Hey guys,
I’ve been a paladin main since WotLK and have played pretty much all melee specs as alts.
I want to try out playing a ranged DPS so I can try something different, but I don’t know which one to pick.
So to all my fellow ranged DPS out there - give me your pros and cons on the different ranged specs so I can pick one to start with… or two… who knows 
bm
pro - is really, really easy, decent damage, bloodlust
cons - pet class
Depends what you playing; Raid, M+ or PvP.
And how important is hitting the top of the dps-meters.
Easy spec, or high learning-curve.
I play all content depending how I feel today so to speak.
Don’t care that much about the TOP dps thing and difficulty doesn’t bother me either.
Pretty much this. ^
MM is just as easy imo and you can still just call a pet when you need bloodlust or use it when tanking in open world content.
You can always try the class trials in-game, no obligation opportunity to try out different classes/specs.
I can give my two cents on warlock and mage -
Warlock - strong survivability, known as the ‘tanky’ caster, with some decent utility and useful pets, but the cons of being a turret means poor mobility and relying on pet AI. Great for soloing content, levelling, and raiding.
Mage - you’re the glass cannon, you’re always going to do good damage, have amazing utility, all at the expense of being incredibly squishy. You’ll be doing a lot of kiting so that you don’t get splattered. Solo content can be a bit more difficult, depending, but obvs they will shine in group stuff.
My fav ranged are:
Beast Mastery Hunter - it just feels right. (Exept buggy pets).
Shadowpriest - also feels kinda good, fast dot and cd’s.
Destruction warlock - Very satisfying where spells feels they do something. Immortal.
Least fav:
MM Hunter - just don’t feel right for me, strange setup of spells.
Demo Warlock - Long learningcurve, long buildup.
Honorable mention:
Frost and Firemage: Used to feel good, but playstyle with Rune of Power just destroyed it.
Balance Druid: Absolutely no damage outside CD (so if you fail you CD you do no damage at all), weak dots, no stackable starfall gives wonky playstyle, “No” valid interrupt.
yeah thats true, but im extremely lazy. xD if pet summon/dismiss was instant then i wouldnt mind it as much but now…meh.
i also found mm to be less fun than bm but thats just subjective. i loved the petless aspect of mm but didnt really like the gameplay of it.
Bm or fire mage.
That would be awesome.
Guess Pet on CD and cast-time is because of PvP. Other we would have insta-casts on them.
My hunter is MM and they still make me summon a BL pet, that’s even worse! 
Good luck picking your new class. (Psst. rogue is the most fun class.) sneaks off
For Affliction Warlocks we are great at doing heavy damage on bosses and otherwise tough mobs. However, getting there requires a bit of build-up and trash mobs dies faster than we reaches our burst point.
At least we are the Warlock spec least affected by mechanics that requires heavy movement as most of our maintenance spells are dots with instant cast to throw around until we get a moment to stand still for our Malefic Raptures or eventually Shadow Bolt/Drain Soul if shardless.
If you’re switching from melee then the only reasonable choice for start is BM hunter.
Any hard caster will be annoying to play until you get used to managing movement.
Bm hunter is generally quite easy, i would not recommend s priest, fire mage and mm hunter as the first spec because they are a bit more difficult, especially fire mage.
My not biased answer is Druid!
hunter is best chose u can avoid all boss mecanics as BM/MM hunter u besicly kill boss without taking a single hit 
I was Pally main TBC to Cata, didn’t really like the changes around then and switched to Ele Shammy and am still maining it now.
I find it fun. It’s quite versitile, can do healing and if you have a hankering to get back to melee you have Enhancement.
The Earth Elemental can tank for you if you need.
We’re not as tough as we used to be but still ok.
whats next unholy dk pet tanking ?
or rise army of dead tanking ?
the elemental should not be avable to tank on shaman …