So with the PTR just around the corner for Season 4, what do you all think could end up being the new meta?
I’m expecting not a lot to really change, but you never know what could happen at the end of the day!
Same as before in s3.
1 Like
Similar to S3, I think. Utility will still be king.
I don’t have strong ambitions to go past +20 (+10 in S4), so no matter the meta, my shaman will be fine.
1 Like
Yeah shame, I have no desire to go above 20s.
Did that for my Warlock and then moved onto this tank. But I’m still interested to see if anything will be tweaked to bring up the other classes up to where they should have been and make the whole assortment of classes to be viable for everyone up to the 20s.
Either RShaman gets a rework, or the dungeon design promotes reactive healing… Otherwise we will still be bottom of the pack this season.
Like last season too… And the season before it… and most of S1 (except some weeks at the end)…
So dunno… bleak I guess…
Some of the tier sets are changing, so there might be some movement in terms of what’s strong. I believe guardian druid is getting back its s2 tier set, for example.
It will be interesting to see what moves around and what tweaks are being done to classes in terms of their skills/spells.
Give it around a week for everyone who will be running all the parses and such to gather all that data to compilate what is happening in terms of output, but also hopefully giving people who want to review that information, also survivability.
I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t have rolled an enhancement shaman if they knew how squishy they were.
But I do like to see the work people put into gathering all that information.
do not see VDH getting unseated from their throne so tank meta prob going to remain the same.
Yeah I don’t see VDH being removed from the 1st spot for tanking. Prot Pally will still be 2nd, as their set isn’t changing from what I remember.
Maybe TWW will hopefully switch things up in terms of the tanking section of M+
Specs who’s S3 tier set was the strongest will probably drop a bit. Specs who loved their S1 and S2 sets will probably rise.
Not super sure how much this will unseat the meta, since I don’t think the tier sets are the exclusive reason why those specs are at the top, nor the reason the least favoured are where they are.
But if I had to take a wild speculative guess on no information except experience and festering cynicism:
- resto druid and holy paladin in “shock” rise to the best healers by a big enough margin that some other healers reroll
- guardian druid, DH and DK as preferred tanks, not much to choose between them
- DH, demo warlock, fire/frost mage, outlaw rogue as strongest overall dps specs
- Blizzard announce (again) that they recognise preservation evoker has a problem with its range limit and buff it’s defensives and healing (again)
- augmentation evoker is just a dps spec now, but nobody cares because almost nobody plays it since S2 anyway
- evoker overall becomes the only class to not be meta in its own launch expansion
- mistweaver retuned and either remains strong and holds 3rd place as an A-tier healer, or becomes absolute dead last F-tier, and either way it stays there for the rest of the expansion without further changes
- no hunter spec is particularly good but also not awful and still popular because kitties
- prot warriors spend 4 months drunk and crying in a corner of the Roasted Ram while queuing for pugs
- arcane mage no longer allowed in instances and reserved exclusively for the archaeology event because it feels like the brainiest spec and nobody plays it in real content anyway
- shadow priests go extinct, the average body mass of azerothian citizens slightly decreases as they get lighter
- disc priest nerfed for raid reasons until it struggles to pug M+16s (but is still excellent in raids)
- WW monks get a bad rep because they always pull aggro on pull and die. nobody knows if they’re good because they don’t survive so they never get invited to anything ever
- sub rogue becomes a pure PvP spec and everybody hates them
- dps warriors are quite good but only get to play when it’s not afflicted week. many decide they like their new RL jobs and unsub.
- ele shamans gain another 3 buttons to use in their basic ST rotation, damage still midrange even when played optimally
- ret paladin finally becomes a sword-and-board spec, 99% reroll because they can’t swing the axe that dropped for them in the last week of 10.2
- balance druid go brrr but nobody plays it
LMK if I missed anyone 
Same old.
let me guess, fire mage will be meta?
tank meta is clear if vdh doesnt lose anything or suddenly dies to trash
I just want feral to be okay, I don’t even wanna be insanely good, just okay would be nice
dno what u guys care this much about meta… u can do 20-s on any class /spec… or 10-s next season… dno ive been playing frost dk alwasys never been a really top spec or meta… can alwasys do all my 20-s both tyranical and fortified timed. and its enough for me. depends on goals i gues.
Everyone is different in terms of how they feel about what is and what isn’t meta. Personally I find the whole thing interesting, as any form of group content in any game always has a meta behind it.
It also shows the willingness of Blizzard, if they want to balance things out for everyone. When they don’t, then of course that is where the drama begins.
So META is in itself a bigger story 
Meta is for baddies.
1 Like
Nobody really cares too much about season 4, so hopefully most people will focus less on what the top 0.1% pick and instead play whatever they want to.
I think I might main my Vulpera monk (mostly WW, but I might try MW in M+ if I can’t get into PuGs) because I’m kinda bored of playing pala for 2 seasons.
It relates to class and spec balance. Nobody really enjoys playing a spec or class that performs worse than comparable specs and classes, even though they invest the same amount of time and effort (or in some cases: significantly more effort for significantly worse performance).
It’s also connected to desirability. Meta specs are meta specs for a reason. It’s frequently because of utility, but also damage and the ease with which it is dealt. Survivability also plays a big role. Many, though not all, aspects that make a spec meta in high keys also matter in lower keys. They’re just less crucial there because lower keys offer more wiggle room.
Any spec can do 20s, that’s true. But that is probably also the justification for not balancing specs and their utility/survivability better in M+. And even at 20, some specs make runs much smoother and easier, and will get invited more easily as well. Those are frequently the same specs that are also meta.
I’ve never played a Vulpera before and been mostly an Alliance player, but making a furry for da horde would be amusing when going into PvP and furbagging someone, I can sense the rage from the future.
1 Like
Even in 20s it feels bad to see other people perform better than you while you are sweating to keep up.
Makes you feel carried. And its a negative feeling.
But here is the secret : There will always be a meta. But the question is “now much better is the meta?”. S1 meta and S2 meta are both “meta” but you can agree that S2 was much worse.
What does this translate to? Well. In S1 not only you could do 20s with any spec. But, at “normal player level” they were indistinguishable in performance. You only start noticing the “meta” when you get to really high skill levels of play.
Unlike S2 for example. That just by being there a FMage doubled the DPS of anyone else with 2 buttons.
S3 is closer to S1 than to S2. But its still nowhere near the paradise S1 used to be. So some specs (not all) still see performance differences (not much fortunately) in 20s.