I’ve been trying to look over the data from season 1, 2 and 3 to see if there is a pattern, as to which classes seem to start off strong and stay that way through the seasons.
In Season 1 we saw:
- Prot Paladin
- Resto Druid
- Balance Druid
- Shadow Priest
- Sub Rogue
- Ret Paladin
- Havoc DH
(Prot Warrior was broken as hell at the beginning, but was nerfed to the ground).
In Season 2, we saw:
- Augment evoker
- fire mage
- shadow priest
- sub rogue
- guardian druid
- holy paladin
In Season 3, we have:
- Augment Evoker
- Fire Mage
- Outlaw Rogue
- DH Havoc
- DH Vengence
- Balance Druid
- Disc Priest
Of course, there are others inbetween in relation to affixes etc etc.
But overall trying to pinpoint a pattern that Blizzard has, makes me feel the druids, rogues & mages will again play a role in season 4 or they could do a completely 180 and make Brewmaster monk OP for tanking, Holy Priest, resto shaman OP for healing, WW monk, feral druid for melee, affliction warlock, elemental shaman for ranged.
Makes me wish we had timewalking dungeons on all the time, so I could level up one of each class again, but on 1 server (deleted a ton as they were spread all over the place as I wasn’t going tpay for server transfers).
I hardly doubt that it will change much…
While setboni are important and can break or make a spec…
I doubt it will have an impact on a lot of the struggeling specs, especially that lots of the boni that won the vote are S3 boni.
Some specs just need a buff or far more help.
My spec sucked the whole expansion and will continue to do so
You’re indeed correct in the terms of the set bonus from the gear.
I think once we see the set bonus for Season 4 and I hope it’s not a copy & paste of a previous season, then we can get an idea of how good/bad the classes themselves will be with all that data.
You will be unpleasantly supriced than. If I dont mix something up it was:
S1: 8
S2: 8
S3: 23
So most setboni will be the same.
What is really interesting that the boring S1 boni return for some specs. Pretty disappointing.
I don’t really understand this analysis.
Who or what is it aimed at?
It’s excluding specs like Prot pala and mistweaver from s3 which perform well at all key levels. It’s included Balance druids, which frankly suck at lower keys, probably hit a sweet spot at key levels higher than most people will even reach ( where stuff lives long enough for balance to do meaningful damage).
Meantime it excludes stuff like bm which do good damage in many conditions easily. Same with ret palas. You can argue that BM hits survivability issues but again this is probably past the level that most people play at. If you’re looking for a safe choice for a 2-20 key I’d take ret or bm pretty consistently over most other specs.
Also specs that are good now generally came as a result of a rework or tuning, not set bonuses. We have no idea what levers blizz will pull and the balance patches also show that Blizz don’t really know either. They don’t sit there with some master plan and think “we’ll make survival broken strong this patch!” - stuff just happens.
In other words the past isn’t a predictor of the future.
Finally the controversial part. I get the impression you’re sorta wondering what to level so you can chase fotm. Far better just to pick something and learn to play it well.
To an extent there you can look at roles. Tanks and healers will always find a spot. In M+ stuff that brings a CR / lust / can handle affixes will always have a headstart over classes and specs that bring nothing.
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Talking about aug vokers, I have a feeling that with Blizzard seeing how much people want them in groups and how many people play them, I’d be surprised that if the next chapter of the World Soul Saga won’t contain a pure support class, like a Bard/Minstrel class that plays music and you’ll have to “twist” your music to rotate those buffs etc.
Listen: come closer I’ll tell you a secret… a little bit closer, that’s right.
Listen my friend: who plays Augvoker only do it because it’s meta and they don’t have to work as much as the other DPS. The rest of the people invite them because they are meta, if was among the average the class would have been dead from the start.
It’s not that people want them, tbh people seem to hate them and want them away. I, as Augvoker, am feeling this sentiment all the time. Always checking mplus website hoping Aug is still meta because the moment it goes from S tier to A tier I know that I will have to stop playing it to be able to keep playing the game.
I’ve noticed some +30 key groups are running without an Aug, which is interesting. 2 Fire Mages or Outlaw, Fire & Demo (and some other combinations).
I don’t know about “want”. It just augments the best meta specs well, so at very high keys it’s almost mandatory. There is a handful of 30 and 31 keys without augvokers, but it’s a very small number. Arguably, there are more people who’d want a proper dps spec in their groups.
I hope they’ll discontinue the “support spec” experiment as it takes up an entire dps spot. I’d feel differently about this if there was a 6th slot in groups, but I don’t see that happening.
(I see Aundra said the same already!)
This is the response of one of the healers of those groups you’re referring to:
Ah thank you, I’ll watch that shortly.
Augmentation evokers are good in coordinated groups, not in PUGs.
Most PUG augvokers can’t even keep Ebon Might at 70% uptime.
And if a DPS dies, you lose 1.5 or even 2 dps in that fight, because the augvoker is useless on it’s own. This is the hard truth.
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it is simply:
-specs that a broken dmg wise
-specs that have a lot of utility and didn’t fall off a cliff dmg wise after tuning
tanks and healers seem to be hard dependend on buffs/nerfs to shake the meta. e.g. if they nerf silence sigil and their dmg, dh might drop out of meta, otherwise if they keep the dmg, utility and tankiness, they will stay meta
for dps:
-fire mage will be a solid bet
-rogue and shadow have a good chance if their dmg is tuned
rest will strongly depend on how broken their dmg is
Wish SPs had Mind Sear back… hate how our AoE is a damn 20s CD, which often doesn’t hit all targets… 
For the majority of this game all classes are balanced, how many go over m+ 24? Indeed not many. As of people that goes higher they will always take the best class possible and yes there is always a meta class or spec. Same in pvp will allways be 1 meta.
easiest specs will shine.
After next week’s buff of the lowest DPS specs, and apart from rogue, DH, and warlock being OP DPS specs, I think class balance is good at the moment. And I assume that in the next few months a few more minor balance changes will be made which will further improve the situation
If there are no class/spec reworks in season 4, as it was the case for rogue or DH in 10.2, I don’t think there will be massive differences to season 3.
