If it contributes 20% less damage than the next worst DPS when played optimally, it might still be sought after for top level keys.
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Right, because if your tank can pull bigger and your healer can heal more (thanks to aug’s primary stat), presumably you can do bigger pulls that compensate even if their damage contribution is quite as good as a third dps.
plus oppressive roar and double silence sigil is ludicrous.
3.3 million unique characters ran a key in Season 2 alone. Seems pretty popular.
OP is also right about balance in S1 and early S2. It was the best or close to the best it’s ever been.
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Yeah. In the most extreme case, with everyone in perfect coordination, aug doing 20% less damage than any other DPS spec will make it still viable at the top, while making it hard trolling to bring it for it’s intended audience.
There will always be a lic…meta comp
Just adding here the official poll made by Blizz to answer this very question
It was the favorite and the sample size was more than 10000. So yes there is measurable data and it’s right to say M+ is the most popular game mode.
Seeing us go from the most diverse season we’ve ever had in S1 where it wasn’t even clear what the best comp was because so many people were running different things at the literal top ranks of progression to a hard locked 5 man comp in S2 was so disappointing.
Also find it ridiculous that of the 3 dps specs that were part of that comp, two of them are STILL looking to be part of it and Shadow is now fighting with tanks for overall and near enough unplayable.
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My friend, dungeon content will always be more popular than raiding, that doesn’t mean that people like M+. Participation doesn’t mean it is popular, it is just easier than raiding, a lot easier. I’m talking about the logistics here.
I get so so tired of people championing M+ on these forums as some kind of savior for the game, when the reality is, Blizzard basically is just recycling old content and using it for end game progression.
The only reason this content is popular, is because it is the easiest path to some of the best gear in the game.
When the new expansion launches, you’re going to see M+ participation crater, because now, players can earn decent gear from world content.
Trust me when I say this, if the older versions of the game rewarded top end gear from 5 man dungeons, no one would have raided then as well.
Edit: If M+ is so popular, why doesn’t it get more attention? Blizzard still puts all their PVE endgame development into raids.
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Are you trying to point out that people prefer to run 5 man content over raids? No duh, doesn’t mean that people like M+, just means that this is the easier path to gearing.
The new world progression path is going to decimate M+ participation next expansion.
Mark this post down.
This is not a viable metric at all. The poll was done on these forums, which are inhabited by the sweatiest players among the WoW population. Ironic that Classic hardcore almost had as many votes and we can see by the population of hardcore this is a niche community, yet it came in 3rd place in the poll.
It’s the only content in the game where you have to play your entire class, use your entire kit - cc, dps dispels, reactively using defensives, etc .
It’s weird that every guild I’ve ever been in you could pretty much stack rank players by IO score and stack rank them by their skill and the two lists would be identical.
M+ is the best way to practice and get better at playing your character. Compared to raid where you can get dragged through by your guildies, M+ has a ton of individual resonsibility.
You leave out rated PVP? This is why I can’t take anyone here serious. Utterly clueless and biased people posting here.
PVP is the ultimate honing tool.
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there’s no doubt that the casual population is bigger than M+ and raiding combined, and that the world-tier participation will likely eclipse both.
but consider me skeptical that the weekly world boss, pet collectors and niffen dig puzzle solvers were the same people running +15’s at 11x the rate of raid participation.
PvP is a gimmick, ripped from an ARPG.
Except people still play ARPG’s 
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No need to get hostile. They’re pretty similar yeah. I do less PVP so I didn’t think to mention it, but yeah compared to raid, M+ and PVP are the best ways to get better at the game.
It seems like you’re totally blinded by your grudge against M+ though. It is immensely popular.
Even this expac where heroic raid gear is now better than ever there are multiple million characters doing M+ every season. Literal millions. Compared to PVP participation I’d bet M+ is 10-20x the population.
Right, because they’re being forced into this content.
The amount of people that actually like M+ is probably extremely low. Running the same dungeons over and over again is just a straight boring MMO experience.
You guys can try to force this narrative that people love M+, but when the new world progression path drops, M+ is going to finally be regulated to the niche content it should have been in the first place.
I can’t wait to drink up all the tears from people complaining they can’t find players to run that crap content.
In all my 20 years of MMO gaming, I have never experienced a more boring, soulless and toxic system like I have with M+.
M+'s popularity is grossly exaggerated by the small minority of posters that spend way too much time posting on these forums.
PVP has been in the game since launch my dude. Was a huge part of older MMOs too. You guys need to get out of your WoW bubble.
Now, back to the topic at hand here, like I said, you can’t balance 5 man dungeons around 39 specs and achieve interesting class play and have balance. It is impossible.
PVP has the same issues.
Right, I’m the biased one here. Drops into a forum and claims that a certain activity is just universally praised by the player base. Sheesh, your ego here is just crazy.
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They said no more support specs in the next expansion.
So I vote delete the spec or change it into a pure dps spec. Support cannot exist on one spec only in the entire game.
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I agree. I thought it was stupid from the start BUT I at least thought they were going to add more to balance it out. If not, it needs to be changed.
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It was the most popular response in the official Blizzard poll that got put out with 10s of thousands of responses. Millions of characters running it every season since its inception.
I’m betting it will be popular still in 11.0.
I’m glad they’re adding world content too though. I hope it’s challenging so I can watch very bad players like you seething mad that you can’t make it through the delves.
Where have I had “ego”? All I said was that it’s the most popular content in the game and by EVERY SINGLE VERIFIABLE SOURCE it’s true. Find me hard numbers that M+ is unpopular. I’ll wait.
I’m not saying that M+ isn’t widely popular… but if you’re talking about the forum poll, that’s highly inaccurate, as people could continually vote on their alts.
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Do you understand what cherry-picking data is? This is what you’re doing here.
Forum polls are worthless.
Show me any real data that proves M+ is unpopular.
You can look at RaiderIO and see the MILLIONS of characters that have done M+ this season, last season, and all seasons before that.
Sorry you feel so mad about M+, but it’s more popular than raid and PVP by a lot. It isn’t close. Numbers prove it. It seems your feelings about M+ are leading you to make these irrational statements about it…
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