Heard mistweaver dps is insane at range. And who doesn’t run triple glimmer in dungeons as an hpal? Your argument is predicated on a ridiculous premise. Everyone sucks with crap traits.
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MW dps sucks at range. MW healing definitely does not suck at range and has no melee dependence. There are plenty of situations in M+ where you will be forced out of melee or have limited melee uptime moving between targets, but you need to keep healing.
And gambling for 3 glimmer pieces from the TR vendor is no joke because MW (or other healers) have no comparable trait of such huge importance for M+ healing
Oh, I’m sorry. I understood “top tier” to mean the best, or equal best at their role. Maybe “top tier” means something completely different in your universe.
Top Tier tanks: Brewmaster, Warrior
Top Tier healers: Druid
1 class isn’t a tier. BrM is clearly the push meta right now, but there are 4 other tank classes in the top 40 runs. It’s not a question of popularity, it’s one of capability. Paladin is capable of pushing top end keys and that puts it in a higher tier than say, Guardian, which is woefully behind.
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There’s a DK tank in the top 10 runs too, ahead of the best pally tank. That doesn’t make DK top tier tank either, just like a couple of outlier pallies don’t. Meanwhile 17 of the top 20 runs are Brewmaster tanks.
Pallies are not “top tier”. They are ok.
Druid healers are in a tier of their own for obvious reasons, the fact that there is only 1 standout class doesn’t make it any less of a tier.
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For any content that 99% of us will do there are plenty of viable specs. Just because a Brewmaster is pushing the highest keys doesn’t mean we need them for the 18s or whatever that we are doing. A far bigger factor is being good at your class.
People need to care less about extremes they are not involved in
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Some people just keep bringing up that argument, but it just doesn’t count in these discussions. To say you have to be good at your class is a valid statement in general, why would it not be, but this discussion is about comparisons of classes, and therefore you have to assume that people have similar skill.
You’re saying if class X is more limited than class Y by design then the class X player just needs to be better than the class Y player…
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I agree. The problem is that more and more often people are far too worried about comp at levels where they are not needing to be. I just want to be sure that I am not feeding the cycle of it that’s all.
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Reminds me of the old raid argument “skill is way more important than gear”
nope
better gear + comparable skill > worse gear + comparable skill
Now replace ‘better gear’ in that expression with ‘better spec’
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Yea but if you put me on a disc priest I will suck. Put me on a resto druid and I will do way better regardless of disc being the better spec.
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Yes that’s where the ‘comparable skill’ component comes in.
If the average performance difference between two healing specs is massive in the vast majority of M+ situations that need for ‘comparable skill’ quickly becomes ‘well as long as you are not a complete moron in one of the specs’.
I’ve invested way more years of effort in playing the various iterations of holy priest, including the legion version which mostly closely resembles the BFA version. But I know that I could surpass my holy priest’s near maximum (no one is perfect of course) M+ performance easily with my resto druid with a tiny fraction of the time invested. Since time invested in a spec is something most of us closely associate with developing a skill level in that spec, this means I can play a fair bit more sloppy and non-ideal with a resto druid and equal or surpass the M+ performance of my holy priest.
The same contrast applies to playing my prot warrior in M+ BFA. I barely played prot warrior in M+ in legion and never played it on group content before legion. However I have played my prot pally on and off through various serious progession (including M+ pushing in legion) in various spec iterations since 2008. None of this matters because when I play my prot warrior now (in comparable ilvl and ideal itemization to my prot pally) the performance difference is so massive I just feel unstoppable (both offensively and defensively) in the vast majority of M+ situations. I hardly consider myself even a ‘good’ prot warrior (such as missing ability cooldown procs here and there or not intensely tracking IP amounts) but I still blow my prot pally out of the water with a tiny fraction of the time invested (and thus skill) required.
The same contrast applies for example in melee DPS when looking at massive havoc DH rerolls away from neglected specs like enhance shaman, feral druid and arms warrior --> equal or greater results with a tiny fraction of the time invested and thus skill level required.
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Is prot really that much better. I played dh, prot pal and bear to around 14 level. My Warr I haven’t pushed yet. Seems I should, it just sitting at 428 ilvl not being played.
Unholy DK is the best class and spec. Huge pull and gg. Rogue is trash anw 
In legion, tanking was all about high to absurd levels of self sustain. Prot warrior could do some of it with their legendary bracers but it was still subpar.
In BFA tanking was redesigned to greatly minimize self sustain, both through gutted self-healing/absorbs and through decreased defensive cooldown durations (or entire removal such as empower wards for VDH).
This new design perfectly fits the prot warrior because their ability to mostly ignore physical damage was relatively untouched through this transition and the BFA patches. At the same time their anger management talent was untouched, which when combined with their superb scaling with haste results in a monster that sharply grows in power from patch to patch.
The superb scaling from proper itemization + anger management means that in most situations you are flooded with rage. This means you have plenty of IP uptime (because you should not spend rage on revenge) and constantly shortening defensive/offensive cooldown durations. Now blizzard also threw in VOP essence to both shorten the cooldown of avatar AND give you avatar procs (7 sec each). Therefore you are looking at uptimes like this. None of this is based on measurement but just a feel from playing my current prot warrior at ilvl 440:
demo shout:
- sub 1 minute effective cooldown, effective duration ~ 14 sec with deafening crash
avatar:
- sub 1 minute effective cooldown, effective duration ~ 28-30 sec if you including VOP procs
last stand + bolster talent (reduces LS cooldown to 2 min):
- 1 min effective cooldown, duration 15 sec, guaranteed blocking throughout duration
shield wall:
- 2-3 min effective cooldown, duration 8 sec
So overall absolutely massive and OP. No other tank gets reductions on their cooldowns that scale with their resource consumption and ilvl. These combined with IP cover you against the vast majority of dangerous non-physical damage situations in M+. In contrast a VDH gets a laughable SINGLE TARGET defensive on a 1 min cooldown and then a “you can’t kill me” defensive (meta) which is nice but it’s only one extra cooldown on a 3 min cd and will NEVER go down with improved gear.
Then of course we have prot warrior’s still absurd damage. You think nerfing unstoppable force talent to 30% solved this ? nope. The existence of this talent in itself is the problem. Imagine if there was a BDK talent that had a high uptime of cutting their blood boil cooldown in half, boosting its damage and granting more resources. It would be insane and the only talent ever picked by BDK in its respective row.
In the BFA tanking design the defensive side of prot warrior completely flew under the radar (and was buffed in patch 8.1) and their offensive power is still insane, especially with the terrible single target damage of so many tank specs.
In raiding mitigating big hits is king so BrM is king and will likely remain king. But in M+ the goal is all about plowing through like an unstoppable freight train and with proper play and itemization (and a competent healer of course because every BFA tank still needs one) the prot warrior just keeps going and going.
As it stands now I’m looking forward in Season 4 to my baseline 50-60% haste (before procs, after procs >= 100%) leading to even more absurd damage, IP uptime and all my cooldowns with absurdly high uptime.
In some cases, a spec becomes “meta” by virtue of a single ability. In the case of druids, it is Rebirth. In terms of HPS and DPS, they can be beat by other specs.
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Nope rebirth is just the cherry on top of a mountain of powerful absurdity. Give brez to everyone and resto druid still has:
- best mobile healing
- best mobility
- good ranged DPS and great melee DPS
- good survivability
- good spot healing, definitely better than holy priest and resto shaman
- powerful non-healing utility like typhoon, roots, soothe and curse removal
Resto druid mastery needs a big nerf in a 5 man setting. The functionality to make it happen already exists there in reverse for their tranquility ability (+100% healing in a raid group). Getting all the hots up on a 5 man party and pumping out insane HPS, including on the move is completely broken in the vast majority of M+ situations, even if you don’t prioritize doing DPS while those big heals are rolling.
All of the points above are powerful in the +10-15 key range just like they are in the +15-20 (or above) range, to admit otherwise is delusional. As with the other roles the big advantages of a spec don’t just magically disappear because you do a lower range of content. These advantages mean you finish that lower content even faster with minimal/zero risk of failure or wiping and likely lower ilvl requirements across the board.
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Then why have we seen the emergence of hpals and mistweavers in the mdi when a dk is taken?
Also with meld skips not being as important we have seen more pally healers as well because they can’t be NEs.
Why take away when you could give to others. Rather than leaving shamans and priests as bad healers in 5 man’s why not buff them and make everyone happy.
Other healers have more utility than you give them credit for too. Druids are the strongest m+ healers but the gaps smaller than you a presenting them to be.
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Preliminary 8.3 changes up
No prot warrior changes and a buff to VOP essence combined with some nerfs to other tanks
Prot warrior #1 tank in season 4 again
No resto druid mastery nerf or anything
No brez given to other healers
No change to godmode rogue toolkit
A+ patch so far, rofl
I don’t know man. I have a druid and hpally that can do keys in the +10-15 range equally well. If it were not for Rebirth, I would pick the hpally as the winner because of the insane burst healing that they get with their CD’s. She can also cheese mechanics with her abilities that might kill the druid.
I feel about the same on my monk too. Monk splash healing with renewing mist is crazy strong and there are very few healers than can tunnel hp into someone with a debuff like the axe debuff in KR than a mistweaver