based on mainly memory and a quick glimpse of arenamate charts, i made a tier list to depict which specs are consistently viable/in a solid spot starting from legion since that’s when they ruined class design.
crazy how much high i’d put frost/afflock if i considered older expacs.
this was just for fun. would be cool to hear opinions.
edit:
interesting to hear how much i’ve missed and varying opinions/insight. i def could’ve placed things better.
Put mah Lakers up there, 17 championships and counting 
I think + (Up) -(down)
Unholy: +
Outlaw: -
WW: +
Aff:+
Ele:+
unholy/outlaw swapping i can agree with
aff i feel is fine where it is cause it seemed pretty mediocre up until just this season+ that one week before mm sidewinders season in legion
Affliction is fine if you play with a holy priest that knows when to PI and dark archangel you so that you can one shot people with deathbolt.
So basically my decision to play Priest/Rsham for the foreseeable future was a wise one? Good.
Yep
Lol I meant to say discipline 
Frost and Aff in Legion, if I remember correctly, were both pretty good… probably B+ or A- tier.
i’d bump ww and both druid specs up at least 1 tier, ww especially has won too many blizzcons for me to think it can fairly be called inconsistent. even without fist stun and with long cd incap, port and some kind of burst dmg model every single season have seemed to make it nerfproof
ret is gonna trend up on this chart if this xpac predicts the next one; until SL i genuinely think the only two good ret seasons in a row we had seen since in at least the last 10 years were fearless and cruel
holy priest was good for all of legion and probably before it but it took the supreme genius of NV to reach its potential so we never really got to see it. like babymichael inventing arcane in wod lol
I would say dominant and demonic into half of dread were also rlly good ret ssns but I see what u mean
Disc down 1 tier
Sub up 1 tier
Arms up 1 tier
Dh up 2 tiers
Ret up 1 tier
Ele up 1 tier
Ww up 1 tier
Outlaw down 1 tier
Hpriest up 2 tiers
probably?
edit: i misread the post and am dumb
seasonal tier lists are so boring and basic, just gotta look at rep charts and you know like 80% of it.
i decided to do a more interesting tier. i sat down as a spriest main and thought “when has spriest ever been bad” and ya. spriest super solid class, esp now in slands
tfw Hansol was the only fire mage /s
Legion 
Combustion going from a dot extender to an i-win button says a lot about class design.
What do you think is the reason for the shift? Pruning? Oversimplification of specs? Fire having access to spells they shouldn’t?
edit: move demo down
Why is disc so high. That spec is usually hit or miss.
I’m going to agree with fire and shadow placement though
Sub and beast mastery need to go down, survival needs to be lower.
I think this is almost the first expansion that holy priests have been this good so they could move down too. Resto Druids are kind of high on that list… they’ve had a lot of bad seasons.
Rest of the tier list is passable or I lack knowledge to critique
The shift from frost to fire?
First they changed mastery to icicles in wod for pve reasons (can’t shatter bosses)
Then they removed deep, then nerfed ebonbolt and comet storm/ice nova
People asked for frostbolt to hit harder like in the old shatter days and their fix was to give it like 14 stackable modifiers and make every other button aside from flurry procs not worth pressing
Frost is good and can be played to high ratings it’s just crazy boring playing necro
Fire has db
so long as rogue mage can queue together, it will drag disc from the ashes.
survival has never not been good since its redesign iirc. this isnt a popularity tier list. even now, survival is noticeably good, bm is just broken.
“ruined class design”
What a joke of a comment
Frost mage should be higher