I’ve always wondered why there’s a meta spec and I think I know why. There’s always a meta spec that seems to be the best at the beginning of a season or just before it starts. After RWF, classes get buff/nerfs and before MDI. Changing specs to be meta also takes a few weeks to get caught up which makes ppl play a few more weeks and lowers burn out. Bliz makes a ton of money from us buying level boosts and more weeks subbed. Probably millions. Classes can easily be buffed to all be near equal, but yet it doesn’t happen. It’s all about money.
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Metas are a natural result of the game being based on math.
That’s pretty much it.
And what is “meta” can change drastically based on the content being done.
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No, they can’t.
That’s why the discrepancies exist. You can’t just tweak one thing and expect an linear increase in power.
Capabilities are also situational. There’s a difference between an stand up and spam your rotation fight and one with lots of movement. Different classes perform differently under those situations.
Finally, “Meta” is a “player” thing, not a “game” thing. Blizzard, demonstrably, doesn’t care about meta, because, as you noticed, the meta changes with the game.
You don’t have to be “meta” to complete content successfully. You can take a raid of all non-meta classes and beat the content.
Turn off your meters, play what you like.
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Bliz can easily change how much people benefit from “math” though
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lol did you sleep through the past 20 years of WoW?
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There’s always going to be a meta spec because some classes synergize well together better than others.
Priest warlock and mage all improve each other more than say running priest warlock hunter.
There’s never going to not be a meta.
Because that’s how reality works. Unless you make all the specs literally identical one of them is going to be the mathematical best.
I’m pretty sure the vast, vast, vast majority of players do not care.
Just this season people went from PCT being an ability barely anyone thought about to it needing nerfed asap and it wasn’t even based on math.
Ramp specs like shadow and balance tend to be awful in lower keys and shine in higher keys. Aug tbh is awful for pugging low keys yet it’s meta in high keys.
Raid meta is typically a lot different than mythic+ meta.
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If Blizz’s plan was to sell more boosts, then why do they constantly make leveling easier, faster, etc
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Ok why don’t they make say rdruid dps more to compete with mw or disc?
Considering discs and MWs are designed to heal based on the damage they do and rdruid isn’t.
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The top DPS healer fluctuates from season to season. MW is doing better damage now, but we’ve been lower-tier damage among healers for several seasons until now. It’s just the way the game works.
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You would think this means they do the most damage but it’s often been the opposite. They’ve been very stingy historically with damage-to-healing conversion classes.
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Nothing will be perfect. Ever. Meta will always exist. And people will flock to it even if its a .1% difference people will still flock to it. Just human nature
I will never understand why the specs don’t get balanced. You are dead on about the meta thing but it made the game so stale I can’t even play it anymore. For instance, years ago I simply could not play an arcane mage. The damage was so terrible that I would just get eaten up. Utility was bad but if I had normal damage I would have been fine with that. But no, I hit with wet noodles. Change specs and bam. Massive damage lol. It makes the game just so very stale. My sub runs out in a week or so and I am just so sick of it. If they balanced the specs then everyone could play any spec they wanted instead of only a handful. In my opinion it’s crazy what they do. All this great potential wasted on the meta lol. so dumb.
Imagine not having a clue what you’re talking about while thinking you do.
No spec is unplayable in 95% of this game. The places where meta actually matters is not somewhere you likely play at.
You having low damage as arcane is an example of player error. Some specs don’t click with some people. Doesn’t mean the spec is weak because you aren’t able to play it well.
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Any spec puts out enough damage/healing/mitigation to handle about 99.9% of the content in this game.
That title keys (literal 0.1%) need a meta due to infinite scaling doesn’t change that.
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If the game was perfectly balanced, people would reroll much less often.
They want you rerolling every so often because it ups the time played metric that they’re so fond of.
I fully believe they shift the meta intentionally to boost this metric but nobody will have any actual proof of it.
Resto druids have to burn a bunch of GCDs casting Rejuvenation to setup giant Regrowths. If I spend that time casting Wrath or Moon/Starfire, I’m pretty sure I’m doing it wrong. Sure, there is HoT propagation after a Wild Growth cast, but it’s too RNG. I’ll burn the instant cast Wrath when it procs, and maybe sneak in some hard cast Wraths to get an instant Regrowth when incoming damage lulls. But, I’d rather Swiftmend up to the free limited-duration tree form proc which makes Regrowth instant anyway.
Then again, my take might be wrong. I don’t main my Resto Druid. I main Resto Shaman.
Resto in high end m+ typically plays around maintaining a state of “Tick over” on the group then while it’s hots are doing the work dots up mobs with a mix of moonfire, sunfire, and rake, then either slams starfire in high AoE or does cat form damage on bosses. If it can get to that point it does very good damage for a healer, but the more it has to heal the less it can do that.
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