1  State of the M+ meta

The following is based on our compositional analysis of M+ parties. It is composed by looking at several weeks worth of data and then forming a more qualitative opinion about what is going on.

You should consider this section more opionionated than the rest of the site.

1.1 Dragonflight, Season 2 (10.1.0)

1.1.1 Priest

More than 95% of all top groups includes a priest. Most of these are shadow-priests, which is by far the most popular specialization this season.

In M+, this abundance of a single spec is a disaster for compositional diversity. In a party of 5, priests more or less lock in a slot. Hence, the amount of available slots for other specs are reduced. Furthermore, a priest will have pairings which are beneficial, and it will suppress certain other specializations. This reduces diversity even more. As an example, priests are generally not good at interrupting. They either have no kick, or their kick is on a long ardous cooldown. This increases the kick-pressure in the rest of the group so you need to pair the priest with specializations who have short-cooldown kicks. A spec which has similarly weak interrupts, such as Warlock, will suffer in an environment where priests are abundant.

While our compositional analysis can point to a specialization being popular, the reason why will require some qualitative analysis on top:

  • Our analysis shows that if you don’t have a Shadow-priest, you are very likely to have a healer-priest, either Discipline or Holy. This argues that the reason priests are brought into keys are likely to be found in the class-tree and not the specialization tree.
  • Power Infusion (PI) is an incredibly strong localized bloodlust-like effect on a 2m cooldown.
  • Mind soothe is an enabler for a lot of skips. It also generally makes routing in the dungeon more safe.
  • Dominate Mind is strong in this season.
  • Disease Dispel is strong this season.

Mass Dispel is a uniquely powerful dispel option. Besides healers, it is only shadow-priest and warlock who are able to handle magic dispels in a consistent way. A common mechanic used by Blizzard is to create encounters where multiple party members gets a magic-dispellable debuff on them. Recent examples are Kul’tharok (Theater of Pain, Shadowlands), Sha of Doubt (4th boss, Temple of the Jade Serpent, Dragonflight Season 1), and Skycap’n Kragg (1st boss, Freehold, Dragonflight Season 2). The idea is that the healer can dispel one party member, and then have to pay attention to the second party member. The mini-game is that some classes can dispel it off themselves, and some deal better with damage intake than others, so the healer can excel by making intelligent choices.

This season, however, there are multiple points in the dungeon pool where Mass Dispel is valuable. Because it is so strong at negating entire mechanics from certain fights, it is not surprising they are an extremely popular class choice. Because mitigating damage is so important this season, it pushes Mass Dispel into the mandatory-area far quicker than it would in other seasons.

1.1.2 Bloodlust

The bloodlust effect remains extremely powerful1. The current tuning puts it well above alternatives such as drums. This means you want bloodlust in your group. While a well-playing group won’t need bloodlust in most key levels, it is important to stress that a less well-playing group will. This means bloodlust become mandatory whenever a group reaches their limit in skill, so they can push a couple of key levels higher.

1 From some data-analysis, it looks like Bloodlust is quite a bit more powerful than combat resurrections.

4 classes have a bloodlust effect: Shaman, Mage, Hunter, and Evoker. Our compositional analysis shows that a major decision in group composition is “do we get bloodlust on the healer?” The answer to this question locks in a lot of other specializations you’d like to pair with. If you pick one of the bloodlust-healers, you also pick a shadow-priest. It leaves a lot of flexibility on the 2 remaining DPS-slots in the group. If you don’t pick one of the bloodlust healers, you have to field a DPS who brings it.

1.1.3 Paladins and Druids

Our compositional analysis shows paladins remains popular, and are used a lot at the top. The choice of paladin (Holy, Protection, Retribution) is fundamental to the composition and is one of the major decisions to be made. As with priests, the popularity is spread over the class, so it is likely there’s class-abilities at play. About 66% of all groups has a paladin.

Likewise, druids enjoy a lot of representation. While feral druid is considerably less popular, the other druid specs are doing well. Around 60% of all groups bring a druid.

One fundamental observation are that these two classes have a combat resurrection in common, sharing this with Death Knights and Warlocks. But DK and Warlock are largely unpopular specs to field in dungeons, which puts the other two CR-carrying classes into the limelight.

1.1.4 Mages

The analysis done on this site has had Fire Mage consistently at the top for the whole 10.1.0 patch2. While shadow priest is immensely popular, shadow priest contributes less to getting higher mythic plus scores in dungeon runs, compared to Fire.

2 This was before the Fire Mage rework which buffed mages by a good amount of power.

1.2 Dragonflight, Season 2.5 (10.1.5+)

1.2.1 Augmentation Evoker.

Augmentation Evokers were added to game, and they were way overtuned from the start3. They became mandatory for a Mythic+ composition, because they provided so much extra damage and survivability to the group.

3 It turns out that Blizzard does this on purpose. New specs, or specs with a rework, are tuned such they come out strong. This encourages people to try them out and can be used as a way to overcome the initial hump of getting the new rotation into muscle memory. In this case, however, it came out stronger than expected.

1.2.2 Stale meta

For high-level play, both Shadow Priest and Augmentation Evoker were forced picks. Furthermore, the specs which we identified as being dominant at the start of the season were all buffed. Mage got stronger. Holy Paladin got a lot stronger. Because druids had the most powerful raid-buff in the game, you could play Guardian druid, a tank which turned out to be extremely strong at surviving. In short, only one composition mattered: Augmentation Evoker, Shadow Priest, Holy Paladin, Fire Mage, and Guardian Druid. I’m a bit perplexed that all the classes which were already deemed very strong for Mythic+ got buffs, as data suggested they should be nerfed, if anything.

As a result, we went from a meta which were pretty balanced to one which was very lopsided toward a single composition4. Worse, this bled into the lower ranks as well, where it shouldn’t matter as much. Everything from the start of season carried over into late season.

4 It was the most unbalanced meta going back to at least the Legion expansion.

Worse, the tuning was slow, and did not address the primary problems straight away. This is risky, because you could end up with a spec in a bad situation. If you first tune things of no consequence to its popularity, then hit the reason it’s popular, the spec might end up undertuned. You’d have to buff the spec afterwards for all the non-consequential things.

1.3 Dragonflight, Season 3

1.3.1 Tanks

The rework of Vengeance Demon Hunter was a success. Perhaps too much of a success. The control-toolkit of Vengeance is far above any other tank in the game, making them the prime choice for any group. Solving a large part of the control puzzle up front is quite powerful. Any other tank in the game is likely to need more help here, but Vengeance can do a lot of control by themselves.

Most of this power comes from a single talent point, “Illuminated Sigils” which adds another charge to all sigils. Having multiple charges is quite helpful with sigil uptime, as you don’t lose value as soon as a sigil is off cooldown. And in certain pulls, having an extra sigil is a lot of additional control.

While Vengeance has been strong, it doesn’t fall outside the equivalent region for most weeks. This means it has been powerful, but perhaps not excessively so.

1.3.2 Healers

Healing has been in a state where three specs, Mistweaver, Restoration Druid, and Discipline Priest, were dominant in the meta. They were all quite powerful in different ways, and you would see them all played at the very top level. Unfortunately, all the remaining healers have been lagging behind at the very top.

Preservation got off to a very bumpy ride this season seeing their primary echo-applicator, Temporal Anomaly, nerfed to 3 targets. This put a considerably amount of GCD pressure on the spec removing a lot of fluidity from its playstyle. In addition, Preservation remains the only healer with a serious range-limitation in the game right now. Holy Paladin and Mistweaver Monk had range-limitations at the start of the expansion, but they are all lifted by now.

Holy Paladin suffers not only from a chain of nerfs coming out of Season 2, but also a complete change in playstyle since the melee playstyle is currently not competitive. This strikes the class twice, and it became unpopular compared to season 2 where they were utterly dominant at high-key play.

1.3.3 DPS

If we go by Region of Practical Equivalence (ROPE), it’s the DPS specs which are broken. Some specs are so far from a neutral contribution that the statistics suggest they are too powerful. These are:

  • Balance Druid
  • Shadow Priest
  • Fire Mage
  • Augmentation Evoker

Early season, Augmentation Evoker was at the top. Judging by early Season 4 data as well, this might be a common occurrence. Early on in a season, the stability provided by Augmentation helps people progress. As other characters gets gear, and people learn how to deal with the dungeon pool, other specializations might take the spot, eventually.

It should come as no surprise Fire Mage is dominant. Fire Mage has an excellent defensive kit which can completely negate a number of mechanics. Furthermore, their damage potential is quite high. Shadow Priest has been at the front this whole expansion, either by means of high damage tuning, or because they’ve been the provider of some crucial tech for the dungeons in the pool. Balance Druid always seem to find a way into the top compositions.

The rule that parties like to get their juice still holds. Paladin, Priest, and Druid are dominant yet again. This season, Retribution has seen a resurgence, mostly because Holy and Protection aren’t played at the top.