Stuff like this is tricky, because melee "fun" varies depending on content.
I'll use Frost DK as my example.
The skill ceiling on Frost is high because of how leashed your kit is. But actually playing an FDK is piss easy. It's basically the opposite for Unholy. If you can execute Unholy's checklist and manage everything, then you're basically top tier Unholy.
Managing pets is BM territory and did anyone ever consider BM a skillfull playstyle?? The answer is no.
Where problems start cropping up is when the boss goes immune, the boss is no longer the target or it's some sweaty ass council fight with 1,000 things to manage for the entire fight. FDK stops being fun in these situations no matter how good or bad you are at playing it because you don't have the proper tools to counter Blizzard's soccer field raid design that has you running 1,000 yards in between targets.
Sometimes you will pop Breath and the game decides you instantly get the debuff where you need to disengage the boss and run 500 yards away or you literally get trolled because the boss has an immune phase AND add phases.
We won't even talk about how FDK abilities are straight up nerfed by 50% in PVP (Cold Heart, Sindy's Fury). Yeah, that's really fun, your abilities hit hard af in PVE, then when you enter PVP a nerf switch is turned on, yup, definition of fun right there.
Last edited by msdos; 2020-10-27 at 01:26 AM.
My list based on gameplay and toolkit - not dps tuning:
S: WW, Subtlety, Unholy
A: Survival, Frost, Retri, Outlaw
B: Fury, Arms, Assa, Havoc
C: Feral, Enhancement
Feral and Enhancement have good toolkits, but their gameplay is just awful.
Imagine putting Ret in S tier, or creating a thread based on youtuber opinions for that matter.
This is the scenario I commonly find myself in: the opener is great, you get to use a handful of abilities... but then you have to wait. Then you use a couple abilities, and then you wait. And then you use an ability, and wait, and another ability, and wait. All those micro waits are gruesome. I hate them.
S+: WW
S:
A: Enhancement
B: Subtlety
C: Frost, Fury, Outlaw, Assa, Unholy
D: Retri, Feral, Havoc, Arms, Survival
Kinda sad when blizzard gut specs into the ground or make them really unfriendly to play for raids and now M+.
For me Enhance is up there and I don't find Unholy the least bit fun. Just because you can spread plague and hit Epidemic doesn't make it fun for me, I don't like using runes either.
The premise of this tier list is not ranking of "do I like it" or "is it fun," (subjective) it is the ranking of "is it good." (objective)
"Can I kill heroic bosses?" when you're underperforming as a character means you're relying on the other higher performers to carry you to some degree, and if your entire raid was composed of the DPS of your class it may not be viable to kill that boss anymore. EG, fight the raid with near 0 saturation: specs brought make the difference, bottomline.
That said, your premise is still sound and only really relevant to progression Mythic guilds and M+ contests. Specs absolutely do not matter for Heroic.
Tier lists are silly unless you're pushing progression / competitive, and only serve to make it a crappier experience when encountering people who claim "class/spec X is bad" and use that as some form of cyber elitism in irrelevant content, like M0 or even 1-15 for that matter, at this point, or regular raids.
I could tank a heroic raid with 1/3 of my gear unequipped yet people still "prefer some other tank" ... good luck fighting that.
I honestly think with how silly fast it is to level and how easy they're making shadowlands "progression" and levelling, they're 100% punting on any semblance of balance and just making it easy to get whatever class up to speed to counter the impossible-to-balance systems they have going on.
I personally haven't cared about video game performance metrics ever since they decided that the way tanks should hold aggro is by being the highest DPS in a raid by a huge factor. Then they decided they shouldn't. It changed 0 of my playstyle, buttons, etc. All it changed was my inclusion in the "lol look at meters" junk swinging that happened when people analyzed parses afterwards. Zzz.
Last edited by frott; 2020-10-27 at 02:25 AM.
WW is a tough nut sometimes as it needs very specific talents to feel fun, and those talents are always the best choices. BrM is a hoot to play though, so I''d suggest giving it a go if you feel like doing some tanking.
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I've just given Survival a go leveling and was surprised by how fun it felt. It's toolkit is varied (not just a bunch of attacks that look and feel the same) and the flow isn't too demanding when it comes to resource management, which is a turnoff for me.
Tier list for me is whichever class has decent to good dps and a very simple rotation coz I just cba to learn complex rotations at this point in my life...
So my rating is:
S - BM Hunter (I stay in melee range so it counts, okay?)
A - don't care
B - don't know
C - doesn't matter
D - Feral, sub rogue
I personally love how frost & assassination play. I don't care for enh because I'd rather play resto or even ele for dps. I've never been able to get the hang of feral so for me it would be D tier because it takes some sort of skill to do the spec right.
that tierlist is garbo(as all tier list are, sick of that meme trend), it was obviously made by a retarded influencer with no fucking clue, retri on S when is a bit more fun that a fucking arms warrior(turtle speed rotation without broken haste). enh on D tier ... the spec is fun, not the most fun but it can be played, the fact that enh is garbo and should have never existed is a different dog, outlaw A tier.... yeah, that guy clearly didnt touched it on bfa, subtley another garbo spec that needs to cease to exist, survi is garbo
My tier list
S: Fury, Assasination,
A: Frost, Enhancement, Havoc (is not on S because rotation is full brain dead).
B: Outlaw, Unholy, Windwalker.
C: Sublety, Retribution.
D: Feral, Arms, Survival.
Strictly based on fun:
Top Tier:
Fury - Great rotation. Effective damage. Good mobility. Good in all phases of game.
Tier A:
Windwalker - Fast and busy rotation. Versatile. Good mobility.
Survival - Simple and fun rotation. Pets.
Havoc - Simple and fun rotation. Outstanding mobility. Beast in PvP.
Tier B:
Frost - Simple rotation.
Retribution - Simple rotation. Great survivability.
Subtlety - Great stealth gameplay. Fun in PvP.
Tier C:
Outlaw - Fun but not as fun as Subtlety.
Arms - Boring and slow gameplay. Great fun in PvP.
Feral - Annoying. But still fun in PvP.
Tier D:
Unholy - Festering Wounds.....
Assassination - Boring.
Enhancement - Broken.
I don't understand how anybody could find UH fun.
It suffers from pretty much every major problem a spec can have:
-Poor Mobility
-Lots of GCDs
-Too many cds, and the rotation feels like crap outside of them
-Pet AI issues
-Ramp-up
-Dot management
-Significant downtime
-Poor visuals / animations outside of Apoc.
Now the fantasy is cool I guess, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
That's how I feel about fury. It's just mindless button mashing. At least unholy has multiple resources to manage, a pet and some other stuff that matters. Meanwhile fury go brrrrrr.
Doesn't matter either way, for this expansion I'm done with plate wearers. Feral or sub rogue for me.
It's almost like a tier list of opinions isn't going to have a general consensus. Whaddya know.
Personally I'd put Subtlety, Outlaw, Arms, Enhancement and Windwalker (fun spec, awful awful animations) at S-A tier and Unholy and Assassination at F.