Shadowlands started with RANGED DPS Dominating: What Changed?

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Shadowlands 9.1.5 and 9.2: THE ETERNAL DEBATE Edition
Today we update the situation on the 1-year-old video about the Melee and Ranged DPS state in both Raiding and Mythic+.
Where we left off was a dire time for Melee DPS, the worst in recent memory, with Ranged DPS dominating (as usual) the Raid Population but also, as a surprise takeover, being more popular in Mythic+, a specialty usually dominated by Melee DPS.

How have things improved after a year, 3 Patches and several Hotfixes worth of Buffs, Nerfs and Legendary additions to the game?

00:00 The ETERNAL Debate: Melee VS Ranged
02:02 Melee & Ranged in BFA Raids: BAD
03:21 Popularity =/= Performance
05:03 Melee & Ranged in Castle Nathria: EVEN WORSE
06:20 Melee & Ranged in Sanctum: THE COMEBACK
07:58 Melee & Ranged in BFA M+: MELEE AHEAD!
09:17 Melee & Ranged in SL S1 M+: …NOT ANYMORE LOL
10:31 Melee & Ranged in SL S2 M+: ….A bit better
11:38 …Why does this happen?
14:24 …Is this going to continue in 9.2?
15:25 My thoughts on it
18:14 See you guys soon!

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14 thoughts on “Shadowlands started with RANGED DPS Dominating: What Changed?”

  3. how well do people think necro shadow preist will perform in raids. Currently playing WW but i completely refuse to play necro WW in raids because of how anti-synergy the cov-leggo and tier set piece is so if i were to play monk it would be kyrian but do people think shadow priest will be really good next patch?

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  4. This is so much bs.

    All of the stuff we see rn is after months and months of farming, these are just speed-clears and actual meta-players stopped a long time ago.

    And even if we look at what is being played, it is extremely weighted towards ranged players, then you have buff classes like warri, dh, monk and the only melee dps that does stuff is rogue and that also only because they farmed the raid for so long that they got the 259 Dagger.

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  5. i think its fine that melee is having their one tier/expansion to be dominant for once. the real issue certain classes having raid buffs means classes that dont rely on being tuned to be overpowered to be viable in competitive guilds which right now means a lot of rdps are on the bottom of the meters as well as having no raid buff.

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  8. great breakdown of the history of it which i think is important to keep in mind as we look towards the future of it.

    also: is this your survival hunter? i like the setup of this ui a Lot. any chance for a link?

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  10. When it comes to M+ in Shadowlands the melee players got a short end of a stick, really.

    Same as in BfA you got weeks with Sanguine, which might be uncomfortable for Range, if you're stuck on the wrong side of the corridor, but that's about it.

    Quaking is still a thing too, which is likely to affect melee more than range players. Sure, it blocks casting, but you're less likely to take damage in a range dominated group, compared to melee dominated one [especially with a melee healer around]

    On top of that, there is Spiteful – which isn't melee friendly either, and Storming, which after nerfs isn't exactly that bad, but it used to be bloody annoying.

    As someone who played Boomkin in Shadowlands, I barely pay attention to Volcanic, even if I get caught by Quaking, I still can cast, and I Shapeshift/Doors of Shadow over Sanguine if I'm too lazy to position myself correctly beforehand.

    I guess Spiteful is a bit annoying since I have to use global cooldown to root them, knock them back or vortex them. Ooof.. so much wyrk!

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  13. I do not know if the logs fully support this, but I have noticed within my guild and within group finder that there seem to be certain class/specs that people are more willing to switch to or from based on balance. To me a clear comparison is the difference in populations from Nathria to Sanctum for Fire Mages and Shadow Priests. In Nathria, both specs were extremely high performing, but fire mage consistently had a higher population than shadow priest. Moving into Sanctum, Shadow Priest is currently one of the worst performing specs, but they have had very little population change. On the other hand, Fire Mage is still performing very well, but the total population has drastically decreased.

    There are a few reasons I can theorize as an explanation. For one, priest has only 1 dps spec so priest mains are probably less likely to switch specs versus a mage with 3 dps specs. However, even looking at total mage population it still seems noticeably smaller as a total percentage of parses. I think another key factor to consider is that there are a few classes that everyone seems to have an alt for and are willing to switch to if they are performing well. It is difficult to find metrics to prove this, but in my own experience I have found that almost everyone has warrior, mage, and hunter alts that they are comfortable enough with to switch to for a season/tier.

    I think this effect is at least somewhat responsible for the shift in ranged/melee populations as between Nathria and Sanctum you see huge swings in the population of both warriors and mages despite their overall ranking not moving nearly as much.

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