It’s time to check out what’s going on in the dungeons of the pre-patch! It’s been a while since we dove into the spec popularity and logs, so things have changed dramatically! The top specs are entirely different, with Frost Mage pulling a big upset at the very top, dominating everything by a large margin.
The Data
The data used in this article comes from Raider.IO‘s excellent analytics tools, taking into account all Mythic+ runs across all levels of play. The data is focused on this past reset and not on the season as a whole.
The Most Popular Specs in Mythic+ Retail
There’s no need to go into the minutia of the changes since Season 3, as everything is on its head! The new No.1, Frost Mage, wasn’t even in the top 10, let alone dominated every other spec by at least 4% like it does now! Even the specs that were played quite a bit in S3 moved up quite a bit, with Resto Druid and Prot Paladin moving up 4+ spots. The new spec in town debuted pretty strong as well, with Devourer claiming slot 4, just ahead of the current DPS king, Survival. Fury and Vengeance are also doing a little better here, but it’s Affliction that got the biggest boost of all the specs, moving from the penultimate spot and 0.3% of players playing it to a big 4.1%, making it the 7th most played of the pre-patch.
The bottom specs aren’t that different, but we do see Fire, Arms, and Assassination drop a few spots to the very bottom. Balance drops the most since S3, losing 11 spots and around 1%.
Runs by key level
We have two new keys being successfully pushed as the pre-patch and squish added quite a bit of power, with 25s also getting some attempts but no successes yet.
And here are the full numbers, including the amount of runs.
Group Composition Popularity
As you’d expect, the groups are completely flipped as well. Prot Palas are the new tanks, sitting in every single top 10 group! The healer slot isn’t any more diverse either, with Resto Druids grabbing everything right down to group comp No.19! When it comes to DPS, Survival and Frost are everywhere, and Fury and Unholy are fighting it out for the third slot, with the Warrior coming out on top in group No.1.
Mythic+ DPS Logs
The below logs are based on POINTS, and not actual damage or healing. This means that they log the timed completion for the specs, with higher keys getting more points, obviously. The time in which the dungeon is completed is also a factor. It is a much, much smaller factor, however. It grants only a few points for significantly faster completions compared to just any in-time finish. We’re also using the Normalized Aggregate Scores numbers, for clarity. This means that the top spec is marked as 100 and then the rest are ranked in relation to that peak point.
95th percentile DPS
The DPS logs aren’t quite the same as the popularity chart. We see Survival dominating and Unholy getting really close to it in No.2. Frost Mage is down in 6th, but the top 7 or so specs are really close. The biggest outlier compared to popularity is Devastation Evoker, sitting in 5th here but only getting 1.6% of the playerbase. Devourers just barely beat out Havoc for 7th, as Arms closes out the top 10, just ahead of Ret.
All Percentiles
Things are very similar here, with the exception of Affliction beating out Fury for 3rd, Devourer doing even better, and Enhancement grabbing the final top 10 spot.
Very High Key Raw DPS Numbers
Note: We’re also taking a look at the raw damage numbers from Mythicstats. They take the top runs for extremely high keys (+12-24) from WarcraftLogs and list the overall DPS for the dungeon, which includes non-combat time as well. They’re ranked by the average DPS numbers, with the very top of the top shown next to it.
The very top keys are also looking similar to the above logs, with the same specs shuffled around the top 10, with the addition of Shadow at the end.
For more stats, you can also head on over to our class guides and tier lists, as well as the full Raider.IO data.
