Mythic Amirdrassil Statistics Page
Disclaimers and Source
The data for this article was taken from the Raid Statistics Page on Warcraft Logs for Mythic difficulty in the week of December 5th. We will be looking at data for the 95th percentile, plus showing the overall results to paint a better picture.
The idea of this article is to give a perspective of the current state of class balance for Dragonflight Season 3, meaning this is an incomplete picture of balance.
We say perspective, as there are inherent biases in looking at the data this way.
- Specs considered underpowered are generally played less and tend to appear weaker than they are.
- This happens as many performance-oriented players tend to play the strongest spec or class, increasing the gap between top and bottom specs even further.
- Position of specs for the 95th percentile might be skewed by alternative strategies and parse funneling. We’re including the chart showing all percentiles’ results to paint a better picture for all specs.
- Tier acquisition will skew how balance looks for the first weeks of Season 3.
Dragonflight Season 3 DPS Rankings – Mythic Amirdrassil the Dream’s Hope During the Week of December 5th
95th Percentile Statistics
| Overall Damage | Damage to Bosses |
Overall Statistics
| Overall Damage | Damage to Bosses |
| Position | Spec and Class | Population Size | Change from Last Week (Heroic) |
| 1 | Assassination Rogue | 11537 | 0 |
| 2 | Subtlety Rogue | 2027 | ↑2 |
| 3 | Outlaw Rogue | 4091 | ↑3 |
| 4 | Marksmanship Hunter | 557 | ↓1 |
| 5 | Havoc Demon Hunter | 17171 | 0 |
| 6 | Elemental Shaman | 2327 | ↑3 |
| 7 | Beast Mastery Hunter | 21226 | ↓5 |
| 8 | Demonology Warlock | 14775 | ↓1 |
| 9 | Enhancement Shaman | 10351 | ↓1 |
| 10 | Balance Druid | 12481 | 0 |
| 11 | Fury Warrior | 11890 | 0 |
| 12 | Feral Druid | 2781 | ↑2 |
| 13 | Unholy Death Knight | 6251 | ↑6 |
| 14 | Frost Death Knight | 1805 | ↑9 |
| 15 | Destruction Warlock | 2328 | ↑2 |
| 16 | Affliction Warlock | 410 | 0 |
| 17 | Survival Hunter | 536 | ↓2 |
| 18 | Arcane Mage | 6852 | ↓5 |
| 19 | Shadow Priest | 4235 | ↓7 |
| 20 | Devastation Evoker | 2517 | ↑5 |
| 21 | Arms Warrior | 3021 | ↓1 |
| 22 | Windwalker Monk | 2660 | ↑4 |
| 23 | Frost Mage | 6998 | ↓5 |
| 24 | Fire Mage | 2759 | ↓3 |
| 25 | Retribution Paladin | 11940 | ↓3 |
| 26 | Augmentation Evoker | 14182 | ↓2 |
Class Writer Commentary
To help us better understand the balance for Dragonflight Season 3, we’ve invited some of our class writers to give commentary on the state of their spec at this stage of the season.
Marksmanship Hunter
Marksmanship’s biggest strength is AoE damage, and especially the bursty kind. It is heavily target-capped, but that is actually fine for fights like Council (at most 3 targets), and Larodar (3 adds and a boss). With the help of Blessing of Autumn, 2-minute specs like Marksmanship can sync their cooldowns with Larodar’s add spawns. Pair this with Marksmanship’s incredible burst AoE, the Heavy Ammo talent, and maybe a touch of Power Infusion, and you can have some amazing performances on AoE-centered fights.
Due to AoE damage naturally being higher, though, this actually inflates Marksmanship’s standings in the DPS Rankings somewhat. Marksmanship is the second-least popular spec in Mythic, and it is only represented in the logs of 6 bosses, many of which are AoE-centric where it performs very well. Swapping the Statistics over to single-target fights like Volcoross, Marksmanship is unfortunately one of the weakest specs in the game. It also suffers a large single-target DPS loss when going for its AoE talents.
Overall, Marksmanship is a bit of a one-trick pony. If a fight has low-target AoE, ideally in short bursts, it can be one of the best specs in the game for dealing with just that – but its single-target damage will suffer when chasing that AoE – and even in its pure single-target build, it has very poor single-target output. The capped nature of its AoE also makes it a dubious choice for heavily uncapped fights like Tindral.
Finally, a lot of its extraordinary performances, such as the ones on Larodar, are heavily relying on Power Infusion (for which Marksmanship is a good, but not best, target) and Blessing of Autumn.
Balance Druid
Lately, you’ve seen guilds prefer Feral over Balance for raid. This comes down to a couple factors like your inability to DPS Tindral roots effectively and melee requirements on both Fyrakk and Tindral Sageswift. Druid in general is very squishy versus raid damage profiles, and Balance is the weakest of the 4 specs. This requires them to be babysat more than other specs.
Subtlety Rogue
The Guardian of the Dream patch brought significant changes to the specialization and it is in one of the top positions on the Warcraft Logs statistic after the first tuning pass .
I was invited to write about the general strength of Subtlety and give perspective on why it performs so well, so let’s get started!
Strenghs of Subtlety
There are multiple reasons for the good performance. I will review what I think is important, and discuss each individually.
Why is Subtlety Rogue so good?
The Tier Set bonus is strong!
Everyone who started raiding early on knew the feeling. Your officers set up a sheet and simulations to decide who to prioritize with tier-set.
This time around, Subtlety stood at the top of the list.
The two-set bonus alone was worth around as much as the complete Season 2 set.
Both the two-set and the four-set bonus offer an impressive ~10% damage increase, which in turn also means not having the tier set is a big disadvantage.
Tier-set acquisition is luckily fairly easy this tier.
Talent diversity, or the lack of it…
Subtlety offers a lot of strong nodes, but only a few options to specialize.
There is one big decision to either take Invigorating Shadowdust or not, the talent adds a lot of complexity to the spec but holds a lot of power.
The remaining decisions are between lower impact nodes to emphasize cleave, AoE or single target damage.
This is not negative, it allows players to pick up more encounter-specific talents without big hits to single-target talents.
Invigorating Shadowdust is a good example of a spell that can help with specific encounter mechanics like roots on Tindral Sageswift.
Replicating Shadows is a second example which is an excellent choice for the Council of Dreams encounter to slightly increase the cleave potential of Subtlety.
Encounter Design!
Amirdrassil is very different from Aberrus and Vault in encounter design.
It still offers a single target-oriented boss profile, but adds multiple fights with some form of vulnerability or damage-amplifying phases.
Gnarlroot, Smolderon, and Tindral Sageswift are the three encounters that this applies to.
Smolderon is the perfect fight for Subtlety rogues and is the one fight that brought attention to the spec.
The Fight is special in that it has very unique fight timings.
It has a vulnerability phase after around 1 minute into the fight which repeats around 1 minute and 30 seconds after.
This timing is perfect for talent combinations with Invigorating Shadowdust. It brings the main burst cooldown Shadow Blades down to 1 minute 30 seconds
and the Without a Trace talent allows for the extra 30 seconds needed to hit the one-minute marker for the first intermission.
Being the only spec in the game to be able to fully utilize the vulnerability gives it a unique position and makes it stand out.
Tuning and nerfs (but not for Subtlety)
It is no secret that Assassination Rogue, Havoc Demon Hunter and Beast Mastery Hunters stood out in performance, but all 3 of them ended up being reduced in power level in tuning, balancing out the top of the statistic.
Having strong baseline tuning and specific encounters tailored towards the strengths of the spec makes it stand out now.
Weaknesses of Subtlety
The elephant in the room. With all the positive things it might come as a surprise to see subtlety as one of the least played specs in the game.
It is, as of writing this article, the 2nd least played specialization in Heroic, 4th least played in Mythic and only slightly ahead of the last place Afliction Warlock in Mythic+.
Why is nobody playing Subtlety?
Subtlety is hard!
It does not come as a surprise but learning Subtlety takes time. This is a result of complex talent options and gameplay elements that are not always intuitive. Invigorating Shadowdust, which is a key piece to subtleties strength, adds a completely new dynamic to cooldown management in addition to that.
Tuning favoring Assassination further reduced reasons to invest time into this spec. Smolderon Mythic is for many Rogues now the introduction to Subtlety and hopefully can motivate more people to start playing it.
Cleave is still bad!
Subtlety Rogue is known for weak low target cleave, what is new in 10.2 is that the spec fell off in AoE. This is a consequence of many small changes to and Bugfixes.
Luckily there is only one encounter this matters with Council of Dreams and this fight is easy enough to have little impact on the viability of Subtelty.
Summary
The raid has multiple encounters tailored toward the strengths of the spec, and while there are weaknesses, they are at least not relevant this raid tier.
How strong is Subtlety Rogue in Season 3?
Subtlety is amazing in raiding, but currently has a low amount of players.
The spec has small deficits in low target cleave and Sustained AoE compared to other Rogue specs.
It can make up for it with strong single-target damage, more dynamic cooldowns due to Invigorating Shadowdust, and compared to Outlaw a better damage profile.
Survivability seems to be a big topic in higher keys recently, and Subtlety has some very strong defensive talents that could be beneficial.
The Mythic+ meta is still not defined and it is unclear if the mentioned points are enough to convince people to play it.
Closing Thoughts
Is Subtlety Rogue a good choice for you?
Subtlety is a quirky but fun specialization more tailored for people who find enjoyment in learning something different with a slightly higher initial learning curve. There is a reward for playing correctly, especially in raiding but also a higher dependency on expertise to get good results.
The addition of Incandescent Essence next reset and the shorter kill timers play to our advantage and should keep the spec in the top ranks on the Warcraft Logs statistic. If a high burst profile and a lot of room for optimization sounds fun to you, it might be the perfect time to consider Subtlety Rogue.
Enhancement Shaman
A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the new Tier 31 set bonus, which has done wonders for our niches of low cooldown burst and priority damage through Primordial Wave, and emphasizing our extremely valuable funnel potential. Alongside that, the talent changes made in the lead up to Season 3’s release did a lot to smooth out some of the flaws related to resource starvation in the Elementalist build, elevating it to the premier pick. This came at the cost of Storm having as much relevance, but after a full Season of it a change of pace is welcome just like the transition from Season 1 to 2.
When it comes to encounters within Amirdrassil, 6 of the 9 encounters have adds that all spawn on favourable timers, allowing us to make use of our extremely efficient AoE (that has the added benefit of costing no real single target damage to do), making us a top tier melee pick when combined with the Windfury Totem we bring. Between the high single target, cleave and funnel, there really is only one weakness – uncapped burst AoE – and the only place that really impacts us is Tindral. This reflects in the statistics, as more guilds defeat it and logs appear, Enhancement will trend downward due to the overall average, but don’t worry our actual value and potential is still well above the average on every other encounter in the raid. Most importantly of all, the final encounter in Fyrakk has ample opportunity for us to flex our low cooldown burst tools, and some extremely important windows that we can make use of funnel for – we’re not just a Windfury Totem here we’re a legitimate high value spec in our own right.
From a performance standpoint, this season puts us in a place within the raiding meta that’s really hard to be sad about. We bring a wealth of damage profiles so we can meaningfully contribute to each encounter, some extra raid utility via Wind Rush Totem and Ancestral Guidance, and a melee party buff with Windfury Totem. We also serve as a solid Augmentation target outside of cooldowns when they’re looking for a more sustained profile between their Breath of Eons. While our trademark build diversity is a little down compared to previous seasons, that it’s still close is a small miracle considering other specs are struggling to even get one functioning this well. Our defense is still a little on the flimsy side and the amount we have to sacrifice to heal is well above others, but that’s more of a nitpick. It’s really hard to downplay just how good the gameplay feels now between the Primordial Wave themed set bonus, the extra Maelstrom Weapon from reworked Elemental Assault and the improved tree pathing to reach Elemental Blast easily.
I personally think the spec comes with a lot of room to flex skill and fight knowledge now, and has clear, defined strengths and weaknesses that keep it relevant in a raid without being oppressive to other classes or encourage stacking. It’s definitely one of the more frustrating specs to pick up because of the many elements present in its playstyle, but its carved out a defined and unique loop that’s extremely satisfying when it “clicks”. In a season where many are (in many cases rightfully) quick to point out the flaws in their spec, I think it’s only fair in the case of Enhancement to highlight both how strong the spec is, and how good of a job the design team has done to get us here.
Class Guides for Season 3
For more information on every spec during the Dragonflight Season 3, check out our Class Guides!
| Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK
Havoc DHVengeance DH Guardian DruidFeral DruidBalance DruidRestoration Druid Augmentation EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage Brewmaster MonkMistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin Discipline PriestHoly PriestShadow Priest Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue Elemental ShamanEnhancement ShamanRestoration Shaman Affliction WarlockDemonology WarlockDestruction Warlock Arms WarriorFury WarriorProtection Warrior |
