In Mythic Amirdrassil, Marksmanship has seen powerful use on a few fights, namely the Council of Dreams and Larodar. As of writing this, Marksmanship actually occupies the #1 DPS Spot for Larodar!
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
Benedizione dell'Autunno, 2-minute specs like Marksmanship can sync their cooldowns with Larodar's add spawns. Pair this with Marksmanship's incredible burst AoE, the
Munizioni Pesanti talent, and maybe a touch of
Infusione di Potere, 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
Infusione di Potere (for which Marksmanship is a good, but not best, target) and
Benedizione dell'Autunno.
Currently, Balance Druid is more or less fine in Mythic raid content. Their damage isn't spectacular and mostly gets carried by Council of Dreams on overall metrics.
Marchio Selvaggio is the primary reason that Druid is brought this tier, and being a DPS Druid Balance has an easier time slotting into a comp over other specs.
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.
Enhancement has seen a really big turnaround over the past few years, and Dragonflight has seen that trend continue with each added Season. This seems to have culminated in Amirdrassil where, for the most part, the spec is remarkably good at what it does and is both a strong performer and very desirable, all while having an extremely enjoyable (although... unique) playstyle to go along with it instead of needing to rely on gimmicks.
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
Ondata Primordiale, 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
Totem della Furia del Vento 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
Totem della Furia del Vento 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
Totem del Soffio di Vento and
Guida Ancestrale, and a melee party buff with
Totem della Furia del Vento. We also serve as a solid
Augmentation target outside of cooldowns when they're looking for a more sustained profile between their
Soffio degli Eoni. 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
Ondata Primordiale themed set bonus, the extra
Arma del Maelstrom from reworked
Assalto Elementale and the improved tree pathing to reach
Detonazione Elementale 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.
