Waiting for prepatch

While waiting for prepatch, I've made a tier list of what spec I'm most excited about.

S

Resto

I really enjoyed resto druid in Shadowlands. There isn't too much changes going into Dragonflight. It has more possibilities with the talent tree. And 1 min convoke is back! But I'm still very concerned about the lack of abilities making it easier to dps as resto druid when you need to heal.

The druid class tree was one of the first that was released, and it could really use an update. It has a very restrictive pathing, having fewer customization options.

Feral

I also put feral into S-tier. I think that the new talent tree gave them many cool options. I've always liked feral druid, but haven't always been able to perform well. Probably mostly because I prefer being ranged over melee.

A

Preservation

I was originally most exited about preservation. A dragon that can heal with flowers and rewind time. It wins class fantasy, but will it be fun to play? Two of the healer youtubers I follow has predicted that it will be unplayable on some raid bosses, because of their lack of range. Think of healing a boss like Halondrous with a short range! In addition to their short range, they have some really slow spells. The combination of long cast time and short range may make the spec much less appealing. People will probably run out of your range before your casts are finished.

B

Devestation

I was also super excited about this spec. It has the same problem with preservation, that is has a lot of long spells. But I think that the short range as a dps is not a big problem. I'm not sure I like the mastery either. They will do less damage the longer into the fight you get. But it is still a dragon, so I will try it out.

C

Balance

I put balance and affliction in C-tier since I don't have high hopes for them. They have kind of opposite problems. Balance is easy to do decent damage with. But the talent tree is filled with passive or boring nodes that does nothing for the spec. Their new mastery makes them ramp up even slower, since you now need to dot everything before you can start doing damage. That is not what the spec needs. Every talent node that is fun is also a choice node excluding something else that is fun. The spec is ok, but it is not interesting.

Affliciton

Almost everything in the affliction tree is either a new button, or a buff you need to keep up on a specific number of stacks. I feel that the ones that designs affliction have no idea what they are doing. They come up with stuff that they think sounds fun, but don't understand how it affect the playstyle. I wonder if they don't try it out at all. My warlock youtube dude says that half the affliction spells does not work yet on the beta. So there is probably not much hope for it. Affliction has not been fun and good at the same time since Legion.

Another reason that I'm giving up affliciton, is the mentality that the game designers think that a class is good if one of the specs is good. They don't care if one of them are unplayable.

D

Destro and demo

Not interested right now.