World of Warcraft Dragonflight launched on Nov. 28, 2022, with a new talent system that knocked everyone’s socks off, giving more freedom and control over how will your spec play. But, three specs haven’t had much luck since the expansion rolled out and have consistently been at the bottom of the tables.
According to WoW Mythic+ leaderboard site Raider.IO, Survival Hunters, Affliction Warlocks, and Assassination Rogues have been the least played specs during both Dragonflight season one and season two with roughly one percent of the population playing these specs.
On the other hand, almost seven percent of the population is currently enjoying the most popular spec, Retribution Paladin. Not all specs are enjoying such popularity among Mythic+ players, and the average for specs is roughly three to four percent.
Although Survival Hunters, Affliction Warlocks, and Assassination Rogues at first don’t have much in common, all three specs actually suffer from similar issues—lack of DPS, clunky and unintuitive talent builds that force you to choose between critical talent nodes, huge DPS output discrepancy between AoE and single-target build, and lack of unique abilities that would incentivize players to choose them over other class specs.
For example, why would you ever pick up Affliction Warlock, when you can bring Destruction Warlock and they will do everything Affliction can, including Healthstones and Soulstones, but have better damage output.
Related: WoW players are calling on Blizzard to fix one ridiculous 19-year-old feature
Over the course of expansion, especially at the beginning of the seasons, Blizzard Entertainment has been aggressively buffing and nerfing classes to create a welcoming environment for everyone. These three specs, however, didn’t receive much love and have stayed in a similar state to what they were at the beginning of the expansion.
Mages, which have consistently been one of the more popular specs in the game for years, had their ups and downs, and now they are back on the top as one of the best specs in the game, especially when paired with Augmentation Evokers.
Patch 10.1.7 is next on Blizzard’s to-do list and still, there’s no sign of these three least loved specs receiving a rework, tweaks, or even buffs that would compensate for spending months in the gutter. Retribution Paladins and Shadow Priests have been in similar shoes and have received major updates with previous patches. It’s high time Affliction Warlocks, Assassination Rogues, and Survival Hunters receive a similar treatment, but unfortunately, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
