Group A of the Mythic Dungeon International took place over the weekend with reigning champion Echo winning the double-elimination World of Warcraft tournament to solidify a spot in the Global Finals later this spring.
Though the group is filled with players that are more than capable of playing nearly any class or spec in the game, Echo had an astoundingly consistent dungeon composition throughout the weekend, only occasionally switching out their Preservation Evoker healer.
However, the comp they used wasn’t one you’ll probably see in many of the pugs you run on live servers.
Choosing some lesser-utilized specialization, Echo did a little bit of meta-shaping by running with an Unholy Death Knight, Feral Druid, and Shadow Priest as their DPS in every dungeon. While the group used a Protection Warrior Tank in every key, and a Preservation Evoker in six out of 10 runs, they also used the vastly under-represented Restoration Shaman in four of their dungeons.
On live servers, none of the top 20 rated M+ dungeon runs used a Restoration Shaman, Unholy Death Knight, or Feral Druid. Only one had a Shadow Priest in it, according to Raider.io ranking.
Meanwhile, all three DPS specs Echo used are among the least popular to bring to M+ keys on live servers. The generally accepted optimal composition on live servers veers toward Enhancement Shaman, Rogue, and Balance Druid. Only one ranged DPS class is used less than Shadow Priest, and Feral Druid is in a similar situation among melee DPS.
Priest DPS is used in 4.2 percent of dungeons making it the least-used DPS class in the game for M+. Though some specializations of other DPS classes are used less, they combine with other specs of their class to become more popular than Priest DPS.
Feral Druids make up 3 percent of the overall DPS population and just 6.1 percent of the melee DPS population, which is only better than the often joked-about Survival Hunter spec. Despite Unholy Death Knights being 7.2 percent of the melee DPS population in M+, the spec only ranks ahead of a few others as well.
Though Preservation Evoker and Protection Warrior are one of the most popular Tank/Healer compositions, Echo’s use of Restoration Shaman is anything but the norm. Being taken into only 11.3 percent of runs on live servers, Resto Shaman is rarely used, sitting as the fourth most-used World of Warcraft class out of six.
