Marksmanship Hunters are one of the best DPS specs Mythic+ and have the highest representation of any class, keeping up with Balance Druids, Fire Mages, Windwalker Monks and Outlaw Rogues. The incredible burst AoE damage provided by
Wilde Geister is frequent enough to trivialize many packs, while still maintaining decent damage in between, due to the sheer number of minor cooldowns Marksmanship has to rotate through.
Unlike Fire Mages and Balance Druids, Marksmanship's damage is all target capped, causing the spec to fall slightly behind in larger pulls such as the Ardenweald section of De Other Side, but the raw burst makes up for it and few classes keep up in overall damage. Hunters are aslo able to bring
Bindender Schuss,
Irreführung,
Stoßfeuer,
Eiskältefalle, and Bloodlust (
Uralte Hysterie), contributing a great deal of utility which has helped solidify their current dominance in Mythic+.
Among the Rogue specs Outlaw is currently having a good time in any content and sees a lot of play. It is solid on pure Single Target and great on Cleave and AoE against up to 5 targets. Besides, the spec comes with several useful benefits like the famous
Verhüllender Nebel and a lot of single target stuns, CC, and interrupt.
We are currently seeing a dungeon meta that (just like we know from Raids) favors ranged damage dealers. Many groups prefer to only run with one melee DD. In high keys, Outlaw seems to be the common pick alongside Windwalker Monks. This effect is much less pronounced in the weekly key area around 10-15. The generally strong specs like Unholy DK and Windwalker are common here and Outlaw is much less common. As to why that is... I honestly don't know. Especially in PUGs, times seem to be super random with picky and arbitrary metas and scores driving decisions where they are not necessary. I'd say Outlaw is totally competitive, probably more so than it is in high keys - whether that gets you into random groups is written in the stars though.
Currently Balance Druid is one of the top M+ specs for multiple reasons. First and foremost Balance Druid has some of the highest burst single target in the game when playing Night Fae with the
Konvokation der Geister ability. When this is compounded with the seasonal affix of Prideful, this makes Balance quite competitive in many situations and pushes them into a solid position for boss damage. Another strength is the virtually uncapped AOE on
Sternenregen,
Sternenfeuer, and
Sonnenfeuer. This comes into play pretty heavily in a few dungeons such as De Other Side's Ardenweald area and the Halls of Atonement Inquisitor Sigar pull. The final two important things are stuff that is not related to damage and it is the utility and survivability of the spec.
Balance with
Geschärfte Instinkte,
Baumrinde,
Bärengestalt, and just the nature of being ranged has a lot of outplay potential in regards to their own survivability and just being naturally incredibly tanky as a result of it. Soon they will also be playing double endurance conduits which double down on this amplified survivability even more. As for the utility of the spec there is a lot of mob displacement abilities such as
Taifun /
Ursols Vortex which are incredibly useful tools for kiting or grouping up mobs.
On top of that there is
Sonnenstrahl which when kicks seem less important to have in mass frequency this expansion, you can get away with Solar Beam in your group which is very useful in certain blanket silence situations. By far the most important piece of balance utility though is
Naturgewalt trees. Tanks are very squishy this expansion and have to kite bunches, so having the extra 10 seconds where tanks can stay in a pack and DPS or rotate defensives is massively important to tank playstyle right now. Overall Balance's strengths are based around massive utility and burst single target. The rest of their kit is pretty solid as a whole, but those two situations are their bread and butter.
