Fearless Gladiator: Legion Season 2

Probably the coolest Rank 1 title since... forever.

Top dps: Lock, balance druid, hunter, mage

Top healers: Rdru, Rsham, mw

Top comps: WLS, Hero Cleave, LSD, PLS, WMD, Dh/lock, Spriest/Boomkin

7.1.5 changed balancing up a whole lot, but the season started in 7.1.0. Because of this I didn't really make any notes about classes or comps and their state before 7.1.5. Balancing was all over the board with hotfixes coming out seemingly every day for the first month. Damage started insane, but things eventually evened out. Blizzard also enabled ALL artifact traits in rated pvp (Previously limited to 34). This caused quite the ruckus and the change was quickly reverted, as most pvp players didn't have high artifact traits, and the buff between 34 and 54 was huge.

Additionally, during a Q&A Blizzard announced they would release the projected cutoffs about a week before the season ended. They kind of held up to their promise, and released the cutoffs 5 days before the season ended. This decision was pretty controversial, as the projected estimates were not very accurate (particularly the Rank 1 and gladiator estimates). 16 hours before the season ended, Blizzard adjusted their estimates to be higher than they were before. Many people who thought they were safe sitting in the old projected duelist or gladiator cutoff no longer were, causing a lot of frustration and anger.

Class Notes:

Death Knight: Frost's artifact weapon got a shorter cooldown and in addition to their other buffs, they had a ton of burst. They did get some nerfs during the balancing weeks and were only mediocre after. Unholy got buffs as well, making them really good at rotting down enemies with [spell=199722]. They had lots of ranged damage as well as pets, meaning they didn't need to be connected to their enemy to do a lot of damage.

Demon Hunter: FOTM for the first week. VERY high single-target and cleave damage, all while having a lot of uptime. The balancing weeks saw them get big nerfs, but overall they were very good all season. They were the bane of 2v2 arenas. Unfortunately they had a somewhat limited number of good comps in 3v3.

Druid: Feral did not get buffs like other classes, so they ended up being mediocre. They had a very good single target burst, but lacked defensives. Balance got buffs and had very good spread pressure and their single target burst was also scary, making them very powerful. Restoration had good mobility, was tanky and had very good defensives with thorns and ironbark having short cds. Bear form for balance and resto was pretty powerful, making those specs nearly unkillable in bear form.

Hunter: Marksman got gutted and lots hated it. It did good damage but was not popular to start. Survival was still the way to go until end season, but it was not very strong until the balancing weeks overbuffed survival. It had very good roots and slows. [spell=234955] was added to allow some damage without breaking ice trap, but it was still mainly used to trap the off targets. Around mid-end season, BM and Marksman were equally as active on the ladder as survival.

Mage: Arcane had insane burst at the start. They could do 50% of someone's health in two globals, making them very OP. They of course got nerfs, but were still very good. Fire was also buffed, with a good single target spec and flamestrike spec made a return temporarily. Frost got a new playstyle, and had lots of consistent damage and burst without glacial spike. All three mage specs were very good.

Monk: Mistweaver was great, with mobility being their only strength. Otherwise their healing was good, and they were still very popular. They had mana issues early on, but those kind of got fixed. Unfortunately, by the end of the season they were only considered mid-tier, similar to last season. Windwalker was still pretty decent, having great damage from their cooldowns but without them they had little damage.

Paladin: Ret was very strong still, having a lot of damage with or without cooldowns. Not a lot changed about ret. Holy had the cd removed from their beacon spells, but were not all that wonderful overall as they lacked healing. Once the balancing weeks finished they were halfway decent, but not the best healers around.

Priest: Shadow got mostly buffs, and had very strong cleave damage with frequent burst. They were too strong, and got some decent nerfs. Even then they still had very good cleave damage. Disc was still pretty weak but recieved a new AoE ability and buffs in late season. They turned out to be very good, one of the better healers at the very end. Holy was a thing early season, but it didn't last. It had lots of instant, powerful heals and outs from stuns and kills with their spirit form optionally becoming a castable spell with [spell=215982].

Rogue: Rogue's stamina got buffed, making them more viable with their also buffed damage. Assassination once again had very scary burst in addition to getting blind back, making them OP again. Sub's finisher dot got buffed, making them extra strong with all the CC they had, putting sub on par with assassin, even better in some cases. Outlaw was still very RNG, making most rogues not play outlaw. Except for on EU servers, where outlaw/fire mage was a very popular comp to play.

Shaman: Elemental got buffs and had great damage. [spell=210689] was super scary when paired with Stormkeeper and [spell=210714], although Lightning Rod and Icefury were eventually placed on the same talent row. Enhancement was still very proc-reliant, but with windfury and bloodlust they had the highest burst. They did get more buffs late season though. Restoration was alright, earth shield got nerfed, and [spell=204293] started to become popular, since it would make teams immune to a lot of CC. It didn't last and the mana cost for Spirit Link got increased, making earth shield meta again. Shaman got very weak when dps got buffed, but the balancing weeks made them a lot better.

Warlock: Healthstone got buffed, and made them heal for a VERY large portion of health. Affliction recieved [spell=234876] in 7.1.5, so if they got someone down low they were almost always a goner until it got nerfed. They did lack defensives, making them not so popular. Destro was still very scary with lots of damage on few casts. Demonology disappeared until some mid season when it was paired with demon hunter for a very strong comp. [spell=212459] did get a nerf near the end of the season, but demo was still very strong.

Warrior: Charge no longer rooted, instead slowed the target. Execute also did a lot of damage again, capable of killing people at below 20% health. Arms had medium damage but great utility making them more of a "support" class until it got buffed mid season. Fury made a comeback, it did insane damage and very good cleave damage while bursting, but not so much utility and less defensives than arms. Both specs were viable for most of the season. Both specs also got [spell=236077]