Vindictive Gladiator: Legion Season 1

This was a crazy season! Very exciting, and a breath of fresh air from what WoD offered us in its final season. For anybody looking back at this season, curious as to how it was, here's a little overview:

Top dps: Assassination Rogues, Ret Paladins and BM Hunters (<-- Early season). After 7.1: Frost DKs, Destro Locks, WW Monks, Feral Druids and still Ret Paladins

Top healers: MW Monks (before 7.1), HPals, Rdru, Rsham, in that order. Priests just kinda sucked the entire season.

Notable comps: RMP, Ret/rogue/healer, rogue/enh sham/healer, FPS, Beastcleave. After 7.1: Vanguards, Walking Dead, Cupid. I'm sure there were more, those are just the ones that come to mind atm.

ALSO, with faction specific PVP titles rewarded, there was less of a split between horde and alliance. Most high rated players were horde though. The orc racial was very good when paired with [spell=196029]. Because of how high damage was, the Blood Elf silence racial was also very good. As far as alliance, they mostly had the human's trinket which could be paired with [spell=214027] for a lot of outs from stuns.

Class notes:

Death Knights: Unholy was the first spec of choice, but it wasn't very good. Frost had good damage but no good defensives and were not very viable. After 7.1 frost got buffs to damage and became one of the FOTM classes. It had very good cleave damage, but otherwise nothing more notable than "did a lot of damage"

Demon Hunter: Started very good at the beginning of the season and got nerfed to the ground literally one week in. They lacked good defensives and damage for a long time. Later in the season they got some damage back, but they did not work very well with many other classes. I think the only classes they did well with was DK and Spriest, because of how cleave-y they were.

Druid: Resto was garbage at the beginning of the season, and it took a 30% buff to healing to make them viable. That being said, they still were not very good. When 7.1 came they got buffed and became very good. Feral was okay at the beginning of the season and did a lot of bleed cleave damage. Usually they would win by the second Incarnation. Boomkin was pretty weak all season, except for the first week of 7.1 but they got nerfed immediately after.

Hunter: BM was very powerful at the start, had a lot of uptime and consistent damage. Paired with an enh shaman they were very hard to beat. They did get nerfed at 7.1 and were no longer very good. Survival hunters made an appearance at the end of the season though, and did a lot of damage, besides having good mobility and CC.

Mage: During the beta, fire was really strong with the flamestrike spec. Frost had glacial spike introduced, which was OP during the beta, but got nerfed when Reckful started one-shotting people with it aftering playing mage for the first time. Many people thought fire would be the new mage meta going into Legion but it ended up not being very strong. By 7.1 most mages were frost again. Overall frost had good burst potential, but was "meh" otherwise. Arcane started to get good by the end of the season.

Monk: Both MW and WW were very popular during the season. Mistweaver started very strong due to their mobility which countered most melee cleaves that were popular on the ladder. They recieved some nerfs, and by 7.1 more mobile and ranged dps became stronger and they turned out to be very mediocre. Windwalker was mediocre during the start of the season but got buffed in 7.1, making them very strong. Their burst was probably the best.

Paladin: Autobubble was introduced. That was fun. Holy got their playstyle switched up with melee wings, which was also very interesting. They were good healers overall, but nothing very notable. Sorry, I didn't know a whole lot about them. Ret was good during the start of the season, and countered the then-OP dps, assassination rogue thanks to Pure of Heart. Oddly enough they made a good comp when paired. They also had their damaging bubble that could sometimes do upwards of 1m damage when it burst. In 7.1 they got buffs and did very good consistent single-target damage. They were very scary. Prot was good during the start of the season. It brought a lot of useful utility to the table, and did decent damage and healing. The eSports team Method's Beanslayerx played prot paladin during several of their games at Blizzcon's grand finals, and it did pretty well. Unfortunately ret was much better than prot after 7.1 and you never saw prot after that.

Priest: Disc was in a really bad spot. They didn't heal for enough, and couldn't keep up with cleave damage very well. They only had a very limited number of comps they worked well in and were very undesirable. Holy wasn't played by anybody. Shadow was good for the entire season. They did good cleave damage that could become very scary if they were allowed to freecast.

Rogue: Assassination was very powerful. Even after a 30% agil nerf early in the season they were OP. Vendetta was super scary. In 7.1 their damage was nerfed 10% and they had less health making them easier to kill. After that they were in a bad spot. The new Outlaw spec was cool in theory, but too RNG to be viable. Sub had good CC, but otherwise couldn't do very good damage and their big finisher DoT could be dispelled. They made a somewhat appearance by the end of the season though.

Shaman: All three specs were viable at one point or another. Enhancement started very strong, having very good burst when they got enough procs. Elemental was very good by 7.1, and high, consistent damage. Restoration was a very good healer spec, it had good counters for cleave damage and purge was able to remove a lot of cooldowns and heals, making them very powerful. As an overall note on shamans, counterstrike totem was very deadly at the beginning of the season because of how much burst some dps teams could do before they had a chance to kill CS totem. It got nerfed around mid-season.

Warlock: Demo started very strong at the beginning of the season due to Implosion and Fel Lord. They had a lot of consistent damage and a lot of pets out. They got some nerfs, and Affliction was the main warlock spec with stacking Unstable Affliction. It would tick for 400k+ when they were allowed to freecast. It would also instantly kill healers when it was dispelled(at high stacks), until that got fixed. In 7.1 Destro got some big buffs and became very dangerous. They could do a lot of damage with almost no casts.

Warrior: They had scary burst at the beginning of the season, but got nerfed pretty quickly. They remained pretty strong until they got more nerfs in 7.1. They were pretty weak after that. Fury did good damage, but because their primary form of burst also meant they took more damage, they were not viable at higher ratings. The first time they got hit by the nerf bat it was deserved, but for some reason Blizzard just kept on swinging.

EDIT Titles were bugged when they got handed out, players up to 2600cr were getting rival. They got fixed the next day. In total only about 28 horde and 17 alliance got vindictive gladiator, a shockingly small number compared to previous seasons. As of now Blizz hasn't really said whether this is a bug or intentional. Although many people think it was a bug, but Blizz decided not to fix it.

*87 horde, 65 alli got r1 post fixes, NA side.

Final rating cutoffs that were necessary to earn the Gladiator, Vindictive Gladiator, or Hero of the Alliance/Horde titles on these realms in Legion Season 1 (WoW Arena Season 19 "Vindictive"):

EU Horde

• 
  
• Gladiator: 2435
• 
  
• Vindictive Gladiator: 2730
• 
  
• Hero of the Horde: 2426
• 
  

EU Alliance

• 
  
• Gladiator: 2661
• 
  
• Vindictive Gladiator: 2971
• 
  
• Hero of the Alliance: 2555
• 
  

EU Blizzard Source

US Horde

• 
  
• Gladiator: 2563
• 
  
• Vindictive Gladiator: 2852
• 
  
• Hero of the Horde: 2432
• 
  

US Alliance

• 
  
• Gladiator: 2437
• 
  
• Vindictive Gladiator: 2704
• 
  
• Hero of the Alliance: 2297
• 
  

US Blizzard Source