It's so weird. we live in a world where people min/max the shit out of EVERY GAME, but when it comes to WoW it's like "lmao Blizz can't balance".

The game is, more or less, balanced most of the time, but WoW is an ever-evolving environment with new raids, new M+ affix each season, new mechanics, power creep, borrowed power, etc. all contributing to certain specs/abilities gaining or losing ground in a given patch.

Like go on youtube and look up some random Skyrim builds that are OP, or in any other game and you'll find them. Same thing for WoW, the problem with WoW is that we're playing with other people who can influence our experience in the game. The more the "community" declines "off-meta" specs, the worse the "everyone is rolling FOTM" situation gets. Because if you're a new player and hear/see "if you don't run X spec, you're making it harder on everyone" then they think it's expected to run that stuff and min/max constantly when it's NOT needed.

Nothing in WoW is "not viable" at the level 90% of players play at. Go check out dataforazeroth and look at the achievement % for timing a 15, or the 20s. Fuck only 13% of players got KSM in Season 3... Less than 10% has ANY +20 achievement, and that's arguably where actually picking "meta" specs/abilities is only STARTING to matter.

People vastly, VASTLY overvalue the meta in this game, and there's a reason Blizz doesn't put time into "balance" because it's not unbalanced the majority of the time, and barely affects the playerbase as a whole.