Introduction
Prior to the launch of Classic, I was very vocal on the forums about the performances of certain specs, and made my predictions about the difficulty of content.
Now, having reached 17 days played time in the month since Classic launched, I’d like to look back and see how my statements held up.
Keep in mind, this is in the context of raiding where your performance is more easily quantified than in dungeons where utility is more important.
Druid
Balance
I am admittedly still unclear on how this spec has been performing. I have literally not seen a single Balance Druid this whole time. However, based on my analysis of Classic WarcraftLogs, they are performing generally better than I expected.
I believe this is due to the incredibly short duration of fights in raid encounters, allowing for the OOM part of Boomkin to be made a relative non-issue.
However, the gear for casters is still limited. A lack of spell hit or spell crit early on means that, so far, Balance Druids appear to be in the same boat as most casters.
Even considering that, Mages are still outperforming them by a rather sizeable margin. In some cases, Mages are doing almost double or more the DPS.
Suffice it to say, I think my assertion that Balance Druids were one of the worst DPS specs was spot-on.
Feral (Bear)
This one amuses me quite a bit. I originally joined my guild as a Restoration Druid. However, during the leveling and gearing process, I found myself having to tank quite a lot. Even going into Molten Core, I was tanking due to a shortage of Warriors.
I frequently described Feral Druid as “mana sponges.” However, having discussed how the healers in my guild feel about healing me versus our Warriors, most have agreed that I am more pleasant to heal. Perhaps this is because of my gear and that will change over time, but for now, Feral has surprised me in its viability.
However, I’m noticing that there is not a lot of room for improvement in this current phase. A lot of my best-in-slot gear comes from outside of raids, and I already have it. Aside from a handful of pieces, going into Molten Core and Onyxia will not make me much better as a tank.
I look forward to seeing what a full phase 1 BiS Warrior tank can do compared to a full phase 1 BiS Feral tank, but for now, I would honestly admit that I think Feral is better than Protection for tanking, but worse if the Warriors have items like Annihilator and Nightfall to swap to.
Feral (Cat)
This one didn’t surprise me that much. As expected, Feral cats are doing about half as much DPS as Fury Warriors and Rogues.
It’s entirely possible these are just would-be bears going cat for fights where they aren’t needed, but based on what I’ve seen, Feral cat DPS is just not very good. Even considering Leader of the Pack, there’s no way they could make up for the huge loss in DPS.
I would still suggest that you do not bring a Feral Druid over a Fury Warrior or Rogue.
Restoration
This is about what I expected as well. It’s not really possible to quantify exactly how useful their utility is, but they consistently underperform every other healer spec.
However, having spoken with Resto Druids and having played it briefly for one PUG raid night, I can say that I definitely understand why they are underperforming. Their healing isn’t very fast. It’s very strong, and very efficient, but most of it will result in overhealing or canceled casts as other healers cast a heal before a Druid can.
Even with predictive healing on raid frames, you can only get out so many heals before everyone else when your casts are just that much slower.
However, they are excellent on fights with consistent damage to multiple targets. I’d highly recommend bringing one or two for fights like Shazzrah, Baron Geddon, Sulfuron Harbinger, and Majordomo.
Any chance a Druid can HoT multiple targets, they can easily be the best healer.
Hunter
I didn’t have a lot to say about Hunter other than their power seems mostly front-loaded. They don’t scale as well as other DPS specs, and whether that is true is yet to be proven.
They are decent right now, at least, so you shouldn’t feel bad about having a few Hunters. That said, they do underperform compared to Mages, so if it’s ranged you need, I’d still recommend Mage over Hunter.
Mage
Speaking of Mage, I’m a bit surprised by this one. Several physical DPS specs seem to be outperforming Mages, including Feral of all things.
However, in fights where melee is punished and ranged have free reign to pewpew, Mage is dominant by a large margin. While I wouldn’t recommend bringing an excess of mages yet, a nice balance of melee and ranged with mages making up the majority of the ranged is a great idea.
Also, their ability to remove curses is quite useful, and most fights where that is necessary, melee are going to be doing more DPS anyway.
Definitely the top tier caster, as predicted, but not quite top tier DPS in general. I think you could make a well reasoned argument in favor of even a Feral over Mage, actually.
Paladin
Holy
I’m not too surprised by this one, either. As expected, Paladins are the dominant healers at the moment. In addition to excellent healing, they provide useful buffs and utility in the form of Freedom and Protection.
If you need healers, I would recommend stacking these cross-dressing holy men. I expected them to be the top healers, and they are.
Protection
I don’t know what to say about this. I’ve not even seen one to really have an opinion. I heard Esfand tanked Onyxia as Protection?
Sorry, but no one, that I can tell, has even uploaded logs of a Protection Paladin, either. For now, I can’t tell if that’s because they aren’t any good, or no one has given them the chance to try.
I’d love to give a fair analysis, but there’s just no data.
Retribution
For its faction, Retribution is the worst spec for DPS.
There’s really not much to say here. Nightfall isn’t out yet, the supposedly OP spelladin build either hasn’t gotten gear or isn’t any good, and Ret doesn’t bring anything useful to the raid except for other Rets.
You can’t really quantifiably justify bringing one over literally anything else. I was definitely right about this spec.
Priest
Discipline
For the purposes of this, Discipline basically refers to a Priest using Power Infusion.
Considering what I’ve seen, I would highly recommend priests be using this build over a more healing focused build. Despite popular opinion, Priests aren’t the best healers right now.
They’re losing to their faction-specific counterparts. Granted, it’s not by a huge margin, or anything, but with how short these fights are and how little healing seems to be an issue, I’d recommend being slightly less mana-efficient in favor of giving your Mages some more DPS.
Holy
Not far behind Paladins and Shamans. If you want to heal, but don’t want to manage Power Infusion, you can put out some very competitive healing.
Considering their ability to dispel magical effects on allies, you’ll need a number of these if you’re Horde since you won’t have Paladins.
All in all, healing priests are doing great, as I had expected.
Shadow
Despite what I had believed, Shadow’s DPS is not really that bad. They’re only slightly behind Warlocks, which are slightly behind Mages. However, parses seem to indicate this is because they were allowed to use Shadow Word: Pain, so stacking numerous Shadow Priests would not produce the same results.
However, it is arguably useful to bring at least one to each raid just to buff the Warlocks, which are not in turn limited as much by the debuff limit as Shadow Priest is.
Depending on your balance of Mages and Warlocks, it might not even be worth bringing a Shadow Priest at all. In fact, our guild is running a Power Infusion + Shadow Weaving Priest build. That way the Priest can easily maintain this useful debuff without sacrificing the DPS slot.
That said, the “sacrifice” is not as great as I had expected.
Rogue
As expected, swords is the dominant spec for Rogues, especially early on. It is, generally, outperforming the dagger spec.
However, it should be noted that dagger spec seems to very close, on average. I suspect this is because fewer rogues are using daggers, so they’re getting more geared.
Perdition’s Blade is in phase 1. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about how good this spec can be, then you’re not aware of what that item is and how good it is at this point in the game.
Unless you have Vis’kag and Brutality Blade, dagger rogues are going to be doing lots more damage, especially if you get a pair of Aged Core Leather Gloves.
Generally speaking, Rogues are about where I thought they’d be: just behind Warriors.
Shaman
Elemental
There are not many parses for this spec, and being Alliance, I’ve not had the opportunity to experience it in person (except for getting hit by a 2k Chain Lightning in PvP and dying instantly).
It’s difficult to make a proper analysis, but I think it’s safe to say they’re in the same boat as Balance. One of the worst, but not as bad as I had imagined.
Interesting note, however: the highest parsing DPS Shaman… is Elemental.
Enhancement
Just… really bad. Exact same situation as Retribution. The absolute worst of the worst for your faction.
If there’s some secret to making Enhancement any good, no one has found it and logged it yet. In fact, they’re a bit worse than I expected, because Windfury procs are really common, and do manage to pull threat… and then the Shaman dies.
Of the DPS specs, Enhancement Shaman has the most deaths. This does improve with higher percentiles, meaning more skilled Shamans probably know to wait, but it is worth noting.
Restoration
This sort of surprised me. I had rated Priests above Restoration Shamans prior to Classic’s launch, but the data is showing otherwise.
It’s not by a large margin, but given the utility Shamans bring and the fact they are actually outhealing Priests on average means Shamans are the dominant healer for Horde.
I was wrong, but not by much. Granted, all the healers are actually pretty close in terms of performance, and healing isn’t so easy to quantify due to the nature of healing done being a limited resource that every healer competes for.
Resto Shamans rejoice!
Warlock
This is about what I expected. The highest parsing Warlocks are DPSing with Corruption up. Accounting for not having Corruption, they’re slightly worse than Mages.
Given the opportunity to use Corruption, a Warlock can easily go toe-to-toe with a Mage, but because of the limited debuff slots, they’re slightly worse than Mages.
Warrior
Arms
I don’t know how many of the “DPS Warrior” parses are arms, and I’m not about to sift through thousands, but the top performing Warriors, to no surprise to me, are not Arms.
However, a few of our Warriors are still playing Arms due to not having Dal Rend’s, so I have no doubt that many Warriors are in the same boat. Alliance has a harder time justifying 2h Fury, as well.
From what I can tell, if you can be Fury, you should be, because the numbers for Arms do not look nearly as good.
Fury
Dominant, as expected. I am actually surprised by just how much, though. Not only are Fury Warriors the best DPS spec, it’s by a mile.
The only time they don’t absolutely crush the damage meters is when they aren’t allowed to go in to attack due to mechanics. Personally speaking, I’d just stack some HoTs on them and let them stand in there taking damage, because their DPS is insanely good.
Protection
Going back to my discussion about being Feral, I’ve noticed that Warriors are actually higher on DTPS (Damage Taken Per Second) than Druids. Perhaps this is due to gear, but from what I’ve seen, Warriors are harder to heal than Druids.
Also, for fights where resistances are needed, Protection is losing so much more to acquire that resistance than a Feral would.
I believe with time and gear Protection will prove why it was considered the only viable tank, but for now, they might have to make room for the bears.
Raid Difficulty
Generally my experience has been that we have a few deaths at most on bosses, but one shot every boss.
I actually predicted that trash would be the difficult part of raids and that less skilled groups would struggle most with that. Considering our group is decently practiced and moderately well performing, yet we still have the most difficulty with trash rather than bosses, I would not be surprised to see some groups wiping constantly on certain trash packs.
Generally speaking, Molten Core is easier than I expected, but not so easy that millions of casuals will steamroll it in greens at level 55. Trust me, APES is probably well above what most players are capable of, so don’t expect to be downing Ragnaros as easily as they did.
Onyxia seemed to cause us some trouble, until we discovered why. Threat worked differently than we had expected. Supposedly, the Fireballs she launches reduce threat, and can be avoided by having a tank run around the room and never getting hit (another reason for a Feral tank, by the way. Moonfire while running to keep threat high).
That said, once we knew what the problem was, we cleaned it up and she is really easy. PUGs will struggle because of threat, but I suspect because of how little damage she deals to tanks and how easy the whelps are to deal with, even the most ill prepared of randoms can handle her.
Overall, Classic raid content so far is easier than I expected, and I already expected it to be fairly easy. Our guild definitely over-prepared in a lot of cases.
Conclusion
I seemed to be generally correct in my predictions, but was most wrong about Feral tanking and healers.
Unsurprisingly, knowing exactly how DPS can be calculated made predicting the rankings rather easy, so most of the DPS rankings were accurate. By contrast, tanking and healing was reliant more on the boss values, such as health, damage, etc, so I was slightly wrong about where each spec would place.
Overall, Classic is basically as I expected, and I still feel justified in saying some specs just shouldn’t be brought to raids. I know that makes me “elitist,” but at least now we have Classic to prove it.
