Title,
What is it?
Melee pref.
Ty.
Disc Priests / Aff Locks (tons of healing, fear) > Hunter (good damage, ranged, infinitely kite melee if you create a gap) / Feral (stealth, healing, solid dmg, can kite) >> Everyone Else >> Solo Warriors. IMO.
Ret / Rogues are solid too but they can easily get kited out or outlasted by the 4 listed above, and two of those classes have fear, which not everyone’s trinket will break.
You want good wpvp? Play a ranged.
Warlock or Hunter in phase 1.
Rogues, Ele, and Mages in phase 2.
Based on my 100 or so WSG’s so far, duels, wpvp encounters in ashenvale… I would say it is a tie between priest, warlock, shaman, druid, hunter, pally, and rogue. With mage and warrior far below those.
Disc priest, I just avoid them now - too much.
I think with the largely increased burst damage people can do with these runes, frost mage will not be as strong as people think. Ice Barrier, the thing that makes frost mage good, will be depleted instantly by a sneeze. Their pvp prowess was in their ability to survive, and their survival is not going to scale with the amount of raw damage everyone will be able to do at 40 compared to vanilla classic.
My prediction is that mages will do better at 40 than they’re doing now, but ultimately still be unable to kill as well as most other classes, because their burst requires a lot of setup and even when things go well, a crit frostbolt followed by a crit ice lance will not be close to the amount of damage other classes can do at 40. Because this damage is roughly the same as vanilla classic frostbolt + fire blast damage. Ice lance doesn’t make mage do more damage, it just makes it a little easier to do medium amounts of damage in situations where getting off a max rank frostbolt is not possible (which will be the case in most SoD fights due to classes having more ways to interrupt mages from range, or getting out of their CC).
Mage dps will actually be -lower- at 40 in SoD, than it is at 40 in vanilla classic, due to other classes having more ways out of roots, or ways to interrupt a mage’s frostbolts. And our survivability will be roughtly the same as vanilla classic or worse, due to the fact ice barrier will not scale with the increased burst every class will be able to do. The only saving grace for a frost mage will possibly be the self-healing, which has so far been nerfed about 4x and is nearly useless for self-healing.