Like many I’ll be a returning player from the first four years of WOW. I don’t post much with the last time being that 1month I resubbed to relive my Priest and then shortly after cancelled the sub on retail.
At this point I’m trying to get a feel for what classes seem to be needed vs what classes will tend to be more over populated. Typically as a general rule any type of DPS is heavily populated with healers being some of the least played in the past. With all the pservers running and all the general class knowledge thats been gained over the last “few” years im curious.
I’ve seen and read tons of information on all the classes that I didn’t know about back in the day. Seems Warriors are a higher pick-rate with Warlocks. Where Priests, Hunters, Mages and Druids seem to be about the same. Shamans and Paladins seem to have earned a better reputation. Obviously picking a class and then leveling it up to 60 will have its own challenges and some who start will stop or make alts.
I see a lot of posts for all types of guilds both Horde and Alliance, so with this in mind. When recruiting for the guilds what classes seem to be more in abundance or even less than others 15yrs later?
Really, it is way to early to even have any idea. There will be so many alts and so many guilds, there is a good chance you will find a home no matter what faction/race/class you choose. Just play what you want, man!
Do you REALLY want to play a human holy pally healbot just to sit in some guild’s front row?
the dps with the best class population to class raid representation is probably warlock or mage.
Ranged dps are more or less always desirable over melee for mechanics reasons, and generally harder spots to fill because of how massively overpopulated rogue and warrior will be… Warlock in particular, tends to be one of the least common dps classes by population. Mage is also listed because the only real limitation towards bringing more mages is gear competition with other mages.
If we’re talking raiding then top desired will probably be priests followed by main dps such as mages, rogues, and hunters. Warlocks are desired but a bit less than those 3. Other healers are desired but a bit less than priests. With warriors you’ll generally have a main tank and a few alternates. A few will dps too but overall you don’t have a huge need for warriors past filling tanking slots.
So I’d group the numbers needed/desired list as:
Priest - about 5 each in a raid
Mage, rogue, hunter - 4 or 5 each in a raid
Warlock, warrior, druid, paladin, shaman - 3 or 4 each in a raid
This is very rough, though. There are a lot more factors involved such as the kinds of people who play those classes, the amount of people who are playing each, the speed at which each class levels, the speed at which each class can gear up.
You’ll see a ton of priests, mages, and druids because they are relatively easy classes to level solo if specced properly. Warlocks and hunters are also easy to level solo but they are a bit more complex to play, due to pets and other mechanics, so many people shy away from playing them. Shaman are usually in the middle of the pack for leveling speed. Paladins, rogues, and warriors tend to be slow levelers unless they find partners. However, you’ll see a lot of rogues anyways because of stealth and other cool things in their toolkit.
So, I’d say the initial bulk of new 60’s will have this population distribution from most to least:
Priest, mage, druid
Warlock, hunter, rogue, shaman
Paladin, warrior
Again, this is not written in stone. It’s an estimate based on what happened in the original launch and general facts on the classes and the people who play them.
Every raid leader is going to have a different optimal raid set up in mind, but in general, warriors mages and priest are always going to be the most abundant class you see in raid groups.
But there is a reason to bring every class to the raid for sure. On horde you usually see more shamans in raid than you would see Pallys on alliance, but every ally raid will still have a few paladins. Locks and druids a lot of the time get the least amount of spots, with hunters getting slightly more then them and Rogues getting slightly more than hunters.
For reference, this is my guilds set up on horde side
Seems about right to me. I usually saw a few more hunters than that, 3 seems pretty low. Maybe 2 more hunters and another druid or two. About 6 paladins instead of all the shaman, few less warriors.
Which is why I was qualifying by raid representation and class population.
Mages will take more raid spots overall (and are a stronger pve class in general after the curses are all handled, but there’s going to be an enormous amount of mages in general to compete with.
This isn’t 100% (lots of people will switch classes as they level, especially warriors), but it is a decent enough prediction of the class populations.
There were classes that outperformed their peers, but every class was needed, so only use stuff like this as a tie breaker when picking what YOU want to roll.
My GM made the raid composition so I am not sure what his exact reasons are, but my guess would be for the WF procs since we are running heavy on warriors.
To early to tell in general.
I remember whispering to low level healers to heal dungeons seeing how it was usually while leveling to find any.
But tanks are some times the busiest people at max.
Tanks and heals may be just as popular at the start as dps because everyone wants to play. You will have shamans hunters volunteering to tank early levels from what I remember in classic, hunter pet tanking adds but eventually warriors were the only tanks I would be finding as people leveled up.
In general it depends on the realm, its time, and what you are playing as if your a tank then healers, if your a healer then tank. Specific dps like mages and healers are usually what I have seen groups struggle to get because they want polymorph while in leveling dungeons.
um yeah get rid of those enhance shamans and have 2 of your resto shamans go imp wep totems and get more warrior dps. Also get rid or a hunter and add another warrior dps and then call it day. It’s close but a totem twisting resto shaman is always going to be better then full enhance, you can still give him Nightfall and have him go 8/8 T1 and weave Healing Waves. The only reason you would run a deep enhance shaman is if you just don’t care, which is pretty much alt raids.
Thanks to everyone so far for their input, it seems to be about on par with the general information that I’ve been able to gather.
Some of the differences I’m seeing compared to my foggy memory of 15yrs ago.
Overall more shamans and paladins for heals v/s more priests for overall healing. Not including the odd Shadow priest for the debuff.
Using more warriors for the melee dps instead of rogues and the inclusion of Feral druids is a thing now, i guess for emergencies, where i remember they were always Resto when I played.