Hardcore class tier list

Is your class easy mode, or did you actually grow a pair and try to level a hard class to 60? Order of hardest to easiest.

  1. Warrior. No self heals, gear dependent, not many escapes. You manage to 60 on a warrior, you are a literal god.

  2. Rogue. Plenty of escapes, but pretty long cooldowns and pretty vulberable to being overwhelmed by being in melee range. Vanish isnt a gaurenteed get away, and pretty prone to constant missing or dodging attacks

  3. Mage. You might have slows and CC but you are pretty squishy and have to think on your feet to get out of tight spots. The mana dependency can make things tricky if you arnt paying attention.

  4. Shaman. Totem utility, damage, ghost wolf mobility, self heals and self buffs. Not behd.

  5. Druid. Mana is a huge thing. Yeah, you can shapeshift to cat or bear, but thats fairly late in classic. You got decent buffs and self heals

  6. Priest. Similar to druid, but they get the power word shield which makes things a whole lot easier. They have a couple mana regen talents as well.

  7. Paladin. Honestly if you die as paladin you either didnt plan ahead or you dced. Heals, damage, a bubble that gives you time to recuperate and reposition and heavy armor. /laugh at them when they die please

  8. Warlock is only here because of a pet. No pet id probably put them at number 3.

  9. Hunter. You are quite literally the easiest class to get to 60. If you die, i cackle at your corpse. You got pets, burst damage, feign death, traps, insane range for safe pulls… difficulty rating is 1/10.

1 Like

Imagine, if you will, you’re a grizzled dwarf hunter.

You stroll into another town to sell all the gear you’ve looted, since your side gig and hobby is being a skilled dwarven treasure hunter. You have plenty of gold because of this, but you don’t need to spend any of it to restock on supplies, because you hunt your own food and make your own bullets. Hell, you have plenty of grenades too, all thanks to your engineering profession.

The town you’re in has a crisis - there is a creature they need you to kill. No worries, you’re one of the best monster hunters on the continent. You pat your loyal pet on the head and motion it to follow - it’s lonely out on the road, but not with your best friend by your side.

You leave town and begin using your innate tracking skills to scout your quarry. You take out an ornate spy glass you constructed earlier to monitor the terrain, and then use your eagle eye ability to make sure no other dangers are around. Aha, there the creature is!

You set a trap next to you incase things get hairy and give the order to attack. You peer through your scope and watch as your faithful companion charges the enemy, intimidates it, and then beats the ever living tar out of it. You chuckle at its ferocious efficiency before loading some shot into your blunderbuss and firing away.

Standing atop the broken corpse of the monster, you sigh contentedly. You nod at your pet and continue on your trek.

Was it easy? Absolutely, but more importantly, it was fun.

22 Likes

Based on the HC death log mod, pulling from hundreds of thousands of deaths, from lowest to highest average level death.

  1. Warlock
  2. Warrior
  3. Rogue
  4. Hunter
  5. Druid
  6. Paladin
  7. Priest
  8. Shaman
  9. Mage

You were close on a few, WAY off on others, such as Mage, Warlock, and Hunter. People think being a pet class makes you a good HC class, but it does not.

16 Likes

It does, at least for Hunter it does, it just creates a noob trap along with it. Our Hunter friend had 95 defense at level 26. That means they’d be crushed by level 23 mobs.

Mix that with untrained melee weapons and you can’t wingclip them away.

Definitely by far the easiest class, issue is it’s so easy people get casual about keeping their skills up to date

3 Likes

Now filter out Hunters under level 10, and Warlocks under level 20.

2 Likes

Warlock was a potential 3, shifting rogue to 4. Id wager its because they use fear and pull other mobs…

Mage surprises me? I guess their CC and blinks can save lives as well as ice barrier later on.

My only real change would be swapping shaman with druid

1 Like

Just take a class with pets, because if you take a disconnect you will die.

1 Like

Unfortunately the greatest killer of the paladin is complacency especially in the lower levels, that and no range pull (all other classes have it, paladins have to get close to pull with a judgement pull, if there are 2 or 3 mobs, your pulling them too) Most pally deaths are from Pally overconfidence.

1 Like

Warlock is a weird one, because it is a very strong soloing class in a good players’ hands, but many playing are not skilled at it and its somewhat unforgiving if you make mistakes, unlike hunter that can reset with FD.

5 Likes

You also don’t get vanish until level 22, so early leveling is really rough even on non HC Vanilla.

2 Likes

Shaman is hands down the worst class in HC.

Mage is one of the best.

Your list is backwards AF

5 Likes

Worst? Bro its got self heals

Totems for support abilities

Ghost form for better mobility

Perma weapon buff

How tf is shaman WORSE than warrior?

1 Like

You’re misinterpreting the stats… You literally have it backwards. Go look at it again

Because all those things take mana, so they go OOM very fast, and once you’re OOM you’re just a really bad warrior. Shaman gear also largely comes from instances which are restricted in HC

1 Like

Because they fall off the map around lvl 20 and never recover.

Plus, that totem noise is the worst.

It really baffles me that warlock has been so bad in the hands of other players. I have leveled warlock the most and it is extremely easy imo. What are people doing wrong with it? Maybe people aren’t picking up the grimoires for a ranked up Torment?

All I ever did was put my 2 most recently up-ranked dots on the enemy right as my voidwalker aggros, then wand to death and that has worked out fabulously for me. If it’s two enemies, you dot up one target with 3 dots, then Corruption + Agony the second target and switch void’s main target to that, put Immolation on it, then wand the first target down because it will aggro to you by then. Works like a charm. 3 enemies: you fear one or just burn the initial target down so you only have to deal with 2. The only reason I ever died on warlock was from doing quests I shouldn’t have been doing.

4 Likes

With warlock I think its few things:

People use fear in bad places and get adds.
If you go in a cave and get respawns the warlock itself is pretty squish without many escapes, so if the vw can’t handle it you’re dead. This is even worse if it’s an undead zone and fear/deathcoil dont work.
People using imp get adds while it stands around (like totems)
People spec destruction while leveling for some reason, which is terrible.
People get overconfident with small pulls and start trying bigger stuff and blow it.

But yeah, if you just take it easy and chain pull with dots and wand warlock is super easy/smooth leveling and it can solo many elites and group quests that other classes can’t.

2 Likes

Totems sit there and pull adds and get you killed.

The mana efficiency while dps/leveling is terrible, and moving totems so you dont get adds makes it even worse (the healing mana efficiency in raids is good though and chain heal is the best heal in the game).

Relatively bad at soloing elites/grouped mobs.

People always claim warrior is hard to level.

It’s not.

You quest in green zones, pull one at a time. Hamstring kite, intercept stun. At 36 you pull two at a time, sweeping whirlwind. Repeat.

You never fight yellow mobs solo

Period

It’s the same as every other melee.

1 Like

This thread is purely an opinion piece. You should make a new thread with some factually stats like this. Threads like this are the same as people going you aren’t hardcore if you have a bank alt.

Warrior is pretty great if you keep them stocked up on potions/bandages and the best gear available.

Always kill one thing at a time until you get some cooldowns and never stand in a respawn area. I think people just get in a hurry on warrior and you have limited options once the combat begins.

Also, ALWAYS outlevel the quest mobs

1 Like