Last night a friend who has held out on WoW for years decided to jump in on the game. She wants to learn her class by herself. She likes pretty much everything, but she is leaning toward ranged DPS.
The question is, if you had to start over with what you would considered the easiest DPS class that would contribute to normal raids what would it be?
I would say hunter. BM is pretty user friendly to get the basics down compared to others. And you always have the option of going MM.
Tell her to wait until DF, then play an evoker. She’ll be learning alongside everyone else, and it’ll be a lot less daunting than trying to keep up with all the things new players need to do in SL to reach that sweet spot where you can just log in and play/have fun.
BM hunter. It’s dead easy and you can move constantly to deal with mechanics.
Have her roll a druid and be a powerful, unstoppable thunder chicken. I love seeing those things. They make me happppyyyyyyyy… 
hunter or if you want more melee… demon hunter, they only have like 2skills so very easy to play. Most are really bad tho.
BM hunter and it isn’t even close. It’s the training wheels DPS spec.
I play all the ranged DPS classes and I think the druid Eclipse rotation is the second hardest to do well enough to get to high DPS. I find fire mage is the hardest because if you scuff a combust you’re totally screwed.
BM Hunter like others said.
Third hardest?
Hunter or demon hunter.
If you’re brand new to the game and if we ignore raids for now then hunter is pretty easy to learn and should have no problems leveling for the most part either solo or in group.
The biggest issue I’d say though for a new player trying hunter for the first time is in group content if you don’t put your pet away when taking shortcuts you’re going to pull the entire instance and wipe the team.
If you learn to avoid that then should be fine.
The second easiest ranged dps I’d say would be a destro warlock for until dragonflight with the talent rework because currently your single target damage is insane and will one shot just about every enemy you face in the open world.
Also warlock has the same pet problem so you’d have to be aware of that.
If I had to choose though from my experience I’d go destro warlock because of the single target dmg. If I can kill the target fast enough I don’t have to worry much about the 2nd or 3rd one attacking me. In group content I just need to be mindful of my pet and keep hitting the target as the tank should have the targets attention on them.
EDIT: Completely forgot but check your pets abilities if you choose a hunter or warlock and turn off their taunt when you do group content because the tank might lose their mind if you don’t.
Warrior or hunter.
When I first started out, I settled on BM hunter and played that for a very long time. I eventually got tired of that and now play Ret Paladin, but for somebody completely new, I would say BM hunter. You can cast while you move, your pet will tank for you. You can also collect new pets, which is fun.
My second choice would be Destro Warlock, but that can feel slow in leveling dungeons. For people concerned about survivability, you have a Voidwalker to tank, along with Drain Life. The negative is the slowness.
Didnt you already post this on an alt a couple of days ago? Answer is hunter. BM hunt. Surv hunt is next.
This was my first and I’ll add to the echo.
Beast Mastery Hunter
Hard to beat a class with a tank you get to choose.
I kind of want to try beast mastery hunter myself. It seems like the most popular spec in the game
Maybe elemental shaman with Icefury. It’s a priority rotation with a lot of abilities. I don’t even play Icefury even though it’s optimal for single target because I usually heal and it takes a lot of practice. Normal talents aren’t too bad. It may be harder than boomie, though I play Fae so weaving in New Moons makes my boomie DPS rotation kind of fiddly. IDK why they have to make healer DPS more complicated than the pure classes.
Makes my head hurt how some people are able to juggle so many different classes. If I tried to do all that, my brain would take me behind the woodshed and humble me.
Did you do MT on different classes?
BM hunter is the easiest ranged dps spec, you just hit like 3 buttons whenever they’re off cd. And if you’re soloing then hit mend pet every now and then.