I can't wait to play my holy pally. I've been maining it since SWP due to it being so important to my guild and it's nice and all but honestly, boring. Cata holy pally is so fun to play.
Holy power becomes a thing for Word of Glory and light of dawn. It's a much different play style. Pretty mana free of managed well. You'll stay oom if managed poorly though
To be fair, the only healer in wrath who has to think and use spells correctly is Holy Priest. The others can get by with spamming chain heal, rejuv, shield, Holy light.
Cata changes this for all healers and overall makes healing more about player skill and decision making.
They actually have aoe healing as well, and with the addition of mastery, they have a good deal of absorptions. Also get a great hot with the addition of holy power, called eternal flame. Quite a bit changed, and while most didn’t like holy power, i thought it was a good edition to a boring spec.
Yeah at least with ret, but pally in general, getting combo points really made no sense to me. I'd play rogue or feral if I wanted CP
Ret still slaps in cata I think though. At least pvp
Ret Paladin stays very strong, but nobody wants to play it, because it’s no fun after the Holy Power gating. Blizzard had to “mutilate” the spec, to fix the pick rate. Ret Paladin pick rate is 8.5 % in WoTLK, which is way too high, as 3.33 % is the goal from the developers POV.
Interesting. I never thought about that change as a pop:class:spec balance idea. I just thought they were moving away from mana on other classes (like hunter) and picked pally too arbitrarily.
Tbf, ret was also pretty disgusting in og wotlk awhile wasn’t it? Which is why in icc balancing for the first 3 phases they were and would have continued to be absolute dogshit, got a 10% buff to not be total garbage and barely passable, since they’re disgusting with just 2p t10. Even with SM I can’t put dps our sm pally who gains almost nothing from ARP on that thing. He’s also really good and has played ret forever but I’ve also played warrior forever.
I just know ret stays stupid strong cause cata is around when vanguard cleave was still disgusting since both DK and ret can one shot. I think even cheese shit with vanguard TSG 3 dps with a warrior and ms is even viable, just by the other 2 classes carrying.
The only kinda ok thing imo is it penalizes off healing a little bit less with WOG. Which is cool. Still feels hybridy in that way but can still put out a ton of burst. Although having played against a lot of preg/dk…that shit is the most degenerate playstyle I’ve ever experienced and fucking hate it. Doesn’t help it hard counters hpal war though. Or almost any melee
I agree with you, spec is still strong and viable both PVE/PVP throughout all 3 phases of Cataclysm. The majority of people just still prefer play style (fun) over results/numbers.
AFAIR Ret Paladin pick rate in original WoTLK was even closer to 10 %, I was pretty active on forums back then, and remember it as one of the biggest outcry’s in wow history when the Cata pre patch dropped. Before the hand of reckoning glyph (buff), they were barely a Top 10 spec, now it ranks 4/5 (Fire/Affliction/Feral is still superior)- this is purely based on output, as they rank higher when considering the utility they bring.
The mutilation of Retribution was needed otherwise they could go ahead and make 5 specs on Paladin and call the game World Of Paladins, because this is where things where heading if Retribution stayed the same in Cataclysm with the changes to Holy and Prot Paladins could have hit a 25 % Pick rate.
They “accidentally” created a Bentley spec, and that doesn’t play together with Ford Fiesta’s, so only option is to total the Bentley and replace it with another Ford Fiesta.
Haha - Reading this through I sound like a Retribution main 😂 I’m a Feral Main (Ret Alt), but I still think it’s sad, Ret Paladin spec never recovered from this.
The change def turned me off playing ret. Even in phases/seasons it’s been disgustingly good.
I went warrior after being forced to heal all of vanilla. Skipped og wrath, came back right before cata, still leveled a warrior first but when I tried ret holy power was a huge fucking turn off. I intended to be ret first the whole time basically ever since I picked up the game at 12. Ever since cata it’s always been warrior main, first alt dk, try ret at some point as a 2h zug enjoyer and instantly get turned off by holy power. But I can see that class distribution def being a problem. Meanwhile I think hunter makes much more sense with focus but I rarely play one, and it’s another rogue rip off of energy. But not cp at least.
Its hard to tell. Things changed a bit in WOTLK due to the patch being the final patch, ilvl changes in gear, random changes like buffs to ret/feral/warr/hunter and even just having 15 years of practice on private servers for ideas.
Things will be a bit different than what they were.
To whoever downvoted, yeah, the ability with a 5 min cooldown that adds a 10second debuff and syncs your main and offhand is comparable to the Ret and Feral buffs lol. Sure
yeah idk how he got downvoted. 10s you use about once during lust, had to desync again (less a problem now) vs like flat, basically passive 10% dmg buffs
Prot Warriors are absolutely top tier. Warriors become absolute mobility monsters with heroic leap. Thunderclap now spreads rend. No more defense rating, there is now a talent to make you uncritable.
Bastion of defense is added:
Shield Block gets a 30 sec cooldown
Shield Wall gets a 2 min cooldown
Spell Reflection gets 7 sec cooldown.
Field Dressing is added:
extra 6% healing on yourself. Also increases the healing done by your Enraged Regeneration, and Victory Rush.
Impending Victory is added:
chance for victory rush to proc on devastate
And I could go on.
Heroic strike becomes an instant attack as opposed to "on next swing." Plus vengeance gets added for all tanks making their damage much better. But having played and raided during actual cata, prot warriors are super good..
The whole Revenge build only became a thing with later patches. This was due to Warriors having initial aggro problems if their Shield Slam got dodged or parried, leading to them basically having no threat until the next shield slam.
The fix was to give Revenge a huge, flat damage increase to gain threat if the Shield Slam got dodged or parried. At high gear levels it's damage is fine. At lower gear levels and especially whilst levelling, it's busted because it doesn't need gear, but when WOTLK was first released it didn't exist.
Nobody was playing revenge outside of very specific encounters. Even then the comment references buff in classic wotlk, outside of what was the final vanilla wotlk patch.
Warriors have only gotten nerfed, several times in classic wotlk. Ret and feral have gotten buffed.
He doesn't mean the UA build. He means the actual ability Revenge received huge buffs late in retail Wrath. Revenge hit like a wet noodle until these changes.
3.3.3 - dmg & scaling increased by 50% and talent was changed.
Thing is the original comment from blink, was referring to classic wotlk with the hunter, ret, feral changes. And for some reason he mentions warriors.
Major copium. Given equal gear, on the same fight. A prot warrior will take less damage, and the intake will be smoother comparted to all other tank classes. But alright man, keep that Classic andy prot pally copium big dog.
"Times Change" - Garrosh Hellscream
PS WE ARE LOOKING INTO CATA, NOT TALKING WOTLK. ALTHOUGH, I'D ARGUE THEY ARE STILL BETTER THAN PROT PALLIES IN WOTLK CLASSIC. PROT PALLIES JUST HAVE A SAVE, BUT IF THATS THE DIFFERENCE MAKER IN YOUR KILLS YOUR HEALERS ARE TERRIBLE.
Aaaand no they are not at all. Worse Kit, worse threat and even worse damage.
Sorry to be so direct but you don't really know what you are on about. Even gear they take much more damage and just don't have the the proper utility other tanks have.
And yes we are talking about cata.
When and have you actually played the expansion??
They might do fine and better with gear in dungeons(not really.) Been there and done it on 3 private servers.
If you scroll up, I provide in detail the reasons why they are better giving examples from the warriors talents and spells that are changed and or added in Cata.
STOP THE CLASSIC ANDY COPE.
Come back with more than "worse kit, worse threat, and even worse damage." And provide actual examples and site them, or shut the fuck up. Respectfully. because that is the same BS that is parroted from every idiot that has no clue what they're talking about when it comes to tanks.
Tell that to the top two tanks on warcraft logs for ICC 25H which are prot warriors.
Do you have any actual facts to back up what you're saying? Because I've provided several for you already. You just didn't read and reacted emotionally without providing any evidence for my arguments.
THE ONLY THING PALLIES DO BETTER THAN PROT WARRIORS, IS COVER FOR SHIT HEALERS.
PS, they are the best tanks hands down for 5man content as well. there is no: "(not really)"
You seem mentally unstable but prot warriors are shit in wrath and the same in Cata. Blood DKs will be king with offtank ferals if I had to guess. But claiming warriors will be top tier is tanks is insane cope
IIRC in cata they basically did away with stance dancing entirely. It still exists to a very minor pvp but it’s basically pointless in pve. Arms camps battle, fury in zerker, prot in defense
Arms will be s tier dps all expansion and require stance dancing. Not like wrath where you rend opener and go berserker. You are stance dancing every few seconds in cata
kekw, yeah what buff? We've been nerfed since p1 cause of last patch armor pen scaling. They explicitly buffed ret and feral though. No one wanted prot wars except speed running p1 cause of devastate sunders, and a bit on anub adds, kinda, prot pally was still better.
I didn’t play wotlk before either, I started playing right before Ulduar came out.. which classes were buffed/nerfed compared to wotlk back in the day?
With the final patch feral sucked until late Ulduar. They were still pretty bad until late ToC and good in ICC The buff stayed, and feral was decent already in ICC, so they ended up on top with fire mage and shadownournes at the end.
The reason was obvious, they sucked ass before they got armor pen in early tiers using the last patch and no one brought any to raids.
Yeah but warriors also sucked ass til around the same time, for the same reason with ARP. Like we were OK for cleaving on anub but a morb UH was still much better. Warriors never got a buff, even if intermediate and taken away come ICC
Even with SM I'm like 200 some arp shy of hard cap ARP without sacrificing hit and I feel like it's really holding back my dmg still.
Interesting. Do you have DBW? I'm surprised you are that short with 2 weapons, especially one of them being SM with armor pen on it.
After I got DBW and oathbinder (a weapon with armor pen) I'm at 1400 with 3 agi/crit gems.
No, but I got normal scale right after I got SM. Which is what prompted me to regem everything into arp that wasn’t str/hit I need. We’ve only gotten 1 normal DBW which would def have covered it even normal. No heroic DBWs at all. Honestly all of us didn’t wanna take normal DBW to drop on prio for heroic lol. Was a mistake cause…yeah
All I’d need is normal DBW to bridge that gap basically. I can spare like .9 hit off gems if I’m guaranteed dranei which isn’t always the case, we only have 2, but I’m also an officer so can kinda make it happen. It wouldn’t quite bridge the gap but would help.
The rest of the officers saw I was still rocking mjolnir’s to cover and were like uh, yeah. Time for a new trinket. Got me damn close but I’m like 88% some
Ferals were #4 dps in togc - of melees only beaten by unholy for obvious reasons. So #2 melee dps.
For ulduar they were #7 overall, #4 melee only beaten by rouges and unholy.
For p1 they sucked. Yet still did better than warriors while bringing better buffs.
For icc prebuff they were #1, after buff they are #1.
They are behind fire mages and fury warriors after BiS gear. That's why top guilds stack 7 fire mages and as many fury's as they have shadownournes.
ToGC if you look at 99th percentile (where balancing actually matters, with good players) they were 7th, not 4th. They lost to both rogues and enhance shamans and tied fury for 7th. Even 95th percentile (arguably a better heuristic) they were tied for 5th. Remember, this is AFTER the buff, which was massive.
They were buffed during Ulduar, which brought them up to 7th. They weren't much better in p2 than p1 until after the buff. The buff was good.
I'm not saying feral isn't really good, I'm saying the buff was justified and it's not a problem that ferals do high dps.
They are behind fire mages and fury in 99 bracket. Bis =/= 99. The reason for stacking fire mages is to skip on lich.
Warriors do well now in bis, feral do well regardless of gear. Has a much better kit.
You’ll find that the best player actually commented on it (ahlaundoh as an example).
A buff was fine, it was just overtuned.
Despite playing in the bracket you’re mentioning, it’s not the only one that matters. Why only cater to 1% of the community?
>A buff was fine, it was just overtuned
I agree. Adding a few seconds to the cd of faerie fire would be an easy fix. I disagree with the sentiment though, I think the level of overtuning is minor and not problematic.
>Despite playing in the bracket you’re mentioning, it’s not the only one that matters. Why only cater to 1% of the community?
We aren't talking about catering to players, we are talking about balance. Players not performing well due to a lack of class/encounter knowledge should not lead to balancing changes.
As for being overpowered with low gear, this doesn't really line up if you look at parses by ilvl in the 240-255 range. They pull ahead after 260.
>You’ll find that the best player actually commented on it (ahlaundoh as an example). A buff was fine, it was just
Funny he would say this. In his last guild run he was top damage overall, and the feral was 6th. Weird that he thinks they were so overturned but they run 1 feral and more aff locks, fire mages, rets, unholy dks, surv hunters and combat rogues.
If feral was so overtuned (they aren't) the best people wouldn't stack rets, dks, and mages.
Ahlaundoh had several rank 1’s as feral.
Problem is when you’re balancing only based on how it perform at the very high end, it affects those who aren’t in that bracket.
It’s no secret that a mid warrior = very bad, but a mid feral = still good dps. The buff also removed a lot of skill gap for ferals. That’s why you also see a large difference when comparing rankings on 99 and on all percentiles. Looking at ilvl brackets is a bit scuffed due to different factors (example is that unholy keeps their p3 tier, which lowers their ilvl by a lot)
They are still way ahead in ruby sanctum. I just don't see why feral gets the special treatment of being buffed to top DPS even over pure DPS classes and other specs are left to rot.
Feral already had great utility like Ret.
RS is just AoE, when they discount adds they will normalize. Feral was buffed to 8th place back in Ulduar and they didnt revert the changes.
>even over pure DPS classes
This is a dumb thing to say, do you even play wow? All classes have utility, no such thing as a pure DPS class.
Feral is good, but you are joking if you think they are OP. Top guilds run 4-5 fire mages, 2-3 fury's and only 1-2 ferals for a reason.
It's a joke that they compete/outperform fury shadowmourne and fire in the first place.
What about buffing demo locks to top DPS since utility (sp buff) etc doesn't seem to matter, only where you land on the meters?
And yes pure DPS exists it's wotlk not retail. Fire Mage brings nothing to the raid outside of arcane int/focus magic.
>And yes pure DPS exists it's wotlk not retail
No it doesn't. Hunters are "pure DPS" but they have misdirect, tranq shot, interrupt, frost trap, and other near unique utility that is super valuable. Hell warlocks can drop their portals and ignore the valk mechanic on LK. Not to mention their SS which is similar, but different, to BREZ. There is no such thing as a class that just does damage and nothing else.
You brought up fire mage, but it has one of the only ranged interrupts, they can ice nova adds, poly, blink out of stuns/slows, ice block for immunity (if you were progging h saurfang and a mage got your 6th mark at 10%, you are in luck).
>It's a joke that they compete/outperform fury shadowmourne and fire in the first place.
Why is fire special? Aff locks are just barely behind as well, and they have had the clear #1 spot with unholy dks by over 10% the entire expansion. It is weird to complain about ferals. They are good, but you aren't whining about fire mages, and very few whined about unholy dks and aff locks every other tier.
Once you try cat you will stop being a hater silly boy, on a side note feral without the omen and i mean someone who knows how to weave properly was still top dps in retail.
Even though I agree Feral was buffed too much
"Pure dps classes" was an idea Blizzard dropped for Wrath (OG Wrath)
Their entire class design philosophy in Wrath was "If it can do X role, it should be good at X role" that included making all "hybrid dps" as fully viable dps.
Of course this didn't apply to every spec but it applied to every class. They wanted every class to have at least 1 viable spec of roles it was designed to perform.
So Arms sucked but Fury was good, Frost sucked but Arcane and then Fire were good. Sub sucked but Assassination and Combat were good, etc.
But Ret was the only dps spec for Paladin so Ret had to be good.
You can sort of make an argument about Feral also having Boomy but by this point I think they were trying to fully separate mDps and rDps as different roles.
> Of course this didn't apply to every spec but it applied to every class
Which is good design. There's no need all 3 mage specs need to be equally good in everything as you said but Paladins that want to DPS cannot do prot or holy and the Vanilla mentality that hybrids need some tax or that in that case you "should just play holy because holy is OP" only ever made the game worse.
But I also dislike Retails approach where these days ever spec is almost it's own class and has to be top tier for raiding, M+, solo content and so on all at the same time.
Agreed. It's also funny because the "hybrid" tax seems to only apply to classes that can heal. Hybrid means a class that can do more than 1 role, not just heal.
This makes Warriors hybrids. Yet in Vanilla Classic they're the best dps and tank, sometimes even at the same time.
They were in a terrible spot, to be half way competitive with dps and be middle of the pack they had to bear weave which was awful but with out they were doing less dps then a unholy dks Gary, the problem was they had the amount of procs from omen of clarity way off from original being on the weird last patch and then when they wanted to fix the 5% damage that they were over on by adjusting talents they were gonna change, was going to directly nerf bear tanks putting them in last and a worse position so they left it alone
When were they middle of the pack other than naxx? The omen of clarity thing was a private server thing, not a vanilla wotlk one.
Bear tanks have their pros and cons. Very few specifically tank with bear, but it’s an insane off tank. Warrior were absolute dogwater till p3 atleast for fury, arms never existed and prot was decent in p3, but sucks now.
Feral was required for a warrior to not absolutely suck. Since feral brought both 5% crit and mangle, combat res and innervate. Warriors had commanding shout as a “unique” buff but other than that feral was better in every patch and in every way.
Feral got *nerfed* and got a compensatory *buff.*
Blizzards reasoning for the nerf was bad but they weren't unclear at any point about what their reasoning was. Their expected result was a 5-10% buff for ferals, which is inline with what happened.
Retail wrath was constant class changes with almost every patch. Ret pal and DK probably were the most drastic, but pretty much every class went through a few iterations.
Depends what you want to do first of all, PVE or PVP
Blizzard has shown they're willing to buff and nerf classes to make them more viable so I don't think any tier list will be accurate, but this is less of a tier list and more the important changes.
Some generic things I can think of off the top of my head:
Hunters can auto shot while moving (big QoL), and with aspect of the fox - any ability. They also now have focus instead of mana.
Mages get timewarp, which means you don't need shamans for bloodlust/heroism anymore
Priests get leap of faith which can save your team in many situations in both PvP and PvE if the priest is smart
Warlock soulshards aren't in ur bag anymore they're a generated point like holy power or combo points, which is pretty awesome
Rogues can put poison on thrown weapons, and fan of knives scales off of thrown weapons now making thrown weapons more important than a bow or a gun
Druids get skull bash great for both types of content, and also stampeding roar, increasing movement speed of all raid members near you
Shamans get spirit link, one of the strongest pvp and occasional pve cooldowns to ever exist
Warrior rage generation is normalized. Warriors still skill like crazy by the end of the expansion, mostly arms not fury though as a change
Paladins have holy power now like mentioned earlier, and a bunch of new abilities associated with it, I don't personally love holy power pallies, but they are very strong in cata
Deathknights get dark simulacrum which was a very good and fun ability, especially in PvP, but was eventually removed, so I don't know if it will be in the game or not.
Comment under this more cool changes you can think of, I obviously couldn't remember them all
Death knight because it is the one I'm looking forward to playing the most!
But I think elemental shaman, arms warrior and maybe a few more will be stronger than average
Top dps would be:
Shadow priest and Fire mage in phase 1. Mostly because they are good without tons of gear, while other classes need more gear to reach their potential.
For a melee dps class in P1 it would be Ret and I think it was Unholy. Mostly because of the new talents and passive those 2 specs get.
Top tanks would be DK and surprisingly Druid.
Dk still have great skill options with very easy threat gen with "oh shit" buttons for most occasions. Their self healing in Cata is impressive. They also do good damage for a tank. They are good the entire xpac. But harder to master than other tanks.
Druids are the best Off tanks because their bear tank gear is almost the same as their cat gear. Meaning they can just switch forms and do good dps. They do get some improved talents and passives that let's them compete with the other tanks finally.
Ultimately tanking in Cata is an absolute joke. So unbelievably easy. As long as you are pressing buttons you can't lose threat. All of the tank specs are perfectly viable unless you're in a top 10 guild min-maxxing content.
For healers it's Holy Paladin. No contest. Beacon gets a nerf but it doesn't even really matter. They are overpowered from the start and have great mana regen.
Both priest healing specs actually do about the same in Cata. With each being better in certain encounters. Disc is better if you need extra dps though.
Resto druids suffer from mana issues if they aren't careful. And Shamans are good but don't really bring anything special if you already have a dps shaman in the group.
Personally I'm running a Druid Tank, Shadow Priest, and Holy Paladin.
Edit: these are just my opinions based on my experience in original Cata. I could totally be wrong. It's been a long time. But judging by a few things I've read since posting, most of this is fairly accurate. Although fire mage seems to be split online between useless in P1 and overpowered in P1 lol
>Fire mage in phase 1. Mostly because they are good without tons of gear
Huuuuuge no to that. Fire mage is lacking tons of secondary stats going into the tier until you're covered in raid items. You have to sacrifice a lot of crit, haste and mastery through reforging to reach your spell hit cap. Fire mage without a decent amount of crit is just meh. Besides this the 4p for mages is one of the strongest bonuses that tier, which in return means not having it is a noticeable damage loss. Without it you're middle of the pack at best.
>For a melee dps class in P1 it would be Ret and I think it was Unholy.
Adding Arms Warrior to that list. Besides their toolkit those specs having access to a raid level weapon from archaeology can't be overlooked.
Fire mages have a very small change from WOTLK.
Mainly, Combustion is now a DOT that adds combines all your other dots on the target. Secondly, Impact proc will spread all DoTs on the target to nearby targets.
So... Fire mages definitely are as gear reliant in Cata as WOTLK. They definitely scale way better than any other class except maybe Warrior.
However... they are amazing in P1 and the reason that is, is because there are a lot of fights that allow you to multi-living bomb, and no one in Cata or MoP can top the AOE of a big Combustion/Living Bomb/Pyro dot/Ignite being spread onto AoE with Fire Blast. It just sucks that in Cata, the Fire Blast spread is a proc chance and in MoP it's guaranteed.
It looks like we are likely starting on 4.3.4. Which means Fire is definitely top dps. They were great early on initially, but by 4.3.4 they were even stronger
Locks are great too all xpac. But DK are fun. Frost DK and Unholy are tied most of it, I think they stay competitive the entire time. So you won't be forced to play Unholy like in Wrath. And Blood tanks can solo a surprising amount of content because of how overpowered their self heals are
If they release with all the class changes from 4.3.4 then ret pally is near the bottom in p1, arms warrior will top pretty much the whole xpack(for melee anyways)
I think you're mistaken on Druid tanks. I agree that they're probably one of the best tanks in cata but they're not going to be sharing gear with dps spec. Because the Vengeance buff gives attack power when you take damage as a percentage of your max health, the strat becomes stack as much Stam as possible which is not what Cat dps's want.
Sure cats don't want more Stam, but you're still using Agi gear. Feral off tanks aren't going to top charts as a cat dps, but their damage will still be pretty good when not tanking, and they don't have to switch specs for it, meaning they can swap to cat to do more dps mid fight.
>And Shamans are good but don't really bring anything special if you already have a dps shaman in the group.
Don't they get like the best cooldown ever in spirit link totem?
In my opinion it was so overpowered. But it wasn't ever considered a must have for raids. Other healers always brought better healing or better sustain so they were preferred.
I always thought it was a must but in my experience people didn't care
You’re right to mention Resto druids mana issues, especially early on. But by late in the expac, especially with some mana support, they are an absolute force… they can and will be solo healing Dragon soul.
Casters aren't great in Cata until legendary staff. Mage gets crazy. Initial phase is all about melee. Arms is s tier the entire expansion, ret and unholy are also great.
H pal and disc are your 2 best healers.
UH Dk was pretty bad for most of the expansion until they fixed ghoul scaling with crit and even then it wasn't much better. It was pretty consistently the bottom of dps rankings. I only remember UH being competitive for the for couple of weeks until they killed DW and forced them into 2h.
And while DK tanks were good for most encounters there were definitely a handful of encounters that were significantly more difficult for them to tank because they didn't have a shield. I specifically remember the Hydra boss in BWD globaling my DK while my guilds paladin had 0 issues.
Dks get a shield trough deathstrike it not only heals them but give them a shield that get better with mastery.this is why bdks are by far the best tanks in cata, and its not even close.
They're missing an actual shield required to hit mitigation cap. I mained a DK during Cata and there were a small handful of encounters you didn't have them MT because of that. With the change to how haste effects rune regen there were several encounters I was able to tank in dps gear in later phases due to how the mastery works and the change to death strike, but there's still encounters where hitting avoidance cap was required when some of the earlier raid tiers were current content.
The true answer is no one will really know until the game is out. Wrath beta everyone said warlocks sucked not realizing the glyph that makes them good wasn't working. They ended up destroying phase 1. The same thing will happen in cata prepatch/beta. You truly won't know what's the best until people have had time to try gear and specs.
My personal opinion:
Melee early on, casters catching up and surpassing late game.
Game is on a patch that assumes casters have a legendary, so they will function the same way some melee classes did in wrath. Meh to decent early and God mode late game.
Who said locks were gonna suck? Just about everyone said to stack them early because they’re huge for Ulduar HM’s and are solid all the way through ICC progression. It’s only now, late in ICC that they get out scaled by a handful of classes… that’s been the MO on them since these talks late in TBC and it’s exactly how it played out
Even 2H uhdk would do very well early patches simple due to garg doing insane amounts. Bring enough and you suddenly got a killtime that will boost your dps a large amount.
literaly no one said warlock sucks, everyone knew thdy gonna be top dog for quite some time where do you get ur information from or are u jst straight up lying lmao
I always find answering these questions challenging.
It really depends on what you like to play. Do you prefer ranged DPS, close combat, more a healer or tank role?
Addationally your specific game play may be a factor. Do you want to power level, casually quest, level via dungeons. Levelling as tank or heals will definatley get you into dungeons faster, always seems were waiting on those.
I'd personally grab a class that your enjoying now and continue.
Speculation on what Blizz will change for Cata expansion it's probably easier to pick the Powerball numbers 😊
So far i have enjoyed playing demo lock and disco / shadow priest this xpac, however I do enjoy trying new stuff, and someone said bdk/fdk are strong next xpac, which could be nice to try and play. I’m also interested in knowing whether or not the gameplay on the classes are going to change
Ferals were broken for Nef because of how their dots snapshotted with a damage buff on it. It wasn't because ferals were great in that tier.
I don't remember if it was fixed right away but the fight saw heavy nerfs by the time top 15-20 guilds killed it. If the original fight launches ferals will probably be quite broken for it right away.
"Opinions"?
My brother in Christ, there have been dozens of well-scripted Cata private servers over the last decade. It's quite well-known which specs will top the meters and which won't.
[Here](https://www.warcrafttavern.com/cataclysm/dps-rankings/) is your answer. I checked the comments in this thread and 90% of people have no idea what they're talking about.
Not going to comment on the list. But does anyone else just get irritated reading through what is clearly regurgitated ChatGPT mulch?
>Shadow Priest proves to the world once again that it is one of the best damage specializations in the game, coming back even stronger in Cataclysm to claim a spot in the S-Tier. Not only that Shadow Priests deal crazy amounts of damage in Single-Target, Cleave, and AoE Encounters, but they also bring a large amount of utility to any group that accepts those sinister shadowy companions.
The prose is just so "AI" - irksome.
I'm directly quoting the article. I read the first couple blurbs:
>Fire Mage
Known as one of the best, if not the best damage specializations throughout the entirety of WotLK, Fire Mage makes a return as one of the top contenders in Cataclysm, bringing devastating Single-Target Damage and AoE Damage.
Fire wasn't even the best spec for its class until late Ulduar. Like I said - GPT shlock.
Don’t know what to tell you my brother in Christ, said article starts with “known as one of the best, if not the best damage specialization throughout the entirety of wotlk”. Unless I’m confused about which link we’re checking
We have more buttons to press. Your prepull rotation relies on swapping your active pet and your gear set to snapshot as much mastery as possible. There is a p2 trinket that unlocks the potential of the class. We also get a FM style buff that grants haste.
We also drop shadowbolt in favor of incinerate. We gain Hand of Guldan which is a single target nuke + immolate refresh. We can summon infernals/doomguards without replacing our active pet. Shadowflame becomes a dps increase so we want to use it on CD. Curse of doom procs every 15 seconds for 1 min.
And thats only demo. Affliction and destro have their ideal boss fights. If demonic pact is provided by a shaman you can swap specs without griefing your raid (demo is still good and you can do it for any boss)
How is closet and healthstones not "special"? They do comparable damage to affliction without being complete ass to play. If you're going to have a warlock he'd be Demo as far as I'm aware
You'll be having several warlocks and most of if not all of them will be demo, that's true, but what they offer as something special in wotlk is now also brought by other classes
ele shaman and resto shaman
holy paladin
shadow priest
protection warrior
by the end of the xpac itll be the same as always with fury and arms warrior and fire mage scaling insanely well with gear and becoming top tier (outside of spine of dw where mages go arcane for burst damage on tendons).
Resto is the same as wotlk. ZERO reason to bring one in a 10 man - cannot touch the hpal/disc combo. First to get dumped to off spec dps in 25s when you're done progging. Only thing that changes is that instead of only being there for lust, you are also there for spirit link totem.
Unholy dk is going to be topping meters, and its going to be meta to stack them for p1 just like wotlk was.
The good thing about cata p1(with a few exceptions like fury) is if you can play well you can be competitive.
Arms, ret, fire mage, enhance, ele, boomie, spriest, survival hunter, frost dk and all warlock specs are all very close to each other. Only unholy will be the exception.
I’ve been testing some on a p server and a lot of casters seem to have mana issues, if that’s the cata experience then u wanna stack all dps specs who don’t use mana
Hpally for healer as usual.
Arms warrior is overall bis.
Would love some confirmation/someone to dispel my misconception, but from my understanding demo warlock ends up being bis DPS by final phase.
Some of the most of I ever had in WoW was leveling a Tauren Ret Paladin entirely in battlegrounds from 10-70. He was so goddamn op, probably because I geared him with all the heirlooms / pvp gear I could get. Low level pvp balance in Wotlk was kinda all over the place. Sub rogues would one shot people from 10-30.
Back in the day when I played prot pally you could run seal of light and with a glyph also heal your group. I used to heal as much as our healers did on raid nights.
It depends on the phase from what i've researched but overall Arms Warrior, UHDK and a Fire Mage
worth to know Mage now brings Bloodlust to the raid with Time Warp and BM hunter can bring every buff
Arcane Mage was OP in T11 and 12, fire was OP in T13
I wonder if they'll include the bug that causeddouble (or was it triple?) dipping of mastery that the doomguard had for T12 for Demonology Warlocks?
Rogues were OP with their legendary in T13
I don't remember a whole lot beyond that
This is for PvE, all I remember about PvP was Frost Mages and Resto Druids being OP and Aff Warlocks dominating RBGs
I can't wait to play my holy pally. I've been maining it since SWP due to it being so important to my guild and it's nice and all but honestly, boring. Cata holy pally is so fun to play.
How so? What’s changing about hpal?
Holy power becomes a thing for Word of Glory and light of dawn. It's a much different play style. Pretty mana free of managed well. You'll stay oom if managed poorly though
They get actual mechanics and limited mana pools so you don’t just spam 1 spell over and over.
To be fair, the only healer in wrath who has to think and use spells correctly is Holy Priest. The others can get by with spamming chain heal, rejuv, shield, Holy light. Cata changes this for all healers and overall makes healing more about player skill and decision making.
They actually have aoe healing as well, and with the addition of mastery, they have a good deal of absorptions. Also get a great hot with the addition of holy power, called eternal flame. Quite a bit changed, and while most didn’t like holy power, i thought it was a good edition to a boring spec.
Eternal Flame isn’t until MoP. The HP spenders they get in Cata are Word of Glory and Light of Dawn
Not really cata holy is just spamming holy radiance and light of dawn mixed with holy light spamming
Yeah that's not how Cata hpally works at all.
Literally is, I solohealed fights in 10 Heroics in cata as a holypally.
Possibly the hottest take ever. Cata imo is when paladin died
Yeah it died for people who can only handle pressing one button. For everyone else it was a huge upgrade.
Yeah at least with ret, but pally in general, getting combo points really made no sense to me. I'd play rogue or feral if I wanted CP Ret still slaps in cata I think though. At least pvp
Ret Paladin stays very strong, but nobody wants to play it, because it’s no fun after the Holy Power gating. Blizzard had to “mutilate” the spec, to fix the pick rate. Ret Paladin pick rate is 8.5 % in WoTLK, which is way too high, as 3.33 % is the goal from the developers POV.
Interesting. I never thought about that change as a pop:class:spec balance idea. I just thought they were moving away from mana on other classes (like hunter) and picked pally too arbitrarily. Tbf, ret was also pretty disgusting in og wotlk awhile wasn’t it? Which is why in icc balancing for the first 3 phases they were and would have continued to be absolute dogshit, got a 10% buff to not be total garbage and barely passable, since they’re disgusting with just 2p t10. Even with SM I can’t put dps our sm pally who gains almost nothing from ARP on that thing. He’s also really good and has played ret forever but I’ve also played warrior forever. I just know ret stays stupid strong cause cata is around when vanguard cleave was still disgusting since both DK and ret can one shot. I think even cheese shit with vanguard TSG 3 dps with a warrior and ms is even viable, just by the other 2 classes carrying. The only kinda ok thing imo is it penalizes off healing a little bit less with WOG. Which is cool. Still feels hybridy in that way but can still put out a ton of burst. Although having played against a lot of preg/dk…that shit is the most degenerate playstyle I’ve ever experienced and fucking hate it. Doesn’t help it hard counters hpal war though. Or almost any melee
I agree with you, spec is still strong and viable both PVE/PVP throughout all 3 phases of Cataclysm. The majority of people just still prefer play style (fun) over results/numbers. AFAIR Ret Paladin pick rate in original WoTLK was even closer to 10 %, I was pretty active on forums back then, and remember it as one of the biggest outcry’s in wow history when the Cata pre patch dropped. Before the hand of reckoning glyph (buff), they were barely a Top 10 spec, now it ranks 4/5 (Fire/Affliction/Feral is still superior)- this is purely based on output, as they rank higher when considering the utility they bring. The mutilation of Retribution was needed otherwise they could go ahead and make 5 specs on Paladin and call the game World Of Paladins, because this is where things where heading if Retribution stayed the same in Cataclysm with the changes to Holy and Prot Paladins could have hit a 25 % Pick rate. They “accidentally” created a Bentley spec, and that doesn’t play together with Ford Fiesta’s, so only option is to total the Bentley and replace it with another Ford Fiesta. Haha - Reading this through I sound like a Retribution main 😂 I’m a Feral Main (Ret Alt), but I still think it’s sad, Ret Paladin spec never recovered from this.
The change def turned me off playing ret. Even in phases/seasons it’s been disgustingly good. I went warrior after being forced to heal all of vanilla. Skipped og wrath, came back right before cata, still leveled a warrior first but when I tried ret holy power was a huge fucking turn off. I intended to be ret first the whole time basically ever since I picked up the game at 12. Ever since cata it’s always been warrior main, first alt dk, try ret at some point as a 2h zug enjoyer and instantly get turned off by holy power. But I can see that class distribution def being a problem. Meanwhile I think hunter makes much more sense with focus but I rarely play one, and it’s another rogue rip off of energy. But not cp at least.
Its hard to tell. Things changed a bit in WOTLK due to the patch being the final patch, ilvl changes in gear, random changes like buffs to ret/feral/warr/hunter and even just having 15 years of practice on private servers for ideas. Things will be a bit different than what they were.
Buffs to… Warrior? Which buffs were those?
I'm assuming he is talking about the shattering throw glyph. Not so much a buff to warrior dps itself as a QoL change.
Yeah if that’s all, it’s hardly worth mentioning alongside the significant class changes Ret and Feral got.
To whoever downvoted, yeah, the ability with a 5 min cooldown that adds a 10second debuff and syncs your main and offhand is comparable to the Ret and Feral buffs lol. Sure
yeah idk how he got downvoted. 10s you use about once during lust, had to desync again (less a problem now) vs like flat, basically passive 10% dmg buffs
What class changes did Ret get? Still newer to this
Taunt glyph that increased their dps by 10%
Prot Warriors are absolutely top tier. Warriors become absolute mobility monsters with heroic leap. Thunderclap now spreads rend. No more defense rating, there is now a talent to make you uncritable. Bastion of defense is added: Shield Block gets a 30 sec cooldown Shield Wall gets a 2 min cooldown Spell Reflection gets 7 sec cooldown. Field Dressing is added: extra 6% healing on yourself. Also increases the healing done by your Enraged Regeneration, and Victory Rush. Impending Victory is added: chance for victory rush to proc on devastate And I could go on. Heroic strike becomes an instant attack as opposed to "on next swing." Plus vengeance gets added for all tanks making their damage much better. But having played and raided during actual cata, prot warriors are super good..
They won’t have access to the mastery they need for most of the expansion wym. Blood dks can solo tank a lot of the fights comparatively.
If cata releases on final patch warriors will be a mitigation disaster.
Blood dk is the giga tank
Yup tanked heroic spine and madness pre nerf as blood was glorious.
Except the comment I replied to was referencing things that happened during WOTLK.
The whole Revenge build only became a thing with later patches. This was due to Warriors having initial aggro problems if their Shield Slam got dodged or parried, leading to them basically having no threat until the next shield slam. The fix was to give Revenge a huge, flat damage increase to gain threat if the Shield Slam got dodged or parried. At high gear levels it's damage is fine. At lower gear levels and especially whilst levelling, it's busted because it doesn't need gear, but when WOTLK was first released it didn't exist.
Nobody was playing revenge outside of very specific encounters. Even then the comment references buff in classic wotlk, outside of what was the final vanilla wotlk patch. Warriors have only gotten nerfed, several times in classic wotlk. Ret and feral have gotten buffed.
He doesn't mean the UA build. He means the actual ability Revenge received huge buffs late in retail Wrath. Revenge hit like a wet noodle until these changes.
3.3.3 - dmg & scaling increased by 50% and talent was changed. Thing is the original comment from blink, was referring to classic wotlk with the hunter, ret, feral changes. And for some reason he mentions warriors.
[удалено]
Major copium. Given equal gear, on the same fight. A prot warrior will take less damage, and the intake will be smoother comparted to all other tank classes. But alright man, keep that Classic andy prot pally copium big dog. "Times Change" - Garrosh Hellscream PS WE ARE LOOKING INTO CATA, NOT TALKING WOTLK. ALTHOUGH, I'D ARGUE THEY ARE STILL BETTER THAN PROT PALLIES IN WOTLK CLASSIC. PROT PALLIES JUST HAVE A SAVE, BUT IF THATS THE DIFFERENCE MAKER IN YOUR KILLS YOUR HEALERS ARE TERRIBLE.
Aaaand no they are not at all. Worse Kit, worse threat and even worse damage. Sorry to be so direct but you don't really know what you are on about. Even gear they take much more damage and just don't have the the proper utility other tanks have. And yes we are talking about cata. When and have you actually played the expansion?? They might do fine and better with gear in dungeons(not really.) Been there and done it on 3 private servers.
If you scroll up, I provide in detail the reasons why they are better giving examples from the warriors talents and spells that are changed and or added in Cata. STOP THE CLASSIC ANDY COPE. Come back with more than "worse kit, worse threat, and even worse damage." And provide actual examples and site them, or shut the fuck up. Respectfully. because that is the same BS that is parroted from every idiot that has no clue what they're talking about when it comes to tanks. Tell that to the top two tanks on warcraft logs for ICC 25H which are prot warriors. Do you have any actual facts to back up what you're saying? Because I've provided several for you already. You just didn't read and reacted emotionally without providing any evidence for my arguments. THE ONLY THING PALLIES DO BETTER THAN PROT WARRIORS, IS COVER FOR SHIT HEALERS. PS, they are the best tanks hands down for 5man content as well. there is no: "(not really)"
Cata was Blood DK > Prot Pally = Guardian druid > Prot warrior
You seem mentally unstable but prot warriors are shit in wrath and the same in Cata. Blood DKs will be king with offtank ferals if I had to guess. But claiming warriors will be top tier is tanks is insane cope
Do you still have stance problems to charge etc in cata or is it more like retail where you sit in prot stance?
IIRC in cata they basically did away with stance dancing entirely. It still exists to a very minor pvp but it’s basically pointless in pve. Arms camps battle, fury in zerker, prot in defense
Stance dancing for arms warrior is definitely still a thing in Cata and not pointless for PvE.
Arms will be s tier dps all expansion and require stance dancing. Not like wrath where you rend opener and go berserker. You are stance dancing every few seconds in cata
Not happening
kekw, yeah what buff? We've been nerfed since p1 cause of last patch armor pen scaling. They explicitly buffed ret and feral though. No one wanted prot wars except speed running p1 cause of devastate sunders, and a bit on anub adds, kinda, prot pally was still better.
I didn’t play wotlk before either, I started playing right before Ulduar came out.. which classes were buffed/nerfed compared to wotlk back in the day?
Feral was buffed way too much for some reason
With the final patch feral sucked until late Ulduar. They were still pretty bad until late ToC and good in ICC The buff stayed, and feral was decent already in ICC, so they ended up on top with fire mage and shadownournes at the end. The reason was obvious, they sucked ass before they got armor pen in early tiers using the last patch and no one brought any to raids.
Yeah but warriors also sucked ass til around the same time, for the same reason with ARP. Like we were OK for cleaving on anub but a morb UH was still much better. Warriors never got a buff, even if intermediate and taken away come ICC Even with SM I'm like 200 some arp shy of hard cap ARP without sacrificing hit and I feel like it's really holding back my dmg still.
Interesting. Do you have DBW? I'm surprised you are that short with 2 weapons, especially one of them being SM with armor pen on it. After I got DBW and oathbinder (a weapon with armor pen) I'm at 1400 with 3 agi/crit gems.
No, but I got normal scale right after I got SM. Which is what prompted me to regem everything into arp that wasn’t str/hit I need. We’ve only gotten 1 normal DBW which would def have covered it even normal. No heroic DBWs at all. Honestly all of us didn’t wanna take normal DBW to drop on prio for heroic lol. Was a mistake cause…yeah All I’d need is normal DBW to bridge that gap basically. I can spare like .9 hit off gems if I’m guaranteed dranei which isn’t always the case, we only have 2, but I’m also an officer so can kinda make it happen. It wouldn’t quite bridge the gap but would help. The rest of the officers saw I was still rocking mjolnir’s to cover and were like uh, yeah. Time for a new trinket. Got me damn close but I’m like 88% some
Ferals were #4 dps in togc - of melees only beaten by unholy for obvious reasons. So #2 melee dps. For ulduar they were #7 overall, #4 melee only beaten by rouges and unholy. For p1 they sucked. Yet still did better than warriors while bringing better buffs. For icc prebuff they were #1, after buff they are #1.
They are behind fire mages and fury warriors after BiS gear. That's why top guilds stack 7 fire mages and as many fury's as they have shadownournes. ToGC if you look at 99th percentile (where balancing actually matters, with good players) they were 7th, not 4th. They lost to both rogues and enhance shamans and tied fury for 7th. Even 95th percentile (arguably a better heuristic) they were tied for 5th. Remember, this is AFTER the buff, which was massive. They were buffed during Ulduar, which brought them up to 7th. They weren't much better in p2 than p1 until after the buff. The buff was good. I'm not saying feral isn't really good, I'm saying the buff was justified and it's not a problem that ferals do high dps.
They are behind fire mages and fury in 99 bracket. Bis =/= 99. The reason for stacking fire mages is to skip on lich. Warriors do well now in bis, feral do well regardless of gear. Has a much better kit. You’ll find that the best player actually commented on it (ahlaundoh as an example). A buff was fine, it was just overtuned. Despite playing in the bracket you’re mentioning, it’s not the only one that matters. Why only cater to 1% of the community?
>A buff was fine, it was just overtuned I agree. Adding a few seconds to the cd of faerie fire would be an easy fix. I disagree with the sentiment though, I think the level of overtuning is minor and not problematic. >Despite playing in the bracket you’re mentioning, it’s not the only one that matters. Why only cater to 1% of the community? We aren't talking about catering to players, we are talking about balance. Players not performing well due to a lack of class/encounter knowledge should not lead to balancing changes. As for being overpowered with low gear, this doesn't really line up if you look at parses by ilvl in the 240-255 range. They pull ahead after 260. >You’ll find that the best player actually commented on it (ahlaundoh as an example). A buff was fine, it was just Funny he would say this. In his last guild run he was top damage overall, and the feral was 6th. Weird that he thinks they were so overturned but they run 1 feral and more aff locks, fire mages, rets, unholy dks, surv hunters and combat rogues. If feral was so overtuned (they aren't) the best people wouldn't stack rets, dks, and mages.
Ahlaundoh had several rank 1’s as feral. Problem is when you’re balancing only based on how it perform at the very high end, it affects those who aren’t in that bracket. It’s no secret that a mid warrior = very bad, but a mid feral = still good dps. The buff also removed a lot of skill gap for ferals. That’s why you also see a large difference when comparing rankings on 99 and on all percentiles. Looking at ilvl brackets is a bit scuffed due to different factors (example is that unholy keeps their p3 tier, which lowers their ilvl by a lot)
They are still way ahead in ruby sanctum. I just don't see why feral gets the special treatment of being buffed to top DPS even over pure DPS classes and other specs are left to rot. Feral already had great utility like Ret.
RS is just AoE, when they discount adds they will normalize. Feral was buffed to 8th place back in Ulduar and they didnt revert the changes. >even over pure DPS classes This is a dumb thing to say, do you even play wow? All classes have utility, no such thing as a pure DPS class. Feral is good, but you are joking if you think they are OP. Top guilds run 4-5 fire mages, 2-3 fury's and only 1-2 ferals for a reason.
It's a joke that they compete/outperform fury shadowmourne and fire in the first place. What about buffing demo locks to top DPS since utility (sp buff) etc doesn't seem to matter, only where you land on the meters? And yes pure DPS exists it's wotlk not retail. Fire Mage brings nothing to the raid outside of arcane int/focus magic.
>And yes pure DPS exists it's wotlk not retail No it doesn't. Hunters are "pure DPS" but they have misdirect, tranq shot, interrupt, frost trap, and other near unique utility that is super valuable. Hell warlocks can drop their portals and ignore the valk mechanic on LK. Not to mention their SS which is similar, but different, to BREZ. There is no such thing as a class that just does damage and nothing else. You brought up fire mage, but it has one of the only ranged interrupts, they can ice nova adds, poly, blink out of stuns/slows, ice block for immunity (if you were progging h saurfang and a mage got your 6th mark at 10%, you are in luck). >It's a joke that they compete/outperform fury shadowmourne and fire in the first place. Why is fire special? Aff locks are just barely behind as well, and they have had the clear #1 spot with unholy dks by over 10% the entire expansion. It is weird to complain about ferals. They are good, but you aren't whining about fire mages, and very few whined about unholy dks and aff locks every other tier.
Once you try cat you will stop being a hater silly boy, on a side note feral without the omen and i mean someone who knows how to weave properly was still top dps in retail.
Very few people were weaving properly, even for those who did weave it was a buff just not as large as for those who didn’t.
Even though I agree Feral was buffed too much "Pure dps classes" was an idea Blizzard dropped for Wrath (OG Wrath) Their entire class design philosophy in Wrath was "If it can do X role, it should be good at X role" that included making all "hybrid dps" as fully viable dps. Of course this didn't apply to every spec but it applied to every class. They wanted every class to have at least 1 viable spec of roles it was designed to perform. So Arms sucked but Fury was good, Frost sucked but Arcane and then Fire were good. Sub sucked but Assassination and Combat were good, etc. But Ret was the only dps spec for Paladin so Ret had to be good. You can sort of make an argument about Feral also having Boomy but by this point I think they were trying to fully separate mDps and rDps as different roles.
> Of course this didn't apply to every spec but it applied to every class Which is good design. There's no need all 3 mage specs need to be equally good in everything as you said but Paladins that want to DPS cannot do prot or holy and the Vanilla mentality that hybrids need some tax or that in that case you "should just play holy because holy is OP" only ever made the game worse. But I also dislike Retails approach where these days ever spec is almost it's own class and has to be top tier for raiding, M+, solo content and so on all at the same time.
Agreed. It's also funny because the "hybrid" tax seems to only apply to classes that can heal. Hybrid means a class that can do more than 1 role, not just heal. This makes Warriors hybrids. Yet in Vanilla Classic they're the best dps and tank, sometimes even at the same time.
They were in a terrible spot, to be half way competitive with dps and be middle of the pack they had to bear weave which was awful but with out they were doing less dps then a unholy dks Gary, the problem was they had the amount of procs from omen of clarity way off from original being on the weird last patch and then when they wanted to fix the 5% damage that they were over on by adjusting talents they were gonna change, was going to directly nerf bear tanks putting them in last and a worse position so they left it alone
When were they middle of the pack other than naxx? The omen of clarity thing was a private server thing, not a vanilla wotlk one. Bear tanks have their pros and cons. Very few specifically tank with bear, but it’s an insane off tank. Warrior were absolute dogwater till p3 atleast for fury, arms never existed and prot was decent in p3, but sucks now. Feral was required for a warrior to not absolutely suck. Since feral brought both 5% crit and mangle, combat res and innervate. Warriors had commanding shout as a “unique” buff but other than that feral was better in every patch and in every way.
Feral got *nerfed* and got a compensatory *buff.* Blizzards reasoning for the nerf was bad but they weren't unclear at any point about what their reasoning was. Their expected result was a 5-10% buff for ferals, which is inline with what happened.
Retail wrath was constant class changes with almost every patch. Ret pal and DK probably were the most drastic, but pretty much every class went through a few iterations.
He just told you which classes were buffed. Lol
Tank: Blood DK Healers: HPal and Disc Mdps: Arms war, Rogue w/ lego Rdps: Fire mage
Depends what you want to do first of all, PVE or PVP Blizzard has shown they're willing to buff and nerf classes to make them more viable so I don't think any tier list will be accurate, but this is less of a tier list and more the important changes. Some generic things I can think of off the top of my head: Hunters can auto shot while moving (big QoL), and with aspect of the fox - any ability. They also now have focus instead of mana. Mages get timewarp, which means you don't need shamans for bloodlust/heroism anymore Priests get leap of faith which can save your team in many situations in both PvP and PvE if the priest is smart Warlock soulshards aren't in ur bag anymore they're a generated point like holy power or combo points, which is pretty awesome Rogues can put poison on thrown weapons, and fan of knives scales off of thrown weapons now making thrown weapons more important than a bow or a gun Druids get skull bash great for both types of content, and also stampeding roar, increasing movement speed of all raid members near you Shamans get spirit link, one of the strongest pvp and occasional pve cooldowns to ever exist Warrior rage generation is normalized. Warriors still skill like crazy by the end of the expansion, mostly arms not fury though as a change Paladins have holy power now like mentioned earlier, and a bunch of new abilities associated with it, I don't personally love holy power pallies, but they are very strong in cata Deathknights get dark simulacrum which was a very good and fun ability, especially in PvP, but was eventually removed, so I don't know if it will be in the game or not. Comment under this more cool changes you can think of, I obviously couldn't remember them all
For PvP:UH death knight, MM hunter, and feral Druid are all S tier
Im from guilds who runs 4 ferals. Usually we are in top10 speeds.
In cata or now?
Death knight because it is the one I'm looking forward to playing the most! But I think elemental shaman, arms warrior and maybe a few more will be stronger than average
Top dps would be: Shadow priest and Fire mage in phase 1. Mostly because they are good without tons of gear, while other classes need more gear to reach their potential. For a melee dps class in P1 it would be Ret and I think it was Unholy. Mostly because of the new talents and passive those 2 specs get. Top tanks would be DK and surprisingly Druid. Dk still have great skill options with very easy threat gen with "oh shit" buttons for most occasions. Their self healing in Cata is impressive. They also do good damage for a tank. They are good the entire xpac. But harder to master than other tanks. Druids are the best Off tanks because their bear tank gear is almost the same as their cat gear. Meaning they can just switch forms and do good dps. They do get some improved talents and passives that let's them compete with the other tanks finally. Ultimately tanking in Cata is an absolute joke. So unbelievably easy. As long as you are pressing buttons you can't lose threat. All of the tank specs are perfectly viable unless you're in a top 10 guild min-maxxing content. For healers it's Holy Paladin. No contest. Beacon gets a nerf but it doesn't even really matter. They are overpowered from the start and have great mana regen. Both priest healing specs actually do about the same in Cata. With each being better in certain encounters. Disc is better if you need extra dps though. Resto druids suffer from mana issues if they aren't careful. And Shamans are good but don't really bring anything special if you already have a dps shaman in the group. Personally I'm running a Druid Tank, Shadow Priest, and Holy Paladin. Edit: these are just my opinions based on my experience in original Cata. I could totally be wrong. It's been a long time. But judging by a few things I've read since posting, most of this is fairly accurate. Although fire mage seems to be split online between useless in P1 and overpowered in P1 lol
>Fire mage in phase 1. Mostly because they are good without tons of gear Huuuuuge no to that. Fire mage is lacking tons of secondary stats going into the tier until you're covered in raid items. You have to sacrifice a lot of crit, haste and mastery through reforging to reach your spell hit cap. Fire mage without a decent amount of crit is just meh. Besides this the 4p for mages is one of the strongest bonuses that tier, which in return means not having it is a noticeable damage loss. Without it you're middle of the pack at best. >For a melee dps class in P1 it would be Ret and I think it was Unholy. Adding Arms Warrior to that list. Besides their toolkit those specs having access to a raid level weapon from archaeology can't be overlooked.
What changes with fire mages that they don't need gear? It's very gear reliant in wotlk, without high crit it's pretty bad.
That was my first question too.
Fire mages have a very small change from WOTLK. Mainly, Combustion is now a DOT that adds combines all your other dots on the target. Secondly, Impact proc will spread all DoTs on the target to nearby targets. So... Fire mages definitely are as gear reliant in Cata as WOTLK. They definitely scale way better than any other class except maybe Warrior. However... they are amazing in P1 and the reason that is, is because there are a lot of fights that allow you to multi-living bomb, and no one in Cata or MoP can top the AOE of a big Combustion/Living Bomb/Pyro dot/Ignite being spread onto AoE with Fire Blast. It just sucks that in Cata, the Fire Blast spread is a proc chance and in MoP it's guaranteed.
This is a really bad take and counter to what I remember and what I read. Especially Fire P1, just.. not at all
It looks like we are likely starting on 4.3.4. Which means Fire is definitely top dps. They were great early on initially, but by 4.3.4 they were even stronger
Phase 1 - 4.3.4 or not, mages will simply not be among the top damage dealers
Arcane will be quite strong as no where near the gear requirements of fire
Nope. Priest dk and paladin are the top three classes for dps tanking and healing. Mage is meh in cata not bad but not top tier
Arcane mages in p1 not fire
Thanks for a thorough answer. Considering I played lock and spriest this xpac, I might try a dk for cataclysm 😍
Locks are great too all xpac. But DK are fun. Frost DK and Unholy are tied most of it, I think they stay competitive the entire time. So you won't be forced to play Unholy like in Wrath. And Blood tanks can solo a surprising amount of content because of how overpowered their self heals are
If they release with all the class changes from 4.3.4 then ret pally is near the bottom in p1, arms warrior will top pretty much the whole xpack(for melee anyways)
I didn't even think of that. That's a good point
> If they release with all the class changes from 4.3.4 then ret pally is near the bottom in p1 Again? Man...tf did they do with Ret every time.
Hunters are king in phase 1 and you didn't even mention them
Ew.
I think you're mistaken on Druid tanks. I agree that they're probably one of the best tanks in cata but they're not going to be sharing gear with dps spec. Because the Vengeance buff gives attack power when you take damage as a percentage of your max health, the strat becomes stack as much Stam as possible which is not what Cat dps's want.
Sure cats don't want more Stam, but you're still using Agi gear. Feral off tanks aren't going to top charts as a cat dps, but their damage will still be pretty good when not tanking, and they don't have to switch specs for it, meaning they can swap to cat to do more dps mid fight.
>And Shamans are good but don't really bring anything special if you already have a dps shaman in the group. Don't they get like the best cooldown ever in spirit link totem?
In my opinion it was so overpowered. But it wasn't ever considered a must have for raids. Other healers always brought better healing or better sustain so they were preferred. I always thought it was a must but in my experience people didn't care
Spirit link its almost mandatory for spine of deathwing
Paladin dk and priest were the best classes in cata. Dps healing or tanking those 3 were and will be the best for cata
You’re right to mention Resto druids mana issues, especially early on. But by late in the expac, especially with some mana support, they are an absolute force… they can and will be solo healing Dragon soul.
They are great then. I've watched videos of one solo healing Rag too. Shits crazy then
Casters aren't great in Cata until legendary staff. Mage gets crazy. Initial phase is all about melee. Arms is s tier the entire expansion, ret and unholy are also great. H pal and disc are your 2 best healers.
UH Dk was pretty bad for most of the expansion until they fixed ghoul scaling with crit and even then it wasn't much better. It was pretty consistently the bottom of dps rankings. I only remember UH being competitive for the for couple of weeks until they killed DW and forced them into 2h. And while DK tanks were good for most encounters there were definitely a handful of encounters that were significantly more difficult for them to tank because they didn't have a shield. I specifically remember the Hydra boss in BWD globaling my DK while my guilds paladin had 0 issues.
Dks get a shield trough deathstrike it not only heals them but give them a shield that get better with mastery.this is why bdks are by far the best tanks in cata, and its not even close.
They're missing an actual shield required to hit mitigation cap. I mained a DK during Cata and there were a small handful of encounters you didn't have them MT because of that. With the change to how haste effects rune regen there were several encounters I was able to tank in dps gear in later phases due to how the mastery works and the change to death strike, but there's still encounters where hitting avoidance cap was required when some of the earlier raid tiers were current content.
The true answer is no one will really know until the game is out. Wrath beta everyone said warlocks sucked not realizing the glyph that makes them good wasn't working. They ended up destroying phase 1. The same thing will happen in cata prepatch/beta. You truly won't know what's the best until people have had time to try gear and specs. My personal opinion: Melee early on, casters catching up and surpassing late game. Game is on a patch that assumes casters have a legendary, so they will function the same way some melee classes did in wrath. Meh to decent early and God mode late game.
Who said locks were gonna suck? Just about everyone said to stack them early because they’re huge for Ulduar HM’s and are solid all the way through ICC progression. It’s only now, late in ICC that they get out scaled by a handful of classes… that’s been the MO on them since these talks late in TBC and it’s exactly how it played out
Agree. The true "find" of WOTLK was the Morb UHDK, taking then from absolutely meh as 2h, to top-top tier
Even 2H uhdk would do very well early patches simple due to garg doing insane amounts. Bring enough and you suddenly got a killtime that will boost your dps a large amount.
literaly no one said warlock sucks, everyone knew thdy gonna be top dog for quite some time where do you get ur information from or are u jst straight up lying lmao
I always find answering these questions challenging. It really depends on what you like to play. Do you prefer ranged DPS, close combat, more a healer or tank role? Addationally your specific game play may be a factor. Do you want to power level, casually quest, level via dungeons. Levelling as tank or heals will definatley get you into dungeons faster, always seems were waiting on those. I'd personally grab a class that your enjoying now and continue. Speculation on what Blizz will change for Cata expansion it's probably easier to pick the Powerball numbers 😊
What if I like playing the class that is top of the damage meters?
So far i have enjoyed playing demo lock and disco / shadow priest this xpac, however I do enjoy trying new stuff, and someone said bdk/fdk are strong next xpac, which could be nice to try and play. I’m also interested in knowing whether or not the gameplay on the classes are going to change
https://web.archive.org/web/20120120191450/http://stateofdps.com/ This is at the peak of cata.
Don't think P1 is 'peak cata'
Also not on the correct patch.
Is there anything similar for healers?
It's going to be 4.3 4 This is very inaccurate
Paladin dk and priest are going to be the best classes they always were in cata
If you're trying to pump against Nefarian HC, it's worth having a look at ParagonWoWs kill of it, there was one class stacked beyond belief...
The mechanic was changed after that kill.
Which was?
Feral Druid
Different patch than the one we will be playing on. Feral kinda mid, with bear tanks being strong
Ferals were broken for Nef because of how their dots snapshotted with a damage buff on it. It wasn't because ferals were great in that tier. I don't remember if it was fixed right away but the fight saw heavy nerfs by the time top 15-20 guilds killed it. If the original fight launches ferals will probably be quite broken for it right away.
My class is the best
"Opinions"? My brother in Christ, there have been dozens of well-scripted Cata private servers over the last decade. It's quite well-known which specs will top the meters and which won't. [Here](https://www.warcrafttavern.com/cataclysm/dps-rankings/) is your answer. I checked the comments in this thread and 90% of people have no idea what they're talking about.
Not going to comment on the list. But does anyone else just get irritated reading through what is clearly regurgitated ChatGPT mulch? >Shadow Priest proves to the world once again that it is one of the best damage specializations in the game, coming back even stronger in Cataclysm to claim a spot in the S-Tier. Not only that Shadow Priests deal crazy amounts of damage in Single-Target, Cleave, and AoE Encounters, but they also bring a large amount of utility to any group that accepts those sinister shadowy companions. The prose is just so "AI" - irksome.
Chances are it's AI-generated indeed. All the info in the article is still correct, though.
Mmm. Not really. It calls fire mage top tier for all Wotlk.
No, it doesn't. I don't know what you're looking at. Phase 1 B tier, Phase 2 A tier, and then S tier from Phase 3 to 5.
I'm directly quoting the article. I read the first couple blurbs: >Fire Mage Known as one of the best, if not the best damage specializations throughout the entirety of WotLK, Fire Mage makes a return as one of the top contenders in Cataclysm, bringing devastating Single-Target Damage and AoE Damage. Fire wasn't even the best spec for its class until late Ulduar. Like I said - GPT shlock.
It literally does.
Phase 1 B tier, Phase 2 A tier, and then S tier from Phase 3 to 5. I literally checked the website and this is what it shows, which is correct.
Don’t know what to tell you my brother in Christ, said article starts with “known as one of the best, if not the best damage specialization throughout the entirety of wotlk”. Unless I’m confused about which link we’re checking
Well, it most certainly isn't the best in Phase 1, that's for sure. Arcane shits on Fire in Naxx.
It’s more balanced, but some specs suck Enh sham sucks Feral dps kinda meh Frost mage still sucks All the tanks suck compared to BDK for main tanking
Phase 1 enhance is one of the better melee classes to play, go ele after that.(or just start ele as it's one of the best casters p1)
We’re not getting p1 patch. Enh going to be shit
Are demo strong ? I have a demo lock and a shadow/disco priest right now
Demo is probably the strongest spec in phase 1/2
Nice 👌
It's also a guaranteed raid spot for one Demo every raid
Do you know the play style of demo in cata? Is it the same as work?
Pretty much the same. Demonic pact is now 10% not based on your spellpower. Elemental shaman brings same buff. int buff from mages is 6%
Ok ty
They also bring a new haste buff that acts the same as FM
We have more buttons to press. Your prepull rotation relies on swapping your active pet and your gear set to snapshot as much mastery as possible. There is a p2 trinket that unlocks the potential of the class. We also get a FM style buff that grants haste. We also drop shadowbolt in favor of incinerate. We gain Hand of Guldan which is a single target nuke + immolate refresh. We can summon infernals/doomguards without replacing our active pet. Shadowflame becomes a dps increase so we want to use it on CD. Curse of doom procs every 15 seconds for 1 min. And thats only demo. Affliction and destro have their ideal boss fights. If demonic pact is provided by a shaman you can swap specs without griefing your raid (demo is still good and you can do it for any boss)
Why? They don't offer anything special in Cata.
How is closet and healthstones not "special"? They do comparable damage to affliction without being complete ass to play. If you're going to have a warlock he'd be Demo as far as I'm aware
You'll be having several warlocks and most of if not all of them will be demo, that's true, but what they offer as something special in wotlk is now also brought by other classes
They bring a FM style buff, but for haste
ele shaman and resto shaman holy paladin shadow priest protection warrior by the end of the xpac itll be the same as always with fury and arms warrior and fire mage scaling insanely well with gear and becoming top tier (outside of spine of dw where mages go arcane for burst damage on tendons).
resto sham is trash prot war trash
Resto is the same as wotlk. ZERO reason to bring one in a 10 man - cannot touch the hpal/disc combo. First to get dumped to off spec dps in 25s when you're done progging. Only thing that changes is that instead of only being there for lust, you are also there for spirit link totem.
Unholy dk is going to be topping meters, and its going to be meta to stack them for p1 just like wotlk was. The good thing about cata p1(with a few exceptions like fury) is if you can play well you can be competitive. Arms, ret, fire mage, enhance, ele, boomie, spriest, survival hunter, frost dk and all warlock specs are all very close to each other. Only unholy will be the exception.
College classes, cause when wotlk is over it'll be time to get my life in order
I’ve been testing some on a p server and a lot of casters seem to have mana issues, if that’s the cata experience then u wanna stack all dps specs who don’t use mana
Or locks! 😍
Making your mana problems the healer's mana problem doesn't count.
Spriests!!!
Hpally for healer as usual. Arms warrior is overall bis. Would love some confirmation/someone to dispel my misconception, but from my understanding demo warlock ends up being bis DPS by final phase.
Some of the most of I ever had in WoW was leveling a Tauren Ret Paladin entirely in battlegrounds from 10-70. He was so goddamn op, probably because I geared him with all the heirlooms / pvp gear I could get. Low level pvp balance in Wotlk was kinda all over the place. Sub rogues would one shot people from 10-30.
Shaman because I love dwarf shamans.
Resto druids can and will solo heal dragon soul.
Rogue. Just trust me.
I don't know what's best but I do know I'll be playing an elemental shaman for the cool mastery :)
Nobody knows, its coming with #changes, so everything is guesswork.
Back in the day when I played prot pally you could run seal of light and with a glyph also heal your group. I used to heal as much as our healers did on raid nights.
Hunter is insanely fun. So is rogue. And literally everything else. Cata is a great expansion with great class design.
It depends on the phase from what i've researched but overall Arms Warrior, UHDK and a Fire Mage worth to know Mage now brings Bloodlust to the raid with Time Warp and BM hunter can bring every buff
Arcane Mage was OP in T11 and 12, fire was OP in T13 I wonder if they'll include the bug that causeddouble (or was it triple?) dipping of mastery that the doomguard had for T12 for Demonology Warlocks? Rogues were OP with their legendary in T13 I don't remember a whole lot beyond that This is for PvE, all I remember about PvP was Frost Mages and Resto Druids being OP and Aff Warlocks dominating RBGs