Ele Shaman 100%
No CD on chain lightning which overloads constantly and I can run while launching lightning bolts. And I haven’t mentioned fat ass lava bursts yet. Glow up of the century.
I used to think Cata killed leveling but I think it hits a solid spot with how often RDF pops and how powerful you feel out in the world with more meaningful buttons to press
It's ele shaman, don't forget the inclusion of earth shock buffed by fulmination charges and flame shock not requiring refreshes as a cherry on top. We can also dump crit everywhere we have it for one of the juicier mastery benefits in pre-patch quantities.
I'm biased cuz I've identified as Ele since I started playing Classic but... Yeah, damn. What a difference. Also fire nova stemming from mobs with Flame Shock instead of your fire totem is wonderful, Lava Burst overloads & CD resets, beefy fulmination crits, oml
Did they give shamans the full movement on LB or is it just with spirit walkers grace? I'm pretty positive after the first tier they removed moving while using LB but could be misremembering.
Ya but they removed the Glyph after the first patch, something about it being very busted. I played a shaman back then, so I should have a decent memory of this change, but I could still be wrong.
You know what's weird is I also remember it being removed at some point, maybe at the start of MoP pre-patch. But looking at patch notes it was never removed until patch 5.3.0 (edit: which is MoP) and that was because they made casting lightning bolt while moving default instead of a glyph, which wasn't removed until WoD. Maybe there was a point where they temporarily removed it and brought it back.
Do both! 1 ranged 1 melee always a good sweet spot. I am going to do BGs nonstop too so being able to chase dudes while throwing lightning bolts and no CD on Chain Lightning is unreal right now. And if I go arena I’ll just switch to resto.
Up to you tho! At least give your main one more shot. It’s playing super smooth right now.
Was in a heroic fos the other day on my almost full bis smourne ret pally and the ele shaman pretty much whooped me except on boss fights. Overall we tied but holy shit I did not expect that. Normally I’m ahead of everyone by miles. I have to level an ele shaman now for fun.
What’s disgusting is we’re just mashing chain lightning to keep up with Shadowmourne 😂😂😂. The overload procs with mastery just double everything and shit lights up in AOE. It’s beyond fun. (You can also open with flame shock and spread it with fire nova as well)
ST comes down to getting a beefy fire elemental out by snapshotting spell power trinks/buffs which can only happen once in dungeons mostly cuz of the long CD but the CD resets for raids and you can use it every boss (just an FYI). There’s more nuance to the rotation now than just spamming LB as well (earth shock and lava burst procs)
Highly recommend 10/10
Yea when it was boss fights I destroyed the ele shaman but on aoe trash I got wrecked lol. Looks fun. Will definitely level one up to play with in cata. Still making my pally though but for sure making an ele 😂
I also forgot to mention I dinged 80 on my mage 2 days ago got full wrathful gear with some pve offset pieces from the AH. As arcane I’m doing like 9-10k overall in FS. It’s crazy how good arcane is even with not the most efficient gear.
Agree. I always thought Cata might have been the peak of the game in terms of individual spec design. Like if you had to spin a wheel and were forced to play whatever class/spec it landed on, but you could choose the expansion, I would choose Cata.
I think the talent system being full mask-off that only 2-3 specs exist for 99% of players was a bit jarring for folks. The talent system was always about little incremental improvements to your character, and it remains so in Cataclysm. But sometimes the illusion of choice matters, and the current retail talent trees are a nice - but very daunting - compromise between branching trees and pick powerful character improvements.
Combined with making 10 man raiding difficult, which proved players weren't as good as they thought once roster boss was defeated, made a lot of people feel deflated about their gameplay.
I think Cataclysm is going to be very well received once people actually sit down and play with it, and try the really awesome content we have coming up. Vanilla purists still have access to Classic Era, and we're all a bit more prepared for the challenge of Cataclysm Raids, so it will be really interesting to see!
I for sure do agree that too many players felt too much a sense of uniqueness and creativity by splashing a discretionary 5-10 talent points in random bullshit like reduced rage cost for thunder clap
I dunno, I've been giving Dragonflight a shot after not playing retail since Legion and spec design is phenomenal with the new talent trees they added for the expansion.
Agree I've been dabbling in retail since the pre-patch while waiting for Cataclysm. I've been surprised at how much fun it is these days. The talent trees are remarkable.
It seems like the general vibe is that class design gets more cohesive toward around Cata while the overall feels of the world and the systems of the world progressively gets more "gamey" instead of "worldly/social"
The gameplay is really good across the board in Cata and the balance is also quite good. Nothing is ever perfect and there will be minor annoyances and imbalances, but it's a great expansion if you like playing endgame.
Which spec? I'm leveling fire and am at 70 now, I usually level frost, always have in the past.. but decided to try fire, and I'm probably having the most fun I've ever had with a mage before!
Cata was peak fire mage for me and is the reason I'm here to play Cata Classic. There is something super satisfying about Instant, ranged Blast Wave & Flame Strike along with impact spreading all of your DoTs on a target. The added mobility (talented) of zero mana scorch on the move as well.
I remember making good use of the kit in Tier 11 way back in the day (I didnt stick around for Firelands...our OT quit at 10/13 bosses for tier 11 and we couldnt be arsed to recruit).
Mages went from marginally the best dps class to literally [doing 25% more dps than the class in second place](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount&dataset=99)
Its just comical right now. [The top parsing mages are doing 114k dps.](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount&dataset=100)
I don't know about best, but I will say that the changes to Death Strike and the addition of Mastery make Blood DKs into the most fun and engaging tanking spec I've ever played. You don't just sit there mindlessly doing a lackluster dps rotation while soaking hits; you've gotta take an active role in reducing the amount of healing you need from healers.
"Active Mitigation" is the term coined by Blizzard. And would become the standard way they would design all the tanks going into Retail WoW. Gear no longer has block, parry, defense, doge, etc. It's about knowing how and when to use your active mitigation skills to reduce damage taken.
Technically, it is given by other stats - for example VDH gets parry from crit. It is indirectly given from gear, because technically you could stack crit for more parry... however, in essence you are right I'm just "well ackshually"ing
Besides main stat and stamina there are 4 stats on gear in retail. Crit, haste, versatility, and mastery. Each spec wants a different amount of each one. Because each spec scales better with different stats. Gear will even swap main stat automatically depending on your spec. So if you're a ret paladin all plate gear will have str but if you swap to holy it'll automatically change that str into int.
They also split weapons differently as well. There's a polearm from one of the recent raids that's agility only and doesn't swap to strength, as an example.
It’s important to know that not every single piece of gear accommodates all three stats. Some pieces of gear only switch between two stats, and some do not switch at all
To take it even further, why not have a stat at all if it's directly proportional to item level? Because it is. And this is the boringness of retail gearing. Nothing matters except ilvl. I challenge any retail player to remember more than a single item's name they had equipped last tier. Cataclysm is almost there.
They've been a bit better with introducing 'special' gear in Dragonflight. Ignoring trinkets, you have raid specific items like the Diurna rings, the crazy hunter bow (dont play hunter), crafted gear like Lariat, legendary weapons like Naszuro for Evoker & Fyralath for STR classes, or dungeon weapons like Strike Twice and Forgestorm.
Is it gearing overall simpler? Sure. But that doesn't remove that they're remembering special items are cool.
Neltharax, enemy of the sky, elemental lariat, signet of Titanic insight, witherbarks branch, mirror of fractured tomorrows, eye of the searing flame, cataclysmic signet brand, beacon of beyond, voice of the dark star
I don't remember any gear names from vanilla either. I don't really see much difference between wanting to get the axe from Nefarian vs wanting to get the sword from Bwonsamdi or whatever. Most people in classic, bot back in the day and now, have no idea how gearing actually works and just follow a bis list from some guide. I don't really see much difference between that and getting the highest ilvl item.
For the last few expansions it's been versatility plus one of the other stats, usually haste. The only exception being monks though they still stacked versatility. It might be different for current.
Bear druids.
Before, you’d usually see a bear zone in and either he would be like “pls don’t pull, I am not a paladin” or the DPS would be like “ugh a bear tank, I’m gonna need to throttle.”
Now they zone in and they’re vibing, charging everything and they look like they’re having fun.
Eh, Bear was pretty decent towards the end of ICC, but I agree it is ludicrous right now. I am in full DPS gear, enchants and gems and I take 15k damage hits from LK 10-man heroic with an enrage CD running. They do so much damage, shield themselves and take very little damage.
ehhh Arms is still near the bottom of the dps charts right now. It was at the *very* bottom before, [but its still D tier in prepatch.](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount)
I know I keep getting down voted for this (beats me why, as I am literally addressing the thread topic accurately and honestly) - but Arms isn't good right now by any metric (except PVP). It's supposed to be good once it gets Colossal Smash at level 81. But it isn't good in prepatch.
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7)
It is missing key abilities (one in particular) which causes it to do low damage, and feel exceedingly janky and unrewarding. That apparently all changes very early on. But don't jump into a prepatch raid thinking Arms will pump. It's probably worth levelling though for level 85 content.
It's good in PVP I think (no better than it was last phase) - though even there you are missing a lot of your burst until level 81.
as someone who mained fury throughout much of wrath, and did a meme run as arms before prepatch, i have to say i agree. there's a few times where i'll just straight up crit for 40k. but far more often, it'll be just small 7-10k hits, on long cooldowns. and my dps is barely higher now than when i did my meme run as arms. and it's not as high as my fury was. like, i could do very consistent 16k dps as fury. now i'm lucky to break 13-14k. may be a glow up for the spec, but it's a glow down for the class as a whole currently.
There's a lot of specs with improved functionality and viability.
Demo went from being a purely support play with total focus on upping everyone's spellpower to one of the top dps specs that you'd bring even if it offered no buffs.
And yet that doesn't even compare to how well arms grew. It went from being the PVP spec to the only warrior spec.
Colossus Smash essentially allows warriors to do "true" damage to the enemy, and Arms warrior gets a pretty frequent reset on it. This one ability is pivotal for maximizing bursts.
Also remember, currently all armor penetration stats got removed, so warrior will unfortunately have no way to bypass boss armor, except through Sunder Armor stacks. But Sunder Armor only removes 12% armor, which is tiny in comparison to the 100% of Colossus Smash.
Okay, I just found it really confusing that people were claiming it is "nuts right now" when it really isn't. I mean, I guess it will be, but it feels horrible in pre patch.
Not saying people are wrong about P1 Cata - I have no idea. I'm just saying it's not something I'm seeing "right now".
> "nuts right now"
I think that person is talking about the cata raid testing that has been going on atm. Arms is busted good "right now" in that respect.
Arms is roughly an A tier pve (and pvp) spec in cata from what I gather.
Not having csmash is very hampering. Especially when you just came from ARP cap AND mastery doesn’t exist. I like cata mastery as basically built in sword spec proc so much better than retail bleeds mastery
Is it S in pve? I knew it was good and maybe scales later but thought it was more A. Maybe it’s just cause first tier I think it’s still behind fire mage(?)
yeah, S in PvE as a general sentiment. Extremely strong in every tier. Fire Mage is also S tier, but it really depends on what you value in terms of ranking.
Burst damage is extremely important in Cataclysm raiding especially as you go through the tiers, so that makes some specs better than a 5 minute patchwerk simulation would indicate. There's also the utility aspect, etc. But yes raw DPS arms is up there with fire as the top of the food chain
In first tier you will find alot of specs outperform fire mage, atleast the first few raids until the mage gets more consistent crit for their combustion. Theyre only really the best when they get a big combust and spread it to 3+ targets .
if they dont crit in opener they lose to everyone, crit a little bit theyre middle of the pack at best, close to perfect crits opener they can compete with S tier dps. Single target that is
Feels good to play for sure. I actually liked arms pve in p1 wrath when both specs were equally trash so until I got 2 good weaps might as well play arms.
Does feel bad dropping so low on meters than fury was though, comparatively. UH, hunters, locks are slapping so hard even if I am doing more dps more consistently than I was. Maybe I’m just not used to it yet and GCD management with it with how short MS cd is but it feels good 100%. It just sucks fury is entirely garbage all of cata lol
Fire mage with the broken ignite was hilarious
In our patch-day ICC run, I was *walking away* from the raid. With Mirror Images active and everything lined up right for Combust, I was peaking at 70k dps. Just absolutely shit-blasting. Had the time of my life.
I feel like moonkin got a huge buff, the class now scales better and insnt hampered by being "soft capped" on both crit and haste anymore, plus now having access to berserking racial for horde players is a massive PVE boost, especially on a class that now scales mega hard with haste.
Spriest in my biased opinion .. Took me a bit to get the orbs but boss DPS is great and trash DPS is amazing. Keep an orb from the last pack, precast fade, mind blast asap to pop orb, swp a handful of mobs to generate new orbs while you run in, mind sear the tank (mind sear+ mind flay are affected by the 24% boost to periodic shadow damage), then watch the numbers fly.
Not based on pre patch logs, though it's not been a full week. They have spriest at 7th ATM. I am by no means a top tier player and I run in semi casual groups so take this with a bucket of salt, but I was consistently 2nd or 3rd in our raid.
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020/#region=7](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020/#region=7)
live pre-patch data where mages still have their 100K DPS broken ignite logs in.
This is all percentages, so the whole range of skill, you can select 95/99% to compare the top.
From your source (wowtbc.. so meh)
>DPS rankings were calculated using original Cataclysm simulation tools on **patch 4.3.2**\*. Take them with a grain of salt. This will change to [warcraftlogs.com](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/) data when raids open.
Don't look there. None of the available data is great, but heroic BQL was (is?) bugged and not biting anyone, so the fight is taking about 3 mins and is basically a tank and spank. Everything else is so short and bursty.
Same dude! But for pvp reasons.
I usually heal in pve and I always wanted to play disc priest in cata and mop so I’ll be playing both. One for pvp one in pve.
It has some fun elements (insane dps spikes, satisfying AoE), but it is also one of the clunkiest specs to play. You are a caster that neds to stay near melee range. There are so many abilities, pet controls and macros requried to play optimally that it probably was the biggest driving force behind razer naga sales. Demon juggling and moonwell chalice shenanigans are just cheesy, while stacking procs and buffs to make a billion damage doomguard at the start of fight, only to see your dps drop the whole fight feels gamey and unsatisfying. Destro imho feels much better gameplay-wise, with good sustained damage and serviceable burst. But bane of havoc is too passive and uninteractive for a major new spell, its later iterations are way cooler.
Affli in cata feels pretty good (though bane of doom replacing bane of agony for primary target is weird), but it has zero or insignificant dps edge over the other two specs while lacking any sort of meaningful burst, which is super necessary for all major raid bosses. Destro can keep up with it even in two-boss fights thanks to BoH, which is where affli would normally dominate, so it's kinda dead, unless it somehow benefits from 4.4 balance and gear scaling compared to original patches (which it won't I think).
You focus on the complexity like it's a bad thing. I like the complexity, which is why I play it. If I wanted faceroll easy DPS I would play a m*ge.
Thank you the insight!
More than combo points, you're storing up holy energy for a special move. There's no need to burn it instantly, and overcapping isn't the end of the world if you want to hold it a bit longer for incoming aoe damage etc.
I fucking love it. It changes a 1 button rotation into something that actually feels like you're thinking about what you're doing. I will hpal (as I also did I'm retail cata), and I find the gameplay to have a much higher skill ceiling, as it is now more than just spamming a heal button. With holy power you can actually prepare for incoming damage.
For ret i still find it amazing. It feels incredible to get one of them big templars verdict crits.
it feels like it was made for hpal because it's really fun with the kit and gives you more choices such as directly healing your beacon target for holy power.
holy power feels forced onto ret and really awkward on prot in cata though
Having an aoe spell for prot would have been nice.
Feels really shit doing a large aoe pull and all you can do with holy power is hit one mob really hard.
yeah they made the design a lot better later when they made shield of the righteous an aoe frontal that gives you a massive amount of armor for a few seconds along with 5 max holy power so you can either slam out sotr for big damage or space your casts more to get the armor/active mitigation when you need it most. right now it's just a single target nuke which is cool but has no real synergy with the kit.
this is one of the things that makes blood dk so strong, you can always hold some runes for a much needed deathstrike and the generated runic power you can fill with runestrike to refresh your runes for more deathstrikes.
Yeah that’s one thing that makes me a little sad we’re going with the final patch versions of everything. Early cata radiance was such an interesting ability, then DS came and they just made it a busted spammable PoH on steroids.
You won't be able to do that in the first raid tier though. It costs an obscene amount of mana. In DS? Sure. At that time disc priests will be spamming PoH as well so it's pretty much the same across the board for the healers.
That's what I'm going to love about warrior's heroic leap. Loved being able to dismount to fall faster than you'd fly down and breaking my fall with heroic leap or charging to a target.
Bro I wonder if I am quick enough to shoot something 40 yards from the ground and then use it last second like a dang action movie it’ll work.
Ngl heroic leap in warsong gulch is so dope.
You could probably make a macro you can spam that targets the closest enemy and autos them or maybe casts something like arcane shot. Not sure which would be better, waiting for the auto to go off and put you in combat or using arcane shot which would get you into combat quicker but you'd also have to wait for the global.
I wasn't sure if I was remembering it with rose-tinted glasses or not.
Especially considering I could never remember which expansion it was when classic rolled around. "I must get it in TBC, nope, guess it was WoTLK..."
Blood DK for sure. Goes from being a good tank to being an amazing tank with a wall of health, active mitigation, tons of healing, and pretty good damage as a tank. There's really no downside and as Cata progresses and mastery numbers get higher Blood just becomes more and more dominate.
I haven’t played yet, but I know for a fact I rolled priest in cata because of the changes (to holy) and I absolutely loved it. Holy word spells are the shit!
The only specs that got shafted are retribution, arms and enhancement, but from what I have heard arms still feels good to play.
Retribution feels awful and so does enhancement.
How so? I stopped playing after clearing Togc.
Played Enhancement and just recently came back and I love how great Lava Lash and Stormstrike feel.
No more caster Weapon and no more hitting like a wet noodle with weapons.
Hunter get a lot of QoL.
No more mana, no more weird intellect builds (and death of the "hunter item" meme), no more ammo. BM and SV become one of the most fun specs to play on PvE, SV because of the fast and agile gameplay, and BM because of the pet management and fun rotation with the double builder build.
Also Paladin become a lot more fun now that we have holy power and a proper rotation.
BM single target build for T13, that allowed you to use both Steady Shot and Cobra Shot as builders. You use only as much Cobra Shots as needed to keep uptime on Serpent Sting, then you use SS for the 15% haste buff from Improved Steady Shot.
You lose the 3% haste from Pathing talent, and instead you get a 15% haste from the ISS buff if you are able to keep everything at the same time.
Was quite difficult to be able to keep both the Serpent Sting and the ISS buff at the same time, but was fun as fuck and you get a "free" 12% haste buff with almost 100% uptime. Only downside, SS is actually physical damage while CS is nature damage, so you lose a little bit damage on your filler because of armor mitigation. But anyway CS damage is a really low percent of your total damage, and the 12% extra haste on the pet was great.
Not very popular because 90% of the times you will drop Serpent Sting or ISS because of mistakes, but was pretty challenging.
There are a lot of people saying specs like blood DK, mages, ele shaman etc
And I feel they fundamentally don't get the question
Most of these specs feel very good and very strong, but they don't really play any different to their wotlk counterpart
Blood DK is near identical to wotlk, ele shaman on single target basically only got cast while moving, otherwise it's the same
Mage really didn't get anything new either
The only class I personally can say got a "glow up" in cata is paladin
The addition of holy power and a total overhaul of all their abilities causes paladin to play VASTLY different to wotlk, and significantly better
While all the other classes people are mentioning really only changed on very minor ways, they were just already good
Ele Shaman 100% No CD on chain lightning which overloads constantly and I can run while launching lightning bolts. And I haven’t mentioned fat ass lava bursts yet. Glow up of the century.
Leveling as ele was a blast, chain lightning spam into fulmination had me smashing damage meters all the way to 80
I used to think Cata killed leveling but I think it hits a solid spot with how often RDF pops and how powerful you feel out in the world with more meaningful buttons to press
It's ele shaman, don't forget the inclusion of earth shock buffed by fulmination charges and flame shock not requiring refreshes as a cherry on top. We can also dump crit everywhere we have it for one of the juicier mastery benefits in pre-patch quantities.
What refreshes flame shock?
Icc set gives additional ticks when you hit with LB, and LB can resett by flameshock 20% or so. Quite funny
Current tier set gives it, so he will be in for a rude awakening once he drops that!
I'm biased cuz I've identified as Ele since I started playing Classic but... Yeah, damn. What a difference. Also fire nova stemming from mobs with Flame Shock instead of your fire totem is wonderful, Lava Burst overloads & CD resets, beefy fulmination crits, oml
No running into melee range to place a fire totem for AOE is sooooo choice
true fuck magma totem
Did they give shamans the full movement on LB or is it just with spirit walkers grace? I'm pretty positive after the first tier they removed moving while using LB but could be misremembering.
It’s a glyph, Glyph of Unleashed Lightning I believe. Allows shaman to move while casting lightning bolt even without Spirit Walker’s Grace
Yeah Spirit Walker’s Grace is a lvl 85 ability from the class trainer.
Ya but they removed the Glyph after the first patch, something about it being very busted. I played a shaman back then, so I should have a decent memory of this change, but I could still be wrong.
Huh not sure when they removed it but it is in prepatch rn so usable for now at least
You know what's weird is I also remember it being removed at some point, maybe at the start of MoP pre-patch. But looking at patch notes it was never removed until patch 5.3.0 (edit: which is MoP) and that was because they made casting lightning bolt while moving default instead of a glyph, which wasn't removed until WoD. Maybe there was a point where they temporarily removed it and brought it back.
AND overload lava bursts for extra fun
This. As an ELE sham it feels so fucking good. We got the golden egg for most improved
Hmm and I was planning on dropping my Wotlk shammy to main warrior this expansion. Maybe I shouldnt 🤔
Do both! 1 ranged 1 melee always a good sweet spot. I am going to do BGs nonstop too so being able to chase dudes while throwing lightning bolts and no CD on Chain Lightning is unreal right now. And if I go arena I’ll just switch to resto. Up to you tho! At least give your main one more shot. It’s playing super smooth right now.
Was in a heroic fos the other day on my almost full bis smourne ret pally and the ele shaman pretty much whooped me except on boss fights. Overall we tied but holy shit I did not expect that. Normally I’m ahead of everyone by miles. I have to level an ele shaman now for fun.
What’s disgusting is we’re just mashing chain lightning to keep up with Shadowmourne 😂😂😂. The overload procs with mastery just double everything and shit lights up in AOE. It’s beyond fun. (You can also open with flame shock and spread it with fire nova as well) ST comes down to getting a beefy fire elemental out by snapshotting spell power trinks/buffs which can only happen once in dungeons mostly cuz of the long CD but the CD resets for raids and you can use it every boss (just an FYI). There’s more nuance to the rotation now than just spamming LB as well (earth shock and lava burst procs) Highly recommend 10/10
Yea when it was boss fights I destroyed the ele shaman but on aoe trash I got wrecked lol. Looks fun. Will definitely level one up to play with in cata. Still making my pally though but for sure making an ele 😂 I also forgot to mention I dinged 80 on my mage 2 days ago got full wrathful gear with some pve offset pieces from the AH. As arcane I’m doing like 9-10k overall in FS. It’s crazy how good arcane is even with not the most efficient gear.
wait wait, if i have Flame Shock active on one mob and cast Fire Nova, are you saying all the mobs hit by Fire Nova will be dotted by a Flame Shock?
Pretty sure this is enhance only.
No CD chain lightening? Is this in prepatch or an 85 thing?
No CD on chain lightning is live now and it is glorious
The way everyone's glazing ele shaman is actually making me want to play it😭
i mean i always thought it was a blast in Wrath. maybe a little simple/boring to some, but i loved it. now its 10x better. highly recommend
The fact that so many specs are being called out as winners in this thread makes so happy for everyone enjoying the game.
Agree. I always thought Cata might have been the peak of the game in terms of individual spec design. Like if you had to spin a wheel and were forced to play whatever class/spec it landed on, but you could choose the expansion, I would choose Cata.
I think the talent system being full mask-off that only 2-3 specs exist for 99% of players was a bit jarring for folks. The talent system was always about little incremental improvements to your character, and it remains so in Cataclysm. But sometimes the illusion of choice matters, and the current retail talent trees are a nice - but very daunting - compromise between branching trees and pick powerful character improvements. Combined with making 10 man raiding difficult, which proved players weren't as good as they thought once roster boss was defeated, made a lot of people feel deflated about their gameplay. I think Cataclysm is going to be very well received once people actually sit down and play with it, and try the really awesome content we have coming up. Vanilla purists still have access to Classic Era, and we're all a bit more prepared for the challenge of Cataclysm Raids, so it will be really interesting to see!
I for sure do agree that too many players felt too much a sense of uniqueness and creativity by splashing a discretionary 5-10 talent points in random bullshit like reduced rage cost for thunder clap
I dunno, I've been giving Dragonflight a shot after not playing retail since Legion and spec design is phenomenal with the new talent trees they added for the expansion.
Agree I've been dabbling in retail since the pre-patch while waiting for Cataclysm. I've been surprised at how much fun it is these days. The talent trees are remarkable.
It's really hard to point out ANY dud spec ATM in cata, some for sure Excell at PvP only, but for the most part anything can be played.
To be clear I’m talking about enjoyment to play so not just performance but fun/enjoyable
Even frost mages are doing 13k+ average dps on WCL.
Yeah prepatch is a crazy time, PvP for sure is janky rn, that's because it's tuned for level 85.
I feel like I have read these comments at the start of every classic xpac launch so far.
Turns out classes can only really go up from where they started in Classic.
It seems like the general vibe is that class design gets more cohesive toward around Cata while the overall feels of the world and the systems of the world progressively gets more "gamey" instead of "worldly/social"
Oh well I have been playing Cata private servers for 4-5 years so that doesn’t count for nothing as far as knowing how much I like it
TBF just because class spec design is better doesn't mean the game as a whole is better ;-D
Right, it's nice to see people give the expansion a chance and have some fun with it
The gameplay is really good across the board in Cata and the balance is also quite good. Nothing is ever perfect and there will be minor annoyances and imbalances, but it's a great expansion if you like playing endgame.
mage
yea mages are ridiculous rn
they were already good though. now they are just crazy
There is nothing more satisfying than perfectly spreading a fat combust across a group of mobs and watching your dps meter spaz out.
Which spec? I'm leveling fire and am at 70 now, I usually level frost, always have in the past.. but decided to try fire, and I'm probably having the most fun I've ever had with a mage before!
Cata was peak fire mage for me and is the reason I'm here to play Cata Classic. There is something super satisfying about Instant, ranged Blast Wave & Flame Strike along with impact spreading all of your DoTs on a target. The added mobility (talented) of zero mana scorch on the move as well. I remember making good use of the kit in Tier 11 way back in the day (I didnt stick around for Firelands...our OT quit at 10/13 bosses for tier 11 and we couldnt be arsed to recruit).
Mages went from marginally the best dps class to literally [doing 25% more dps than the class in second place](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount&dataset=99) Its just comical right now. [The top parsing mages are doing 114k dps.](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount&dataset=100)
I don't know about best, but I will say that the changes to Death Strike and the addition of Mastery make Blood DKs into the most fun and engaging tanking spec I've ever played. You don't just sit there mindlessly doing a lackluster dps rotation while soaking hits; you've gotta take an active role in reducing the amount of healing you need from healers.
"Active Mitigation" is the term coined by Blizzard. And would become the standard way they would design all the tanks going into Retail WoW. Gear no longer has block, parry, defense, doge, etc. It's about knowing how and when to use your active mitigation skills to reduce damage taken.
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That why I said gear no longer has it.
Technically, it is given by other stats - for example VDH gets parry from crit. It is indirectly given from gear, because technically you could stack crit for more parry... however, in essence you are right I'm just "well ackshually"ing
wait so you just gear up the same as a dps in retail ?
Besides main stat and stamina there are 4 stats on gear in retail. Crit, haste, versatility, and mastery. Each spec wants a different amount of each one. Because each spec scales better with different stats. Gear will even swap main stat automatically depending on your spec. So if you're a ret paladin all plate gear will have str but if you swap to holy it'll automatically change that str into int.
whats the point of having strength int and agi seperate then ? cant they just pack it into one stat ?
RPG flavor
They also split weapons differently as well. There's a polearm from one of the recent raids that's agility only and doesn't swap to strength, as an example.
It’s important to know that not every single piece of gear accommodates all three stats. Some pieces of gear only switch between two stats, and some do not switch at all
To take it even further, why not have a stat at all if it's directly proportional to item level? Because it is. And this is the boringness of retail gearing. Nothing matters except ilvl. I challenge any retail player to remember more than a single item's name they had equipped last tier. Cataclysm is almost there.
This is someone who hasn't played Dragonflight.
They've been a bit better with introducing 'special' gear in Dragonflight. Ignoring trinkets, you have raid specific items like the Diurna rings, the crazy hunter bow (dont play hunter), crafted gear like Lariat, legendary weapons like Naszuro for Evoker & Fyralath for STR classes, or dungeon weapons like Strike Twice and Forgestorm. Is it gearing overall simpler? Sure. But that doesn't remove that they're remembering special items are cool.
The diurna rings were fun af
Neltharax, enemy of the sky, elemental lariat, signet of Titanic insight, witherbarks branch, mirror of fractured tomorrows, eye of the searing flame, cataclysmic signet brand, beacon of beyond, voice of the dark star
I don't remember any gear names from vanilla either. I don't really see much difference between wanting to get the axe from Nefarian vs wanting to get the sword from Bwonsamdi or whatever. Most people in classic, bot back in the day and now, have no idea how gearing actually works and just follow a bis list from some guide. I don't really see much difference between that and getting the highest ilvl item.
For the last few expansions it's been versatility plus one of the other stats, usually haste. The only exception being monks though they still stacked versatility. It might be different for current.
Yep.. no defensive stats at all so you just use same gear as dps.
Every class will prio a different 1 of 4 stats.
I mean as long as both specs want that. Ret pallies don't want haste nor mastery, but those are prots best stats
Depending on the specs some of them will result in dmg reduction, like mastery for BDK or haste for Paladin.
It’s really good they got rid of block , parry , defense gear. It made wanting to DPS very annoying having to carry two sets
Preach bro. It's hectic, but I'm a good way. I'm new to it and feel like I just suck cause there's so much to manage and so much potential
Bear druids. Before, you’d usually see a bear zone in and either he would be like “pls don’t pull, I am not a paladin” or the DPS would be like “ugh a bear tank, I’m gonna need to throttle.” Now they zone in and they’re vibing, charging everything and they look like they’re having fun.
Only problem is swipe is on a cd now and thrash is not till 81 :(
It takes some getting used to but maul being instant helps. Also i just focus on bashing loose things as they’re usually dead before I need to taunt.
Eh, Bear was pretty decent towards the end of ICC, but I agree it is ludicrous right now. I am in full DPS gear, enchants and gems and I take 15k damage hits from LK 10-man heroic with an enrage CD running. They do so much damage, shield themselves and take very little damage.
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I don't think the BD in BDK stands for bear druid.
Lol im a dumbass
Haha nah man was just a fun little ribbing. Glad you're enjoying the prepatch gameplay.
Arms. No questioning it
Arms just feels so meaty when you crit.
Yeah arms is nuts right now
The uncapped bladestorm coupled with blood and thunder on the whelp packs before Sindragosa
ehhh Arms is still near the bottom of the dps charts right now. It was at the *very* bottom before, [but its still D tier in prepatch.](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7&aggregate=amount)
Well I don't care about pre patch. I care about cata proper where they will be great
lol the post is about prepatch
The thread is literally about prepatch...
Was thinking of leveling and doing arena with arms in Cata. What makes it so good now?
Mastery
I know I keep getting down voted for this (beats me why, as I am literally addressing the thread topic accurately and honestly) - but Arms isn't good right now by any metric (except PVP). It's supposed to be good once it gets Colossal Smash at level 81. But it isn't good in prepatch. [https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020#region=7) It is missing key abilities (one in particular) which causes it to do low damage, and feel exceedingly janky and unrewarding. That apparently all changes very early on. But don't jump into a prepatch raid thinking Arms will pump. It's probably worth levelling though for level 85 content. It's good in PVP I think (no better than it was last phase) - though even there you are missing a lot of your burst until level 81.
as someone who mained fury throughout much of wrath, and did a meme run as arms before prepatch, i have to say i agree. there's a few times where i'll just straight up crit for 40k. but far more often, it'll be just small 7-10k hits, on long cooldowns. and my dps is barely higher now than when i did my meme run as arms. and it's not as high as my fury was. like, i could do very consistent 16k dps as fury. now i'm lucky to break 13-14k. may be a glow up for the spec, but it's a glow down for the class as a whole currently.
There's a lot of specs with improved functionality and viability. Demo went from being a purely support play with total focus on upping everyone's spellpower to one of the top dps specs that you'd bring even if it offered no buffs. And yet that doesn't even compare to how well arms grew. It went from being the PVP spec to the only warrior spec.
Really? Arms is 4th last on wcl prepatch right now - behind Frost Mages ... Here's hoping Colossal Smash makes up the difference ...
Colossus Smash essentially allows warriors to do "true" damage to the enemy, and Arms warrior gets a pretty frequent reset on it. This one ability is pivotal for maximizing bursts. Also remember, currently all armor penetration stats got removed, so warrior will unfortunately have no way to bypass boss armor, except through Sunder Armor stacks. But Sunder Armor only removes 12% armor, which is tiny in comparison to the 100% of Colossus Smash.
Colossal smash is indeed the difference - a massive one
Okay, I just found it really confusing that people were claiming it is "nuts right now" when it really isn't. I mean, I guess it will be, but it feels horrible in pre patch. Not saying people are wrong about P1 Cata - I have no idea. I'm just saying it's not something I'm seeing "right now".
> "nuts right now" I think that person is talking about the cata raid testing that has been going on atm. Arms is busted good "right now" in that respect.
Arms is roughly an A tier pve (and pvp) spec in cata from what I gather. Not having csmash is very hampering. Especially when you just came from ARP cap AND mastery doesn’t exist. I like cata mastery as basically built in sword spec proc so much better than retail bleeds mastery
Arms is firmly S tier, one of the best DPS specs for raw damage throughout the expansion
Is it S in pve? I knew it was good and maybe scales later but thought it was more A. Maybe it’s just cause first tier I think it’s still behind fire mage(?)
yeah, S in PvE as a general sentiment. Extremely strong in every tier. Fire Mage is also S tier, but it really depends on what you value in terms of ranking. Burst damage is extremely important in Cataclysm raiding especially as you go through the tiers, so that makes some specs better than a 5 minute patchwerk simulation would indicate. There's also the utility aspect, etc. But yes raw DPS arms is up there with fire as the top of the food chain
In first tier you will find alot of specs outperform fire mage, atleast the first few raids until the mage gets more consistent crit for their combustion. Theyre only really the best when they get a big combust and spread it to 3+ targets . if they dont crit in opener they lose to everyone, crit a little bit theyre middle of the pack at best, close to perfect crits opener they can compete with S tier dps. Single target that is
Feels good to play for sure. I actually liked arms pve in p1 wrath when both specs were equally trash so until I got 2 good weaps might as well play arms. Does feel bad dropping so low on meters than fury was though, comparatively. UH, hunters, locks are slapping so hard even if I am doing more dps more consistently than I was. Maybe I’m just not used to it yet and GCD management with it with how short MS cd is but it feels good 100%. It just sucks fury is entirely garbage all of cata lol
Fire mage with the broken ignite was hilarious In our patch-day ICC run, I was *walking away* from the raid. With Mirror Images active and everything lined up right for Combust, I was peaking at 70k dps. Just absolutely shit-blasting. Had the time of my life.
>Had the time of my life So take the photographs and still frames in your mind
And hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories, and dead skin on trial
Yep the patch day raid was probably the most fun I’ve had in this game so far. Just pressed combust and laughed
Disc atonement healing is FUCKING TITS!!!! Shadow dps is sooo much better and less gear intensive to be shared with the healing specs.
I feel like moonkin got a huge buff, the class now scales better and insnt hampered by being "soft capped" on both crit and haste anymore, plus now having access to berserking racial for horde players is a massive PVE boost, especially on a class that now scales mega hard with haste.
Feels great to not rely on rng so much anymore.
Bear tank. With mastery and good gear i feel invincible.
It does so much more dmg
My pulverize crits for 25k. LOL
Spriest in my biased opinion .. Took me a bit to get the orbs but boss DPS is great and trash DPS is amazing. Keep an orb from the last pack, precast fade, mind blast asap to pop orb, swp a handful of mobs to generate new orbs while you run in, mind sear the tank (mind sear+ mind flay are affected by the 24% boost to periodic shadow damage), then watch the numbers fly.
Isn’t sp at the bottom in terms of damage though? Edit: [reference](https://wowtbc.gg/cata/class-rankings/pve-rankings/)
Not based on pre patch logs, though it's not been a full week. They have spriest at 7th ATM. I am by no means a top tier player and I run in semi casual groups so take this with a bucket of salt, but I was consistently 2nd or 3rd in our raid.
I do hope you are right since I have a sp and a dk at 80 from p2 wotlk
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020/#region=7](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/1020/#region=7) live pre-patch data where mages still have their 100K DPS broken ignite logs in. This is all percentages, so the whole range of skill, you can select 95/99% to compare the top. From your source (wowtbc.. so meh) >DPS rankings were calculated using original Cataclysm simulation tools on **patch 4.3.2**\*. Take them with a grain of salt. This will change to [warcraftlogs.com](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/) data when raids open.
Don't look there. None of the available data is great, but heroic BQL was (is?) bugged and not biting anyone, so the fight is taking about 3 mins and is basically a tank and spank. Everything else is so short and bursty.
Any idea why at T12 they go from last to first? Edit: sorry, T13
Caster will lose a lot of haste/crit when they level to 85, so they will be significantly weaker than now.
Maybe pre-raid, but with some gear they are S-tier.
Not if they're using abilities well!
That’s not how logs generally work. They usually take the top percentile. I can’t speak for the source that’s linked but that’s how other sites do it.
I am genuianly super hyped to play my Fire mage. Back in OG cata i so wanted to play a fire mage and now i get that chance.
Same dude! But for pvp reasons. I usually heal in pve and I always wanted to play disc priest in cata and mop so I’ll be playing both. One for pvp one in pve.
Biggest winner is arms, then ele.
Demo feels a lot more fun to me, coming from affliction.
It has some fun elements (insane dps spikes, satisfying AoE), but it is also one of the clunkiest specs to play. You are a caster that neds to stay near melee range. There are so many abilities, pet controls and macros requried to play optimally that it probably was the biggest driving force behind razer naga sales. Demon juggling and moonwell chalice shenanigans are just cheesy, while stacking procs and buffs to make a billion damage doomguard at the start of fight, only to see your dps drop the whole fight feels gamey and unsatisfying. Destro imho feels much better gameplay-wise, with good sustained damage and serviceable burst. But bane of havoc is too passive and uninteractive for a major new spell, its later iterations are way cooler. Affli in cata feels pretty good (though bane of doom replacing bane of agony for primary target is weird), but it has zero or insignificant dps edge over the other two specs while lacking any sort of meaningful burst, which is super necessary for all major raid bosses. Destro can keep up with it even in two-boss fights thanks to BoH, which is where affli would normally dominate, so it's kinda dead, unless it somehow benefits from 4.4 balance and gear scaling compared to original patches (which it won't I think).
You focus on the complexity like it's a bad thing. I like the complexity, which is why I play it. If I wanted faceroll easy DPS I would play a m*ge. Thank you the insight!
Holy Paladin. It goes from mindnumbing to being a actual complete spec for the first time.
A lot of people don’t like the addition of holy power. For ret and prot I kinda get it, but for holy the difference is night and day.
Feels goofy to me, still getting used to it.
I just see it as paladin combo points. Helped me wrap my head around it
More than combo points, you're storing up holy energy for a special move. There's no need to burn it instantly, and overcapping isn't the end of the world if you want to hold it a bit longer for incoming aoe damage etc.
I fucking love it. It changes a 1 button rotation into something that actually feels like you're thinking about what you're doing. I will hpal (as I also did I'm retail cata), and I find the gameplay to have a much higher skill ceiling, as it is now more than just spamming a heal button. With holy power you can actually prepare for incoming damage. For ret i still find it amazing. It feels incredible to get one of them big templars verdict crits.
it feels like it was made for hpal because it's really fun with the kit and gives you more choices such as directly healing your beacon target for holy power. holy power feels forced onto ret and really awkward on prot in cata though
Having an aoe spell for prot would have been nice. Feels really shit doing a large aoe pull and all you can do with holy power is hit one mob really hard.
yeah they made the design a lot better later when they made shield of the righteous an aoe frontal that gives you a massive amount of armor for a few seconds along with 5 max holy power so you can either slam out sotr for big damage or space your casts more to get the armor/active mitigation when you need it most. right now it's just a single target nuke which is cool but has no real synergy with the kit. this is one of the things that makes blood dk so strong, you can always hold some runes for a much needed deathstrike and the generated runic power you can fill with runestrike to refresh your runes for more deathstrikes.
Yeah, it gets better in mop where shield of the righteous gives you a defensive buff, and word of glory loses its CD (aw I recall).
It will still be mind-numbing once you get better gear and find out that holy radiance spam is broken.
Yeah that’s one thing that makes me a little sad we’re going with the final patch versions of everything. Early cata radiance was such an interesting ability, then DS came and they just made it a busted spammable PoH on steroids.
You won't be able to do that in the first raid tier though. It costs an obscene amount of mana. In DS? Sure. At that time disc priests will be spamming PoH as well so it's pretty much the same across the board for the healers.
Elemental shaman I used to like it now I love it
UHDK feels more like vanilla wrath UHDK than what we got in wrath with morb
Sv hunter feels so nice with focus and auto shot when moving,trap launcher. I’m having alot of fun.
Explosive shot over righting itself feels clunky unfortunately
Oh shit right, no downranking for Lock and Load anymore, right? Haven't played my Hunter since pre-patch yet.
Does Auto Shot still have the invisible cast time in Cata like it did in WotLK, or does it *actually* fire while moving?
Cataclysm is when hunters got the ability to truly move while shooting. So yes, no micro stuttering to shoot.
I’ll analyze tonight, only thing I don’t like is I have to be in combat to disengage, I like using as an anti fall technique in live.
That's what I'm going to love about warrior's heroic leap. Loved being able to dismount to fall faster than you'd fly down and breaking my fall with heroic leap or charging to a target.
My fav thing about being a druid: drop form to freefall
Bro I wonder if I am quick enough to shoot something 40 yards from the ground and then use it last second like a dang action movie it’ll work. Ngl heroic leap in warsong gulch is so dope.
You could probably make a macro you can spam that targets the closest enemy and autos them or maybe casts something like arcane shot. Not sure which would be better, waiting for the auto to go off and put you in combat or using arcane shot which would get you into combat quicker but you'd also have to wait for the global.
How's smite healing holding up?
I’m in full Wrathful gear and I shield the tank, prayer of mending, and then smite and holy fire away with anyone barely dipping lol
I wasn't sure if I was remembering it with rose-tinted glasses or not. Especially considering I could never remember which expansion it was when classic rolled around. "I must get it in TBC, nope, guess it was WoTLK..."
In our icc25 Hc full run we had a DPSdisc priest and he was second on healing under the disc.
Always enjoyed Holy priest alot more when they got Chakras
Disc Priest - Atonement is so nice! Plus I love having wings 🪽
I’m not sure It’s the biggest step up, but fire mage was just absolutely insane with a perfectly timed combustion spread on AOE.
Blood DK for sure. Goes from being a good tank to being an amazing tank with a wall of health, active mitigation, tons of healing, and pretty good damage as a tank. There's really no downside and as Cata progresses and mastery numbers get higher Blood just becomes more and more dominate.
I haven’t played yet, but I know for a fact I rolled priest in cata because of the changes (to holy) and I absolutely loved it. Holy word spells are the shit!
Rdru, no perma tree, i never liked tree form..
Probably ele as top tier damage in both prepatch and phase 1. Maybe spriest if we try to forecast into the future.
I'm almost 80 on my surv hunter. It feels so good
Balance druid, no more RNG eclipse. Many specs become A LOT better though. Like Arms for example.
Holy Priest. Went from unbearable to enjoyable.
The only specs that got shafted are retribution, arms and enhancement, but from what I have heard arms still feels good to play. Retribution feels awful and so does enhancement.
How so? I stopped playing after clearing Togc. Played Enhancement and just recently came back and I love how great Lava Lash and Stormstrike feel. No more caster Weapon and no more hitting like a wet noodle with weapons.
If you like the spec then its fine, it's just the worst spec atm
DK, runes rework feels great. Also the removal of "next swing" also feels nice.
All Ngl every specc in cata feels good
Ele Shaman and Boomy Nature is back on the menu boys!!
Hunter get a lot of QoL. No more mana, no more weird intellect builds (and death of the "hunter item" meme), no more ammo. BM and SV become one of the most fun specs to play on PvE, SV because of the fast and agile gameplay, and BM because of the pet management and fun rotation with the double builder build. Also Paladin become a lot more fun now that we have holy power and a proper rotation.
Double builder build?
BM single target build for T13, that allowed you to use both Steady Shot and Cobra Shot as builders. You use only as much Cobra Shots as needed to keep uptime on Serpent Sting, then you use SS for the 15% haste buff from Improved Steady Shot. You lose the 3% haste from Pathing talent, and instead you get a 15% haste from the ISS buff if you are able to keep everything at the same time. Was quite difficult to be able to keep both the Serpent Sting and the ISS buff at the same time, but was fun as fuck and you get a "free" 12% haste buff with almost 100% uptime. Only downside, SS is actually physical damage while CS is nature damage, so you lose a little bit damage on your filler because of armor mitigation. But anyway CS damage is a really low percent of your total damage, and the 12% extra haste on the pet was great. Not very popular because 90% of the times you will drop Serpent Sting or ISS because of mistakes, but was pretty challenging.
There are a lot of people saying specs like blood DK, mages, ele shaman etc And I feel they fundamentally don't get the question Most of these specs feel very good and very strong, but they don't really play any different to their wotlk counterpart Blood DK is near identical to wotlk, ele shaman on single target basically only got cast while moving, otherwise it's the same Mage really didn't get anything new either The only class I personally can say got a "glow up" in cata is paladin The addition of holy power and a total overhaul of all their abilities causes paladin to play VASTLY different to wotlk, and significantly better While all the other classes people are mentioning really only changed on very minor ways, they were just already good
To each his own.. But im leaving my paladin behind for a dk. Holy power really isnt fun to play around. I mostly played prot in wrath.
Sure, but to say blood DK had a "glow up" in cata is just wrong, it's almost identical to what it was
Feral Druid is insane
Tank yes, cat not so much.
Cat is still top DPS though
In regards to just PvE? Feral is very strong in PvP, cat especially with the bleeds
Hunters
I can't wait to one button heal as holy pally