The Definitive Cataclysm DPS Tier List | World of Warcraft Classic Catalysm

I agree that my assessment of combat rogue specifically was a bit harsh, and if I had to re-rank I would put it in B tier especially due to the burst damage they provide. That being said, I still think assassination will be played significantly more and is the better overall spec outside of two target fights. Sub is still D tier - just because you can pull it off for 2-3 fights max doesn't make it a worthy choice when assassination can perform just as well, on top of being an easier spec to play. As far as Marksman goes, it's F tier for the same reason as Fury: Survival is literally always better and Marksman doesn't provide utility to make up for it. Hope that clears things up a bit.

I like how you put this tierlist, given the fact that some classes are better than others per tier. Overall, I agree with where the specs are placed tbh. Subbed for future vids

Would love a tank tier list in this style, taking into account performance across phases. Most tier lists just focus on one phase or provide no actual context for the ratings, so it's good to see this.

Pretty good tierlist imo. Also the fact that so many of the specs are S or A tier is a sign of a good balance.

The best tier list I’ve seen so far, not just the placing but the information and the delivery. Way better than the other wow content creators smh.

balance and cat I think will be similar single target. Edging out the balance with the lego staff. Also, without a bear, cat brings instant sunder. Allowing wars/rogues to spend more casts on damage. With a bear, cat can do this aswell AND dont have to keep up mangle. (Also STAMPEDE!) You definitely wouldnt stack them, but I think cats will surprise people in cata in both cleave and single. Solid tier list bro

Helloooooo, thx for the tier list ! I have few choice of dps to play : dk uh/SP/war/ret Question : what is the best dps in the really early at cata ? Is is Dk uh like it was at wrath ? Thx

I played back in the day cata in good guild i don't now early on with the last patch, but in dragon soul unholy wasn't that good for most bosses, you needed burst dps for the hardest bosses like the back of deathwing or the boat and have a lot of changing targets. Same reason why furty warriors and sub rogues were used a lot.

If anyone is curious about the Tank and Healing strength of Cata Main Tank: Blood S tier Paladin: A tier Bear: B tier Warrior: C tier Off tank: Bear S tier Warrior: A tier Blood: B+ tier Paladin: B tier Your Blood DK will literally always have a cooldown up, they'll be taking the least amount of damage by far of any tank from bosses and you'll be least worried about them, Bears are the highest damage tanks by far when they aren't tanking the boss and they can absolutely hold what they need to. The other 2 specs are pretty much diet versions of them, Paladins will not be able to have 100% rolling uptime on cooldowns and Battle Stance just isn't comparable to cat in a tank spec. You'll probably be able to do most content with any combination of tanks but these are the best. For the most part consider the ideal tank setup to be Main tank: Blood DK/Paladin Off tank: Bear/Warrior For Healers it's less a tiering rung and more of a role fulfillment King of Tank healing: Holy Paladin Raid Healers: Shaman (25 man) Holy Priest (10 man), Druid The boob: Disc You'll always have a Holy Paladin, in terms of bombing a heal into a tank there is literally nothing comparable to a Holy Paladin, they have more tools but in this matter they are still unmatched. However, health values are high in Cata, mana is tight and bosses love to spam random unavoidable damage and a holy light isn't going to heal your DPS any longer so you need the throughput healers to efficiently heal your raid. Shamans especially will feel the difference between 10 and 25 player because Spirit Link Totem directly scales with the number of players, a vocal Resto Shaman will complain if they heal a 10 man right after a 25 man because their Spirit Link Totem is just objectively worse but they are incredible in 25 mans. Holy Priests aren't as constrained to the number of bodies as Resto Shamans are but a Holy Priest being able to AOE heal the raid without entering the AOE Chakra is going to be so much happier than a Holy Priest that has to enter the AOE Chakra to Raid heal. Druids are literally just constant hots and healing. They're the kings of efficiency and are likely topping the throughput healing charts because overhealing is a much rarer case in Cataclysm. Unfortunately for Resto Druids though they are likely the first healer to get cut if you decide to drop a heals for a fight on farm so if you're going to main a Resto Druid make sure to have a Balance spec ready to go. Disc Priests are the kings of cheesing a fight, Power Word: Barrier or as it will be called out as "The Boob" literally breaks so many encounters. They still have that pesky Power Word Shield can't stack thing that prevents them from being as efficiently stacked as they can and their new hybrid DPS/Healing spec is here but for some specific fights you can expect to see 2 or 3 Disc Priests to ignore a mechanic, you'll never top healing charts with the sole exception of Halfus Wyrmbreaker so savor this fleeting moment of glory.

Best class tier video I've seen so far.

I don’t have big opinions on tier lists, and I was very very young playing Cataclysm, but I heard Arcane/Fire mages were really great in Firelands & Dragon Soul tier but I could be wrong so…

Really accurate tierlist, can’t disagree with any of it. Maybe a bit too harsh on Fury warriors, yeah they will be legitimately F tier in T11 but in later phases probably C. Never sleep on the fury warrior community to overperform expectations in Classic. Cataclysm did a great job of introducing incredibly unique raid fights that underrepresented specs could excel on. One example is Spine of Deathwing, where sub rogues and arcane mages were nearly mandatory because of their burst damage. Another example is Chimaeron, a fight that took advantage of Resto Shaman’s strengths (stacking raid at perma low health). Shaman shined on fights with important frequent kicks, like Maloriak.

A note on innervate: the Cata changes means it hardly does anything when used on another target but is very powerful when used on yourself. So innervate mostly becomes self use only.

Play whatever do good parses people will want you 100%

I think this is fairly accurate, what I would add though is the fact that some of the specs/classes is more or less in a "bring one, and only one" situation. LIke Balance Druids, Feral Druids, Ret Paladins and you might bring 2 Shadow Priests. Their numerical (throughput) value isn't great enough to stack, but their group support value is massive. So while I agree they're A (or even S) tier if you don't have one the moment you have one, the second one becomes C or D tier.

I disagree a lot with how you sorted rogue. Combat has a niche damage profile that pretty much no other class has. They are, without a doubt, the best 2-target cleave dps spec in the game. Combat would excel on a lot of bosses with this kind of damage profile, such as Omnitron when the shield falls off the last targeted robot and allows you to have a phase where you can cleave both of the active robots, Magmaw when you have to kill the skeleton mob that spawns while still being able to hit the boss, Maloriak's black ooze adds, etc. Additionally, Combat has very good burst ST and cleave with Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree. Using these CDs with Blade Flurry offers some of the best burst cleave in the game. I would put combat at a solid A tier because while their single target damage is decent, their 2 target cleave is unrivaled. I'd put assassination at around A or B tier as well. They do great single target damage but lack any real cleave or AOE (Fan of Knives was severely nerfed in Cataclysm). Subtlety I would also put at A tier, possibly S. While they do have poor damage early game, they scale very well into DS when they get the legendary daggers, becoming some of the top dps. Additionally, they probably have the best survivability of any class in the game, which is pretty important for a lot of the heroic bosses in Cataclysm. They have talents that encourage the usage of Recuperate which is already a ton of survivability, not to mention they have a talent which decreases damage taken from AOE spells by 30% while increasing the duration of Feint. Subtlety even has the ability to snapshot Rupture which would do a ton of damage on a boss like Nefarian. Rogues also offer Tricks of the Trade which is still a great damage utility spell that should still be able to snapshot spells like Corruption and Moonfire come Cataclysm. Rogues can also have very consistent AOE slows/Healing Reduction with Fan of Knives, as FoK scales off of your thrown weapon (which you can put a poison on in Cataclysm).

As a rogue who went pillar to post in vanilla classic combat rogue dominates cata classic because of its mastery bonus and boosted energy regen, they change a lot about rogues and boosted combat a lot because of how dominant assassination was in wotlk. You have access to more glyph boosts and such too, cata combat rogues from start to finish are top 5 raid dps usually up top more only classes that beat it at mages usually, most classes pump 45-60k dps throughout the expansion, mages pushing there legendary end up doing 50-70k and combat rogues push 55-80k assassination rogues even with legendaries run 45-65k they end up being middle of the road. Also feral is super strong melee a lot of dot changes and boosts to mangle so you don’t lose so much dmg if you can’t get behind. A mob they are up there in dps too. I don’t know where you’re basing any of this information off of lol,

Was planning on continuing as arms warrior , but there will be so many fotm rolling it wo ill prob main shaman and swap my old alt to main

What would you say is the best and easiest to play in S tier?

Theres plenty of fights where Demo warlock is subpar compared to both Affli and Destro (bonus the fact that destro and affli uses same gear while demo is more gimmicky with mastery stacking), Destro has risen a lot in performance/viability on the most recent cata private servers, whitemane/athena. I've played on all Twinstar cata servers and back on Hades / Apollo 1 no one played destro but the representation has only risen. Similar with UHDK (but thats cuz UHDKs scripting is kinda busted on twinstar atm)