Class strengths and weaknesses

Community General Discussion
1

One of the reasons classes are in their current state is blizzard’s wish to give each class a strength in an area and a weakness in another.

And to some degrees some classes really are that way.

However, for some classes I struggle to find any particular strength for.

So I want to ask you, what is the strengths of :-

Arms warrior
Resto Shaman
Frost DK
Survival Hunter
Subtley rogue
Destruction warlocks ( almost forgot they existed )
Arcane mages
Enhancement shamans
Feral druids
Holy priests
Vengeance demon hunters

I struggle to find any strength for these in any kind of pve environment, they have clear defined weaknesses, but never a clear defined strength, Arms can do a huge aoe burst, but so can 10 other specs and they even do it better and sustain it for longer.

Theres almost no situation where one would want to pick an arms warrior over fury, an enhancement shaman over an elemental one, a feral druid over a balance druid.

It get’s worse when you add in other classes. No one in their right mind would pick a vengeance DH over a prot warrior, no one would pick a holy priest over a resto druid.

2

Uhm, let’s see:
Arms -strong exexute
Resto -a lot of heal CDs, only heal with interrupt and AoE-stun, spirit link totem
Destru lock -can deal pretty strong burst AoE, strong 2T cleave
Arcane -only mage with def CD
Feral druid: BR, group speed CD

Theoretically everyone of them had their defined strength, but Blizzard prefers to f*ck up the classes more and more. Arcane mage for example was the one with the strongest ST. Now he’s a worse fire mage

3

I’d guess Destro is still the best 2 T cleave in the game? That’s if the spriests don’t take that role aswell. And arms has execute. ALso Resto is still LINK taged all over it. Other than that the others don’t have strength

4

P
V
P
:slight_smile:

destro and arms are very good, both at least a tier imo

5

Frost DKs strength lie in their cleave potential. That is where Frost really shines, atleast for PvP.

Enhance is supposed to shine in disrupting casters, purging people, being supportive to the team whilst dealing huge burst damage in a short amount of time. However, they gave those abilities away to other classes and nerfed Enhancement.

6

Eh?
Fire and Frost have defensives too.

1 Like
7

Resto Shaman - Big balls aoe healing, if team is standing in that rain.

Frost DK - easy of play with decent rune generation and such, tho BoS build sucks

Enhancement shamans - hybrid tanky dd’s. At least shuld be, cuz right now are worse more convoluted and weaker fury wariors.

Vengeance demon hunter - less surviving, more mobile tank. Their mobility is insane and can kite like gods and have a aoe pull like DK’s.

As for the rest idk, not interested in them.

8

Arms warrior - Good burst AOE and execute phases, pvp
Resto Shaman - their raid healing is still hard to parallel in terms of ease, speed, efficiency and utility.
Frost DK - no idea. Haven’t played DK enough to make an informed judgement at max level but their short term AOE burst seems quite good.
Survival Hunter - tricky one as they lose the safety of ranged, which can be a boon. Surv also has some great burst AOE as well as well as their St dmg being fairly decent by no means a bad spec at all.
Subtley rogue - not poor by any means just that other rogue specs are broken. Sub has excellent priority damage when fighting In a pack of mobs. The problem with sub is you have to do twice as much resource management than the other two specs.
Destruction warlocks ( almost forgot they existed ) - 2T cleave, pvp.
Arcane mages - very quick priority damage in right circumstances. Fire may outperform it overall but in the first moments arcane is ahead, which is useful for things like emissary nuking.
Enhancement shamans - no idea. Haven’t played one enough.
Feral druids - see above.
Holy priests - Holy priests are not weak by any stretch. Massive utility in their kit for dungeons that is healing faced In the form of quick instant big heals, tank savers, decent AOE healing. Their raid healing is also very efficient and easier to implement than disc. HWS is a godly CD in raids.
Vengeance demon hunters - extremely mobile, good cc (prison and chains, misery), decent tank dmg, fair anti magic kit for a tank. Vengeance are decent for mythic and get the job done nicely.

9

I’ve been waiting for them to nerf that horrible talent for so long.
I heard they did in 8.2 but it’s still the best talent, I hate playing with it.

10

Well I main arcane and… Well, in the span of 10 seconds more or less, if we don’t get interrupted and aren’t forced to move, we can deal plenty of damage by chaining rune + arcane power + trinket + tw (eventually) + elixirs or whatever. The only problem is that outside of that window, we don’t do much, and just wait for the next window, which usually comes the next fight or the same fight if it takes more than 2-3 minutes (obviously without time warp tho).

If we get interrupted or stunned, we cry blood.
If we are forced to move a lot (more than our 2 shimmers and displacement allow) we cry blood.

Actually, I do cry blood whatever happens during that phase, because it surely won’t be easy to deal with and there’s a high chance it will break the phase.

You do also cry blood when you evocation gets interrupted BTW.

Overall we’re just not that good. Sure you can have a decent ST damage, but it’s just that, decent, for kind of half the effort you have a better outcome with fire, so.
I do like purple tho. And arcane fantasy. So I don’t care and keep playing arcane.

11

I’m the same with my chars. I have a theme for them and I don’t compromise it.
My panda mage is a mystical sorcerer. Ergo he’s arcane and that is that. My mag har mage is fire.
My panda rogue is subtlety. My goblin rogue is outlaw.

I know for some ppl this kind of thing isn’t important but for me it is.

2 Likes
12

I interrupt and purge alot, and use my cap totem all the time. I guess that makes me a bit unique to other healers? Hoping healing output will be stronger after hotfixes coming on wednesday :slight_smile:

1 Like
13

Tbh the fact that shaman can Interupt as a healer with a reasonable CD (hoj is not reasonable and bosses are immune) instantly gives them a massive strength. Having a full group capable on interrupting makes places like sots a breeze (so long as there no overlap).

Plus gotta love those massive mastery crit heals as a monk, if celestial fortune procs it’s like I’m from the brink to over half health in a single heal.

1 Like
14

Actually Dh’s give 5% magic dmg buff, useful if you have 3 casters on your team, battleshout & warrior utillities isn’t gonna work with 0 melees

But yeah i get your point

15

Knowing arcane magic and calling yourself an arcane magic caster. Sounds really cool.

That’s pretty much the one and only useful thing about this spec at lvl 120.

On lower levels, you can obliterate people in battleground with them.

16

Taking 3 casters to a high key is basically suicide, but I think the problem would be that the DH would get ripped before people can blame the casters.

As for arms warrior, fury provides everything they do but just better and more consistent, so why take an arms when you can take a fury? the only scenario you’d want to take an arms warrior is for group pvp like rated arenas.

I leveled my mage exactly for this, the arcane theme is amazing, but tbh I couldn’t keep with the shallow design and absolutely bad performance, arcane is good with super high gear, but you still lose against the usual top performers.

Isn’t a strength, you don’t need so many interrupts, for an m+.

If anything it’s a +, not a strength, there isn’t a scenario where people would say let’s pick a shaman for their interrupts nor link totem.

Throughout the thread I see people stating obvious things, but those things aren’t strengths, a strength is something that’d give you an edge above others.

Arms warrior with good burst? a DH can do the same with eye beam all the while proving many other things, a good rogue can do more aoe burst dps than an arms warrior.

There is never a good execute window for arms too, more likely the mobs/boss will die before you can even pull off a full ToM and even with the execute phase your dps becomes competitive not better than others.

A destro lock provides SS, gateway and healthstones? potions give more hp, you can get healthstones from proving grounds and the other 2 warlock specs provide the same and other better utilities + there isn’t many 2t cleave scenarios in the game atm.

If resto shamans raid healing was good they would’ve taken them for damage intense fights, but they don’t because disc priests and holy paladins provide much better output, so even in their " supposed strength" they’re weaker than others who have other strengths.

Survival hunters having great burst aoe? almost all classes have great burst aoe that’s not a strength, and so is being decent at St damage.

17

I stun as many times a possible, fear when needed and purify/dispel the hell out of everything. Sometimes so much i forget someone needs a heal especially in lower keys xD

1 Like
18

Aight, fair enough

19

Where is the holy priest part :frowning: i was way into this post and then no love for hpriest

20

I dont feel like any class or spec is unique in any way any more.

Everyone can do the same some just do more damage…

Cant wait for classic until they fix this mess of class design :slight_smile: