With the release of the new expansion Dragonflight, many players are wondering which class might be the strongest in World of Warcraft. MeinMMO provides you with an overview of the currently best assessments. But keep in mind while browsing through the tier list for the classes that everything can still change.
Where do the numbers come from? Currently, there are no logs and only little data available from the new expansion Dragonflight. Therefore, we are gathering impressions from various sources here to give you an initial picture, including:
- from the experts at wowhead and their Rankings for Mythic+ and the first raid
- from the experts at IcyVeins and their Rankings for Mythic+ and the first raid
- from our own experience with the various classes and from the beta of Dragonflight
The assessments are still subject to constant change until we have values we can rely on. The first Mythic dungeons open on Wednesday, November 30. From then on, the assessments will likely stabilize somewhat.
By the way, you voted on which classes you like the most:
Things to pay attention to: Most assessments still refer to numbers from the beta and the opinions of experts and professionals. Accordingly, there are no real values achieved by actual players to determine the strength of the classes.
In addition, many tier lists consider factors like defensive capabilities and usefulness of the classes, as these are more important in certain content than pure damage. So you will not find just the strongest DPS classes, but the tier list of the classes that perform best in raids and dungeons.
The first season and thus the first Mythic+ dungeons and the first raid open on December 16. From then onwards, you will find in our DPS ranking for World of Warcraft the actual results for all classes.
We will be covering the release of WoW Dragonflight in a live ticker throughout the entire week. Here are the most important features:
Tier list for the release of Dragonflight
These are the strongest classes in Mythic+
God Tier
- Demon Hunter
S Tier
- Rogue
- Monk
- Death Knight
A Tier
- Warrior
- Druid (Feral)
- Shaman (Enhancement)
- Evoker
- Paladin
B Tier
- Mage
- Warlock
- Shaman (Elemental)
- Priest
C Tier
- Hunter
- Druid (Balance)
What makes the classes so strong? The Demon Hunter is the undisputed king in this area in all current assessments. He has the strongest AoE abilities in the game, is nearly unkillable, and brings useful control abilities.
Almost the same goes for the Rogue. Here, Assassination is traditionally the weakest spec, but Blizzard often tweaks the balancing, which can lead to shifts here. If you play Rogue, you can be sure that at least one of your specializations is always popular in dungeons.
Monks and Death Knights particularly excel with high AoE damage, but also occasionally bring good utility. Death Knights, for example, are popular for their Death Grips and can also keep themselves alive for a long time or relieve the healer.
What about the weak classes? Among the Hunters, Beast Mastery Hunters are somewhat ahead, but overall the class is weaker compared to others. They don’t bring anything that others can’t do, and usually do it better. In particular, they lack defensive abilities, which, according to many experts, is the most important criterion in Dragonflight.
Balance Druids land in the C Tier mainly due to their damage. If you can mitigate that, the class brings very useful cooldowns like Treants and Vortexes. If Blizzard adjusts their damage, the class could also rank higher.
The release of Dragonflight was … bumpy. We were there amidst the chaos:
These are the strongest classes in raids
Keep in mind that the raid bosses were only tested very briefly and many professionals are more reserved with their assessments. The assessments here are therefore more speculative than with Mythic+.
God Tier
- [no class is currently too strong]
S Tier
- Demon Hunter
- Rogue
- Shaman
- Druid
A Tier
- Mage (Arcane)
- Hunter (Beast Mastery)
- Evoker
- Warrior
- Monk
- Death Knight
- Warlock
B Tier
- Mage (Frost and Fire)
- Priest
C Tier
- Hunter (Marksmanship and Survival)
- Paladin
What makes the classes so strong? As in dungeon content, Demon Hunters and Rogues are ranked highly due to their enormous damage. The exception here is Subtlety Rogues, who performed slightly worse in raids overall.
Among Shamans, especially Enhancement Shaman rank highly because they serve as supporters for all melee fighters – especially Warriors and Rogues. This makes them a popular addition to many groups besides their decent damage – despite nerfs in the beta.
Druids bring additional to their damage useful raid buffs and abilities like a speed boost, healing, and Wild’s Mark, as well as a resurrection in combat. Owls are generally more popular and stronger than cats due to their higher damage and range.
What about the weak classes? Paladins have the huge problem that they have arguably the worst mobility of all classes. As melee fighters, this is an enormous DPS loss in fights with a lot of movement. Additionally, their damage output generally falls behind most melees.
A similar problem affects Marksmanship and Survival Hunters. They are more tied to their locations than Beast Mastery Hunters and therefore fall behind this specialization. Their damage is relatively low and they bring no useful abilities for the raid.
Tier List for Tanks and Healers
These are the strongest tanks: At least wowhead has also dealt with tanks and healers. We also looked around a bit in the class discords. A very good piece of news: all tanks are at least usable in Mythic+ and none are worse than A Tier.
Warriors generally dominate dungeons and raids because they bring a lot of damage along with defensive abilities and now have decent self-healing and stronger mitigation. One reason why we recommend Warriors as a class if you want to switch.
In raids, Druids, Monks, and Paladins lag a bit behind but are still not “bad” tanks.
These are the strongest healers: For healers, it’s similar: almost all healers are usable in all content. However, Evokers and Druids can particularly stand out in Mythic Keystone dungeons. Their group healing combined with damage dealt and utility is unbeatable.
Priests struggle here a bit as they can have trouble managing high damage spikes in dungeons. What’s more important, however, is that they hardly bring any useful abilities for the group like control.
In raids, it’s different. Here, almost all healers are on par and nearly every combination works. The only healer that falls behind a bit is Restoration Shamans, who, although they bring one of the strongest healing abilities in the game with their Spirit Link Totem, otherwise rank behind other healers.
If you still can’t decide which class you want to play, we have some recommendations for you:
Which class should I play in WoW Dragonflight? We recommend 5 classes, we advise against 2
