The best, worst Season of Discovery DPS classes in WoW Classic so far

We're a little over a week removed from the launch of WoW Classic Season of Discovery. And in classic Warcraft style, the brand-new raid added to this OG remix was cleared in less than 24 hours. For the rest of us grinding out raptors and worgs around Azeroth, it may help to know what's performing best. So far, the best and worst Season of Discovery DPS classes across WoW Classic paints an interesting--if not unsurprising--picture.

In regards to raw DPS numbers as well as usage, Rogues, Hunters, and Warriors rule the roost. However, the least played (and lowest DPS) class may surprise some. Let's take a look at the first week of raiding numbers in the Season of Discovery.

A note about the numbers for WoW Classic Season of Discovery, as well as the best and worst forming DPS classes. These numbers come to us from the Vanilla WoW warcraftlogs aggregate. This is to say that the numbers reported are from players opting into being tracked, so this does represent the most hardcore of hardcore players. That said, it does give us insight into what classes and specs perform best at the moment.

And wouldn't you know, Hunter, Rogue, and Warrior sit at the top. In the case of the two melee classes this has to deal with two factors: Attack speed and bleeds. For Rogues, the best skills right now focus on amping up Slide and Dice uptime and maximizing DOTs. The same goes for Fury and Arms Warriors. However, the surprising damage source comes from Hunters utilizing a Skorpid pet and the Skorpid Shot.

These damage per second numbers for Season of Discovery DPS showcase that attack speed and dots rule the roost. It also highlights that pure spellcasters appear to be lagging behind significantly compared to melee.

And yet, the thing that strikes me most as a Priest main is Shadow spec all the way down there at the bottom. What happened, you may ask. Well, this is where the numbers might be getting skewed. You see: The collected data only accounts for averages across the classes played. This means that the more of a class that's used the better that average ends up being across the board.

In the case of Shadow DPS being so low, it's two things. First, that most Priests running BFD are healing and not DPSing. Second, this is a class lacking two of its biggest spells: Shadowform and Vampiric Embrace.

As seen above, the spread of players taking a Priest in as DPS is incredibly low. However, this just means that a majority of healers are most likely playing Priest. The same could be said for Shaman, as that class is evenly spread across tanking and healing now.

Will the numbers change as we progress through this first phase of Season of Discovery DPS? Potentially, as tweaks are inevitable. We'll keep tracking where things land as more players hit the current max level of 25.

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