DPS PvP Rankings / Tier List for Cataclysm Classic

Dec 02 update: The rankings have been updated for the new PvP Season!

You can find below a quick summary of the current PvP DPS rankings:

1. Feral Druid (S-Tier)
2. Hunter (S-Tier)
3. Rogue (S-Tier)
4. Mage (S-Tier)
5. Warlock (S-Tier)
6. Retribution Paladin (A-Tier)
7. Death Knight (A-Tier)
8. Shadow Priest (A-Tier)
9. Balance Druid (A-Tier)
10. Warrior (A-Tier)
11. Elemental Shaman (B-Tier)
12. Enhancement Shaman (B-Tier)

In order to further understand the reasoning behind these ranks, we would recommend you to read the rest of the page, as that is explained in more detail in the next few sections.

Feel free to also consult our PvP Healer rankings page if you are interested in learning more about your potential partners in the arena, or our guides on compositions in each bracket (2v2, 3v3, and 5v5) to learn which kinds of teams best suit your class.

When sorting out the rankings for DPS in PvP, we are primarily concerned with three things:

• Damage Throughput — first and foremost, DPS are there to deal damage. You will not win unless you kill the other team. Unlike in PvE, however, sustained damage is usually less important than burst damage, although some classes still rely more on sustained damage to overwhelm the enemy healer.
• Utility — this is probably the most skill-based portion of PvP, and where the best players shine. Control abilities such as Fear and Polymorph are game-defining abilities in Arena matches, as you effectively can take other players out of the fight for short periods of times. Effective use of control abilities, and the number of options available to a class are hugely important in how valuable a class is in Arenas.
• Survivability — just as you want to kill your enemies, you are also trying to not die. Defensive abilities and cooldowns are also quite important, especially when you are trying to reset or live long enough to regain offensive pressure. Some classes are significantly more durable than others, which has a huge impact on their effectiveness in Arenas.

These rankings will focus on these factors, and are specifically written in the context of 2v2 and 3v3 Arena. These rankings also could hold up decently well for 5v5 arena, but 2v2 and 3v3 are the significantly more popular and more competitive brackets. It is also important to note that group composition is incredibly important in Arena; playing a comp that utilizes your class's strengths can turn a B-tier class into an A-tier comp.

If you would like to know more about recommended arena compositions for any of its brackets, consult our guides below.

Feral Druid offers a jack-of-all-trades toolkit with a focus on melee DPS and bleed damage over time. They have great burst damage, especially against low armor targets or when all damage over time effects are ticking, and can stay mobile with their increased speed from Feral Swiftness. While they lack a Mortal Strike effect, this is usually overcome by playing with teammates that can bring it.

Feral's biggest strength comes from the Predatory Strikes talent, which allows for instant cast spells, with Cyclone being a great option to take enemies out for a while, prevent healing, or allow yourself or your teammate to recover. They can also do decent off-healing, and have Bear Form, Survival Instincts, and Frenzied Regeneration for when they are the kill target, making them excellent all-rounders, which can fit well into nearly any composition.

Marksmanship Hunter is the most common Hunter spec in arena, offering great burst windows through lining up multiple instant damaging shots, such as Chimera Shot. It also brings a strong ranged Mortal Strike effect with Widow Venom.

Hunters have multiple viable comps, but also have some issues, specifically around line-of-sight and how easily pets can die in Arenas. This is mostly a Beast Mastery issue, and part of the reason why the spec is rarely played in Cataclysm PvP.

Overall, Hunter brings solid damage and control, making them one of the best ranged DPS provided their team can prevent them from being trained the whole game.

Rogues are one of the only melee classes that have stealth and rely on dishing out controlled burst damage to stunned or otherwise controlled targets in their opener. For that reason, Rogue has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, and is one of the most popular melee classes to play in PvP.

Possibly the single most popular Arena comp of all time is Rogue, Mage and Priest (RMP), because their playstyles are so complementary. Rogues have incredible utility such as Smoke Bomb, amazing burst such as Shadow Dance, and their defense is also much stronger in Cataclysm, with Recuperate and Combat Readiness.

Rogue's signature Stealth allows them to control matches from the start, picking and choosing how to open. Rogues have multiple powerful long cooldowns, making them very strong while they are available, but also weak when completely out of cooldowns, thus putting the pressure on the Rogue to use them appropriately to secure the win before running out of gas.

Mages have always been strong, especially in the context of the Rogue, Mage and Priest (RMP) team composition. Fire is the strongest spec available, with the new Combustion which can instantly win a game on its own with a good enough spread and application timing, the Dragon's Breath plus Polymorph guaranteed-CC combo and high DPS on the move through Firestarter, Fire Blast, Living Bomb and Hot Streak procs.

Frost is also good but relies much more often on hard casting of both CC and damage, making it much more vulnerable to disruption. It does have more freezes and slows, as well as reliable cooldown-fueled burst DPS combos, however, while Fire is often at the mercy of RNG for its burst damage. Blink is also the bane of melee, enabling Mages to break stuns and disengage quickly.

Often the Mage play style is less about overwhelming your enemy team and more about securing a win by bursting down one target while keeping every other target out of the game through crowd control abilities such as Polymorph, but Mage can also overwhelm when needed or when lucky, making it one of the best casters in Cataclysm.

Warlocks are a great class in PvP in terms of sustained output and durability, and will mostly be playing Affliction in Cataclysm. DoT snapshotting with Soul Swap and Demon Soul is one of the best ways to reach a win by dealing unhealable damage, and enemy healers cannot even dispel the DoTs off due to Unstable Affliction!

Shadowflame is now also very strong, contributing to Affliction's high damage potential. Warlock utility is as strong as ever with Create Healthstone, Curse of Tongues, Fear, and Curse of the Elements. Finally, their passive defenses are also great thanks to Soul Link and health regen from Siphon Life and other support talents such as Demonic Aegis.

Retribution Paladin is a very strong all-rounder melee class, which has great burst with their major cooldowns, Avenging Wrath and Zealotry, especially if also under the effect of the new Inquisition buff. Its main weakness is the lack of a Mortal Strike effect.

Retribution can also consistently heal thorough Word of Glory and the new Holy Power system, allowing them to be the best supports for triple DPS compositions when taking into account their multiple defensives including Divine Shield immunity and Hand of Protection, Hand of Sacrifice, and Hand of Freedom, which can keep you mobile or help teammates survive being focused.

Death Knights are slow but also difficult to stop, making them plate armored melee juggernauts who dominate the arena. While they lack a healing reduction effect like Mortal Strike, they more than make up for it with high sustained damage from diseases, the new Necrotic Strike, and pet burst damage from their multiple cooldowns such as Summon Gargoyle.

Also, they have multiple ways to bring enemies to them and keep them there instead through spells like Death Grip and Chains of Ice. They also have great anti-caster tools in general, such as Anti-Magic Shell and Strangulate.

Death Knights have no movements speed spells or dashes, which is their biggest weakness, making them better with mobility support from allies such as Dispel Magic and Hand of Freedom.

One of the most common comps in Cataclysm is "TSG", which is Warrior plus Death Knight, plus Holy Paladin, known for being a melee cleave with high durability from its three plate wearers, and extremely high burst damage as long as they can connect, with the Paladin being there to keep them as mobile as possible.

Shadow Priests are similar to Warlocks in their playstyle, but provide more defensive utility, such as the new Leap of Faith, and even have a Unstable Affliction spin-off in Sin and Punishment, which will punish enemy teams for dispelling the Priest's Vampiric Touch.

Shadow Priests also have access to significant off-healing from the standard Priest healing arsenal, which allows teams to play defensively even if the healer is being pressured or controlled, and they can help remove dangerous Magic with Dispel Magic, both defensively and offensively.

Finally, their control options are decent, and include Psychic Scream, Silence, and Psychic Horror, which can be combined for a very long lockout period on the enemy healer or other important targets.

Balance Druid, when left unchecked, is able to do massive area damage and decimate an opposing team by itself. Unfortunately, they are also one of the most vulnerable classes to being trained and disrupted, as their ability to kite away is limited now that shapeshifting only removes slows and roots for Restoration Druids, while Starfall and any hard casts still require the Druid to not be CC'd in order to function. Regardless, Lunar Shower allows for massive fully instant damage output, helping a lot in this regard and allowing Balance to be more competitive than in previous expansions.

Balance brings the standard Druid arsenal of utility and defensive tools, and can also silence a healer for a huge amount of time with the new Entangling Roots plus Solar Beam combo, but their damage is further amplified in cleave setups thanks to Starfall and their Eclipse-empowered DoTs. Balance can do massive spread damage, especially if DoTs are protected by Unstable Affliction, but is susceptible to line-of-sight plays from the opposing teams and is very vulnerable to damage itself, making it an easy target.

Warriors are the antithesis of Rogues; instead of utilizing a stealthy, controlled style of play to set up and execute kills, Warriors are there to deal high consistent damage, while also tanking through enemy incoming damage. Warrior can put high pressure on enemy healers thanks to a combination of high burst and solid sustained damage, as well as Mortal Strike.

Warrior's biggest weakness is what you would expect out of a melee: up-time. Inexperienced Warriors can be easily countered by Mages and other ranged classes, meaning it is up to the Warrior and their team to work together, using tools such as Dispel Magic and Hand of Freedom, as well as the Warrior's own Spell Reflection, to stay out of CC and keeping Mortal Strike up.

With the right support, Warriors are unstoppable juggernauts that will wreak havoc in the Arena. Cataclysm has increased Warrior's toolkit for getting back in range with the new Heroic Leap, and higher burst damage can be achieved in Colossus Smash windows, but its lower ranking compared to Wrath reflects the much stronger buffs other classes got, especially Rogues, making Warriors not as dominant in the meta as they used to be.

Elemental Shamans provide high buffs for caster teams with totems such as Wrath of Air Totem and 10% more Spell Power with Totemic Wrath, but are no longer one of the best specializations in the arena due to Bloodlust and Heroism no longer being usable while in a match, the removal of the Astral Shift Wrath talent, and general power-up of other specs who can now shut down Elemental handily, such as Rogues.

As a hybrid class, Elemental Shamans offer effective off-healing, helping their team to play defensively when needed. Purge is also a powerful tool for clearing enemy players of debuffs and helping to set up kills. Above all, Elemental has good burst damage potential with Unleash Flame followed by Lava Burst and Fulmination, but is just as likely to get killed before it can cast anything, especially against melee cleaves, where Thunderstorm often feels like it has way too long of a cooldown.

Enhancement Shaman bring multiple ways to buff ally DPS in PvP, such as Strength of Earth Totem, and also have much better mobility through the new Earthen Power and Ancestral Swiftness. The revamped Ghost Wolf also prevents you from being slowed while active, but Enhancement still lacks gap closing abilities and a Mortal Strike effect, and also does relatively low damage compared to melee peers.

They can also instant-cast spells with Maelstrom Weapon, which can be used offensively, to off-heal, or to CC with Hex, making it quite versatile, and disrupt enemy casters heavily with Wind Shear, Grounding Totem.

Overall while Enhance PvP has its perks, its relatively low ability to catch up to targets and keep them within range allows it to be easily controlled in many caster matchups, and its Mail armor suffers against physical damage heavy teams, even with the powerful Shamanistic Rage at their disposal.