wow Castle Nathria Shadowlands Mid-week DPS, Tank and Healer Log Rankings

[Starym 3,800]

The above stats are for Normal, all data.

Now that things have somewhat settled down and many players have gone through Castle Nathria we're looking at the logs once more to see how things are shaking up this early in the raid's life cycle. Heroic difficulty is still a little underrepresented, as the vast majority of guilds are still stuck in the first part of the raid, so we'll once more be looking at both Normal and Heroic stats for a better representation.

We also have our own guide writers talking about some of the top specs, so you can get some context and better insight for the numbers. We'll also be looking at some tank and healer DPS/HPS numbers, but they're less relevant for their roles than the pure DPS spec roles.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For some Heroic specs the data representation is very low, with Survival and Assassination being as low as 250, while on Normal all specs have plenty of data, but don't have the top players in there, especially the ones racing for World First. So it's up to you to pick which data is more relevant at this point.

The very top specs are basically the same for Normal and Heroic, with the exact rankings re-arranged, so let's take a look at both, starting with the 95th percentile:

Normal data by Warcraft Logs.

Heroic data by Warcraft Logs.

Now for a little break from all the charts, let's hear what our guide writers have to say about the top specs, as Balance and Unholy have dominated this first week:

Balance Druid by Bora:

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Balance Druid has been performing exceptionally well throughout Heroic Castle Nathria. The raid is a well balanced one, with almost equal parts single target, cleave, and hectic multi target, so how does 1 class excel at all 3?

 

Breaking it down from the base upwards, Balance Druids have outstanding sustained cleave and spread multi target. Stone Legion Generals, Sun King, and even Sire Denathrius are great Balance Fights. Then we add in Covenants.

 

Night Fae and Kyrian are both fully viable and excel in different areas. Night Fae has insane burst potentially which levels off into high sustained single target. Kyrian scales well with targets and is not too shabby on single target either with its short CD ability. Finally we have Balance of All Things which is our cherry on top. Balance of All Things adds immense power to our single target kit through the Critical Strike buff it gives. When played around well, it can be upwards of 15 to 20 percent DPS increases.
 

Unholy Death Knight, Abyssalwave:

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Currently Unholy is seeing a lot of success compared to BfA due to the combination of changes that have occurred in Shadowlands. Some of the most impactful changes have been the new Unholy Blight and Unholy Pact that synergize very well with the reworked Army of the Damned.

However, the biggest reason for this success is Unholy’s new Mastery which before only affected Shadow damage but now affects Minion damage as well. To counteract the domination of Unholy Death Knights in week 1, Blizzard nerfed our Mastery effectiveness by 15%, which equals out to a 5-6% nerf. This still has us in a strong position for Castle Nathria progression.

And now back to the numbers, as we take a look at the "All Data" category:

Normal data by Warcraft Logs.

Heroic data by Warcraft Logs.

And on to more spec discussion, closing out the top 5:

Marksmanship Hunter, Azortharion:

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Marksmanship Hunters have been performing very well in Castle Nathria, as well as Mythic+. The spec has high single-target damage and is very mobile, and pairing this with some of the highest on-demand burst DPS in the game via Wild Spirits and Trueshot, you have an exceptional all-rounder.

A lot of fights have enough cleave to justify sacrificing a tiny bit of single-target DPS to gain a lot of AoE damage, such as Trueshot and Explosive Shot. Basically, Marksmanship does not have to skimp very much on its excellent single-target damage to do some of the best AoE burst in the game.

Feral Druid, by Wordup:

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Feral has come out of the gates fairly strong in Nathria, largely because it has already got a lot of tools it needs to work immediately from boss one. Access to solid Conduits, Legendaries and Soulbinds, without having to wait for the Great Vault or specific boss kills. Convoke the Spirits also has a lot of potential to really shine on some single target bosses that have good burst timing windows, thanks to the last minute changes before launch raising it up. Many of the fights in Nathria simply lean into single-target specialists or those that can perform efficient Cleave, and without the usual range constraints that limit Feral being present there, it is simply showing up as a solid, well tuned spec with the right tools for the job.

That being said though, some of the logs are are also getting some small extra gains via the discovery of "owlweaving", which involves using Balance Affinity to shift to Moonkin Form to maintain Sunfire/Moonfire and throw out the occasional Starsurge. We'll see how long this lasts in Mythic when fight timers and damage profiles may change, but things are looking good.

Shadow Priest, by Publik:

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Shadow Priests are performing consistently well, with their talent tree and toolkit proving to be extremely versatile for Castle Nathria encounters. Specifically with Void Torrent and Hungering Void, Shadow is proving to be one of the best DPS classes at priority damage. A few of our talents also help us with more AoE style encounters, with Shadow Crash or even Surrender to Madness depending on the fight.

It was no surprise to us that Shadow started off performing exceptionally well, but as we get later into the tier you might see Shadow drop a bit as other people craft their Legendries or upgrade their conduits. Both Legendries and Conduits for Shadow are extremely lackluster, so pending tuning these will not give Shadow quite as much of a bump as some other specs will see. Either way, the spec is still looking very strong going into Mythic Castle Nathria.

And finally, we'll take a look at the Normal Tank and Healer DPS/HPS, but note that these stats aren't that relevant, as those roles are much more complex:

Normal data by Warcraft Logs.

Normal data by Warcraft Logs.

For more detailed looks at each spec, you can check out our class guides or our Castle Nathria tier lists  for DPS, healers and tanks!

[Allseye 96]

As far as i understood, this data is without the latest classtuning, isn't it? I'm really interested how it looks like with latest classtuning. In these data, there is a hugh gap between some classes/speccs. Looking forward how this will be adressed. In my opinion its absoluetly okay to have around 5-10% differences is top performings. But this is really hugh right now.