Update: Blizzard have now announced a big class tuning pass for next week, with many buffs and nerfs that will change the below landscape. You can head on over here to check out all the details.
Here we go! The raid is open and players have been blasting away at all those spiders! As usual, we waited until both NA and EU realms had a go at it. So, it’s time to see the extremely preliminary rankings. And speaking of preliminary, don’t forget the gear situation is also extremely weird at the moment. There are few tier sets floating around, players don’t have any solid items, and relatively few players raided at all yet.
Also, we’re back at the start of a raid tier, which means Normal is our main focus. This is because there are only a few Queen Ansurek kills in Heroic, and none logged quite yet. There’s also a very small population having done any of the bosses in Heroic these couple of days. But, if you’re dead-set on Heroic stats, they’ll be at the bottom as usual.
Note: We are using Normalized scores instead of raw DPS for the Warcraft Logs rankings. Normalized scores take into account the outlier boss fights where certain specs could stack massive DPS (due to the nature of the fight, whether it’s AoE spam or something else), which would then affect their overall score for the whole raid.
Normal
Overall Damage 95th Percentile
No Fyr’Alath? No problem! Fury breaks through to the very top! The spec that usually needs a whole lot of gear to shine does it with the absolute minimum. After the fairly unusual No.1, we see a pretty expected No.2, with Arcane dominating the easier difficulties as per usual, with its extreme burst windows. The Rogues are back, and it’s the inverse of what we had at the end of Dragonflight, with Outlaw and Subtlety at the top and Assassination a little further down.
Enhancement Shamans be happy! No, seriously, there’s no way of telling how long this might last, but the dual-wielding Stormstrikers are in 5th for now! Arms is hanging on down in 6th after having been at or around the top for a long time in DF. Beast Mastery falls a little, but is actually pretty stable, while Affliction is up quite a bit. Retribution is missing its Fyr’alath heyday, but not quite as much as Unholy, which is down in the bottom half. Windwalker closes out the top 10, actually also very stable from expansion to expansion! The bottom 3 finds Augmentation, which seems to still be having some logging troubles, Destruction, which was pretty much there already before the expansion, and Fire, which was dead last before as well.
Overall Damage All Percentiles
Arcane pushes its way past Fury to the very top, but just barely. Arms is doing a little better and Affliction a lot better, as both push past Enhancement when compared to the top percentiles. Survival makes a strong appearance in 8th, as Windwalker pushes past Retribution, which closes out the top 10. Devastation finds itself just outside, with the Hunters gathered behind it.
Boss Only Damage All Percentiles
The direct damage chart is fairly unsurprising, as the usual suspects hover at the top. Arcane is even more ahead here, but we do see Affliction making a big splash in 2nd! Subtlety and Arms reprise their overall damage performance, while the non-Marksmanship Hunters also make a strong showing. Assassination regains some ranks after its poor showing in the overall numbers, and Fury finds itself down in 10th.
Heroic
Overall Damage All Percentiles
Heroic is a little tricky without Ansurek and with a whole lot less data to work with. However, we do see the same trends. Fury is on top by a large margin here, as the fights get slower and Arcane’s burst doesn’t shine quite as much. Outlaw gets past the Mage as well, with Retribution taking advantage of the harder fights to move into 4th.
Enhancement also seems to be performing better on the higher difficulty, and we see a Death Knight make an appearance in the top 10 too! Frost DK is always better in the hands of better players and in higher difficulties, and it finds its way to 7th here. Windwalker and Survival are doing about the same as on Normal, with Subtlety dropping quite a bit down to 10th. The bottom 3 would be exactly the same as on Normal, except Balance Druids decided to join the party and bailed Fire out, just barely.
And so there it is. The very first couple of days for Nerub-ar Palace. The numbers are SURE to change, perhaps even this week, as more players and more gear get added to the mix! As we wait for the data, you can check out our tier lists here, our class guides here and our Nerub-ar Palace guide here!
