The series: [Intro­duc­tion, and a call for com­ments, Solo Dif­fi­culty vs Group Dif­fi­culty, PvE vs PvP, Vari­ety vs Spe­cial­iza­tion, Solo Per­former vs Group Util­ity, Your role in a PvE raid]

This is how every tal­ent tree of every class fits into a pve raid.

This list assumes play­ers at the same skill and gear level. Every­one knows some­one who will say “how can you say that X does more dam­age than Y, my friend is Y and zomg pwns all in a big raid guild, blah blah”. The guild you men­tioned doesn’t have the same qual­ity at every per­son, your friend hap­pens to be the best player in that guild. Your friend would prob­a­bly be the best at any class they chose.

Also, many raid encoun­ters specif­i­cally high­light one class’s fea­ture over another. So these com­para­tors don’t hold true for every event in the game.

Now, notice that I’m not list­ing every pop­u­lar build. The typ­i­cal hunter beast­mas­ter build is 41÷20÷0 or 41 points in Beast­mas­ter, 20 in Marks­man­ship, 0 in Sur­vival. The typ­i­cal com­bat rogue build is 40-odd points in Com­bat, 20 or so in Assas­si­na­tion. This isn’t a cat­a­log of every build for every class, just sweep­ing gen­er­al­iza­tions by tal­ent tree.

Finally, if I’ve made any errors, please leave a com­ment, and I’ll update this list.

Last updated 2008-07-18. Includes revi­sions from Kiki­das (war­lock), Las­sira (hunter), and Kadir.

Com­mon to All roles

Druid - good gen­eral pur­pose raid buff, good debuffs, good caster util­ity with inner­vate, good raid util­ity with in-battle resurrection

Hunter - good ranged phys­i­cal dam­age, nice vari­ety of debuffs, best aggro man­age­ment, can help man­age the aggro of oth­ers, infi­nite dura­tion of dam­age (unique for ranged classes), awk­ward crowd control

Mage - excel­lent ranged sin­gle target/aoe dam­age, pure dam­age class, caster raid buffs, decent aggro man­age­ment, good crowd con­trol, free food/drink

Pal­adin - excel­lent raid buffs via bless­ings, mul­ti­ple pal­adins stack very well in raids due to wide vari­ety of these bless­ings, good vari­ety of party buffs in auras, nice buff/debuff melee option in judgments

Priest - decent raid buffs, good threat man­age­ment, lim­ited crowd control

Rogue - pure dam­age class, excel­lent single-target melee dam­age, good aggro management

Shaman - excel­lent group util­ity via totems

War­lock - excel­lent sin­gle target/aoe dam­age, best dam­age over time, good debuffs to either do dam­age or enhance any­one else’s, free health potion equiv­a­lent between fights, lim­ited crowd con­trol, good raid wipe recov­ery via soul­stone, lim­ited aggro management

War­rior - enhances party health or melee dam­age, good aoe melee debuffs

Dam­age / Dps

Druid (feral) - good melee phys­i­cal dam­age, enhances raid melee dam­age, dam­age doesn’t scale through endgame due to item­iza­tion
Druid (bal­ance) — good ranged magic dam­age, enhances group caster damage

Hunter (beast­mas­ter) — excel­lent ranged phys­i­cal dam­age, enhances group dam­age of any type
Hunter (marks­man) — PvP dam­age spec, can also be excel­lent PvE dam­age with mid-tier raid­ing gear and up, good phys­i­cal dam­age group buff
Hunter (sur­vival) - PvP survivability/control. Also good raid util­ity in deep endgame PvE raid­ing via Expose Weak­ness, enhances all phys­i­cal damage.

Mage (fire) — high­est sus­tained ranged magic dam­age
Mage (frost) — PvP survivability/control, low­est burst dam­age and high­est dura­tion
Mage (arcane) — PvP burst dam­age, high­est burst dam­age and low­est duration

Pal­adin (ret­ri­bu­tion) — PvP dam­age. Also excel­lent party dam­age buff in large raids.

Priest (shadow) — decent ranged magic dam­age, good debuffs, excel­lent group util­ity in con­stant mana and health regen, dam­age doesn’t scale through­out endgame due to itemization

Rogue (com­bat) — high­est sus­tained melee phys­i­cal dam­age
Rogue (assas­si­na­tion) — my wife says, “Good ques­tion, what do full assassination/mutilate rogues do that com­bat rogues don’t?“
Rogue (sub­tlety) — PvP survivability/control.

Shaman (enhance­ment) — good phys­i­cal melee dam­age, greatly enhances group melee dam­age
Shaman (ele­men­tal) — PvP nuking.

War­lock (afflic­tion) - excel­lent dam­age against bosses, excel­lent raid util­ity via var­ied mob debuffs; aggro prob­lems due to most dam­age being DoT and there­fore hard to slow down when prob­lems arise.
War­lock (demonology) - good raid dam­age, most self-boosting abil­i­ties, ver­sa­til­ity via dif­fer­ent pet sac­ri­fices
War­lock (destruc­tion) - PvP burst dam­age; can be excel­lent in deep endgame raids with appro­pri­ate crit gear. (look­ing for more info)

War­rior (arms) — PvP dam­age; how­ever, with suf­fi­cient phys­i­cal dam­age sup­port (usu­ally in mid/deep endgame) mob debuffs enhance phys­i­cal dam­age to make an arms war­rior use­ful.
War­rior (fury) — good melee phys­i­cal dam­age, good melee aoe

Tanks

Deathknight - best tank for caster tar­gets (accord­ing to cur­rent pre-expansion information)

Druid (feral) - best tank for melee tar­gets, best single-target off­tank, gear is prob­lem­atic in scal­ing through­out endgame (also, can switch with­out respec to cat-dps between fights)

Pal­adin (pro­tec­tion) - best tank for mul­ti­ple targets

War­rior (pro­tec­tion) - 2^nd best at every­thing deathknight/druid/pally are good at, also great generic sur­viv­abil­ity tricks for boss fights

Heal­ers

Druid (restora­tion) - best heals over time, best healer on the move

Pal­adin (holy) - best single-target healer

Priest (holy) - 2^nd best at every­thing druid/pally/shammy are good at
Priest (dis­ci­pline) - PvP healer, good raid caster buff

Shaman (restora­tion) - best multi-target healer