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

Shaman (restoration) - best multi-target healer

Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
• WoW Wrath Class Redesign and Reitemization Explained
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
• Where PvP Gear Often Helps

In grouping, not all classes are similar. Some provide simple and easily defined benefits, while others provide auxiliary benefits beyond their basic stated role that more than make up for an apparent lack of output in that role. That was wordy, let’s talk examples.

Rogues are pure damage dealers, so given the same skill of players and same gear level for all toons–(Rogue x5) should do more damage than (Cat druid x5), (Enhancement Shammy x5), (Beastmaster hunter x5), or (Fury Warrior x5). Rogue is a pure damage class, so this makes sense.

However, other classes bring valuable benefits in enhancing the performance of their allies in similar roles. Enhancement Shamans bring the almighty windfury totem. Fury Warriors bring Battle Shout. Cat druids bring Leader of the Pack. Beastmaster Hunters bring Ferocious Inspiration and Improved Hunter’s Mark. All of these buffs work together.

So, a group that is (Rogue, Fury Warrior, Cat Druid, Enhancement Shammy, Beastmaster hunter) magically fit together like pieces of a puzzle and will do more damage than (Rogue x5). Their sum is greater than their components. The rogue will still top the damage meters, but that rogue will know that of their chart-topping dps, almost half of it is due to allied buffs, and far above anything they could generate without those allies. Enlightened raiding rogues love having an enhancement shaman and the others nearby, even though those friends do less damage than the rogue does. PvE is a team game, not a damagemeter race.

Likewise, (Mage x5) do great damage because they’re a pure damage class, but (Mage, Warlock, Boomkin, Shadow Priest, Enhancement Shammy) does even more damage.

So group utility also plays into raid roles.

However, group utility is a strange thing. Most of these buffs are limited use only. So having two enhancement shamans side by side doesn’t give you twice as much windfury benefit. Likewise with the cat druid damage buff and fury warrior damage buff. And so, like hybrid roles, there are a limited number of spots in raids for single-role utility/buff people.

Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization
• WoW Wrath Class Redesign and Reitemization Explained
• Fools, Silence, and Damage Reporting–supplemental
• WoW Itemization Dreams

If your class can do many things, don’t expect to be unqualified best at any of them.

There are three roles: tank, healer, damage (dps). But really, every class can do damage–you have to be able to put out some kind of damage in order to play the solo game. So it’s really two specialized roles, plus the common role that everyone has. Some classes specialize completely in that common role: hunters, rogues, mages, warlocks. The rest can do multiple things, and this article concerns them.

Now, every class can’t do everything in the game (except druids). That’s part of what makes groups fun. With the correct mix of characters, you can accomplish goals that a group of identical characters couldn’t do alone.

That variety in gameplay that you enjoy in the solo game, the ability to kill mobs and heal and be tough… that entire skill set doesn’t directly translate to your endgame experience. Generally, each of those roles opens up to various niches for you in raids.

Three examples:

• Paladins can heal, tank, and dps. They’ve got all the bases covered! However, each role is not complete and universal coverage of that role. Pallies heal single targets extremely well, but struggle with being stunned and group damage. Pallies tank large groups of mobs extremely well, but struggle at times with raid bosses and caster bosses. Pallies dps well in PvP, but struggle with the continuous high level of damage needed for PvE.
• Rogues do one thing: damage. When built correctly, they can damage in any situation in the game, caster or melee, PvP or PvE. They damage well. They have to, because they don’t tank or heal.
• Priests can heal or damage. Priests are great healers. However, even when they choose to spec and play a damage role, their damage rarely compares with pure damage classes, either in PvP or PvE.

While the best guilds will value a good hybrid player (the druid who can tank or dps, the pally who can tank or offheal), there simply aren’t that many hybrid positions available in raids. Most of the time, you have to excel at one thing, which means largely sacrificing that versatility and embracing your class’s niche. You have to learn to kick butt as much as possible in the one thing you choose to be excellent at.

Here’s where I lift a toast to every restoration druid who has ever received the raid or instance direction:

“The tank’s dead! Tree-man! Go bear form and pick up that boss!”

Tree-man is sitting there thinking,

“I’m wearing a mix of leather and cloth healing gear. The warlock has more health than I do, and I have a pally salvation buff. I do have a tanking set of gear, but it’s trapped in my bag because we’re in combat.

“Bear form is not a Superman cape!”

But Treeman switches anyway, because he’s built for restoration and hardly ever gets to rawr in groups. It’s a more fun way to die.

Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
• Officers should all have Tanks and Healers
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: PvP vs PvE

No class is globally better at PvP than every other class. WoW PvP is a huge rock-paper-scissor game, where there’s an answer for every move, or in WoW’s case, Class A always feels overpowered to an opponent of Class B, Class B over Class C, and Class C over Class A. (except expanded out to an 11-way graph) While no class is universally dominant in PvP, some builds are universally better than other builds in that environment.

For example, protection warriors are a PvE tanking spec. They don’t provide a heck of a lot of control or damage, and no healing, to a PvP group. (They do get to annoy casters and melee dps though. Also, reflecting pyroblast back at mage is joy.)

Likewise, a character that is heavily invested in pvp is specialized in abilities that don’t matter in pve, like extreme survivability or crowd control. The extreme survivability doesn’t matter because of the basic nature of PvE: you have an absurd amount of damage coming into points of the raid whose job is not to be instantly killed by it (the tanks), you have people’s whose job it is to keep those people alive (the healers), and then everyone else has to remove the source of that absurd damage (the dps). If your raid’s system breaks down and the boss starts running around the raid and killing non-tanks, your priest or warlock’s improved fear won’t help, your rogue’s cheat death won’t help, your arms warrior’s and paladin’s plate won’t help. Various class’s ability to recover from critical hits doesn’t matter when the boss hits you for four times your maximum health. All those PvP tricks don’t matter.

Running a PvP spec toon in PvE raiding is pedaling uphilll while others are on even ground, and some are rolling downhill. If you’re a PvP spec and are awesome in raids, then congratulations: you are a great player! However, your guild also knows you’re a great player. There are many other people of your spec who are frustrated and confused as to why people pass them up for groups and instances. PvP specced people are even more reliant on having outstanding gear and greater skill than an equally-geared pve spec player in order to do the exact same job in a PvE raid.

This is fair. PvE spec people are less effective in battlegrounds and arena. (Unless by “effective” you mean “easier to kill”, in which case they are much more effective.)

Both ways, the average experience can be overcome with sufficient skill, but given two equal characters played by two equally skilled players, one built for pve and the other built for pvp, with no other variables a raid or group lead is going to take the pve build, because it’s designed to be successful in the content that they want to run.

Secret Design of WoW PvE: PvP vs PvE is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Introduction, and a call for comments
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid

Your ability to solo partially determines the experience you’ll have in groups. If you have an easy time in the leveling game, you are going to have a more difficult experience in the endgame/group game. The following list goes from easy-to-solo to hard-to-solo.

• Hunters are the easiest class to level while playing the solo leveling game, no matter what spec. Pet plus ranged damage is just simple.
• Warlocks are second. Again, a pet class. (I might be wrong on this. Someday I have to fill in my knowledge gap regarding warlocks)
• Rogues and mages are third. Lots of damage is easy grinding.
• Then shamans and druids, because of the damage/healing hybrid nature.
• Until finally you get down to classes that are harder to solo, like paladins, priests, and warriors.

Now, I’m not saying that paladins are hard to solo. All of WoW solo content is easy with every class. It’s just that leveling a pally is harder than leveling a hunter or a warlock. Of course, it’s possible to build a “hard to solo” class like a pally in such a way that when matched against a poorly-played warlock that the pally would come out ahead. Player skill counts for a lot, and that’s true of all the comparisons to come. But given two equal players, there’s no way to correctly spec and play a priest so that they’ll solo as fast or as easily as a correctly spec’ed and played mage.

So why does this matter? Well, classes that are easier to level have that balance come out somewhere. Somewhere inside their decision tree, and this is just an example, Blizzard said “hunters will not have an easy time in raids because they level so easily”.

Now, individual hunters can be great in raids, just as great and useful as other classes. But your typical fully-leveled hunter never had to build a good skill set that a player needs to be a good raider. Four parts pet attack button, four parts Autoshot, one part Mend Pet. Sprinkle Arcane Shot and Multishot to taste. Let simmer for /played. Voila, max level!

Blizzard decided that hunters would have to work harder (shot rotations based on hidden cast times, non-obvious math, and spreadsheet-only derivations regarding weapon choices and haste) to do comparable performance as other classes in their role (damage). If it were easy for a hunter to be competitive in raids, nobody would ever play anything but hunter! They would rule both inside and outside groups.

Now, the solo game doesn’t just come to a screeching halt when you hit L70. There are dailies, reputation grinds, crafting that requires plenty of hard-to-find materials… in fact, much of this is very helpful to generate the resources to give you an edge in performance while participating in the end game. However, the playstyle of all this content is exactly like the solo/levelling game. So for the purposes of this discussion, it’s the same.

When farming motes for primals, everyone groans when the hunter arrives. Nobody has it easier. You don’t find many RMT-farming priests, warriors, or paladins.

On the flip side, the frustration that pallies, priests, and warriors feel while leveling and playing the solo game is more than made up for in their group play. Tanking and healing shines in groups, and this is the big payout.

Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Introduction, and a call for comments
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: PvP vs PvE

It occurred to me that people who haven’t been grouping or raiding a lot don’t know what role various classes have in a raid, or of class design in general. You can go read the page on the worldofwarcraft website, but they make every class sound equally great at everything. That’s just not the reality of it. So I can keep complaining about how many people get stuck between little knowledge and expanded knowledge, or I can take my shot at fixing it via explanation.

If you don’t know how a particular character or spec of a character fits into the group game that follows the leveling game, this is for you.

It’s possible to find out everything I’m about to write from various places online, but as far as I know, there’s not one place where it’s all connected. Most articles are written from the point of view of one class or another; every guide is written by that class, for that class.

This is going to be the top level view, how raid leaders (and possibly Blizzard designers) look at classes and their role in the game.

I write here simply to relay what I’ve come to understand as the game of WoW as it relates to the PvE endgame. If you disagree with something I’m about to say, that’s fine, but please remember that I’m not thinking of any one player, especially you, when I’m writing this. I’ve read as many internets as I could, led many raids, played too many classes, and this is what I know.

Now, I’ve raided with a number of classes at high level, but not all of them. I’ve lead many raids of various sizes, but not all the way through the endgame in either version of WoW. Some of what I’m about to say might be incorrect. Therefore:

Please comment to educate me, and I’ll update the articles as necessary.

Hope you enjoy it.

(Someone else can write a “The Secret Design of WoW: PvP” guide or series. I’ll be glad to link from it here.)

Secret Design of WoW PvE: Introduction, and a call for comments is from Groups of Words.

• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Variety vs Specialization
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: PvP vs PvE
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Performer vs Group Utility
• Secret Design of WoW PvE: Your role in a PvE raid