World of Warcraft players likely still have at least a few months until Shadowlands officially releases sometime in 2020 Q4, but fans of Azeroth are already learning a ton about the upcoming content. Beta testing is well under on the public test realms and, along with some major WoW story spoilers, fans are able to learn a lot about how the classes are going to play after the impending level squish and the usual class balance tweaks that come with any major expansion.
The addition of Covenant choice and that decision's impact on class abilities is an interesting new wrench in the metagame, but the number crunchers are already hard at work figuring out which classes are going to climb to the top of the damage charts when World of Warcraft Shadowlands releases. It's obviously too early to say for sure if there's a clear best DPS class, but early testing data does include a few big winners and losers.
Thanks to information from the PTRs, the team at wowmeta has been able to build an evolving DPS chart for the Shadowlands era. The rankings are updated daily and offer a nice high level view of which classes are best optimized for the endgame PvE available on the test realms. Fans may not be surprised to see Destruction Warlocks topping the charts, but there are some interesting twists on the way down to the bottom...
Note: Keep in mind that Shadowlands content is still being tweaked and these rankings could potentially change on a daily basis. The DPS is calculated based on performance in PvE (Raids, Mythic+ Dungeons) at Level 60 for both Single Target and AoE situations.
Destruction Warlock - 9.2K (100%)
Beast Mastery Hunter - 8.3K (90%)
Assassination Rogue - 7K (76%)
Fury Warrior - 6.9K (75%)
Affliction Warlock - 6.9K (75%)
Havoc Demon Hunter - 6.8K (74%)
Frost Mage - 6.7K (73%)
Balance Druid - 6.6K (72%)
Windwalker Monk - 6.5K (71%)
Frost Death Knight - 6.5K (71%)
Feral Druid - 6.4K (70%)
Retribution Paladin - 6.3K (68%)
Shadow Priest - 6.3K (68%)
Arms Warrior - 6.1K (66%)
Demonology Warlock - 6.2K (65%)
Fire Mage - 5.9K (64%)
Arcane Mage - 5.8K (63%)
Elemental Shaman - 5.7K (62%)
Unholy Death Knight - 5.7K (62%)
Marksmanship Hunter - 5.5K (60%)
Subtlety Rogue - 5.3K (58%)
Enhancement Shaman - 5.3K (58%)
Outlaw Rogue - 5.2K (56%)
Survival Hunter - 5.2K (56%)
When using a DPS ranking like this, it's always important to keep in mind that the numbers are based on close to perfect performance by top-level players in some of the most challenging encounters in the game. The average player leveling up or working through lower level Mythic dungeons likely doesn't need to worry too much about this sort of ranking. Basically, players who want to run an Outlaw Rogue or Suvival Hunter shouldn't use this chart as an indication that they are making a bad decision. In practice, the difference between DPS will more often come down to who knows their class, the fights, and mechanics best.
Be sure to check back in the coming weeks as more details about Shadowlands emerge. Until then, For the Horde!
World of Warcraft is available now for PC. At this point, World of Warcraft Shadowlands does not have a confirmed release date.
Source: WoWmeta