With a new leveling experience upon us and the expansion looming, plenty of players are returning or looking into what they should be maining in SL. Making these sorts of decisions can prove pretty difficult if you don’t have experience with the different playstyles on offer and especially so if you’ve been gone for an extended period and aren’t familiar with all the changes that a class has seen over multiple expansions. The prevailing advice usually tells new players to play what they like, but what if you don’t know, or you’re stuck between multiple options?
The right class for you is going to depend on a number of things. First, you should narrow down what role you’re looking to play. From there it’s going to be much easier to cover what you should aim for, and the advice here should help you settle on a solid, safe class for you. Keep in mind, this guide is focused on providing general insights rather than content-specific recommendations. While some classes shine in particular settings, it’s more likely to leave you with a fun class if we don’t focus on one specific niche. From that angle, we’ll discuss the specs that fit each role best for simplicity or strength, and start with a nod to flexibility with a class that is the ultimate fit for the uncertain player; Druid.
Flexibility
While there are a lot of factors that can help an undecided player find the specialization that is perfect for them, an excellent starting point if you’re feeling indecisive is looking into the classes that support the three major roles: Monk, Paladin, and Druid. Among them, Druid is special because it has four specializations rather than the usual three and covers both sub-roles of DPS with a ranged and melee option. If you’re looking for a class that can let you try out many different playstyles without leveling and gearing a new character, Druid is easily your best option.
In all three cases, the strength of each individual spec isn’t perfectly the same, and Druid, despite getting the recommendation here, is still guilty of this. Monks tend to see Windwalker, their DPS spec, not living up to the highs Mistweaver and Brewmaster do. In Druid’s case, Restoration and Balance tend to be the stars of the show where Guardian and Feral are less desired. Paladin is the least painful in this regard since usually all three specializations are fairly solid and the one in the lead compared to the rest of their role hasn’t trended towards always being the same.
One of the biggest issues you might face playing Druid is actually other Druids because of this. The class boasts stellar utility, but that utility is shared by all four specializations for the most part. Groups that already have that utility from an existing Restoration healer may not be as interested in, say, Feral DPS because of it.
Simplicity
If you’re a new or returning player, or swapping roles, simplicity can be a huge boon. There are piles of things to get used to and when you’re not already comfortable with the things your role is expected to do at a baseline this long into the game’s lifecycle it can be a headache to have to juggle a complex or very attention-demanding rotation while you’re learning several other things. For this, I’d recommend options where the skill floor is low. Keep in mind, the skill ceiling isn’t necessarily in the same place and these recommendations shouldn’t be taken to mean getting the most out of these specs is trivial. They’re chosen specifically for being simple to get started.
Melee DPS: Havoc Demon Hunter
Not only is Havoc the winner in terms of the melee pack, if you’re looking for the absolute utmost in ease of learning, Havoc should be your choice. At its most basic level, Havoc has one ability you press to generate a resource, another you press to spend it, and a handful that should be used every time their cooldown completes, and that’s all. Optimizing it can certainly become a more complex affair, and you could theoretically make it even more simple with a much-maligned talent but at its core Havoc provides solid performance with very low demand. They’re also insanely mobile which makes them even more helpful for getting used to moving during bosses, responding to other players, and generally handling the other tasks the game expects beyond just dealing damage.
Ranged DPS: Beast Mastery Hunter
While most ranged classes are actually casters and learning them has their own hurdles, Beast Mastery is unique in having the usual advantages of both Melee and Ranged DPS simultaneously. Usually, melee can move, while ranged classes have to stand still for at least part of their damage dealing. Beast Mastery never has to stop despite getting to play 40 yds away from their target. This makes mechanics that heavily punish either style tend not to hurt Beast Mastery and just about the only things that really hamper them will probably hurt another spec more. In addition, the absolute floor for playing them is a rotation that sorts itself out with desynchronized cooldowns on the majority of abilities. Getting deep into optimizing the spec is a lot more complex, and it makes a great option for players who want an easy to learn, hard to master experience.
Tank: Guardian Druid
Guardian is an excellent onboard for new tank players because you have a ton that you need to keep track of as a good tank. What the enemy is doing, even outside of fight-defining mechanics is extremely important to a tank and in many cases, doing your job of surviving makes knowing the enemy casts and general flow is as or more important than your own. That’s a lot to take on if you haven’t tanked or healed before but Guardian makes things a little easier by making your own button presses and resource management fairly simple. Outside of the defensives you’ll use to tank through threatening situations you have some basic DoT management and abilities to press on cooldown. It’s worth noting though, that while most tanks are weaker against Magic than physical damage, Guardian has a particularly hard time with resisting magic and in some cases just cannot have enough defensives off cooldown for meaningful magic spikes and will have to rely on their healer to pick up the slack.
Healer: Holy Priest
Healers are the role that features the highest skill floor in general, but Holy provides a reasonably simple starting point with the basic push-pull of slow, cheap heals contrasting fast, expensive ones. Healing is ultimately a game of managing your resources and knowing just how much you need to commit without spending valuable cooldowns or too much mana so you can’t avoid some amount of growing pain when learning them. Holy at least doesn’t stack a large number of synergistic interactions that complicate your spell selection onto this, with most synergies coming in the form of cooldown reductions to your emergency heals.
Strength
It’s too early to say for certain what will be the best once Shadowlands comes out and balance is always subject to change, but if you’re on the fence and want something that is poised to reward skilled play there are options available. Selections here are based both on the current state of classes, their trajectory headed into the expansion, and how meaningful their utility is and has been since utility is less often nerfed than damage and often just as much of a factor in content.
Melee DPS: Frost Death Knight
Let’s not get too deep into this without addressing the elephant in the room; Frost is often hard to play well. It features a dual resource system, buffs to maintain, and procs to manage all while still being expected to use Death Grip at the right times, handle an in-combat resurrection, and now handling Anti-Magic Zone as well. It does, however, immensely reward that difficulty. The utility alone that Frost brings to the table will generally make it a desirable class and currently its damage is quite solid as well. Better yet, unlike some classes, your utility tends not to suffer heavily from diminishing returns; a group can get use from multiple death grips and casts of anti-magic zone in ways that other utility often doesn’t.
Ranged DPS: Affliction Warlock
Warlocks are the kings of group content quality of life thanks to providing healthstones, the much-desired summoning portal, demonic gateways for planned movement, and more. This means that a group would probably have some desire to have a Warlock even if they were a complete dead weight on the meters but thankfully, they aren’t. Affliction is an extremely solid spec that, while it shines on single target, tends to be great against many different enemy configurations. Better yet, their talents are robust and allow a lot of customization as to how hard the spec is to play. You can start out minimizing the complexity through talent choices and ramp up as you get more comfortable; Affliction is a DoT focused spec that can manage as few as two or as many as six drain effects with a surrounding supporting kit. This is a huge upside, though its minimum is still more punishing of mistakes than Beast Mastery was for that recommendation, Affliction can help you slowly get used to the class before you juggle everything all at once. If you want to always be relevant, Affliction is the DPS spec for you.
Tank: Blood Death Knight
Touting the same utility advantages as their sister spec Frost, Blood also makes an excellent all-around tank with varied and powerful cooldowns, excellent magic mitigation, and self-healing that scales with the damage they’ve taken. Blood is extremely good, and the addition of anti-magic zone giving their already strong tools against magic another buff makes them easily the best option for handling what is traditionally the weak spot of other excellent tanks. As a Blood Death Knight, you have many options, and in stark contrast to something like Guardian that generally has few decisions to make outside of its cooldown use, Blood has a very toolbox style where several of even your non-cooldowns are meant to be used in particular situations rather than on a consistent, recurring basis. This can lead to some extra difficulty, but also increases your control over the character and rewards knowledgable play.
Healer: Discipline PriestDisc is another spec that falls into the generally difficult category. You lack the depth of heavy tools that many other Healers have to correct mistakes or catch up when you’re behind, but in exchange, you get a unique and powerful central theme. While it isn’t unusual for other healers to have some interaction between their damage and healing spells, Discipline heals primarily through dealing damage and has the highest damage output of any of the healers to support this. This means that a well-played Disc Priest is essentially double-dipping on throughput; they keep their fellow players alive while also dealing meaningful damage. You won’t (or at least shouldn’t) be outpacing the actual DPS players on the meters, but bosses will die faster for your presence. Just keep in mind that strength comes at a cost and you have to be on top of your game to make the most of Disc; fall behind and your group might just die.