All expansions and metas have classes that are a bit easier to pick up or make work, while others are more nuanced, especially in PvP. Cataclysm is no exception in that regard. In this article, we will go over the criteria and reasons why some classes are harder than the others, to give you a better understanding of what to expect from PvP in the new expansion. In order to understand both sides of the difficulty spectrum, we will go over the easiest and hardest classes to play in PvP in Cataclysm.
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Introduction
Before we begin, a quick disclaimer is in order. No class is guaranteed Gladiator just for existing, so you shouldn’t feel bad for playing a certain spec. It is also important to understand the difference between “easy” and “hard” classes, which comes down to “skill floor” and “skill ceiling”.
Skill floor represents the difficulty of learning the foundation of a spec or class. This is the minimum requirement to do well and is based on a few things. For melee DPS, it can mean the complexity of your rotation. Can you do most of your damage with 1 or 2 buttons? How many CC abilities do you have? Does precise timing of using them matter? These are just some of the things that determine the skill floor of a spec.
On the other hand, skill ceiling represents how far a class can be pushed to the absolute limit. Having a high skill-cap means being able to min-max endlessly due to subtle nuances in the spec’s toolkit.
Melee
Easy
Frost Death Knight
This specialization is the most straight forward melee in the game, as this consists of using Obliterate, Frost Strike, and Howling Blast during Rime procs. Similar to its modern design, Frost DK is given Pillar of Frost as their major offensive cooldown, and Hungering Cold as their AoE Crowd Control spell. This allows for 1 minute setup windows for Frost DKs to set up kill windows on their enemies.
Due to Frost DK not requiring any pet management or snapshotting on their spells, Frost DK is mechanically straight forward and has the lowest skill floor in Cataclysm Season 9.
Moderate
Subtlety Rogue
Moving on to Moderate specializations, Subtlety Rogue has dropped down from being a Hard melee to a Moderate melee. Cataclysm has introduced a multitude of changes for Rogues, which has provided more on demand control and stronger defensive cooldowns. The difficulty that arises when playing this specialization is using Rogue utility properly and effectively in order to find kill windows. This involves using Preparation, and is important make valuable usage of Vanish and Smoke Bomb as you can reset the cooldown of these spells.
What causes this specialization to be a Moderate melee is mainly due to Rogues playing more as a brawling melee as opposed to a careful tactician. Due to their ability, Recuperate, as well as Evasion and Cloak of Shadows, Rogues are efficient at surviving for long periods of time and are typically avoidant to death in most scenarios. Also, changes in Vanish have prevented this ability from breaking immediately from spells when used, and with the addition of Glyph of Blind, Blind can be used on demand.
Arms Warrior
Entering into Cataclysm, Arms Warrior becomes way less forgiving of a specialization. This means that Warriors must maintain careful defensive play in order to survive opponent onslaughts. In terms of their defensive play, Warriors aren’t allowed to blindly press their offensive cooldowns, especially since Recklessness prevents Warriors from pressing Shield Wall.
Also, due to Rogues having Find Weakness in Cataclysm Classic Season 9, and that Warriors have an increased cooldown on their Spell Reflection, this makes them more vulnerable to enemy swaps. In order to play effectively as a Warrior in Season 9, its important to focus on optimizing your damage while also being attentive to enemy cooldowns. Due to Arms Warriors toolkit provided in Cataclysm, this makes you a pseudo support specialization, allowing you to support your teammates with Intervene, Spell Reflection, and Intimidating Shout.
Unholy Death Knight
Comparative to Wrath, this specialization focuses directly on their win condition from the ability, Summon Gargoyle. The learning curve involves increasing the amount of damage Gargoyle provides through snapshotted buffs, as well as keeping your targets in Line of Sight to maximize the output of your offensive cooldowns.
Unholy Death Knights must utilize more pet management than before, which involves using Death Coil to increase the damage of your Ghoul pet from Shadow Infusion. This involves Death Knights having to maximize and maintain their pet buffs before and during their Dark Transformation cooldown. This specialization has also received Necrotic Strike, which requires more maintenance and knowledge for when its necessary to use.
Retribution Paladin
Ret Paladin was considered the most difficult to rank in this tier list, and despite being one of the last specs in Medium tier, it could be considered a Hard melee to play. This is due to the amount of abilities that are given to Ret Paladins in order to support and assist their allies, which in turn makes them a powerful pseudo support specialization.
The amount of off-healing this specialization provides from Word of Glory is extremely strong. From Selfless Healer and Last Word, this causes Ret Paladins to situationally determine when it’s best to use their Word of Glory. This is due to the possibility of you being Crowd Controlled by your opponents, or from Rogues using Smoke Bomb to prevent any spells casted on the target. Making these decisions to heal as a DPS specialization increases Ret Paladin’s skill ceiling. Also, Selfless Healer only is effective on allies, making Rets the kill target from most compositions. In order to play this specialization well, it means you will have to feel comfortable playing under pressure in PvP combat.
What redeems Ret Paladin’s difficulty is their survivability and tankiness from their defensive toolkit. Having Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Sacred Shield, have more than most specs to stay alive. This helps ease newer players into PvP.
Enhancement Shaman
Enhancement Shamans have experienced some changes for Cataclysm, which includes giving Shamans more reactive defensive cooldowns, and a more complicated rotation. Also, this specialization requires a lot of off-healing in order to excel in arena, making this specialization more tricky than others.
Cataclysm introduces a rework to Tremor Totem, turning this spell into a 1 minute reactive cooldown that can be used while feared. This cuts a bit of responsibility from the spec. Another spell given to Shamans is Shamanistic Rage, as this allows them to mitigate incoming damage when in a stun. This makes Enhance Shaman less reliant on pre-emptive play to disrupt kill windows.
Another reason for placing this specialization in the moderate tier is due to an increased amount of spells to their rotation. Enhance Shamans have been introduced to Unleash Elements, providing an additional ability added to your damage rotation. This spell changes its effectiveness depending on your applied weapon enchant, which can change your method of using this spell in specific matchups.
Hard
Feral Druid
Feral Druid is considerably the most broken melee specialization in PvP due to it’s excessive amounts of defensive utility, control, and damage output. In order for you to land kills consistently as Feral, it requires a bit of knowledge of what makes this specialization so powerful.
Cataclysm introduced Predatory Strikes, which can be used at full combo points to guarantee an instant cast nature spell on your enemies. Pairing this spell with your strongest nature Crowd Control spell, Cyclone, makes this extremely powerful to prevent incoming damage or to slow the game out. It is also important to consider utilizing snapshotting to the fullest potential, as this can strengthen your bleed effects. If you aren’t abusing snapshotting, you end up losing out of a ton of DPS, making this almost mandatory to excel as this specialization.
Not Recommended for PvP
These melee specializations are considered weaker than every other spec, and will cause you to struggle if you decide to pick any of these up for competitive PvP.
Assassination Rogue, Combat Rogue, and Fury Warrior.
Ranged
Easy
Balance Druid
Balance Druid is relatively straightforward in Cataclysm, making this specialization easier to perform as in competitive PvP. Although this spec is considered mediocre, the rotation is similar to its modern design in terms of applying your DoTs and bursting with Starsurge.
Another concept that requires some knowledge is the new Eclipse system, which boosts all Arcane and Nature damage spells when reaching 100 Eclipse Energy. Since this ability automatically applies when using damage spells, this does not require much change in playstyle.
Their main challenge is when they are trained. Since they are considered a primary kill target from most compositions, Druids will end up sitting in Bear Form for prolonged periods of time when your Barkskin and Frenzied Regeneration are on cooldown.
Moderate
Marksmanship Hunter
Marksmanship Hunters were originally a complicated specialization to master, due to their ability to dismiss and re-summon their pets in order to reset the cooldown of their pet spells. This is currently patched in Cataclysm Classic, making this spec less complicated and easier to fit into the moderate category for this tier list.
Instead of cycling through pets to apply Roar of Sacrifice on their team, Hunters can focus on maximizing their damage. Damage is way easier to do now, since Hunters now have Focus instead of Mana when using spells. Hunters typically use a Monkey pet, which makes landing Crowd Control way easier on healers.
Elemental Shaman
Going into Cataclysm, Elemental Shamans lose their crown as one of the most dominant specializations. This involves losing their strongest self-defensive passive, Astral Shift, making them take considerably more damage throughout the expansion.
With added glyphs and changes in damage rotation, Elemental Shamans are able to execute their rotation in a more fluid way. Glyph of Unleashed Lightning helps with this, as this allows for your Lightning Bolt to be casted while moving. Also, introducing the talent, Fulmination, makes damage more bursty from Earth Shock, giving them a periodic source of instant cast damage.
Elemental Shaman’s damage rotation is more straightforward than most due to their primary spell being castable while moving and having on-demand burst. Since Shaman’s lose out on defensives, this requires careful decision making before being aggressive in matchups. Overall, Elemental Shaman fits relatively well as a moderate ranged spec.
Affliction Warlock
Due to the amount of pet and DoT management required to succeed in competitive PvP, we have placed Affliction Warlock as a moderate level spec to play. Let’s explain more on why that is the case.
Cataclysm introduces Soul Swap, a giant quality of life improvement for Affliction Warlocks in PvP. Having the ability to spread your DoTs from a target, and apply them to another target reduces the burden of needing to focus heavily on DoT maintenance. When Warlocks aren’t spreading their DoTs around, they typically use Haunt for increased DoT damage, and Drain Life to save themselves in dire situations.
Another skill that puts Warlocks in the moderate tier is snapshotting. Due to the introduction to Demon Soul, it’s important to snapshot your DoTs optimally, requiring Warlock players to focus more on their temporary buffs. Also, their defensive toolkit is mostly passive abilities, especially from Soul Link and Demon Armor, making this specialization more forgiving than others.
Fire Mage
Fire Mage is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful specs in the game for the entirety of Cataclysm. The difficulty in this specialization comes from their rotation, which requires minmaxing of your DoTs as opposed to your direct damage spells.
Looking at Combustion, this spell combines your periodic Fire damage, a majority of that damage is obtained through Ignite. The more direct damage that is applied on your target, the more Fire damage this ability will do. In order to maximize the damage of this cooldown, Mages Shatter their Scorch or Fire Blast for a Hot Streak. Then, they either shatter or rely on RNG to crit their Pyroblasts for massive burst damage.
This specialization tends to be more RNG based, and can be extremely powerful if Mages receive lucky crits. Due to the rotation being a bit more confusing than retail, its best suited as a moderate spec when it comes to difficulty.
Frost Mage
For our last moderate specialization, we have Frost Mage taking this position. This spec requires a bit of pet management, but the damage rotation is very straightforward.
Frost Mages are given Frostfire Orb, which grants Mages a smoother method of generating procs for instant, direct damage. Cataclysm also gives Frost Mages a permanent Water Elemental pet, making it easier to Shatter Frostbolts. Managing pet position is important, as this allows you to get valuable Shatters off from Freeze, and is used to prevent your pet from dying.
Hard
Shadow Priest
Placed at the hard category in for ranged is Shadow Priest, this is due to the variance of gameplay that is offered when doing their rotation.
Shadow Priest is more of a unique specialization in Cataclysm based on the way damage is produced to enemy targets. After spending some time to ramp up DoT damage and generate Shadow Orbs, Orbs can be consumed with either Mind Blast to maintain your current DoTs, or with Mind Spike to gain more burst damage. Using Mind Spike will remove DoTs on the target, and both can result in re-applying your dots for a snapshotted damage increase.
This specialization also has a large variety of utility, which involves Mass Dispel, off-healing, and Leap of Faith to assist your team and score kills on your opponents.
Not Recommended for PvP
These ranged specializations are considered weaker than every other spec, and will cause you to struggle if you decide to pick any of these up for competitive PvP.
Beast Mastery Hunter, Survival Hunter, Arcane Mage, Demonology Warlock and Destruction Warlock
Healers
Easy
Restoration Shaman
Based on the defensive nature of Restoration Shaman in Cataclysm, as well as how powerful their healing really is, this is ranked as the easiest healer to play out of all Healer specializations.
Restoration Shaman’s healing primarily consists of Earth Shield, Healing Stream, Unleash Life, and Riptide, giving them multiple sources of passive and instant cast healing. Also, their dispels provide additional healing from Cleansing Waters whenever they remove a magical debuff from their target. This makes dealing with RoT based compositions more manageable, which involves using more dispels to remove DoTs and passive healing from Earth Shield and Healing Stream.
Additionally, Resto Shamans are given totems that passively assist their teammates, especially from Strength of Earth Totem, which increases primary stat for Strength and Agility classes. This specialization is also well versatile with avoiding Crowd Control due to their Grounding Totem and Wind Shear, making them strong against caster specializations. As casters become more prominent in later seasons of Cataclysm, this will only empower the strengths of Restoration Shaman.
Moderate
Discipline Priest
Discipline Priest is considered more of a difficult healer to perform as, especially since it requires more of an offensive mindset as opposed to the other Healer specializations provided on this list. Due to the amount of offensive support this specialization offers, this results in more of a DPS mindset as opposed to a defensive support mindset.
This specializations dispel, Dispel Magic, removes two magic debuffs at a time, allowing Priests to remove Crowd Control easier on their allies so their team can stay aggressive. Abusing your dispel will enable your success, especially when playing as a setup composition.
Also, Cataclysm has introduced defensive cooldowns for this specialization, including Aura Mastery from Inner Focus, and Power Word: Barrier. Power Word: Barrier requires both reactive and pre-emptive play in order to mitigate damage from your team, making this more difficult to use this cooldown effectively. Another benefit of Barrier is that it is primarily useful into Rogues when Smoke Bomb is used on an ally.
Holy Paladin
Holy Paladin maintains much of its identity from Wrath of the Lich King as a cooldown based Healer, making it more reliant on smart decision making for your allies to survive long, drawn out matches. This specialization is typically seen with melee cleaves, as their utility allows them to connect easier on their opponents.
Paladins in Cataclysm are introduced with a new Holy Power resource, which assists them in how they heal. Combining cooldowns like Avenging Wrath or Guardian of Ancient Kings with their talent, Last Word, allows Paladins to immediately top their allies, when at low HP, with Word of Glory. This is valuable due to Season 9 having lower health pools than any other season in Cataclysm, making it easier to gain value out of Last Word.
Wizards are typically difficult for Holy Paladins, since a majority of their defensive cooldowns help avoid and immune physical damage. Also, Paladins have a more difficult time avoiding casted Crowd Control outside of Hand of Sacrifice, making this specialization weaker as the expansion progresses.
Hard
Restoration Druid
As for our last specialization in this tier list, Restoration Druid has been placed in the Hard category. This is primarily due to how they heal in Cataclysm, as well as noticing opportunities to push for Crowd Control, especially when using Cyclone.
Instead of their healing breakdown primarily focusing on Lifebloom, it has shifted towards using Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, and even Efflorescence for additional healing output. Their healing is extremely lackluster, making it more difficult to stabilize teammates from offensive burst damage. The only way to heal through pressure as a Restoration Druid is when Tree Form is used. This is now a cooldown, and if you shift out of this form, you can’t shift back it, making it useless.
The best way to succeed as Resto Druid is by playing a high tier composition, finding yourself Mages, Shadow Priests, Shamans, and Ret Paladins to help carry your healing weakness. Also, due to the lack of healing, mastering Cyclone is mandatory to excel as this specialization. This requires more thought out and planned decision making to sustain your teammates during crucial moments.
Not Recommended for PvP
Holy Priest
Holy Priest is the only healer specialization that is considered weaker than every other spec, and will cause you to struggle if you decide to pick any of these up for competitive PvP.
Final Thoughts
And there we have a complete picture of difficulty levels in each role. We put emphasis on skill floor instead of skill ceiling, focusing on how difficult classes are to pick up for newer players. There are quite a few options in all sections and roles depending on your preference. The overarching theme is how complex the rotation is and how many things you may need to focus on in arena. If the spec has a fairly linear rotation without requiring precise control, it is generally very forgiving for newer players. Having to balance offensive and defensive plays can be quite punishing, so you may need to avoid classes that require you to do so. Difficulty isn’t the only thing you should keep in mind when picking a main, but is still worth considering depending on your PvP goals in Cataclysm Classic.