Power Ranking all Classes (For 5-toon Multi-boxing)

[Vegasboxing]

Protection Warrior:

Overall Ranking: 9^th Single Target Burst Dmg: 8^th AOE Burst Dmg: 7^th Survivability 10^th

Protection spec because, forget about it… you won’t be able to last long enough to dish out damage in a DPS spec. Unlike DK’s, which have a ranged alternative strategy, melee bombing is your only choice with the Warriors.

Take the talents Double Time, Enraged Regeneration, Unyielding Strikes, Dragon Roar, Mass Spell Reflection, Bladestorm, and Gladiator’s Resolve. Take the Glyphs Wind and Thunder, and Resonating Power.

The melee bomb strat works similar to the DK strat, but without diseases. Use Charge to dive into a juicy target, such as a healer. Open up with a Thunder Clap, which will do some AOE damage, put bleed DoT’s on everyone in range, and slow them down with a snare.

Then break into a Bladestorm. I like to use a macro consisting of a combination of Land Stand, Demoralizing Shout, Shield Wall, and Shield Barrier, as well as Bladestorm itself.

Once you come out of the Bladestorm, follow up with another Thunder Clap, and then Dragon’s Roar for the finale. If your healer target is close to dead, finish them off with Devastate or Execute.

Then, using a combination of Shield Barrier, Enraged Regeneration, and Mass Spell Reflection, you should be able to Intervene and Heroic Leap your way back to the safety of your teammates. Wait for your Bladestorm cooldown, and repeat.

Thunder Clap is a terrific way to AOE pressure the enemy down with Deep Wounds procs, while snaring them at the same time. Devastate and Revenge are really good melee abilities, Devastate having no cooldown and no rage cost, so it is spammable.

Legion Thoughts:
Deep Wounds looks like it’s gone, which is a pretty big loss… and Bladestorm will be Arms and Fury only, so that pretty much kills Prot PvP. There are some good DPS talents choices… Siegebreaker, Crackling Thunder, Avatar, and Booming Voice… and there are some good Survivability talent choices… Second Wind, Never Surrender, and Softened Blows.

Fury will probably be a much better choice in the next expansion, as Bloodthirst will restore 5% health, Imposing Roar will give you a 20% leech, and it gives you access to Bladestorm (240% + 240% physical damage each second with two weapons equipped!) and Dragon’s Roar in the last talent tier. Hopefully they will have enough Survivability to make an impact.


Destruction Warlock:

Overall Ranking: 10^th Single Target Burst Dmg: 5^th AOE Burst Dmg: 8^th Survivability 13^th (Last)

Destruction Warlocks are the bottom of the barrel in Survivability, mostly because they have no way to run away from a persistent melee character. …And with very few instant cast spells, no real way to burst a melee class down. This is one of the few classes a boxer can play where the enemy running in circles around you still works really well. Other classes will have an instant cast burst response, or some other method to run away from them.

The biggest thing the Lock has going for them is the famous Chaos Bolt spell, the hardest hitting spell in the game. As a 5-boxer though, it is pretty much overkill, and the long cast time and the building up of the Burning Embers resource is tedious and clunky.

I tried liking Cataclysm, the lvl 100 talent, as it does really good damage. However the short radius, long cast time, and the fact that you have to target the ground with all 5 toons, (which they never seem to target the same place even with a center macro), makes it tedious and ineffective. If only Mannoroth’s Fury worked with it…

Grimoire of Sacrifice is a decent talent and should be taken, however it makes Soul Link useless without a pet so you won’t get your leech.

The only decent combo I’ve found for AOE, though it can be tedious to set up, is with the talent Charred Remains. Build your way up to 4 burning embers, position yourself right at the 35’ish yard range from the enemy team, wait until they are nice and bunched up, then target someone and use Fire and Brimstone. Then cast Chaos Bolt a couple of times. Try to switch to a different target the second time you cast it. It should wreak havoc on their front line.

Legion Thoughts:
Burning Embers are now Soul Shards that can only be generated with Conflagrate and critical strikes with Immolate… yuck. Chaos Bolt still has a 3 second cast time and consumes TWO Soul Shards… yuck.

Instead of getting better Survivability talents… they seem to have lost the only decent ones they had… yuck. The one exception seems to be the PvP talent Demon Skin. It sounds like a good pick, but overall the class looks like a disappointment for Legion.

Maybe the redesign of the Demonology spec will be better. (Cast a Doom on everything in range?)


Elemental Shaman:

Overall Ranking: 11^th Single Target Burst Dmg: 11^th AOE Burst Dmg: 9^th Survivability 11^th

Oh the master class…. the birth of multi-boxers… how we miss the glory days. The truth is, the utility and broad selection of useful spells is all still there… it’s just that there is no burst DPS anymore. Chain Lightning used to hit hard, and Lava Burst used to hit like a truck back in the WotLK days. Now, Chain Lightning hits like a mosquito and Lava Burst hits like a horsefly. Why Blizz took away all the burst of Shamans and gave it to Hunters? I don’t know. But that’s the state of things now.

There’s really no good strategy for playing them; they just suck. Flame Shock a target, Lava Burst a target, Lava Burst again, do an Earth Shock and maybe 4 Lightning Bolts later you can get a kill. (Ok it’s not quite that bad, but seriously, there’s really no tricks to playing this class.) Just build up Fulmination for a while, and you might get a 1-shot kill with an Earth Shock every once in a while.

The only cool thing about Shamans is they get the best Ashran book, which gives you Ghost Wolf at epic mount speed with invisibility attached to it. They play much better as resto healers, so if healing is your thing, do that.

Legion Thoughts:
Other than the minor change of Fulmination charges to a Maelstrom resource instead, very little is going to change with this class.

Control of Lava might be the best talent for Shamans coming up in Legion. It seems mandatory to give you some good Lava Burst damage. Lightning Lasso looks interesting, although I can’t tell how much damage it’s going to do. It’s very interesting that Shamans are going to get some decent stun spells besides just a lame totem.

I doubt those two talents are going to completely turn around the downfall of this class, but perhaps they will move up in the power rankings.


Rogue:

Overall Ranking: 12^th Single Target Burst Dmg: 12^th AOE Burst Dmg: 12^th Survivability 9^th

The spec you play as a Rogue is entirely preferential; I seemed to have the most success with Assassination, but others could do better with different specs I’m sure. I use the word “success” lightly here, as I never really had much success or enjoyed playing the Rogues very much in Ashran or BG’s. I did enjoy them back in the day when I did world PvP in Timeless Isle, but those days are gone.

Because melee is so bad in Ashran, the best I could do is grab the Shuriken Toss talent and go to town on someone from 30 yards out. After a while of doing this though, you realize you might as well just log off and play a real ranged class.

If you happen to catch someone alone and separated from the rest of their pack, you can open with Vendetta, and using the Subterfuge talent, Ambush them a couple of times, and then Dispatch them. I always set one of my toons to Cheap Shot when the others Ambush, so that you at least get a stun on your target.

Legion Thoughts:
Subtlety looks like it will be the best option, as Shuriken Toss looks like it won’t be available to the other two specs. The PvP talents Cold Blood and Shadowy Duel look interesting.

Shadowstrike looks like a better version of Ambush, and will deal 550% of Attack Power as damage and teleport you behind the target… as well as granting a combo point. Coupled with Cold Blood and/or Shadow Dance, this could make for a lot of quick kills.

Still no good range options, so unless there’s going to be some really cool world PvP (like Timeless Isle was…) in the expansion, I’d steer clear of this class for the most part.