Top 3 DPS - Healer - Tank in BFA
Top 3 DPS
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Frost Mage - The damage is competitive, but you’re in the dungeon to cast Blizzard a lot. Like...a LOT. The Blizzard snare will be a focal point of many trash strategies in BFA, and you can expect to see it feature prominently in the MDI. The new BFA intellect buff is a nice bump for other casters and your healer. Ice Block is a great ability for pushing high keys and will have some uses for certain cheesy strategies.
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Destruction Warlock - These guys can do serious work on the DPS meter currently, and they bring all the usual great warlock utility. Healthstones are always nice but are especially good early in expansions when healers struggle to move health bars quickly. Portals enable a lot of neat skips in dungeons. Summoning is great for quality of life but will also likely be utilized in certain dungeons to let players swap specs (or gear LOL) midway through a dungeon.
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Outlaw Rogue - BFA dungeons look like they’re gonna be similarly melee-unfriendly like Legion dungeons were, but if you’re going to bring a melee you can’t do much better than Outlaw. The damage is strong, and rogues have top notch utility. Shroud lets you skip a lot of trash that’s gross to deal with. Lockpicking will let you activate some very convenient skips in Tol’Dagor. Cloak of Shadows will let rogues soak some dangerous boss mechanics. And let’s not forget every healer’s favorite rogue ability: Feint.
Top 3 Healers
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Holy Paladin - Is anyone surprised? The class had a few abilities tweaked coming into BFA, but the deep toolkit that made pallies so dominant on live and in the MDI hasn’t changed much. Blessing of Sacrifice and Protection are top tier external defensives. Divine Shield lets paladins soak mechanics or avoid one-shot mechanics. Lay on Hands is extra useful in BFA where tank health is an issue. Beacon of Virtue is still great for quickly topping a group off, and Holy Shock is a great two-way spell. The icing on the cake is that pallies, long known for fantastic single target damage in Legion, have also become pretty good at dealing AoE damage as well. And the new Avenging Crusader talent lets paladins focus exclusively on dealing damage for sustained portions of a boss fight. If you’re looking for a flavor of the month/year/expansion healer in BFA, hop on this bandwagon.
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Discipline Priest - The big news coming out of this spec in BFA is that Power Word: Shield no longer has a cooldown and can now be spammed. No other healer has access to on-demand shields, and shields are strong in the infinitely scaling M+ environment. The usual warnings still apply to Disc: they struggle with Bursting because they have nothing to hit for Atonement healing, and the healing style itself can be a bit awkward for players accustomed to more traditional healing classes. Disc AoE damage isn’t great, but their single target DPS can hang with actual damage classes on fights where healing isn’t much required. Power Word: Fortitude is a great buff for the party (10% stam).
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Restoration Druid - I’ll probably get flayed by the Mistweaver community for not putting them here, but I haven’t seen anyone play MW on beta yet so it’s tough to separate hype from reality at this point. Druids essentially got nerfed across the board coming from Legion. They lost some throughput cooldowns due to talent shakeups. Their rejuvs are much shorter in duration in BFA than in Legion. Their damage took a big hit when legendaries were removed. Bear form got its stamina slashed significantly, making druid much less capable of eating big hits. But this class was strong in M+ in Legion, and it still plays a lot like it did in Legion -- just a bit worse at...pretty much everything.
Top 3 Tanks
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Vengeance Demon Hunter - And not even because it’s tanky. In fact, this spec is sorta squishy on beta. But the damage. My god, the damage. Vengeance can legitimately top the meters on big AoE pulls if it isn’t forced to kite, and its single target damage is still healthy. Their sigils are great for CC, and their mobility is top notch. Try keeping up with a panicked DH in Waycrest Manor trying to reset their Necrotic stacks. I dare you.
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Brewmaster Monk - Admittedly this one is based on community feedback more than any first hand experience with the spec -- I haven’t actually run with a BrM monk yet. But I hear really good things. They got Guard back in BFA, giving this already-sturdy tank even more mitigation. Self-healing is still an issue, but monks have more tricks than perhaps any other tank to kite mobs. Ring of Peace is a great tool for managing giant pulls, and Transcendence is always good for at least a few wacky hijinks in each dungeon. I wouldn’t be surprised to see BrM at the center of some really crazy pulls in the MDI.
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Blood Death Knight - Blood DKs got nerfed pretty hard coming into BFA, but let’s be honest: they had a lot of room to come down. This class still suffers from mobility issues, but its self-healing is still strong. Gorefiend’s Grasp is still the envy of every tank, and the threat generation is still good. The loss of Vampiric Aura will sting, but even without the group leech DK was still a great tank in Legion and hasn’t fallen THAT far in BFA.