The Vault of the Incarnates Race to World First has declared a winner, with Echo, a now-three-time champion, clearing the raid on Mythic difficulty before any other guild in the world. Their longtime challengers from North America, Team Liquid, finished just a few hours after them, settling the race and adding another chapter to the greatest WoW rivalry of all-time.
And now, with the Mythic race concluded (save for the third-place finishers and beyond), we can start to get a look at which classes and specializations are dominating the highest levels of WoW raiding. While these numbers only represent a small sample of the WoW playerbase, they still give the game’s population a good idea of which classes are going to be the strongest throughout a season, and which classes could dictate the way the game is balanced for the forseeable future.
Here’s how the field of DPS specs stacks up immediately following the conclusion of the Vault of the Incarnates Race to World First.
Two data tables are shown above: one for Heroic raiding and one for Mythic. We’re choosing to show you both because WarcraftLogs only shows aggregate rankings for classes once 50 kills have been accumulated on a single boss. Since only a handful of guilds have downed bosses on Mythic difficulty so far, Heroic raiding parses would give players a better view of what the DPS landscape currently looks like.
For now, Heroic tables will be the gold standard for common players’ standards, although Mythic raiding tables still have some value. The Mythic leaderboards usually level out several weeks into a WoW season.
As shown in the data tables above, Rogue is far and away the strongest class in raiding right now, with Outlaw, Assassination, and Subtlety being the best three specs in the entire game. All three Rogue options outrank all other classes’ choices, with Outlaw being the most popular of the three, according to WarcraftLogs. Both Echo and Liquid ran two Rogues in their compositions for their Raszageth kills, with Echo’s Rogues playing Assassination and Liquid’s on Subtlety.
Related: Echo take down Raszageth, win third consecutive WoW Race to World First
Beyond Rogue’s outlined dominance, other melee DPS specs included in the top spots of the leaderboard are Enhancement Shaman, Windwalker Monk, and Fury Warrior. Each are strong options that have made their presence known in all eight fights of the current raid tier.
As far as ranged DPS specs go, Marksmanship Hunter and Arcane Mage are the safest bets right now. Both of those specs have plenty of sustained damage that can last them through the entirety of lengthy fights like Raszageth and Broodkeeper Diurna. Liquid’s top DPS player, Mage specialist Imfiredup, sustained 90,000 DPS during his team’s world second kill of Raszageth, while Echo’s veteran Hunter player Rogerbrown put out over 81,000 on the fight with Marksmanship.
In Mythic raiding, Rogue still has a clear stranglehold on the top of the DPS board, with Windwalker Monk, Fury Warrior, and Arcane Mage notably falling down the table. Keep in mind that Mythic raiding leaderboards are still incomplete due to not enough guilds collecting data on fights. Any Mythic raid rankings you see during the early stages of a raid tier could be mildly misleading in some regards.
In total, if you’re looking to change classes and are purely interested in the business of dealing damage, the best options for you right now remain Rogue (any spec), Arcane Mage, and Marksmanship Hunter. Those three classes are purely dedicated to damage, and if one of their top specs gets nerfed in some regard, they’ll likely have a backup spec waiting in the wings to shoot up the charts. Monk and Warrior are also viable options if you like playing classes that can also perform in other roles beyond DPS.
