WoW News

Frost Death Knight Starts Climbing the Charts – MoP Classic Phase 1 Heart of Fear DPS Rankings

Today, we are looking at the DPS rankings during the week of September 2nd for Mists of Pandaria Classic Phase 1 in Heart of Fear & Mogu'shan Vaults. For this analysis, we will use data provided by Warcraft Logs Heart of Fear & Mogu'shan Vaults statistics.

Warcraft Logs' Mogu'shan Vaults Statistics

Looking for more insight into class performance for Mists of Pandaria Classic? Check out our Tier Lists for Mists of Pandaria and the upcoming raids.

DPS Tier List Healer Tier List Tank Tier List

DPS Rankings in Mists of Pandaria Phase 1 - September 2nd

Heart of Fear

95th Percentile Statistics

Overall Damage

Damage to Bosses

Overall Statistics

Overall Damage

Damage to Bosses

Mogu'shan Vaults

95th Percentile Statistics

Overall Damage

Damage to Bosses

Overall Statistics

Overall Damage

Damage to Bosses

Biggest Changes This Week

For this week, we are highlighting some of the lower-performing specs and why they are where they are in the rankings.

Frost Death Knight

Frost DK isn't exactly performing poorly, but they have very much been struggling to keep up with Unholy until recently. We asked our Death Knight DPS Writer for an explanation as to why they are behind and why they are catching up rapidly.

Mogu'shan Vaults was perfect for Unholy. There were a lot of opportunities to spread amped diseases, like Elegon and Stone Guards. Heart of Fear reaches closer to where Frost performs best, fights with lots of adds, and has a single target focus.

The new gear available also means there is a lot more Mastery, which is a power spike for Frost. Combine that with the 2-piece tier bonus on Battlegear of the Lost Catacomb is also just a straight damage increase to Frost's main abilities, and it should be clear why Frost is climbing rapidly. At this point, Frost is equal, if not slightly ahead of Unholy on single-target sims.

Fury Warrior

While Arms and Protection continue to find themselves toward the top of the charts, Fury Warrior is sitting uncomfortably at the bottom, as both the least-played specialization and the lowest damage.

Balance Druid

Balance Druids have found themselves struggling to keep up in both Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear. This is what our Balance Druid Guide Writer had to say on the topic:

Balance Druids in Phase 1 have several issues that cause them to be behind the competition. We have a very front loaded damage profile with almost all our damage coming out during the burst. In both Mogu'shan Vaults and Heart of Fear, several bosses have you hold Bloodlust until the end of the fight, which punishes us heavily. Mogu'shan Vaults also has the Will of the Emperor fight, where Balance are often placed onto root duty, which drags down our average for the entire raid.

In addition to damage profile issues, we are also simply a spec with worse tuning than the competition. We rely heavily on our secondary stats in order to get working and we aren't able to gather enough of them for now.

There's also a bit of a knock-on effect. Balance is already doing lower damage than the others, and already had the expectation set in Mogu'shan Vaults that we are there to perform non-damage related duties, and so you will often see Balance Druids be assigned to tasks to help raid success outside of DPS, which again causes the result to skew even lower.

Elemental Shaman

Elemental Shamans have fallen to the bottom of the pack in Heart of Fear, while remaining at least middle of the road in Mogu'shan Vaults. We asked our Elemental Shaman Guide Writer for their thoughts on why that might be the case:

Elemental's strengths lean very heavily toward mass AoE, ideally with a priority target in the mix. This means that they can absolutely blast on bosses like Stone Guards and Elegon. On the other hand, they fall behind in Heart of Fear due to the fights being largely single target, or for bosses like Garalon, having multiple targets that are out of reach for Elemental AoE.

Disclaimers and Source

The data for this article was taken from the Heart of Fear & Mogu'shan Vaults Statistics Page on Warcraft Logs. We will examine the data for the 95th percentile and show the overall results to paint a better picture.

The idea of this article is to give a perspective of the current state of class balance for Mists of Pandaria Phase 1, meaning this is an incomplete picture of Mists of Pandaria balance.

We refer to perspective, as there are inherent biases in examining the data in this way.

Specs considered underpowered are generally played less and tend to appear weaker than they are.

This happens as many performance-oriented players tend to play the strongest spec or class, increasing the gap between top and bottom specs even further.

Position of specs for the 95th percentile might be skewed by alternative strategies and parse funneling. We're including the chart showing all percentiles' results to paint a better picture for all specs.

Statistics displayed below show data for 25-player heroic difficulty. For 10-player difficulty, please visit Warcraft Logs.

Mists of Pandaria Classic Class Guides

For more information on Mists of Pandaria classes & specs, check out our Class Guides!

Blood DK
Frost DK
Unholy DK

Beast Mastery Hunter
Marksmanship Hunter
Survival Hunter

Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage

Brewmaster Monk
Mistweaver Monk
Windwalker Monk

Holy Paladin
Protection Paladin
Retribution Paladin

Discipline Priest
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest

Assassination Rogue
Combat Rogue
Subtlety Rogue

Elemental Shaman
Enhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman

Affliction Warlock
Demonology Warlock
Destruction Warlock

Arms Warrior
Fury Warrior
Protection Warrior

Balance Druid
Feral Druid
Guardian Druid
Restoration Druid

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