WotLK Phase 2 Guide: Top 3 DPS Classes in Ulduar

The Ulduar is coming on Jan 19. Many players are discussing these questions:

How well each class performs in this raid?

What are the classes that really shine early on or later in phase 2?

Which are kind of the top-tier classes in Ulduar?

 

Today, we're going to talk about the top three classes, in particular talking about DPS for WotLK. These classes are for early game Ulduar as well as late game, where they will kind of shift in how good they are slightly, but these are still going to be the three classes that shine extremely.

 

Well, I have to say Ulduar is a unique raid. This is the first raid we've encountered in all of the Classic where every single boss is. For the most part, has some actual mechanics that actually fully change the way you play each of your classes.

 

Some bosses with particular buffs greatly increase the DPS of certain classes while not doing nearly as much for others, so those classes can shine on those specific fights. Some types shoot up in certain fights. Of course, there is going to be a special mention of one class that I think is the resident sleeper class for the next phase, so stay tuned to the end if you want to see that.

 

Warlock

I think it is probably the most stackable, especially early on, easy to support, deal phenomenal damage, and is easy to survive.

 

 

Phase 2 is kind of the phase of the Warlocks. This is where we see a huge jump in the DPS numbers of Warlocks themselves, but we already see Warlocks are pretty much the strongest or second strongest class, so phase 2 will go up even more.

 

Warlocks throughout this entire raid are just phenomenally consistent and always going to be one of the most stackable classes. They have a ton of HP, so they can survive most of the mechanics that currently have one or two shots.

 

Most of the players are in the raid, so it'll make it a lot easier for you to progress through the raid. Now both Warlock specs, Demonology, and Affliction are singing their times to shine, and they are doing phenomenal DPS. There are a lot of situations where you might need some extra cleave damage where demonology is just gonna destroy pretty much everyone.

 

If you do have an off-spec that you're not utilizing right now, you can pick up destruction for the Freya encounter; it just makes things extremely easy.

 

If you have an AoE stun and it just helps out with all of the DPS and dealing with the addons, Warlocks and most casters can get a lot of gear from hard modes. The gear is buffed, so you will see a lot of people fighting for all of the gear you want, so if you want to scale really well, you're definitely going to do these hard modes, but you might have some struggles getting all of your gear.

 

Unholy Death Knight

Maybe you will be kind of surprised. Now I'm talking about this class, but Frost Death Knight, especially for Alliance, is still going to be one of your most powerful classes, and you can absolutely stack him, but Holy Death Knights are going to be the PowerHouse in this raid for a lot of the fights, and that is for a few different reasons.

 

 

One Unholy DK's scale phenomenally well, and from all simulations currently on Holy DK, even at a three-minute fight situation, are still doing the highest single target DPS throughout an entire raid.

 

If we look at all of the classes right now, one thing that's very important to note there are three-minute fights are quite literally the worst length of fights you can have for an Unholy DK because your Gargoyle is exactly a three-minute CD, technically I guess you could say like a three minute and 15-second fight would be the worst, but either way that is the weakest we are going to look comparing ourselves to other classes.

 

Now Holy DKs are obviously the kings of burst in Wrath of the Lich King, and they continue to scale phenomenally well throughout this entire expansion, much more than they ever did before on private servers with multiple things that actually go into that.

 

If they play well are ridiculously useful in this raid, and that's because a lot of the bosses have massive DPS checks that are actually phased out. It means that you might need to hold off on DPS at a certain portion, and then for the last phase of a boss, you might need to absolutely give a pump and push as much as possible. This is going to be very vital for a lot of the hard modes, and this is where Unholy DKS shines.

 

Those small burst windows are by far the strongest actions of the Unholy DK. Now the important thing to note here is that you have to play correctly for the Unholy DK to really shine in these moments, but they can absolutely easily push your guild over into the DPS. You need to be able to down a boss.

 

Now, this sort of situation applies to many of the fights throughout Ulduar, and that's why Unholy DKs are so powerful, just as DPS powerhouses. DKS also comes with phenomenal self-sustain and other CDs where they can use things like Anti-Magic Shell, which can actually protect themselves from a lot of the mechanics.

 

Rogue

I will talk about Assassination Rogue. Still, there are some fights, such as Kologarn and Resilience and a few others, which are extremely powerful to switch to combat because you have Cleave, that is doubling your DPS for the duration of it being up, so we will see combat Rogues and do ridiculous numbers on certain fights. The class skills extremely well throughout the entirety of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

 

 

Rogues are pretty much going to be topping some fights, as well as being near the top in a lot of other situations. During phase 1, we did see Rogues rise to the top of the overall meters. Rogues absolutely shine in speed runs or overall DPS through raids, using some cheeky Phantom knives technology. Now the Assassination Rogue is powerful in almost every fight in Ulduar.

 

There are some fights where being a melee DPS can be a bit of a Hindrance, where you're not necessarily getting buffed as much as some of the casters, but without a doubt, there are some things that Rogues can do that absolutely make them vital for progression, and then as they scale really well with getting gear in the raid, really vital for most of the encounters.

 

Now, in particular, Rogues almost never die, which is very important in Ulduar's early phases. Because of the nature of the raid, there are significant amounts of AoE damage that can go out, and there are a few abilities that Rogues can absolutely ignore with the Cloak of Shadows, but one thing that most people don't really expect from Rogues to use is actually using faint.

 

 

Now Rogues currently have actually figured out that using faint on single Target situations instead of tricks of the trade is a DPS gain for themselves. That faint actually gives you a 50% damage reduction from AoE abilities. This means you can live through significantly more things happening in the raid and continue to DPS the bosses when a lot of your raids are dead, especially as you progress through these hard modes.

 

We all should know by now that uptime is King when talking about DPS. If you're continuing to hit a boss, then you're going to do more damage unless your class is very weak comparatively than anyone that has to run out and Dodge mechanics, so this is going to be one of the biggest reasons why Rogues are going to be extremely useful and potentially stackable early on in this phase.

 

If you want to learn more details, you can watch Sarthe's video. We hope that this guide is helpful to you.