The War Within Beta: Melee DPS Meta Tierlist for Season 1

The War Within Beta: Melee DPS Meta Tierlist for the upcoming Expansion.
We're looking at each Specs's Single Target damage, AoE damage, and the power/popularity of other Specs in its Class to see how likely each of them is to find a space in the Meta of Season 1 of The War Within.

00:00 What We're Looking At
01:06 Havoc Demon Hunter
02:51 Feral Druid
05:15 Survival Hunter
07:25 Rogues
10:44 Warriors
12:10 Death Knights
14:33 Retribution Paladin
15:40 Windwalker Monk
16:49 Enhancement Shaman
19:56 Final Words & Goodbyes!

[florian-k]

Having Feral in D because “it’s not being played by many” is ridiculous.

[Hastalasagna]

Fury being this low is ludicrous.. The only melee clearly ahead of it rn is frost dk and maybe assa rogue.

[zanzabarky]

Feral is looking similar to arms, ret, and enchance. But we get put in d for memes. Even when the DPS was high in testing feral still got put really low.

[Kyzurs]

What is this tierlist 😐 so many placements that don’t make sense

[Sly_]

Outlaw 2 tiers ahead of Ret and Enhance is wild. Cooked list.

[richard_n]

I'm maining Fury to start TWW. The damage is really good, especially AoE. People complain about a lack of utility, but I changed over to Engineering and I can now bring some more utility to the table. I can tell you already from knowing history, that Frost and Assassination will both be nerfed with 3-4 weeks from now. You have Havok too high for sure. Fury and Unholy are A tier. Enhancement should be B tier, it does great damage and of course has TONS of utility.

[dhdynastyz]

I'm one of the top 10 outlaws in the world in both raid and M+ content for the last 8 seasons. Put it this way, I'm playing frost DK until they fix it. Low damage, clunky, and just not even fun to play in its current state. It belongs near the bottom of this list. In all forms of content.

[edinson]

Ahh. Yeah shaman is pretty good funnel damage with primordial wave splintered elements. Then if you get hot hands proc youre usually topping damage on priority targets.

[ch.kv.]

Thanks, I like your methodology for creating the list with competing specs etc

[danex]

Sadly Havoc is gonna be dead for PUG M+ if Vengeance continues to be the go for tanks.

[Skuggi]

seeing Izen playing Rsham just feels right

[Vis_Electra]

Havoc: If Havoc has "top tier hero talents" that tells you how poorly implemented hero talents really are across all melee specs. I'm looking forward to playing my Havoc DH again, but no where near as hyped as I was during SL S1 with casino legendary.
Feral: Every Boomkin is prepping Feral right now... I get it, we need some hot takes in here. But putting Feral in D tier is just burnt. C+ or B- for me.
WW: How can you put WW next to UH DK in good conscience? Doesn't bring the numbers in M+ currently on the beta. It's ok, but there is no scenario where you would go like "Thank god we brought this WW." Not the carry spec anymore, more like the one getting carried. Maybe underrated in melee heavy comps if anyone else out there plays those.

[joshoxley]

Warriors deserve a lust shout. Give them something

[adamsmith]

Biased Doomer for Ret. To put it worse than Arms is highly incorrect

[Hallpassmusic]

this isn't a good tier list unfortunately, trying to get an understanding for where melee are regardless of raid buffs especially classes that share it with different roles. Rogues inherently are going to be put higher than druids because they are only clashing with other dps counterparts where druid and shaman counterparts are much more important roles to fill.

would love to see a redo on this where you strictly stick to the specs role and dont rank them based on another spec existing.

You also mention in your description that this is a list to potentially fit a meta spot in TWW when we all know playing melee in itself is off meta so might as well put everything in D and assa in C

I think were still forgetting the defensive of these classes, very small mentioning of these. DK/feral/rogue is absolutely unkillable where yes enhance has really good damage they will 100% hit a point where they take too much damage

[fabianpino]

can you sahre the data you use to make these tier lists? I haven't found it

[yasinaiden]

Best tier list in internet so far .short and useful tnx boss

[Calltrops]

Havoc has a GCD bug on Aldrachi reaver and this causes sims to be very high but its not actually possible

[Proverb.]

I think Enhance is better than Ele for keys. I'm not sure about raid. In M+ Ele is only very strong in aoe, their single is not great and funnel is way worse than the previous fire build with the current better storm build. Enhance still has the better spec tree to enable keeping almost full single target talents while also getting maximum aoe value, and still have very good funnel/prio damage, which is way more important in my opinion.

[MemphisGH]

Havoc and Vengeance were both meta during dragonflight