Important Class Information

This page is intended to summarize each class's particular role in the hardcore endgame, and their key spells and importance.

Mathematically, there is an ideal population breakdown for classes in the guild; however, this population breakdown is not achieved in practice due to class popularity. Fortunately however, many people actually raise alts in response to the guild population imbalance. This article is intended to shed a light on which classes we should actively encourage. Naturally, you should raise whatever class you want to first, but if you want a suggestion, try dwarf priest or mage OR warlock.

Interestingly, some classes serve as enablers to other more popular classes, whereas others form the backbone of DPS. Warlocks support mages with Curse of Elements, and Shamans support melee classes with Windfury totem.

## Priests & Mages

In general, we always need more dwarf priests and mages.

Mages have "Decurse" and "Blizzard" - two of the most important abilities in the game. Blizzard, as an AOE snare, allows us to fight large packs at a distance, and avoid explosion or "scorched earth" effects. Decurse, which is also available to druids, is also important because of how many endgame fights involve a curse that limits healing effects - a death sentence if not treated. Interestingly, mages also scale - if there are more mages, then mages become more powerful due to effects like Winter's Chill, which stacks 5 times per mage. Mages are also the highest DPS caster class, beating warlocks considerably at almost all endgame content.

Dwarf priests in particular have "Fear Ward" which is crucial for raiding, because unlike Tremor Totem, it can be cast in advance of a fear or charm effect (whereas Tremor Totem works in an area of effect that must be placed close to the action). Priests are a fairly uncommon class, and if things go south, they are much more fragile than other healers.

## Warlocks

Despite having a reputation as being one of the "safer" classes to level to 60, warlocks are a rare class in hardcore 60. This is fortunate, because you only need a few of them to get the benefit from this class. Even in Molten Core, we usually only banish 2 mobs. Warlocks are also needed to tank AQ40 during the Twin Emperors fight.

Currently we are very short on warlocks. We only need 3-4 active warlocks, but we are down to 2 as of January 2023.

## Hunters - the Chore Class

It is a well known fact that hunters are great at soloing content and having gear independence, even at 60. Their drawback is that their DPS tends to plateau after a certain point?, and they don't scale in numbers?. Because Hard Chores does a lot of chore tasks, having a lot of hunters is actually a good thing, especially for banks and alts. Hunters greatly add to the safety margin in almost all outdoor content and have very few weaknesses. Almost every player who has multiple level 60s has at least one hunter. They can also solo Maraudon, which is very handy for processing new players/characters doing the Inferno Questline.

Hunters also get Tranquilizing Shot which is an required ability in many raid encounters, such as in Kara and MC.

## Shamans

More information needed here.

Windfury greatly increases the damage output of melee classes. Ideally there is at least one Windfury user in every melee group.

## Warriors and Rogues

Rogues and warriors are top single-target DPS classes and are among the most common classes. Interestingly though, as their population increases, you get diminishing returns.

Warriors on the other hand enable group formation for doing dungeons, but the gap in gear required to elevate warriors from dungeon tanks to raid tanks is actually quite high. We have quite a few warriors, but we are probably good with the number we have.

Rogues are good at stunlocking important casters and abilities, but they don't tend to enable other classes very much. We get enough rogues organically; if you are starting an alt, consider something else.