Warcraft: Best PvP Specs for Classic Season of Mastery

ESTNN breaks down all the best specs for WoW Classic's SoM.

World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Mastery (SoM) PvP is going to be a new experience for those playing retail. It’ll also give those who played during the Classic Era a chance to take the things they learned and reapply them here.

Unlike with Classic Era, SoM will introduce the three Battlegrounds, their rewards, and reputations from day one. You’ll also find PvP objectives in Eastern Plaguelands, as Blizzard looks to open up more content earlier. Blizzard has decided, however, not to make any balance changes with this first “alternative” Classic experience. So, most tier lists are likely to remain relevant here.

Holy Paladin

This Alliance-only healer is a true boss of PvP healing. With the Paladin being so heavily focused on single-target healing, they’re ideal to partner with a Warrior as their ‘Pocket-Healer’ and dominate battlegrounds. This is especially so in Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin, when smaller 10v10 or 15v15 conflicts lend themselves to a solo carry. Unlike Priests, Paladins have the advantage of plate armor (at level 40), bubbles, seals, and blessing. Giving them a great deal of utility to survive and protect allies.

The standard PvP build for Holy Paladin is 32/19/0. It removes all unnecessary PvE talents, such as Precision, for a much more defensive style with talents like Shield Specialization, however, retains access to Holy Shock (the last Holy talent). You’ll then need to dip into the Protection tree to get Improved Consecration — as you’ll want to use Aura of concentration in PvP.

Discipline Priest

The priest is slightly trumped by the Paladin on the Alliance side, but for Horde, this is the healer to go to. The Priest is far from perfect, however, Cloth armor makes them easy to kill, they lack mobility, and they do very little damage. Although, if you can avoid being focused, you’ll dish out great healing. Another point to remember is that each Priest Race has a unique spell. For example, Dwarf Priests have Fear Ward, making their target immune to the next fear cast on them. Wowhead has a great breakdown of the unique spells here (scroll down to the “Best Priest Races” section).

21/30/0 is what you want to aim for as Discipline. With this build, you’ll see increased spell range, damage, and Power Infusion. Plus a 15 buff that increases spell damage and healing by 20% to you or an ally. Then you’ll want to put points into Holy to pick up a few deeper talents such as Improved Healing to keep your mana in check.

Subtlety Rogue

You’d better get used to seeing Rogues in Classic SoM – or rather, not seeing them. Subtlety Rogue is the best of the three Rogue specs when it comes to PvP. They’re one of the best, most reliable damage classes in the game, and with so few requirements for gear, they’ll torment most Battlegrounds. You can play any of the three specs in PvP, however, Subtlety is the most viable in almost all situations.

Early in Classic SoM (phase 1 or 2) you’ll see a lot of Rogues running 21/3/27 with Cold Blood from Assassination and Improved Eviscerate. This will give you one-shot damage potential on most players in the early stages of Classic SoM. A slight variation can see you drop two points in Subtlety (Heightened Senses) for Improved Kidney Shot in Assassination. Regardless, in SoM Rogues are likely to be as dominant across PvP and PvE as they were in Classic Era. Especially with the Debuff count being all but removed.

Arms Warrior

Arms Warrior is top of the pack when it comes to PvP, not just melee, but anyone. You might need to get friendly with a healer to be at your best (see above). But once you get going, you’ll become an unstoppable killing machine. With Mortal Strike being one of, if not the best anti-healing skills in the game, Arms is able to take down enemy healers or simply just reduce their impact.

31/20/0 is the most standard Arms Warrior build for Classic SoM. With Mortal Strike in Arms the key ability pick up, while making sure to take full advantage of the Fury talents. Most notably Enrage, Blood Craze, and Piercing Howl. Arms are the most deadly 1v1 specs in the game, just try to avoid fighting a frost mage 1v1 — it probably won’t end well and might make you regret playing a Warrior.

Affliction Warlock

Warlock is going to be a menace in PvP, in both Battlegrounds and open-world battle — be it draining your target's HP, fearing people (for way too long) to dealing out large damage to endless targets. The Warlock, in this case, Affliction, is a spec to be feared and is our ranged DPS of choice.

You’ll be looking at a 30/0/21. The aim of the build is to be back line artillery — with your ammunition being shadowy DoTs. The build has two key survival talents; Siphon Life which drains HP, and Curse of Exhaustion, which should help you control melee players from getting too close. Nightfall is a key talent in Affliction, allowing your Corruption and Drain Life spells a 4% chance to fire off an instant Shadow Bolt.