▷WoW Shadowlands DPS Rankings for Raids (January 2021) 🥇

A few quick notes for the seasoned WoW gamer.

Alright, let's get rid of the PSAs. Before I begin, let me remind everyone that these DPS rankings point to those who are currently crushing the WoW Shadowlands charts, riding comfortably, and in need of a little love from Blizzard. By no means do these DPS ratings indicate which classes you should put aside altogether: the mantra "bring the player, not the class" continues to be true. Every class in WoW can take out Castle Nathria on Mythic difficulty, and unless you're trying hard to be a part of the 1% Raid Guild, you don't need to mercilessly downplay your guild. Someone who likes their class and excels at it will always be a better choice than someone who has simply switched to one of the current flavors of the month.

Second, Blizzard has made some minor class tweaks in WoW Shadowlands since our first DPS Rankings post. These have greatly improved the performing classes a bit, so the overall DPS floor is higher. More comprehensive, sweeping class adjustments won't happen until Update 9.1, which is expected to arrive sometime in the spring (according to a PC Gamer post with a brief interview with game director Ion Hazzikostas). In other words, unless there are additional minor changes via fixes, the DPS rating in WoW today is unlikely to change too drastically over the next few months. Alliance abilities and Soul Bindings also play a big role in overall class performance, and these will also receive adjustments in Patch 9.1.

Finally, these WoW DPS rankings are based on the high level Mythic difficulty for Castle Nathria in Shadowlands, so it's important to remember that these DPS rankings don't always translate to 1: 1 in lower difficulties. Some classes scale better and faster with improved gear than others, and it's important to remember that underrepresented classes and specs tend to drop in overall stats due to simply failing to be popular. That's not to say that a Survival Hunter is a hidden gem - the class and specs are the lowest of the three hunters - but it might not be as bad as some claim. Also, as you progress from Mythic to Heroic and lower difficulty in Castle Nathria, those class gaps in the WoW DPS ranking start to narrow, at least between the mid and lower level DPS specs.

WoW DPS rank for raids in January 2021.

To keep things simple, I've divided WoW's DPS rankings into three categories: Outperforming, Tied, and Needed Loving. Outperformance is aimed at classes that are absolutely breaking graphics right now and are more likely to receive nerfs than other classes in patch 9.1. On Par is where the majority of classes will drop - those classes are in a generally healthy location for now and will likely only receive minor adjustments in the future. Needs Love is exactly what it says on the box - these classes can still wipe out content, but they need some substantial improvements and tweaks from Blizzard to reach their full potential.

The classes within these categories are listed from strongest to weakest (because that's sort of the purpose of DPS ranking). These categories are here to quickly indicate where the classes are currently located in Shadowlands. Again, these rankings are based on Mythic Castle Nathria to better demonstrate how the classes performed at their theoretical peak. I used data derived from actual results and rankings and then crossed it with simulated results alongside the lists of the top 10 Mythical Raiding Guilds in WoW to better illustrate where the various classes and specs fall with the rankings. WoW DPS for January.

Interestingly, when comparing these DPS rankings with last month's WoW DPS rankings: Feral Druids was initially in the Needs Love category, but they have since proven all of us fools and moved up into the over-performing category. . On the other end of the spectrum, Frost Mages were meant to be overkill, but they ended up safely in the On Par category. Alright, let's move on to the WoW Shadowlands DPS ranking, namely the Castle Nathria raid.

Outperforming