WoW Forever Spec Difficulty Rankings: Easiest and Hardest Classes to Play

Picking a specialization in World of Warcraft: Forever is not only about damage or raid performance. Some builds use a small set of abilities repeatedly, while others ask you to manage several cooldowns, watch procs, switch stances, or time attacks around weapon swings.

To help you understand what each playstyle demands, we have put together a difficulty ranking based on the number of buttons used in simulated rotations. The table includes DPS and tank builds, along with their regularly used buttons and actions per minute.

Key Takeaways

• Combat Rogue has the fewest regularly used buttons among the ranked DPS builds.
• Feral Bear Druid has the lowest button count among the ranked tank rotations.
• Fury Warrior has the highest button count in the snapshot, with 10 regularly used buttons.
• Actions per minute and button count are different measurements. A build can press frequently while using relatively few abilities.
• Healers are not included because healer reference simulations are not available for this ranking.

How the Difficulty Ranking Works

The ranking measures each build using a preset rotation in a simulated single-target encounter. Difficulty groups are based on the number of different buttons used at least once per minute.

The simulation uses a roughly two-minute, single-target encounter and runs each reference setup 10,000 times. It counts player-activated abilities, cooldowns, consumables, and item uses. Automatic attacks, pet abilities, and passive procs are not counted as button presses.

When two builds have the same button count, the tie is broken using the number of core buttons responsible for 80% of presses, followed by actions per minute. The difficulty groups themselves are based on button count alone.

WoW Forever Spec Difficulty

The table includes 28 DPS and tank builds, with one selected rotation for each listed specialization or hybrid. Experimental hybrids are labeled, and Hunter builds using melee weaving are identified separately.

Buttons are abilities used at least once per minute. Core is the smallest number of buttons responsible for 80% of presses. APM means actions per minute.

Rank	Specialization / Build	Difficulty	Buttons	Core	APM
1	Combat Rogue	Easier	3	3	21.9
2	Assassination Rogue	Easier	3	3	23.6
3	Arcane Mage	Easier	3	3	32.8
4	Frost Mage	Easier	4	3	30.1
5	Frostfire Mage (Experimental)	Easier	4	3	30.5
6	Balance Druid	Easier	4	3	33.7
7	Subtlety Rogue	Easier	4	3	35.0
8	Feral Bear Druid (Tank)	Easier	4	3	58.8
9	Affliction Warlock	Easier	4	4	32.5
10	Elemental Shaman	Moderate	5	3	36.4
11	Shadow Priest	Moderate	5	4	31.2
12	Demonology Warlock	Moderate	5	4	33.5
13	Marksmanship Hunter (Weave)	Moderate	5	4	35.0
14	Beast Mastery Hunter (Weave)	Moderate	5	4	35.8
15	Feral Druid	Moderate	5	4	41.3
16	Fire Mage	Moderate	6	5	32.4
17	Shockadin (Experimental)	Moderate	6	5	34.1
18	Enhancement Shaman	Moderate	6	5	34.2
19	Destruction Warlock	Moderate	6	6	35.2
20	Ret-Prot Paladin (Experimental Tank)	Harder	7	4	30.7
21	Protection Warrior (Tank)	Harder	7	4	58.6
22	Retribution Paladin	Harder	7	5	47.6
23	Holy-Prot Paladin (Experimental Tank)	Harder	8	5	34.7
24	Protection Paladin (Tank)	Harder	8	5	35.8
25	Fury-Prot Warrior (Experimental Tank)	Harder	8	5	51.7
26	Arms Warrior	Harder	8	6	41.8
27	Survival Hunter (Weave)	Harder	8	6	45.4
28	Fury Warrior	Harder	10	7	57.6

Important: A higher rank in this table means a rotation uses more regularly pressed buttons in the selected simulation. It does not mean that the build deals more damage or requires more overall player skill.