What’s up everybody? It’s Librarian Husky! Tier lists are on the horizon, so here’s my top five melee DPS in the War Within. This is based mainly on how they play, how fun they are, and bonus points if they’re visually pleasing.

Number Five: Unholy DK

With the recent reworks, Unholy DK has become an absolute powerhouse of minions, spawning literal hordes of undead to swarm your enemies. For example, using Doomed Bidding when you consume Sudden Doom on either Death Coil or Epidemic, you spawn a mage skelly or Magus of the Dead, and you can also make their Shadow Bolts hit four targets instead of one.

New Abilities and Synergies

You’re able to have a pet abomination that stomps around, spreading disease and festering wounds in its wake, just to name a few things. Now, they of course keep a lot of their old stuff in class fantasy, but with these updates, in my opinion, it plays so much better. Slamming down Unholy Assault offing you and generating four festering wounds that you can instantly follow up with Apocalypse, build up new festering wounds, and spread them with VI Contagion so that everything is covered in delicious festering wounds.

Visual and Functional Appeal

Of course, we slap an abomination on top of them and a horde of skelly mages to bombard them with Shadow Bold Volleys. All the while, we’re getting insane amounts of strength from Fermite. All in all, it just synergizes well, and the rotation is very fun. Adding on Hero talents, you have Rider of the Apocalypse, making you spawn one to four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, each with their own ability or buff.

Passive and Active Abilities

Most of this is passive, but it does pump a lot and it is very visually pleasing. But there are things like Mcrane having an aura of Death and Decay or Troll Bane’s Chains of Ice synergizing with Scourge Strike, making it shatter into an AOE. And of course, being able to replace Death’s Advance with a Death Charger instead—bye-bye slow DK, got to go fast!

Vampiric Fantasy

It’s called feeding into the vampiric fantasy, giving you access to Vampiric Strike which replaces Scourge Strike when it procs. It heals you for 2% of your max health and stacks haste up to 7%, as well as Death Coil and Scourge Strike damage. All of this is doubled during Dark Transformation, making that cooldown even stronger.

Enhanced Abilities

You also have Perma Vampiric Strength during Dark Transformation. Overall, it speeds and smooths out the rotation a ton as well as beefs up your damage. So yeah, Unholy DK got itself a glow up, and the minion fantasy is stronger than ever. Go, my minions, do my bidding!

Number Four: Retribution Paladin

Next, at number four, the reworked Retribution Paladin. I’ve always enjoyed W Paladin, but this latest rework just made it a ton more fun, keeping its somewhat simplistic play style with a constant spam of spenders, which is so much fun on AOE. Being able to back-to-back spam out Divine Storm to mow down your packs is exhilarating.

Synergies and Talents

They’ve also emphasized Wake of Ashes as a big button with tons of synergy tied into it with both retribution talents as well as your new Hero talents. With Radiant Glory, for example, you can no longer pop Awakening Wrath. Instead, it has a chance for Holy Power spent to proc or whenever you press Wake of Ashes.

Hero Talents

With the addition of Herald of the Sun Hero talents as well as Templar, Wake of Ashes works as a trigger for the Hero talents. Herald of the Sun gains Dawn Light, which are dots that proc on enemies or friendlies. Wake of Ashes guarantees these as well as Avenging Wrath when it procs.

Powerful Effects

So, when you Wake of Ashes, you spawn up to six Dawn Lights that deal a metric ton of damage and AOE everything. Oh, and you also spawn laser beams between you and your Dawn Lights, kind of like Unholy DK‘s Hell Chain, but these are holy. You also gain a ton of haste from each Dawn Light.

Fast-Paced Rotation

The rotation is very fast-paced and a ton of fun. Templar follows a similar path, but upon popping Wake of Ashes, it turns into a new ability called Hammer of Light, which is a big old AOE nuke. This empowers you and causes you to start spewing out Imperion Hammers from the sky to bonk your enemies overhead.

Hammer of Light Gameplay Loop

Playing around the Shake the Heavens buff you gain from Hammer of Light greatly increases the number of Imperion Hammers you spawn. This buff is extended by your holy power generators, creating a fun little gameplay loop. All in all, the War Within Ret Paladin is very fast-paced and spammy without being complex.

Ease of Play and Survivability

It’s fairly easy to pick up and just decimate stuff. Playing around a 30-second cooldown Wake of Ashes makes you feel like you never lose momentum. You always have it ready for every single pack in a dungeon or part of a boss where you might need that extra burst. Simultaneously, it has an absolutely absurd amount of survivability.

Utility and Healing

If you ever wanted to just stand in stuff for the heck of it, Ret has you covered. You can immune stuff on top of this. They also bring combat res, cleanse toxin, sacrifice, and a ton of off-healing. Even the laser beams from Herald of the Sun do a ton of healing if you line them through players. You can still do 80% of your damage from range if you need to run away from a mechanic.

Number Three: Fury Warrior

Next, at number three, Fury Warrior, mainly with the Mountain Th Hero talents, but Slayer is good as well. Fury Warrior in the War Within plays largely like good old Fury Warrior. Generate a ton of Fury, spam out Rampages, and burst down packs with Odin’s Fury, Ravager, or Bladestorm’s thunderous AOE.

Slayer Hero Talents

A spear as well while spreading bleeds and gushing wounds with Bloodthirst. These Slayer Hero talents empower your execute through various talents. Slayer strikes passively proc and make execute hit harder, as well as give you Sudden Death procs for more executes. Sudden Death also increases the number of hits your Bladestorm does up to three.

Damage Amplification

You also apply Overwhelmed on mobs, increasing your damage dealt to them, and it gives Bloodthirst a chance to unleash a flurry of steel, which is an AOE that deals a ton of damage but also applies Overwhelmed for more damage. You can further empower this in the Fury tree with Unhinged, making every other hit of Bladestorm also cast Bloodthirst.

Synergies and Rotations

This works with your Whirlwind buff, so each of those free Bloodthirsts during Bladestorm will in turn hit five targets, and each Bloodthirst has a chance to AOE due to Slayer talents. But the real fun, in my opinion, is with Mountain Th, aka the real enhancements.

Mountain Th Enhancements

Mountain Th forces you to play Thunderclap as Fury, but it’s actually a good thing because it’s Mountain Th. Your Thunderclap does what Whirlwind does, effectively replacing it in your rotation. So your Thunderclap will trigger Whirlwind’s Meat Cleaver as well as all other talents tied into it.

Thunderclap and Bloodthirst

Bloodthirst has a chance to turn Thunderclap into a Thunder Blast, making it into a giant nuke, which funnily enough deals Stormstrike damage, which not even Enhancement Shaman‘s Stormstrike does—make it make sense! This is incredibly visually pleasing with that big stomp that just explodes in lightning everywhere while you also slam down lightning strikes to hit.

Hero Talents and Lightning Strikes

Your enemies, which are also part of these Hero talents, lightning strikes have a chance to proc from Raging Blow, Execute, and Thunder Clap SL Blast. This, in turn, has a chance to give two empowered Bloodthirsts that deal more damage, give more rage, and have no cooldown. Overall, like I mentioned earlier, it plays very much like good old Fury but with a lot of fun sprinkled on top of it.

Fast-Paced War Machine

Incredibly fast-paced, War Machine is probably the best way to describe it. Even though I love Whirlwind, I’m loving Thunder Blast more, and weaving in Thunder Clap to trigger Meat Cleaver works incredibly well. Did I mention it looks great? Clap, clap!

Number Two: Survival Hunter

Next out is number two, with an explosive entrance: the reworked Survival Hunter. Now, this rework I am a bit in love with. The new play style and rotation are incredibly satisfying, with tons and tons of bursty boom booms. Now everything revolves around your Wildfire Bombs and Explosive Shots.

Tinker Class Fantasy

Giving us a taste of the Tinker class fantasy while also adding in a gameplay loop of buffing your various high-impact abilities through Kill Command and Tip of the Spear talent. This makes it so that each Kill Command gives you one charge of Tip of the Spear, up to three, each charge increasing your next ability’s damage by 15%, up to 30%, depending on how much Critical Strike rating you have.

Gameplay Loop and Fun

Even without Tip of the Spear, Survival is incredibly fun to play. But with Tip, it becomes even more fun as you have that gameplay loop to play around, making sure you weave in Kill Commands and spend Tip charges. This also gives value to Kill Command on AOE.

Effective Use of Abilities

It doesn’t feel like a dead button. Spending Tip of the Spear on bombs and Explosive Shot is very rewarding. Did I mention there are explosions? You can also build around having a 45-second or 1-minute cooldown on Coordinated Assault that refreshes your Wild Bomb instantly, caps out your Tip of the Spear charges, increases you and your pet’s damage, and gives you more Kill Command resets for 20 seconds.

Coordinated Assault Benefits

When it ends, you’re given two free Explosive Shot charges, allowing you to pop three of them in a row for maximum boom boom. So even if a pack dies during Coordinated Assault, you still get the free Explosive Shots to cram down the next pack’s throat as it currently does not have a duration, which is great. There’s never a risk of the charges running out.

AOE and Dungeon Play

In AOE or in dungeons, it never feels like it slows down. Having a very short cooldown on Coordinated Assault feels great to play with, but you can also make it into a proper 2-minute cooldown, making it incredibly strong, but of course, at the cost of having it less often.

Hero Talents

Adding in Hero talents to the mix doesn’t really change how you play in any way, shape, or form. Sentinel is visually pleasing AF—go, go Blue Owl! Pack Leader is pretty much 100% passive but still synergizes well with Survival, though it might lean more towards raiding or single-target where you focus a lot more on Mongoose Bite slamming and Kill Commands.

Overall Fun and Survivability

Overall, Survival is just an incredible amount of fun to play with a fast-paced and rewarding rotation. Plus, they’ve got more defensives as well, so no pun intended, but their survival is a lot better as well.

Hunter Path in War Within

You can have this path and War Within, which I’d say is recent enough to play Hunter. And lastly, the number one, the coup de grâce: Enhancement Shaman. Shocking, I know. But let me start off with, despite Enhancement having a lot of unaddressed crap in the corners, it’s still by far the most fun.

Storm Builds

Storm builds in the War Within are insane, currently being all about spending rather than only spamming Stormstrike. Trust me, we still spam it, but it’s not the centerpiece anymore. It’s more like the table on which the centerpiece stands. That centerpiece being Tempest, a big AOE nuke that triggers from spending 40 Maelstrom or proccing Awakening Storms three times.

Tempest and Wolves

Not only does Tempest deal an ungodly amount of damage at the moment, but it also spawns a Lightning Wolf, giving you access to many wolves. On AOE, you also get three charges of empowered free Chain Lightnings following every Tempest, with even more Maelstrom refunding talents on top of that, making you a non-stop Chain Lightning spamming monster or Lightning Bolt on single targets.

Haste and Feedback Loop

It just flows incredibly well and has a very satisfying feedback loop. Enhancement that is not blistered; their feedback loop seems a bit broken at the moment. You’re also flooded with a ton more haste, which fuels the rotation even more. Meanwhile, the Elementalist build that we played in Dragonflight works by and large the same way as in Dragonflight.

Elementalist and Stormbringer Talents

Currently also synergizing very well with the Stormbringer Hero talents due to that extra WF you spawn from Tempest because each wolf multiplicatively buffs your Elemental Blast, effectively turning it into an elemental nuke. However, Totemic Hero talents are currently turbo broken and not in a good way, but there’s potential there if or when they decide to tackle the totemic issue.

Enhancement Shaman in War Within

I am more than fine with blowing stuff up with Tempest, but both Elementalist and Storm builds are very much alive and well in the War Within, just perhaps not as well as they could be. Now, Enhancement has also gotten a tad more survivability through some new talents, most noticeably the Stone Bulwark Totem.

Utility and New Talents

There’s also a ton of new utility due to the reworked Shaman class tree, making Shaman overall even more valuable as far as utility goes. There are a lot of nasty curses, poisons, and fears in the War Within dungeons, tons of casts and abilities you can interrupt with stuns, knockups, and incapacitations.

Personal Preference

Enhancement is still on top for me just from how it plays. I am a lover of both Storm and Elementalist builds, and like I said, Elementalist is roughly the same whereas Storm got an incredible glow-up and should perform overall better. Of course, pending tuning, but at the very least, it’s just so much fun to play.

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