For this analysis we have used data from Warcraft Logs Statistics page for Trial of the Crusader, accessed on 10/08/2023. We are interested in the maximum potential of each class, so we are looking at the 95th percentile of representatives of each class, or the top 5%. 19 out of 20 players will not produce this much raw damage output, but usually the relative power level of the classes does not shift very much when moving down to players closer to median performance.
Warcraft Logs Trial of the Crusader Statistics Page
Trial of the Crusader Boss DPS Rankings
Trial of the Crusader All Bosses Damage
Mages, Death Knights, and Warlocks take the top spots this phase, with Rogues close behind. The Death Knights and Warlocks have been quite strong in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 and they continue to be a top ranking damage dealer in Phase 3. The Fire specialization for the mages is a very powerful scaling specialization that gets stronger and stronger with more critical strike chance. We saw the mages start to come into form in Ulduar and their ascension continues with the more powerful Trial of the Crusader gear.
The “All Bosses” category does not tell the whole story though. We’ll see that just about every encounter in this phase has a different DPS ranking for the classes. Some overall rankings are boosted up by exceptionally strong performance on particular bosses due to unique mechanics of each encounter.
Northrend Beasts
Northrend Beasts Damage
Northrend Beasts is the most “tame” encounter of the five different bosses in Trial of the Crusader. While most of the encounter is effectively a single target damage situation, some classes like Warlocks and Shadow Priests will be able to apply damage over time effects to both Acidmaw and Dreadscale while they are active, giving a decent boost to their total damage output.
Similarly, some of the melee classes can use their cleave and multi target damage abilities on the Snobolds that spawn during the first phase with Gormok active. However the Snobolds have strange targeting properties and some abilities work and others do not – the lucky classes that have functional abilities get a boost because of it.
Lord Jaraxxus
Lord Jaraxxus Damage
Lord Jaraxxus has two aspects to it that substantially shake up the damage ranking on this boss. The first and most obvious is his ability Nether Power which gives him a very powerful spell damage buff. This is important for our damage rankings because Mages can use Spellsteal to gain this buff and have a massive boost to their damage. This is a fight mechanic that benefits Mages substantially and benefits no other class.
The second aspect of Lord Jaraxxus is that there are frequently extra demon enemies summoned into the encounter. This means classes with effective and efficient multi target damage capabilities such as Fury Warrior get a strong boost, more so than they do on an encounter like Northrend Beasts.
Faction Champions
Faction Champions Damage
Faction Champions is a fight that is so incredibly skewed that Warcraft Logs chose to remove it from their All Bosses damage category, which is probably a good call. In this encounter you face a large number of NPCs meant to mimic a PvP encounter. In order to prevent raids from simply spamming AoE abilities to decimate this encounter, the NPCs have a special buff that reduces all AoE damage they receive by 75%. However, this buff only reduces the damage of “direct” AoE spells like Arcane Explosion or the explosion from Seed of Corruption. It does not reduce the damage dealt by a Deathknight’s diseases spread through the use of Pestilence or a few other quirky ways players figured to work around this damage reduction.
Any class with a way to effectively deal damage to multiple targets that gets around this 75% reduction absolutely dominates on this encounter, and any class who can’t do that is left in the dust.
Twin Valkyr
Twin Valkyrs Damage
Similar to Faction Champions,Twin Valkyr are another encounter with some unique damage mechanics. Each player can pick either light or dark essence which does a variety of things but most importantly increases the damage you deal to the opposite-essence Valkyr boss by 50% and decreases the damage you deal to the same-essence boss by 50%. Some classes can make great use of this such as Affliction Warlocks who will apply Corruption to the opposite-essence boss, then change their essence, and apply Corruption again to the other boss. This way they have a damage-boosted Corruption running on both bosses, and can refresh it the entire fight with their Everlasting Affliction talent.
However, Warlocks are not the biggest abusers of this essence-based damage boost. Due to the unique way that Blade Flurry calculates its damage for the secondary target, Rogues with this ability are unquestionably on top on this encounter. Blade Flurry simply copies the damage dealt to the first target onto the second target, without taking into consideration that the second target is a different essence so the secondary damage is not reduced at all. An Arms Warrior’s Sweeping Strikes works similar to Blade Flurry, but even that is not enough to bring Arms Warrior into the upper rankings since the specialization is quite weak to begin with.
Most multi target damage abilities like Whirlwind will calculate their damage to each target separately. They deal boosted damage to the opposite-essence boss and reduced damage to the same-essence boss. This makes most of those abilities not very good on this encounter.
Anub’arak
Anub’arak Damage
Anub’arak puts a very strong emphasis on classes with good multi target damage – much more so than Lord Jaraxxus. With 4 Burrower adds spawning about every 45 seconds there is plenty of fodder for the AoE classes to push out the classes who are more oriented towards single target damage. Assassination Rogues and Arcane Mages are both in the top half of the rankings for overall performance, and the bottom half for Anub’arak rankings.
The most impressive feat achieved on Anub’arak is being able to skip the burrow phase entirely. If the boss reaches 30% health before it is supposed to Burrow, it will cast Leeching Swarm and begin Phase 3 and never go under ground. You may have seen this happen on some of your 10 player kills of this boss, but with a super high performance raid this can even be done in the 25 player heroic version of the encounter. This was achieved by less than 1% of raid groups, evidenced by the 99th percentile kill time for Anub’arak being a hefty 3 minutes 54 seconds (definitely includes a Burrow phase) while the fastest kill time is only 1 minute 34 seconds (definitely does not include a Burrow phase).
Looking Forward to Icecrown Citadel
What is clear from our experience in Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader is that class performance is encounter dependent. There are some consistently high performing classes like the Unholy Death Knight and Affliction Warlock, but each encounter presents unique challenges that cause different classes to excel. It looks to me like Icecrown Citadel has much more focus on single target damage and less on AoE and multi target damage compared to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader, which will certainly shift the balance of the classes a little. I’m very excited for the release of Icecrown Citadel on October 12th and I hope you are too!
About the Author
Simonize is a long-time Rogue player from original Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. Primarily focused on PvE, he is the author of rogue gear comparison spreadsheets for Classic Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. If you enjoy Simonize’s work, you can join his Discord or follow him on Twitch and Youtube.
