Project Lore

World of Warcraft has never been balanced, ever.  Since the beginning of time one or more classes have been considered stronger than the rest, until it was hit with the nerf bat.  Warriors, hunters, rogues, priests, paladins, druids, death knights, I am fairly certain every class has had their time to shine.  Due to the rampant issues, the term OP, or overpowered, entered into WoW's lexicon, and has remained a staple to this day. If every one of WoW's ten classes was designed to do the same thing the game would be very boring.  You can argue that the differences have become cloudy all you want, but the classes still maintain core abilities that others cannot recreate.  Mages are the masters of crowd control, rogues love to incapacitate, paladins live in a bubble and hunters are a big tease.  Each class has their perks, but some remain on a single track.  That's why I believe they deserve to be the best at what they do.  Not overpowered, but designed to excel at their sole purpose, DPS. In my ideal world, where gear and skill are equal, rogues and warlocks would top the DPS charts on most fights.  They'd be followed by mages and hunters, and then a menagerie of the other classes. No, stop it.  Scroll back up here.  At least read the rest of the post before you head to the comments section to tear me a new one! These four classes have been singled out because DPS is truly their method of choice.  They cannot perform any other aspect of the holy trinity, in any spec.  In a pinch, any of the unnamed classes can attempt to fulfill one of those other rolls. I'm not suggesting that their be a large DPS gap between these tiers either, just a noticeable one.  Something like 1.0% for the top tier and 0.5% for the second, both of which could easily be overcome by a more skilled or geared player of the other classes. Judging by the information on WorldofLogs.com, my pipedream is almost a reality, at least in ICC.  Rogues are in fact on top, oddly enough, in all the fights.  But the stab happy class seems to be a bit out of line with everyone else, doing a substantial amount of extra DPS.  This could be explained by excellent use of Tricks of the Trade swapping however.  Warlocks and hunters are maintaining good DPS, even if they aren't plentiful in terms of appearances.  Warlocks should ideally be a bit higher on average.  Even other classes are managing to be sprinkle themselves into the top slots.  If there's one class that seems to be out of whack it's mages.  The class is present, but well below the other three on average. Naturally, I may be a little biased since my main is still a gnome rogue.  What would your ideal DPS tier be?  I wish I could ask the same about healing, but I've realized that healing ranks for certain fights can change radically depending on the encounter.  Whereas a healing rotation may change for fights X, Y, and Z, a rogue will use the same rotation for pretty much everything.