The Best Classes For Hardcore Mode In WoW

The Hardcore servers of World of Warcraft: Classic are quite deadly. They are a realm of permanent death and cautious adventuring. On these servers, your choices about how you traverse Azeroth are more important than they’ve ever been before.

From how you traverse the world’s geography, to what professions you choose, and of course, what gear you use, every one of these choices is needed to make you sure your character survives for as long as they can. The most important of these choices is what class your character will be. As a class dictates how your character fights, and what healing and movement abilities they have, this will affect their time in Azeroth the most.

What Makes A Class Good For Hardcore

There are two qualities that make a class good for Hardcore runs; survivability and utility.

Survivability is how well a class excels in combat, which is the most dangerous part of Hardcore. This quality includes how good a class is at damaging its enemies, mitigating damage, and healing themselves.

A class’s utility is what abilities it has that makes it exceed outside of combat. This quality includes how it traverses the world of Azeroth, how it can avoid and escape combat, and any other quirk that can aid its journey.

Good Survivability Classes

The classes with good survivability generally excel in armor, power, and healing, or a combination of two or three of these aspects.

The paladin class is a great choice for Alliance characters to be on Hardcore servers since it posesses all three of these qualities.

As a heavy armor class with access to shields, it can be a bastion against the onslaught of enemies. With its access to holy magic, it can reinforce its defenses with barriers of immunity, as well as heal itself and others with holy spells.

This holy magic and the heavy weapons a paladin can equip make it a formidable class at dishing out damage as well. The damage output it has can be quite low at low levels due to the passivity of its spells at that level, but its defenses and healing capabilities often make up for this fact.

Warrior is another heavy armor class, and the only one available to Horde characters, making it a great choice for those who want to have the aesthetic of a paladin, but to serve the Horde.

Due to its heavy armor and proficiency in heavy martial weapons, a warrior excels at mitigating damage and dealing it back to its enemies. In fact, it is usually the most popular class to tank with on Classic realms because of this.

It is lacking in the healing department, since it lacks access to magic, but with the right professions (like alchemy or first aid), it can shore up that weakness.

Although it is a light armor class, priest thrives on the battlefield, although it does have to be careful.

With a combination of holy and shadow magic, a priest has access to powerful healing and damaging spells, as well as those that shield themselves and allies, and drain health from foes.

Although seemingly fragile, with the right positioning and mana management, priest is a formidable choice for Hardcore combat.

Another light armor class, a warlock is a master of damaging their enemies and sustaining their own health.

Their dark spells expertly vanquish foes and suck the health and mana from them. Although their individual defenses are quite low, with the ability to make healthstones, soulstones, and utilize their demon minions to defend them and distract their enemies, a warlock has a great level of survivability.

Good Utility Classes

A good utility class is one that has a bunch of tricks up its sleeve, even if it isn’t commonly known for its strength in extended combat scenarios.

Druid is the perfect example of one, as it combines some of the best aspects of other classes, and has a number of skills of its own that make exploring Azeroth easier.

Its different animal forms have their own strengths, from stealthing and increasing travel speed, to mitigating damage and enhancing damage dealing, and even increasing swim speed.

With healing spells and crowd control spells as well, this makes a druid excel at traveling and escaping danger when the going gets tough. They can even teleport themselves to the safety of their order’s capital, Nighthaven in Moonglade.

The rogue class is known to have a myriad of tricks up its sleeves, allowing it to dart in and out of combat and avoid dangerous situations.

From being able to sneak past foes and ambush them with stuns and poisons, the rogue can stay out of harms way until the right time or place.

Additionally, if danger arises and death seems imminent, rogues can vanish and distract their foes to make a swift getaway. They also have the innate skill of opening locked chests and lockboxes, granting a rogue more treasure and money.

Classes That Excel In Survivability and Utility

Some classes are skilled in both dangers of Hardcore, combat and exploration. They have skills and aspects that let them evade death in both of these situations.

Mage is one of the classes that excels in both of these. With its impressive arsenal of volatile spells, and its access to portals and teleportation, a mage can deal massive damage to its enemies and traverse the world with ease.

Although its spells are mainly offensive and lack any healing spells, mages do have some minor barrier spells, as well as crowd control spells that grant them some more survivability in combat, and a way to escape when death rears its ugly head.

Additionally, traversing vast swathes of Azeroth is trivial for skilled mages, as they can teleport and create portals to capital cities, as well as blink a short distance while exploring the worlds. They can make themselves and allies food and water as well, furthering their utility quality.

The shaman class has notable worth in these qualities as well. With their offensive, healing, and minor defensive spells, as well as having access to medium armor and shields, their survivability is quite good.

A shaman’s totems enhance their combat abilities and their utility skills as well, providing crowd control for escaping dangerous situations.

Shaman can be seen as a mirror to paladin, as only Horde characters have access to shaman, and its strengths make it a popular choice in Hardcore.

With shaman also having access to the ghost wolf form for quicker travel, and a second hearthstone with a shorter cooldown through the Astral Recall spell, this class shines outside of combat as well.

Hunter has long been a popular class to solo level with in World of Warcraft, and it is no different for Hardcore servers.

With its deft combat prowess and animal companions’ own strengths, its survivability is quite valuable, striking hard and fast, and using their pets to distract and destroy enemies that the hunter themselves can’t handle.

Traps are also a part of a hunter’s arsenal, providing crowd control for dangerous foes and extra damage. When death seems imminent and inescapable, hunters can also Feign Death to fool their foes and make them lose interest so they can safely get away.

Outside of combat, the hunter class has some notable utility, through its movement speed enhancements and tracking capabilities for different types of enemies.