A Tier: Hunter, Shaman, Priest and Mage
A Tier classes are still EXTREMELY strong at this level and can absolutely compete with the best classes in the game, especaily if in the right hands. The biggest difference between these and S Tier is that they tend to have a few more unfavorable matchups or weaknesses that good players can easily take advantage of.
Hunter
Hunter are looking REALLY strong at Level 30, and one of the biggest reasons is just how much damage they can put out while keeping their opponents at a distance, and of coure the MASSIVE amount of utility the new pet families bring.
Marksmanship in particular has some incredible burst damage and
Beast Mastery benefits massively from how powerful pets have become in WoW Forever. Pets now scale with your stats, which makes them significantly more dangerous than they were in Classic.
Hunters also have some fantastic tools for controlling fights. Between
Concussive Shot, their traps, and their ability to constantly apply pressure with both ranged attacks and pet damage, while dealing semi decent melee dmg if they too, hey can be extremely difficult to deal with, especially for melee classes. One of the biggest advantages Hunters have is that their pets can continue putting out damage even when the Hunter is being pressured. This is particularly noticeable with
Beast Mastery, where pets can be surprisingly difficult to kill while still dealing a TON of damage.
Overall, Hunter is one of the strongest classes in the game right now, with
Marksmanship and
Beast Mastery being particularly nasty in the current Beta.
Shaman
Shaman is a bit of a weird one right now because
Enhancementt is an absolute MONSTER when everything lines up, an it's a counter to one of the S Tier classes,
Warlock, but the class as a whole has some pretty noticeable weaknesses.
The biggest thing going for
Enhancement is its INSANE burst damage. Between
Windfury Weapon and
Stormstrike, Shamans are capable of absolutely deleting someone if they get a few good procs. Seriously, some of the damage
Enhancementt can dish out at Level 30 is wildy ridiculous. They've also got some fantastic utility with
Purge, their plethora of Totems,
Ghost Wolf and more. One of the more interesting changes in WoW Forever is the ability to attack while in
Ghost Wolf, which gives Enhancement another way to maintain pressure while staying mobile. And unlike a lot of other melee classes,
Shaman can also heal themselves, which makes them surprisingly difficult to deal with when they get the opportunity to reset and recover.
However,
Enhancement still has some weaknesses. Getting kited or controlled can be a MASSIVE problem, especially against classes that can consistently keep them at a distance. Their damage can also be pretty inconsistent depending on how often
Windfury Weapon decides to cooperate.
Elemental and
Restoration aren't looking nearly as impressive at the moment either, with
Elemental in particular struggling to put out competitive damage compared to
Enhancement.
Shaman are absolutely capable of winning duels against classes ranked above them, and I wouldn't be surprised to see
Enhancement climb higher as players continue experimenting with builds. But for now, their reliance on burst damage and some difficult matchups are enough to keep them in A Tier.
Priest
Priests rececntly got their
Penance nerfed, which brings them down from S Tier to A Tier. They are still absolute MONSTERS in Level 30 PvP right now, with
Discipline in particular being one of the strongest dueling builds in WoW Forever.
The biggest thing going for them right now is just how much they can do while being incredibly difficult to kill. Between
Power Word: Shield,
Penance,
Psychic Scream, and their ability to dispel every buffs, means they've got an answer to almost everything. And the scary part is that they're not just sitting there healing themselves.
Mind Blast can dish out massive damage,
Penance provides an insane amount of value and damn ear full healing them, but also able to crank the damage when needed as well.
Their survivability, damage, and mana efficiency make them incredibly difficult to deal with, especially for classes that can't maintain enough pressure to break through their shields and healing.
Mage
Frost
Mage is easily the strongest Mage specialization for Level 30 PvP right now, and it's not even close,
Between
Frost Novaova,
Frostbolt,
Ice Lance and
Shatter Frost Mages have an INSANE amount of control and can dish out some pretty nasty burst damage while keeping their opponents at a distance, esepcially if they some good RNG and Crit. The addition of
Ice Lance in WoW Forever has made
Frost even more threatening, especially when combined with
Shatter and the ability to freeze targets.
On top of that, they've still got
Polymorph for crowd control and
Ice Block for when things get a little too spicy. Melee classes in particular can have an absolutely miserable time against a good
Frost Mage. If they can't consistently close the gap, they're going to spend most of the duel getting slowed, rooted, and blasted from range.
However,
Mage does have some difficult matchups, particularly against
Priests,
Warlock and certain
Druid builds since they can't be sapped in form and they shift out of their
Frost Nova and sloes.
Fire and
Arcane are both very bad at PvP and nowhere near as well as
Frost is at the moment, so most of Mage's A Tier placement comes from just how strong Frost alone is.