Unholy has performed very well in Castle Nathria so far. Even after an initial mastery nerf (that was completely justifiable), Unholy has stood strong as one of the best melee to bring on the majority of fights.
Zona Antimagia can be leveraged on all later fights except Sludgefist, finding good value pretty much everywhere. Unholy is very resistant to downtime, losing little damage by running out of melee. This is very useful for progression as the damage output is consistent across pulls. Finally, the damage itself is very competitive, especially in execute.
Ceifador de Almas in conjunction with
Exército dos Mortos (often used for a bloodlust burn) makes Unholy one of the best, if not the best execute spec in the game.
Great raid utility, good damage profile and high damage throughput all fed into making Unholy the best melee of the tier.
Windwalker has been, and continues to be, one of the strongest melee classes in Castle Nathria. This is due to a combination of a strong Legendary in
Deleite do Invocador, strong Covenant in Kyrian, and many fights that utilize the 2-minute cooldown of both with
Evocar Xuen, o Tigre Branco.
Windwalkers had a bit of a wild ride with 9.0.5, bug fixes, and compensatory buffs, but the version of Windwalker that we have now is nearly as strong as the version before the 9.0.5 silliness, albeit with a little bit more work required. The reason that Windwalkers have dropped a little bit from the commanding spot on top that they were earlier in the tier, was that more people started to play them. At the start of the expansion when Windwalker was very strong, many of the people playing them at a high level were high level players themselves, such as Trill from Limit.
Understandably, as more players switched to Windwalker, the population became more diverse in its skill levels, which does have an effect on the percentiles. After 9.0.5, Windwalker became slightly harder to maximize, especially in the AOE fights that dominate the percentiles and later fights in Castle Nathria, so these two factors are why Windwalker has fallen slightly in the rankings, but remains a very strong spec.
Lastly, what cannot be completely ignored, is that with Brewmasters and Mistweavers not being the "meta" specs for their roles, there is more room for Windwalkers to be brought in to provide the raid with the
Toque Místico debuff.
Frost started out quite low on the rankings in Castle Nathria. It suffers significantly from having the Bigger and Badder brother Unholy. High-end players with good gear, good kill timers and good skill tend to play what's optimal. This leaves Frost left hanging, generally creating bias against it. We have seen a significant improvement over the course of the tier. Both due to some minor buffs, but also due to Unholy players swapping back to Frost. Frost does really well on multiple encounters where it can leverage its strong cleave. Huntsman, Sun King, Lady Inerva, Council, Stone Legion Generals and Sire Denathrius all present some kind of cleave. The damage isn't always useful (heavy cleave are in multiple scenarios mostly pad), but it does boost Frost's performance. Frost suffers greatly from random forces downtime, sometimes interrupting your
Sopro de Sindragosa and ruining your dps. It also doesn't do that well on priority target damage. Just like Unholy though, it has access to
Zona Antimagia which has been greatly useful on the majority of bosses this tier.
Suffering from an obstructive Bigger Brother, Frost brings great raid utility, great cleave but not the best damage profile nor damage utility. It's one of the better melees but falls short in some areas.
