Overview
DPS Zerg trades the safety of a second healer for raw kill pressure. With arms, subtlety, frost, and affliction all pointed at one target, no 5s healer can out-heal a fully committed opener — so the entire game plan is to manufacture that opener: Sap and Polymorph the enemy's peels, Fear or Spell Lock their healer, and blow the target up inside one Kidney Shot.
The catch is that a single disc priest cannot win attrition. If the first swap fails you have no fallback core to grind behind — you're playing a coin-flip that lands hard when you execute cleanly and folds fast when the enemy survives the initial burst. That's why it sits in C tier: devastating against greedy or under-coordinated teams, exposed against anything that stacks healing.
Win condition
Lock the enemy healer with layered CC, stack Mortal Strike + Wound Poison to gut their healing, and delete one target with the combined burst of warrior, rogue, and mage before your single disc priest is out-attritioned.
Strengths
- +Highest burst ceiling in 5s — four DPS can global a single target through one healer
- +Mortal Strike + Wound Poison stack the enemy healer out of the game during the swap
- +Polymorph + Fear + Sap layer enough CC to lock a healer for the whole kill window
Weaknesses
- −Only one healer — you lose every attrition game against multi-healer cores
- −One whiffed opener and you're on the back foot with no defensive depth to recover
Cooldown timeline
Set up before you commit: Sap a peeler, Polymorph a secondary healer/DPS, and have the warlock's Felhunter ready to Spell Lock or Fear the enemy healer. On the call, warrior lands Mortal Strike (Mortal Wounds) and rogue opens from stealth with Cheap Shot → Premeditation → Cold Blood, applying Wound Poison so healing is halved twice over. Mage fires a Shatter combo — Frost Nova → Ice Lance/Frostbolt — while the warlock chains Death Coil and Fear to keep the healer offline. Everyone pops trinkets and offensive cooldowns together (Recklessness/Death Wish, Icy Veins, Cold Blood Eviscerate), and Kidney Shot closes the window. If the target lives through all of that, back off, let CC DR reset, and re-set rather than feeding a counter-swap.
Positioning
Stage the rogue in stealth off to the flank for the Sap and the opener while the warrior, mage, and lock hold LoS on a pillar. Collapse hard onto the kill target the instant the healer is CC'd, but keep the frost mage and priest spaced so a single Fear or AoE can't catch your whole team. The disc priest plays deepest behind LoS — Pain Suppression and Power Word: Shield are your only lifeline, so never let the priest get isolated or trained off the pillar.
Vs. the meta
Three healers simply out-sustain a single burst window — you cannot win attrition. Your only path is a full lockout: Polymorph and Fear two healers on separate DR while Spell Lock and Kidney Shot the third, then commit every cooldown at once on one target. If the kill doesn't land under that lockdown, it isn't coming — reset CC DR and try again rather than trading into their endless healing.
Their warrior + mage pressure plus two healers grinds your lone priest down over time, so you must kill before the clock favors them. Sap or Poly one healer out of the opener, Wound Poison + Mortal Strike the other, and blow up a target early. Peel their mage off your priest with Counterspell and Spell Lock, and never let the game go long — every minute past the opener swings toward them.
Gear requirements
- ▸Warrior + rogue: hard-hitting weapons first (Merciless 2H / fast off-hand), then resilience — the kill has to land in one opener
- ▸Mage, warlock + priest: resilience plus a deep enough mana pool to survive one long game, since your single healer can't win attrition
Tips
- •You have one healer — treat every game as a race and force the kill inside your first fully-loaded opener.
- •Double the healing debuff: land Mortal Strike and Wound Poison on the target before you dump burst.
- •Save the warlock's Spell Lock and the mage's Counterspell for the enemy healer's clutch cast, not for pressure.
- •If the swap fails, disengage and let CC DR reset — re-setting beats tunneling into a counter-swap with no defensive depth.
Gear & talents for this comp
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