Difficult Classes

[Cyphox]

For those of you with experience with end game raiding in vanilla, what class would you say is the most difficult to play? Specifically DPS

[FrustratedMoth]

The hybrid classes are the most difficult to play from a DPS standpoint, you'll have to work 300% harder for 75-95% of the output of a pure damage class. Feral Druid is the hardest of the hardest, and if you're seeking self-harm at the highest level, choose this.

Out of the 'viable' classes, Fury Warrior is the hardest. The casters, rogues and hunters are easy; stand in one place and shoot/stab stuff, but Fury has a more involved rotation, not to mention the leveling. If you want a hard DPS class that you won't get kicked out of raids for running, be Fury.

[Sham]

My favourite vanilla classes in terms of skill requirement and available abilities are demo warlock and holy paladin. Both can be amazing in right hands.
Here is video of support pally from vanilla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoLvRKsIbOc

But thats PvP. As far as PvE, nothing is difficult. You just spam 1-2 buttons there on any classes. Well, maybe fury warr is abit more complicated, but not by much

[nervous]

Fury warrior needs more attention than any other class if you're concerned with optimizing your dps.
Hunter is also a class that needs a lot of attention, although optimizing that class's dps is more of learning your autoshot timer and compensating for lag on the fly.

[Armilus]

Warlocks and Mages basically spam 1 button and occasionally have to CC something. You don't really have to manage any resources aside from a huge mana bar. At most you might need to use a mana potion/mana gem as early as possible in a fight.

Hunters have to time their aimed shot usage with their autoshot and if they really want to excel, keep their pet alive by pulling it out for AoE. They have to manage their mana and pet while threading aimed shots between auto shots.

Rogues have to keep slice'n'dice up at all cost, after that they spam sinister strike (or backstab if daggers) and use eviscerate if they can (without slice'n'dice dropping off). On top of this, they have to stay alive by dodging fire and cleave. Energy regenerates at a constant rate so you don't really need to do much to manage it in PvE, rogues have a 1s global cooldown and not many abilities with a 5-6s cooldown. You just have to stick to your rotation while not dying.

Warriors have to manage their rage and rage generation is very unpredictable. They also have to manage their cooldowns. Some abilities cause way more damage per rage than others, you need to make sure you are using these abilities on cooldown. So often a lesser ability will come off cooldown but you are better off waiting to save the rage for a better ability that is about to become available again. On top of all this, you have to manage the global cooldown. If you use Whirl Wind 0.5s before your bloodthirst is off coolown, you will be locked in global cooldown for 1.5s and unable to use your bloodthirst for 1 full second. Across the length of a fight this can result in 3-4 less bloodthirsts than a warrior who waited until after the BT to use WW. On top of managing your rage, cooldowns and global cooldown, you have to be very careful of your positioning to avoid fire and cleave (just like rogues).

Edit: Mages/priest/hunters and healers have to avoid fiery death as well but melee tend to have a lot more of it to avoid and have a lot more opportunity to die just because they were standing in the slightly wrong spot.