Vanilla question

[Cien]

i am embarassed and ashamed to say i leveled 1-60 as a holy priest, me being the 10 year old that i was AND being a goody two-shoes, the thought of playing shadow repulsed me :P it was slow, but fun, i enjoyed it anyway! those days, leveling and questing wasn't rushed as it is today, i for one loved reading the quests and figuring out where you had to go, but in emergencies...thottbot anyone? :P

i still remember a conversation with my brother to this day, 'why don't you go shadow? you'll do loads more damage', 'erm, im doing damage already thanks, AND lightwell is SO pretty'

[The3rdCatalyst]

So I was wondering, before LFG and dual spec, how did one person leveled as a healer? Did he killed mobs and did quest as healer or did he respec at the talent guy every time he was needed for a dungeon?

As a holy paladin it wasn't that bad. Concecration, paladin's aoe ability was a holy paladin talent ability. I remember my brother would pull 5 mobs while wearing any gear with int and stamina on it, lay down the aoe while healing himself. It was horrible 1v1 but great in packs from 20-50ish. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#sVxz

As priest you would run as discipline and wands were a lot more viable when questing than using abilities. Put a shield on yourself, mind blast and wand them down, never had downtime but killed slowly. Really strong 1v1 or 2v1. Otherwise it would get too tough to engage. Wand builds were viable until shadowform which you had to go shadow or holy. Holy offered strong spell damage burst and with more int later on meant you wouldn't oom as quickly, making spells more viable. Shadow obviously did the msot damage of the 3 specs.

Rest shaman was largely not viable because you would depend on totems and melee to do damage while saving mana for healing. Healing was mediocre and damage was even worse. I never saw a resto shaman until 50's and they were often running with groups or dungeoning with guildies.

Resto druid was more viable than shaman, but was still difficult. It became a mix of healing, then going into bear form, then back to healing, etc. Also when you switched forms you lost all your enemy/rage, so speccing into resources when you shapeshift was needed. http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#0ZZVV0o

[Sierra85]

leveling holy priest was a long and arduous task. fun as hell though.

[provaporous]

Since I played the game from TBC to CATA on private servers (shame on me, I know, but it was hard to convince my parents that paying for a game is ok) I never really experienced true low level experience of that time. When I leveled my first char I did only quests and later on with my alts it was queueable.
So I was wondering, before LFG and dual spec, how did one person leveled as a healer? Did he killed mobs and did quest as healer or did he respec at the talent guy every time he was needed for a dungeon?

Priest: you would go wand spec as a spriest while leveling and you would still be able to heal dungeons.
Shaman: nope.
Druid: nope.

[sykoex]

Specs in vanilla worked different than they do today. Back then you could put talent points in multiple specs, not JUST holy. So as you leveled you could put a few points in holy, a few in shadow. Also in vanilla there were very few abilities that were "spec exclusive", so even if you put all your points in shadow as a priest, you'd still get a ton of healing spells from your class trainer that would help you heal in leveling dungeons. Then when you got to 60 and wanted to become a serious healer you could pay to respec and put lots of points in holy and/or disc.

[oldgeezer]

A prot pally friend duelled a holy priest back in Vanilla just for the hell of it. He said that after 20 minutes or so they decided to call it a draw.

[ifrah]

Since I played the game from TBC to CATA on private servers (shame on me, I know, but it was hard to convince my parents that paying for a game is ok) I never really experienced true low level experience of that time. When I leveled my first char I did only quests and later on with my alts it was queueable.
So I was wondering, before LFG and dual spec, how did one person leveled as a healer? Did he killed mobs and did quest as healer or did he respec at the talent guy every time he was needed for a dungeon?

I probably remember encountering 1 or maybe few healing-specced low level toons back in days (earlyish 2005) when I leveled myself. Almost all of the priests (me included) were playing shadow (with the mandatory disc talents). The leveling was very wand-intensive, oh the joy. After shadowform it was quite good though, as not that many of the classes were exactly a sologrind superstars.
Even in mid-end raiding guilds quite many healers and tanks had the normal cookie cutter specs instead of pure raiding talents until maybe BWL/AQ and beyond. Respeccing was a rare thing to do, the cost was a huge lump of gold, I respecced perhaps less than 10 times during the whole vanilla. In normal 5man dungeons having the "sologrind" or "pvp" talents instead of anything pve-oriented was the standard. Although it did not matter that much, things got ugly all the time and that was the nature of the game.

[slaise1]

Since I played the game from TBC to CATA on private servers (shame on me, I know, but it was hard to convince my parents that paying for a game is ok) I never really experienced true low level experience of that time. When I leveled my first char I did only quests and later on with my alts it was queueable.
So I was wondering, before LFG and dual spec, how did one person leveled as a healer? Did he killed mobs and did quest as healer or did he respec at the talent guy every time he was needed for a dungeon?

The truth was you allays lvled as dps spec, but you could still heal instances until lvl 55-ish. If you wanna try it out yourself google "Vanilla 1.12".

[Lochton]

No it was absolutely normal to have fury tanks and shadow healers, especially in leveling content. Nobody expected you to gimp your leveling experience so badly, and the dungeons were still easily doable.

Also nobody would even notice because you didn't see talents when inspecting someone.

I didn't say it wasn't normal, though. Nor did I say it wasn't doable. Just said that many pointed it out faster once it failed.

[Morbownz]

You played as a hybrid most of the time. You (as a priest) had access to the most basic of the DPS spells, Mind Blast, SW:P, you could never really empower those abilities if you decided to play a healing spec, this is basically the way Vanilla talent trees worked.

[McNeil]

I leveled as a prot warrior when I first played the game. When I complained that mobs died way to slow, my friends suggested me to go DPS while doing quests and keep prot gear in my inventory in case I was asked to tank some dungeon. I instantly noticed that I received a lot more damage, but atleast the mobs died a lot faster.

[deniter]

Until max lvl content you could easily tank or heal dungeons with whatever spec you liked.
So most people just had a normal dps spec for leveling, and only switched to heal at max level (if at all)

What he said.

Just make sure you collect gear pieces for tanking/healing while you level up, and change gear for dungeon runs. Your spec doesn't matter before max level and 60+ dungeons and raids.

[Daedius]

In the old days, one had to run to their class trainer to switch specs that cost you gold... with the cost increasing per switch.

Was an absolute pain in the ass, and costly. Dual Spec was a Godsend !

[connectz]

reading these responses really tells you that most people on here have never played vanilla lol.

how did you level as a healer? you didn't, you leveled as dps and respecced to heals at 60 because you can heal every dungeon as dps until cap.

[Roadblock]

reading these responses really tells you that most people on here have never played vanilla lol.

how did you level as a healer? you didn't, you leveled as dps and respecced to heals at 60 because you can heal every dungeon as dps until cap.

And your re-posted what multiple people have said in this thread only with a "look at me I'm special" tone.

OP what you can get from this is that there were multiple options in how to level as a healer (or tank which is what I did).

[Alindra]

As a Holy Paladin? Put +Spell Damage gear on and Holy Shock things to death. I miss Shockadin, there were fights in Kara/Mag/GL where I'd DPS as it over healing. :/

Don't forget that in Vanilla Holy Shock required 30 prerequisite points (31 total), so you couldn't even get it until lvl40.

[Mindelan]

During Vanilla I played a druid. Leveled a little as Feral, but found I could get more done as Resto. I saved a ton of time leveling because I found a mage or two and healed them while they mass-pulled and AoE'd mobs. Made for much faster grinding than solo, and generally faster than questing at the time.

[FertsBlert]

Vanilla was different, the talent system and skills were far less restrictive than now. It was very easy for a mostly Shadow priest, mostly Feral\Balance druid, mostly Ret pally to heal anything below raiding content and even some raiding content was quite doable, got no idea bout Shammies cause we didn't have any Ally side

For Warriors (because they were the only viable tank in raids and even in most dungeons) it was common to be full Arms with the mandatory 12? (might have been 15) points into Prot there was a talent that was required early on in the prot tree, even for full on progression raiding as the Main Tank.

It was only later in Vanilla that the talents were adjusted enough\the content became difficult enough that it was a better choice to actually take the full tree for whichever role you were undertaking.

[Arcagniark]

Levelling back then was much much slower baseline, people often took months to lvl to 60 in Vanilla as everyone was "enjoying the fresh world". Levelling as a healer was extremely slow in open world as healing was not designed for that and back then the philosophy was different towards every specs can do anything. For example some specs back then were unplayable pretty much (#boomkin).

[feateous]

if you weren't an idiot, you specced into dps and brought a bunch of healing gear (intellect for extra mana) for dungeons. Spriest was a very good leveling spec if you kept an up to date wand and understood the concept of pacing (pacing no longer exists due to OP self heals and never running out of mana).

You only respected at 60 or maybe 56 if you wanted to farm BRD for a few levels. Nobody expected anyone to be the proper spec before lvl 60.