Classic World of Warcraft Discussion [Megathread]

[kary]

You didn't say they didnt have to spec prot though, you said:

"There was no reason to go deeper into the prot tree after last stand. "

and,

"Most warriors (including main tanks) were generally fury/arms with a small number of points in prot. "

As a reply to me saying the main tank would usually go deep prot

A lot of main tanks didn't go into prot past defiance. Defiance is on the same tier as last stand, and in a post right after that I rectified that (been 10 years, talent trees are foggy)
You didn't have to spec any further than 20~ points in prot to be a perfectly viable main tank.

https://youtu.be/74fmTBRTnDg?t=233

Check preach's video. *shrug*

- - - Updated - - -

Gear funneled? Ok let's look at the BIS stuff for bear tanks:

Weapon - Warden Staff (BOE epic 43 staff)
Trinket 1 - Smoking heart of the mountain (BOP trinket that is crafted by enchanters)
Trinket 2 - Mark of Tyranny (Quest reward from killing Rend Blackhand in UBRS)
Shoulders - Defilers Leather Shoulders (reward from hitting exalted with AB)
Legs - Outriders Leather Pants (reward from hitting exalted with WSG)
Neck - Master Dragon's Slayer Medallion (reward from the Nefarian head quest, an item that drops every week, only surpassed by the Mark of C'Thun)
Belt - Lava Belt (MC craftable, extremely strong because of the level of armor, only surpassed by the Thick Qiraji Belt in AQ40)
Idol - Idol of Brutality (drops from the Magister in Strat UD)

Of course I didn't list all of the gear slots but this is roughly half of them and outside of the neck piece, you don't need to raid for any of that. And that Nef head quest for the neck piece literally drops every week. Gear funneling happened in vanilla no doubt, but not really with feral druids.

There were the boots/shoulders from BWL. Drake fang talisman was BiS. Lol, you just said in your same post that there's better in AQ.
You could waste all that gear on a druid and still not have a main tank. Sounds like a sound investment to me.

[RickJamesLich]

A lot of main tanks didn't go into prot past defiance. Defiance is on the same tier as last stand, and in a post right after that I rectified that (been 10 years, talent trees are foggy)
You didn't have to spec any further than 20~ points in prot to be a perfectly viable main tank.

https://youtu.be/74fmTBRTnDg?t=233

Check preach's video. *shrug*

That preach video is loaded with a lot of bad, like the whole thing with "spamming sunder being best for threat" despite being blatantly false. Preach complains about dps having to wait until the tanks were ready to hold threat, yet at the same time says you didn't need to get the best ability for burst threat lol, not realizing that he contradicts himself.

[kary]

In a pure min/max sense, sure.

Were you fortunate enough to have a 100% attendance main tank? Well, grats then.

You didn't need to min/max anything until Naxx. Even then, it was only Patchwerk (raid DPS) and Loatheb (damage mitigation) progression that I recall being true displays of number crunching. 4H was just having enough warriors in 4/8...and KT was a nice balance of both execution and raw throughput.

That's what I was saying. You could tank on a druid. They were just a ton inferior to any warrior of any spec as long as they have points in defiance/last stand, and you couldn't MT a boss because crits and crushing blows were an inevitability.

- - - Updated - - -

That preach video is loaded with a lot of bad, like the whole thing with "spamming sunder being best for threat" despite being blatantly false. Preach complains about dps having to wait until the tanks were ready to hold threat, yet at the same time says you didn't need to get the best ability for burst threat lol, not realizing that he contradicts himself.

Yeah, and ignore the part where shield slam wasn't useable till naxxramas launched.
As in, for all vanilla progression, shield slam wasn't a thing.

You couldn't spam revenge because that was reactive. So yeah, you basically just spammed heroic strike and shield block until revenge lit up.

[RickJamesLich]

There were the boots/shoulders from BWL. Drake fang talisman was BiS. Lol, you just said in your same post that there's better in AQ.
You could waste all that gear on a druid and still not have a main tank. Sounds like a sound investment to me.

A lot of those leather items that druids would get are side grades for melee dps (not necessarily all though). That being said, there was no major gear funneling with bear tanks..... like they weren't getting the best rogue items before the rogues were. And the trinkets I listed were way better than DFT in terms of survivability.

Keep in Bears as off tanks were completely fine in most cases, so it didn't hurt having one. Plus you had the benefit of suddenly having an extra healer on fights where you didn't need that bear tanking, as well as the innervate and battle rez. So while they weren't main tanks in all instances, they were definitely helpful to have around and by no means a hindrance.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, and ignore the part where shield slam wasn't useable till naxxramas launched.
As in, for all vanilla progression, shield slam wasn't a thing.

You couldn't spam revenge because that was reactive. So yeah, you basically just spammed heroic strike and shield block until revenge lit up.

Shield Slam was introduced in the BWL patch:

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Shield_Slam

So it was definitely around for the majority of time.

[kary]

A lot of those leather items that druids would get are side grades for melee dps (not necessarily all though). That being said, there was no major gear funneling with bear tanks..... like they weren't getting the best rogue items before the rogues were. And the trinkets I listed were way better than DFT in terms of survivability.

Keep in Bears as off tanks were completely fine in most cases, so it didn't hurt having one. Plus you had the benefit of suddenly having an extra healer on fights where you didn't need that bear tanking, as well as the innervate and battle rez. So while they weren't main tanks in all instances, they were definitely helpful to have around and by no means a hindrance.

- - - Updated - - -



Shield Slam was introduced in the BWL patch:

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Shield_Slam

So it was definitely around for the majority of time.

It wasn't doing great damage/threat up until it was fixed around naxxramas patch.
Granted you won't take anything from the video, but I very clearly remember that being the talk of the town back then.

As far as battle res/heals go, you wouldn't have a feral with full/viable healing gear unless your guild was on farm for months, lmao. You'd be much better off having more damage from offtanking warriors.

[goibonuden]

They were just a ton inferior to any warrior of any spec as long as they have points in defiance/last stand

Quote by you: "The multiple dps warriors you had in raids were, by design, more competent tanks." DPS warriors didn't spec into last stand and defiance, did they? Genuine question.

[RickJamesLich]

It wasn't doing great damage/threat up until it was fixed around naxxramas patch.
Granted you won't take anything from the video, but I very clearly remember that being the talk of the town back then.

As far as battle res/heals go, you wouldn't have a feral with full/viable healing gear unless your guild was on farm for months, lmao. You'd be much better off having more damage from offtanking warriors.

According to the link I posted, the threat increase came with the ZG patch. And preach does have some interesting points, I can't hate on the dude entirely, I'm not saying vanilla was perfect by any stretch but I think a lot of the criticisms that it receives are often incorrect.

As for feral druids only healing after content was on farm for months, I won't disagree there lol. Druids were still cool for shit like guild MC runs, where a lot of the main guy's didn't need stuff, so they'd let alts in. If you didn't have enough off tanks, you could have a druid help out though, for example, and then at other points in the run they could decurse or heal instead, or chain sleep dragonkin in BWL, for exmaple. On the flipside hardcore guilds used druids on fights where they knew the boss was incapable of critting (for example, Patchwerk or Thaddius).

I don't disagree with you entirely, I mean if your point is that warriors had a much easier time, I'd definitely say yes. I think druids still brought some pretty cool utility and could still tank a lot of the stuff though.

[Sanguinerd]

Quote by you: "The multiple dps warriors you had in raids were, by design, more competent tanks." DPS warriors didn't spec into last stand and defiance, did they? Genuine question.

We didn't no, atleast the ones I knew and myself :P

[kary]

Quote by you: "The multiple dps warriors you had in raids were, by design, more competent tanks." DPS warriors didn't spec into last stand and defiance, did they? Genuine question.

Generally speaking, back then they did.

You generally weren't able to be a pure dps because you often found yourself tanking. Most dps warriors back then had to have 2 sets of gear.
Most dps warriors had a spec similar to http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#LZVV0Vgxoioxwzh
Last stand and shield block talents. enough into fury to pve dps and enough talents in prot to not instantly die if they needed to tank trash. i.e offtank spec. You could spec more into prot for defiance, or spec more into arms for tactical mastery (ony spec) or deep fury for death wish to bypass fears.

- - - Updated - - -

We didn't no, atleast the ones I knew and myself :P

I guess the ones I raided with tanked a lot more than you did.

- - - Updated - - -

According to the link I posted, the threat increase came with the ZG patch. And preach does have some interesting points, I can't hate on the dude entirely, I'm not saying vanilla was perfect by any stretch but I think a lot of the criticisms that it receives are often incorrect.

As for feral druids only healing after content was on farm for months, I won't disagree there lol. Druids were still cool for shit like guild MC runs, where a lot of the main guy's didn't need stuff, so they'd let alts in. If you didn't have enough off tanks, you could have a druid help out though, for example, and then at other points in the run they could decurse or heal instead, or chain sleep dragonkin in BWL, for exmaple. On the flipside hardcore guilds used druids on fights where they knew the boss was incapable of critting (for example, Patchwerk or Thaddius).

I don't disagree with you entirely, I mean if your point is that warriors had a much easier time, I'd definitely say yes. I think druids still brought some pretty cool utility and could still tank a lot of the stuff though.

Yeah, I said feral tanks were suboptimal. That pretty much is all ive been saying. You could have one, but it's highly unlikely that he'd be better than a warrior on any fight with the exception of Jindo in ZG.

[goibonuden]

Yeah, I said feral tanks were suboptimal. That pretty much is all ive been saying. You could have one, but it's highly unlikely that he'd be better than a warrior on any fight with the exception of Jindo in ZG.

You did actually say that it was good/viable to bring one feral but that he'd only be cat dps to buff others with aura, and that bear off-tanks were always an inferior choice to warriors. The other guy you are conversing with has given you an example of patchwerk and thaddius being better to do with bears, and I've given you examples of AQ trash clearing, skeram, jindo and vaelastrasz, and now you say only jindo is the exception. :P

[Thimagryn]

Still think Hybrid Tax needs to be done away with, regardless of 'keeping it Vanilla'. It simply has no place in class design; it was only meant to be an incentive for pures to keep their class.

[kary]

You did actually say that it was good/viable to bring one feral but that he'd only be cat dps to buff others with aura, and that bear off-tanks were always an inferior choice to warriors. The other guy you are conversing with has given you an example of patchwerk and thaddius being better to do with bears, and I've given you examples of AQ trash clearing, skeram, jindo and vaelastrasz, and now you say only jindo is the exception. :P

Patchwerk would shit on a druid, lol.
Druids couldn't gen enough threat on vael.
Trash clearing isn't an actual thing worth mention.

- - - Updated - - -

Still think Hybrid Tax needs to be done away with, regardless of 'keeping it Vanilla'. It simply has no place in class design; it was only meant to be an incentive for pures to keep their class.

that wouldn't be vanilla doh.

[goibonuden]

Patchwerk would shit on a druid, lol.
Druids couldn't gen enough threat on vael.

Bears took a lot less dmg from hateful strikes. As for vael, it's only what i've read is good on nostalrius forums. One of the few perks bears have over warriors is higher threat generation though, so why would that be a problem? Again, genuine question, not disagreeing just do disagree.

[Xandrigity]

Still think Hybrid Tax needs to be done away with, regardless of 'keeping it Vanilla'. It simply has no place in class design; it was only meant to be an incentive for pures to keep their class.

Can't have your cake and eat it to. Vanilla= massive class imbalance.

[Chaelexi]

Gear funneled? Ok let's look at the BIS stuff for bear tanks:

Weapon - Warden Staff (BOE epic 43 staff)
Trinket 1 - Smoking heart of the mountain (BOP trinket that is crafted by enchanters)
Trinket 2 - Mark of Tyranny (Quest reward from killing Rend Blackhand in UBRS)
Shoulders - Defilers Leather Shoulders (reward from hitting exalted with AB)
Legs - Outriders Leather Pants (reward from hitting exalted with WSG)
Neck - Master Dragon's Slayer Medallion (reward from the Nefarian head quest, an item that drops every week, only surpassed by the Mark of C'Thun)
Belt - Lava Belt (MC craftable, extremely strong because of the level of armor, only surpassed by the Thick Qiraji Belt in AQ40)
Idol - Idol of Brutality (drops from the Magister in Strat UD)

Of course I didn't list all of the gear slots but this is roughly half of them and outside of the neck piece, you don't need to raid for any of that. And that Nef head quest for the neck piece literally drops every week. Gear funneling happened in vanilla no doubt, but not really with feral druids.

And you had to fight with warriors for the BIS chest from Naxx as it was fury BIS as well.

- - - Updated - - -

The problem is that without shield slam, you get into a scenario where people have to wait before they start dps. Also, you again ignore that outside of MC, most raid bosses give infinite rage, in which case you want to use the abilities that generate the most threat, regardless of efficiency. Essentially not using shield slam makes a fight considerably longer since the dps now have to hold back quite a bit of their full potential, fine on easy fights, but on any sort of progression or challenging boss that can possibly wipe the raid, going without Shield Slam means that you did something very wrong.

Highest threat tank was Fury Hybrid tank, problem was they did not have all the survivability.

- - - Updated - - -

Can't have your cake and eat it to. Vanilla= massive class imbalance.

Problem with warrior offtanks was rage generation but on Vael they had infinite rage which meant they were spamming sunder and HS every attack. And if you went up to flurry in fury your would end up close to attack speed capped. I was an undergeared fury OT and could be number 2 on threat vs geared tanks because flurry and HS spam.

- - - Updated - - -

It's a valid concern for sure. But it's not like nost had too few of any class though. In fact the only class that were by far the most in demand was still warrior (tank, not damage). Healers were always easy to find, and in my personal experience, people were more accepting of the hybrid niche speccs. Druids had the lowest pickrate at about 8%, while warriors were quite a bit above nr 2 with 18%, but it's also relevant that only 1 race can be druids on each faction, while every race can pick warrior.

Once Naxx(late AQ40) fury warriors were number 2/3(depending if rogue or warrior had TF) on DPS. This comes from experience of progression raiding in a top 10 world guild(Deus Vox). Raid comp consisted of 4-6 warriors(2 tanks, 2 pure DPS and 2 furyprot hybrid), 4-8 mages, 4-8 rogues, 1-2 locks(COE and COR, not there for their DPS but to buff others), 2-3 priest(heals), 3 Pali(Heals, BoK, BoW/BoM, BoSalv), 1 Druid (hot bot and Mark), Fill last open spots with Hunter or more rogues/mage.

- - - Updated - - -

You really didn't read the update or you're just trolling. At this point legacy is inevitable.

I read it as there will be Legacy after all WoW expansions are done and we have the people to assign to this project. You know squeeze the last little bit of money out of people.

- - - Updated - - -

One more thing, to all of the people claiming Blizzard said they wanted Legacy/vanilla servers from a statement from the Nost people. They may have very well felt that way but if Blizzard went into the meeting saying that we do not want Legacy servers, Nost would have looked at them and said then Why did you spend money on flying use to Blizz headquarters to tell us this and that this meeting is over. For any productive meeting to happen there has to be some common ground to start on. And Blizz may have came into this meeting playing that up to get more information from them, but I do believe there is some want from employees and developers for this but currently, as I have stated in every thread, the cost of producing Vanilla servers is just too great, especially when it risks competing with the current game and leaching subs from there(people who can only afford to play one over the other as Vanilla will not be included in the base price sub fee). Speaking on the sub fee I see it as an extra 7 a month over base sub or you can get Vanilla for 14.95 reg sub fee.

[ro9ue]

Y'all see this:

http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44218

[kary]

@Chaelexi, that's def the vanilla situation I remember.

[Kyanion]

@Chaelexi, that's def the vanilla situation I remember.

Yeah I still don't know there is an argument about feral vs warrior right now. Those of us that played in Vanilla know exactly how that situation played out. Maybe it would be worth revisiting if Legacy was to happen but I don't really care about what happened on Nost. The simple reason is we don't know how exact they got the numbers compared to true Vanilla.

Also don't forget Nost was on 1.12 so they were using a further patch and then going back into MC/BWL and so on. The numbers they'd likely produced would have been skewed away from what happened in Vanilla if they even got the numbers exactly the same as true Vanilla.

[kary]

Yeah I still don't know there is an argument about feral vs warrior right now. Those of us that played in Vanilla know exactly how that situation played out. Maybe it would be worth revisiting if Legacy was to happen but I don't really care about what happened on Nost. The simple reason is we don't know how exact they got the numbers compared to true Vanilla.

Also don't forget Nost was on 1.12 so they were using a further patch and then going back into MC/BWL and so on. The numbers they'd likely produced would have been skewed away from what happened in Vanilla if they even got the numbers exactly the same as true Vanilla.

lol.
That's why earlier I linked the 2 videos I could find re: nostalrius competitive pve. where 2 different "progression" guilds both did a bwl speedclear with 0 non resto druids in tow.

But eh, you tend to find garbage specs a ton more easily in less progression oriented raids.

[Kyanion]

lol.
That's why earlier I linked the 2 videos I could find re: nostalrius competitive pve. where 2 different "progression" guilds both did a bwl speedclear with 0 non resto druids in tow.

But eh, you tend to find garbage specs a ton more easily in less progression oriented raids.

Which is why I liked the game more as it evolved in TBC/WotLK where more specs got to shine. It was funny in Vanilla how so many guilds that were terrible (stuck in MC when BWL was cleared long ago) still tried to enforce progression guild mentality in regards to classes/specs. Things stayed the same throughout the game in that many guilds always try to act like they are above their station and follow the hardcore mentality of what the top guilds are doing. At least in later expansions I wasn't really getting shunned for my class/spec choices.