I'm less excited about vanilla and more excited about

[pateuvasiliu]

No we knew that. Makes me wonder if their mana costs are off just a bit. I mean I could heal as a Paladin for a very long time non-stop but as long as some of those fights could get sometimes you woukd run out eventually. Granted mana also has a ton do with how well your group is geared and plays.

You probably had bad DPS taking unnecessary damage, didn't itemise properly ( flasks, pots, mana regen gear? ) or didn't have a good task sheet of who heals who.

[Armourboy]

You probably had bad DPS taking unnecessary damage, didn't itemise properly ( flasks, pots, mana regen gear? ) or didn't have a good task sheet of who heals who.

Really hard to say, can't exactly pull up spread sheets from then, itemization wasn't an issue, although individual luck could dictate some of the gear. I mean who healed who was pretty easy, at least for me, I was generally stuck on the MT or decursing depending on the fight.

I think part of the difference too is people in the group, who knows what gear they were using, if they were playing correctly. That stuff wasn't my concern, I was more worried about the overhealing charts, etc.

All I can do is look back to my experiences and knowing that mana was an issue in raids.

[Emerald Archer]

Blasted Lands was the place for weapon skills. Mobs that were part of a quest that couldn't be killed and, if memory serves, didn't attack back.

It was... exhilarating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ys3Kgxo3Yk

Ooooh, they DID attack back! Dealing absolutely no damage, but hey, couldn't just go afk for an hour and come back alive. Probably.

Such exciting gameplay, really brought such life into the game.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Really? I'm pretty sure the only thing people experience in current wow is gear identity.

And you'd be wrong to think that. Being "pretty sure" based on how you feel doesn't exactly reflect as reality onto the millions busy playing this game for millions of reasons.

[Macaquerie]

It was during WOTLK, when more thought went into optimization and the "right or wrong"-think had been cemented.
On Classic servers these days, it seems people go with optimal builds if they wanna do something more than potter around in the world though.

Well that's because in Vanilla, and to a lesser extent in BC, there were enough random little things you could do to improve your performance, so that you didn't necessarily need to be all MLG to be a valuable member of the raid team, you could just bring some consumables, set up your UI in a way that didn't completely suck, and have some minimal level of situational awareness, and you'd already be better than the vast majority of players out there. Once everything was simplified in Wrath and all the gimmicks were mostly done away with, raiding became a lot more competitive because you no longer had anything to compensate for running a suboptimal spec or having reflexes that were a bit slow.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Well that's because in Vanilla, and to a lesser extent in BC, there were enough random little things you could do to improve your performance, so that you didn't necessarily need to be all MLG to be a valuable member of the raid team, you could just bring some consumables, set up your UI in a way that didn't completely suck, and have some minimal level of situational awareness, and you'd already be better than the vast majority of players out there. Once everything was simplified in Wrath and all the gimmicks were mostly done away with, raiding became a lot more competitive because you no longer had anything to compensate for running a suboptimal spec or having reflexes that were a bit slow.

It was also a time when 15 people knowing their shit could carry a team of 40 in raiding.

Thanks, but I'll take raids that are hard by demanding players to be actually good, rather than logistics being the thing to overcome and "gimmicks" being helpful over raw skill of a player.

[Konteil]

Not if you had a mana battery with you...I mean a shadow priest.

say it isnt so!

[Swalload]

u forgot caster dpsers going oom from dpsing too hard, having to learn to manage their mana.

There was no management of mana. You DPS until you're oom and then you shoot wand. You gain nothing by randomly stopping to cast spells.

Healers were the only ones with mana management.

- - - Updated - - -

the RPG elements that existed in vanilla. Talents, stance dancing, weapon skills aspects that more or less invested you in your character plus the removal of a constant lever puller simulation. People are so fixated on Vanilla that they ignore a lot of the great things we've lost for a more streamlined mainstream game which sucks.

We're talking about vanilla here, not TBC, so talents are not part of that list, as they were garbage.

[Heathy]

I can't say i saw much depth in the weapon skills, i did a rogue and it was good for them, and warriors and hunters (lol).

but mages warlock priests druids and even palas for the most part didn't really get much from weapon skills, i levelled my wand skill in molten core on the trash and bosses. mages and locks could do the same, druids and palas hardly ever had the chance to melee. or hell you could level one handed maces on a holy pala from just the occasional swing here and there. just a progress bar. perhaps it could have become something better but in the end it was useful to less than half the classes. or lets just say it meant something to less than half. the other half either got the one skill they needed passively or they just didn't need weapon skills to function as a class.

[Zylos]

say it isnt so!

it isn't.... Spriests didn't act as a mana battery unti BC

[DesMephisto]

And you'd be wrong to think that. Being "pretty sure" based on how you feel doesn't exactly reflect as reality onto the millions busy playing this game for millions of reasons.

Then show me? Lever pulling gear rng simulator hardly counts as fantasy.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Then show me? Lever pulling gear rng simulator hardly counts as fantasy.

- Artifact weapon progression that's lasted the entire expansion
- Class fantasy with every spec having a unique weapon to that spec with a unique story
- Artifact weapon tints from various types of content such as raiding, PVP, challenges, questing etc etc with some even becoming unobtainable past Legion as a sign of the player's commitment to this content
- Class mounts
- PVP Prestige
- Scaling tech to the world
- World Quest system keeping world content relevant far beyond the leveling process in combo with scaling tech
- Roleplaying
- Pet Battling
- Collections like mounts, pets and transmog
- Professions having questlines and long-term commitment tied to them
- The Suramar Questline when it was current and progression to unlock everything in Suramar
- Achievements allowing players to showcase what they've done regardless of the gear they have on a character

And BfA is keeping these elements + adding new ones, such as unlocking Allied races, long overarching storylines etc.

Should I go on? But yeah you're right, WoW is only about "gear identity"... GTFO with that stupidity, especially when you're comparing to an iteration of this game where the drop of an epic piece of loot could literally make a guild implode because everyone was so thirsty for rare-as-fuck RNG gear as the only metric of high end progression of their character. Which iteration has the most tards going "I miss the time when people could look at me and ooh and aah over my gear?". Yeah, Classic.

[Rollo]

It was during WOTLK, when more thought went into optimization and the "right or wrong"-think had been cemented.
On Classic servers these days, it seems people go with optimal builds if they wanna do something more than potter around in the world though.

Hunter has always had at minimum two different raiding builds. Towards the end of classic there were 3 that were very solid and optimized, with slight variations depending on if another hunter brought a talent that you wouldn't need. That's not even counting beast master, which wasn't truly raid viable until TBC.

[Mahogany]

That was TBC. And depended on whether the lock went dest shadow or dest fire.

Euhm no? Spriest gave a +15% shadow dmg taken debuff to the target - Go check the Vanilla Spriest Talent Tree if you still think I'm wrong

[MMKing]

''Shadow weaving''. Gives your shadow spells a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to increase the shadow damage taken by the target by 3%, stacking 5 times.

[Akka]

the RPG elements that existed in vanilla.

Making the distinction is pretty weird.
WHY do you think many people are actually excited about Vanilla ?

[Askyl]

I'm excited about healing! I will play mainly a none healer I think but my 1st alt will be a priest. Using different levels of heals just to keep mana up while still keeping the party / raid up, mana was hard back then!

[Forogil]

That was TBC. In vanilla all they did was provide 15% shadow damage to the warlocks.

And kill Onyxia.

[Eveningforest]

So, I ran my lowbie hunter from Auberdine to Mulgore last night to tame The Rake (1.2 attack speed). Died twice to Ashenvale bears and once near Camp Taujaro.
Took my Rake to Ratchet, camped a couple of Oily Blackmouth pools while feeding my hungry beast constantly the less valuable fish.
Opened up a few beers (irl), fished, and chatted in guild until it was time to go to bed.

That's the Vanilla I remember, that's the Vanilla I'm looking forward to again.
Everything takes forever, so you automatically slow down, chill and enjoy the world.

[Phuongvi]

don't forget can't be able to join a raid for the week because someone choke after the first boss