Balance the classes. Keep the content the same. Just stop.

[Swalload]

Honestly? They specialized in giving a unique spirit buff. That was their specialty.

spe·cial·i·za·tion
ˌspeSHələˈzāSH(ə)n,ˌspeSHəˌlīˈzāSH(ə)n/Submit
noun
the process of concentrating on and becoming expert in a particular subject or skill.
"the division and specialization of labor"
a particular area which someone concentrates on or is an expert in.

Disc spells:
Power Word: Fortitude
Power Word: Shield
Inner Fire
Dispel Magic
Shackle Undead
Mana Burn
Inner Focus (Talent)
Power Infusion (Talent)
Divine Spirit (Talent)

Holy spells:
Lesser Heal
Renew
Resurrection
Cure Disease
Heal (Skill up from Lesser Heal)
Flash Heal
Prayer of Healing
Abolish Disease (Skill up from Cure Disease)
Greater Heal (skill up from Lesser Heal and Heal)
Holy Nova (Talent)
Light Well (Talent)

Whether you're 31 points in disc or 31 points in holy, you're dipping into the other school/tab about 50/50 depending on dungeons, raids, and enemy/spell type. They both have six unique non-talent spells that are used depending on the encounter (Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal are the same spell - only different ranks.)

Let's keep this in context.
The original guy I replied to said people would never bring a disc priest - I explained that they actually did bring a disc priest and ret paladin.
I can give some wiggle room on the ret spec, since in most cases they still played as a healer. However, in this context, what is the appropriate role/play of "disc" that the raids wouldn't bring?

Edit: Quote tag was messed up!

the process of concentrating on and becoming expert in a particular subject or skill.
"the division and specialization of labor"

Which is to full health bar by using holy spells because there's no active discipline spells worth using. The entire tree helps the holy play style more than anything else. People didn't even ask if priests were disc or holy, they asked healer or shadow and if he said heal he asked if he had spirit buff. Cuz everyone knew it made no difference otherwise, you look at them playing in your raid and both the guys would do the exact same spells at the exact same time. There's a reason why the disc page got insanely change later on: because it was not a spec.

[Mindark]

You put points in ret, with a 2 hander and pull stuff, nothing stays on you and you don't tank anything, everyone dies. How is that playing Prot? That makes no sense lol.

Because

Specs are a playstyle

And for the record, threat is always fickle. That's a dps problem, not a tanking problem. And paladins were never viable tanks in vanilla. Even speced, geared, and playing for it. Everyone still dies. With prot warrior, nobody in the raid waits for 3 stacks of sunder, everyone dies.

everyone dies. How is that playing Prot? That makes no sense lol.

Are words and their definitions just arbitrary to you? Pick a stance and stick with it.
1) Specs are determined by the spellbook tree of which their spells/abilities are used
2) Specs are a playstyle
3) Specs are defined by the outcome of the role

And, make up your mind. This back and forth literally started with (summarized)

No, you will not play disc or many other spec

to follow it up with

The disc page is just another holy page with a different name, it doesn't allow you to play any differently than a holy priest. So it's not a spec in itself.

Why are you acknowledging disc as a spec to say it isn't viable to turn around and say the spec doesn't actually exist?

[Manaia]

the process of concentrating on and becoming expert in a particular subject or skill.
"the division and specialization of labor"

Which is to full health bar by using holy spells because there's no active discipline spells worth using. The entire tree helps the holy play style more than anything else. People didn't even ask if priests were disc or holy, they asked healer or shadow and if he said heal he asked if he had spirit buff. Cuz everyone knew it made no difference otherwise, you look at them playing in your raid and both the guys would do the exact same spells at the exact same time. There's a reason why the disc page got insanely change later on: because it was not a spec.

I 100% agree with this. There was a healer and shadow. The healer had two talent trees, discipline and holy. In your example though, the (disc) priest with inner focus is more likely to top the health bar off though in a clutch

No, you will not play ret or arcane or disc or many other spec, you will play was we were forced to play, you will find it stupid, and you will, like many other people, stop saying that vanilla was the best.

I just want to know what you meant by this, what were you talking about disc when you mentioned this? When you yourself admit that "Cuz everyone knew it made no difference otherwise." This was what I was contesting. What disc build/spec/whatever-you-want-to-call-it wouldn't be brought?

[Kilee25]

Paladins' DPS and tanks specs were a joke though, for DPSing and tanking. Every class has DPS abilities, that doesn't mean every class had a legitimate DPS spec. There were no tank cooldowns for paladins. Lay on hands might be considered a "tanking" cooldown.

I don't think they were a joke. I think that's going too far. I played with a lot of players in vanilla who carried their weight very well in hybrid off-specs. They certainly were better than a lot of the "pure" classes. In the end, the player behind the character could make up for a lot. At the very least, at least in the guild I was in, this didn't become a problem until mid AQ40. We had a paladin main tank, feral DPS, shadow priest, etc... we had a lot of people playing unusual specs, and they would regularly outperform the pure classes. Mostly you just needed 40 people who knew the strategies and could move out of the raid when they got debuffed with bomb mechanics.

Warriors were the only class intended to be "real" tanks in vanilla. Adding a tank spec gave their healing a little flavor. It did not make them competitive tanks. To answer your question, "why was everything resolved in the first expansion.." It's because players were demanding it, and Blizzard changed direction.

I think it's presumptuous to claim to know what the designers intended.

My interpretation of Vanilla's design is that pegging the classes into certain roles was probably at attempt to solve a logistics problem. A 40 man raid needed around 6-10 healers depending on the fight and raid group. Realistically you weren't going to find that many priests, so the healers had to come from somewhere. The only other tanking classes, also had healing specs, so they ended up having to heal because the ratio of tanks to raiders was very small in a 40-man. Until you got to Nax you really didn't need 6-8 tanks. You needed 2. So having a lot of classes who could be a main tank didn't seem to matter as much as needing to find healers somewhere.

I think the raid gear and class design was a limitation imposed by the designers as a counter to the logistical problem that 40-man raids represented. I also think that they lacked experience in thinking that 5 man content and smaller raids could be a viable end game for people.

In this respect, I do feel that the "class viability" was intentional.

But my own point and perspective is that I feel this is a net negative to the players. Raids who want to succeed will sort out who is going to heal on their own. They don't need the game designers to dictate that for them. Same with who tanks. I think from that perspective, Vanilla was a flawed game, and it's one flaw that I'd like to see fixed in WoW Classic. In that one area, I don't actually think it made the game better.

[Shoeboots]

It's weird that people are still debating what changes classic should or should not receive. Watcher basically closed the door on all of this during the last Q&A, saying vanilla is vanilla, and that the only discussion he's interested in is which version of vanilla we should get.

[Swalload]

Because



And for the record, threat is always fickle. That's a dps problem, not a tanking problem. And paladins were never viable tanks in vanilla. Even speced, geared, and playing for it. Everyone still dies. With prot warrior, nobody in the raid waits for 3 stacks of sunder, everyone dies.



Are words and their definitions just arbitrary to you? Pick a stance and stick with it.
1) Specs are determined by the spellbook tree of which their spells/abilities are used
2) Specs are a playstyle
3) Specs are defined by the outcome of the role

And, make up your mind. This back and forth literally started with (summarized)



to follow it up with



Why are you acknowledging disc as a spec to say it isn't viable to turn around and say the spec doesn't actually exist?

How hard can it be to extrapolate? Saying it doesn't exist is just a figure of speech, of course the page is there and you can put points in it. You're still gonna play like a holy priest, disc doesn't make you specialize into anything different than what holy already does. Having a spirit buff is not being specialized into anything, you're not the master of spirit stat, you're just a holy priest with another button to press every 30 minutes. Everything else is the exact same, from your action bars to your stats, no difference. So if yuo specialize in doing what holy does, it makes you holy, regardless of your stupid talent choices.

1) Specs are determined by the spellbook tree of which their spells/abilities are used I said that's what a spec should do, and since disc use mostly holy spells instead of disc spells, it means it's closer to holy
2) Specs are a playstyle Disc plays exactly like holy, so it's more holy than disc
3) Specs are defined by the outcome of the role You do the same role as a holy priest if you put all your points in disc, you're still just a holy priest

[Nitros14]

Discipline was like Arcane in vanilla, a talent tree to buff your other two talent trees.

[Mindark]

I don't think they were a joke. I think that's going too far. I played with a lot of players in vanilla who carried their weight very well in hybrid off-specs. They certainly were better than a lot of the "pure" classes. In the end, the player behind the character could make up for a lot. At the very least, at least in the guild I was in, this didn't become a problem until mid AQ40. We had a paladin main tank, feral DPS, shadow priest, etc... we had a lot of people playing unusual specs, and they would regularly outperform the pure classes. Mostly you just needed 40 people who knew the strategies and could move out of the raid when they got debuffed with bomb mechanics.



I think it's presumptuous to claim to know what the designers intended.

My interpretation of Vanilla's design is that pegging the classes into certain roles was probably at attempt to solve a logistics problem. A 40 man raid needed around 6-10 healers depending on the fight and raid group. Realistically you weren't going to find that many priests, so the healers had to come from somewhere. The only other tanking classes, also had healing specs, so they ended up having to heal because the ratio of tanks to raiders was very small in a 40-man. Until you got to Nax you really didn't need 6-8 tanks. You needed 2. So having a lot of classes who could be a main tank didn't seem to matter as much as needing to find healers somewhere.

I think the raid gear and class design was a limitation imposed by the designers as a counter to the logistical problem that 40-man raids represented. I also think that they lacked experience in thinking that 5 man content and smaller raids could be a viable end game for people.

In this respect, I do feel that the "class viability" was intentional.

But my own point and perspective is that I feel this is a net negative to the players. Raids who want to succeed will sort out who is going to heal on their own. They don't need the game designers to dictate that for them. Same with who tanks. I think from that perspective, Vanilla was a flawed game, and it's one flaw that I'd like to see fixed in WoW Classic. In that one area, I don't actually think it made the game better.

If ret had gear, they could be decent. But skill being equal, they were not doing better than pures. I have a very difficult time believing that you progressed with a paladin MT, unless you had two warrior OTs to back him up. A lot of fights would literally be impossible without taunt (hell, one fight was impossible with a gnome warrior because of LoS issues - couldn't be healed). A lot of raiding was knowing and reacting to mechanics, but some of them depended on specific things like taunt and maintaining threat. Once a paladin ran out of mana, their threat generation disappeared. Sure, a paladin could maintain threat if everyone throttled their dps. Enrage timers were very rare (and always soft enrages), but that would be a boring playstyle. Who wants 45 minute boss encounters clearing an entire raid?

It isn't so presumptuous to claim to know what the designers intended when they flat out said it. I won't look it up, it's hard finding specific things on the internet from 13 years ago. I really wish I could find this video (I've searched and failed to find this specific one many times over the years) of 7 paladins left on a 1% Lucifron attempt. They still had their divine shield cooldowns. Do you think they killed him? Nope. It was a wipe. 7 paladins could not chip away 1% of Lucifron's HP with all their cooldowns. Sure, our specific examples here are anecdotal, but I think your experiences were probably around bad players, which boosted the ret's relative power.

[Thimagryn]

Druids were based on Malfurion, who at the time was a Druid of the Claw, with a mix of the Keeper of the Grove. These units were mainly healers, with the Druids of the Claw being able to shift into Bear form - [B]but rarely doing so, since Rejuv was so good.

Bear Form was a necessary part of the Rock Paper Scissors balance that drove Warcraft 3. It was a not a widely popular way to play, but it was required in certain matchups.

The same exists for WoW, except it was an oversight where the end-game mattered. Bear Form can effectively tank everything except raids; where Crushing was a major factor. Bears have the potential to EXCEED Warriors in raw tanking stats. They have a higher health pool, they can hit the armor cap (75%) but they lacked Block stat and had no way of avoiding Crushing Blows. Why wasn't +def simply given to Bears? Because it wouldn't have solved the meta; it would have shifted the optimal Tank from Warriors to Bears considering the balance at the time had bears stats scaling higher. There wasn't much point in balancing Feral stats in Vanilla given that TBC was around the corner with a clean slate.

If Feral wasn't intended to be a Tank, then there is no intentional design reason why their raw stats scaled higher than Warriors. On top of that, there would have been no reason why TBC allowed Ferals and Prot Pally into raiding if they were never intended for raiding.

[Swalload]

I just want to know what you meant by this, what were you talking about disc when you mentioned this? When you yourself admit that "Cuz everyone knew it made no difference otherwise." This was what I was contesting. What disc build/spec/whatever-you-want-to-call-it wouldn't be brought?

It's mostly an old argument from many other posts where people want classes to be balanced. Because to balance some less viable specs it includes bringing in new skills. It's more about ret than disc though because if they just want to make ret do decent dps they would have to increase the dmg of seal of command and judgement by such a gigantic amount that they would literally one shot everyone in pvp, no exception, like a 1500% dmg increase or something. By bringing other abilities to make it decent constant dps it would change the class a lot, and at this point, why not do that for disc and arcane as well since they were specs with no identity.

[Shoeboots]

The problem is the CMs are relaying the feedback from the WoW forums to the devs, which DOES include the class change feedback, and have said it's a 'conversation worth having.'

So as far as anyone can tell, based on CM responses on the official forums, it seems they are still open to the discussion of class changes. (even though they shouldn't be.)

Last I checked, they closed that thread and said that a clear majority want Classic untouched, just like Watcher said later in the Q&A. Did I miss something?

[Mindark]

How hard can it be to extrapolate? Saying it doesn't exist is just a figure of speech, of course the page is there and you can put points in it. You're still gonna play like a holy priest, disc doesn't make you specialize into anything different than what holy already does.

This whole thing was extrapolated from your initial claim (summarized):

No, you will not play disc, you will play as we were forced to play

Please reconcile those two statements for me.

edit: stepping back and looking at this big picture, this whole discussion is petty. My apologies for dragging it on. I get hung up on little things and get pretty stubborn. We probably agree, but are having problems understanding one another.

[pateuvasiliu]

Classes are balanced. They each have a role. If you buff Paladin Ret dmg you make them OP in PvP.

If you buff Shaman Ele raid damage you make them OP in PvP. Each spec has a purpose. Yeah you can't raid as a Ret Paladin, deal with it. You couldn't really raid as a BM Hunter in WOTLK either.

[Swalload]

This whole thing was extrapolated from your initial claim (summarized):



Please reconcile those two statements for me.

You will play a holy priest with points in a disc page that mostly improves the holy specialization playstyle, spells and role.

[Shoeboots]

Perhaps not? I may have missed that Q&A then, because I thought the thread came after.

EDIT: Thread definitely closed, if you have a link to that Q&A I'd be interested in giving it a listen.

The Q&A is on WoW's Youtube channel and here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r7AFMw2fAk

They discuss classic briefly at the very beginning and that's it so you don't have to watch the whole thing. But Watcher is very clear about the direction they're going, essentially making 95% of this forum discussion moot.

[Manaia]

It's mostly an old argument from many other posts where people want classes to be balanced. Because to balance some less viable specs it includes bringing in new skills. It's more about ret than disc though because if they just want to make ret do decent dps they would have to increase the dmg of seal of command and judgement by such a gigantic amount that they would literally one shot everyone in pvp, no exception, like a 1500% dmg increase or something. By bringing other abilities to make it decent constant dps it would change the class a lot, and at this point, why not do that for disc and arcane as well since they were specs with no identity.

Got it!
I wish there was a varied play style for them, but it was what it was! Their identity may not have been solidified because in alpha their vision of a disc priest was more monk like. They wanted them to be more melee and...well, disciplined. That's why they had inner fire. Their end talent was Sleep, which was like polymorph without the healing. Ended up being too god-like, especially in PvP so they changed their design philosophy for disc to be a more mana conscious/efficient healer when beta rolled around.

[Mindark]

You will play a holy priest with points in a disc page that mostly improves the holy specialization playstyle, spells and role.

What is a disc priest, in your opinion? This is probably where the disconnect is.

[Daffan]

Let's see what would happen with "balanced" classes in Vanilla:

• Protection Paladins are equal to Warriors. Since the former has infinitely better AoE threat, Warriors are rendered obsolete, and must conform with being over-the-top gear hungry, threat-capped DPS.
• Kitties are equal to Rogues. Suddenly Rogues are benched for life, since whatever utility they have cannot possibly be better than brez and Tranquility.
• Moonkins are equal to Mages. Mages share the bench with Rogues, since Sheep and water are nothing compared with brez, Tranquility and offheals. Moreso in raids with high fire resistance (no rolling ignites). As an added benefit, they get to 1-shot people left and right in PvP.
• Enh Shamans are equal to Rogues/Warriors. They will complain about being threat-capped to no end, and will also be 1-shotting people in PvP, more than Moonkins at least.
• Ret Paladins are equal to Rogues. You just sent the latter into non-existance in PvE. How can a squishy Rogue compete against plate, salvation, bubble and non-trivial heals?

So, in order to accommodate those precious hybrid classes, you bench all the pure ones in PvE, and cast the (admittedly fragile) PvP balance into f***ing oblivion. Nice balancing there /s

Edit: All of this is from a raid viewpoint mostly. The only ones that complainers seem to even care about.

Wait, why does a boomkin have to be 100% equal to a mage dps?

[Mindark]

He's already said he doesn't think Disc exists in Vanilla.

He also said that it's a figure of speech, and that disc priests aren't viable. When asking him to reconcile those two statements, he started talking about holy priests again.

[Thimagryn]

You're misinterpreting my words.

Feral WAS meant to be a tank.

It was NOT meant to be equally as competitive as a Warrior tank. And it wasn't, obviously. This follows the Druid of the Claw design, with a Druid being mainly a healer with the ability to tank, but mostly not being used for that.

Who the fuck is asking for Feral to be equally as competitive as a Warrior tank? You are missing my point entirely if you think this is what balance changes we want. TBC didn't even make Prot or Feral be equally as competitive as a Warrior tank! We want to be viable.

And you keep bringing up TBC. You realize TBC was 2 full years and 2 months after Vanilla launched, right? Design changes over time. Shocker.

And you realize that the patch that ever Vanilla purist wants is the 1.12, right? Which was released in late August while 2.0 was released in early December of the same year. There was no such thing as Vanilla back then, and everyone regarded TBC and its changes as progress in WoW just as any balance patch would have brought massive changes in design to any given class.

If you are making an argument for Vanilla 1.0, then you're only fooling yourself. The whole Nostalrius movement is exactly the version of Vanilla that purists are talking about. It's the fact that TBC brought parity and was only a mere 3.5 months away that anyone is even considering potential balance changes being retroactively added into Vanilla content.

Literally a taunt and mana mechanic for Prot, and +def and scaling tweaks (nerfing) to Bear. That's all to make them viable without making them immediate equals.