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

[Flarelaine]

Any questions?

Yes. Can you lay off WCIII? This is WoW we are talking about.

[Swalload]

That's not how that works.

That's not how any of this works.

You are a Disc Priest if you take Disc talents down to Divine Spirit. You are a Holy Priest if you take Holy talents further down than Disc.

Just because you use the same spells, doesn't make you the same spec. Otherwise every Warlock is Destro because they use Shadow Bolt. End of story.

I'm just wasting my time at this point. No one is willing to learn. I don't get anything out of this lol, you either learn or stay wrong, the outcome cannot change my day.

All hunters had pets, they're all BM.

All warriors have charge, they must be a plane or something.

You can go from Holy to Disc without changing your action bar, everything is the same fucking crap. I remember putting points in disc to level cuz it had reduced smite cast time and better wand dps. What a fucking spec, truly a work of art, fucking original, all these new spells that were never seen before, wow, so much use, so much class fantasy.

DISC USE HOLY SPELLS, HOLY ROLE, HOLY STYLE, HOLY EVERYTHING, DISC WAS NOTHING IN AND OF ITSELF, IT WAS JUST A BUFF THAT COST 31 POINTS.

Read this, change your mind, or stay wrong.

[Kithelle]

you are an example of the problem. the discussion for what is and what is not wanted can not even be had.

you have a either with me or against me attitude. ashame because in the end vanilla servers will suffer. well done.

Hey...you're the one screaming for vanilla then 2 seconds after you get it you demand changes for it which doesn't make it vanilla anymore.

[Flarelaine]

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.

I could not care less about PvP. But assuming it matters, I can point to how Blizzard has assigned different damage to abilities in PvP. They can do that.

[Swalload]

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

Disc priest became disc priest when they got their own stuff, I think it was just before wrath. They had their own style by really using PW shield, which is the basically the iconic disc ability that was barely used before (and at the same time they allowed rage generation through the shield iirc). At this point disc had it's own playstyle different from holy and it became a something that people could specialize into, and not specialize into the same playstyle as holy.

Pretty much the same thing happened to arcane.

[Underverse]

Hey...you're the one screaming for vanilla then 2 seconds after you get it you demand changes for it which doesn't make it vanilla anymore.

When people say that they want vanilla, they're mostly talking about the social aspect of the game which is ruined by things like cross-realm menu options, LFG, LFR, etc. Secondly they're talking about inconveniences such as flying, professions, lack of portals everywhere, and so forth. Only extreme purists want it exactly the same, no balancing changes or bug fixes. You're deliberately ignoring nuance so you can win an argument on a technicality.

[Flarelaine]

News Flash: Vanilla WoW was based on WCIII. Considering WCIII is the game that spawned WoW. Shocker.

That does not mean Vanilla was a copy. If it had been, there would have been death knights in it.

[Thimagryn]

According to Blizzard, they were. From the front page of MMO-Champion:

Pointed out many times, this doesn't mean Bears were viable or equal to tanks. Garr is the exception to the rule, and people have pointed that out. Raid composition also has to compensate for a bear tank, and that is one of the ONLY encounters they can raid tank. Yes, it was inspirational, but it was also the exception to the rule and not the rule itself. Again, lack of +Def makes them not viable for any other encounter. As a Feral, I would like the potential to be able to tank all content if the game already has the stats to support it.

The thing is, you could bank on a Feral tanking any encounter given that they are lucky to never be Crushing Blowed to death, or get the over-heals to compensate. That doesn't mean the gameplay is suddenly viable. The amount of spike damage a Bear gets from 2 crushings in a row is enough to kill them, and that's why they aren't used in raids. It's not because it's impossible, but because it's too impractical. Not practical, thus not viable.

Your point being?

Vanilla wasn't going to massively overhaul classes because you don't do that mid-expansion.

And Classic Servers aren't being introduced mid-expansion, thus the conversation happening right now. Let that sink.

I dunno why you're pretending 1.12 is guaranteed here? Like, keep up to date if you're gonna talk about this kind of stuff, you're making yourself look silly.

Then you have no position in what Vanilla is if you're going standing by the possibility of 1.0-1.12. You are suggesting that we can't have balanced specs because no one knows what Vanilla patch they will use. That's not an answer. That's your excuse.

[Kilee25]

When people say that they want vanilla, they're mostly talking about the social aspect of the game which is ruined by things like cross-realm menu options, LFG, LFR, etc. Secondly they're talking about inconveniences such as flying, professions, lack of portals everywhere, and so forth. Only extreme purists want it exactly the same, no balancing changes or bug fixes. You're deliberately ignoring nuance so you can win an argument on a technicality.

I agree with you.

[Kithelle]

When people say that they want vanilla, they're mostly talking about the social aspect of the game which is ruined by things like cross-realm menu options, LFG, LFR, etc. Secondly they're talking about inconveniences such as flying, professions, lack of portals everywhere, and so forth. Only extreme purists want it exactly the same, no balancing changes or bug fixes. You're deliberately ignoring nuance so you can win an argument on a technicality.

Not really...people said they wanted vanilla...no one started asking for a modded vanilla till like I said, 2 seconds after it was announced.

[Kilee25]

Not really...people said they wanted vanilla...no one started asking for a modded vanilla till like I said, 2 seconds after it was announced.

That's not true. You can't know what every person was thinking. The people voicing it now were thinking it before it was announced, they just didn't see the point in asking since they couldn't even get Vanilla in the first place.

[Mindark]

Disc priest became disc priest when they got their own stuff, I think it was just before wrath. They had their own style by really using PW shield, which is the basically the iconic disc ability that was barely used before (and at the same time they allowed rage generation through the shield iirc). At this point disc had it's own playstyle different from holy and it became a something that people could specialize into, and not specialize into the same playstyle as holy.

Pretty much the same thing happened to arcane.

Oh, I see. So when you said nobody would raid as disc or arcane, you were...talking about a subject matter you didn't understand? You're conflating disc/arcane as it is now with disc/arcane as it was then. Disc was a slightly different version as holy, holy was a slightly different version as disc. They were "healing" priests. I'm not sure why you put holy on a pedestal and shit on disc. They're essentially the same thing with a few different talent choices. And...I don't want to blow your mind here or anything...but holy didn't get an identity until disc did.

[Deleted]

Trying to balance classes would ruin them, part of what made vanilla interesting was the utility and novelty of some of the more buff-y classes, giving them competetive output alongside that would make some of them outstrip others. It'd be a problem, and that's without going into the amount of manhours needed to balance the specs with old, lengthy talent trees that allowed you to mix and match talents between specs - it's been hard enough to get vanilla servers without asking blizzard to re-balance classes with a now alien design.

There was a reason for the hybrid tax.

[Swalload]

All Warlocks were Destro then. They all used the same spells, you didn't need to change your hotbar. Got it. You're just completely incorrect in every way shape and form.

Nice, you had Conflagrate and Shadowburn as affliction. Look man, no one wants to read about how little you know about warlocks, it's a fucking waste of everybody's time. Stop being wrong, learn from me, I know more than you. It's really that fucking simple, not everyone knows the same thing in this world, you just happen to stumble in a situation where you don't know shit. The best thing you can do is learn instead of making a clown out of yourself.

[Swalload]

Oh, I see. So when you said nobody would raid as disc or arcane, you were...talking about a subject matter you didn't understand? You're conflating disc/arcane as it is now with disc/arcane as it was then. Disc was a slightly different version as holy, holy was a slightly different version as disc. They were "healing" priests. I'm not sure why you put holy on a pedestal and shit on disc. They're essentially the same thing with a few different talent choices. And...I don't want to blow your mind here or anything...but holy didn't get an identity until disc did.

Kind of, except it was holy's identity since it's all holy spells with holy visual and actually more synergy with the talent page itself. Disc had its uses but in the end it was just a new flavor of holy with no playstyle differences. It's not about shitting on a spec, it's about realizing that calling disc a spec is stupid in itself since it basically was the holy playstyle with a spirit buff. I've never met anyone claim that they were a disc priest in vanilla, people didn't do that, they said holy or shadow, that's it.

[Bas Prime]

While I absolutely are on the same page as you OP, I am at the point where Blizz should just start rolling out classic with the first patch, and add the same stuff in the same manner as they did in the past. Just restart wow for those servers. Just when Classic comes to an "end" create a new server for TBC and let people copy their characters. So they could play in classic with their 60 character and level on in tbc with their other character.
I think this whole arguing is pointless, since the hate boils up very quickly and I am sick of this.
Another solution could be purist server, working as I statet above, and a server where we have all the good stuff we have now, balanced classes, hybrids as tanks and damage dealer and so on. Not sure if this is possible, but that way, players who like wow how it was could play on the purist server and others, who would like the classic content can play on the other.

[Thimagryn]

Classic servers are recreating Vanilla, which wasn't going to overhaul the classes mid-expansion, and therefore Classic shouldn't..

If it were as simple as sticking to Vanilla only, there would have been no conversation at all.

Having read the other posts you've made, it's clear you know very little of the actual balance of Vanilla and are only advocating no change with no actual position on what that is. You aren't actually making any points against why balance changes shouldn't be implemented, only sticking to a 'Blizzard already made this game don't waste their time on changing it' stance. It's not unreasonable, but stop pretending you know anything about class viability, especially if you are advocating that there is a possibility for the game to be rolled back before 1.12.

I dunno why you're pretending 1.12 is guaranteed here?

Is completely contradictory to 1.12 specific "Less viable than Warriors. More viable than people thought.(Celestalon)"

[Swalload]

Then you'd know Conflagrate was a shit spell, and the only two spells you needed were Shadowbolt and Corruption as Destro - Which every warlock had and used. (Of course, not including your curses - Again, which every warlock had.)

Or perhaps you enjoy making a clown out of yourself, to quote you.

All Warlocks were Shadow damage spec. You didn't WANT Conflag, and Shadowburn was actually not even as good as Shadow Bolt in terms of damage, making it also shit, especially since it burns a Soul Shard.

I mention the fact that you don't know shit about locks and then you proceed by adding more incorrect informations. Okay.

[Uselessrouge]

Except the point of this thread is only changing class balance (yes I know that is still a comparatively big undertaking). You do have a good point that if you don't like it then just don't play it, but what if players wanted to experience the entirety of vanilla (i.e. doing everything as far as content goes) in the spec they enjoy? Sure, you can attempt to do all of the content (including raiding, and 'competitive' bgs) as any spec, but do you think it is going to be pleasant, especially when vanilla purists know that many specs fail at their original intended job in those types of content (e.g. A prot paladin main tanking for most raid encounters or a shadow priest dpsing)?

Some people want to replay vanilla, or just experience most of it the way that it played out, without being compelled to heal when you don't roll healer in retail, or support without actual tanking when you were main or off-tanking in retail.

Despite all of the arguments for/against vanilla/retail purism aside it really should not be surprising why so many players want this one change to happen. You can love vanilla, while also not loving class pigeon-holing.

you dont think making all classes balanced will make the content trivial? i think if they change classes content will become lfr mode when evry class does 3 times more dmg then they actualy did

[Mindark]

Kind of, except it was holy's identity since it's all holy spells with holy visual and actually more synergy with the talent page itself. Disc had its uses but in the end it was just a new flavor of holy with no playstyle differences. It's not about shitting on a spec, it's about realizing that calling disc a spec is stupid in itself since it basically was the holy playstyle with a spirit buff. I've never met anyone claim that they were a disc priest in vanilla, people didn't do that, they said holy or shadow, that's it.

There was no holy identity. Disc and Holy played the same. If you swap most of your uses of "holy" and "disc" with each other, you get your own counter argument. Sure, nobody in vanilla claimed they were disc. They were HEALER (not holy, unless they were and specified it) or shadow. You're putting holy on a pedestal again. What gave holy its "identity?" Only because the healing spell was in the holy spellbook and not disc? What about the following: power word fortitude, power word shield (for non-tanks), inner fire, dispel magic, fear ward (onyxia says hi), shackle undead, mana burn (pvp), divine spirit, and power infusion. Every. Single. Disc spell. Was used by good holy priests.