That tanks in vanilla reached defcap seems to be a very common misconseption, at leat in this thread. Getting defcapped was not that easy, the gear simply did not have enough defense on it, and the only way to enchant it was with Zul'Gurub enchants as a Warrior (14 def total) and an extremely rare Leatherworking drop from MC (9 def total, and you would sacrifice a lot better enchants if you used this enchant on each available slot). Defcap was however not as important as it was in TBC and later on, since the Warrior's Shield Block ability could have a near 100% uptime and pushed both critical strikes and crushing blows off the boss attack tables, which made Block% the least desirable stat for a Warrior tank (block value was also quite so-so but became very valuable in Naxxramas when Shield Slam was reworked to scale with it, which is also reflected heavily in the Naxxramas gear). This was a benefit that neither Druids or Paladins had, which is one of the reasons they were inherently inferior as tanks.
If you claim that your tanks back in vanilla reached defcap, they very likely did not.
Last edited by Whiskra; 2017-12-01 at 04:52 PM.
Tanks and healer gear today is dps gear with different stat weights, so while vanilla/bc stats wasn't hard to comprehend per se, the homogenization of stats is completely fucked. It's LITERALLY nothing but main stats + secondary. Removal of Spirit for healers was the final nail in the coffin for having stats have any depth at all, or real difference between specs/roles, other than as mentioned stat weights.
Just another slippery slope in terms of design.
Last edited by MasterHamster; 2017-12-01 at 05:08 PM.
Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.
Please lol. I cleared almost all of the original Naxx and there were still people in my own guild who didn't know how or refused to believe how weapon skill worked. The alliance guild on our server Vis Maior was one of the few guilds in the US to actually clear Naxx, and their officer rogue played combat daggers and didn't use SND at all. He published a video of patchwerk when people thought that boss was impossible under the title of "No Gimmicks, all skill", then proceeded to play combat daggers completely wrong. If that isn't a testament to how retarded the general player base was (and that guild was actually very good), even at the top end, I don't know what to tell you.
So many examples of this shit, and I don't really care to go through them all. Weapon skill, %hit, better itemized blues, weapon speed and spell power. The shear amount of ignorance and retardation in Vanilla was wide spread if you cared to pay attention, and it's cancer plagued the player base from the top to bottom. You could tell if a healer was good or not depending on whether or not they could find the mana neutral downranked healing spell, compared to the idiots who spammed the highest rank and sat there being useless for the rest of the encounter.
Nobody is saying that Vanilla stats were hard. People are saying that there was a large amount of ignorance in how things worked and what you're suppose to look for. This is a combination of it being a lot of peoples first MMO and the lack of resources. I'm not really a Vanilla supporter, but there were more stats and far more confusing itemization in Vanilla. It's like the game purposely tried to confuse people back then, to the point that you could really fuck your character if you weren't careful. You can still do that today, but the game is far more streamlined and won't fuck your character that badly if you use the wrong stats.
This. Unlike some modern stats (like Mastery, for example), every stat in Vanilla did pretty much exactly what it says on the label. Block made you block better, resistance lowered the damage you took from the associated element, weapon skill made you better with that weapon, defense made you a better defender, spell damage increased your spell damage for the specified school, and mana per 5 seconds regenerated that much mana every 5 seconds. The stats themselves aren't complex, it's the breakpoints and soft caps a lot of less-savvy players didn't understand (and even then, like with WotLK's Armor Penetration, there were some stats like Hit where people just memorized a magic number to hit and went from there without really bothering to learn what the stat did in detail).
edit: That being said, there were some really fucking goofy design decisions in Vanilla, mostly through itemization if you wanted to play an off-beat spec. Stuff like level 40something mail gloves being best in slot for Fury warriors because of the weapon skill, or the fierce loot competition between rogues and Fury warriors because rogue leather was ridiculously well-itemized for Fury and DPS plate itemization was a joke until mid-WotLK (with Armored to the Teeth being a bandaid talent to lower rogue/Feral/Fury loot competition by encouraging Fury to pick up DPS plate, which persisted until Cata removed the 1 AGI - 1 AP conversion for warriors).
Last edited by Thage; 2017-12-01 at 07:23 PM.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
You do realize that a ton of "retailers" also played Vanilla, right? This is such a troll thread
That's... just the exact opposite of reality. Today's stat are explicitely saying everything that the stat does, while Vanilla stat were on the contrary NOT being clear about their precise effects. Saying "weapon skill makes you better with that weapon" as an example of a supposedly explicit stat speaks for itself.
Last edited by Akka; 2017-12-01 at 10:20 PM.
you get a bit more choice today, at least int stacking was the best option for healing iirc, more mana = more heals = longer time before oom.
these days you basically get to choose whether to stack crit/haste/mastery/vers each spec has a primary and secondary that are better than the other two but there is an element of balance involved. you didn't get enough gear to have much min/maxing options in classic you used whatever you got/won the bid for. some items lasted for a long time like the trinkets from the books in dire maul, the priest one had int and mp5, which was kinda bis for a while i think the only other one like it was the rejuv gem in bwl.
Last edited by Heathy; 2017-12-01 at 11:09 PM.
Literally every 'retailer' I know either hates that stats have been simplified beyond belief, or is utterly apathetic about it. Most retailers are in fact probably the same people posting shit like this, lol.
Nothing was complicated about stats in classic, outside of maaaaaybe defense/gaming the hit table.
Was this the same Blizzard that introduced daily quests, dungeon finder, pet battles, garrisons, transmofgrifag, faceroll dungeons, linear story-telling questing, scenarios, flying mounts, toys, and class pruning to us?
I guess the itemization must have been horrendous, even frightening.