Will warlocks and mages be half the population of classic?

[Aggrophobic]

This is the same crap I got during Vanilla and ever since I have been a warlock. But boy isn't this entertaining or what? The OP clearly gives his opinion and he says why he thinks that warlocks would be played mostly and almost literally everyone thinks because of the optimal builds and damage wise.

World of WarCraft, vanilla or not, just like a real life is not binary. Claims that only Warriors, Mages, Rogues will be played are delusional.
I bet there are going to be people who are going to roll warlocks just so that they can provide summoning services and take gold for it.
Not me though, not going to bother with vanilla.

I played warlock as well, actually.
I had lots of fun.

I do not think that the average player will have the patience for it today though. I might be wrong of course but I find it much more likely that people will just play whatever does the most damage and also a class that does not have to spend and hour befor each raid, farming soul shards.

[Aeula]

Well since Paladin is worthless I was going to go Warlock as that was my first proper class in WoW.

If Blizzard made ret viable then I’d go ret, but since I doubt they will...

[Aggrophobic]

I'm not sure on what are you basing this because that what you are saying, happens currently on live realms. I mean, you guys sound like everyone comes to WarCraft to raid. Sure, that is the end-game but as I'm following this vanilla "keep it the way as it was" situation, people rather seem to be focused on other things.

Raiding was the only way to get good gear back then and there is little else to do at max level. You either work on getting ready for raiding or you raid.
Things such as ranked PvP, pet battles, mythic+, hunting for transmogs, mounts and achivements, nothing of that existed back then. There is just nothing else to do at max level.

So yes, people will most likely pick the strongest classes, just like on retial. The difference is that the bad classes were REALLY bad in vanilla. Not like the 1%-5% behind that "bad" classes are today.

But I guess we just have to wait and see.

[Dhrizzle]

If it goes by any recent vanilla trends. Mages, rogues and warriors will be played the most. Warlocks are druids are usually the least played, especially on the Alliance side.

IIRC that's what it was like back in Vanilla. The least played classes were Paladin and Shaman due to being faction specific but added together they were up there in the warrior/rogue/mage numbers.

[Deleted]

You think warlocks were a heavily played class that were good in raids in vanilla? Chuckle, chuckle.

[Dhrizzle]

That kinds defeats the purpose of a classic server.

Putting aside the fact you could consider TBC and WotLK to be "classic," there was a lot more differences between Vanilla WoW and later iterations. The non-guided world content, longer and more difficult dungeons, unskippable raid progression, greater immersion at the cost of QoL and much, much more grind. If you're only playing for the wonky class design there's a lot of stuff that may come as a shock to you.

[Merie]

1.12 Warlocks were no joke. While the rest of you were drinking your lives away, Warlocks were lifetapping for mana then life draining the health back. They could kill mobs I never could on any class other than Huntar and if played right, were god like.

[Aggrophobic]

I am telling you that knowing all that, there are people who's focus is not raiding. Not sure where you go idea that I don't know what did and did not existed back then. And no, not everyone picks the strongest classes on retail.

I have no idea what you know and not. You do seem unclear on a few matters here however.
I would guess that the average player will not even reach max level on these classic servers though.

[pateuvasiliu]

Rogues > Hunters > Warriors

Pretty sure that's how it goes, popularity wise.

[klaps_05]

Rogues and warriors most likely, with mages 2nd. You need only 1 lock per raid (his life will be hell due to soulshards). Dwarf priests and shamans make progressing through tier 1 and tier 2 much much easier due to utility.

[Aphrel]

warrs and rogues will be the most popular. Followed by mages and priests.

[Tekkommo]

Warriors and Rogues will probably be most popular.

Mages probably next, with an even spread for the rest besides Druids who will be bottom.

[Nozuka]

healing with my druid was mostly HT spam, from what i remember.
or to be more precise: HT spam casting, but stopping the cast if it would end up overhealing.

[Deleted]

Soul sharding was hardly a problen, 5 minutes on azhara and you are set to go ezpz.

To be honest it is quite hilarious people are talking so much about about damage, when there were many bosses that would require good chunks of your raid to provide buffs, utility or perform specific encounter roles.

Specially since as a horde player i remeber to have to be using my wand for long periods of times in bwl, onyxia.

[Alvito]

Putting aside the fact you could consider TBC and WotLK to be "classic," there was a lot more differences between Vanilla WoW and later iterations. The non-guided world content, longer and more difficult dungeons, unskippable raid progression, greater immersion at the cost of QoL and much, much more grind. If you're only playing for the wonky class design there's a lot of stuff that may come as a shock to you.

Why stop there? We could just call all of it classic. Obviously with their little ice cream remark they meant vanilla. They have also spoken exclusively about vanilla. You talk about unskippable raid progression that stopped in BC and didn't matter at all by the time Wrath came out.

- - - Updated - - -

1.12 Warlocks were no joke. While the rest of you were drinking your lives away, Warlocks were lifetapping for mana then life draining the health back. They could kill mobs I never could on any class other than Huntar and if played right, were god like.

For questing or pvp that might be great. In a raid setting their damage did not justify bring multiple locks over other specs. You certainly didn't want to keep trading the mana of a lesser dps for the mana of the healers keeping everyone alive either.

[Deleted]

Gunna be a priest baby!

[Maudib]

I'm playing a mage in classic for sure. Having portals is a godsend even now, let alone when you can't mount before 40.

And AoE grinding... mages are gods at AoE leveling and farming.

[Grimreaper]

This is wrong, Warriors did not have the best dps in PvE raid terms.

If you should single out the spec that consistently got to be on top in late Naxx, ever did highest dps in any fight at all it was fire mage.
Thanks to how ignite worked in Vanilla, none were able to contest them at that point.

Until then, hunters(thanks to best threat management) were their main competitor on dps meter together with rogues.

You're talking about rolling ignites, wich just amounts to reading the meters wrong. Yes, you had 1 mage doing good dps because all the other mages were feeding into his ignite. But if you brought 1 fire mage and 1 2handed fury warrior, the warrior would win hands down every single time.

[ohwell]

Lmao yeah. Speccing SM/ruin and spamming shadowbolt was really complicated.

ITT: People thinking BC's spec's damage was the same as Vanilla's version.


SM/Ruin spamming shadow bolt was average damage at best.

[Anoregon]

If the classic server is PvP (or there is a separate PvP server) it's going to be like 80% rogues.