Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[Mushkins]

Chapter I: PVE
Group 1: Hybrid DPS
The group includes Elemental Shaman, Balance Druid, Shadow Priest, Retribution Paladin and Enhancement Shaman.
Despite being able to deal decent dps for a limited period of time, they quickly run out of mana and deal less damage than "pure" dps in the long run. With proper gear and consumables you can make them work in raids, but you have to be willing to go the extra mile.

Group 2: Hybrid Tanks
The group includes only Protection Paladin. As a single target tank, Protection Paladin is worse than both warriors and druids due to worse single target damage mitigation and lack of threat generating abilities. What they really shine at though, is aoe farming and 5-man fast dungeon runs due to their insane damage reduction against multiple weaker mobs.

I deliberately excluded Feral Druid from both groups since both the cat and the bear forms are viable in PVE.

Group 3: Non-hybrid classes
3a. Fire Mage and Affliction Warlock are nonviable due to raid mechanics/restrictions. If someone asks to make them viable in pve, he's an idiot.
3b. Leveling Specs like Beast Mastery Hunter and Demonology Warlock. They are great for solo play, especially leveling, but are terrible in raids.

Chapter II: PVP
There are no nonviable specs in PVP as long as you have fun.

PS: If you enjoy playing some class/spec, you should play it. You shouldn't listen to people that telling you what you can or cannot play. Instead, You should try to break that negative stigma attached to your class/spec by proving that everybody is wrong. If you're willing to put in a lot of extra work farming consumables, you should be able to play whatever you want to play.
PPS: At the end of the day, the big reason somebody might not want you in his group/raid as an unconventional spec is simply because they don't want you to get gear, gear that they want for themselves. And your spec is only an excuse to not share gear with you.

[bmjclark]

Every spec except shadow on any class that can heal.

[Nomads]

Viable for what? Each spec has a place and time it is useful for... well besides the 1.0 iteration of Hunter's Survival spec. But I'm pretty sure we won't be starting there.

[Cyanu]

i wasn't really following the vanilla discussion all those years but from what i can recall:

tanks: essentially only warrior was truly viable, with a tons of work to overcome gearing issues other tanks could work too but warrior was better nonetheless so you had no reason to play other tanks except 'fun'

healers: i can't recall much about healers tbh other than that we had tons of holy priests and that disc was unplayable (not even niche spec, just garbage)

DPS:

generally most classes had a 'go-to' DPS spec that was simply superior to others, we used to call them 'cookie-cutter' builds and usually not playing one of them meant you're doing it wrong

the DoT classes were not really viable due to the fact that every character (bosses included) had a hard debuff limit on it, therefore raiding with multiple locks or shadow priests would mean that only few of them will be able to apply their corruption/immolate/shadow word pain etc, but still those debuff slots were better reserved for debuffs that benefit the entire raid (like Curse of Shadow etc)

now for the more direct casters essentially rolling an elemental shaman or balance druid over a mage was a suboptimal decision (aka less DPS in some cases considerably) and you would often have to answer following FAQ: 'why didn't you roll mage if you wanted to nuke things?'

mage on the other hand was picking specs based on mob immunities: in MC and BWL everything was immunue to fire while in Nax everything was immunue to frost, while arcane blast did not exist and arcane was a tree that was simply enhancing your frost/fire spells in a more generic manner

for the melees rogue was the king of DPS, fury was also capable of some big numbers but it had suffered from severe threat issues (meaning it had to stop DPS in order to not get aggro from the tank)

usually the optimal raid setup was more like:

a warrior only tank group

a healer group of mostly holy priests (aka the primary healers) and some 'support' healers like resto shaman/druid

a melee group who grabs all the buff it needs from retri/enha etc and then stacks rogues

a ranged group who graps all the buffs/utility it needs from locks/moonkings/ele and stacks mages

i can't recall much about hunters i believe that MM was a solid spec

in essence there were entire classes without a single viable DPS spec, that includes priests and shamans who were almost exclusively healers in pve

also in both classic and tbc certain specs were only brought in for a buff/debuff they had exclusive access to and counterbalanced their own poor performance

[Deleted]

Shadow is just as terible as the rest due to the terrible sustain.

[Akka]

Before being able to answer, there is two main questions :

1) What MEANS "viable" ? What is the criterium ? Is it about being able to do a job period, or is it max performance in comparison of another spec ?

2) In WHICH CONTEXT are you speaking ? 40-man raiding ? 20-man raiding ? Dungeons ? Leveling ? PvP ?

Because yeah, Vanilla was much more varied in its approach, and some spec were pretty bad at one thing and pretty good at another.

[arboachg]

"Nonviable" in PvE raiding**

[grexly75]

For raiding for most of vanilla:

Top tier hybrid specs
* Restoration (Druid)
* Holy (Paladin)
* Disc/Holy (Priest)
* Restoration (Shaman)
* Arms/Fury (Warrior)
* Protection (Warrior)

Viable hybrid specs
* Feral (Druid)
* Shadow (Priest)

Crap hybrid specs
* Balance (Druid)
* Protection (Paladin)
* Retribution (Paladin)
* Elemental (Shaman)
* Enhancement (Shaman)

Yup pretty much the specs we enjoy today were garbage back then.. Back then I tried to level a Ret pally and not knowing what I was doing it was painfully slow.. Ended up leveling a Fire mage instead which was quicker but at the time never knew that Frost was better survival wise.. lol

[Nomads]

Yup pretty much the specs we enjoy today were garbage back then.. Back then I tried to level a Ret pally and not knowing what I was doing it was painfully slow.. Ended up leveling a Fire mage instead which was quicker but at the time never knew that Frost was better survival wise.. lol

They werent garbage. What you retail children cant seem to grasp is that every spec is not supposed to be good in every situation. Period. You do BM for leveling and solo play. You do marksmen for group content. You do survival for PvP.

This was the design that made Vanilla fun. Otherwise you get the monstrosity of talents and builds that is currently in Legion, where every 10 levels you pick a new talent from 3 options and can somehow, magically switch your spec at the drop of a hat.

[Deleted]

i can't recall much about hunters i believe that MM was a solid spec

i played mm hunter from mc to aq40 (so no naxx sadly) and on single target fights our hunters came right behind the rogues in the damage meters. But i think that was mainly because we had no fury warriors and our mages were bad as hell. so mm hunters were ok dps wise but boring as hell to play

[Shiny212]

They're all viable.

An enhancement shaman can dominate BGs, or boost the dps of a high melee raid by ridiculous amounts, but pretty freaking useless if you don't have much melee. Doesn't do good dps on his own, but that's not his role either.

Apply this thinking to all hybrids, they are ALL viable.

[Charge me Doctor]

any spec is viable if it's raid leader playing it.

on more serious note - through vanilla history many specs got changed from not viable to godlike specs, so, there is that. Which vanilla do you want to hear about?

[BicycleMafioso]

Every spec except shadow on any class that can heal.

No, shadow is only slightly better than Balance, and that is only due to raid viability and usefulness with shadow weaving for the warlocks; personal dps it is worse due to only having one spell (mind flay) rotation and you will oom. I would suggest a power infusion + shadow weaving heal spec only using rank 1 mind flay to maintain weaving.
It was a great pvp-spec since you can usually kill someone before going oom.


===
Anyway.
Feral is viable as a hole-filler and aura-bot, assuming it is post-revamp meaning they can still innervate, they have lotp and only stay in cat form/bear form when they don't need to decurse or heal.

Balance? Only if you play it to maximise mana cost reduction as a resto spec.

Prot? Pre-revamp it is a good idea, due to more blessings and longer salvation duration since you didn't have greater blessings. Great in pvp for healing and damage (reckoning gathering whilst healing) since holy shock only did damage in the early stage so there was no reason to be very deep holy.

Ret? You needed kings and it was the 31-point Pre-revamp.

Shaman? No experience with shaman in vanilla to be quite honest. I only played one in alterac valley as elemental before losing interest.
Enhancement was good every six fights in pvp when you got lucky with procs.

Arcane? Well, you were gonna be deep arcane pre-revamp anyway, even though you were casting frostbolt. Missiles is too mana intensive outside of clearcasting.

I don't understand why bm is getting hate; it was a good spec after the revamp. Surv was good after the revamp. Mm was just better. Lacerate, despite its reputation, was not even the worst 31-pointer in the game, because all warlock 31-pointers were worse.

- - - Updated - - -

i played mm hunter from mc to aq40 (so no naxx sadly) and on single target fights our hunters came right behind the rogues in the damage meters. But i think that was mainly because we had no fury warriors and our mages were bad as hell. so mm hunters were ok dps wise but boring as hell to play

I enjoyed raiding with mm (post-revamp). I was actually higher than the rogues for the most parts, but one of them caught up by around AQ40 times. Until I started learning that BM-subspec and sending the pet in was better than surv-subspec. Our Fury warrior had not reached the gear scaling that he could overtake me.
Idk about the skill of the other people, but I hung around EJ at the time and I feel like I played as best as I could be expected. I can't claim the same for the others.
Our warlocks out-dpsed our mages, fwiw. Something I experienced in all raiding guilds I was in. Right up until they pulled aggro and died at least, which only happened on horde.

[Deleted]

Every spec except shadow on any class that can heal.

Shadow priest as a manabattery for holy.

[Daggot Ur]

There were NO specs in vanilla. That’s the bain of retail wow. Every class had a set of abilities to do everything they were supposed to, for example shaman could cast damage spell,swing in melee, heal. Talent trees only enhanced one of those tasks that shaman chose to perform.

Stop applying retail mentality to classic. It was built differently. All classes were good. Not all roles were designed for pve or pvp.

[grexly75]

They werent garbage. What you retail children cant seem to grasp is that every spec is not supposed to be good in every situation. Period. You do BM for leveling and solo play. You do marksmen for group content. You do survival for PvP.

This was the design that made Vanilla fun. Otherwise you get the monstrosity of talents and builds that is currently in Legion, where every 10 levels you pick a new talent from 3 options and can somehow, magically switch your spec at the drop of a hat.

And you lost all credibility when you start out with the insulting others calling them children because they have a differing opinion to you..

[Daevied]

There were NO specs in vanilla. That’s the bain of retail wow. Every class had a set of abilities to do everything they were supposed to, for example shaman could cast damage spell,swing in melee, heal. Talent trees only enhanced one of those tasks that shaman chose to perform.

Stop applying retail mentality to classic. It was built differently. All classes were good. Not all roles were designed for pve or pvp.

No specs?, what a silly idea

[grexly75]

There were NO specs in vanilla. That’s the bain of retail wow. Every class had a set of abilities to do everything they were supposed to, for example shaman could cast damage spell,swing in melee, heal. Talent trees only enhanced one of those tasks that shaman chose to perform.

Stop applying retail mentality to classic. It was built differently. All classes were good. Not all roles were designed for pve or pvp.

There were specs back then just not like they are seen as now..

https://izco.wordpress.com/viable-sp...-wows-history/

[tankbug]

There were NO specs in vanilla. That’s the bain of retail wow. Every class had a set of abilities to do everything they were supposed to, for example shaman could cast damage spell,swing in melee, heal. Talent trees only enhanced one of those tasks that shaman chose to perform.

Stop applying retail mentality to classic. It was built differently. All classes were good. Not all roles were designed for pve or pvp.

It's implied that, for example, a warrior putting most of his points in arms is an arms-warrior, not a "any warrior". Yes, you could off-tank in other specs if the mobs weren't too strong, but the talents were extremely important. There was more cookie-cutter specs back then, and you had better play the right class/spec combo if you wanted a spot in the raid.

[Raugnaut]

i wasn't really following the vanilla discussion all those years but from what i can recall:

tanks: essentially only warrior was truly viable, with a tons of work to overcome gearing issues other tanks could work too but warrior was better nonetheless so you had no reason to play other tanks except 'fun'

healers: i can't recall much about healers tbh other than that we had tons of holy priests and that disc was unplayable (not even niche spec, just garbage)

DPS:

generally most classes had a 'go-to' DPS spec that was simply superior to others, we used to call them 'cookie-cutter' builds and usually not playing one of them meant you're doing it wrong

the DoT classes were not really viable due to the fact that every character (bosses included) had a hard debuff limit on it, therefore raiding with multiple locks or shadow priests would mean that only few of them will be able to apply their corruption/immolate/shadow word pain etc, but still those debuff slots were better reserved for debuffs that benefit the entire raid (like Curse of Shadow etc)

now for the more direct casters essentially rolling an elemental shaman or balance druid over a mage was a suboptimal decision (aka less DPS in some cases considerably) and you would often have to answer following FAQ: 'why didn't you roll mage if you wanted to nuke things?'

mage on the other hand was picking specs based on mob immunities: in MC and BWL everything was immunue to fire while in Nax everything was immunue to frost, while arcane blast did not exist and arcane was a tree that was simply enhancing your frost/fire spells in a more generic manner

for the melees rogue was the king of DPS, fury was also capable of some big numbers but it had suffered from severe threat issues (meaning it had to stop DPS in order to not get aggro from the tank)

usually the optimal raid setup was more like:

a warrior only tank group

a healer group of mostly holy priests (aka the primary healers) and some 'support' healers like resto shaman/druid

a melee group who grabs all the buff it needs from retri/enha etc and then stacks rogues

a ranged group who graps all the buffs/utility it needs from locks/moonkings/ele and stacks mages

i can't recall much about hunters i believe that MM was a solid spec

in essence there were entire classes without a single viable DPS spec, that includes priests and shamans who were almost exclusively healers in pve

also in both classic and tbc certain specs were only brought in for a buff/debuff they had exclusive access to and counterbalanced their own poor performance

Arcane Missles was spammable at the time.

I remember getting kills from dueling with my Arcane Mage back then. Arcane Missles would keep hitting the target even after the duel was over, thus killing them. Was fun.