Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[Tziva]

Knock it off with the insults.

[jackofwind]

Any Druid spec that is not healer

Any Paladin spec that is not healer

Any Priest spec that is not healer

Any Shaman spec that is not healer


Warlocks were pretty bad at everything besides banish from what I remember.



Basically want Warrior tanks, frost mages (fire was only a thing with rolling ignites in naxx), combat rogues, hunters, arms warrior and healers. Paladins were the best healers I am pretty sure, did not have to worry about mana much.

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fury warriors were very niche, arms was better usually.

I mean if we are honest the only good specs in vanilla for raiding are

prot warrior

heal priest
heal druid
heal shaman/pala

Priest and Paladin were good tank healers. Shaman was a raid healer.

As for DPS

1. Combat Dagger Rogue
2. Mortal Strike Warrior
3. frost mage / Aimed/Multishot Hunter
..
..
'Affliction' Warlock

late in vanilla Fire Mages were good thanks to rolling ignites in Naxx. I did not play a Mage myself so not entirely sure what prompted that, probably talent patches.

Fury Warrior was niche and none of our top warriors seriously played dual wield. Not to say it was bad but simply a bit worse than Arms at least on Horde.

Keep in mind my opinion on Warriors comes from being Raidleader on Horde side. Without Windfury Warriors are probably a lot worse.

And Mages might be better on Alliance side with Paladin buffs.

There is truly an awful lot that is wrong with this post.

Some really easy and quick examples:

DS/Ruin Warlocks are one of the strongest DPS classes by Naxx, behind the single Mage with the Ignite stack and keeping pace with Fury Warriors. Especially on Ally side with Salvation, since their DPS is literally only throttled by needing to regulate their threat. They are weaker early in Vanilla because they lack %Hit in their Talents like Mages, but once they acquire it they scale better.

Hunter DPS falls off dramatically after BWL and their poor scaling makes them one of the weakest DPS classes by 1.12.

Arms Warriors were rarely taken to raids due to the use of a debuff slot and the fact that DW Fury is dramatically more powerful - in fact an interesting part of Vanilla is that none of the best DPS specs actually use 2h weapons.

Combat Rogues go Sword spec. Daggers are sub-optimal in all respects due to weapon speeds and positioning requirements.

Fire Mages became a thing as soon as progression was past BWL as Frost is sub-optimal and only used to get over boss immunities. Also bear in mind that only one single Mage gets the DPS from the Ignite stack - your Mages essentially work in tandem to boost that individual's DPS.

[Holofernes]

every spec had some kind of viability. Prot Paladins for soloing stuff, pom pyro mages for flag carrier kills, feral druids for flag carriers, mm hunters for 2 shotting low geared mages, suv hunters for meleeing blue geared warriors, and raid dps, MM hunters for aura,

rogues: there were so more different rogue styles than today. U could be combat sword, combat dagger, assa dagger(stay behind the mob) or hemo (debuff rogue) , all played for raid dps. And than there were those pvp rogues everyone hated

For dps warriors, there was 2hand fury (utb + cloudseeker leggins +swordspec + hand of justice + windfury, i had SO MUCH FUCKING FUN), standard fury, that served as an off-tank, arms was played as dps too.


Balance tree was even strong in pvp. On our realm we had a guy that played balance throughout all of classic wow, and he was very feared. He had a LOT of +arcane dmg stuff, and he killed people in pvp with moonfirespam. Yep. This guy killed rank 14 warriors easy peasy by spamming moonfire from like 46 yards and running away.

i dont think there is any non-viable spec per se, but i do think that a lot of specs only exist in their special niches that were either intendend from the devs, or created by creative players. In raid environments, the biggest problem for many of those "nonviable" specs was the dot or debuff limit on targets, and magic resistence. A fire mage in Molten Core is VERY useless.

[jackofwind]

Imagine being this stupid.

It's literally the way the game was designed.

[urasim]

Elemental was not viable in raiding because it was not made for raiding. Elemental was destroying faces in PVP though. And that was true for other specs like shadow/balance/surv/subtlety.

Did you play the same classic as everyone else? I guess if you're dicking around in the open world ganking noobs elemental was okay...

[therealbowser]

Depends on when we start the game from, and what roles you plan on using them in.

For instance, if we start the game from when innervate is still the level 31 resto talent, then all druids will be required to have that talent to raid. They don't even necessarily need to be healers, they just need it to support the raid.
Case in point:


On the other hand, though, aside from particular abilities that are crucial to the raid, you can be virtually any spec you want, even in raiding, and be just fine. I remember in vanilla asking the highest end raiding guild on my server what spec they expected of players, and the main tank's response was that you could be any spec you wanted, as long as you were willing to provide the role the raid needed. This, again, being from a tank with Thunderfury when it was tricky to get and the best tank on the server.

The simple truth is that you can be any spec you want as long as you do what the raid needs you to do. Vanilla really didn't depend as heavily on talents (again, aside from specific critical abilities the raid needs such as innervate) and instead on necessary roles. For instance I probably did more decursing in fights as a mage than I did dealing damage for certain bosses. Good times.

Don't lose any sleep about which specs are viable unless you are playing a druid or something or really want to contribute to your raid in some special way. As classic went on, a lot of these special buffs became innate and less powerful/useful specs got interesting and effective buffs, which is why I'd rather play classic during its later days than its early days.

The only spec that is genuinely bad and borderline unusable is protection for paladins early on in the expansion -- even shaman held aggro better than them. Play anything other than that, and you're good. (Even protection paladins got a buff later on, too.) Assuming we start at 1.0ish, even retribution has a direct role to play in raids with its blessing of kings, just expect to be healing and buffing, not dealing damage.

TL;DR: Aside from certain talent abilities that are fairly broken (innervate, at least one blessing of kings, etc), you can be any spec you want as long as you perform the roles needed in a party or raid. Nothing is truly useless, although protection paladins do come close.

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Did you play the same classic as everyone else? I guess if you're dicking around in the open world ganking noobs elemental was okay...

Dunno about you, but I recall elemental being pretty damned bursty in PvP. It was just outshined by enhancement... not because enhancement was better, but because every now and then a shaman would get a triple crit windfury with a two handed weapon and people would just lose their minds over one shotting a player.

Don't remember if elemental was good in PvE content, but it definitely was good in PvP. Not that PvP meant much since 90% of PvP was dicking around; the old honor system was useless, competitive PvP really didn't exist and the best PvPers were typically the ones in raiding gear.

[Daggot Ur]

Did you play the same classic as everyone else? I guess if you're dicking around in the open world ganking noobs elemental was okay...

Ok you go L2P shaman and then we will talk

[jackofwind]

My answer to that person applies to you too.

Your comment makes no sense at all. We are stupid for telling you that the game was designed a particular way?

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Ok you go L2P shaman and then we will talk

Elemental is objectively inferior to any of the pure caster DPS classes in Vanilla. Not because of their base damage output but because of two main reasons:

A) Terrible mana costs make them go OOM on long fights or force them to throttle their DPS.

B) They predominantly deal Nature damage, which doesn't have an applicable Warlock curse to reduce boss resistance (and post-BWL bosses have lots of Nature resist)

[Daggot Ur]

Your comment makes no sense at all. We are stupid for telling you that the game was designed a particular way?

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Elemental is objectively inferior to any of the pure caster DPS classes in Vanilla. Not because of their base damage output but because of two main reasons:

A) Terrible mana costs make them go OOM on long fights or force them to throttle their DPS.

B) They predominantly deal Nature damage, which doesn't have an applicable Warlock curse to reduce boss resistance (and post-BWL bosses have lots of Nature resist)

And I never said they can compete im pve or that they were meant to compete. What I said is they were exceptionak in PVP and that was their strong side

[God Save The King]

Naturally classic did not exist in a vacuum, and spec viability varied based on patch & content. I recall paladin tanks being fine in dungeons, even druids/shamans could tank dungeons, but raids were dominated by warrior tanks due to pushing crushing blows off the hit table with their blocking stuff. PvP was a different beast entirely, one I didn't really care for, so I do not know much about it.

The very general rule, with plenty of exceptions, is as follows:

If your class can heal, you're a healer.
Else if your class can tank, you're a tank.
Else you're a dps, and one of your specs is the best, follow cookie cutter builds.

You did need to consider dungeon vs. raid though. I believe at one point affliction was better than destruction, but they couldn't use DoTs in raids due to the debuff limit, so they only saw use in dungeons.

[Akka]

Really spec was a more appropriate term back in vanilla. You had access to everything but SPECialized in a certain tree. Now it is more than just a specialization, it is the entirety of what you are while "specced" into it.

Yeah. Legion destroyed the whole concept of "spec" to make it "subclass" or so. Vanilla was much more fluid, allowing for all kind of builds that were tailorable down to the point.
And yes, they weren't all equally good. But you could really do your own build to fit whatever you wanted, be it looking for the optimal output or going for fluff/RP or some bizarre hybrid just for fun, or balancing to tailor it to your playstyle.

And most importantly, the difference between a good build and a bad one was far from being as huge as people make out of it. It was of course very noticeable, but even "terrible" build could be viable compared to the "optimal" ones.

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On the other hand, though, aside from particular abilities that are crucial to the raid, you can be virtually any spec you want, even in raiding, and be just fine. I remember in vanilla asking the highest end raiding guild on my server what spec they expected of players, and the main tank's response was that you could be any spec you wanted, as long as you were willing to provide the role the raid needed. This, again, being from a tank with Thunderfury when it was tricky to get and the best tank on the server.

The simple truth is that you can be any spec you want as long as you do what the raid needs you to do. Vanilla really didn't depend as heavily on talents (again, aside from specific critical abilities the raid needs such as innervate) and instead on necessary roles. For instance I probably did more decursing in fights as a mage than I did dealing damage for certain bosses. Good times.

Don't lose any sleep about which specs are viable unless you are playing a druid or something or really want to contribute to your raid in some special way. As classic went on, a lot of these special buffs became innate and less powerful/useful specs got interesting and effective buffs, which is why I'd rather play classic during its later days than its early days.

TL;DR: Aside from certain talent abilities that are fairly broken (innervate, at least one blessing of kings, etc), you can be any spec you want as long as you perform the roles needed in a party or raid. Nothing is truly useless, although protection paladins do come close.

Great post, and it highlight one of the aspect that I really missed in Vanilla : what was important was "doing your job" instead of everything being judged by meters (and I'm a fan of DPSmeter who could probably not play without it ; but I'm also a team player and I find it more fulfilling to find ways to make the team succeed than just tunneling on my output).

[Kralljin]

A lot of Hybrids were "viable".

The issue for most hybrid casters was simply mana.

Specs like Sp, Elemental or Balance could put out decent dps, however you had to chug mana potions / dark runes / demonic runes like candy to compensate your nonexistant mana regeneration.

The issue was that this got expensive as fuck rather quickly and those specs really wanted Mp5 gear, which was usually healer gear, thereby they were much harder to gear than Warlock / Mage.

Packing in an Enhance Shaman wasn't terrible as well, give him Nightfall and enjoy your buffed Caster / Melee dps.

[jackofwind]

And I never said they can compete im pve or that they were meant to compete. What I said is they were exceptionak in PVP and that was their strong side

My bad, I think I quoted the wrong person in my post.

[Chaelexi]

Any Druid spec that is not healer

Any Paladin spec that is not healer

Any Priest spec that is not healer

Any Shaman spec that is not healer


Warlocks were pretty bad at everything besides banish from what I remember.



Basically want Warrior tanks, frost mages (fire was only a thing with rolling ignites in naxx), combat rogues, hunters, arms warrior and healers. Paladins were the best healers I am pretty sure, did not have to worry about mana much.

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fury warriors were very niche, arms was better usually.

I mean if we are honest the only good specs in vanilla for raiding are

prot warrior

heal priest
heal druid
heal shaman/pala

Priest and Paladin were good tank healers. Shaman was a raid healer.

As for DPS

1. Combat Dagger Rogue
2. Mortal Strike Warrior
3. frost mage / Aimed/Multishot Hunter
..
..
'Affliction' Warlock

late in vanilla Fire Mages were good thanks to rolling ignites in Naxx. I did not play a Mage myself so not entirely sure what prompted that, probably talent patches.

Fury Warrior was niche and none of our top warriors seriously played dual wield. Not to say it was bad but simply a bit worse than Arms at least on Horde.

Keep in mind my opinion on Warriors comes from being Raidleader on Horde side. Without Windfury Warriors are probably a lot worse.

And Mages might be better on Alliance side with Paladin buffs.

Once Naxx came along Fury warriors were top 2 dps in the game(behind fireamages), there only issue was threat management. On alliance it was only dualweild fury with Tier 2.5 and edgemasters handguards, but horde you could go 2H fury with windfury and would be solid DPS.

[dreamdaddy]

Every spec except shadow on any class that can heal.

Shadow was very fringe in Vanilla too. I remember 1 shadow priest on my server who was in meaningful content and she was a raid leader who would swap from healing to shadow depending on the fights' needs.

[Daggot Ur]

Shadow was very fringe in Vanilla too. I remember 1 shadow priest on my server who was in meaningful content and she was a raid leader who would swap from healing to shadow depending on the fights' needs.

Again - shadow was primarily a pvp spec

[Katchii]

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.

From a lore stand point, there is no "switching specs" since you're trained in all of it, it's just what particular set of abilities you want to use right now. The restriction was game play induced.

I have no comment on the talent thing, I like both options honestly, but admittedly prefer the current one where the each choice is more of a choice, as opposed to just another setup towards completing your cookie cutter build. Getting a talent point to spend every level though did feel better than some level ranges where you literally get nothing new for 10+ levels using the new system.

The design choice in Vanilla, while it made sense to have different specs for different situations, it wasn't really exciting knowing that your spec was practically decided for you based on what aspect of the game you were currently playing. This resulted in very little if any real choice when it came to being "viable" since there were cookie cutter builds for each spec and pretty strict role requirements in raids and groups. Unless you had spent an inordinate amount of time properly gearing your Fury warrior, you had to tank to be included, Arms wasn't even a real choice for PvE, especially if there was Rogue in the guild who could easily do the same or better DPS without having to throttle their DPS or spend nearly as much tie gearing up to be competitive.

[Rootkitt]

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.

Stop assuming people that disagree with you are "retail children". I've played since start of Vanilla, raided in Vanilla, and I disagree completely with your statement. This was NOT the design that made Vanilla fun. Having to spend all your gold to switch specs for PvP and raiding was garbage. Playing combat daggers as a rogue, then trying to have some fun PvP and facing hemo rogues was not enjoyable at all. Being a paladin and having "talent" options for tanking, but being completely garbage was not fun at all. Spending 40 levels with one or two abilities as retribution was not fun at all. These are not the aspects of Vanilla that were fun for most people.

[lanesia24]

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.

Retail children eh? You realize vanilla is a 14 year old game right? There's nothing new or hard about it. Retail offers a lot more challenge for me than vanilla WoW ever will because I already did it 14 years ago. I did the PvP, I did the raids, I played multiple classes. At this point it's just going through the motions. Molten core? Blackwing lair? Hard? Give me a break. The only hard thing about classic is getting through the tediousness of most of it. The Pvp system was designed to reward whoever played the most.. the epitome of grind it out tediousness.

I'm sorry if you thought vanilla WoW was hard. It's not. Now consider yourself informed. Look at these jokers.. trying to parade 12 year old content around that's already been played through by millions and dissected on the internet a million times as hard content. Good joke.

[Nomads]

Retail children eh? You realize vanilla is a 14 year old game right? There's nothing new or hard about it. Retail offers a lot more challenge for me than vanilla WoW ever will because I already did it 14 years ago. I did the PvP, I did the raids, I played multiple classes. At this point it's just going through the motions. Molten core? Blackwing lair? Hard? Give me a break. The only hard thing about classic is getting through the tediousness of most of it. The Pvp system was designed to reward whoever played the most.. the epitome of grind it out tediousness.

I'm sorry if you thought vanilla WoW was hard. It's not. Now consider yourself informed. Look at these jokers.. trying to parade 12 year old content around that's already been played through by millions and dissected on the internet a million times as hard content. Good joke.

Sorry, but you can't say "you did it all" when you only did MC and BWL. I actually cleared C'thun and most of Naxx. And I don't even say I did it all.

I haven't played retail for the last 3 expansions, but nothing from BC, Wrath, or Cata could compare the the difficulties of Naxx 40 and the second half of AQ40, except for Ulduar Hardmode.

You'd be hardpressed to find anyone who raided Naxx 40 say anything in the last 6 years has come close.