Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[blackblade]

Ret pala was pretty damn viable in vanilla. Kappa.

Someone's gotta put buffs on alliance warriors.

[Lollis]

Fixed a couple of items for you.

Idd. Disc priest was only slightly viable. In most cases we were only allowing one, maybe two Disc priests per raid.
But make no mistake, if stuff like Power Infusion didn't exist those players would be going much more into a standard Holy spec.

I would argue that Fury was a top tier though.

[Shisui-kun]

- Shadow priest in the viable list? And here I thought they were getting replaced by healers that can smite for more damage then shadow ever can. They only go up to the shadow debuff and that's it and only if they have really well geared Warlocks and a good amount of those. Shadowpriest would only be taken as a dispel/debuff bot and in PvP you are probably face tanking warriors 24/7 and dispelling polymorphs, goodluck with itemization and scaling as well!

- Enhancement shaman in raids? I thought people were just speccing Resto with some Windfury talents since they would only use mana tide since they would be grouped with melee anyway?

- Elemental has okayish dps and then you realise you will be OOM and downranking until MP5 catches up, nice right?

- Boomkin? Never.

- Lolret.

- Feral is okayish if you played Resto for more than a year and got lucky on no one wanting your drops I guess? Scale well but terrible itemization, most of which will go to Rogues/Fury's anyway

If you play any of those specs be prepared to rarely get loot and if you play one of the caster specs to never get Atiesh.

[Nomads]

- Shadow priest in the viable list? And here I thought they were getting replaced by healers that can smite for more damage then shadow ever can. They only go up to the shadow debuff and that's it and only if they have really well geared Warlocks and a good amount of those. Shadowpriest would only be taken as a dispel/debuff bot and in PvP you are probably face tanking warriors 24/7 and dispelling polymorphs, goodluck with itemization and scaling as well!

- Enhancement shaman in raids? I thought people were just speccing Resto with some Windfury talents since they would only use mana tide since they would be grouped with melee anyway?

- Elemental has okayish dps and then you realise you will be OOM and downranking until MP5 catches up, nice right?

- Boomkin? Never.

- Lolret.

- Feral is okayish if you played Resto for more than a year and got lucky on no one wanting your drops I guess? Scale well but terrible itemization, most of which will go to Rogues/Fury's anyway

If you play any of those specs be prepared to rarely get loot and if you play one of the caster specs to never get Atiesh.

People like you are the reason these off-specs got so much hate. This attitude did not exist within progression guilds. I was on the top Alliance guild on my server. We used Ret Paladins and Shadow Priests in the raid regularly. Yes, the Shadow Priests had to occasionally off-heal on fights that needed less DPS and more survival, but that just made them more useful for their versatility. Same thing with feral/balance druids. They had to put their healing pants on for some fights and basically cast minor healing spells, but it's better than telling people they have to sit out for some fights while another class zones in for 1 fight.

[Shisui-kun]

People like you are the reason these off-specs got so much hate. This attitude did not exist within progression guilds. I was on the top Alliance guild on my server. We used Ret Paladins and Shadow Priests in the raid regularly. Yes, the Shadow Priests had to occasionally off-heal on fights that needed less DPS and more survival, but that just made them more useful for their versatility. Same thing with feral/balance druids. They had to put their healing pants on for some fights and basically cast minor healing spells, but it's better than telling people they have to sit out for some fights while another class zones in for 1 fight.

No idea how far you've raided, but you simply didn't get a spot in any guild, let alone be invited to said guild if you wanted serious progression. And no, shadow priest wouldn't "off-heal" because they were better off as a mix-match if needed or else focused in a pure holy build. You simply didn't have the necessary talents, gear or mana even if you saved points for certain items. Possible in TBC, not so much in Vanilla. Downranking as a non holy/resto was pretty terrible and their dps coefficients were non-existent.

Probably none of those specs ever went purely with it without being forced into their healing counterparts or some mismash and I can bet most never got to see Naxx or even get close to getting Atiesh, which was BiS for a long, long time, the healing one even until SSC.

[Nomads]

No idea how far you've raided, but you simply didn't get a spot in any guild, let alone be invited to said guild if you wanted serious progression. And no, shadow priest wouldn't "off-heal" because they were better off as a mix-match if needed or else focused in a pure holy build. You simply didn't have the necessary talents, gear or mana even if you saved points for certain items. Possible in TBC, not so much in Vanilla. Downranking as a non holy/resto was pretty terrible and their dps coefficients were non-existent.

Probably none of those specs ever went purely with it without being forced into their healing counterparts or some mismash and I can bet most never got to see Naxx or even get close to getting Atiesh, which was BiS for a long, long time, the healing one even until SSC.

Rofl, never got Atiesh? Not even most pure specs got Atiesh. Did you? I was one of the best geared mages on our server and never got it.

And yes these specs DID see Naxx... my guild cleared up to 4H on our server with these specs. Just because your guild was run by imbeciles who didn't understand the game does not mean every guild was. But with members like you, it's no secret why people have these misguided notions about these specs.

[Gunnery Sgt Hartman]

No idea how far you've raided, but you simply didn't get a spot in any guild, let alone be invited to said guild if you wanted serious progression. And no, shadow priest wouldn't "off-heal" because they were better off as a mix-match if needed or else focused in a pure holy build. You simply didn't have the necessary talents, gear or mana even if you saved points for certain items. Possible in TBC, not so much in Vanilla. Downranking as a non holy/resto was pretty terrible and their dps coefficients were non-existent.

Probably none of those specs ever went purely with it without being forced into their healing counterparts or some mismash and I can bet most never got to see Naxx or even get close to getting Atiesh, which was BiS for a long, long time, the healing one even until SSC.

Jesus, Mary and Josef! You don't know what you're talking about son!

My guild used some of these "Nonviable specs" in all our raids and we cleared up to mid Naxx.

[Loxotron]

http://www.tankhard.com/2009/01/16/401/

You could never do 4 horsemen with 4 tanks, because mechanics simply didn't allow it, least you could try was 5 and that was overstretching (also this was at a point where every single one of your raiders was decked out in full tier 3). I remember the first KT kill was crazy because you NEEDED buffs from the outside world that some quest mobs in zones across the world provided in order to kill him, and that wasn't because they were mechanically hard but because number tuning was absolute dogshit.

Also, teamwork? Please, most of the people in those 40 man groups were just present there doing fuckall because fps/internet lag. Moreso, you can't say a fight is hard when personally as a hunter I FD'ed every minute or so just to drink mana for 30 seconds, literally afk drinking mana, how is that hard? If you add to that, that i wasn't the only hunter you have at least 4-5 people afk drinking every minute. Yeah, crazy hard. Let me not even get into class design, as a hunter you just used Aimed Shot whenever you could, arcane shot was literally a waste of mana, rogues were made fun of with good reason because the only thing they did was 1-1-1-2 (Fill combo points to max, use evisecrate), tanks were literally just spamming sunder armor on bosses.

While were on Tanks, for gods sake on Onyxia the whole raid (39 people actually) were afk for 5 minutes while the tank was building aggro. Please please oh pleaaaaase tell me how Vanila was "hard", it wasn't hard it was just dumb, and thats OK because not even Blizzarad knew what they were doing with classes/raids back then.

I do agree that its harder to coordinate 40 people rather than 20 but, mistakes in 20 man are way more punishable than 40, hell I distinctly remember back in BWL if 30 out of 40 were here on a ready check, you would pull the boss.

QoL changes (which was what made Vanila raids harder) are not the same as having at least 4-5-6 mechanics on a boss and have to have every single member do his duty, maybe not so much in Antorus but it was clearly visible in ToS and NH where personal responsibility was much higher.

Ehm, it wasnt possible to drink after FD in vanilla for at least half of it for sure, you were put back to combat after FD asap.
Tanks that spam only sunders are dummies, i doubt they would made that far.
That wasnt a good rotation for rogue as well..
Onyxia could be killed like that only because of texture bug with pixel walking which make you to avoid whelps and deep breath, i can count it as a bug which should have been fixed and i hope will be, so you wont kill it with afk guys as you wrote at all.

[Hottage]

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)

Good to know I performed sufficiently well to raid end-game current content in one of the best guilds on my server as a "Crap hybrid spec"

[Vorkreist]

"Nonviable" in PvE raiding**

If your hybrid spec is that uselessly bad it can't be considered into a 40 man zerg then you would be far worse into any type of end game pvp or any other end game activity.

[cparle87]

Keep in mind those groups are tailored for melee DPS, what with Windfury and Trueshot Aura. If Hunters had groups made for them, as in they went Survival with 1 Trueshot and 1 Agi totem they'd be much higher.

I would say if you put Warriors + Rogues + Hunter + Shaman in one party and

Hunters ( SV ) + Marksmanship Hunter + Shaman in one party and made sure the pets are buffed and don't die Hunters can out DPS Rogues and Warriors.

Didn't trueshot aura only affect ranged attack power, which was a completely separate stat from normal (melee) attack power?

[Segus1992]

Shadow priest as a manabattery for holy.

Wrong expansion. TBC was so much more balanced than Vanilla (but still had major issues).

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Good to know I performed sufficiently well to raid end-game current content in one of the best guilds on my server as a "Crap hybrid spec"

Viable in Vanilla: "eh you can come, we still need 4-5 more warm bodies to fill this 40 man group". I should know, I was 11 years old and I raided AQ40 as a Ret Paladin in what was THE best guild on my server. I did not carry my own weight.

- - - Updated - - -

If your hybrid spec is that uselessly bad it can't be considered into a 40 man zerg then you would be far worse into any type of end game pvp or any other end game activity.

Not true at all of course, as the main issue for hybrid specs were that they had no good way to get mana back. Spirit regen was way too slow with how much mana spells cost if you wanted to have any respectable damage, and that only worked for two of the classes (Shadow and Balance). For Retribution and Enhancement, you were just fucked (or had to AFK to regen).

This issue was obviously not as prevalent in PvP where fights didn't last for 10+ minutes.

- - - Updated - - -

Didn't trueshot aura only affect ranged attack power, which was a completely separate stat from normal (melee) attack power?

Pretty sure Trueshot Aura was always just AP (there were three (four) stats - global AP, melee and ranged (and feral)) whereas Hunter's Mark was ranged only.

[Wiedzemir]

If your hybrid spec is that uselessly bad it can't be considered into a 40 man zerg then you would be far worse into any type of end game pvp or any other end game activity.

Yeah, right. Tell it to the balance druids aka one shot machines of death in PvP.
Or feral druids. There was nothing like it in WSG.
Or enhancement shamans. Sure, for them it was more like a slot machine of doom, you either one shot stuff or run out of mana.

Also. What do you mean "can't be considered". You have a very skewed perception on how raid groups were formed. Sure, there were always "maximum efficiency" raid leaders aka "go!go!go!". But they were by far not the majority and maximum efficiency was never a requirement. Only if people had sufficient and, most importantly, correct gear.

[Deleted]

As for Shamans. Elemental and enhancement are both pretty useless up until AQ20 where Elemental becomes viable. Elemental and Enhancement is still viable in PvP though.

[Orange Joe]

It depends how you look at it. There are specs that do not work the best in a current raid tier, so you could say they are not viable. Also, every raid encounter has a requirement that has to be fulfilled (dps,hps wise). If your spec fulfills that requirement, then there is not a problem with it, really.

You are confusing optimal with viable.

[Wiedzemir]

You are confusing optimal with viable.

This. This discussion looks like a debate between someone who plays the class he likes and someone who always plays a FOTM class.

[Ickz]

Vanilla purists are in for a rude awakening if the classic servers are a 100% recreation of Vanilla. 2004-7 Vanilla with the currrent 2017/2018 WoW community is going to be absolutely nothing like it was. Prepare for ilvl/bis-detector addons and groups only inviting viable specs so they can do content with far less than 40 for "more" loot.

[Wiedzemir]

Vanilla purists are in for a rude awakening if the classic servers are a 100% recreation of Vanilla. 2004-7 Vanilla with the currrent 2017/2018 WoW community is going to be absolutely nothing like it was. Prepare for ilvl/bis-detector addons and groups only inviting viable specs so they can do content with far less than 40 for "more" loot.

I have two questions.
1: How are "ilvl/bis-detector addons" are going to work in vanilla?
2: What does "the currrent 2017/2018 WoW community" has to do with vanilla. You people won't even touch it or if you will then just to quit before 60 and complain on forums on how the game boring/tedious/slow.

[Hottage]

Viable in Vanilla: "eh you can come, we still need 4-5 more warm bodies to fill this 40 man group". I should know, I was 11 years old and I raided AQ40 as a Ret Paladin in what was THE best guild on my server. I did not carry my own weight.

I raid leaded and also PvPed to Grand Marshal, I wasn't insignificant on the damage meters (not first by any measure, but at least mid-pack) and was one of the most well known Retribution paladins on my server.

I also wrote one of the most popular Retribution guides from Classic until about mid way through Cataclysm.

I'd say I pulled my own weight :3

[Specialka]

I raid leaded and also PvPed to Grand Marshal, I wasn't insignificant on the damage meters (not first by any measure, but at least mid-pack) and was one of the most well known Retribution paladins on my server.

I also wrote one of the most popular Retribution guides from Classic until about mid way through Cataclysm.

I'd say I pulled my own weight :3

Your own weight like you said, but statiscally, retpal were useless as dps, but brought only for buffs.