Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[Sinte]

Did you people even raid past Karazhan and claim to have opinions about the game? Warlocks,useless? What?

Please, back to your caves, in your private server community, stop deluding the forums.

The tears of Shamans being nothing but a 5% crit for the casters, along with the moonkin, which one of them got a spot for that not both, and the Shadow Priest as a mana battery, or a retri as a mana battery which no one cared for them so SP was always picked.

You dont have a clue about the raiding scene, yet you people somehow have an opinion, baffling.

Yes,at some moments, an elemental shaman might appear on the meters, but main job, give the Warlocks 5% crit, while denying your moonkin guildie a spot.

BUT YES, LATEST PATCH AND PRIVATE SERVER IS HOW THE GAME WAS PLAYED.

Lol wow you are so full of hatred and toxicity you can't even tell when someone is being sarcastic. He was SARCASTICALLY saying that warlocks were bad, so that you could see how stupid you were in saying shamans were bad in TBC, when in fact they were one of the most desired classes in group/raid content,even outside the WINfury buff they brought.

[potis]

Lol wow you are so full of hatred and toxicity you can't even tell when someone is being sarcastic. He was SARCASTICALLY saying that warlocks were bad, so that you could see how stupid you were in saying shamans were bad in TBC, when in fact they were one of the most desired classes in group/raid content,even outside the WINfury buff they brought.

Nah, dont misunderstand, i know most of these posters are wrong, i just answer for the triggering, classic subforum is the easiest place to trigger people, i dont really care whether i might forget a particular thing from 11 years ago, but triggering them? Priceless.

Also, no i know i am not wrong,mentioning windfury also, cause you needed a dps shaman for the totem, right ?

[potis]

The good ol' "Jokes on you I was only pretending to be retarded" defense.

Yes you needed an Enh shaman for the totem. They have imp WF totem and can totem twist so their group benefits from the agility totem and WF totem at the same time. You weren't going to have a resto shaman spend all their mana totem twisting.

Man you continue to not get it and its why its adorable.

You were not gonna get more than a certain spec because it was considered nothing more than a buffbot, what dont you people get.

1 elemental for the 4 other casters.

1 enh for the 4 other melee.

Not 2 enh over some other melee.

Not 2 elemental over a warlock.

Etc etc, its still considered a -buffbot- class,get it in your brain.

Same with the other hybrid classes, you were not gonna get more than what it was needed for cause they didnt provide anything more than the other classes.

The tears of those particular classes is what caused the WoW to change, what dont you people get, did you ever actually play then?

The second elemental shaman that went resto, cried that he couldnt outdps a lock and it was either bench, or resto.

The owlkin cried that the first elemental shaman did more dps, so he was prefered over his 5% crit so it got benched or went resto.

The retri cried that the shadow priest outdpsed him so he is the prefered mana battery.

The retri also cried he cant outdps a warrior for a melee spot.

The alliance mostly, seal of blood op, not

The enh cried he cant outdps a rogue/warrior for a melee spot after the WF buffbot..

Aka, non-viable specs apart from A BUFFBOT.

[Eapoe]

The hybrid tax was well known.

Except by the people saying it wasn't that big and was changed in BC who have been arguing with the person talking about hybrid tax existing until Wrath when it was substantially changed. All I can assume is you are trying to deflect for being proven wrong or came in to the conversation late. 1 shows stupidity and the other shows ignorance. Pick a better response next time.
On a side note, reading this article and seeing all the people who play on PS's stating that all specs are viable and competitive, backed by the people who stated that PS are just approximations with changes, then people who ask for the game to be like PS (such as the shut down Nost) really don't have anything more than a vague idea of what Vanilla was really like.

[Nerdpuncher]

I am living for these arguments where people try and recall details from a decade ago as if it happened recently. The number of people claiming to remember exact details is hilarious. Fuck off you do. You remember bits and pieces you put together from old patch notes and assume you've figured it out.
Given the horrible response from the community if I were at Blizz I would shitcan the whole project before people have any more chance to howl about what a terrible job they did/have done/will do.
The level of insane self obsessed demand the wow community has is mind blowing. Classic WoW will be whatever is the most stable patch point in the old game. It WILL have QOL improvements because they are hard wired into the game now, to screech and bitcch about how evil QOL changes are is as stupid as it is pointless. Just shut up and wait a bit.

[Cainium]

I am living for these arguments where people try and recall details from a decade ago as if it happened recently. The number of people claiming to remember exact details is hilarious. Fuck off you do. You remember bits and pieces you put together from old patch notes and assume you've figured it out.

For many this maybe true, but not for everyone.

I can tell you details about games i've played 20 years ago i played as a child and can replay these games today with almost EVERYTHING in my mind.

If you have done something for YEARS you won't forget about it that easily. Thats a fact. And even if you don't remember every single number or formular, you can remember the bigger picture. Espacially if you were raidlead back than and have had to manage all these things you WILL remember what you did there....

[Kaibhan]

I am living for these arguments where people try and recall details from a decade ago as if it happened recently. The number of people claiming to remember exact details is hilarious. Fuck off you do. You remember bits and pieces you put together from old patch notes and assume you've figured it out.
Given the horrible response from the community if I were at Blizz I would shitcan the whole project before people have any more chance to howl about what a terrible job they did/have done/will do.
The level of insane self obsessed demand the wow community has is mind blowing. Classic WoW will be whatever is the most stable patch point in the old game. It WILL have QOL improvements because they are hard wired into the game now, to screech and bitcch about how evil QOL changes are is as stupid as it is pointless. Just shut up and wait a bit.

First off the internet exists. All this vanilla information is still out there everywhere. Not to mention it wasn't that long ago. I could still tell you how to gear and play many classes in vanilla as a raid lead back then. It's not that hard especially since the mgaic numbers were essentially the same.

Second, you have no idea how come control works. Each commit to the codebase is essentially a snap shot in time. Any quality of life changes would have to be added in.

[YouWillAllAnswerToSithis]

Probably Wand specialization or something.

[Nomads]

Nah, dont misunderstand, i know most of these posters are wrong, i just answer for the triggering, classic subforum is the easiest place to trigger people, i dont really care whether i might forget a particular thing from 11 years ago, but triggering them? Priceless.

Also, no i know i am not wrong,mentioning windfury also, cause you needed a dps shaman for the totem, right ?

So you basically admitted that you're trolling and have no idea what you're talking about. Thanks for admitting what everyone else could see 3 pages ago.

[bufferunderrun]

So you watched about an hour and half of footage in 20 minutes or so?

Open your eyes. You can see them running around. I mean, you've made it pretty clear you don't even know what you're looking at.

Protip, damage meters don't show class spec.

Come back when you have an idea of what you're even talking about.

even if some guild were able to field hybrid class with subpar specs that is like today having method running with survival hunters in their group, for them and their level of play it's possible to cover for the lacks of a spec, for 99.9% of the guilds is just a wasted spot.

We know already that average players will never be able to perform like those guys it's true with good spec and even more for trash spec especially in vanilla when to make those spec performing decently one need to gear in a certain way and spend an hefty amount of gold.

So in conclusion even if some outstanding player are able to bring those spec in raid and perform decently for 99,9% of guilds that would be just a waste spot and possibly waste of good gear, my memory is a bit fuzzy about it but i vaguely remember that ele shaman had to use mostly cloth to perform in the same way warrior fury had to use leather, that is another problem that has been resolved by blizzard from wotlk onward.

Would you waste epic gear that would serve better on a mage or a rogue onto a trash spec that may never been able to dish out the same performance?

This discussion anyway is so 2006 the same arguments of back then.

[evogsr]

even if some guild were able to field hybrid class with subpar specs that is like today having method running with survival hunters in their group, for them and their level of play it's possible to cover for the lacks of a spec, for 99.9% of the guilds is just a wasted spot.

We know already that average players will never be able to perform like those guys it's true with good spec and even more for trash spec especially in vanilla when to make those spec performing decently one need to gear in a certain way and spend an hefty amount of gold.

So in conclusion even if some outstanding player are able to bring those spec in raid and perform decently for 99,9% of guilds that would be just a waste spot and possibly waste of good gear, my memory is a bit fuzzy about it but i vaguely remember that ele shaman had to use mostly cloth to perform in the same way warrior fury had to use leather, that is another problem that has been resolved by blizzard from wotlk onward.

Would you waste epic gear that would serve better on a mage or a rogue onto a trash spec that may never been able to dish out the same performance?

This discussion anyway is so 2006 the same arguments of back then.

I'm not sure why there's discussion about the average player being made anyway. The average player doesn't raid, remember?

You're not wrong about certain specs wearing pieces of gear that were not within their armor type - however that isn't an optimization problem with a spec. It's an itemization problem from that period of time in the game, that still persisted in some form fading in degrees from every expansion all the way until the end of Cata.

Refer to my earlier post:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post48469841

[bufferunderrun]

I'm not sure why there's discussion about the average player being made anyway. The average player doesn't raid, remember?

You're not wrong about certain specs wearing pieces of gear that were not within their armor type - however that isn't an optimization problem with a spec. It's an itemization problem from that period of time in the game, that still persisted in some form fading in degrees from every expansion all the way until the end of Cata.

Refer to my earlier post:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post48469841

i think most of this discussion spawn from today concept of viable, honestly speaking today every spec is performing almost in the +-10% with each other unless one play on a world first guild or have a guild master/raid leader wanna be pro there is no problem bringing any spec in raid.

vanilla actually has big difference, it's true that some spec could shine but the prerequisite is to have lot of gear, spent lot of gold and a competent player behind the keyboard; today a window licker could play any shaman spec and perform decently with the candy gear from wq, don't think that you can do the same in t1-2

So by today standard many specs are not viable in raid especially during progression, but if someone is focused on playing one of those spec then he should be prepared to be hardcore in both the amount of time he require to dedicate to it and it's way of playing.

Itemization is part of the problem when we discuss spec viability, nowaday ele shaman have their dedicated mail in every slot, why a guild should spend gear (that in vanilla is pretty hard to acquire no free epix for everyone) on a messed spec when they could gear a mage or a rogue with trice the results?

[evogsr]

i think most of this discussion spawn from today concept of viable, honestly speaking today every spec is performing almost in the +-10% with each other unless one play on a world first guild or have a guild master/raid leader wanna be pro there is no problem bringing any spec in raid.

vanilla actually has big difference, it's true that some spec could shine but the prerequisite is to have lot of gear, spent lot of gold and a competent player behind the keyboard; today a window licker could play any shaman spec and perform decently with the candy gear from wq, don't think that you can do the same in t1-2

So by today standard many specs are not viable in raid especially during progression, but if someone is focused on playing one of those spec then he should be prepared to be hardcore in both the amount of time he require to dedicate to it and it's way of playing.

Itemization is part of the problem when we discuss spec viability, nowaday ele shaman have their dedicated mail in every slot, why a guild should spend gear (that in vanilla is pretty hard to acquire no free epix for everyone) on a messed spec when they could gear a mage or a rogue with trice the results?

I hear you.

Where you're missing the mark again, is between what is viable and what is optimal. Depending on who you're talking to, a 10% margin is not good enough. The zealotry of optimization seekers hasn't ceased to exist in Live. What you're describing didn't just happen because gear optimization either. The homogenizing between classes and specs made more advancement towards that end, and that's exactly what it took to bring the margin of balance that close- where no one is distinguishable from anyone else. You can certainly appreciate the ramifications that carries over to Vanilla pvp.

The bar was certainly set higher in Vanilla, there's no disputing that but the question your posing to me is outside of reason. There has never been such a phenomenon occur where a community is made up entirely of only 4 of the 9 "optimal" classes. Not only has this never occurred, but it never occurred at the peak of optimization zealotry at any point during WoW's history. I'm not even aware of an instance where a single guild has done this and been at all successful. Hell, that hasn't happened in any triple A MMO title I've played.

It's pretty easy to understand why that's been the case. A player's class/spec choice is innate to what they want out of the game. There will always be far far more players who choose to bend the social or expected norms than those who adhere to them. That, on its own merit is precisely why there is always diversity. No amount of players like Potis screaming at kids, telling them they're wrong or retarded for playing XYZ is ever going to change that reality, let alone give them pause to consider switching.

[potis]

It's pretty easy to understand why that's been the case. A player's class/spec choice is innate to what they want out of the game. There will always be far far more players who choose to bend the social or expected norms than those who adhere to them. That, on its own merit is precisely why there is always diversity. No amount of players like Potis screaming at kids, telling them they're wrong or retarded for playing XYZ is ever going to change that reality, let alone give them pause to consider switching.

You are wrong and you cant read, or as usual in these forums, you read what suits you.

No one said the classes wont be invited, we are saying the classes wont play what they want to play.

The druid will go to his corner, de-curse, cast a low rank healing touch and innervate the priest, he wont tank, he wont DPS.

The shaman will drop his totems and spam low rank heal to give 25% armor to the tanks while the combat rogues/fury warriors can have some windfury extra DPS.

The paladin will do his 5min blessings, later 15min blessing rotation and then cast his low rank Holy Light while standing at his corner, with the occasional judgement with Seal of Wisdom for some mana return to the mages.

The Shadow Priest exists only for the 15% shadow damage to the Warlock and that was 1 per raid, and that after the 16 debuff slots were introduced while also being OOM 24/7, a bit slower for the Alliance Shadow Priests cause seal of wisdom, otherwise, corner, holy spec and keep the raid alive.

I was a feral druid in 2005 ever since WoW launched in Europe pretty much and for the first 2 months, sure it was fun 2-3 shotting clothies outside Ironforge in duels cause we didnt know better first month into the game, and by second month in the game since we started learning how it works and its all about raiding ,i had the brain to realize "What is this bullshit" and since i didnt want to play resto, i rerolled to a Horde Warrior in May 2005 which is my main since then.

The only place any of the classes did anything else than buffbots/healbots was on Patchwerk because one of our Warriors decided to study that August we used a druid to go tank, aka stand there as the 3rd Hateful Strike soaker, and nowhere else cause they couldnt be used anywhere else.

All your posts indicate you have never actually raid leaded then, or have been in a leading/relevant position in a relevant guild and it all screams private server shenanigans, you have no idea what you are talking about and what happened in Vanilla and even if you did play in Vanilla you are probably the type that was carried on Sunday mornings to give out free MC gear while farming bindings on split groups.

Vanilla isnt 1.12, and even with 1.12 changes most of the classes were useless because the other classes became even better.

Even the link with the vanilla videos show exactly that, but your lack of knowledge shows you cant even understand what you are seeing.

[bufferunderrun]

I hear you.

Where you're missing the mark again, is between what is viable and what is optimal. Depending on who you're talking to, a 10% margin is not good enough. The zealotry of optimization seekers hasn't ceased to exist in Live. What you're describing didn't just happen because gear optimization either. The homogenizing between classes and specs made more advancement towards that end, and that's exactly what it took to bring the margin of balance that close- where no one is distinguishable from anyone else. You can certainly appreciate the ramifications that carries over to Vanilla pvp.

The bar was certainly set higher in Vanilla, there's no disputing that but the question your posing to me is outside of reason. There has never been such a phenomenon occur where a community is made up entirely of only 4 of the 9 "optimal" classes. Not only has this never occurred, but it never occurred at the peak of optimization zealotry at any point during WoW's history. I'm not even aware of an instance where a single guild has done this and been at all successful. Hell, that hasn't happened in any triple A MMO title I've played.

It's pretty easy to understand why that's been the case. A player's class/spec choice is innate to what they want out of the game. There will always be far far more players who choose to bend the social or expected norms than those who adhere to them. That, on its own merit is precisely why there is always diversity. No amount of players like Potis screaming at kids, telling them they're wrong or retarded for playing XYZ is ever going to change that reality, let alone give them pause to consider switching.

i'm not missing it, nowadays viable is pretty much synonymous of optimal because respeccing and gearing is so easy that basically peoples just mind the equilibrium btw melee and ranged, tanks are all viable and the same are healers there basically no more difference btw raid healer and tank healer, everyone has the same buffs and everything is raid wide.

But in vanilla thing are not that simple, first and foremost most raids had hard requirement while today boss mechanics require a learning back then they require tot dps, tot hps, resistances etc and gearing up was much more difficult; what that mean? Symple a mage could be geared in t1 and do the same dps a boomkin do in aq cloth, that alone instantly reduce the spot dedicated to "weak" specs just enough to have their buff but not enough to satisfy the number of request.

At last on my server nowadays most druid play a boomkin in a vanilla server 1-20 would try it for the buff, if i go now into the shaman hall the specs are equally distributed in vanilla enha and ele were rarely seen because the first beside it's windfury totem that was a nice buff to the melee groups didn't bring the same dps of a rogue.

In certain sense those specs were the wow versions of bards back in the day, i won't say they didn't have a spot in raid but those spot were very limited and a RL wouldn't gimp it's raid to and bring 10 boomkin i don't even think guilds recruits them in batches like today.

So the correct info to give peoples is to try to find a spot but be prepared to suffer to find it, don't expect it to be as easy as is today; most of the time you will be asked to respec also don't expect them to play like today and be substantially on par with pure dps classes.

[mickybrighteyes]

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)

hold on...
that 'crap' list seems to include some odd options... like the best answer to OOM (only balance druids had innerate) and the single greatest dmg multiplier for melee (windfury totem from enhancement was that much better than normal shaman).

So hybrid druid builds that took innervate were actually preferred over resto druids, and enhancement shaman were desired assuming your raid organizers weren't retarded with group set up.

Now calling feral 'viable'.... in a time where all the druid gear was +healing and they were competing with rogues for dmg gear (no tanking gear available) with dmg that was a 1.0 swing speed (kitty form) and fuck all scaling.... you must be joking. Feral got 'viable' in TBC just before they broke the class for scaling too good into pre-raiding equipment.

edit:

I think we can all agree on the following though -

the only non-viable speccs back then were retribution paladin, survival hunter, and MAYBE subtlety rogue. Almost everything else could somehow find a way to perform to a noteworthy degree in the major areas of the game. Ret just seemed to give up durability and healing for lackluster dmg that a pet could match. Surv was trying to melee with no real melee skills.... and sub would bet everything on stealth openers and their cooldowns (which largely did not work in group play outside pvp ooh ambush for a few thousand dmg once every minute or so while almost any other dmg specc could match that WITHOUT using reagents or stopping their dps)

[mickybrighteyes]

The resto shamans for the melee groups speccing for the improved totems is generally much better than bringing an enhancement shaman that does very little damage and no healing.

you weren't seeing resto shaman specc 23 points into enhacement. I assure you of that.

also enhancement shaman dmg wasn't low, it was unreliable. There's a difference. Granted they had only ONE melee attack on a cooldown they could still perform better than some builds (though not if they grouped with them and dropped their offensive totems).

[mickybrighteyes]

A lot of people did and still do. The loss in healing is negligible and the benefits from buffing every melee group with better totems is amazing.

maybe you want to rethink this statement? 23 points in a tree is going to basically make that your tree or cripple advancement into another tree. Most builds barely go past 20 pts deep in another tree unless there was some uber cool effect to synergize with. Sure WF totem could be that thing with your melee group (especially if it's stacked with sword specc melee dudes with procc based effects), but it wasn't exactly easily quantified back then for people to take a perfectly good healer and gimp it to hell and toss into cleave range. typical builds were 21 points deep at MOST and that 21st point was on something big... like demonology warlock's sacrifice, warrior's deathwish... actually mostly they were activated abilities. to dip this deep into a tree was most definitely NOT a 'negligible' loss considering you're tlaking about a build that is likely not oriented for dealing dmg in melee.

If you're thinking about Stormstrike it wasn't allowed since it ate up a debuff slot.

you're correct it likely wasn't allowed... but then again the only part about the skill that was ideal at the time was the instant melee strike to procc more windfury off the autoswing timer. WF was unreliable as fuck due to RNG but could pump out numbers to make a rogue's cold blood 5pt eviscerate look weak.

[evogsr]

You are wrong and you cant read, or as usual in these forums, you read what suits you.

No one said the classes wont be invited, we are saying the classes wont play what they want to play.

Not one thing you said in that diatribe full of know-nothing is anything other than a divorce from reality. But again, thanks for continually proving you have no fucking clue of what you're talking about.

Also, since you can read the future, have you won the powerball yet? Or does your crystal ball only work when it suits a point you haven't and can't substantiate?

[Auberdeen]

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.

how? we were kited like fools and could never, ever close gaps.