Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[NihilSustinet]

For raiding lots of specs weren't viable, but very few if any specs had no use whatsoever.

[Soon-TM]

Vanilla WoW class designs were utter garbage. I don't see any argument that can be made against that. The whole notion that "some specs are made for this and that." was not even realized well if that's what was intended. Balance Druid for example was so bad that it was a meme. This is not even getting to the overly simple rotations of all classes.

Only if you consider it from a raiding min-max point of view, which was completely superfluous back then. Vanilla class balance was made with an entirely different philosophy in mind, with its pros and its cons, much like today's. That doesn't make them "garbage" though. And btw, Balance druids were EXTREMELY dangerous in PvP, they could 1-shot you easily, and unlike Arcane mages, they weren't tied to a 3 min cooldown.

[Aliven]

For raiding lots of specs weren't viable, but very few if any specs had no use whatsoever.

"I made that druid to be stalwart protector of nature, to be the refreshing spring of health and smite foes with stars and sun. Now i will cry in the corner and throw my one spell to Holy Priests so they dont shout on me. Im helping..."

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Only if you consider it from a raiding min-max point of view, which was completely superfluous back then. Vanilla class balance was made with an entirely different philosophy in mind, with its pros and its cons, much like today's. That doesn't make them "garbage" though. And btw, Balance druids were EXTREMELY dangerous in PvP, they could 1-shot you easily, and unlike Arcane mages, they weren't tied to a 3 min cooldown.

Why play balance if you can play warrior and global somebody every couple seconds.
Also, classes were non viable not because of their dmg. Actual dmg was good. It was because a) other specs/classes were mathematically better and b) those non viable specs went oom after 1 min in 5 min fight.

[Soon-TM]

"I made that druid to be stalwart protector of nature, to be the refreshing spring of health and smite foes with stars and sun. Now i will cry in the corner and throw my one spell to Holy Priests so they dont shout on me. Im helping..."

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Why play balance if you can play warrior and global somebody every couple seconds.

Which doesn't happen until you are geared to the teeth, and gl against frost mages and (good) rogues. Btw, even Enh shamans have an easier time globalling people.

[Aliven]

Which doesn't happen until you are geared to the teeth, and gl against frost mages and (good) rogues. Btw, even Enh shamans have an easier time globalling people.

So you are saying, the topic about endgame viability is not relevant till people get to the endgame...

[Soon-TM]

So you are saying, the topic about endgame viability is not relevant till people get to the endgame...

Define "viable" first.

[NihilSustinet]

"I made that druid to be stalwart protector of nature, to be the refreshing spring of health and smite foes with stars and sun. Now i will cry in the corner and throw my one spell to Holy Priests so they dont shout on me. Im helping..."

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Why play balance if you can play warrior and global somebody every couple seconds.
Also, classes were non viable not because of their dmg. Actual dmg was good. It was because a) other specs/classes were mathematically better and b) those non viable specs went oom after 1 min in 5 min fight.

im guessing you played alliance. on horde druids were the main single target healer. we were the most important healers in the raid.

[Aliven]

im guessing you played alliance. on horde druids were the main single target healer. we were the most important healers in the raid.

Seems you didnt know what a Holy Priest is. Or Resto Shammy for that matter.

[NihilSustinet]

Seems you didnt know what a Holy Priest is. Or Resto Shammy for that matter.

uh. of course we did. those were mostly raid healers for horde guilds at the top end.

[Mushkins]

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.

[Chaelexi]

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.

Not in Vanilla, there were just specs and playstyles that were not viable in Vanilla even with every consumable popped/used available. We had a resto druid that cried that she could play boomkin and be competitive. So we made her a bet that if she could keep up in an alt MC clear that we would give here a chance in the main BWL clear the week after(she had almost all the BWL and MC cloth off pieces available to her). She was popping demonic ruins like candy(she farmed 100 of them in the prior weeks), had mana regen food, a paly casting judgement of wisdom so she could get more mana. Every fight she started off well but by the middle of the fight she was had no mana and was 60% behind my fury warrior in blues using Dal Rends weapons and this was in MC where fight lengths were short.

So no not every class is viable in it's vanilla flavour. Just like arcane mages, destruction warlocks(you either went 30/0/21 or 9/21/21 as the only good talent in destro was ruin), ret paly and feral druids did were in the same boat do to limitations. As well as actual Prot Paly(no taunt, quality defensive cooldowns), Feral Bear Druid(it kind of worked until Naxx/ late AQ40 Crushing blows destroyed you.

[zoefschildpad]

Not in Vanilla, there were just specs and playstyles that were not viable in Vanilla even with every consumable popped/used available. We had a resto druid that cried that she could play boomkin and be competitive. So we made her a bet that if she could keep up in an alt MC clear that we would give here a chance in the main BWL clear the week after(she had almost all the BWL and MC cloth off pieces available to her). She was popping demonic ruins like candy(she farmed 100 of them in the prior weeks), had mana regen food, a paly casting judgement of wisdom so she could get more mana. Every fight she started off well but by the middle of the fight she was had no mana and was 60% behind my fury warrior in blues using Dal Rends weapons and this was in MC where fight lengths were short.

So no not every class is viable in it's vanilla flavour. Just like ret paly and feral druids did were in the same boat do to limitations.

Similarly, we had a paladin that swore he could be a tank. Pulled 2 molten giants, killed the one the warrior was tanking first, and the paladin lost aggro when we were halfway through his. Useless.

[Chaelexi]

Similarly, we had a paladin that swore he could be a tank. Pulled 2 molten giants, killed the one the warrior was tanking first, and the paladin lost aggro when we were halfway through his. Useless.

Funny part about Paly tanks is that they could keep agro the best by spamming heals on themselves...... but then they could not block while casting......you great design there. You just reminded me about one more huge bug/exploit in vanilla. You could pull snap agro with a fel hunter as a lock by spamming Paranoia(the increased stealth detection spell) as it had no gcd, applied a buff to 40+people in the raid and each application counted as a small value of stacking threat. It had the highest threat in the game. you could bind it to mouse wheel and just upscroll to threat.

[Specialka]

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.

So funny you contradict yourself. You said yourself, if you are willing to put in a lot of extra work farming, etc... Why they should put in extra work to be competitive?

Honestly, raiding in vanilla was a joke if we compared it to today raids. That is why, at the time, you could have shitty specs in the raid without any problem as long as you have enough "pure" class to compensate. But if you wanted to top the dps meter or heal meter, you should not play those specs.

[Mushkins]

So no not every class is viable in it's vanilla flavour. Just like arcane mages, destruction warlocks(you either went 30/0/21 or 9/21/21 as the only good talent in destro was ruin), ret paly and feral druids did were in the same boat do to limitations. As well as actual Prot Paly(no taunt, quality defensive cooldowns), Feral Bear Druid(it kind of worked until Naxx/ late AQ40 Crushing blows destroyed you.

You will be surprised when you see that most of mages in your MC/BWL raid are 31 talent points in arcane.

[Chaelexi]

You will be surprised when you see that most of mages in your MC/BWL raid are 31 talent points in arcane.

But mages in BWL and MC were decurse bots, they could not do any substantial damage until AQ40 when stuff could be hit by fire spells.

[Thimagryn]

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.

If you have a car with 3 wheels it still runs. Make the most of it and have fun. Just don't compare yourself to all the otjer cars out there. 3 wheels is fine if you put some effort to make it work.

...Or we could just not drive the car with 3 wheels.

[Xecks]

If you have a car with 3 wheels it still runs. Make the most of it and have fun. Just don't compare yourself to all the otjer cars out there. 3 wheels is fine if you put some effort to make it work.

...Or we could just not drive the car with 3 wheels.

every class other than warriors had 1 spec that was viable in raids. mages were frost only till aq40 then all went fire only. you had a role and up until aq40 you were able to tank on a feral druid. ret actually was really good in naxx though and decent on some of the other raids.

[Thimagryn]

every class other than warriors had 1 spec that was viable in raids. mages were frost only till aq40 then all went fire only. you had a role and up until aq40 you were able to tank on a feral druid. ret actually was really good in naxx though and decent on some of the other raids.

And the path of least resistance is rolling a Warrior.

[Soon-TM]

There were no nonviable specs. Some were good at PvP, others were good in dungeons, and others were good at raids.