What were paladins like in vanilla?

[chooi]

Overpowered if we started with an early WoW patch. But for 1.12:

Actually very strong for (solo) leveling up to around level 40.

Level 40-60 is where the painful slog begins because Paladins don't get a lot of DPS increases via talents or abilities and don't scale very well with gear either - unlike e.g. Warriors. Have fun questing, farming and grinding reputations without friends or a Mage/Hunter alt!

Endgame: awesome Healers and Buff Bots. That's it.

Sure, you can make Rets/Prots/Shockadins work up to a certain level and with tailored raid/group composition but it requires unreasonable effort when you can just roll a Warrior or true DPS class - or play the better Classic WoW that is TBC.

'But Jimmy, Classic was easy - you don't have to minmax!' Yes, Timmy, we don't have to. But please, put at least 13 points into Holy and wear your cloth gear so you can be somewhat useful in your Ret spec, mhkay? (btw 13/8/30 was a pretty solid hybrid spec for pre-60 overall questing and dungeoneering)

[Zyky]

Not viable tanks.

That isn't entirely truthful. My guild back in Vanilla had 1 pally who did tank on and off and was pretty much the reason why we killed Nefarian when we did.

[therealbowser]

Leveling was actually really easy. If you wanted active gameplay, it was a bore. If you wanted to be invincible, it was great. As a paladin, I could regularly fight enemies that were red (+3 levels or more) and could occasionally win duels against players as high as +10 levels over me (skull).

Basically, leveling as a paladin meant you would activate a seal, auto attack an enemy, tab out, then tab in after 30 seconds, reactivate a seal and heal as needed, and repeat until enemy was dead. Might have been some judging on the way, but it's been a while. You didn't spam judgements or you'd run out of mana. It wasn't the fastest way to level, but by far was the easiest.

At endgame? Primarily, if you wanted to tank, give up while you're ahead. Sure, you can technically tank. But you won't do it often, and you will only be doing it for 5 man dungeons. These people who say "well, paladins can tank in raids!" are just wishful thinkers. No one is going to let a paladin tank in a raid.

You might be able to convince someone to let you deal damage in a raid, but it's highly unlikely. Most likely, what you are going to be doing is healing.

As a paladin who raided early on (though briefly, paladin raiding wasn't really for me) it largely consisted of using an addon called 'buffahoy' to apply 5 minute blessings to 40 individual players (and later 15 minute greater blessings IIRC to each class) and using an addon called 'decursive' to cleanse debuffs over and over, as well as providing healing as needed. The good news is that any spec of paladin could do this easily, and paladins are greatly desired for raiding. The bad news is, well, if you wanted to do anything other than support a raid, you're SOL.

Others experiences may vary and I certainly didn't raid AQ or Naxx as a paladin, but I highly doubt the experience changes as time goes on.

Either way, get this idea out of your head about 'endgame'. Vanilla literally revolved around two games -- the game where you leveled up -- a journey that was not quick, and if you were rushing to level 60 you'd burn out super fast -- and a game where you participated in endgame content. 1-59 was as significant -- if not more so -- as level 60. So consider everything, not just one aspect. If you think you're gonna rush to 60 then you are probably in for a bad time.

[Armourboy]

Overpowered if we started with an early WoW patch. But for 1.12:

Actually very strong for (solo) leveling up to around level 40.

Level 40-60 is where the painful slog begins because Paladins don't get a lot of DPS increases via talents or abilities and don't scale very well with gear either - unlike e.g. Warriors. Have fun questing, farming and grinding reputations without friends or a Mage/Hunter alt!

Endgame: awesome Healers and Buff Bots. That's it.

Sure, you can make Rets/Prots/Shockadins work up to a certain level and with tailored raid/group composition but it requires unreasonable effort when you can just roll a Prot Warrior or true DPS class. 'But Jimmy, Classic was easy - you don't have to minmax!' Yes, Timmy, we don't have to. But please, put at least 13 points into Holy and wear your cloth gear so you can be somewhat useful in your Ret spec (btw 13/8/30 was a pretty solid hybrid spec for pre-60 overall questing and dungeoneering)

Eh once you hit 49 to 50 and could handle undead in WPL leveling wasn't that bad.

[thediceman]

Reasonably easy to level pre 40, but takes a massive hit post. Be prepared to be a healbot/buffbot in any raid you get into UNLESS you want to walk the path of the damned and by path of the damned I mean RET. Gearing for it is brutal, you are constantly harassed for being generic and sub optimal BUT if you managed to get enough gear (some rogue gear oddly enough) you can absolutely melt face with it.

However, it is a slog. You will be tested and only a few per server will rise from the flames as true pve/pvp gods.

[mickybrighteyes]

a druid's thorn buff did more damage than a paladin, unless the paladin was fighting undead. In that case the paladin was almost always op.. and then they reclassified forsaken as humanoid for gameplay reasons and... it got a lot harder for paladins to camp the undercity

[thediceman]

a druid's thorn buff did more damage than a paladin, unless the paladin was fighting undead. In that case the paladin was almost always op.. and then they reclassified forsaken as humanoid for gameplay reasons and... it got a lot harder for paladins to camp the undercity

Someone has never watched a Zalgradis pvp video. Nothing say hilarious like a 4k damage kerchunk on every shaman you come across while using gnomish cloaking device.

[Ange]

I think the years have warped your memory - rogue is not a fast leveling class. Warlock and mage are much faster. Also isn't combat swords how you would level quickly anyways? The only reason people level as daggers is frontstabbing I thought.

The leveling talents with a hybrid spec could get you a garanteed high ambush crit after each XP gain/mob kill. You oneshotted azshara mobs or used 2 GCD's from level 4x till 60.

Pressing 3-4 GCD's per mob and wait till they die is a different thing to ONESHOTTING/TWOSHOTTING mobs for the last 15+ levels with zero need for food. The only limitation you had were the spawn speed and keeping your farming spot was only possible as a rogue for obvious reasons.

[chooi]

Eh once you hit 49 to 50 and could handle undead in WPL leveling wasn't that bad.

Good point but exception to the rule. I spent hours grinding mobs there. Now that we know everything about Vanilla we can play a lot more efficiently. I think a good way from 50 to 60 can be to do as many attunements and dungeon quests as possible and start grinding materials for epic mount quest, overpowered crafting pieces like the healer cloak (Hide of the Wild), reputations, etc. You have to do this at some point anyway so why not get this done as early as possible while gaining some XP and pre-raid gear?

[arr0gance]

Ever played Whack-a-Mole? It's like that, but with buffs.

[JustRob]

Overpowered if we started with an early WoW patch. But for 1.12:

Actually very strong for (solo) leveling up to around level 40.

Level 40-60 is where the painful slog begins because Paladins don't get a lot of DPS increases via talents or abilities and don't scale very well with gear either - unlike e.g. Warriors. Have fun questing, farming and grinding reputations without friends or a Mage/Hunter alt!

Endgame: awesome Healers and Buff Bots. That's it.

Sure, you can make Rets/Prots/Shockadins work up to a certain level and with tailored raid/group composition but it requires unreasonable effort when you can just roll a Warrior or true DPS class - or play the better Classic WoW that is TBC.

'But Jimmy, Classic was easy - you don't have to minmax!' Yes, Timmy, we don't have to. But please, put at least 13 points into Holy and wear your cloth gear so you can be somewhat useful in your Ret spec, mhkay? (btw 13/8/30 was a pretty solid hybrid spec for pre-60 overall questing and dungeoneering)

Really? I don't know how close private servers get to vanilla as it originally was, but playing paladin I think before I hit lvl 10 I died 20 times already. Auto attacks are so slowww, if I fight two mobs at the same time I'm pretty much dead, unless I get extremely lucky. You'd think Holy Light would give you some survivability, but it costs too much mana and takes too long to cast.

It probably gets easier later on, but the beginning levels for a paladin are rough. On druid at least you get bear at lvl 10 and I think by that time you also already have two heals.

[Airlick]

So which class that's not a tank or a healer is easy to perform well on in vanilla?

Mage is what you're looking for. Strong as hell in PvP, PvE of all kinds, levelling, very convenient with teleports and can also make a ton of gold with them - travelling was a real pain back then, there were no hubs with portals like Dalaran, you only had HS to count on and that was set in IF/UC, so if you didn't want to waste 30+ minutes on travelling, you paid for a portal.

Hunter was absolutely not what it is today, basically a caster with focus instead of mana and a gun. You actually used arrows/bolts/bullets and they cost money to buy/make in addition to pretty much leaving you with only 3 bags, since 1 was taken up by projectiles. Hunters had no disengage as it is now, that is a blink, no relevant defensive CDs and only frost trap to save you if a melee locked on you. They were very squishy, and feign death really didn't save anyone from a live player. On top of that, you probably needed more macros than a warrior, and that's saying a lot. It was good in that you couldn't really die in solo PvE and you could solo some elites with a good pet, which really no other class aside of warlock could. There's a good reason hunters were generally referred to as huntards, they were easy to level, but very hard to actually play well, so many hunters were actually completely clueless.

[JustRob]

I like the class fantasy of mages, always have, but I just dislike playing casters unfortunately.

[Armourboy]

Good point but exception to the rule. I spent hours grinding mobs there. Now that we know everything about Vanilla we can play a lot more efficiently. I think a good way from 50 to 60 can be to do as many attunements and dungeon quests as possible and start grinding materials for epic mount quest, overpowered crafting pieces like the healer cloak (Hide of the Wild), reputations, etc. You have to do this at some point anyway so why not get this done as early as possible while gaining some XP and pre-raid gear?

It's why I ground undead to get the rep pieces for turn ins for argent dawn. Kill two birds with one stone. Too me the worst part was 40-50 but I was on a PvP server and avoided STV as much as possible.

[MalfLFT]

Prob the slowest class but they could do some incredible things and were great 1v1's and even as healers many specced Ret so they were true Hybrids.

[Tapcon]

What is so hard about saying "Hey, I will buff Wisdom." and then having the next Paladin pick a buff. Paladin Power was really unnecessary. I never had to be reminded to buff and would often cover buffs that my teammates would fail to refresh (Greater Blessing of Might or Blessing of Salvation on Warriors and Rogues when I was buffing Wisdom on everyone else.) Maybe the addon helped bad players but anyone that paid attention really didn't need it.

This argument doesn't make sense to me. That line of reasoning can be extended to any addon. "Maybe addons help bad players but good players don't need them." "I'm a good player so I don't need them" Sure, lets play with pally power, KTM, DBM, luna, theorycraft, atlas, etc. That makes your life a lot harder. The point is they help you. If you are a good player they make you BETTER. Why wouldn't you want to use a tool or resource to help you improve?

Personally when I see a pally without PP I say "YIKES!" and 95% of the time they're reeeeally bad. What happens when you don't have it is that you think you have 100% uptime but you don't. It becomes super difficult to remember when to rebuff and who died on that last kill and needs rebuffs. One class needs rebuff but the others are at 12 so no reason to waste symbols on the rebuff right away. Then everything gets out of sync.

Also, you can't cover what another paladin has missed because then they won't receive your original blessing. Most raids run 5 paladins max.

The leveling talents with a hybrid spec could get you a garanteed high ambush crit after each XP gain/mob kill. You oneshotted azshara mobs or used 2 GCD's from level 4x till 60.

Pressing 3-4 GCD's per mob and wait till they die is a different thing to ONESHOTTING/TWOSHOTTING mobs for the last 15+ levels with zero need for food. The only limitation you had were the spawn speed and keeping your farming spot was only possible as a rogue for obvious reasons.

There's no way you are one-shotting mobs while leveling from 45-60. You are not talking about vanilla right now. At level 60 with 1000 AP in a crappy ret set with crusader-procced on TUF I crit for like 1k which doesn't 1-shot mobs in Desolace in the mid 30s.

Hunter and druid can get to 60 in <4 days /played and don't 1-shot anything. But rogue can? Shouldn't that make 1-2 days /played possible?

What hybrid spec are you talking about? 21/8/22? combat swords would be faster.

And what makes you mention Azshara? You'll get to 48ish there but still have Un'goro, Felwood, WPL, Winterspring, EPL to 60. The blood elves are really nasty but other than that it's a lot of hippogryphs, furbolgs, and ghosts which are basically normal.

[Airlick]

I like the class fantasy of mages, always have, but I just dislike playing casters unfortunately.

If you don't want to play a caster and don't want to eventually end up as a tank/healer, then it's either rogue or hunter. Rogue is slower at levelling, and as opposed to a hunter you will have some downtime, but you're also ungankable, have high DPS and are very good both in PvE and PvP. But if the inconveniences that hunters had to deal with don't scare you, it's also a good option. The only one left if you don't want to play a rogue either, anyway.

[Cronovey]

Realistically, you would be relegated to buff bot unless they start us with the 15 minute greater blessings (which they probably will since it'll be 1.12) in which case you might have some time to throw a few heals and perhaps out of combat rez from the back of the raid for the random tank who might have died or the mage who pulled aggro on trash since they had no threat drop originally.

For leveling, Judge > Seal > Auto until Judgement was back up basically. Seals were only 2 minute duration originally IIRC (only leveled a dwarf pally to about ~19 for BG twinking back then) and you had trouble surviving because of spell pushback and only having the long cast of Holy Light for sustain. Getting Consecration made it better but it was still very slow going because you didn't have any sort of off GCD attack like warriors with Heroic Strike or attack speed buffs like rogues with Slice and Dice so it was just brutal. Felt like it took forever to kill things and once you did start doing damage with decent gear, you went OOM frequently as well.

Let's put it this way: Leeroy in the revamped UBRS wants the Devout set shoulders for a reason when you rescue him in WoD. Joke's on us, Leeroy was actually trying to itemize properly for beginner raiding.

[Radical Centrist]

Mainly talking about endgame. Levelling a paladin in vanilla was pretty fucking awful from what I remember. Use a seal, auto attack and pray your attacks don't miss or get parried.

I've been reading up on their endgame, seems like pallies were mainly buffbots and healers. In cloth gear. So now I have a lot of doubt if I should roll pally in WoW Classic, I've never been too fond of healing and it sounds boring.

My next choice would be hunter. Best solo class, easy levelling, and in raids there's always room for a couple.

Pally in classic. LOL....

[Lolsteak]

Paladins were awful at leveling? I disagree