What were paladins like in vanilla?

[Hottage]

If you can't handle being a healer + buff bot 24/7 in raids don't roll pally. You recast a blessing with a 5 min duration on 40 people and by that point you almost need to rebuff.

Except that stopped being an issue with Greater Blessings in patch 1.9.

[Improtaight]

Healers and buffbots in endgame PvE. Worse arms warriors in PvP. Not viable tanks.

+1.
you summed it up nicely

i levele as prot just to survive, tried to dps at 60 it was a 2 button thing with huge cd and time u just spend bluntly hitting the target with auto attack.
tanks at 60 are a mana shitstorm, u cant do anything.

[Echocho]

You had one spell called flash of light, if you used any other spell you were not playing a paladin correctly.

[Denso]

You had one spell called flash of light, if you used any other spell you were not playing a paladin correctly.

Funnily enough this is actually incorrect. Holy Light rank 3 was where it was at.

[Gaidax]

Flash of Light spam was legit. You did not really need to downrank Holy Light, but you could - it would roughly be same thing overall.

Flash of Light was super mana efficient, you could spam it forever.

[Orby]

Relevant view of Paladin endgame in 2006

I haven't watched that video in years... those old apple commercials this is based off, has it really been so long? Puts the last 15 years into perspective lol

[Leih]

We mainly used paladins for spamming dispels and buffing, with a little bit of flash of light spam in between. It wasn't the most engaging class, at least in PVE lol

[Super Kami Dende]

I had heaps of Fun as Ret in Vanilla. So much so that I stayed Ret for the past 14 years. The gameplay was pretty basic but so was every class in Vanilla. At least you got to Seal twist instead of spamming Frostbolt or Shadowbolt.

[crusadernero]

It was shit. I will play one.

[Teleros]

You will have more than 1 Paladin in raid so going for BoK, imp. BoW and imp. BoM is pretty much pointless.

Ideally sure, but the way I look at it, there'll always be unexpected problems cropping up, so having some flexibility there is good*. Don't want to be caught out when Dave keeps DC'ing or Bob decides he'd rather be a Resto druid or something.

Also, what DPS talents are we talking about? Consecration, Shock and 3% Melee Hit? If you want to do at least semi-decent DPS you need SoCommand in Ret gear or go full Shockadin with Imp SoR.

Oh I wouldn't expect to do even semi-decent DPS with what I had, hence the "somewhat".

*My thinking goes something like this:

1. Start here: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...in/BDzP9NAAAcA - with 15pts spare (2pts in UF but it could be Imp SoR instead - w/e). Imp Conc Aura is so deep in the Prot tree I just assume I won't be in a raid with it (yes, someone may go for it & BoSanc, but I'm assuming not). The Imp BoM / BoW combo pairs nicely, as few classes will want both.
2. Now what?
3a. 10pts in Ret & Imp SoR for personal DPS: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...in/BD_M9NAAAc8
3b. 11pts in Prot for BoK, so you can cover for missing raiders etc: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...BDzP9NACzxABwA
4. Stick the remaining talent points wherever. Guild may want JoW/JoL, so go Lasting Judgement (beats +hit concerns in my book), etc.

PoJ I'm not sure about, at least outside of PvP. Your job in dungeons & raids is to stand still whilst spamming heals, and in the open world you have a mount. Vanilla bosses generally weren't nearly as complex as modern ones, so whilst I might well want it when dancing in Naxx or something, on the whole I don't think it'll make a big difference.

If you can't handle being a healer + buff bot 24/7 in raids don't roll pally. You recast a blessing with a 5 min duration on 40 people and by that point you almost need to rebuff.

Luckily, WoW Classic will have 15min Greater Blessings, so you will just have to re-buff at the boss, then bind everything to FoL and roll your face across the keyboard .

[Squishy Tia]

We had a running joke in my old raid guild that went: "Paladins never die...and neither do their enemies." If that play experience would be appealing to you then go for it, but they really suck to level.

Prot Pally with Reckoning + Flurry Axe = OMGWTFBBQ. Next to Fury Warriors and Enh Shaman (again with Flurry Axes x2) they were absolute wrecking machines.

[Yatagarasu]

Tried paladin at demo, not my cup of tea at all. Will be levelling my rogue <3 God I missed gouge being a relevant spell

[Denso]

Flash of Light spam was legit. You did not really need to downrank Holy Light, but you could - it would roughly be same thing overall.

Flash of Light was super mana efficient, you could spam it forever.

I guess I could have specified this was the case for raiding I guess.

The problem wasn't really ever running out of mana (rarely seen for paladins as Illumination was incredibly strong), it was the fact that a low rank Holy Light simply provided superior HPS at roughly the same mana cost per second. Sure you could spam Flash, but you'd do less healing. I don't remember the details exactly (it's 12 years ago after all), but it had to do with the fact down-ranking down to a specific threshold (think you had to stay above level 20?) still gained same benefit of +healing or something from your gear as a full rank Holy Light. I also think Blessing of Light played a part as a down-ranked Holy Light still gained full benefit from that as well.

As far as specs go it was usually 30/21/0 (getting Sanctuary), 30/11/5(+5) (getting Kings), 30/5/11(+5) or 29/11/11 (Kings and Seal of Command). We had a roster of 8 paladins if i recall correctly and we generally spoke to each other whenever we swapped our specs around so that we always had at least 2 if not 3 Kings and I think our ever-present GM picked Sanctuary. We tried having one of us spec a bit of Retribution (5/11/30(+5) I believe?) at some point with Nightfall and Vindication (?), but I think it only lasted a few months.

Everyday farm life as a raiding paladin without Seal of Command was really, really painful. Thankfully Blizzard put our desired herbs for raid pots in Scarlet Monastery though, so we managed to kill most mobs within 30 seconds even without it.

[chooi]

Ideally sure, but the way I look at it, there'll always be unexpected problems cropping up, so having some flexibility there is good*. Don't want to be caught out when Dave keeps DC'ing or Bob decides he'd rather be a Resto druid or something.

It's all about good communication with your raid team. If your BoK/Imp Conc Pally is missing the raid for whatever reason you can always respec and any somewhat decent guild will give you the gold to do so because it's in the best interest of the whole raid.

But point still stands: You are either the BoK Pally, the BoW/BoM Pally or the BoSalv/Light Pally or some other combination of that.

PoJ I'm not sure about, at least outside of PvP. Your job in dungeons & raids is to stand still whilst spamming heals, and in the open world you have a mount. Vanilla bosses generally weren't nearly as complex as modern ones, so whilst I might well want it when dancing in Naxx or something, on the whole I don't think it'll make a big difference.

I think you are underestimating how good +movement speed is for any type of content.

Leveling & Open World: nothing will speed up your whole gaming process more than increased run/mounted speed, especially in Vanilla where you spend a lot of time running around and even more so because of no mount pre-40. It's really the best and first talent you should rush for when leveling, doing a lot of open world and/or farming.

Dungeons & Raids: running out of fire faster or dealing with other mechanics that require you to get quickly from A to B means that you can start healing again earlier, it gives you a small grace time if you notice bad stuff slightly too late or allows you to still squeeze in that heal you started casting when you are hit by a mechanic. Also reduces your time running back after a wipe which you will do a lot.

PvP: obviously running away from or to enemies/allies more quickly

It's basically like SSDs in RL: you don't need them but they save you a lot of time spent waiting on the long run and make your whole PC experience much more convenient.

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I think that your approach is justifiable when you come to the point where all you do is raid-logging AQ40/Naxx and nothing else and/or always play in groups. Otherwise a deep-deep Holy spec is just making your own life much more difficult. For everything BWL and before you shouldn't need a full support spec anyway and as I said, usually there is more than one Paladin in a 40-man raid.

[Guardian Bob]

One thing people need to remember too is as a ret paladin, judging seal of wisdom on a boss is a 100% must and reduces your mana drain drastically while doing DPS for the fight.

Something that Lasting Judgement did better honestly. As a Holy Paladin I'd fight you in real life to put up Judgement of Light cause of meter padding. Seriously, Judgement of Light is super OP. Of course the raid really wants Judgement of Wisdom, specifically the casters as they don't benefit from Judgement of Light.

Tier 2.5 made Judgements last longer I believe so it made it a bit better for Rets.

Paladins are powerhouses, if played right, during every content stage.

Paladins were also super hard to keep around, as most of them disappear due to boredom. My guild went through so many Paladins it got to the point when we had to keep some gear in the bank for new Paladins. This was the same problem for Druids cause they too would fade away. Priests were the only healers who stuck around, though I don't know about Shamans since I've never played horde.

Anyone looking to make a guild in Classic should make their Paladins happy and allow them to get 2h weapons, otherwise enjoy regearing Paladins every so often.

Funnily enough this is actually incorrect. Holy Light rank 3 was where it was at.

Max rank Flash of Light until you run low on mana and then rank 1 Flash of Light all day long. If you have the libram from Scholomance you can get away with a lot of healing output doing this. Cause when it says it adds 43 healing to Flash of Light, it really adds 43 healing. I think it was 43 healing, I'm trying to remember. Holy Light would be more efficient but the cast time is so long that your output is hurt. Two flash of lights heal more than what one Holy Light does and only .5 seconds more time. And if you stack +healing as any Holy Paladin should, you only need 1 or 2 heals for everything but the tanks. Spell crit is a bonus, not something a Holy Paladin should stack.

[Unholyground]

I don't know about Shamans since I've never played horde.

Shaman of all specs were usually tolerated mainly because even if there was a DPS loss they still provided windfury/mana totems which increased the damage output of other melee classes greatly as well as providing some nice MP for healers and mana DPS classes.

[wholol]

I think it's fair to say that paladins were the most support oriented class in the game, regardless of spec.

People who gravitate towards the support role will enjoy playing a paladin in classic, even if they don't want to be healers.

[Cyrops]

Paladins are quite underrated ( you can see that in this thread) , let me shed a different opinion on the topic.

- Paladins are considered the most mana-efficient ST healers in the game.

- Holy paladins in group pvp are incredibly powerful, their kit is considered so powerful in fact that it is the reason alliance premades are considered superior to horde ones (composition wise) ,even though horde racials are somewhat better.

-Ret is not the only viable build , (sword and board) reckoning pala is just as good if you know how to properly use and time /sit macros to proc it.

- T2 judgement set alone is worth raiding as a pala, you only have to wear clown suits in raids and can swap to your full T2 set everywhere else ( considering you already have it ).

- open world and leveling is not as horrible as people make it out to be, especially with reckoning build lvling , here check this brilliant guide to know what I'm talking about for leveling : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8BPATSVpRg.

If the above isn't enough to help you make a decision, let me warn you that there will be significantly more people rolling hunters and raid spots will be harder to find than a pala.

Since you mentioned reckoning:




It was bomb skill, also intervention let you dodge repair bill, which was AWESOME (I remember we would race who uses it first, since it was what, 30min cd?).