Will you try to make a "bad" spec viable?

[deniter]

There are no bad specs in vanilla, you just have to realize most of them are not meant for raiding. Some specs are good for soloing, leveling up, and farming stuff, some are good for PvP.

[Zappidoo]

Some of the specs in Vanilla were generally agreed to be pretty bad. Now we have a lot more knowledge & tools to help us out. That said, will you try out one of these specs & attempt to make them work? Who knows what will happen this time around. If I missed one, tell us about it below.

While my memory of Vanilla is fairly limited what are these magic tools and knowledge that we have now that we didn't then. There was addons, there was tons of theory crafting/testing, and sites to "guide". If nothing in the game is changing at its core class wise what makes people think all of a sudden some epiphany is going to make a feral druid a viable spec in pve? Whats viable and whats not is subjective and people are entitled to that but if we are talking about viable being not holding people back or getting carried as a body in anything past MC I can't really see anything changing.

[Caardamus]

I'm 100% playing an Enhance Shaman. I know that it's not the best spec, and I will probably have a harder time finding groups for things, but I have always loved the being a support class more than being a dps.

[luciano]

Or maybe Blizzard will tune everything a little differently, and all the DPS specs will be viable.

[Edgeta]

Balance and feral weren't bad in 1.12 The problem was a perfectly played dps druid was slightly behind a perfectly played mage/rogue so most guilds already had druids shoehorned into healing even though it really only made a big difference for top-tier guilds. We routinely had a balance druid in the top 3 DPS for our raid.

[Oozlz]

Auto attacking while praying for windfury procs? Eventually getting Stormstrike on an 8 sec timer?

More like watching for Nightfall procs (stack crit for max flurry for max swings for max NF uptime) and using frost shock (buffed by mages and locks also). Also totem twisting. You will do more dps, and boost your group more (more mana for twisting) and run out of mana less often than using ES and SS.

[Boricha]

If they do tbc and let us transfer chars then I'll probably level an Spriest near the end of vanilla.

[Vishy]

prot paladin

They said they were going to make prot paladins viable for classic.

[Oozlz]

They said they were going to make prot paladins viable for classic.

Source Please? This seems false.

[Bramickias]

If you mean viable in raids, forget it. For everything else, every spec is somewhat viable with the right gear.
I used to play a ret pally strickly for PVP, and once i got my blue pvp set i was doing great. My friend was a feral druid and he was doing incredibly well in BG. But, i still think a big reason why we were both doing so well in BG was because nobody knew how to deal with either of our spec. I realized that when some of my guildmates asked to duel me after some BG and i destroyed them because i knew exactly what a warlock, a rogue or a spriest could do, and it took them several duels before they could begin to counter anything i was doing. Maybe that will be a bit different in Classic with so many player having so much experience by now.
Neither of us ever thought of doing raids with thoses (i had a warrior for that, he had a mage). For 5man dungeons I just swapped in a healing set and nobody cared about the healer's spec as long as he was healing. 5man dungeon are really really easy as long as you dont mess up your pulls.

[The Stormbringer]

Voted on all of them. Might as well try them all, right?

[kunah]

Would love to do a shadow priest. But I rolled one before and I know the mana problems are real.

[Bramickias]

I'm 100% playing an Enhance Shaman. I know that it's not the best spec, and I will probably have a harder time finding groups for things, but I have always loved the being a support class more than being a dps.

If you are willing to build yourself a healing set, you'll have no problem finding groups for 5man dungeon, and before 40 you wont even need a dedicated healing set.

[draynay]

I want to, but it sounds like such hard work to reach the middle of the pack.

[Thage]

More like watching for Nightfall procs (stack crit for max flurry for max swings for max NF uptime) and using frost shock (buffed by mages and locks also). Also totem twisting. You will do more dps, and boost your group more (more mana for twisting) and run out of mana less often than using ES and SS.

Enhancement shamans with Nightfall are going to be in demand once raiding gets underway. High uptime on 20% extra spell damage for the raid on a boss is nothing to sneeze at.

Also, Enhancement shamans with a strong 2h Axe or Mace from raiding will be PvP wrecking balls with WF procs. Enhancement is also more than capable DPS in dungeons and the 10-man t0 raids on its own merits. You just need to be intelligent with totem twisting and weapon selection.

Arms and Ret can find similar niches with Nightfall and other weapons with strong debuffs that help the entire raid's DPS notably improve. It's all a question of how willing you are to put in a little extra work to make an off-beat spec work.

[SpellCleave]

prot paladin

HELL YEA! Ret for me as well. We both ought to find a welcoming guild.

[Vyomesh2]

Enhancement shamans with Nightfall are going to be in demand once raiding gets underway. High uptime on 20% extra spell damage for the raid on a boss is nothing to sneeze at.

Also, Enhancement shamans with a strong 2h Axe or Mace from raiding will be PvP wrecking balls with WF procs. Enhancement is also more than capable DPS in dungeons and the 10-man t0 raids on its own merits. You just need to be intelligent with totem twisting and weapon selection.

Arms and Ret can find similar niches with Nightfall and other weapons with strong debuffs that help the entire raid's DPS notably improve. It's all a question of how willing you are to put in a little extra work to make an off-beat spec work.

If you're having a Warrior wield Nightfall it will be a 2H Fury Warrior. But those other classes won't be raiding with Nightfall. Just have a Hunter spam wingclip on the Boss if you want to do Nightfall strats so much.

[Exkrementor]

Balance and feral weren't bad in 1.12 The problem was a perfectly played dps druid was slightly behind a perfectly played mage/rogue so most guilds already had druids shoehorned into healing even though it really only made a big difference for top-tier guilds. We routinely had a balance druid in the top 3 DPS for our raid.

The problem is that a balance druid is out of mana after 30 seconds and mages and warlocks arent.

[Orby]

I actually played a ret Paladin alt in vanilla, I actually enjoyed it.. mana was a huge issue, but then I was never specced properly :P

[RobertMugabe]

Feral doesn't belong on this list.

And tbh ALL of these specs are only "non-viable" in raids and ONLY in raids. For literally any other type of content (incl. PVP) they're some of the best specs