Nonviable specs. Which are they?

[Gungnir]

Warlocks were severely hindered by the limits on debuffs and other Warlocks putting their dots on yours

Warlocks weren't even using dots. Curses came first, and if you had 4 warlocks then the last one could get a dot up perhaps.
That wasn't the brunt of their damage though, DS/Ruin and SM/Ruin were all around real meaty shadowbolts which just kept scaling hard as fuck.

[MMKing]

Warlocks were severely hindered by the limits on debuffs and other Warlocks putting their dots on yours

True.

The warlock shift started to occur with patch 1.7

Patch 1.6 introduced several items with allot of spell hit, such as the Head off Nefarian and the trinket. Patch 1.7 added further hit items, which were even easier to get for a BWL raiding warlock. The additional debuff slots were also added. Add a shadow priest, and your warlocks can bring top tier DPS. Greater than Rogues, warriors and mages even on some fights.

However, as was pointed out. I don't believe most people realized the potential warlocks had going into AQ40 and Naxxramas. But even the guilds that saw the potential, were already heavily invested in their 40 man roster they used to roll through Blackwing Lair. The perceived strengths of Warlocks, likely did not counter the downside associated with leveling and gearing warlocks or even putting valued members on the sideline and bringing in fresh warlock members.

[FeedsOnDevTears]

It feels like a lot of the people in this thread just have either forgotten what it was like or they've been reading too much MMO champ.

Shadow, elemental and balance for example weren't bad DPS. Hell, shadow was CRAZY strong DPS-wise but was limited by mana.
Elemental and balance were also very strong but again, limited by mana.
Regarding melee, you've got feral that can get pretty damn competitive with abusing Wolfshead and powershifting. Yes it was not intended, but it shows that you can make it work to quite a decent level.
Hunters were always quite good when played correctly, albeit boring.

Another weird misconception is that warlocks were somehow bad. They were weak early on since they didn't have an easy way to get hit rating through talent trees for example, but they scaled like a goddamn truck.
I genuinely think warlocks are the one class that somehow went under the radar during the initial Vanilla period because if you ever had a warlock get into T3 gear, they genuinely became tied top DPS with a geared fury warrior and the one fire mage that got ignite.

Not to mention a good warlock with engineering is one of the scariest things ever in PvP, though this is mostly for horde warlocks. Unfortunately WotF completely shafts alliance warlocks but it does mean that alliance warlocks will have an easier time getting raid spots, since there will be less played.
A build that I HIGHLY recommend for any PvP-toting warlock is the Conflag/Nightfall build. If you've got decent gear you've already got monstrous damage and survivability as a warlock and Conflag/Nightfall just gives you even more instant damage capabilities.


Thirdly is the misconception about tanks. Yes if you were raiding current content then warriors were the tanks you were after.
However, if you're outgearing a raid or running dungeons, you could easily get a paladin or druid tank. Hell, paladins were brilliant dungeon tanks.

Isn't that last part really the key?

I didn't play vanilla, but I get the impression that there was a HUGE gap in difficulty / performance /expectation between raiding and ranked PvP on one hand, and pretty much everything else. I.e. there weren't any specs that couldn't perform their role in a normal dungeon (although some were better / easier), although solo questing or pvp was pretty hard for some specs, like tanks and healers.

[Millyraynge]

However, if you're outgearing a raid or running dungeons, you could easily get a paladin or druid tank. Hell, paladins were brilliant dungeon tanks.

No matter how strong they were equiped, paladins and druids were never able to tank raid bosses.

Druids weren't able to do something against criticals hits and crushing blows, also avoidance was pretty much non-existant. With very very good gear (from aq/naxx) druids were able to survive bosses in MC. In dungeon environment druids always took a lot more damage than warriors. Doing dungeons only with dungeon gear was impossible for druid tanks.

Paladins didn't had taunt and their aggro generations usually stopped 30sec after pull due to empty mana bars. Its just impossible to tank as a paladin. One aggro loss and there was no way the paladin could get back the aggro in both raids and dungeons until all 4 or 39 members were dead.

[Epoch]

No matter how strong they were equiped, paladins and druids were never able to tank raid bosses.

Once again you are incorrect. Paladins and druids were able to tank raid bosses during vanilla.

Druids weren't able to do something against criticals hits and crushing blows, also avoidance was pretty much non-existant. With very very good gear (from aq/naxx) druids were able to survive bosses in MC. In dungeon environment druids always took a lot more damage than warriors. Doing dungeons only with dungeon gear was impossible for druid tanks.

Many druids (including myself) tanked bosses throughout vanilla in raids such as: mc, bwl, both aq's and naxx. Just because you didn't have a paladin or druid tank in your guild or raid doesn't mean that we didn't tank. That would be like me saying the following: "SHAMANS DIDN'T DPS DURING PANDARIA BECUZ I DIDNT SEE ONE!"

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patchwerk_(original)

"This article is about the original 40-man version of Patchwerk introduced in Patch 1.11. For the 10 and 25-man versions of the raid boss introduced in Wrath-Logo-Small Wrath of the Lich King, see Boss 15 Patchwerk."

"Several guilds have successfully utilised feral druids as Hateful Strike tanks as they are able to attain very high damage mitigation and hitpoints, and are often able to survive Hateful Strikes without the use of Flasks and Stoneshield Potions. A druid's normal weakness, his lack of Defense to reduce crits and crushing blows, does not apply in this fight. The downside is, they are less able to avoid the Hateful Strikes due to their lack of the Parry ability. If a druid must be used for Hateful Strikes, they should have close to 75% damage mitigation or more, plenty of stamina gear, and an appropriate spec."

As I spoke of earlier in this thread, with the correct gear druids could and did tank many bosses in many raids. It was not hard to get close to 75% damage reduction with gear in the game, coincidentally a lot of that same gear had a good amount of stamina on it. Just because you didn't see a paladin or druid tank during vanilla doesn't mean that we didn't tank.

I honestly don't understand what your issue is with the thought that druids and paladins could tank and did tank during vanilla. I've only been able to come up with two reasons why someone would be of that opinion:

1. You mained a warrior in vanilla, wanted to feel like a special snowflake and didn't want competition. Similar to an egotistical biased dev.
2. If you did play vanilla you never encountered a paladin or druid tank, therefore you are of the opinion that we weren't able to tank. If this is the case then virtually all of your posts on this topic have been a waste of time.

I didn't personally witness reckoning bomb one shot kazzak, does that mean it didn't happen?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xhgvouRprw
No, it doesn't. Give your little factless tirade a rest.

Interestingly, I'm noticing similarities between what you have posted in this thread, and the massive amount of whining / crying by posters during Nightfall progression because method used a druid for their main tank, never mind that they still used an off tank and did so to get the world first.

The hilarious amount of forum whining after the world first Gul'dan kill wasn't due to a druid tank being used, it was because a warrior wasn't used as the main tank for the world first. I'll type that again - the forum whining after the world first kill wasn't due to a guardian druid being used as a main tank, it was due to incompetent players assuming that it was solo tanked when it wasn't, these same players took to the forums and cried for weeks even after players (including myself) posted many Gul'dan kill videos which showed other tanks could and did main tank Gul'dan at the time. Players just wanted something to whine about. Method did this because they were in a race for world first, and doing so allowed them to bring in more dps. After years of seeing this same crap on dozens of forums for many games I'm still amazed by the bias, ignorance and entitlement that some players continue to show.

We (paladins and druids) tanked prior to the first raid in vanilla, we tanked during vanilla, and we have continued to tank after vanilla. It's been over a decade and it's about time people got the heck over it.

[Lollis]

Once again you are incorrect. Paladins and druids were able to tank raid bosses during vanilla.
<snip>

In my experience, while both Feral Tanks and Prot Paladins were extremely rare, where they did show up they tended to be in either very early content or very late content. I don't recall ever having a Pala or Druid tank during BWL through to mid AQ, although that is likely more down to my guild at the time, and since it has been 12-13 years I could very much be remembering wrong.

The misconception comes primarily because Druids and Paladins were not expected to do anything but heal for much of Vanilla's lifespan. Ret Paladins, Feral DPS, and Moonkins were not too uncommon however.

I think the main issue with the 'only warriors tanked' thing is more about Warriors than it is about Druids and Paladins. Usually guilds took a handful of each class, and it just happened that Warriors were more useful for tanking than they were for DPS.

Fury was god, especially later on, but they tended to pick up lots of pieces of gear that other classes would have been greatful for. When you are forcing yourself to take 8 Warriors, you have to decide how that loot is going to be divided. Do you let them take pieces of gear from everyone, or do you get them to Tank and share with almost nobody else?


Prot Paladins and Feral Tanks were rare, not because they were particularly bad tanks or anything, but because Warriors fitted as the puzzle piece much more snugly.

[ydraw]

Prot Paladins and Feral Tanks were rare, not because they were particularly bad tanks or anything, but because Warriors fitted as the puzzle piece much more snugly.

No dude. They weren't rare, they were non existent. It wasn't about what people thought, it was about the facts of the mechanics of the game. No class except warriors could tank anything except a few gimmick fights. Bosses were designed around being tanked by a warrior and nothing else. Itemisation was designed around warriors being the only tanks.

The other classes had rubbish threat, took way more damage, and didn't have a taunt in the case of paladins. They never tanked anything other than dungeons.

You can misremember it all you want, the fact is if you want to tank in Vanilla, you will have to roll a Warrior, end of story.

In The Burning Crusade it was possible for Paladins and Druids to tank around 75% of the bosses. Not in Vanilla.

[wholol]

The problem with classic though is that people already have the preconception that XYZ specs are , let's not call them bad, subparr to others, which will undoubtedly create a meta in classic where guilds will not take these subparr specs due to "min/maxing" since thats the mentality that expansions forged us into.

Which probably means that said specs might have a worse time in classic than vanilla.

[Tojara]

Druids, priests, shaman and paladins were all healers. Sure you could have a paladin specced deep into retribution for a certain blessing, that didn't mean they actually did DPS in raids though. They picked up the buff, then they healed.

Warriors were the only viable tanks in raids.

Keep in mind this is in context of raiding at the 'high end'. People can argue that shadow priests were viable (they weren't), but why would you bring something that did 1/4 to 1/3 the DPS of a rogue, fury warrior or a fire mage in Naxx? You wouldn't. To me viable simply means it brings something worthwhile, or is at least fairly competitive. Nobody by today's standards would claim that in a raiding environment holy paladin DPS is viable. Yeah you can bring one, doesn't mean it's actually viable though. Every hybrid class or non-warrior for tanking was essentially treated like this. If you enjoy being sup-optimal and doing way less DPS than an alternative, then sure.

The only real DPS classes in AQ/Naxx were rogues, fury warriors and fire mages. Hunters did okay (nothing amazing), and you brought only as many warlocks as you needed for curses (warlock DPS was shit until they allowed life tap to scale with spell power). Everything else was dog shit. Why bring a hybrid DPS that might do ~300 DPS (being generous) to Patchwerk, when you could bring a fury warrior or rogue who would do 650-800 DPS? You wouldn't.

This doesn't mean that guardian druids or protection paladins didn't exist. Yeah, I'm sure they tanked some bosses, but I remember a certain hunter back in the day tanking Nefarian too. Does that mean hunters are viable? In TBC I made an unhittable set on my rogue and tanked Gurtogg, RoS, Mother and Illidan much to the dismay of the whiny warriors in my guild. Does that mean rogues are viable tanks? No, but it could be done.

Stop confusing "could be done" with actually viable. Realistically if you could heal, you healed, and if you wanted to tank you would play a warrior. Every other DPS spot was filled with a metric shit load of rogues, a couple fury warriors (gear dependent), mages, several hunters and several warlocks.

PvP was an entirely different story. Hybrids could actually flourish there.

[Gaidax]

No dude. They weren't rare, they were non existent. It wasn't about what people thought, it was about the facts of the mechanics of the game. No class except warriors could tank anything except a few gimmick fights. Bosses were designed around being tanked by a warrior and nothing else. Itemisation was designed around warriors being the only tanks.

The other classes had rubbish threat, took way more damage, and didn't have a taunt in the case of paladins. They never tanked anything other than dungeons.

You can misremember it all you want, the fact is if you want to tank in Vanilla, you will have to roll a Warrior, end of story.

In The Burning Crusade it was possible for Paladins and Druids to tank around 75% of the bosses. Not in Vanilla.

This pretty much, as usual you have some people rushing in and hallucinating how paladins/druids were tanks or Rets were DPS and some such silly stories. Reality is that Tank=Warrior, just like that. Paladins were pretty much healbots through and through, of course I am sure there were some hipsters trying to do shit other than healing (if they were even allowed and actually geared for that), but this ended up being twice the work for half the results.

[meowfurion]

They werent garbage. What you retail children cant seem to grasp is that every spec is not supposed to be good in every situation. Period. You do BM for leveling and solo play. You do marksmen for group content. You do survival for PvP.

This was the design that made Vanilla fun. Otherwise you get the monstrosity of talents and builds that is currently in Legion, where every 10 levels you pick a new talent from 3 options and can somehow, magically switch your spec at the drop of a hat.

"This was the design that I enjoyed in Vanilla"

Fixed that for ya. I think compared to now, Vanilla was utter garbage - straight, hot garbage - and people who think it wasn't will change their mind once they get their vanilla servers and start playing it again.

The only reason people think Vanilla is some magical happy fun place is because it was their first experience with WoW and it stuck with them in a nostalgic way that produced many endorphines.

It "imprinted" onto them, if you would.

[Gaidax]

"This was the design that I enjoyed in Vanilla"

Fixed that for ya. I think compared to now, Vanilla was utter garbage - straight, hot garbage - and people who think it wasn't will change their mind once they get their vanilla servers and start playing it again.

The only reason people think Vanilla is some magical happy fun place is because it was their first experience with WoW and it stuck with them in a nostalgic way that produced many endorphines.

It "imprinted" onto them, if you would.

As a one who was in Vanilla I can wholeheartedly agree, Vanilla is garbage by today's standards and we played it back then because we did not know and did not have any better.

I am sure there are more than enough genuine people who love Vanilla, but I also think there is too much nostalgia fed nonsense going on here too. I, personally, not even sure I'll be trying out those Classic servers, because simply said - it will be a worse game than modern WoW in just about every regard. The only way it will be better is for those who rolled correct class for correct job and geared up to the teeth in raids, then you can have genuine fun completely recking 90% of people in BGs and such, or drooling over meters leaving everyone else in dust.

[Deleted]

Hybrid DPS and Tanks really didn't work well in raids, but people did try them out for fun with really high end gear from Naxx/AQ and managed to achieve "decent" results. You still wouldn't take them for progress over actual DPS like Warr/Rogue/Mage or Warrior tanks.

[Ravingmad]

Most hybrids were having a hard time.

Druids were bad IMO. Tank spec was the weakest one, boomkin was almost decent but still subpart with the other casters, and they were OOM so fast ("its time to poke the boss with my staff for 30sec so I can regen!"). Feral was useless. Heal was the only viable spec if my memory serves well.
My first character was Druid, but we had more the "jack of all trade, master of none" for most specs anyway.

Shaman Enhanc was more oriented to defend yourself better (Talent tree). Windfury was a blast (2h in BGs... oh the memories...!), but not viable in dps.
Elem was weaker than boomkin. And I cant tell at all about healers.

Paladin made decent tank, but warrior was still better.
Retpal were only useful for the extra buff and help with healing, mostly. Still low dps.
Can't tell about HealPal.

I was just playing casual at that time on my brother's account, so this is just from memories.

At that time Hybrids were not as specialized as now. Roleplaying wise it was a lot of fun, as you could fill many roles and assist. But effectiveness-wise it was harder to tell.

But Im planning to play these 3 classes when the Vanilla servers comes up as its my favorite kind of classes in general (hybrids).

[Soon-TM]

Damn, the one thing 100% Vanilla about these boards is the amount of hybrid QQ. I guess they are being purists, in a certain way

[Alydael]

i wasn't really following the vanilla discussion all those years but from what i can recall:

tanks: essentially only warrior was truly viable, with a tons of work to overcome gearing issues other tanks could work too but warrior was better nonetheless so you had no reason to play other tanks except 'fun'

healers: i can't recall much about healers tbh other than that we had tons of holy priests and that disc was unplayable (not even niche spec, just garbage)

DPS:

generally most classes had a 'go-to' DPS spec that was simply superior to others, we used to call them 'cookie-cutter' builds and usually not playing one of them meant you're doing it wrong

the DoT classes were not really viable due to the fact that every character (bosses included) had a hard debuff limit on it, therefore raiding with multiple locks or shadow priests would mean that only few of them will be able to apply their corruption/immolate/shadow word pain etc, but still those debuff slots were better reserved for debuffs that benefit the entire raid (like Curse of Shadow etc)

now for the more direct casters essentially rolling an elemental shaman or balance druid over a mage was a suboptimal decision (aka less DPS in some cases considerably) and you would often have to answer following FAQ: 'why didn't you roll mage if you wanted to nuke things?'

mage on the other hand was picking specs based on mob immunities: in MC and BWL everything was immunue to fire while in Nax everything was immunue to frost, while arcane blast did not exist and arcane was a tree that was simply enhancing your frost/fire spells in a more generic manner

for the melees rogue was the king of DPS, fury was also capable of some big numbers but it had suffered from severe threat issues (meaning it had to stop DPS in order to not get aggro from the tank)

usually the optimal raid setup was more like:

a warrior only tank group

a healer group of mostly holy priests (aka the primary healers) and some 'support' healers like resto shaman/druid

a melee group who grabs all the buff it needs from retri/enha etc and then stacks rogues

a ranged group who graps all the buffs/utility it needs from locks/moonkings/ele and stacks mages

i can't recall much about hunters i believe that MM was a solid spec

in essence there were entire classes without a single viable DPS spec, that includes priests and shamans who were almost exclusively healers in pve

also in both classic and tbc certain specs were only brought in for a buff/debuff they had exclusive access to and counterbalanced their own poor performance

That's why I wonder if they aren't going to fix some of those specs. I guess it wouldn't be "pure" then, but does it really make sense to leave specs unplayable (or unviable)?

I don't think they really fixed tanks until around the time of Hyjal in BC (they made the paly and druid really good).

Will be interesting to see how they roll this out- balance wise. I am also curious if they will keep the old buff system and if they will keep the raids 40. I imagine they: will balance the classes, will leave the buff system and will make raids flex so you can complete them with less than 40.

- - - Updated - - -

As a one who was in Vanilla I can wholeheartedly agree, Vanilla is garbage by today's standards and we played it back then because we did not know and did not have any better.

I am sure there are more than enough genuine people who love Vanilla, but I also think there is too much nostalgia fed nonsense going on here too. I, personally, not even sure I'll be trying out those Classic servers, because simply said - it will be a worse game than modern WoW in just about every regard. The only way it will be better is for those who rolled correct class for correct job and geared up to the teeth in raids, then you can have genuine fun completely recking 90% of people in BGs and such, or drooling over meters leaving everyone else in dust.

I have to agree. If they launch it just as Vanilla was, you will get a ton of people that play for a couple of weeks then forget it.

There will be some hardcore purist that will play, but that will be a niche type of crowd.

It really depends on how much money they want to make off this or not (and the pricing model, etc).

If they are doing it more "for the vanilla fans" (which I doubt, since it is a business after all and businesses do things for $$) and there isn't that much overhead to get it up and running- I think you might see them drop very similar to Vanilla and then just leave it alone.

If they are planning on making money off this (this is my bet, since it is a business and not some kind of "fan club" or something) they will have to "fix" certain aspects of the game, just to keep people.

I personally would like to see "Vanilla 2.0" with graphic fixes, balance fixes, QoL improvements etc. When the game finishes it's original patch cycle- I would like to either see:

1) The game evolve off in its own direction (maybe a WoW that focuses on the smaller quests in Azerroth instead of always saving the world from certain destruction and the big meanie) or even a more just Horde v Alliance version of WoW. While our mains are off saving the world time and time again- we fight the little battles, in the trenches.

or

2) Just repeat the patch cycle for season 2 (would eventually get pretty boring though).

Going to be real interesting to see how they handle this. No matter which way it goes, rivers of tears will flow (that much is certain).

[Holian]

When did "viable" become synonymous with "optimal?

Yes, a Rogue/Warrior/Mage/Warlock will out dps a Feral/Ret/Boomkin/Elemental... does that mean those specs are unviable? I would argue absolutely not.

Druids COULD tank basically anything in the game, Warriors did it better ofcourse, but it COULD be done, and on some fights (hateful strike soaking on patchwerk, specifically) it was even GOOD, and if we move over to PvP... feral was absolutely fine, great even in 1vs1 against alot of classes.
Moonkins are in a similar state, yes a Mage or Warlock will out dps them, i dont think anyone is arguing against that, but not being #1 on the damage meter, does that make a spec "unviable"? Especially considering how good they were in PvP.

Prot paladins made excellent 5man AoE tanks and had great solo AoE farming, Ret worked in PvE, about the same as a dps druid/shaman... not topping any meters but still doing respectable damage, and were perfectly fine in PvP.

Elemental shamans had the same issues as boomkins in PvE, mana problems mostly, but again, aslong as you went ham on consumables, you did alright, and they were kinda scary in PvP, elemental burst was no joke.
Enhancement was dps wise in the same boat as the other hybrid dps, it worked, but wouldn't top any meters, but considering the buffs they gave the melee group, and give them a nightfall axe and it's hardly a "wasted" raid spot... and i think we all remember how terrifying they were in PvP.

So who's left of the "unviable"? Shadow priests? Absolute beasts in PvP, and after the ZG patch, crucial to the ranged dps, not to mention the benefit of having one for Loatheb, one of the hardest fights in all of vanilla.

If your defenition of "viable" is #1 on the damage/healing meter, then there are 2 viable dps, rogue/mage and eventually warrior/warlock when they eventually out scale them with gear. Same for the healers, priest only viable healer up until Naxx, and then Paladin is the only viable healer.
And ofcourse, Warriors are the only viable tank, ignoring ofcourse what a mockery a good Prot Paladin will make of a Warrior tank when farming 5 mans in a geared, competent group.

There is not such thing as an "unviable" spec, in vanilla. They just excel at different things, and have different weaknesses, and that's great!
This is what gives the game flavour and personality!

[Zyky]

For the most part if you weren't a Prot Warrior, Fire Mage, Destro Lock, Combat Rogue, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin/Resto Shaman. You really didn't get to see the high end content. You'd see a random this or that here and there, but it wasn't common and it wasn't particularly viable.

[Multitorix Davlen]

There weren't really 'specs' like there are now. All Classes were viable the same as it is today. Saying "Ret wasn't viable!" is like saying "Taking the middle talent for Ret in Legion isn't viable". You didn't pick a spec in vanilla, you picked talents.

You most certainly picked a spec by picking the talents. If you went heavy into arms, you were an arms warrior. What people did were "builds" for the specs, like mace rogue or sword rogue. But point is to be those builds you were a Combat Rogue first and foremost.

[potis]

When did "viable" become synonymous with "optimal?

Yes, a Rogue/Warrior/Mage/Warlock will out dps a Feral/Ret/Boomkin/Elemental... does that mean those specs are unviable? I would argue absolutely not.

Druids COULD tank basically anything in the game, Warriors did it better ofcourse, but it COULD be done, and on some fights (hateful strike soaking on patchwerk, specifically) it was even GOOD, and if we move over to PvP... feral was absolutely fine, great even in 1vs1 against alot of classes.
Moonkins are in a similar state, yes a Mage or Warlock will out dps them, i dont think anyone is arguing against that, but not being #1 on the damage meter, does that make a spec "unviable"? Especially considering how good they were in PvP.

Prot paladins made excellent 5man AoE tanks and had great solo AoE farming, Ret worked in PvE, about the same as a dps druid/shaman... not topping any meters but still doing respectable damage, and were perfectly fine in PvP.

Elemental shamans had the same issues as boomkins in PvE, mana problems mostly, but again, aslong as you went ham on consumables, you did alright, and they were kinda scary in PvP, elemental burst was no joke.
Enhancement was dps wise in the same boat as the other hybrid dps, it worked, but wouldn't top any meters, but considering the buffs they gave the melee group, and give them a nightfall axe and it's hardly a "wasted" raid spot... and i think we all remember how terrifying they were in PvP.

So who's left of the "unviable"? Shadow priests? Absolute beasts in PvP, and after the ZG patch, crucial to the ranged dps, not to mention the benefit of having one for Loatheb, one of the hardest fights in all of vanilla.

If your defenition of "viable" is #1 on the damage/healing meter, then there are 2 viable dps, rogue/mage and eventually warrior/warlock when they eventually out scale them with gear. Same for the healers, priest only viable healer up until Naxx, and then Paladin is the only viable healer.
And ofcourse, Warriors are the only viable tank, ignoring ofcourse what a mockery a good Prot Paladin will make of a Warrior tank when farming 5 mans in a geared, competent group.

There is not such thing as an "unviable" spec, in vanilla. They just excel at different things, and have different weaknesses, and that's great!
This is what gives the game flavour and personality!

I will bite.

1)No competent player back in the Vanilla would ever group with a druid tank when they could take their Warrior tank for anything simply because "Wait for threat, wat?".

Sure, threat was relevant for the 99% that had no clue, the few tanks that had a clue didnt give a fuck, and we are talking Vanilla, there were probably less than 20 tanks on the server that had a clue.

Even so, any player that would group with a half-retarded Warrior, would never allow a druid.

2)No they didnt, an overgeared Holy Paladin from his raiding group could tank a useless 5man dungeon for his friends, again would not tank shit against competent players.

Only overgeared early Rank 14 Paladins as Rets were dangerous, and those only every other moon with procs, overall they werent anything against anyone with a clue.

3)This never existed, you are talking about end vanilla which isnt Vanilla, 3 months out of 2 years isnt the only Vanilla, 2 videos of some shaman taking Sulfuras first because "EPGP" system and right clicking on a video, out of 200 bgs, for 20 kills isnt "Wrecking".

Sure, the random windury proc with Arcanite Reaper early could be dangerous for the average pleb that had no clue, or you know, stun and destroy them cause they are useless either way.

4)Beasts in PvP, wat?

Is this some pug view? The ones were were cleaving for free honor for the Rank 14 pushers?

While pushing rank 14s early in the EU servers, aka summer 2005, Warriors would 2 shot anything that wasnt plate, fixed swing timers, it became 3 shot everything, along with Rogues with Barman Shanker, same reasoning with swing timers, they stopped after, now if you were a horde warrior like myself, add the lovely Windfury proc on white hits to watch whatever is cloth, melt in 1 global.

Followed by BWL progression, Combat rogues became relevant and Rank 14s appearing a few more, while boosting other Rank 14s.

Average fire mage with pom/arcane power/pyro/trinkets once every other moon.

I helped 2 people get Rank 14, the third only got rank 13, while i left my Warrior at Rank 10 and offline from September 2005 to December 2005 for this very reason (And uni )

You know what was scary in PvP? A Chrommagus xbow wielding hunter was scary, not a useless shadow priest, and the Loatheb again, this was for a few months, for 1 fight, useless anywhere else.

Viable in Vanilla is : "Lets hope these people have no idea how useless i actually am compared to a real class in the same gear level so they will play me".

Some specs only became viable because people already knew what the fuck to do and the lack of DPS/Healing/Tanking didnt matter in private servers.

Along with 1.12 talents.

Thats all there is to it.

I can accept your opinion if you werent part of a relevant progressive guild cause i do not know how pugs played until Cataclysm were i stopped raiding seriously and discovered how the actual WoW is if you dont have competent people around you.