Do you think they will release classic with unviable specializations?

[Deleted]

Druids can off-tank during whole Vanilla, just never maintank in the later raids because of def cap. But yea they will probably release the speccs as they were since otherwise it changes the game too much when it comes to PVE/PVP/Leveling.

[Moizus]

There are no unvaiable classes in vanilla cause it was perfect OMEGALUL

[MasterHamster]

They'll attempt a as-pure-as-possible on launch and the first few months, then realize releasing a snapshot of balance and leaving it as is means 85% of characters are going to be Warrior/Mage/Rogue/Priest, so don't worry too much, they'll do some emergency rebalancing sooner or later.


Classics class/spec balance was horrendous and I expect players to demand some balancing quite quickly. Of course, Blizzard will be very careful, but one thing most seem to forget is that unviable specs back then didn't come with a warning-label saying you'll always be subpar and underpowered. Blizzard not making any balance changes is naïve at best.

[Powerogue]

At first, then players will scream nonstop to have it fixed (exactly like they did in classic) and we'll see what happens from there.

[Deleted]

Im pretty sure hardcore PVE players will be a minority on classic realms. Most people will play for fun, casually raid and pvp. PVP-wise specs were pretty balanced with a lot of them being viable 1v1 (thank god there will be no stupid arena) in skilled hands.

[Cyanu]

What are the other specs that weren’t played?

Demo, Ele sham?

for raiding most classes had only a single spec that was truly viable, the rest could work up to a point if you went full tryhard mode with bis gear and such but in the end if you did all that work with the 'proper' class you'd be more efficient

the general idea is:

shamans and druids raided only as resto

paladins and priest only as holy

warriors were MT with some potential as DPS limited by lack of threat reducing talents (they had to stop DPS in order not to get one shotted by the boss)

mages were either spamming frostbolt or fireball based on the content (MC/BWL everything was resistant to fire, Nax everything was resistant to frost) aka arcane/frost or arcane/fire

rogues and hunters also has cookie cutter raiding specs that if i recall correctly were mostly based on MM and assa (i might be wrong on that one, i wasn't playing those classes back then)

locks were using an oddball spec that just grabbed all talents that improved shadow bolt and spammed shadow bolt while casting curse of shadow once per minute, it was mostly destro with some afl talents thrown in if i recall it correctly

and yes, i do think that they'll release it without balancing the specs, sorting out this mess is a colosal task

[Dhrizzle]

Yes most probably. Personally I preferred the route they took with TBC in making all specs at least somewhat viable burning don't expect Blizz to do that for Classic.

Besides it isn't a matter of specs being "unviable," (for the most part.) Classes in Vanilla would have specs for solo, group, PvP etc. You just need lots and lots of gold if you want to do well in various activities.

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for raiding most classes had only a single spec that was truly viable, the rest could work up to a point if you went full tryhard mode with bis gear and such but in the end if you did all that work with the 'proper' class you'd be more efficient

the general idea is:

shamans and druids raided only as resto

paladins and priest only as holy

warriors were MT with some potential as DPS limited by lack of threat reducing talents (they had to stop DPS in order not to get one shotted by the boss)

mages were either spamming frostbolt or fireball based on the content (MC/BWL everything was resistant to fire, Nax everything was resistant to frost) aka arcane/frost or arcane/fire

rogues and hunters also has cookie cutter raiding specs that if i recall correctly were mostly based on MM and assa (i might be wrong on that one, i wasn't playing those classes back then)

locks were using an oddball spec that just grabbed all talents that improved shadow bolt and spammed shadow bolt while casting curse of shadow once per minute, it was mostly destro with some afl talents thrown in if i recall it correctly

and yes, i do think that they'll release it without balancing the specs, sorting out this mess is a colosal task

IIRC warlock's DoTs were desirable to use but had to be ignored due to the limited debuff slots, it was actually midway through TBC that the scaling and synergy of SBs edged out all the DoTs. I do wonder if they'll go with those limits as they were a technical limitation more than a gameplay decision.

[Roxyfoxy]

Yes most probably. Personally I preferred the route they took with TBC in making all specs at least somewhat viable burning don't expect Blizz to do that for Classic.

Besides it isn't a matter of specs being "unviable," (for the most part.) Classes in Vanilla would have specs for solo, group, PvP etc. You just need lots and lots of gold if you want to do well in various activities.

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IIRC warlock's DoTs were desirable to use but had to be ignored due to the limited debuff slots, it was actually midway through TBC that the scaling and synergy of SBs edged out all the DoTs. I do wonder if they'll go with those limits as they were a technical limitation more than a gameplay decision.

No, warlock dots are super bad once you reach bwl+ quality gear, since they scale very bad compared to just spamming shadowbolt. And if you dont intend to do anything above dungeons and maybe mc (blue /green items are better than most of the MC gear) then the debuff slot is definatly not a restriction.

Affliction was buffed a lot in tbc, but also there the same thing happened, SB just scale too good compared to dots.

When you get some decent bwl gear, the only time a dot is a dps gain, is when moving and you do not want to lifetap. And due to the mana cost of shadowbolt, that rarely happen, and the dps gain is minimal at most.

Exception is for SM/ruin locks, where you put on corruption for the chance to proc instant shadowbolt.
There is space for two corruptions when you get 16 debuff slots. And no more than two warlocks should be SM/ruin anyway, since DM/ruin is better, but SM/ruin provide the imp for the tanks

[Jinbo]

Nothing is nonviable

[Drosul]

Nothing is nonviable

I'd hardly call an enhancement shaman's primary role of being one of the guys holding nightfall axe a real role.

Hybrids don't need to actually match "pures" in total damage output, but they do actually have to be good enough between their damage and utility to not be a complete liability to bring vs another damage dealer... I'd legitimately rather NOT bring a player and run with 39 than waste a roster spot on an enhance shaman who is going to do failure levels of damage, has mediocre utility that in no way makes up for his lack of damage, and who is going to want to roll on weapons or gear better used for class/spec options that don't suck.

Loot was too rare/precious drop rate wise to bother wasting it on a failure spec.

Start with removing the debuff limit so that all spec options can actually do their rotations in raid combat.... then work on hybrid itemization so they have gearing options pre-aq40... If they're still low after that look at SUSTAINED damage buffs or even better utility buffs to make them actually desirable enough to be a consideration over rogue/mage/warrior/lock #8+

[Torrasque]

They will be as broken or useless as they were then, don't worry.

[urasim]

1. Yes. They're not releasing classic 2.0, they're releasing classic.

What it should be!

2. More than warriors could tank. People were just fucking terrible back in vanilla and had no idea how to theorycraft.

This is just a mis-characterization of the players back in the day. Yes, the vast majority didn't know mechanics, but the vast majority of players playing RIGHT NOW don't know mechanics. There might be less amount of terrible players right now, but it's still the majority that suck at the game.

[Kudos]

Come on.. even my half decent guild used voice com from pretty much the start of MC and so did every single one of the good guilds.

I first did MC and Onyxia in a guild that lead the whole raid using macros to explain encounters. Wasn't ideal, but was definitely do-able. Every guild I was in afterwards used teamspeak.

[jinreeko]

I know a lot of the crowd wants a pure vanilla experience? But do you really think blizzard will release classic and only warriors will be able to tank? Generally curious?

Ion mentioned the phrase "which version of Classic" at Blizzcon I believe, which leads me to believe they won't go for the pure Vanilla experience

[Vestig3]

Nothing is nonviable

Lol wait till you play vanilla and you will find out which specs are nonviable.

[zoddzero]

Unviable speccs are a big part of vanilla so they probably won't change anything there.

Ion mentioned the phrase "which version of Classic" at Blizzcon I believe, which leads me to believe they won't go for the pure Vanilla experience

He probably meant there's a question whether they should release Classic on a 1.12.1 patch like most private servers do or if they should release the first patch of vanilla which included different talent trees for example.

[Deleted]

Anyone, who thinks they aren't going to change things to make the game appealing to more than 0.1% of its target audience, is delusional. Blizzard is a company, they won't sink significant money and work-force into a game that only a small hand-full of fickle, demanding purists are going to enjoy. They will make a game that will guarantee a certain return of investment. There will likely be QoL adjustments, copied from current WoW, like the crafting interface, as well as class-adjustments, maybe even 1 or 2 abilities from later expansions to fill gaps in a role's kit.

[Nozuka]

i think they will release exactly as it was. but might change things later on. but only small balancing changes.

[Vestig3]

Anyone, who thinks they aren't going to change things to make the game appealing to more than 0.1% of its target audience, is delusional. Blizzard is a company, they won't sink significant money and work-force into a game that only a small hand-full of fickle, demanding purists are going to enjoy. They will make a game that will guarantee a certain return of investment. There will likely be QoL adjustments, copied from current WoW, like the crafting interface, as well as class-adjustments, maybe even 1 or 2 abilities from later expansions to fill gaps in a role's kit.

They release Classic or they will release something that looks like Classic but isnt, makes much sense right? no... the only reasonable way to release classic is to do it like it was coz thats what people want.

[hulkgor]

I know a lot of the crowd wants a pure vanilla experience? But do you really think blizzard will release classic and only warriors will be able to tank? Generally curious?

They'll release classic with how classes were. You're talking about not viable very loosely though. That only applies to progress raiding for the most part. You can tank dungeons as a Prot Paladin, even some farm raid content. You can dps as boomkin or feral druid. It's just below par for endgame raiding.

Stop perpetuating that gibberish.