What are the unplayable or useless specs

[Gaidax]

If I were president, I would make it punishable by death for people who began playing the game in WotLK to run into threads like this and say dumb shit like AT LEVEL 60... U BETTER PLAY WARRIOR IF U WANNA TANK... WARRIOR IS THE ONLY LEVEL 60 TANK... THE ONLY TANK AT 60... AND HAVE FUN PLAYING PALADIN BUFFING EVERY 5 MINUTES AND NOTHING ELSE... EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CAN'T PLAY <insert playable specc here>.

What you screeched there is not far from truth. Realistically as Paladin you were either Holy or you were a shitty version of warrior with a bit of heals.

[Whitedragon]

Paladin tanks only had half a kit and lacked on-demand threat (like a taunt for when the lock spams out corruption and goes balls out on shadowbolts...).

About the only thing I would correct is pally tank rarely had trouble dealing with single target burst (we out shined warriors here actually), it was more random add pickup mid fight, or tank swapping that was hard.

[Marakesh]

Hey I never played vanilla WoW, but have always heard comments from friends about useless or outright unplayable specs. Was this overstated like it is today, or are there actual unplayable worthless specs. I don't just mean for raiding, but for leveling and pvp.

2nd crack at this, since no one really answered your question.

A better way to look at vanilla classes is to ask what experience are you going to get with each of them. Its not a modern mmo where class design is made to function as evenly as possible across all parts of the game, and yet people enjoyed the game on many of these "useless" spec's. I believe wow classic reddit has a section devoted to explaining what to expect playing each class. Nothing is really going to beat that.

In my case, I played a druid in vanilla and had a great time. Top notch levelers as feral, enjoyed tanking dungeons and then 20 man raids, very good at pvp, above average as farmers at 60. I switched to healing for 40 man raiding (and I knew that was coming because I had spent 15 minutes reading the forums before picking a class, even back then that's all it took.) I loved having stealth for world pvp, I liked being the flag carrier in wsg, and found tanking dungeons and healing raids the most interesting role in each of those situations.

One thing that might change though is global class selection. For example, during actual vanilla druids were like 6-8% of the total 60 population when average should have been 100/8= 12.5%. Consequently, you were rare and getting an invite to a raiding guild was easy. On nost it was 25% warriors and 6% druids. Since it was mostly hardcore players and everyone knows the raids thus decreasing the number of healers you're likely to carry, these might be good numbers to fill available raid spots.

Will that happen in Classic? I doubt the more casual crowd will pick classes that way, but I also don't think most of us will raid and if we do, I don't think it will be with low healer comps wherein you only take 2 restro druids. How much will playing a common class matter outside of raids? I suspect it won't matter and being a tank or healer will get you through the majority of instanced content the same as always.

The really important question is what style of play do you want while leveling and pvp, because I'm willing to bet that's where you'll spend 90% of your actual time. Warriors for instance, aren't just the worst levelers, they are by far the most boring. Also, I found their play against ranged so bad, I just couldn't. So easy to get kited until much later in the game. However, if you really want a raid spot and to do leet dps there, by all means grind a warrior up to level 60.

[ringpriest]

Hey I never played vanilla WoW, but have always heard comments from friends about useless or outright unplayable specs. Was this overstated like it is today, or are there actual unplayable worthless specs. I don't just mean for raiding, but for leveling and pvp.

Yes, it is overstated. Even for raiding, it's overstated.

While it was certainly possible to select a mish-mash of random talents that gimped you, the key to doing well was knowing how to play your class if you did that, and picked even vaguely appropriate talents you could do just fine at any of your class roles up to raiding. And even then, not knowing how to gear, or how to play (all rank 1 spells on bars at 40), or even playing the wrong role in the wrong spec ("I'll heal as feral!") was far more likely (and far more common) than someone with a truly unplayable build (and even that last one was actually very possible if you had decent gear for it and weren't dead-set on pushing the highest level content you could).

For sheer unplayable specs... I seem to recall that fire mages (I was a warrior, then rogue and huntard in Vanilla going into BC so I could be wrong) were truly unplayable in Molten Core raiding due to the high preponderance of fire immune mobs, and I remember discussions about how getting Bear tanks properly geared for good raid tanking was nigh-impossible. But short of that, if you could play your class and had decent gear, you could do anything your class could do (and then some) - I remember shammy and boomkin tanking dungeons (carefully) and even warlock and hunter pets tanking them (very carefully). Level of control and skill demonstrated by good players and groups seems almost alien now - I can remember surviving pulling multiple extra groups of mobs in instances by clever CC and kiting.

Assuming you were at least adequately geared, player skill mattered a ton, in terms of what you could accomplish, and that did carry over into raiding and PvP; it didn't matter how "optimal" someone's spec was in PvP if their opponent was better at chain-cc, fight resets, LOSing, stance-dancing, etc. And in raiding, the druid who could not stand in fire, show up, not QQ, use Innervate and Brez well and usefully contribute is going to get picked over the prima donna with the "perfect" spec who does 20% more dps. There were just so many things that went into "playing well" beyond "mathematically optimal rotation while not dying" - wipe prevention and recovery was soooo important, and now it's just... not a thing anymore, and the same goes for threat management and mana managment (which is basically a joke now).

Some specs were better at certain narrow things: geared and well-played rogues could stunlock and kill the average squishies (lock, mage, priest) easily 1v1, it was basically impossible to chase down a well-played hunter in the open world (does anyone else remember the jump-spin-shoot trick?) , a geared mage with a PoM-Pyro build could kill most toons in seconds if all their cooldowns were up, druids were the best pvp flag carriers until people had mounts... all that kind of thing. And likewise, some classes and specs were probably harder to play - I was never a particularly good warrior, and I remember I found paladins kind of a nightmare to play, shammies had to worry about totem management... but people did play all those classes effectively and had fun doing so.

Oh, and some classes had much better Sunken Temple quest rewards than other classes - and Sunken Temple quest rewards were a huge deal.

[breslin]

What you screeched there is not far from truth. Realistically as Paladin you were either Holy or you were a shitty version of warrior with a bit of heals.

Is that true for only cutting edge raiding? How are paladins in questing, farming and pvp?

[VanishingAct]

Hey I never played vanilla WoW, but have always heard comments from friends about useless or outright unplayable specs. Was this overstated like it is today, or are there actual unplayable worthless specs. I don't just mean for raiding, but for leveling and pvp.

Any serious guild ie raiding guilds, any hybrid dps spec.
Any hybrid tank spec except warrior
Hunters also belong in this category except for a small handful for tranq

[Gaidax]

Is that true for only cutting edge raiding? How are paladins in questing, farming and pvp?

This was a classic post back in the days and should give you a nice overview of questing and farming experience as a paladin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comm...lay_a_paladin/

PvP Holy paladin was fantastic, while anything else was pretty meh, not totally shit, but having your damage output tied 100% to total RNG really was annoying - you basically ran up to people and auto attacked hoping for some nice procs. Engineering is a must IMO, because at least then you could spice it up with Death Ray and some essential tools Paladin did not get otherwise. It was also super easy to kite and run away from Paladin, so that was another frustration piled up. The upside, you were an absolute bitch to deal with when defending a flag and you could reset a fight sometimes even numerous times.

[Flurryfang]

There is not really specs in Vanilla, but you can talk about roles like dps, healer and tank.

I never really saw dps priests in Vanilla, only healers and in my group of friends, priest was seen as the hardest class to level because of that, since they had little dps options.
The same thing with druids. While they had ways to do dps, i rarely saw them in other roles than healer and a rare time as tank.

Paladins could do amazingly in dps, since they could burst alot of cloth/leather dps with a single combo as ret, but i never really saw them as tank.

So dps priest, dps druid, tank paladin and tank druid was something that might aswell not have existed back then. Their talent trees was more for utility when you did another role.

But when it comes to all other roles, everybody who had dps talents could do dps and everybody who had healer talents, could heal.

[Soimu]

i really hope classic won't be 100% accurate to original else it will be full of rogues in pvp

[Zka]

For sheer unplayable specs... I seem to recall that fire mages (I was a warrior, then rogue and huntard in Vanilla going into BC so I could be wrong) were truly unplayable in Molten Core raiding due to the high preponderance of fire immune mobs

That's patently false. I myself had raided MC several times as fire. About half or a bit more of bosses were not fire immune at all. Against fire immunes I just used frostbolt - my DPS was like 1/3 lower than if I had been frost but I was still around the top of the charts.
Fire res was also not necessary. Just avoid damage and play properly, early classic raids are VERY trivial.

[Highelf]

People in Private servers have figured out how to raid as Balance, it's not anything gamebreaking or close to mage/warlock level, but it works if you want to be a flexible player who can dps and heal in a pinch without changing spec.

Also Druids in general are very good in PvP regardless of spec really, shit ton of utility and shapeshifting make them very desirable for PvP teams.

I played Moonkin in Vanilla based solely on their lore, all the shapeshifting and they could use staves! lol. I didn't once think about end-game content. Leveling in Vanilla as a Druid is, still to this day, my favorite experience in WoW. The class quests were so fun and being able to shapeshift and do different things when needed was so cool. I could drop a couple emergency heals and what not. Dungeons were a lot of fun and they were decent in pvp, admittedly I was such a noob that I probably could've done better but still had fun(moonfire spam lol).


However, every now and again during my leveling, I would get whispers or people just laughing at me because I was a moonkin, especially the higher I got in levels. By the time I hit 60 and was ready to start raiding(after gearing from UBRS, etc) TBC hit and I never got to experience it so I cannot comment on what that was like. But from what I remember, it would've been very hard for me to find a spot I think in a solid raiding group.

But I will say this. Classic was not always about topping meters. There was so much more than that, each class and sometimes spec brought different things to the table that were essential. Moonkin had Faerie Fire, Mark of the Wild, and a lot of other utility. My cousins got in to WoW way before I did and they actually raided Naxx and they all said that topping a dps meter wasn't the end all be all. You can't dps anything if you're dead. In other words, if you bring a spec that isn't considered top shelf, but you know how to play it, you stay alive and don't die to anything, you're better than the rogue/mage/warrior that did. Just my .2

PS. I truly hope that this mindset stays alive when Classic goes live, otherwise it will turn a lot of people off and all that will be left are the self proclaimed elitists trying to treat it like it's the current "rush to get on the plane before it takes off" mentality.

[sunwrathmother]

Having fun getting killed by an unplayable feral, resto/moonkin, resto/bear druid.
I suggest watching STORMX or Sodapoppin's videos.
Then come back to this thread and post your thoughts.

[D3athsting]

Wiping on the first 2 molten giants in MC on your first raid.

Lul, i remember when i got a whisper from a guildmate "hey wanna come to mc?", never been there before i said to myself "omg epix!!" and accepted, entered the raid only to see they were wiping on first 2 molten giants, needless to say we didn't make it to lucifron

[vashe9]

For end-game raiding the dominant classes are:
Prot Warrior
Any of the four classes that can heal
Fury Warrior
Rogue (I think combat or assassination depends on tier)
Fire Mage

Then slightly below them are the warlocks and hunters. Warlocks are better on alliance side because of paladin's Hand of Salvation. Hunters can drop threat at will so that'd help more Horde side.

Then you have the non-viable specs, which is pretty much everything I haven't mentioned. Feral, Balance, Shadow Priest, and Ret are not tuned to do appropriate DPS, but their utility in cases will get them raid spots.

HOWEVER, if you're not going to spend hours and hours farming Scarlet Monastery and Un'goro for grave moss and dreamfoil, you're not even going to be raiding AQ40 or Naxx anyway. And before that, it's not going to matter that much.

I'm the kind of guy that wrote a 50-page essay about what vanilla was like; and I am not going to raid hardcore. It's not worth it to me, too much mats farming.

The post in my signature does have the optimal raid setup for alliance Naxx in it somewhere if you're interested.

And my source is that I actually paid for a subscription to Warcraftmovies and spent an afternoon watching old videos specifically looking at DPS meters on these old fights. After 40+ videos I don't think I found a single one where a hybrid DPS class was in the top 10. Or even close to it.

People are seriously over estimating the need of pots ect... I've cleaned AQ and gave up on 4 horsemen because of the lacks of geared warriors... And I dont remember that everyone in my raid had to farm tons of potions... And it was 14 years ago, with people keyboard turning and mouse clicking playing on potatoes pc with 15 fps max...

[garicasha]

People are seriously over estimating the need of pots ect... I've cleaned AQ and gave up on 4 horsemen because of the lacks of geared warriors... And I dont remember that everyone in my raid had to farm tons of potions... And it was 14 years ago, with people keyboard turning and mouse clicking playing on potatoes pc with 15 fps max...

I never did raid that far myself, but one thing that I am certain about is that the level of tryhard a player Could do is so much more than now. Those world buffs were very, very potent.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they were Needed...but they were available.

[lonely zergling]

Any serious guild ie raiding guilds, any hybrid dps spec.
Any hybrid tank spec except warrior
Hunters also belong in this category except for a small handful for tranq

Dont worry there will be many many raiding guilds who dont give a fuck about the meta and they will still be able to clear the content at their own pace. These speedrun guilds are a tiny tiny minority with no support from fansites at all ( there wont be a raider io "speedrun" section similar to m+, no way).

Strange how we played vanilla on our shitty pcs with bad internet connection with 6 hunters and some people playing shadow / feral / sub rogue / ms warry / ret pala without even using all consumables and we cleared the raids. Now imagine playing all these "bad" specs with the correct gear and more consumables and proper debuff management lol.

[BSwitch]

Hey I never played vanilla WoW, but have always heard comments from friends about useless or outright unplayable specs. Was this overstated like it is today, or are there actual unplayable worthless specs. I don't just mean for raiding, but for leveling and pvp.

Nothing is unplayable or useless. Anything, any spec can be played.

Now, that said, there are specs that are clearly better or more optimized for certain parts of the game. For Paladins, Holy is optimal for Raiding; Ret, while basically never used in raiding (may change come Classic) can be very strong in PvP; Prot is missing a taunt, so raiding Prot is not really possible, but tanking 5-mans is certainly possible, and aoe mob grinding as Prot is possibly the most fun I ever had in Classic.

Anything can work, and if you find something you want to play you'll be able to do it just fine. There may be requirements to adjust if you want to do certain bits of content, but on the other hand there will be guilds that will be pretty open and will allow people to play what they want. No reason you can't level as a Holy Priest, or DPS a dungeon as a Survival Hunter. You may not be optimal, but as Esfand has proven for Ret Paladins, optimal specs are determined by talents, gear, AND effort. Put in the time to get good, and get consumables to improve your character, and anything can be fine.

[VanishingAct]

Dont worry there will be many many raiding guilds who dont give a fuck about the meta and they will still be able to clear the content at their own pace. These speedrun guilds are a tiny tiny minority with no support from fansites at all ( there wont be a raider io "speedrun" section similar to m+, no way).

Strange how we played vanilla on our shitty pcs with bad internet connection with 6 hunters and some people playing shadow / feral / sub rogue / ms warry / ret pala without even using all consumables and we cleared the raids. Now imagine playing all these "bad" specs with the correct gear and more consumables and proper debuff management lol.

I think so now, it will be different to vanilla. Content will be much easier and hybrids will be allowed in somewhat.
Our guild was a cunt towards hybrids, think we only let 1 war be dps and 1 druid be feral and thats it.

[jackofwind]

I think so now, it will be different to vanilla. Content will be much easier and hybrids will be allowed in somewhat.
Our guild was a cunt towards hybrids, think we only let 1 war be dps and 1 druid be feral and thats it.

Which is nonsense considering that Fury Warriors were the #1 overall scaling DPS in the game.

Of course if your guild didn't let Warriors raid as DPS then you probably didn't get past BWL.

[collax]

Which is nonsense considering that Fury Warriors were the #1 overall scaling DPS in the game.

Of course if your guild didn't let Warriors raid as DPS then you probably didn't get past BWL.

It only became first dps late tho.