What are the unplayable or useless specs

[Deletedaccount1]

Hybrids can't dps

[1 + 1 = 3]

Prot Warrior and Holy priest are a joke, all should roll Balance druid and Shadow priest.
Just check the net everybody is saying that.

[jackofwind]

It only became first dps late tho.

It was top DPS by BWL, at least on patch 1.12 which is what Classic is running.

[Varolyn]

When looking at all forms of content, I don't think there is really any completely useless spec in vanilla. Some of the hybrids did take far more gear/effort to come even close to the more standard Damage Dealers however, and even then, they would get outscaled quite fast. But what should be the concern of Classic wow is the meta-hivemind that has been developed over the years. So many players/gamers have become meta slaves so getting in a guild as say as an ele shammy will be difficult on that reason alone.

[VanishingAct]

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.

We were in naxx so no need to talk like an elitist mate. Though everyone was in naxx. In naxx it changed and we got more fury wars but we had some real special needs people trying to tank n fury. Twin emps were fun when the warriors seemed to keybind demo shout to their entire keyboard.

[collax]

It was top DPS by BWL, at least on patch 1.12 which is what Classic is running.

But he was most likely talking about vanilla.

[Eucep]

Main issue I had was paladin leveling. That... was... soooo.... slow. Untill you could sword/board and aoe butcher stuff.

[telygroar]

Shamans are great too. Beside, only shaman have bloodlust in horde §

[Nihilux]

Personally I'm intending to join or create a guild for casual play, whereupon spec isn't really that important. Since it's vanilla and we know so much, I'd rather have people play whatever they want (within reason ofc), even if it's suboptimal, and enjoy themselves (still will be LC + DKP though and of course, play suboptimal and you are expected to contribute more as well). Especially since if you rush vanilla, you'll be burnt out and done way too soon and I'd prefer it to be long lasting. That's me though and it'll not likely be the thing in most guilds.

[Maudib]

Main issue I had was paladin leveling. That... was... soooo.... slow. Untill you could sword/board and aoe butcher stuff.

Yep... very slow. But you got a free 40 mount.

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I'm intending to join or create a guild for casual play, whereupon spec isn't really that important.

I keep telling people there are likely to be more of your type of guild than the "play this or else" types. Play what is FUN for YOU.

[Gaidax]

Main issue I had was paladin leveling. That... was... soooo.... slow. Untill you could sword/board and aoe butcher stuff.

Oh yesss... the upside was that you had like no chance of dying, but it was so damn slow... like soul-crushing slow AND boring, because it was basically a 100% bloody auto-attack.

Warlock on the other hand - holy crap, by level 40 you were a god of death mass murdering mobs for xp on industrial scale.

[breslin]

Oh yesss... the upside was that you had like no chance of dying, but it was so damn slow... like soul-crushing slow AND boring, because it was basically a 100% bloody auto-attack.

Warlock on the other hand - holy crap, by level 40 you were a god of death mass murdering mobs for xp on industrial scale.

Was demonology or destruction a thing in vanilla?

[Gaidax]

Was demonology or destruction a thing in vanilla?

TBH, there wasn't really a "spec" in fashion it is now. Vast majority were SM/Ruin or DS/Ruin, so if I'd translate it into modern terms, I'd say it counts as Destruction, because you were spamming Shadow Bolt, which is a nuke, while rest of the shit was either useless or forbidden (because debuff limit was a thing and nobody would let you overwrite critical debuffs with some shitty dot) or for PvP - there a good DoT stack usually resulted in whatever you targeted simply dying (aside from heals and such) and it was a game of cat and mouse from there on where you were busy trying not to die before they do.

Demo was not even a thing in Vanilla, really. You always took talents from Demonology tree but it was mostly to for synergy with Affliction/Destruction and PvP perks. Pets died in raids the moment any sort of AoE went off, so mostly they were just sacrificed anyway.

[Armourboy]

TBH, there wasn't really a "spec" in fashion it is now. Vast majority were SM/Ruin or DS/Ruin, so if I'd translate it into modern terms, I'd say it counts as Destruction, because you were spamming Shadow Bolt, which is a nuke, while rest of the shit was either useless or forbidden (because debuff limit was a thing and nobody would let you overwrite critical debuffs with some shitty dot) or for PvP - there a good DoT stack usually resulted in whatever you targeted simply dying (aside from heals and such) and it was a game of cat and mouse from there on where you were busy trying not to die before they do.

Demo was not even a thing in Vanilla, really. You always took talents from Demonology tree but it was mostly to for synergy with Affliction/Destruction and PvP perks. Pets died in raids the moment any sort of AoE went off, so mostly they were just sacrificed anyway.

Arcane for Mage, and Survival for Hunter worked pretty much the same for more reference as to why things often weren't really specs

[lanesia24]

Nothing is useless or unplayable. People exaggerate about Vanilla far too much.

Some specs are actually useless in certain situations though. Like playing fire mage in molten core or trying to tank as prot pally in MC or things like that. It can be done sure but nobody really wants to deal with that. The reality is people are spoiled by class balance in todays WoW. In Classic a lot of specs are simply far below others and it won't change and just saying "nothing is useless or unplayable" which might be true isn't really accurate either.

[breslin]

Arcane for Mage, and Survival for Hunter worked pretty much the same for more reference as to why things often weren't really specs

What was the last talent for Arcane Mage?

[garicasha]

Arcane Power

http://classicdb.ch/?talent#o

[avitush]

I feel like boomkins were in a pretty bad place. Now that I think about it, I don't recall ever having seen one in Classic WoW. They might've had some kind of utility (a crit aura for casters, I think?) that made one worth bringing to raids, but iirc, they weren't fun to play at all.

And yeah other specs were good in general but useless in some situations because some mobs/bosses were immune (or had very high resistance to) certain elements. You didn't want to be a fire mage in MC, for example.

[Valdhammer]

I think all this depends on who you play with and what you care about. I started playing vanilla with real life friends about a month after release and we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. There were no resources to tell us that the specs we were playing were “suboptimal”. All we knew is that we were having tons and tons of fun. None of us cared about silly things like getting realm firsts, etc. we were all adults with jobs when WoW came out and didn’t really have time to do a lot of the high-end content but that didn’t stop us having fun. Nit one bit.

Classic will be different because everyone will be able to look up the “best” specs immediately, so I can see how someone wanting to play a less optimal spec might run into people who will treat them unkindly for it. My advice would be to tell these people to fuck off and play with those who aren’t toxic. Play with people who can have fun while failing and learning as opposed to those who don’t know this is a game. If you aren’t smiling while playing, you’re doing it wrong.

[chooi]

People really have to understand that in Vanilla you are playing a class, not a spec!

Also, having the right stats matters and having multiple sets of gear is essential if you want to utilize the full potential of your class, especially when playing hybrids.

For example, even if you spec into Retribution you are still a Paladin which means a hybrid role. You don't suddenly become a pure DPS like on retail. By putting points in a talent tree you merely improve one of the aspects of your class. That means Holy tree makes you better at healing. Prot tree makes you better at taking damage. Ret tree makes you better at dealing damage. You can run a 20/0/31 Holy/Ret-hybrid-build, put on your +heal cloth and be a decent healer for Boss A or deal damage with your 2h and strength gear for Boss B. But you will always be way behind a pure DPS as a Paladin regardless of your spec.

Also understand that not all specs cater to the strengths of a class or what is most needed in certain types of content. Ret Pally RNG burst damage can be fun for randomly one-shotting people in PvP but is irrelevant in raids because of awful sustained DPS. In contrast, Holy Paladins have awesome synergy with their talents making them very strong, unOOMable single-target healers with great utility and survivability for both PvE and PvP. There's practically nothing of interest that a Ret Paladin can bring to the group that a Holy Paladin can't. But the Ret Paladin sacrifices almost all of his healing capabilities to become a 50% DPS while the Holy Paladin sacrifices almost all of his little DPS capabilities to become one of the strongest healers. Choose wisely.

Exactly the same is true for other classes. An Arms/Warrior can and will tank with his tank gear set. Fury/Prot-Hybrids are actually awesome for tanking any type of content with the right gear and raid support. A Fire Mage will still deal decent damage when casting Frostbolts and a PvP-specced Rogue will be doing more DPS than a Shadow Priest. Because that's just how overall class design & balance in Vanilla work.

So my advice is: pick a class, not a spec and understand how that will impact your Classic experience.

Expect to heal as a hybrid in raids. Expect to tank as a Warrior in dungeons. Expect to respec and change your gear for different types of content you play as any class. Don't just stick to one niche of your class because that's not how Vanilla works and you miss out on a lot of what made it interesting socially and gameplay-wise. If all you want to do is DPS then you should really consider rolling a pure DPS class. If you just want to tank as Paladin then accept that you won't see a lot of raids from the inside and/or will have a really tough time finding a guild. Make the right choice, guys. Rerolling won't be easy in Classic