Play a Viable Spec or Don't even bother play Classic...

[Zulatomten]

I've noticed a trend here that people tell others that they should play a "viable" spec instead of a spec they actually want to play.

If you want to play one of the "viable" spec/class, then go ahead, please do so.
But if someone doesn't want to, why should they do what you want them to do?
This is the first official chance of playing classic again, it's an accomplishment for the community. Shouldn't this be a time to finally let the community experience the game how they wish to play, or how they may have played the first time they had a go at it?

Ben Brode(Previously Hearthstone Game Director) responded to a video about why there are bad cards in Hearthstone where one of the statements were "It's fun to have underdog cards". I think something similar can be said about the bad or "unviable" specs in Classic WoW. It's fun to be a "unviable" spec and do well at it.

Note that I'm not saying that i support any balance change to make the "unviable" specs more viable, just don't see why every priest (or any other class) on the server should be identical to the next because any indiffrences are viewed as sub par.

[RobertoCarlos]

People have a better understanding of the game now.

Theres gonna be more rogues with engineering with charge helmets than ever before.

You're more than welcome to be the struggling feral druid but beeeee prepaaaaaaared!

[Deleted]

People have a better understanding of the game now.

Theres gonna be more rogues with engineering with charge helmets than ever before.

You're more than welcome to be the struggling feral druid but beeeee prepaaaaaaared!

don't they argue that they have access to a helm at lvl 40 that is bis all the way up to sunwell?

[jackofwind]

Non-viable specs in raids can be powerhouses in PvP. That said, the best PvP gear comes from raids.

It's just that the gear system of Classic doesn't really support a lot of the hybrid (read: unviable) DPS specs. You're fighting pure DPS classes for off-set DPS pieces and waiting for your T2.5, meanwhile you're collecting your healing gear.

[RobertoCarlos]

don't they argue that they have access to a helm at lvl 40 that is bis all the way up to sunwell?

Yeah and you can tank as a bear if you farm for very specfic gear that has +armor on it. You're welcome to do the grind. Will be lame if everyone is warriors/rogues/priests

[Molis]

It is not that you shouldnt bother playing. Non-viable or Hybrid raid specs can be great for PvP, gathering, questing etc.

Just dont show up as Mr Ret Pally ready raid and be surprised when you are asked to heal.

[seleri]

I haven't seen anyone being super toxic about it. Mostly just people warning newbies that they shouldn't expect to raid MC as a fire mage, for example.

[wysimdnwyg]

During Vanilla, if you wanted to raid with a higher level guild, you played one of the "preferred" specs. You had tanks (Warriors), healers (pretty much everyone who could heal), and dps (everyone who wasn't a tank Warrior and who could not heal). Outside of a few select cases for distinct purposes, that was it.

Second tier guilds and casual raiders would take more players who wanted to raid even with the less-preferred specs, but the prevalence of those decreased as you got closer to the top echelon.

All that to say, that attitude is nothing new.

However, I would disagree with the sentiment that this is the prevailing attitude around here. I've seen more posts telling people that this is what to expect, but that many guilds will take players regardless of their preferred class and spec than I have posts telling people they MUST raid with certain specs. If you want to play a Fire Mage raiding MC, you go ahead. Just understand the drawbacks (specifically in this case that most of the mobs in MC are immune to your fire damage, making your dps negligible at best) and that the top guilds are going to be more discerning.

[Rusken]

This is the biggest reason I'm probably going to main a Shaman in Classic. I love healing but I also get to work on building an Enhance PvP destruction set to take into BG's and world content.

[Deleted]

Ben Brode(Previously Hearthstone Game Director) responded to a video about why there are bad cards in Hearthstone where one of the statements were "It's fun to have underdog cards". I think something similar can be said about the bad or "unviable" specs in Classic WoW. It's fun to be a "unviable" spec and do well at it.

The problem is the context. He said its fun to have underdog cards in the context of finding a deck or future meta where a "bad" card could excel at through a mechanic that you thought of(or was recently added). For example Purify is a bad/underdog card(and was widely condemned on release), but was made more viable via cards later added that allowed silence priest to rise to popularity.

In Vanilla WOW this is not the case. You know how classes will be, and they will never change. There won't be a patch tomorrow buffing the feral druid or changing ret paladins. This is a problem because while it might be fun at release, in the long term you are just making your char less successful(worse at pvp, raiding, farming gold etc). To give you an example, imagine if Hearthstone never got any expansions and we still played the original game - would priest really be fun when you would lose the 10th game in a row?

[Swalload]

I've noticed a trend here that people tell others that they should play a "viable" spec instead of a spec they actually want to play.

If you want to play one of the "viable" spec/class, then go ahead, please do so.
But if someone doesn't want to, why should they do what you want them to do?
This is the first official chance of playing classic again, it's an accomplishment for the community. Shouldn't this be a time to finally let the community experience the game how they wish to play, or how they may have played the first time they had a go at it?

Ben Brode(Previously Hearthstone Game Director) responded to a video about why there are bad cards in Hearthstone where one of the statements were "It's fun to have underdog cards". I think something similar can be said about the bad or "unviable" specs in Classic WoW. It's fun to be a "unviable" spec and do well at it.

Note that I'm not saying that i support any balance change to make the "unviable" specs more viable, just don't see why every priest or (any other class) on the server should be identical to the next because any indiffrences are viewed as sub par.

It's not about wishing to play a game the way you want to and complain about how it's made. It's wishing to play a game the way it was made in the first place. Running into a ret pally and saying "lol a ret pally" was part of vanilla and there's no reason to delete this from Classic. Ret being unviable is the same thing as not having DKs at all. Rets were made viable later on, DKs were added later on, Vanilla wasn't not the place to enjoy any of these, that's just how it was and people need to play it how it was.

[Projectmars]

I haven't seen anyone being super toxic about it. Mostly just people warning newbies that they shouldn't expect to raid MC as a fire mage, for example.

That one makes complete sense though: Why would anyone want to seriously run a spec that literally can't deal damage to anything in a specific Raid?

[klepp0906]

all spec's are viable.

the end.

[kamuimac]

I've noticed a trend here that people tell others that they should play a "viable" spec instead of a spec they actually want to play.

If you want to play one of the "viable" spec/class, then go ahead, please do so.
But if someone doesn't want to, why should they do what you want them to do?
This is the first official chance of playing classic again, it's an accomplishment for the community. Shouldn't this be a time to finally let the community experience the game how they wish to play, or how they may have played the first time they had a go at it?

Ben Brode(Previously Hearthstone Game Director) responded to a video about why there are bad cards in Hearthstone where one of the statements were "It's fun to have underdog cards". I think something similar can be said about the bad or "unviable" specs in Classic WoW. It's fun to be a "unviable" spec and do well at it.

Note that I'm not saying that i support any balance change to make the "unviable" specs more viable, just don't see why every priest or (any other class) on the server should be identical to the next because any indiffrences are viewed as sub par.

because if they dont they literaly wont be able to play endgame. simple as that . nobody will ever invite them to any group and nobody will join their groups.

simple as that .

it would be different if blizzard rebalanced classes but without rebalance 3/4 of specs are unplayable garbage. and its not 5% delta like now . its literaly not viable to play in endgame.

[Khallid]

I may be wrong about this, but don't you play whatever unviable spec you want during leveling and then switch your talents for raiding? Raiding and leveling are two different activities, so you need to pick different talents for it.

Going to a raid with unviable specs in vanilla is just as dumb as using PVP gear for PVE was in WoTLK. Your talent trees are not balanced for raiding per spec.

[kamuimac]

Yeah and you can tank as a bear if you farm for very specfic gear that has +armor on it. You're welcome to do the grind. Will be lame if everyone is warriors/rogues/priests

but it will be . we all know it . anyone denying it is hurting so many people who will spend 2-3 months leveling to max level only to never do anything with that toon

nobody will take underdog when they can fill their raid with another rogue/warrior/mage .

[Projectmars]

all spec's are viable.

the end.

All specs are viable at various parts of the game, sure, but very little works for everything, if anything. (Fury Warriors and Frost Mages may be the two exceptions, and even then Fire Mage is far better after a certain point)

[LedZeppelin]

depends on your audience. Plan on playing with a hardcore raiding guild? Leave the ret paladin at home. Just doing some casual raiding? Who cares

[Xenodrake]

I did the Vanilla thing and i was a Shadowpriest. This time around I am going Holy but if I get the chance to go Shadow again I will. 1 is good for the raid and i still have a video on you tube of me being a noob at Onyxia lol.. Mind you this was 12 years ago please be gentle >_<

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0xI_eyCLdA

[chazus]

Pretty much through the entirety of Vanilla, I played a Feral Druid (Tanking mostly) and Enhancement Shaman. So, I mean. Play what you want. I had to go resto to get into BWL+, but until that point, I was happy doing what I was doing.