Resto Druid
Resto Druid
Warrior or Mage.
Arguments can be made for Lock and Rogue. But both of these fill niche rolls and will likely not be as productive as Warrior and Mage.
Hunters are very limited by gear scaling and will pretty much be invited to do specialty jobs such as pulls, kiting and tranq shot.
Ret, Enh, Feral as Cat, Shadow Priest may get you an invite. But don't expect one. Priests can spec to Shadow Weaving while still picking up Power Infusion(from Disc) which seems to be a fairly reasonable support spec. Shaman can spec down Enh tree to Imp Weapon Totems, but its going to hurt your mana regen and heal potency.(I would not recommend this spec for progression or early raids as mana regen is going to be tight)
Imp. Buff is assuming that you force a warlock into playing SM/Ruin, Curse of Recklessness will often straight fuck your tank and can easily be substituted with one of your resto shamans picking up an armor debuff weapon.
Soulstones and healthstones are good, aye, but not mandatory. AQ40 won't be released until probably a year after launch either way.
I also mained a warlock in Vanilla and I love the class, I'm not under any illusion that we're pretty expendable until AQ40.
Though since we're not having progressive itemization, we might be a bit stronger in Classic with the few spells that won't be outright resisted because we can't get hit gear until ZG patch.
you do not sound like you ever played in classic
there is no such a thing as „hardcore“ and „casual“ in classic. because there are 2-3 hours long dungeons and 40m raids. thats it. no lfr, no matchmaking and NO crossrealm. so you can be sure as hell, IF a RL gets 40m together 2 times a week at a fixed time, he will NOT take anything with him, just because of guildies... maybe he will, for 1 or 2 evenings. then ppl wake up and realize that its classic.
either you get a raid spot (of this rare 2-3 raids that will exist per realm) or not. if not, you will play dungeons with strangers, while your guild raids. dungeons that last 2 hours or more. and these ppl will sort out special snowflake specs like hell.
ppl should have a nice cup of reality when it comes down to classic.
anyway, its completely useless to tell this some sort of ppl, because these ppl will stay in classic not longer than 2-3 months. this is more sure than every argument someone can bring up here.
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yeah, the ret paladins that were summoned in for 10mins to buff, lol.
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this is so... omg.
did you ever played in vanilla ? on one of the not so big realms ? do you realize that we will have a 10th amount of players and raids, if even, on classic realms ? there will be realms where 1, in words ONE raid will exist. and you think that RL that get that 40 ppl together, that all ARE able to keep playing on a classic environment without leaving after 2-3 months, that RL will take every idiot with him, just because „play what you like“ ? you have to wake up man. seriously.
some ppl have such unrealistic imaginations. cheesus. classic servers will give you a hard time. for the 2-3 months before you ppl (thx god) will leave.
this.
assuming that these 1-3 raids that will even exists on classic server realms, and that really get it managed to bring that 40 ppl together on a fixed shedule, are sooooo faaaaar away from having that „hey my friend, play what you want, its ok“ mentality lol
a)
it will be super sorted out, cause of the very very very few players that even keep playing there.
b)
it will be super toxic. because toxic community of today + elitism + rare spots.
c)
no cross realm. no matchmaking. just 40m raids and dungeons. there is no such thing like „casual“ or „hardcore“ playing. either you play „hardcore“ or you standing in front of the AH.
ppl really have to wake up.
Pretty much anything you want. The choice will reflect the level of the guild that has a space for you however.
Watch some videos and read up and see which one appeals to you most. I suspect that there will be even more people wanting to make ret paladins work for example in classic than there was in vanilla so you may find the niche / sub optimal raid spots more competitive and you'll need to stand out if thats the path you want to take.
There will be a shit tonne of rogues and warriors though so there may be more mileage in niche!
People seem to think because they played with their IRL friends and made in-game friends that they'll now have "friends for life" again. I used to sit in trade for hours and just bullshit with people and got labeled a troll. I luckily had a good reputation for being a priest so it didn't effect me being groups, but just chatting with people angered other people.
I wouldn't say it was THAT accessible. I had an ax (still have it actually - Treant's Bane) from a Tribute Run that wasn't on Thotbot (premier item site) because the drop rate was so low. There were however, a lot of theorycrafting people on the forums trying to make sense of the insanity of Blizzard's spell rank system and spell/attack power conversions.
I think this stems from the idea that the game is casual. WoW is very friendly towards casuals, almost to a fault today (imo), but gone are the days of "oh I want to challenge myself" and improve their abilities and actually achieve it for themselves. I am guilty of this even. I used to want to be a Mythic raider and I did it for a time, got one Cutting Edge achievement, but after a fellow officer went off on me because I was going through some personal stuff, I am just happy getting AOTC and the occasional few Mythic boss kills above that.
Most warlocks are playing SM/Ruin anyways in a raid (yes DS/Ruin is higher dps, but most people outside of hardcore raiding prior to AQ40 dont wanna respec everytime they wanna PvP etc ), especially at least 1 - because you want the imp buff for your tanks. Especially once you get into BWL and higher. Yes the itemization will help warlocks, once we get bloodvine especially. There's tons of videos out there from mid-late geared BWL warlocks being up there on dmg with warriors and rogues and mages. For some reason the myth that warlocks aren't good stuck with them from the early patches of vanilla till now.
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Sounds like you're just a sensitive little guy. To be honest.
Never said that warlocks weren't good, simply that you only really need one or two at most.
And warlocks definitely do suffer pretty heavily pre-AQ40, which will likely be around a year on Classic servers before we can get any sort of hit rating worth talking about.
Also, keep in mind that since people know how well warlocks scale nowadays, you'll have more warlocks competing for those few spots.
Ranged? Mage
Melee? Rogue
Those are the safest options.... the S Tier if you will. Warlocks, Hunters and Warriors would also be decent options.
One thing a lot of people seem to forget about Vanilla is how many specs simply weren’t viable until after they got raid gear... often combined gear from multiple raids. If you don’t want to deal with the horrible gearing process or playing a spec you don’t enjoy to gear the one you do then the safest DPS are above.
Actually - im pretty sure you can get a pretty accurate distribution of classes by looking at the popular private servers, and you couldn't be more wrong. Especially on alliance side.
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No. Sensitive because you let a fucking e-person calling you out for being dog shit at a game one night make you quit. You're just adding in personal reasons to make it sound like you chose life over your hobby, but we all know you just got fuckin rekt for wiping the raid on your 500th attempt.
Is there only one raid on popular private servers? Puhleeze.
Classic will be WAY more popular than the most popular private server... and will have PLENTY of players obtaining raid level status. While you may have played Vanilla, you clearly are letting flawed private server experience cloud your judgement.
It is also true that today's gamers are more sophisticated... and will be able to more efficiently accomplish things in Classic.
This answer is all you need, remember its a game that is meant to be played for fun so play what is fun for you, I find when folks play a character they like they will put more effort in and do better than a so called better class of same level played by someone who was made to play that class.