Ultra hardcore raider can get more from horde in raiding (more dps potential), but alliance is alot easier pve wise.
Ultra hardcore raider can get more from horde in raiding (more dps potential), but alliance is alot easier pve wise.
I think a lot of individual people would love to play alliance for PvE - but they're held back by group of friends that want to stick to horde cause they prefer PvP'ing in downtime as there's not much PvE farm happening outside of raids.
I do forsee a huge issue with PvP queues in Europe if not more people go Alliance
Sword Spec is the most OP racial Humans have. Nearly every end-game weapon for Melee is a Sword. People very heavily underestimate weapon skills, and it's going to be even more important than private servers have assumed due to the somewhat recent Bluepost shedding some light into the boss hit tables, which the private servers had undervalued.
Also Paladin shits on Shaman for DPS buffs.
Literally what i came to post. Sword spec was extremely strong.
It's very funny to read people saying horde had better racials because i distinctly remember in vanilla the mantra was horde have best pvp racials but alliance have the best pve racials.
The only pve performance enhancing racials the horde have are
- Bloodfury for orc rogues and warriors
- WotF will increase your uptime vs a non undead on bosses that fear
- Berserking- Berserking was still good, but not nearly as good as it became later in wows lifespan, it was 10% attack or cast speed if you were full hp and required you to be sub 40 or 50% for the actual 25% if i recall correctly.
Alliance have
- Fear Ward
- Sword spec
- Escape artist (same as wotf but for roots and only if you were melee)
- Stone form (for the armor, i do not recall any other uses)
- Possibly shadowmeld if that actually worked properly in vanilla
Overrated racials that people tend to compare when they really shouldn't:
- Orc axe spec and pet damage increases were pointless as you used swords and you never really used your pet as it would just die easily (which had a cost to reviving and resummoing via shards and food to increase its happiness)
- Bloodfury was melee ap only, i forget if it remained in 1.12 but bloodfury used to slap a 25 50% healing debuff on you after using it, hell at one point it actually did a % of your max health dot on you, something like 30% of your hp was lost as an undispellable dot, but this didn't make it into the actual release of the game.
- Dwarven gun spec was useless as well if i recall as ranged weapons didn't get glancing blows
- Troll bow spec was just as useless for the aforementioned no glancing blows
- Tauren 5% health could be argued but it is as trivial as the 5% int and spirit for gnomes and humans.
- Troll Beast slaying was 5% increased damage, which looks great on paper but there just aren't actually a lot of bosses that were classified as beasts, it was all elementals, dragons and undeads mostly, there were maybe 5 bosses or so that this racial actually did anything on
- Human mace spec - same as orc axe
- Bloodfury needs to be mentioned twice just purely because it is by far the most overrated racial in the history of the game and still to this day is vastly overrated, i specifically remember WoD as the best example where in the prime of human EMFH imbalance alliance players would justify the dual trinket issue with orcs have bloodfury, an ability that granted you a fixed number of 345 attack power at level 100, the closest trinket that offered that little attack power were very early MoP leveling green trinkets at something like level 92 (again this was during WoD)
While windfury totem was excellent, paladin buffs were just flat better overall.
Overall there was no real major difference in the factions pve wise other than sword spec which was superior dps for the alliance but it did not stop both horde and alliance guilds competing for realm and world firsts, something which continued for expansions up until the introduction of paid faction and race changes.
To those who doubt just how strong sword spec was, there is a reason this 0 strength 0 stamina level 44 mail gauntlet was BiS for the entire game https://classicdb.ch/?item=14551
Last edited by Yes but actually no; 2019-06-16 at 10:55 PM.
The guilds that want to min-max will go with whatever is mathematically better, regardless of their retail wow faction. Any guild going for world firsts will be Alliance
Paladins, Fear Ward and Shadowmeld basically make Alliance much better.
Shadowmeld was a PvP-waylay ability in Classic. No in-combat use at all. It became a "vanish" in WotLK.
What i meant by the paragraph you quoted is rather simple: Is it theoretically possible that 2 or 3 guilds decide to "prove to the world that Horde can do it" and no-life through MC to claim Worldfirst? Yes. It is totally possible, because especially in the beginning when rogues are still stronger than fury-warriors Salvation is far less of a factor and logistics are by FAR the most deciding factor in who kills what first. Salvation will become more important much later in the phases.
But does a single-digit number of Horde guilds that try and go for worldfirst "mean" anything when almost everybody will play Alliance? You can look at the actual numbers in classic 14 years ago or at the current numbers: The Horde is dead without Blood Elves. And today male models actually have faces instead of ugly flesh-wounds. I see no way in hell for the Horde to be the more played faction in classic. It simply is too ugly for the majority of players. And with logistics being so important for 40man raiding this automatically means that the chances for the Horde to end up as the more active raiding faction are very, very slim.
Right now at this very moment there are 12 Alliance guilds that cleared mythic Crucible while the Horde HoF filled up last night. Do these 12 Alliance guilds "mean" something? They prove that Alliance is capable of clearing the content....but if you actually want to PLAY the content right now then those numbers simply say "Go Horde, dude"
Last edited by Nathasil; 2019-06-17 at 04:49 AM.
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really? because only 5/43 vanilla bosses have a fear as a significant mechanism during the fight. i wouldnt call that "many, MANY fears around in Vanilla raids." Nefarian, Magmadar, Gluth, Onyxia, and Yuaj(who is an optional boss) Fearward is very useful.. in PVP, in PVE... it's a dead racial on the other 38 bosses.
Edit for some additional info: Magmadar fear, nefarian fear and gluth fear can be outranged by all ranged (including healers). And the Magmadar fear can be dispelled.
Last edited by Varrusian; 2019-06-17 at 05:13 AM.
Fearward isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. The number of encounters where the main tank gets feared isn't all that high and decreases as the content gets harder. BoS alone however is a big deal. Once you overaggro a boss, it's unlikely that the pull will properly recover, most bosses are immune to taunt and since ranged overaggro happens at 110%, you are fucked.
On top of everything you mention I feel the bottom line is you'd need a shaman in every group to cover a raid in tranquil air whereas 3 (4?) Paladins can basically cover every conceivable buff wanted (does anyone want wis + might at the same time, or does salv, kings and might/wis cover basically everyone?) for your entire raid.
Min Max is a play style mate, no matter the game. It can be piss easy, like doing HC farms while you are mythic geared, we minmax the shit out of it just to have fun. Some method guys who said on streams that they will go hardcore on it. Quite a few guilds who started recruitment now have set goals on leveling time and what is expected of their players too, leaving not much space for "exploring" and going straight to numbers game. That is what will take it to get to realm first. World first will be quite interesting. I agree that those people might get bored real quick, but again, minmaxing is a play style. Some tough dudes killed Onyxia with 3 man party, some people might try to clear nax with 20 and proper minmaxing. (post progress that is ofc)
Most likely Horde to be honest