So, here’s the deal.
I was a warlock at the tail end of classic, and dont really remember anything from that time very well, aside from the mindless soul shard farming pre-raid.
A lot of the guides right now appear to be based on private servers, so I’m just wondering what can be trusted and what should be ignored.
The specs themselves and the general approach are ok. When Classic there may be a difference in BiS and which spec is “optimal” as we don’t know what the numbers are going to be like.
For example, private servers raiders will tell mages to put 31 points in arcane power and have one mage deeper frost for the debuff. The problem there being that stuff dies in 2 seconds on private servers thus 1) mages don’t run out of mana. and 2) survivability means 0. So they end up wear greens with as much spell power as possible. That’s not how it was in Vanilla.
Second is if you decide to try and AoE farm. Don’t look at private servers. Mana usage on Cone of Cold is messed up. It was very mana inefficient but it was possible on private servers. Granted, with the correct gear it might be doable. Also, I’m not sure what the “correct” behavior was as of 1.12, but Blizzard put in measures to stop AoE farming at least pre-1.12. An example, being putting in more elite fish in the waters of ZG.
So take it with a grain of salt. The general approach is correct. The details however, will be TBD.
Classic won’t be a replica of Vanilla either, so take what I said with a grain of salt as well.
Thanks for the tip. I was intending to go mage mostly for the AoE farming and general usefulness in raids. It was still doable, right? I legit don’t remember much. I was like, nine or ten?
Playing a mage is a solid choice. You’re pretty much decent at everything and will have no problems getting into a raid or instance as DPS.
But AoE leveling … question mark. People don’t know this except mages who did it back in the day pre nerf, but Blizzard ninja nerfed pretty much everything at one point. Around 51, mages used to be able farm Mara for gross amounts of xp. But that was made impossible. Lashers in DM were also a thing, but Blizzard nerfed that too.
That’s really interesting.
More things to think about re: behaviors and numbers being all wrong on private servers. God knows what else.
Also, mana was a huge problem when AoE leveling or gold farming. Not every mage could do it.
Also, people talk about how great AoE farming the murlocs were in the swamps. But what is lost is that Blizzard made it so much harder by putting in more ranged murlocs at one point.
Information like that, that happened pre 1.12 was all lost.
Yes it was, in 1.12. You can’t compare the metagame of launch classic to the 1.12 build that we know we’re getting. To put things simple, after every spec got their redesign, they saw somewhere between a 15-25% throughput increase, and the final one being that tank and threat changes saw the DPS ceiling be dramatically increased.
The reason why mages run 31 into arcane is because there’s no deep DPS talents in the frost tree outside of the 10% winters chill debuff that can be applied by a single mage. Where as with 31 points in arcane, you get access to 10% increased mana. 3% damage, 3% crit, and arcane power.
You underestimate how fights were primarily designed throughout the majority of classic.
You planned to run out, or be as close to running out of mana as possible. You also blew through mana to get out of inherently dangerous parts of fights, because large amounts of them were add fights being able to use as much offensive burst power as possible throughout the entire raid to get the majority of fights with single time adds down as quickly as possible, while you let the rogues\warlocks\warriors (and hunters after the FD to drink) do the rest of the job while you wanded to regen and get back some mana to go back to finishing off the fight.
Guide as in talent builds or playing the class? There are tons of the former, and if you play from 1-60 you will not need a guide.
How spells worked, spellpower values, farming spots, mana, efficiency, ect.
Switching toons for a moment for this. I played this toon (was originally Thermal, but long story) the most in vanilla. I had a ball all the way through just picking talents and playing by feels. Every so often I would respec when I wanted to try something different or made a miss-click or saw a new technique someone else was using. Honestly, just play the class the way that entertains yourself while leveling. Once you get up near 60 you will have a good idea about the rest of the stuff.
Also do not get so hung up on AOE farming. All of the non-instanced spots are likely to be farmed 24/7 by goldsellers.
Just have fun with it, and by all means LEARN HOW TO CC.
Spellpower values you will absolutely have to wait til at least they start beta testing it because, even with the old code, things could change with respect to them putting it on a new backbone.
Mana-wise, use all your mana gems, make sure you have a spirit stick because, iirc, evocate worked around spirit based mana regen (it also helps if you have a druid who will throw you an innervate). You’ll have enough talent points to go into arcane with any spec to get the mana regen talent and also have mage armor for regen. Final numbers, of course, will be dependent on what happens with the new backbone.
Efficiency, frost mages were best with mana, unless you went deep arcane.
Spells are pretty self explanatory in most cases.
Farming spots could change depending, again, on what happens and may even be overfarmed which will need to new farming spots.
Most of the pserver guides will help give you an idea, but take it with a grain of salt until final numbers are around.
I don’t understand how things were in vanilla? Or a private server. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this comment from tje private server community. Arcane power? Lol. I suggest you stop.
i will do the best i can.
mages were CC heavy and required a lot of skill to be a good pvper. most went ice, because of the CC but coupled with fire abilities for extra damage.
arcane wasnt really a thing. in pvp anyway.
you can look at most of the old talents and see.
classicdb.ch/?talent#o
try your hand at it.
improved frost nova, permafrost, cold snap, ice block- all must haves if you pvp. go full ice and get ice barrier and you were pretty much op.
Those are very specific questions with a massive variety of answers and those answers change depending on which faction you choose.
In general mages are solid choices that you really can’t go wrong with. Prepared to be bored to tears in PvE.
I don’t remember people worrying that much about DPS numbers in Vanilla, at least not to the extent that they are crunched and simmed and theorycrafted today. For mages threat was a bigger concern than DPS because we didn’t have an aggro reduce ability like Fade or Feint or something like that. Our entire rotation was basically just one spell for a good chunk of Vanilla, so it wasn’t exactly complex and difficult to play. But, iirc, if we pulled aggro we basically just had to Ice Block and hope the tank could regain aggro while we were in it. Mages needed to pay more attention to the threat meter than the DPS meter in Vanilla.