Our guild never made any strange choices regarding paladin use, we did have a protection paladin, but used him in a way that worked for the guild; he was not the main tank.
At least you understand, a lot of people just don’t get it.
It’s sad because even tho there are people who really want to play warriors, I’d wager there are a ton of players who are going to play warrior because of the damage output only.
It’s my opinion that pre-Naxx raid was better and more balanced.
It’s not that fury warriors got massive direct buffs, they always did tremendous damage, they just couldn’t go full tilt because aggro limited them.
That’s why IMO pre-naxx was perfect
All of Vanilla is great, even later on in Naxx, but I know where you’re coming from. Monkeynews had an interview with Tipsout to explain some dynamics and Tips asked him if he played anything else, and Mn outright laughed and said no, Warrior is the best class in Vanilla.
I agree with a lot of it, despite having a sincere love for Rets and Rogues as well. And to an extent Priests.
What I recall though from an old friend rings true for Warriors more than any other class (shout out to Zethcurry if you frequent these forums):
Warriors notice their gear upgrades more than any other class. A Mage for instance might get some prebis pieces, and see their frostbolt go from 1200 to 1300 damage. Or maybe 1400. Warriors see their damage increase the same way but in bigger chunks. You go from totally crap level 60 green gear and your Bloodthirsts crit for 1100, to getting full prebis and seeing them crit for 1800. It’s noticeable. A lot of that had to do with talents being %-based, such as Enrage for example. And when you get a weapon on a Warrior while leveling, it is a noticeable power spike. A Mage might go from Emberstone Staff to Illusionary Rod and there is virtually no difference. A Warrior going from Smite’s Hammer to Whirlwind Axe notices it 100 times more so.
Couple this with the fact you need an inordinate amount of Warriors for most entry-level guilds to progress, and for the elite guilds to speed clear, and you have a huge pool of people playing Warriors. Many are bad. You’ll see parses where Warriors are prioritizing Bloodthirsts during Execute phases either because it’s better that way in Retail, or because they are trained to hit whatever lights up first.
When you take these variables you get like you said, a ton of people who see Warriors as the best class on paper, and it is a straightforward class to play. It’s funny because in some regards, Warrior has a higher skill cap in PvE than almost any other class. Rogues just keep SnD up, Mages press Frostbolt for 2 tiers, while your Warriors need to off-tank, and prioritize cooldown and consumable usage; Deathwish use and capping Flurry stacks before execute phase before transitioning into Recklessness and Mighty Rage pot use while Deathwish lines up with Recklessness for ticks till cooldown. It’s not hard but there are so many people who just can’t do it. They’ll go full pepega and parse very low and wonder why the class is so dominant yet they are so bad.
It doesn’t change the fact that most will remember getting run over by Warriors in 2 or 3 crits while leveling while they should have abused their ability to kite, and promptly want to roll a Warrior believing they are completely overpowered. Most of the time the error lies with those people despite them being right that Warrior scales inherently better than almost any other class for the duration of Vanilla.
Pre-Naxx and actual Vanilla threat wasn’t as big of a deal because we never had Warriors that good. We had Warriors with truckloads of gear that were carried by said gear. Now we are at a point where the gear and the skill coincide and you have a recipe for Warriors to make up ~35% of the playerbase on any server at any given time. I don’t think changing how threat works will change this. Warriors are just arguably the best class in Vanilla.
I probably rambled too much there as I’ve been drinking gin all day, so forgive me.
Thats the real issue, imo. Not how fast the better guilds are to clear it, but that those guilds are going to have alts and benchwarmers and even mains that are sitting out so guildmates can run it, and these folks are going to be pushing pugs.
I don’t know how I feel about this. I started early, but never got to raid bwl (but did see a bit of aq20). Part of me is glad to have a better chance at seeing that content, but part of me wants it to be nearly impossible to do.
I don’t think naxx will ever be a bendover. Bwl will force some folks to learn their class. Maybe its good that zg and mc will be so much easier? Nice to get some epics.
But regardless of if its skill, knowledge, consumables, or threat, 3 weeks MAX til mc is cleared. People who aren’t believing this are fooling themselves about the level of professionalism some players take it to.
Don’t worry, you’re still coherent. It certainly would be interesting to see how things go…
Remember it’s not just the threat that matters, but tank swaps in pre- naxx raid that are harder because the pre-naxx taunt was far less powerful.
It’s the combination of all the components of naxx that changed the game to a point where warriors could also dominate over DPS.
It just wasn’t possible before naxx because they would pull aggro vs the typical guild tanks.
Post naxx and anyone could tank at near the top level. Essentially, Blizzard nerfed the skill needed to tank in vanilla by quite a lot.
Let’s not bring thunderfury into this, because that was likely the reason. It was likely a catch up mechanism so that players who were behind could do naxx.
Without those threat changes far fewer would have.
It’s a change that’s no longer needed because we now have all the time in the world.
Let’s have pre-naxx tanking back!
Yeah, MC and BWL aren’t too difficult. AQ40 takes a bit more coordination, and Naxx requires not only intimate knowledge of your class, but a rigorous consumable farming schedule. With how world buffs are likely to work in Classic, I think Naxx will be a tad harder.
I also think on the other side of the coin, MC and Onyxia will be easier. 16 immediate debuffs and Dire Maul gear is going to make those raids much more lenient.