I can’t lie: I am looking forward to Classic. I will likely roll hunter, even though back then I was a druid (loved tanking five-mans; wasn’t crazy about being a healer in raids, but there was no other option). Our guild was through MC (excep Rag), AQ 20, ZG, and had downed the first two bosses in BWL. We were wiping hard in BWL, likely because we didn’t really spend enough time farming the former instances. I guess we had the zeal but lacked the patience. Most folks had a smattering of gear but I don’t recall anyone having more than a two-piece bonus from anything. Good times.
Anyway, TBC launched, so that pretty much ended vanilla raiding. But end game in TBC was a lot of fun too, especially Kara, which allowed many different raiding configurations—and I loved the smaller group sizes.
So while I am looking forward to Classic, I can’t help but be held up a bit by limited tanking options. I really liked tanking on my druid in five-mans and never understood why I couldn’t tank in raid instances—until someone explained the concept of “crushing blows.” I was all, “Dude, that’s not a thing.” Well, I was wrong. So very wrong. You ever had 39 people simultaneously say, “Told you so?” Oh, it happened. We all had a good laugh, and then I shut my mouth about raid tanking. “Stick to the five-mans, fuzzy boy,” they said. Good stuff!
I know Classic is supposed to be a classic experience, but man, I sure wish paladins and druids who wanted to tank had that option. I get that you can’t just give them those abilities all willy-nilly without throwing all of it into a tizzy (allowing Paladins, for example, would give the Alliance an advantage, which I get isn’t fair since Shamans don’t have a tanking tree at all). Hybrids being pigeonholed into singular raiding roles never sat well with me (likely because I loved feral druids). I’ll deal with it, of course. I just wish it wasn’t so.
That’s how classic is. Every class has 1 intended role to raid as. It’s not recommended to take them into raiding if you don’t want to do that role. If you want to commit to tanking, should just roll a warrior.
Druids struggle with end game tanking because they don’t have enough avoidance. Their dodge boost don’t compensate for the lack of everything else. Extra health is almost meaningless. You could have a 20k health tank but if he doesn’t avoid any hits, no amount of healing would keep him alive. If mass health worked as a tank strat, then people would have warlock tanks.
Vanilla is what it is, but I do agree with you OP. I think it would have been better if each class spec was viable in raiding and that we had more options. I feel genuinely bad for those who like certain fantasy archetypes only to find out that they’d just be laughed at and rejected if they wanted to raid, or even just group up, as those who got unlucky with the Vanilla lottery.
As much as I dislike about TBC personally, rebalancing the classes was one of the things they did great imo.
I’d need to see evidence of that. I saw paladins in vanilla pull and hold giant swarms of mobs. They just beat themselves to death against all those thorns effects. I’m not saying a shaman can’t do that, but I am saying I’ve never seen it. That said, my vanilla experience was entirely with the Alliance, so I don’t know much about shamans.
dude totally, they made such great additions to each class that just made them fit so much better and gave people more choices with the classes they loved
