Horde side. Something with a high skill ceiling. A nightmare in the hands of a pro, but maybe not so good in the hands of an average player? Thank you…
highest skill ceiling is a warlock. but the class that is hard to actually play properly is the druid in pvp.
5 Likes
Boomkin or Ele shaman. Both can absolutely melt people in PvP
1 Like
While not under rated, mage and hunter imo have the highest skill cap. You can 1v2 people if you are good enough.
1 Like
For horde I’d suggest Enh shammy. You can literally triple windfury crit someone to death before your dismount animation finishes.
1v1 I’m actually going to say Arms Warrior
People have this idea that warriors are terrible when not being babysat by a healer, when the reality is that they really only need a healer to deal with ranged roots/snares from Mage/Hunter/Druid… They where hardly helpless 1v1 overall, and even vs their “counter classes” listed above, they had enough stuns and raw burst to potentially eek out victories.
As for overall underrated:
Boomkins are reportedly really really good, but I can’t confirm that personally as my server had 0 of them.
Instead, I will say Warlocks take my vote… People know they are strong, but they ignore how incredibly diverse and versatile they are… I can think of no less than 5 different fully viable builds for warlock that each have an entirely unique playstyle, and some with multiple gearing options within that playstyle. Furthermore, they all have radically different strengths and weaknesses… and all of them are capable of winning a 1v5 with enough skill or luck.
1 Like
he asked for something with a high skill ceiling that was a “nightmare in the hands of a pro” lmao
To be fair, while Enhance can be played at it’s base level like a Frost DK with even more severe brain damage… The shear amount of totems, situational spells, and keybinds you have access to, and the resulting more twitch/reactionary styled gameplay in utilizing those spells effectively gives them a higher skillcap than they get credit for…Grounding a mage’s arcane power, tremor toteming as a lock is fearing your healer, kicking every 6 seconds… positioning an earthbind totem for maximum aoe snare on an opposing group, poison cleansing, disease cleansing, using a totem to poison cleanse, offhealing (which you really suck at but it’s still possible), weapon swapping to 1h/shield when focused, are all things in addition to the “run up to a guy and pray to the windfury gods” attacking. They also have some of the most limited mana pools in the game to do all that with, even further emphasizing the importance of their choices.
Warlock at it’s base level is often given credit for being a very high skillcap class, but I could probably teach a quadraplegic how to SM/Ruin murder someone by using seduce, curse of shadows, and shadowbolt as my only buttons at the most basic level. Or a frost mage to sit at the 36 yard mark and just pick targets specifically already engaged vs a teammate and mash frostbolt over and over until they die… In both cases that player might end up getting the kill, or hell, even topping the BG they where in doing exactly those things, but there is clearly room for more… Enhancement is imo fairly similar. Powerfully easy at the basic level, but the really good ones are significantly more problematic (though not nearly as dangerous as the Elemental variety since those do even more damage, do it at ranged, and have strong healing)
4 Likes
The high skill ceiling means that a certain class/spec has options available to it to counter other classes. A high skill floor means that a class when played by Hellen Keller will still roll people in pvp on occasion.
Enhancement shamans simply don’t have the mana pool to fight in prolonged engagements versus competent opponents, and all world trinkets/engineering does more for other classes than it does for the enhancement shaman. they just don’t have that high of a ceiling because an enhancement shaman played at an elite level will still crumple to just about every matchup on average.
warlocks have a high skill floor when paired with the succubus, I won’t disagree on that, but they have the most options available to them and can match every other class cool down for cool down and beat out all of them consistently. high floor, even higher ceiling
3 Likes
Every class has a high skill ceiling though… in regards to pvp
1 Like
Btw, I don’t know if you care but if you want to top killing blows in battlegrounds role a lock. They can spread some insane damage with their dots and finish(execute) people off with shadowburn(which always seems to crit).
As a lock you can mow people down with so many damage sources and have a huge effect on group pvp, arguably more than any other class.
druid IMO you need to know how to play all your specs
Feral druid was quite a complicated spec to play in vanilla relative to the others. There’s a huge difference in vanilla between an average rogue and a great rogue, but whether that suggests there’s a high skill cap there I’m not sure. I’d agree that locks are up there as well.
2 Likes
Feel like warlocks are over looked in every aspect of the game. Leveling, pvp, pve, cc, aoe. They can do everything but get credit for being 2nd fastest leveler and nothing else.
2 Likes
Theres not a lot of youtube video showcasing warlocks, and I think that could be a issue whereas theres so many mage/warrior/rogue ones
search youtube for “Goth 1.12 pvp” “Seuche 1.12 pvp” if you want to see hands down the best mechanical warlocks in duels
1 Like
Those are also playing a more modern method than you saw back in the day, using the tidal charm, full engi and weaving scorch in despite being sm/ruin because it was on fire school.
A bit ironic because people rarely actually played like that back in the day (because we know better now)… Some old school warlock vids I can recommend:
Drakedog 1 through something like 6 or 7 was all vanilla era.
Some things to note being that his first 2 movies are SM/Ruin and I’m fairly certain before deathcoil buff (early version was a 10min cd damage/heal nuke with no horrify), and the negative resistance nerf. His later videos all use a deep destro build (and important to note there that conflag changed a number of times during vanilla)
Dacke I remember the 2nd video specifically
Notes of importance is that he was soul link-shadowburn build, and soul like at that time was a 30second castable buff with a 50% reduction, and Master Demonologist (the thing that gives warlocks a stupid amount of resistance with a felhunter out and makes casters cry) didn’t yet exist
Now most applicable for potential classic, is going to be RD playing SM/Ruin
This is the only video I’ve been able to find in years where someone actually plays SM/Ruin how I played it… by seduce nuke-kamehameha-ing people’s heads off…
Important to note that this video is AFTER negative resistances was nerfed, and AFTER double trinkets was nerfed…You could quite literally double his damage numbers for the brief amount of time that both of those things also existed.
1 Like
Shaman or druid are deadly in a hand of a pro, a skilled player behind one of those toons is nasty.
2 Likes
For group play, a paladin that’s well geared and supports in PvP can carry a team to victory with sheer defensive skill. The ability to completely negate other classes burst combos on allies and yourself is invaluable to sustained success in BGs and world combat. Weapon switching between The Unstoppable Force with SoC for bursting with HoJ and Judgement and Divine Favor Holy Shock to a huge shield and 1 hander for when getting focused is the hybrid pvp experience.
Completely true. My brother was the best feral druid on my server and he wrecked. Only class he had trouble with was warlocks and their everlasting fear bombs that you can’t get out of.
1 Like