This is my first time playing classic. Loving it so far! I am curious if any vets can give their take on non-meta tactics in classic dungeons and raids. Can you still complete high level classic dungeons and raids if you have a few players not using meta classes and talent builds? Do enrage timers give breathing room for less min maxing and more fun having? Thank you.
Really depends on the guild, and what you mean by non META classes. However assuming you have a good raid leader, and the raid overall has competent players, they will typically be able to carry 3-4 players without any real challenges even when pushing new content before everything is on farm. I would strongly recommend if you want to be one of these, always be prepared with the best gear you can get, enchanted, and with full consumes, and know the fights. If you’re a positive in the raid, people wont mind as much your lack of DPS, also don’t take marginal upgrades for yourself that would be a much bigger benefit to the raid for someone else.
That said some non Meta classes bring more to the raid than others, for example a boomchicken or feral provide good buffs that you can’t get from a resto, so are desired. Shaman will always be desired for the WF and other totems. Shadow and Ret don’t really bring anything of value as most raids as healers will cover all the key buffs, and they don’t really bring anything special, but if raids are short in those areas, they can fill in as necessary.
for the most part yeah, but some with require more friendships than others
for example I love non meta class builds however I’d never group with an enhancement shaman tank in a raid
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@OP Ret pally is fun but youll see soon why its the meme spec of classic
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Molten core has been cleared by 40 druids. People are so annoying and pedantic honestly. Play what u want. 
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When I played in Classic 2019, we had a shadow priest, a boomkin, and a bear tank. You’ll likely be able to find a place no matter what you play, as long as you put in the effort.
Not every guild is hyper sweat. The bosses are not that hard and can be done without having an optimized raid team.
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Enh shaman can actually tank quite well certainly if stuff is on farm. That said if you’re running super sweaty groups, they might not have the threat necessary, but that would defiantly be a harder roll to fill, especially since like paladins they lack a taunt, limiting their viability on some fights.
I do agree though most raids wouldn’t let a meme spec take on a key roll like a tank for the most part, but if your willing to DPS as a shaman you likely get that spot, and perhaps the ability to tank a few bosses here and there if people are out. A key here for you would be to tank and run lots of dungeons with people you raid with, if they see you as a competent tank, you are more likely to get those opportunities if they should arrive when your main tanks are out.
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I’ve seen enhancement shamans fight KT. Anything is possible! People might flame you for having fun and being non-meta though.
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I’ve had paladin tank raids too, ( some bosses u can’t but there are ways). There’s a blessing (kings?) that generates like insane amounts of threat and u can spam with ( helps having a druid too). 
End of the day, we ain’t world first.
Kings spam actually makes them quite good on some bosses, and amazing in places like ZG where they are a great offtank. They do have the limitation however that without a taunt, they just are extremely challenged in anything requiring switching, like Four Horsemen, as you would not want them spamming Kings and getting agro on all the Horsemen, pulling them out of their corners.
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This is great feedback. Good to know thanks. Yeah I am less interested in world firsts, maximum dps, and clearing stuff in record time. A clear is a clear. Not like I’m going to face-roll talents lol. More like playing non-meta class specs for raiding like ret pld or shadow priest etc. Anyways, I’m gonna look for a laid back raiding guild that doesn’t take meta too seriously because you can still clear stuff either way.
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Ya I know the ins and outs of it, I just don’t raid in guilds on if I manage to raid it is usually a pug so I wouldn’t trust the group with it
The key to Classic, in general, is to get into a casual guild that has friendly people and does raid progression. The experience is much, much better than trying to do things solo or via PUGs. Casual guilds will be happy to bring whatever 40 sign up to go, meta or not.
When you get into competitive guilds thats when the “meta” raid compositions become forced and you have to play very specific classes and specs.
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Its also 10x better than being in a hardcore raiding guild that speedruns all the raids in 1 night with no tolerance for mistakes or not being peak efficient at your spec.
Casual prog guilds can still hit and do naxx within 2 night runs fully clearly it…
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Yes, but it is just harder to do so. Balance druid for example does not get hit rating from talents the same way that mages do, so they need gear to not miss as much. But you need to do the content to get the gear.
A good player can do wonders with a non-meta class or spec, but everything they do will just be more difficult. Sometimes only a little more difficult, sometimes a lot more difficult. I wouldn’t let it deter you from playing what you want though. I’ve already ran with shaman tanks in this fresh and it was absolutely fine.
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Yes, except for a few situation, you need ony scale cloak, and fire/nature resist sets, and patchwerk is a DPS check.
I’m playing druid myself, we get dual spec just play resto and balance.
You definitely can, dungeons and raids are easy enough for any group composition. However for tanking I recommend having Warriors simply because they handle threat better than other tanks. As for dps, anything does the job.
However there’s a problem with non-meta specs, people tend to be elitist and will only bring meta specs into their raids so you might have an hard time getting into pugs and certain guilds.
Guilds tend to be accepting of a handful of not meta specs in the raid since getting 40 people is already a challenge.
The forums will defend this as though this means meme specs are “fine” since I guess they are better than nothing.
But the majority of your raid is going to be meta specs. Having 10+ warriors is common. Having 10+ hunters or 10+ warlocks or 10+ shadow priests? Pretty uncommon to non-existent. The vast majority of a guilds dps will be warriors, rogues, and mages with a sprinkling of everything else, mainly because getting even more warriors, rogues, and mages is hard not that the other classes and specs are hard.
The original raids were cleared by clueless players getting 20fps at 100 ping you could clear all the content on anything. Buuuut good luck convincing everyone else that it’s worth it to bring you.
Apes speedrun of molten core was 17 minutes. All Druid speedrun was 30 minutes . We will all be fine. Just breathe everyone. 