I agree. Try a druid!
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just play the class and spec you want… this is why you hear so many of us say, play what you like, not what others like… everyone has a different taste for things, and like others stated before get nightfall and I am positive your guild whoever has you, will pick you up… Vanilla raids aren’t as complicated as we once thought in 2004-2006
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This really. You can play any spec (as long as it doesn’t take too many of precious debuff slots), all you need is to find a friendly relaxed guild.
With all knowledge acquired over 1.5 decades on average players will be better than they were in vanilla, so if there are few hybrids doing weird roles in raid, there will be plenty of players to compensate for it.
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our locks were expected to have minimum a 30 at the start, by the end I normally had 10ish just because I was bad about getting drain soul on mobs consistently. you will have 3-4 locks in the raid (used to be 2-3 but classic is 16 debuffs so maybe get more in for curses), most people are lazy and want a summon so thats say 25-30 stones between the locks. then you have soul stones and health stones to pass out but we usually gathered and made those as we started trash not pre-farmed.
If you have buddies who will play and you can group with, (not that you even need that) then all the more reason to play whatever you want to play.
If retribution pallys are uncommon, you’ll be a rarity. It will be nice to mix things up and have different kinds of heroes in Azeroth.
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feral druids will probably be a bit underplayed but most guilds will give at least 1 maybe 2 slots to feral
crit aura, BR, innervate and can tank if need be. you also dont compete really for weapons with other melees. so melee heavy 5 mans will love you!
but i agree to most ppl here, just play what you want to play and then find a guild that allows you to play that role. in normal guilds it should be fine, in progress guilds maybe a bit harder, but there will be ret slots as well in some.
Soul shard farm is not a big deal. I mean you have to farm mobs anyway so you just click drain soul right before they die. Fill up a bag and you are good.
Destro is fine for PvP. First warlock on my server to get Grand Marshall was Destro. Personally I went Soul Link but we both did well. For raiding you will probably want to go SM/Ruin. So pretty much shadow bolt spam. But all the classes are spamming something or other . Might as well be shadow bolt.
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As someone who tends to hop around classes depending on guild need, I’d say play what you enjoy otherwise it won’t be as much fun.
Paladins can tank dungeons, if that’s what you like, and tanks tend to be in short supply at 60.
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It’s a good practice to fill your bags with shards the night before.
You can summon stragglers (ideally off the edge of Blackrock Mountain to help teach them the virtue of punctuality)… and use the remnants making healthstones for whoever wants one, rather than just a select few VIPs
Basically, like the old line about guns or condoms, with soul shards it’s better to have one and not need it, than need one and not have it. You can always just delete excess shards if absolutely necessary.
The actual farming of them is massively overblown, however… You can spend 5 minutes in an AV and fill your bags just drain soul sniping whatever the deathball raid zerg is currently attacking, and once you know what you’re doing in pvp, even places like WSG I can end up with more shards at the end of a game than I had going in, just by being diligent with drain soul-ing targets right before they die. It becomes second nature over time.
There are 2-4 warlock pve specs.
- Demo Sac/ Ruin is the top pve build and atrocious for pvp.
- SM/Ruin is the #2 build, but it is OUTSTANDINGLY good for pvp
The remaining two builds are niche…
3. Master Demonologist/ Ruin… This is the build you run when your tank is atrocious, you are a tier or more better geared than your tank, or your guild was super insistent that one of the warlocks get the 3/3 imp talent for bigger bloodpact… This build is always a substantial dps loss, but incredibly threat forgiving (since you get 20% threat reduction and also lost 10% shadow damage reduction) This build is also kind of terrible in pvp… but not useless like DS/Ruin
- Soul Link… You may be asked to run this build if and only if your guild is using you to tank twin emps in AQ40.
As for pvp builds:
-
Nightfall/Conflag
More nuke centric version of SM/Ruin… You could also use this in pve, but it’s a 10% loss vs SM/Ruin (a difference that could potentially be mitigated by the different gearing strategies for NF/Conflag favoring crit% vs SM/Ruin favoring flat +shadow… and then you’d basically be more or less helping to keep the improved shadow bolt debuff up for your raid a bit better… That being said, SM/Ruin could also stack crit% if it wanted and would still have the +10% shadow from Shadow Mastery talent. -
SM/Ruin
This is one the single most well rounded builds in the game… It can 100-0 people with nukes, it can 100-0 people with dots, and gets both range talents and shadowburn… It also has more utility with CoEx and can somewhat “drain tank” (at least better than most specs) -
Shadow Mastery/Demo Sac
Sell out hard to stack +% shadow modifiers (with succubus sac) or basically turn into an unlimited health/mana factory (VW sac)… You play entirely reliant on dots/drains to do your thing but it’s a hell of a solo farming build, and a hell of an annoying pvp build once it gets the gear it needs (it’s INCREDIBLY gear dependent but incredibly powerful scaling) -
Soul Link/Shadowburn
This is like a training wheels warlock… You play like a short range version of SM/Ruin, but are incredibly tough to kill and basically will only lose a 1v1 to classes that understand how to utilize their longer reach to keep you at bay. Most people aren’t that talented. -
Soul Link/Affliction
This is the build of warlock you run when, rather than winning, you just want the other person to hate their life enough to quit the game in disgust… It’s basically a dueling spec, and kind of immune to people 1v1… The downside is that it’s also so horrifically inept at dealing damage, that it’s kind of like playing a tank spec in pvp and you basically have to tickle people to death or drain their mana AND tickle them to death. -
Deeper destruction…
It’s not bad, and arguably only a tiny bit worse than the above builds, but once you understand the intricacies of using the extra 6 yards of range for your spells, you start favoring Destro builds that at least get the range talent in affliction (which is SM/Ruin and NF/Conflag)
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Honestly from what you are saying Lock sounds about right. The soul shard farming doesn’t take very long to be honest. 5 minutes a day or so and you’re ready for raiding.
That said if you plan to PvP as well… for the love of all that is holy don’t roll Lock or Priest on alliance. Go horde with it or don’t bother. The masses of undead will eat you alive.
PvE wise, if it has a melee weapon, it goes human. Sure you can go other things, but you WILL lose DPS if PvE is your main goal.
Stick with pally, my warrior will want all the healbots I can find.
There is a rule.
“The answer to all Classic questions, is Druid”
and it works here too.
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I hope you strapped your belt on tight, young <class>, because there is work to do here in Northshire.
And I don’t mean farming.
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I’ll be playing a tankadin come classic, just like i did in vanilla. You’ll make friends during the leveling process if you’re good and that can help you get a raid slot as an off tank.
So basically I’m saying play what ever you want how you want, if you’re good, someone will pick you up and help you progress simply because you’re fun to play with.
They can in very low end guilds. The HotW spec you mentioned 0/30/21 is not a progression raiding spec. You can get away with it in molten core or raids that are farm status…but its a very under-performing healer and a very under-performing tank.
Feral druid threat and dps both require the omen of clarity talent in the balance tree, you dont have it. Healing druids at best have 2 spots in a raid, one that rejuves the raid and one that swiftmends the tank, you dont have the talents for either. HotW is a leveling/5man dungeon spec or a “carry me” spec for raids that are farm status.
Rogues dont raid in pvp spec either for progression. Combat is not good for pvp, lol.
You will be paying for respecs or pvping in your raiding spec. No guild in progression is going to have pvp specced toons invited because you will be at the bottom of the meters for your class and role. The exception being the very low end guilds that have trouble clearing anything…and a big part of the reason they have trouble is allowing people to raid in pvp spec.
Holy Paladin.
I’m not so mix max to care about the human expertise. For PVP there’s much better than human for most classes. But yea if all you do is pve warrior than sure human.
Going to have to hard pass bud sorry
I’m not against druid. Wpvp would be fun with stealth. And off heals for dungeons and leveling.
All specs are viable in classic now, man. There’s ret paladins that stick just fine in the charts. If you’re going to try to get into method for world firsts, yeah no, they won’t let you. But between all the youtube guides, indexes, exhaustive theory crafting you’ll be fine in any normal guild.
If you play a fury warr, yes, you can faceroll and win.
and you 100% will not top charts. But you can pull decent enough numbers to come along on raids.
We didn’t think bear tanks were a thing either. Skarm has a whole guide on youtube about the benefits of bear tanking.
Skarm actually has a friend that plays a ret pally and pulls numbers just fine. Play what you like man, it’s not worth trying to hit the 2nd round of world firsts.
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Combined i agree. Feral dps dwarfs warrior dps complexity completely. However, you’re not compensated for the level of complexity in comparison to warrior dps. And druid tank is infinitely simpler than warrior tanking in Vanila, but warrior has to tank to have a difficult role.