Which class will be most needed in vanilla?

[Clayvin-stormscale (Clayvin)]

Tanks as always. Paladin will probably be one of the least popular classes because its a pain to buff 40 people in a raid every 5 minutes.

[Ayasa-kiljaeden]

What classes are going to be most needed in classic? Priests? Shamans? Paladins? Warrior tanks?

I wanna be that guy

[Raelhorn] is more or less right… but still wrong.
Pally preferred in raiding for healing, 5 mans was priests just cuz pally’s lacked AoE healing.
Warriors where the best tanks/dps classes and did more dps then rogues.
You would take more then 1 lock but mostly for the SS and hearthstones (no way you would carry over 100 shards to a raid), and remember no soul wells so 1 individual HS each time.
Hunters you would still take them as early game their strong but their scaling is bad.
Shadow was only useful tell shadow cleaving but you would only take 1 anyways
sham/druid/pally he’s right about though.
but really go warrior, pally, or priest.

@Clayvin, they do have greater blessings, ie 1hr buffs >.> just wipes hurts you, financially because or reagents being 1-5G per, think they came in groups of 5 though.

[Æsus-kiljaeden]

I’m surprised they allowed Recklessness. It did have a reduced armor component, so a DPS boost for your melee classes, but it also increased the enemy attack power. It was an trade-off, usually at the expense of the tank taking harder hits; I guess it depends on whether or not the healers (and tanks) could handle it.

The small attack power gain an NPC’s gains is quite negligable compared to the benifit of additional armor reduction. 9 times out of 10 tanks don’t have the problem of getting hit too hard, they have to problem of holding threat. Curse of recklessness helps against most classes in that respect, and normally only dps warrior’s have to worry about backing off.

Curse of recklessness was the single most underappreciated warlock spell in vanilla wow. Not only was it normally the largest raid dps gain a warlock could provide with a button press, but people insisted that it wasn’t worth it and a CoA or CoD was better. It had awsome synergy with fear was well. You could control when an enemy would stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off simply by throwing up CoR then kite it as it started to run back to you, override your CoR with any other curse then watch it run around in fear again. It was the small things that separated the good locks from the bad ones, and a good lock will ALWAYS get a raid spot. I wouldn’t be surprised to see good locks top dps meters in thier raids.

[Feuerhuf-hyjal (Feuerhuf)]

Well, every raid needs at least three paladins, Alliance-side – four is better. Sure, everyone falls all over themselves for healers generally and priests specifically, but paladin is a pretty good choice for that reason: buffs!

[Auddoras-stormrage]

Depends.

PVE raids = warrior tanks and all healing specs

Dungeons = all type of tanks and healers.

BGs= 1x Paladin tank(strongest solo PvP melee class if built right) and healers

Dps is always going to be available.

[Darjuul-wyrmrest-accord]

Nicely done. Did you get give soloing Scholo a shot? That was an interesting one, even if it kinda boiled down to running laps around Gandling’s room for half of it.

As for tanking dungeons, was it by Voidwalker, Searing Pain spam, or just screw aggro madness and giggles?

Unfortunately no, I never much bothered with Scholo solo (ran it too damn much). I did duo most of LBRS with a mage though, farming up the Robes of the Archmage pattern. Had some druids and rogues follow us in stealth and observe because they didn’t believe we could handle the 4 and 5 pulls.

When I tanked, I just went all out. CC, DoTs, a lot of Searing Pain. I held aggro in DM:W pretty well, but I was obviously gave all my healers grey hairs.

I was on Alliance, but yeah Shaman tanks were great (played Horde for the first chunk of Vanilla before swapping over).

I was thinking more in the context of that it would push something else off if the debuff slot wasn’t kept free, it did have a fairly short duration (somewhere between 5-10 seconds?).

Yeah but that that point you just reapply… there was a priority system for debuffs so it’d usually drop off a Deep Wounds or maybe a Curse of Agony or something and you just dealt with it. Taunt, Sunder, and Curses were all pretty high. Maybe it was a bit more of a balancing act with rolling Ignites, but one of our mages refused to change from Frost and another was literally a madman (as in, he was heavily medicated and thought he was Jesus Christ reborn) and would only spec full Arcane. So, we didn’t have much Ignite rolling.

I’m surprised they allowed Recklessness. It did have a reduced armor component, so a DPS boost for your melee classes, but it also increased the enemy attack power.

If was iffy on some bosses, but for the most part the extra damage done was worth it. If we were doing ZG or AQ20 and only had a couple of melee we’d skip it, but we usually had a couple of hunters, bunch of warriors and rogues, and usually a ret so in 40 mans the extra DPS was worth it. Especially once the tanks were geared.

Sunder was THE main threat ability for Warrior tanks (and actually did extra bonus threat at 5 stacks for some reason, if I recall correctly)… so I’m a bit surprised by this one. Don’t think they stacked (may have reduced armor more), but if it overwrote it, it could be something of an issue.

Threat being the big concern that it was back then, a threat loss would be a whole raid DPS loss.

Revenge actually did more Threat per Rage IIRC, Sunder was just easier to use. Don’t even ask about 1.12 Shield Slam, there are enough threads here about that as it is.

Talented Expose Armor gave a greater reduction, didn’t stack, and most rogues didn’t take the talent (it was useless outside of a raid). I know some min-maxers used it, but we never bothered; we’d rather the tanks have an easier time maintaining threat in case things went south.

[Loial-shadowsong (Loial)]

Warriors.

They are the strongest immediate melee next to Rogues yet offer the ability to tank. They scale incredibly well in every raid tier. They are your ultimate frontline in PvP; AB they assault bases and close out kills, WSG they control the middle and close out kills, and AV they push flags and towers and tank warmasters/bosses, and close out kills.

They are without question one of the absolute strongest classes in Vanilla, and every raid needs a surplus of them available. They are fickle and primadonna, and rotate guilds depending on gear drops and levels of entitlement. They are your alpha and omega.

You will never see a shortage of them, and you will see every guild recruiting them constantly, well into the latter stages of progression. Early on, as tank spots in raids are limited, you will see guilds favoring missing rotational classes and debuffs, but through the end of BWL, into AQ40, and Naxxramas, every guild continually looks for top-performing Fury Warriors and back-up tanks.

You will always see guilds looking for any number of classes, but in my experience, Warriors.

[Nerdsmasher-proudmoore]

I’ll think i’ll roll a paladin baby give me that hammer of GG and mcdonalds hat.

[Tomes-llane (Tomes)]

Priests brought the shackle for those strat runs

[Boogyman-dentarg]

skilled players!

[Valhallin-kilrogg]

Assuming you’re a skilled player, want to raid at a high level, and you want a class that will always be useful in every situation:

#1 Prot warrior

If you are a pro tank, you will find a place in a good guild. Once you’re situated, you will have a raid spot and be highly valued forever.

#2 Priest

If you’re fine playing holy or shadow, you will find a raid spot no problem.

#3 Mage

Mages scaled well in Vanilla, they’re ranged so healers love them, they use only a couple debuff slots, and provide multiple kinds of utility.

A properly balanced raid had a need for every class, especially for certain buffs, cc, burst dps, etc, but those 3 were the most needed imo.

[Tykis-icecrown]

If you want to be that guy… find a good guild first, and they will welcome you with loving arms if you are willing to fill a role that no one else will. Just make sure you get good at it!

But I think a priest healer would be the safest bet. I tried leveling one, and I found it extremely tedious to level. It just wasn’t fun for me.

[Pintero-moon-guard (Pintero)]

I would say druid / warlock though it depends on what you want to do, 5 mans pvp raids? etc. Warlock would be your best bet for raiding i’d think druid if you wana heal.

[Ythisens]

Probably tanks or healers, the usual.

Definitely not Warriors or Rogues though… there won’t be a shortage in that department.

[Axêll-scilla (Axêll)]

I find it strange that people are saying healers. Are we all forgetting that Hybrids almost all become healers at max level? Priest, Shaman, Paladin, Druid. 4 out of 9 classes get pigeon holed into healing ( lets not pretend like they don’t) at 60, where is the shortage of healers coming from? 40% ish of the classes are designed around healing at 60…

[Aryxymaraki-earthen-ring (Aryxymaraki)]

I find it strange that people are saying healers. Are we all forgetting that Hybrids almost all become healers at max level? Priest, Shaman, Paladin, Druid. 4 out of 9 classes get pigeon holed into healing ( lets not pretend like they don’t) at 60, where is the shortage of healers coming from? 40% ish of the classes are designed around healing at 60…

Two reasons.

One - Those classes tend to be the least played. All healing-capable classes combined average a population roughly equal to warrior + rogue.

Two - Not all of those players are willing to heal; they’re DPS spec or they PVP or they just don’t want to heal for PUGs when they could play in a guild group.

[Thestevesbdk-proudmoore]

you play a different classic than i did? warriors are the only tank.

[anon71292160]

Roll a priest and you’ll never run out of friends.

[anon83669306]

Probably tanks

Definitely not Warriors

Wait … but …

[Fallanaa-area-52 (Fallanaa)]

I’ll be rolling a druid as a main. I’ll also have no problems being a healer, as it’s what I did in Vanilla. Though in TBC I was a tank/healer hybrid for Karazhan. (Kinda wish that was possible again LOL)