Nobody Really Wants To Heal

[Lersayil]

I don't really care what we're doing and how its split between dps and healing as long as its interesting. But I do hope we get to heal some more (or all the time), since I never much enjoyed the AST / WHM styled 1.5 button dps rotation.

As for WoW yeeah. Vanilla was notorious for the meme class specs. Lot of illusion of choice, but in the end the choices we're usually very limited by their performance and split by PvE / PvP.

[Kaethra]

As for WoW yeeah. Vanilla was notorious for the meme class specs. Lot of illusion of choice, but in the end the choices we're usually very limited by their performance and split by PvE / PvP.

Alot of that wasn't by design. As much as people like to rag on some of the difficulties in Vanilla WoW (and it did have its issues), class specs were not as bad as people believed. For example, I had a very success shadow priest spec. As I indicated before, I was raiding just fine with it. It was a challenge to be sure to heal and DPS. Back then we had ONE hotbar. It took addons to give us other hotbars. So what I had to do was put my heals on one hotbar, and damage spells on the other. This let me shift 1 and shift 2 back and forth. Playing in PVP also helped give the proper reflexes for that as well.

To give another example, a friend of mine played a Rogue that was a dagger spec. The common theme was that daggers under performed. His didn't. He had two felstrikers and his spec while mostly tailored for PVP burst, also had great PVE DPS. Enough that the guild we were in was recommending him to tone down his agro a bit by not executing the combos as often.

There were several specs that could be used. But too many people thought that you needed dedicated this or that. As I said I came from EQ where often times when you put together a party, you assigned roles after you got 4-6 people together. You saw what you had and you worked it out. You only needed specific classes in specific roles if you were in 1. Very high end content and 2. You were in a progression style run (meaning you didn't have requisite gear). Many of us handled WoW in very much the same way and it worked fine.

WoW was by no means perfect with its class and spec balance (never really ever did), but the issues many people had were caused by the players themselves.

[Ilyrian]

Alot of that wasn't by design. As much as people like to rag on some of the difficulties in Vanilla WoW (and it did have its issues), class specs were not as bad as people believed. For example, I had a very success shadow priest spec. As I indicated before, I was raiding just fine with it. It was a challenge to be sure to heal and DPS. Back then we had ONE hotbar. It took addons to give us other hotbars. So what I had to do was put my heals on one hotbar, and damage spells on the other. This let me shift 1 and shift 2 back and forth. Playing in PVP also helped give the proper reflexes for that as well.

To give another example, a friend of mine played a Rogue that was a dagger spec. The common theme was that daggers under performed. His didn't. He had two felstrikers and his spec while mostly tailored for PVP burst, also had great PVE DPS. Enough that the guild we were in was recommending him to tone down his agro a bit by not executing the combos as often.

There were several specs that could be used. But too many people thought that you needed dedicated this or that. As I said I came from EQ where often times when you put together a party, you assigned roles after you got 4-6 people together. You saw what you had and you worked it out. You only needed specific classes in specific roles if you were in 1. Very high end content and 2. You were in a progression style run (meaning you didn't have requisite gear). Many of us handled WoW in very much the same way and it worked fine.

WoW was by no means perfect with its class and spec balance (never really ever did), but the issues many people had were caused by the players themselves.

Out of interest - do you remember your build?
And were you taken as a Shadow Priest - or a did you actually take the spot of a healer.
Cause an Spriest was useful as the mana battery, obviously, but in no way had the mana to sustain the role of a full healer.

Of course in a 40 like MC you can take 15-20 people who know what to do and they can more or less drag the Ret Pallies and Balance Druids etc through it... but it wasn't not just optimal it was deliberately going against the (bad) game design.

But of course if it worked and nobody cared then fair play.

[Sylve]

Out of interest - do you remember your build?
And were you taken as a Shadow Priest - or a did you actually take the spot of a healer.
Cause an Spriest was useful as the mana battery, obviously, but in no way had the mana to sustain the role of a full healer.

Of course in a 40 like MC you can take 15-20 people who know what to do and they can more or less drag the Ret Pallies and Balance Druids etc through it... but it wasn't not just optimal it was deliberately going against the (bad) game design.

But of course if it worked and nobody cared then fair play.

Generally speaking, Raid Leaders only cared if you were good at what you did regardless of Class.
Much like Savage Raiding in XIV, it was only the 'World First' raiders or hardcore progress guilds that excluded Classes, usually because they were doing what XIV players do, and take only the classes with the mathematically superior numbers. Even if it was as small as 5%, if there was an advantage to taking one class over another, they did that.

[Ilyrian]

Generally speaking, Raid Leaders only cared if you were good at what you did regardless of Class.
Much like Savage Raiding in XIV, it was only the 'World First' raiders or hardcore progress guilds that excluded Classes, usually because they were doing what XIV players do, and take only the classes with the mathematically superior numbers. Even if it was as small as 5%, if there was an advantage to taking one class over another, they did that.

True true, but it wasn't just 5% comparing say a Mage to a Balance Druid.
Or a Arms Warrior to a Ret Pally.

But yeah, if you had a relaxed cool raid group/server/weren't pushing to kill anything really past MC/ZG then you'd be more or less fine.

[Kaethra]

Out of interest - do you remember your build?
And were you taken as a Shadow Priest - or a did you actually take the spot of a healer.
Cause an Spriest was useful as the mana battery, obviously, but in no way had the mana to sustain the role of a full healer.

Of course in a 40 like MC you can take 15-20 people who know what to do and they can more or less drag the Ret Pallies and Balance Druids etc through it... but it wasn't not just optimal it was deliberately going against the (bad) game design.

But of course if it worked and nobody cared then fair play.

Healer, and I don't quite remember them being able to give mana, but my memory on that might be janky. I believe the replenishment buff didn't come till an expansion. That was given to Ret Pallies, Shadow Priests, and I want to say one of the druid specs in Lich King. But now that I think about it, it may have started with shadow priests in BC.

As for the spec, I know it had enough to get shadowform. So at least a 10/10/31 spec. Possibly 10/5/36.

[Lersayil]

Healer, and I don't quite remember them being able to give mana, but my memory on that might be janky. I believe the replenishment buff didn't come till an expansion. That was given to Ret Pallies, Shadow Priests, and I want to say one of the druid specs in Lich King. But now that I think about it, it may have started with shadow priests in BC.

As for the spec, I know it had enough to get shadowform. So at least a 10/10/31 spec. Possibly 10/5/36.

I second this, I dont remember giving mana in the early days... but I also sort of remember that being a thing sometime before BC? Damn its hard to find versioned talent calculators.

[Deceptus]

I second this, I dont remember giving mana in the early days... but I also sort of remember that being a thing sometime before BC? Damn its hard to find versioned talent calculators.

Shadow Priest Mana Battery was TBC via Vampiric Touch

http://calculators.iradei.eu/talents/priest

[Sylve]

Healer, and I don't quite remember them being able to give mana, but my memory on that might be janky. I believe the replenishment buff didn't come till an expansion. That was given to Ret Pallies, Shadow Priests, and I want to say one of the druid specs in Lich King. But now that I think about it, it may have started with shadow priests in BC.

As for the spec, I know it had enough to get shadowform. So at least a 10/10/31 spec. Possibly 10/5/36.

Vampiric Touch was BC, that was the Mana Battery effect. in Classic they only had Vampiric Embrace, which party healed for 20% of your Shadow damage.

[Ilyrian]

Healer, and I don't quite remember them being able to give mana, but my memory on that might be janky. I believe the replenishment buff didn't come till an expansion. That was given to Ret Pallies, Shadow Priests, and I want to say one of the druid specs in Lich King. But now that I think about it, it may have started with shadow priests in BC.

As for the spec, I know it had enough to get shadowform. So at least a 10/10/31 spec. Possibly 10/5/36.

I think you're right - I'm probably confusing Replenishment with Shadow Weaving. Need to get my Classic head back on >.<