WoW Classic Class Picking Guide

[Music] hey guys what's up mad season here back with another video for you so you've decided to join many others in the world of Azeroth as it was in 2004 to 2007 referred to as vanilla or classic I'm sure you have many questions the biggest of them probably being what class should I play as you would imagine classes have changed and evolved in a huge way over the years almost unrecognizable from classic dickering so in this video I'd like to give a brief rundown of each one and go over their roles responsibilities niches perks and just how they play it as a whole now this is a pretty exhausted subject on youtube I think class guides are all over the place but something I've noticed is that they're usually more aimed for the hardcore audience with most of the tak being about the end game and tier lists for DPS healing or tanking aimed more at people who may be played on private servers for the past several years or at least have a base knowledge of the game and it's vanilla state so since that's been covered really well by people much more knowledgeable than I for this video I want to take a much more casual approach assuming that the last time you played classic was 12 years ago or maybe you never had the chance to play it at all I'll go over each class in the endgame and talk about the responsibilities and what roles that they generally landed in but I won't go super detailed and get into spreadsheets or anything like that so if you're looking for a very high-level detailed guide with class rankings and whatnot you probably won't find this video very enlightening but if you just had the thought of yeah I'm not sure what class I want to play let me search YouTube this might be helpful to you at least that's what I hope the first thing I'll say is that each of these classes in the game have very specific roles that only they can fill it's one of the more defining aspects of vanilla actually today things have sort of melded together most classes are capable of really good a OED PS or maybe back then it was the major specialty and today most classes have some form of stun which was primarily a rogue attribute back then everyone is super mobile has oh crap buttons big DPS cooldowns everyone can do everything basically this wasn't the case back then and it has it's good sides and downsides a downside obviously is that the balance is questionable there were certain specializations that you rarely saw because it was still the early stages and a lot of this was still experimentation but a good side was that the roles that you could fill or the roles that you could fill no one else it gave you more value and a sense of identity people saw different classes join and they reacted differently it was something like oh cool a warlock now we can summon and we also have that handy soul still and if we wipe or oh nice shaman and we get to have that party wide windfury buff I can guarantee you that this will be one of the first things that you notice if you pick up classic and it's part of what made it so special back then before we get into the classes though I should also go over how talent worked since I'll be mentioning specializations quite a bit talents back then were much different you didn't outright pick a specialization which gave you certain spells you had access to 90% of your class's abilities regardless of the spec and putting points into certain trees would just increase the power of those abilities for example as a mage who has more points in the frost tree you still have fireball fire blasts scorch and flame strike and whatnot but they just won't be as powerful as they would be if you had more points in the fire tree so later on if I say fire mage or whatever try to disassociate that with today's system where for the most part fire mages just have fire spells or only assassination rogues that poisons your toolkit is tied to your class not your specialization I just wanted to mention that since it's one of the more confusing things for those who never played before the Cataclysm expansion so in no particular order let's start with the warlock [Music] this is a pure DPS class that specializes in shadow and fire magic and is supported with a wide variety of curses and other afflictions to wear down and debilitate your foes you also have access to a varied selection of demons to accompany you and your journeys each with their own role to fill there are three specializations our affliction destruction and demonology affliction improves your damage over time effects to give your enemies a slow but steady death and destruction more focuses on your big hitter spells such as shadow bolt or the instant cast shadow burn a more direct way of dealing damage with big crits and much more volatility compared to affliction and as for demonology as you guess this improves your ability to summon demons increasing their health damage and much more as for your roles warlocks are the ultimate wingman class they're just great to have in the party they're the only ones who can summon allies which is especially important back then since meeting stones did summon and with no flying traveling was much more cumbersome in general their soul stone was quite unique and much more valuable back then as well only this and druids had the ability to resurrect during combat although back then he had to apply the soul stone before the target died so sort of a pre-emptive battle res most of the time though and you just threw it on a healer and they only used it after a wipe so they could raise up and save everyone I read back they're also the only class that can reliably crowd control elementals with their banished spell which was castable in combat and has no cooldown you pretty much needed warlocks for the GAR fight back then in the molten core he had a bunch of mini elementals running around and unless he had a bunch of tanks he would be wise to have a few warlocks on banish'd duty they arguably have the most useful debuff sin the game with curses that reduce their resistances of enemies so all of your spell casters can pump out more damage their fear spell is one of the better crowd controls particularly for PvP is castable in combat and range with no cooldown and it didn't immediately break on damage which made it very tough to deal with and another defining spell is their life tab which trades life for mana mana management wasn't just a thing for healers back in the day DPS also had to use their resources wisely or risk being unable to cast anything today most DPS classes have it just to have it it's inconsequential 99% of the time the one exception I think is the arcane mage so if mana management isn't something that you're too keen on or lack is a great choice for the spell alone it'd give them an edge over other casters in the game they could also make health stones which were just as valuable back then as they are today vital to have but realistically you'd save them for the tanks because they required soul shards to make which brings me to my next point a quirk with warlocks back then was that their soul shard system wasn't tied to your character like how it is now rather it's an inventory item and to gather them you have to be draining the soul of a target when it died certain spells require these soul shards to cast the ritual of summoning health stones soul stones every demon summon excluding the IMP and even combat spells such as soul fire and shadow burned these took up an inventory slot and back then as infamous as it was they didn't stack so you're constantly playing this game of keeping an ample amount of these shards to make sure that you could cast all of your spell's and make your stones and whatnot and at the same time trying to save space for quest items and loot so some will find that aspect frustrating but they're just so useful to have that it's completely worth it I find if your goal is to make friends in this game I always say to make a tank a healer or a warlock any of those and your friends list should fill up pretty quickly because people will always want you around so for endgame you're a great support class and you have great prospects in both PvE and PvP raiding wise you are hindered a fair amount and due to the debuff slot limit back then your whole raid was limited to 16 debuffs on one target so being a class that has a wide variety of damage overtime spells and other debuffs you may feel quite restricted in the rating scene if your focus is rating I think most warlocks drift away from the affliction tree in particular because of this limit and they still do all right for themselves but again that's mainly rating we're talking about here casual dungeons and PvP it's no-holds-barred so you're free to do whatever you want because of this they're quite deadly and the PvP scene you just have so many choices of abilities to [ __ ] or encumber your enemies and with mastery of all of your demon summons you could overcome nearly any obstacle so just a great utility class while still having some bite for actual DPS which is why I like them so much since we're talking about DPS here though another hugely different thing in classic we need to talk about was thread today it's really just the tanks responsibility to hold a ground everything and pretty easily done at that you taunted and you haven't forever unless you forget to press buttons however back in vanilla it was more of a group effort remember that old Onyxia wipe animation he wasn't joking it was much harder for tanks to get and if the DPS went balls to the wall they could very well rip aggro from the tank and wipe the entire raid my guild personally did the three sunder rule warriors had this Under Armour ability which was the main threat generator and it stacked a 5 and usually when they got to 3 you were OK to start dpsing not necessarily pop all of your cooldowns and go ham but she could at least start to ramp up at this point so you have to take this into consideration when talking about DPS or likes do great damage and the later tiers there shadowbolts head extremely hard but downside is that they have little to no way of reducing their aggro other than just not attacking there is an argument to be had between having medium damage and good aggro control versus high damage and no aggro control so definitely consider that if you're looking for the class that deals the most damage it's a double-edged sword [Music] next we have the mage anyone who's played RPGs before should know the basic gist of this class you are dresses and you command the power of frost fire and arcane to freeze incinerate and disintegrate your foes their play styles are quite varied fire spec is more based on huge bursty damage to kill your enemies in the blink of an eye a lot of the old PvP videos you'd have what we're called three-minute mages or with cooldowns you'd be able to instigate people with giant pyro blasts is pretty much the definition of a glass cannon though and you forego defense for the sake of allah defense if that's not your style though you also have frost which is much more methodical and more catered towards defense through slows routes and barriers you have much more control in general compared to the fire spec and as for your arcane school this is where a lot of your utility spells lay just to throw out some examples you have some supportive spells such as your arcane intellect the ability to dampen and amplify magic dampen decreases magic damage and healing received and amplified does the opposite we also have a shield which absorbs damage in exchange for mana the blink spell to create some distance and some damaging spells such as the channeled arcane missles for steady damage or the AoE arcane explosion they still had a lot of Handy abilities that we have in the current game the main ones being the ability to conjure food and water and also portals to major cities it's just that back then with gold being so hard to come by and travelling being so time-consuming they had much more value compared to today just keep in mind if you play a mage and you're hanging out in your major city you will be asked for food and portals it's just a fact of life some of the more industrious mages even made quite a bit of gold selling portals to major cities back then you needed a reagent to open one up so there was some justification in charging a price for them they're cheap spell was the most diverse and reliable crowd control in the game no cooldown cast a black range and worked on humans and beasts which most of the dungeons were comprised of and combined that with the challenging nature of dungeons back then and thus the need of CC mages are always great to have in the group and its usefulness in PvP is also pretty self-explanatory in the rating scene you could always want at least a few mages there for food and water and for their damage too as I remember they did pretty good an interesting quirk that I should mention though is that back then and this is for any class not just mages but enemies did have resistances so you might be stronger or weaker too pending on what your killing and harder SPECT for example the molten core being the home of the elemental Lord of fire Ragnaros it had many enemies were resistant to fire magic so a fire mage would find themselves quite weak here as you would imagine and elsewhere as a frost mage there are some other fights that are unfriendly to them it makes sense if you think about it especially if you played the old Final Fantasy's where he had to find an elemental enemies weakness it's just one of the old RPG elements that I thought was worth mentioning since mages have access to three schools of magic though they can adapt a bit better than other classes whereas warlock is a manly shadow and some fire you can use fire frost or arcane which gives them an edge in certain fights [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the rogue's proficiencies lion stealth subterfuge and assassination they have a wide arsenal of stunts slows poisons and other debilitating effects to ensure that they're always in firm control of any skirmish that they come across that is if they so choose to engage being just one of two classes to have the stealth ability the rogues have the advantage of staying in the shadows and striking or disengaging when the time is right just the sound of a stealth drogue nearby is enough to send chills down a player spine because they know that they're being stalked and at any moment you'd hear this if your goal is to make other players angry and snap their keyboards in half this is the class for you their offensive juggernauts holding a wide variety of robust cooldowns to kill their enemies in the blink of an eye and at the same time many abilities and traits that made them extremely evasive and nimble because of this they're extremely deadly in PvP in the right hands and are considered among the best as DPS in the PvE scene as well they use the energy and combo point system you build up energy over time and you have combo point builders and spenders as your resources you have three specializations to choose from and that's assassination combat and subtlety the combat rogue is a total swashbuckler designed to simply overpower your target typically focusing on one-handed swords or maces but there were some dagger builds as well usually though if diggers were your weapon of choice most of your points would land in the assassination or subtlety trees assassination increases your burst damage and improves your poisons and subtlety refines your stealth and your ability to sneak through the shadows as well as giving you more cooldowns to set up more efficient kills as for some of your specialties you have the ability to pick elects which can make certain dungeons easier or let you open up black boxes this is another skill that players would make gold from offering to open lock boxes for a small sum another quirk with them was that to use your backstab or ambush abilities back then he actually had to be behind your target it does make sense it is called backstab after all so positioning was key and if you or your opponent was lagging pvp would be quite tricky to pull off sometimes and as for leveling as you would imagine most rogues would invest points into the combat spec it's hard to backstab when enemies are constantly facing you they're also the only class that can disable traps making them quite good for PvP but even in certain areas in PvE as well they have a wide variety of poisons at their disposal as I said in classic he actually had a whole profession to craft them direct damage damage over time a slow killing reduction casting speed increase pick your poison they're applicable on the fly so you can adapt to any situation that's presented to you and going into more detail with their evasiveness and defensive capabilities you have sprint which increases your movement speed evasion which increases your ability to dodge and vanish which immediately puts you in stealth to hide yourself from your enemies with these cooldowns you can escape just about any situation which is another reason why they're so deadly in PvP being able to choose your fights gives you such a huge advantage compared to other classes they don't have as much utility in the realm of group buffs or long-lasting crowd-control their weaknesses are their cooldown dependent and as far as everyday dungeon crowd controlling is concerned they just have SAP which is only usable on humanoids and without a certain Talon it breaks you out a stealth upon cast which also makes it quite dangerous I remember back then sometimes to get in groups people wanted me to have points and improved but since it was quite deep into the subtlety tree I never had it since it would hurt me in rating and respecting back then was very costly their main saving grace is that their kick ability who was the most reliable interrupt in the game having a short cooldown and castable anytime as long as he had the energy but where they maybe aren't as useful compared to a warlock or mage and group utility they make up for in pure raw damage they're famous for being one of the powerhouses of vanilla and one of the reasons for that is because the accel had aggro control they have the feint and vanish abilities in their toolkit which complements their potential for high DPS really well because you have more freedom with how much you can actually attack without pulling aggro and wiping the entire raid as the main reason why I liked rogue so much back then and why I rated this one for most of vanilla so PvE or PvP you just can't go wrong with them truly a class to be feared when played properly [Music] the hunter is an expert scout and marksman who favors a bow gun or crossbow as their weapon of choice and are accompanied by their trusty companion pet their fourth and final peer DPS class in the game and they hold a wide variety of devastating ranged attacks to decimate their foes from a distance and a small arsenal of traps to keep them out of harm's way if that fails them however they have a respectable amount of melee strikes and a ferocity that's matched only by their beast companions bears leopards spiders wolves the wild holds endless potential allies for the hunter to tame summer is common as a household cat and others are rare trophies and only the most patient can say that they've successfully domesticated your three specializations our marksmanship beasts mastery and survival marksmanship as you'd guess improves your ability to attack from range providing increases to your various things and even the aimed shine ability which is a skill that takes a few seconds to line up a devastating hit beast mastery improves your animal companions and your bond with them providing benefits for both the hunter and the pet a signature spell on being bestial wrath which turns your pen into an unstoppable killing machine and as for the survival tree this houses many improvements to your traps melee attacks and just improves your control in general and your ability to kite highlight being your wife earned sting which is a ranged attack that puts your target to sleep some of the unique things going on with them that she may have heard is the fact that they need ammo to fire their weapons this was taken away in the Cataclysm expansion but for bows and crossbows you needed arrows and for guns he needed bullets to be able to attack to help keep your bags clean he also had access to special ammo pouches or Quivers which typically had higher capacity and also a boost to your ranged attack speed you also had the ability to equip melee weapons in addition to your ranged since hunters really shined that range these mainly son after four the stats more than anything you may have heard people jokingly referring to every single weapon in the game as a hunter weapon this is due to their tendency to take melee weapons with little regard to their comrades even though they don't really use them either due to selfishness or blissful ignorance as for the pet system this was also quite different at the time nowadays pets share the same stats and DPS regardless of what you tame but back in vanilla each pet had unique stats some were more tanky some had a really high attack speed or maybe a slow speed but with high damage or maybe they had certain unique abilities for example the turtles had a nice shield wall which made them quite nice for tanking enemies and only the boars had a charge which would route enemies in place for a second and wolves had a howl which would increase the damage of party members and so on there's way too many to list the way you learn these skills was also pretty unique certain pets had certain ranks of these skills and if you battled with them enough you'd gain the ability to train their skills to other pets it used skill points and you had all sorts of abilities and buffs to choose from and customize your pet armor increases certain resistances and so on he also had a happiness meter that she had to keep track of there are three levels unhappy neutral and happy with a damage modifier of 75 percent 100 percent and 125 percent respectively it decreased over time and was only increased through feeding her pet certain foods and if your pet was unhappy for too long it would actually abandon you funny enough how often you had to feed your pet who was affected by the loyalty system which was another quirk that they had the longer you journeyed with your companion the more loyal that became to you and the less he had to feed it to keep it happy and it goes on and on it really had some Pokemon aspects to it it was quite complicated back then so it was kind of funny that newer players were often pointed towards hunter as their first class that's because were easy to play at a very basic level but looking past that they're actually one of the hardest classes to master I think a contributing factor to that being there dead zone basically enemies who are too far to melee and too close to shoot that's right if enemies got up in your face you're forced to bust out your melee weapons and deal with them that way or find a way to get some range between you this is pretty easy if you have a pet to taunt it off of you but up until level 10 you're on your own so it's a pretty tricky thing to deal with especially in PvP it's a constant battle of keeping other players out of melee range and you can really notice as clear as day the difference between a good hunter and a bad hunter in a PvP setting another unique thing they have our traps you do still have some of these today depending on your spec but I think the best way to put in is back then they were much more substantial and that's because they were vital and keeping distance between you and your enemy so with the removal of the dead zone they kind of faded into the background but back then you had to master these things if you wanted to be a decent hunter you had the normal freezing trap which as you'd guess frozen targets and she also had your frost trap which was your AoE slow and there were some damaging ones immolation for a single target dot and explosive for AoE a cool set of abilities that helped define the class and I mentioned this earlier but hunters back then used mana has their resource which will take a lot of people by surprise I'm sure so no more focus which means proper mana management becomes an important aspect of the class as a whole as for your endgame roles your DPS obviously they aren't the most damaging and endgame rating but they make up for it by bringing some great utility he had aspect of the pack which was a group wide speed buff the trueshot aura which was a group wide attack power buff tranquilizing shot to dispel at rages and with your eyes of the beast he made excellent trash and boss Polar's and with your tracking you could pinpoint the location of certain enemies it was very common to Hunter's as raid leaders back then and it makes sense there the forward Scouts of the game leaving their comrades through dangerous enemies and obstacles they had great agro control with their feign death ability so if fred control is one of the more scary aspects of vanilla for you they handle it quite nicely probably as good as rogues if not better and in PvP they were quite deadly if they know what they were doing there were a threat to everyone any melee if they knew how to kite healers with their mana drain and even casters if they had the raid pet pushing back their casts I think if he had to pick just one class to describe as easy to learn and hard to master it's the hunter war war never changes since the dawn of humankind when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and both blood has been spilled in the name of everything from God to justice to simple psychotic rage [Music] the quintessential melee class of any RPG the warrior is a heavily armored juggernaut who doesn't rely on cunning nor magic rather they favor their combat prowess and the hefty weight of sharp steel to cut through their enemies whereas the cowardly hunters mages and warlocks take to running from their enemies the warrior is the one who chases no tricks no ambiguity just pure rush strength and a thirst for blood whether it's your enemies or your own is inconsequential and that's because a unique thing they have going on is their rage system through attacking or being attacked you generate the rage resource which you build up over the course of a skirmish and spend on devastating melee attacks there are three specializations our arms protection and fury arms focuses mainly on improving your skill with two-handed blades and some traits that focus on bleeding your enemies to death it's generally the go-to for PvP ears with their biggest spell industry and being the mortar strike which reduces the effectiveness of healing making them one of the few classes to counter healing in the game protection is their tank spec they forego the two-hander for a sword and board and focus on getting threatened enemies and soaking up damage and fury is pretty self-explanatory this spec has a focus on dual wielding and you buff yourself through the power of rage getting some buffs from being hit and sacrificing some survivability for damage and although I did say dual wielding there there are some builds that use two handers in the fury tree one of their weird quirks back in classic is their different stances you have three of them and that's defensive battle and buzzer King each one has their own perks defensive increases your threat and reduces your damage taken but it also reduces your damage dealt as for berserk this gives you some cred but increases your damage taken and battle stands is middle of the ground no benefits nor detriments he also had certain abilities that she using certain stances some examples would be disarmed which is only usable in defensive over power which is battle stance only or an interrupt shield bash which is usable in both battle and defensive stances particularly in PvP it can make for a hectic time weaving between these three stances and adapting to what's going on around you and since you lost all of your rage when switching there was something though is pretty tricky to master - you may have heard the term stance dancing before and is something that you'll have to learn for both PvE and PvP so not only are they relentless but they also do very well at adapting to their surroundings and can buff their offense or defense on the fly damage wise they can really pump it out and some see them as the best again with quotes around best there because like some other classes a downside is then they don't really have any way to get rid of aggro so you have to be very careful at the same time and as for tanking a lot of you probably know that Warriors are deep tanks for vanilla in full plane and with the shield they're just unbeatable at soaking up damage whether it's passive or active mitigation they're the kings of classic and at the same time with their huge arsenal of taunts and threats in Raiders they also excelled at holding aggro which wasn't so easy back then the better your tank is the better your raid is because your DPS can let loose a bit more and single target or AoE Warriors were great at holding a girl and if you want to play one for damage PvE or PvP you can't go around [Music] calling upon the power of holy magic to protect and replenish their allies the priest has the reputation of being one of the most resourceful healers in classic they're as good as healing as Warriors are at tanking and if that's not your cup of tea drawing upon the power of shadow they're more than capable of dealing out damage and melting faces your three specializations are wholly in discipline which are based around healing and shadow which is for damage let's cover healing first due to their flexibility and dry healing power every raid will have a hefty supply of priests there to keep everyone alive big slow cast heels that you can buffer best my seals that you can react with quickly an area of effect heal a heal over time to keep things steady the ability to dispel harmful effects from allies and beneficial effects from enemies and a boon to stamina and even a shield to prevent damage you name it the priest has it and it's this extreme versatility is why they're considered the quote best healer by many as for the differences between the two specs holy is more of a direct healing tree while discipline is more of an increase in support of stuff like buffs indiscipline he had power infusion which increases spell damage and healing on your target and divine spirit which increases a player's spirit and in the holy tree you have some passive boost to healing in general and even the spirit of redemption which allows you to heal allies from beyond the grave so it's another preference sort of thing do you want raw healing or a bit of added support and I am saying holy or discipline here but again with the classic talent system it's not that simple usually people say that since you have more points in one tree than the other so when I say holy speck it might be something like 30 points in the holy tree and like 21 or something and discipline so it's not an all-or-nothing deal and that goes for any class really as for their DPS speck shadow you throw away the divine in favor of dark shadow magic to melt faces the way you deal the damage is pretty varied kind of a hybrid between more like sand mages in a way you get a damage over time a hard hitter and a channeled spell so it's a nice mix for a lot of people and with shields and the ability to heal if you step out of shadow form pretty good survivability to because of all of this there juggernaut sin PvP I actually fear them more than rogues if I'm gonna be honest they do have a spot in rating but their biggest weakness is their mana they run out quite quickly so I personally saw them very rarely in my guild I do know that they give a nice debuff that increases shadow damage taken so you probably want at least one Shadow Priests and the rate for that if nothing else so you do have an important role to fill in the PvE scene a quirk with them is that shadow form that I mentioned today it's just something that you want to have on because it gives you some spell damage but in classic in addition to the damage this form would lock you out of most of your healing spells actually you can only use any shadow based spell and your shield and if you want to heal you have to exit the form and then patch yourself up and then re-enter it it's extremely tough on your mana and should only be used as a last resort so replenishing allies with holy spells or torturing foes with dark shadow magic the ultimate yin-yang class that packs a punch on both sides of the coin [Music] the jack-of-all-trades and the master of none the druid is the ultimate hybrid class of the game being one with nature itself they can take on the form of many different beasts to adapt to any situation the healer Goes Down or they run out of mana and a dungeon back up a bit and spot heal or maybe the tank went down so you just go bear form pop cooldowns and try to weather the storm they're a great choice for players wanting to do a little bit of everything certainly the most nimble out of all of the classes with their travel form which makes them second to none in escaping sticky situations or running flags in the Warsong Gulch your three specializations are restoration for healing feral for melee DPS and tanking and balance for a caster DPS let's cover healing first your tool kit consists of two heals over time once standalone and another through a flash heal an instant cast heal a slower big hill and a few others their toolkit is an as diverse as a priest but they make up for it in other ways now this isn't tied to just restoration but one of the nifty things that you have is your battle res rebirth like I mentioned earlier the warlock and druid are the only classes capable of resurrecting players in combat the former having to preemptively cast a soul stone before the target dies this itself is extremely useful as you would imagine and a conceive you'll wipe if your tank goes down and not only that but you also have the innervate spell which busts mana regeneration and is cast a ball on anyone so or some may say that they lack the rock healing power of priests they make up for an utility and support and are always great to have in the raid and they also have some pretty good crowd control capabilities their routes can take any melee out of the equation as long as you're outdoors and they also have the hibernate spell for beasts and Drake and Ken and they also have the mark of the wild which is a pretty important buff increasing your armor attributes and resistances of you and your groupmates another quirk with them this time a negative though is that they don't have a normal out of combat resurrect - believe it or not in rating it doesn't really matter because you're gonna have priests and paladin's anyways but for dungeons if you had a druid healer you had to sort of account for that and make sure that you bring a class that's capable of raising such as a paladin or a shadow priest or something my first character that I leveled back in o5 was a paladin and the first group of friends that I made had a druid healer so they'd always bring me a long enough for my charming personality first off but also because I could actually resurrect out of combat so just something to keep in mind it is a turn-off for a lot of people another thing I should mention and this was true for any class with heals over time is that a player can only have one of these active on them at any given point that's right if you had two druids only the most potent rejuvenation would stick on your target and the weaker one would get a message saying that a more powerful one is already active this limit would only be removed in patch 2.0.1 which was the Burning Crusade pre patch I don't want to say that druids were built around these hills over time back then as they are now I mean they only had two but they were the ones who are the most affected by this one hot limit so they do take a hit there as for the feral spec this is a little tricky since it's for tanking and DPS this tree buffs your bear form for tanking and cat form for DPS in bear form you get rage just like a warrior and jamol your enemies to death basically they have a lot of trade-offs compared to the warrior on one hand and druids have some self-healing and they're immune to polymorph and are much more mobile in general but on the other hand they're a bit squishy compared to warriors since they can't block nor parry and they lack big defensive cooldowns such as The Last Stand or shield wall but on your mutant third hand they have the ability to step out and eek hearse battle res or innervate when needed so it's whatever your preference is as far as rating is concerned people generally defaulted to warrior / droids you will see druids tanking certain fights but since horrors are so good in general they kind of take the backseat to ama as for your cat DPS similar to the rogue use the energy and combo point system very similar abilities to the rogue with bleeds and backstabs and whatnot and rating wise they kind of have a similar thing going on here though they have their roles certainly but they don't scale the best as I remember so you may find it harder to get into a raiding group compared to say a rope for instance as for balanced droids you summon the power of nature itself to take down your enemies and buff your nature and arcane abilities such as moon fire wrath and star fire and if you invest enough points into the tree you get the moon conform which gives you and your party members some spell cred if your concern is rating they fell under the same curse as Shadow Priests their biggest weakness is that they ran out of mana quite quickly their moon conform is jokingly referred to as oom Ken because they'd constantly be out of mana so you know the saying the jack-of-all-trades and the master of none it's not without its downsides while they are technically capable of several roles a lot of the times in regards to raiding they fall into healing primarily but that is just talking raiding there I'm sure a lot of you don't even plan on doing that end game may be preferring PvP or just some casual dungeon running if that's the case you have a bit more freedom in a lot of ways so you should follow your heart and do what you want well you should do that anyways in fact and with the druid you have a lot of options in that regardless since you're so versatile the kings of support in my book [Music] paladin's do battle to protect the world from the forces of shadow powerful warriors in their own right they can also call upon the light to heal wounds create shields of force and incinerate evil creatures at least that's what their official description says you were a heavy plate and judging from your spell book you have a strange infatuation with fists and hammers you're the judge jury and executioner with emphasis on the ladder and your through specialization 'he's our retribution for dps protection for tanking and holy for healing for retribution you pick up a two-hander and unleash some righteous smiting on your enemies and for protection you pick up a sword and board and with the power of light protect yourself and your allies from harm and with holy you call upon the power of well holy magic to keep your allies alive this class has also changed quite a bit over the years rivaling the hunter even some of the cool quirks that you have are your blessings the paladin has access to a plethora of buffs to aid your groupmates attack power stat increases threat reduction and much more something you may have heard is that these were relentlessly annoying to keep up since they had a five-minute duration and with 40 man raids it's quite a lot of buffing but luckily classic is based off of patch 1.12 where you had the greater blessings which cost a reagent to cast but also they had durations of 15 minutes so these blessings in general are very useful for dungeons raids PvP solo play whatever they were one of the more defining aspects of the class and made them great group mates sexually and another unique thing that got going on are their auras these are party wide buffs that increase armor resistances to certain schools of magic a thorns buff that deals damage to attackers and so on they were just as essential as the blessings especially those resistances since there were some fights that were based around stacking them and next we have the seal system basically these were enhancements to your melee attacks that did a variety of things we have some extra holy damage per swing some healing per swing maybe some mana and tied to each of these seals was a judgement effect essentially if you cast the judgement spell on an enemy you got another effect unique to each seal for example with that healing seal I mentioned earlier it D buffs the enemy and any Ally hitting it will now get some healing per melee attack and it's the same for the mana seal and for the holy damage one it just does some straight instant holy damage and there's a bunch of other cool effects for all of the other seals it's a really unique system that was chipped away over the years ultimately seeing an end in the Legion expansion I think and it's another one that really defines the class and stops them from being labeled as just a warrior who can heal and their job description isn't just for show being warriors of light they have an edge against the unholy undead and demons of the world through some exclusive spells that are only usable against these enemy types so kind of a unique benefit that they brought to the table whenever you were running a dungeon or a raid that was filled with undead or demons and another unique thing is that their alliance only that's another wild thing that a lot of people didn't know I think how could you have a class that's only available to one faction isn't that imbalanced well it's vanilla World of Warcraft believe it or not strange elements such as this weren't sacrificed for the sake of that hyper balance that you see in the current game again good sides and downsides but that's just how it was some fights the Alliance simply had it easier than the Horde and vice versa with the Horde Shaymin which I'll talk about in a bit first though I wanted to get into their specializations a bit more starting with holy as I said in regards to just a raw healing most people will tell you that priests are the kings of classic paladin healing is very straightforward you have a big slow cast heal and a flash heal and if you spec into it an instant cast that's pretty much it for their direct heels but combined with those blessings that I mentioned earlier it's certainly enough retribution spec takes on a two-hander as I said and the dealer combination of physical and magic damage through that seal system the seal of command which is found in the retribution tree is usually their seal of choice this has a chance to proc extra attacks so they could get quite bursty and combined with their heavy plane and their ability to heal themselves and other spells such as their bubble and LAN hands they're quite tough to kill it always seems like you have to kill a paladin like three times to actually kill them which makes them quite dangerous in PvP rating wise they're rare to see since their overall damage wasn't the best but PvP was another story pretty tough to fight as for protection paladin's they're quite good at AO e tanking threat wise but their big problem is that they don't have a taunt which is crucial if enemies got off of them it's a struggle to get them back and it's something that gets worse over time as your dps gets more and more geared their way of getting aggro was just a threat increase buff so they had a hard time single target tanking thread wise and since they of course use mana has their resource running out is always a danger that you have to keep in mind so rating wise most paladin's landed in the healer role since that's what they excelled at again play what you want if you want to be retribution or protection I'm sure you'll find guilds will take you in it's just that it's gonna be harder compared to a holy paladin it all depends on your endgame goal really the only sure thing is if you enjoy fists hammers and righteous smiting this is the class for you commanding the power of earth fire wind and water shemin's manipulate the elements themselves to their well and through the aid of their sacred totems which provide boons to the Shaymin and their allies they're considered to be one of the best support classes in the game while still pecking a mean punch on their own there the Horde counterpart of the Alliance's paladin and they typically fall into the damage or healing roles their three specializations are elemental enhancement and restoration restoration as you guessed is for healing enhancement is a melee based DPS spec which specializes in well weapon enhancements hence the name and elemental is for a caster DPS making use of nearly every element as for what separates them from everyone else we have their totem system they do still have these today but like much else they're a shadow of their former selves back then you had a huge variety of special totems of each element fire earth water and air and they all did different things fire totems were for damage mainly either direct or a OE and water was more inclined for healing or mana regeneration and earth and air and hence to you and your party members and various ways now it would be exhausting to list every single one but she had totems that buffed the weapons of your party members with wind fury giving their melee attacks a chance to proc extra attacks that was quite a popular one he had one that broke fear charm and sleep effects for all group members of a few seconds which was extremely useful Angie had some that increased her stats such as strength or agility or others that reduced your damage taken taunted enemies increased resistances and one that you could use as a sentry put it at a choke point of a battleground to give ample warning of an incoming attack in essence there are a huge variety and they really made the class quite unique this class was also distinct and due to the fact that they had two lives with their reincarnation passive once every hour you have the ability to resurrect yourself on the spot and hunt your enemies from beyond the grave and as for their play styles and roles as I said to DPS enhancement was originally designed to be for tanking actually but it ended up being used for melee DPS more often than not your main damage came from those weapon enhancements mainly wind fury which gave you those extra attacks these could get quite ridiculous because they could proc off of each other one of my favourite PvP videos back then was unbreakable the shaman he had the legendary hand of Regnerus two-hander and he fully displayed just how crazy enhancement shamans could be now it is sort of a slot machine most fights didn't end with a single swing so just keep in mind the power of video editing but some people like that style because it's really satisfying when the stars do a line and you just chunk your enemies there are other choices though you have rockbiter which increases melee attack power but also thread a remnant of their intended role of tanking and also flame tongue which gives some extra fire damage and frost brand which still some frost damage and also slows enemies it's not just all auto attacking though you do have quite the variety of spells to support and to complement your melee such as frost shock for slows earth shock for interrupts some self heals and combined with your totems you're quite versatile actually if consistent damage is more your speed you may enjoy elemental this focuses on magic damage of course there's still bursty and they pack quite a punch but compared to enhancement it's more controlled through the use of cooldowns and trinkets there big one being their elemental mastery buff which made you see some big numbers a more durable caster dps with their ability to wear male armor and with their ghost wolf form and various slows pretty slippery to as for heels we have the restoration spec you have the normal stuff that you'd expect you got a quick panic kill and a slower but bigger one and even a totem then Hills party members something that made them quite good though is their chain he'll a wee healing wasn't really a thing at the time and the spell was great for that very thing so I kind of made him specialize in group healing and combined with your totems you're an extremely valuable class in both PvE and PvP they're a bit too good though because like druids paladin's and priests in the rating scene they're most commonly healers enhancement has damage troubles and much like the shadow priest elemental has mana problems so a lot of the time if you are rating your healing compared to the other classes I think you're able to find groups more easily as a Shaymin since their totems are so good I mean you're gonna have the easiest time trying to get in as a healer but if you're bringing windfury or extra mana or a fear breaker to the table I think your chances are pretty good arguably the best support class in the game so if that's your cup of tea you'll be very happy with this choice I think but that's about it those are all 9 classes of vanilla world of warcraft their strengths their weaknesses and just the weird quirks that they had back then I hope that this video at least gave you a general feel of how they all play and what roles they fell again I didn't want to go too hardcore with endgame and DPS or healing rankings because I just wanted to cover their play styles more and the things that made them unique I mean this video is nearly an hour long already so I probably went on for too long anyways it's kind of funny how I set out for this to be a casual guide but here we are at 50 minutes so I guess I'll just sign off here do what you will with the information I provided I hope that it helps you and narrowing down your choice for whatever you want to play check out the comments as people usually have useful information that I missed or got wrong and the next question is usually well what grade should I pick well say no more luckily I already have full guides for that made for both the Horde and the Alliance some races do synergize well with these classes more so than others which may or may not be important to you if it is I'll have some links for you in the description of this video so feel free to check those out I hope you found the video helpful though like it if you liked it and I'll see you in the next one peace farewell for now mortals we hope you enjoyed today's video he will get sooo you

Channel: MadSeasonShow

Views: 2,311,498

Rating: 4.9052801 out of 5

Keywords: wow, world of warcraft, madseasonshow, World of Warcraft, guide, tutorial, how-to, walkthrough, World Of Warcraft (Video Game), world of warcraft: classic, wow classic class picking guide, rogue, hunter, mage, warlock, paladin, priest, shaman, warrior, wow class picking guide, wow vanilla, wow vanilla class picking guide, wow 1.12, wow vanilla classes, wow best class, best dps class vanilla, best pvp class vanilla, wow best tank vanilla, wow best healer vanilla, dps, tank, healer

Id: 3t-OsvFBiXE

Length: 57min 33sec (3453 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Groggyy1695]

Mad SeasonShow 🙌🏼

[u/Shoelebubba]

Let’s condense this video yea? Want to tank? Warrior. Other classes can during dungeons, sure, hell even Shamans with Rockbiter could. Raids? Warriors were king, nobody else came close. Hell even during the end of BC Warriors weren’t even close to being toppled. Want to heal? Priest. Everyone else supported Priests. Shamans dropped totems to help them, Druids were just there to innervate them and battle res the priest who died to get back mana (and throw Mark of the Wild), Paladins were Blessing bots. Wanna DPS? Hunter, Mage, Rogue. Shout out to Warlock to summon people in a world without summoning stones or LFG tool ports. Threat is the danger for dps across the board, and for casters its threat and mana. These 3 deal with that limitation. A lot of Vanilla dps was not blowing past the tanks on threats, then having the Boss hammer down every dps before the tank grabs 110% threat over the next person on the list. There’s a reason there’s a lot of dps taking threat memes from the time.

There is a reason to play Shaman, Paladin, Druid. As someone who leveled both a Druid and Paladin solo I can tell you that you can heal, tank and dps dungeons leveling up just fine. But it’s a miserable experience leveling on your own and your role is always subpar compared to the pure classes and you’re brought for your buffs and utility (Mark, Blessings, Totems) rather than throughput.

[u/cydric97]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to this evenings presentation. Tonight, we look at the crowds of the retail playerbase shit on classic.

And now, on with the show!

[u/neutrolGreek1]

All these videos are the same bullshit.

All these content creators never played retail vanilla at a high level. Listen, hunters ARE Tier 1 DPS in MC/BWL and for many bosses in AQ/Naxx. This idiot dares to say that Rets can come close to hunters, hard to even believe someone is that clueless.

I was pissed if I wasn't Top 5-7 in MC/BWL and got Top 5 in many bosses in AQ/Naxx, usually ones with less adds like Four Horsemen.

Private servers are broken for melle, talents are bugged, proc rates for OP items like Ironfoe are broken, raid bosses have 0 armor due to armor debuff stacking(which wasnt how retail vanilla was), and many more things. These content creators are basing these shitty videos off private server experience, just stop.

[u/Yawanoc]

Have we heard any more word about a classic release date? I've heard rumors bouncing between May and July, but nothing more reliable than some random blog post on the second page of google.