Running dungeons for weapons is usually worth it for melee classes. They are your single biggest source of damage from anything. I would say give it a few runs, especially on shorter dungeons.
Casters are a bit more dependent on actual stats, though wand dps is very important, especially for priests.
i very purposefully wanted to avoid RR/Duskwood, and based on what I've seen in my brief trips to RR for dungeon quests, I don't regret that decision even slightly, even if it has set me back a few levels
I find it amusing and intriguing how much discussion and debate still occurs over the mechanics and best practices 15 years after the game came out.
I think it says a lot.
If you go look at WoW power gaming communities there isn't really any debate. People have figured out the numerically best ways to do basically everything, and did so years ago. We just don't tend to be that kind of community. The mechanics of classic WoW are thoroughly solved if you go poke around the internet a little.
Not that I'm discouraging debate or discussion, it's fun to do...but I don't think it says anything philosophical about classic WoW's mechanics or it's depth.
There's also a lot to be said about what is numerically the best way, and what fits your individual play style better.
I often times would avoid "Best in slot" talents that had to be activated because I'd either forget or because I'm not spending my whole time fighting patchwerk or a target dummy.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah, if anything Blizzard games have by far the most unyielding meta because of how popular they are -- they get theorycrafted to death pretty quickly. You can do weird and quirky stuff and that's probably where the fun in Classic is for a lot of people, but there's no real debate at the top end on WoW. Doubly so for Classic with this particular version being run by private servers for almost 15 years.
Fiatil on
+1
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
There's also a lot to be said about what is numerically the best way, and what fits your individual play style better.
I often times would avoid "Best in slot" talents that had to be activated because I'd either forget or because I'm not spending my whole time fighting patchwerk or a target dummy.
Even taking numerically out, this version has been on private servers for over decade, as Fiatil pointed out. Every possible mechanic in this version is solved. Both in a perfect numeric sense and a practical execution sense.
Again, this is not to discourage discussion here. It's fun and interesting to play with different things and try things for yourself. I just caution making blanket statements about what it says about classic mechanics that our community is still having these debates. If you want "correct" answers without doing the experimentation, they do exist.
Like I might switch to 31 Survival when I hit 40 for a while just because Chimera Sting is fun to use. Ain't "worth it" at that gear level but it is entertaining. Sleep one add, ice trap two more? Who needs Polymorph or Sap, lol.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Private servers had a lot of mistakes and some were not small.
I happened upon a priest leveling guide from before people got to play classic, and there were at least 4 things proven to not work in classic that worked in private servers.
Visiting class discords filled with private server players had them testing and finding inconsistencies all the time
Like obviously it wasn’t enough to make top players like apes not still have a huge advantage, but private servers were far from perfect.
Private servers had a lot of mistakes and some were not small.
I happened upon a priest leveling guide from before people got to play classic, and there were at least 4 things proven to not work in classic that worked in private servers.
Visiting class discords filled with private server players had them testing and finding inconsistencies all the time
Like obviously it wasn’t enough to make top players like apes not still have a huge advantage, but private servers were far from perfect.
They had a lot of trouble determining hp pools, spell damage, frequency of attacks because by the time the vanilla private servers launched they were well into BC/wrath and talents weren't the same anymore. It was a lot of guess work and "yeah this feels right." Which is why there was a huge discrepancy with what the private server players felt was realistic for elite/boss damage and what was actually the real numbers.
Not only that, to compensate for the "unknowns" of the boss fights, they cranked up damage and hp pools of them instead to artificially inflate the difficulty. Like you said, it wouldn't have stopped a guild like apes, but private and classic are not comparable easily, it's not a 1:1.
Shit playing on one of those servers everything feels snappier, like there's almost 0 delay whatsoever and I know that was not how it felt in classic. Shit it doesn't even feel like that now because they readded the spell batching lag that vanilla had that they removed in newer code.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I remember listening to the Countdown to Classic podcast, where they had a whole bunch of top private Vanilla players for each class get on and discuss their classes.
And for the most part there was flat agreement amongst one another, but 2 things got me to raise my eyebrow:
1. There was staunch disagreement about Paladin builds. Apparently there were some newer strategies and they were in disagreement about whether they were good or not.
2. A lot of them, especially the Hunter players, saying that WoW Classic felt "off" to them, that it was mechanically different, that certain talents didn't work properly, etc.
So while I do nod in agreement that, yes, the WoW Classic meta is "solved," I think where you get that information and from when is half the trick. Spell batching alone changes a lot of the pvp advice out there.
I'm only level 29 but Classic feels exactly right to me! Except pet pathing, they improved pet pathing somehow I'm sure of it. My cat basically never spazzes out like they used to, lol.
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
the point about freedom and flexibility on builds and mechanics is not what is best but what works
as has already been demonstrated, if you min-max everything to the 99th percentile, the game is comedically easy. see: a raid of mostly sub-60's in greens beating rag on the first pull
*most* of vanilla, particularly phase 1.. is tuned for like... the 5th percentile. Molten core? Maybe 40th.
You can get away with a lot and it literally does not matter. This is in sharp contrast to retail where everything is perfectly tuned to a number, and people seppuku over their class being 1 or 2% short of that number, or missing out on a critical piece of titanforge
Yeah, Sargeras/Detheroc in Vanilla had tons of guilds in MC, 10+ guilds on each side in BWL, a handful of guilds clearing AQ40 and less than 5 guilds with more than 3-4 boss kills in Naxxramas. MC isn't really hard, it just felt hard.
I'm still surprised they killed Rag in the first week but I guess if you'd had a dozen years of practice on pservers vOv
You can get away with a lot and it literally does not matter. This is in sharp contrast to retail where everything is perfectly tuned to a number, and people seppuku over their class being 1 or 2% short of that number, or missing out on a critical piece of titanforge
I detest how the game is like that now, but that's a rant, so....
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
What level range did you guys go in as? And I think improved latency helps A LOT.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
I'm pretty sure this is pure and simple everyone just having gotten better at playing MMORPGs, like any video game you remember being challenging when you were younger feeling strangely easier when you go back to replay it a decade or two later.
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
I'm pretty sure this is pure and simple everyone just having gotten better at playing MMORPGs, like any video game you remember being challenging when you were younger feeling strangely easier when you go back to replay it a decade or two later.
I think this is where I am with this as well. Like I have multiple thousands of hours more experience in WoW now than I did 15 years ago, and even more if you start to include understanding games in general.
Latency and even discord are HUGE compared to the garbage we used to put up with.
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
Addons like weak auras, tell me when, dbm, hud style gui, etc...
We may be better in general but pulling multiple mobs at once will fuck you up. Hell i was leveling in westfall on my warlock and some respawns caught me and suddenly it was 4v1 against stuff 2 levels higher than me. I had to basically go into crazy pvp cc survival mode to kill them all. I havent worried about pulling less than 6-7 mobs in a decade. It was crazy having any sort of adrenaline rush in westfall.
My wife said she really likes how everything is simpler but harder. She is really enjoying her mage without all the weird procs and stuff. She just casts her bolts and if lots of stuff is grouped she novas coc and AEs until shits dead. She said she likes the talent trees over picking abilities as well. And being able to have spells from multiple specs. And she is someone who started in mop and never played vanilla or really any game other than pokemon at all.
We may be better in general but pulling multiple mobs at once will fuck you up. Hell i was leveling in westfall on my warlock and some respawns caught me and suddenly it was 4v1 against stuff 2 levels higher than me. I had to basically go into crazy pvp cc survival mode to kill them all. I havent worried about pulling less than 6-7 mobs in a decade. It was crazy having any sort of adrenaline rush in westfall.
My wife said she really likes how everything is simpler but harder. She is really enjoying her mage without all the weird procs and stuff. She just casts her bolts and if lots of stuff is grouped she novas coc and AEs until shits dead. She said she likes the talent trees over picking abilities as well. And being able to have spells from multiple specs. And she is someone who started in mop and never played vanilla or really any game other than pokemon at all.
having my entire spellbook at my disposal feels good
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
The thing I like a lot about Classic is that classes can do everything baseline and talent trees just make you better at it.
In retail WoW specs may as well be three different classes within a character for all that they share.
My dude is level 34 and I just got to Desolace to try and get some reprieve from STV. It's a bit of a pain in the ass with dungeons though. I'd like to do some SM but is the easiest path for alliance really to run north from Southshore? Seems crazy and feels like I'm missing a more convenient flight path. It's something I've never had to think about having always played horde.
I decided to play a druid this time through. Tanked gnomergon and it took longer than I thought to do that whole dungeon. I will jump on discord and get an invite. Fallowren - Druid on Pagle.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Technically the flight point in Western Plaguelands is closer to Scarlet Monastery, but without a mount it would be very dangerous
yeah there's no way in hell it's a good idea for an alliance to book it through the WPL at that early of a level
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
When I was Horde during the actual vanilla WoW I remember seeing the same Alliance group hanging around Scarlet Monastery for several hours in a row, I did a Library run and then a couple hours later came back for an Armory run and they were on their way out of one of the portals and heading into the next. I wondered why they were spending so long there farming the dungeons multiple times but now that I'm Alliance on Classic it makes sense.
For Horde forming a group for a run of a single SM run is no big deal but for the Alliance you're only going to bother making the trip if you have the intention of spending a while there.
Also explains why Alliance always seemed so willing to fight while Horde just wanted to get into the dungeon. If you've set aside several hours to run SM multiple times anyway, what's a few extra minutes for PvPing out the front?
0
anoffdayTo be changed whenever Anoffday gets around to it.Registered Userregular
Something does still feel off. I'm not sure what it is.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
Damn, I've been playing wow on and off close to that long as well, but not much here is feeling easy to me.
I think for a lot of people who haven't been riding the private server train all these years, it's the fact that they aren't trying to play the game on a toaster and the overall lag/latency/internet is massively superior.
We're not messing around on Dad's HP he bought you for schoolwork, hooked up with 56k and squeezing by on 10-15 FPS in a raid if you were really lucky.
Posts
Casters are a bit more dependent on actual stats, though wand dps is very important, especially for priests.
If you go look at WoW power gaming communities there isn't really any debate. People have figured out the numerically best ways to do basically everything, and did so years ago. We just don't tend to be that kind of community. The mechanics of classic WoW are thoroughly solved if you go poke around the internet a little.
Not that I'm discouraging debate or discussion, it's fun to do...but I don't think it says anything philosophical about classic WoW's mechanics or it's depth.
I often times would avoid "Best in slot" talents that had to be activated because I'd either forget or because I'm not spending my whole time fighting patchwerk or a target dummy.
Even taking numerically out, this version has been on private servers for over decade, as Fiatil pointed out. Every possible mechanic in this version is solved. Both in a perfect numeric sense and a practical execution sense.
Again, this is not to discourage discussion here. It's fun and interesting to play with different things and try things for yourself. I just caution making blanket statements about what it says about classic mechanics that our community is still having these debates. If you want "correct" answers without doing the experimentation, they do exist.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I happened upon a priest leveling guide from before people got to play classic, and there were at least 4 things proven to not work in classic that worked in private servers.
Visiting class discords filled with private server players had them testing and finding inconsistencies all the time
Like obviously it wasn’t enough to make top players like apes not still have a huge advantage, but private servers were far from perfect.
They had a lot of trouble determining hp pools, spell damage, frequency of attacks because by the time the vanilla private servers launched they were well into BC/wrath and talents weren't the same anymore. It was a lot of guess work and "yeah this feels right." Which is why there was a huge discrepancy with what the private server players felt was realistic for elite/boss damage and what was actually the real numbers.
Not only that, to compensate for the "unknowns" of the boss fights, they cranked up damage and hp pools of them instead to artificially inflate the difficulty. Like you said, it wouldn't have stopped a guild like apes, but private and classic are not comparable easily, it's not a 1:1.
Shit playing on one of those servers everything feels snappier, like there's almost 0 delay whatsoever and I know that was not how it felt in classic. Shit it doesn't even feel like that now because they readded the spell batching lag that vanilla had that they removed in newer code.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
And for the most part there was flat agreement amongst one another, but 2 things got me to raise my eyebrow:
1. There was staunch disagreement about Paladin builds. Apparently there were some newer strategies and they were in disagreement about whether they were good or not.
2. A lot of them, especially the Hunter players, saying that WoW Classic felt "off" to them, that it was mechanically different, that certain talents didn't work properly, etc.
So while I do nod in agreement that, yes, the WoW Classic meta is "solved," I think where you get that information and from when is half the trick. Spell batching alone changes a lot of the pvp advice out there.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
It's probably 15 years of playing wow but everything feels easy. Sure we still wipe in dungeons but I remember gnomer taking much longer than 30 minutes too.
as has already been demonstrated, if you min-max everything to the 99th percentile, the game is comedically easy. see: a raid of mostly sub-60's in greens beating rag on the first pull
*most* of vanilla, particularly phase 1.. is tuned for like... the 5th percentile. Molten core? Maybe 40th.
You can get away with a lot and it literally does not matter. This is in sharp contrast to retail where everything is perfectly tuned to a number, and people seppuku over their class being 1 or 2% short of that number, or missing out on a critical piece of titanforge
I'm still surprised they killed Rag in the first week but I guess if you'd had a dozen years of practice on pservers vOv
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
What level range did you guys go in as? And I think improved latency helps A LOT.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I'm pretty sure this is pure and simple everyone just having gotten better at playing MMORPGs, like any video game you remember being challenging when you were younger feeling strangely easier when you go back to replay it a decade or two later.
I think this is where I am with this as well. Like I have multiple thousands of hours more experience in WoW now than I did 15 years ago, and even more if you start to include understanding games in general.
Latency and even discord are HUGE compared to the garbage we used to put up with.
Addons like weak auras, tell me when, dbm, hud style gui, etc...
My wife said she really likes how everything is simpler but harder. She is really enjoying her mage without all the weird procs and stuff. She just casts her bolts and if lots of stuff is grouped she novas coc and AEs until shits dead. She said she likes the talent trees over picking abilities as well. And being able to have spells from multiple specs. And she is someone who started in mop and never played vanilla or really any game other than pokemon at all.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
Leave your pet engaged and get enough distance and he'll despawn and you'll almost instantly drop combat
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
The wrongest opinion.
Yeah, this is usually my goal
There's no need for brave young RIP to die
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Look I love RIP and delight in the pain he brings others but I also don't trust him at all. I'm pretty sure he plots my demise.
having my entire spellbook at my disposal feels good
In retail WoW specs may as well be three different classes within a character for all that they share.
*post lvl 20
yeah there's no way in hell it's a good idea for an alliance to book it through the WPL at that early of a level
For Horde forming a group for a run of a single SM run is no big deal but for the Alliance you're only going to bother making the trip if you have the intention of spending a while there.
Also explains why Alliance always seemed so willing to fight while Horde just wanted to get into the dungeon. If you've set aside several hours to run SM multiple times anyway, what's a few extra minutes for PvPing out the front?
Damn, I've been playing wow on and off close to that long as well, but not much here is feeling easy to me.
We're not messing around on Dad's HP he bought you for schoolwork, hooked up with 56k and squeezing by on 10-15 FPS in a raid if you were really lucky.