Class/specs viability/balance based on private servers

I quess we will never know until we see Classic in action.

I expect tougher competition for raids, bg's, open world, etc. I also would think Twink brackets will also see a difference in competition compared to how it was in vanilla, both in competency, organization and more players with BiS.

fury warrior will for sure be even more competitive than in vanilla. I expect raids to bring significantly less hunters than in vanilla, and only casual/non hardcore guilds will be rocking enhancement/elemental shaman (aside from guild/raid leaders significant others/best friends etc).

Most people will be bringing their experience both from retail up until now and/or from private servers as well. That is to say, competition will be no less fierce than it is right now, probably even fiercer as there are many who already played Vanilla, have prepared for it and just now how to level, farm,...do stuff more efficiently than back then
With that being said, I personally will start looking for a raiding guild as soon as we get an actual release date(!), which I am assuming is going to happen roughly one month before release.
At that point any guild/aspiring guild leaders that want to be successful in Classic will and should have a pretty clear plan of how they want to go about this, i.e. what classes, races, professions they need for their guild, a roadmap dungeons, gearing and raiding, etc.

So basically what you all are saying is that Classic will be a lot of min/maxing. I sincerely hope you are wrong because how I want to relive Vanilla is not with an e-sport community 10-20 years younger than me. Hopefully I can dodge the majority of these tryhards by not joining the very first servers but those that come after. Not saying at all that there isn’t a point in min/maxing or playing end game, but you know..there’s a lot of other things to take into consideration aswell I think in order for it to be a pleasant experience other than just a race for server first.

Most people will be bringing their experience both from retail up until now and/or from private servers as well. That is to say, competition will be no less fierce than it is right now, probably even fiercer as there are many who already played Vanilla, have prepared for it and just now how to level, farm,...do stuff more efficiently than back then
With that being said, I personally will start looking for a raiding guild as soon as we get an actual release date(!), which I am assuming is going to happen roughly one month before release.
At that point any guild/aspiring guild leaders that want to be successful in Classic will and should have a pretty clear plan of how they want to go about this, i.e. what classes, races, professions they need for their guild, a roadmap dungeons, gearing and raiding, etc.

We've already recruiting and have a solid roster about 3/4 of which have raided with us in actual vanilla or on private servers. We're shooting for 2 mc teams yay, the dream for TF farming). I think you are right on how it'll be in terms of competition.

So basically what you all are saying is that Classic will be a lot of min/maxing. I sincerely hope you are wrong because how I want to relive Vanilla is not with an e-sport community 10-20 years younger than me. Hopefully I can dodge the majority of these tryhards by not joining the very first servers but those that come after. Not saying at all that there isn’t a point in min/maxing or playing end game, but you know..there’s a lot of other things to take into consideration aswell I think in order for it to be a pleasant experience other than just a race for server first.

You shoudln't be concerned at all. There will be plenty of semicasual/non hardcore guilds out there. That and the great thing about vanilla is you can play however you want. Unless your goal is the fastest route to the end you don't need to worry about minmaxxing at all until at least 1 year into classic's life span (AQ40 time). The server/world first race will go on but many hard core players won't even care about that. Most of us recognize the social aspects and the journey are what is best about vanilla. There are some that play a different game--the extreme tryhards--but they won't change how you have to play or your experience.

I think there's a lot of leisure room between "min/maxing" and full random/yolo/casual/etc.

It's not just about the server first race or anything. Some things will fly, other things won't. If by min/max you mean that you expect to find a raid spot as a SP/oomkin/ench/etc. then yeah, you are likely not. This is partly due to the limitations of the game (debuff slots, spell resistance etc.) but also due to the attitude you're carrying. If everyone signing up for a raid team was a "special snowflake" who cared more about individual fun than what the whole raid was doing then we wouldn't get anywhere. Sometimes you have to suck it up and do things that you might not want to do for the good of the raid - that's why knowing your class ahead of time is important.

So to sum it up:

if it's about spec, then yes - I reckon 90% of the players will min/max their spec

if it's about gear, then about 70-90% are going to min/max their gear - about 10-30% of the player base either won't know how to do that, won't have the time to do that, won't have the skill or luck to do that

if it's about professions, then about 50-70% are going to min/max that as well, there will be a significant portion of players taking professions for personal profits and fun, but the vast majority is going to be leveling professions which are in some form or another significant to them

if it's about race, I reckon about 20-40% of the players will make a significant decision (i.e. one they would not normally make) based on their race - most players honestly care about the visuals first more than anything (and then tell you how their favorite race is "objectively" the best), the passives can be extremely good but everything can basically be done by everyone at any point in the game (obtaining R14 as UD Warlock, PvE raiding as a NE priest, etc.)

if it's about about faction - only 5-10% of the players will min/max their faction, usually the tryhards who want to have an easier time in high-end raiding or PvP

And in my opinion, if you're better than average (top 50%) you're eligible for just about any sort of content in this game. Race/faction will never significantly hinder you, but professions/gear/spec definitely will.

I liked Nymis's thoughts, and would like to add a few observations of my own for PvP servers.

Spec: I'm not expecting extreme min/maxing on PvP servers. PvE, yes, but PvP...something tells me not everyone's going to want to shell out 50g for respecs all the time, especially when they're not a good farming class. For some classes you can PvP perfectly well in raid spec, even fantastically (hunter and warlock come to mind), but for the hybrids if they're healing in raids and don't want to be healing in BGs, I'm expecting some hybrid specs. 20 points in holy for paladins for example to get Illumination and then dumping the rest to get Reckoning or some such.

Class / Race / Faction: These go together in a lot of ways. There are likely going to be more shadow priests and warlocks on Horde than Alliance, simply because people pick their race and faction together often for these classes when it comes to PvP. Even PvP mage has some traces of this when I see discussions.

Professions: A lot more engineers than there were in actual vanilla.

Aside from that, no I don't think there's going to be too much more min/maxing. People talk big about someone else playing a Dwarf priest, but at the same time they also scream in BGs for someone to heal them and absolutely refuse to roll a healer themselves. It's easy to give advice when you're not the one following it.

You also have to keep in mind that Private servers have both PvE and PvP meshed together. A lot of the most hardcore min/maxers I know are PvE players 1st and PvP 2nd. PvE might become a min/max fest, but PvP? Doubtful.

I struggled to figure out how to solo kill as a healing priest in Vanilla, now I have a much more thorough understanding of my class, how to be offensive, and I'm already planning my spec to synergize with my brothers class/spec so we can do world PVP like back in the day.

I also want to get into a raiding guild so I can re-live the glory days of being a top competitor in the PVE scene as well. I was the 7th Benediction/Anathema on Mal'Ganis, I'd like to try and replicate that as much as I can. It is hands down my favorite weapon in WoW and it's still my transmog to this day. (Should have been legendary!)

So I'm bringing an inherent knowledge of Vanilla PVP and PVE mechanics/experience and over a decades worth of lessons learned.

There will be people who can do a lot of work just from game knowledge, like people knowing how to perfectly line up CC timings on a rogue and people who are really good at kiting as a mage or micromanagement as a warlock. It just comes from the amount of time playing the game, and less to do with private servers themselves.

But more broadly, the average player of retail today is far more skilled than the average player back in vanilla, that just comes from the game being out for so long. You can find all these youtube videos of players back then backpedaling and not playing even close to semi-optimally, to where a contemporary player would recognize some issues if they had to pilot the character.

But my last point is that a lot of super hype pvp videos, at least sometimes, are against opponents who have far less gear. This comes from the most efficient way to farm honor in vanilla being getting into a pre-made group, vetting members for being well-enough geared, for warsong gulch and stomping the pug teams of solo players who often don't have the same amount of gear. Not always the case, but it can be.

Yeah man, premades are the way to go! We use to rock and roll 6 min WSGs for hours on end. Lol

So many good posts here so I'll just isolate my favorite class and make a case for its value; the hunter.

Highlights for PvP:
Viper sting - one of the highest value abilities in game.
Beast mastery (world pvp)- the best pvp spec from level 10-55ish. You will simply outvalue every other class with how insane bestial wrath is. At this stage in the game you wont even need to properly kite or use traps. You simply push bestial wrath and win. What if they have cooldowns and beat you? Bestial wrath will be off CD by the time you run back to your corpse, their CD's likely wont be. This thing is up for every pvp engagement.
Mobility - we take mobility for advantage in retail but it matters in world pvp and BG's a lot. Hunters have it.
Burst - Very bursty but also yielding high sustained. This damage is difficult to mitigate as it is physical, you dont stop damaging if you oom, and your damage is split between you and a pet. The pet / autoshot also have a ton of pushback potential.
Best midfield lurk / flag assist on WSG, due to viper teams usually bring 1-2 hunters minimum.
Best flag defense in AB until warlocks get gear and then warlocks, especially SL locks begin to outvalue hunters for defense (pending premade comps)
Highest impact in AV with viper. Viper ranks 1-3 are cycled through to oom high value targets on the opposing faction while spreading rank 1's to force dispells and oom healers.

As a hunter in premades I often find myself positioning near high value targets or harassing enemy healers. I dont kill healers. I simply oom them and then stand with them while they are completely helpless. I do my best to isolate these healers and keep them out of the team fight. This doesnt always work but is the highest impact a hunter can have on a premade.I can use eagle eye and high mobility for dominant positioning in maps like AB. I am arguably the best peeler for our heals/flag carries other than a frost mage? My sustained and harass are used to irritate the opposing team and create opportunity, when a kill target is established I can easily swap to the kill target (due to my range and immense burst) and drop the opponent with ease.

Pve:
The best leveling class. Fast and efficient. Can tank as BM for everything up to ZF with relative ease. TPS is actually higher than most leveling warriors.
The second best gold farming class.
The highest dps boasting a TON of utility during dungeon/pre raid. Can solo farm devilsaurs for pre raid preparation.
The highest dps in tier 1.
The highest dps for content progression during BWL. Parses dont see hunters falling until BWL is fully cleared and guilds begin to gear. This will not be fully accurate in classic due to changes to Lupos, but hunters should still be holding the top 5-10 spots during your BWL progression.
The best nightfall uptime / the only class with tranq guaranteeing you spots despite the fact that you devalue over time.
The ability to split mobs using feign. This can be used for solo play to avoid fighting large groups and is also used in raids for speed clears, a competent hunter is worth their weight in gold. Also can be used for guilds to force skips with clever use of feign death.

Hunters have a bad rep. But they're solid. Of the 9 classes in vanilla, all of which have a DPS spec, hunters are the BEST dps in PvE for more than 2/3rds of the game. During the end of the 2nd tier and throughout the 3rd tier hunters fall off, but they still provide uncontested value with tranq and nightfall. By this time youve already established yourself in a guild and have networked enough to solidify your spot anyways...

In PvP you are always great. Not just good, great. "But what about your deadzone...?"... <3. This is the best part about being a hunter. I dont have to try and predict what you will do. You will always try to gap close me, and that works for me. I do best when you are chasing me. I can reset the fight several times and in a pinch my melee isnt horrendous. 1v1's are laughable with very few exceptions. Team fights are excellent allowing me to create opportunities with CC/Vipersting/Harassing with pushback and peeling but I dont sacrifice my damage and burst. There is no downside. My pet dies? Im still in the game. Im oom? Im still in the game.

At the entry level, hunters are easy and awesome. At the top end they offer one of the most compelling styles of play that is hard to master. A bad hunter will still provide good dps (even if you make him put his pet away...). A good hunter can carry the group through the world and dungeons.

If I had to summarize my love of this class with one word it would be independence. Their sets look pretty sexy too...

Stfuppercut, please make an account so I can LIKE THE FUCK out of your posts!! Great write up on the Hunter and has further solidified my reasons for wanting to play one. Awesome.