I almost went with a priest or warrior main after I heard the Kevin Jordan interviews on the Countdown to Classic podcast.
Hearing how proud Kevin was of the classes, explaining how and why they were so 'COMPLETE' compared to other classes as far as talents and design go, etc.
I was heavily considering Warrior because I've tanked more than ANYTHING in all of my WoW years. But in the end I realized that I only truly loved tanking as my blood elf paladin that I started in TBC, that I started Tanking initially because I couldn't find groups consistently as DPS, and that I want to try and do things differently instead of try to oddly recapture something that I shouldn't be trying to recapture since I didn't tank until post-vanilla anyway.
Priest I almost considered because I have always loved the idea of an undead priest and I've never focused on healing ever. I thought that trying the ultimate healing class in vanilla would be a great new way to tackle the game. I shied away from it in the end because I think it's going to be too new that it will hinder my performance too much and I'll have to spend too much time learning.
I settled on having an opportunity to claim the glory I originally wanted to claim with my original UD Lock from retail and the fact that I just absolutely love how the class plays. Especially in classic w/ the talent trees.
To be fair, elemental gets ripped off pretty bad in Vanilla. Beyond having a tiny mana pool and lightning bolt being a weaker spell than all other classes' main nukes...
An Elemental shaman doesn't benefit from Curse of Elements.
And a talent tree, Elemental, that gives the most natural spell crit in the game lacks a talent that refunds mana on critical strikes. They gave that talent to mages, and it's called Master of Elements.
Oh yeah Elemental could for sure use some improvements, but i'd say the spec is far from garbage. 30/0/21 gives massive spell crit for LB (10%) and while no mana refund talent is available, Elemental has the obligatory clearcasting talent (10% after any cast to reduce mana cost by 100% for next spell). Not to mention the largest cast time reducer available, to my knowledge, of any caster (1sec off LB and CL).
It's...pretty bad. Not benefitting from CoE is rough, having no built-in ways to manage mana beyond Clearcasting is not great. I mean if you could convince me that Ele is viable, it'd be my main 100%. As of right now, I'm weighing bear druid or warlock. I want it to be good, like a lot. I'm just not convinced it can be.
Im still 50/50 on Warlock or Priest, but i think i will end up playing a priest just to try something new. Its going to be fun no doubt
I made an Orc Shaman during the initial stress test beta for WoW in November 2004 but chickened out and abandoned him before level 2 for an Orc Warrior, which I ended up playing when the game released later that month and for the rest of the vanilla days. Planning on going back to Shaman as my main for Classic after trying it out on a pserver a while ago and liking it.
I sometimes get tinges of wondering if I should do Warrior or Hunter or Rogue or sometimes Priest instead but I'm trying to just keep my head down with my original choice so I don't drive myself crazy. Maybe mess around with the other ones when my leveling buddy is offline or I'm trying to build up Rested exp.
To be fair, elemental gets ripped off pretty bad in Vanilla. Beyond having a tiny mana pool and lightning bolt being a weaker spell than all other classes' main nukes...
An Elemental shaman doesn't benefit from Curse of Elements.
And a talent tree, Elemental, that gives the most natural spell crit in the game lacks a talent that refunds mana on critical strikes. They gave that talent to mages, and it's called Master of Elements.
Oh yeah Elemental could for sure use some improvements, but i'd say the spec is far from garbage. 30/0/21 gives massive spell crit for LB (10%) and while no mana refund talent is available, Elemental has the obligatory clearcasting talent (10% after any cast to reduce mana cost by 100% for next spell). Not to mention the largest cast time reducer available, to my knowledge, of any caster (1sec off LB and CL).
It's...pretty bad. Not benefitting from CoE is rough, having no built-in ways to manage mana beyond Clearcasting is not great. I mean if you could convince me that Ele is viable, it'd be my main 100%. As of right now, I'm weighing bear druid or warlock. I want it to be good, like a lot. I'm just not convinced it can be.
Though after some tinkering with the character planner on wowhead, Ele shaman might be competitive with warlocks in Phase 1-2 content, even with Warlocks having T1 because their set is kinda garbo.
Almost picked Hunter. I played one on p servers and they were a lot of fun. I also almost picked Paladin, as it was my original main from vanilla wow. However, I think I'm going to roll a warrior. I want to tank and it's the only class that can really do it well, outside of niche instances and circumstances.
Warlock, but I prefer stomping someone's face in with a big-ass weapon nowadays, so Warrior it is.
Priest! Having a pet in Vanilla seems...friendlier. Since you have to care for it and such!
Both druid and pally. I enjoy tanking/barding and PvP but, honestly, with either choice the conundrum is to end up healing, a role I do hate. It gets even worse on druid after having it enforced by my guild during my retail playtime.
But even then... warrior doesn't cut it for me when it comes to PvP (so little utility for someone who enjoys being an enabler or a CC/buff/debuff bot) and the only actual melee remaining (rogue) sucks in group settings (again, PvP-wise) so I end up in a loop and considering back these two (ret/prot pally and cat/bear druid).
Both druid and pally. I enjoy tanking/barding and PvP but, honestly, with either choice the conundrum is to end up healing, a role I do hate. It gets even worse on druid after having it enforced by my guild during my retail playtime.
But even then... warrior doesn't cut it for me when it comes to PvP (so little utility for someone who enjoys being an enabler or a CC/buff/debuff bot) and the only actual melee remaining (rogue) sucks in group settings (again, PvP-wise) so I end up in a loop and considering back these two (ret/prot pally and cat/bear druid).
I feel your pain. I played druid in vanilla and was constantly forced to heal against my wishes.
That said 1.12 druid is much better. Your main values as raid healer are innervate and brez; both are base abilities. With that said you can easily run a 0/30/21 spec, or even more extreme, while raiding. You’ll still be expected to heal, but once the raid is done you’re still left with your spec of choice.
It might not be ideal, but thanks to druid Resto tree being quite bad, most people don’t care what you spec as long as you heal and have your utility spells ready.
Compared, paladin’s holy spec is so good i imagine most people will demand you spec it for raids; at least until most of the raid is geared.
I have been deciding between Warlock and Priest, but im now 100% going to play the Priest.
I almost decided for a mage or at least the longest time. But clearcasting works as intended (sadly :D) and not like on diverse private servers with fishing for it via spamming arcane explosion r1. I realised it pretty late ...
The other thing is the long respawn time for mobs in the open world. okay due to the stresstest this one has might been improved, but on the longterm it might goes back to 5min or so. Too long for the most spots :X
Maybe I will play a mage as an alt before p2 starts.
Now I main Shaman. I love Elemental/Heal Hybrid Spec for wpvp and heal for dungeons / raids.
I'm still debating on whether or not to roll Human Paladin(never played one), or just make my old main again, a Undead Warlock. I am leaning more towards Warlock as we get closer and closer to launch.
Shadow priest in BFA was some of the most fun I've had in wow, which made me want to roll spriest in classic, but I strongly doubt that these two versions of the class are that similar. Also I gotta be a mage. I just love mages so much.