I remember doing Warsong Gulch in the 50-59 range on DK's release and faced an enemy team that had 9 death knights and one druid.
Was getting death gripped back and forth like kids fighting over a toy.
I have a vivid memory of the same thing happening to me in the alliance flag room of wsg. I was just a 13yo noob. I didn't do anymore bgs the rest of wotlk
Haha my favorite WSG memory was my blood DK turned my exp off at 79 had the enemy flag for 30 mins while I chased 2 resto druids around the map, I couldn’t out damage them but no one could kill me meanwhile both our team were fighting around us
Yep. I was able to fight groups of horde 3v1 in hellfire peninsula on my DK wearing the starter zone set. This was on launch day of WotLK. No one knew what you could do and your damage and self sustain was bonkers.
Mop was absolutely horrible when it comes to daily activities. It took nearly 2 hours per day just to do the required daily quests. This wasn’t fun at all. Even if I love this Expansion, it was horrible to grind every shit. Funny that Blizz never got the hang of it when it comes to „endgame“ activities (mostly during that time). You either had an expansion where you were overwhelmed with all necessary activities or you had an expansion where you literally had nothing to do.
See I didn’t care about that because all I did was pvp. That was by far the most fun I ever had pvp wise. Easy to grind alts and get them geared. Numerous different playstyles. It was awesome
I raided heroic(and mythic when that became the hardest difficulty) in mop and never bothered with daily quests. I did what I needed for the cloak but that was it. My memory might be wrong but I don’t remember that to be 2hours a day. Though we weren’t a high rated guild.
I feel like I lost my main ever since. After WoD I stopped all serious content and never did any again because Blizzard basically ended my main.
New demonology is cool and all but it doesn't play anything like the old metalock.
The best of Holy Paladin is hands down BFA season 4.
You basically had 100% uptime of wings and every holy shock was basically a lay in hands. Not only that I remember topping the DPS meter on some +20 Tyrannical bosses as a healer.
I can't speak for the worst time as I was a fotm roller at that time lol
Eh earlier this expansion was definitely worse. The avenging crusader era where your gameplay was literally three buttons and none of them were healing spells.
I still remember the video of the shadowpriest near a flight path in his surrender to madness state just killing horde over and over as he struggled to stay in the form.
No one could kill him and they would be half dead before they landed. I think eventually the buff killed him but it was a wild 3-4 minutes
That sounds so cool lore-wise. Imagine some insane psycho blasting people's minds with void energy, struggling to contain the vast power of it before losing control and dying.
I miss MoP shadow priest so much. Even WoD was pretty good, at first I wasn't a fan of Dot weaving in Highmaul but it grew on me.
As much as I loved the class fantasy if SP in legion, it really killed the spec for me in terms of playstyle and it hasn't been able to recover since.
It was fun smashing mongoose bite like a madman, what was not fun was attending to buffs/debuffs cus those interupted the mongoose spam, also butchery scaling with how many enemies you hit was fun.
I enjoyed BFA surv, once you got overloaded with haste, everything came together, we will never reach the heights of stats like 8.3 again.
SL was worse, same as BFA but with less of everything, dull leggos, soulbinds and conduits. The bomb tier set was fun but mostly cus it was op.
Legion Fury was the most fun I’ve ever had playing any RPG of all time.
Even today Fury is still fun as shit to play if you don’t mind wrist pain, even if some seasons or raid tiers it’s subpar performance wise.
I loved Legion fury, infinite stacking Executes was peak during Antorus.
Swapping to the whirlwind legendary for AOE in m+ and raid encounter felt so good.
Going from that to BfA felt so freaking bad. I really didn't want to play it anymore ):
Thankfully all my buttons on my mouse are my fury abilities so I have my work around but yeah I first went arms than fury did the rework and I LOVED it
I mained a ret paladin in vanilla for almost all of it, except for a brief affair with enhance shaman.
I have never been treated so badly in a game haha.
Yeah I dunno what that guy is smoking, we were good in the 3.0 prepatch but not a second sooner. We were laughingstocks through all of BC.
I remember just running into crowds in BGs with pre-nerf divine storm and healing for more than the entire enemy team could output.
we now know why every test our teachers handed out had "read the entire question before you answer" written on it somewhere. people have no reading comprehension.
there is a spreadsheet somewhere where every spec (starting from Legion iirc) was rated on how they were overall in that specific expansion and season.
iirc mages and rogues were one of the highest ranked, i dont remember the other classes/specs tho. if i happen to find that spreadsheet i‘ll link it here
EDIT: So i found the spreadsheet tho 2 things are different, first of all its just for M+, not overall (should still give a „rough“ idea of how strong some specs were)
And secondly the soreadsheet was just starting from BFA not Legion
[Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kvWgszCR6LIbhywIvBFOttTZKIOI1A8_LO7jl2fmB60/htmlview#gid=113634026)
OP was u/alcaras
and Original Post is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/s/IsTHcR0Ao5)
Monk, 48 hours after launch. I was the only monk at level cap, and so when I did a WSG people just ran away when they saw me coming, and when I scored a flag at hype speed they just rage quit.
85 to 90? i'm very confused.
(I'm aware that Cata was 80 to 85 and MoP from 85 to 90. But Monks were not a hero class, they started at level 1, which is why I'm confused. Been playing since 3.1)
Monks were launched in Mists of Pandaria, which came right after Cataclysm, when the level cap was 85. He’s saying he was the first monk on the server to get from 85 to 90.
No. Although the person never claimed to go 85-90 just that they hit 90 in 48 hours. So They could have gone 1-90 into that short amount of time. They said they were top 500 worldwide so it is possible.
I "cheated" that thing with RAF
Your friend would give you one level to one of your characters for every 2 they leveled till level 80, so my freind with 2 level 80 characters leveled my monk to 80 within minutes of the exp launch.
Practically deleted a spec for an entire expansion just so people wouldn't complain when they took Metamorphosis away because there would be no one left playing it. From one of the best specs in the game to utterly useless in the space of a few months :/
The dev that basically made Locks great in MoP going over the whole development process back then, really shed some light on this though.
It doesn't really sound like they were on board with what he did to Demo, and likely when he left a bunch of pride started getting in the way and I wouldn't be shocked if that primarily fueled that comment.
Its really funny though, one of his first ideas for how to change demo in MoP ended up being the basis for what they did with it in Legion. They really did turn around and take his idea and be all proud of it.
Demo locks during throne of thunder were gods. Last boss dropped a trinket that would increase crit chance by 100% for a couple seconds. So the lock would cast doom during that time, and every doom crit would spawn an imp. The lock would have dozens of imps and would sometimes be half the raids damage in 10 mans
Also it was *so* broken that blizzard changed dot snapshotting forever due to this synergy
Let's say you have 3 buffs up and you cast something that summons an imp. The imp would spawn and be affected by those 3 buffs for its entire existence, even if the buffs on you fell off.
Most DoT effects used to work like this too until people realized they could maximize its effects by accumulating as many buffs and possible and then dump all their abilities, those abilities were affected by the buffs without them being on the player. Now to my understanding all DoT effects and summons are affected dynamically by the stats the player have, removing snapshotting and rewarding players that can keep buffs up.
All specs/classes have had their highs and lows, but pve wise I’d imagine mage and warlock has been consistently been a top performer. Not always #1 but in the mix. Spriest as a spec has been one of most consistent performers in raid since legion.
Worst might be SV hunter since it’s melee rework. Not actually a true troll pick but BM and MM have consistently outperformed it and being ranged is often an advantage. They were only truly strong at the end of shadowlands due to a busted tier set that blizzard(rightfully imo) just let ride. Nothing has been a true troll pick in a looooong time. Play whatever you want.
Gameplay:
- 5: Brewmaster in MoP
- 4: 100% crit Fire Mage season 4 BfA
- 3: Infinit Wings Holy Pala Season 4 BfA
- 2: Guardian druid Legion with Mark of Ursuc
- 1: SL Fistweaver Kyrian Monk S1-S3
Power level:
- 3: All Tanks MoP and Season 4 BfA
- 2: Launch DH dps
- 1: Launch DK all speccs
Visual:
- 3: Legion Arkan Mage
- 2: MoP Mistweaver
- 1: MoP Demolock
My personal Fav of all time:
Shadowlands Fistweaver for Raid and M+
My Underdog that was amazing for me:
Feral dps Bc, Wotlk and Cata
That raid was the reason I changed my main to boomkin until I quit after Legion. The class only got better and better and since not many people played it, I was always guaranteed a spot.
My alltime favourites were MoP Affliction Warlock (Kil'jaedens Cunning was just soooo cool) and Shadow Priest in Legion with *that* vial from the order hall in the open world against world bosses before the nerfhammer struck down on Surrender to Madness
Best? Legion Sub Rogue with Soothing Darkness, 3 Shadow Dance Charges, and nearly 100% up time on Shadow Dance was so damned fun. You also took no fall damage and Shadow Strike teleported you behind your target each time instead of just once. Absolutely insane gameplay.
Worst for me? Enhancement Shaman being literally forgotten for all of BFA was pretty bad.
A lot of "worst" specs would happen during vanilla wow. Mostly DPS specs for healer classes. Ret paladin and balance druid were easily at their weakest and most dysfunctional state during vanilla
The most powerful class of all time, atleast in pve, id vote for Arcane Mage in patch 6.2. Mythic raid bosses could be killed in as little as 12 seconds with a full mage raid group
Well Mage is the true hero (not just class) of WoW so that. Worst likely druid or paladin during Vanilla were if you weren't healing you aren't worth your spot.
This gets my vote for best and worst simultaneously.
Worst because nothing I do matters, I am just here to launch death beam.
Best because Look At Me. I'm The DPS Now.
The first season of in Wrath arenas, frost death knights were broken. If I recall correctly you would build runes and then spam four howling blasts and most people died. It was probably the most absurdly overpowered class that I remember.
Early Wrath Hunter with the rework of survival spec with explosive shot and lock n load. I topped DPS meters for the first few weeks in Maxx with minimal effort and sub optimal gear. It got nerfed pretty hard in the first update and MM/BM became viable again. Also explosive shot being AOE at the time caused issues in a few fights.
I didn't remember how busted we were when I was playing as a kid in original TBC. without a doubt, the most imbalanced OP class all of TBC. atleast in pvp
Ret paladin in vanilla was the worst. You would be auto-kicked from groups for showing up as one. The best was probably MOP.
Survival hunters for me personally, the best was legion. Now is a close second, I never enjoyed the spec as ranged and always felt that marksman overshined it. When Fury of the Eagle paused the timer on your mongoose stacks from falling off it really felt like you could control your ST damage and with some skill do some crazy things. It was just a ton of 'spinning plates' and you had to keep up buffs but it was so much fun. The worst for it was BFA. They took what made legion fun and butchered it but now it's almost back to legion levels.
Enhancement shaman. Best was vanilla. 2h mace with windfury, stacking crit and you could run around one shotting cloth in pvp. It has never felt more dangerous than it did back then. Worst was BFA's first patch. 8.0 All classes got a rework except for Priest and Shaman. Blizzard really said "We couldn't do them in time so you need to wait for 8.1" and then didn't change much at all. For a whole patch shaman's just felt like absolute shit compared to everyone else.
There was a long standing joke about the Alliance sending a small company of men after a warlock taunted Varian Wrynn. Of the 8 sent, none returned. So the Warlock taunted them again, so they sent 20 men. None returned, except the Warlock, who again taunted them. This time Varian sent 100 soldiers, 20 archers, an alliance tank, and three planes. After several minutes of screaming, pkeas for mercy, and outright carnage, o e soldier returned, dragging himself along the ground, quickly bleeding out. Varian asks him, "What happened?"
"Sire, it was a trap! There were TWO Warlocks!"
Theres so many good and fun iterations of SP that this is kinda hard to answer. I liked cata shadow, legion, bfa, df season 1 shadow, all fun to play in different ways. Worst obviously would be vanilla shadow, or if something more recent this seasons shadow is fucking so unfun to play with all the gutting the spec received.
Veng DH on release was pretty busted. I remember topping both DPS and heals in dungeons without even trying. Healers also hated us due to the health ping ponging between full and 3% every 2 seconds, so they’d waste big heals all the time too.
MW monk has had some of the biggest swings from good to bad across different patches. From DPS-lite to AFK gods.
Destro warlock is will be and always has been the best class and spec in the game. Ridiculously easy insane damage and beautiful summons heals etc with pets?! Perfection.
I had a fury warrior on my FL prog team that wowed me so much I have mained one ever since. She would burst so much it caused Ryolith to literally pivot in place in a circle lol it was awesome
Warlocks during MoP were obscene. Breaking the 1 mil DPS milestone and making the rest of the bars on the dps meter look like ants.
Every class it seems has been down in the dumps at one point or another but not all have had the moment of glory that some did during certain expacs.
HPal in DF S1 were genuinely bottom of the barrel. I’m speaking from a PvP pov but they were actual dogshit. Don’t know a time HPal has ever been worse
Warriors in vanilla are 10x the DPS of the worst spec, Retribution. But for expansions I had over 90% chance to Dodge and was over Armor cap in TBC with a Feral tank
Worst was Druid in classic.
They didn't gain the ability to, you know, do damage until BC. At one point? Bear was doing more DPS than cat. Yes. You read that right.
Remember when the ultimate talent for balance was Hurricane? Me too!
Beast Mastery was bad in Wrath so I got laughed at for doing it despite doing pretty good damage.
Then comes along Cataclysm and I still got laughed at until I was at the top of the DPS charts and had a pet for any buff the raid didn't have. The funniest part of it all is that I experienced this the entire expansion until the very end.
Survival Hunter at Vanilla launch was the biggest joke of all time. The 31 point talent was a melee DoT at a time when hunters were completely useless in melee range.
Necrolord Outlaw Rogue with Marked for Death was easily the most fun the spec has ever been for me. Second place would be Season 4 Outlaw rogue with the Blunderbuss legendary and the current iteration is my third favorite version of the spec.
It's a shame Outlaw doesn't have Serrated Bone Spike but Assassination does in Dragonflight.
The only time I ever healed was when disc priest topped the meter by just doing dps and throwing out shields on cooldown. MoP atonement was something else.
I mean... Classic ret
Upside: if you do seal twisting, you have surprisingly engaging rotation that you've to pay more attention to than the raids (bonus points if your swing timer does not come with highlighted area to twist at)
Downside 1: you do 1/4th the damage of a frost mage for thrice the work with chance equal to your crit*SoC that you will steal agro from the tank on your first two swings
Downside 2: Your best DPS increase takes a dot slot, consecration also takes a dot slot even if it does not show as a dot.
Blizzard back in the day really made whole ass class and went "nah fuck you" before even releasing the game
There was 5 minutes in Vanilla where Paladin's could stack Reckoning foolishly and then 1-shot bosses.
But more seriously, right after they were reworked in DF they were ridiculous.
Protection Warrior has had 2 high points in (relatively) recent history; the end of BfA, when the Thunderstomper build was at its peak, and the end of SL when a good player could make Conqueror's Banner eternal.
9.0 Prot warrior, before they changed how the Reprisal legendary worked, was beyond unplayable.
Every other tank had a means to pull, hold agro on a full pack, and use a common defensive to not die instantly. Not warriors. When you charged in, you had enough rage for either a revenge or a shield block... not both. Revenge meant you'd hold threat on the pack but you're a wet paper bag defensively so your HP disappears in a blink. Shield block meant that the piddling little thunder clap does barely any damage and the DPS immediately rip agro from you. It was the only time I can recall ever seeing a tank class be actually not worth playing. Like, there have been bad balance patches where a tank isn't good, but they can at least clear low keys. Not 9.0 prot war. Even overgeared, they were just not worth playing.
Pushing the memory here and I am sure it has been mentioned but when early on enhance shamans could windfury off windfury indefinitely and they were gods. Wasn't around for long IIRC.
Afflock in legion. Healers were invalid to me. I still remember just planting myself down in the soul well of final phase Gul'dan and not having the stock limit apply to me at all since I was functionally immortal.
Ret paladin during wrath pre patch was a 1 button god. No matter the gear they had. Release DKs at 80 were almost as strong as ret was during the prepatch.
Dh on launch was incredibly op, first example : chaos strike (56% attack power first hit +88% attack power with the second hit, back then it was 125% + 600% and could refund the cost if the speed was critical) and same goes for a lot of other spells the blade dance was a 1 second 100% dodge chance every 7 seconds, 100% leech, metamorphosis could stun for 4 seconds in pvp instead of a slow blur was 35% damage reduction and 65% omnidirectional dodge chance instead of 25 and 50 etc
Launch DKs all through wrath may have been the most broken class to ever exist.
Worst is probably Demo and Survival after the nerfs during WoD, as Ion put it, they didn't want us to play those specs at all. Sucks cause Survival with Black Arrow/DoT playstyle was my fav.
Volley hunters in (WotLK) Naxx. AOE’ing single targets with volley and doing more dps than a normal rotation. With infinite mana thanks to aspects, before focus was a thing.
Best: ret in 10.0.7
Worst: ret specifically when the game launches.
Ret's rework not only made the spec incredibly fun, but also probably the most overpowered it's ever been.
DKs on launch in BGs, just ridiculous.
I remember doing Warsong Gulch in the 50-59 range on DK's release and faced an enemy team that had 9 death knights and one druid. Was getting death gripped back and forth like kids fighting over a toy.
I have a vivid memory of the same thing happening to me in the alliance flag room of wsg. I was just a 13yo noob. I didn't do anymore bgs the rest of wotlk
Haha my favorite WSG memory was my blood DK turned my exp off at 79 had the enemy flag for 30 mins while I chased 2 resto druids around the map, I couldn’t out damage them but no one could kill me meanwhile both our team were fighting around us
Yeah DK on release was the most imba thing ive seen in wow
I’ve heard the horror stories when they could self Rez as ghouls when they died
You won a super close arena match, barely overcoming the DK’s insane power level? Just kidding he got back up and hit you once, he wins
I forgot about that lol
I remember some Blood DKs soloing who raid tiers in WotLK. Absolutely wild.
I remember tanking raids without being defense capped and having no idea how to play my character when I first hit 80. It was a crazy time in WoW.
A true HERO class
I didnt play at that time but i heard stories. Wasnt fresh blood dk out of starting zone basically able to solo max level other classes?
Yep. I was able to fight groups of horde 3v1 in hellfire peninsula on my DK wearing the starter zone set. This was on launch day of WotLK. No one knew what you could do and your damage and self sustain was bonkers.
Had a 59 frost DK twink in those days. Could nuke like a mage, melee like an arms warrior, and had the armor of a druid. Totally busted.
Wintergrasp as a dk was pure joy. Felt like a dungeon boss when a 5 person group couldn't take you.
Being able to swap to blood presence as a 2H Frost Dk in Arena was elite for saving your healer in 2s 🔥
Warlocks were peak in mop. Rip Metalock
Any class was peak at MoP tbh
Was just about to say this. Literally any class, any spec. Didnt matter, everything just felt REALLY good to play.
This is why it’s MoP classic waiting room for me.
Same!
MoP really was the golden era. God I miss that expac
Mop was absolutely horrible when it comes to daily activities. It took nearly 2 hours per day just to do the required daily quests. This wasn’t fun at all. Even if I love this Expansion, it was horrible to grind every shit. Funny that Blizz never got the hang of it when it comes to „endgame“ activities (mostly during that time). You either had an expansion where you were overwhelmed with all necessary activities or you had an expansion where you literally had nothing to do.
I enjoyed farming with the Tillers, it was a simple life
I miss my farm, I should go back and visit.
Tillers were great. Miss my farm as well
See I didn’t care about that because all I did was pvp. That was by far the most fun I ever had pvp wise. Easy to grind alts and get them geared. Numerous different playstyles. It was awesome
Ok, got ya. Then of course it was fun. I‘m a PvE player, so it was so and so - good and bad. 😉
Timeless isle was great though but yeah the release was rough. Endless damn daily quests that you HAD to do for professions or some gear smh
I raided heroic(and mythic when that became the hardest difficulty) in mop and never bothered with daily quests. I did what I needed for the cloak but that was it. My memory might be wrong but I don’t remember that to be 2hours a day. Though we weren’t a high rated guild.
Don't forget SL/SL in BC :)
I'll never forget that. That's when I peaked. Taking on 3x melee classes and walking away unphased. Good times
8.3 destro has entered the chat. It will never be the same again. That shit was so overpowered in pvp.
85% BASE HASTE CHAOS BOLT MACHINE GUN
Well based off the Cata announcement today you'll be happy in 2025.
I really miss being a meatlock
For real I was tankier than most tanks on destro lock during mop I could solo clear HC dungeons while the rest of the group gasped
I want that playstyle and visual back so fucking badly. Hell id settle for a fucking glyph to give me back my green metalock
Blizz absolutely dropped the ball when they took meta away from demono. It was the best fun I ever had in wow. Will be for ever missed.
Ive literally never had as much fun in wow as i did playing metalock. Dh and metalock could have coexisted. They dont share the same mechanics at all
They could have but Blizz doesn’t want us to have fun. I tried DH and i hated it. Demonolock too. So I’m a destrolock now.
I feel like I lost my main ever since. After WoD I stopped all serious content and never did any again because Blizzard basically ended my main. New demonology is cool and all but it doesn't play anything like the old metalock.
The best of Holy Paladin is hands down BFA season 4. You basically had 100% uptime of wings and every holy shock was basically a lay in hands. Not only that I remember topping the DPS meter on some +20 Tyrannical bosses as a healer. I can't speak for the worst time as I was a fotm roller at that time lol
The worst is current hpal lol
Eh earlier this expansion was definitely worse. The avenging crusader era where your gameplay was literally three buttons and none of them were healing spells.
I didn’t play BFA but wotlk full pvp geared holy paladin was a blast as well,
surrender to madness spriest during emerald nightmare/early trial of valor
Because your dps rotation was so broken the devs required you to die to justify it.
But then made the last boss of the raid a fight where you "died" to come out of a dream and didn't actually die.
I still remember the video of the shadowpriest near a flight path in his surrender to madness state just killing horde over and over as he struggled to stay in the form. No one could kill him and they would be half dead before they landed. I think eventually the buff killed him but it was a wild 3-4 minutes
That sounds so cool lore-wise. Imagine some insane psycho blasting people's minds with void energy, struggling to contain the vast power of it before losing control and dying.
The Priest class hall hat an consumable, which made so you dont loose insanity for 10 min.
Which is both "best and worst spec" at the same time.
That was amazing times. Shadow priest has been downhill ever since. Nothing lives up to the fun or the fantasy.
[удалено]
How they massacred my boy meme from season 1 to now. Mostly pvp wise from my pov tho.
[удалено]
Nothing has been as exciting since
MOP held the best incarnations ever of many classes. Hunter was the best ever. Same as demonology warlock and shadow priest.
Arms warriors were also absolutely busted in mists.
I miss MoP shadow priest so much. Even WoD was pretty good, at first I wasn't a fan of Dot weaving in Highmaul but it grew on me. As much as I loved the class fantasy if SP in legion, it really killed the spec for me in terms of playstyle and it hasn't been able to recover since.
Survival hunter in cataclysm was one of the most fun specs
Worst was BFA. I loved the legion melee but BFA killed what made it fun and just drove it into the dirt.
It was fun smashing mongoose bite like a madman, what was not fun was attending to buffs/debuffs cus those interupted the mongoose spam, also butchery scaling with how many enemies you hit was fun. I enjoyed BFA surv, once you got overloaded with haste, everything came together, we will never reach the heights of stats like 8.3 again. SL was worse, same as BFA but with less of everything, dull leggos, soulbinds and conduits. The bomb tier set was fun but mostly cus it was op.
WoD SV was fun too before the massive nerfs in highmaul :S
def. i mained surv hunter and balance druid in cata, neither was rly difficult but felt so badass and was usually the only one in a raid.
Legion Fury was the most fun I’ve ever had playing any RPG of all time. Even today Fury is still fun as shit to play if you don’t mind wrist pain, even if some seasons or raid tiers it’s subpar performance wise.
Way too far down. Draught of Souls and Convergence of Fates were unreal
I loved Legion fury, infinite stacking Executes was peak during Antorus. Swapping to the whirlwind legendary for AOE in m+ and raid encounter felt so good. Going from that to BfA felt so freaking bad. I really didn't want to play it anymore ):
Thankfully all my buttons on my mouse are my fury abilities so I have my work around but yeah I first went arms than fury did the rework and I LOVED it
Worst: Ret Paladin in Vanilla
I mained a ret paladin in vanilla for almost all of it, except for a brief affair with enhance shaman. I have never been treated so badly in a game haha.
They had that brief moment when Rec Bomb was a thing. That didn't last though lol.
They got really good in BC at least
Pre patch wotlk ret pally was most op class I've ever played.
Yeah I dunno what that guy is smoking, we were good in the 3.0 prepatch but not a second sooner. We were laughingstocks through all of BC. I remember just running into crowds in BGs with pre-nerf divine storm and healing for more than the entire enemy team could output.
OP: Asks for both best and worst Everyone: This class and specialization at this time.
Happens every time lol
we now know why every test our teachers handed out had "read the entire question before you answer" written on it somewhere. people have no reading comprehension.
Legion Affliction was my toptoptop ever spec. MoP warlock was my top class but I liked mop survi hunter too the best of all hunters
End of legion blood dk was literally unkillable. I soloed a +18 tyrranical darkheart thicket. It took a while tho.
there is a spreadsheet somewhere where every spec (starting from Legion iirc) was rated on how they were overall in that specific expansion and season. iirc mages and rogues were one of the highest ranked, i dont remember the other classes/specs tho. if i happen to find that spreadsheet i‘ll link it here EDIT: So i found the spreadsheet tho 2 things are different, first of all its just for M+, not overall (should still give a „rough“ idea of how strong some specs were) And secondly the soreadsheet was just starting from BFA not Legion [Spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kvWgszCR6LIbhywIvBFOttTZKIOI1A8_LO7jl2fmB60/htmlview#gid=113634026) OP was u/alcaras and Original Post is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/s/IsTHcR0Ao5)
Monk, 48 hours after launch. I was the only monk at level cap, and so when I did a WSG people just ran away when they saw me coming, and when I scored a flag at hype speed they just rage quit.
85 to 90 in 2 days is pretty impressive
85 to 90? i'm very confused. (I'm aware that Cata was 80 to 85 and MoP from 85 to 90. But Monks were not a hero class, they started at level 1, which is why I'm confused. Been playing since 3.1)
Monks were launched in Mists of Pandaria, which came right after Cataclysm, when the level cap was 85. He’s saying he was the first monk on the server to get from 85 to 90.
Server first monk would have had to level from 1 to 90. It's even more impressive. I didn't do MoP prepatch, did they let people do early monks?
No. Although the person never claimed to go 85-90 just that they hit 90 in 48 hours. So They could have gone 1-90 into that short amount of time. They said they were top 500 worldwide so it is possible.
They used a recruit-a-friend “exploit” to grant them 85 levels in a minute.
This comment makes me feel old.
I know MoP was 85 to 90, but Monk has always started at 1, hence the confusion.
Realm first, and like world 500th something
Isn't it more impressive? 1-90 in 2 days. Monks started at 1, and unless my memory is shot, you couldn't boost until WoD.
I "cheated" that thing with RAF Your friend would give you one level to one of your characters for every 2 they leveled till level 80, so my freind with 2 level 80 characters leveled my monk to 80 within minutes of the exp launch.
man, I forgot about that mechanic. It was fun doing the level ups in a capital city and having bystanders send tells accusing you of flagrant hacking.
Gilty as charged, I first learned about this mechanic because I reported a player for it, a gm then came an explained it to me.
PTSD
The worst is always going to be WoD demo lock. "we would prefer if you didn't play Demonology Warlock"
Practically deleted a spec for an entire expansion just so people wouldn't complain when they took Metamorphosis away because there would be no one left playing it. From one of the best specs in the game to utterly useless in the space of a few months :/
The dev that basically made Locks great in MoP going over the whole development process back then, really shed some light on this though. It doesn't really sound like they were on board with what he did to Demo, and likely when he left a bunch of pride started getting in the way and I wouldn't be shocked if that primarily fueled that comment. Its really funny though, one of his first ideas for how to change demo in MoP ended up being the basis for what they did with it in Legion. They really did turn around and take his idea and be all proud of it.
Worst: WoD demo warlock after they announced DH for Legion. Nerfed Meta into the ground and the devs told us they didn’t want us playing the spec.
Demo locks during throne of thunder were gods. Last boss dropped a trinket that would increase crit chance by 100% for a couple seconds. So the lock would cast doom during that time, and every doom crit would spawn an imp. The lock would have dozens of imps and would sometimes be half the raids damage in 10 mans Also it was *so* broken that blizzard changed dot snapshotting forever due to this synergy
I never knew that. What was the change to snapshotting?
It doesnt snapshot anymore, except for feral druids
Let's say you have 3 buffs up and you cast something that summons an imp. The imp would spawn and be affected by those 3 buffs for its entire existence, even if the buffs on you fell off. Most DoT effects used to work like this too until people realized they could maximize its effects by accumulating as many buffs and possible and then dump all their abilities, those abilities were affected by the buffs without them being on the player. Now to my understanding all DoT effects and summons are affected dynamically by the stats the player have, removing snapshotting and rewarding players that can keep buffs up.
All specs/classes have had their highs and lows, but pve wise I’d imagine mage and warlock has been consistently been a top performer. Not always #1 but in the mix. Spriest as a spec has been one of most consistent performers in raid since legion. Worst might be SV hunter since it’s melee rework. Not actually a true troll pick but BM and MM have consistently outperformed it and being ranged is often an advantage. They were only truly strong at the end of shadowlands due to a busted tier set that blizzard(rightfully imo) just let ride. Nothing has been a true troll pick in a looooong time. Play whatever you want.
Gameplay: - 5: Brewmaster in MoP - 4: 100% crit Fire Mage season 4 BfA - 3: Infinit Wings Holy Pala Season 4 BfA - 2: Guardian druid Legion with Mark of Ursuc - 1: SL Fistweaver Kyrian Monk S1-S3 Power level: - 3: All Tanks MoP and Season 4 BfA - 2: Launch DH dps - 1: Launch DK all speccs Visual: - 3: Legion Arkan Mage - 2: MoP Mistweaver - 1: MoP Demolock My personal Fav of all time: Shadowlands Fistweaver for Raid and M+ My Underdog that was amazing for me: Feral dps Bc, Wotlk and Cata
Mage is blizzards pet class, always has been and always will be.
Feral at tbc release, then again at wotlk release
"Mangle lol" Honestly just druids in general at TBC release. Feral dps and tanks were suddenly actually good and resto was unkillable in 2v2 arenas.
Was a great time to be a Druid. Plus boomkin tanking that one boss in bc!
It’s nice to see someone actually speaking well of a boomkin
That raid was the reason I changed my main to boomkin until I quit after Legion. The class only got better and better and since not many people played it, I was always guaranteed a spot.
Hard disagree, the WoD pre-patch changes to playstyle made it way, way worse than Mists peak boomie.
Armor pen feral in icc was the most fun spec I ever played. Very demanding to keep your bleeds up but very rewarding
Stacking so much ARP you were taking bosses into negative armour... Insanity
My alltime favourites were MoP Affliction Warlock (Kil'jaedens Cunning was just soooo cool) and Shadow Priest in Legion with *that* vial from the order hall in the open world against world bosses before the nerfhammer struck down on Surrender to Madness
Restor Druid mage and rogue are always strong and viable
BM hunter early MoP was kinda crazy. Men and my friend would duo in arenas and just release the whole zoo and watch the carnage.
Best? Legion Sub Rogue with Soothing Darkness, 3 Shadow Dance Charges, and nearly 100% up time on Shadow Dance was so damned fun. You also took no fall damage and Shadow Strike teleported you behind your target each time instead of just once. Absolutely insane gameplay. Worst for me? Enhancement Shaman being literally forgotten for all of BFA was pretty bad.
God I fucking miss Legion Sub.
A lot of "worst" specs would happen during vanilla wow. Mostly DPS specs for healer classes. Ret paladin and balance druid were easily at their weakest and most dysfunctional state during vanilla The most powerful class of all time, atleast in pve, id vote for Arcane Mage in patch 6.2. Mythic raid bosses could be killed in as little as 12 seconds with a full mage raid group
Affliction lock thinking about it. Legion was really fun. Affliction lock if I had to play it now. I'd probably just play a different game.
Affliction just felt right in Legion.
brewmaster was a fucking BLAST in mop. guardian druid went fucking crazy too.
I feel like shamans were peak at cata-mop
Well Mage is the true hero (not just class) of WoW so that. Worst likely druid or paladin during Vanilla were if you weren't healing you aren't worth your spot.
Legion fire mage was peak fire gameplay. It was snappy, and you had three different rotations based off boss HP%. That shit was fun.
Bear tanks with twilight devastation in 8.3
This gets my vote for best and worst simultaneously. Worst because nothing I do matters, I am just here to launch death beam. Best because Look At Me. I'm The DPS Now.
I have the “enemy nuke incoming” sound associated with Twilight Devastation from that Savix video
Worst: Survival hunter from legion on Best: Survival hunter in MoP
Best: Survival hunter TBC -> WoD Worst: Survival hunter Legion -> Current Nothing touches that spot like Surv used to do
The first season of in Wrath arenas, frost death knights were broken. If I recall correctly you would build runes and then spam four howling blasts and most people died. It was probably the most absurdly overpowered class that I remember.
Early Wrath Hunter with the rework of survival spec with explosive shot and lock n load. I topped DPS meters for the first few weeks in Maxx with minimal effort and sub optimal gear. It got nerfed pretty hard in the first update and MM/BM became viable again. Also explosive shot being AOE at the time caused issues in a few fights.
Historically DKs and Warlocks have never been bad in PvE.
Rogue literally any spec at any point in TBC. Ganking fools in the Outlands still brings a smile to my face.
I didn't remember how busted we were when I was playing as a kid in original TBC. without a doubt, the most imbalanced OP class all of TBC. atleast in pvp
feral druid in WoD pvp was a beautiful thing
Ret paladin in vanilla was the worst. You would be auto-kicked from groups for showing up as one. The best was probably MOP. Survival hunters for me personally, the best was legion. Now is a close second, I never enjoyed the spec as ranged and always felt that marksman overshined it. When Fury of the Eagle paused the timer on your mongoose stacks from falling off it really felt like you could control your ST damage and with some skill do some crazy things. It was just a ton of 'spinning plates' and you had to keep up buffs but it was so much fun. The worst for it was BFA. They took what made legion fun and butchered it but now it's almost back to legion levels. Enhancement shaman. Best was vanilla. 2h mace with windfury, stacking crit and you could run around one shotting cloth in pvp. It has never felt more dangerous than it did back then. Worst was BFA's first patch. 8.0 All classes got a rework except for Priest and Shaman. Blizzard really said "We couldn't do them in time so you need to wait for 8.1" and then didn't change much at all. For a whole patch shaman's just felt like absolute shit compared to everyone else.
Sub rogue post uldir. It was so unbelievably bad for the rest of bfa
Ret pally at release of Wotlk and at least for a bit after. There was a few days in beta where ret pally numbers were so high they crashed servers.
Cataclysm Combat Rogue holds a special place in my heart. Current Com.. er outlaw rogue, I dislike strongly.
I remember Hpally being great in Cata.
There was a long standing joke about the Alliance sending a small company of men after a warlock taunted Varian Wrynn. Of the 8 sent, none returned. So the Warlock taunted them again, so they sent 20 men. None returned, except the Warlock, who again taunted them. This time Varian sent 100 soldiers, 20 archers, an alliance tank, and three planes. After several minutes of screaming, pkeas for mercy, and outright carnage, o e soldier returned, dragging himself along the ground, quickly bleeding out. Varian asks him, "What happened?" "Sire, it was a trap! There were TWO Warlocks!"
Theres so many good and fun iterations of SP that this is kinda hard to answer. I liked cata shadow, legion, bfa, df season 1 shadow, all fun to play in different ways. Worst obviously would be vanilla shadow, or if something more recent this seasons shadow is fucking so unfun to play with all the gutting the spec received.
I have very fond memories of BDK in MoP and Brewmaster in WoD (RIP Guard...so good)
I miss resto shaman from shadowlands… vesper totem was insane for keys… and for worse we can say surv hunter any expansion lol
Holy Pally MOP
Veng DH on release was pretty busted. I remember topping both DPS and heals in dungeons without even trying. Healers also hated us due to the health ping ponging between full and 3% every 2 seconds, so they’d waste big heals all the time too. MW monk has had some of the biggest swings from good to bad across different patches. From DPS-lite to AFK gods.
Destro warlock is will be and always has been the best class and spec in the game. Ridiculously easy insane damage and beautiful summons heals etc with pets?! Perfection.
Destro lock in mop was goated
Worst: Fury War - beginning of Cata Best: Fury War - end of Cata
I had a fury warrior on my FL prog team that wowed me so much I have mained one ever since. She would burst so much it caused Ryolith to literally pivot in place in a circle lol it was awesome
Warlocks during MoP were obscene. Breaking the 1 mil DPS milestone and making the rest of the bars on the dps meter look like ants. Every class it seems has been down in the dumps at one point or another but not all have had the moment of glory that some did during certain expacs.
WW Monk- now
Blood DPS DKs and sword and board DPS warriors. I’ll die on this hill.
I mean, the Undead Sub Rogue has always been amazing. I remember going 1 on 3 in open world content and winning all of the freaking time
Balance druid in Vanilla had worse dps than a mage auto attacking with their wand.
Release DK. Nothing comes close.
worst class: The one i’m playing Best class: The ones doing better then me even if same class
I really loved WoD survival. I wish hunter had 4 specs to bring the black arrow explosive shit build.
HPal in DF S1 were genuinely bottom of the barrel. I’m speaking from a PvP pov but they were actual dogshit. Don’t know a time HPal has ever been worse
Warriors in vanilla are 10x the DPS of the worst spec, Retribution. But for expansions I had over 90% chance to Dodge and was over Armor cap in TBC with a Feral tank
Worst was Druid in classic. They didn't gain the ability to, you know, do damage until BC. At one point? Bear was doing more DPS than cat. Yes. You read that right. Remember when the ultimate talent for balance was Hurricane? Me too!
Season 3/4 SL Survival hunter
Back in Vanilla when windfury could proc windfury enhance shaman was peak.
Beast Mastery was bad in Wrath so I got laughed at for doing it despite doing pretty good damage. Then comes along Cataclysm and I still got laughed at until I was at the top of the DPS charts and had a pet for any buff the raid didn't have. The funniest part of it all is that I experienced this the entire expansion until the very end.
warlock during crucible
BC Shockadin was S-tier fun.
Night Fae Boomie ;)
Survival Hunter at Vanilla launch was the biggest joke of all time. The 31 point talent was a melee DoT at a time when hunters were completely useless in melee range.
Played priest main from vanilla to dragonflight and allways felt like we had some sort of win every single raid or season. So that's my "win" class.
Most hero classes on launch
Necrolord Outlaw Rogue with Marked for Death was easily the most fun the spec has ever been for me. Second place would be Season 4 Outlaw rogue with the Blunderbuss legendary and the current iteration is my third favorite version of the spec. It's a shame Outlaw doesn't have Serrated Bone Spike but Assassination does in Dragonflight.
The only time I ever healed was when disc priest topped the meter by just doing dps and throwing out shields on cooldown. MoP atonement was something else.
Not sure if any of you remember maces rogues in TBC in PVP, took no skill to own the battlefield.
MM Hunter during Cata Dragon Soul patch - man it was so much fun. So much utility - both PVP and PVE
I mean... Classic ret Upside: if you do seal twisting, you have surprisingly engaging rotation that you've to pay more attention to than the raids (bonus points if your swing timer does not come with highlighted area to twist at) Downside 1: you do 1/4th the damage of a frost mage for thrice the work with chance equal to your crit*SoC that you will steal agro from the tank on your first two swings Downside 2: Your best DPS increase takes a dot slot, consecration also takes a dot slot even if it does not show as a dot. Blizzard back in the day really made whole ass class and went "nah fuck you" before even releasing the game
Legion made me drop my druid after not getting any good legendary until mythic Elisandre.
Never forget Vengeance DH flag carriers outrunning mounts during Legion.
TBC Holy Pallies we’re crazy good from what I remember.
Gladiator stance warrior Season 1 of WoD
Classic shadow priests
There was 5 minutes in Vanilla where Paladin's could stack Reckoning foolishly and then 1-shot bosses. But more seriously, right after they were reworked in DF they were ridiculous.
Protection Warrior has had 2 high points in (relatively) recent history; the end of BfA, when the Thunderstomper build was at its peak, and the end of SL when a good player could make Conqueror's Banner eternal.
Fire Mage in Vanilla/Wrath, Frost Mage in Cata, and Fire Mage in MoP were all God-tier.
Doubt anything comes closd to release DK. Could effortlessly solo 3 people on wrath. Got veng glad with DK easily in wrath.
3.0 had wandering bands of Ret Paladins causing havoc on that daily zone with the sunwell
I miss MoP enh shaman, esp ascendance before rework, god damn it was good. Legion/cata arms warrior was also in my Top tier list.
9.0 Prot warrior, before they changed how the Reprisal legendary worked, was beyond unplayable. Every other tank had a means to pull, hold agro on a full pack, and use a common defensive to not die instantly. Not warriors. When you charged in, you had enough rage for either a revenge or a shield block... not both. Revenge meant you'd hold threat on the pack but you're a wet paper bag defensively so your HP disappears in a blink. Shield block meant that the piddling little thunder clap does barely any damage and the DPS immediately rip agro from you. It was the only time I can recall ever seeing a tank class be actually not worth playing. Like, there have been bad balance patches where a tank isn't good, but they can at least clear low keys. Not 9.0 prot war. Even overgeared, they were just not worth playing.
Wod had the best gladiator warrior. All the other expansions just got it wrong
Pushing the memory here and I am sure it has been mentioned but when early on enhance shamans could windfury off windfury indefinitely and they were gods. Wasn't around for long IIRC.
Afflock in legion. Healers were invalid to me. I still remember just planting myself down in the soul well of final phase Gul'dan and not having the stock limit apply to me at all since I was functionally immortal.
Ret paladin during wrath pre patch was a 1 button god. No matter the gear they had. Release DKs at 80 were almost as strong as ret was during the prepatch.
Dh on launch was incredibly op, first example : chaos strike (56% attack power first hit +88% attack power with the second hit, back then it was 125% + 600% and could refund the cost if the speed was critical) and same goes for a lot of other spells the blade dance was a 1 second 100% dodge chance every 7 seconds, 100% leech, metamorphosis could stun for 4 seconds in pvp instead of a slow blur was 35% damage reduction and 65% omnidirectional dodge chance instead of 25 and 50 etc
Launch DKs all through wrath may have been the most broken class to ever exist. Worst is probably Demo and Survival after the nerfs during WoD, as Ion put it, they didn't want us to play those specs at all. Sucks cause Survival with Black Arrow/DoT playstyle was my fav.
Volley hunters in (WotLK) Naxx. AOE’ing single targets with volley and doing more dps than a normal rotation. With infinite mana thanks to aspects, before focus was a thing.
Best: ret in 10.0.7 Worst: ret specifically when the game launches. Ret's rework not only made the spec incredibly fun, but also probably the most overpowered it's ever been.
End of wrath random BGs, would either one shot or get one shot.