I want to leave Retail and move to Classic, permanently. I think what’s frustrating about Retail is all the constant changes every week, lack of community, M+/Raids made for the top 1% ESports only, etc.
But this isn’t a retail bash post.
I have some questions I was hoping people could answer:
Are there any PvP recommended servers I should join? I heard Firemaw is one of the best.
Should I go Alliance or Horde? I know this is personal preference but I also heard there’s more people playing Alliance. How bad is the faction imbalance? I personally don’t care, in Retail I’ve played Alliance AND Horde for years, so no preference.
Any tips on what class to roll or avoid? I heard Wars/Rogues do the best dmg, Mages best AOE and utility, there are too many Hunters and Druids kinda suck. Is any of this true?
If you want pvp Firemaw is a great place. Population is that of a pretty high pop Classic server, growing by the day.
The pop imbalance is, in my estimation, 40-60% Alliance. This is mainly driven by the surge in levelers that, for whatever reason, have preferred to join the Alliance. This means that as horde, you may have a more difficult time leveling up as world pvp seems to be many leveler’s and non levelers’ bread and butter.
Some mega gankers like Grim (wow legend, check his videos out) have joined the horde faction recently so I guess things will balance out. Horde is big enough though to have its place in this server and kick 4ss, no questions about that. Economy is great on both factions (26k items on horde and 35k on Alliance as of yesterday).
When it comes to high end raiding, both factions are great, but horde has probably more players since we were the majority faction for the whole of Era’s lifespan. We also get insta Qs on bgs these days which is super nice, and on Pug v Pug games, we have a very high win ratio (at least in my experience).
In terms of classes, Warrior is the king of damage, no questions asked. A pain to level up in this dangerous world of Classic Era though. Hunters get very limited raid spots that are reserved for exceptionally good pullers, if thats your jazz go for it. Druids are a 100% guaranteed raid spot and Omega OP in WSG… depends on your tastes mate.
If I were you, I would roll horde and make a shaman → Insta spot for raids as a healer, and godmode destroyer of worlds in pvp as Elemental. You would also be joining the underdog faction and keeping the pressure on the Alliance.
This is why I quit retail. It’s not the WoW I fell in love with anymore.
And as to your other questions, Bananoid has it covered. It’s pretty much the summary of everything about era!
Edit: But to elaborate, I’ve definitely had some lovely experiences on era. For the most part, people want to help you out in the world. I’ve seen maybe three childish or rude people in my three to four weeks of playing which is nothing in comparison to my experiences on retail. If you want the spirit and feeling of vanilla today, the best your going to get is era right now. Wishing you good luck.
Ally is better raiding faction in vanilla, horde is better for pvp (in general). How much you care about that is up to you but the difference is not insignificant.
This is a swamp issue and people tend to get very mad over this so I am obliged to preface with this. “The content is easy, class and spec don’t matter that much it’s all about the journey”. Now to the actual game - it’s extremely imbalanced but that’s part of the charm.
Leveling is braindead easy with every class, warrior and to a lesser extent rogue can be kind of tricky very early on if you don’t know where to get a decent weapon for your level range. Mage specifically can be optimized for bunch of aoe grinding strats and if you are into that then it is the best leveling class. Note that easy =/= fast, there is a lot of downtime between mobs and knowledge of what quests are worth doing in terms of exp/rewards/annoyance can make a colosal difference in your experience.
Raiding. It’s all about warrior-priest-mage. Game is full of “meme specs” aka talent specs that are so comically bad that there is no objective reason to bring them to the raid over anything more meta, some people are very passionate about playing those and you can clear everything with those specs in a raid but they are objectively bad and result oriented players will give them relevant treatment.
Warrior is king of vanilla, best tanks(arguably only tanks), best dps, you can’t go wrong with more warriors. * all warrior gear is mega contested
Priest - best healers, no competition shadow is a meme spec.
Mage - best range dps, best aoe for big pulls, good utility
Rogue - a worse warrior, they got some exclusive niches, they are not that much worse, still head and shoulders above most classes in the game,you will still want some in raid for utility but at the end of the day it is a worse warrior
Druid - worse priest, every raid wants 1 for the buff, other than that it’s a worse priest. Not healing specs are memes
Hunter - They have niche of being raid pullers but other than that hunter is a wheelchair class
Warlock - worse mage, every raid will still want at 2 for debuffs and some niche warlock only tasks
Paladin - utility class, every raid wants 2 for their unique buffs and some healing. Paladins are the reason why ally outperforms horde on average in raids. Non healing specs are meme
Shaman - this is an interesting one, shamans can compete with priests when it comes to healing and their unique utility (totems) is group wide so horde raids are sort of forced to stack them. And as with all hybrid classes shamans are basically healer only class.
Never played enough vanilla pvp to get solid opinion on classes there but it’s a different kind of broken with some geared classes (mainly warriors, shamans and rogues) being able to absolutely blow up unexpected target. Also, consumables are very big part of classic in general but in PVP they break the game to the next level. For example there is a potion that grants 30s of immunity stuns/roots/slows, or another one that grants 6s immunity to all physical damage. Depending on which side of the spear you are on this can be extremely fun or extremely frustrating.
Warriors: great if bringing a pocket healer. If solo, using faps and gadgets. Otherwise meme class.
Rogues: great for wPvP b/c of opening. Need hands in BGs to make an impact - those who do, are great. If you can only ambush and roam around in stealth in wsg, you are beyond the meme category.
Druid: godtier when it comes to flag carrying. Its a tough skill to learn but they are the undisputed #1 flag carriers. Feral/Boomkin can be fun if you have good positioning and make yourself useful for the team. As most times, this is not the case, lots of memes running around.
Warlock: not the best if not properly geared. However, if you are, melee cannot touch you. Just cannot. You can basically put dots all game and end up killing the whole field 2 times over.
Hunter: hands needed. Most hunters cannot make use of traps, flare or pets properly. Those who do, dominate the field. A hunter has a huge bag of tricks and can basically stay mid in bgs and dictate the tempo of the game. Top flag defenders in wsg.
Priest: if you heal, are properly geared, and can move, you are very unkillable. If you manage to gear up a shadow priest with top tier gear (rough proposition, b/c of guilds’ reluctance) you are the #1 threat 1 on 1 on pvp. As hands and gear often are out of the equation, many priests fall into the useless category.
Mage: least gear dependent class in the game (arguably). Can play with multiple specs although most pvpers favor deep frost. Maximum CC and survivability, and can punch with their glass cannon very hard. Second best flag carrier in WSG. Downside is, if you find yourself out of place, you will die very fast.
Paladin: paladins are arguably, or so I have heard, the best PvP healing class in the game. It is true there are some exceptions I have seen in my experience that do fulfill this label on Era (E.g.: Powerstation) but most don’t know how to position themselves, are Retri specced which is big lol (although fun I guess) and have zero to very little impact in games. I would say, for what their potential is worth, there is a big paladin pvp talent void in Era.
Shaman: let’s get enhancement out of the way - while I do think an enhancement shaman properly played is superior to a ret paladin (as they can atleast wf some clothies), they are mostly a meme class played by people who saw 2006’s Unbreakable video (one of the coolest ever, ngl). Could they be better? maybe. Do talented shamans play enh? No.
As healer shamans are good. If we measure their potential, I would still have both priests and pallies above them. But since pallies suck, shamans are actually some of the best healers in the game, so its very viable.
And now, brace yourselves… Elemental shamans… from the depths of beyond broken mechanics, absolute unlimited scalability, comes the one-shotting super burst nature machine. The amount of damage a geared and skilled? ele shaman can produce in less then 2 seconds is second to none. Add to that mail + shields, a bag of utility totems, heals… true their mobility is no the best… but who cares for them if everything they touch dies.
As somebody mentioned above, what I just wrote here may add to the swamp of thoughts and feelings about pvp. This is my personal view at least. I play a mage btw lol
Curse of tounges, 60% slower cast time. Most ele dmg relies on casting, well most caster dmg relies on casting lol.
If there are no dispels present it is very very potent.
Though with good mages/ druids nearby it is not really a thing, with active dispels it turns into a slight annoyance only id say a horde ranged camp then is much stronger than its alliance side because of shamans. For the pure burst pressure they put out / spamming pois clense, grounding and tremor. To make it worse all the shamans gives the horde a ton of offensive dispells.
As for why there are fewer locks, its as horde generally comes with alot of will of the forsaken and then you have a 30 yard 4 second pulsing tremor totem removing all fears/ sleeps and charms (group wide, still can be very annoying given just how many shamans play pvp).
Also does magic dust actually tremor, usually making horde side dusting stronger.
idk why you’re replying to me about all this. what has any of that got to do with allies having an advantage against shamans? the poster i was replying to suggested that alliance warlocks have a better chance vs shamans than horde do
i’ll leave this conversation open to you, maybe sooner or later you will be able to answer my question (not the one you made up in your head): what advantage do alliance warlocks have versus shamans, that horde warlocks do not?
