Looking for a best raiding spec per class + other questions

[Hyunckel]

I never played Vanilla, but I remember in TBC that some classes had better roles in certain specs than others (for ex, Ret Paladins did the lowest dps ever and were pretty useless for progressing guilds)

Is there a list of 'best raiding role' for each class during Vanilla?

I think it goes like this:

Priest: Discipline or Holy I guess (Unless Holy's aoe heals are like buffs and totems: Party-wide and not raid wide lol)
Warlock: Prolly Destruction spec I guess?
Mage: No idea, I heard Frost was actually good in Molten Core and that Fire was useless in that raid for ex?
Rogue: Combat maybe?
Druid: Either Restoration or Feral (Tank) I bet.
Shaman: Elemental?
Hunter: Dunno, Marksmanship or Beast Mastery I guess
Warrior: Protection
Paladin: Hum...... Holy? lol

Ideally, I loved playing Rogue in TBC (PvP - PvE), then in WotLK Arms Warrior (PvP), Ret / Holy Paladin (PvP - PvE), and had some fun with Disc Priest (PvP), Resto Druid (PvP) too.

I had quit during Cata after 2 months (was playing DK and they butchered my pve blood dps spec =/ ) and then played 1 month of MoP before WoD as Ret Paladin & Arms Warrior for PvP, was pretty fun until they removed half of the skills ><
Then WoD... No thanks lol

So yeah, I wonder, do bosses drop Shaman gear when you are on an Alliance toon in raids, and vice versa Paladin gear when raiding as Horde?

Is the 100 Gold fee to delete your spec to play some off spec (like, main raid spec tank, dps off spec) really that expensive to earn?

Is it true you only get 3 drops in a 40 man raid? lol

But on the other hand, I heard that greenies and blues drop like candybars on this server during leveling, maybe during 'basic' Lv.60 dungeons as well so that could offbalance the gold / gearing issues...

I had other questions but forgot them lol.

[Theloras]

Paladin: Hum...... Holy? lol

Ret all day err day bro - well somedays Prot

[SiegeMentality]

Disclaimer: I was around in vanilla, but I did not raid seriously until BC.

My main was a priest, and discipline was trash until BC. The changes made to disc in BC is what had everyone hopping on that bandwagon. I actually leveled my priest to 70 as disc to check out the changes. Even at 70, for healing groups / raids, you went holy with points in disc for improved fortitude and such.

Edit: Also, most people frown on druid tanks in vanilla because druids can't get defense capped.

[Lindow]

I don't know about the other forums, but there's quite a nice Mage guide with successful raiding specs in it. As a mage, I didn't do end game content until TBC (did it all speccing fire), but apparently, in vanilla, it is pretty much frost for MC and BWL then fire for the rest.

[grimnarr]

The best build for warlock raid dps at the moment:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#IZfxVzRxoxZgx0tM0z

[varth]

I raided a bunch in retail, so its

Priest: Holy during 6 buffs, later on with more debuff slots having 1 shadow priest is good.
Warlock : Destruction
Mage: Frost for mc-bwl, fire for aq-naxx
rogue : combat
Druid : resto, you CAN feral tank but it's not as good as a war across the board
Shaman : resto
Hunter : don't know
Warrior : Prot and fury, fury scales very well with gear, atm they are somewhat weak but later they can do top dps
Paladin : holy flash of light spam

[Hyunckel]

I raided a bunch in retail, so its

Priest: Holy during 6 buffs, later on with more debuff slots having 1 shadow priest is good.
Warlock : Destruction
Mage: Frost for mc-bwl, fire for aq-naxx
rogue : combat
Druid : resto, you CAN feral tank but it's not as good as a war across the board
Shaman : resto
Hunter : don't know
Warrior : Prot and fury, fury scales very well with gear, atm they are somewhat weak but later they can do top dps
Paladin : holy flash of light spam

Pretty spot on from my researches.

One thing I don't get though, what"s those buffs & debuffs slots? Firstly, how / why are there limitations and when / why did blizzard decide to increase those slots (I hear it went from 8 to 16 to 20?)

Secondly, how the hell do you decide who gets which slot(s), for ex, in the case you had xx warlocks / spriests / mages (dunno if frostbolt's slow is counted, or let's imagine scorch / firebolt etc's fire dots)

And about dots and enemy buffs / debuffs, I noticed there was no way to track their duration, with any addon (XPerl, OmniCC, nothing), found one addon made recently by the private servers community, but it just sets up a timer for buffs/ debuffs on enemy target frame IF you were close enough to 'see' it cast, since there is no way to track them in real time.

Heck, using Luna Unit Frames or XPerl AND OmniCC, you can't see proper numerc durations on your own buffs / debuffs under your character frame with either of those addons, you can only see your buffs / debuffs timers on the Blizzard icons on the top right corner of the screen besides the mini map =(

Enough off topic, thanks for the help to everyone who posted, I had already decided to play mage in the end, since Paladins are almost forced to be healers / buffers only in a raid environment to feel useful.

Sucks that the itemization was limited to MP5 / Intel / Spirit back then until PvP armor sets.

I guess I'll have to fire up some 3.3.5 servers for my ret pal BG wrecking fix lol

[Bioness]

Almost everything in this thread could be found with a simple Google search.

I will add that as far as Warlock specs are concerned you don't call them by the talent tree, but rather by the talents within the trees themselves. Again all this you can find with a simple search.

[Armilus]

One thing I don't get though, what"s those buffs & debuffs slots? Firstly, how / why are there limitations and when / why did blizzard decide to increase those slots (I hear it went from 8 to 16 to 20?)

It was likely due to performance concerns and raids were one of the last things they added in development. They basically threw MC and Ony together right before release and didn't have time to fix game mechanics that were broken with 40 people. They got around to it eventually.

Secondly, how the hell do you decide who gets which slot(s), for ex, in the case you had xx warlocks / spriests / mages (dunno if frostbolt's slow is counted, or let's imagine scorch / firebolt etc's fire dots)

There is a debuff priority system (admittedly it wasn't actually added to wow until they increased the debuff limit to 16, but it is currently active on Nost). Before the priority system, when a new debuff was applied one of the old ones 'fell off'. This also applied to buffs on players so tanks could go through 5-6 flask of the titans in a raid because people keep buffing them with things like thorns and push the flask off. (Players have a 16 buff limit on Nost, so this isn't a concern.)

The priority system consists of a few levels of importance and each debuff is basically 'tagged' with one of the priority levels. I believe the first level is Protected, which basically means that nothing can replace that debuff. The second level is 'high' which means that only another high priority debuff or a protected debuff can overwrite it. Then I think there is medium and low priority but it might just be low priority.

In order to decide which debuffs stay up, your raid group has to decide what debuffs they want and ensure that NOBODY uses any debuffs that have a high enough priority to push off one of the desired buffs. The biggest culprit there are weapon proc's that debuff the target, they tend to have a decently high priority and do very little to help the raid.

And about dots and enemy buffs / debuffs, I noticed there was no way to track their duration, with any addon (XPerl, OmniCC, nothing), found one addon made recently by the private servers community, but it just sets up a timer for buffs/ debuffs on enemy target frame IF you were close enough to 'see' it cast, since there is no way to track them in real time.

Heck, using Luna Unit Frames or XPerl AND OmniCC, you can't see proper numerc durations on your own buffs / debuffs under your character frame with either of those addons, you can only see your buffs / debuffs timers on the Blizzard icons on the top right corner of the screen besides the mini map =(

You can use Chronometer to see the duration of your short-term buffs like renew/rejuv and the duration on your CC's like fear/banish/polymorph.

Natur Enemy Cast Bars (NECB) will give you timers on other player's debuffs so you can see when another player's banish is going to end but it will only show the last banish cast. If you have 4 warlocks banishing targets, it will only show 1 timer.

I don't think it's possible to get the remaining duration on other player's (or NPC's) buffs with the vanilla addon API. It would be possible to create an addon that watches for the buff being applied and runs it's own timer but I haven't seen any.

[FrustratedMoth]

Druid: Resto is likely what you'll be using if you want to raid. It is possible to get a raid spot as a feral DPS or a moonkin if you're skilled and stubborn, but you'll have to really work for it.
Mage: Fire technically does more damage, but since everything in MC and I think BWL will have fire resist you're gonna go frost. Arcane is useless, but at least Arcane Missiles look cool.
Warlock: SM/Ruin or DM/Ruin are basically your only choices. Your dots are almost useless due to the debuff limit, though.
Priest: Holy/Disc is your go-to healyspec. If you're a priest, you'll likely be healing in raids. However, there's usually 1 shadowpriest in a raid to buff the warlock damage, so if you really want to spec Shadow you can. It's a tough life though, you do decent damage, only slightly below pure DPS classes, but nobody will care or notice because you're still a hybrid. "Nobody complains about my damage as a shadowpriest!" "lol thats becus theres no dmg to complain about. lol hybrid loser"
Paladin: Paladins are easily the best class in 5-man groups due to your buffs and auras, even as Ret. In raids though, it's quite different. Holy paladins make great healers. They're on the same level as Priests and can equip up to plate. Retribution, though... Oh man. There've been some outstanding rets in raids, but since the general attitude in the raid scene is 'usefulness = dps' nobody will care. You're likely in the middle of the pack in terms of damage if you're skilled, but nobody's going to care about the seven mages doing less damage than you because they're pure damage classes. Even if the raid leader knows you bring 110% to the raid, handing out flasks and buffs and bandaging people and saving someone's life with Lay on Hands, guess what'll happen? Xxdethxswagyolox the Rogue, the one in full greens that takes more damage than the tank, doesn't use poisons, spams a racist /yell macro every time he stealths, spams Sinister Strike and Slice and Dice in dagger spec to do 44 DPS, is going to get picked over you for the DPS slot, because he's a pure DPS and you aren't. Unlike Ret, Prot actually is useless and won't be mentioned. No matter what spec you use, you'll be a buffbot.
Rogue: Combat Swords and Combat Dagger specs are the best by a slight margin.
Warrior: Warriors are interesting because they have two viable raid paths: fury DPS and prot tanking. Arms is more bursty and good for PvP, but it does less damage in raids. Don't expect to be chosen for a raid spot if you go Arms.
Shaman/Hunter: Never played or read about the vanilla hunter or shaman, but I assume resto/marks is the way to go.