I miss healing and/or tanking, need some serious advice
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 12:07 pm
This is a bit longer, but I want to get the best advice for my dilemma so bear with me please and thank you!
So I am very fond of hybrid classes in later expansions. Ive played tons of druid, shaman and paladin throughout expansions up to Cataclysm and did my fair share of both healing and tanking. I always got massive amounts of enjoyment out of it and got very comfortable with always being needed/required and having that responsibility.
Its just that direction that the game took from Cataclysm up that I dislike.
So I decided to relive the best times, Vanilla and TBC(mainly TBC for me, but the scene for it is dead atm)
Hell, I almost forgot how fantastic it was, no this is not nostalgia...I still do love it. The only real downside is that most classes in vanilla are so damn bare-boned and hybrids seem to be quite outdated and below average at nearly everything, but healing apparently and not only due to near non-existent itemization.
So since we are talking about nostalgia I went for hunter, which was my only vanilla char back in the day when I was totally oblivious to what mmo even is. While I do enjoy it tons, at my current level Im starting to miss the "being needed" kind of feeling. While there is overpopulation of warriors, it seems to be nigh impossible to get anyone to tank at low levels and when there is someone to tank, there isnt anyone to heal. Its just hour/two of waiting/begging only for that one person to disconnect in a midst of a run leaving us to either try to tank with pets, search for a missing member for another hour or just disband. Every time. This often happens after one bad pull and one single wipe, despite rest of the run being perfectly smooth.
This is not how I remember vanilla, we wiped and went back and wiped and went back and did whatever we could to finish it.
So Im finding myself overleveling it even with the absolutely minor amount of questing on a side that adds up over time and unable to finish off even that one quest for the last boss I so want.
Sure I can just quest/grind and have fun. But I so damn enjoy doing the runs that it really bums me out.
The problem here is warrior seems to be the only real tank in vanilla and Im just not fond of melees and never was. Druid and Paladin were exception, because of their specific mechanics and not being stuck in melee-sword-whacking mode. With them I had options.
Then there is a priest, the ultimate healer that has at least a bit of variety when it comes to healing, Im just afraid of not really having much fun just repetitively wanding away whenever Im not healing.
And at last my favourite hybrids. I went through all the forum "horror stories" of leveling/playing them on vanilla and it looks liek this:
Paladin seems to be that afk autoattack-stand-in-one-spot-forever kind of guy, that sounds utterly boring. Sucks as prot, sucks as ret and spams and only used for spamming buffs and single heal. Not sure if he can pull off at least 5-man tanking. Doesnt sound very exciting. Though he is considered good in pvp?
Druid seems to be just walking innervate and combat ress with some hots on a side. Balance is useless, feral is nearly useless, but he at least seems to be able to tank 5-mans. Druid was almost always my main. Hell, Id go for it, but again...Im worried that my end game will be just a walking utility, that noone will allow me some fun with tanking anymore and that if I switch to pvp, it is going to be pretty underwhelming experience (or so I heard).
Shaman as resto would be fine, possibly a lot of fun. But here we go again, elemental sounds like a pain to attempt to even try and Im unfortunately ele positive. Never really took interest in enhancement.
If Ill heal, I want it to be at least a little bit engaging (not x ranks of one single heal spam) and if Ill tank and enjoy doing so it would be really sad to get whacked at 60 for not being the "right" class for it.
Now I know many of the horror stories are just exagerrated and not entirely true, thats where I need advice. I have zero experience with vanilla versions of any of the classes apart from hunter.
If you can give me some examples from your experience about how druid/shaman/paladin/warrior are at the respective roles Id very much appreciate it.
So I am very fond of hybrid classes in later expansions. Ive played tons of druid, shaman and paladin throughout expansions up to Cataclysm and did my fair share of both healing and tanking. I always got massive amounts of enjoyment out of it and got very comfortable with always being needed/required and having that responsibility.
Its just that direction that the game took from Cataclysm up that I dislike.
So I decided to relive the best times, Vanilla and TBC(mainly TBC for me, but the scene for it is dead atm)
Hell, I almost forgot how fantastic it was, no this is not nostalgia...I still do love it. The only real downside is that most classes in vanilla are so damn bare-boned and hybrids seem to be quite outdated and below average at nearly everything, but healing apparently and not only due to near non-existent itemization.
So since we are talking about nostalgia I went for hunter, which was my only vanilla char back in the day when I was totally oblivious to what mmo even is. While I do enjoy it tons, at my current level Im starting to miss the "being needed" kind of feeling. While there is overpopulation of warriors, it seems to be nigh impossible to get anyone to tank at low levels and when there is someone to tank, there isnt anyone to heal. Its just hour/two of waiting/begging only for that one person to disconnect in a midst of a run leaving us to either try to tank with pets, search for a missing member for another hour or just disband. Every time. This often happens after one bad pull and one single wipe, despite rest of the run being perfectly smooth.
This is not how I remember vanilla, we wiped and went back and wiped and went back and did whatever we could to finish it.
So Im finding myself overleveling it even with the absolutely minor amount of questing on a side that adds up over time and unable to finish off even that one quest for the last boss I so want.
Sure I can just quest/grind and have fun. But I so damn enjoy doing the runs that it really bums me out.
The problem here is warrior seems to be the only real tank in vanilla and Im just not fond of melees and never was. Druid and Paladin were exception, because of their specific mechanics and not being stuck in melee-sword-whacking mode. With them I had options.
Then there is a priest, the ultimate healer that has at least a bit of variety when it comes to healing, Im just afraid of not really having much fun just repetitively wanding away whenever Im not healing.
And at last my favourite hybrids. I went through all the forum "horror stories" of leveling/playing them on vanilla and it looks liek this:
Paladin seems to be that afk autoattack-stand-in-one-spot-forever kind of guy, that sounds utterly boring. Sucks as prot, sucks as ret and spams and only used for spamming buffs and single heal. Not sure if he can pull off at least 5-man tanking. Doesnt sound very exciting. Though he is considered good in pvp?
Druid seems to be just walking innervate and combat ress with some hots on a side. Balance is useless, feral is nearly useless, but he at least seems to be able to tank 5-mans. Druid was almost always my main. Hell, Id go for it, but again...Im worried that my end game will be just a walking utility, that noone will allow me some fun with tanking anymore and that if I switch to pvp, it is going to be pretty underwhelming experience (or so I heard).
Shaman as resto would be fine, possibly a lot of fun. But here we go again, elemental sounds like a pain to attempt to even try and Im unfortunately ele positive. Never really took interest in enhancement.
If Ill heal, I want it to be at least a little bit engaging (not x ranks of one single heal spam) and if Ill tank and enjoy doing so it would be really sad to get whacked at 60 for not being the "right" class for it.
Now I know many of the horror stories are just exagerrated and not entirely true, thats where I need advice. I have zero experience with vanilla versions of any of the classes apart from hunter.
If you can give me some examples from your experience about how druid/shaman/paladin/warrior are at the respective roles Id very much appreciate it.