(05-20-2014, 05:05 PM)Twinflame Wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDP3T3j2vOcROFL
/wave
/em goes back to work
Outside of him never having played DPS by the sound of it, yes, this kind of crazy shit happened. Â This is the kind of stuff I bring up when people want to go back to vanilla raiding. Â I have a few places I'd disagree, namely about how the lack of mechanics made it easy (he was pretty up front about being in a relatively casual raid), but don't let anyone tell you vanilla raiding was better. Â A few tidbits he missed!
Entire classes had limits. Â As he mentioned, you didn't need any prot or ret paladins in a raid. Â Only holy had its benefits. Â It's benefits were blessings, which lasted 30 seconds. Â So you never needed more than one or two paladins. Â So have four friends with paladins? Â Useless. Â Level a warlock or a mage, we needed them.
He missed the fact that gearing up was bad, but the actual GEAR was a nightmare for a few classes. Â Hunters especially not only needed to watch their mana, but needed INTELLECT on their gear! Â That's right, hunters needed to balance their agility with intellect because abilities either used one or the other. Â And this led to several stupid hunters figuring everything should be theirs, including two-handed strength weapons to use as stat sticks because, "What if I need to raptor strike or wing clip?" Â That's where "huntard" came from.
In that bit, he says you only needed two spells if you were a healer. Â And he was technically right. Â However, you needed ALL of your healing spells. Â That meant you might have all your levels of Flash Heal and Holy Light on two bars so that you could heal using JUST ENOUGH mana, because you needed to conserve it. Â You could get in serious shit for overhealing, and that could happen solely by using the spell a level higher than you needed it.
Yes, warriors needed certain skills. Â A few of which weren't in their stance. Â That meant a protection warrior didn't usually use shield bash (because they needed the rage for sunder) but they often had to switch to battle stance to use Mocking Blow, an ability that taunted in melee range when your taunt was on cooldown. Â This was necessary because, sometimes, if your DPS was high, you couldn't start until there were five sunders on the target. Â He didn't mention how little threat even prot warriors generated. Â Healers and DPS pulled hate all the time, so you had to watch your threat meter religiously and know precisely where to restart your rotation. Â For some classes, like Affliction Warlocks (and they were ALL affliction), that meant that you might suddenly overtake the tank on threat and couldn't dump threat fast enough because your dots were still doing incredible damage.
You might get passed over in a raid based on RACE! Â Racial traits essentially made and broke classes. Â Hell, priests even had a spell they got BASED ON THEIR RACE! Â So humans had a heal for themselves only and had a spirit buff. Â Guess who got invited along to raids most often. Â Not Night Elves, which had a damage spell and an avoidance spell. Â Those were wastes of mana! Â Reroll a human so that you have an instant for yourself that gets you back on the other characters quickest. Â And you can't race change, so reroll from 1.
It is impossible to stress how seriously some people took raiding guilds. Â This guy was obviously in one that wasn't too serious (they got to play around). Â There were some hardcore guilds that seriously broke down combat logs after the fact and reported back to you how you could have increased your DPS. Â And guess what? Â If you performed everything perfectly, turns out you would have had enough DPS and healing efficiency to kill the boss. Â Screw whether it was humanely possible, it worked on paper, and it was your fault. Â And if you were the consistent "problem", you were ejected from the raid.
He wasn't joking about being ejected not just for being the wrong spec, but also wrong class, wrong race, having the wrong gear, not being able to demonstrate a certain level of damage on a dummy, being blacklisted in the local community after being ejected from your last raiding guild, for not showing up to a raid even in an actual emergency, or for being friends with someone that was ejected from a raid, regardless of whether or not you disagreed. Â And yes, of all of those, I have seen examples personally.
Of course, if you're friends with the GM, you aren't ever ejected, no matter what. Â Your numbers have an excuse. Â But other peoples' numbers? Â Ironclad proof of failure. Â "You should have been on the fucking boss, man. Â My girlfriend was getting whelps."
The mechanics they did have were utterly crazy. Â Take Baron Geddon. Â He starts pulsing, and in 10 seconds he does 30,000 damage, 500 the first second, 500 the second second, 1000 the third, etc. Â The tank had 9-10k health if he was really well geared. Â Imagine this back in the time before internet connections were so quick and reliable. Â This also meant that the game chugged if you weren't using a high quality machine back in the day. Â The problem was that the melee had no mitigation. Â These days, almost everyone has a sort of self-heal, ways of getting out of damage. Â That leaves survival in your hands. Â In vanilla, you needed the healers to refill you, and their mana was mana you needed to survive.
So it really sucked that another mechanic did damage AND stole mana, and was unavoidable. Â Unless you had a shitload of fire resistance gear. Â So you had a whole set of gear specifically tailored to combat fire damage just so that your mana wasn't completely burned. Â How many mechanics in new WoW require you to have a gear set, then once you have it it's not even a big deal?
Oh, but the most fun was living bomb, the first time I remember being sentenced to death. Â You ran away from everyone else, because when it exploded, unless you'd packed a ton of gear and had the stamina, it killed you. Â It did a healthy chunk of damage to you, but it also flung you into the air and the falling damage generally finished you off. Â Which, by definition, you probably did too far away to be healed in midair.
Nowadays? Â None of these mechanics would be a problem. Â People have mitigation for them, people have mana to heal you, people can prepare. Â It's difficulty that can be overcome. Â With the movesets you had? Â You just hoped it hit your priest so they could cast levitate, and thus they all carried soft feathers. Â Your survival was almost completely out of your hands. Â And, of course, if you're airborne and away from the group, you're probably not doing damage. Â It especially sucks if you have a bunch of melee, who suffer the most from the spells.
And I haven't even talked about repairing and what a pain in the ass that was. Â And did he go over the debuff limit? Â Yeah, you could be ejected from the raid, or told not to do things in the raid, because you could only use a certain few debuffs before they started erasing the first ones put on.
Difficult? Â Yes, very. Â Harder than MoP, I certainly think so. Â More fun than MoP? Â There are a few things I miss, but don't believe the hype when someone uses the word "better". Â Harder isn't better, because it wasn't hard for the right reasons.
Goddamnit, and I didn't tell you guys about Divine Intervention, the paladin spell that costs a reagent, kills yourself, and gives someone invincibility (usually a healer). Â But your paladin is a healer, obviously! Â So it is a healer's job to carry reagents and predict a wipe beforehand, then die by putting it on another healer who, in MC, HAD TO BE IN THE PARTY WITH THEM! Â Why would you need that when Warlocks had Soulstone? Â Because Soulstone had a half-hour cooldown. Â And if neither of those worked, there was a stink because the whole raid had to release and run back to the raid. Â Yes, that was an admonish-able offense in vanilla.
Man, vanilla raiding...