WotLK's Most Weird, Yet Viable Specs (there's a lot of them)
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- čas přidán 30. 04. 2022
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There are A TON of weird, yet viable specs in WotLK, today I wanted to do a trip down memory lane and look at what was good and why.
Got any others you think I should include? Comment below and i'll try and do a part 2!
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#wotlk #wow #mmorpg - Hry
Catch up fast with the best leveling guide made by Classic's top speedrunners. I've done Loremaster of Northrend 3 times using this, can confirm works very well. Guides for Dragonflight also available! www.restedxp.com/?ref=WillE Use Code: WILLE for 5% off!
1:20 honor among thieves rogue
3:20 fan of knives rogue
5:00 spellhance shaman
6:20 prot/holy paladin
8:45 prot/holy/ret preg paladin
10:00 shadowfrost death knight
11:28 blood death knight
12:58 metamorphosis tank warlock
14:04 arms prot tank warrior
15:20 frost/fire mage
thx!
BiS
All useless ass specs and complete memes in a serious guild
@@Excentrix54 ur retarded if u think enhancement is first of all useless and second of all meme, it's a tier 1 dps spec from t7 to t9
@@Excentrix54 spellhance one of the best dps until icc especially early on. preg paladin pvp monster - fan of knives rog big for onyxia. rest may be kinda mediocre.
This was the beauty of the old talent trees. Of course there was BiS, cookie cutter specs. But it also lead to so so much experimentation that every once in a while led to something fun and broken being uncovered. Love the old talent trees, look forward to Wrath again.
@Elliot Rose Yes, it is actual choice. Illusion of choice is the existing talent trees. I hate when people make that argument.
Actually hopefull for Dragonflight talent trees for that reason. Will not be the same as you can't put 50/50 in two different trees liek in the past but it atleast on paper should allow for insane customization.
Sure there will be a tree thats best for pvp/singletarget/aoe and it will be solved by some pro that people will copy but i imagine there would be quite a few options if one is okay with doing 5-10% less dps.
@@jockeberg8353 I'm never gonna be hyped for a wow expansion, but that specifically is really exciting to me about DF.
@Elliot Rose yeah and if you use these specs get ready to get kicked out of group
dont complain afterwards
@@jockeberg8353
It’s not enough for me to play DragonFlight, even if it does sound promising.
Mostly because every expansion after Wrath was “promising” and then ended up disappointing.
But also because I don’t want to split my playtime in half between Wrath and the new expansion.
Playing Blood as dps was weirdly some of the most fun I’ve ever had in wow. In fact the crazy versatility of all 3 dk specs made it my favorite thing ever and still main DK to this day!
I stopped playing dk after they changed bloody dps. It was so fun and it flowed so well. It sort of didnt feel like a rotation at all
on the flip side unholy/frost tanking was my favourite memory of Naxx/Ulduar xD
I seem to remember there being a way to play frost dk as a tank too, but I'm not sure if I'm misremembering
Blood and Unholy were the original DPS specs and Frost was originally the tank.
@@ct6394 i thought so, thank you!
Honorable mention to the Revenge Warrior in PvP. - It's a nice one, you go Fury, grab Titan's Grip, then go down Prot to get improved revenge and also grab those 5% talents for block, parry and/or dodge as much as you can. - Get a lot of stamina, gem full stamina, and add resilience from the PvP gear, and jump onto people. Shield means you'll revenge a lot against melee folks, you get a lot of HP that's only bolstered by Last Stand, stacks nicely with Enraged Regeneration, and on top of that, with so much HP, that Bloodthirst effect of "attacks heal you for 3% of your HP " means you're a really strong tank. And when those Revenge procs hit? Enjoy seeing half an enemy's HP vanish in a single weapon skill.
Is this really viable tho? Id love a warrior with shield in pvp. But cant find anything viable except the 100% armor pen one. Which i will never get the gear for.
@@nyi6284 It struggles a bit against casters, unless you're good at using Spell Reflect. - But otherwise it's good, yeah.
And when you're not doing PVP, it also makes for a good tank for dungeons and heroics. So you can still farm emblems.
Main reason it works though is the way Revenge scales. And you really wanna fish for every opportunity to land Revenge on the enemy. Hence why you have the shield, to add blocks on top of your dodges and parries. - And, you know... in WotLK you have 2h weapons with tank stats, that are intended for DKs.
@@kayn9651 sounds like alot of fun. Mabey ill give it a try. Thanks man
Could you link a example tree or somekind of forum post that elaborates on it like preg pala?
@@nyi6284warriors go arm pen regardless of spec
The nightmare that was Shockadin, I loved and i mean loved running a shockadin and just beaming people for 50% their HP an healing to full with one shock instant flash combo
Doin that rn in warmane wow, so much fun
@@luizfelipemelo1098 I was one of the very first player on Warmane, back when it was MOLTEN WOW. It had its peek, but since then major staff issues have created a rift between myself an that server. A lot of players left because they made 2 people into staff members an they became a major problem against players who spoke out aginst any issues facing molten wow. Especially after its data was hyjacked an it was forced to restart as warmane.
Play on private servers and 14:15 is my favourite Warrior spec. I've always got it set as an off-spec for doing 5mans. It's so much fun doing 6-10k every pull.
If you're leveling, once you hit 46 anyway, it immediately is obvious how powerful it is and once you hit 51 where you've got 5/5 Shield Specialization it's hands down the best way to level a tank warrior. You do *so much damage* and the survivability is rock solid.
Gather up a group of mobs, AOE grind them down and laugh all the way to level cap.
An additional and oft-overlooked leveling spec I want to mention: Ret-tection Paladin.
This one's solely for leveling and, once you get Divine Plea, this goes by the wayside but if you want to level a Paladin tank with strong tanking options and minimal downtime than focus on the Retribution tree.
Here's the comparison between the specs:
Starting at Level 30 to give Prot the best footing:
Ret:
- 10% reduced instant cast mana costs
- 3% improved crit, increased Judgment usage (higher damage)
- Reduced opponent's attack power (10%+ damage reduction vs no AP reduction)
- Seal of Command - RIGHT HERE BABY! Auto-cleaves AND (through glyph) providing one of your only access to early mana regen.
- 3% or 6% more damage (depending on type)
- 15% movement and, this is key, mount speed. Essentially it's "level 10%-15% faster"
- 3% more group damage, 50% improved ret aura which adds up doing large AOE pulls.
Prot:
- 11% more incoming heals
- 5% more dodge.
- 9% reduced damage.
- 4% more armor.
- 50% devo aura buff
- 10% stam/STR, in theory mana back but in practice... eeehhh...
- Crap damage, no mana regen. Enjoy drinking every 2-3 pulls.
The mana thing seems like less of an issue on paper but in practice it's huge. Leveling isn't like endgame where everything you'll be wearing is kitted out in defense rating that helps you get value out of Blessing of Sanctuary. The problem to is that BoS requires, by definition, a lot of mobs and fails to prop up your mana adequately once you get down to 1-3 mobs remaining and it *shows*
A Ret tank can go almost constantly while a Prot tank regularly requires sitting and waiting.
I was leveling with a friend who'd taken my advice on Ret-tection, dominated the damage meters from levels 15-60 (always top 2 damage done - usually 1st by a large margin) despite a lack of heirlooms, and at 60-61 we went back to Startholme to 2-man it as an Enhance + proper Prot to let her practice the Prot rotation.
After her damage fell by 20% at best and a half hour of having to choose to either drink after the pull or focus on mana conservation during the last few mobs (resulting in 40%-50% DPS reduction) she bailed on Prot proper until lvl 72 when Divine Plea entered the equation.
After that it's not a question. Prot's the superior experience.
The tendency I've heard is to point out that Prot take demonstrably less damage but it's important to realize that most of the damage you take as a 5man in WotLK is AOE tanking trash pulls rather than boss fights.
You know what's also an excellent way to minimize trash damage? Killing mobs.
Dead mobs don't need to be healed through and when you're 50% of the group's overall damage for a dungeon run because of Seal of Command + able to make regular use of Conc I'd argue, as someone who was a Ret-tection's pocket shammy healer (minimal MP5 options pre-TBC), each 5 second interval a mob doesn't beat up your tank is a direct buff to your MP5.
And at level 39+ you're guaranteed Replenishment which can be taken for granted in 25mans but shouldn't be in leveling 5mans.
To say nothing of the ability to throw on a proper DPS set and a 2hander then do 80%-90% the damage of a dedicated Ret pally and.. yeah.
RELEASE THE HORDE OF RET-TANKING BELFADINS! FLY MY PRETTIES! :D
Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
Considering that, as a shaman, you can tank 5mans in the lower level range in *leather*, mitigation is obviously not really an issue. Yes, prot takes demonstrably less damage, but it's not like thats even necessary! Ret all da way babyy
its too long to read, but yeah this build is my precious little love. i took it to duels. insta win all 1v1's vs melee and lose to all ranged/casters xD
Perfectly said. Thank you for this cheeb🙏🏻
@@VintageNarwhal You're welcome!
I think there's a lot of justified frustration with off-standard builds because it can be hard to sus out what the heck is going on or the foundational assumptions/ideas are themselves sus but there are levels to this game.
Level 1: Do whatever, talent points go with whatever looks good, your early habits crystallize. You either stay here, puttering about doing solo stuff, getting carried or struggling in group content when you're unlucky enough to be in a group without enough carry.
There's no shame in Level 1. We all started there.
Level 2: You've learned what the guides say and community consensus is by either research or cultural osmosis. You may not fully understand everything yet but you're no longer a liability in group settings.
This tends to be the spot where most people finish at IME. They know that groups with higher minimum ilvl/GS tend to do better, they've accepted which talents lead to most of the DPS, they've got a solid grasp on execution now but never really think any further about the game.
To use an example near to me: They know *THAT* tanks stack stamina but underlying concept of Effective Health and why it's so more valuable than avoidance isn't something they can communicate. It's something to do with the avoidance nerf in ICC, which is true, but they can't really express *why*.
This is totally fine and, again, no judgment. Being good enough to log in, kill some bosses with your friends and log out is a totally fine place to be.
Level 3: You start understanding *WHY* things work the way they work.
Using a different leveling build can make sense once you realize that "time to level" is determined by a mixture of travel time, time to kill mobs / maximizing damage and minimizing time not recovering between mobs/packs.
Put those together, grasp the concepts and you can craft your character's toolkits around the task at hand rather than taking the truths about endgame PVE or PVP as inherently relevant in all ways at all times.
Cuz they aren't! An optimized old-content soloing spec won't look like an optimized DPS or tanking spec for endgame.
It s insane spec, always first damage in dungen, and for leveling you can just pull a shit ton of mobs as long as there are no casters and kill em in no time, best used with a lot of defense and the defense potion
Regarding the Fan of Knives interrupt: The way our group back then managed to deal with the immortal adds on 0 lights Yogg-Saron was our rogue (me) perma-interrupting them with FoK as well as applying wound poison, and the 2 piece tier 8 set bonus made it so that I had enough energy to spam it constantly. Good times
I remember back in wrath around Ulduar era, we had a rogue tank for a VOA run one time in a pug. I was fairly impressed, don’t remember his name sadly as this was quite some time ago
Seen it quite a bit. Stacked dodge like crazy
Man I remember a rogue buddy doing that too hahaha good times
@@ryansimcock2508 best times
Same dude, but we had a disc priest do archavon
I also wen for a dodge build from time to time, it was fun, because you not only got a ton of dodge but also everytime you dodged you got a combo point and hit the enemy with your offhand xD
This is the reason Wrath was my favorite expansion. I loved making weird specs an designing my character to do something very niche
You mean very broken
@@remyd8767 Some things yes, but most are niche.
7:30, you forgot about the infinite mana regen with the talent to the right of avenger's shield. I used that spec in arena season 6 to get gladiator and would several times play 40 minute 2v2 arenas on high rating along with a dk 🤣
WotLK is where I saw the longest 1v1 in my entire life... Holy Paladin vs Frost Mage.
After they duked it out for 45 minutes with none of them dying they finally said "ok, let's call it a draw".
Literally, any time one of them was about to run out of health or mana, the paladin would bubble and heal, and the mage would sheep and eat.
I remember seeing Frostfire Mage during Ulduar and it did so well. I thought it was the coolest spec, and was really sad to see it killed, and the spell later removed.
Yeah that was the meta in early uld
I mean what’s the difference really? It’s not like you get to use all the frost and fire tools. It’s fire but with a different main nuke. It still plays the same as fire, it’s just that the spell looks a little different.
And if there was a spec that *could* take advantage of crit chains/instant pyroblasts AND shatter combos, it would be absolutely broken.
@@drewnolde2674 Wasn’t so much about it being different so much as a cool class fantasy of combining fire and ice into one spell 😄
I’d love to see another one of these videos, even for the more niche or memey specs! Figuring out new weird builds is literally my favorite part of any RPG - shame that this isn’t possible at all in retail anymore
Hopefully it will be in DF
@@ChinnuWoW it wont be.. dragon flight is trying its hardest to skip over this weirdness.. by having a class based spec tree (abilities and such) and then a SPEC based talent tree based on the spec you pick.. you cant mix fury and arms.. or fury and prot.. or whatever.. youll be Warrior Fury or Warrior Prot.. that is it
The talent tree changes post wrath really dulled down PvP imo
Make one yourself Tyler, be the change you wish to see
Early in Wrath there was a DK spec that was a hybrid of Frost and Unholy dual wielding, mostly using Howling Blast spam with Rime procs, I remember using that and topping DPS charts in raids with pretty mediocre gear, which surprised my guildmates, it got removed pretty quickly though
I miss running the old dk frost tank. I was dw frost tanking through Naxx. It was so much fun. It really had that feel of using Ice as a way to strengthen the DK's armor and the aoe burst threat was sick. All the three trees could tank back then she it was so much fun seeing the different styles do their thing and hold threat. Once it became blood only, I went DPS as frost. I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy the blood play style. It felt watered down vs frost. There was so much more to keep an eye on.
Totally agree. I ran a frost tank, thought of it as a better aoe tank with better mitigation.
Blood's gimmick is self healing and increased healing received- it works but just not as satisfying to play in a raid setting imo
I was tanking as unholy with boneshield. Its Not viable this days
FFB spec for mages was actually extremely good at first it just got nerfed *very* quickly, in particular it no longer double dipped the crit damage talents. blizzard's reasoning was the idea of frostfire bolt was to give fire and frost mages an option to hit targets highly resistant/immune to their main spells but still have it benefit from their talents, they never wanted it to be a main rotational spell
Those pvp videos were amazing
Ensidia even used the spec for the only 2 minute hodir hardmode kill
It wasn't nerfed, Torment The Weak got changed and FFB spec couldn't really afford the points to get TTW, so every other spec just got a free 12% damage modifier, and FFB couldn't compete.
@@Maxvla yes it was. There are specific patch notes saying that ffb will no longer benefit from the crit damage talents from both the fire and frost trees and TTW has never worked on bosses or anything immune to snare/slow on live servers. If it works on your pserver, then it is either bugged, changed on purpose, or just some jank pserver shenanigans
@@TheOnlyGBeast TTW: Patch 3.0.8 (2009-01-20): Now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage against targets afflicted with any type of slow (such as the combat slow from Thunder Clap).
The only FFB change in wotlk was this: Patch 3.0.3 (04-Nov-2008): The periodic damage effect from Rank 2 of this spell now benefits from spell power gains.; Reduced the mana cost of Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.
Three builds I knew about were:
DW Frost/Blood DK, a tank spec using 2 one hand tank weapons. Frost talents got you extra armor and other good stuff like haste and hit chance with DW, blood had many self healing talents and also included many talents that were balanced around using a 2H which got much stronger with dual wielding such as Blood Worms and Blood Scent. It could also bring both the % AP and % Haste raid buffs. It worked best on dungeons as you could stack a lot of avoidance and have endless runic power with Blood Scent but wasnt as popular for raiding.
Instants only PoM Mage, a PvP focused spec that used the PoM talent and its upgrade granting 30% extra crit chance while PoM was up. It would work by never using spells other than instant casts keeping the 30% bonus crit permanently. It got patched later when the Improved PoM talent would be consumed by any spell, not just spells affected by PoM.
Combat Hemo Rogue, PvP build similar to early TBC AR+Prep builds. This build grabbed Adrenaline Rush from the Combat tree and Prep+Hemo from Subtelty, with the additional talent points allowing for more flexibility. It had a lot of utility with Prep and things like improved Sprint and Thrown Weapon Spec and could put a lot of pressure with Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. It was mostly a 3v3 build as it lacked burst compared to other PvP builds and instead worked more like playing a Warrior; running into the enemy team and going unga bunga on their healer. It would also benefit massively from Glyph of Preparation, allowing it to reset Blade Flurry, Dismantle and Kick in addition to all the usual cooldowns. It stopped being as popular when Envenom got buffed and you could also play Sin in a very unga bunga way.
I literally tanked whole normal ICC as frost dk tank. Heroic I felt I was a bit falling off, but the spec was legit. Actually if the talent that gave you magic resist didnt had such a low proc chance it would be completely viable. (it would be amazing for sindi for example but the proc chance was so low it sometimes did fall off on a boss thats constantly hitting you, like, cmon...)
I feel like there was so much they could have added to demo locks around metamorphosis like making it an actual stance switch with balancing but instead they decided to shit on one of the coolest abilities they got to hash together demon hunters
Yeah warlocks on retail got completely ruined, the new demonology is probably the worst designed spec in the game.
Blood DK when armour penetration was beginning to creep in was one of the top DPS specs also due to heart strike scaling and shadowmourne
Omg heartstrike alone was OP I remember killing 2 to 3 people at the same time with it in lower lvl BG could only imagine the damage with AP an shadowmourn
On WOTLK warmane its one of the played specs
There was a hybrid demo/destro spec on the dalaran wow private server, basically you would go into the destro tree up to conflagration, and spend the rest into demo where you should end up around the decimation talent. Basically you are a destro lock with no chaos bolt, and just spam soul fire at execution.
Great video. I loved a lot of these specs. The rogue was hilarious on my bank alt max level rogue just rocking pvp and/or pve. It's hilarious. The shaman spec was so much fun. Lastly, yes, DK was just stupid amazing and OP starting. So insane.
The pvp tank/holy pally was so much fun. I used to run flags all the time even better than my durid. I could actually chase down the enemy flag carrier and kill them. So awesome.
As our theory crafting durid once said in guild chat, she said: Penetration is great, but you need a lot of it to really feel it.
We never let her live it down. She was awesome.
I wanted frost fire to work so badly, wasted so much time with it and ended up so disenchanted with my mage, went back to the mage in ulduar and discovered the absolute joy of a massive arcane crit
im gonna miss my blood dps dk already.
most fun i ever had in wow
Same..I was hoping to do blood dps again but on last patch...
One of my fondest memories in wrath is playing 2v2 as arms/ resto druid and often facing 2 guildies who played arms/protholy. Needless to say we lost almost every time but it was good times 😁
Frostfire was nerfed very early on. It double dipped from coefficients and talents.
It wasn't outscaled by arcane and fire. It was crippled by Blizzard.
It wasn't nerfed. Torment the Weak in arcane tree got changed to work off tank attack speed slows, and FFB spec couldn't afford the points to get it while fire, frost and arcane could all get it. 12% free damage for those specs made FFB not able to compete.
I don't remember anything about the build itself, but I do remember getting absolutely stomped by a warrior in arena who used Titan's Grip to wield a 2-hander along with a shield. It was so bizarre and I rarely ever saw it again, but it always seemed super difficult to deal with when it did show up.
This is called a fury warrior
@@ryanbruce3670 topkek
It's really just worse than arms, but it can be really funny. Look up Dontain Gearbreaker Fury PvP
I remember a bug in early wrath where if you first speced fury grabbed titans grip and equipped 2 2h, then respeced and went arms you would still have both weapons eqquiped and did dmg, i remember how op bladestorm was with that
@@Epicdps there's a name I haven't heard in 10 years
Had a guy in my guild during wrath that had a really effective warrior tank. His guy used a two-handed sword in each hand. Was very strange but, worked like a charm. Dood pumped out a ton of damage and always seemed to hold onto threat. I was his healer so, I would know. LoL :P
Bloodthirst fury tank worked with shield as well
“LoL”?
How old are you, like 65?
@@diogenesfromsinope6212 RofL
@@diogenesfromsinope6212 how old are you, 12?
@@diogenesfromsinope6212 LmaO (:(:(:
Gargoyle was actually the 21 point talent in the Unholy tree for much of wrath. So Shadow Frost DKs had access to even MORE ranged damage with a second pet on a CD doing high dps.
Also, Icy Touch was completely broken and could crit for 5k with the help of an OP questing relic and the old Icy Touch glyph. You could machine gun 4 Icy Touches from range after converting blood runes to death runes, plus another from Blood Tap and two more from Empowered Rune Weapon. All while generating runic power for hard hitting Death Coils.
it wasnt a questing relic. it was a relic from grizzly hills pvp vendors. requires lvl 74 and increases icy touch base dmg by 100 or whatever it was. BASE DMG. which means basically 33% dmg increase before Attack Power is applied. currently on pservers its still bis for tanking as every icy touch basically do 60-100k threat on bis gear in ICC.
For comparison a bis DK tank can pop between 400-600k threat on their opener while every other tank can pop around 200-300k at best.
TLDR: Your main tank will always be a DK otherwise your guild / raid group is shit.
I used to rock a Prot/holy/ret paladin back in the day, but it was through my own experimentation. I didn't really think it was that functional, despite me being able to solo some content.
Very nice to see it being mentioned. Makes me not look so crazy ahahahha!
I remember I raided as frostfire for several patches and did really well. It could perform well, and I held my own as a mage, but as soon as an arcane mage was also in the group, it became obvious how poorly it did. Still, super fun!
It was really great for early xpac raids back in the day. I enjoyed frostfire mage a whole lot. It did feel really good to switch to arcane eventually tho
I would say that the blood/frost tank spec in patch 3.3.5 should get some attention too since it basically specs only a maximum of around 40 points into one tree
it's the main build for tanking on privare servers anywat, combining frost\blood raid wide auras + the hystery to boost people
DW frost Tank are the better Tanks in ICC. You have all flat mitigation you need From the other Specs + parry haste is Not a issue anymore.
My favorite build to run was holy/shadow priest for BG and 5v5. It had circle of healing and good heals from flash of light, but its big strength was the holy talent that cause your target to run 30% faster after you cast Power Word: Shield on them. Combined with mind flay movespeed reduction, you could infinitely kite most classes while doing top healing and very high damage. The only downside was how squishy it was but it was hard to catch them and you could shield allies like hunters or locks to make everyone have more mobility than the enemy
The WormPen hunter was another. A MM/BM hybrid with enough in BM to get exotic pets for the worm's 20% armor debuff. You just stacked arpen and spammed physical damage. With ICC gear I could sustain 10k dps, though mobility was lacking.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention that DK’s back in the day were known for having two tank specs: Blood in Frost presence, and Frost in blood presence.
I played a frost DK tank in early wrath, I’ve rarely seen it mentioned since the wrath announcement (from what I’ve seen), to the point I was starting to think it was extremely rare, a complete meme (or my memory was wrong)! Glad I wasn’t the only one who experimented with frost in blood tanking, or am suffering from DK spec dementia. Wasn’t there an ok early crafted set that supported it as well?
@@gregthomson2299 I have no idea to be honest, I never played it, and barely tried Blood in Frost presence tanking. I just remember reading guides mentioning it. I don’t think Frost in Blood was a complete meme.
Frost + Unholy DK's were broken as shit at the start... Youd get howling blast, and prenerf Unholy Blight from UH tree and do an absolutely absurd amount of aoe dmg. I do remember using corpse explosion with that build too and i think that move got nerfed too.
First 1. Howling Blast was a 41 tree and Unholy Blight was a 51 tree which means you could Not specc into bouth. So ist was never! An Option. With 3.1 IT got changed and Howling Blast was also Not taken because IT was porly scaled. Thats why good.players skipped IT.
I had some success with prot warrior pvp. It was macroing all the block value CDs/trinkets for big shield slams. Also spell reflection had a pretty short CD; a very satisfying ability!
I still remember diseaseless blood spec for DK. Also Howling Blast was originally towards the middle of the tree, so you could spec into really great defensive and AoE abilities across all 3 trees at once. The Tri-spec I ever saw, and it made the DK virtually impossible to kill if they were awake. Blizzard moved Howling Blast to the bottom of the tree before the end of Wrath, killing this forever.
There is a particular dk spec missing. You know Howling Blast used to be the "level 40" skill for death knights and they were able to get the spell power bonus from unholy (20% atk power). So all they did was dunk on enemies with two fast weapons to get the crit proc and spam said blast to no end. A first patch tried to cancel this with a cooldown of 6 seconds, but it was still not enough, which is why patch 3.1.0 traded the positioning in the talent tree with Hungering Cold and the build was effectifly disarmed.
yeah this was the spec i was most surprised wasn't on here. it was beyond broken and required actual tree changes
I would love to see launch DKs lol, with the raised ghouls and all
this was exactly the spec i was waiting for... you could outdps other much better geared classes easily with green/blue gear in AOE AND single target dps. good old times.
Preg will not just be a "viable" spec. It is literally one of the best specs and is meta
yeah and this video ruined it :D keep it secret :D Pregheira will be popular now,one of the best rets world
This spec is the most broken spec in woltk history. No weak points with no brain req. I hope blizz will check it before woltk and prop fix.
@@szybki12381 you may have not seen manspin yet altho its a meme spec
This is the real wow for me.
The possibility to do so much variation on your specs its just top notch!
8:50 there's a more dps oriented variation of the build, instead of specing into single hand bonus damage you would spec into two handed bonus damage, still retaining the prot's double melee hit talent. You would gear into strength and swap two handed weapon + t9 ret's class gear item\spellpower onehand + spellpower shield + pvp flash of light class gear item. You would have insane art of war procs with the spellpower stick + some decent melee damage with the two handed weapon
Blood dks were viable in 3.3. They stacked ArP in ICC and did some crazy damage. My guild's first shadowmourne went to an ArP blood dk.
Bloods damage never bad in wrath, in 25 man they don't bring any buff not already covered. Although they could have a place in a 10 man roster
To my understanding; it's not bad, but frost and uholy are a bit better.
absolute dungeon hero spec . I remember playing endgame with my budy on private server . I was healing as ret paly with flash of light libram from pvp, he was tanking as blood dps with frost aura. Poor dungeons had no mechanics at all. We were both smurning around and pulling 15- 20 k dps each with cd's. + the 3 random dps that would join us . So from what i recall , it has a really nice burst with that rune weapon of his , falls of a bit later , similar to combat rogue, but less viable. Loses dps in the long run
I would still say arp capped b dk dps is a serious contender for single target dps top rankings, moreover bdks really do shine in pushing raid bosses.
But i would still say the best feeling of playing the bdk back in days was the absolute domination of soloing old raids and tbc hcs , as even though you can solo them with pet classes nothing beats the feeling of going ham on bosses as a b dk and soloing those old guys whom you remember giving you so much trouble back in older expansions.
But yeah wotlk was a great time heck i remember doing an icc 10 with a uh tank dk and we cleared it without any wipes.
In my humble opinion, the best talent trees to tinker with for soloing older raids or current heroics (some, not all) were DKs and Pallies
enhancement shaman with the instant cast heals also worked.
@@heygek2769 that was the first class i soloed anything with but I couldn’t get through every TBC heroic at 80 without dying a ton (only had naxx and some TOC10 gear at the time, though)
I remember wanting to be a solo god with my Enh though, to the point that I leveled armorsmith on it to get that epic 60 mail chest that gave you a bubble before I knew that i would replace it in outlands with quest greens
@@acheronnchase6220 spellhance might be the answer
@@heygek2769 they hadn’t theory crafted that spec yet in 2008 ….I did solo viscidous at 80 but it took like 30 mins and I had to pop wolves at least 20 times for mana but that fight wasn’t too hard
There was a prot DPS build in Ulduar that involved massive Strength and Shield Block Value to pump hard on bosses. Don't remember much else about it but it got fairly high damage.
I ran a Piercing Howl (Fury) Prot Warrior during Naxx and TotC in Lich King - was fantastic for off tanking and controlling lot of mobs with the Warrior's great mobility.
This is what i'm hoping dragonflight brings back, I would love to see a return of shaman tanks or something lol
"You need your tank to be able to tank for the entire fight"
"Locks tanking in wrath as a main tank? Nah"
Well the thing is: That is not entirely accurate. A warlock CAN maintank. And yes: It was done back in the days. A decently geared warlock could tank anub 25 easily for a few reasons. But I would like to adress a few things that people say in order to explain further.
1) "You can only tank for 30 (+6) seconds!"
No. You can tank very well in this form. As in: It is your deffensive cooldown.
Metamorphosis grants you 600% bonus armor. Yes, that is right: Not "increases armor contribution from cloth and leather". With decently set gear you can read that part like this: "You become armor capped for 36 seconds". Which is a physical dmg reduction of 75%.
But outside of Metamorphosis you also have some damage reduction.
2) "You are a paper tank outside of meta! You have no Damage reduction and no dodge / parry / block. And you are critable"
That seems to hold true on first glance, but let us look a bit closer.
Let us start with a baseline 8000 armor. (2730 from Demon Armor). That is a damage reduction from physical sources by 34%. Not much considering other tanks easily reach 50-55%.
And then there is the lack of dodge / Parry. Does the warlock have something to compensate?
Well yes. Multiple things in fact.
Soul link: 20 (+5) % reduction from all sources.
Master demonologist: 10% selectable damage reduction or 5% from all sources. (Voidwalker: 10% physical. Felhunter 10% magical. Felguard: 5% from all sources)
Molten skin: 6% reduction from all sources.
This gives the warlock a combined permanent reduction stats of:
55% Physical
31% Magical
With a voidwalker.
In fact: The warlock tank has the highest permanent magic damge reduction in game.
As for being critable: That is resolved with PvP gear (which is your go-to in either case, due to increased stamina values) and the talent "Demonic resiliance" which reduces the required resiliance by half.
So you are a meaty tank, which scales very well with armor trinkets due to your base armor being so low, has the highest magical resistance and a very large healthpool thanks to soul link.
So you require a bit more healing than other tanks but can soak hits very well. Is that bonus healing being accounted for? Well yes.
Demon Armor also grant you 26% additional healing.
3) "If you can not survive tank CD encounters, you can not tank!"
So let me take two famous tank damage scenarios.
Big Bang and Plasma Blast.
Algalon 25 man will cast Big Bang requiring a tank swap and a deffensive CD.
That ability deals 112.750 Physical damage. So: Can our warlock survive that?
In metamorphosis he gains 85,25% physical damage reduction. The incomming damage now becomes 16.630.
With 10.000 being absorbed from your voidwalker shield (which does not kill the voidwalker anymore btw) this becomes 6.630 damage. Laughable when compared to the healthpool of a suboptimally geared WL tank being easily 40k.
Now Plasmablast is another beast. This ability deals 31.250 magical damage per second for 6 seconds (Hardmode).
With the passive damage reduction this becomes 21.562 dps. With overhealing on the warlock, this is also doable using the VW shield, the Demon armor healing and a healthstone. That is: Doable WITHOUT deff cds. External CDs like Pain supression or the optimal tankbuddy: A Paladin with hand of sacrifice, will turn that ability into a joke.
And that also means: Your other tank can keep his deffensive cooldowns and does not need to swap
And you can keep metamorphosis for other situations, instead using it to taunt.
Speaking of which:
4) "You can't hold agro / Tank swap!"
The agro one is easily dealt with:
PvP gear also grants hit, your main agro spell is searing pain, with Intensity and either a paly (concentration aura) or a resto shaman you reach 100% knockback prevention.
The Tank swap one is a bit more tricky.
Yes: Your only taunt is your Metamorphosis. A 2 minute 13 second CD.
But let us look at a real example: Saurfang.
He places a debuff on the tank which heals him. Rune of Blood lasts 20 seconds.
That is a very frequent tankswap. How do you do it?
Agro management. The thing about Warlocks is: They deal a lot of agro and unlike Paladins, Druids and Warriors: They do not need to be hit to produce more agro. So the other tank has to stop building agro on tankswap fights where there is only 1 boss (like Saurfang) and let the warlock take over. External agro mechanics (Rogues and hunters) help out a lot.
Paladins can go a step further and use divine shield to force the boss onto the warlock.
Is it more complicated than pressing taunt? Oh hell yes.
But is it doable? Yes.
So to summarise:
The warlock tank is more complicated, but viable. In fights where you do not need to perform frequent tankswaps (which is nearly every fight. Notable exceptions being Saurfang and Syndragosa) the warlock is good. In tankswapfights he is very dificult but still viable.
Or to put it in another way: A warlock tank would be easily competative, if he had a single target taunt.
Galaxy brain warlock tsnk
@@miseto5211 Well it is not that "Galaxy brain" on my part.
I for one still look for a solution to high frequency tank swap fights. Besides "Do more agro than the active tank"
If blizzard changed the Metamorph aoe taunt to this:
"10 yrd range. 15 second Cooldown.
Taunts the target enemy for 6 sec. If the caster is a demon, this ability will taunt all enemies in a 10 yrd radius."
(Usable in normal form)
Then every single problem a warlock tank has would be fixed.
He would still not be able to compete with a Paly tank, but it would make him on paar with (if not slightly better than) druid and warrior tanks.
jesus what a read
I just remember how AWESOME the trinket Deathbringers Will was
6xIT Shotgun Frost DK was my favourite because it was a unique way to look at playing FDK, was top tier DPS and didn't require full bis to compete since it required T7 set bonuses.
I like 2h frost blood dk with Acclimation from frost, and Spell deflection from blood. Kind of an anti spell build
6:14 you've missed out one important thing of that spec - stormstrike gives +20% to nature damage done by shaman afterwards. Spell power from gear combined with bonus damage for shocks and for nature spells from elemental tree would make Earth Shock a hand cannon. When WOTLK launched and people were running around with ~12-15k hp - getting 5-6k earthshock crits on you after stormstrike would take about half of your hp (from Stormstrike, autoattacks and earthshock itself). If shaman got lucky with ES crits duel would last as long as 2 Storm strike CDs. That thing was wild
Don't forget Maelstrom weapon. Having a lightning bolt deal double damage as an instant cast with just over 70% spell coefficient is amazing! It takes a high attack rate, but combining it with the spellcrit glyph for flametongue, the +8% damage glyph from stormstrike (raising it to a 28% damage bonus) and the 4% lightning bolt damage glyph (although the 20% lightning shield glyph, or the shocking glyph, are prolly better) along with ele talents can make that thing crit for over 10k with the right gear!
Fan of kives rogues were a plague on ladder when that was a thing. Awesome video, lots of nostalgia :D
I played hat rogue in Naxx and Ulduar and it was some of the most fun. Just having shadowstep in a raid back then was fantastic.
This also made me remember the crazy times in tbc when there were just so many viable specs, combat swords, of course, still being the best one. next to that you had mutilate combat, sub combat, combat hemorrhage and in pvp shadowstep hemorrhage, shadowstep ambush, mutilate sub, harp, seal fate hemorrhage, and shadowstep combat. that was a wild and fun time
I hope the dragonflight talent trees allow for some more free form combinations and, while obviously not happening in 10.0, maybe we can return to having access to all 3 spec trees at some point.
14:06 Arms/Prot was super-legit. You gave up about 5% of your avoidance and 10% stamina, but you FLEW away on the threat meter as long as something was hitting you. Even if your passive avoidance was low, you could continue using Revenge for several seconds after 1 dodge+block+parry, and if you ran out of time, just tap Shield Block and you're in business again. While you're doing this, you're constantly using Heroic Strike and Cleave, your Mortal Strike is your new threat bomb with Tactical Mastery, and you can still switch to 2H for extra dps AND Bladestorm for funsies. Raid bosses were immune to stun, but trash mobs are not, so you will prevent a lot of damage with Improved Revenge. It will be useful in pre-raide situations and as a pocket-OT. I plan to Dual Spec Arms/Prot and Fury in Wotlk.
Revenge does not stun in 3.3.5a
With both talents it deals 80% damage on two targets and has no cooldown.
During short period of time in Wotlk i remember i've played as blood dk stacking up TONS of armor penetration for my shadowmourne. I was doing some SICK, CRAZY dps numbers (constant scoring world 1-10 in raids logs for dk's). That was pretty funny - only tanks had quite problems with holding aggro sometimes :)
Oh i remember the Arms Prot Warrior. Got them in instances like The Pit of Saron and i was amazed that my class of choice could achieve something like that.
I started playing WoW as a blood dps when I got dk, one of my earliest memories is being in ICC and my first piece of won gear being a sanctified chestpiece off saurfang
Beating a DK as a rogue in wrath was basically impossible.
I remember running around as Frost-Fire or Arcane-Frost mage in PvP and defeating players just by being so different. Instant invisibility, Double Frost bolt nuke with Arcane Power or the knockback of Blastwave with Blazing Speed and Ice Barrier for defense wasn't just good - it was a lot of fun.
I quit the same day they forced everyone to dedicate to a single talent tree.
Awesome to hear, but seems a little dramatic to quit when your OP spec gets nerfed
@@SneazingWalrus I assume they were referring to the Cataclysm talent rework, which (among many other things) forced players to commit EVERY talent point they received, up to the 31st point, to a single specialization before they could even CONSIDER branching into other trees, at which point they only had 10 points left over anyway and only being able to spend them in the first 2 rows of the other specs was pointless. This effectively killed hybrid specs overnight, and Blizzard has never brought hybrids back in any way that really mattered.
I remember I used to play an AoE-focused, disease based DK back in WotLK. Decent at single target, but he had crazy scaling against multiple targets. The main idea was to use a specific combination of talents and glyphs (though I can't remember exactly what it was) to both refresh the duration of diseases, and spread them to all targets within a certain range. I remember it was a combination between two different specs, but I can't quite remember exactly how the build was set up and what made it 'tick', but I do remember I would frequently top damage meters in raids!
Yo that necromancer build looks awesome. Definitely trying it.
Instead of Blizzard removing and chaning the things I actually want from Wotlk, they should be making positive changes..Like giving DK's the ability to DPS or Tank as any spec like originally intended - but use experience to balance it better.
there is no way to properly balance that though
I was excited for classic with hopes for Wrath. I leveled to 60 just because I didn't start playing WOW until TBC so I wanted to have that experience. I played a little bit in TBC clasic, but my main passion was to experience Wrath once again. Then they announced classic Wrath was finally here but with changes.....changes I did not want. So, my fond memories will have to do. I will not be playing.
That's why WotLK was sooooo good.
Somewhat rare gear, with some imagination, and it was fun. Too many devs loose sight of fun.
"Oh boy, I cant wait to see what hunters had going for them"
Hunter Tanks (with enough MD from other hunter, to pet)
Fury Tank -2H and Shield, for Shadows Edge soul farm
Restohance - using maelstrom for chain heal spam
Firecane - using the Arcane Barrage proc, with FFB, burst with icy veins
My DK used a blood/frost mix spec back in wrath for pvp. allowing for both the defense of frost, the HP recovery of blood, while still having access to the flex of both. Might not have been optimal, but i had a lot of fun with it and it worked.
I remember playing shockadin all the second half of wotlk, and at least in dungeons ( the undead ones) usually topping the dps charts.
It was super fun play both healing and dps, but it was limited to just some dungeons/fights
The stamina paladin was short lived but insanly broken, i remember beating 3 players solo in arenas easily.
I really wanted to hear about the stackable blood aura from early on. That was the most OP and hilarious thing!
Man i loved prot holy, the silence and the single target shield spell was amazing
The honor of among things 5s is hilarious
Sap 4 -> blind their trinkets -> have them watch us slaughter 4
-> vanish -> sap 3 -> have them watch us slaughter 3-> stealth -> sap -2 -> have them watch us slaughter 2-> sap 1-> have them watch us slaughter 1-> kill him with your bow and gun autos
Another really cool build that I think got nerfed around 3.0.8 was the BM / MM hybrid hunter in PvP. Early on in wrath, hunters were able to pickup both readiness from MM which completely reset all of your CDs. They could also get beastial wrath from the BM tree. Beastial wrath gave a massive damage buff and made you completely immune to all cc for the duration. Hunters could use beastial wrath, readiness to bring the cooldown back up, and use it again all while being immune to cc for something like 20 or 30 seconds.
It was great for a short time I loved popping a 2nd bw on pesky pally who used their bubble also wasn't it nerfed in bc?
Very cool! you missed Shaman Tank though! Some of us shammys are still tanking in P4 of TBC Classic. Hoping to see how and if it still sort of works in WoTLK
I'd like to add 1 thing. Spellhance shaman works best with a crapton of haste. As you said spell power weapons rings and trinkets, with as much haste as possible. Spell power weapons already have high speed, so you will deal A LOT of damage with flametongue weapon as you will use it on both weapons
I was playing dps blood DK on a private server on 3.3.5 patch. Full armpen sockets, forget the color bonuses. It was quite fun I would say because while hysteria + dancing rune weapon were active the dps really skyrocketed. My gear was something around 5900 GS and it was satisfying to outdps 6400+ guys... for a short period of time lol
In classic I built a dungeon tank warlock. Deep into demo of course and destruction coupled with the pvp gloves for 100% resist pushback on searing pain. I also spent DKP on some defense rings, backs and shield trinkets. I main tanked Onyxia into phase 3 once but wasn't really prepared for it, I bet we could have done it if I banked and we tried again. But I was able to tank a smooth LBRS run and could play off tank on Garr, holding an extra mini for a minute. I really think it worked but I could also have just had some of the best healers in the business. It was something fun to work on during shadowbolts anyway.
Yeah, I still remember having a silly Blood/Unholy mixed build on my DK back in WotLK. Single target was okay damage and good tanking, but when you pulled a whole lot of enemies, you basically became immoltal and your DPS exploded. The reason was boosted deseases, that you could spread to all enemies and could easily refresh using a pretty standard aoe rotation. But you got healed from that damage and it was outhealing most of the damage in appropriate content (soloing 5-man quests and dungeons).
As well it could get pretty nastic in PVP when you got into a blob.
Titan's grip tank was something I remember people trying to make work
I used to run Prot/Holy/Ret Pally in some jank-ass attempt to capture some of that shockadin fun I had in TBC. Cool to know someone actually made a viable build for that now.
I really enjoyed this video and the trip down memory lane :) However it is very amusing to me thinking about how a good majority of these builds or talents are still very viable and around on Project Ascension xD
I remember making a build using all 3 trees for DK to tank Obsidian Sanctum 3 drakes, because it gave far more cooldowns for surviving the breaths.
Speaking of Blood DK being viable as DPS I do recall the design intent early on was that every spec could be DPS or tank. If you wanted to tank there were a few baseline tank talents you'd generally need to pick up, with a few in each tree, but they were early on in the trees. So you could get those and then pick the spec you want to tank with. Iirc every spec had a big CD towards the bottom that helped define it's tank niche.
I was a frost tank for a while there. The CD gave something like +25% armor for a while. So it was good vs bosses that did pure physical damage. Unholy I think got some stuff that made it especially good vs spells, and blood was somewhere in the middle with a CD that boosted your max HP and received healing for a while.
It was really neat and I was sad when they went the direction of the specs being more clearly defined. It probably was the right move from a balancing perspective, but some flavor was lost.
Unholy dw parry tank was awkward as fuck, but so much fun
Unbreakable armor gives strength and armor on a Short cooldown, so dps and the best mitigation in wotlk :)
My favorite old school DK build, and I mean like... First patch only, was the frost/uh build where you got Howling Blase and a ghoul pet. When WOTLK released, howling blast was like the 31 point talent. So you could get howling blast and all of the dot damage talents in unholy along with ghoul.
played that, absolutely insane. Some dude hit 8k dps on patchwerk. Best memories i have on wow. It was patched after Ulduar. The talent tree looked so beautiful with those 17 points in Unholy...
@@NoFutureForG0uda I swear i never see this spec talked about, it was so nutty, wish we could see it in classic once.
Great video! Quick suggestion - I'd love for there to be timestamps so I could share specific specs easier with my buddies
Early on in Wrath i'll go Blood DPS/tank on my DK can have it as long as possible, Blood was so fun, good enough DPS but you could never die :D
A quick note about the spell power enh, it was initially available to dual wield spell power weapons in wotlk in particular it was during naxx (it got changed in 3.1 iirc) it at the time was the highest dps spec of shamans due to hyper overload on spell power and most importantly it was reliable. After it got cut down in power by a drastic margin and more importantly it was bloating the already long list of people who want spell power weapons and regular enhance play was potentially better dps with good rng but also the weapons enh used wasn't really shared so the contesting pool of players was either non-existent or very low.
Another fun pvp spec for shamans for bgs was the Frost Shock root + earthbind build it was insanely annoying and really funny to see but wasn't common at the time.
Cat Behemoth has a video "World of instantcraft 2" where you can see the Fan of knives spec beautifully in action, among other crazy builds from those times. Those good 'ol days
I used a form of the Spellhance shaman back when the change to Fire Nova originally happened. People were like it won't be better than the normal spec but I went from 5th highest damage on bosses and like 10-12th on trash mobs to 1st-3rd on bosses and 1st on trash. This was during the period where Fire Nova worked on enemies with Flame Shock on them rather than your fire totem and there was a glyph where lava lash would spread flame shock to mobs within 8 yds. I was still using Windfury and Flametongue and no SP jewels or gear though but I specced further down Elemental than you normally would.
I would defiantly enjoy another video of this. A spec I've always seen as interesting is the Spell Power / Spirit Demo lock. Where you basically share you spell power with your party / raid, and basically play as a sort of support class of just being a buff to everyone else.
Another good one is Tank Rogue.
Get yourself 2 weapons enchanted with BladeWard then go Combat down to Unfair advantage and Sub down to Cheat Death.
You can tank any physical boss no problem.
I used it against Tyrannus Heroic.
I did have another rogue and a hunter redirecting agro though.
I remember playing the Arms-Prot Warrior (or Revenge-Tank is I knew it) and kicking the ass of a pvp-equipped rogue after finally reaching the max lvl. Just from the high defense of that build and revenge having a set dmg instead of scaling from the weapon. It was glorious!
Generally I loved the talenttrees just some few tweaks and twists here and there and oyur build stood out against all the other. It was funny to win a fight just because I leveled another talent as the main builds did.
That warrior arm/prot revenge spec with mace is really, really strong pvp spec.
Whats good about it? Trying to find a viable warrior shield pvp build that is not the armor pen shield bash one you need insane gear for.
Warriors when Blockvalue scaled damage on shield slam, combined with ARP led to oneshot all over. That was soo fun in bg's
happy that spellpower enha was mentioned, shit is absolute rocks in pve
Spellhance was really good for a while because there were offhandable spellpower weapons (one hand as opposed to main hand only) so you could dual wield SP weapons for wicked high SP levels until they changed all SP 1handers to MH only.
Warlock tanking in heroics was great. A true are class. Pull with seeds. Switch to hellfire snd immolation aura and spam scorch on single targets. Getting the souk link glyphed. Improved fel armor for extra heals and a palading throwing heals with beacon meant you were almost impossible to kill and you had massive amounts of threat and damage. You just need enough pvp gear to be uncritable.
I remember the Panzerkin which was mostly for dungeons, but it used the moonkin armor bonus to tank
You forgot the Tri-spec DK that made blizz force you to have to put 51 or 61(?) points into your first spec you talented it. It was massively op for a time.
Highlight of pug raids in WotLK for me was unrelenting assault prot tank on twins in TotGC hc25 where I topped DPS for a fight, some random rogue noticed I forgot to swap out all my arp DPS gear from the arena fight before so tricks of the traded on me when DBW procced a taunka and I managed a 46k revenge and cleave. Over 100k damage in a global because it hit 2 targets. WotLK was the most fun I ever had in WoW and I will not be playing classic mostly because I cant be bothered sinking as much time into it as I did back then so I will leave the memories as they are, no experience could live up to the nostalgia.
i remember having a healer tank pally that was just insane. I would over heal on purpose to pull aggro because it was so easy to proc i basically never died and could live even with healer dead for super long. while hitting as high as others for damage. pretty sure its the last pally build he was talking about. it was nuts.
I used a version of that in arena. A proc pally with holy pally gear. Basically not killable.