From what I remember, they were the exact same with a new tier of talents, same with lich king. You could argue (correctly) the new trees are more useful/functional. But damn, I would spend hours playing around with specs and what is optimal for how I want to play the game.
Oh yes. I remember that well. It was immensely satisfying tweaking my DK's talent tree and kit between raid nights and watching my numbers climb up.
Honestly, I don't really have a preference either way as both systems scratch different itches of mine (except for the Cataclysm system--that was like the worst of both worlds). The system in Mists and newer is great since it gives you some useful moves immediately. The older system is great because it allows you to do some wacky ass shit if you know how to exploit it. I love it.
Maybe the wonky talent tree thing was something from beta. I remember hearing about it but I don't remember exactly what time period it was from.
I just think the new trees are boring as hell with no consequence (kind of like the diablo 3 skill system, LETS GIVE THE PLAYER EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGGGGGG), even though it is technically "superior".
I'm not too crazy about harsh consequences with that, especially considering how easy it is to screw up using the classic talent trees. That's actually one of the reasons I don't really care to play Path of Exile: if you screw up your talent tree too bad (and it contains 1325 fucking talents!) your only recourse is to reroll.
That being said, I think the original WoW respec system was in a pretty decent place. The main issue that I see with the penalties is that you run into that classic issue where you could have to pay out the ass if you want to change roles for raiding/dungeons. I always appreciated having the ability to dual-spec in Wrath and I remember being genuinely mystified when some select people (vanilla elitists, I imagine) were throwing a ton of shade at Blizzard for adding it!
Even though there was no tracker, thottbot was very popular in vanilla, and I think alakazam later in vanilla, with wowhead? being a thing in tbc. Those database websites have been around since not far from launch, so even with no instructions, people would frequently alt tab to find out where the hell to go.
Yep. Not to mention the various in-game addons and such. I forgot which one I used to use when I first started, haha.
Still, when I was starting it was kind of neat to just read the quest text and make your way over there. It
usually at least gave you a decent idea of where to go, and there was almost always something interesting to see along the way.
I am sorry I am doing this, but you listed like the ONLY two classes that can do that shit in vanilla.
Oh, trust me. I'm well aware.
I've leveled a priest and warrior through that content. I completely understand how it's "supposed" to be.
We don't know, and from what we are lead to believe, they don't yet know how they are going to handle it. Far as I am aware, this whole vanilla server thing was a relatively recent thing they decided to greenlight, so I'd be surprised if it even made release in 2018.
Yep. At this point I'm really curious how they're going to handle a bunch of the little nuances, like keeping cheaters out, dealing with the massive differences between the old and new operating systems (vanilla WoW was written during that innocent time before UAC, after all. Hell, it ran on Windows 98!), and stuff like that. I imagine there's going to be some serious retrofits to get everything working smoothly, but hopefully they do it in more of a StarCraft: Remastered way rather than a Darkening of Tristram way.
And, above all else, I hope we don't end up with something like that:
I'll try getting by with the standard fare, although I hope whatever patch they use is late enough to have more actionbars, in december 2004 there was the 10 slots and that was all you got..., wasn't till a later patch where you got more action bars.
I can't imagine them targeting anything less than 1.12.2, honestly. To me, it wouldn't make sense for them to give you anything less than the full experience of Classic, if nothing else because the world just wasn't complete beforehand (I hear Silithus is a great example of that).
I really am considering rolling healer, but I'll really really really want to assemble a group of people to level with if I decide to do that. Leveling solo as a non dps (tanks had it even worse than healers from what I am told from the tanks of old) was a lot more challenging and time consuming than the dps counterparts.
Yep. I leveled my priest from 1-80 as holy. That took a while. <_<
*edit because I edit almost all my posts because...*
How much would you hate me if I randomly disabled your edit privileges for funsies?
" A fun trick in PvP is to use your hearthstone, people think it is a heal and will try to kick/pummel/counterspell, hf."
I FORGOT ABOUT THIS, do people still do this? Looks the exact same as a heal as a shaman, they blow their interrupt, then you can heal without getting interrupted. I remember doing that kind of stuff all the time.
I've never personally seen anyone do it (though I very rarely PvP), but that's a great idea!
I have something almost equally as fun. I used to PvP quite a bit on my DK during Cataclysm (I used to do Tol Barad pretty often), so I'd periodically have some fun with
Dark Simulacrum. Basically, it throws a 12 second debuff on the target, and if they use a spell that costs mana during that time, the DK can use that spell once by activating DS again. Most people notice that and end up blowing a cheap or weak spell on it, which is
something but typically isn't all that useful. One time, however, I hit a mage with it right as they cast mirror image.
You know what? It actually worked. Four hulking tauren, decked out in plate. One of them a harbinger of death and pestilence, the other three just doing mage things. It was pretty great.