Are all specs valid?

[Ivina]

Sadly, in vanilla all specs are not valid.

I love druid, and am conviced that feral can make it in HL PVE, but it is not true for balance spec.
Balance spec is only usefull as hybrid with heal to optimize big heals (so this is actually a 100% heal spec).

[balsh]

You can make it through pve/raids as feral, it's just that you'll be healing 99,5% of the time (was feral on retail, rolling feral here, I'm kinda masochist).

[popezaphod]

Once I hit Lv 20 on my Druid I'm going into Feral as it's the best for leveling. But once I hit, say, 55, I'm respeccing as Resto to heal dungeons and eventually raids. I knew what I was getting into when I selected this class - unlike when I played on back in the day and refused to play Feral.

[Grava]

This is why I dislike Vanilla, because all specs should be valid, a Prot Paladin should be as much as requested as a protection warrior is in raids.

Then why are you here? Seriously, I see so many posts about "why do you love Vanilla so much?" and "Why can't I do [x]?"

Current retail WoW (pretty much since Wrath) has dumbed down the game, given people less to feel successful about, and made it EASIER for people to play the game. You want in on a secret? The reason why people want and loved and continue to love vanilla is because of the sense of accomplishment. Wrath babies can start their wails of "but Wrath was best", now.

Moving on to OP's question, a number of other posters have already answered this. No, you will likely not be raiding as feral, or boomkin, or shadow. For each guild (which, keep in mind, there will be a LOT of if the current number of players stays similar), there may be 1-2 of each for the buffs they provide the other classes. But that said, I wouldn't count on it being you unless you're both dedicated and GOOD. Two key points that I would keep in mind.

But the question was: are they viable? Yes, in some manner or another. A prime example is how many warriors there are right now. I think it's hilarious. Back on retail, there were hardly this many warriors. And almost none that were allowed to DPS. And because of all the video hyper, nostalgia, and because people seem to think they're Pat reincarnate, everyone has rolled rogue / warrior in hopes of being a PvP god.

Good luck to you all with that. I would estimate most of them will burn out at some point, whether because they're not used to a game telling them to get f***ed (leveling speed is slow, same-level mobs can crush you 1v1, etc.) or because they aren't allowed to pve in one spec or another for instances. Lord knows at 60 I have NO intention of inviting "balance" druids to my 5-mans. lol

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't. That person just needs to be a shining example of how to play the game. And therein lies the final point of why I love vanilla WoW. The community. You learn who people are, and trust me...it gets around the server. If you're bad, you'd better learn quick and not be a d-bag, or it will haunt you later.

Sorry for the rant. People like "madhorde" bother me and it got under my skin. Go post on a Wrath / Cata board if you don't want to play vanilla, instead of detracting what is, so far, the most well-made, well-scripted private vanilla server ever.

[Sethzer]

Ret paladin and enhancement shaman is low DPS but some utility and a good holder of the Nightfall axe for its proc. Some raids accept one, but they're very weak PvE specs and I would question the sanity of anyone who insists on playing a ret/enh in PvE.

No need for ret/enha for Nightfall. Just have an offtank go with it.

[shadesofjoe]

It's really a mixed bag. Some classes pigeonhole you into an optimal spec, but others allow flexibility. For example, there were viable builds for Affliction, Demonology and Destruction that allowed Warlocks some variety depending on itemization and play style. I raided with Arms, Fury and Prot Warriors as well.

But then there was the Boomkin who decided he would rather Moonfire spam Gehennas than decurse and heal the raid. He didn't last very long.

[pasiutlige]

Just like Grava said. No, specs arent all simply viable, but if you are shining example of your playstyle, you should be good to go. Ret paladins? Sub-par to other melee, but has so much supporting abilities, that he might single handedly save you from a wipe twice on a single boss. Same goes to druids, they are very powerfull healers when not speced in to a healer. Tough - OOMkins are pretty fucked in vanilla, tough I'd like to see a raid setup with Spriest mana batery and OOMkin glass cannon, might actully be pretty awesome.

Feral tanks are really viable, maybe not "Warrior Viable", but viable.

[eotrampage]

This is why vanilla-nostalgia is overrated, sure pre-WoTLK content is the best but some changes and additions were made for a reason....
Id love to see the developers here move on from vanilla very soon and just update skills themselves if possible to make stuff more viable and not as bad as in vanilla release state.

[Mrplow]

So there was this thing about Vanilla like for example all warriors should be only tanks and priests only healers and paladins couldn't heal and druids couldn't tank. Now that 10 years have passed since vanilla started, we the players having learned the classes inside out, can we now actually play all classes/specs in vanilla?

Warriors in decent gear were good DPS, Shadowpriests are viable as PvP and Discipline Priests are pretty good tank healers. A raid can use one Shadowpriest, too, for the locks.

Paladins could only heal and do shitloads of support on the raid, and Druids can offtank in 20 mans but yeah, not much beyond that.

You can play whatever you want but don't expect any raiding guild to just bend over and adapt to your ideas. A Warrior tank is almost always better to have in a raid than a Protection Paladin or a Feral Druid (with very few exceptions), Priests are the best healers when it comes to efficient healing, Shamans are best for melee healing and Druids are the best raid healers after AQ hits (with all the Healing Touch talents and items casting time decreases so much, they are best at keeping general DPS and other healers topped).

Retribution Paladins are generally subpar DPS compared to the normal DPS classes, even if we know of a few exceptions who could get the gear to DPS kind of normally.

Sorry, Vanilla still clusters you into roles, and you either get used to it, or you will be disappointed.

This is why I dislike Vanilla, because all specs should be valid, a Prot Paladin should be as much as requested as a protection warrior is in raids.

So you're here why?

[Visuv]

This is why vanilla-nostalgia is overrated, sure pre-WoTLK content is the best but some changes and additions were made for a reason....
Id love to see the developers here move on from vanilla very soon and just update skills themselves if possible to make stuff more viable and not as bad as in vanilla release state.

I've been long dreaming about a modified vanilla WoW.

Just some minor tweaks, there are too many unused talents.