Spec-based elitism on a legacy server

[Syphonize]

Hey everyone!

I am quite excited to see that we might get official legacy servers. I was hoping I could bring up a more controversial topic in the hopes of fostering a better community.

From my experience, there was plenty of spec-based elitism on Nostalrius. In general, this was fine on Nostalrius because the people who came to play here came to play in spite of these things. On an official server, I feel like such attitudes will foster an incredibly antagonistic community and not one that would be good for a large audience.

Examples of good advice:

"Bear tank can work THIS way, but if you want to play the best tank spec, that might be warrior."
"Ensure you bring something else to the table as Elemental will usually never top the charts. If you want to do that, you might want to consider a pure DPS class."

Examples of bad advice:

"You will never DPS as Balance, gtfo reroll or quit."

People who are used to playing vanilla servers already know the "best path" and will likely go the way they know to. People who might be playing these servers for the first time after many years would love the opportunity to explore the talent tree since current WoW does not have one. Please do not deny such players the opportunity. There will be a lot of attention on legacy servers if it comes up. Let's make it a positive one.

Thanks everyone!

[Arucado]

"You will never DPS as Balance, gtfo reroll or quit."

Bullshit, you can do decent dmg in any spec, even balance or retry pala. I had a ret in my raid (pvp epic+zinrokh) who used to be 6th on dps table.

Obviously do not expect to be one of the better, because those are Rogues and fury warriors. In other hand i think that Warrior tank is a must, and Pala/druid tanks are only worth for dungeons.

[Arucado]

And by the way i think this forum is dead untill we got some news about Blizzard-Nostalrius meeting, there is nothing more to talk about tbh.

[Norjak]

From my experience, there was plenty of spec-based elitism on Nostalrius. In general, this was fine on Nostalrius because the people who came to play here came to play in spite of these things. On an official server, I feel like such attitudes will foster an incredibly antagonistic community and not one that would be good for a large audience.

This is part of the reason they got away from talent trees in retail. The new system is "bleh" imo.
With talent trees, you're always going to have people gravitate towards the optimal spec, from a min/max perspective. If someone wants to play a "fun" spec, they are subject to ridicule & considered ignorant, or just bad.
I didn't really mind the talent trees in Vanilla/TBC, but in LK they started to get bloated.
It gets interesting when different talent specs bring interesting utility to the group, like the Boomkin crit buff or the SV Hunter Expose Weakness buff in TBC.

[Syphonize]

"You will never DPS as Balance, gtfo reroll or quit."

Bullshit, you can do decent dmg in any spec, even balance or retry pala. I had a ret in my raid (pvp epic+zinrokh) who used to be 6th on dps table.

Obviously do not expect to be one of the better, because those are Rogues and fury warriors. In other hand i think that Warrior tank is a must, and Pala/druid tanks are only worth for dungeons.

I agree with you. I'm just pulling examples of random advice as examples of what not to do!

This is part of the reason they got away from talent trees in retail. The new system is "bleh" imo.
With talent trees, you're always going to have people gravitate towards the optimal spec, from a min/max perspective. If someone wants to play a "fun" spec, they are subject to ridicule & considered ignorant, or just bad.
I didn't really mind the talent trees in Vanilla/TBC, but in LK they started to get bloated.
It gets interesting when different talent specs bring interesting utility to the group, like the Boomkin crit buff or the SV Hunter Expose Weakness buff in TBC.

Yep. People will gravitate towards a min/max spec, but that does not mean that people who haven't even seen talent trees in their WoW careers should not be allowed to be given an environment to explore them. I'm mostly talking about this from that perspective.

[Theoloras]

when in doubt all you have to do is...

<Edited>

[Blib]

No one will be "denied the oppertunity" to play whatever spec they like. Blizz legacy servers will have all kinds of guilds just like nost did. An increased amount of people who plays suboptimal builds just means there will be more of that kind of guilds.

I think the toxicity on the topic isn't even that bad tbh, people generally don't give a shit which spec you run dungeons in, and as I said before there is a guild for everyone.
Only thing that triggers people every single time is when some deluded fella argues that their memespec is superior.

[Drain]

^ Type text instead of dropping a giant troll image. It's amusing to see you dropping that though because Reckbombing is all you were good for on the server, a cowardly broken tactic any monkey could perform effectively.

Syphonize: There's no way to avoid build elitism without rebalancing the game, which no one will approve of. That means editing talent trees, equipment, and even spells, far away from what they were on retail Classic. So you either get it as it was, with elitists looking to specialize/maximize, shunning everyone that doesn't, or you get a customized fun server most people won't play on.

But what you might not realize with elitists is that they will act this way regardless, even between perfectly viable builds and classes. They continued to do so years after Classic, and I'm sure they still do today. They want to be the best at something, usually top dps, and won't settle for less. Seeing the world in only black and white, they'll ignore anything else. While I don't care about how they play, it does annoy me when they try to apply it to everyone else, expecting you to follow suit. My advice is to just play what you like, and join a guild that won't put up a fuss about it. Most guilds will run a dedicated Ret/Enh or Arms Warrior for Nightfall procs. Moonkins are useful for the crit buff. Do what you like.

[Syphonize]

Syphonize: There's no way to avoid build elitism without rebalancing the game, which no one will approve of. That means editing talent trees, equipment, and even spells, far away from what they were on retail Classic. So you either get it as it was, with elitists looking to specialize/maximize, shunning everyone that doesn't, or you get a customized fun server most people won't play on.

But what you might not realize with elitists is that they will act this way regardless, even between perfectly viable builds and classes. They continued to do so years after Classic, and I'm sure they still do today. They want to be the best at something, usually top dps, and won't settle for less. Seeing the world in only black and white, they'll ignore anything else. While I don't care about how they play, it does annoy me when they try to apply it to everyone else, expecting you to follow suit. My advice is to just play what you like, and join a guild that won't put up a fuss about it. Most guilds will run a dedicated Ret/Enh or Arms Warrior for Nightfall procs. Moonkins are useful for the crit buff. Do what you like.

Well said, and I completely agree with you. I don't want any rebalancing either. I was in a pretty fantastic guild myself on Nost that had a lot of people experiment with a lot of stuff. I just wanted to put this out there to dial back the negativity you usually see when it comes to "sub-par" specs. If we get official legacy servers, Vanilla WoW is going to be given a lot of attention and will be shown to a pretty large audience. Let's make it a good exploratory experience for everybody involved!

[snawfu]

You can play a shit spec and accept you might not be considered for all guilds.
Just the way it goes.