Greetings, adventurers! Librarian Husky here, ready to guide you through the exciting world of Classic WoW in 2024. With Blizzard’s fresh Classic release just around the corner, it’s time to make one of the most important decisions in your journey: choosing your class. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran revisiting old favorites, a curious explorer seeking something new, or a first-timer ready to dive into vanilla Azeroth, this guide will help you navigate the choices ahead and find the perfect fit for your adventure. Let’s embark on this journey together!

Class Overview and Rating Criteria

I wanted to go over each class and let you know what you’re getting yourself into. I will rate the classes based on several criteria: leveling, since there’s no experience boost in this version of the game, you will be spending a significant amount of time leveling, which translates to multiple in-game days played.

PVP Considerations

PVP is another important factor, considering both smaller scale and larger scale engagements. Additionally, farming gold is essential in this vanilla setting; if you want to accomplish basically anything in-game, you will need gold, and some classes have a much easier time acquiring it than others.

Rating System

I will use a one to five-star system to help with the ratings, where five is very good, four is above average, three is average, two is below average, and one is poor. It’s also worth mentioning that Blizzard has recently made a few announcements that may significantly impact your choice of class.

Account Features and Benefits

First, it’s important to know that switching between your own characters on the same account will be instant. This isn’t directly related to class choice but is a nice feature to have.

Debuff and Buff Cap Removal

Secondly, the removal of debuff and buff caps benefits several classes that we will discuss later on.

Upcoming Changes in Game Mechanics

Don’t expect significant changes in which classes are at the top of the DPS meters. Although this was attempted in the Season of Mastery many years ago, it didn’t really alter much in the grand scheme of things.

Jewelspecialization in Anniversary Realms

This change won’t occur at launch, but Blizzard plans to add Jewelspecialization to Anniversary Realms. This means players will have a PvP and PvE spec, a farm spec, and a normal spec, allowing flexibility without the need to spend 100 gold between raids.

Future Updates and Features

Anniversary Realms are progressive, so eventually, players will experience The Burning Crusade (TBC) with unique features such as Jewelspecialization. With nine distinct classes to cover, there’s much to explore and discuss.

Interactive Learning Experience

Dodev aims to make learning more interactive and goal-driven by incorporating features like experience achievements and leaderboards to motivate progress. The platform offers tools to get fully onboard with Python and Go programming languages through hands-on learning, where you’ll write plenty of your own code.

Understanding the Priest’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Today, let’s get back to discussing the priest class. We’ll begin with the cloth armor types first and then ascend upwards. The priest wields both light and shadow. In classic gameplay, they have significant strengths and some noticeable weaknesses too. I’ve always found priests to be relatively fast and extremely efficient while leveling. The key thing is that they barely ever need to stop and drink.

Leveling and Resource Management

Whenever I level a priest and reach a new level where I can buy food and water, I go and purchase a few stacks. I often find that I won’t even have used them all before reaching the next tier of food and water. However, they are very reliant on a wand, so you might consider going enchanting early until you get a wand or stopping by a capital city to buy one quite early on.

Shadow Form and Class Fantasy

The first quest that offers wands will take a bit of time to reach you. You can acquire Shadow Form at level 40, which really powers you up and adds to your class fantasy. I believe that the priest is a great choice for leveling; it’s quite simple and straightforward in terms of how they play.

PVE Performance and Healing Capability

In PVE, there is a story between the priest’s two identities. They are, without a doubt, the best healers in vanilla gameplay. They simply have the largest toolkit of heals, and your average raid will often include multiple priests playing both holy and discipline specializations.

Performance of Shadow Priests

Both specs work just fine, by the way. For raids, players who want to push performance will seek the power infusion talent for their casters. Shadow priests are among the biggest winners of the debuff cap removal, functioning on a very basic level. They need three debuffs, and previously we only had 16 total. This was a significant factor that made them hard to justify bringing, but now, without the debuff cap, they can work. However, do not expect them to deal crazy damage; in fact, Shadows are still not great DPS and continue to face extreme mana problems. They can now buff Shadow vulnerability to assist warlocks, and Vampiric Embrace healing can be beneficial in some fights. While Shadow priests won’t be in super high demand, you won’t feel bad about bringing one to your raid.

Historical Context and Damage Output

A point of reference here is the top 10% of damage dealers for each class in Phase One and Phase Two of Classic 2019. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a snapshot specifically for Phase One, but this gives you a rough idea of how things looked back then. Moving on to PvP for priests, the healer identity continues to be very strong and versatile. They possess an offensive and defensive magical dispel, racial spell bonuses, mana burn, fear shields, and so on.

Shadow Priests in PvP

Shadow is also much better in PvP and is definitely one of the strongest small-scale or skirmish-type classes in the game due to a mix of damage over time and self-sustain. However, they are not as effective in larger-scale PvP due to their lack of AoE threat.

Overview of Priest and Mage Classes

But the utility of the priest is still nice to have overall; the priest is great for PvP. Farming on the priest is okay. You remain a highly efficient specced Shadow, which can certainly hold down a farming spot on PvP realms, but it’s probably just going to be gathering, and you don’t have access to anything exceptional.

Mage: The Original Hero Class

Ah, Mage! The original hero class before the Death Knight was introduced into the game. If you want to be among the best at quite literally everything, Mage can probably do it, and it’s for good reason: basically every single fresh server has a Mage who hits 61st by themselves. This will happen on the fresh server coming up, too, I’m sure. Mages uniquely have access to AoE farming, allowing them to gather up a bunch of mobs and Blizzard them down, though this involves much more concentration than regular play and isn’t really for everyone.

Strengths in PvE

Even if you’re just playing normally, you’re sitting a good 30 yards away, Frostbolting at basically zero risk. Mages are a fast and consistent pick for leveling in PvE scenarios. They are the best overall caster damage dealer in Vanilla and the one you’ll be stacking the most of. You start in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair playing Frost as well. A bunch of stuff is immune to fire, but in the later stages of Classic, you can go Fire and start enjoying those massive Fireball crits into huge Ignite dots.

Mages in Dungeons

Mages are amazing in dungeons too, more so than other classes because they just have so many AoE spells, and there is no AoE cap whatsoever in Vanilla. The more you pull, the better the Mage gets in PvP. Mages are a very strong solo and small-scale PvPer due to their Polymorph freezes and Counterspell, which allows them to have control over the battlefield.

PvP Dominance

In large-scale PvP, Mages are the best class in the game by such a big margin that nothing even gets close. Your ability to freeze and slow enemies from a distance can instantly turn the tide of battle or allow you to engage an enemy. And guess what? They’re the best gold farmers too—again, by an absolute mile; nothing compares to them.

Understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of Mages and Warlocks

The caveat is that you must be willing to learn how to effectively play the class. Mages can boost other players, allowing for an AOE gold farm to accumulate resources in a way that no other class can. Blizzard has implemented some anti-boost mechanics in dungeons, such as in Zarak Mara and Straton Dead, where after a while, mobs become immune to slows and roots, gaining increased movement speed. They haven’t mentioned this in regard to Fresh, so I believe Mages will still be able to boost others. Even without boosting, Mages excel at gold farming. Additionally, Mages have the advantage of their own food and water, the ability to create portals that they can sell to other players, and the capability to teleport around the world. This class is remarkably powerful in nearly every aspect, though they do face challenges such as a high dependence on mana and vulnerability when undergeared. While they are primarily a DPS class, they have numerous advantages.

Warlocks: The Shadow Casters of Classic

Warlocks, the primary shadow casters in Classic, were my main during the 2019 release. They are excellent levelers overall, capable of utilizing a drain tank build where they face tank enemies while using Drain Life. With a Succubus as their primary demon, Warlocks also enjoy a series of great class quests that allow them to acquire their demons along with several armor pieces. Additionally, players receive a free mount at level 40, which is particularly beneficial in Fresh since accumulating enough gold by that level can be challenging. Warlocks experience minimal downtime while leveling and have the ability to summon other players, which is an aspect that many will eagerly anticipate.

Debuff Cap and Shadow Mastery

The debuff cap has removed three full cursive shadows. This is beneficial, as you may experience a lack of hit chance. Regarding your talents, if you can’t hit the hit cap for a long time, when your Shadow Bolt does hit and crits, you can easily over-aggro, especially on Horde. With the debuff cap gone, you can consistently apply Corruption and utilize the Shadow Mastery Ruin spec, which allows you to take advantage of one of your damage-over-time effects.

Affliction vs. Destruction Builds

Unfortunately, there is basically a 0% chance that any Affliction build will outperform Destruction in vanilla. Damage-over-time spells simply aren’t very effective; there are no haste effects for them to scale with, and they don’t crit. Despite this, they remain a straightforward class to play in PvE and tend to be underplayed. Therefore, it should be relatively easy to find a raid spot if you’re a Warlock. They are middle-of-the-pack DPS, improving over time with expansions but still remaining in that position.

PvP Performance of Warlocks

In PvP, Warlocks excel in small-scale encounters due to their demons and health stones. However, based on my experience, I cannot recommend playing an Alliance Warlock on a PvP server. It often feels like half the Horde are Undead, while the other half consists of Warriors and Shamans, all equipped with PvP trinkets that can remove fear. In larger-scale PvP, Warlocks are not quite as effective since you can’t always stay in range for fear spells, leading to a reliance on damage-over-time effects and curses that can be dispelled.

Perception of Warlocks in PvP

When people discuss Warlocks in PvP, they often focus on the soul. This highlights the perception of their role and effectiveness in various combat scenarios.

Druid Class Overview

Next up, we have the Druid class in World of Warcraft, which offers a bit of everything and the chance to play any role in the game. That’s the theory, at least. I have always been a big fan of Druids due to the progression involved in acquiring different forms. You start off as a novice using only spells, then complete a quest to learn bear form at level 10 and receive cat form at level 20 from your trainer. These milestones are very satisfying to achieve and provide a sense of power. You also gain travel form at level 30, which is often more efficient than mounting up over short distances and enhances your effectiveness between defeating enemies in cat form and switching to human for healing.

Leveling as a Druid

Repeating is great when you’re leveling as a druid, specifically as feral. You don’t need to stick to one specialization; you can flex between tank or DPS for dungeons without any problem. However, druids tend to feel like they fall off a bit power-wise towards the late game. Overall, though, they provide a positive PvE experience for druids.

Effort and Rewards

The main theme here is that the more effort you put in, the more rewards you’ll get out. Resto druids are fine, and in a vanilla raid setting, you always want one of them with the buff cap gone. You can now use heal-over-time effects, but healing in classic tends to be quite “whack-a-mole” style. Aside from a few fights where the raid is taking consistent damage, this isn’t going to change much.

Combat Res and Feral Spec

Innovating combat res is nice to have, but again, enemies tend to die so fast that druids often don’t get as much use out of it as they can in future expansions. Vanilla druids also lack a traditional resurrection ability. Feral can be good, but it’s a very high-effort specialization. You need to maximize your energy gains and optimize your DPS, but even with all that effort, you may not surpass a warrior in damage output.

Tanking and Community

Tanking has a similar story. Druids have good threat per second, but they are not as effective as other tanking options. I find that those who choose feral time and again are absolute fanatics of the specialization and the class, which is commendable. Lastly, let’s discuss Boomkin, which I haven’t talked about yet.

Performance Analysis of Druid Specializations

The performance of certain Druid specializations in various contexts is often criticized. There are players who claim to be top-tier in their groups, but their DPS roles can be misleading. The balance tree, for instance, has significant issues, including poor hit chances and several ineffective talents. Even with adjustments to debuffs, it remains uncertain whether Moonfire would provide a meaningful DPS increase over time.

Strengths and Weaknesses in PvP

Druids excel in Player versus Player (PvP) scenarios due to their blend of mobility and sustain, which makes them formidable in smaller skirmishes. All Druid specs capable of dealing damage can compete effectively against most other classes. However, they tend to be frustrating opponents for melee classes because of their ability to reset fights and apply crowd control. In large-scale PvP, their utility may not match that of other classes, but they still maintain a competitive edge.

Flag Carrying in Warsong Gulch

One area where Druids truly shine is flag carrying in Warsong Gulch. Their ability to switch forms while moving with the flag makes them incredibly difficult to pin down, positioning them as the best class for this role. This unique advantage allows them to perform exceptionally well in specific PvP situations.

Gathering Professions

In terms of gathering professions, Druids are above average due to their natural mobility in the open world. While their strengths primarily lie in gathering, it is uncommon to see a Druid excel beyond this specialization.

Rogues in Vanilla Gameplay

Rogues have a unique position in the game, especially for players who do not engage in mining or herbalism to support their endgame gold spending. They are a popular choice on PvP servers due to their ability to control fights effectively. However, their appeal extends beyond just that aspect.

Leveling Challenges

While rogues can be among the fastest classes to level from 1 to 60, they come with certain challenges. Players often find themselves in a peculiar situation where they need to build combo points, but by the time they accumulate enough, the enemy is already nearly defeated. This leads to wasted abilities like Slice and Dice, reducing overall efficiency during leveling.

Class Quests and Endgame Potential

The class quests for rogues add a rich flavor to the leveling experience. Once players complete leveling, they can look forward to a rewarding endgame. In vanilla, rogues rank among the top damage dealers, offering great crowd control and interrupts in dungeons, which ensures consistent damage output in any PvE setting.

Performance in Raids and PvP

In raid settings, rogues can achieve significant damage output, especially with the uptime on abilities like Blade Flurry. However, they may eventually be outperformed by warriors in terms of long-term damage. Nonetheless, rogues possess powerful cooldowns as combat specs and remain a strong choice overall. With 40 players per raid, having a few rogues can enhance the team’s damage-dealing capabilities.

Legendary Status in PvP

In the realm of PvP, rogues hold a legendary status due to their burst damage potential and control abilities. Their high skill ceiling allows for impressive plays, making them a sought-after class for competitive players looking to dominate in player-versus-player encounters.