When WEIRD Specs WORKED In WoW | World of Warcraft

Off-meta picks and "weird" specs were something frequently experimented with during the early days of WoW when talent trees were long and class scaling was less tied down.
Today im covering 1 of these unusual specs for the majority of the classes in the game.
This is when When Weird Specs WORKED In WoW | World of Warcraft

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[Slashresto]

You forgot about spell hunter and spell rogue that used Spellpower gear during vanilla to increase dmg of their arcane shot/Poison.

[NEPAAlchey]

Gladiator spec was the most fun I had with my warrior. Doing good DPS and saving us from wipes when the tanks died because I was there and ready to pick it up. It was usually only viable tanking in LFR but it was still badass and felt very on brand for the class.

[Antigamer]

a Long Lost Spec from WotLK would be for Deathknights.
the Duel Wield Frost DK Tank.
i was Frost DK Sectank in a Guild around WotK and was Frostskilled it was Freaky how much you vould Take when you Parry all the Attacks that come in.
Saw the Big Hitter Drop from Arthas and was the only DK who had no Need for it.

[alihorda]

I loved gladiator stance. I find it so lame that in almost all games shield +1h is tank by default.

[Daftmachine]

A geared prot warrior in WOTLK could wreck pvp as well, even without the gladiator spec. Shield slam and revenge dealt the damage, and shockwave and concussion blow provided tons of cc 🛡

[andromidius]

Another edition - Survival Hunters doing trapweaving in Wrath. All expansion we were told "next phase you'll fall off and Marksman will take over" and each new patch Survival stayed ahead purely because of trapweaving. The fact Explosive Trap, for some reason, did more single target damage then Black Arrow despite it being an AoE ability while also having a longer duration (meaning even more damage AND more lock and load procs) and sharing a cooldown with Black Arrow meant we just always did the trapweave whenever possible. Even playing absolutely insane strats on certain bosses - like on Kolagarn in Ulduar where we had to jump over the edge of the pit, drop the trap mid-air and disengage back onto the platform in order to set the trap off (and inevitably fall to our deaths more then once if there was any lag at all). And bitterly complaining non-stop on bosses that hovered and thus couldn't set off traps - such as Twin Valks.

Good times, if also very exhausting at times. Once Blizzard gave us trap launcher in ICC things got much easier, and now in Cata Black Arrow actually does decent damage and Explosive Trap was nerfed into the ground (to the point its actually pretty bad AoE).

[jasonwowhero]

Gladiator stance needs to come back. Like. That was just the coolest stuff ever.

[Weeboslav]

Problem in WoW is that Blizzard is too afraid of experimenting and/or letting player have too much freedom. You have to play specific play style and your choices are limited at best. And midmaxing culture don't help at all. Like, back in MoP(and Warlords if I'm not mistaken)DemonLocks had a glyph that turns them into tanks, but you were at best, panic tank if your tank dies in a dungeon. Even in Cata, Enhancement had tanking talents and abilities, but could you possibly tank?No. Resto Druids have a dps rotation in Cata despite the fact that they hit like a wet noodle...

[TheRealCeeJai]

3:45 Yeah, when you're only looking at the Top 5% of players, sure. In reality, for *most* players, Gladiator warrior players were committed warrior players and often were near top of the charts in their raid. I raided Mythic in WoD as Glad spec until near the end of progression in HFC, when I swapped back to Arms. I never had any issues with the spec until then.

Besides all that, quoting the numbers being bad is a pretty weak argument for why a spec was killed, as numbers can be quite easily tweaked, as we've seen plenty of times. The other main quoted reason they buried Glad Stance was because Bonus Armor items gave AP to Glad warriors, which some people (main tanks) saw as a problem. This argument completely discounts the fact that after the tanks get that gear (which had the same drop chance as any other piece on a boss), that it was getting sharded or otherwise going to waste and that this was a way to get more use out of tank items in the game.

Glad stance for 12.0. It should have been a Hero spec.

P.S. - I thought the title was "When Weird Specs WORKED in WoW", not "When Weird Specs EXISTED in WoW". Kind of weird to use Glad warr as this class' example and then say it was utter dogsh!t numerically. That kinda means it didn't really work, no?

[_Jachel]

Only other specs or build that i've heard of that you didn't mention are holy shock paladin, spellpower poison rouge (which i think only worked on pservers), resto/boomy with 3% hit FF in tbc, and frostfire mage (which wasn't the best, similar to glad stance).

[thomassleziak]

Loved shockadin in TBC. Full PVE shockadin with mail spell damage equip from SWP. Plate equip had low spell damage stats. You could Autoattack with Seal of Righteousness + Consecration all melee classes, without even using Judgment and Holy Shock :D

[thomassleziak]

Pomfrost mage was way more fun than Pompyro with the 100 % bonus crit damage and + 50 % crit chance to frozen targets. You didn’t even need to instant cast anything, you just frostbolt + ice lance, fire blast if needed and bye bye players :D

[No-Me]

I loved tanking on my shaman during BC. Even used the taunt they had for specific things up through Cata.

[rz]

For Druids talking about Manual Crowd Pummeler is very disappointing considering this is not a spec, and has been discussed so much already.

What about moonkin tanks in TBC or other options?

[SVReality]

But Gladiator warrior wasn't a player made weird spec... You should have added Fury tanks from vanilla instead. Also Shockadin -> ProtRet pally. And wasn't meleweaving a playstyle for hunters and not a spec in itself? Lastly Smite priest was legit the best priest leveling spec up until Cata.

[Anoradord]

Never forget the warlock tank. Beautiful times. Right there with shockadin dps

[Brainbread]

Smite priest did have some interesting bugs with the Tier 5 set. Where if you had Surge of Light procc'd, and used Smite while the -150 mana cost proc from the Avatar Regalia was up, your non-smite spells would not consume the -150 mana buff. Which let you spam Holy Nova on aoe pacs. This combined with the Blade of Eternal Darkness having a chance to proc on each enemy hit with Holy Nova resulted in positive mana gains on downranked Holy Nova's. All this together let you basically spam holy nova infinitely on trash packs in Mount Hyjal or in big pulls in heroic dungeons.

Smite was pretty cool and I am glad I mained it during TBC Classic. Other than AoE, the mana issues never really went away sadly.

Too bad it wasn't a spec in SoD.

[TheRealCeeJai]

21:55 You skipped a LOT: before Leotheras the Blind, you could use a mage OR warlock tank on one of the council members in Gruul's Lair and, right before SSC, one of Kael'thas' advisors needed a warlock tank (preferably two, as her mechanics could be wonky and a backup was good).

[Boomerkin]

There was a glyph that you could socket for warriors at the same time gladiator was out that basically turned a lower level prot warrior into gladiator and it was an absolute menace in dungeons. Had a pally in one group that couldn't figure out how he was being out dpsed by a DPS prot warrior.

[QualDanas]

For warlock tanking, I'm surprised you did bring up the glyph to give them a tank spec.