Caspus wrote: ↑

4 years ago

God some of you guys are ridiculous sometimes.

Play whatever your heart desires and when you are online always strive to learn and better your gameplay.

You can do whatever you want in this game and still complete the same content as everyone else.

Only nerds care about Min/maxing, ignore them. They for some reason think gate keeping a game gives them e-points.

Are you going to be on the same level plain as top guilds? Nah. But are you going to find a guild that'll eventually clear all content? Yes, so long you keep at it.

Are you going to be topping meters? Nope, but who gives a shit. Only nerds care. Don't listen to nerds. Just be friendly and helpful to others and have fun is my only advice. People will like you and be friends with you regardless of what you play. How do I know? Because i've had a really good friend who played a smite priest, a very memey spec and he was loved by the server (A small example)

I know a lot of ret paladins that have cleared to KT and have been given might of menethil, etc. You won't be treated like shit for what you play.

Put you and your enjoyment first (If your enjoyment is to be a dick then /shrug, a consequence of that is you won't make a lot of friends but you do you.) It's a game and always treat it like that.

I hope you get after it and have fun!

Thanks for the kind words @Caspus . My expectations align just with that; I'll be able to do some ZG, AQ20 and MC, and that's just fine. My ambitions are small, compared to some of you lot, but it feels reasonable as a Ret. I really hate the meme culture, as posted by @Relik, since that's what feeds the stigma, but those guys are probably not going to be going Zandalar Tribe anyway.

Caspus wrote: ↑

4 years ago

https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=3589/ ... ng-screech of the dragonling

By the https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=24388/brain-damage of https://classic.wowhead.com/quest=364/the-mindless-ones, I say ! This dragonling is also not what it seems !! Either its https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=24424/screech somehow.....makes sense, in a weird sort of way or that blasted https://classic.wowhead.com/npc=1697/keeg-gibn tricked me again with some poison !! I never knew there was Tome of Polymorph: Dragonkin !!!

Hey, if you change your mind and come on Hydraxian Waterlords we are planning on creating a guild for only paladin/priest... let me know if you need more informations :-)

JollyResolve6 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Caspus wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Only nerds care about Min/maxing, ignore them. They for some reason think gate keeping a game gives them e-points.

Or maybe some people just enjoy min/maxing?

Kind of weird to make a post about how people should just play the game the way they want to, while at the same time childishly insulting anyone who happens to enjoy min/maxing.

I min/max, I'm a nerd. It's not a insult, it's a fact. You're a nerd if you min/max. It's a passion thing and im telling casuals to ignore us when people start telling others what you can and can't do regarding the game.

Caspus wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I min/max, I'm a nerd. It's not a insult, it's a fact. You're a nerd if you min/max. It's a passion thing and im telling casuals to ignore us when people start telling others what you can and can't do regarding the game.

I think comments like yours derail the conversation. Having a good balance of opinion is important. They should not be "ignoring" anyone. They should be fielding out everyones input to have an accurate understanding of what hurdles they will encounter. Plugging your ears, closing your eyes and creating a character is not a great way to find success in the game. While their version of success may be different than a min/maxers, they should still take the time to listen to a variety of perspectives before making their choice.

We are all isolated in this community on barrens chat, that is for the most part, VERY accepting at tolerant. We hear the same pro casual propaganda echo'd day in and day out. The atmosphere you find on this forum will be A LOT different than the one you will find ingame as can be seen on the discord communities for servers, reddit, private servers etc etc etc... What happens when you pump these guys up and then you arent there when they choose a server? When theyre just alone in a pit of players who arent tolerant and who dont care that they want to be special?

I think its important to be honest and to outline the struggles these specs will face. If anything, this will encourage players to find a group before Classic launches and to start networking with guilds that will tolerate their playstyles. They came here for advice... Not for Caspus to pat them on the back and encourage them to make choices that will create issues for them in the future.

So I would advise that new players do not ignore everyone else who is giving advice on how to succeed in an MMO. A genre that requires communicating and collaborating with others to explore the world.

Ignoring everyone else and playing what you want is all well and good until you realize most guilds wont even consider accepting you. The number of Ret/Prot Paladin spots in raiding guilds are always going to be dramatically lower than the amount of players picking those specs.

Yes, you *can* raid as these specs. But like Esfand says, the most important stat for a Ret Paladin is Charisma. Unless you really go above and beyond, the reality is you probably wont get these raidspots.

I am all for Retpaladins giving it their best and trying to get to raid. But the minority actually will be raiding. Just know this before you roll a Retpaladin.
If you believe you will enjoy healing though, you can always give Ret a shot and just respec later if it doesnt work out.

I just don't agree with you that they're going to have a hard time finding a group to play with. They will have a group to play with specially with the amount of people who are going to be playing Classic. Myself when I played Prot and many others I know who did off-specs found a group on servers with really small communities, which most are pretty tryhard at that. You're not realizing the amount of casual guilds that are actually going to be active during classic that will be picking up all these new players trying out new specs/classes and ignoring Meta's. This is why im saying don't worry about all the negative aspects to playing a off-spec because the playerbase will be large enough to accommodate most people. So long you always try and improve and keep a positive attitude you will get far in vanilla.

I've been playing vanilla private servers since 2010, i've been in every kind of guild from casual to hardcore to speed running guilds across 9 60 paladins, 3 warriors and 2 mages. Main spec and meme spec on all of them. I've seen everything from arcane mages, smite priests, countless ret paladins (good or bad, didn't even matter), feral druids used to never be popular back then, boomkins, melee hunters (One even got Thunderfury). Even a melee mage who literally got drunk every raid and beat the bosses with his staff and occasionally hit instants as he shitposted in guildchat and bullshitted in vent.

From my experience raiding nonstop for almost a decade I can honestly say new players no matter what will find a guild to raid with. If people with 500-1000 population servers can then finding a guild on classic will be easier than breathing.

People already know the downsides of off-specs. Ret specially. Ret is a mainstream meme in the vanilla world. Re-iterating it does nothing.

Caspus wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I just don't agree with you that they're going to have a hard time finding a group to play with. They will have a group to play with specially with the amount of people who are going to be playing Classic. Myself when I played Prot and many others I know who did off-specs found a group on servers with really small communities, which most are pretty tryhard at that. You're not realizing the amount of casual guilds that are actually going to be active during classic that will be picking up all these new players trying out new specs/classes and ignoring Meta's. This is why im saying don't worry about all the negative aspects to playing a off-spec because the playerbase will be large enough to accommodate most people. So long you always try and improve and keep a positive attitude you will get far in vanilla.

I do realize that there will be casuals. I also realize that the people choosing to meme will have less opportunity. Flat out. They will have less opportunities to participate in group content. This is not to say they will be unable to find a group, just that they will have far less opportunities. Raid teams will not actively be recruiting ret paladins, many will simply turn them away. Premade teams will not be actively recruiting ret paladins, and many will turn them away. This is true right down to 5 man dungeons. Can a ret do a 5 man dungeon? OF COURSE! 5 man dungeons can be done with 3 guys who are relatively competent! No question about it. But if a warrior tank is filling his group, will he bother bringing a ret, who will likely perform worse than another class just so he can share gear? Naw. He wont bring the ret. He will ignore the rets whisper unless no one else responds.

All content can be done with 39 players. Therefore EVERYTHING is viable. But any team based activity will be filled with team players. Team players want to find other people who add value to their team. They will be less interested in those who make a self-interested choice that is suboptimal.

Our experience on private has been entirely different. So I cant speak to your experience. Memes were never welcome in any guild I participated in, on any premade and were dismissed in almost every pug I played in. HOWEVER; individual players who were memes found ways around this by providing value in other ways so I have regularly seen exceptions made. But these are exceptions. In most cases, meme specs should be reserved for exceptional players. Outliers. Meme specs are not a good platform for the casual player to find success on.

edit: The irony of playing a meme spec is that they are inherently suboptimal. Yet to bring these specs closer to relevance, you need to MIN/MAX the HELL out of them. This should be an immediate turnoff for the casual user who has aspirations of raiding. The barrier to entry for raiding on a meme, is exceptionally higher.

Learn it! Know it! Live it!