The dark days of Pre TBC

[Palafix]

Having only made a Pally after the x-pac, I have little idea of what exactly it was like playing as a Pally pre-TBC, and I'm curious.

What was it like playing as a pally? What did you do in raids? In 5-mans? Did any of you tank anything, or try tanking anything? Was it really all that bad pre-TBC?

[Lore]

I didn't play one either, but I heard 5-minute single target blessings on 40 people were awesome.

[Tybalt]

I didn't play one either, but I heard 5-minute single target blessings on 40 people were awesome.

Improved Blessing of Salvation was the uber-talent if you were the salv blessing paladin.

[Shirak]

In the guild I was in (before I moved) you were a cleasne bot...

[Dorvan]

Dorvan was my alt pre-BC, and has been Prot ever since level 30 or something. I tanked just about all the pre-raid content available on him (everything except DM I believe, no one ever ran it at that point).

Honestly, I have a tendency to look back and say: "How did I do that?" The main things that stick out in my mind were that I drank a lot more between pulls, and the Butcher in Scholo was a major pain in the ass (you'll recall that he has an aggro dump). I ran Scholo more than anything else, I think I had 3-4 deathbone pieces when BC hit.

[Arcand]

What was it like playing as a pally? What did you do in raids? In 5-mans? Did any of you tank anything, or try tanking anything? Was it really all that bad pre-TBC?

I've been prot since level 10, without exception, and was incredibly lucky that some people from my first guild gave me a shot at tanking when I hit 60. We went into Stratholme so I could do my master swordsmith quest; I was in Imperial Plate and had a Dimensional Blade of the Bear. (No spell damage, but this was in the days of Seal of Fury so it didn't matter.)

I ran up a tanking set with a lot of defense (393...try doing that when all the real gear has Class:Warrior on it) and mp5, spammed Consecration and counted on SoF for pretty much all my threat. It worked because the others (resto druid, mage and rogue) were extraordinarily good players.

When my new raiding guild started ZG, the guildmaster (a warrior) announced that all tank gear would go to warriors first, and so I healbotted 98% of the time from then until BC. I got to tank a tiger on the ZG tiger boss, all the spiders, all the raptors, imps in MC, adds on Garr, sometimes adds on Executus, and that was it.

I have no idea why I stuck with it, but things are better now.

[jere]

I tanked all the way up, levelling as prot, though I spent a year or so raiding as holy/prot.

To tank you used Seal of Fury (later was removed as a seal, and Righteous Fury was added in its place).

Seal of Fury added threat to your melee swings. Judgement of Fury added threat to your holy damage attacks.

I don't think it was possible to become uncrushable with Holy Shield at that time (though I could be wrong as I was rarely allowed to pick up tanking gear).

[Elennira]

i healbotted up until 60, when i then moved into MC and became a cleanse-bot...that was 'fun'...at least the boss fights were awesome

[Sabindeus]

Retribution was the tank tree.

It had: Deflection, Anticipation, and the uber 8 pallies in raid Blessing of Kings. Not to mention the only reasonable way of generating aggro: Consecration.

That's right, Consecration used to be a Ret talent. 21 pointer.

Keep in mind that there was no Spiritual Attunment back then... so the correct tanking procedure was:

Judgement of Fury + Rank 1 Consecrate, which was hax because JoF generated approx the same amount of aggro as 1 Sunder EVERY TIME THE TARGET TOOK ANY HOLY DAMAGE. At all. Even like, 1. In contrast, Seal of Fury at max rank generated an additional invisible 90 TPS (scaled by weapon speed). So even with SoR being proc based, it was generally worth it to run SoR/JoF + R1 Consec for threat building.

Then once your mana ran down, you'd switch it up like so: Judgement of Wisdom + Seal of Fury. The uber hax here was that Seal of Fury had an additional invisible attack attached to it so that every swing was 2 swings for the purpose of proccing Judgement of Wisdom! Mana regen like crazy... plus threat.

This setup actually let me out aggro some warriors... the problem of course was back then we didn't have real gear available... and warriors were overpowered due to being able to tank as Arms or Fury pretty much as well as Prot.

[Arcand]

the Butcher in Scholo was a major pain in the ass

Quoted for truth, bolded for emphasis.

Also, the raid design philosophy at the time was "put out enough damage to keep all the priests, paladins and druids busy", and every so often they'd design an encounter just for us so we wouldn't feel left out of the fun...so they'd have a boss spam some kind of cleansable AoE.

It's a miracle we put up with it. I guess watching bosses go down is cool no matter what your role was.

[Sabindeus]

Also, Protection was the uber pvp tree.

Repentence = win.

Reckoning = win.

Stand back and spam some FoL until some dumbasses crit you a few times... then 4x Reck/SoCom them to death all at once. It was awesome.

[Palafix]

Did raids bring Pallies as DPS? Because I know our guild had one enhance shammy. Actually, he didn't dps on most fights. In the beginning days, when you could OOC rez, he was assigned "graveyard" duty, meaning staying in the back, OOC, rezzing people who died.


But he got to roll on the really 2hers along with the dps warriors, and he did some pretty crazy damage when he was dpsing.


I figured most guilds would bring Paladins as heal or cleanse bots, but from my understanding, Paladins couldn't heal 5-mans without difficulty, or at least not without near full cloth.


Though I'm surprised that Paladins were tanking stuff at all, with no SA and no taunt. SoF must have been mana efficient, but still, there'd be no burst aggro.

[fafhrd]

i didn't play one, but i remember it seeming entirely normal to expect pallies to rebless every 5 minutes in combat (the less important ones like salve, seriously who needed salve? could just slip off), for each person in the raid.

In defense of that, i don't remember fights being much longer than 5 minutes though (although i can't say i remember timing anything). Ragnaros was what, 6 minutes tops? It was Ouro/Visc/C'thun and Naxx that started pushing fights up to the 10 minute mark.

we used to keep one pally whose job every raid was just to stand off to the side and do nothing, unless someone died during a fight. then he'd res the dead, the dead would drink up, and continue with the boss.

[Dorvan]

Oh, and I started playing WoW a few weeks after 1.9 was released...so I always knew Cons in the Holy Tree and never experienced Seal of Fury.

[Kombo]

Also, Protection was the uber pvp tree.

Repentence = win.

Reckoning = win.

Stand back and spam some FoL until some dumbasses crit you a few times... then 4x Reck/SoCom them to death all at once. It was awesome.

was this way back when reckoning could one shot a raid boss? Because i remember hearing about how this pally dueled a rogue untill the rogues weapons broke, then got summoned into MC and killed one of the bosses there.