redjester99
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2014
Hi there!
So as the release of Kronos approaches, and there are forum topics polling for what faction you'll be rolling, and there is a considerable portion of the player base to-be that are unsure.
My hope is to give a bit of a breakdown based on fact, and some of my own opinion and experience, mixed in with the input and experience of others. Now, bear in mind, I'm making this post from the mentality of ideal play. That's usually how Vanilla private servers work, the culture is very different from that of ye olde servers of Vanilla, where most players didn't raid nor played in an ideal fashion.
More specifically, funnily enough in both Vanilla on the server Kil'Jaeden and on the Vanilla private servers of Feenix, I was the troll mage Toshiok, mage class leader for my guilds and part-time raid leader. Most people were highly surprised that a mage was the shot-caller. If anyone would know me from playing the past, it'd be by that name.
Anyways, enough about me. I'm not important.
Also, I guess a couple people might very much disagree with about my claims over class balance, among other things perhaps. Feel free to disagree and reply and discuss, no need to get angsty.
My history has been about 70-80% Horde over my WoW career, mostly playing mage and warrior. I too am having trouble myself deciding which faction to pick, let alone which class.
So let's kick this off, topic by topic:
GEOGRAPHY
So something that is nice to bear in mind, location, location, location. The important things here to consider are the location of instances relative to main cities, namely higher level and endgame instances in relation to each factions main city. For the Alliance, Ironforge, which will probably hold 70% of the players, Stormwind mostly the rest, not much of a difference there geographically to consider. The Horde, 90% of them will be in Orgrimmar, so that's where we'll be basing it off of.
So let's consider perhaps the most important area in the game, Blackrock Mountain. Housing 4 major instances and considered the only real "battleground," lots of world PvP between the instance groups. Blackrock Mountain houses Blackrock Depths, a place that we all will be become well acquainted with, unfortunately, and Blackrock Spire, the upper portion being of utmost importance to preraid gear, a pillar upon which to build a raiding guild. Essential instances. And of course, Blackwing Lair, and the most infamous raid of all, Molten Core. Every player that will ever raid will make countless trips to this area.
So if you haven't yet surmised this, Blackrock Mountain is in the Alliance's backyard. In fact, sandwiched right between Dun Morogh and Elwynn Forest. The Alliance have a huge advantage here, if geography and travel is an issue for you. Alliance gank squads in BRM are not uncommon. The Horde have to take a zeppelin to Grom'gol and fly up, usually to Kargath in the Badlands.
*Protip* If you fly to Burning Steppes, the bottom side of BRM, it might be safer from ganking, but takes longer. Most gank squads will sit on the top side because it's where most people go in, and it's closer to the chain needed to get up to BRS and BWL, and to take you down to BRD and MC.
So really, in terms of endgame instances and preraid dungeons, most things are not even but negligible. A couple minutes of running is not really worth the discussion.
Something else to note is World Bosses, whenever they will be released. This is about split down the middle. Perhaps a small edge to Horde. Kazzak is quite close to Stormwind, but countered by the Azuregos being in Orgrimmar's back yard. And the Four Dragons of Nightmare, each faction has easy access to one, the Alliance in Duskwood and the Horde in Eastern Ashenvale, and one that each faction has a slight edge on, Horde with Feralas, and Alliance with the Hinterlands.
Also, something to consider, the instance that EVERYONE will do is Scarlet Monastery, conveniently located in Tirisfal Glades. If you're Horde, no problem. If you're Alliance, you have to take either a stroll through Silverpine and all the way around the Undercity, taking ages. Or, you can cut through the edge of Western Plaguelands, where angry, diseased, undead bears 10+ levels higher than you will be aggroed on you from a mile away and chase you and kill you, since you will likely not have a mount. Just something to consider.
I imagine for location, it doesn't make that big of a difference, but always something to consider.
RACIALS
This will not be overly in depth, but overall, the Alliance racials favor PvE, and Horde favor PvP, for the most part. In particular, I'm looking at:
Alliance:
Night Elf - Dodge chance for tanking.
Gnome - Bonus Intellect for mana and crit chance, little bastards.
Dwarves - Stoneform for tanking ~ general damage reduction.
Humans - Weapon skill, vital for melee dps and dealing with hit chance.
Most of these are small quality of life bits that help in raids, also things to consider are Humans' bonus to rep gains, which is generally more helpful to raiders, and the 5% bonus to spirit, which is reasonably helpful to healers and a tiny bit to caster dps. On a PvP note, Night Elf Shadowmeld can be handy for PvP, even to avoid ganks while levelling, and you can cast Meld while eating, super stealthy regeneration. Also to consider in PvP is the Gnome Racial Escape Artist.
Horde:
Orc - Reduced stun duration.
Undead - Will of the Forsaken, enough said.
Tauren - War Stomp and Stamina increased.
Troll - Berserking can be somewhat useful in PvP, just a reasonable increase to damage.
Now on a PvE note, Tauren is regarded by some as the best tanking race due to their beefy brawn (see what I did there). While Troll Berserking is previously mentioned, it's generally considered stronger in PvE, and Orc's Blood Fury can be handy in raids now and again, and the Orc racial with bonus weapon skill to axes can be nice for dps warriors.
There are other racials that are there, of course, like Cannabalize, but I wanted to focus on the more important ones that would be more impactful in endgame, because that's what people care about more.
~
Now taking into consideration Priest racials. Many people forget that these exist. Specific races of priests had access to certain spells. Overall, these racials fell in a way that left the Alliance far better off in PvE, not particularly close. However, if you're wanting to play Shadow spec, you will want to look to the Horde side. Horde was snubbed a bit in this regard. Here are the abilities and the races that can use them.
Desperate prayer: Instant heal, castable only on self, quite strong. A panic button. A miniature Lay on Hands. Would enable quick self heals to enable more healing for everyone else.
Races: Human, Dwarf
Starshards: Arcane damage-over-time spell, not particularly strong.
Races: Night Elf
Touch of Weakness: Deals a small amount of shadow damage, and reduces damage dealt by target by a decent little chunk.
Races: Undead
Hex of Weakness: Reduces damage dealt by target, and reduces effectiveness of healing by 20%.
Races: Troll
Feedback: Very interesting ability, puts up a barrier around the priest for 15 seconds, any spells that hit the priest in this time will burn a chunk of mana from the enemy caster for each spell, also damaging them for 1 point of shadow damage per point of mana burned.
Races: Human
Fear Ward: The god tier of priest racials, regarded as the strongest of all priest racials, protects target for 10 minutes, immunizing them from all fear effects, the most common CC in raids.
Races: Dwarf
Elune's Grace: Decreases damage taken by a % and increases dodge chance for a short duration
Races: Night Elf
Devouring Plague: A damage-over-time spell that lasts 24 seconds, deals a solid amount of damage and heals the caster for an equal amount of its damage caused.
Races: Undead
Shadowguard: When a spell, ability, or auto attack hits the caster, the enemy will take a small amount of shadow damage, lasts 10 minutes, 3 charges.
Races: Troll
So overall, the Alliance priest racials far favor healing, and the Horde, for shadow. Honestly, a significant portion of these racials are thoroughly useless, and there are more of the useless ones on the Horde side. Generally, the Alliance priests' healing benefits far more from their racials than the Horde's shadow priests benefit from their racials, particularly with the Humans and Dwarves really bringing so much to a raid, and Dwarf priests considered the best in the game.
Also, it was requested that I include base stats for each race, so some people are more into min/max than I even thought. Not a problem though, I just think that starting stats are negligible. Also something to bear in mind, that stat gains upon level-up are based on class, not race. So a gnome warrior and a tauren warrior would gain the same stats upon leveling up.
* = %bonus to stat is taken into consideration in this table, with all characters at level 1. Tauren are not included because Tauren receive a bonus to max health, not a bonus to stamina.
Also nice to note that Night Elves have less strength than the guys with rotted biceps and missing half their muscles, the Undead.
So now, time for the meaty bit that people might start disagreeing about:
PALADIN VS. SHAMAN
Ahh the old debate. I will not cover too much from the PvP perspective, mostly about raiding, but I will discuss it a bit. Many people have and will have a lot to say on this subject, so do check out some very detailed discussion on it in the replies below.
From the raiding perspective, which is better? What is more useful? Both are not the strongest healers on their respective faction, they both fill a secondary healer and buffing role, usually also able to stand in more dangerous places being a bit tankier than priests.
Paladin -
Shaman -
Overall in this light, I'd say that a Paladin does fewer things than the Shaman, mostly bearing in mind all of the totems, but a Paladin can do those few things really well. Quality vs. Quantity you might say. High performance with limited utility, vs. solid performance across wider utility.
Outside of healing, neither class is particularly great in raiding in other roles.
Prot Paladins are out of the question, no taunt and not enough threat generation, not having a tier of tanking gear is not helpful either. Sometimes considered for the imp packs in MC, and not bad in 5 mans.
Enhancement and Ret paladin are brought sometimes to use the Nightfall axe to debuff the boss for more magic damage from the raid, usually Ret's are frowned upon for taking gear from Fury Warriors who out dps them by a considerable margin early on, and the way warriors scale, that distance between them only grows. The most ret paladins and enh shamans you ever see per 40 man raid is 1. Never more.
Speaking more to a class decision making topic, if you plan on playing specifically ret paladin or enhancement, you will probably not get a raid spot, particularly with any guild in BWL or beyond. However, you can easily be taken as a healer and over time acquire some off spec gear, to the point where you could play enh or ret, particularly with paladin t2, which can be used for both Holy and Ret quite effectively.
You can find some youtube videos of Ret raiding dps that is super high, but that's at the absolute highest gear you can possibly have and every buff under the sun, and usually these videos are in Naxx, so vs. undead enemies.
It's actually rather unfortunate that elemental shaman is not viable for raiding, it has the talent tree and potential, but there is not a high enough rank of Lightning Bolt, even with equal amounts of damage gear, top rank Lightning Bolt (like rank 8? with 400-500 base damage) is so much weaker than top ranked mage frostbolt (like rank 11, around 650-750 base damage). The disparity in the base damage before spell damage is added is absurd. Blizzard made an effort to ensure that hybrid classes healed. Also, Lightning Bolt has crazy aggro generation. Blizzard made sure that elemental shaman and boomkin had ridiculous aggro generation to keep them from dpsing, in part with the healing tier gear. An elemental shaman will pull aggro over classes that are doing double their damage. Also something a shaman might need would be a talent like Master of Elements in the Mage Fire tree, that refunds mana from critical strikes. Just through talents alone, elemental shaman hovers around 20% crit if memory serves, not taking into account Intellect or Crit Chance on gear. This would help counter the mana inefficiency of Elemental.
So in PvP, in a healing/buffing/support role, Shaman take an aggressive/offensive approach, Paladin takes a more defensive role. However, Ret paladin can be rather strong in PvP, and enhancement to a lesser extent, but can be considerably powerful, lots of enhancement PvP videos with Sulfuras. In PvP is where Elemental shines, solid burst damage and kiting. One could make a solid case that Shaman is more of a solo pvper, and paladin is more of a group pvper. The Paladin spell Blessing of Freedom being one of the strongest PvP spells in the game for any class.
The overall consensus is that most people, obviously, will not be playing either class, as you would expect, so where the majority of players would need to consider these kind of things is in raiding, having Paladins and Shaman in your group. What you see as stronger and more important between shaman and paladin in PvE will likely be the basis upon which many will make a decision if their decision hinges on class balance and min/max raiding.
If you are unsure about what class to play, let's be honest, rolling either of the two with the full intention to heal will have guilds parading through the streets in celebration when you join them.
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
Some of these may not be overly important or worth consideration, and perhaps subjective.
In Alterac Valley, Alliance have an advantage. Their base is harder to siege/break the turtle because of the bridge. And bunkers are easier to defend than towers are. Alliance has more defensive chokepoints overall on the map. This should probably not be that big of a deal to most people.
Alliance quests are a bit better, as they were completed first and are a bit more polished throughout and received a bit more tender love and care, and the Horde quests were rushed in and the devs had said back when that they never got the Horde quests to a level equal to the Alliance due to time constraints with release.
The Horde quest chain to get attuned to Onyxia's Lair is significantly shorter than the Alliance's chain, same with getting the key to UBRS.
The Alliance quest chain to get attuned to Onyxia's Lair is far more epic than the Horde's, both this point and the previous reflecting the detail/polish of Alliance quests.
Any other suggestions/discussions/ideas would be greatly appreciated and will be added. Just putting this here to lay out all these small microscopic things that a player might consider when making a decision.
Edits:
Also I'd like to say thanks for the positive feedback, like I said earlier, I hope some more good points can be made and discussed and perhaps added. I'm making on-going edits, making sure everything is nice and pretty and readable.
So as the release of Kronos approaches, and there are forum topics polling for what faction you'll be rolling, and there is a considerable portion of the player base to-be that are unsure.
My hope is to give a bit of a breakdown based on fact, and some of my own opinion and experience, mixed in with the input and experience of others. Now, bear in mind, I'm making this post from the mentality of ideal play. That's usually how Vanilla private servers work, the culture is very different from that of ye olde servers of Vanilla, where most players didn't raid nor played in an ideal fashion.
More specifically, funnily enough in both Vanilla on the server Kil'Jaeden and on the Vanilla private servers of Feenix, I was the troll mage Toshiok, mage class leader for my guilds and part-time raid leader. Most people were highly surprised that a mage was the shot-caller. If anyone would know me from playing the past, it'd be by that name.
Anyways, enough about me. I'm not important.
Also, I guess a couple people might very much disagree with about my claims over class balance, among other things perhaps. Feel free to disagree and reply and discuss, no need to get angsty.
My history has been about 70-80% Horde over my WoW career, mostly playing mage and warrior. I too am having trouble myself deciding which faction to pick, let alone which class.
So let's kick this off, topic by topic:
GEOGRAPHY
So something that is nice to bear in mind, location, location, location. The important things here to consider are the location of instances relative to main cities, namely higher level and endgame instances in relation to each factions main city. For the Alliance, Ironforge, which will probably hold 70% of the players, Stormwind mostly the rest, not much of a difference there geographically to consider. The Horde, 90% of them will be in Orgrimmar, so that's where we'll be basing it off of.
So let's consider perhaps the most important area in the game, Blackrock Mountain. Housing 4 major instances and considered the only real "battleground," lots of world PvP between the instance groups. Blackrock Mountain houses Blackrock Depths, a place that we all will be become well acquainted with, unfortunately, and Blackrock Spire, the upper portion being of utmost importance to preraid gear, a pillar upon which to build a raiding guild. Essential instances. And of course, Blackwing Lair, and the most infamous raid of all, Molten Core. Every player that will ever raid will make countless trips to this area.
So if you haven't yet surmised this, Blackrock Mountain is in the Alliance's backyard. In fact, sandwiched right between Dun Morogh and Elwynn Forest. The Alliance have a huge advantage here, if geography and travel is an issue for you. Alliance gank squads in BRM are not uncommon. The Horde have to take a zeppelin to Grom'gol and fly up, usually to Kargath in the Badlands.
*Protip* If you fly to Burning Steppes, the bottom side of BRM, it might be safer from ganking, but takes longer. Most gank squads will sit on the top side because it's where most people go in, and it's closer to the chain needed to get up to BRS and BWL, and to take you down to BRD and MC.
So really, in terms of endgame instances and preraid dungeons, most things are not even but negligible. A couple minutes of running is not really worth the discussion.
Something else to note is World Bosses, whenever they will be released. This is about split down the middle. Perhaps a small edge to Horde. Kazzak is quite close to Stormwind, but countered by the Azuregos being in Orgrimmar's back yard. And the Four Dragons of Nightmare, each faction has easy access to one, the Alliance in Duskwood and the Horde in Eastern Ashenvale, and one that each faction has a slight edge on, Horde with Feralas, and Alliance with the Hinterlands.
Also, something to consider, the instance that EVERYONE will do is Scarlet Monastery, conveniently located in Tirisfal Glades. If you're Horde, no problem. If you're Alliance, you have to take either a stroll through Silverpine and all the way around the Undercity, taking ages. Or, you can cut through the edge of Western Plaguelands, where angry, diseased, undead bears 10+ levels higher than you will be aggroed on you from a mile away and chase you and kill you, since you will likely not have a mount. Just something to consider.
I imagine for location, it doesn't make that big of a difference, but always something to consider.
RACIALS
This will not be overly in depth, but overall, the Alliance racials favor PvE, and Horde favor PvP, for the most part. In particular, I'm looking at:
Alliance:
Night Elf - Dodge chance for tanking.
Gnome - Bonus Intellect for mana and crit chance, little bastards.
Dwarves - Stoneform for tanking ~ general damage reduction.
Humans - Weapon skill, vital for melee dps and dealing with hit chance.
Most of these are small quality of life bits that help in raids, also things to consider are Humans' bonus to rep gains, which is generally more helpful to raiders, and the 5% bonus to spirit, which is reasonably helpful to healers and a tiny bit to caster dps. On a PvP note, Night Elf Shadowmeld can be handy for PvP, even to avoid ganks while levelling, and you can cast Meld while eating, super stealthy regeneration. Also to consider in PvP is the Gnome Racial Escape Artist.
Horde:
Orc - Reduced stun duration.
Undead - Will of the Forsaken, enough said.
Tauren - War Stomp and Stamina increased.
Troll - Berserking can be somewhat useful in PvP, just a reasonable increase to damage.
Now on a PvE note, Tauren is regarded by some as the best tanking race due to their beefy brawn (see what I did there). While Troll Berserking is previously mentioned, it's generally considered stronger in PvE, and Orc's Blood Fury can be handy in raids now and again, and the Orc racial with bonus weapon skill to axes can be nice for dps warriors.
There are other racials that are there, of course, like Cannabalize, but I wanted to focus on the more important ones that would be more impactful in endgame, because that's what people care about more.
~
Now taking into consideration Priest racials. Many people forget that these exist. Specific races of priests had access to certain spells. Overall, these racials fell in a way that left the Alliance far better off in PvE, not particularly close. However, if you're wanting to play Shadow spec, you will want to look to the Horde side. Horde was snubbed a bit in this regard. Here are the abilities and the races that can use them.
Desperate prayer: Instant heal, castable only on self, quite strong. A panic button. A miniature Lay on Hands. Would enable quick self heals to enable more healing for everyone else.
Races: Human, Dwarf
Starshards: Arcane damage-over-time spell, not particularly strong.
Races: Night Elf
Touch of Weakness: Deals a small amount of shadow damage, and reduces damage dealt by target by a decent little chunk.
Races: Undead
Hex of Weakness: Reduces damage dealt by target, and reduces effectiveness of healing by 20%.
Races: Troll
Feedback: Very interesting ability, puts up a barrier around the priest for 15 seconds, any spells that hit the priest in this time will burn a chunk of mana from the enemy caster for each spell, also damaging them for 1 point of shadow damage per point of mana burned.
Races: Human
Fear Ward: The god tier of priest racials, regarded as the strongest of all priest racials, protects target for 10 minutes, immunizing them from all fear effects, the most common CC in raids.
Races: Dwarf
Elune's Grace: Decreases damage taken by a % and increases dodge chance for a short duration
Races: Night Elf
Devouring Plague: A damage-over-time spell that lasts 24 seconds, deals a solid amount of damage and heals the caster for an equal amount of its damage caused.
Races: Undead
Shadowguard: When a spell, ability, or auto attack hits the caster, the enemy will take a small amount of shadow damage, lasts 10 minutes, 3 charges.
Races: Troll
So overall, the Alliance priest racials far favor healing, and the Horde, for shadow. Honestly, a significant portion of these racials are thoroughly useless, and there are more of the useless ones on the Horde side. Generally, the Alliance priests' healing benefits far more from their racials than the Horde's shadow priests benefit from their racials, particularly with the Humans and Dwarves really bringing so much to a raid, and Dwarf priests considered the best in the game.
Also, it was requested that I include base stats for each race, so some people are more into min/max than I even thought. Not a problem though, I just think that starting stats are negligible. Also something to bear in mind, that stat gains upon level-up are based on class, not race. So a gnome warrior and a tauren warrior would gain the same stats upon leveling up.
Race/Stats | Strength | Agility | Stamina | Intellect | Spirit |
Human | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 21* |
Dwarf | 22 | 16 | 23 | 19 | 19 |
Night Elf | 17 | 25 | 19 | 20 | 20 |
Gnome | 15 | 23 | 19 | 24* | 20 |
Orc | 23 | 17 | 22 | 17 | 23 |
Undead | 19 | 18 | 21 | 18 | 25 |
Tauren | 25 | 15 | 22 | 15 | 22 |
Troll | 21 | 22 | 21 | 16 | 21 |
* = %bonus to stat is taken into consideration in this table, with all characters at level 1. Tauren are not included because Tauren receive a bonus to max health, not a bonus to stamina.
Also nice to note that Night Elves have less strength than the guys with rotted biceps and missing half their muscles, the Undead.
So now, time for the meaty bit that people might start disagreeing about:
PALADIN VS. SHAMAN
Ahh the old debate. I will not cover too much from the PvP perspective, mostly about raiding, but I will discuss it a bit. Many people have and will have a lot to say on this subject, so do check out some very detailed discussion on it in the replies below.
From the raiding perspective, which is better? What is more useful? Both are not the strongest healers on their respective faction, they both fill a secondary healer and buffing role, usually also able to stand in more dangerous places being a bit tankier than priests.
Paladin -
- Paladin buffs can be extended to the entire raid
- Very strong buffs arguably stronger overall than shaman buffs, can be customized to each specific class
- Regarded as the most mana efficient healer in Vanilla
- Is able to put out stronger single target heals than the Shaman
- Built for great sustained healing
- Divine Intervention is not the greatest wipe recovery, and is not relied on, therefore making Soulstones a huge priority for Alliance raids.
- Handy to have in Scholo and Strat with anti-undead abilities.
- Can cast judgements on bosses, giving buffs to raid, namely judgement of wisdom for raid wide mana regen.
Shaman -
- Shaman can buff only a single group
- Can give 4 buffs to each member of the group
- Great multitarget healers with chain heal, typically allows Horde to send in melee dps on bosses where there is aoe damage and where such a thing would not be a valid tactic, Shazzrah for an example.
- Reincarnation is a vital to wipe recovery and getting the raid back on its feet
- Shaman also have strong cooldown based totems, like Manatide and Tremor
- Totems being left behind in the raid aggroing patrolling mobs is a common way of wiping.
Overall in this light, I'd say that a Paladin does fewer things than the Shaman, mostly bearing in mind all of the totems, but a Paladin can do those few things really well. Quality vs. Quantity you might say. High performance with limited utility, vs. solid performance across wider utility.
Outside of healing, neither class is particularly great in raiding in other roles.
Prot Paladins are out of the question, no taunt and not enough threat generation, not having a tier of tanking gear is not helpful either. Sometimes considered for the imp packs in MC, and not bad in 5 mans.
Enhancement and Ret paladin are brought sometimes to use the Nightfall axe to debuff the boss for more magic damage from the raid, usually Ret's are frowned upon for taking gear from Fury Warriors who out dps them by a considerable margin early on, and the way warriors scale, that distance between them only grows. The most ret paladins and enh shamans you ever see per 40 man raid is 1. Never more.
Speaking more to a class decision making topic, if you plan on playing specifically ret paladin or enhancement, you will probably not get a raid spot, particularly with any guild in BWL or beyond. However, you can easily be taken as a healer and over time acquire some off spec gear, to the point where you could play enh or ret, particularly with paladin t2, which can be used for both Holy and Ret quite effectively.
You can find some youtube videos of Ret raiding dps that is super high, but that's at the absolute highest gear you can possibly have and every buff under the sun, and usually these videos are in Naxx, so vs. undead enemies.
It's actually rather unfortunate that elemental shaman is not viable for raiding, it has the talent tree and potential, but there is not a high enough rank of Lightning Bolt, even with equal amounts of damage gear, top rank Lightning Bolt (like rank 8? with 400-500 base damage) is so much weaker than top ranked mage frostbolt (like rank 11, around 650-750 base damage). The disparity in the base damage before spell damage is added is absurd. Blizzard made an effort to ensure that hybrid classes healed. Also, Lightning Bolt has crazy aggro generation. Blizzard made sure that elemental shaman and boomkin had ridiculous aggro generation to keep them from dpsing, in part with the healing tier gear. An elemental shaman will pull aggro over classes that are doing double their damage. Also something a shaman might need would be a talent like Master of Elements in the Mage Fire tree, that refunds mana from critical strikes. Just through talents alone, elemental shaman hovers around 20% crit if memory serves, not taking into account Intellect or Crit Chance on gear. This would help counter the mana inefficiency of Elemental.
So in PvP, in a healing/buffing/support role, Shaman take an aggressive/offensive approach, Paladin takes a more defensive role. However, Ret paladin can be rather strong in PvP, and enhancement to a lesser extent, but can be considerably powerful, lots of enhancement PvP videos with Sulfuras. In PvP is where Elemental shines, solid burst damage and kiting. One could make a solid case that Shaman is more of a solo pvper, and paladin is more of a group pvper. The Paladin spell Blessing of Freedom being one of the strongest PvP spells in the game for any class.
The overall consensus is that most people, obviously, will not be playing either class, as you would expect, so where the majority of players would need to consider these kind of things is in raiding, having Paladins and Shaman in your group. What you see as stronger and more important between shaman and paladin in PvE will likely be the basis upon which many will make a decision if their decision hinges on class balance and min/max raiding.
If you are unsure about what class to play, let's be honest, rolling either of the two with the full intention to heal will have guilds parading through the streets in celebration when you join them.
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
Some of these may not be overly important or worth consideration, and perhaps subjective.
In Alterac Valley, Alliance have an advantage. Their base is harder to siege/break the turtle because of the bridge. And bunkers are easier to defend than towers are. Alliance has more defensive chokepoints overall on the map. This should probably not be that big of a deal to most people.
Alliance quests are a bit better, as they were completed first and are a bit more polished throughout and received a bit more tender love and care, and the Horde quests were rushed in and the devs had said back when that they never got the Horde quests to a level equal to the Alliance due to time constraints with release.
The Horde quest chain to get attuned to Onyxia's Lair is significantly shorter than the Alliance's chain, same with getting the key to UBRS.
The Alliance quest chain to get attuned to Onyxia's Lair is far more epic than the Horde's, both this point and the previous reflecting the detail/polish of Alliance quests.
Any other suggestions/discussions/ideas would be greatly appreciated and will be added. Just putting this here to lay out all these small microscopic things that a player might consider when making a decision.
Edits:
- Someone pointed out that the Troll racial "Da Voodoo Shuffle" that reduced duration of slows was not in Vanilla, a mistake on my part. Now fixed. No more shuffling.
- I also realized/remembered/was reminded that the Night Elf Priest racial "Starshards" is not an aoe, but a single target damage-over-time. Now fixed. Doesn't make the spell any less useless :3
Also I'd like to say thanks for the positive feedback, like I said earlier, I hope some more good points can be made and discussed and perhaps added. I'm making on-going edits, making sure everything is nice and pretty and readable.
Last edited:
