brianbrigaudit2138: Remember when the first classic rerelease worlds 1st onyxia kill had a lot of mages and most of them aren't even 60.

marioeguerrap: @WillEmmo Man, people forget that the 'Rolling Ignite' wasn't just a mechanic, it was a mathematical disaster caused by the debuff limit. Since the server only allowed one Ignite slot on the boss, the first Mage to crit 'owned' the stack for the entire duration.

The broken part was that subsequent crits from other mages didn’t just refresh the 4-second timer; they added their damage to the existing pool. We’re talking exponential growth where one Mage is ticking for 4k damage every 2 seconds because 6 other Fire Mages are feeding his stack. Of course, this meant the 'Ignite Owner' generated threat for the entire raid's fire damage. The rotation wasn't about DPS, it was about managing who was going to die next so the stack didn't fall off. 10/10 mechanic, would pull aggro and wipe the raid again.

valdiramorim8170: Honorable mention are fire mages back in Ny'Alotha. The 29 fire mages and a tank vs heroic Ny'Alotha video is still one of the coolest moments I've seen in wow.

BigBoss-zw6ft: WillE you forgot to mention that the arcane mage meta also included swapping an old mage set popping your cds and swapping back to the current gear. This was one of the reason why they disabled old sets from working for higher level characters.

williambriese7527: I’m kinda shocked you didn’t mention stacking 16 aug evokers in a 20 man raid

vc3928: Ackshually -- the "holy trinity" originally meant a tank, healer, and control class from EverQuest. It was called that because you needed all three of those roles before you could fill with damage dealers.

/nerd

Edit: Also should add that there was a nerf to Yogg-0 that made him into the version that Classic WotLK saw, and only five guilds killed the pre-nerf version (plus one guild that exploited a holy paladin phased to hold agro on the adds). I don't remember the details of the nerf anymore but it had something to do with making the adds that enrage easier to identify so it was much easier to pull them out with hunters. The pre-nerf version lasted all the way until the ToGC patch and was one of the lowest killed bosses in WoW history, which is why the Starz kill was so impressive. A blue post at the time said that they were relieved Yogg-0 was finally beaten because they were beginning to worry they'd made it impossible.

hendrikmoons8218: I remember during the early days of WotLK how we raced to level 80 with our DK-only 5man groups.

2 blood DK, not only for agro, for healing everyone and themselves for double that. (rune of fallen crusader)

1 frost DK, to stand in between them 2 and slow everything while making everybody deal extra frost damage

( you only did physical, frost & unholy) (rune of cinderice falen crusader)

2 unholy DK to AOE and single target everything down faster than it could spawn. (rune of falen crusader)

We went from helfire citadel to basicaly level 80 doing only 2 things.

1. Hulk smash & speedcrash the dungeon, exit, reset, rince repeat until outleveled.

2. Move to the next dungeon, then see point 1.

This was absolute fun & efficient.

Later editions on, with armor stacking, both pure plate & pure leather ruled for gearing in M .

archmagemc3561: You forgot 1 class stack that was dumb. Invoker stacking. They would stack a ton of the buffing invoker spec that'd enhance a single DK who would have something insane like 120 million DPS and kill a boss in less than 30 seconds. It didn't matter which boss, it was just dead.

martokotka: The Elder Scrolls ost during classic warrior segment is killing me

thomastronstrøm: I did not play the unholy gargoyle phase, but if I recall, Trolls were untouchable on the logs, because of berserk snapshot ting, with everything else

prainiak5710: I think Fire Mages in Nyalotha deserve a place in this ranking, with Azsharas Font of Power Trinket PvP On Use Trinket

birdLOLWUT: Really surprised you didn't mention the Classic WoW launch dungeon groups that had 3 Frost Mages, 1 Warlock and 1 Priest and would use Eye of Kilrog to pull all of Cathedral into the hallway of death.

beeftips1628: Shoutout to the first week of SoD where hunters were doing so much damage with explosive shot tanky pets that people were doing 5 hunters into dungeons

sebastian6843: anazing vid - i missed the shadow priest surrender to madness dominance in the emerald nightmare - actually making blizz buff illgynoths hp by 200% to prevent one phase tactics with loads of shadows

williamterry8508: Ferocious bite didn’t refresh Rip until the prepatch in Cata. But dropping Rips with the dmg boost was huge. You also get a tank/dps for Ony. I would tank Ony then swap into cat after she died. Way more productive than rocking 3 tanks. Feral -> Ony, War -> Nef and DK on adds was our server first kill setup

quinn562: This is why og vanilla was great, people just played the game with the people put in front of them lol - it honestly just wouldn't have worked because of how little there was in terms of geared people compared to the rest of the general population, people didn't have room to screw around with crazy comp testing it was too much of a time sink cultivating geared people to begin along with probably being looked at crazy for even suggesting any kind of wild class stacking

I also like the idea of having to stack locks vs yogg from a rp standpoint, sometimes you need to fight the devil with a demon lol

LodanSD: 6 Black Mages, 1 White Mage in Delkfutt's Tower. Oops, wrong game!

coreyjonesmusic: Stacking 15 arc mages for TBC is actually the best comp for speed the entire xpac, especially in post-nerf raids. It sounds giga ridiculous at first, but if you think about it for a moment, it makes sense: half of the raid is trash mobs. with either of these setups you can just aoe everything down in a matter of seconds, plus arcane mages do very good damage on trash in general. vs bosses it is a bit worse than other setups for sure, but it will make every raid until swp a breeze. even in swp this comp will be much better than it looks

benjiusofficial: I am still enamored at that vanilla speedrun of Ragnaros with, like 32 frost mages

MasterJohnam: Clicked, paused and commenting before watching:

I hope DK and Warlock Yogg Stars world first kill is mentioned.

Schtiffles: Another reason for class stacking on KJ in ToS was surviving the knock back. Rogues, warlocks, mages, could easily get from one side of the arena to the other on the super tight knock back timing.

epochellipse: "And sometimes, those unique strategies involve filling your raid with cats." 1

Cnith: The kitten fight in Blackwing Descent was the first one I thought of, since it was just ridiculous.

It was probably due to ignorance that we only had one DPS Warrior in my Vanilla guild so the damage meters were usually dominated by us Rogues.

I also remember doing the Spine of Deathwing encounter as a Sub Rogue. I sucked at it but got the job done.

89qwyg9yqa34t: Honestly I don't miss the game. Raider culture was baffling. You could only get invites to fights if you already outgear them and if you drop out of the game for a few months and your guild implodes, good luck gaining access to anything but LFR and it's not like any of the fights were difficult. Boss guides were everywhere. Don't stand here. Stand there. Decide at the beginning who was going to soak whatever thing. If you were the only one with a buff, use it at the right time. Learn the dance and as long as everybody pushed their buttons, you win. The entire game was a waste of potential and the more they ironed-out the wrinkles, the more tedious it became.

Dec 06 2025

Buy WOW Classic Gold (lvl60)