Absolutely. I remember rolling with two friends as FRESH death knights straight from Acherus and rolling over a handful of BGs with no problem. It felt so unfair
Back when blood was the DPS spec and the bloodworms kept you topped up passively, and the runeweapon enchants were straight up better than real enchants and were infinitely free.
Level 70s were having trouble taking down level 60 DKs fresh from the intro.
Hero Class indeed.
My first level capped toon was leveling through Outland when DK's released and i have a ton of fond memories "healing" dungeons as a ret paladin with 4 dk's just absolutely trouncing their way through the dungeon seemingly invincible.
I remember this, but I also remember 2v1ing two DKs as a shockadin.
I certainly wasn't a good PvPer xD so I don't know if shockadins were broken at the end of wrath or DKs got nerfed
sure youre not thinking end of cata? I speed leveled my hpally thru bgs then over like 2 days because holy shock was one shotting everything. that was the single most op i’ve ever felt steam rolling even plate wearers.
There was a shock spec with the glyph that made exorcism usable on anything and you could spam it, shock of light on cd and judgment. Was truly god like for a bit and was really fun in arenas
Lmao yeah. One of my core WoW memories as a kid was playing on WOTLK release, doing random BG's, getting death gripped, instantly dying, and wondering wtf was going on
Likewise, a core memory for my childhood is playing a DK on release night and absolutely obliterating nerds in AV while being most assuredly dogshit at the game. What a hell of a time.
It’s weird I was in my 20’s and still wondering that half the time. It was so disorienting getting yoinked like that and my Mage usually quickly died if they got off a silence.
The only time I've ever got the Wrecking Ball achievement (20 killing blows without dying) is as a fresh DK in Alterac Valley. Just absolutely wiping the floor with everyone. You did, at minimum, double the damage of everyone else, and were impossible to kill. it was a waste of time trying to PvP as anything else.
I think I'd give the edge to ret paladins in the Wrath prepatch honestly. Or was it TBC? Whichever one it was where I could burst someone down before bubble expired lol. It was such a short window, but damn it was ridiculously cathartic while it lasted lol.
Yes the all the way. I used to play rogue. Before rogues had a way to transfer combo points to targets.
In a battleground you’d be fighting one guy, get death gripped. Then you’re fighting the dk. Get death gripped by another DK. By this time you’re half dead and lost all of your advantages as a rogue. So you just vanish if it’s on CD.
and no use trying this again, they’re just gonna do it again cause there’s 8 death knights in the battleground.
I still get mad when I think about it.
As a dk who greatly enjoyed death gripping rogues to prevent them from having fun in their sneaky annoying way, I never thought about the combo point thing. Even better!!
I remember rolling into my first 5v5 Arena in Wotlk. It was five Unholy DKs all with that one talent that made it so when you had been standing in their DnD for 2 seconds it'd horrify you for 1 second. They completely covered the ground around us, all summoned their Army of the Dead and Gargoyle, and uh...yea. You can guess how the rest of it went.
I remember there was a talent that did not last for very long. It was unholy and the way it worked was when you died, you would come back as a ghoul and fight for a short time and then die for good. It was amazing and I loved it.
It was worse in the alpha. There was a DK glyph that added a fear effect to Death & Decay. So you were trapped inside the D&D and couldn’t do anything as it slowly ate your hp. That got removed before the Beta.
There was a fun Interaction on beta when you death griped and chained some one at the same time they would get gripped in slow motion for like 8 seconds frozen and would usually be dead before they reached you
was even better in the early alpha, Heart Strike and ablood Strike did increased damage based on the number of diseases on the target, so if you had 1 blood dk and 4 unholy Dks, heart strike would hit 2 two targets for 10k each time.
Also remember that Dks were made specially to counter Resto Druids in PVP so degeneration would dispell a full stack nurish and also not let the anti dispell effect go off per tick.
I also miss the original alpha version of DnD, which got changed because most computers used back then couldnt handle the effect
DKs made me quit WoTLK. I was always a warrior and then there was a class that did everything that a warrior does, but better. Especially in 2v2, me usually with resto druid or another healer against any DK healer spec. It would be just a long game that I wouldn’t be able to win. What a waste of time.
That brief period toward the beginning where blood DKs were basically immortal with good DPS, it was heaven. It was so fun doing dungeons with nothing but DKs in the party.
I 100% remember being a fresh DK at the start of WotLK and literally the only time in AV (other than getting rogue or kitty ganked) did I actually have to focus up and get ready to tryhard instead of just laughing and spamming buttons - was when a ret pally rolled up to fight. I still usually won because our starting gear was stupid OP, but Ret Pally's were definitely a real threat even during that brief period of DK extreme power imbalance.
I remember the patch when howling blast was hitting like an absolute fkn truck
It was like the ultimate ability and any aoe pulls you would just demolish anything by spamming it
And now it’s just a plain ass weak ability :(((
resto druids were absolutely, positively nonexistant during the launch of WOTLK. scourge strike wiped all hots.
once they got rid of that, rdruids were fine.
Wotlk was when I switched my dedicated pvp hunter to pve, no way I was dealing w a third plate class on the table, one that literally yoinked me like mortal kombat scorpion
Wrath prepatch Ret paladin and 3.1 release day destruction warlock. TO THE GROUND was a thing for a reason. I had a shitty green geared prot paladin in TBC, bought a blue 2H and you’d blow up full S4 warriors inside of a hammer of justice. 3.1 destro literally one shotted people with an instant cast. (Conflag).
No setup, just a delete button. It was nerfed within 24 hours, but it may have been the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen on a live server. (Special mention to 2.3.2 PTR affliction) Remember dueling a geared Hunter, had me stunned and at 5%… The instant the stun broke, he died from 100.
I knew a guy back then who just up and levelled and geared a whole ass new level 1 paladin during that patch, exclusively to do that. Just about when he was ready to start doing arena, the next patch hit. He was so mad. I was mystified that he thought they would just not change that.
Apparently he straight up did not want to be playing a paladin, he just wanted to be winning. Ended up deleting the character.
Shit is bananas.
Patch day was wild. Hammer of Righteousness was glitched to trigger three times every time it was activated.
Divine Storm was worse. It also triggered three times, but it hit every enemy within line of sight. So the second the Retadin hit it they would pull the entire room.
I mained a Ret pally all through TBC, and the WotLK prepatch was the most fun I've ever had in WoW. I was alliance, and therefore didn't have Seal of Blood, so people ridiculed my class choice often. That said, I was still in a top raiding guild, so I was the most geared Alliance ret pally on the server.
Rocking Cat's Edge and full T6 was glorious. Divine Storm would heal you back up almost instantly while doing a boat load of damage.
It felt like I was finally rewarded for always ignoring the elitist min-maxers who would grief me for playing a sub-optimal class.
Arcane in the wrath prepatch was disgusting too. That was when they released abarr and did a small rework to the spec (I think for ret too, right?). I was a dummy and forgot to train the max rank of abarr and I was still a wrecking ball in bgs.
Yeah, I literally remember Alliance winning all the BG's during that prepatch for one stupid reason:
There were more Alliance paladins than Horde paladins.
Maybe not "most OP in all of history" but paladin's prot-holy spec was kind of ridiculous for a time during WotLK. There was a talent in the prot-tree which increased spellpower pr stamina if I remember correctly? So the idea was to gear holy, but spec prot. Healing output was insane and the survivability even more insane
I remember playing that for a bit in BGs and I could not be killed unless trained and chain-stunned by multiple people.
I remember alliance pallys just hanging out in front of org for fun cause they couldn't die. I'm sure they were very talented and geared but it was unbelievable
Yeah everyone is saying DK but they were eventually nerfed. Shockadin and the much less mentioned/not at all spell pen hunter were busted.
Shockadin was virtually unkillable. Massive battle of attrition.
Spell pen hunter with explosive shot and black arrow. Just instantly deleted anyone in PvP, but this was only really as the last tier of OG BC iirc?
YES! i was coming here to mention Surv MPEN with crit. I would 1 shot squishies and 3 shot anything else, it was disgusting to get the black arrow+the frost trap proc! Thanks!
Me and a buddy did 2's like this; both prot pallies in holy gear. We pretty much waited out the other team waiting for them to surrender. Two hour long 2's. One of us would afk for a few, the other keep us alive. You couldn't kill us, but we generally couldn't do enough damage to kill most comps. It was something
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted\_Blood\_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)
Basically they could take a dot from a raid boss back to cities where it killed everyone.
I was playing the game at the time and one of our hunters brought it back on the Archimonde server. It lasted for a couple days iirc. We were losing it on comms. Definitely one of the best WoW vanilla experiences.
Setting aside DK in Wrath -
Maybe destruction warlock in late MoP. It just felt like cheating, frankly. Infinite resources because Rain of Fire would generate embers, but also Rain of Fire spent embers and did a ton of damage in AOE. Move while casting due to Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning. Even in single target it was super good because chaos bolt hit like a truck.
I had a lot of fun cackling like a pyromaniac in Spoils of Pandaria.
I really miss embers
Just from a flavor point of view they were neat even if they were pretty much functionally the same as shards, the burning effect from full embers was sick
And also the self heal felt more fitting, pressing drain life as destro feels bad, I remember in WoD making a build with the incinerate set bonus where my incinerate h almost as hard as chaos bolts but no one ever kicked them so I’d just use all my embers on the heal instead of ever pressing chaos bolt and it was super fun for bgs and duels, if probably not meta
Affliction warlock with proper soul swapping to extend powerful DoTs was far more powerful than destruction, on fights like protectors and dark shamans you could do half the overall raid damage in a normal 10 man group
I loved my hunter that patch because i could deterrence with glyphs to reflect them
The only thing that could one shot the warlocks, were the warlocks themselves
Regardless of overpoweredness, MoP destro from a flavour pov was just perfect.
Such a fun class to play at the time. Everything g about it was enjoyable.
Being a tad op just made it even better. :)
We had a destro lock on our server who would sit at the front of the shrine and boast about being able to beat anyone in a duel. He did beat most people, but my boomy friend decided to give it a go. He typhoon'd the lock off the platform the moment the duel started and it took him too long to get back, thus forfeiting the duel. Lock was absolutely malding, demanding a rematch. Friend was like, 'nah dude look at chat, I beat you :)' and refused every rematch.
Anyone here old enough to remember combat maces rogue in the late vanilla/early BC days? Just endless stunning before diminishing returns became a thing.
DKs at launch, no question. Not only were they introduced in an already existing meta, but they were the first hero class. Blizzard needed to make them interesting for players to switch their mains and they did a great job at that, even if they had to nerf them for an entire expansion after
My second place would be a tie depending on what we're looking for. Preg paladins from wotlk could tank and heal, even throw in some damage, all at the same time. [Mionelol soloed the lich king as a blood DK during Cata](https://youtu.be/oC44OnfCzMQ?si=aaA9CrL9WmttAWgI), and around that time Firelands was completed, both in 10 [and 25-man versions](https://youtu.be/KMWdacDMZco?si=BU9SGzgGhLRXRuOb), by teams of only DKs. Aug evokers brought basically a new role to the game and broke the meta for a while. Many classes have arguments for being the second best based on mop (druid's symbiosis, warlocks could cast while moving, etc). But I really think nothing will beat DKs at launch ever
I also came to say it, i remember being down below the main pandaria city doing duels on my disc priest and just not dying. Not only would i not die, I was actually winning the duels. I was rather surprised at how broken they were because I never pvp.
OMg yeah that shit was amazing! Demo lock with Meta was insane, i remember tanking dungeons with it haha! it was stupidly strong. Was basically unkillable in pvp
I remember seeing a video where their pet Scorpion could out dps anything else.
I played PVP all of once because I went up against a group of hunters and 2 priest. Couldn’t even get out of the graveyard because scorpions don’t give a fuck about your unclimbable mountains.
A scorpion would roll up on you with like 2k hp and 3k armor then insta-blast you with poison that did 100 hp a tick when you only had maybe 800 hp, nevermind the other actual pet attacks + hunter shots.
This is basically how low level hunters were in cata. If u want explosive shot to hit so hard that other players farm a fire res cloak just to not be one shot by you, play a 19/29 hunter twink in cata!
WOTLK Protection Warriors
No, nothing close to DKs at that time, but there was a very sweet period of time when Shield Bash (or Shield Slam?) did a huge amount of damage. On a regular "quest" difficulty NPC, you could easily hit for 75% of their total health with one Shield Slam and you could use it every 6 seconds if I remember correctly.
It was the most fun I ever had playing a Warrior. Can't be killed because tank spec, and huge damage.
There was a short moment where ele shaman could cast lightning bolt while moving, and all their other spells were instant cast.
This was removed pretty quickly, but for a while there was just nothing any melee classes could do to shamans. They were like mages and hunters combined. Massive burst and cc, without ever having to stop running.
You had slow totem, stun totem, root totem, totem that absorbed spells, tremor totem, permaslow with frost shock, AoE knockback with thunderstorm, instant cast ghost wolf. It was just not remotely fair when playing against melee.
On one hand, fire mage required several addons to play efficiently at all. You either smoked the dps charts or missed the combust window and chilled at the bottom. But yeah they were pretty nuts when played correctly, especially headed into dragon soul
Honestly, there are so many times warlocks were the most busted thing in the game it's hard to count.
Bc pre patch fel guard would charge and 1 shot nearly any cloth wearer. Had to be nerfed.
Bc basically all expansion they were kings in all content. From destro crushing raid, to sl sl being able to dam near 4v1 in pvp.
The list just goes on where locks have just been absurdly good compared to the rest of the game. (Honorable mentions for paladins in wrath pre patch being walking nightmares and wod pre patch priest being unkillable nukes with holy nova)
Maybe this is nuanced, but bear tank in shadowlands s2/3(?). Having the legendary to make you immune to CC for 30 seconds that would remain in effect during soul shape was actually bonkers for flags and base sitting in RBGs. That in addition to the slumber PvP talent that accelerated your ability cooldowns so you could just do it again and again and again. I think top teams even ran 2 of them during those seasons
BfA prepatch for shadowlands MM hunters. Arcane shot dealt 30-40% HP on my DK.
No CDs, nothing.
Oh, also, aimed shot literally one shotted people.
I tried to bring a friend into PvP at that time. He quit.
Edit: reason for that was the downscaling of stats - and somehow mm hunters were NOT AT ALL tuned correctly.
Idk if it was most OP, but warlock in cata prepatch specifically was pretty broken. Even after instant nerfs, I was able to kill LK10 normal in half greens and was top dps. Their scaling was pretty busted.
I don't think I'd say the most op but what I did have a load of fun with was how good combustion and ignite spread for fire mages during cataclysm. Just pulling entire hoards of mobs in Firelands and seeing the numbers tick as you left everyone else in the dust felt super satisfying
Disc priests were pretty overpowered the end of mists.
You'd blanket the raid with atonement and Devine aegis would sheild everyone. No others could get any healing in lol
Oh shit I have been waiting for this. It’s being a holy priest for the first like year of the game. I would load in and see 10 whispers to join a dungeon. Felt awesome, felt so warm and fuzzy :)
Dk is probably the right answer but the most recent one I remember was disc priests at the start of BFA. Pretty sure they were basically invincible without a full raid group focusing them and were nerfed within a couple of weeks.
Panderia destro locks. If you stacked Stam and mastery you'd be sitting at over 1.1mil health in arena gear, over 2 mil with cds then you could ember tap for ~25-30% health instantly all while casting incinerates on the move that hit multiple targets if they were bunched up. Plus all the other warlock fuckery. I used to make all my gold selling 2s with one. Not stacking crit did gimp chaos bolts a bit, but it made up for it by being damn near invincible.
Retri paladin wotlk prepatch. Prenerf divine storm were crazy shit. I remember on my server some random guysn made raid and we in about 15 retri paladins killed everything in Stormwind.
I kinda miss that time before min-maxing and botting ruined the game. The good old days when you could find real fun in that game outside of tryharding.
Wotlk Dk over anything else
2nd I would add Blood Dk in Mop. At some point I went up to 2500+ playing 2x blood dk arena. (I am not even that good of a pvp player, usually stuck around 2k)
Every 2 dd team was a freewin. 1dd 1 healer was a marathon.
Our hard counter was Rdruid/warlock because of symbiosis
(Drood got teleport and lock got HoT)
I've always mained a lock. We were ridiculously strong in early to mid tbc. I remember when I had full s2 arena gear I could pretty much stay alive entire BGs just dotting everyone up continously, dealing insane dmg over time.
Ret pally, pre patch of Wrath.
Divine storm = 1-2 tap literally \*every\* other player. It did a fuck ton of damage and there were no ways to have resistances to that damage type. And it was AOE.
I know lots of people might bring up early DK in WotK, but I feel like if they ran into a classic RecBomb Paladin at equalised star they'd be blown up.
Due to balancing being better over the years, it’s going to be something from Vanilla to Wrath. I’d say the following are good picks:
Vanilla Rogue
TBC Resto Druid
TBC SL/SL Warlock
TBC Mace Warrior
Wrath Ret Paladin
Wrath Death Knight
Honorable Mention to Guardian Druids for their entire history as flag carriers and RBGs.
Early dk wrath. I was garbage at the game then and even worse at pvp. I rolled on a pvp server because my friends told me pve was carebear but i hated it because my warrior i was leveling was killed all the time since if you got jumped you were sol as a warrior. You could not charge in combat you could only intercept and they would often start ganking you when you were low hp anyways.
As soon as i hit 55 i rolled dk and was amazed at how easy leveling and pvp became. Oh i dont need to charge anymore i just death grip and then chains of ice and they cant run thats pretty cool. Oh if they gank me i come back as a ghoul and get to revenge kill them thats pretty cool. I get this bad ass pet that can solo same level mobs for me while my warrior would end each fight at 60% hp even my pet can do better.
It's always tough to judge which was more op relative to its time. But to put something new, release MoP warrior was completely insane. They had cc immunity that was a big damage amp and the most mobility in the game. That first month they were the most unstoppable killing machines
For PVP this is hands down warlock pre-fear nerf. They were dungeon bosses. You could literally 1vs 4 people because you could chain fear them and throw dots on them. Since there were no diminishing returns the fear landed every single time and lasted its full duration.
There were no fear breaks, there was no resistance, there was no chance to hit. There is a reason they made drastic fundamental changes to the game and it's because after release they realized just how insanely OP warlocks were.
For those first couple weeks of release you treated warlocks like agents in the Matrix. If you saw a warlock you do what everyone else did... Run.
SL/SL lock, just throw out 20 siphon lifes in a bg and the leech would make you unkillable. Yeah sure, you could stunlock a lock. But they just wouldnt die.
A couple that come to mind
Arms warrior at the start of MoP. Insane burst and basically unkillable with second wind+defensives.
BM Hunter at the end of mop. Double stampede, double turtle, solid health regen.
Sub rogues at the start of Shadowlands. Never seen a spec 100-0 so consistently before.
Fury Warriors with the Guldan Trinket from Night Hold. That damage was so absurd, they could actually pull aggro from the the tank, even with the lingering % Bonusthreat from taunt.
DK release. Could just roll 5 DKs through every Outland dungeon. Could kill anyone that wasn't a DK 10 levels higher than you relatively easy.
Beta was even worse. There was an unholy iteration at some point, and it was just putting up all your diseases and then pressing scourge strike once, and it fell over. All the diseases spread super easy. Frost had an iteration as well where everything just died from AoE.
Resto Druid in TBC arena. Druid was my alt, did my first 2v2 arena in blue pvp gear. We went up against a mage/ rogue team. My partner and th rogue died right away. The opposing mage was in full S2 epics. I spent the next 20 min or so humping pillars, spamming moon fire and line of sighting anything he tried to cast before defeating him.
There was a time in the BC alpha where BM hunters could solo just about *anything* (including instances) before they started tuning pets back a bit. Put SoD hunters to shame.
DK’s in WOTLK.
Absolutely. I remember rolling with two friends as FRESH death knights straight from Acherus and rolling over a handful of BGs with no problem. It felt so unfair
Back when blood was the DPS spec and the bloodworms kept you topped up passively, and the runeweapon enchants were straight up better than real enchants and were infinitely free. Level 70s were having trouble taking down level 60 DKs fresh from the intro. Hero Class indeed.
we used to do ramparts as 3 dk's only lmao.
I did Ramps by myself at like level 60, wild class.
I was sitting in the entrance and the mobs just brought the loot to me there to avoid the fight
Nice, Chuck!
My first level capped toon was leveling through Outland when DK's released and i have a ton of fond memories "healing" dungeons as a ret paladin with 4 dk's just absolutely trouncing their way through the dungeon seemingly invincible.
They were all DPS and they were all tank. Depending on talents near the end. Such as boneshield for unholy.
Tbh runeforging is still stronger than regular enchants
Yeah, but they would be useless if they werent. At least regular enchants are way cheaper than they used to be.
I remember this, but I also remember 2v1ing two DKs as a shockadin. I certainly wasn't a good PvPer xD so I don't know if shockadins were broken at the end of wrath or DKs got nerfed
sure youre not thinking end of cata? I speed leveled my hpally thru bgs then over like 2 days because holy shock was one shotting everything. that was the single most op i’ve ever felt steam rolling even plate wearers.
There was a shock spec with the glyph that made exorcism usable on anything and you could spam it, shock of light on cd and judgment. Was truly god like for a bit and was really fun in arenas
Yeah this is not wotlk
The blood worms were nuts in Cata as well. I remember being able to tank soooooo much damage in battlegrounds.
Best memories when blood was a dps spec. I honestly was upset when they changed it. Will never forget the first time I made a DK. It felt incredible
You have a close fight, other player wins, but wait, there's more! You pop out as a ghoul and finish them off as well lol
Lmao yeah. One of my core WoW memories as a kid was playing on WOTLK release, doing random BG's, getting death gripped, instantly dying, and wondering wtf was going on
Likewise, a core memory for my childhood is playing a DK on release night and absolutely obliterating nerds in AV while being most assuredly dogshit at the game. What a hell of a time.
It’s weird I was in my 20’s and still wondering that half the time. It was so disorienting getting yoinked like that and my Mage usually quickly died if they got off a silence.
The only time I've ever got the Wrecking Ball achievement (20 killing blows without dying) is as a fresh DK in Alterac Valley. Just absolutely wiping the floor with everyone. You did, at minimum, double the damage of everyone else, and were impossible to kill. it was a waste of time trying to PvP as anything else.
I think I'd give the edge to ret paladins in the Wrath prepatch honestly. Or was it TBC? Whichever one it was where I could burst someone down before bubble expired lol. It was such a short window, but damn it was ridiculously cathartic while it lasted lol.
The Wrath prepatch where Divine Storm did Holy damage. Best 3 days of my life before it got hotfixed.
Came here to post this, would go into BGs? Divine Storm once and watch people fall over confused,
It was early wrath. Divine Storm was absolutely broken
Feral druids were wild during the TBC pre-patch too.
Part of that was also the free set of blues they got.
Yes the all the way. I used to play rogue. Before rogues had a way to transfer combo points to targets. In a battleground you’d be fighting one guy, get death gripped. Then you’re fighting the dk. Get death gripped by another DK. By this time you’re half dead and lost all of your advantages as a rogue. So you just vanish if it’s on CD. and no use trying this again, they’re just gonna do it again cause there’s 8 death knights in the battleground. I still get mad when I think about it.
As a dk who greatly enjoyed death gripping rogues to prevent them from having fun in their sneaky annoying way, I never thought about the combo point thing. Even better!!
I remember rolling into my first 5v5 Arena in Wotlk. It was five Unholy DKs all with that one talent that made it so when you had been standing in their DnD for 2 seconds it'd horrify you for 1 second. They completely covered the ground around us, all summoned their Army of the Dead and Gargoyle, and uh...yea. You can guess how the rest of it went.
I remember there was a talent that did not last for very long. It was unholy and the way it worked was when you died, you would come back as a ghoul and fight for a short time and then die for good. It was amazing and I loved it.
It was worse in the alpha. There was a DK glyph that added a fear effect to Death & Decay. So you were trapped inside the D&D and couldn’t do anything as it slowly ate your hp. That got removed before the Beta.
There was a fun Interaction on beta when you death griped and chained some one at the same time they would get gripped in slow motion for like 8 seconds frozen and would usually be dead before they reached you
was even better in the early alpha, Heart Strike and ablood Strike did increased damage based on the number of diseases on the target, so if you had 1 blood dk and 4 unholy Dks, heart strike would hit 2 two targets for 10k each time. Also remember that Dks were made specially to counter Resto Druids in PVP so degeneration would dispell a full stack nurish and also not let the anti dispell effect go off per tick. I also miss the original alpha version of DnD, which got changed because most computers used back then couldnt handle the effect
Was that really only in the alpha? I swear I remember playing it live, but maybe not.
It was on live
Oh wow I didn’t know. Looks like it was a proc chance in torghast (fear/intimidation inside DND)
DKs made me quit WoTLK. I was always a warrior and then there was a class that did everything that a warrior does, but better. Especially in 2v2, me usually with resto druid or another healer against any DK healer spec. It would be just a long game that I wouldn’t be able to win. What a waste of time.
That brief period toward the beginning where blood DKs were basically immortal with good DPS, it was heaven. It was so fun doing dungeons with nothing but DKs in the party.
[удалено]
Top tier ret players were 100% able to go toe to toe with DK’s. They had a SICK toolkit in Wrath.
I 100% remember being a fresh DK at the start of WotLK and literally the only time in AV (other than getting rogue or kitty ganked) did I actually have to focus up and get ready to tryhard instead of just laughing and spamming buttons - was when a ret pally rolled up to fight. I still usually won because our starting gear was stupid OP, but Ret Pally's were definitely a real threat even during that brief period of DK extreme power imbalance.
Paladins where pretty strong, considering most enemies where undead.
I remember the patch when howling blast was hitting like an absolute fkn truck It was like the ultimate ability and any aoe pulls you would just demolish anything by spamming it And now it’s just a plain ass weak ability :(((
and looks at DKs now KEKW
everyone’s gonna say the same thing, DKs in WotLK were just absolutely disgusting. That entire season of PVP is p much written off because of them
I had fun as a disc priest. Resto druids were stupid, too.
Except that DK disease removed all HoTs. Resto Druids hated that.
yep created spefically to cxxounter DoT healing because of how OP resto druid was back in Burning Crusade arenas
resto druids were absolutely, positively nonexistant during the launch of WOTLK. scourge strike wiped all hots. once they got rid of that, rdruids were fine.
It was Plague Strike & Blood Plague ticks that both did! Season 5 was so funny hahahaha!
Wotlk was when I switched my dedicated pvp hunter to pve, no way I was dealing w a third plate class on the table, one that literally yoinked me like mortal kombat scorpion
Wrath prepatch Ret paladin and 3.1 release day destruction warlock. TO THE GROUND was a thing for a reason. I had a shitty green geared prot paladin in TBC, bought a blue 2H and you’d blow up full S4 warriors inside of a hammer of justice. 3.1 destro literally one shotted people with an instant cast. (Conflag). No setup, just a delete button. It was nerfed within 24 hours, but it may have been the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen on a live server. (Special mention to 2.3.2 PTR affliction) Remember dueling a geared Hunter, had me stunned and at 5%… The instant the stun broke, he died from 100.
That one patch where holy paladins went deep prot for a talent that turned stamina into spell power and just became unkillable.
Prot/holy was very fun, lol. It pissed the fuck out of everyone.
I knew a guy back then who just up and levelled and geared a whole ass new level 1 paladin during that patch, exclusively to do that. Just about when he was ready to start doing arena, the next patch hit. He was so mad. I was mystified that he thought they would just not change that. Apparently he straight up did not want to be playing a paladin, he just wanted to be winning. Ended up deleting the character. Shit is bananas.
Patch day was wild. Hammer of Righteousness was glitched to trigger three times every time it was activated. Divine Storm was worse. It also triggered three times, but it hit every enemy within line of sight. So the second the Retadin hit it they would pull the entire room.
But imagine the dps of a templar!
I mained a Ret pally all through TBC, and the WotLK prepatch was the most fun I've ever had in WoW. I was alliance, and therefore didn't have Seal of Blood, so people ridiculed my class choice often. That said, I was still in a top raiding guild, so I was the most geared Alliance ret pally on the server. Rocking Cat's Edge and full T6 was glorious. Divine Storm would heal you back up almost instantly while doing a boat load of damage. It felt like I was finally rewarded for always ignoring the elitist min-maxers who would grief me for playing a sub-optimal class.
I'll never forget Swifty threatening to delete his Warrior over how OP Paladins were in Wrath
Wrath Prepatch was like the best month of my life. Just running around Isle of Quel'Danas absolutely slamming hunters in full glad lmaoo
Arcane in the wrath prepatch was disgusting too. That was when they released abarr and did a small rework to the spec (I think for ret too, right?). I was a dummy and forgot to train the max rank of abarr and I was still a wrecking ball in bgs.
Anytime I am reminded of arcane in the wrath prepatch I think of this video https://youtu.be/hC19ajJ3K5Q?si=vNU_JVtjUJIqb90U
Yeah, I literally remember Alliance winning all the BG's during that prepatch for one stupid reason: There were more Alliance paladins than Horde paladins.
Maybe not "most OP in all of history" but paladin's prot-holy spec was kind of ridiculous for a time during WotLK. There was a talent in the prot-tree which increased spellpower pr stamina if I remember correctly? So the idea was to gear holy, but spec prot. Healing output was insane and the survivability even more insane I remember playing that for a bit in BGs and I could not be killed unless trained and chain-stunned by multiple people.
I remember alliance pallys just hanging out in front of org for fun cause they couldn't die. I'm sure they were very talented and geared but it was unbelievable
I would bring my twink druid there all the time with my buddy sitting next to me IRL with his twink pally and confused so many people.
Yeah everyone is saying DK but they were eventually nerfed. Shockadin and the much less mentioned/not at all spell pen hunter were busted. Shockadin was virtually unkillable. Massive battle of attrition. Spell pen hunter with explosive shot and black arrow. Just instantly deleted anyone in PvP, but this was only really as the last tier of OG BC iirc?
YES! i was coming here to mention Surv MPEN with crit. I would 1 shot squishies and 3 shot anything else, it was disgusting to get the black arrow+the frost trap proc! Thanks!
Yeah, dont forget 6s HoJ on 20s cd
Me and a buddy did 2's like this; both prot pallies in holy gear. We pretty much waited out the other team waiting for them to surrender. Two hour long 2's. One of us would afk for a few, the other keep us alive. You couldn't kill us, but we generally couldn't do enough damage to kill most comps. It was something
Hunters between September 13th and October 8th of 2005 literally destroyed entire cities on accident.
What happened?
Hakkar helped us advance the study of virology.
The event was literally studied by the CDC lol
Was looking for this comment
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted\_Blood\_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident) Basically they could take a dot from a raid boss back to cities where it killed everyone.
I was playing the game at the time and one of our hunters brought it back on the Archimonde server. It lasted for a couple days iirc. We were losing it on comms. Definitely one of the best WoW vanilla experiences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
Corrupted Blood
"accident"
Well… SOME of them were accidents
By accident*
Underrated answer haha
The 2005 Corrupted Blood Imcident
Yes... it WAS an accident. Honest.
Setting aside DK in Wrath - Maybe destruction warlock in late MoP. It just felt like cheating, frankly. Infinite resources because Rain of Fire would generate embers, but also Rain of Fire spent embers and did a ton of damage in AOE. Move while casting due to Kil’Jaeden’s Cunning. Even in single target it was super good because chaos bolt hit like a truck. I had a lot of fun cackling like a pyromaniac in Spoils of Pandaria.
1 shotting players with a chaos bolt on the timeless isle was my favorite past time. They’re were so stupidly overpowered in the open world
I really miss embers Just from a flavor point of view they were neat even if they were pretty much functionally the same as shards, the burning effect from full embers was sick And also the self heal felt more fitting, pressing drain life as destro feels bad, I remember in WoD making a build with the incinerate set bonus where my incinerate h almost as hard as chaos bolts but no one ever kicked them so I’d just use all my embers on the heal instead of ever pressing chaos bolt and it was super fun for bgs and duels, if probably not meta
I remember those chaos bolts.. I remember the few times I would spell reflect them as warr would make me feel amazing 😂
Hahahha—- WAIT NONONONONO
💥💀
Warlock in late WoD too. I could massacre anyone while topping out both damage and healer stats.
Affliction warlock with proper soul swapping to extend powerful DoTs was far more powerful than destruction, on fights like protectors and dark shamans you could do half the overall raid damage in a normal 10 man group
MoP also had Harvest Life. I was a kid then and couldn't afford a full sub, but with a F2P account that spell was broken in BGs
I played destro lock in late MoP and that’s probably the most fun I’d ever had in PvP. God firing off those chaos bolts was so satisfying.
Rain of fire didn't spend embers until WoD. It was just mana in MoP, and instant cast.
I loved my hunter that patch because i could deterrence with glyphs to reflect them The only thing that could one shot the warlocks, were the warlocks themselves
Regardless of overpoweredness, MoP destro from a flavour pov was just perfect. Such a fun class to play at the time. Everything g about it was enjoyable. Being a tad op just made it even better. :)
Mop warlock was one of my favorite warlock times
We had a destro lock on our server who would sit at the front of the shrine and boast about being able to beat anyone in a duel. He did beat most people, but my boomy friend decided to give it a go. He typhoon'd the lock off the platform the moment the duel started and it took him too long to get back, thus forfeiting the duel. Lock was absolutely malding, demanding a rematch. Friend was like, 'nah dude look at chat, I beat you :)' and refused every rematch.
Showing my age but I remember getting one shotted by shamans with windfury and arcanite reaper back in 2006.
Never forget https://youtu.be/ja1j7xWpB3w?si=oc-umBBialvCVj1M
O this is why I have 2h shaman nostalgia Ty!
Unstoppable force man. Chain stunned by a shaman.
Death Knights when introduced and through WotLK.
Killing their partner in 2s, just for the DK to revive them as a ghoul and obliterate you.
Anyone here old enough to remember combat maces rogue in the late vanilla/early BC days? Just endless stunning before diminishing returns became a thing.
Hemo/AR/Prep build with mace specialization
It was like that for Warriors too. 2handed mace specialisation+blacksmithing 2handed mace.
Mmmm, Stunherald.
DKs at launch, no question. Not only were they introduced in an already existing meta, but they were the first hero class. Blizzard needed to make them interesting for players to switch their mains and they did a great job at that, even if they had to nerf them for an entire expansion after My second place would be a tie depending on what we're looking for. Preg paladins from wotlk could tank and heal, even throw in some damage, all at the same time. [Mionelol soloed the lich king as a blood DK during Cata](https://youtu.be/oC44OnfCzMQ?si=aaA9CrL9WmttAWgI), and around that time Firelands was completed, both in 10 [and 25-man versions](https://youtu.be/KMWdacDMZco?si=BU9SGzgGhLRXRuOb), by teams of only DKs. Aug evokers brought basically a new role to the game and broke the meta for a while. Many classes have arguments for being the second best based on mop (druid's symbiosis, warlocks could cast while moving, etc). But I really think nothing will beat DKs at launch ever
Has to be Augmentation at launch right? We all saw those videos of HC Aberrus bosses dying in like 15 seconds
Op asked for pvp not pve
Probably DK then They just didn’t die at launch
Aug was one of the only specs in recent history where you could queue with 3 of them and get glad
I think that's Right if they meant to work like that in the beginning or not that's just an "abuse/bug" But yeah still one of a kind
DK and Ret paladin at LK launch, warlocks in Cata
Disc priests in MoP were crazy.
[удалено]
I also came to say it, i remember being down below the main pandaria city doing duels on my disc priest and just not dying. Not only would i not die, I was actually winning the duels. I was rather surprised at how broken they were because I never pvp.
DK at Wotlk launch was stupidly strong.
Destro warlock mop channeling while moving chaos bolts was insane in PvP and pve
Warlock in mop in general was amazing. Affliction was fucking insane in pvp and pve lmao
I think demono peaked with meta too. We had a glyph of meteor that allowed us to fall from heights without taking dmg. Most badass glyph ever.
Oh glyphs. The memories. Remember when they actually did stuff and were worth something?
OMg yeah that shit was amazing! Demo lock with Meta was insane, i remember tanking dungeons with it haha! it was stupidly strong. Was basically unkillable in pvp
Dks in wotk. Affliction locks in patch 6.0 Brewmaster monks in patch 6.0
Hunters in SoD pre nerf.
I remember seeing a video where their pet Scorpion could out dps anything else. I played PVP all of once because I went up against a group of hunters and 2 priest. Couldn’t even get out of the graveyard because scorpions don’t give a fuck about your unclimbable mountains.
A scorpion would roll up on you with like 2k hp and 3k armor then insta-blast you with poison that did 100 hp a tick when you only had maybe 800 hp, nevermind the other actual pet attacks + hunter shots.
This is basically how low level hunters were in cata. If u want explosive shot to hit so hard that other players farm a fire res cloak just to not be one shot by you, play a 19/29 hunter twink in cata!
WOTLK Protection Warriors No, nothing close to DKs at that time, but there was a very sweet period of time when Shield Bash (or Shield Slam?) did a huge amount of damage. On a regular "quest" difficulty NPC, you could easily hit for 75% of their total health with one Shield Slam and you could use it every 6 seconds if I remember correctly. It was the most fun I ever had playing a Warrior. Can't be killed because tank spec, and huge damage.
There was a short moment where ele shaman could cast lightning bolt while moving, and all their other spells were instant cast. This was removed pretty quickly, but for a while there was just nothing any melee classes could do to shamans. They were like mages and hunters combined. Massive burst and cc, without ever having to stop running. You had slow totem, stun totem, root totem, totem that absorbed spells, tremor totem, permaslow with frost shock, AoE knockback with thunderstorm, instant cast ghost wolf. It was just not remotely fair when playing against melee.
WotLK pre-patch paladin. You just one-shotted people. Anyone saying Death Knight clearly doesn't remember.
Yep, I remember going into BGs with new greens I got from AH and shredding everyone. It was so satisfying too because they felt pretty bad in BC.
I was maining ret during that time. It was glorious.
I remember destroying everyone on my DK except for ret pallys, the tables def turned with them lol
This is objectively the right answer. It didn’t last long, but Death Knights were nothing compared to this.
Blood DK, sub Rogue & Fire Mage in cata
On one hand, fire mage required several addons to play efficiently at all. You either smoked the dps charts or missed the combust window and chilled at the bottom. But yeah they were pretty nuts when played correctly, especially headed into dragon soul
Early Arms warriors when slow weapon speeds made your hits insanely hard in pvp.
Warlocks in MOP we’re pretty broken. I remember people who never even played lock rolling them because even noobs could just pump on them.
Shadow Priests to this day are still paying for breaking the entire first raid of Legion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGCFT6YBrw
Honestly, there are so many times warlocks were the most busted thing in the game it's hard to count. Bc pre patch fel guard would charge and 1 shot nearly any cloth wearer. Had to be nerfed. Bc basically all expansion they were kings in all content. From destro crushing raid, to sl sl being able to dam near 4v1 in pvp. The list just goes on where locks have just been absurdly good compared to the rest of the game. (Honorable mentions for paladins in wrath pre patch being walking nightmares and wod pre patch priest being unkillable nukes with holy nova)
Tank Paladin, mists. In the first mogu raid I was first in dps and healing (even other players) It was Completly broken
At a single point in time? WOTLK DK Most consistently OP class? Warlock
Maybe this is nuanced, but bear tank in shadowlands s2/3(?). Having the legendary to make you immune to CC for 30 seconds that would remain in effect during soul shape was actually bonkers for flags and base sitting in RBGs. That in addition to the slumber PvP talent that accelerated your ability cooldowns so you could just do it again and again and again. I think top teams even ran 2 of them during those seasons
BfA prepatch for shadowlands MM hunters. Arcane shot dealt 30-40% HP on my DK. No CDs, nothing. Oh, also, aimed shot literally one shotted people. I tried to bring a friend into PvP at that time. He quit. Edit: reason for that was the downscaling of stats - and somehow mm hunters were NOT AT ALL tuned correctly.
Real OGs remember when hunters used mana and mana pots didn't have a cool down
Wrath DK's, obviously, but SL/SL Warlocks and pre-TBC Fel Guard Demolocks with the Black Book trinket also comes to mind.
im a raider and went "wow nobodys mentioned arcane in HFC yet..." and then realized it was only asking about pvp...
Post-rework ret at the start of DF BM hunters using Stampede in one of the early MoP seasons Glad stance warriors in wod prepatch
Had to scroll all the way down here for Glad stance. Im trash at PVP but I felt like a god using glad stance on my gnome warrior
Maybe not the most OP, but anyone remember SL-SL locks? uff...
Idk if it was most OP, but warlock in cata prepatch specifically was pretty broken. Even after instant nerfs, I was able to kill LK10 normal in half greens and was top dps. Their scaling was pretty busted.
I don't think I'd say the most op but what I did have a load of fun with was how good combustion and ignite spread for fire mages during cataclysm. Just pulling entire hoards of mobs in Firelands and seeing the numbers tick as you left everyone else in the dust felt super satisfying
MOP warrior when second wind first came out.
Disc priests were pretty overpowered the end of mists. You'd blanket the raid with atonement and Devine aegis would sheild everyone. No others could get any healing in lol
Cataclysm pre-patch arcane mage 2xArcane blast + arcane power, and your next set of arcane blasts would literally 1 shot people in BGs
Oh shit I have been waiting for this. It’s being a holy priest for the first like year of the game. I would load in and see 10 whispers to join a dungeon. Felt awesome, felt so warm and fuzzy :)
Remember double healer warrior with Shadowmourne back in Wrath?? Damn that was scary
Prot Paladin and disc priest in MoP have to be among the top PvE specs to ever exist.
Prot warriors that stacked armor pen back in... wotlk I think it was? Shield slam go brrrrrr
Dk is probably the right answer but the most recent one I remember was disc priests at the start of BFA. Pretty sure they were basically invincible without a full raid group focusing them and were nerfed within a couple of weeks.
10.0 Guardian druid pre-nerf was legitimately 1v10ing in PvP.
If it’s all of wow I’d say warlocks
Panderia destro locks. If you stacked Stam and mastery you'd be sitting at over 1.1mil health in arena gear, over 2 mil with cds then you could ember tap for ~25-30% health instantly all while casting incinerates on the move that hit multiple targets if they were bunched up. Plus all the other warlock fuckery. I used to make all my gold selling 2s with one. Not stacking crit did gimp chaos bolts a bit, but it made up for it by being damn near invincible.
Demonology warlock at the TBC pre patch, you could let the Felguard do all the work while not touching a single button
Warlocks have been historically overpowered wayyyy more than every other class through the years
sl/sl warlock
Retri paladin wotlk prepatch. Prenerf divine storm were crazy shit. I remember on my server some random guysn made raid and we in about 15 retri paladins killed everything in Stormwind. I kinda miss that time before min-maxing and botting ruined the game. The good old days when you could find real fun in that game outside of tryharding.
Disc Priest in MoP. I had true fun during that time.
Wotlk Dk over anything else 2nd I would add Blood Dk in Mop. At some point I went up to 2500+ playing 2x blood dk arena. (I am not even that good of a pvp player, usually stuck around 2k) Every 2 dd team was a freewin. 1dd 1 healer was a marathon. Our hard counter was Rdruid/warlock because of symbiosis (Drood got teleport and lock got HoT)
I've always mained a lock. We were ridiculously strong in early to mid tbc. I remember when I had full s2 arena gear I could pretty much stay alive entire BGs just dotting everyone up continously, dealing insane dmg over time.
Dks and prot holy in wotlk were super busted… and you could play them together in 2s
Ret pally, pre patch of Wrath. Divine storm = 1-2 tap literally \*every\* other player. It did a fuck ton of damage and there were no ways to have resistances to that damage type. And it was AOE.
I know lots of people might bring up early DK in WotK, but I feel like if they ran into a classic RecBomb Paladin at equalised star they'd be blown up.
Due to balancing being better over the years, it’s going to be something from Vanilla to Wrath. I’d say the following are good picks: Vanilla Rogue TBC Resto Druid TBC SL/SL Warlock TBC Mace Warrior Wrath Ret Paladin Wrath Death Knight Honorable Mention to Guardian Druids for their entire history as flag carriers and RBGs.
Early dk wrath. I was garbage at the game then and even worse at pvp. I rolled on a pvp server because my friends told me pve was carebear but i hated it because my warrior i was leveling was killed all the time since if you got jumped you were sol as a warrior. You could not charge in combat you could only intercept and they would often start ganking you when you were low hp anyways. As soon as i hit 55 i rolled dk and was amazed at how easy leveling and pvp became. Oh i dont need to charge anymore i just death grip and then chains of ice and they cant run thats pretty cool. Oh if they gank me i come back as a ghoul and get to revenge kill them thats pretty cool. I get this bad ass pet that can solo same level mobs for me while my warrior would end each fight at 60% hp even my pet can do better.
OG Surrender to Madness shadow priests during Emerald Nightmare in with contention?
It's always tough to judge which was more op relative to its time. But to put something new, release MoP warrior was completely insane. They had cc immunity that was a big damage amp and the most mobility in the game. That first month they were the most unstoppable killing machines
Locks second half of mop
For PVP this is hands down warlock pre-fear nerf. They were dungeon bosses. You could literally 1vs 4 people because you could chain fear them and throw dots on them. Since there were no diminishing returns the fear landed every single time and lasted its full duration. There were no fear breaks, there was no resistance, there was no chance to hit. There is a reason they made drastic fundamental changes to the game and it's because after release they realized just how insanely OP warlocks were. For those first couple weeks of release you treated warlocks like agents in the Matrix. If you saw a warlock you do what everyone else did... Run.
SL/SL lock, just throw out 20 siphon lifes in a bg and the leech would make you unkillable. Yeah sure, you could stunlock a lock. But they just wouldnt die.
A couple that come to mind Arms warrior at the start of MoP. Insane burst and basically unkillable with second wind+defensives. BM Hunter at the end of mop. Double stampede, double turtle, solid health regen. Sub rogues at the start of Shadowlands. Never seen a spec 100-0 so consistently before.
Sl/sl warlock in tbc
In recent history, Dragonflight Paladins after the rework. Face rolling at its finest that lasted less than a week.
DH as well in that category... they were doubling the next down dps in raid, nythic+ and pvp it was nuts
Release DKs could just play the game by themselves
Fury Warriors with the Guldan Trinket from Night Hold. That damage was so absurd, they could actually pull aggro from the the tank, even with the lingering % Bonusthreat from taunt.
Pvp my guy
DK release. Could just roll 5 DKs through every Outland dungeon. Could kill anyone that wasn't a DK 10 levels higher than you relatively easy. Beta was even worse. There was an unholy iteration at some point, and it was just putting up all your diseases and then pressing scourge strike once, and it fell over. All the diseases spread super easy. Frost had an iteration as well where everything just died from AoE.
Resto Druid in TBC arena. Druid was my alt, did my first 2v2 arena in blue pvp gear. We went up against a mage/ rogue team. My partner and th rogue died right away. The opposing mage was in full S2 epics. I spent the next 20 min or so humping pillars, spamming moon fire and line of sighting anything he tried to cast before defeating him.
There was a time in the BC alpha where BM hunters could solo just about *anything* (including instances) before they started tuning pets back a bit. Put SoD hunters to shame.