The distract use can help to stop a player from eating/drinking so it is quite useful in arena

My warlock still has a grand Firestone in her bags. When they removed the spell all the conjured stones were converted into basic white items with no description

Divine Intervention was the coolest WoW-Ability. Ending your own Life to save someone else is the ultimate Sacrifice and you can't get any more Noble

8:21-9:19 One very practical aspect of sentry totem you forgot to mention was that, when you took the totems PoV, your char froze in place. That includes mid air as well. That ment, if you didn't have any kind of slow fall as a shaman, you could jump from w/e height and throw sentry totem just before you hit the ground (which ment your char hovered just above the ground), switch back to shaman PoV and land safely. SMART! Not sure if it was a bug or not though.

I remember playing the beta. During the first few days of the beta, when you died and ran back to your body there were undead in the mist. They would attack you and you could actual die, again, while you were dead, thus getting sent back to the graveyard. Hardly anyone remembers this as it was only the first couple of days of beta. It was enoying, not to mention bizarre. You want weird, that was weird.

I have to let you know something about sentry totem. For almost all of vanilla wow if you switched your view to the sentry totem it made your character stop falling. You'd literally just hang in the air until you swapped your vision back to your character. I used to use it going to the BRD and MC entrances. It was a bug but it was super useful.

I remember one time in WOTLK when i came back as a ghoul and was the only one alive while Kelthuzad was almost dead. I ended up kiling him in ghoul form and dying but we finished it! it was amazing. I dont think i will ever forget that

Oh my god when you talked about Mind Soothe it reminded me of something I did during WoW Vanilla ! So I played druid, and I was part of the "BWL hibernation team" of my guild, we were a group of 3 druids that went to try and hibernate dragonkins in those huge packs after Vaelastrasz. And when you were talking about Mind Soothe you mentionned that a resisted spell counts as an aggression. And it was true for hibernate too ! Our hibernation team had to coordonate the hibernation so that if one of them resists, we can all retreat. But here's what I did : There was this boss, Ghaz'Ranka in Zul'Gurub (the one that you had to fish out of the water) that dropped a trinket. A trinket most considered trash, as it did only this : for 12 seconds, you'd gain a big magic hit score bonus. Of course, this was useless for casters as you want your hitscore to always be above the cap, not just 12 seconds every 2minutes, and useless for healers as you couldn't miss your heals... But I claimed it. When it dropped, I went : "+1 hibernate" and everyone was confused as hell. But then, I would use this trinket, have a huge hit score boost, and never miss my hibernates in BWL ! And soon, every druid in my guild started to want it for hibernate, and Hpriests for light cage, and so on ! Great times.

Amplify Magic was a really good spell to cast on someone right before a duel to cheat and win easier :^)

Original Ritual of Doom, you needed 4 friends to cast it and one random person died, for you to get a doomguard for 15 minutes.

In my opinion abilities do not need to be used often at all. Having the option of something situational feels really good imo. Especially spells that are full of class flavor. Also I think that ability pruning in general is something really bad if it's just about an optional or situational spell or ability (that does not harm the experience somehow). If people don't wanna use it they will simply ignore it. If there is however someone that wants to use them, they can. If you remove the option to use it you do nothing but harm the experience for players who like these abilities since people who ignored them previously don't care anyway.

*Casting Symbiosis on a rogue* - Wow, thanks for the Evasion dude! :D - "Uhm, i got Growl...?"

It was also reasonable to run damped magic on yourself all the time due to fact you dont heal yourself and youll be mitigating any magic damage you take. So as long as you were going to be healed, it was reasonable to keep dampen magic on yourself.

im still mad they took my totems

3:58 Distract stopped players running and so could open up enough of a gap to get out of range, slow down a flag carrier train, etc. etc. Pretty handy in WSG.

Distract was one of the most useful and best spells for me playing rogue in Vanilla/BC times. Its not weird its clear what it does and it helps in every situation

Man I loved Symbiosis! It was so unique. To be fair that's what I think WoW could have more of, more class/spec synergies. So it really gives you more choices and things to consider. Shame indie dev blizz couldnt handle it.

1:40 dealing with that without timers or addons must have been hell lol

I dont know if anyone said that, but I really appreciate that you go into the main topic right away. There is no 25 second introduction, no jumping around the topic. Everything you need is a title, and voila, the content starts right away. Thank you!

Currently Paladins have an ability called contemplation that literally only summons a pillar of light. It does nothing

Sentry totem?! More like Selfe totem hah...

He forgot to mention how sentry totem, used when falling (jumping down to molten core) would reset the fall damage counter. So if used right before you would land you essentially, take no fall damage.

Ha, the glorious days of sending horde players down the bridge in Alterac when they wanted to ride in your base.

Shadow word insanity - "only negatives for removing the dot" Uhhhhhh what? 1 Any pvp scenario where the target is low hp 2 target is about to Los and you need to refresh your dot any way, free dmg 3- Ally is about to soft cc a target and you want the dot off, - free dmg. 4- dots are about to fall off any one in bg an way, free dmg, reapply dot- arenas as well for overall dmg 5- it also allows you a time to throw out burst dmg if you timed it right lining up with dmg cds There was a few addons that would track the dot timer for you, not even much management.

Just as a Sidenote: Distract doesn't meed Stealth in Order to be used, it's still available outside of Stealth in Legion

Eyes of the Beast was cool ability.

Mained Druid during MOP, never played my Druid again after realizing Symbiosis was gone

Forgot the old summon doomguard that sacrificed a player and released a hostile doomguard

I miss Devouring Plague for Shadow Priests :(

still missing resto druids using ice block

I miss Eyes of the Beast. I used to love controlling my hunter pet for fun, and would often use this ability for pulling LoS targets. Mostly, I used the ability for fun to follow people around as my pet. :D Also, I found Sentry totem useful in the Vanilla Alterac Valley. I would put the totem in a tower we had, and if someone killed it I got an alert. So even if I was not looking through it, I would know someone was there.

I absolutely loved using Priest Stealth (Mind Soothe) back in the day. I solo'd dungeons back when that was much more difficult by skipping past packs and similar with it. I genuinely miss the utility of the spell.

Symbiosis sounds so cool, and it perfectly makes sense within a lore context. Wish there was something similar to it currently, maybe to a lesser degree.

I remember raiding on my Mage in BC and having to use Amp Magic on all 25 people during the Gruul fight haha.

I always used dampen magic when running around on my own in vanilla, which was most of the time. Every bit helps.

I'll distract someone into a group of mobs they tried to run around.

Symbiosis could be brought back in a form where it just gave the target one out of few abilities and gained you a buff based on it that's unrelated to the class of the target. Like if used on casters it would give healing touch, if used on melee it would give rejuvination, if used on healers it would give swift mend or something like that, and on tanks it would give barkskin. And it would give you a buff based on the role you used it on, like increased movement speed when used on melee dps, increased manaregen when used on healers, 5yd more range when used on rdps, and 10% dmg reduction on tanks. This would make it not break the game, but give you interesting choices in dungeons, raids and pvp. Like when speedrunning dungeons you might want to get that move speed and have additional instant cast hots from the target, but in raids you may want more manaregen, or in hard M+ dungeons your tank may need an additional defensive while buffing your resistance to group wide damage.

More like 10 unique abilities I kinda liked

The first one: shadow word death was added because priests were basically useless on quickly dying mobs. It was intended as a filler spell right before a mob dies, not for boss fights.

The Firestone is interesting concidering this: Demonology had a talent to improve it back in vanilla. It also had: Buffs to your voidwalker, a 30% dmg share, 10% Dmg reduction on the Voidwalker, Health buffs to you and your pet. Your voidwalker was a tank and the tree made you more tanky, while being able to resummon it. There is also: Searing pain. A *FIRE* spell which caused more agro on a low cast time. Out of place for a caster right? Well concidering that warlocks had the most stamina of all casters: Not so much. Items? Dungon set 1: gave you 200 armor. Like any other class. Same with D2. T1 however: Improved drain life? A buff to your pets health and resistance? T2? Same thing Set from AQ (weapon ring cloak)? a buff to pets *MEELE* dmg. A talent build could reach BOTH improved Searing pain in the destro tree AND Sould Link. It makes me wonder: Was the Vanilla Demonology WL designed to be a Tank? Tanking would look like this: You let your demon (VW) tank while healing it and casting searing Pain. Both healing and Searing Pain would give you agro. If your pet where to die: You'd get the agro and if you quickly react, you could sacrifice it to get a shield and quickly get a new Voidwalker. You would tank while Soul Link transfers dmg to the Voidwalker, untill it overtakes you in agro. Casting either searing pain or lifedrain. Actually quiet interesting. And the Idea that warlocks could tank is not too far off. Look at AQ40. Look at Illidan in BC. Look at Gruls lair first boss. It actually looks like WL could tank and Bliz wanted us to notice it. Just for fun, I punched talents into a Classic WOW talent tree and got THIS: 15% More Stamina (5/5) 20% better Health Funel (2/2) and 30% Better Voidwalker (3/3) Fel Domination (1/1) 15% more Stamina on Voidwalker (5/5) 4 second lower summon cast (2/2) Improved meele dmg by Voidwalker 20% (5/5) Demonic Sacrifice (1/1) Improved Firestone (1/2) 10% Dmg reduction on VOidwalker (5/5) 30% Dmg transfere to demon (1/1) DESTRO: 5% lower destro manacost (5/5) 10% chance to daze enemy (5/5) 5% more Destro crit (5/5) 10% more Crit on searing pain (5/5) ALTERNATIVE: AFLICTION 10% lower Resist on afli spells (5/5) 20% improved curse of weakness (3/3) 10% improved lifedrain (5/5) 70% chance to ignore cast reduction when being hit while channeling mana/lifedrain (5/5) 4% chance to get an instant shadowbold with lifedrain (2/2) This feels too smooth, too well designed to be just a coincidence. You can hit EVERY SINGLE tanking ability (with 15% firestone as an extra) in Demo and reach 2 abilities via other specs, which you could cast while being hit, making you either more tank OR get more agro. And you could even be used as a Spell Tank using a spellstone instead of a firestone. Overall: I will try to tank in Classic WOW as a warlock. My guess is: It is Better than the Enhancer Shaman Tank variant. It is WAY worse than a warry tank. And a worse than a druid Tank. But it COULD work. Interesting sidenote: Health funel costs no mana and the firestone turns your meele weapon into something which could build up more agro, in addition to the AQ dagger being a 1,5 attackspeed dagger: You could still tank without mana, so dieing of lifetapping wouldn't be an issue in clutch moments, when you are oom and the boss is at low %. Not to mention: Most bosses have Mana so you can use Mana Drain aswell. And with 2 Talents from the 4% insta shadowbolt to Manadrain: 30% of the drained mana will also dmg the boss. Races to tank as a WL: Dwarf for the Stoneform Orc for 5% pet dmg Troll for Reg and Berserking

Dampen magic was used in vanilla for grinding elemental mobs because with it they didnt deal any damage to you

I thought Dark Simulacrum would be on here, it gives similar results as symbiosis (dk can get any spell) and it used to work in pve too. I remember dks using it on the op fire mage npcs in ashran to oneshot enemy players with fireballs. Fun times :)

3:53 distract was very important for setting up targets for sapping before sap's range was increased. so to say it has no cc potential, i dont agree with.

I totally forgot how fun symbiosis was and now I'm gonna miss it all over again

please make this into a series with more spells, talents or even boss abilities that are unique!

Pretty sure Sentry Totem was just there because warcraft 3 witch doctors had a sentry totem ability. It being an rts leaving something that gives you vision somewhere was really useful. A side note on Mind Soothe: druids had a similar spell "soothe beast" or something like that. It was basically what you think it was: a mind soothe usable on beasts.

Damn, this just makes me miss my badass Druid. I remember always casting symbiosis on our holy pally in a raid so he would have the insta rez if the tank went down.

Divine intervention was also used in WSG with an engineering hat to mind control an enemy flag carrier. You could then DI the flag holder and the flag would drop.

OH man. Divine Intervention is the ability I miss more than anything. I think DI and Life-Grip are the two best "troll the raid" abilities.

Keep up mate. Really enjoyable videos.

What about Plains Running? Tauren only ability where they would run instead of mount early in vanilla.

Distract is used in emergency situations where you are killing an enemy and his friends come, you can vanish and quickly distract them to make them “turn” and lose you for a split second and not hit u out of stealth. Distract is extremely useful in pvp.

need to make part 2 including vanilla priest human racial (feedback) which burned bit of attackers mana for 15 secs after activation, or grace of elune for night elves that reduced ranged dmg

Mind soothe was useful in guarded areas. What I miss is the aggressive hunter-pet setting. You could use your pet as a sentry and move it to a chokepoint. You can still sort of do that with defensive, but it is not as effective. I suppose all the terrible hunters kept using it in the wrong places. The video is really well done!

Distract was super useful back in the days. It manipulates the aggro cones, and allow rogues to pickpocket, which is something you forgot to mention.

Amplify and Dampen magic are great. They require skill and planing to use sure. But honestly for solo leveling dampen magic is great just as another buff,and amplify magic is superb when your in a part of the dungeon where there are mobs with no magic uses,so when you cast it on your tank he can benefit from greater heals. Although they were situational they were super fun to play around with.

I always figured Shadow Word: Insanity was supposed to be used at the end of the fight, so the DoT didn't need to be reapplied. Just a way to use up the last few ticks the DoT had left for a quick, last-moment blast of damage to finish the boss off. Of course, timing this accurately would be difficult...but the concept makes sense.

In MoP, there was an item that allowed any class to cast Symbiosis. Anyone remember it?

Yeah I was in a hardcore pve guild as a balance druid when symbiosis came out. All I can say is that I was never allowed to use it on anyone but tanks. And there was a fight in Heart of fear where I was allowed to use it to get intervene to run faster when fighting Tayak. It was really cool, but ridiculous as hell.

The best part about Sentry Totem was the fact that every time you right-clicked the buff, it would take your vision back to your totem.. which also made your character lock in place, meaning you could jump off the entry point to Thousand Needles from the Barrens, and as long as you clicked your totem near the ground, you could survive the entire fall. :3

I used distract A LOT when I pvp'd on my rogue. It's been a really long fucking time but it was actually very practical and when you get good with it it becomes one of those abilities that can set you apart from a burst rotation only rogue. Basically everything you listed in the video is true but came up a surprisingly large amount of time when the ability was in your thought process. Some people just didn't know about it too and it was hilarious when you used it on them. On more than one occasion I had people thinking their mouse or something was broken until someone told them what it was xD

damn i forgot that symbiosis even existed, now i miss it

Shout out to detect traps (AKA Swirly ball!), the most addicting, A.D.D. move in history.

Symbiosis was the best thing ever. i would run 2's with a friend his feral druid and my unholy DK. he got death coil so if i went low i could pop lichborne and he could spam death coil on me to full heal me was the most overpowered thing ever.

I did a decent amount of arena when this spell was out on my druid and would constantly get yelled at by the other team member if i put sym on someone else. it was a very fun ability but caused some issues, lol.

I remember being a dps DK at the time, and having any Druid use Symbiosis on me was great because I got the Wild Mushroom: Plague, which was soo good because it was incredibly annoying to spread diseases back then. Wasting time and runes applying both diseases to each individual enemy, or both to one and then Blood Boil to spread them only within 15 yards of myself, was annoying when DK at the time already felt slow and resource starved rather often. The Plague shroom cost 0 runes and 0 runic power, could be placed anywhere within 30 yards, and applied and refreshed both diseases to all enemies within like 10 yds of the mushroom, for 30 sec or so. It was very, very useful to not have to worry about spreading my diseases whenever I had Symbiosis.

In the early Mists of Pandaria beta, the hunter talent Murder of Crows used to actually summon a bunch of extra crow pets that would follow you around and help you fight.

Can't forget the item that dropped during MoP. The Overgrown Lilypad which worked liked Symbiosis, minus needing a druid but had an hour CD.

something people always seem to ignore is just how powerful vanilla spellstones really were in pvp. the highest rank removed all magic dots and magic cc and then also gave you a 900 magic shield. completely destroys any shadow priest or mage in a 1v1

I miss symbiosis, and i play only warlock hahaha

The Warlock one reminded me of the ability to gain mana as a moonkin when meelee hitting something.

We amplified magic on pretty much every fight, because the healing was double the casting damage received; dampen magic was great for PvP when most groups didn’t use Healers for PUGs

Distract doesn't require stealth; it just requires the target to not be in combat.

I really have to say "Distract" has every right to be still in the game. I can so often prevent a moving grp of Mobs from running into our fight in M+ for example with "Distract", what no other class can do. Sure, in Raids it is not necessary a.f., Shroud isn't necessary there too. You can use it in PvP zu play around with enemies. You can use it while questing to turn around enemies so you can safely pass through or pick pocket. Additionally I don't understand, why Blizzard sometimes removes "not so useful abilities", because... you don't have to use them, but people often find ways to have fun with them, still.

Distract was really fun in vanilla and tbc. Because at that time when used on a player it changed their direction But didnt stop them like it does today. I have sent players flying at lumbermill in AB, Bridge in AV and outdoor pvp :D

I would definitely be counted amongst the Rogues that just mess with people sapping them distracting them just messing with them

12:05 "DKs were really good in pvp" *proceeds to backpedal*

That 1 DK ability (i forget what its called off the top of my head) that you have to BUY at Ebon Hold where it's only use is exploding the corpses of mobs you've killed.

Dampen magic was actually useful in PvE, such as in Trial of Grand Crusader's last boss, Anub'arak, where you take damage based on the remaining health you have. When you go like 10%, it basically reduces all damage you take very drastically so that the small self-heals were enough to survive the DoT.

Distract can be useful in PvP when you’re just out of reach of an enemy flag carrier. Throw the distract just behind them and it will turn them around. 99% of the time, they’ll also take a few steps in the wrong direction, straight towards you. You’ll need to use burst of speed or a perfectly timed sprint to get in position for this though, since you have to be in stealth to use distract.

Fond memories of everyone with a rez ability crowding by the boss’s door shouting “DI me please!”

Touch of weakness when it was bugged and you could stack multiple ranks and then wand someone to proc 5x shadowed weakness + 5 chances at blackout proc. Hex of Weakness. Inner fire with AP. Original Berserking which was more potent the lower health you were at. Windwalk totem letting you pretend walk of cliffs. Farsight, and the silly control pet. Mindcontrol with all the crazy different mobs in the game that did sweet stuff, like the NPC outside alliance AV had a really op cleave, mobs in Botanica that would give your group like 160ish???? spellpower, fire resist buff in brd in prep for MC. Holy Fire being a billion second cast and actually being fire element for a brief time. Laughably bad Lightwell. Rolling Ignites during vanilla raiding, first ignite gets all the others added to it and it continues to grow. Find Treasure racial because booty. Magic Absorption, kinda weird. Curse of tongues and void form forcing languages on players. Can't think of anymore off the top of my head.

I still have nightmares about shadow of death, ghouls did ton of damage on top of that

Love this series of old WOW, I remember most of it, so this is a trippy trip down memory lane ! :D

Missed out Detect Magic. :D

The main thing I've always loved about the spells and abilities ever since vanilla, were the fuckin icons for them anyone agree?

Outside the UBRS entrance (where pvp skirmishes always happened) I discovered that while un-flagged, you could cast the mages 'detect magic' on an enemy player while they were eating/drinking and it would make them stand up and cancel the eating, but would not flag you. So much trolly fun.

See 'that one room in Karazhan', as we called it, otherwise known as 'Detect Invisibility'.

Druids were honestly so much fun back in mists

Distract is pretty fun, especially in world pvp and battlegrounds.. near bridges

We need a top 10 NPC that break the fourth wall (shenzu the white tiger in pandara asks "why fo you keep clicking on me" when you annoy him

I've used Distract in Booty Bay, back when you couldn't fly in original zones, derailing people into the water as they tried to leave was fun as hell.

Curse of Recklessness (warlock) was a pretty awesome ability that wasn't well understood/used by some players. I loved it and was super bummed when it was removed. You could totally control feared mobs (instead of fearing them into more adds) by toggling between agony and Recklessness when in charge of controlling a few mobs in large pulls. God that game was so fun when cc was absolutely detrimental to dungeons and raids.

Common misconception that Distract requires stealth to be used. I've been using it out of stealth since 2005.

Firestone was basically a remnant of the time where Warlocks were oddball melee magical hybrids, which was apparently the early plan. Same reason why Warlocks could use swords.

i like how hard you try to make sentry totem sound as useful as possible

I can’t remember the name of the spell, but a priest could switch their health bar with others. That’s the one I miss.

Really miss eye if the beast for hunters wish It'd come back

Warlock: Detect Lesser Invisibility. That should have definitely been in this video. Not sure when it was removed, but I used to use it in Vanilla to see some ghosts around Raven Hill in Duskwood. I think there might have been some hidden ghosts around Karazhan and Scholomance as well, but my memory is foggy.

I remember an epic moment of a rogue using distract on a flag carrier in Warsong, made him stop just long enough for the team to catch him.