Pally, Warlock, Mage 3man leveling comp suggestions

[Apatheist]

People should take the advice from these private server heroes with a grain of salt. Whole bunch of them popped up on this site in the last few months.

Why? Recent experience on private servers seems more trustworthy than 15 year old memories to me. Pretty much all of the people I know that play on private servers also played retail vanilla.

Judging by what we've seen so far on beta private servers actually seem harder than classic. Players that have come from private servers are the ones complaining that everything is too easy and Blizzard have been trying to convince them the beta values are correct. If anything, the evidence so far suggests private servers are overtuned.

[MiRai]

Why? Recent experience on private servers seems more trustworthy than 15 year old memories to me. Pretty much all of the people I know that play on private servers also played retail vanilla.

Judging by what we've seen so far on beta private servers actually seem harder than classic. Players that have come from private servers are the ones complaining that everything is too easy and Blizzard have been trying to convince them the beta values are correct. If anything, the evidence so far suggests private servers are overtuned.

There have been several people, like Esfand, StaySafe, and TipsOut (whether you like any of them or not), who've been playing on private servers religiously, for years, only to repeatedly admit, on stream, that Classic is not the same as any private server they've played on, and the knowledge they've gained from private servers is not exactly carrying over to Classic.

So, with all of the missing information that private servers don't have and are forced to make guesses at (Nano from Nostalrius has admitted this multiple times in several interviews), I wouldn't fully trust whatever anyone has "learned" from them.

[Apatheist]

I wouldn't fully trust whatever anyone has "learned" from them.

Some of it probably doesn't translate but that doesn't mean people haven't acquired a lot more knowledge about the game in the past 15 years. If nothing else, the tricks with particular items or raid strats people figured out on private servers let us know what to look for, right?

[Xyl41]

Some of it probably doesn't translate but that doesn't mean people haven't acquired a lot more knowledge about the game in the past 15 years. If nothing else, the tricks with particular items or raid strats people figured out on private servers let us know what to look for, right?

Not exactly, just due to the number of things that are different. Dungeon elites hit much softer on Classic than on private servers, boss parry is much higher (almost 3x) on Classic compared to private servers, and regular mobs have differences as well. People can use the private server knowledge as a base, but it won't be much more reliable than anything else, just due to the huge amount of guess work used on private servers.
These guys will have a better grasp on Classic than most random people, but that doesn't mean anything they know is right (as evidenced in multiple Blue posts).

[Apatheist]

Not exactly, just due to the number of things that are different.

I'm sure there are some numerical differences. I'm talking about specific mechanics and strategies that are standard practice on private servers but were unheard of outside of maybe the top 1% of guilds in vanilla. For example, stacking on Viscidus so everybody an sapper charge the adds. Stuff like this completely changes the fight.

Even aside from private server players, the average level of player knowledge and competency is generally higher than it was in 2004-2006.