My last post is/was aimed at a different era than 1.12, but I'll continue it anyways for entertainment.
Druid: In my opinion, druids were hands down the weakest class in this era. Balance had some good individual talents, but was a complementary tree, I don't think I ever saw a full on balance druid outside of the occasional guy showing up to the raid with hurricane as a joke. Feral could become semi-viable DPS, but it required an extremely dedicated player to gear up. You had to grind out marshal stuff, all sorts of reputations, get a bunch of weird ass strength leather pieces. We used a feral druid to offtank from time to time, but he was a hardcore mf'r who geared out perfectly and brought full consumables all day. Even then, it wasn't worth it. I will say that alliance guilds want an active feral tank for outdoor raid mobs. Horde can easily wipe a raid by MC capping the MT which cannot be dispelled. The only counter is bear tanks. Now, 9/10 druids will raid as restoration. The issue with restoration is that HoTs are very weak (low benefit from +Healing) and they don't stack. Furthermore, healing in Vanilla is a 100% or 0% deal. With that said, druid gear has to go somewhere, trash mobs need sleep, people need MotW, and Brez is kind of cool.
As far as PvP goes, druids were very lacking in CC, they lacked the ability to cure CC like a priest/paladin or prevent CC (other than self-polys) like a shaman, their damage sucked as feral, and their healing was weak easy to counter (purge). They did make the best flag carrier for WSG which was the pinnacle of competitive vanilla PvP though. The class was handsomely compensated by being overpowered in every other expansion.
Paladins: I would have said that prot was worthless in PvE before Feenix, but I guess it can be brought to mediocrity with enough dedication (tough to cap defense with non-set). You only needed 14 points in holy to heal well, so you always had a token Ret for BoKings. If there was ever a class that scaled with gear, it was the holy paladin. Illumination was a talent that gave 100% mana back on crits. Paladins could have only had that talent and they would have been the best PvE healer once geared. Unlike the other healers, paladins benefited tremendously from all caster stats (int, crit, +healing, and mana/5). Holy Light scaled better than any other heal in the game and flash of light made paladins the only healer that didn't even have to downrank. They had access to the best healing cloth, leather, mail, and plate. Blessings were so much better than totems which were better than the utility of any other class. That's not even mentioning auras or seals/judgments. They could also ignore the mechanics of many fights via divine shield. Oh you need an aoe tank? How about the paladin throws up righteous fury and kites snared mobs with heal aggro. Class was overpowered as fuck.
In terms of PvP, Lol. Very early on, Seal of the Crusader was broken and giving the atk/haste without weakening attacks which made ret very strong.
I don't know if this is the most broken spec in the game's history, but it's damn close.
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=1...5231050551031n
I mean fuck, all the good healing talents, holy shield, repentance, sanctuary, and reckoning in a single build. Good luck focusing the healer. Divine shield had no counter, and Freedom could have a near 100% up-time with talents. Paladins only weakness was that they were very susceptible to interrupts and curse of tongues. Not tons more to say, best healer in both PvE and PvP.
Shaman/Priest (my 2 favorite classes) to follow!
P.S. I'm quite good at priest
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