Classic/Vanilla WOW

[JurisDictum]

Windfury was overpowered I think was the gist of it.

But if you were just good at the game, frostshock kiting and earthshocking crucial spells went a long way. Grounding totem the right spells was also big (you could ground totem blind vs rogues I remember). You would walk up and melee them and be conservative with your mana against most classes (you didn't have to be as careful with mana vs Rogue and Warrior, but had to be more careful with melee). Bad shamans I remember did a lot of spam shocking and running OOM.

Heals were mana efficient and would have NS + greater heal for emergencies.

Shadowpriest with +shadow damage gear just melted things if you knew what you were doing. It was very mana intensive though and not nearly as good group pvp...but still just that kind of power was useful in groups.

A lot of this still applied when WSG opened up during the BWL era...

Things started changing and getting lamer by Nax era because raid gear started to get really good and I remember warlocks specifically were all the sudden considered OP (unresistible fear from death coil I think was part but not of that)...but I don't remember much detail then because I really wasn't active.