Did they ever? ...

[Wakanda]

I'm an Enchanter main. I love leveling Enchanters so much I am literally about to make my 5th enchanter on P99, but I don't think charm is classic at all, and I would be okay with future projects making charm a gimmick instead of the entire game (game literally feels like Enchanter-quest, especially on new servers).

Monks were never this tanky either. I know people will be like oMg tHe MoNk miTiGaTioN NeRf cAmE LaTeR!!! I'm not talking about that nerf. I'm talking about during classic. I was a monk main in 1999. I was one of the first high level monks on my entire server. I remember having other players message me during raids or pointing out in ooc how insane my damage was because no one had really ever seen a high level monk before and had no idea what they could do, so when they saw my fists dominating the combat logs, they were stunned.

And also we did build AC back then. There was the whole AC is king thing that you never hear mentioned on P99. I remember being a noob and wanting stats, not AC, but a real-life friend convinced me I should try AC over every other stat, and I did, and was shocked at how game changing it was. This is why enameled breastplates were really expensive on classic. No warrior would ever choose a crafted BP over enameled breastplate back then because of how insane 25 ac was for a chest slot.

But my point is, I was building my monk for pure damage mitigation. Wearing weird things you would be unlikely to see on a level 50 monk on P99 during classic. Gatorscale leggings over planar leggings. Azure sleeves over planar sleeves. Froglok crown over planar head piece or over executioners hood. The top monks only cared about AC back then, whereas on P99, you will see them generally preferring lower AC items with more stats on them. It's not because we just didn't know how to play the game back then, it's because it's literally a different version of the game.

Despite building for damage mitigation however, I was never a tank. I remember being so confused when I discovered P99 and was reading discussions on the forums about how Monks are more mana efficient to heal than a lot of tanks for certain camps, because this was never the case. As the monk I was the puller and DPS. I had decent survivability because I was slightly tankier than a lot of DPS, had feign death (which if I didn't use, I would regularly die after getting aggro), and mend. But I remember many of our groups simply falling apart because we lost our tank. I remember one group in particular where our tank left and our healer straight up said they aren't healing if we don't get a tank because of how stressful it was to heal me. We found a Ranger, hoping he would be tanky enough (as a Monk I literally saw a Ranger as tankier than me, despite all the paper doll jokes about Rangers at the time). He wasn't tanky enough either, so the group still fell apart.

Another thing people seem to have forgotten about too is that Kunark armor was considered better than planar gear, again, because "AC is king." If you were wearing woven shadow and you got a piece of Mrylokars armor, you swapped it out for that piece of Mrylokars armor because AC was that damn good. Also even before Kunark came out. You know how woven shadow legs have wisdom on it? Terrible stat for a rogue right? It was the meta to still wear these over items like Mithril Leggings (which have strength on them), because the AC difference was huge and again, AC was king. On P99 you never see this.

This is not a knock on P99 either. I love the project and have nothing against it. It's just that I remember things really vividly.

I also remember when Disease Cloud was the meta for SKs on classic. I hated mine and felt like he was useless, and then I read on the forums that SKs were over-powered because they could cast disease cloud on any mob and hold aggro indefinitely, even without taunting, and I tried it and discovered that it was true. I suddenly felt super OP. Then I made an SK on P99 and I found myself spamming clinging darkness, sometimes multiple times on the same mob, to hold aggro. Disease cloud doesn't do much comparatively.

I'm sure there are other SKs from back in the day who remember what I'm talking about.

Also I remember another reason why disease cloud was OP back in 1999. You're a low level SK and you're solo'ing. Then you get rabies, and now you don't regenerate HP for a really long time, and can't level until it wears off. Sucks really bad. Well, actually it was learned that if you put disease cloud on yourself, it does little damage at all, but prevents mobs from putting rabies on you. I tried this on P99 and it didn't work at all; I still got rabies, lol.

Again, this isn't a big deal, but it's not true classic.