Ideas for a pure Fishing melee class?

[Cyath]

I was reading a WoW forum the other day (not sure which was it was, probably this one actually ^_^) and I stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information...that if you use a Fishing Pole in battle, it actually uses your Fishing skill instead of Staves! Which got me thinking...what class could just use Fishing to fight? Yeah, you heard me right, no wimpy swords, axes, maces or daggers for me - it's just ANGLING POWER! :)

But first we need to consider things a bit more carefully...

1) Does Fishing skill affect damage as well as to-hit?

2) What's the most powerful Fishing pole you can get? I'm betting that at really high levels "real" (pshaw!) weapons will outdamage the poles...hopefully this isn't the case though. :)

3) How high can you get Fishing skill? Is it capped by your level?

4) Does the +Fishing from Shiny Baubles etc and better poles also add to your in-battle Fishing skill?

5) Anything else I'm missing?

Once we have all that data, we have to move on to the most important question...which class would make the best Fisher? Obviously caster classes like Mages and Priests are out, so are Hunters because they use primarily long-range, and probably Druids too, since we don't want to spend time in alternate forms which don't allow us to use our Fishing. So that leaves :

1. Warrior - Could be pretty good, fishing poles count as a melee weapon, so all your skills can be used.

2. Rogue - Not so good, you can forget about lots of stealth related skills because you're not going to be using a dagger, also, no dual-wielding for you. Probably not a great choice.

3. Shaman - Could be interesting, the spells could be a real help in battle.

4. Paladin - The idea of a holy knight with a fishing pole is just too hard to resist, plus I could call him The Fisher King. ^_^ (lame joke I know) Plus it would actually give me a reason to play Alliance...

Well, I think it's a pretty interesting idea, I'm definitely going to try it out when I have the time, I just wanted to suss out more information first.

[Skandranon]

I hate to be the one throwing the damp towel, but this was quietly repaired in the last patch.

[MongoJerry]

I nonetheless have found fishing poles to be excellent weapons for my priests from levels 1-12ish. They usually far outdamage the one-handed maces one can find, and it often takes a while to find one's first really good staff. And anyway, the staff trainers are often way the heck too far away for a new character. Thunder Bluff for horde -- whereas the only horde priests are undead and trolls. And I think the staff trainer is in Darnassus for alliance which is way off in the boondocks, unless of course, you're playing a night elf.

[Thawwing Light]

I nonetheless have found fishing poles to be excellent weapons for my priests from levels 1-12ish.  They usually far outdamage the one-handed maces one can find, and it often takes a while to find one's first really good staff.  And anyway, the staff trainers are often way the heck too far away for a new character.  Thunder Bluff for horde -- whereas the only horde priests are undead and trolls.  And I think the staff trainer is in Darnassus for alliance which is way off in the boondocks, unless of course, you're playing a night elf.
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I agree unconventional weapons work well low level... Myself, I used an Arclight Spanner til about 11.

I trained Staves in Stormwind, with a guy in the Trade district... who also trained me in Short Swords. Maybe they've made more skills widely available in the new patch?

[MongoJerry]

I trained Staves in Stormwind, with a guy in the Trade district... who also trained me in Short Swords. Maybe they've made more skills widely available in the new patch?

Perhaps, or perhaps they moved the staff trainer to Stormwind since the early beta. Or perhaps I forgot where it was, since it was early July when I last had an alliance character train to use staves.

[Ruvanal]

Perhaps, or perhaps they moved the staff trainer to Stormwind since the early beta.  Or perhaps I forgot where it was, since it was early July when I last had an alliance character train to use staves.
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There was a staff trainer in Stormwind from the point in the beta when they changed to actually require going to a trainer instead of just using the skill page to learn the weapon skills. The staff trainer in Stormwind was tucked away in an out of the way section of the mage quarter and was usually missed by most players.

For the alliance there are more than one locations to learn the weapon skills of daggers, staves, thrown weapons, fist weapons and crossbows. It was like this prior to consolidating the weapon training down to 4 master trainers too. It was just harder in the beta to locate the individal weapons trainers since they tended to be spread out all over each of the cities when they first moved to this method of training.