Prediction of classes in TBC

[TJ]

Hunters and Warlocks are going to explode in popularity for obvious reasons. I think Shaman and Paladin on Alliance and Horde respectively will also be popular throughout the expac, more the latter than the former due to Seal of Blood. Apart from that, I think it will stay relatively the same apart from some people more willing to play support classes/specs like SP and Boomkin as they improve a lot compared to Classic.

Just talking about TBC makes me excited, can't wait for it. Really hope they don't mess it up in a standard Blizzard style.

[Djanco]

warlocks and rogues EVERYWHERE

[Thunderball]

Pretty easy to predict.

Warlocks, Rogues, Druids are going to see a sharp rise.

Priests, Mages, Warriors are going to see a huge fall.

Paladins, Shamans - going to stay the same, i.e. a lot.

Hunters are pretty interesting because a lot of people that have them as farm chars are going to make them mains, not a very big increase overall though.

[Mosha]

Pretty easy to predict.

Warlocks, Rogues, Druids are going to see a sharp rise.

Priests, Mages, Warriors are going to see a huge fall.

Paladins, Shamans - going to stay the same, i.e. a lot.

Hunters are pretty interesting because a lot of people that have them as farm chars are going to make them mains, not a very big increase overall though.

This is what I initially thought as well, but honestly the more I think about it, I am honestly not quite sure the 'big dps specs' will see this huge massive rise.

The only reason I don't see this happening at a scale I thought it would before, is simply because of how raids are formed in tbc compared to classic.

In classic, you can literally stack half the raid with warriors and mages and push insane numbers. But in tbc, although certain classes are the highest dps classes, you don't necessarily 'stack' them like you do in classic.

A group of 5 warlocks for example, is going to do less dps overall for the raid than a group of 3 warlocks, one boomkin, and one ele shaman.

I do think certain classes will see a rise for obvious reasons (shamans/paladins). But for hunters and warlocks, honestly I bet it doesn't increase THAT much. Their presence in the raid will increase tremendously, but idk about the actual numbers.

Tbc raids have to be pretty diverse, classic raids don't really at all.

[Kralljin]

I would really love to know why people predict such a rise of the rogue population.

Unless you're into Arena, rogues aren't good until they get enough gear (which is around T6).
Not to mention that T4 and especially T5 is filled with Melee unfriendly fights.

On top of that, they bring nothing to a raid, in a Meta that is dominated by Classes for their great raid support.
Raid setups are tight in TBC, having more than two rogues isn't that great, especially because they require gear to function which then obviously needs to be divided among those rogues.

Unless rogue's performance in PvP carries the shit out of them, i don't think that will happen.
Even there, rogues are basically stuck with a single 3v3 comp, RMP, anything else is terrible, they can't enter 5v5 because people tear rogues apart there, leaving 2v2 the only bracket with a some options.

As far as PvP is concerned, you're better off playing Warrior / Warlock, especially because you are not as reliant on PvE items (which are as described, "more difficult" to acquire for a rogue), grab PvP Items, Stunherald if you play Warrior and you're good to go.

Rogue will be a novelty class for a few chosen within a guild that are being groomed to dominate the meters once BT releases, but most certainly not a FotM Class like Hunter or Warlock.

There is fucking over casters in random bg's i guess, but i don't see that as a reason why this class will surge in popularity.

[Mosha]

I would really love to know why people predict such a rise of the rogue population.

Unless you're into Arena, rogues aren't good until they get enough gear (which is around T6).
Not to mention that T4 and especially T5 is filled with Melee unfriendly fights.

On top of that, they bring nothing to a raid, in a Meta that is dominated by Classes for their great raid support.
Raid setups are tight in TBC, having more than two rogues isn't that great, especially because they require gear to function which then obviously needs to be divided among those rogues.

Unless rogue's performance in PvP carries the shit out of them, i don't think that will happen.
Even there, rogues are basically stuck with a single 3v3 comp, RMP, anything else is terrible, they can't enter 5v5 because people tear rogues apart there, leaving 2v2 the only bracket with a some options.

As far as PvP is concerned, you're better off playing Warrior / Warlock, especially because you are not as reliant on PvE items (which are as described, "more difficult" to acquire for a rogue), grab PvP Items, Stunherald if you play Warrior and you're good to go.

Rogue will be a novelty class for a few chosen within a guild that are being groomed to dominate the meters once BT releases, but most certainly not a FotM Class like Hunter or Warlock.

There is fucking over casters in random bg's i guess, but i don't see that as a reason why this class will surge in popularity.

I noticed the same thing, I could see them either staying pretty similar specifically for the reason you pointed out with pvp, or actually dropping quite a bit in the pve community.

I will sort of disagree that their only 'decent' comp in 3s is RMP though. Yeah that is their top tier rank one comp, but in the mid to higher ranges you will see some SP/rogue/X teams, some RMD, RLS, RLD, and maybe even some ret rogue shaman or something. Yeah in 5s it's all about a burst competition so it will be filled with ele shamans, mages, warriors, paladins, etc. But rogue really is a powerhouse in arena overall.

As for the pve thing, I couldn't agree more. Idk why people think rogues are this amazing lethal force in pve... maybe because they just remember rogues with glaives and thought that was the best it got? Like you said, rogues in pve for a majority of the expansion were extremely weak. Not just because they literally brought you absolutely nothing to the raid besides sub par damage, but melee did NOT have a good time in 90% of the fights in TBC early on. I thought about writing a list of fights but I googled and someone already did it for me.

High King Council has several AoEs to manage and the big man himself cleaves/whirlwinds pretty nastily. Casters can just plant their feet and nuke the entire time.

Gruul drops Cave-Ins and flings everyone away with Ground Slam. Everyone has to dodge the Cave-In, but ranged have loads of room to spread, melee can get rather easily screwed and have low uptime because of Ground Slam already.

Magtheridon drops Conflagrations, knocks you around with Quake, and has the fun mechanic of clicking on orbs to interrupt him. This fight is very melee unfriendly as having too many melee means having melee run out super early to get to far away placed orbs, on top of the other crap that screws melee more than ranged anyway.

Hydross is neutral to DPS.

Lurker is basically designed to hate melee. Whirl needs to be danced out of to minimize DPS loss, Geyser sends you flying, and the add phase has melee swimming whereas ranged get to just nuke.

Leotheras also really hates melee. You get the “fun” of Sartura’s Whirlwind all over the place combined with an Inner Demon mechanic where you have to solo an NPC only aggro’d on you, with no attacks on the rear for you to make use of.

Fathom-Lord is bad as well. The healer add does melee range AoE stuns but also requires a kick so those melee get shafted hard. There are also tornados that spawn and can just utterly ruin melee as you reposition, and totem stomping eats up melee uptime a lot.

Tidewalker is fairly neutral, but AoE requirements and RNG with Watery Graves and Watery Globules can screw a melee heavy group.

Lady Vashj generally sucks for melee, with one exception. P1 AoE roots and even if the Tank breaks loose immediately, she still runs off a bit to shoot you, leaving melee behind. P2 you’re on elemental duty and/or naga duty while hoping the Strider never fears you. P3 is probably the first time melee are FAVORED because with Spore Bats covering the arena in goop, melee can move with the boss to keep up DPS, but ranged may have to stop repeatedly to reposition.

Al’ar, the “why did we bring melee” fight. Melee are chasing the boss constantly, they can’t be anywhere near adds due to AoE explosions, and fire patches show up everywhere. The room is so big and the boss moves so much that Tanks have almost as little uptime as the melee do.

Voidreaver, localized AoE death. Ranged have to move for orbs but it is far more individualized compared to the stand back and do nothing for melee.

Solarian isn’t so bad but like Tidewalker, lack of AoE can make add phases painful. The Living Bo… Wrath of the Astromancer affects melee the most, but isn’t horrid. Melee are needed to kick adds.

Kael’thas, hooboy. Council members all hate melee: fixate can swap and murder them, 35 yrd fear only catches them, Arcane Explosion murders them, and the toy maker is just annoying. The weapons have all kinds of AoE nonsense. KT himself does nasty Flamestrikes, requires kicking, and Rogues/Warriors might keep the fun job of shiv/hamstring spamming MCs. Oh and in the air phase, you just can’t get near him to DPS so have fun swimming.

[hulkgor]

One of the bigger reasons why Classic launched in a 1.12 state was that they seemingly only had a working version of 1.12 in one of their backups, but since TBC they kept a better record of each patch state (at least according to their Classic panel back in 2018).

If you really think that they're gonna put themselves in a position of deploying multiple patches and fixing all the issues that will arise with every single one, as opposed to deploying the latest one and running with it, exactly like they did with Classic, you're being delusional.

Yes, content is trivialized and nerfed, yes, it sucks, but it's the easy way to do it. They'll just gate content by phases and be done with it. Same as Classic. Same as TBC private realms.

But hey, if you're hoping otherwise, best of luck!

[Nak88]

I don't care about the meta, I will keep playing with my Classic toons (resto shaman and fire mage) and possibly I'll level up a belf pally. I have never cared about min-maxing, speedruns and tryhardism.

[Kralljin]

If you really think that they're gonna put themselves in a position of deploying multiple patches and fixing all the issues that will arise with every single one, as opposed to deploying the latest one and running with it, exactly like they did with Classic, you're being delusional.

Point is, unlike Retail, Classic (and by extension TBC) has unofficial competition in form of private servers.

Most people were fine with Classic having no real changes, but i think now most people that have played for some time are on side that making some changes would have improved things.
If Blizzard goes blindly into TBC with the 2.4 state and model content release the way TBC rolled it out, TBC will flop hard after the first month.

Because that means:
1.Nerfed content
2.No Attunements
3.All content from Karazhan to MH is available (combined with 2., you can farm the first bosses in MH from week one)
4.All content that is being added is BT, ZA (which is extremely pointless at this point) and SWP.

In other words, no one will really bother with T4, Heroics, Arena (for gear at least) or craftables at all, people farm gear in MH (because almost any boss in there is a joke) and wait for BT release.
Which will also seriously fuck Arena, because they're sitting on S1 gear, while PvE already offers T6 equivalent items.

Not to mention, batching and leeway was still a thing in TBC, if they adhere to that, it will even further harm the experience.

This has nothing to do with being delusional, but TBC will extremely suffer if Blizzard blindly adheres to it.
And as said above, competition exists and if Blizzard fucks up TBC, people will most certainly turn their eye towards private servers, because not everybody is willing to pay monthly sub for an inferior experience while a free alternative exists.

Most people were willing to give Blizzard a pass because Classic was their first experience into this whole legacy server thing, but if Blizzard displays an unwillingness to learn things, people will turn towards alternatives.

[Misuteri]

Prediction, SL/SL locks in arena. Succubus sacrificed shadowbolt one button rotations in PVE. Demonology/affliction for leveling and world farming.

[Mosha]

If you really think that they're gonna put themselves in a position of deploying multiple patches and fixing all the issues that will arise with every single one, as opposed to deploying the latest one and running with it, exactly like they did with Classic, you're being delusional.

Yes, content is trivialized and nerfed, yes, it sucks, but it's the easy way to do it. They'll just gate content by phases and be done with it. Same as Classic. Same as TBC private realms.

But hey, if you're hoping otherwise, best of luck!

I have to ask, and this is a genuine question here... if all the changes they are doing patch by patch is simply balance changes and tuning numbers differently and not drastically changing the game like some balance patches do, then what possible bugs would come up from this anymore than just deploying one singular patch?

[Coldfrostzero]

Paladins tanks are now needed for certain fights, holy still great tank heals, Ret becomes way less memey but still pretty low in dps. The buffs they bring are amazing.

You can tank perfectly fine in Classic as a Paladin. I shelved my paladin recently, but I tanked every single boss except Vael (which would arguably have been the easiest to tank) without any issue. The server of Kirtonos added paladin tanks in many guilds after seeing how viable they are. I tanked Sulfurian Harbringer and all of the adds, pulling threat off the guy who was supposed to do the boss only.

Ret paladins in BC are middle of the road unless there is a demon or undead, which bc has plenty. Fights like Leothas the Blind, if you put a paladin with the melee group and give windfury, they can break the top 5. You just have to seal twist and not oom yourself.

[Nosnogard]

I predict a lot of Warlock Destro PvP videos copying Drakedog. 1v2/1v3 vs. undergeared characters in World PvP or in Arathi Basin.

I expect to see a lot more Paladin tanks than I did back in TBC originally

[Mosha]

I do think shamans and paladins will be pretty popular, at least at the beginning, for the same reason that they were when BC originally came out (Alliance players can now be shamans / Horde players can now be paladins).

There will be a lot of SL/SL warlocks doing arenas. No doubts there.

I don't get why there's so much talk about how warriors suck in BC though. Maybe it's just me, but I've mained a warrior since 2005 and found BC a lot of fun. Granted, I didn't play at a super ultra top 1% pro level or anything, but I was PvE DPS fury for 99% of that expansion (a couple of rare "offtank didn't show up, either you suck it up and spec prot for a night or we can't raid" moments made up that other 1%) and had a good time.

It’s not that warriors suck, it’s just that they are nowhere even comparably as popular or needed than they are in classic.

You can have 50% of your raid in classic be warriors and do amazing. So going into tbc they are going to be forced to reroll (at least most) because there simply won’t be room for as many in raids. Also on top of this, melee just simply kinda suck in tbc raids compared to ranged

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You can tank perfectly fine in Classic as a Paladin. I shelved my paladin recently, but I tanked every single boss except Vael (which would arguably have been the easiest to tank) without any issue. The server of Kirtonos added paladin tanks in many guilds after seeing how viable they are. I tanked Sulfurian Harbringer and all of the adds, pulling threat off the guy who was supposed to do the boss only.

Ret paladins in BC are middle of the road unless there is a demon or undead, which bc has plenty. Fights like Leothas the Blind, if you put a paladin with the melee group and give windfury, they can break the top 5. You just have to seal twist and not oom yourself.

Yeah and boomkins can dps perfectly fine as well in classic as they can do the minimum dps required to reach most enrage timers. That doesn't mean they are needed or by any means wanted in 90% of raids. In tbc it is incredibly different, you will see paladin tanks everywhere, compared to classic where if you look up the top 1000 guilds you will see 99% warriors 1% druids and possibly one paladin.

[hulkgor]

I have to ask, and this is a genuine question here... if all the changes they are doing patch by patch is simply balance changes and tuning numbers differently and not drastically changing the game like some balance patches do, then what possible bugs would come up from this anymore than just deploying one singular patch?

That's the magic of an mmo, huge as it is. Every little change will have bugs. It's not just "deploy patch 1, deploy patch 2, deploy patch 3".

Especially having TBC on a 'foreign client' (Classic is actually Legion 7.3.5 client, we don't actually know if TBC will be a separate client or a fork just like Classic is), there's no clue on what problems would arise every single patch, and don't forget newer hardwares, software, drivers, API changes, etc, and they're running Classic with a skeleton crew, TBC will probably be aswell. Can you imagine the shitstorm of gamebreaking bugs every single patch deployment? Might aswell just run the most stable (and vastly tested) patch available and have peace of mind.

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If Blizzard goes blindly into TBC with the 2.4 state and model content release the way TBC rolled it out, TBC will flop hard after the first month.

I don't mean to disagree entirely with you, you make some good points, but i feel like i heard this over a thousand times about Classic, regarding many of its aspects.

"no changes? Dead on arrival!"
"layers? Dead in weeks!""
"gated content? Dead in months"
etc, etc, etc...

TBC actually being one of the most popular expansions in WoW, i severely doubt it's success will hang on those aspects you are mentioning.

[Unholyground]

Literally no sane guild will care in TBC since everyone brings something needed to the table in the form of group wide buffs. I was a ret paladin in TBC with an Enhancement Shaman in the grp and I was topping meters in Kara back in the day for example.

[Mosha]

That's the magic of an mmo, huge as it is. Every little change will have bugs. It's not just "deploy patch 1, deploy patch 2, deploy patch 3".

Especially having TBC on a 'foreign client' (Classic is actually Legion 7.3.5 client, we don't actually know if TBC will be a separate client or a fork just like Classic is), there's no clue on what problems would arise every single patch, and don't forget newer hardwares, software, drivers, API changes, etc, and they're running Classic with a skeleton crew, TBC will probably be aswell. Can you imagine the shitstorm of gamebreaking bugs every single patch deployment? Might aswell just run the most stable (and vastly tested) patch available and have peace of mind.

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I don't mean to disagree entirely with you, you make some good points, but i feel like i heard this over a thousand times about Classic, regarding many of its aspects.

"no changes? Dead on arrival!"
"layers? Dead in weeks!""
"gated content? Dead in months"
etc, etc, etc...

TBC actually being one of the most popular expansions in WoW, i severely doubt it's success will hang on those aspects you are mentioning.

Ok but regarding the patches, how do you know this I’m specifically asking for some sort of evidence that this will happen. Classic itself has had quite a few patches, and I’m not recalling any game breaking bugs that arose from these at all. And these changes to classic were WAY more intrusive than just adjusting some numbers.

Tbc needs to be patch progressive for sure. Classic was understandable, tbc will be ruined for a TON of players imo.

[Polymorphin]

TBC Arena is RMP VS RMP.

[Kralljin]

TBC actually being one of the most popular expansions in WoW, i severely doubt it's success will hang on those aspects you are mentioning.

If people are able to skip past most of its progression because the content is undertuned due to increased player knowledge (or were simply blocked due to attunements, which are not there in a 2.4 state), then yes, the expansion will sink quite rapidly.

Anything below MH will become flyover content, Arena (which already stands on shaky legs because TBC PvP aged poorly) will devolve pretty quickly into a oneshot fest because S1 gear doesn't hold a candle to MH gear.

Mind you, TBC is not Classic with a long leveling phase to see the endgame, even casual players will hit 70 within a month or less, then the endgame needs to carry it.
If that falls apart because of a botched content release schedule, that's just stupid.

Also, i don't think they *shuld* go for an extremely authentic release, because it's just a mistake, patching classes from 2.0 to 2.4 is neat, but leaves way too many holes for exploits.
Harder PvE content would be nice but also not the most crucial criteria.

But as far as content release is concerned, taking 2.4 and just plastering a release schedule akin to the original one over it sets TBC up for failure, which quite frankly is even a loss for Blizzard because this whole legacy server thing is a money printing machine for Blizzard, self saboting that success makes no sense from a business perspective.

TBC Arena is RMP VS RMP.

Your post is missing a lot of W's and D's in my opinion.

[Mosha]

If people are able to skip past most of its progression because the content is undertuned due to increased player knowledge (or were simply blocked due to attunements, which are not there in a 2.4 state), then yes, the expansion will sink quite rapidly.

Anything below MH will become flyover content, Arena (which already stands on shaky legs because TBC PvP aged poorly) will devolve pretty quickly into a oneshot fest because S1 gear doesn't hold a candle to MH gear.

Mind you, TBC is not Classic with a long leveling phase to see the endgame, even casual players will hit 70 within a month or less, then the endgame needs to carry it.
If that falls apart because of a botched content release schedule, that's just stupid.

Also, i don't think they go for an extremely authentic release, because it's just a mistake, patching classes from 2.0 to 2.4 is neat, but leaves way too many holes for exploits.
Harder PvE content would be nice but also not the most crucial criteria.

But as far as content release is concerned, taking 2.4 and just plastering a release schedule akin to the original one over it sets TBC up for failure, which quite frankly is even a loss for Blizzard because this whole legacy server thing is a money printing machine for Blizzard, self saboting that success makes no sense from a business perspective.

Your post is missing a lot of W's and D's in my opinion.

Agree with everything besides the class balance thing, well not so much what you said about it because it is true but because of what we are getting anyway.

The game is going to get exploited no matter what, that’s just how it’s going to be. I think them leaving it at a static state in terms of class balance will allow those exploits to be used all expansion long and create extremely dull scenarios in things like arena.

Balancing the classes through patches makes for a more fun, less scripted and predetermined meta. Yeah we ‘know what’s going to happen’ so people can plan for it, I get it. But WAY less so than releasing the classes as is and leaving them in a static state.