TBC class viability and PVE

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I made a video about my thoughts on Fury Warrior in TBC and how the perception has changed from 2008 to now, literally a complete phase shift in how people think about it. Though your summary is closer to the truth than the memeworthy discussions I see elsewhere. I raided as Fury/Arms back in 2007/2008 through all content up to Mu'ru and then I did it again in 2017, though only through to killing Archimonde.

People have this idea that TBC is like "only bring ranged" and "Warriors only play Arms".. When the world firsts and speedrun kills were stacking rogues (3-4) and Arms Warriors barely got a look in until Sunwell hit and scaling blew through the roof. Even then, give or take some obvious requirements it aint gonna matter that much what comp you run beyond those requirments.

I'm going to be for the 3rd time maining Fury Warrior and offspeccing tank, with the odd flavour night as Arms. TBC balancing is decent, there are raid spots for pretty much everyone.

The issue for Fury Warriors and Rogues is that they compete with your second Mage and your BM Hunters for a raid spot and not other melee.
You always take 1 Ret, 1-2 Enh Shamans (2nd can be Resto), 1 Arms Warrior and 1 Feral (who serves as third tank) ...that's 5-6 melee spots taken up just by your "buff bots". Fury Warriors literally bring zero utility to your raids apart from their DPS, that puts them in the same "group" as Mages, Warlocks and BM Hunters and the simple fact of the matter is that Fury Warriors can't compete with any of those specs until they get Glavies. It's "similar" with Rogues but they do bring Armor Reduction which can be really strong, however this does come at the cost of your Prot Warrior threat as Imp Expose Armor overrides Sunder Armor which is a big threat reduction for your Prot Warrior. Once your Feral Druid is geared enough to be your MT you can get a Rogue into your raid, but that leaves only 1 Warrior to spread Battle Shout to your 2 physical groups. It's doable, but kinda annoying.

[clevin]

Once again, people are saying 'viable' when they mean 'optimal'. You don't need 5 shamans to clear anything before Brutallus. Pretty much everyone is viable. Some are better than others, yes and you do want to look at buffs brought, etc. But once you get the basic buffs and important utility, everyone is viable in the sense that, assuming people play decently and are geared for the content, stuff will be killed.

The question is do you need or want to be highly optimized? If so, why? are you trying for server firsts? Top 50 guilds? Or are you simply tryharding where you blindly copy people who are a top 50 world raid when you have neither the time nor the people to do that?

[Rageadon]

The question is do you need or want to be highly optimized? If so, why? are you trying for server firsts? Top 50 guilds? Or are you simply tryharding where you blindly copy people who are a top 50 world raid when you have neither the time nor the people to do that?

Most guilds will aim for highly optimized rather than trying to fix problems with the players themself, hence why guilds breaks apart

[Metaslave]

I think people needlessly obsess over having an optimized comp, when it's best to just optimize with the players you have available.
Maybe in Sunwell it matters but prior to that you can run a wide variety of setups.

[Argorwal]

Most guilds will aim for highly optimized rather than trying to fix problems with the players themself, hence why guilds breaks apart

Pretty much.

I’ve been in normal raid pugs in retail where people start blaming class balance for why they are wiping.

It’s like...maybe it’s the player that sucks and NOT the class? But of course getting almost anyone to admit it’s their own skill that is the problem is very difficult.

[Bigbazz]

Raid comps are gonna vary massively, and we're arguing here over tiny irrelevant margins as if they are much larger ones. For the average guild/player this isn't gonna matter at all. We're having this discussion about super easy TBC while my super casual retail guild has killed Mythic Castle raid bosses (which is harder than all of TBC by a lot) bosses with 3 dps Warriors in the raid while Arms in SL is literally competing for weakest raid spec in the game, other than the one place it's decent (P3 Sire), or with 19 people.

The issue for Fury Warriors and Rogues is that they compete with your second Mage and your BM Hunters for a raid spot and not other melee.
You always take 1 Ret, 1-2 Enh Shamans (2nd can be Resto), 1 Arms Warrior and 1 Feral (who serves as third tank) ...that's 5-6 melee spots taken up just by your "buff bots". Fury Warriors literally bring zero utility to your raids apart from their DPS, that puts them in the same "group" as Mages, Warlocks and BM Hunters and the simple fact of the matter is that Fury Warriors can't compete with any of those specs until they get Glavies. It's "similar" with Rogues but they do bring Armor Reduction which can be really strong, however this does come at the cost of your Prot Warrior threat as Imp Expose Armor overrides Sunder Armor which is a big threat reduction for your Prot Warrior. Once your Feral Druid is geared enough to be your MT you can get a Rogue into your raid, but that leaves only 1 Warrior to spread Battle Shout to your 2 physical groups. It's doable, but kinda annoying.

Arms Warrior is only really worth taking at Sunwell level, you need to offset the dps difference of Arms (which is one of the weaker ST specs) and Fury (one of the stronger ST specs). Fury loses less dps by keeping up improved demo shout (utility), less dps helping with applying sunder (minor utility), brings improved battle/commanding shout (prot can but doesn't spec that far into Fury, Arms does). Rogue may or may not bring exposed armor 2/2 (it must be talented, and it's not part of the default combat rogue build).

Ret was not a common raid class until Sunwell, it's still only an optional pick then. Fury Warriors are competing with Rogues for dps slots (of which every world first took 2-4) and really the only disadvantage a Fury Warrior has compared to a Rogue is single target due to threat limitations, they are extremely close on output (though Rogue is behind in early tiers due to rage from raid damage) but Rogues can reset threat allowing them to keep pumping. If threat issues aren't so relevant Fury becomes more attractive.

And it's as I showed in my video, and the reason I made a video. People will talk talk talk about a lot of imaginary scenarios where Fury gets left behind yet Fury Warriors were regularly competing at the top in 2008. I showed examples in my video at T4/T5 content level where Fury Warrior is either one of the strongest specs, or outright broken. So long as there is a Winfury totem down they are strong, if you give them a Feral too they are godly, the utility is the talented shouts (demo/battle/commanding)

Week 1 into T5 I will as a Fury Warrior have my BIS weapon until Warglaives, I will have the BIS weapon of T4 before going into Karazhan and with a tiered release Fury will outgear its rage starvation issues before entering T5.. You will probably week 1 be doing the speed kill strategies, where Fury Warrior is incredible due to having stronger cleave than any other spec.



Anyway I'm looking forward to more of this. Back then I was ranking top 20, but no rank 1 action.

[BobAwesome]

I recall Warlocks toping charts just by spamming Shadowbolt thanks to sacrificing their succubus giving +15% shadow damage and in conjunction with +10% shadow damage from Shadow Priest Shadow Weaving.

[Fkiolaris]

I don't care what people say, I am go to TBC as a feral cat as I did the first time around

[Hexme]

Ret is a little better in tbc still a meme but you human male paladins have to wait for wotlk to really shine sorry

You must have ignored that Alliance Paladins are getting seal of blood in tbc

[Bigbazz]

I don't care what people say, I am go to TBC as a feral cat as I did the first time around

We had a Feral cat in our private server guild. It's a bit of a pain farming the gear pieces you need but you're loved for the 5% crit and utility and the single target is good enough to be taken, that said not gonna be high in demand if you're not gonna gear a tank offspec too.

[arkanon]

Are bear tanks viable for 5man? I started after T6 and was Resto.

In short, yes, absolutely. I tanked all 5 mans in tbc on all tanks and had no issues. Are some easier / more efficient with certain tanks? Yeah, absolutely, but considering the low difficulty, it was never so much of an issue I didn't get invited or the run was abandoned. Lets be honest, we are talking TBC normal/heroic dungeons, not a M+20 - play what you enjoy, youll do fine.

As many have said over the last few days; TBC will be harder than vanilla - but considering how simple vanilla was, the bar was very low. Everything will still get steamrolled by the higher end players, and wont pose much of a challenge for anyone with a coordinated guild. I think the pugging community might hit some roadblocks, just like with normal difficulty in current raids, but for the most part, everything will be 'viable' for all content.

[Echo of Soul]

If history is any indication the most toxic players gravitate towards melee specs (primarily warriors) and wouldn't touch a caster class with a 10 foot pole. The PVE environment will probably be a lot more pleasant in TBC because of this since they now bring no utility and not particularly good DPS either. These types of players will most likely either quit, stay in classic or transition to arenas.

Ret paladins, enhancement shamans and feral druids tend to attract more mild mannered types of players and since you need those more than you do warriors and rogues it's a win-win.

[arkanon]

The question is do you need or want to be highly optimized? If so, why? are you trying for server firsts? Top 50 guilds? Or are you simply tryharding where you blindly copy people who are a top 50 world raid when you have neither the time nor the people to do that?

This is an issue in all forms of the game currently - and it becomes REALLY obvious when a lower skilled player copy/pastes some world first raiders build and attempts to replicate their numbers. Truth is, they A) Dont have the gear required to make the spec work and B) They play it so poorly and suboptimal, they make a fool outa themselves. Many of these players would be far better off starting with the passive heavy build and learning the class / spec / content before trying to mirror the build of some world first raider.

My advice to people in heroic and below in retail, and anyone looking to play classic tbc is the same; Play what you enjoy, and you will have more success - you will be more motivated to put in the work and grind things out if you enjoy what you are playing. You are far more likely to hang in there when progression hits a wall if you enjoy what you are playing. You are highly likely to produce better numbers even with a suboptimal spec if you enjoy it.

- - - Updated - - -

If history is any indication the most toxic players gravitate towards melee specs ....

Ret paladins, enhancement shamans and feral druids tend to attract more mild mannered types of players

What an entirely confusing post. Please provide something to back up this absurd claim regarding "history" showing that melee players are more toxic?

[tru]

Are bear tanks viable for 5man? I started after T6 and was Resto.

My entire bc experience had a war mt and bear ot for our groups.

[Musta]

SPs were top dpsers in sunwell. I WAS THERE.

[OokOok]

A few observations resulting from a lot of experience with retail, classic, and the unspeakable.
I hope I can help people decide what to play and how to play in the coming expansion.


PVE will be easy. In my opinion - easier than non wordbuffed Naxxramas (excluding Sunwell). There will be outliers like entering Hellfire Citadel heroics on your blue/green geared tank and getting pummeled into the ground by muscular orcs, but those will only last a few weeks max, then you will have farmed/cafted your gear and become familiar with what to pull and how.

It will be possible to clear all content with multiple suboptimal specs like shadow priests, but most guild will continue to metaslave and will try to produce "optimal" comps. This means some popular classes will struggle for raidspots (sup fury warrs).

"Pre nerf content" - one of the selling points of how TBC is going to be "harder" - don't believe it, it won't matter. First of all - only a handful of bosses were meaningfully changed and even then it was rather a different version of mechanics (like Solarian pre-nerf bouncing debuff or Mother Shaz prismatic auras) than a big difference in difficulty. Asmongold just made a video talking about big scary mind control on Vashj tank. Guess what - just bring an offtank to taunt the boss Or bring five, because the DPS check will be irrelevant.

The only thing that will really matter are 360 degree (chain) cleaves that were a thing before 2.1. They are deadly to melee and require knowledge of the mobs. Sometimes melee just don't go in on packs at all due to those. Unless they are fury in plate




Spec rating - in order of best to worst (generalized, can't really compare tank healer to a raid healer).

Tanks:
1. Paladin - there will be at least one in every raid, and if bosses hit for what they did in retail TBC, they might be able to maintank everything up to Sunwell with good healers and/or externals. As a bonus they can solo farm places like Strat/Scholo for 200-300g/hr (or more - depending on the realmeconomy). Best 5man tanks by MILES.
2. Warrior - awesome single target just like in classic, but severly limited in AOE tanking. High skillcap unlike "drop conc" paladin (a meme... or is it?)
3. Druid - quite decent with 2.1 itemization, threat machine for Sunwell bosses, most likely will be required by many guilds at that point.

DPS:
1. Warlocks - very good single target, awesome AOE, but no cooldowns. The faster bosses die, the worse locks are. They will be present in speedrun meta, and also in more casual guilds. Don't worry about there being a lot of them - it will be easy to find guild spots.
2. Hunters - awesome single target, crappy AOE, great cooldowns. They will not be in speedrun meta, but standard guilds are very likely to have a "hunter group" (at least a feral, maybe even enha too). Many spots, easy to get into guilds. Considerably higher skill ceiling than Warlock due to pet control and punishing pet mechanics. The best dps class in Sunwell.
3. Mages - mediocre as frost or fire in T4, extremely good as Arcane in T5 with proper gear. Spots limited dur to requiring innervates to perform best. Better aoe than locks and whats extremely important - a LOT less threat generated. Fade off hard in T6 and beyond.
4. Warriors/Ret Paladins/Rogues - with proper group/debuff setup fury can be very competitive with 2.1 itemization and BIS on cleave fights. Problem is there will usually be 1 spot for them in a normal guild. Arms warr will likely be brought for debuff, just like one ret pala. One rogue spot might or might not get filled to gear a guy for Sunwell progression. No reason to bring more, they will struggle before T6 gear.
5. Boomkins - 1 spot in warlock group. Highest DPS on most fights among hybrid casters if played well.
6. Ele Shammies - 1 spot in warlock group.
7. Enchancement Shammies - might bring one to buff melee group, not guaranteed. Brings lust, thats a big plus.
8. Shadow Priests - 1 spot in healer group if guild struggles on mana for some reason and to buff warlocks. Unlikely to be really needed due to fights being short and healer mana not being relevant unless it comes down to dropping to smth like 2-3 healer comps. 1 spot max, crap dps.


Healers:
1. Shaman - you bring lust and that makes you BIS. Multiple spots
2. Resto Druid - best raidhealer. One spot.
3. Priest - one spot.
4. Pala - tank healer, one spot. Might have to compete with shaman, depending on how the guild values blessing vs additional lust. High output will not be needed in the unbuffed content state.


There are big differences in pre-bis gearing of some classes, for example Warlocks are going to be very expensive while hunters are pretty cheap. Farming primals will be an absolute cancer on populated realms even with layering. Think Ungoro mafia but almost everywhere.

Feel free to ask more specific questions.

Mage does not have better aoe than warlock in TBC, SoC is the best AOE in the expansion.

[Fisher557]

What an entirely confusing post. Please provide something to back up this absurd claim regarding "history" showing that melee players are more toxic?

I mean certainly you understand this guy was just going off his personal experiences and right lol

[arkanon]

I mean certainly you understand this guy was just going off his personal experiences and right lol

Well if thats the case, the comment really should be "I once played with 2 warriors who were both dicks, but I played with a druid, shammy, and ret pally who were all pretty chill".

If I once met a guy named Barry who was a bit of an asshole, I don't start running around saying "history has shows us that people named Barry are assholes", especially when the people I am saying it to have never met the Barry I am talking about...

I mean certainly you understand this guy is confusing his EXTRMELY limited personal experience with a historical trend right lol.

[donjn]

Not sure I agree with Shadow Priests have the worst DPS overall in TBC.

[Fisher557]

Well if thats the case, the comment really should be "I once played with 2 warriors who were both dicks, but I played with a druid, shammy, and ret pally who were all pretty chill".

If I once met a guy named Barry who was a bit of an asshole, I don't start running around saying "history has shows us that people named Barry are assholes", especially when the people I am saying it to have never met the Barry I am talking about...

I mean certainly you understand this guy is confusing his EXTRMELY limited personal experience with a historical trend right lol.

So you’ve never made blanket statements over your personal experiences? Lol what is with this forum and taking everything extremely literal. Like imagine in real life someone was like “yeah you know those raiders fans, throughout history they just get crazy” and then someone walking in and pushing their glasses back up on the bridge of their nose and going “actually do you have ANY proof of the history behind how raiders fans act”.

JFC dude lol.