TBC class viability and PVE

[ydraw]

Especially not if you're in greens and you're a new warlock who doesn't have a guild, proven track record, or any idea how to play the class..

Is this real life?

You won't be in greens because crafted tailoring armor is better than T5 raid gear.

And knowing how to play the class is spamming shadow bolt.

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Also they can use leather gear which would otherwise be wasted because you only have one rogue and maybe a feral druid in your raid.

So can hunters, in fact most of their BIS gear is leather.

[stevenho]

Err, if everyone and their mom rerolls lock, then you won't have an easy time finding guild spots. Especially not if you're in greens and you're a new warlock who doesn't have a guild, proven track record, or any idea how to play the class. Most good guilds already have their TBC roster somewhat finalized. There will be dozens of flavor of the month hunter/lock rerolls looking for that same spot in guilds.

That's a common misconception. It is much easier to find a raid spot as a lock than any of the one-spot-only classes like rogue, fury or moonkin. Even though the class is more popular. It has been this way on servers that shall not be named for years.

[crusadernero]

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.

Im actually going to level my Paladin to 60 in classic and take him to BC. Will play ret the whole way. I know its a meme spec in classic, but raids are so easy there so yeah.

I mained Protection warrior whole vanilla and BC back in the day. Tanked all there was except for naxx. This time around im going to smack around on my Ret Paladin in BC, dont care what the meta is. I'll bring my judgements!

[stevenho]

Ret is useful, just make sure you secure your 1 spot in a raiding guild as early as possible.

[ifrah]

Yep, as already said many times, every single spec can have a meaningful role in raid. This does not mean that all raids will have each and every one of them represented, nor does it mean that many of them will be given more than one single spot. These 0-1/raid delicacies such as ret/prot pala, moonkin druid etc. are in many guilds reserved for the more longer term trusted members, officers and their buddies, or just for players who have a proven track record of high attendance. Therefore if you're looking for a guild, you'll likely in a better position if you haven't pigeonholed yourself in such 1/25 role.

[Bigbazz]

Yep, as already said many times, every single spec can have a meaningful role in raid. This does not mean that all raids will have each and every one of them represented, nor does it mean that many of them will be given more than one single spot. These 0-1/raid delicacies such as ret/prot pala, moonkin druid etc. are in many guilds reserved for the more longer term trusted members, officers and their buddies, or just for players who have a proven track record of high attendance. Therefore if you're looking for a guild, you'll likely in a better position if you haven't pigeonholed yourself in such 1/25 role.

I mean that's true but I think it's overstated, the amount of times I've raided with several 1/25 classes in a raid I can't even count. Unless you're playing in a guild where it's really balls to the wall optimisation all the time you're just going to run what you have online, what you can pickup from recruitment, what people are playing.

You can cover pretty much everything you need in a raid with 21-22 slots, you've plenty of room to play with those last couple of spots and still have what is in effect a generic optimal raid setup. The rest depends on what stage of progression the server or your guild is at, the boss you're working on and the gear/skill of player options.

Class stacking to insanity was a thing on Classic Vanilla because some specs are literally useless and others are literally broken overpowered, that just isn't the case in TBC, it was more the case in Castle Nathria in Shadowlands, and the vast majority of guilds run some sort of sub-optimal raid group in Castle every single week.

[stevenho]

You are both right.
1/25 classes WILL be staffed by "friends of GM", especially glaive classes
Also there WILL be more of them in more casual guilds. And stuff will still die.
Depends on the guild and its goals.

[munkeyinorbit]

Look! I found one of the guys with no clue, but still has an opinion!

Says the guy who prob thinks SP is a good dos spec. I'm pretty sure they topped out at about 1500 dps.

[ifrah]

I mean that's true but I think it's overstated, the amount of times I've raided with several 1/25 classes in a raid I can't even count. Unless you're playing in a guild where it's really balls to the wall optimisation all the time you're just going to run what you have online, what you can pickup from recruitment, what people are playing.

You can cover pretty much everything you need in a raid with 21-22 slots, you've plenty of room to play with those last couple of spots and still have what is in effect a generic optimal raid setup. The rest depends on what stage of progression the server or your guild is at, the boss you're working on and the gear/skill of player options.

Class stacking to insanity was a thing on Classic Vanilla because some specs are literally useless and others are literally broken overpowered, that just isn't the case in TBC, it was more the case in Castle Nathria in Shadowlands, and the vast majority of guilds run some sort of sub-optimal raid group in Castle every single week.

Agree, there was a bit poor wording, and also one-sided view on my side earlier. These "0-1" classes are surely nowhere strictly such unless you're in some draconian minmaxing environment. The raid compositions I remember from my TBC raids compared to these optimized ones are vastly different, sometimes even horrible, but things died nevertheless.
To rephrase the earlier message, the 0-1 is the optimal representation which does not take in account the availability of quality players. The difference between having a warlock or a mage on the "nth dps spot" is miniscule in terms of the ability to kill a given boss, unless this missing class+spec represents one of the rare hard requirements here and there (e.g. you do need at least one warlock to tank the other eredar twin, and pretty much a prot pala for the m'uru void ele adds. Maybe. That's at least what I remember).

[Monteverdi]

Feel free to contribute with your thoughts on the subject.
Just make sure they are not 14 years old

I thought about going into more detail, I just didn't want to derail things. And yeah, a lot of my info is 14 years old. Certainly much of my experience is, as I've not really played on private servers aside from a sandbox I spun up locally for some testing. However, that doesn't make the info wrong.

There's a *ton* of misinformation out there on the forums, youtube, etc. Some of the common things I'm seeing are people *vastly* overvaluing weapon damage, falling into the Reckoning Trap, and thinking that paladin is as a simple as 'constantly consecrate' and you're an AoE king. TBC prot pally has some pretty complex choices with gearing and playstyle that don't follow tanking norms from before and after. It's a dance between making sure your gear provides crit immunity and uncrushability (with Holy Shield up) while at the same time making sure you're able to dish out enough threat, and a huge chunk of that threat comes passive sources that people minimize or overlook altogether (most reflect on block via Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield, Shield Spikes, other on-block effects, paired with thorns effects like Ret aura, Thorns, etc.). Consecrate is a phenomenal AoE tool, but a lot of new prot paladins are going to come in thinking that's where it stops, and they're going to be very bad.

The other thing I'd point out on how people are misunderstanding paladin is Righteous Defense. I see a lot of people talking about how the addition of Righteous Defense - finally giving Paladins a 'taunt' - is what makes them viable in TBC. While it's certainly a welcome tool, it's got a lot of limitations that a lot of these people aren't thinking about, namely that it has very little use in raids, with bosses being untauntable. I even see some people on youtube talking about how one of TBC prot pally strengths is 'threat control' when it's undoubtedly one of the biggest *weaknesses* of a paladin tank due not only to just how much of our threat comes from those passive sources, but also due to the fact that our mana regen (which, another aside, the mana regen is one of the biggest reasons that TBC prot is viable where Classic Prot is not, though that often gets overlooked) is based on our incoming healing (but, importantly, not overheals) which means if we're not the active target and not taking damage, we're very quickly going to run OOM while trying to build aggro from a very limited kit.

Most, if all, of these points aren't in direct response to you, mind you. Just points for discussion regarding the idea you bring up in the OP that prot paladins have a 'low skillcap'. A lot of people are gonna roll new prot paladins in TBC Classic thinking this, and they are going to be really bad and sorely disppointed.

[Brotherman]

I was there too, ahh the memories

People have to remember not to judge Shadow Priests by what we were at the beginning of TBC. We came in a little rough, but after a few patches were very good. Come Black Temple I would be Top 5 raid dps on bosses. By patch 2.4.3, there was no debate whether shadow sp gear was lock or spriest, we'd earned respect. The only deficit is the lack of an AOE. Multi-dotting is ok, but my god, I wish they would have given us Mind Sear earlier. Personally, I'd bring 1 sp for 10 mans, 2 for 25s. And as always, bring the player not the spec.

The lack of AOE would be the argument to minimize Shadow Priests if you're in a try-hard guild looking for world-first speed runs.

[stevenho]

I thought about going into more detail, I just didn't want to derail things. And yeah, a lot of my info is 14 years old. Certainly much of my experience is, as I've not really played on private servers aside from a sandbox I spun up locally for some testing. However, that doesn't make the info wrong.

There's a *ton* of misinformation out there on the forums, youtube, etc. Some of the common things I'm seeing are people *vastly* overvaluing weapon damage, falling into the Reckoning Trap, and thinking that paladin is as a simple as 'constantly consecrate' and you're an AoE king. TBC prot pally has some pretty complex choices with gearing and playstyle that don't follow tanking norms from before and after. It's a dance between making sure your gear provides crit immunity and uncrushability (with Holy Shield up) while at the same time making sure you're able to dish out enough threat, and a huge chunk of that threat comes passive sources that people minimize or overlook altogether (most reflect on block via Blessing of Sanctuary, Holy Shield, Shield Spikes, other on-block effects, paired with thorns effects like Ret aura, Thorns, etc.). Consecrate is a phenomenal AoE tool, but a lot of new prot paladins are going to come in thinking that's where it stops, and they're going to be very bad.

The other thing I'd point out on how people are misunderstanding paladin is Righteous Defense. I see a lot of people talking about how the addition of Righteous Defense - finally giving Paladins a 'taunt' - is what makes them viable in TBC. While it's certainly a welcome tool, it's got a lot of limitations that a lot of these people aren't thinking about, namely that it has very little use in raids, with bosses being untauntable. I even see some people on youtube talking about how one of TBC prot pally strengths is 'threat control' when it's undoubtedly one of the biggest *weaknesses* of a paladin tank due not only to just how much of our threat comes from those passive sources, but also due to the fact that our mana regen (which, another aside, the mana regen is one of the biggest reasons that TBC prot is viable where Classic Prot is not, though that often gets overlooked) is based on our incoming healing (but, importantly, not overheals) which means if we're not the active target and not taking damage, we're very quickly going to run OOM while trying to build aggro from a very limited kit.

Most, if all, of these points aren't in direct response to you, mind you. Just points for discussion regarding the idea you bring up in the OP that prot paladins have a 'low skillcap'. A lot of people are gonna roll new prot paladins in TBC Classic thinking this, and they are going to be really bad and sorely disppointed.

My skillcap comment was relative - IMO it is easier to play a pala tank than warr tank at any given skill level. That is not a knock, that's a legit advice I can give to people thinking about going pink. For me it will be interesting to see how pally MTs will fare threat wise on bosses T6 and later.

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I was there too, ahh the memories

People have to remember not to judge Shadow Priests by what we were at the beginning of TBC. We came in a little rough, but after a few patches were very good. Come Black Temple I would be Top 5 raid dps on bosses. By patch 2.4.3, there was no debate whether shadow sp gear was lock or spriest, we'd earned respect. The only deficit is the lack of an AOE. Multi-dotting is ok, but my god, I wish they would have given us Mind Sear earlier. Personally, I'd bring 1 sp for 10 mans, 2 for 25s. And as always, bring the player not the spec.

The lack of AOE would be the argument to minimize Shadow Priests if you're in a try-hard guild looking for world-first speed runs.

I think you will be surprised to see how different it will be 14 years later.

[ShimmerSwirl]

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.

Im curious where you get the idea that DPS is going to be way better than it was originally. People weren't clueless in TBC like they were in Vanilla. Websites like Elitist Jerks and tools like Rawr were around and people knew about gear optimization, specs, buffs etc. Yet even top guilds (im not talking Method but "normal" top guilds) still struggled with dps, going oom, not able to keep tanks alive etc. Why so confident that this will all go away?

[TigTone]

In terms of DPS and Healing which class was more entertaining between Shaman and Paladin.

It has been so long I don’t remember how each played.

[Naxxramas91]

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.

Op has too much misinformation to handle. Please ignore this shit post.

[Bigbazz]

Im curious where you get the idea that DPS is going to be way better than it was originally. People weren't clueless in TBC like they were in Vanilla. Websites like Elitist Jerks and tools like Rawr were around and people knew about gear optimization, specs, buffs etc. Yet even top guilds (im not talking Method but "normal" top guilds) still struggled with dps, going oom, not able to keep tanks alive etc. Why so confident that this will all go away?

I can give you some reasons

1 : 2.4.3 classes/gear - I assume badge vendor stuff and sunwell isle will obviously all be closed off at the start, but we're still gonna be likely running the end version of the game, where classes were considerably different to how they started the expansion.

2. Availability of information, Elitist Jerks was a great source of information but consider how widespread and further developed that information is today, people also have way more gold to do silly things like levelling enchanting to enchant a ring and then dropping it again for another profession. It's just more widespread these days and will be known from day 1, not discovered over time.

3. Consumables - I remember back in the day people being really lax with consumable use, only using haste pots on big bosses like KT/Archimonde. On a private server I had people popping full consumes on dungeon bosses or early Karazhan bosses. The whole popularity of dps logs will push that, in 2008 we didn't start going hard on consumable perfection until Sunwell.

4. LW Drums - Blizz may change this but almost nobody I knew had LW for drums prior to Sunwell, and even then only top guilds did it by and large. These days if LW doesn't get changed even casual guilds will have a healthy dose of LW drums even in T4. On P.server we had 4 haste drummers + 1 AP drummer in a group as early as Gruul progression (which wasn't very long progression, to be clear).

5. Borderline exploits - How about summoning some shaman alts into a raid, having them BL then booting them to re-inv your main shamans which get summoned in and then you pull with BL up and available immediately? The imagination of players with regards to finding ways to cheese things has evolved. Can hope Blizz breaks all this dumb shit though.

6. Raid Comp - Larger servers with more clued in players means more guilds will run optimised raid comps more often. This is definitely going to evolve through Classic though as so many people think they have a clue and are clueless to the point of hilarity. There are a tonne of "Classic Andys" who are looking at TBC through a Vanilla looking glass who understand very little about how TBC is an entirely different game. It's closer to WOTLK than it is to Vanilla and TBC is nothing like WOTLK.

[clevin]

Not only did I, I played a shadow priest. Well. But we were not top tier DPS in TBC. Anyone how says they were topping the meters in their raid as a DPS either played with crap DPS or that raid didn't have locks, hunters, mages (early) or rogues (later).

NOTE: When I say spriest wasn't top tier DPS, that's indisputable from the logs... Aside from some very short bursty fights, any fight that lasts for a bit will see shadow priests move down the rankings (assuming other DPS is equally skilled and geared). That does NOT mean you don't want them... they do provide boosts to healers and to other casters whose performance could be hampered by mana.

The problem is that tools don't measure that well. If a mage can cast N more spells per minute because of the mana regen provided by the spriest, that damage all gets credited to the mage, none to the spriest that enabled it. IF healers can heal for longer because of the regen and have to heal less because of the passive heals provided by VE, the shadow priest kind of gets some credit for the latter but again, none for the former.

However, there's no benefit to having 2+ spriest in a group with the mages. The regen doesnt stack, so one spriest provides all the benefit you're going to get for the mages. That means that if you DO have another spot for a caster, you want to bring one that can generate more personal DPS than a shadow priest.

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Come Black Temple I would be Top 5 raid dps on bosses. ... Personally, I'd bring 1 sp for 10 mans, 2 for 25s. And as always, bring the player not the spec..

If shadow was top 5 DPS there's no functional reason to limit them. But wait...

[Recovery]

Im curious where you get the idea that DPS is going to be way better than it was originally. People weren't clueless in TBC like they were in Vanilla. Websites like Elitist Jerks and tools like Rawr were around and people knew about gear optimization, specs, buffs etc. Yet even top guilds (im not talking Method but "normal" top guilds) still struggled with dps, going oom, not able to keep tanks alive etc. Why so confident that this will all go away?

It will go away because not only do people have the information that they had then via EJ and rawr and stuff... they have 13 more years of information gained form private servers and just playing wow in general. I mean, just watch kill vods from that time. 90% of the people are still clicking and keyboard turning. even then.

As it happened in classic, most good guilds will down ever raid within 24 hours of release.

However, when youre all bored after your 3 hour raid nights, i challenge you to come hang out with me in 3v3! That wont be as easy.

[ShimmerSwirl]

I can give you some reasons

1 : 2.4.3 classes/gear - I assume badge vendor stuff and sunwell isle will obviously all be closed off at the start, but we're still gonna be likely running the end version of the game, where classes were considerably different to how they started the expansion.

Is this confirmed? 2.4.3 did bring some buffs, and haste was a much bigger thing. But I remember when that patch came out and its not like guilds starting downing bosses all of a sudden that they couldn't kill before. It was a mild boost at best.

2. Availability of information, Elitist Jerks was a great source of information but consider how widespread and further developed that information is today, people also have way more gold to do silly things like levelling enchanting to enchant a ring and then dropping it again for another profession. It's just more widespread these days and will be known from day 1, not discovered over time.

My memory may have failed me, but I believe it was not possible to do that. If you dropped enchanting, the enchantment on the ring became inactive.

3. Consumables - I remember back in the day people being really lax with consumable use, only using haste pots on big bosses like KT/Archimonde. On a private server I had people popping full consumes on dungeon bosses or early Karazhan bosses. The whole popularity of dps logs will push that, in 2008 we didn't start going hard on consumable perfection until Sunwell.

Could definitely be a thing, but the ability to do this is dependent on the presumption of not dying. Eg if people are wiping on Kara bosses due to tank deaths and they have to constantly reoil/buff/potion they might not be inclined to spend that kind of gold every single pull. DPS logs were a thing back then too. Top DPS was posted in raid chat after every pull, and on log sites after the raid.

5. Borderline exploits - How about summoning some shaman alts into a raid, having them BL then booting them to re-inv your main shamans which get summoned in and then you pull with BL up and available immediately? The imagination of players with regards to finding ways to cheese things has evolved. Can hope Blizz breaks all this dumb shit though.

Is this actually a thing? By the time the alt shaman hearths out and the new shaman is summoned back and the tanks pulls and builds threat for a couple seconds, how much of BL is actually left? Not to mention that the exhaustion debuff would make this mostly impossible.

6. Raid Comp - Larger servers with more clued in players means more guilds will run optimised raid comps more often. This is definitely going to evolve through Classic though as so many people think they have a clue and are clueless to the point of hilarity. There are a tonne of "Classic Andys" who are looking at TBC through a Vanilla looking glass who understand very little about how TBC is an entirely different game. It's closer to WOTLK than it is to Vanilla and TBC is nothing like WOTLK.

When I raided, raid composition was very much a thing that was paid close attention to. Groups were built around maximizing the synergy between classes and buffs. The GM of my guild was the first to ring the gong during the original AQ, and the guild was top two during TBC. Players were all expected to be fully flasked and buffed for the entire raid and read up on boss strategies before every fight. We had class leads for every class that inspected gear, talents and enchants to make sure everything was optimal. Players would DPS training dummies while being watched and critiqued by guild leaders. Everyone was on voice chat of course. Im saying all this to say that TBC bosses were legitimately hard for a guild that very much so knew what it was doing.

I admit I have not played private TBC, but in light of my experiences it is just very hard for me to fathom that the data of those servers is accurate if fresh 70s are speed running through bosses. I know players have gotten better and have more knowledge, but I also know that myself and the people I played with were looking for every edge and optimization as well.

[Bigbazz]

Is this confirmed? 2.4.3 did bring some buffs, and haste was a much bigger thing. But I remember when that patch came out and its not like guilds starting downing bosses all of a sudden that they couldn't kill before. It was a mild boost at best.


My memory may have failed me, but I believe it was not possible to do that. If you dropped enchanting, the enchantment on the ring became inactive.



Could definitely be a thing, but the ability to do this is dependent on the presumption of not dying. Eg if people are wiping on Kara bosses due to tank deaths and they have to constantly reoil/buff/potion they might not be inclined to spend that kind of gold every single pull. DPS logs were a thing back then too. Top DPS was posted in raid chat after every pull, and on log sites after the raid.



Is this actually a thing? By the time the alt shaman hearths out and the new shaman is summoned back and the tanks pulls and builds threat for a couple seconds, how much of BL is actually left? Not to mention that the exhaustion debuff would make this mostly impossible.


When I raided, raid composition was very much a thing that was paid close attention to. Groups were built around maximizing the synergy between classes and buffs. The GM of my guild was the first to ring the gong during the original AQ, and the guild was top two during TBC. Players were all expected to be fully flasked and buffed for the entire raid and read up on boss strategies before every fight. We had class leads for every class that inspected gear, talents and enchants to make sure everything was optimal. Players would DPS training dummies while being watched and critiqued by guild leaders. Everyone was on voice chat of course. Im saying all this to say that TBC bosses were legitimately hard for a guild that very much so knew what it was doing.

I admit I have not played private TBC, but in light of my experiences it is just very hard for me to fathom that the data of those servers is accurate if fresh 70s are speed running through bosses. I know players have gotten better and have more knowledge, but I also know that myself and the people I played with were looking for every edge and optimization as well.

There is no exhaustion debuff in TBC, and while the above Shaman summon thing wasn't anything I personally saw done in TBC It's something done on private servers and will be done in TBC if it's possible because even 15-20s BL at the start of a fight is a big deal. In TBC ring enchants didn't require enchanting to use, it was one of the few profession bonuses they didn't account for like this so you can get your BIS rings and enchant them and then drop it for LW or something, hopefully it gets broken.

As for 2.4.3, it's obviously an assumption we will be on this patch but it'd line up with the Classic approach. A tonne of changes happened between 2.0 and 2.4, including changes to consumables, itemisation, stats (expertise), class design (including specs gaining/losing abilities) and general balancing. Like in early TBC Warriors used dagger offhands and fast offhand was the norm, then they allowed WW to hit with the offhand and people also figured out a slow offhand would marginally increase flurry uptime, causing people to suddenly start using slow offhands and dagger was now actively bad (because normalised AP was lower for dagger WW offhand damage than similar or even faster speed swords/maces)

Theorycrafting back then was common at the high end, but the level of sweatiness happening on private servers is by and large a result of hardcore players migrating there to raid and continuing to develop or refine strategies as if TBC didn't end. A big part of that will also be down to buggy/inaccurate private servers that have lots of minor differences to TBC, that's almost certainly a factor. But either way these days people have the path laid out infront of them, not much is left to figure out, it's down to what Blizzard changes/fixes/nerfs.

Edit : And on logs, yeah posting damage meters was a thing but so many players were clueless back then, even going into Sunwell and having had BT on farm. Only 1 guild I played with in TBC actually did logs, and they were the 2nd top guild on server with 5 glaives and pushed deep into Sunwell. I was the player who caused them to stop posting logs because of my e-peening over logs, it literally caused a guild drama. I was young, they weren't used to dealing with people so obsessed with DPS. I was the stereotypical dps whore then (but I didn't link damage meters, though I loved when others did!).

Oh to be young and dumb and having fun.