TBC, world buffs and consumables

[CostinR]

‘Thousands?’ Umm idk what server you have been playing on, but it ain’t thousands

If you want to get Blue Quality gems in your sockets, Epic Pants Enchant and Weapon Enchants it sure is thousands, especially when a server launches. It will be the case with Classic Burning Crusade.

Add to that epic crafted gear that everyone wants to a degree or another and yes it goes in the thousands.

[Bigbazz]

It's already been discussed to death but we're gonna be getting a modified (time gating etc) 2.4.3 patch where all this was fixed, classes were really well balanced at that point and really the whole game runs like clockwork. That said, it will be way too easy to form any sort of challenge for an organised guild, private servers have run 2.4.3 and in recent years we've had very polished feature/content complete versions with pre-nerf content numbers or even buffed (harder than pre-nerf) and they still got roflstomped.

Blizz can control the roflstomping to some extent by not allowing all the strong crafted items at launch and by having pre-nerf Magtheridon. Magtheridon was initially a big roadblock for many guilds, while in the nerfed form he's easier than Gruul. Private servers also show though that TBC is too hardcore for most players and the attunement roadblocks kill guilds (hard for new players coming in later to catch up, higher ranked guilds cannibalise the lower ones), they always start with big hype and massive numbers but eventually end up as ghost towns while Vanilla/WOTLK pservers seem to thrive.

If i remember right, they made buff elixers lose their value overnight. Since you had to choose between 1 hour buff or elixers, everybody just took 1 hour buff. Some flavour was surely lost.

This is a non-issue, both in TBC and right now on private servers it's very common to run elixirs instead of flasks. Mongoose or Major Agility Elixir for example is very nearly as good as a flask for a DPS Warrior while being much cheaper and tanks will sometimes run a Battle + Defense elixir for more threat output.

Until you have the rep to use the flask tokens it's not at all uncommon for people to use elixirs for a lot of stuff, and most people aren't just popping haste pots left and right either. You have absolutely zero issue selling elixirs on TBC realms, the market is there for them because the price to performance difference is huge.

How many people made arcanite reapers in classic?

That's not a good example because in Classic the game is taking place after weapon speed attack power normalisation. If you took away normalisation then slower weapons would once again have an extreme advantage for instant damage attacks.

[Flurryfang]

It's already been discussed to death but we're gonna be getting a modified (time gating etc) 2.4.3 patch where all this was fixed, classes were really well balanced at that point and really the whole game runs like clockwork. That said, it will be way too easy to form any sort of challenge for an organised guild, private servers have run 2.4.3 and in recent years we've had very polished feature/content complete versions with pre-nerf content numbers or even buffed (harder than pre-nerf) and they still got roflstomped.

Blizz can control the roflstomping to some extent by not allowing all the strong crafted items at launch and by having pre-nerf Magtheridon. Magtheridon was initially a big roadblock for many guilds, while in the nerfed form he's easier than Gruul. Private servers also show though that TBC is too hardcore for most players and the attunement roadblocks kill guilds (hard for new players coming in later to catch up, higher ranked guilds cannibalise the lower ones), they always start with big hype and massive numbers but eventually end up as ghost towns while Vanilla/WOTLK pservers seem to thrive.



This is a non-issue, both in TBC and right now on private servers it's very common to run elixirs instead of flasks. Mongoose or Major Agility Elixir for example is very nearly as good as a flask for a DPS Warrior while being much cheaper and tanks will sometimes run a Battle + Defense elixir for more threat output.

Until you have the rep to use the flask tokens it's not at all uncommon for people to use elixirs for a lot of stuff, and most people aren't just popping haste pots left and right either. You have absolutely zero issue selling elixirs on TBC realms, the market is there for them because the price to performance difference is huge.

From my experience in TBC, people really did not want to use the extra gold on mongoose/major agility, because the cost of flasks got so low compared to the cost of 2 elixirs. The experience was different in competitive raiding guilds, but in the average guild, you did not see elixirs after the change... But then again, my experience might be dated, with Classic players maybe doing completely different things than back in the day.

And then we come back to the point, that what do we gain/lose by having TBC be with many buffs, compared to few buffs (post/pre compile patch). I don't think anything is lost by having the many buffs, as most people will properly completly ignore it and not really notice the abundance, while some players will absolutely love being able to do so much preparation before raids

Edit: And while private servers is a good thing to compare to when it comes what to expect of TBC-Classic, its also a bit dangerous. The playerbase of Classic, and future TBC-Classic, will be much, much less hardcore than the players who go to private servers. People will go to play TBC, BECAUSE of the attunement, not despite it, just like people go to Classic for the slow leveling experience, not despite it.

[Tojara]

That's not a good example because in Classic the game is taking place after weapon speed attack power normalisation. If you took away normalisation then slower weapons would once again have an extreme advantage for instant damage attacks.

That's not entirely my point. Even if they kept weapon speed normalization to an earlier vanilla version, the point remains, who is going to spend over a thousand gold for an item that's going to last an incremental amount of time? Nobody. You can bring up numbers all you want to compare relative damage in both PvE and PvP scenarios, but I can assure you that in either scenario where arcanite reaper might be favored, it's not favored by much and it's also over a thousand gold of raw materials in price (by today's standards).

My entire point is that this isn't the same time period, the rule set was known beforehand and people play the game differently. In what world, pre-normalization, or not is somebody going to spend that amount of gold when they can get into any Molten Core run for a chance at OEB/Spinal/Earthshaker/BRE as soon as they hit 60? This didn't happen 15 years ago because it took some players several months to hit 60, and it took a few months for people to even clear MC for the first time. Nowadays every guild with a pulse clears MC as soon as they have enough people and pugs are absolutely rampant. This level of pug activity didn't exist on my vanilla server until the end, and it was still relatively rare.

Talking about normalization like it would've made a difference is pretty laughable too. I played with people 15 years ago and people 15 years ago were retarded. Yes there was information out there, but people chose to ignore it. Some people used arcanite reapers prior to normalization because they realized that mathematically, it was superior in some PvE and some PvP situations depending on what epic weapon they were comparing it too (keep in mind, that in earlier versions of the game, the loot from MC was awful and MC dropped like every piece of T2 as well). Most people however just used arcanite reapers because it was the only real two handed weapon they could get their hands out, regardless of if it was 'good' or not. All of this simply because there was no wealth of information and people just wore whatever was available to them.

What more evidence do you need of player ignorance? The mountains of edgemaster handguards that were virtually free on most servers, despite information being out there that they were good? People dismissed blue trinkets all the time because they were blue, just like casters and healers dismissed green items that gave +spell power or +healing simply because a blue or purple item HAS TO BE BETTER. Or rogues not knowing that aged core gauntlets were good? I mean, the list goes on.

Zero to do with the normalization. If classic servers launched with a different patch cycle, you might have some people buy arcanite reapers, but the majority still wouldn't. It's a waste of money when you know full well that you can clear Molten Core with your eyes closed. 15 years ago many just lucked into the fact that arcanite reaper was a pretty solid weapon with a favorable attack speed, but the main reason for the crafting of the item was that clearing raiding content (any raiding content) wasn't a given for the average player, whereas today literally anybody can (pug or not).

All of this leads me to believe that some crafted items in TBC won't be as sought after as they once were.

[Nicholaes92]

Right, so since they're the ones who cared most, obviously they're the only ones who matter.

This is literally the mind set that caused these changes. It's literally THIS REASON why the game became so focused around only raiding.

You're once again failing miserably at saying anything other than "Raiders are all that matter."

- - - Updated - - -



Right, so there isn't a point, and you can't tell us the point because there isn't one. Or, more specifically, I called you out directly and now you're embarrassed and can't defend yourself.

Got it.

My fuckin guy, you keep saying ‘this is the mindset...’ as if I’m backing the raiders or something. I am not. I haven’t raided raided sine the end of wotlk and I probably won’t in classic tbc. What I’m saying is, even as a casual, you would be a fucking moron to use, let alone stack, elixers and flasks doing things like dailies. That is absolutely asinine. Just sell them, even if I was sitting on a stock pile of elixers no one wanted to buy, I would fuckin vendor them before I stacked them to do dailies. This isn’t a raider mindset, this is a mindset of what’s worth doing in this game for how hard it is, and elixers for dailies is an actual joke.

[Nicholaes92]

Then you're doing a terrible job.

I’m not even mentioning raiders anymore. I’m specifically just talking about using these things for dailies. Completely ignoring the raiders who used this. Even with the topic of raiders completely out of the topic, it’s still a dumb dumb dumb idea to stack flasks for freakin dailies.

[Bigbazz]

From my experience in TBC, people really did not want to use the extra gold on mongoose/major agility, because the cost of flasks got so low compared to the cost of 2 elixirs. The experience was different in competitive raiding guilds, but in the average guild, you did not see elixirs after the change... But then again, my experience might be dated, with Classic players maybe doing completely different things than back in the day.

And then we come back to the point, that what do we gain/lose by having TBC be with many buffs, compared to few buffs (post/pre compile patch). I don't think anything is lost by having the many buffs, as most people will properly completly ignore it and not really notice the abundance, while some players will absolutely love being able to do so much preparation before raids

Well I started playing on TBC launch and hit 70 after 2.1, but I immediately started raiding at 70 and quickly climbed the guild ladder (and it really was a ladder in TBC due to the attunements, as you might well remember). But I also played the Warmane launch in 2017 and was playing with the top guilds on that server (and genuinely some of the best legacy and current WoW players in the world in those guilds) through to the end of clearing Hyjal before I stopped.

Both cases I was buying Mongoose/Major Agil because it was cheaper to do a night of raiding on those than it was to use a flask. Towards the end of actual TBC back in 2007/2008 I was using primarily flasks (from tokens)and Demonslaying Elixirs, but never got to that stage on Warmane, was primarily using Elixirs because a full night of Elixirs was cheaper than one flask on the AH there and only used a Flask on proper progression, especially during farm. A flask was actually superior as a DPS for me, but only really worthwhile if you had recklessness up (once per 30m).

And on Warmane the tanking trends were very different to actual TBC because it was an overall obsession with TPS rather than health/avoidance stacking we saw back then.

Edit: And while private servers is a good thing to compare to when it comes what to expect of TBC-Classic, its also a bit dangerous. The playerbase of Classic, and future TBC-Classic, will be much, much less hardcore than the players who go to private servers. People will go to play TBC, BECAUSE of the attunement, not despite it, just like people go to Classic for the slow leveling experience, not despite it.

It was primarily casual players, you had the usual crew of hardcores who dominated all the top private realms and who are dominating in classic now, but the majority of players were just average guys there for a good time, not for a hard time or a long time. I was one of those too, I had no initial intention of raiding, but I tanked a Kara run as a pug and it spiralled into a guild invite and full on raiding, at a time I had just moved home, got the internet finally installed (after months without it) and I was out of work... Timing.

The issue with the attunements was that on launch everyone was doing them so no problem. But later nobody wanted to do Heroic Shattered Halls because it was tough. I know people love to say it's not hard, but I tanked the thing as a Warrior in pre-raid gear and wanted to pull my hair out (T5 attunement requires the speed run of saving the hostage on HC), after the initial surge of players had done it nobody really wanted to go there, nobody farmed it for badges and so it becomes harder to get done later down the line.

Of course Blizz eventually removes that attunement requirement, but then you have a similarly tough attunement to get into T6 (Vashj/KT).. In 2007-2008 it caused higher guilds to cannibalise the lower ones and that happened on Warmane too, I don't know the exact causes but like other TBC servers it went from extremely popular (like every zone was just packed full) to a complete ghost town in the matter of about 1-2 years.. On the other hand the WOTLK servers have been really healthy for years.

[deenman]

That Method's kill video is during pre 2.1.0 patch where you could stack as many elixirs as you wanted and world buffs worked until this patch as well.



TBC will be different if it's going to be 2.4.0 at launch.
It was "vanilla like" at start but patch after patch Blizzard made major changes. Starting from 2.1.0 removing consumable and world buff stacking. But the biggest change was 2.3.0 where they completely made step to another direction:

-converted weapon skill to expertise
-reduced Azeroth XP requirement alot and made basically ALL elite areas to non elites
-healing gear now has ~30% spell damage to it as well
-almost all classes got minor revamp and/or QoL changes (hunter lost deadzone, blind no longer need reagent, mage table etc.)
-all profession trainers train up to 300 skill (no longed needed to go Uldaman to learn master Enchanting etc.)
-AV reinforcements

those are first things to come in mind so yeah it will not be like classic if they choose to give us the latest patch.

I was surprised to find out the dead zone was removed in tbc(funny as i actualy played hunter a fair bit in tbc,but its been long i guess),i was under the impression it was removed in cata,didnt something change in cata in regards to hunters range dmg?(dont mean focus or ammo etc)

[Nicholaes92]

Which, again - Great for you that you think it's dumb.

For people who aren't you, who didn't raid though? You're not able to see their viewpoint because you were a raider. To you, a raider, it's dumb.

For everyone else, who literally didn't raid or pugged at best, there is LITERALLY NO OTHER TIME WORTH USING THEM.

How many times do I have to tell you I don’t and am not going to raid and that I’m a casual until you actually learn to read it? Should I just start quoting myself until you?

[deenman]

Ironically, crafting has more relevancy in tBC than Classic. Hell I think it had far more relevancy than any other iteration of WoW but some expansions I can't speak of like MoP or WoD (didn't play as much then). The armor crafters in tBC might not have endgame gear crafts like engineering or weaponsmiths but still provided slot upgrades that had constant demand.

lol the armor and weps u crafted in wod were INSANE,you could use them to level in wod,with an ilvl of normal hellfire(last tier of wod),granted you could only equip 2,but a wep THAT strong when leveling+early gearing days was bonkers

[Kralljin]

All of this leads me to believe that some crafted items in TBC won't be as sought after as they once were.

The big ones, meaning the tailor items will still be good because some of them can last until BT and walk over T4 in particular.

I think that's the difference here, a lot of the craftable items in Classic are worse than some loot from raids, in TBC, this situation is, depending on the item, reversed.

To pick up the example from above, if Arcanite Reaper was equivalent or slightly superior to BRE, i'd wager a lot of people should be wearing it.

[deenman]

Have they?

If you look at warcraft logs for example. There's 320,000 mages that have killed any boss in heroic Ny'alotha. 2.5 million mages have killed a boss in Blackwing Lair on classic.

1.2 million warlocks in BWL. 242,000 warlocks in heroic Ny'alotha.

It seems to me that the raiding game has experienced a catastrophic playerbase collapse on retail.

On wowprogress there were 84,000 guilds raiding in Icecrown Citadel. That's down to 13,800 in Ny'alotha.


Maybe the changes have been good for the game but they certainly haven't been good for raiding.

first off,dont know if those stats are real,but even if they are,those numbers dont rly seem odd one bit,even if retail had 20 times the players of classic,those numbers still dont seem odd one bit,there is only one bwl,nyalotha you said those numbers are heroic,MANY people do just lfr or just normal,many people dont even raid,they do arenas,rated bg,s world quests,mythic plus,mythc raid,in classic you dont have anything else to do but raid,even pvp isnt an option to do alone for gear,also bwl is literaly easier than most lfr bosses

[gutnbrg]

i watched Method killing Lady Vashj and first thing i see them all having all old world buffs + 5 elixirs and flask and other buffs too... is it going to be thing to farm old world elixirs in addition to new ones and getting world buffs as well?
It's going to suck if TBC is just like classic where you stack all world buffs for every raid.

i thought tbc was completely different game

Well u dont have to stack any buffs to clear mc or ony or zg or bwl really, even tho some fights are difficult. Guilds just do it to make it easier and faster...Also method was going for world 1st dude, do u think they were just gonna go in there with no buffs or flasks? They were spending 10s of thousands of gold per raid to make sure they had the best possibility of downing what they needed to down. You cant compare method to any other guild except the others in the top10...

[deenman]

I'd be really disappointed if they remove the elites and put in the post-nerf heroics. If that's what it turns out to be, it'll just be a faceroll like classic is today.

ofc they will remove the elites lol,this isnt tbc+ its tbc as it was,also even with nerfed dungeons,tbc hc's are still the hardest heroic dungeons ever,even harder than cata ones(cata dung werent really THAT hard,it was the nature of the rdf that caused issues,you cant throw randoms vs mecanics that can actualy 1 shot you and expect imediat succes)

[Nitros14]

first off,dont know if those stats are real,but even if they are,those numbers dont rly seem odd one bit,even if retail had 20 times the players of classic,those numbers still dont seem odd one bit,there is only one bwl,nyalotha you said those numbers are heroic,MANY people do just lfr or just normal,many people dont even raid,they do arenas,rated bg,s world quests,mythic plus,mythc raid,in classic you dont have anything else to do but raid,even pvp isnt an option to do alone for gear,also bwl is literaly easier than most lfr bosses

I said raiding game. People doing all those other things don't have much to do with the raiding population.

You can check the stats here https://www.wowprogress.com/ and here https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...4#difficulty=4

You'll find normal ny'alotha actually has far fewer logs than heroic.

Also, LFR isn't raiding really. There's no social aspect and no chance of failure thanks to the stacking buff.

[Nicholaes92]

I dunno, but I shouldn't have to quote you at yourself for sure.



So you raided in TBC, correct? Since the END OF WOTLK is AFTER the end of TBC.

Thus you look at TBC as a raider. Try to keep up with yourself, honestly, it hasn't even been hours since you said that.

Yes I raidED I am no longer a raidER. Do you understand what past tense means? If I were a raider right now then my mindset would be that of a raider, I am no longer one nor do I plan on raiding anymore, hence no longer a raider mindset.

I am playing tbc right now as we speak and not raiding so I don’t see tbc as a raider I see it as a casual, and using elixers or flasks for dailies is still a fucking stupid thing to do.

[deenman]

I said raiding game. People doing all those other things don't have much to do with the raiding population.

You can check the stats here https://www.wowprogress.com/ and here https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...4#difficulty=4

You'll find normal ny'alotha actually has far fewer logs than heroic.

Also, LFR isn't raiding really. There's no social aspect and no chance of failure thanks to the stacking buff.

if lfr isnt raiding,classic is hello kitty adventure lol,also i dont get your point in saying stuff like people doing those things dont have much to do with raiding population....well its a direct corelation to the smaller numbers you see in heroic,when people have options ofc they will chose other things,casuals and hardcore people in classic had ONLY the ONE raid,in retail you get same gear levels from pvp dung raids,and you have casual content like wq's and lfr,also a shit ton of people just play the game for transmog or pet battles,options that didnt exist before

[Nitros14]

if lfr isnt raiding,classic is hello kitty adventure lol,also i dont get your point in saying stuff like people doing those things dont have much to do with raiding population....well its a direct corelation to the smaller numbers you see in heroic,when people have options ofc they will chose other things,casuals and hardcore people in classic had ONLY the ONE raid,in retail you get same gear levels from pvp dung raids,and you have casual content like wq's and lfr,also a shit ton of people just play the game for transmog or pet battles,options that didnt exist before

The raiding population has collapsed in retail. Even if you add normal, heroic and mythic together this is obvious. Regardless of the reason.

[Bigbazz]

On the subject of crafted items in TBC. They weren't all available at launch but there are some incredible items available from crafting. I will use melee dps/warrior point of view because that's what I know but it's pretty much across the board that crafting items are vital to pre-raid and T4-5 gearing.

Fel Leather - LW crafted blues
Ragesteel - BS crafted blues
Vengeance Wrap / Cloak of Darkness - LW/Tailoring crafted cloaks
Furious Gizmatic Goggles - Engineering goggles

You're gonna use these until T5 or beyond. The Ragesteel shoulders are about equal with T4, the Fel Leather boots are effectively a sidegrade to the best from T5. The goggles are T5 ilvl, usable at level62 and are about equal with T5 helms (Vashj drop). A dps Warrior using one of these cloaks will not replace it until Black Temple, unless they can get hold of the Doomwalker BOE (which will be super rare and sell for a lot) cloak, which is basically a sidegrade anyway. Dory's Embrace (badge item) is added later which will obsolete the crafted cloaks, but that should be long after Black Temple is cleared.

Dragonstrike - Best 1h weapon in the game pre Warglaives or S3 weapons, and it's able to be dual-wielded in 2.4.3
Lionheart Executioner - Best 2h weapon in the game pre Kael'thas.
Stormherald - Speaks for itself if you PVP.

If I was raiding hardcore I would max Blacksmithing and Leatherworking, then drop BS in Sunwell to pickup Jewelcrafting.

[deenman]

The raiding population has collapsed in retail. Even if you add normal, heroic and mythic together this is obvious. Regardless of the reason.

basic logic concepts are hard to grasp for some people lol...if you only had burgers to eat....vs a person having burgers pizza icecream stake fruit and salads,you think MAYBE you would end up eating more burgers than the people with options?for some its easier to order a pizza than cook a stake or grab an apple