Anyone else planning to just roll with fun-to-play talents for TBC?

[Thage]

What we have learned from Classic is that we won't get the original game but a nerfed version of it. In that regard i'm pretty confident it doesn't matter what talents you pick in terms of your raid performance. People run raids naked, without any gear in Classic, in a game that is all about getting gear. You really think your talents will make any difference in TBC (if that will ever come)?

As konway mentioned, Classic running on 1.12 from the get-go was partly a matter of necessity, since they couldn't salvage any data from 1.11 and earlier (and I have suspicious but can't confirm, they relied heavily on the Nostalrius developers to help them with the old itemizations for dungeon and raid drops prior to the buffs they got late in Vanilla due to aforementioned lost data).

What I think they'll do for TBC is run it on a 2.4 client, but with each phase rolling out talent changes and class balancing from the associated patch, unless they intend to rebalance everything to maintain the spirit of the progression ladder but without the schizophrenic class balancing due to Arena growing pains (some classes wildly pendulumed throughout TBC until 2.4.3). Either would not be a terrible idea, and in both cases they have the data for those earlier versions so they can tune accordingly, either to preserve the challenge with 2.4 talents or to maintain a controlled rollout of class design per patch with each phase.

edit, unrelated to the above: To answer the OP, it depends on whether I end up getting the itch to give the TBC raid ladder another try or if I'll just stick to Heroics and battlegrounds. I don't want to run the risk of burning out as badly as I did the first time around, which took a long time for me to get over enough to try raiding with any seriousness again, because my guild got stuck in t4 due to my server's rampant poaching problem. I didn't see the point in trying to stay on top of my game anymore and took a much more casual approach to the game. If I end up in a guild that can get over the Kara/Mag/Gruul's hurdle and field 25 people on a regular basis, I might be more serious in my build choices, otherwise I'll stick to some of the off-beat builds I ran back in the day that were specially built around performance in dungeons with lots of trash packs and fewer mechanics to worry about.

[Cæli]

I take whichever things has the best icon/spell effect
love the old wow colors

[Eldar45]

Content is easier but players min/max more than ever now. Never heard of people spending 20 hours of farming consumables every week on retail.

No, TBC will have no "fun" in it.

Your arguments are entirely hyperbole. There isn't anyone farming for consumes for 20 hours. I farm for maybe an hour a day in an inefficient way and I'm able to afford all of the consumes I'd possibly need.

Making 1000g in just a week is EASY. Got my mage alt to 60 and had its epic mount in five days. And that was before prices got to like they are now. Dreamfoil has doubled in price, and is super easy to farm in DM:E.

[konway]

I'm not holding my breath, though.

Same, Blizzard's approach to Classic has basically been "make it as cheap as possible". The rampant botting / hacking, tradeable raid loot, and terrible customer service / GM support are just a few examples of how that has played out.

I think they held back because they assumed Classic would fail quickly. Our only hope is that Classic's success will convince them to devote more time and money to Burning Crusade.

[Roxyfoxy]

Looking at some Naxxramas logs, where bosses actually got mechanics you cant really ignore. you can really see that the insane dps that people have is the reason for classic being considered easy.

I see logs of people speedrunning BWL and AQ, failing horribly at simple naxxramas mechanics.

In TBC, there is much more mechanics that you cant ignore, so i will put my bet on TBC not being as easy as many people seems to think.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Not necessarily true for TBC.

Blizzard lost all data prior to patch 1.12 so that was their only option for Classic. They have all of the Burning Crusade data, so they could make it 100% progressive if they wanted, right down to every single bug and talent change throughout the entire expansion.

I'm not saying they'll go that far, but if they've learned anything from Classic then they'll at least do something smarter than giving us 2.4.3 from Day 1.

That would be the SMART business decision. Launch and a full patch-cycle would be amazing for the players wanting to make TBC "their home". It would also be great for those of us that never saw it when current.

[ClassicPeon]

Same, Blizzard's approach to Classic has basically been "make it as cheap as possible". The rampant botting / hacking, tradeable raid loot, and terrible customer service / GM support are just a few examples of how that has played out.

I think they held back because they assumed Classic would fail quickly. Our only hope is that Classic's success will convince them to devote more time and money to Burning Crusade.

I dont know anyone who is still playing classic.

I dont think they expected it to fail quickly, but they probably expected the numbers they have now sooner.

No matter how you tossed and turned it classic was always going to be ezpz. Taking 5 seconds more per raid fight wouldnt have changed that.

Blizzard didnt "ruin" classic, people just came in with extreme expectations compared to what vanilla actually was.

BC is a big step in the direction of what we know today. Smaller raid sizes, no world buffs, bit more balance and such. Its going to have much more long term appeal then classic does.

[konway]

Blizzard didnt "ruin" classic

They made several drastic changes that had an extremely negative impact on the game. I don't know how you define "ruin", but they sure ruined the best parts of the game in my opinion.

[gleepot]

They made several drastic changes that had an extremely negative impact on the game. I don't know how you define "ruin", but they sure ruined the best parts of the game in my opinion.

Name one -- also this thread is futile because there's absolutely no indication that TBC is coming.

[Mage in Pajamas]

Fun Priest build: (36/25/0)
Someone on my server doing this back in the day. Not an optimal build but sounded fun anyway.

DPS talents:
Improved Divine Spirit for damage based on 10% of Spirit
Focused Power: 4% Spell Hit
Force of Will: 5% spellpower and 5% spell crit
Power Infusion: Dps cooldown
Searing Light: 10% increase on Holy Fire/Smite

In addition to talents that already modify heals and dps for 5% extra crit and 25% of Spirit as spellpower
Add Holy Nova for aoe pulls.

Why? Didn't need a seventh healer in their 25 man anymore. Wanted to keep Divine Spirit/Improved Spirit in the raid.
Added Power Infusion to a caster. Emergency heals and dedicated dispels.
And most importantly for him, he didn't lose his raid spot!

[Malania]

If we've learned anything from Classic, it's probably that the content is incredibly easy for modern day players. Same will likely go for TBC, even with its pre-nerfed content. TBC will be a bigger challenge but I think we can still expect casual guilds to steamroll through it without problems.

So I've been thinking about what class/spec/build to go with for TBC and as a semi-casual I've come to the conclusion I'm just gonna pick one that is fun to play. Right now I'm leaning towards going full destro Warlock with Shadowfury, because it is just that, a ton of fun, unlike its optimal specs for PvE or PvP. I will welcome the challenge of playing sub-optimally as well.

Will you like me just go with fun spec/builds or will you aim for the optimal ones? I suppose it all depends on how hardcore you intend to be.

Some of the later bosses may challenge them. Vashj, Teron Gorefiend or KT etc, still have individual requirements on mechanics that do require decent player ability even after this time. Can't be relied on RNG because of the larger raid size from previous models to exempt them from having to do something important.

[anon5123]

Most of Classic has been easy because we've got 1.12 spells/talents on content that was designed for 1.1, 1.5, 1.9 talents etc.

Look at how people are doing in Naxx and you'll see that only about 10% of the playerbase has cleared it. Most of TBC's raid content is as hard, if not harder than Naxx. It won't be faceroll like vanilla.

But at the same time, there really are no "meme specs" in TBC. Even the worst DPS specs still bring useful buffs/debuffs to help out the raid. So raid comp is much more freeform.

[JohnGatsby1992]

There are numerous companies that manufacture and sell video games. A notable manufacturer of video games is Microsoft. Microsoft produces the majority of Xbox games and the popular Xbox Live Arcade gaming service. Other companies producing video games include Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., and Leap Frog Corporation.

[Justitiaxx]

If we've learned anything from Classic, it's probably that the content is incredibly easy for modern day players. Same will likely go for TBC, even with its pre-nerfed content. TBC will be a bigger challenge but I think we can still expect casual guilds to steamroll through it without problems.

So I've been thinking about what class/spec/build to go with for TBC and as a semi-casual I've come to the conclusion I'm just gonna pick one that is fun to play. Right now I'm leaning towards going full destro Warlock with Shadowfury, because it is just that, a ton of fun, unlike its optimal specs for PvE or PvP. I will welcome the challenge of playing sub-optimally as well.

Will you like me just go with fun spec/builds or will you aim for the optimal ones? I suppose it all depends on how hardcore you intend to be.

Shockadin build, once I get the right gear

[erifwodahs]

Most of Classic has been easy because we've got 1.12 spells/talents on content that was designed for 1.1, 1.5, 1.9 talents etc.

Look at how people are doing in Naxx and you'll see that only about 10% of the playerbase has cleared it. Most of TBC's raid content is as hard, if not harder than Naxx. It won't be faceroll like vanilla.

But at the same time, there really are no "meme specs" in TBC. Even the worst DPS specs still bring useful buffs/debuffs to help out the raid. So raid comp is much more freeform.

Dude, Naxx has been out for how long? We don't know how many players are still playing that so saying "10%" is as good as saying 1% or 60%. People have killed Onyxia while naked. Unless Old talents literally made your class worse with each level, it would have not stopped people from killing anything. Anything prior to Nax is if you can enter, you can kill it old itemization or not. Over 2k guilds have 15/15 and less than 100 guilds are 1/15. Chances are that if you can do one boss, you can do most of them. And we are only looking at what? Two resets?

[Echocho]

Have they confirmed TBC now!? That's amazing news! So psyched!

[konway]

Name one -- also this thread is futile because there's absolutely no indication that TBC is coming.

Increasing server populations by over 300%. Didn't even adjust gathering nodes to match, made the world PvP phase a total nightmare for minority factions and eventually destroyed many servers when free transfers were opened.

[Kralljin]

That would be the SMART business decision. Launch and a full patch-cycle would be amazing for the players wanting to make TBC "their home". It would also be great for those of us that never saw it when current.

I don't think it's the best call.

The issue is that you'll have a lot more "quirks" in there.
A prot pally could just keep threat on anything if they were grouped up with a SP, because Spiritual attunement and VE had a degenerate interaction, as resource generation also generated threat.
That wasn't fixed until 2.1, meaning that during that time, a Prot Pally could just keep threat on anything without even touching those mobs, as the mana generation from their passive does the job.

Also, the AoE cap wasn't introduced until 2.2.
I'm probably not the only one that sees a big issue between a lack of AoE Cap + a class that can keep threat without ever being in Melee range, at least for like 6+ months.

This is just some of the issues i know off, who knows how many are hidden in there and how gamebreaking they are.

The concept of going 100% progressive sounds neat in theory, but the more you get into the details, it just gets less appealing from a perspective of somebody that wants to enjoy TBC, rather than just witnessing how the game gets pecked apart by the playerbase.

If Classic has taught us anything, then it's that certain holes within the game will be mercilessly exploited, adhering to a philosophy that forbids making any changes, despite being clearly better for the player experience, should not be repeated in TBC.

I'm all for mixing things up, rather than plastering a release schedule over the 2.4 patch, but that should be done off the 2.4 state, not just re releasing TBC as it was.

also this thread is futile because there's absolutely no indication that TBC is coming.

There is just:
-Blizzard saying the "legwork is done" for TBC, as TBC is much smaller in scope than Classic
-Ion saying "TBC is the logical next step"
-A poll on how to roll out TBC servers
-J. Allen Brack saying that they have plans for the future of the modern game and Classic in a recent earnings call
-Blizzard still hiring engineers for WoW: Classic
-John Hight saying that Classic has its own team

Do those count as indicators?

[Malania]

Have they confirmed TBC now!? That's amazing news! So psyched!

Blizzard sent out emails to people ages ago asking how they'd like to go into TBC. Character resets, everything carried over or mix of the 2 on a new server.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think it's the best call.

The issue is that you'll have a lot more "quirks" in there.
A prot pally could just keep threat on anything if they were grouped up with a SP, because Spiritual attunement and VE had a degenerate interaction, as resource generation also generated threat.
That wasn't fixed until 2.1, meaning that during that time, a Prot Pally could just keep threat on anything without even touching those mobs, as the mana generation from their passive does the job.

Also, the AoE cap wasn't introduced until 2.2.
I'm probably not the only one that sees a big issue between a lack of AoE Cap + a class that can keep threat without ever being in Melee range, at least for like 6+ months.

This is just some of the issues i know off, who knows how many are hidden in there and how gamebreaking they are.

The concept of going 100% progressive sounds neat in theory, but the more you get into the details, it just gets less appealing from a perspective of somebody that wants to enjoy TBC, rather than just witnessing how the game gets pecked apart by the playerbase.

If Classic has taught us anything, then it's that certain holes within the game will be mercilessly exploited, adhering to a philosophy that forbids making any changes, despite being clearly better for the player experience, should not be repeated in TBC.

I'm all for mixing things up, rather than plastering a release schedule over the 2.4 patch, but that should be done off the 2.4 state, not just re releasing TBC as it was.

I quite liked TBC at launch, attunements and all.

[Kralljin]

I quite liked TBC at launch, attunements and all.

I'd rather see attunements as well, at least initially, but i think one should employ a bit more nuance than "everything must be in its 2.4 state" or "let's go 100% progressive with every issue attached".