What Were the "Working" Roles + Specs in TBC?

[kranur]

If you wanna get invited to even semi-serious groups instead of shit groups.
Corrected for you. Even when every spec is viable, you still will be struggling to get into groups, just wait and see since you seem to be only guessing.

Same has been said for classic and meme specs, yet my guild has druid tanks and enhancement shamans, and we are more than semi-serious.
The actual people playing the game are different than the top 5%.

[Netherling]

If you wanna get invited to even semi-serious groups instead of shit groups.
Corrected for you. Even when every spec is viable, you still will be struggling to get into groups, just wait and see since you seem to be only guessing.

This is not true for Classic at the moment (at least on my server) and even less likely to be true on Classic TBC.

[potis]

Same has been said for classic and meme specs, yet my guild has druid tanks and enhancement shamans, and we are more than semi-serious.
The actual people playing the game are different than the top 5%.

When will you people understand that you are the same as anti-vaxxers when it comes to these discussions.

What you do in your own bubble, is your issue, it doesnt make it correct, there are proper way to do things, and wrong way to do things, if you are having fun, good for you.

No one said you cant do it, its simple that you are wasting your own time by doing it that way, if thats okay for you, good, its not okay for others.

Now when it comes to actual discussion about TBC.

Assuming the latest iterations of TBC, Prot Pala = Offtank, irrelevant if tanks arent shit and can actually tank, and tab-tank.
Warrior>Druid till Illidan cause of the obvious reason of the ability to counter is Shield Block, Druid > Warrior in scaling and overall mitigation after that, all around they are the same.

Healers are all equal mostly, shamans have the totem advantage of the party buffs.

DPS classes that have any talent or ability that restores mana = meme mana battery, you dont get more than required.

Shadow Bolt Spammer > BM macro "Game is hard> The rest with Warriors/Rogue a bit ahead of the pack cause armor pen and gery/gear scaling after awhile.

This is mostly true after BT gear levels, till then the private server people know better, as example in actual early TBC (first 2-3 months) any Shadow damage was king because of the OP craftable set, even after the nerfs on it.

[Thage]

I'm actually curious to see how the announced changes to Ret play out. This could end up a notable QOL buff for Ret, getting rid of spell batching and adjusting/tuning them around seal twisting to account for the change.

[Sughs]

Just play what you enjoy like any expansion ever.

I'm going with Arms and Subtlety.

[facefist]

Same has been said for classic and meme specs, yet my guild has druid tanks and enhancement shamans, and we are more than semi-serious.
The actual people playing the game are different than the top 5%.

By serious I meant competitive, which your guild doesn't seem to be.

[kranur]

By serious I meant competitive, which your guild doesn't seem to be.

Competitive in what? Speedrunning?
There's a difference in not caring to speed run and not finishing the content in a timely manner. Especially with classic versions of the game.

[RCA]

Comments seem about right, remember seeing all the classes and their specs throughout the expo. Of course some were better than others in different circumstances but main-ed a shammy so I can really only talk about that class. Man, how badly everyone wanted me to switch from ele to resto, also I remember mana tide being big in Gruul, so always got put into the mage/warlock group 3 or 4 when we did that one. Enchance was interesting but least of the shammy wants per raid. Looking back I'm glad I got to play all the specs, switching somewhat often because all were interesting enough. Lol still remember passing up on t4 chest since resto wasn't my "main spec" I was such a good boy back then and didn't lie. Oh man those boxes in Mag too, wipefest too many times, lol people couldn't click at the same time and there was a debuff that lasted a long time, so needed like 15 people to do the mechanic, if I remember correctly.

[Shaiandra]

No, no. Holy Shield greatly increased your block chance, but it didn't outright guarantee a block whereas Warrior's Shield Block would guarantee 2 blocks.

Uncrushable wasn't 102.4% avoidance - 102.4% was only possible with Rogues and Druids in cat form, and it allowed them to dodge or avoid every attack. Crushing Blows (Which are still a thing) happens when you have a level difference between you and the other mob - As bosses counted as +3 lvls above you back then, this meant that you had something like a... 6%? chance baseline to be hit by a Crushing Blow, which dealt I want to say 50% extra damage.

Becoming Uncrushable had to do with how Auto Attacks were calculated - Unlike today in which you have several individual rolls going on (First is if you dodge/parry or if the attack misses. Then it rolls to see if you block the hit. Finally it calculates if you got crit or not), it was all a single roll back then - Did you dodge/block/parry/avoid the hit, did it land normally, or did it crush or crit where all a single shared roll.

Now, the way I was taught about it was that the roll essentially rolled 1-100, and if it landed I.E. 1-6, you got Crushed, 7-9, you got Crit, 10-12, you avoided/it missed you, 13-18 (Everyone had a 5% chance to dodge attacks baseline) was a dodge, ect, ect.

As you added more stats, it would still only roll 1-100, so you would slowly "push" off the ability for Crushing Blows and Critical Blows to occur. I think it was something like 17% combined dodge/parry/block chance would make you uncrushable. It was somewhat complicated, and also something that was years ago, so I can't remember the itty-bitty details.

So, yea. 103.4% total Avoidance was a thing for "invincible" Cats and Rogues. Uncrushable was much, much lower and had to do with preventing Crushing Blos.

I haven't really thought about TBC in nearly a dozen years (and have no intention of playing it again now) but I think I still remember this.. Most of your post is correct in theory, though the last parts are off.

Yes, there was a single roll for melee attacks, with the possible outcomes being:
Miss, Parry, Dodge, Block, Crit, Crushing Blow, normal hit
I believe in that priority order; maybe dodge came before parry. To push Crushing Blows off, you needed a total of 102.4+% combined Miss, Parry, Dodge and Block such that those were the only possibilities (the extra 2.4% being since you'd have an effective -0.6% of each of those four against an enemy 3 levels higher). And of course, all these important numbers only apply accurately in PvE.

The first goals for tanks generally was to get at least 490 total Defense skill (base 350 from being level 70, then 140 more from talents and Defense Rating gear), in order to reduce a level 73 enemy's crit rate from 5.6% to 0%. At this point you'd have 10.6% each of miss/parry/dodge/block against a lv 70 enemy, then I believe both Paladins and Warriors had talents for +5% parry, but anyway. If say you had 10.6% miss, 15.6% parry, 10.6% dodge, then you would need at least 65.6% block chance in order to push crushing blows off the table. A Warrior's Shield Block granted +75% block so they've already exceeded that requirement while Shield Block is up, while a Paladin's Holy Shield temporarily added +30%, so a Paladin would still need 35.6% block (and/or other avoidance) before Holy Shield in order to be uncrushable while Holy Shield remains up. A Paladin in T4 or comparable gear probably won't have the stats for that, but T5 caliber or higher, likely yes.

(As a side note, being uncrushable also implies uncrittable, but since you can't always guarantee Shield Block/Holy Shield are up, it's optimal to reduce enemy crit chance to 0 passively anyway.)

A lot of times, block is included in the word 'avoidance' in the context of saying a Paladin needs 102.4% avoidance to become uncrushable, even though you do still take damage when blocking. You're right that a Rogue can have 102.4+% miss/parry/dodge with enough Agility/dodge rating and temporary buffs like Evasion active, and thus actually be unhittable by melee attacks to their front, but I think in most tanking context, 'avoidance' doesn't only mean that.

[Guy4123]

Prot pallies were better at tanking fast attacking bosses also like prince DW phase. He would eat our warriors asshole through his couple shield block charges but my holy shield would generally have enough charges for the CD to come up.

Everyone's gonna want a prot pally for dungeons and heroics though so the start of the expansion will be great.

[Dhrizzle]

Most hybrid-DPS were viable during tier 4 content (Kara, Gruul, Magtheridon) but then many of them scaled terribly and had to rely on having the right utilitiy/support to justify raid slots. In practice this meant bye-bye Boomkin, gimme more mana-mana Priests.

For pure DPS classes you tended to start raiding with specs that gave you +hit with talents then transitioned to ones that did better damage. For example warlocks started raiding with Affliction spec then transitioned to Destro at a certain gear level. Then you'd theorycraft your abilities until you find out you only need to do Shadow Bolt for best damage and to increase mana/healing from mana-mana Priests.

Disclaimer - I may be misremembering what I did and it's possible I did the wrong things anyway.

[LazarusLong]

I've tried searching this on Google and haven't really found anything.


Pretty much, I'm inquiring about the viable roles (tanks, healer, DPS) for the specs in TBC. For example, I know in vanilla/Classic WoW Protection Paladins had a tanking spec but had no Taunt, making them not very viable.


When TBC first came out, I spent the entire expansion leveling a fresh toon so I never experienced the end game of Heroic Dungeons and Raids. I'm not really sure what class Specs will be best suited for come Burning Crusade Classic.

I only remember the class balance in the late BC (Black Temple - Sunwell). 4 Shamans is a must (1 of them enhance if possible to buff melee), 2-3 paladins (1 prot is a must since it's the best aoe tank), Fury is pretty good but not required. Feral druid was the best tank at the beginning but fall off in the late BC. 1-2 Shadow priests (you want them in casters groups). 2 Hunters (BM at the start, marks in the middle, survival with a very high gear). Warlock tank (yes, tank).

[Zka]

I wished blizzard expanded on that 3rd role who's job was to improve the group's performance instead of competing for meters. That went away almost entirely with Wrath and beyond.

Yeah +1. I loved the hybrid tax and support specs. However I see the problems with this philosophy.
1) It's a nightmare to balance. If your class raises others' dps by 5%, you are worth much more (in nominal RDPS) in 25mans than in 10mans or even smaller formats. Other issue is stacking. You either let it stack and increase the balancing problem or don't let it stack and you'll force groups to only take exactly 1 of each support specs. This is very hard or impossible to balance properly.
2) many people felt bad about low personal dps (and there are objective problems with it for example in solo gameplay or arena) and wanted this design to be gone.

[Cæli]

Most hybrid-DPS were viable during tier 4 content (Kara, Gruul, Magtheridon) but then many of them scaled terribly and had to rely on having the right utilitiy/support to justify raid slots. In practice this meant bye-bye Boomkin, gimme more mana-mana Priests.

Disclaimer - I may be misremembering what I did and it's possible I did the wrong things anyway.

well, boomkin scales exceptionally well, starfire gets a spell coefficient of 100%, long cast time, scale even better with haste, they scale better than arcane mage in sunwell

[Djuntas]

I loved prot paladin, so Im gonna play that. Either that or feral/guardian because I also main a druid on "real" wow.

[Malacrass]

P
Everyone's gonna want a prot pally for dungeons and heroics though so the start of the expansion will be great.

This can't be stressed enough when it comes to TBC.

Heroics are a HUGE part of the expansion due to Badges of Justice, you or someone in your guild will always want to run them.
Even as a raider I would say you will still spend 4/5 of your group-playtime in Mechanar and other easier accessible heroics for various reasons, so picking a class / spec that is good in these scenarios will make a huge difference.

That said I'm not sure how things will play out with the current playerbase, but I would assume that Prot Paladins will be vastly preferred over any other tank, especially as the expansion progresses and pulling packs + aoe becomes more and more standard. I don't believe people will bother with CC classes as much as they did back when I played, at least.

[stevenho]

5man dungeon meta will be this:

"LFM 4m HC spam: prot pala, warlock, mage, healer"

Leader being a rogue or a hunter or a similar crap aoe class. Fast and efficient.

[LionSinMaikeru]

I've tried searching this on Google and haven't really found anything.


Pretty much, I'm inquiring about the viable roles (tanks, healer, DPS) for the specs in TBC. For example, I know in vanilla/Classic WoW Protection Paladins had a tanking spec but had no Taunt, making them not very viable.


When TBC first came out, I spent the entire expansion leveling a fresh toon so I never experienced the end game of Heroic Dungeons and Raids. I'm not really sure what class Specs will be best suited for come Burning Crusade Classic.

Pretty much all specs were used for one thing or another. Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests were very useful.

[deenman]

No raid won't include a shadow priest.

2 or 3 even depending on group,wasnt the mana thing party wide?

[stevenho]

There will be max 1 SP to buff locks, no more.
For speedruns replacing him with another lock will be a huge net gain.