Dead specs & Classes in TBC

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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With the coming transition of the anniversary servers from classic to TBC it’s time to look at changes to improve the game. TBC does make some significant improvements from classic, but falls flat when it comes to certain classes & specs.

The most glaring examples are mages & rogues. Rogues are essentially a waste of space until Sunwell, and mages are a waste of space in sunwell. Rogues problem in the early game is primarily lack of raid utility, being essentially limited to expose armor on bosses. Mages bring practically no utility used in raids, except maybe improved scorch & very limited need of decurse, but not having a fire mage and warlocks playing shadow is a better option for raid dps. Neither class bring any valuable buff or party aura that would come close to closing any gap to bringing another of their role.

On top of this we also have classes like shamans & paladins which bring some of the best raid/party utility in the game, however there is a massive difference in value between the specs. Enhancement has by far the biggest impact on improving a party’s DPS, it’s outright unfun to be a physical DPS without an enhance, a caster without an elemental is not even noticable on the other hand. Elemental is a medicore DPS with mediocre bonuses to casters compared to what a resto shaman would bring. The only reason you would ever bring an elemental is the fact that shamans are so overepresented that they generally make up at least 20% of the raid and other hybrid dps just being worse.

Druids in TBC have no viable DPS spec. Feral has decent dps, but it exists merely as something that makes the best tank (on par with paladin) even more valuable, on it’s own it’s not great at all. Boomkin is utter garbage. Paladins are in a similar position with holy, it is completely overshadowed by two much more useful specs and is the weakest healer in TBC.

Some of the design decisions in TBC did make essentially all classes desirable, which is no different from classic, it did allow other specs than warriors deal meaningful DPS aswell and is great in that regard, but it still falls short of being good design.

My suggestions to solve this is to make every class more valuable & without breaking pvp balance.

Rogues you can’t buff expose armor without affecting pvp, unless you were to give them armor pen buffs that only affect non-players, but you could give slice and dice a party buff component of 5% haste. This however might not even be enough, making it raid wide might be necessary.

Mages should have arcane intellect provide a secondary effect such as crit. Shatter should affect any target immune to roots. Combustion should be lowered to 1.5 minute cooldown, but only increase by 5% per non-crit.

Druids should have their form auras be raid wide.

Casters need to have abilities like improved scorch, shadow weaving, warlock curses etc. be streamlined into flatter spell damage modifiers without specific schools. This would help maintain the pvp balance and it would bring much needed buffs to boomkins & elemental.

Heroism/Bloodlust should be raid wide & induce the sated effect. Shamans are already the first class you want to fill any raid subgroup with, this is basically just the same fix that was done to drums in 2021.

Shadow priest’s mana bonus should be raid-wide, but be reduced for every raid member above 5.

Now paladins and protection warriors… On top of my mind my suggestions that would improve QoL for a raid would be raid-wide shouts & have holy paladins make auras raid wide, maybe add some power to existing blessings & auras. I don’t think raid-wide shouts would help protection warriors at all though.

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No changes please.

4 Likes
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We are 5 years beyond that.

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I want to experience TBC as close to original as possible.

3 Likes
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Your best shot was doing that before 2021.
Changes are required to bring the experience inline with what was back in 2007.

For example to properly experience classic, you would have to be extremely restrictive with raiding as only something like 0.1% even killed a boss in naxxramas.

Fixing serious flaws that are to a large part stem from the way the culture & people have changed will improve everyones experience.

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Could be good ideas for classic+ but the odds are low this will happen for tbc

1 Like
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Almost every class/spec is viable in TBC PvE scene…besides Rogue class as whole. I wouldn’t mind Rogue being little bit “fixed”.

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not all of us are raiders, me for example like to solo stuf and here and there a 5 man dungeon and i am perfectly fine not having epic’s that’s for the raiders.

2 Likes
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It is obvious blizzard has little regard for classic & tbc when cata/mop is running, however there is a lot of hope given that they are doing changes to the coming mop version, for example with class tunings that were added in WoD.

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Like one bs take after another to the last. bs back to back. Lets make 20 ench shams for raids or what? Dude, please read a guide or smth.

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Making party buffs raid buffs woud result in big dps increas for raid and lower number of slots from support class

What woud resoult in more stacking of piure DPS , what woud increas overal raid DPS even more

Then you woud have to increase HP of bosses or Raid diff woud drop to joke level

And at the end we woud end up with min req group of “buffers” and even more green/purple frames in TBC raids

3 Likes
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What gives you the idea of a slight nerf to shamans would possibly increase the number? If anything you would consider going with 4-5 shamans instead of 5+. I do agree that enhancement are able to bring way too much utility to a group with twisting, which resto & elemental can’t effectively do without big personal loss.

I never suggested making all party buffs raid wide. I did suggest it for 2 classes which you NEVER want to bring. Boomkins & Rogues are always a waste of space, in sunwell when the game is over would you bring a rogue for expose, if you have enough warglaives. This would mean you could bring 1 of them instead of zero. You also never bring more than 1 shadow priest, however making their mana bonus raid wide would lower the degeneracy when it comes to competing on a personal level, as you have less requirement of being in the right group.

HP & Bosses obviously have to be buffed regardless. TBC was only fun until T5 content was nerfed.

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I don’t get why people always go and start playing classic when they actually want to play a new game.

All we really need for TBC is the dungeon balance as close to the original release point as possible with just some required bugfixes and the atunements intact. Both throughout all phases.

It’s classic. It’s a museum. If you don’t like it: There’s other stuff.

1 Like
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I’ve played classic since nost, mate. It has been clear to everyone that changes are necessary.

You call for dungeon changes then the next sentence you call it a museum, you are incoherent.

Games are not museums, they like everything dealing with people require adaptation to the every changing people that play them. Most changes blizzard has done to classic & mop have been met with enthusiasm, such as dual spec, batching removed, chronoboons. However it is clear more changes are direly needed. Boosting should not be the best way to level, afking in AV should not be the best way to gear, warriors should not be the only DPS class. This new pvp system killed pvp by making a pve battleground the meta to achieve pvp ranks.

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Actually I did quite the contrary. But the way you look at “classic” may prevent you from realizing this.

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When has “bugfixes” been changes? Bugs were fixed all the time from launch on.

Actually I agree with Linal, have a go at changes in Seasonal, C+ and all the other ones - Anniversary as well, but leave the Classic cycle as a museum, as close to the original as humanly possible - it is too late for Cata, but MoP is a new chance!

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I don’t like all of those changes and I think that they harmed the game.

Dual spec removed very important gold sink from the game, which is reflected in a crazy inflation.

Removal of batching made fun things impossible like sheeping each other.

Chronoboons made world buffs necessary even for the most casual raids.

I probably shouldn’t even remind, what a disaster their ranking rework turned into. With all grand marshals running around with Naxx level gear in BWL, earned by running to the south 9999 times.

Even instant mail between alt characters is questionable, as it essentially made bags and bank less useful: now you have free 6000 slot bank at your hands, available at any small town with mailbox, with no downsides.

I’m not against changes, per se. The problem however is that modern Blizzard is unable to make changes that would benefit the game. I don’t trust them to do it. The old game was not perfect by any means, but it was good, so just recreating it is good enough. Old team was much more capable and modern team cannot do good work, so they should not do any changes.

2 Likes
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I very much doubt Blizz will make any changes, and I’m gonna play Nicolay as Mage no matter what, but to be honest, I would be very happy if Arcane Intellect gave something like 3% crit on top of int to the Mage’s party, and maybe improved scorch gave general spell damage increase, not just fire. It would make me feel like less of an anchor on the raid, only brought because: “well he’s been with us all vanilla, so I suppose we should :man_shrugging:” “are you suuuuuure you don’t wanna reroll enh sham? :wink:”

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Ok. We had Vanilla, we had 2019 Classic, we have Era (TBC Era still missing atm but most likely being installed).

These versions aren’t enough?

Personally I love starting over new, but meanwhile I got enough of “the real classic feeling” with all its inconveniences.

They should probably release a once and for all Vanilla-like version on a lower patch than the 2019 one which stays like that forever. This can probably only happen with a Europe wide PvE server bc I’m pretty sure that it will be a low pop server after all.

And the Classic+ version that allows Qol features for all those who like Classic without stumbling blocks. I guess that the playerbase for a comfortable Classic is way higher.

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It also opened a whole new world. Now people can actually participate in multiple things without feeling handicapped (pvp in pvp specc for instance. You can play fun speccs and still be viable for raids.

Dual specc was the best thing they added in anniversary.
Besides, there is enough gold sink in consumeables.

Allthough i dislike world buffs immensely. Chronoboons actually made us viable to play our char after gathering world buffs. Previously without boons you had to get world buffs, and just not play your char until it was ready for raid. Extremely bad gameplay.

1 Like