With the upcoming TBC anniversary re-release planned in winter/spring 2026 I would like to bring up some shortcomings of TBC to the attention to the Blizzard devs and the classic community. Hoping to start a conversation, with the ultimate goal of improving the TBC gaming experience for all of us (although mainly focused on pve). The classic anniversary realms already brought some QoL improvements, like dual spec, chrono-boons and the removal of the (de-)buff limit. I think we can all agree that these changes have improved the classic experience a lot. Similar to Classic Vanilla, TBC also has itās āproblemsā, so lets see where we can improve.
Well known content creator on Youtube named WillE has made a video 2 years ago where he evaluates his experiences throughout TBC. I think he brings up some valid points. Lets go through his points and ill finish with some closing thoughts.
His major points:
- Group wide buffs
- Heroism stacking
- One button rotations
- Very one sided pvp meta
- āHeart beatā resists in pvp
- End game content gets worn out the more you progress through the phases
1. Group wide buffs
Buffs in TBC are group wide, this means to play optimally you have to set up each group perfectly so each spec in the group gets exactly the buffs it needs. That means each melee group NEEDS an Enhanced Shaman for Windfury, Feral Druid for Leader of the Pack, a Warrior for Battle Shout. In addition you also need a Survival Hunter, Ret Paladin and Arms Warrior in the raid for their debuffs. One of your Enhanced Shamans canāt make it to raid? Well that means 20% less dmg for the melee classes or 10% less dmg for the hunter group, have fun!
I would suggest to make more buffs raid wide, like totems, shouts, Ferocious Inspiration (and not stack), and of courseā¦
2. Heroism
Every raid group in TBC will do some level of Heroism stacking. Either on their Hunters or their Warlock group to maximize dps. That means someone has to mid fight open his raid tab and switch in Shamans to use their Heroism, and then switch in the next Shaman, wait for the first heroism to expire call for the next Heroism, and then switch another Shaman in. Needless to say this is extremely cringe and stupid, and I am certain Blizzard never wanted Heroism to lead to this kind of gameplay. So PLEASE add the Sated debuff like in WotLK, complete with all the hotfixes, to prevent degeneracy.
3. One button rotations
Classes like Warlocks, Elemental Shaman, and Boomkins still have to press one button for their pve rotation, which is very boring. Especially Boomkins really need some love, because there is no sane person in the world that actually enjoys Boomkin gameplay in raids over any other class (for real). Warlocks have interesting pve talent specs like Fire Destro, but playing it in raid is just very unwise to do since your Arcane mage has to spec fire, which is way less dps, and Fire Destro is still a small dps loss, and does not scale as well. My suggestion is to give Fire Mage and fire Destro Warlock something unique to bring to the raid. So Warlocks can have a choice to play the one button spec or the Fire Destro spec.
4. Very one sided pvp meta - 5 āHeart beatā resists in pvp
These are some concerns I have heard a lot during my time playing TBC. However, I am not a pvp-er beyond Classic Vanilla, because I do not enjoy Arena pvp. Arena enjoyers please give your thoughts on these.
6. End game content gets worn out the more you progress through the phases
I think Blizzard can add more end game content by bringing Rated Battlegrounds to TBC anniversary. I think a lot of classic players enjoy Battlegrounds over Arena pvp, adding Rated Battlegrounds gives players more ways to enjoy end game.
These are the āproblemsā I think a lot of us TBC enjoyers were met with last time playing TBC classic. To any readers, please let me know your thoughts, and like the post if you agree. Hopefully Blizzard picks up on this.