As someone who never played TBC, I’m curious:
How different are the classes when TBC comes?
Which classes receive the most changes?
From memory, most “meme specs” get boosted and become viable for competitive play. Classes and specs retain their identity, although the balance of power between those classes fluctuates (for example, the introduction of Cloak of Shadows turns Warlocks into an absolute pushover for Rogues). On the whole, classes and specs feel much more polished and complete in BC.
I guess to use a more concrete example,
Does levelling up a mage in classic feel very different from levelling up a mage in TBC? Are spells and abilities radically different? Entirely new rotations?
That’s really what I’m asking about classes in general.
Levelling a mage in TBC is, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this, substantially easier than levelling a mage in Vanilla WoW.
You can kill 5-10 targets at once as usual, but if anything goes wrong you have a ranged frost nova that only requires your pet to be in range.
And then there’s Ice Lance.
3 Likes
It’s alot and not so much all at the same time.
“Meme” specs are all in much better spots.
Mages won’t be able to boost and aoe level at the same capacity as you see in Classic.
Hunter pets don’t just get dismissed or stand still in raids and Beast Mastery actually becomes the top tier raiding spec while staying bis for leveling.
Enhancement Shamans dual wield.
Playstyle-wise in pve there are not overwhelming differences for most classes/specs. The largest ones are Arcane Mage, Demonology Warlock, Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druid.
Reason being that these were specs that ultimately lacked anything resembling a core rotation but gained one in TBC, and Enhancement also changed from being a 2h-based spec to a DW-based spec.
Arcane Mage got Arcane Blast, and their core rotation revolves around managing stacks of it.
Demonology Warlock gained an actual pve dps pet and their spec largely revolves around microing that pet so it doesn’t die to aoe (Warlock pets don’t have Avoidance in TBC).
Enhancement Shaman becomes a Dual Wield spec, Stormstrike gets an actually usable mana cost and Lava Lash is added, making it play more like a fury warrior and less like a ret paladin.
Feral gains Mangle, giving both cat and bear a debuff to manage and making the spec more involved than just spamming Shred/Maul.
Most other specs just have damage/cost adjustments with a couple of abilities added to their Vanilla playstyle and practically play about the same, and/or mostly benefit from the debuff cap being raised letting them use their dungeon rotation actually in raids (afflocks, spriests, etc).
Most of the differences between vanilla and tbc are core mechanics (consumables being consolidated, wbuffs gone, debuff limit gone) or basic numbers changes (cost/damage/scaling).
11 Likes
That was amazing, thank you.
I’m trying to decide what to level up in classic as an alt, and I was thinking it might be good to avoid something where the experience would be similar in TBC, and that way, discover what the classic X felt like.
I also get a kick out of experiencing these classes and discovering how they laid the groundwork for these classes in the expansions to come. For example, my main is a holy paladin, which I never played in retail. However, I recently leveled a paladin to max in retail and it was interesting to see how various things were still there, but tweaked in various ways, or actually quite similar.
Shamans go from healers to not just acceptable, but necessary as Enhance and Elemental. Druids go from sub par Tanks (Good offtanks) to God tier Tanks/Offtanks and God tier Heals. Shadow Priests go from a “maybe we will take you if we have 5 Warlocks and even then you will probably go weaving and get no gear and have awful DPS” to Top 5 DPS and one of the most needed utility as Warlocks become one of the 2 best DPS in the game that Shadow Buffs and BC is a caster meta so Priests being a mana battery is literally never bad. Paladins go from Holy only to being necessary offtanks (or even main tanks if geared properly) in any Raid group. Ret isnt “required” but becomes very useful, and Blood Elf Rets do very well and provide great Ret specific buffs.
Rogues and Warriors DPS gets crapped on hard so I expect a ton of sad Classic players or a lot of rerolls.
Overall, all the meme specs become meta and the entire world was happy. I would say Druids, Shamans and Shadow Priests are the standout specs for BC from what we have today. Moonkins do much better, but they are still bottom of the barrel unfortunately.
This alone has me the most excited. I cannot wait to play in a World where people cant use World Buffs as a crutch. I dont expect extreme difficulty, but I do expect the pub experience (my personal favorite raiding experience) to be far, far more interesting for this reason alone.
My absolute favorite Classes being not only needed, but being more fun is the cherry on top. I absolutely cant wait.
Oh also, AoE being limited will mean the early dungeon experience wont be completely ruined. Just everything about it is going to be so much better. Dungeons having Heroic modes also has me excited as Cata Dungeons were based on BC Heroics. So I imagine my memories of the difficulty will actually be fairly close to what I remember. Cata dungeons even on normal people still avoid to this day because they just destroy most pubs.
1 Like
That was fun for about a week before they tuned the damage down. Just spamming ice lance and hoping up and down.
the hybrids actually become hybrids in PVE. For PvP, they’re still pigeonholed into heal botting or go home.
Feral druids start killing everything
Fundamentally each class changes very little, on a spec by spec level things change dramatically.Just about every spec gets a new button to press and it emphasises what the spec is supposed to be.
I could go on a spec by spec basis but I’ll keep it to a minimum.
-Arcane mages get a rotational ability (arcane blast)
-Affliction locks are encouraged to cast ALL their affliction dots and not just spam shadowbolt.
- Enhance shamans provide more meelee group utility than resto or elemental shamans.
All classes get what they need in TBC to maintain a spec identity, without diluting their class fantasy. All paladins can heal regardless of spec, but Holy is the best bet for healing.
My TBC experience on the opening week was with a mage, and I easily outpaced my friends while playing much less than they did.
To be fair, that was done in a PvE server. The Ice Lance nerf was noticeable, but it stayed amazing for shatter combos.
No. Leveling 1 - 60 isn’t much different as a Mage in the expansion. While you’ll get access to one or two new abilities via your 41-point talent (temporary water elemental) and icy veins, a little extra defense with baseline Ice Block, and some mana cost reductions to certain spells like AI and Fireball. And that’s assuming we’re on 2.4.3.
Otherwise it’s just Frostbolt spam. The new non-talented abilities like Molten Armor, Ice Lance and Spellsteal are all learned between 62 and 70.
many of the specs that didnt get any real focus in Classic start to sure up a bit more. Shammies and druids probably get the biggest turn arounds. Melee, while still good takes much more work to be good since ranged catches upand for the most part surpasses the melee. It wont be uncommon to see hunters and and Warlocks and druids in high demand.
Joke specs suddenly are much more realistic options even the boomkin. Though the biggest change is going to be that you bring 5 shaman to raids for the most part. Heroism and bloodlust are for group only and will be rotated in and out of the top dps groups.
Mages, while good are not ~as~ good as Warlocks because of the way talents shake out. But can get 90% of the way there with some trinkets and mana mangment.
really not all that different, the only real major change are some new added abilities that every class has something different, and some expansion to the talent pools that in some ways are good and others not so good.
The classes that get the biggest change, probly shaman and paladin equally, they go from vanilla to a similar but very effectively different class in tbc. For example, in vanilla really all you want is a resto shaman or holy paladin, but in TBC you want Elemental, Retribution, Enhancement and Protection because they all provide value to the raid, and these two classes also are better in PVP than in vanilla because they have more player agency over their output to a degree.
The classes largely preserve their current feel, but neglected specs get more unique identities.
- Mages get a better Arcane-based nuke and the spec actually supports using those spells, rather than just being a utility tree to amp up Fire or Frost
- Druids of the Feral variety get better fleshed out passives and a new skill to make us feel less like lvl15 versions of Rogues or Warriors
- Paladins not only can effectively Tank, they’re actually one of the strongest choices in almost all scenarios, plus Retribution becomes effective DPS with excellent utility
Essentially, if a spec felt like it needed some kind of signature skill that wasn’t just another spec’s bread and butter, then they got it in TBC. If they already had skills, those skills got better and typically got new fun mechanics with them. TBC did a lot of gap filling so that each spec had a more distinct identity and you didn’t feel completely stupid being one of your primary specs.
All of that being said, not all specs got equal love and there are definitely some that languished until WotLK, but overall you’re in a much better place to play whatever you want and succeed than in Vanilla.
1 Like
enh didn’t get lava lash in tbc
2 Likes
WoW, TBC really sounds like the “new and improved” version of Classic.