Creative Builds, Classes, and Talents

So we all know this game has pretty much been solved. For example, if I want to go shadow priest for PVE most of the talents and gear I would pick could be found on a bunch of guides. In fact, some players could actually potentially look down on me if I don’t follow the optimal build. To clarify, I don’t play this game to be the best, but instead to just enjoy the experience. I was hoping to get some good ideas on builds that I or other players could play around with for fun.

My question to everyone is what are some non-meta builds/specs that you have been either speculating or enjoyed? Or perhaps which classes have the most room for creativity in their gear and talent trees (following meta or even non-meta)? I am looking to try out some non-optimal, non-meta builds for fun.

TLDR; What are some non-meta builds that a player could mess around with?

4 Likes

You can mess around with any of them. Just don’t waste everyone else’s time joining their raids or arena teams and you are fine

7 Likes

I personally enjoy the SV build for heroic dungeons runs that gives up readiness to have scatter shot.

It makes a good interrupt on a spell.

Won’t lock out the the spell school, but it’s still very useful. And I can do the same with wyvern sting.

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There is a limited numbers of specs yet many of them have their uses
some more niche than others
they are usually fine in most environments
but we live on an era where everyone Googles what xxxx is BEST for xxxx?
which narrows it a lot

This. By all means mess around but don’t fool yourself that a shaman can tank or something.

I mean a shaman tanked all of Kara before the nerfs, sooo…

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This is genius. Tank Shaman has to be possible. I hear someone tanking with a Moonkin Druid which is somewhat exciting.

I’ve always been curious as to if build properly a shadow priest or disc priest could get away with tanking. Obviously this would be tough in a raid environment but maybe could get away with 5mans. Or maybe a warlock could tank?

I play shockadin for funsies sometimes. I enjoy it more than prot pally aoe thing.

Survival hunter (scatter/wyvern shot) has been lots of fun.

Arcane mage in bgs has been interesting. Pretty consistent killing through heals it’s scary.

Haven’t played boomkin but they seem much less of a meme in bgs

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Spell damage Rogue can be fun if u can get some gear for it. Lots of + nature damage or spell damage gear for poisons.

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Carried by healers, but sure.

I feel as though Rogue has a bunch of different options for every aspect of the game.

I’ve been having fun leveling a Daggers/Sub spec Rogue with the improved Ambush/Backstab talents.

Can be done is not the same as the optimal option.

Can it be done? Yes.
Is it optimal? No.

Easy answer: Literally whatever you want.

Better answer: Most off-meta builds involve mixing and matching generic power boosts in secondary or tertiary talent trees. It doesn’t make much sense to dip into Balance at all as a Feral since you can’t get any useful talents in 99% of them that can be used while in Cat or Dire Bear Forms. However, for classes like Priest and Paladin, there are options that exist that let you try to focus on a particular spell or class theme.

Example 1: Pure Smite Priest
https://tbc.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/0550100130505102501-005551002020052
Idea behind the build is to Smite spam with Holy Fire, and it captures the relevant synergy talents of Force of Will and Spiritual Guidance. This build isn’t meta though because it offers none of the utility of a Shadow Priest, would have to nerf itself further to get things like Improved Divine Spirit, and goes OOM really really fast.

Smite Priests do better by getting more focus into Shadow to amp up SW:Pain and SW:Death… but at that point you’re just an anemic Shadow Priest who uses Smite instead of Mind Flay and Mind Blast, and minus the utility to make it that much better.

Example 2: Vengeance Protadin
https://tbc.wowhead.com/talent-calc/paladin/-0500503350000130501-0500505130030125
The idea here is that you trade a ton of survivability in favor of a lot more damage output while relying heavily on Consecration for your damage output. This isn’t really super workable in raids like T5, but probably can be used in some Heroics with the right gear and definitely a lot of Normals. The real bright spot for this build is that it is a farming build, like Stratholme or Black Morass or whatever it is you enjoy AoEing down. Vengeance procs fairly regularly despite not prioritizing any Critical Strike Chance, and Consecrate does a ton of damage thanks to all the modifiers you’ve added to it, letting you focus almost entirely on being unhittable (only Blocks, Dodges, Parries, or Misses) and having enough Block Value that you barely take any damage.

The takeaway is that most of the “creative” builds are just things like above with minor variations. Some classes are more prone to having alternatives than others, notably classes where you don’t entirely change roles from talent tree to talent tree, but that’s all there is to it. Every now and then an off-meta build will rise up because it actually competes quite well. Kebab Warriors (that is DW Arms Warriors) is one such example, with Kebab scaling very well, being easier to play than traditional Arms, doing comparable damage to traditional Arms, and still bringing all the debuffs/buffs that Arms is brought for in the first place. All it does is dip into Fury more deeply to grab different damage bonuses that work with DW.

Beyond that you really only have oddball gearing setups, like SP Hunters trying to make their minimal magic damage hit much harder… because reasons I guess?

Shaman have very limited Tanking abilities because they’re just too squishy, have no real talents towards being a Tank, and (probably the worst thing) have no gear dedicated to it. A Shaman in full S2 Gladiator gear is still squishier and more prone to death than a Druid first getting into Karazhan.

A Shaman did manage to get carried (lots of deaths and Reincarnation/Soul Stone usage) on their way through a Karazhan before the nerfs with a stacked group to cater to him, but that’s it for that. The same Shaman could barely take Gruul Hurtful Strikes at low growths, let alone to finish, and Magtheridon was flatly out of the question because the adds were too much for a Shaman to handle.

T5 is too punishing on even easier bosses like Leotheras, let alone genuine bruisers like Tidewalker.

Shaman, for all their efforts, can’t Tank.

4 Likes

It’s so far removed from optimal that it isn’t worth mention.

It’s meme.

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I enjoy playing a 49-SURV/12-MM build on my Hunter & it performs nicely for all the various different activities that I like to do in the game, & most importantly I have fun playing it. If dual-spec was in the game I would probably have a more raid-dps focused build to use there, but since it isn’t in the game I simply accept the compromise of having to spec for multiple different activities in the game with a single spec - and Survival wins at that for me. But, from what i have seen in-game almost all Hunters are avid meta-chasers, with the same basic BM spec & the cliché Ravager pet. Pretty sad really that this is what the game has devolved into - just mindless PARSE-PvP.

Considering how many hunters are meta chasing rerolled Fury Warriors?

It’s no surprise.

These suggestions are great and I like what you said about changing role from spec to spec. I think at the core this is what I was struggling with. Most talents feel like they don’t have too much room for creativity, but classes like rogues, warriors, and hunters (dps melee classes specifically) have much more wiggle room to play around with. This wiggle room can also alter the play style (while still being somewhat effective) and can adjust the viable equipment acquired along the journey. For classes that are extremely mana reliant it seems extremely taxing to take these off meta builds.

To add to the priest builds I was able to find some wiggle room for AOE grinding. I pretty much rushed power infusion, and then built into holy nova damage with spirit tap. I was somewhat reliant on potions and shadow fiend, but it was a lot of fun to kill mobs in packs of 4 or so vs the typical smite or shadow rotation.

I had a lot of fun playing a Shockadin Paladin back in my original TBC days. For some reason I can’t even play a Paladin anymore though these days In TBC (no desire, any spec), so my Classic Holy Paladin is just sitting in SW/IF at 60 doing my banking & AH business now.