TBC Considerations PART 2

Now that Spell batching is going away THANK YOU BLIZZARD!

Can we also consider a few things for TBC that would make the experience of TBC by Blizzard a more true to the original TBC. What I mean by this is, going a literal “no changes” rout is a nice idea, and the principals of sticking with the core of that makes sense, but some thing cant be had in a vacuum.

  1. I feel like we should consider using 2.4 Itemization. TBC itemization was changed but gained little to zero power factor, in some cases these changes were nerfs, actually in most cases were nerfs, excluding one situation where it was a buff for Retribution Paladin PVP. Their PVP sets got Resilience added as they deserved and should have had from day 1, it was a very much needed thing for them to be viable or comparable in PVP.

  2. Can we please consider the use of 2.4 Classes, now I know this is a double edge sword, but the classes were overall nerfed from 2.0 to 2.4, some things got improved yes, but it was not like Classic Vanilla where massive power increases were had for the classes based on their class updates and incremental improvements. 2.4 classes does indeed nerf my favorite class in the world (rogue), but I am ok with that because its better for the game overall, and I would really like for my Paladin friend to be able to Arena as Ret, heck even PVE that way with a spec that works VS the early version that doesn’t.

  3. Regarding Raid and Heroic Dungeons, can the PVE content be Un-Nerfed, and what I mean here is if you review the patch notes, you can see that numerous dungeons and raids were nerfed for the sake of a catch up mechanic. Things like Raid and Dungeon attunements were removed, some encounters had mechanics removed or nerfed sharply, and some encounters were just down right nerfed for the sake of catch up. Now that its 2021, and we the players have lots of experience in PVE, and know the encounters, can we please have the per-nerf versions of the PVE content so that it poses slightly more challenging. I am not delusional, I know that the raids will get cleared fast, but for the average bear using the per-nerfed formats will be at least more enjoyable than playing the “Catch up” versions. Please note that Kara had actually received some buffs along the way, and would like to see all the buffs to bosses included, but lets keep those pesky nerfs on the cutting room floor.

  4. Lastly, can we also consider to use 2.4 Arena rating requirements for PVP armor and weapons, this way raiders will not be “forced” into Arena just so that they can get weapons early as was the complaint before and the reasoning and rationalization for adding the rating in the first place. This also gives new arena players and seasoned arena players goals to go for rather than just to zugzug the arena, and goals are good because it gives people something to go work toward.

Thanks!

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  1. I’m pretty sure this will be the case, as it was for classic. If Karazhan drops are worse than du geon gear (as they were on launch), people would throw a fit, as they should.
  2. Same as number 1, it’s only logical.
  3. Definitely a touchy subject. I’m sure just about everyone agrees attunement quests/keys should remain, no one is questioning that. However, when looking at the change logs for all these raids, the line between “bug fix” and “nerf” is often blurred. Some of the changes are absolutely essential to the health of the game, like kt/vashj dropping more than 1 vial. Others we could do without, but it’s hard to tell on a case by case basis.
  4. This one is just my opinion, but rating requirements should be #nochanges. If someone wants to grind arena for a bis weapon, it’s their right. People did it in classic, people still do it in retail to this day. Pvp is part of the game

Many of the T5 and T6 Bosses, heck even Grull was nerfed HARD, and its not like they were your common “reduce health” reduce damage" sorts of nerfs, they had entire mechanics removed or simplified. Many bosses went from Naxx level to MC level overnight.

I missed the announcement that spell batching is going away.

I hate to ask this but–many people just make stuff up on these forums. Did you make this up?

No sir.

Its the real deal. 10ms if I am not mistaken is the Retail batch cycle, all games on line use some kind of batching to a degree or another.

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I won’t throw a fit. I have no problem with the patches progressing as they did back then.

TLDR Version:

  1. Yes.
  2. Yes.
  3. Yes.
  4. No.

Longer Version:

  1. Yes. Some early items (IIRC) didn’t have Spell Power for the Protadins, Expertise became a thing over Weapon Skill, and as you mentioned, Paladins just didn’t get Resilience for some dumb reason.
  2. Yes. TBC balancing was not like Vanilla, were classes were much closer at the start to what Devs wanted, and they were tweaked as needed. Some overly strong classes needed toning down, others needed a boost to fill their intended role, and Sunwell balancing was the most “complete” of the bunch.
  3. Yes. Definitely this, the only nerfs should be periodic much like TBC itself. Once T5 is released, Heroic Dungeons can be a tad easier to get into. Once T6 releases, T4 gets easier. Etc. This is consistent with TBC, Wrath, Cata, etc.
  4. No. Arena gear was a slow ramp up over time because the gear wasn’t meant to be entirely inaccessible. Plus that gear is necessary for Ferals to be crit immune without relying on blue gear forever.
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Solid points on 4

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They need to release heroics with the revered rep requirement, and pre-nerf raids/dungeons. Classic was way too easy before Naxx, Blizz has to see this. It would be a huge detriment to TBC if they ignore the game being so easy again.
I’m totally fine with 2.4 itemization and class balance, but they still need to tune the raids to a reasonable difficulty.

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1.sure
2.Sure
3. aslong as you’re not suggesting bringing back 360 degree cleave i’m fine with 2.4 balance overall.
4.It’s abit of mixed bag. There are for example. No rogue offhand swords till tier 6/ZA. It also gimps classes that don’t benefit heavily from blacksmithing. I’d leave it the way it is, leave the rating requirements till season 3.

My biggest bugbear is going to be the release of tier 5 and half of tier 6 alongside tier 4/season 1. This is for a variety of different reasons, But the main one is I don’t want to be dragging my guild through numberless SSC/TK trash clears over actually raiding.

I expect 2.4.3 everything with staggered content like Vanilla. And I think that’s a good thing. Though I would say I don’t t mind anything that existed at some point during TBC…but I just don’t see the reason for things like patch progression. We know how things are going to end up. And especially longer attunements. It’s a game. It should be fun. Waiting longer to get to the good stuff just seems like a waste of time.

That was the experience tho, and blizzard most likely nerfed those things as a catch up mechanic.

It would be a disservice to the players to have post nerf content.

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It might be a disservice to you, but plenty of players might want the final patch. Maybe the majority.

And like it or not 2.4.3 is authentic, just like 1.12 is authentic. It might not be your preference, but Blizz isn’t making this for any one individual.

I’ll bet you you’re right also. The majority won’t have the patience to do spend time to do anything “tedious” or “boring”. They just want an “I win” button.

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Oh Khlause, I just want to add - I’d like transmog and pet battles too.

Edit: Oh mechanical gnomes and barbershops

As a future Elf-Ret my responses will be a bit bias

  1. For the love of god, please, do this one. S1, S2, and the first half of S3 until geared out where just AWFUL being in zero resilience.

  2. I’d actually expect this one, if classic-vanilla is any indication. We’ve used late vanilla class balance the entire way so far.

  3. Agreed on this one as well. One of my biggest let downs for classic-vanilla is how comically easy it was, before naxx (and even then only a few bosses actually posed a threat). Granted I realize we as players have gotten significantly better at the genre/game in general since back in the day, but I’d prefer a little more authentic bite to the content, if possible.

  4. I wouldn’t mind then changing the arena-gear rating system around a bit, HOWEVER, I do have a big caveat for S1, where there would either need to be weapons added for honor only, or the s1 weapons remaining unrated for that season only. Every season after the first, there’s the previous season’s weapons available for purchase with honor as a catch up mechanic, so it’s only s1 that would concern me in this way.

Three items I would add to your list off the top of my head:

  • Drum - stacking nerf. Already seeing guild tension over LWing feeling like a requirement for tbc raiding.

  • Horde vs Alliance Paladin Seals… A case where homogenization isn’t a bad thing.

  • Attunements. I have a feeling I’ll be in the minority here, but if we do go with the late TBC patching, I’d actually prefer EARLY-TBC attunements where they actually existed and took a bit of effort to attain.

this one might be way off base, but id like them to make belf and draenei available during prepatch so we can get to work levelling before tbc launches and be closer to finishing our characters rather than have t start from lvl1 when tbc launches.

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now I know you’re goofin…

Probly so, its why 1.12 in a 1.12 state is so popular I suspect, because they just want to roll the content, not actually do it.

I really don’t think they’ll do this despite it being true to TBC. We’re all far more likely to get into T5 content while Arena 1 is still ongoing so I think they’ll gate it.

I truly hope so. I don’t want T4 to be irrelevant within a month. The reason it didn’t happen in TBC originally was a hold over from how inaccessible (or, rather, how bad the average player and guild was) raiding as a whole was and also a number of bugs that prevented kills.

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