Keep in mind that was 10years ago, there have been massive improvements since then to rogue tanking, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much they can tank these days.
If you go back at look at the “world 1st videos” (many are world 3rd, 5th etc but still) its Rogues, Locks and Warriors on top of the dps charts in almost every video for almost every kill. And Hunters didn’t really start showing up until SWP.
Now granted the meta will probably have changed in 10 years… but I still don’t see melee going from top dps to worst… I think bad melee are going to have a bad time and should probably reroll lock now… but a good melee who is able to efficiently time his cooldowns, pool his rage/energy and efficiently/reliably get out of the bad and back into the fight will still be among the best dps through most of TBC
Yes they are bad but they’re are still viable.
Given the right amount of effort (learning fights, rotation, etc…) Yes, the average shaman tank can accomplish Kara, going beyond that will require following strict gearing. This is on HARD pservers where everything is buffed (boss+25% hp & damage). I’m sure you know how Blizzard is going to approach TBC…
I mean… mages can “tank” MC once everyone outgears the content to a high enough degree. I still don’t know if I’d necessarily call that “tanking” though.
I remember rets personal DPS not being the best, but 1 being wanted for the raidwide crit buff, refreshing judgments, the ability to buff the protadin with improved sanctity, and the general utility of having another pally in the raid.
It isn’t though… really. It just takes time to setup properly and if you’ve never done it before it can take a long time your first time through, but it really isn’t hard.
Agreed, but Excel is just the same simple thing done over and over and over again. It doesn’t really require any special skills.
/headdesk
Another expansion of listening to you go on and on about something that isn’t real…
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Non of ur “lead tanking” is worth anything. A hunter just misdirecting the MT with an aimed shot and multishot along with the MT normal rotation is plenty of threat. Threat isn’t nearly the problem it was in vanilla. The bosses just hit really really hard, thats why fury tank wont be a thing.
What?!
Shaman parry talent in TBC is also a 30% threat drop.
You still have no way of dealing with crushes at all.
Bears can deal with it through huge EH values, but even Warriors and Paladins get trucked without dealing with crushes.
Rets in the beginning were at a disadvantage.
In Patch 2.3 Crusader Strike was boosted from a 10s CD to a 6s CD.
In Patch 2.3.2 CS was boosted again from 100% weapon damage to 110%.
In layman’s terms CS, with a 3.6 delay weapon, went from 36% of auto attack to 66% of auto attack. Thats over a 45% boost to CS damage.
Post 2.3.2 Rets were fine.
They weren’t topping meters, but they out DPS’d other damage off specs, ie elemental and boomkin, while bringing lots of utility.
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It’ll depend on what kind of raid group you’re with. If you’re pugging It’ll be tougher unless your the one arms/ret.
Its just classic all over again. People say play what you want but reality is even with how easy classic is people still min maxed. Now in 25man raids with more personal responsibility… yeah people are being delusional if they think all these dps warriors will have spots.
Tbc brought a lot of utility to many specs. So you’ll have a spread of melee and ranged. It’ll just favor range much more heavily than melee. And if you’re something like fury bringing nothing It’ll be that much harder.
Obviously melee will be brought but you’ll never stack them like in classic. Which by definition means they’ll be people who either reroll or won’t have a spot. That’s the harsh reality of it. Classic is far too melee heavy for everyone to just play their main and get a spot. Truth hurts.
All the tbc endless priv server videos I have seen has it being arcane mage, BM hunter and warlock.
Almost all videos I have seen from endless TBc had arcane on top for most of the fights.
Seeing how endless TBc BUFFED boss health so the fights were longer which doesn’t favor arcane and they were still topping meters makes me believe it will be arcane as #1 followed by BM and lock.
An alliance ele shamans 1 totem and racial gives it’s whole group 4% hit and 3% crit.
Also lust.
No, the reason it won’t be a thing is because Deep Prot exceeds Fury/Prot in TPS during high rage situations and has higher threat per rage than Fury/Prot for low rage situations.
Deep Prot in TBC only offers 1.05x Stamina and 1.3x Block Value multipliers over Fury/Prot. The defensive talents are all in the 1st and 2nd row of Arms or 1st through 3rd rows Prot, both of which are easily accessible by Fury/Prot. Every other bonus Deep Prot has over Fury/Prot is purely offensive, be it the rage cost reduction of offensive abilities, 1.1x Strength multiplier, or Devastate.
You seem to be under the impression that Fury/Prot cannot use a shield, which is incorrect.
The real benefit of Fury/Prot in TBC would be the ability for the Rogue to use Improved Expose Armor, increasing BM hunter DPS while not totally ruining the Warrior’s threat. I am unconvinced that is worth it, though, and this is unnecessary if using a Feral or Prot Paladin tank instead.
Private servers are a poor representation of the live game for a number of reasons… not the least being that they just got PART of Swp what… 2 weeks ago? So your sampling size is what… 5 raids for a fraction of the tbc content? Doesnt seem super reliable… 
On live mages were close on a lot of fights but still almost always behind locks… who are often behind rogues/hunters/wats
Boss health is unchanged. You’re mistaken
And actually I just watched a few Endless TBC BT/SSC videos (there are literally only maybe a dozen largely from the same 2 guilds so again… sample size) and I couldnt find a single one where a mage was top dps. It was locks/hunters 90% of the time. I saw was one guilds Archi kill where you had a mage 1st hunter 2nd and 3rd and a rogue 4th… with the other mages (and hunters and locks) falling well behind the rogue…
We’ll have to see if it changes, but my recollection of a typical (note the word typical. not mandatory, not best) TBC raid was:
Group 1
Shaman
Prot warr
Prot pally
Ret pally
Arms warr
Group 2
Shaman
BM Hunter
BM Hunter
Surv Hunter
Feral druid
Group 3
Shaman
Destro lock
Destro lock
Destro lock
Aff lock
Group 4
Shaman
Mage
Mage
Shadow priest
Boomkin
Group 5
Shaman
Holy pally
CoH priest
IDS priest
Tree druid
So there was melee consisting of dps warriors, rets, and rogues. It’s just that there was often only limited spots for three different flavors of melee DPS. Melee DPS was there, but it just wasn’t stacked like it is now.
People would stack for different fights, but the above is representative of a run of the mill raid for typical content. Sometimes people would run more melee, sometimes there’d be no ret, or the ret would be in a different group, etc.
Hunters and locks were really good, but I’ll be surprised if the meta turns into bringing 8 or 9 locks/hunters each. Seems too unbalanced, but then again we now live in the age of 18 warrior raids lol.
The only thing you really need to stack is shaman. They’re the true gods of TBC.
Agreed.
Boomkins also offer a large amount of utility…both group and raid wide.
With that being said a Ret Paladin brings:
3% raid wide crit with talented Judgement of the Crusader.
2% increased damage to group with Imp Sanctity Aura.
1 Blessing
1 Judgement, while maintaining ALL judgements through Crusader Strike.
Ret Paladin utility ranks up there with anyone else’s while doing very solid damage post Patch 2.3.2.
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Again, small sample size and skewed environment but… No one really seems to be stacking shamans on the private servers, typically seeing just 3 and those are largely ele not resto which is surprising
There’s a thing called Misdirect that Hunters get in TBC, this should prevent any “lead tanking” from a dps.