Weapon swapping

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

Hey everyone,

So I know that warriors pretty much have to weapon swap to use all their abilities but does any other class also weapon swap? I could picture rouges swaping between a fat 1hand and daggers or a pally/sham swapping between two handers for melee and 1hander shield for casting.

Just didn’t know if this was a thing in vanilla so looking for thoughts

2

Mages <----- Off-hands.

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3

Yeah minmaxing pallies do it too:

  • Rets shield/turtle in PvP if they are “ahead” of their SoC proc rate and dont have Vengeance up – against physical damage

  • Shock/SoC pallies go 2H vs wizards and shield vs physical

  • Reckoning pallies surprisingly usually dont (changing weapons clears stacks) – unless they are go shield against physical similar to rets

4

2H pallies (ret, reck, or shock soc) will often also macro going shield if they are going to go into Concentration Aura to fake or heal (if the attacker(s) primarily physical dmg of course)

5

Weapon swapping can be useful for a feral druid. Say you want to pop out of bear to heal. Equip your healing staff before you do. Or if your about to moonfire spam then throw on your spell damage weapon.

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6

For Mages, there is an off-hand item from one of the class quests that refounds between 400-1200 mana. It is an item you wana keep for all stages of Classic. It has a 30 second swap in timer and its general CD is 5 minutes. You can use it from 1 to 3 times depending on fights.

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7

If I am not mistaken, all on-use items have a 30s cooldown when you equip them. Obviously not when they are already on their own cooldown from use, but it opens up some interesting gameplay choices. This applies to weapons with on-use effects as well as armor with on-use effects.

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In my experience Warriors that actually swapped weapons were pretty rare. I think it triggered the global cooldown to do it via macro, doing that in combat was a big sacrifice. Most just accepted that you don’t use shield abilities unless you’re protection. Again, just my experience, on one server.

9

Rogues must have a dagger equipped for certain abilities like Ambush and Backstab.

Warriors must have a Shield equipped for certain abilities like Shield Bash and Shield Block in addition to being in the correct stance.

It’s definitely a thing and good players will be using it.

10

pretty much every class swaps to Skull of Impending Doom in PVP.

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11

One of the most popular was Mage switching to spirit stick for evocate. Anyone else also switching to spirit stick for innervate.

Switching to no weapons for your wipe to save on repair bills.

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12

Shaman absolutely should be swapping weapons for the appropriate situation, though usually it’s a matter of ‘swap for the matchup’ rather than ‘swap for skill usage’.

13

I prefer wife swapping :sweat_drops:

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14

Stance dancing was very normal amongst high level Warriors in PvP. There wasn’t a reason to in PvE, unless you were going to be tanking - or were emergency taunting the boss.

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Yeah, just watched this video. Don’t remember this item at all. Totally getting it this time.

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16

Mostly correct.

Vanilla Warrior has to go Battle Stance for Thunderclap and Mocking Blow, and Berserker Stance for Berserker Rage and Intercept. While tanking of course.

I wouldn’t consider this high level, but apparently Blizzard did. Each expansion reduced the need to switch stances to the point that they don’t exist in the modern game.

17

on a pserver that I played on, I had a macro that casted ambush and then immediately swapped my weapon to my slow 1h, and another one that did the same thing, except with backstab

i expect every good rogue to be using those two macros

I think that also had a macro that swapped my weapon and then casted sinister strike without tripping the GCD before the sinister strike… I don’t know if that last one is gonna work on Classic WoW; it probably wasn’t supposed to work
in theory, you could use a sinister strike->weapon swap(dagger) macro in its place

and I think swapping your weapon is supposed to reset your swing timer to some extent, so be sure to time them right in PvE

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Likely not as we are under the impression that the client will be the same as the retail client.

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Literally every class in pvp

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I’m told that this actually existed in early Vanilla, but was quickly eliminated by Blizzard due to Caster QQ.