WoW Classic has shown that many players today use every advantage available to them even when the challenges are actually quite simple – keyword: world buffs. With the Classic version of The Burning Crusade, the powerful buffs are gone. But there are also various possibilities for the so-called min-maxing on Outland.
Before the launch of WoW Classic, you could always read in the forums and comment areas that players should play the vanilla new edition exactly as they wanted. Fancy a Vengeance Paladin or Balance Druid? Then just play one. There will be enough communities that will also provide a home for so-called meme specializations. In general, the over-ambitious meta from the private servers will not prevail. Most people who play Classic want to enjoy Classic.
In retrospect, it may actually have worked that way for individuals. For most of the Classic community, however, things have been different over the last year. Former shadow priests or elemental shamans often play warriors today. Despite the low difficulty of the raid challenges for a long time, most raid groups equipped themselves with world buffs and consumables night after night. Many players also leveled up engineering for the raid area in order to tickle a little more DpS out of their own hero with the explosive gimmicks. And since the world first kills in Classic were always off the table after a very short time, a speedrun meta developed.
More: Full throttle right from the start – the tricks of the classic speed runner
Yes, WoW (buy now) Classic has proven impressively that many players today want to use almost every advantage at their disposal in order to achieve their goal. With a reboot of The Burning Crusade possibly coming out in a few months, we have two pieces of good news for you. No. 1: World buffs play a much smaller role in TBC. The buffs available for level 70 players in Outland are not nearly as numerous and powerful. – No. 2: The class design was greatly improved with TBC at the time. While there are classes and playstyles that are better than others, you won’t find unplayable meme specs in the hybrid classes that can take on multiple roles.
The meta in TBC Classic – this is what happens on private servers
However, we also have bad news: there are many opportunities for so-called min-maxing in Outland even without world buffs and with a better class balance, and the various private servers on which you can already experience The Burning Crusade show that what we could expect in TBC Classic (at least if Blizzard doesn’t make any adjustments to the affected areas).
Meta 1: The Optimal Raid Setup
Many boss fights in TBC are considered to be rather unfriendly to melee fighters, and there are also two long-range classes, the hunters and warlocks, that deliver really well over the entire Outland era. In other words, raids with countless warriors are a thing of the past. Instead, many guilds are trying to establish warlock and hunter groups and provide them with the most important buffs.
Speaking of buffs: An optimal 25-player raid in TBC not only relies on the damage potential of individual styles of play, but also on the provision of the most important strengthening and weakening effects. In the best-case scenario, you need three paladins (preferably a protection, retribution and holy paladin), five shamans (including an “Ele” and an amplifier), a “Feral”, a balance druid, a shadow Priests, an Affliction Warlock flanking the Destroyers, and a Survival Hunter supporting the Beast Lords. Add a protection warrior and other healers and the raid is complete. The laggards will have classes and playstyles that (especially in the early TBC tiers) only deal okay damage,
Meta 2: Leatherworking for drums
Engineering is an enormously effective profession not only in PvP, but also in the PvE area of Classic, no question. Especially if you focus more on melee fighters and pack fewer magicians and warlocks, who naturally have high AoE potential. However, the leatherworking profession will be even more effective in TBC, in every combat situation and across all classes and specializations.
The reason: The drums of battle, which noticeably increase the melee, ranged and cast haste rating of all party members for 30 seconds. If 20 out of 25 players have these drums in their bags in a raid, you can maintain the associated effect for all groups throughout the fight. Of course, this has an enormously positive effect on the performance of the entire raid. So positive that some progression guilds on private servers require the profession for main characters.
Meta 3: Rotating Shamans
We already mentioned it: Many raids on the TBC private servers build groups for the strongest DpS styles of play in order to support them with the best group buffs in the best possible way. If you want to squeeze the maximum out of the hunters and sorcerers, you can go one step further and make the best possible use of the then version of bloodlust/heroism. The powerful cooldown only affected the group in TBC, but did not provide the players with a limiting saturation debuff, as is the case today. In other words, you can rotate the shamans one after the other into your best DpS group, so that they can ignite their fighting frenzy/heroism there, building on one another.
Meta 4: For crazy people – changing jobs
In TBC Classic, all manufacturing professions have their special, exclusive delicacies. You lose access to most of these bonuses once you switch professions. However, there are exceptions. Enchanters who upgrade their rings with the exclusive enchantments may continue to use them even if they retire from the Enchanting Rod. It is similar when a jewelcrafter creates the exclusive gems, sockets them into an armor item and then aims for a career change.
The private servers show: there are people who want to get the most out of their hero and therefore level up enchanting every time they get the best-in-slot rings of the current tier level (only to then switch to another profession switch). The same applies to jeweller’s art.
The meta in TBC Classic – this is what awaits us
It has to be said that many TBC private servers are extremely difficult to balance. Significantly more difficult than the original TBC experience from 2007. At the same time, Classic has been proving for over a year that you don’t need a high level of difficulty to arouse a certain demand for efficiency in the community. We are therefore certain that some of the points mentioned above will also play a major role in TBC Classic (again: if Blizzard does not make any adjustments in this regard).
Leatherworking will be as common among raid enthusiasts as engineering is currently in Classic (i.e. the more ambitious, the more common). The setup will certainly be almost optimal for ambitious progress and speedrun guilds. Thanks to the significantly better class balance, less ambitious guilds should also benefit from the increased flexibility and be colorful, with a greater variety of playstyles than is currently the case in Classic.
Also, we don’t think too many players will bother to learn and unlearn enchanting or jewelcrafting multiple times for a few DpS points. This is probably only an option for players who don’t know what to do with all that gold.
Thanks to the elimination of world buffs and the much more limited consumables, the raid preparation for many players in TBC should be even more chilled than it was in Classic. However, if you want to get the most out of your hero, you can invest even more time and gold in this goal in TBC than in the vanilla new edition.
How common do you think min-maxing will be in TBC Classic? Should Blizzard make adjustments in some areas? And how do you intend to approach the raid content in the TBC reboot? For example, are you leveling up extra leatherworking or are you staying true to your old trades? Tell us in the comments!
What is WoW Classic?
World of Warcraft Classic is a true recreation of the original WoW as you know it from 2006. All parts of the game – from combat mechanics and talent trees to character models and zones – have been recreated, contributing to the authentic experience.
Getting Started
All players with an active World of Warcraft subscription or game time on their accounts have access toWoW Classic at no additional cost.
- Open the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App and select World of Warcraft from the menu.
- Select World of Warcraft Classic from the Version menu. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second Account drop-down list. In this column, select the active account you want to play with.
- Click the Install button. The progress bar will tell you when your game is ready to play.
- Click the Play button when the installation is complete.
You will need to select the realm you want to play on from several different realm types. Make sure you choose the same realm as your friends – in World of Warcraft Classic, you can only group with characters that are on the same realm as you!
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