A lot will change in the classic World of Warcraft with The Burning Crusade. Classes, factions, and races that dominate in the vanilla reboot must make way for better options in Outland. We can already deduce from the various TBC private servers what is likely to await us.

In our special TBC Classic: No World Buffs, No Pro Meta? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that! we already covered how the meta in Outland will change significantly compared to the meta in the vanilla reboot. In this article, we want to go into more detail and look at how the power structure of the classes, factions and races will shift with TBC Classic and what insights we can take away from the various TBC private servers.

Because one thing must be clear to all of us: Similar to WoW (buy now) Classic, private server guilds and players experienced in TBC Classic will also have a decisive influence on and shape the meta and the world-first race (from the race at level 70 to the first kills across all raid instances). You will establish strategies for gold farming, leveling, arena and speedruns. At the same time, there will also be new developments, since the TBC versions of the private servers (also here: similar to WoW Classic) will differ in detail from TBC Classic to a greater or lesser extent.

TBC Classic: Horde or Alliance?
If you look at current Ironforge.pro population figures , 53 percent of all high-level characters that have appeared on WarcraftLogs in the last few weeks belong to the Alliance. The fighters under the blue lion banner are even more dominant if we look at the currently most successful raid guilds in WoW Classic. Of the 50 fastest guilds in Naxxramas , only 14 belong to the Horde. Only two Horde guilds are represented in the top 10. The reason: paladins.

With TBC Classic, however, the alliance will lose this decisive advantage: Paladins and shamans will then be available to both factions. At the same time, some Horde races have extremely strong racial skills. Let’s just take Boiling Blood of the Orcs, which in TBC not only increases attack power, but also spell damage. Or the trolls’ speed buff from Berserker. Or the Blood Elves’ Arcane Current, which they can use to silence enemies and regenerate mana.

In addition, the Horde and Alliance Paladins differ in one important detail. Blood Elf Paladins wield Signets of Blood . Alliance paladins, meanwhile, find the seal of vengeance in the spell book. The latter spell is more mana efficient, the former deals more damage overall. You can certainly imagine what is more important to many players.

A look at the private server communities shows what all this can mean for TBC Classic: There are sometimes significantly more Horde supporters than Alliance fighters (on a particularly popular one, around 61 percent versus 39 percent). And that, although there are often extra advantages for the alliance on said servers. For example, Alliance Paladins are allowed to use Signet of Blood, Alliance players are allowed to ride for free and receive more honor in PvP than Hordlers. Sounds good right? Still, many choose the Horde.

TBC Classic: Who Does the Most Damage?
WoW Classic ‘s DpS logs have been dominated by the “Brown Boys” since Phase 1. Rogues or mages can occasionally keep up (thanks to Ignite), but the bottom line is that well-equipped warriors have by far the greatest damage potential. In other words, if you want to get through raid instances like Naxxramas particularly quickly, pack as many warriors as possible and supplement them with a few villains and magicians. Add a hunter for the pull and a sorcerer for the curses and the speedrun raid is done.

With TBC Classic, this one-sided situation will change fundamentally. The reasons:

All hybrid playstyles will receive important changes with TBC, thanks to which their support will be even better, while at the same time they can deal noticeably more damage. In other words: no raid wants to do without shadow priests, reinforcement shamans, elemental shamans, balance druids, feral or vengeance paladins.
The increased damage potential of many specializations is also the next point: all ways of playing that rely on damage-over-time effects can now also use them thanks to the significantly increased debuff upper limit.
The raid size shrinks from 40 to 25/20 to 10. Specializations become more important, which can noticeably increase the performance of the raid through important buffs and debuffs.
In TBC there are significantly more boss fights where melee fighters are at a disadvantage or where ranged fighters can more easily achieve high damage numbers. Raid groups that, like in WoW Classic, mainly rely on offensive warriors and villains, make it unnecessarily difficult for themselves.
And who does the most damage in Outland? Well, that depends. In fact, most boss fights are dominated by Destruction Warlocks and/or Beastmaster Hunters. However, magicians or elemental shamans appear again and again at the very top. And as the raid progresses, warriors and rogues alike battle it out in the top 30—especially if they own the Warglaives of Illidan. With the end boss of TBC, Kil’jaeden, even villains dominate the DpS logs, without their top damage the fight is much more difficult. But don’t think that the old melee dominance will reign supreme in the Sunwell Plateau. At M’uru, for example, the top 30 consists almost entirely of warlocks. In Brutallus and the Eredar Twins, on the other hand, Hunters rock the stats.

There are three things to keep in mind with all of this. Number 1: The top DDs on the private servers are also at the top because they are in a group that is optimal for them. Some buffs, such as totems, also only affect the members of your own group in TBC Classic. Beast Lords that fight alongside a Feral Druid and a Shaman do significantly more damage than Beast Lords that are packed alongside spellcasters. And when Destruction Warlocks think about their perfect party, Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids should play a big part. Plus: On the private servers, it is quite common for the shamans to be rotated into the best DpS groups one after the other so that they can ignite the battle frenzy/heroism there. Unlike in retail WoW, the powerful buff in TBC does not yet leave a saturation debuff. If you are not in these groups, you get nothing.

Number 2: Adjustments have been made to the raid bosses on many TBC private servers to make them more challenging. In other words: the tuning is sometimes much harder than it was with the original, non-weakened version of TBC. When tuning the raids from TBC Classic, however, it could well be that Blizzard uses patch 2.4.3 with all the nerfs installed to date as a basis. In that case, it probably won’t matter at all which damage experts you pack or whether you use other minmaxing strategies (drums, shaman rotation) or not. But WoW Classic shows that many guilds want to get the most out of it.

Number 3: We have already indicated that within the TBC era, the power structure of damage specialists will shift more or less noticeably. Some playstyles just scale better with stronger gear than others. In addition, the available gear can also cause a turnaround for other reasons. We’ve already mentioned the Warglaives of Illidan. Another example is a tier 5 mage set bonus that suddenly causes arcane to shoot through the roof – especially when the mages are properly supported (such as with a shadow priest) and the combat due to patch 2.4. 3 stands will be quite short.

TBC Classic: Who fills up best?
In the TBC era, we can look forward to three full-fledged tank specializations, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. In most raids, a warrior should take over the role of the main tank from day 1. He gains crit immunity very quickly, has access to a diverse range of tanking tools, and generates good threat stats early on. In addition, he does not make a good offtank. Unlike in WoW Classic, tanking warriors do not rely on an offensively designed Fury Prot skill. Instead, they go deep into the protection tree. So they take more AND generate more aggro. However, if they don’t get on the food board, their protection spec gives them little rage. Your damage is bad.

When it comes to tanking large groups, the Protection Paladin is the number one choice. There is no better tank for heroic dungeons, especially when you have two warlocks in your party. And even the 10-player raids from the TBC era can tank well-equipped, experienced protection paladins almost entirely solo. He also brings important support and scales extremely well with equipment. However, it is initially a bit more difficult than with the warrior to equip the protection paladin and achieve crit immunity without neglecting aggro generation.

At the dawn of the TBC era, the Feral Druid is the perfect offtank. He can switch into cat form and deal damage if needed, or tank a boss or numerous adds as a bear. Its generated threat is unparalleled across all tier levels. At the same time, he achieves enormously high armor and endurance values ​​early on. The disadvantages? The lack of defensive cooldowns, the need to switch forms to drop consumables in combat, and the fact that (unlike the other tanks) they can never become immune to crushing blows. However, the latter weakness is not relevant for all bosses. For example, almost all baddies from the Sunwell Plateau cannot hit characters with a “crushing blow”.

Long story short: You get the most out of your raid if you each have a protection warrior, protection paladin and wildness druid in your ranks. However, if necessary, all other combinations are also possible.

TBC Classic: Who Heals Best in Raids?
Of course, there are also numerous logs from the TBC private servers for the four healing specializations. What stands out there: Shamans, druids and priests appear equally often in the top 30. In some battles, priests dominate (Felmyst, for example), while other battles are dominated by druids (Brutallus) or shamans (Lurker). Most of the time, however, the picture is colorfully mixed.

Only paladins can only be found occasionally in the lists. No wonder, since these are mostly used as pure tank healers – a task that they can perform very efficiently in TBC. At the same time, significantly more group damage hits the raid in TBC than is the case in WoW Classic – so that shamans, druids and priests can easily shine with their group healing and HoTs. So don’t worry about the healer’s job. All four specializations are important and often seen in raids. The fact that shamans are most likely to end up in the raid several times is mainly due to their totems and bloodlust/heroism.

TBC Classic: Which class is the easiest to farm gold with?
When it comes to farming gold efficiently solo in WoW Classic, you can’t get past magicians. No other class can shoot such large trash groups in the open world or in dungeons so easily from life. This is not only possible because they slow down the meanies with their frost spells and can kite so easily, but also because they cause damage to all opponents equally with their AoE spells – no matter how big the pull is.

The latter was changed back then with Patch 2.2 . Suddenly Blizzard and Frost Nova (as well as other AoE spells from various classes) had an upper limit on the damage that you could cause to targets with the spell. We’re pretty sure this change will be active by the time TBC Classic launches. If we’re right, as a mage, you won’t be able to do big pulls as efficiently as you can in WoW Classic right now.

However, there are isolated area effects that were not affected by patch 2.2. This includes the consecration of paladins. At the same time, with TBC Classic, Protection Paladins are among the best tanks when it comes to tanking large groups of enemies. And indeed, as a “prot-pala” in the Outland era, it is easier than with any other specialization to successfully implement AoE farm strategies solo in the open world or in some dungeons and rake in a lot of gold. Especially when the opponents consist of undead and demons, such as in Stratholme. With practice and the right gear, they can pull together and bomb away a large chunk of the Classic dungeon in one go. At the same time, prot-paladins with their tank skills are in any group that wants to tackle a heroic dungeon, a welcome guest. So welcome that you might even bag some pocket gold for your services or thatcan secure Urnether from the final boss. And even when boosting low-level characters, protection paladins will outrank mages.

And what about druids? With their epic flight form in the open world, they could farm resources super easily? Well, that was only for a very short time. The Epic Flight Form questline was introduced in Patch 2.1 , and as of Patch 2.1.2 it was no longer possible to pick herbs while Flight Form was active.

The good news: thanks to daily quests and numerous useful professions, you can farm gold in TBC Classic regardless of your class. The biggest problem will be that the most popular farm locations in Outland will be completely over-farmed due to the supposedly high number of players.

TBC Classic: Which classes are rocking in the arena?
Anyone who has read our review of the first six years of PvP in World of Warcraft knows that the class balance in the arena was anything but good at the time. Especially in the most popular “brackets” 2vs2 and 3vs3, some flavor of the month combinations have always dominated, and that will be the case in TBC Classic as well.

The private servers show that the best class combinations have hardly changed over the years. Combine a rogue or warlock with a healing druid or priest and you’re on the right track in 2v2. The druid in particular is so strong as a medic that he also works well with various other damage experts such as warriors or hunters. Occasionally, teams of Vengeance Paladin and Restoration Shaman can cause a surprise. In the 3-way range, you’ll do well if you add a third way of playing to the combinations just mentioned. The well-known “RMP” of rogue, mage and priest will also work wonderfully in TBC Classic. For example, a warrior goes well with a warlock and a druid. In this bracket, however, teams with shamans also appear more often,

And what about the 5 range? After all, that’s where the most points are awarded for the rating earned, and the balance is also best here. Styles like Holy Paladin, which are at a disadvantage in the 2- and 3-bracket, do much better there. However, the effort involved in finding appointments and the like is also higher. At that time it was already the most unpopular arena bracket and on many private servers 5vs5 is hardly played or not at all.

Keep in mind with all of this that the extra years of experience in the TBC Classic arenas will make themselves felt. The average arena player will have more skills than they did back then. Healers will play more aggressively, similar to retail WoW. Overall, it will be harder than it was then to secure the Gladiator title over the four – Season s.

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.

1. Open the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App and select World of Warcraft from the menu.
2. 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.
3. Click the Install button. The progress bar will tell you when your game is ready to play.
4. 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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