Best Features in The Burning Crusade What Players Want From TBC Anniversary
Is it Winter/Spring yet?
Many players are looking forward to The Burning Crusade pre-patch to level up their Draenei Shaman and Blood Elf Paladins, while others are still on the fence, uncertain of what to play. If you fall into the second category, then this article might be for you! Below, we take a look at all of the S-tier Specializations for each role in Phase 1 of The Burning Crusade.
Best DPS in Phase 1
TBC Phase 1 DPS Tier List
Warlock
Overall Rating: S
Overall Warlocks in Burning Crusade Classic bring some of the top damage in the game for single-target as well as multi-target or AoE, as well as great utility. Warlocks bring curses, Master Healthstone, Ritual of Summoning, wipe prevention in the form of Master Soulstone, crowd control in the form of Fear and Banish.
In the Burning Crusade, Warlocks get Seed of Corruption which has a high AoE cap, can crit (which forgoes the cap) has a 15 yard explosion range, and can be cast from a safe distance, making it one of, if not the best, AoE spell in the game.
Warlocks have a plethora of viable raiding specializations each shining in a unique way.
Destruction Warlocks
Shadow Destruction is the ol’ reliable specialization, closest to what we currently know from WoW Classic, providing solid single-target DPS as well as amazing AoE.
Got a mage friend or a mage that decides to go fire? Incinerate is your new best friend. You can go Fire Destruction and,thanks to the Improved Scorch debuff, you will outshine Shadow Bolt-casting Warlocks. On top of that, you don’t even need a Soul Shard to get your Demonic Sacrifice buff!
Demonology Warlocks
Another option would be to go the path of a Demonologist—Felguard goes SMASH! Ever wanted to deal solid damage during movement or CC encounters? Whilst you are running around or incapacitated, your new best friend will still be chasing the boss and dealing damage.
Your Felguard takes 50% less damage from bosses' Area of Effect damage spells, and he positions himself behind targets, which results in increased survivability and greater DPS because bosses are not able to parry or block attacks from behind. On top of this, pets now scale with our stats. Demo will shine on plenty of fights, like on Magtheridon and Gruul in phase 1, where you personally cannot deal any damage but your pet can happily keep smashing. However, you need to keep your pet alive, and If it does die, you will see a severe drop in your damage output until you have him back up.
Affliction Warlocks
Finally, Affliction is the utility bot. More DoTs! In Burning Crusade, the debuff cap moves up from 16 to 40, so Affliction Warlocks are allowed to use more of their damage-dealing debuffs. Affliction has the benefit of being able to “preload” their damage with dots, allowing for minimal DPS loss when incapacitated or moving.
Malediction and Shadow Embrace are another reason an Affliction Warlock will be brought. These increase raid-wide DPS as well as giving the Tank more breathing room to gear offensively. Also, Blood Pact can be brought for the Tank.
Affliction also has a lot of fun on multi-targets as well, as you can load up all targets with your DoTs. Keeping track of which to refresh can be a fun challenge.
Warlock DPS TBC Classic
Hunter
Overall Rating: S
Hunters in TBC Classic have two specializations, both of which are top tier in their own ways. The first is Beast Mastery, a chart-topping single-target DPS choice, thanks to new abilities, such as Steady Shot and Kill Command. The second specialization, Survival, brings arguably some of the best raid utility in the form of Expose Weakness. Our only, minor weakness would be consistent AoE damage, since we still only have Multi-Shot and Volley, which fall short compared to classes like Warlocks and Mages.
Beast Mastery hunters will be at the top of the damage meters throughout all of Phase 1, thanks to a few new abilities and talents. Steady Shot fills the downtime gap Hunters previously suffered in Classic. New talents, such as Ferocious Inspiration, The Beast Within and Serpent's Swiftness, give us great boosts. Our pets now scale with a percentage of some of our stats, making using our pets and keeping them alive a high priority, since they now account for roughly 30% of our overall damage output. The next major contributor to the Beast Mastery damage is the Beast Lord Armor. This set's 4-piece bonus provides a 100% uptime of 600 Armor Penetration, giving a big DPS boost. The final factor making Beast Mastery's damage output S tier is "melee-weaving." With TBC Classic, the dead zone is removed and the melee swing timer is separate from our ranged swing timer. Therefore, we can easily move in and out for a quick Raptor Strikes.
While the Survival specialization suffers from slightly lower damage output from not having the talents Ferocious Inspiration, The Beast Within and Serpent's Swiftness, Survival Hunters make up for it in top tier raid utility by providing a boost to all Physical damage dealers in the raid, with Expose Weakness. This talent should have an uptime of nearly 95%, making a Survival Hunter a valuable asset to all raid teams.
Hunters' damage output increases significantly in Burning Crusade Classic, and our utility and defensive properties remain important. We gain the new ability Misdirection, which is a great asset to pulling targets to designated Tanks and helping with initial threat. Freezing Trap and Frost Trap remain solid abilities for crowd control. Our signature aggro dump with Feign Death is still great to keep threat under control; however, you can no longer Feign Death to drop out of combat in boss fights to swap trinkets.
Hunter DPS TBC Classic
Best Tank in Phase 1
TBC Phase 1 Tank Tier List
Protection Warrior
Overall Rating: S
The Protection Warrior is no longer the sole top-tier tank in The Burning Crusade, but in the early stages of Phase 1 it still outperforms both Druids and Paladins. With the most complete defensive toolkit and a strong grasp on the classic tanking fantasy, Warriors hold the crown going into the expansion. Their scaling later in The Burning Crusade is eventually surpassed by the other tank options, but in Phase 1, especially before stepping into raids, their threat generation, mitigation, utility, and excellent gearing choices firmly place Protection Warriors in the S-tier.
One thing that truly separates Warrior's from the rest is their access to such powerful tanking cooldowns, like Shield Wall and Last Stand, that can be used to smooth out damage intake or simply as panic buttons to stay alive. Even beyond these larger active mitigation cooldowns, Warriors also have access to Shield Block,which provides consistent active mitigation through blocking. This ability also helps Warriors reach their Defense cap, something Druids cannot achieve without wearing a full Tier 4 set. On the topic of blocking, Warriors gain a massive benefit from the stat, which really isn't matched in any of the other Tank classes, and this once again sets them on such a high tier early on. Shield Slam increases in damage (and threat generation) with the more block value you have, and items like Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 pair extremely well with this mechanic and further elevate Warrior performance.
One major improvement that Warriors received with The Burning Crusade was a quality-of-life change to Thunder Clap, which can now be used in Defensive Stance, as opposed to being limited to Battle Stance. While we won't see the AoE threat capabilities that are present in modern WoW, TBC begins to move the class in that direction by offering more tools to manage groups of enemies. Reputation rewards such as the Petrified Lichen Guard further support this by helping Warriors maintain aggro in multi-target encounters.
Protection Warrior TBC Classic
Best Healer in Phase 1
TBC Phase 1 Healer Tier List
Restoration Shaman
Overall Rating: S
The Restoration Shaman is one of the best group Healers and the most useful Healer of TBC Classic, and it all starts with being the only source of the new Bloodlust / Heroism effect, which you can never have enough of in any group!
They are great supports for both Melee and Caster groups, bringing the Physical damage totem staples, Strength of Earth Totem, Windfury Totem and Grace of Air Totem, and also the new Wrath of Air Totem, which increases the spell damage done by their group. Unique to Restoration, Mana Tide Totem will continue to refill mana bars of other Healers and mana-hungry DPS alike, and the new Earth Shield provides some extra passive healing to anyone taking consistent damage, as well as being a way to lower spell pushback on demand.
Shamans also bring a lot of other situationally useful tools: Tranquil Air Totem, Purge, Tremor Totem, Earthbind Totem and Grounding Totem, as well as poison- and disease-removing totems that can automate the process in fights where these debuffs are consistently applied to your party.
In regards to healing, Chain Heal gets a new rank at Level 70, and its healing is pushed even further by a new talent, Improved Chain Heal. The new stat, Haste, also works really well with the long Chain Heal casts, and its full effect will be felt even more in the later tiers. As before, the single-target healing available is good but limited to hard casts.
The main weakness of Restoration is this hard cast requirement on almost all of its healing spells. This limits mobility and makes the spec vulnerable to interrupts and spell pushback, at least when Healing Focus is not maximized and Earth Shield is not present on the Shaman. Fortunately, in PvE these limitations are easy to overcome, making Restoration a powerhouse with few downsides.
Restoration Shaman TBC Classic
If you'd like to see our full Tier List rankings of each Specialization in The Burning Crusade Phase 1, be sure to check out our Guides, linked below:
TBC Phase 1 DPS Tier List TBC Phase 1 Tank Tier List TBC Phase 1 Healer Tier List
What class or specialization do you plan on playing in The Burning Crusade Anniversary? Let us know in the comments below!
