Burning Crusade Classic Tank and Healer Rankings: PvE Tier List for Phase 1 of TBCC

TBC 由 perculia 发表于 2021/05/18，13:25

Disclaimers About These Tier Lists

S: Valuable on every encounter, bringing strong throughput, exceptional survivability and universal utility.

A: Excels in most situations, but have some weaknesses on one or two encounters with your throughput, survivability or utility.

B: Solid choices, which may have a niche on some encounters but lack the throughput, survivability, and/or utility of stronger classes.

C: Viable, but without strong throughput, survivability or utility.

D: Suffers from several weaknesses and are only prioritized when there aren't better options available.

F: Generally considered unviable.

Tank Tier List for Phase 1 of Burning Crusade Classic

Ranking

Spec

Writer Comments

Protection Warrior

Comments by TheKrugLife

Feral Druid

Comments by NerdEgghead

Protection Paladin

Comments by Askalon

Tank Rankings and Explanations for Phase 1 of Burning Crusade ClassicS Tier Specs

Overall Rating: S

The Protection Warrior is no longer the only viable tank option in The Burning Crusade but, especially when it comes to the main tank position, it still outshines both Druid and Paladin and remains on the tanking throne. Warrior tanks will never be labeled as "situational" because the simple truth of the game is that, Warriors have the most complete tanking kit for overall tanking and they even excel and stand out in their own unique tanking categories. Threat, mitigation, utility, and excellent gear scaling all come together to make the Protection Warrior an S-tier tank.

One thing that truly separates Warrior's from the rest is their access to such powerful tanking cooldowns like 盾墙 and 破釜沉舟 that can be utilized to smooth out damage intake or simply be used as panic buttons to stay alive. Even beyond these larger active mitigation cooldowns, Warriors also have access to 盾牌格挡 which allows them to have some form of active mitigation (in the form of block) active at pretty much all times. On the topic of blocking, Warriors gain a massive benefit from the stat that really isn't matched in any of the alternative tank classes which once again sets them on such a high tier, 盾牌猛击 increases in damage (and threat generation) with the more block value you have and items like 诺莫瑞根自动格挡器600型 pair extremely well with the Warrior.

One major improvement that Warriors received with burning crusade was a quality of life change to 雷霆一击 which can now be used in defensive stance as opposed to being limited purely to battle stance. While we won't see the AoE threat capabilities that are present in modern WoW, we start to see the winds change in that direction with the release of TBC, you now have more options to maintain threat on several mobs. There's even a new shield that you can get from reputation in the form of 石化苔藓盾牌 that'll help you keep aggro in AoE situations.A Tier Specs

Overall Rating: A

Bears are exceptional tanks throughout the entirety of TBC. They have the highest effective health pool (EHP) of all three tanking specs due to amplified armor values on all feral gear and the amazing armor scaling from 巨熊形态 and 厚皮, allowing bears to soak large damage spikes from bosses with ease. Bears also pack a ton of avoidance from Dodge due a generous Agility-to-Dodge ratio and an abundance of Agility on leather. Finally (and perhaps most importantly for the Classic meta), feral tanks can generate the most threat per second (TPS) and damage per second (DPS) of the three tank specs by a significant margin. The DPS advantage of feral tanks is especially large when not actively tanking, as cats and bears use the exact same talent build and also share a lot of gear, making ferals excellent off-tanks in raids which use protection warrior tanks.

In Phase 1 specifically, a bear in BiS mitigation gear packs over 19,000 health, 74% armor mitigation (almost capped), and 58% avoidance when fully raid buffed, while being immune to critical strikes via a combination of Defense and Resilience. By swapping to more threat-skewed gear (using pieces that ferals will already have for DPS) and giving up uncrittability, the TPS of a Phase 1 bear can be increased from ~1250 to ~1550, enough to hold threat against competitive warlocks and fury warriors, while still maintaining 66% armor mitigation and 53% avoidance. Note that gearing for crit immunity is particularly easy for ferals in Phase 1 without making too many threat or mitigation sacrifices, as the level 70 epic PvP offset contains several high value tanking pieces with loads of Resilience, and the 适者生存 talent significantly reduces the amount of Defense/Resilience needed for uncrittability compared to warriors or paladins.

The primary disadvantages of feral tanks are the lack of strong AOE threat generation (similar to warriors), the absence of defensive cooldowns, no protection against crushing blows, and the inability to block with a shield (which is important on a few key encounters in later phases such as Kael'thas and Illidan). However, none of these disadvantages are game breaking: 横扫 now scales with attack power in TBC, so holding multiple targets as a bear is a lot more viable than in vanilla for a skilled tank despite not matching the capabilities of a paladin. Similarly, despite no innate defensive cooldowns, the sky-high passive avoidance of feral tanks allows on-use avoidance trinkets such as 莫罗斯的幸运怀表 and 坚韧徽章 to function essentially as strong defensive CDs. In fact, when wearing Agility gear, bears can become completely immune to physical hits when avoidance trinkets are activated, providing buffer against big damage spikes or boss mechanics. Crushing blows are also not a significant concern, as the massive health and armor levels achieved by bears are tuned around the fact that damage intake will be spikier than for warriors or paladins.

Given the strengths mentioned above, the reason for an "A" rather than "S" rating in Phase 1 is due to the significant gear advantage that protection warriors have relative to bears in early TBC progression. Warrior Tier 3 gear is on par with level 70 dungeon gear and more than good enough to take straight into Karazhan and 25-man raids. In contrast, feral gear from vanilla is a far cry from TBC raid gear, as Blizzard did not figure out how to properly itemize for ferals until TBC. As a result, bears will be a lot squishier than warriors in the first few weeks of TBC raiding prior to picking up Tier 4 gear, but should still have no issues tanking Karazhan right at 70. For initial Gruul and Magtheridon kills, however, a warrior tank can be more beneficial as the defensive toolkit of a warrior can compensate for being undergeared. By the end of Phase 1, bears are perfectly competitive with warriors as main tanks for all raid content, and are in fact preferred over warriors in threat sensitive scenarios. In later phases, bears will far surpass the other tanking specs in TPS, as prot warrior threat scales poorly with gear unlike ferals, and bears also end up outclassing the other tanks for damage mitigation due to their absurd avoidance scaling with Black Temple and Sunwell gear.

Overall Rating: A

For Phase 1 of TBC, Protection Paladins will excel the most compared to other tank classes when tanking dungeons and heroics, and be very viable for raid tanking. Most, if not all of the optimal raid compositions recommend having a Protection Paladin in their tank roster due to their massive AoE threat, buff utility, and survivability.

THREAT:
The threat generation of Protection Paladins is primarily dependent upon their Holy damage dealt due to 正义之怒 with the talent 强化正义之怒 nearly doubling threat from Holy abilities.
Protection Paladins are the preferred tank for encounters that have numerous mobs due to the massive AoE threat generated by 奉献 which is unrivaled by any other tanking class. This enables AoE damage classes such as Warlocks and Mages to be extremely liberal in their use of AoE spells for quickly eliminating trash packs.
For single-target threat generation, Paladins can rely on damage from Seals, 审判, and 神圣之盾, which can be significantly amplified using 复仇之怒. Compared to other tanking classes, Paladins also have the strongest threat burst at the start of pulls thanks to 复仇者之盾, an excellent ability for starting off fights in raids and dungeons due to its large damage, long range, and ability to hit multiple targets. In heroics and raids, Paladins can also rely on additional, passive threat from mana restored by 灵魂协调 due to the heals received while tanking.

UTILITY:
Paladins offer great utility to their groups and raids through their Blessings, Judgements, and Auras. 强效王者祝福 in the Protection talent tree is one of the most sought-after raid buffs, as it can greatly benefit all classes and roles. The debuff from the Judgement effect of 智慧圣印 provides excellent utility for mana users in the raid, as they can get a significant amount of mana restored from their damaging abilities on enemies with the debuff. If specced into 强化十字军圣印, a Paladin Tank can also significantly increase the damage of the raid with the +3% crit bonus from the 十字军圣印 Judgement debuff. When it comes to coming to the defense of your allies when they have aggro on enemies, Paladins have 正义防御 for taunting multiple enemies simultaneously and 保护祝福 for temporarily removing aggro your friendly target, allowing you to rebuild aggro on them.

SURVIVABILITY:
Protection Paladins have a large set of abilities and talents for maintaining high survivability in dungeons and raids. Paladin tanks are able to have an extremely large health pool due to 神圣使命, 战斗精准, and 强效王者祝福 increasing their stamina from gear and buffs by an additional 28.2%. The talents 强化正义之怒, 坚韧, 偏斜, and 预知 can also improve a Paladin tank's survivability through additional damage mitigation and avoidance.
Paladins are extremely gear dependent for achieving uncrushability and defense cap, however, with the right gear and 强化神圣之盾, Paladins are able to maintain uncrushability for up to 8 blocks within 10 seconds, which is excellent for surviving bosses with fast attack speeds or thrashes.
One of the largest drawbacks of Paladin tanks is the lack of powerful defensive abilities, such as the Warrior's 盾墙 and 破釜沉舟, which can be crucial for surviving emergencies when at low health or when taking extremely high damage. However, for surviving emergencies, Paladins have the talent 炽热防御者 for passive damage reduction at low health, 圣盾术 for instantly removing debuffs that may be extremely dangerous such as 致死打击, and 圣疗术 for instantly restoring oneself to full health.Healer Tier List for Phase 1 of Burning Crusade Classic

Ranking

Spec

Writer Comments

Restoration Shaman

Comments by Woah

Priest

Comments by Vaelis

Holy Paladin

Comments by Dunraven

Restoration Druid

Comments by SixPackyx

Healer Rankings and Explanations for Phase 1 of Burning Crusade ClassicS Tier Specs

Overall Rating: S

The Restoration 萨满祭司 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 嗜血 / 英勇 effect, which you can never have enough of in any group!

They are great supports for both melee and casters groups, bringing the physical damage totem staples, 大地之力图腾, 风怒图腾 and 风之优雅图腾, and also the new 空气之怒图腾 which increases the spell damage done by their group. Unique to Restoration, 法力之潮图腾 will continue to refill Mana bars of other healers and mana-hungry DPS alike and the new 大地之盾 provides some extra passive healing to anyone taking consistent damage, as well as a way to lower spell pushback on demand.

They also bring a lot of other situationally useful tools: 宁静之风图腾, 净化术, 战栗图腾, 地缚图腾 and 根基图腾, 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, 治疗链 gets a new rank at Level 70 and a new talent, 强化治疗链, that pushes its healing even further! The new stat, Haste also works really well with the long Chain Heal casts, and its full effect will be even more felt in the later tiers. As before, the single target healing available is good, but limited to hard casts.

Thus, the main weakness of Restoration is that it has a 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 治疗专注 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.A Tier Specs

Overall Rating: A

Priest Healers bring the most versatile toolkit of all healers—治疗之环 and 愈合祷言 for raid healing, 恢复 healing over time effect as an equivalent of Druid's 回春术, 真言术：盾 to prevent incoming damage, if at terrible mana efficiency. Being jack of all trades, however, they are master of none—at least for now, their time to shine is yet to come in further phases!

Utility brought by Priest Healers is immense, but requires just a single Priest to use it to full extent—any Priest Healer over that is redundant in terms of buffs. The buffs include 坚韧祷言 (virtually always boosted by 强化真言术：韧) and 暗影防护祷言.
If 2.4.3 database present in Beta is not reverted to 2.2 or below, 防护恐惧结界 will be accessible to every Priest race. This is not of huge import since Fear mechanics are not very abundant in PvE content, but every subsequent Priest brought to raid will linearly improve amount of people fear-warded—the buff now lasts 3 min and has a 3 min cooldown, meaning only a single instance may exist per each Priest.

Discipline is not favored as a PvE spec due to loss of 治疗之环 and a significant chunk of healing output, but brings neat utility such as 痛苦压制, 能量灌注 and 神圣之灵. 强化神圣之灵 is not recommended—its effect is greatly diminished by fact that casters never stack Spirit. 痛苦压制 and 能量灌注 are nowhere near mandatory for PvE raid content, but protecting against burst damage and increasing fellow caster's burst damage respectively is absolutely amazing for Arena PvP, granting the spec a place high in the meta.

While on basis of wearing cloth armor they lose a lot of physical defense, they make up for it to some degree via 心灵之火. Choosing 人类 or 矮人 grants access to 绝望祷言, an awesome life-saver when things to awry. 暗夜精灵 can use 艾露恩的赐福, helping survive non-caster burst in Arena PvP. Other races unfortunately lack in means of self-defense.

Overall Rating: A

Remaining largely unchanged from Classic, Holy Paladins remain consistent with what they bring to the table: strong tank healing, buffs, and utility. Generally speaking, raid comps will run one holy paladin per raid team, seeing a significant decrease from the 3+ that were brought for Classic raids. This is due partly to the reduced raid size but also because the other healing classes are improved upon in The Burning Crusade whereas Holy Paladins seem to gain the least amount.

One of the biggest changes Holy Paladins will notice is the decrease in mana returned from the talent 启发, changing from 100% mana returned down to 60%. While this change is certainly a nerf to the talent, the gear itemization is much better in The Burning Crusade, allowing more sustain on a lot of the best pieces. There is also the addition of another cooldown to use in the form of the talent 神启, reducing the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 seconds. This talent, coupled with 神恩术, will allow some creative ways to manage mana during raids as well as figuring out the best way to utilize the cooldowns. Finally, the new talent 神圣指引 increases spell damage and healing by 35% of your total Intellect creates another dynamic to consider when gearing. All these changes help to make Holy Paladin players a bit more engaged than they were in Classic.

Of course, the bread and butter of paladins is their strong buffs and support. Holy Paladins will have the easiest time picking up 强化智慧祝福 and 强化力量祝福. Another quality-of-life addition is the talent 光环掌握, increasing our auras an additional 10 yards. The other staples, like 守护者的宠爱, help round out the true utility offered by Holy Paladins. While they may not be the flashiest healers, Holy Paladins will still be sought after, especially considering the changes to the Protection and Retribution specs potentially making the Holy spec a bit more of a rarity compared to Classic. B Tier Specs

Overall Rating: B

Resto Druids get some fantastic changes in TBC. The addition of 生命之树 and 生命绽放 bolster the iconic HoT playstyle. With the increase to buff cap, healers can now comfortably use all heal-over-time effects without worrying about knocking off buffs. On top of that, HoTs stack from other players, meaning that if there are two Resto Druids in the group, both can apply 生命绽放 or any other HoT to the same target.

And yet, Resto still falls behind the other healers. It can do considerably good tank healing and decent raid healing, but not as well as some other healing classes. Even though Resto will bring all the utility of a Druid (激活, 复生, 精灵之火, 野性赐福), the other Druid specs can be considered more crucial to the raid roster. However, Resto Druids who talent into 生命之树 do bring a unique party-wide buff that increases all healing received by 25% of the Druid's total Spirit.

While Resto Druid is a completely viable, realistically good, and extremely fun specialization for TBC, the fact that it is simply outmatched by the other healing classes moves it a bit lower on this list. That doesn't mean we won't see some stellar Resto Druids topping the meters at times.

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