WoW: TBC Classic - Buff cap, stats, AoE damage - this changes

With The Burning Crusade, Blizzard not only brought familiar features like two fresh races, Outland with all its challenges, or the jewelcrafting profession to the World of Warcraft in early 2007. There were also a lot of small changes. In this special, we'll take a look at the differences in combat compared to WoW Classic - it's all about the buff cap, new stats, adjusted area damage, and much more.

• 1st TBC Classic: Upper limits for buffs and debuffs
• 2. TBC Classic: Everything different with the values
• 3. important limits in TBC
• 4. other important adjustments for combat

When you hear WoW: The Burning Crusade, you're bound to think of iconic raid challenges like the Black Temple or Karazhan, pine for the Wargleves of Illidan, or recall all the adventures you've had on Outland. All of this and much more awaits us when Blizzard makes classic servers available for TBC for the first time, or when they add TBC content to the existing WoW Classic servers (as of today, we don't know what Blizzard has in mind).

But back then, with the launch of TBC as well as the subsequent patches in Azeroth, a whole lot had changed even in small ways. And if Blizzard will use the latest patch 2.4.3 as the foundation of TBC Classic - as they did with WoW (buy now 14,99 € ) Classic - all these small changes will affect our gaming experience from day 1. For this special, we've dug through the patch notes again for you and picked out all the adjustments introduced with TBC that affect combat in PvE and PvP.

TBC Classic: Upper limits for buffs and debuffs      
In WoW Classic, it's been a big issue across all phases: Players can only use a limited number of buffs at a time before each new buff overwrites the oldest effect. The cap on buffs is 32, and there's also a maximum cap on debuff effects on an enemy, even as low as 16 debuffs. Both caps have a huge impact on the gameplay in Classic.

If you get all available world buffs in WoW Classic, you have to be careful not to use too many consumables afterwards. In the worst case, a simple heal-over-time effect or a weapon proc could overwrite a powerful buff from, say, Bleak North.
In raids, it is usually clearly defined which debuffs are allowed and which are not. Many playstyles have to forgo their damage-over-time effects in the process, as they would only clean debuffs with their DoTs, which bring significantly more to the raid's bottom line.
With TBC Classic, the whole issue of buffs and debuffs will relax for the following reasons:

The World Buffs from Classic were made uninteresting for level 70 characters with patch 2.1, as they only work up to level 63.
Elixirs have been split into Battle and Guardian Elixirs with patch 2.1. You can only use one Battle Elixir and one Guardian Elixir at a time. In fact, if you drop a vial, elixirs will not be usable at all, as a vial will count as both a Guardian and Combat elixir.
The upper limit for debuffs that can affect enemies at the same time has been raised from 16 to 40 in TBC. Incidentally, the debuff cap didn't disappear completely until WotLK in December 2008.

TBC Classic: Everything different with the stats     

With TBC, as well as throughout the TBC era, Blizzard developers have made significant adjustments to our characters' stats. The biggest change right at launch: Items no longer provide a percentage increase in critical hit chance, hit chance, or dodge chance. Instead, the so-called "Combat Rating System" was introduced for all stats.

The reason for this change is that the number of points you need to increase a stat by one percent changes with your level. For example, if 28 points of Critical Hit Rating at level 34 might give you four percent more Critical Hit Chance, 28 Critical Hit Rating at level 70 will only give you 1.27 percent more Critical Hit Chance. However, if you get a fixed 2% increase in Critical Strike Chance from somewhere, such as a talent or buff, it doesn't matter if you're level 34 or level 70, the bonus remains fixed at 2% Critical Strike Chance.

At level 70, the conversion to TBC looked like this:

15.77 Melee Hit Rating = 1 percent more hit chance.
15.77 Speed rating = 1 percent more speed (the value changed in TBC in the meantime and was then reset again)
12,62 Spell Hit Rating = 1 percent more spell hit chance
22,08 Critical Hit Rating = 1 percent more Critical Hit Chance
5,92 Armor Pierce Rating = 1 percent more Armor Pierce
2.37 Defense rating = 1 point defense
1 point defense = 0.04 percent less chance to be critically hit and 0.04 percent increased chance to block/dodge/parry/miss
18.92 dodge rating = 1 percent dodge chance
23.65 Parry rating = 1 percent parry chance (as of patch 2.1, previously it was 31.54 parry rating)
7.88 block rating = 1 percent block chance
Until patch 2.3: 3.9 weapon skill rating = 1 point weapon skill
As of patch 2.3: 15.77 Weapon Skill rating = 4 Weapon Skill = 1 percent lower chance of your opponent dodging or parrying your blows
The removal of Weapon Proficiency in patch 2.3 and the simultaneous introduction of Weapon Lore had a major impact on many items, talents, and folk bonuses. It's very likely that we'll be dealing with Weapon Lore from the get-go in TBC Classic.
WoW: TBC Classic - Hardening is an important value especially for PvP battles, but not only!
WoW: TBC Classic - Hardening is an important value for PvP battles, but not only!
Source: Blizzard
Also new in TBC is the value Hardening, which you will find mainly on PvP armor and weapons.

39.4 Hardening Rating = 1 percent Hardening = 1 percent lower chance of being critically hit / 2.2 percent lower crit damage / 1 percent lower damage from players (as of patch 2.2, DoTs are also affected) / 2.2 percent lower amount of siphoned mana (as of patch 2.4)
Note that you can also use Hardening as a tank in PvE to make yourself immune to critical hits.

Important Limits in TBC   
Just like in WoW Classic, you'll want to hit certain thresholds in the TBC era before focusing on increasing other stats. Here are the most important thresholds:

Crit Immunity for level-70 tanks when fighting raid bosses: 490 defense (you need 140 defense and 332 defense rating respectively through gear).
Crit immunity for level 70 tanks when fighting raid bosses through toughening: 5.6 percent toughening or 221 toughening rating.
Spell hit chance cap for level 73 enemies (bosses): 16 percent or 201.92 spell hit chance
Cap for spell hit chance in PvP (vs. level 70): 3 percent or 37.86 spell hit chance
Melee hit chance cap on level 73 enemies (bosses): 9 percent (141.93 hit rating - applies to all abilities or two-handed weapon/one-handed weapon plus shield auto attacks) and 28 percent (441.56 hit rating - applies to two one-handed weapon auto attacks), respectively.
Cap for melee hit chance in PvP (vs. level 70): 5 percent (78.85 hit rating)
Weapon Lore Soft Cap (Level 73 enemies will no longer dodge your attacks when you are behind them): 26 weapon lore or 101.92 weapon lore rating
WoW: TBC Classic - If you only attack enemies from behind in WoW, you need less weapon lore.
Source: Blizzard

Note that there are various other ways to get the desired spell chance, hit chance or weapon lore values apart from your equipment. For example, if you have a Draenei in your party, you'll have a one percent spell hit chance. You need even less if you also have an elemental shaman in your party. Rogues, on the other hand, can gain Weapon Lore and hit chance through talents. All of these options and many more will help you get to the cap faster.