TL;DR
- TBC Classic beta rumored for March 2021 with multiple sources confirming
- Class roles become more flexible with reduced disparities between specializations
- Hunter dead zone removal and combat traps provide significant quality-of-life improvements
- Warrior mobility upgrades and tanking capabilities make them raid essentials
- Mage spell steal and Warlock soul well introduce powerful new gameplay mechanics
Speculation surrounding the launch timeline for WoW Classic’s highly anticipated Burning Crusade expansion has begun circulating within the community.
Nano stated: “
Multiple independent sources have now verified that The Burning Crusade Classic (TBC) Beta is scheduled for March 2021, potentially arriving earlier than initial projections suggested.”
Blizzard Entertainment has not provided official confirmation regarding these circulating release date rumors. Despite the absence of formal announcements, the developer has been conducting player surveys for approximately three months, gathering feedback about potential expansion rollout strategies.

Countless adventurers eagerly anticipate diving into The Burning Crusade Classic. MmoGah.com, operating as a trusted wow classic gold provider, is pleased to present this comprehensive TBC class selection guide for enthusiasts.
This instructional content originates from MadSeasonShow, where he comprehensively analyzes each class’s strengths, weaknesses, and evolutionary changes from vanilla WoW to the Burning Crusade era. All referenced material is properly attributed to his original video presentation.
With The Burning Crusade approaching, many players remain uncertain about their primary class selection. Most veteran participants have experienced vanilla Classic, understanding that classic wow classes traditionally maintained clearly defined roles. You could specialize as a dedicated tank, optimal healer, peak DPS warrior, or control-focused mage—alternatively selecting warrior or priest roles. However, class selection becomes more nuanced in TBC; while classes retain their core identities from vanilla, the specialization gaps narrow considerably, creating more balanced gameplay dynamics.
Hunter
Hunters excel as wilderness experts, fearlessly exploring Outland’s uncharted territories alongside their loyal animal companions. As anticipated, they specialize in delivering sustained ranged damage where they perform most effectively, though they maintain respectable close-quarters combat capabilities. They represent one of only two classes exercising direct control over companion pets, with hundreds of creature families and variations available for taming throughout the game world. Beyond their formidable ranged assaults, hunters possess an arsenal of traps that inflict damage, slow movement, weaken opponents, or otherwise incapacitate any unfortunate entities triggering them. They arguably dominate kiting tactics throughout The Burning Crusade, making engagements against them feel like perpetual pursuit scenarios.
The Beast Mastery specialization concentrates on enhancing your pet’s combat effectiveness, becoming substantially more potent in this expansion. Marksmanship delivers powerful ranged attacks while Survival appropriately enhances personal durability while providing additional utility and team support capabilities. Core functionality received significant enhancements, including the elimination of the notorious dead zone—that problematic distance gap where hunters previously couldn’t utilize either melee or ranged abilities. This mechanical improvement grants them significantly greater combat freedom compared to their vanilla counterparts, with traps now deployable during active combat situations, representing a monumental gameplay upgrade.
Warrior

While warfare fundamentals remain constant, warriors undergo substantial evolution throughout The Burning Crusade. They continue as heavily armored combat specialists—there’s simply undeniable satisfaction in physically striking adversaries. The warrior archetype represents gaming’s most straightforward RPG character concept: equipping massive armor, wielding enormous weapons, and pummeling foes into submission through controlled rage. For newcomers to World of Warcraft, warriors operate using the rage resource system, generating combat energy by attacking enemies and receiving damage, then expending this resource to execute powerful melee abilities. Your weapon selection and utilization methodology fundamentally depends on your chosen specialization path.
The Arms talent tree continues serving as their primary PvP specialization, emphasizing two-handed weapon proficiency alongside various debilitating crowd control effects. While traditionally PvP-focused, arms warriors gain considerable PvE relevance in TBC. Protection-specialized warriors frequently claim superiority as premier single-target tanks, boasting extensive defensive cooldown options and threat generation capabilities. Victory Rush provides rageless damage following killing blows, enabling kill streak continuation (note: this iteration precedes any healing functionality). Warrior mobility receives comprehensive enhancement through the Intervene ability, enabling you to charge toward allies and intercept the next hostile action directed at them.
Mage
Masters controlling hurricane-force winds, freezing frost, and destructive fire—mages demonstrate exceptional mobility, crowd control, damage output, utility, defensive capabilities, area-of-effect, and single-target damage. These versatile spellcasters adapt seamlessly to virtually any combat scenario. The spellcasting archetype dates back to fantasy genre origins; in WoW Classic, they concentrate on three magical disciplines: fire, frost, and arcane arts, each presenting unique effects, playstyles, and strategic applications. Beyond functioning as heavy damage dealers, mages provide substantial allied support through buff application, crowd control effects, conjured sustenance, major city teleportation portals, and throughout vanilla, these capabilities established them among the game’s most prominent classes. Whether you elect to control and freeze opponents via the PvP-oriented frost tree or annihilate raid encounters through fire’s raw power, they consistently perform exceptionally across all expansions for both PvE and PvP content—The Burning Crusade maintains this tradition. Spell Steal extracts beneficial magical effects from enemies and applies them to yourself for maximum two-minute durations without cooldown restrictions, effectively transforming mages into superior dispelling specialists.
Priest

The spiritual authority of Priests encourages engagement with this content if you find it valuable. As the initial healer featured in our analysis, priests wield extensive holy magic to restore allies rather than employing frost, fire, and arcane spells to destroy enemies. They maintain defensive capabilities through offensive holy and shadow spells for self-protection. Priests have earned recognition for possessing the most diverse healing toolkit among all healing classes—including damage absorption, heal-over-time effects, group healing, rapid healing, substantial healing, and powerful buffs, enabling adaptation to any situational demands. Additionally, those experimenting with darker arts, weaving shadow spells instead of healing, utilize combinations of damage-over-time effects, debuffs, and burst damage spells, rendering them formidable threats in both PvE and PvP environments.
Priests introduce the first new ability in our examination: Mass Dispel, removing one beneficial magic effect from enemies and one harmful effect from allies within substantial radius parameters, even capable of breaking immunity effects. This capability now functions as baseline for all priests across both factions, rendering targets immune to the subsequent hostile spell. This mechanic was deemed too crucial for racial restriction, effectively diminishing dwarf racial advantage significance. Prayer of Mending applies a buff to targets where, upon receiving damage, they receive instant healing with the spell transferring randomly to additional raid members up to five maximum occurrences. Binding Heal provides low-threat rapid healing for both yourself and your target despite considerable mana expenditure. Shadowfiend makes its inaugural appearance, summoning a shadowy entity to assault your target while restoring priest mana with each successful strike.
Warlock

Warlocks have established renown as exceptionally powerful combatants throughout The Burning Crusade, particularly excelling in this expansion. Whereas shadow priests merely adopted darkness, every spell within warlock repertoires originates from shadow magic schools, with applications varying dramatically—whether delivering straightforward damage via hard-cast Shadow Bolts, employing extensive damage-over-time arsenals, debilitating curses, commanding diverse demonic servants, or utilizing supportive spells.
Warlocks represent outstanding combinations of support capabilities and damage output. The Affliction tree concentrates on enhancing curses and debilitating effects with increased focus on damage-over-time spells to inflict gradual but inevitable demise upon adversaries. Demonology, as terminology suggests, improves various demons under your control, while Destruction prioritizes utility and defensive capabilities for maximum damage potential.
Among the numerous classes incapable of specialization within the game, warlocks demonstrate exceptional damage-dealing capacity. They not only preserve their substantial utility but also function as raid-nuking machines in PvE and unstoppable forces in PvP—you’ll encounter warlock/druid combinations so frequently they may induce keyboard-related nausea. New spell additions include Seed of Corruption, inflicting damage-over-time on targets while exploding for area-effect damage after accumulating sufficient damage thresholds, representing remarkably powerful AoE capabilities. They additionally acquire new armor termed Fel Armor, undergoing multiple iterations throughout WoW’s history, but in Burning Crusade (BC), it augments healing by 20% while increasing spell power comparable to mage armor values. Warlocks gain Soul Well functionality; with two assisting players during summoning, it drops an interactable soul well distributing healthstones, eliminating tedious individual stone trading processes.
Action Checklist
- Research all class changes from vanilla to TBC before committing to main
- Test multiple class specializations on beta servers when available
- Create profession and gold acquisition plan for your selected class
- Practice key ability rotations and cooldown management for chosen specialization
No reproduction without permission:OnLineGames Guides » WoW Burning Crusade Classic Class Picking Guide: Part One Essential TBC class selection guide with expert insights for WoW Classic's upcoming expansion
