A curious bug in World of Warcraft Classic made fire mages nearly unstoppable. Many of them strolled through Azeroth with a 100% critical strike chance.
Despite the fact that World of Warcraft Classic is a game that is almost 16 years old, small bugs and issues continue to be uncovered. The most recent case involved fire mages who turned into unstoppable killing machines. A massive bonus to critical strike rating made this possible – triggered by a bug.
What was the bug? The bug affected the spell Combustion. This is the final talent in the fire talent tree for mages. The spell grants the mage a 10% additional critical strike chance. The chance increases by an additional 10% with each spell cast until a total of 3 critical strikes are achieved, at which point the effect ends. However, some players found a way to keep the spell active indefinitely.
How did the bug work? Mages simply had to enter a dungeon and start casting spells. They stacked Combustion as often as they could until they achieved two critical strikes – typically resulting in 4-7 stacks, meaning 40% – 70% additional critical strike chance. In particularly fortunate cases, a bonus of 100% could even be achieved. If the mage then left the dungeon, Combustion became a permanent effect. Thus, fire mages were able to permanently benefit from the additional critical strike chance.
The buff would only disappear if the mage manually dismissed it, died, or logged out. For the sake of fairness, it should be mentioned that fire mages with maximum critical strike chance tend to die relatively quickly, as the threat generated can hardly be sustained by any tank for long.
These were the consequences: The bug caused massive imbalances in tackling dungeons, raids, or even PvP in the open world or battlegrounds. A fire mage who lands a critical strike nearly every time not only deals massive initial damage but also applies a powerful DOT that quickly drains enemies’ health points. With so much damage, even the toughest bosses in WoW history would not survive long.
A video on this – with questionable music selection – can be seen here:
Blizzard reacted quickly: After Blizzard was alerted to the bug in the forum, only a few hours passed before a hotfix was released. It is no longer possible to keep Combustion active permanently by leaving a zone. The buff then disappears, or is removed upon the next critical strike – as intended.
It was the golden hours for fire mages, who had a moment of invincibility once again. But now that is over too.
