Some classes dominate in WoW, not just because of their active skills or abilities, but also because of some overpowered passive skills. Here’s a list of passive skills that dominated the WoW universe.
10. Improved Counterspell
This passive allows mage to add a 4 second silence to their Counterspell ability. This effect prevents the target from casting any spell for a duration of time. Counterspell is already a powerful ability, with the 24 second cooldown and can also interrupt when enemies are in the middle of casting their skill, but with this passive it can add crowd control and immobilize enemies in a longer period of time. Unfortunately they remove this passive ability in Warlord of Draenor.
9. Throwing Specialization
A rogue talent from Wrath of Lich King, this passive interacts with the ability called Fan of Knives. This ability costs energy to use and generates combo points, which means as long as they have energy they can spam Fan of Knives. As this passive interacts with this ability, if maxed out it Deadly Throw and Fan of Knives abilities a 100% chance to interrupt enemies for 3 seconds. But later on they removed the ability interaction, to interrupt spellcasting on Throwing Specialization to Fan of Knives.
8. Glyph of Gag Order
On the 8th spot, this passive improves the warrior’s ability, Pummel and Heroic Throw, where it will silence the target for 3 seconds in addition to the skills effects. Pummel is already interrupt ability with a 15 second cooldown. For Heroic Throw it gives a ranged silence with 1 minute cooldown. Since this is overpowered especially in pvp they changed it in a few months, that it doesn’t work against players, and later on gave it a cooldown that it will only work every 15 seconds.
7. Dematerialize
The only skill in our list that is not a silence or interrupt. It only exists in the Mists of Pandaria, with a 10 second cooldown and causes all attacks to miss in 2 seconds after you received a stun. Stun is probably one of the basic skills that everyone considers, and having this passive where enemies can’t attack you after they stun, increases your survivability and advantage against stuns. But later on they gave it a longer cooldown and made it an active ability, and was later removed from the game.
6. Kil’jaedens cunning
This talent allows warlocks to cast while moving. In its first version it’s a cooldown ability and when activated, in the next 6 seconds you can cast and channel while moving with 1 minute cooldown. Also it has a passive that allows you to cast and channel while moving as well but has a 50% haste penalty and movement speed is reduced by 20%. Eventually they removed the haste penalty and lowered the reduced movement speed by 15%. Later on they removed the active ability and allowed players to use the passive effect only, but still it’s an overpowered ability for warlock so they decided to nerf the talent to cast filler spells for three warlock specs with no penalties.
5. Mace stun TBC rogues
At the number 5 spot we have the mace stun for rogues and warriors. Both rogues and warriors had a talent called Mace Specialization , that gives them the ability to randomly stun enemies for 3 seconds.
4. Twilight Devastation
This is a random enchantment on gear that if you damaged things you had a chance to trigger a beam that will deal damage equal to 18% of your health to enemies. There are ways to increase the damage of this ability, one is to increase your max health by stacking stamina and two is to get other pieces of equipment that also had twilight devastation on them. So if a tank had a gears with twilight devastation equipped, they could actually one shot other players in PvP, but was later nerf putting a passive that it will disappear after hitting 10 targets.
3. Shadow of Death
This only existed on a single patch where when they died they would be resurrected as a Ghoul for 45 seconds. The Ghoul abilities were about as strong as half of a normal player and another set of skills as well.
2. Glyph of Death and Decay
Is a Death Knight AOE ability that they can throw to the ground and will deal damage with whoevers inside of it . The glyph has a 20% chance to cause Fear that will put the target into place for 2 seconds. With Chains of Ice that chains the target for 3 seconds and after that they will just regain 10% of their movement speed each second, making it hard to go out in the glyph. With Death Grip it draws the target toward Death Knight forcing them to attack for 3 seconds which basically brings them back to the glyph. It was later nerfed in the game.
1.Reckoning bomb
Taking the top spot, this passive gives a chance that if they are a victim of critical strike they will gain an extra attack on their attack. What players did is they allowed a friend rogue to stab in the back with level 1 dagger, with no stack limit, it allowed them to stack a total of 2,000 stacks of reckoning, and was able to almost one shot a world boss. After that they nerfed this passive immediately putting a 4 maximum stack.
Video Chapters:
Intro: (0:00)
10-Improved Counterspell: (0:13)
9- Throwing Specialization: (2:28)
8- Glyph of Gag Order: (4:40)
7- Dematerialize: (5:57)
6- Kil’jaedens cunning: (7:28)
5- Mace stun TBC rogues: (9:53)
4- Twilight dev: (13:13)
3- Shadow of Death: (14:33)
2- Glyph of DnD DK: (15:41)
1- Reckoning bomb: (17:58)