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Jargon, decoded

The glossary

304 words from World of Warcraft, MMOs, esports and every game chat you have ever been flamed in — what each one means, and how people actually say it. Every entry has its own link, so you can send it to the friend who just asked what a twink is.

Word of the day

AV

PvP

Also: Alterac Valley

Alterac Valley: 40 v 40 across a whole zone, ends when a faction boss dies. Can last hours or minutes depending on the era.

“AV weekend, honor is doubled, everyone's queueing.”

See also: Battleground, Honor

All words

6 of 304 words for “Build”

  1. Build

    WoW

    A complete plan for a character: talents, gear and how you play it. A shared build is a link.

    “Send me your build.”

    “This is the standard 31/8/12 Mortal Strike build.”

    See also: Spec, Talent, BiS

  2. Combo points

    WoW

    Points a rogue or cat builds on a target with some abilities and spends with finishers. Up to five.

    “Five combo points, Kidney Shot.”

    See also: Energy, Finisher

  3. Dual spec

    WoW

    Later feature that lets you keep two talent builds and swap between them. Not in vanilla; watch for it in Forever.

    “No dual spec means you're a healer on raid nights, full stop.”

    See also: Respec

  4. Hybrid

    WoW

    A class (or build) that can fill more than one role: paladins, druids, shamans, priests. Also a build split across trees.

    “Hybrid tax: druids heal fine and tank fine but do less damage than a rogue.”

    “That's a hybrid build — 20 points in each tree and no 31-pointer.”

    See also: Spec, Talent

  5. Beta

    Gaming slang

    A pre-release version: playable, unfinished, changing weekly. Forever is in beta as this is written.

    “Beta numbers, don't plan your whole build on them.”

    See also: PTR, Datamine

  6. Theorycraft

    WoW

    Working out the math of the game — stat weights, rotations, breakpoints — from data and testing instead of feel.

    “The theorycraft says agility beats crit for you until 30% crit.”

    “He theorycrafted the whole build in a spreadsheet.”

    See also: Equivalence points, Sim, Min-max

WoW

World of Warcraft, especially vanilla, Classic and Forever.

79 words

Raiding & dungeons

Group PvE: pulls, loot rules, wipes and parses.

47 words

PvP

Battlegrounds, duels, twinks and world PvP.

31 words

MMO

Words shared by every online RPG.

47 words

Esports

Competitive play, broadcasts and the meta.

21 words

Gaming slang

What people say in every chat, every game.

79 words

Missing a word, or got one wrong? Tell us. Then go build something and use it in a sentence.