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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

4 of 304 words for “Rotation”

  1. Rotation

    WoW

    The order you use your abilities for the most damage or healing. In vanilla it is usually a priority list rather than a fixed loop.

    “The rogue rotation at 60 is basically Sinister Strike, Slice and Dice, Eviscerate.”

    “Follow the priority list on the rotation tab and the numbers take care of themselves.”

    See also: Priority list, GCD, Cooldown

  2. Priority list

    WoW

    A rotation written as 'use the first thing on this list that is available'. Handles procs and cooldowns better than a fixed sequence.

    “Priority list: keep Slice and Dice up, Eviscerate at 5 points, otherwise Sinister Strike.”

    See also: Rotation, Proc

  3. Sim

    WoW

    A simulation of a fight to estimate DPS for a gear set or rotation. Later WoW has SimulationCraft; vanilla relies on spreadsheets and logs.

    “Sim says the dagger is a 2% upgrade.”

    See also: Theorycraft, Equivalence points

  4. 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.