Celestalon seeks advice on class balance

[Queen of Hamsters]

What ruined the spec was Vulnerable.

It's just a wanna-be collosus smash.

Yeah and that. 7.1.5 made Vulnerable a bit more rewarding to play into but the spec (entire class imo) is still a far cry from being the best it has ever been. They tried to reinvent the wheel but in doing so they deflated the already existing wheels...

And the worst part is that it wouldn't surprise me if they repeat it all over again with the next expansion... What is it that makes them want to rebuild the classes with every expansion anyways?

[xZerocidex]

He's not asking for advice, he's trying to make his job seem more difficult than it actually is.




What ruined the spec was Vulnerable.

It's just a wanna-be collosus smash.

Yeah, if Blizzard wanted to capture the sniper theme then they should've baked Armor Bypassing threshold into their Mastery.

Would've made more sense.

[InfiniteCharger]

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...78877928570881

In a recent tweet, Celestalon poses the following question to the players:


I think that the devs just need to be more proactive with underperforming specs. Doing nothing about the situation and just leaving underperforming specs to rot for an entire tier isn't going to make the problem magically go away.

I think there needs to be more frequent minor buffs to perceived and/or theoretical underperforming specs every fortnight (~5% increases each fortnight). Many other games have frequent balance updates but WoW usually has one or two at the start of the tier, then nothing for the next 3-4 months.

And on top of that I think that we just need better communication from the development team. We need to know what the devs are thinking, what they're currently seeing in theoretical DPS, why some classes are so low (do the devs really believe that Feral is at "100 dps" capability right now?).

All in all, they just need to be a lot more active instead of giving up and saying "I guess we'll try again next tier".

There should be more to a spec than simply DPS. Each spec should have its own strengths and weaknesses in certain situations.
Each one cannot the be all and end all in itself. That was never the way these things were supposed to work. Things were never supposed to be balanced across all classes/specs. But since WOW has moved towards making DPS the key stat for most specs, it now is a problem because that is the only stat damage dealers care about.

[Eleccybubb]

Well, early vanilla put class before spec. You were not a fire mage, you were a mage, who happened to specialize in fire. To you, that may sound the same, but, you had eight different and viable classes. Now, you have only three (perhaps arguable to say four).

And those classes had near worthless specs.

[Beace]

There should be more to a spec than simply DPS. Each spec should have its own strengths and weaknesses in certain situations.
Each one cannot the be all and end all in itself. That was never the way these things were supposed to work. Things were never supposed to be balanced across all classes/specs. But since WOW has moved towards making DPS the key stat for most specs, it now is a problem because that is the only stat damage dealers care about.

Fair point. I think the game was more interesting when specs synergized with each other. Spriests being mana batteries and doing a bit less damage was fine IMO, same with shaman windfury, feral crit, etc.

[Eleccybubb]

I don't understand. Class before spec design allows this. But, you are unforgiving of this.

If all 3 specs of a class are viable to play then I'm happy. If not aka Survival Hunter in PvE in Vanilla then fix it. Nobody went Survival seriously in PvE. Partly because Lacerate was shit and even after 1.7 when they changed it the spec was still awful. I just don't like a spec for a class being damn near useless. But that's just me.

[Deleted]

So basically what he's saying is every feral sucks dick and if they buff them a bit (fucking roflmao at tier bonuses) then every "A" player will go feral and they will be insanely overpowered, okay. Got it.

[clevin]

The problem isnt what he states, that players who care about DPS gravitate to the better class/spec combination. It's that spec C (and B) were 20-30% under spec A.

Now, if spec A was 100, B was 94 and C was 89? We'd still see some migration but among fewer people.

[xZerocidex]

But, it was a different philosophy. You had eight viable classes that fulfilled different roles in early vanilla (per faction). A mage was not designed to be on equal DPS as other so-called DPS classes, because that is a misnomer. The unholy trinity was only applied to class design after release of WoW.

Now, you had some really awful talents (like Lacerate). But, this is due to lack of testing, not poor design philosophy.

I also think the main issue is that the game was new at the time, things never get properly adjusted and scrap next xpac. If we we're still in Vanilla era the chances of balance and specs being viable would've been much better as they have ever the expansions.

I just think the only thing holding them back is the redesigns of the classes.

[clevin]

There should be more to a spec than simply DPS. Each spec should have its own strengths and weaknesses in certain situations.
Each one cannot the be all and end all in itself. That was never the way these things were supposed to work. Things were never supposed to be balanced across all classes/specs. But since WOW has moved towards making DPS the key stat for most specs, it now is a problem because that is the only stat damage dealers care about.

This, too. In TBC I loved playing the rogue I started with because it had a variety of tools to use in combat from stuns to blinds and other means of control. Sure, you had to do good DPS *too* but good player knew that there was more to playing DPS well than simply output.

Starting in LK, DPS classes all became about the DPS only

[Kazuchika]

Oh look more passive aggressive bullshit from good old Celestablet

[Beace]

The problem isnt what he states, that players who care about DPS gravitate to the better class/spec combination. It's that spec C (and B) were 20-30% under spec A.

Now, if spec A was 100, B was 94 and C was 89? We'd still see some migration but among fewer people.

Funny that you should post that, when you seem to completely miss his point. Spec B & C are never 30% behind spec A. That doesn't happen in modern WoW. Spec B & C might be 30% behind spec A on warcraftlogs, but that would be because the most skilled and geared players are gravitating to spec A, even if spec A is only 5% better. That is what he's saying with his tweet.

[Eats Compost]

There should be more to a spec than simply DPS. Each spec should have its own strengths and weaknesses in certain situations.
Each one cannot the be all and end all in itself. That was never the way these things were supposed to work. Things were never supposed to be balanced across all classes/specs. But since WOW has moved towards making DPS the key stat for most specs, it now is a problem because that is the only stat damage dealers care about.

DPS being key isn't a symptom of class design, it's a symptom of dungeon/raid/encounter design. If you want to make other things more valuable, you have to change the way they're used, which means changing encounters.

Historically, WoW is terrible at making non-damage tools on DPS classes valuable. Progressive outdoor challenges work poorly at max level because virtually nothing creeps up in stretching along with your gear, and raids at absolutely hopeless at making utility valuable because of the age-old "bring the player, or the class" problem. Sure, utility still gets used all the time, but because most of it has some kind of cap (only so many meteors to soak, only so many stuns before DR hits, only so many things to sprint to, only so many things that need to be interrupted) most groups just have what they need thanks to numbers.

Honestly, it comes down to WoW's overall combat and gear structure being hot garbage at max level.

[Essem]

Ive always thought that they should make the talents decide whether you are a ST/AoE/Clreave specc and not Assasination = ST Outlaw = AoE for example.
Strip the talents away and balance classes without them first, then add talents 1 AoE 1 Cleave and 1 ST talent on the same row.

Basically the name of your specc shouldnt decide what youre good at, let your talent choices do.

[Deleted]

I have played WoW since TBC (mostly pvp) and I have never seen less balance in the game than in the first months of Legion. Instead of improving the game through the elimination of gear from pvp and pvp talents and templates, we reached an entirely new level of imbalance. The idea that this scale of the problem can be explained by better players picking only certain specs is utterly ridiculous. One only has to remind oneself of the huge melee-caster chasm to see that this is nonsense.

Now, Blizz is taking steps in 7.1.5 to correct that and they seem to be effective and Im glad that they re doing it, but maybe a bit less smugness is in order considering how this expansion started out.

[Klingers]

I suspect this will be a fairly controversial opinion, but I honestly think Blizzard need to stop balancing classes around high-end raids, tuned bosses or characters with certain legendaries or artifact traits. I also think they need to really balance PVP separately. Not just in terms of baseline stat templates, but actually dialing damage back versus the outside world if that's what it takes.

The Devs need to start asking themselves far more elemental questions about class design and damage numbers:

• Do big resource-spender abilities feel punchy and satisfying?
• Are these classes fun to play, to the exclusion of all other factors, when people are doing grindy shit?[/i]
• Is power fantasy and big-number damage helping to alleviated soul-crushing boredom of mob farming?

In my opinion "Flavor Of The Month" never arises from "This class is better by 2%." It usually arises from "Blizzard have nerfed my class to shit, now it's not fun anymore. What's good now?". That wouldn't happen nearly as much if people felt that their classes didn't go from something great to something lesser. If you play WoW 20 hours a week and you spend 5 of those raiding, that's 15 other hours of your week where you're not going to give a shit how your class performs in a raid. You're doing to care how it plays during world quests, or mob farming, or whatever else you're doing.

I know those are not the clearest points but I guess the TLDR is that class balance itself is the problem. To truly make this game fun regardless of what spec you play blizzard need to keep classes fun, simple, static and BIG DEEPS without twiddling a thousand little knobs and making nebulous justifications for changes that don't pass the sniff-test.

If a class isn't fun then it's not fun. If you play that class you dont give a shit because you were 5% up on Raid Boss X at phase 3. You care about how it feels to play the other 95% of the time.

[Terahertz]

Lets start with actually buffing/nerfing things slowly instead of gutting specs with a butcher's knife in one fell swoop. Also relevant for PvP

[ZehGeek]

All that really needs to be said is if they've admitted they specifically didn't listen to Feedback about a class..high chances they're going to continue that.
Of course talking about Fury Warrior feedback.

[Beace]

All that really needs to be said is if they've admitted they specifically didn't listen to Feedback about a class..high chances they're going to continue that.
Of course talking about Fury Warrior feedback.

Got a source on that? I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious to read exactly what they said.

[Lane]

You want to better balance the specs of this class. How much do you buff/nerf each spec?

Surely this is oversimplified. You need to look at why certain specs are under-performing. Does it rely too heavily on procs? Is the rotation awkward/complicated/unforgiving? Are long cast times, building up enough resource to use abilities, mobility an issue, etc.?

I've never thought balancing classes was simple, but to imply that it's just a matter of flatly buffing or nerfing by a percentage is just so wrong. I've seen it argued that devs shouldn't need to play all of the classes and specs to design for them, but maybe they should. Especially if this is their approach to "balancing".