Blizzard and class balance, please help me understand

[Deleted]

Continue your defense.

Legendaries that FIX fundamental design flaws of specs are BAD DESIGN.

If you still don't have all your legendaries for your main spec you should just shut up and go play something else because you sure as hell are not playing WoW.

[Charge me Doctor]

Continue your defense.

Legendaries that FIX fundamental design flaws of specs are BAD DESIGN.

There is no fundamental design flaw, you either play GCD capped DH, or you don't. You choose to not play one for various reasons and complain about it.

The only DPS DH design flaws you can argue about are crit reliance and how two DHs of same ilvl can have up to 10% CS crit difference resulting in 200k DPS difference

[unbound]

Not going to write a long-winded post about Blizzard's approach to balancing, there's already hundreds of those with dozens of new ones popping up every day. What I don't understand is how the dev team can say this:



And yet they also state that they specifically designed Demon Hunters in a way that would reduce the difference in performance between a new player and a pro and pruned other classes to the same effect.

Can a pro player really execute a dead easy 3 button dps rotation so much better than a noob that it would account for 20% or more difference in dps?

TBH, you aren't going to really tell the difference between a pro player and a good player.

For a noob, their struggle will rarely be with a "dead easy 3 button dps rotation". But they will struggle with the mechanics (since they are, by definition, noobs), struggle with remembering to activate their other long-timer abilities in a timely manner, and will either be completely ignorant of the nuance to maximize their dps.

For example, BM hunters actually need to pay attention to timing to maintain Dire Frenzy optimally (that is, maximizing 3 stacks as long as possible) as well as actually relaxing a bit in regards to using multi-shot as just mashing the multi-shot button will be a rather large dps loss.

[Lulbalance]

it's been almost 14 years man. If you don't know enough to choose a consistent class with options by now (assuming you care about numbers), that's on you.

[Svisalith]

Can a pro player really execute a dead easy 3 button dps rotation so much better than a noob that it would account for 20% or more difference in dps?

Yes

The difference between a top 10% vs a top 25% DPS log on Goroth Heroic is about a 1.2x DPS increase.

If you compare pro vs noob instead of "pretty great player" to "pretty good player" the gap can be many times wider

The answer to why is actually quite complicated but in short the vast majority of players that are not in high end mythic guilds just can't play a "simple" spec that well and very rarely have good habits for learning to improve their play.

There is no fundamental design flaw, you either play GCD capped DH, or you don't. You choose to not play one for various reasons and complain about it.

Pretty much everything DH does is GCD capped - you're either filling with demon's bite or with felblade, un-mastered fel rush and throw glaive. All of them do terrible damage. Tank is GCD locked as well w/ lots of spells including shear, a generator with no cooldown or cost.

[Tradu]

Please don't comment on the state of a class unless you actually play it at a Heroic level. Jesus even at a Mythic+ level.

When I use the term "fury starved" I am describing the fact that Havoc does NOT flow properly. It is not fluid gameplay. I repeatedly have periods where I stand there auto attacking the boss while waiting for RNG fury to kick in. 8+ seconds of auto attacking. Are you seriously trying to claim that's GOOD DESIGN?

There is a difference between having infinite resources and having none for upwards of 10 seconds. Don't we play for FUN?

Don't tell me to not spec into Demon Blades either because a). It's the top DPS choice. b). By speccing into it you don't have to spam a shitty resource builder that does zero damage(which no other class has) c). I don't want carpel tunnel.

Luckily I play all 12 classes(not every spec) at at least heroic raid/M+ level. And if you sit there just autoattacking as Havoc, you're bad. You have Throw Glaive and Fel Rush at the very least to fill some of that gap. I get that it's hard to understand that you're meant to actually manage your resource and not just spend it the moment you get it.

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Continue your defense.

Legendaries that FIX fundamental design flaws of specs are BAD DESIGN.

I agree that legendaries are too impactful, but you're just misunderstanding your spec, that's not bad design.

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This guy gets it. If I'm standing there waiting for Fury, auto-attacking. I'm casting Fel Rush or Throw Glaive. Both of which do nothing, no DoT or proc. Flat damage, less damage than an auto-attack with Dblades.

Fel Rush is one of your highest DPET abilities.

[Requimortem]

"Blizzard" and "class balance" are two things that never go together.

[fiestatastic]

A lot of the difference between player output is simply internet connection. I'm sure everyone has played with players at some point that consistently lag or dc. If a player can't respond with their 3 button rotation very well due to lag, they are more likely than not going to perform more than 20% worse than a player with good internet that can.

Beyond that, the biggest contributor to the disparity between top and bottom are legendaries. Player skill is way below having a good internet connection and having the right legendaries.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

5.4 class balance would like a word with you.

Legion's class balance is far, far from "best". With all the contributing factors to class balance and ability tuning sometimes outright ignored by Blizzard, it's hard to imagine that Legion with all its legendaries and artifacts and ridiculous set bonus stacking to be "balanced" in any sort of way.

Seems like you don't remember mop very well. Look at logs from spec to spec and you will se the truth of it. Never have we had all three specs of pure classes be within a few percent of each other. Never. Certainly not in mop.

[Tradu]

A lot of the difference between player output is simply internet connection. I'm sure everyone has played with players at some point that consistently lag or dc. If a player can't respond with their 3 button rotation very well due to lag, they are more likely than not going to perform more than 20% worse than a player with good internet that can.

Beyond that, the biggest contributor to the disparity between top and bottom are legendaries. Player skill is way below having a good internet connection and having the right legendaries.

Internet connection really doesn't make as much of a difference as you seem to think. WoW is not a fast game, you have ~1 second in between abilities as well as the ability to queue up abilities to compensate for lag. By your logic, no Oceanic player was able to do good DPS until they got their own servers, which is just straight up false.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

last good class balance and class desgin was in wotlk. Now we have the biggest pruned shit.

Pruning has nothing to do with balance. Unless you think we are talking about balance druid.

[Super Kami Dende]

Not going to write a long-winded post about Blizzard's approach to balancing, there's already hundreds of those with dozens of new ones popping up every day. What I don't understand is how the dev team can say this:



And yet they also state that they specifically designed Demon Hunters in a way that would reduce the difference in performance between a new player and a pro and pruned other classes to the same effect.

Can a pro player really execute a dead easy 3 button dps rotation so much better than a noob that it would account for 20% or more difference in dps?

Yes. As you can see by Percentile DPS rankings across all classes.

Though I tend to find the people that talk about specs being "dead easy" or only "3 button specs" are people below 75 percentile.

[Vaerys]

Yes. As you can see by Percentile DPS rankings across all classes.

Though I tend to find the people that talk about specs being "dead easy" or only "3 button specs" are people below 75 percentile.

By those peoples' logic, "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" is harder than Battletoads.

[HordeFanboy]

Pruning has nothing to do with balance. Unless you think we are talking about balance druid.

and??????????

[Argorwal]

This game is hilariously easy.

"Pro players".

The only differential between DPS now is Legendaries and gear.

I watched a PUG Demon Hunter who hasn't even downed Heroic KJ yet and has hilariously terrible uptime/rotation on our logs last night Out-DPS me by an insane margin just because he has Anger of the Half Giants and inherently ALWAYS has more Fury to spend.

^That's dogshit design. Dogshit. Design.

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Do you know what's also stupid? Designing a whole raid tier around soaking mechanics + also being godly at DPS.

My spec - Havoc DH. Provides zero raid utility. It provides middle of the pack ST and awful cleave/AoE. It also doesn't provide a coveted soak defensive.

Why bring me? When you can bring a Rogue? The answer of course is that you don't. My casual guild had to fill spots in our roster with PUGs because we didn't play the right classes to down Heroic KJ.

Havoc does have a soak with netherwalk???

[Siglius]

Havoc does have a soak with netherwalk???

tfw you realize you didn't get benched due to your class, but because you didn't even know what your class can do.

Edit: Matter of fact is actually on HC KJ DH's are actually better at soaking than rogues, since rogues can't cloak the big tank meteor, unless with cheat death on a 6 min cd, where as DHs can do it every time Neatherwalk is available. The reason you bring rogues for M KJ is so they can deal with the beam on their own with feint.

[Charge me Doctor]

Yeah.

Because crits refund fury.

Would you care to have a go at defending the Havoc DH Tier 21 set bonuses? How they force the Demonic spec and result in a marginal(if any) DPS gain over T20. How it gives haste when the spec that cares about haste is..... You guessed it, Nemesis/Cblades with.... DEMON BLADES(MORE HASTE, MORE FURY).

I can go on and on - and this is only about Havoc.

Want to talk about Elemental being dumpster tier for the whole expansion? Want to talk about their marginal buffs in 7.3? How Blizzard has no fucking idea what they are doing.

Or poor Survival? Who's DPS and playstyle/mechanics are garbage. Please. Continue.

I play fire mage, want to talk about set bonuses? Mine actually devalues my main stat and mine T19 4piece bonus sims higher than T20 4piece even considering 15ilvl difference.

How exactly more haste doesn't mean more fury for demon bite? It lowers your GCD you know. I'm not going to argue that haste is more valuable for demon blades+the ring, but fury gain is still going to be extremely random, which is your main complaint. When you have an option to make it not random but predictable, but you ignore it "cuz mine deepz" probably

Don't know much and don't care about Elemental, honestly, i haven't seen many elemental shamans recently, but the guy on my battlenet list who plays only elemental didn't complain in 7.2 and now and still beats aff warlocks in pugs.

Survival suffers from "why bring another melee when you can play ranged?" problem and BM being extremely good for Tomb thanks to its mobility. Again, it's not a problem of spec for the most part, but problem of current raid, it's not designed to favor Survival.

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There is no resource management as Havoc.

Not true.

Getting fury is also RNG(DBlades).
Hilarious that this expansion is so loaded with RNG in every single aspect - even their new class' gameplay.

You have an option to make it not RNG, and it's hilarious to me that you keep bring it up.

Fel Rush is counter-intuitive to every other gameplay element in this game and so was the Momentum spec(even though I enjoyed it).

It is as counter intuitive as walking away from a boss to charge back in inbetween swings as Arms. Aka - it's not at all.

During Emerald Nightmare I would be the DPS that would die the most - constantly trying to max my DPS with Momentum.

Well there is a learning curve... Bad DHs will die using Fell Rush, good ones will survive and do more damage.

Havoc cookie cutter build(best DPS) is fury starved which leads to sloppy gameplay and DPS. They designed a Legendary that fixes(somewhat) that fury starvation. How the fuck is that not poor design?

Feel free to sacrifice your random resource generation option for more stable one. Legendary isn't supposed to "fix" this "problem", it supposed to boost a talent choice, this talent is designed to be chaotic and random, if you don't like it - don't pick it.

Seriously, Cinderstorm sims higher than Meteor for most fights on my character, but i don't pick it, because i can't reliably land 100% of them and cast it on cooldown, it also fucks up my flow during combustion ("i don't like how it plays" argument), so i chose to pick Meteor for almost every boss, sacrificing whatever theoretical DPS in favor of more stable DPS and more convenient play

[Loveliest]

What I'm having trouble understanding is that after 13 years they still can't get class balancing anywhere near perfect. You think they would've solved the problem of classes scaling out of control without having to constantly turn the knobs.

Well... I could play the devil's advocate and say classes have changed with each expansion so the time frame is irrelevant. BUT I also feel that the more time passes the bigger discrepancies - between classes, between specs, between roles, between same class with different gear. So I think this imbalance is done on purpose, so people keep changing their class and not get bored. That's surely true for pvp.

[Nfinitii]

The biggest problem is the player base has an unrealistic expectation for class/spec balance. This is only exacerbated by player perception, websites like Warcraft logs and the 1% of mythic raiders.

[Bigbazz]

There are too many variable with spec balance, it also seems to be more down to which flavour Blizzard wants to promote in any given month because they have historically been fine with letting some specs be either blatently over or underpowered with a clear problem highlighted very early on (as early as the testing realms) but not addressed until a later major patch.

When you have to also take into account early/mid/late tier performance, scaling and specific items/legendaries.. They're never gonna get it perfect, and since they have made the game more complex over the years it has only become more difficult. In TBC you had a lot of one-button wonders and generally the balance was better, but TBC was so dominated by variations of raid buff setups that the raid buff setup were actually more important than anything else, which as a result heavily affected class balance and player perceptions of certain specs.

Not going to write a long-winded post about Blizzard's approach to balancing, there's already hundreds of those with dozens of new ones popping up every day. What I don't understand is how the dev team can say this:



And yet they also state that they specifically designed Demon Hunters in a way that would reduce the difference in performance between a new player and a pro and pruned other classes to the same effect.

Can a pro player really execute a dead easy 3 button dps rotation so much better than a noob that it would account for 20% or more difference in dps?

A pro can

1. Do mechanics while maximising uptime and minimising mistakes
2. Plan ahead and collect data internally from previous experiences to help with cooldown timing/stacking
3. Adjust to changing conditions on the fly, maximising efficiency and minimising dps loss.
4. Spam abilities to minimise latency/waste between abilities, maximising overall casts (this is a huge issue with lower to medium skilled players)

If bosses were all pure tank and spank it would be less relevant, the difference would be smaller. The fact is most bosses are the opposite of that and have movement, adds phases, soak mechanics and a load of other factors that you need to deal with.. So yes it's quite easy for people to do 20% more damage from skill, people did in TBC when some specs were 1 button wonders.. Economy of movement and overall casts is something the majority of the playerbase struggles with, whether they like to admit it or not.