Will Blizzard ever disclose their intentions with class balance?

[Wilfire]

Some specs are consistently good every patch while other specs get left in the dust for years. It sucks because you could be playing an okay-ish spec one day and then the nerfhammer hits you and suddenly you can't compete in raids or arena anymore. This is even more jarring when there are systems like AP and legendaries in the game which result in commitment to specs. Since Blizzard has an agenda when it comes to class balance, why don't they just reveal it so that people can avoid playing specs that are slated for gimping?

If there's a system like AP or legendaries in the next xpack or any other system that results in increasing spec commitment, Blizzard should reveal before launch which specs are expected to be good throughout the xpack and which ones are one-patch FotM wonders that will get nerfed HARD. No one likes playing gimped specs.

[Animalhouse]

Some specs are consistently good every patch while other specs get left in the dust for years. It sucks because you could be playing an okay-ish spec one day and then the nerfhammer hits you and suddenly you can't compete in raids or arena anymore. This is even more jarring when there are systems like AP and legendaries in the game which result in commitment to specs. Since Blizzard has an agenda when it comes to class balance, why don't they just reveal it so that people can avoid playing specs that are slated for gimping?

If there's a system like AP or legendaries in the next xpack or any other system that results in increasing spec commitment, Blizzard should reveal before launch which specs are expected to be good throughout the xpack and which ones are one-patch FotM wonders that will get nerfed HARD. No one likes playing gimped specs.

The reality is that it's a crap shoot and has always been. Every expansion and major patch brings changes that can make or break the flow of a spec. But what feels broken for one feels fine to another.
I just roll a ton of alts and make sure they are all at max level end of expansion so I can find the one that feels best when changes are made.
I have been able to stick with druid for the longest cause they can do all roles. Hate boomkin this expansion but many love it. Was horrible at feral this expansion till 7.3. Now I am raping face more than I was with my enhancement shaman. Went from guardian/resto all exp to a happy feral.

Just gotta roll with the punches and deal with the knee-jerk blizz changes. A few people abusing abilities/talents with certain stat weights and blizz locks it down hurting the majority that did not. It's just the way it goes.

[madokbro]

Ion actually indirectly touched upon this subject during the last Q&A. What I got from it was that the internal data collecting tools at blizzard show vastly different results than third party web sites like simcraft and warcraftlogs. Yet, since the community perception is greatly influenced by such sites, they are in a constant struggle to balance the specs regarding both their internal data and the community perception of the specs that are created by third party damage meters.

[God Save The King]

Ion actually indirectly touched upon this subject during the last Q&A. What I got from it was that the internal data collecting tools at blizzard show vastly different results than third party web sites like simcraft and warcraftlogs. Yet, since the community perception is greatly influenced by such sites, they are in a constant struggle to balance the specs regarding both their internal data and the community perception of the specs that are created by third party damage meters.

Came here to basically say that.

Part of the community perception is absolute delta vs. relative delta. I went and found some old stats from SoO, The dps (on average) ranged from 12k to 22k. That means that the lowest dps has an absolute delta of 10k below the top, and it's relative delta is 45% of the top. (Similar stuff for ToT)

If we look at ToS right now, we see a range from 1.39m to 1.60m. This absolute delta is 210k, which seems insane! But the relative delta is 13% from the top.

I believe the point of class balance is to basically get all the classes/specs within a recent range (somewhere around the 15% from top mark I'd guess, looking at Legion/WoD), and giving different classes places to shine in each tier. My offspec is a moonkin, and I rock some of the fights in ToS, but the single target ones I am just okay at.

[Nefarious Tea]

Came here to basically say that.

Part of the community perception is absolute delta vs. relative delta. I went and found some old stats from SoO, The dps (on average) ranged from 12k to 22k. That means that the lowest dps has an absolute delta of 10k below the top, and it's relative delta is 45% of the top.

That must be post squish; pre 6.0, DPS with 500k hp weren't doing only 20k DPS.

[Swalload]

They are carefully nerfing and buffing specific things to force people into rolling something new. That makes the game less stale and forces people to play more than they would if they only played 1 toon and knew it would always be fine.

But saying "we purposefully tweak balance to make players play more and pay more" makes them look evil.
So instead they say their logs are different than the rest of the planet and that it's hard to balance. If a spec is 5% behind, I'm sure anyone here can understand that increasing its dmg by 5% will bring it exactly where it needs to be. It can't become 10% over everyone else by increasing its dmg by only 5%, it's mathematically impossible. Balancing a class is much easier than people believe.

[God Save The King]

That must be post squish; pre 6.0, DPS with 500k hp weren't doing only 20k DPS.

Yes, the historical SoO data is post squish.

[Mosotti]

Balancing is impossible. Anyone hoping for that should really quit now, cause it's never going to happen. The only way to balance the game would be to give the same spells with different names to all specs. Even that would not please anyone because... those simulations are really fucking useless in real life, because if you have 100.000 people playing a spec, you have a range of 100.000 play styles, from brilliant fucking top level world first guild motherfucker to complete fucktard. And that is not a smooth distribution, so then what the fuck do you change to make ALL the people happy and achieve the "balance"? You cater for the retard, you get the angry top level guild dude, you cater for the fabulous, you make the retard yell.

Working for a game like this and being in charge with balance must be the shittiest job ever...

[Arrashi]

Their intentions are simple - keep things working with minimal amount of effort and work put into it.

[madokbro]

So instead they say their logs are different than the rest of the planet and that it's hard to balance.

What if they are telling the truth though? These people are passionate employees of a video game company, not evil masterminds, they are hardly comparable to the all-consuming monster corporations with their endless lying and plotting.

It stands to reason that they simply cannot share their own methods of data collecting without finding themselves locked in a debate with a great amount of people who wasted months, years living a lie. There are people who think they are forced to play Arms Warrior to raid Mythic, instead of Outlaw Rogue their favorite spec, and they are due an explanation Blizzard simply cannot provide.

Instead, they subtly hint at what is actually going on, trying to get you to play what you actually enjoy.

[Spryte]

Their intentions are simple - keep things working with minimal amount of effort and work put into it.

Couldn't agree more, thought this many times myself.

[Teaon]

Survival is the spec in this expansion that so far, has not been touched or talked about at all, they remade it, felt they made a mistake, and left it to die in this expansion.

my question, are they going to delete some specs?

the game need some specs to be gone completely, but the backlash is going to be a big one.


but lets be honest, warlocks, mages and rogues dont really need 3 dps specs, the game need some sort of spec squish.

[Video Games]

Since this happens every expansion, i always go with mage, rogue or warrior and i never have this problem. Stop playing shaman and pallys if you care so much, honestly.

[GorkAndMork]

They are carefully nerfing and buffing specific things to force people into rolling something new. That makes the game less stale and forces people to play more than they would if they only played 1 toon and knew it would always be fine.

But saying "we purposefully tweak balance to make players play more and pay more" makes them look evil.
So instead they say their logs are different than the rest of the planet and that it's hard to balance. If a spec is 5% behind, I'm sure anyone here can understand that increasing its dmg by 5% will bring it exactly where it needs to be. It can't become 10% over everyone else by increasing its dmg by only 5%, it's mathematically impossible. Balancing a class is much easier than people believe.

Sure thing, just let me check your mind reading ID to do be sure you know what you talking about.

Balancing a class is much easier than people believe.

It's actually a lot harder than most think.

And it's not hard to see. Lets start from this:
"If a spec is 5% behind, I'm sure anyone here can understand that increasing its dmg by 5% will bring it exactly where it needs to be." Behind on what kind of fight? Or are you assuming that specs do exactly the same damage in any situation this game provides? Because it's not just wrong, it's silly.

We could go on. For example, we could ask about gear level we measure "dmg" on.

[Dangg]

DPS class balance is actually surprsingly good if you look at warcraftlogs
rather small differences across the board

tbh I don't think there was ever a small gap like that

[Swalload]

What if they are telling the truth though? These people are passionate employees of a video game company, not evil masterminds, they are hardly comparable to the all-consuming monster corporations with their endless lying and plotting.

It stands to reason that they simply cannot share their own methods of data collecting without finding themselves locked in a debate with a great amount of people who wasted months, years living a lie. There are people who think they are forced to play Arms Warrior to raid Mythic, instead of Outlaw Rogue their favorite spec, and they are due an explanation Blizzard simply cannot provide.

Instead, they subtly hint at what is actually going on, trying to get you to play what you actually enjoy.

What is going on is they dont remove RNG from outlaw, not increase any numbers, not do anything and just hope a T21 with another RNG effect is gonna save the day.

They either don't know, don't understand and turn in a circle with a blindfold.
Of they do know, and they don't fix it on purpose.

The problem is it's all easy to fix, it really is, and nothing is fixed, so it's hard to believe they don't know what's happening. Only one option left.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure thing, just let me check your mind reading ID to do be sure you know what you talking about.


It's actually a lot harder than most think.

And it's not hard to see. Lets start from this:
"If a spec is 5% behind, I'm sure anyone here can understand that increasing its dmg by 5% will bring it exactly where it needs to be." Behind on what kind of fight? Or are you assuming that specs do exactly the same damage in any situation this game provides? Because it's not just wrong, it's silly.

We could go on. For example, we could ask about gear level we measure "dmg" on.

People base their opinion of PvE balancing on one thing: the raid logs of the current tier that combines all bosses. Just tweak around this biased shit so people can stfu already and still be bottom of the meter in-game on their fotm reroll.

[Trend]

Some specs are consistently good every patch while other specs get left in the dust for years. It sucks because you could be playing an okay-ish spec one day and then the nerfhammer hits you and suddenly you can't compete in raids or arena anymore.

I agree with this in regards to arenas, which I don't enjoy because it's always been so much about specs and comps. But what spec can't compete in mythic raids? Top end raiding has always required the most extreme min/maxing, but that's not a representative experience. But from what I've seen, a really good player on a bad spec is still going to be able to contribute more than an average player on a strong spec. To me that is competing, but maybe you have another definition.

This is even more jarring when there are systems like AP and legendaries in the game which result in commitment to specs.

They already said the damage output legendaries were a mistake, so if you want them to share their intentions, they already have on that point.

In terms of your belief that AP makes you stuck on a spec, I think that is a whine without substance. Because of the way the points and AK both scale, with much effort at all you can catch up to whatever your main is within a few weeks.

Since Blizzard has an agenda when it comes to class balance, why don't they just reveal it so that people can avoid playing specs that are slated for gimping?

Do you actually believe what you write? It would make absolutely zero sense for them to want to have bad specs. Or what, do you think a survival hunter stole Blizzard's lunch money when he was little so now this is his retribution?

[Occam-OC]

Ion actually indirectly touched upon this subject during the last Q&A. What I got from it was that the internal data collecting tools at blizzard show vastly different results than third party web sites like simcraft and warcraftlogs. Yet, since the community perception is greatly influenced by such sites, they are in a constant struggle to balance the specs regarding both their internal data and the community perception of the specs that are created by third party damage meters.

If this is the case Blizz should consider releasing tools to close the gap between what internal data indicates and what meters show the community.

[Wilfire]

I agree with this in regards to arenas, which I don't enjoy because it's always been so much about specs and comps. But what spec can't compete in mythic raids? Top end raiding has always required the most extreme min/maxing, but that's not a representative experience. But from what I've seen, a really good player on a bad spec is still going to be able to contribute more than an average player on a strong spec. To me that is competing, but maybe you have another definition.



They already said the damage output legendaries were a mistake, so if you want them to share their intentions, they already have on that point.

In terms of your belief that AP makes you stuck on a spec, I think that is a whine without substance. Because of the way the points and AK both scale, with much effort at all you can catch up to whatever your main is within a few weeks.



Do you actually believe what you write? It would make absolutely zero sense for them to want to have bad specs. Or what, do you think a survival hunter stole Blizzard's lunch money when he was little so now this is his retribution?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-4u6gn1r4U

"We'd rather you did not play demonology". What do you that means? Blizzard has explicitly stated in the past that they don't want players to play certain specs. I'd rather they be upfront and honest about which specs are slated for gimping so that we don't waste time hoping for buffs or "balancing passes".

[shaunika123]

unless you're in a very high level mythic raiding guild (IE like top 50) then it shouldnt matter, the class balance is close enough that mythic can be cleared with anything

we killed mythic KJ with 2 DHs and a retpala and no resto shaman


i mean yeah, sure it sucks when other classes perform better just because they're better classes, but no classes are totally terrible there's like a 10% difference between the worst and best class overall