Class Balancing... no thanks

[Deleted]

Problem is that all specs could bring in the same stuff. Retribution could provide nothing special which Tanks (also getting Blessing of Kings) and Healers (also getting Blessing of Light) already could give.

Problem is that people aren't seeing this and are wildly guessing that X amount of utility means Y amount of DPS.

The classes were unbalanced that's why Warrior's make up about 20% of the pop on private servers with shamans, druids and palas around 5%.

[Aggrophobic]

I'm not asking to add features.

Lets say TBC came out a year later than it actually did. How many balance patches would have gone through during that time. That's what I'm asking for. Vanilla WoW wasn't popular because you could only play 3 different classes, that's not what made vanilla popular. Class balance didn't kill WoW. If anything it made the game better because TBC was more popular and Wrath was as popular as it got. But end of Wrath started the homogenization shit which I think really impacted the game.

Look when multispecs and Alts really became popular, end of Wrath and forward. I have 6 110s right now. I only had 1 max level in Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath. I didn't hit a second max level until end of Wrath.

It's totally anecdotal, but I think many people are going to say the same things. Making the classes more even in performance (vs utility/job) is only going to help the game.




I see no reason we can't balance numbers without making all the classes the same. Hybrid tax aside, an ele shaman should be within 30% damage of a mage, considering they can boost all melee damage in the raid, but they shouldn't do half the numbers on a good day. I don't want to see bosses change, nothing like that, I don't want altered systems, I don't want new talents... I want Vanilla to benefit from 10 more years of balancing, as if TBC + never happened and we are playing the same game. If they don't want to bring Shaman on a raid because they would prefer to have more CC in the group, thats a legit reason to be benched. But performance due to bad numbers tuning isn't a legit reason. Especially because it's automatic, don't take these specs they can't put up numbers.

As for DPS being the sole metric, in Vanilla it was. Boss mechanics were comically easy and rotations consisted of 1 to 2 buttons and dot, maybe, if you were allowed to use it without dropping sunder or some other important debuff.

Now DPS is less the sole mechanic because in Heroic and Mythic you can be one shot out of the raid if you mess up a mechanic. And if you are too concerned on doing mechanics and you drop attack, your DPS suffers greatly. A good player on any class is going to get taken over a mediocre player on the best class. In vanilla you just weren't taken if you weren't one of the xyz classes. Your performance meant little.

Yeah, so play retail and stop ruining classic.

[Sigxy]

uh, I'm pretty sure BoK is the 31 point Retribution talent, unless im missing the context of this conversation? Prot had Sanctuary not kings.

Oh right, forgot Sanctuary!

But no, both of those are in the tank tree. Retribution just got an aura.. which increased HOLY DAMAGE by 10%.

So you know. Good for... paladin tanks.. paladin dps... bored priest healers...?

Edit: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#s - and edited my first post to correct myself with Blessing of Light and Sanctuary.

[Deleted]

Oh right, forgot Sanctuary!

But no, both of those are in the tank tree. Retribution just got an aura.. which increased HOLY DAMAGE by 10%.

So you know. Good for... paladin tanks.. paladin dps... bored priest healers...?

Edit: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#s

Good for basically no one in raids then as Rets and pala tanks weren't viable. Disregarding the fact that a Ret may not get a raid spot in the first place

[Sigxy]

Good for basically no one in raids then as Rets and pala tanks weren't viable. Disregarding the fact that a Ret may not get a raid spot in the first place

Pretty much. :< And it wasn't hard for one paladin healer to spec for kings if they needed it, since it's fairly early in the tree.

[RapBreon]

I have this theory that class representation being more even in old Classic than it'll surely be in WoW: Classic will be partially due to how hard it was to reroll, the lack of information and the knowledge that hey, classes were being changed anyway. It's not like rolling a warlock came with a warning sign that said "You will forever grind soul shards to summon raids, and you'll always perform worse than mages in dps."

If Blizzard declares that there will be no class balance changes at all, not even down the line, then I expect Warr/Mage/Priest/Rogue to eventually constitute at least 75% of characters total. I do not think enough people will be too keen on rolling an underperforming hybrid just because of memories, as they realize they are forever stuck in a Worse-than-Holy-Priest healing mode, or forever a "You're not a Prot Warr" bear druid or prot paladin. Go heal.

I mean what class am I considering with my current knowledge of how vanilla was?
Tanking, I'll go Warrior. THE tank.
Healing, I'll go priest. THE healer.
PvP/Melee dps I'll go rogue or warrior. THE dominant pvp classes.
Ranged I'll go Mage. THE dominant ranged (caster) class.
The Fantastic Four.

Other classes do bring stuff to the table that is valueable, but I do not think people will be too keen to choose classes they know are and will remain gimped.

The more I think about it the more obvious it becomes that Blizzard will eventually be forced to make balance changes because the vast majority on WoW: Classic will make an informed decision based on balance that was inherently broken.

But sadly that'd also open Pandora's box in the process.

This is the most convincing argument in favour of moderate balance changes so far.

[netherflame]

That was just an example of a thing I believe they will try to tune. I never played either of this classes in classic to know if it is possible to manage their mana, the popular complaint is that it was impossible.

It all comes down to what do you define as manage? I remember as a healer you'd almost rotate with the other healers, while half the healers would heal the other ones would be wanding/autoattacking to regen. That was part of it though, you coordinated with the team to make sure in the end if all worked out. Dps played the same style game but played around adds, when you knew adds would be coming that you needed to kill you would wand to regen so that you didn't run out of mana.

A good example that I remembered was when fighting Rag, when you were getting close to the add phase people would wand and let some mana regen because the goal was to kill the sons as fast as possible which meant you had to have enough mana so that you didn't run out mid phase.

[McFuu]

In an in an ideal world, I'd have zero problem with a Shaman doing 50% of a mage if all those buffs equated to the missing damage (I'm under the impression they did, or you'd never see Blessadins, etc. in a raid). The issue is lack of healers or willing healers and the fact those hybrid can still bring those buffs without being specced into their DPS specs (something that was alleviated with TBC). So you just made them fill the space in an infinitely more useful manner and brought an actual DPS. If you want to give me TBC design I'm down for that, nay I'd prefer it.

I am definitely going to have to disagree about the last two statements though. You seen some serious feet dragging in most Vanilla raids (I think again, Naxx was an exception, but it appears to be an exception to most Vanilla raid rules) and get away with it. Zero chance that would work in a Legion Mythic guild that has decent progression. Cutting edge guilds stacked Rogues for soaking purposes sure, but if they didn't do insane damage too noway that strat would've pulled through. An argument could also be made that the most recent round of 'class usefulness' (something mostly new to Legion) stemmed from the same mechanics just in different form i.e immunities. So it's not like it's something unique stemming from the uniqueness inherent to that class, but rather X DPS specs have a good immunity cheese.

The point I was making is: The difficulty of the mechanics is somewhat irrelevant as the DPS checks weren't tight, whereas now even with more difficult mechanics, DPS checks are very real (again Naxx was the exception?). If you make those checks relevant, then I'd agree 100%. Whereas now, I'm on the fence.

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. I'm saying it's harder to be dps now than it was. Before class and gear was all that defined DPS, that and don't stand in the fire. Now it's much harder. But Now the player defines the DPS, not the class.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, so play retail and stop ruining classic.

Classic is already ruined, I want it to actual be functional.

[david0925]

Oh right, forgot Sanctuary!

But no, both of those are in the tank tree. Retribution just got an aura.. which increased HOLY DAMAGE by 10%.

So you know. Good for... paladin tanks.. paladin dps... bored priest healers...?

Edit: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#s

That calculator looks like the 1.12 patch before TBC prepatch with Druid getting moonkin form for balance over hurricane and LoTP over whatever they had as their original 31st point, and tree form over innervate

Original WoW had BoK as 31st talent as ret talent, and it was only moved to tier 3 Prot so all 3 specs can spec into such an important buff without being forced into ret.

[strifemon]

I dont think they can actually make some real balancing changes without ruining the game OR turning it into something rly different.

Lets say, blizz will add taunt to paladin's toolkit, so they can do some real tanking. The next day pallys will realize that they don't actually have any suitable gear for it. I mean pala need way more stats than a warrior to be a successfull tank. Ontop of standard def stats they also need int, spelldamage and spellhit. So to balance it, blizz would have to add some new items for them or just add stats on existing tanking gear. After that, palas would say that if they are allowed to tank, why they dont have tier sets for it ? And blizz would turn actual tier pieces into tokens which can be exchanged for ... you see what I mean, right?
And that story is only about adding taunt to palas, we may also speak about turning bears into real tanks )

And if we are speaking about balancing, why don't we speak about balancing in open world? I mean, do you remember how did mages farm areas crowded with mobs ? With my hybrid druid I can't even imagine that speed of farming.

More of it, some people here hope that eventualy servers become TBC. I believe balancing classes at this stage would actually make progressing to TBC almost impossible, since ontop of balancing already made changes to TBC world, they would also be prompted to do even more of it, just like now.

[Sigxy]

That calculator looks like the 1.12 patch before TBC prepatch with Druid getting moonkin form for balance over hurricane and LoTP over whatever they had as their original 31st point, and tree form over innervate

Original WoW had BoK as 31st talent as ret talent, and it was only moved to tier 3 Prot so all 3 specs can spec into such an important buff without being forced into ret.

Right, and if we do get a 1.12 patch - what then? What's the point of even bothering having a Retribution Paladin who gives... -nothing-?

[netherflame]

'Everyone' being the people who don't play the game, and only whine and moan in the corners with 0 room for improvement. You are impossible to please, thus not really a solid target audience...

If you leave or refuse to play anything not EXACTLY like the decade old vanilla, then you're not a worthwhile investment.

People wanted vanilla, THAT IS WHAT VANILLA WAS, if you change it then its not vanilla. Blizzard could very easily make the current retail version like the old game by doing 2 things if thats what people want.

1. Make leveling take longer, old zones used to force you to experience a few of them before moving out of the range. Entire zones would get completed and you might see 2 or 3 levels. In current day you'd have to make it so completing a zone got you 1 level maybe 1.5 levels.

2. Slow the game down, less mechanics, less moves, less twitch reactions to things. Mechanics used to be simpler, you didn't have 5 puddles to soak every minute, you didn't have multifaceted boss fights, you didn't have ways to teleport around the world.

-------
The thing is thats not what people want anymore, its a very small subsection that want that. Making changes to classic that aren't bug fixes, ex ret pallies saving up retribution stacks from getting crit for an hour by monsters just so they can 1 shot a world boss. Having to manage your mana wasn't a bug, that was the game and if people want "the classic experience" thats what they get, otherwise its not the same.

[Youn]

In TBC, paladins never tried to also be spell hit capped. At 15% it simply wasn't possible. Most paladins completely ignored hit.

[david0925]

Right, and if we do get a 1.12 patch - what then? What's the point of even bothering having a Retribution Paladin who gives... -nothing-?

Ret did respectable damage on horde side due to Seal of Blood and was comparable with top melee dps classes. But yeah, as far as melee dps they didn't bring anything unique, as all the blessings and judgments can be covered by most specs.

[strifemon]

In TBC, paladins never tried to also be spell hit capped. At 15% it simply wasn't possible. Most paladins completely ignored hit.

Can't imagine tanking 4hm without being hit capped. It's like "let's see if we are lucky enough" ? )

Tho that wasn't the actual point of the post, hope can get it right

[david0925]

Can't imagine tanking 4hm without being hit capped. It's like "let's see if we are lucky enough" ? )

Tho that wasn't the actual point of the post, hope can get it right

That's why you used warriors with 6 piece dreadnought to do it. 4hm is also vanilla which, at least at the time, paladins or druids were not good main tanks unless you severely outgear the content as well as your party. Things might have changed on private servers if they are able to discover things otherwise unknown on live back then.

[nmarg85]

A point has gotten me thinking from those who played vanilla I see us anti vanilla players were the ones stuck on crap hybrid classes. I wonder if there's something too this that what we rember is nothing but pain and shit and those pro vanilla were the ones playing the few working classes?

We should have sencus of class played to vanilla opinion see if there's a correlation

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Giff crusader strike or fuck off

Of course there's a correlation. It's funny how they use the "hybrid tax" and "jack of all trades, master of none" fallacies, yet no one says anything about warriors having 3 specs viable. It was pretty much the same on the vanilla forums back in the day, that retarded logic.

[Deleted]

Ahh so they have less value...That must be why Blizzard are making Classic from their 14 year old memories and not working with the Nostalrius team.

They probably would curl, but you don't appear to be one of them, so stop arguing on their behalf. It makes your opinion as worthless as the crumbs on their neck beards.

And classic will have lest value Imo.

[Youn]

Pretty sure, If I am remembering correctly:

+/- 1% for level difference, So.. +3% for bosses.
15% miss
15% glance
70% hit or crit

Goal was to have enough hit to push miss off the table. Leaving only Glance and hit.

[strifemon]

That's why you used warriors with 6 piece dreadnought to do it.

Right, and that's why I said "class balancing" to allow pala's be a real tank will touch more than "just adding 1 spell" and would be too expensive