Balance the classes. Keep the content the same. Just stop.

[KainneAbsolute]

Some specs bad at pve were good at pvp.

Each time we demand balance, we are demanding TBC servers! hahha

[Molvonos]

Balanced classes aren't Vanilla. Just stop. Vanilla is more group based than a solo games, classes are meant to make up for each others weaknesses.

Any decent guild will want all classes represented in raids due to limited gear, you can't class stack because you're going to waste a ton of gear and end up with a bunch of people still in blues when the next raid tier releases. And as far as non-40 man content, you can literally clear it all with any combo of classes, any decent player is aware off this, especially in this day and age because mechanics are easy until like mid AQ40. If someone is super selective outside of "need CC" then it's probably because they're shit and you shouldn't group with them anyways.

The problem with this, is that there are some instances where you cant just make up for another classes inability.

There's nothing that can force aggro onto a paladin with no taunt.

There's nothing that can keep a druid from crushing blows.

Two examples.

MC and BWL having bosses immune to a particular magic school wasn't 'making up for' anything. It forced specs. Warlocks were affliction with Shadowbolt Spam, because Demonology was ass.. Mages were Frost, because Arcane was ass and too mana intensive.

Resto druids and Holy Paladins wearing cloth. DPS warriors wearing leather. Not making up for weaknesses. You even state about stacking classes, but you have other classes using other armor-types because its more efficient.

[MHMabrito]

People asked for Vanilla, they should get 100% Vanilla.

[xcitng]

I don't see any reason why they can't balance the classes at least a little bit better than they were in Vanilla strictly through balancing the numbers while leaving the mechanics/spells themselves alone.

Because that's not vanilla, people who pushed hard for it want vanilla so they should get it.

[Tiberria]

The simple fact of the matter, which no one who isn't purist is willing to accept, is that you can't just minorly change anything.

If you rebalance the classes, you then have to rebalance the gear.
If you rebalance the gear, who knows what that alone will do to the game.

No, you don't necessarily have to rebalance the gear. You know what gear is available, and you know how much average DPS each spec does (or can find out by just looking at MC logs). Why can't they just change the numbers for how much each ability damages for while leaving all of the mechanics and gear and rotations, and everything else the same. For example, if a Warlock is doing 20% less damage than a Mage, just make every Warlock spell do 20% more damage. It's not going to work out perfect, but they can do a rough level of tuning just by doing that.

The other thing that people have to realize is that even if they copy and paste the game in as it was before the TBC pre-patch, the game will still play out differently than it did in actual Vanilla. For one thing, the players are a lot more informed than they were in Vanilla, and stuff like class theorycrafting and DPS sims are massively more advanced. With the more advanced theorycrafting, I suspect it's likely that class balance will be further off than it was back then, because there's probably a lot of stat, gear and rotational nuance to be exploited that people will discover that will make certain specs pull further ahead. Also, addons, especially UI addons are so much more advanced than they were in Vanilla. If stuff like WeakAuras gets ported to Vanilla, it's going to change the difficulty level and how the game is played.

[RapBreon]

Can we not just discuss this calmly and rationally without calling each other pieces of shit for having different tastes in the game? It's just a fucking game holy shit.

Absolutely not, I cop more heat from purists than anyone else. Yet I'm distinctly on their side. I really want to get involved with this discussion, but sheesh, people so worked up. Ooooh, woe is me!

[Jazzhands]

The problem with this, is that there are some instances where you cant just make up for another classes inability.

There's nothing that can force aggro onto a paladin with no taunt.

There's nothing that can keep a druid from crushing blows.

Two examples.

MC and BWL having bosses immune to a particular magic school wasn't 'making up for' anything. It forced specs. Warlocks were affliction with Shadowbolt Spam, because Demonology was ass.. Mages were Frost, because Arcane was ass and too mana intensive.

Resto druids and Holy Paladins wearing cloth. DPS warriors wearing leather. Not making up for weaknesses. You even state about stacking classes, but you have other classes using other armor-types because its more efficient.

Druids can tank anything up to/including BWL, I've seen it personally. Paladins can do the same, but the main issue is they require the group to control their threat and often slows down encounters, so no one does it, however it's a good example of how your group can make up for your weakness.

Warlocks spammed shadowbolt because of the debuff limit, the go to spec was an affliction/destro hybrid. Demo needed DoTs to be anywhere decent, and Destro had fire damage but did less overall than SM/ruin. Mages actually ran 31 arcane/20 frost, usually one mage had a talent to stack the frost debuff for your other mages who used a slightly different spec. This spec is significantly stronger than fire until you reach AQ40 levels of gear, until then any other spec is worthless. You are drastically misinformed about classes. Min/maxing will always be a thing, even with "balanced" classes. One will always be superior even if by a tiny margin, and it will always be the preferred, or to some people, only viable spec.

Classes wearing gear that isn't for their main armor class isn't a weakness, it's simply bad design, but that was Vanilla. It's just part of the charm. Play a caster if you don't want warriors taking your leather.

[Nitros14]

No, you don't necessarily have to rebalance the gear. You know what gear is available, and you know how much average DPS each spec does (or can find out by just looking at MC logs). Why can't they just change the numbers for how much each ability damages for while leaving all of the mechanics and gear and rotations, and everything else the same. For example, if a Warlock is doing 20% less damage than a Mage, just make every Warlock spell do 20% more damage. It's not going to work out perfect, but they can do a rough level of tuning just by doing that.

Now you have a class that doesn't go out of mana, has 2,000 more HP and brings curse utility that does as much damage as Mages who don't have any of these things.

[Tiberria]

Because that's not vanilla, people who pushed hard for it want vanilla so they should get it.

But, there's lots of other people that want to play Vanilla but want to be able to viably play a Prot Pally or a Shadow Priest, don't want to be 100% forced into healing on certain classes, etc., etc. There's a spectrum of people interested in Vanilla servers, and the game doesn't belong solely to the people who demand 0 change whatsoever any more than the live game belongs only to hardcore Mythic raiders.

Blizzard's going to want to maximize the amount of people playing Vanilla servers to maximize their profits, and you have to accept the reality that this will involve some movement to adjust some things. Pure numerical class tuning is one of those things that is perfectly reasonable. The reality is, no matter what they do, it's not the same game anyway. You can't go back and erase the 13 years of experience that people have with the game and the content, and that extra knowledge alone is absolutely going to change the way the game plays out.

- - - Updated - - -

Now you have a class that doesn't go out of mana, has 2,000 more HP and brings curse utility that does as much damage as Mages who don't have any of these things.

The 2000 HP is also a number that they can easily just tune down. So is mana regen. It's much simpler than you're making it out to be.

[RapBreon]

Resto druids and Holy Paladins wearing cloth. DPS warriors wearing leather. Not making up for weaknesses. You even state about stacking classes, but you have other classes using other armor-types because its more efficient.

I actually think that's kinda cool.

[Nitros14]

But, there's lots of other people that want to play Vanilla but want to be able to viably play a Prot Pally or a Shadow Priest, don't want to be 100% forced into healing on certain classes, etc., etc. There's a spectrum of people interested in Vanilla servers, and the game doesn't belong solely to the people who demand 0 change whatsoever any more than the live game belongs only to hardcore Mythic raiders.

Blizzard's going to want to maximize the amount of people playing Vanilla servers to maximize their profits, and you have to accept the reality that this will involve some movement to adjust some things. Pure numerical class tuning is one of those things that is perfectly reasonable. The reality is, no matter what they do, it's not the same game anyway. You can't go back and erase the 13 years of experience that people have with the game and the content, and that extra knowledge alone is absolutely going to change the way the game plays out.

- - - Updated - - -



The 2000 HP is also a number that they can easily just tune down. So is mana regen. It's much simpler than you're making it out to be.

You're going to give mages infinite mana, 2,000 more HP, curse of elements, curse of shadows, curse of recklessness/weakness?

Why even have a different class?

[Tiberria]

You cannot balance the game around how well people theorycraft.

Balance the game the way it's supposed to be balanced. At no point ever should WoW EVER be balanced on how well people can theorycraft.

But, if you don't do that, and you don't set up addons such that only addons that existed in Vanilla are allowed (and only in their pre-TBC versions), the game experience is nowhere near the same as it was 13 years ago. Once you realize that point, the practicality of making 0 changes whatsoever kind of goes out the window, because you're not reproducing the authentic experience to begin with.

Note how during the Blizzcon intro, Brack specifically stated that they would be delivering a "Blizzard-quality" experience with Vanilla servers? I suspect that some pure Vanilla elements like certain specs being basically unplayable won't meet their threshold for "Blizzard-quality" in 2018.

[RapBreon]

No, you don't necessarily have to rebalance the gear. You know what gear is available, and you know how much average DPS each spec does (or can find out by just looking at MC logs). Why can't they just change the numbers for how much each ability damages for while leaving all of the mechanics and gear and rotations, and everything else the same. For example, if a Warlock is doing 20% less damage than a Mage, just make every Warlock spell do 20% more damage. It's not going to work out perfect, but they can do a rough level of tuning just by doing that.

The thinking back in the day was, the Warlock was taxed the 20% (or X%) for the utility they bring. 'Versatility Tax' (cause warlocks weren't a hyrbid) guided a lot, I mean a lot of their class design choices. So, in that sense they were balanced against mages.

[Tiberria]

Because you didn't think about it hard enough.

Why bring a warrior when you can bring a warrior that can heal? (paladin)

You make the warrior have enough of an advantage in single target DPS tuning and pure survivability that it's a reasonable trade off. It's the same way you have multiple tanks viable on live despite not being exactly the same.

[Tiberria]

The thinking back in the day was, the Warlock was taxed the 20% (or X%) for the utility they bring. 'Versatility Tax' (cause warlocks weren't a hyrbid) guided a lot, I mean a lot of their class design choices. So, in that sense they were balanced against mages.

So, they can also look at the class representation in raids (since that was the only real end game back then). If people are taking twice as many Mages and Warlocks, it's obvious that the Warlock utility tax is too high, and they can respond by buffing Warlock damage numbers (or nerfing Mage numbers). All of that can be done without changing the actual rotations or mechanics.

[Tiberria]

So in other words, you don't balance the classes.

Because Warriors would do more damage than Ret Pallies. You know - Like they did in Vanilla already.

Back in Vanilla, Ret Pallies were worthless, because the utility that they were taxed for/healing capability/etc. didn't make them valuable enough to be worth putting in a raid comp. Obviously, they were taxed too much, and they would have to adjust their damage numbers until they actually are a spec people wanted to bring. People aren't going to tolerate entire specs being wastelands in 2018.

[Nitros14]

People aren't going to tolerate entire specs being wastelands in 2018.

Sure people are. The people who actually want a classic server.

[Tiberria]

It's hilarious that people like you think it's really that simple. It's not. Balancing classes is probably one of the most challenging aspects of this game. You really think you know better than their team that's dedicated to making balance changes?

Their class balancing in Vanilla was hilariously inept, so yes, I think anyone with a spreadsheet, some data on class representation and some common sense would be able to do a better job.

It's actually still terrible on live, but just not to the cartoonish levels of pants on head incompetence as it was in Vanilla/TBC.

[Tiberria]

Sure people are. The people who actually want a classic server.

And those people are likely a small percentage of the people that are actually interested on playing on a classic server.

[Nitros14]

And those people are likely a small percentage of the people that are actually interested on playing on a classic server.

But if they want significant changes that upend the gameplay they aren't really interested in a classic server at all are they? They're interested in WoW 2.