Thoughts on making certain classes mandatory for some fights?

[Rygore]

With Blackrock Foundry just over a week from release, guides have come out for several encounters already, and as I read over the fights on WoWHead, I was surprised to see that the Blast Furnace fight has a mechanic that makes it highly beneficial to have priests in the group on normal and heroic, and MANDATORY to have them on mythic. Feel free to look it up yourselves, but basically, the fight requires you to kill an add next to another channeling add in order to remove a shield so that the channeling add can be damaged. There is a 3rd type of add that spawns throughout the fight that can be mind controlled (And only via Dominate Mind from a priest, there is no mechanic in the fight itself that does this i.e. Instructor Razuvious) and will do damage to the elemental adds, so they explode faster and players can damage the channeling mobs more. This is completely optional in normal and heroic, and in fact looks very easily doable, which means you aren't burnt if you do not have a priest in smaller groups.

If we look at the fight on mythic difficulty, however, these elemental mobs gain a shield that grants them FULL DAMAGE IMMUNITY unless they are attack by a mob being mind controlled, at which point they gain a debuff and can be damaged normally. This seems like such a strange move for Blizzard to pull because I personally do not remember the last time a mechanic for a fight was put solely on one class, especially on a difficulty that requires a more or less specific raid comp already. Of course no one has done this fight on mythic yet, but guides would suggest that healing gets pretty intense during the phase in which this mechanic takes place, so to have a disc or holy priest do this seems out of the question, which suggests that mythic raid comps REQUIRE a shadow priest.

I'm not saying shadow priests shouldn't be in a mythic group in the first place, but should a group find themselves without one, it makes mythic Blast Furnace much harder than it already seems to be. I'm wondering what others think about this relegating of mechanic to only one class, and potentially only one spec of said class?

[Jonnusthegreat]

They specifically mentioned that this was one of the reasons for making mythic difficulty 1 raid size again. I am all for it, since it encourages players to be good at more than one spec. If done well, it will encourage guilds to have a diverse raid composition.

[mittacc]

First they remove the class diversity and now they add this? I don't get Blizz's design direction; are they changing it?

[Hamanis]

They specifically mentioned that this was one of the reasons for making mythic difficulty 1 raid size again. I am all for it, since it encourages players to be good at more than one spec. If done well, it will encourage guilds to have a diverse raid composition.

Basically this, when they were talking about making mythic one size it was with the thought that you would have 1-2 of every class in the raid with possiblilities of more of a single class for this higher difficulty. Because of that, they talked about adding in mechanics that would require certain classes again in mythic to fall in line with that ideology.

[Phookah]

Blizzard has already stated that part of the reason they wanted to move Mythic to a 20man difficulty is that they can then design encounters around the assumption that the raid in question will have access to at least one of every class, so this doesn't seem odd, given that.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

"Bring the player, not the class"

[Hilltopperpete]

I'm all for it.

It's gonna suck for casual groups that do kill many HC bosses when the priest is on a date or gets bogged down at work (which happens to my raid group constantly), but in general, it's something the devs have wanted to do for a long time that was impossible with the old 10/25 split. There have always been fights that could be cheesed if you had specific classes (using Divine Shield to drop tank debuffs especially), it'll be nice when they're balanced around that concept on purpose. When they told us about Mythic, they warned us well in advance that eventually we needed to plan around having one of everything available because they were no longer constrained by the 10/25 raid balancing.

[Rygore]

I get the point. I wasn't around for any of the interviews when they were designing mythic as a difficulty. Just seemed misplaced to me after they homogenized classes so much, i thought they were largely staying away from this. What stood out to me about this in particular was that there is NO other option than to have a priest to MC. On M Karg you can complete the Berserker rush mechanic without any hunters or mages with some clever kiting (around cat pits) and a BoP, or you could just run him to fire anyways. (Not that M Karg is difficult though, I guess). I just hope they can also find unique ways to do this for other classes in future fights, I wanna feel cool too for a fight! D;

[seam]

"Bring the player, not the class"

Well, I mean, even after the quote was first said they made it clear you'll want some diversity.
I don't remember the exact quote, but it was said in the first weeks of raiding in Wrath they it was to stop class STACKING.

And, I mean, you can bring ANY makeup(As long as you have tank/heals) into normal and heroic...just not the specific difficulty meant to be tuned around such a thing.

On M Karg you can complete the Berserker rush mechanic without any hunters or mages with some clever kiting (around cat pits) and a BoP, or you could just run him to fire anyways. (Not that M Karg is difficult though, I guess). I just hope they can also find unique ways to do this for other classes in future fights, I wanna feel cool too for a fight! D;

Weird example since you can deal with the Rush by just running him into fire and be perfectly fine too ^^''

[Makabreska]

Oh God pls don't! I don't want a new Instructor Razuvious fight :<

[Raiju]

I can't think of a fight in recent times requiring a class mechanically - only 'requiring' due to tuning which is unrelated.

Given mythic is 20man I have no issues with an expectation of every class being present and therefore making fights more versatile with that in mind. Only a good thing imo.

Going to have to recruit a rogue or two though if they become required, we're currently running 0 rogues.

[Deleted]

I think it's fun that less often used abilities like this find use in raid content. A few guilds which lack priests might find it annoying, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that the majority of mythic guilds have at least one priest, healer or otherwise.

[Deleted]

The reintroduction of such mechanics is one of the top reasons I'm happy about the 20man mythics.
Can't wait what funny ideas are yet to come.
- Demon-adds to enslave?
- Perhaps even another mage-tank with spellsteal?
- some funny warrior spell-reflect stuff?
- important items which must be pickpocketed from boss/adds?
- hunters have to tame beast adds, perhaps make them ridable for the remaining encounter?

I LOVE to possibility for classes to shine once again. Forget "bring the player..." for mythic. I want to have diversion!

[jijuiji]

It'sa nice idea, but kind of screws over a lot of casual mythic groups. Not to mention the amount of dead realms where a spriest has just become an urban legend

[Deleted]

Same way in MOP when hunters were almost required to do the belts and the add on Garrosh fight

destruction warlocks were best class for engineer duty on heroic. most heroic kills actually had a destruction warlock or combat rogue w. shadowstep. BM was the better dps spec back then and without a pet able to attack the eng, you couldn't do 3 million damage in 10 seconds.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

And, I mean, you can bring ANY makeup(As long as you have tank/heals) into normal and heroic...just not the specific difficulty meant to be tuned around such a thing.

How do you do Ko'ragh without any magic damage?

[Shiroh]

Blizzard has already stated that part of the reason they wanted to move Mythic to a 20man difficulty is that they can then design encounters around the assumption that the raid in question will have access to at least one of every class, so this doesn't seem odd, given that.

This.
It is what I was waiting for to be honest.

[Jeniwyn]

I actually find this whole thing a little problematic. Sure, a group can be expected to normally have one of each class but what happens the day when that person just can't make it? Unless someone has an unlocked alt they can sacrifice, you are screwed.

[Deleted]

How do you do Ko'ragh without and magic damage?

You just kill him without any interphase :P

[Tziva]

I don't think it's a huge deal for mythic. Mythic raiders are already used to shifting the roster on a per-fight basis and with a 20-man team, it would be really unlikely they wouldn't already have at least one priest on the roster.

I think it's a bad idea for normal and heroic, where you will find more casual groups that might not have optimal class balance or total class coverage.