WoW's Balancing Team. How is it?

[Deleted]

What do you guys think about the "Balancing Team" of WoW?
Do they make enough changes? Good or Bad?
I'm inclined to believe Blizzard is a bit "shy" when it comes to changes mid expansion. For example on the Q&A with ion hazzikostas he said Blizz didn't want players to feel robbed out of their legendaries, so they didn't remove 8% damage increase legos even though they regret inventing them.

In games like League of Legends we see changes almost every week, sometimes cold-blooded changes without any remorse or fear from feedback.

Do you think Blizzard should be more "cold-blooded" when it comes to changing the game mid-expansion?

[Socialhealer]

lazy? bad? non-existent?

changes are made probably twice a year, if something is shit it stays shit, if it's overpowered it stays overpowered.

this is why FotM is super popular in wow you know you're going to be OP for 6 months easily.

[Dystemper]

They suck donkey balls

[Swalload]

Ask the balancing team leader himself:

[Umbrex]

complete clown fiesta

[omni]

Better than Overwatch's. lol

[Role Unknown]

It is what it is

Look, Blizzard has already admitted that its impossible to completely balance every class/spec perfectly.

[Deleted]

One thing for sure is, that the communication is horrible with them

[Regalbeast]

Everyone thinks that every designer sucks at every company that makes a game they play. That's just how life works (unless you play a Mage, then you think they are always on point).

[Justpassing]

It's a rollercoaster, always has been.

[Oakshana]

lazy? bad? non-existent?

changes are made probably twice a year, if something is shit it stays shit, if it's overpowered it stays overpowered.

this is why FotM is super popular in wow you know you're going to be OP for 6 months easily.

Well, if you're going to be OP for at least 6 months, then you aren't technically staying overpowered, are you?

There is a reason they don't just do sweeping changes every time a class appears OP or in need of buffs, they have to look at the development cycle and how scaling is going to change certain abilities in those 6 months. They aren't just sitting on their asses with their thumbs up their butt going "meh". It only appears that way because A.) You aren't an active developer on that team and have NO idea what goes into making those kinds of changes and B.) Those changes will never, ever happen fast enough for a player... because the whole time they are saying in their head "this is unfair, so unfair and they aren't doing jack shit about it".

And that is almost invariably never the case.

[Keltas]

Actually doing balance passes on the lower standing classes, and fixing scaling issues, and it'd be fine.

The problem right now is there is always a pack (usually the same specs too) that end up significantly behind because they scale like garbage. Blizzard fixes this by just giving them tiny buffs every 6+ months instead of fixing the underlying issues. Otherwise there is a pretty small gap between the general pack of specs nowadays (On single target raid bosses that is).

They could do with either homogenizing toolkits so people like spriest aren't literally worthless on aoe or burst, or they could go full in on everyone being unique, but right now too many specs can do everything while half the specs have a "niche" they don't even do the best, while lacking the tools to do any other thing (again see spriest).

[Stormspellz]

It is what it is

Look, Blizzard has already admitted that its impossible to completely balance every class/spec perfectly.

no one is asking for "perfect" they are asking not to feel like a carry when playing certain specs

[shiava]

It is what it is

Look, Blizzard has already admitted that its impossible to completely balance every class/spec perfectly.

This was perfectly understandable, and up to the ends of wotlk (more or less) class were pretty different and unique.
Where there completely broken classes? yes
Did it matter? Well, maybe in pvp but it was fun to play specific things to counter some others.

After that, knowing that classes can never be balanced, blizzard went ahead and tried it anyways, failing terribly and ending up with what we have now. All the classes got butchered to 3 skills, everybody does the same thing, no uniqueness at all. And guess what? There are some classes that are still completely broken in pvp like some healers and tanks.

It was good like it used to be. Classes should get their specific shit back again

[Swalload]

It is what it is

Look, Blizzard has already admitted that its impossible to completely balance every class/spec perfectly.

Easy to say while hiding in a bunker in California. Shit's a lot easier to balance than people think. It's just not profitable and a lot of Riot people went over this and the concept of FOTM. Games like this do a rotation and switch things around on purpose to make it feel like the game is not stagnant, keep players interested and force them to reroll (aka pay more and play more) to the next best thing.

If a class is 5% behind, what do you do? Well, you increase its dmg by 5%. What do you think will happen? Its dmg will increase by 30% and it will go insane? Shit no, its dmg will increase by 5% and it will be in line with the rest. Nothing else can happen lol it's fucking simple math. It's a process that has to be done over and over with every new tier of content because they also don't balance items or set bonuses.

This game can be balanced to a 1% margin, they just don't think it's worth it even if it's the right thing to do.

[Sariengrey]

terrible........period

[Socialhealer]

Well, if you're going to be OP for at least 6 months, then you aren't technically staying overpowered, are you?

There is a reason they don't just do sweeping changes every time a class appears OP or in need of buffs, they have to look at the development cycle and how scaling is going to change certain abilities in those 6 months. They aren't just sitting on their asses with their thumbs up their butt going "meh". It only appears that way because A.) You aren't an active developer on that team and have NO idea what goes into making those kinds of changes and B.) Those changes will never, ever happen fast enough for a player... because the whole time they are saying in their head "this is unfair, so unfair and they aren't doing jack shit about it".

And that is almost invariably never the case.

6 months in wow is a very long time it's a raid tier its a pvp season.

and lul i have no idea because i'm not on that team? blizzard are on that team and they have no fucking idea to quote a big fat idiot celestalon "elemental is overpowered you just don't know it"

lava burst -20% damage on PTR.
WoD goes live
lava burst +33%
lava burst +10%
lava burst +4%
elemental shamans found nowhere in raiding guilds loads rerolling to mage/boomkin, guilds taking 4-5 mages & 4-5 hunters though lava burst still massively underpowered.

OH WE DIDN'T KNOW? fucking LUL keep chatting shit,, i know and you can't prove i don't know this is like religion or Schrodinger's cat , until you put me in charge of balancing at blizzard you can't prove i can't do it better than all of them so don't assume shit buddy.

[Darkeon]

They are... existent?

[Elbob]

I think they are somewhere in the middle. I like that they make numerous changes a tier and often do a good job of catching up the slacking specs. But sometimes I feel like they totally miss the mark. Maybe they don't play the class/spec at a moderate to high level or they don't get good enough feedback/info on it.
ie)

The challenge of tanking should have to do with the parts of tanking that aren't timing your active mitigation perfectly.
The difference between survivability when your active mitigation is up and when it isn't shouldn't be huge.

I read that in the last dev QA and thought... have you played a prot paladin? Their active mit is a flat 50%+ damage reduction... how is that not a HUGE SURVIVABILITY difference?

[Baine]

Some decisions are weird but I usually don't care much about balance.