Only 5 classes have raid buff abilities - what do YOU think?

[Kithelle]

Current developers are going through and making the same poor balancing decisions that the previous, now-fired developers made. Nothing much else to see here.

Even worse when it was meant originally that every class would have something unique...then they went back on that.

[Sencha]

This can't be real. Mythic+ groups will all be the same and good luck creating a group if you don't belong to one of these classes.

I'm pretty sure they will eventually remove all raid buffs or give all classes a buff in a coming build.

[Evaddon]

I...I...I...I...I don't care?

Good players will still get a raid spot, high dps specs will still get a raid spot, guilds will build around what they have. Pugs will still probably literal shit half the time.
Yeah.

[meowfurion]

After much number crunching and deliberation amongst my peers and gaming friends online, I have come to a very specific conclusion that I think most people who read this post also came to:

IDGAF.

[Deleted]

Glad you guys don't care, I'm happy you took the time to tell everyone how little you care. It's good you were able to demonstrate this, it must feel really good.

[meowfurion]

Glad you guys don't care, I'm happy you took the time to tell everyone how little you care. It's good you were able to demonstrate this, it must feel really good.

We're doing god's work.

[Deleted]

Out of the 5 classes you mentioned, they all have some unique raid/group utility which will make them attractive/warranted in raids.
Monk - +5% physical damage
Death Knight - Battle res & Grip
Shaman - Heroism/Bloodlust & Ankh
Druid - Battle res(which has been improved I think, target has more hp/mana when ressed?) but you could argue to bring back MotW here maybe...
Demon Hunter - +5% Magic damage

Honestly bloodlust is completely irrelevant. There are even drums... and 3 classes can bring it. If blood lust was shaman only, then yes, list it. But it isnt.

The problem is: if you have a guardian druid and blood dk as tank and 4 melee spots, you NEED a DH, WW Monk and dps warrior. So 1 raid spot left for rogues, sv hunter, enhancement, feral, dk and ret pala. I can tell you for sure, those 3 specs with buffs would dominate the melee raid spots - and the rest will suffer.

Having a mage or a priest will be no problem.

[unbound]

For people who don't know it yet, as of right now only 5 out of 12 classes are getting raid buffs/debuffs in Battle for Azeroth (see here)

What do you think?

In my opinion: Looking from hardcore raiding perspective, undoubtedly this is kind of utility you cannot give up on. Directly it means, that these five classes will have increased (guaranteed) raid spot compared to others, and thus indirectly all the other classes have decreased chances for a raid spot. This especially concerns DPS specs, as you most likely are going to use various healers for various healing utility anyway, and tanks depending on the encounter/what is fotm.

What about other DPS specs? Where are their raid buff/debuff? Some people might think that other DPS specs already have some kind of strong utility which should almost auto-include them into the raid anyway. Well, no. Looking at Legion expansion Ferals, WW monks (besides Antorus so 4 out of 5 raids), Enhancement Shamans, Elemental Shamans - were in a terrible place. They didn't even do top DPS. Yet neither Shamans nor Ferals got a raid buff. Why? Because they can increase raids movement speed which was a live or die thing only on Helya?

Sure, looking at Legion expansion Monks and Demon Hunters would definetely deserve a raid debuff as they were not that great. Priest getting a buff is understandable but they were in pretty good place this expansion anyway (both DPS wise [emerald nightmare btw] and Mass Dispel must-havism-wise). Mages (ice block btw), and Warriors (Commanding Shout, executes and overall being in a good place dps wise) got the debuff on the other hand, and they seem like very useful classes without it anyway. :O

I mean:
why aren't Hunters getting buff? Because they have immune? Mages do too yet they get the buff.
why aren't Death Knights getting a buff? Because they have death grip which is a thing once per dozen of bosses? Looking at Method they used DPS DKs only once (Xavius) out of fives times on final bosses.

Even Rogues had raid debuff in BfA (which was removed very recently and granted to Monks), which is big wtf, how did Blizzard even come up with an idea to increase The Walking Utility's (aka Rogues) utility by even more utility? Did Blizzard just randomly pick up random classes?

TLDR: I personally believe Monk, Death Knight, Shaman, Druid, Demon Hunter deserve raid buff. Or just all classes should have gotten various buffs like it was in initial alpha release (see here) so you can take plenty of options into consideration when building up your raid, as you usually cannot fit all 12 classes into 20 man raid.

Let me take you back to BC. Specifically Karazhan raiding.

All I heard about leveling in that expansion is how it was impossible to raid Karazhan with exactly specific classes in your group. All I heard is that it wasn't possible without those classes.

You know what I did? I took in a wide variety of groups with a lot of different classes...sometimes even without any of the classes that were "required" to raid; and I was successful.

You know how I did that? I didn't blindly follow the guides. I used what I had with me in the raid and made adjustments. Again, I was successful.

The answer then is the same answer now and will almost certainly be the answer in future expansions. Unless you are one of the handful of guilds that is trying to be world or server first, there is no class or ability that you absolutely must have. Heck, my current guild took down heroic Aggramar long before most on our server, and we didn't have nearly enough of the *must have* classes to cc the embers easily.

[Deleted]

Ferals need a raid buff in your opinion because they "only bring movement which sucks" ? Wut ?
Shaman doesn't bring a motherfuckin' combat res that is not even counted as a combat res ?

Shadow Priest doesn't deserve it because we can massdispell - which is "mandatory" on one encounter in the whole expansion (and which is getting a huge, huge, huge nerf in BfA btw) ?? Ah yeah, we could do insane DPS on Xavius (the most important boss of the expansion of course) and okay DPS for everything else - except Mythic Plus where we're below tanks anyway lolthxbye. Indeed, we don't deserve a small help to gather a raid spot. That's the Stamina buff though, just in case you forgot.

Damn son

How about you use the same logic you took on shadow priest on shaman?

That Combat Res with 30min CD, that isnt reset on a wipe, that resses you on spot, so its useless if a void zone is under you (or even near you as on argus sometimes). That ress you use because it looks like it will be a kill try, but no it isnt, while the next try literally wipes on 0.4% and you didn't have ankh available.

Feels good to have Ankh. Sure there are situations where Ankh is useful, but the majority of time? No not really. I dont even wanna know how much extra repair costs Ankh has caused me over the time.



I really dont care about the buffs raid-wise. But M+ will probably be a bigger nightmare than it is now depending on affixes.

[Khallid]

I thought there were going to consumables (scrolls or something?) that could give you the raid buffs if you didn't have the classes that gave them. Was there a change to that or are we just ignoring it for convenience?

[Alex86el]

i think each class should provide one raid-wide buff of their own.
not a castable buff that you have to re-cast like a bot.
but an aura on by default, (or toggleable so that you feel like you're doing something)

[Marrilaife]

Great, even more reasons to never bring an non-Holy Paladin to raid/Mythic+

Same for non resto shaman. Feral druids and surv hunters are another rejected specs because if you wanna a melee - there are other classes, if you wanna hunter or druid - there are other specs that are more in demand.

[Kralljin]

I thought there were going to consumables (scrolls or something?) that could give you the raid buffs if you didn't have the classes that gave them. Was there a change to that or are we just ignoring it for convenience?

There are:

1.Bloodlust drums (only LW in BfA)
2.Sta / Int / Attack power Scrolls (7% vs. 10%)
3.Battle Rez (Engineers only)
The Monk / DH debuff have no consumable equivalent, as "support" debuffs never had any of those.

But the point remains, if you have no Monk tank, you need a Monk Healer to slap the boss every minute or a WW.
Dps DH has a safe raidslot anyway if no DH Tank is present, an insane advantage over any other hybrid.

[Rhamses]

Wow! That is a pretty stupid change.

What was wrong with giving each class a specific buff?

http://bfa.wowhead.com/news=275398/c...le-for-azeroth

Some of those buffs fit their classes amazingly well.

[Kralljin]

Wish they gave windfury totem back to shamans

I'd be surprised if Shaman (as a whole) would even get close to being as useful as the class was during Vanilla / BC in the remaining lifetime of wow.

[Khallid]

There are:

1.Bloodlust drums (only LW in BfA)
2.Sta / Int / Attack power Scrolls (7% vs. 10%)
3.Battle Rez (Engineers only)
The Monk / DH debuff have no consumable equivalent, as "support" debuffs never had any of those.

Thanks for the confirmation. I just wanted to know, since it's relevant to the discussion, although personally it doesn't affect me because my guild already has every class anyway.

I was assuming that the monk and DH debuff would also have a consumable tied to them. Interesting that they don't. I wonder if this will affect how Monk is the least played class overall.

[shaunika123]

Just because a class or spec has raid buffs does NOT mean they will be included just because of them. Look at Retribution Paladins. They had Blessing of Might and then Blessing of Wisdom. How many world first kills do you think they were included in for Legion? 2. 2 Rets in the world first groups. Just because they get a buff doesn't mean it is enough to make them worth bringing. Now, things like Lust/heroism, or the rest of how a class/spec works will be enough.

might was a small oneoff buff

buffing your entire raid by 5% is an entirely different thing

[BlakeArt]

I'm litteraly sick of Blizzard's stupidity. They do, undo and redo game design and every, f.u.c.k.i.n.g cycle is getting worse. We take out buffs because they are a bad and old design (wich I agree with, that's true, that was a great idea). Bring the player not the class, right. Years later, we don't know what to do to make the game fresh without adding anything new ! Let's roll back our policy for years and let's bring back the class over the player ! Not all, just some that already have an huge appeal for raiding.

That's plainly stupid and if no one realize that ar Irvine, theyr place is somewhere else (2 words : First with D, second C, was made by mean germans). The lore is completly fucked up and they have no idea of where they are going with theyr gameplay.

[RobertoCarlos]

Stupid move, give one to everyone or none at all

[Tantaburs]

Unless you are in a World Top 100 guild none of this matters.

People care way to much about pretending they are Method and Min/Maxing every little detail and saying everything else is unplayable. Every boss in the game is killable with any class in the game find a guild that doesnt pretend to be better than it is and play what you want to play.

If you are in a top 100 guild. This is what you signed up for play what's best and Min/Max to oblivion you knew what you were getting into.