Big class changes in 8.1

[dlhak]

Warlocks and DKs are fine, same with most other classes. Shaman really is one of the only specs in major need of reworks, maybe havoc dh.

Holy / Protection paladin, Shaman all specs, shadow priest <--- these are the specs they said they will work on.

Hunter and warlock are they only ones who have been reworked. it really feels as a new expansion for them.

[Marrilaife]

If the boomkin meme era of reddit didn't become so overwhelming I'm sure shadow and shaman would have been looked at. But because there was so much pressure and a lot of memes going on boomkin just took priority.

Which is good, boomkin was the most broken of them all but literally it's sad that the only reason blizzard listens to feedback is when your class becomes a fucking meme

Somehow they had time to rework every spec of hunter, some even twice, several waves of tweaks for aff locks, demo locks, warriors of all kinds and so forth.

Funnily Havoc players are crying out loud despite they got shiny new talents, now tell me what feral druids got... nothing really. Ele shamans did a step backwards with cd readded to flame shock, then they removed the requirement for flame shock for lava burst crit so people don't have much problem with flame shock cd... and guess what, latest build went back to requiring flame shock on the target, but it still has a cd.

Enhancement was neglected because it was overtuned so people were like numbers are there, so spec is fine. It still doesn't have any of its issues fixed like lack of raid utility, lack of reliable aoe, lack of defensives and it actually lost few things from the talent tree replaced by worse choices.

[zito]

Somehow they had time to rework every spec of hunter, some even twice, several waves of tweaks for aff locks, demo locks, warriors of all kinds and so forth.

Funnily Havoc players are crying out loud despite they got shiny new talents, now tell me what feral druids got... nothing really. Ele shamans did a step backwards with cd readded to flame shock, then they removed the requirement for flame shock for lava burst crit so people don't have much problem with flame shock cd... and guess what, latest build went back to requiring flame shock on the target, but it still has a cd.

Enhancement was neglected because it was overtuned so people were like numbers are there, so spec is fine. It still doesn't have any of its issues fixed like lack of raid utility, lack of reliable aoe, lack of defensives and it actually lost few things from the talent tree replaced by worse choices.

you forgot monk just got some new changes a few days ago

feels bad man

[Kelathos]

I wouldn't have said no to an extra 3-5 weeks either. My hype for this launch isn't that big yet. I mean, things are moving along at a good clip and that's great, but I almost wonder if we need a certain amount of content drought to get us desperate and excited for new content?

Weeks? We're talking months. 8.1 and its class designs won't be ready in just a few weeks.

[Armourboy]

My Ele shaman comfortably sitting at the bottom of the meter would like to have a word.

LUL to OP complaining about lock's damage being nerfed when they were over the top. Please remember that balance tuning is not finished before going full retard.

Yeah but that was a numbers problem. Elemental in MoP was one of the more fun specs to play, even without the numbers backing it up. It's the reason so many people were playing them as alts. I saw more Elemental Shaman in MoP than I can remember at any point in the specs history. That happened because it was a blast to play.

Same thing happened with Fire Mage in Legion at the start. It was a heck of a lot of fun to play so everyone had a fire mage. Blizzard basically had to overbuff Frost just to get people to play another spec.

Oddly enough most of the specs that people point to as enjoyable to play are the ones that were either fun to play in Legion and they didnt completely screw them up ( like Fire mage ) or they got some pretty good work in beta, like Fury, Balance, and Warlock.

There is a reason there hasn't been many threads on Fire in BfA alpha/beta, it's because it is still fairly enjoyable to play.

[Craaazyyy]

class reworks have nothing to do with class being good or bad in terms of its performance.. that can be easily fixed by just tuning the numbers


class reworks are mostly to keep shit fresh or,in this case, to make classes more enjoyable to play.. and that not just rotation and numbers.. its other things too


two expansions without new talent row, three expansions of pruning.. thats what needs to be addressed and fixed

but realistically 8.1 wont change much

[Tradu]

My Ele shaman comfortably sitting at the bottom of the meter would like to have a word.

LUL to OP complaining about lock's damage being nerfed when they were over the top. Please remember that balance tuning is not finished before going full retard.

Nobody was talking about balance.

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Their design process has always been highly iterative. Which is great for game devs, but painful for players.

I've been testing various specs on beta and I have to say - some of them I love, like REALLY love. Fury is great (aside from the bug where some attacks don't seem to physically connect) and I am happy that there's options for BM builds with a bunch of buttons again.

Ironically the spec I disapprove of most, so far, is Survival. I hate that they threw out a bunch of stuff that worked and turned it into some weird melee BM-lite spec with the occasional ranged ability. Legion's needed some changes, to be sure, but not to the extent that we're getting in BFA. Not in my opinion at least.

Would be nice if they'd keep as much of that iteration to the test versions as possible, instead of using live servers for it.

[Armourboy]

Nobody was talking about balance.

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Would be nice if they'd keep as much of that iteration to the test versions as possible, instead of using live servers for it.

I've always found it amusing that players spend all of alpha and beta telling Blizzsrd the pitfalls and issues of a spec, it being ignored " because" and then it hits live and suddenly they need to fix it because low and behold what testers told them were issues actually were issues.

That doesn't just apply to classes either because I can remember the complaints about legendaries in alpha/beta but Blizzard just went on with it anyways.

[The Stormbringer]

Weeks? We're talking months. 8.1 and its class designs won't be ready in just a few weeks.

I'm not asking for 8.1, I'm just asking for additional tweaks and testing to ensure the classes aren't completely terrible. I'm willing to wait for the next patch to get all the changes, but there should at least be some right now.

[Accendor]

My Ele shaman comfortably sitting at the bottom of the meter would like to have a word.

LUL to OP complaining about lock's damage being nerfed when they were over the top. Please remember that balance tuning is not finished before going full retard.

Ele on Bottom was number problem, not a design problem.

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That's what happens when a lot of morons pre-order.

Preordering has nothing to do with this. I understand your aversion against it, but it simply does not matter in a sub based game.

[Deleted]

I feel bad for Shamans (especially DPS specs) since they keep getting shafted at the start of of pretty much every expansion. They usually end up doing meh DPS in most scenarios, have clunky playstyle and plenty of talents that are not viable on top of also being squishy in both PvE and PvP. In Legion Gust of Wind was a decent addition for Elemental PvP but now that has been removed and apparently they recently returned the Flame Shock requirement for Lava Burst instead of actually attempting to fix the spec.

[Aleksej89]

Gotta say it is depressing when the "class design" team decides to prune classes to their bare bones, and then still miserably fail to balance out the pitiful arsenal of abilities that are left in the game.

[SirCowdog]

I keep seeing all these threads pop up, and all I can think of is how stupid it is to pre-order, or even buy in at launch. The more and more I see of how unfinished these expansions are, the more this becomes true.

[Beefkow]

I guess a class is not fine until it tops the dps meter for more than 5% on the 2nd and you play the class, am I right ?
Its not fun to play the "top dps" spe anyway. You're less satisfied when you beat them.

Topping the meters... you're kidding me right?

Gameplay and mechanics ALWAYS comes first. Apparently blizzard forgot how classes worked.

And honestly, nobody cares about damage output at this point, we care about how our character feels and progresses.

That is how Sub Rogue was fixed mid expansion in Legion.

Video proof!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKbXmhCPtU

While this is an exaggeration it started the momentum needed for Legion Sub mid expansion rework.

Sadly they only fixed 1 spec.

As of right now, about 30 specs out of 37 needs to be fixed.... (just a random number off the top of my head), or a least a good majority. With that being said, I have a strong belief that patch 8.1 won't fix anything, let alone mainly spriest/shaman/dk.

[zito]

I keep seeing all these threads pop up, and all I can think of is how stupid it is to pre-order, or even buy in at launch. The more and more I see of how unfinished these expansions are, the more this becomes true.

Legion was great though. All they had to do was continue and build on what they introduced. But instead they scrapped everything like artifact weapons to re do it over. I can't wait til 9.0 when azerite gear gets scrapped. Though it deserves to be scrapped the entire system is hypocritical of their design intent. The whole reason the talent trees are like what they are now is because they pruned the % increase talents to instead give us azerite which just gives us % boosts.

Years of development down the drain every expansion because they feel the need to restart instead of improving

[clevin]

Legion was great though. All they had to do was continue and build on what they introduced. But instead they scrapped everything like artifact weapons to re do it over. I can't wait til 9.0 when azerite gear gets scrapped. Though it deserves to be scrapped the entire system is hypocritical of their design intent. The whole reason the talent trees are like what they are now is because they pruned the % increase talents to instead give us azerite which just gives us % boosts.

Years of development down the drain every expansion because they feel the need to restart instead of improving

Except I leveled my lock as destro in Legion and then we all figured out the spec was crap. Yeah, they changed it mid-expansion... which is better than not doing anything but it's annoying as hell to have them miss the mark time after time ESPECIALLY when they get feedback in alpha/beta about issues.

[SirCowdog]

Legion was great though.

You mean Legion was great....a few months in after they'd cleaned up the launch issues, corrected some of the bullshit with Legendaries, released a few more mythics, allowed the order hall missions to actually be completed, re-enabled flight, opened up Artifact Research to a point where it wasn't a miserable grindfest, and finally cleaned up some of the class imbalance?

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. BfA will be exactly the same: Not even worth buying until 6+ months in when they unfuck everything they break at launch.

[Deleted]

MoP was pretty close.

You mean the one where we had stacked Disc priests and Demo locks?

[Nathasil]

I really love to shit on BFA....but this particular reason does not fly for me. Remember all the people rolling Prot Warrior in 7.0? Or Comb...i mean Outlaw? Or how Shadow Priest was Godmode for ST damage (>20% ahead of anybody else)? Yeah, things change....constantly. Also, 8.1 will make KT Humans and Zandalari Trolls payable, which a lot of people will want to main and you CANNOT POSSIBLE suggest they will all just buy a race change in the shop, because as we all know allied races are totally not a cash-grab shop-feature. They are not. Read it from my lips: Blizzard does not want to push you into buying race changes. Never.

[socialmaker]

7.1 was 2 months ( a week less actually ) after Legion launch. I expect 8.1 to be about the same time frame, possibly a couple to few weeks slower coming than 7.1 was, given what I recall hearing from different people at Blizz in their various interview/Blizzcon/etc.

That would be an acceptable compromise. Probably a lot of people would stay off the Sham, Shadow Priest and what else is almost guaranteed to be changed.