Originally Posted by
rda
Spare me, please. I know what I am talking about here, I am just shortening things in order not to write a page-long essay. You are right that resources aren't infinite, and yes, of course, there are priorities, but we are not talking about something abstract, we are talking about a specific thing: balancing specs, and this area has been changing.
When it is said that whenever they release a pre-patch for a new expansion, the specs are balanced for the new max-level, what is exactly meant by that? It is meant that the numeric coefficients on spells are computed according to average expected stats and spell structure at the new max-level, not the old max-level. In prior times old max-level and new max-level were wildly different because characters were getting new spells / spell modifiers. This changed, we are now getting nothing. There are a few other factors involved, most of them changed as well, in the same direction. So while, yes, it is still true that balancing for the old max-level is different than balancing for the new max-level, the difference has been decreasing heavily and the additional effort involved in providing some tuning for the old max-level in addition to the supposedly thorough completed tuning for the new max-level has been disappearing. Yet what we see on the sheet is one completely broken spec (how did this get through tuning for any level? huh?) and the rest of the sheet being 2x in spread from high to low (way too big accounting for all possible error margins).
Here's the reality: they did not do anything except the basic number tuning. They kept talking about that number tuning and were saying that "this will happen on the PTR, that's what PTR is for" and then it basically didn't happen, they did a shoddy job and completed it in what seems like 20 minutes.
Now, I am not saying that lack of balance for the old max-level is so damn important or unusual. We always had this problem yes, and many other things are more important, yes. Agree. I am saying two things. First, that this was always Blizzard producing bad quality while telling stupid stories about resource management (which nobody should care about, but the fanboys care). And second, that this is somehow even worse in BFA than it was before because BFA stopped adding abilities during leveling yet their supposedly completed tuning for the new max-level produced such a stupid picture for the old max-level despite the specs being the same.
/Damn, ended up writing a page-long essay.