What ever happened to "Bring the player not the class"

[Everythingzen]

"Bring the player not the class" is one of the biggest wow jokes as you can see from top guilds doing heavy class stacking to get kills

That’s because they are competing for world first so they will do anything that will
give them an edge. The problem now (and has been for a while) is that most people think they are on the same level or have to play the same comps as them to do content.
I understand some classes just aren’t as good as others, but I think a lot of guilds/people should be looking for the player, not the class. Majority of issues in downing content are mechanics and/or people paying attention; not the extra dps/healing/etc from playing certain classes.

[valky94]

Looking over the high Mythic+ comps it its literally the same thing every single run. For every comp it seems like Blood DK, Havoc, Sin are 100% mandatory. For Healers Disc or MW is mandatory. So this leaves no room for any other tanks of healers at all. The final DPS spot seems to be a tossup between Frost or Boomkin with the random Lock or Hunter making an appearance every now and then. Seems like Shamans, Paladins, and Warriors arent allowed at all. So is it just me or did Blizzard recently prune like 20 specs out of the game? Where is the fun and creativity if people literally run the same thing over and over and over again.

didnt ion say in an interview or a qna that they scrapped that idea because there was too much homogenisation between classes/specs??

[Daan]

unless you push for 15+ those are not mandatory at all and even then you see runs without them, so not sure what youre smoking

Maybe not mandatory, but even on lower keys they make the runs much easier.

[rohoz]

Actually bring the class not the player does the same thing but worse. With bring the player not the class you have a higher chance of seeing more varied classes because outside of the top .1% most people will be playing the class they enjoy. With bring the class not the play you will see the classes needed to cover the buffs and then stacking of the strongest classes/specs while the ones with no utility/utility other classes/specs can bring get left in the dust. Huge part of why Shamans, Shadow Priests, and, Ferals are having issues getting into groups. Other classes simply bring more utility/dmg.

I mean you can look at the first tier of legion and this first tier and already tell that.

top 1% was always fotmop specs, and will always be.

[Deleted]

It's bring the player with the class. There will always be class imbalance but unless you're pushing to be that top 1%, class means nothing.

Just because you bring a mage doesn't mean you'll succeed. Most people playing the game simply lack the skill.

[Alphatorg]

It's not about some big philosophy that Blizzard follows. Design and balance in BFA is such a mess that such questions are beside the point. Just look at Prot Warriors (zero G'huun parses for them) or Guardian Druids. In M+ at least half the specs feel strictly inferior.

And in raids you get stuff like 4-5 rogues being all but mandatory on Zul - at least they are so broken beyond measure that you can get away with half-geared twinks, 4 locks being absolutely mandatory on G'huun and some might say to a (much) lesser extend a couple of Arcane mages on the utter mess that was Fetid Devourer.

[Ladina]

Link me a single 15+ Comp that isnt using any of the following Blood DK, DH, Rogue, Disc Priest and I will accept that Im wrong. Bnous points if its a Prot Warrior with a Resto Sham healing.

There are streams from top players blazing Atal'dazar with a resto shaman using link and tremor to mass pull, stop being bad research, learn, quit the i suck but its not my fault attitude.

Just did yesterday 13+ 14+ 15+ in time with a 1/2 pugs not on discord

Prot Paladin, WW Monk, Rogue ( me ) , druid resto ( good one ), DH ( below average )

Other run

Prot Paly, Rogue, ww monk, warlock ( ok ) , disc priest ( not even a good one )

usually run with : DH tank ( sometimes havoc ) , Moonkin ( sometimes resto or guardian ), rogue, mage, w/e ( literally any class in here for tank, dps or healer )

moreover i pug all the time as tank , dps and healer, i've seen players that are good and bad in every spec with fathom players usually being awful

healed a +10 with a prot warrior that was tanking rezan in the mid of the room while also spawning as many adds as he could, not using any defensive for when applies the dot on him, pulling mid pack patrol.
Other run, dh havoc afk on m+ pull then fel rushing to rezan while also aggroing the stealth patrol & small raptors then dying to them without doing a single hit to boss but making sure to add them all to boss fight. ( i honestly just have a lot of fun with theses, don't even complain on pugs these days ).

TL,DR: Bad players are bad and will always find an external excuse to explain why they are not getting invited to runs just like ppl complain and have an excuse when they fail to work, pay their bills, cook, go to gym, breathe, sleep.

[Nnyco]

Maybe not mandatory, but even on lower keys they make the runs much easier.

turns out aoe/uttility classes are good at aoe and cheese, next thread you gonna tell me affliction is good at two target boss fights

[clevin]

Actually bring the class not the player does the same thing but worse. With bring the player not the class you have a higher chance of seeing more varied classes because outside of the top .1% most people will be playing the class they enjoy.

Except that's not what actually happened in classic and TBC.

With bring the class not the play you will see the classes needed to cover the buffs and then stacking of the strongest classes/specs while the ones with no utility/utility other classes/specs can bring get left in the dust. Huge part of why Shamans, Shadow Priests, and, Ferals are having issues getting into groups. Other classes simply bring more utility/dmg. .

This is because they've screwed up class design. Bring the class used to work because DPS classes weren't all about DPS. Shadow brought mana regen, etc. The downside of that design was that you didn't stack them since the buff didn't stack and spriest DPS was bad to compensate for the mana regeneration. It's a tough problem but you think they could do better after 14 years.

[Rogalicus]

Classes do not need to have different capabilities to not be homogenized, they need to have different gameplay and thematics.

That's actually why new design sucks. Class gameplay is more homogenized than ever, but some classes have good utility, some don't.

[Kralljin]

Huge part of why Shamans, Shadow Priests, and, Ferals are having issues getting into groups. Other classes simply bring more utility/dmg.

It can work if Blizzard would actually for once commit to their design philosophy and stop making stupid exceptions for classes they seem to favor.

"Everyone needs to bring something unique!"

So okay, Tremor as of now is pretty much a PvP thing, ignoring the few instances it's useful in M+, also being next to useless in Uldir, you will never use Tremor unless someone seriously fails.

Mages already have Arcane Int, why do they need Time warp on top of that?
Is too important to pass up even for nhc / hc / m+? Then why do Drums exist?

But they have no issues designing a Boss fight that basically makes 4 Warlocks the Meta choice, hotfix be damned.

Ferals are nothing but bad rogues with a bit of Druid utility, no one gives a shit about Stampeding roar in a world where even immobile classes such as DK and Paladin have short pseudo sprints with Wraith walk and Steed.
(Not saying those skills are OP, but you get the idea)

But on the other hand, both Monk and DH get a debuff that makes them practically mandatory, you won't engage a difficult mythic boss without DH and Monk, unless you seriously cut down on caster or melee dps.
You can't even substitute those buffs like Battle shout, Int or Fortitude.

[Voltsmasher]

so basically people are forced to play something they dont like over something they enjoy just to be viable? I thought games were supposed to be fun. If literally no one will group with you because you enjoy Prot Warrior or Shaman then whats the point of even playing? Im having trouble finding a reason to log in every day because I main Shadow Priest, Shaman, and enjoy PvP with my DK. All of those are shit right now. So why should I be forced to play something else I dont enjoy? Obviously someone is going to come along and think they are cool and reply "No one is forcing you to play something else" Well actually they are. if I cant get groups based on the classes I enjoy playing then YES I am being forced to play something else. I mean I dont really enjoy sitting in Boralus all day long spamming group requests just to get denied based on my class.

No, people are supposed to play what they like and stop pretending they are a pro mythic + tournament player. Shaman isn't quite as bad as people on the apocalypse forums would lead everyone to believe. Also I've never had an issue getting a group as a shaman maybe enhance has more problems than resto / ele? After that get some friends and make your own group.

[unbound]

Looking over the high Mythic+ comps it its literally the same thing every single run. For every comp it seems like Blood DK, Havoc, Sin are 100% mandatory. For Healers Disc or MW is mandatory. So this leaves no room for any other tanks of healers at all. The final DPS spot seems to be a tossup between Frost or Boomkin with the random Lock or Hunter making an appearance every now and then. Seems like Shamans, Paladins, and Warriors arent allowed at all. So is it just me or did Blizzard recently prune like 20 specs out of the game? Where is the fun and creativity if people literally run the same thing over and over and over again.

Blizz found out the hard way that it requires time and effort to balance things properly. There is no easy answer like, "Bring the player, not the class". Like everything else in life, philosophies that fit on a placard don't actually work.

"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

The problem, in general, with bring the player and not the class is that the game becomes stale much quicker. With that design philosophy, playing a mage becomes exactly the same as playing a warlock or hunter or any other ranged class. Same goes for melee, heals, and tanks.

Of course, the problem with bring the class is that it requires effort on the part of Blizz to create content that can be accomplished by multiple methods. As should be very clear at this point, Blizz put no such effort into this expansion. So the FotM classes will dominate. (Keep in mind, FotM classes still happened even with the "bring the player, not the class" they tried doing)

[Reyuna]

Let Blizzard bring the undervalued classes/specs up to scratch rather than just ham fist nerf everything to be on a crappy playing field.

Not every class has to be exactly the same. Homogenisation is boring.

[Voltsmasher]

Bruh, there is no question that classes in MOP, which emphasized the "bring the player not the class mantra" more than any other xpac, were more balanced than they are now. No question at all about this. Some uniqueness is okay, but Wow is not and never was a straight up RPG. It was at it's most RPG state, extremely RPG lite.

Here is the real issue with your post now, today's WOW is all about competitive content modes and those are already anti-RPG, the two things just don't mix. That's why we have issues in BFA, because the class design is fucking horrible in the content environment they created. We do not need "homogenization" and never had it but Blizzard needs to stop listening to people who complain about things like this and then make stupid decisions like class design on the whole in this expansion. Like it's a basic thing for a class to have some kind of CC that is useful to the group, to have some kind of movement speed enhancer/gap closer/escape mechanism, and to have some kind of defensive ability and group utility. Those are things every class absolutely should have and there is no good reason at all they ever moved away from that mentality except listening to all the wrong feedback.

You can certainly have a game where competitive gaming modes like M+ are the main part of end game content and more than half the classes cannot be competitive in that content, but the community backlash is going to be severe. What they did in BFA is so fucking dumb, the pruning, the GCD change, all of that, completely stupid.

If they had actually stuck with what we had in Legion or at least actually went through with their promises to nerf all utility and cc across the board and did so on an equal level, we'd be fine, but instead we have this mess.

Disagree. Not every class needs everything. That's exactly why everyone got annoyed with classes. Class balance is dumb because if you want to be able to do everything than everyone has to. Your argument is that MoP was perfect I understand that to be highly subjective. My side of it was that in MoP it never mattered less what class you were and the feel of playing something different was not even there.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

That's what happens when you introduce high difficulty content in a class-based game. There will inevitably be classes whose toolkit is (far) more adequate than others' for running said content. Basically, the higher the difficulty, the least choice for classes if you are looking to optimize results - an extreme version of this can be seen in the HEAVY class stacking during world first progression runs. And this isn't something exclusive to BfA, it has been happening constantly, even in the days of the "great homogeneization" of Cata/MoP.

Quoting this for great truth. Class disparity isn't a WoW exclusive thing even. FF14 has the same problem every expansion where a couple of Jobs gives everyone boners for their utility and output (Red Mage having an instant-cast revive is a good example right now) and some Jobs where they are absolutely nerfed into the ground, with awkward mechanics that people can tell a mile away are getting a major redesign next expansion.

Just the impact is averted somewhat because if your current Job in FF14 sucks, you can literally just switch to a different one without rerolling.

[Marrilaife]

Advantages of a class / spec should never be so big you can replace a main with an alt 15 ilvls less and get better results. Things like sub rogues on mythic zul and brewmasters in mythic uldir over any other tank class are basically an abomination that should never happen in an rpg that tells you to devote to your character.

Bad class design combined with bad encounter design and zero proper beta testing / reacting to results of these tests. Tons of exploits / cheese going through despite being reported in beta.

Thats not a problem.... every class/spec should be able to do 100% of the content...

This exactly. There can be differences between more useful specs and better synergy comps, but not to the point that some specs are "auto include" while some others struggle to find a single niche to shine.

Also the game that asks you to invest a lot of time into your character (which is of specific class) and often ties achievements, professions or questlines to various types of content, should not tell you after that your class is unsuited for wide swaths of content, for example dks being useless in arenas or shamans being avoided in mythic raiding and high mythic+.

Yeah I know people will say "but most players play casual content and stuff is balanced there". Nope, stuff just doesn't matter there. If stuff was better balanced at top end, it would only positively impact the lower echelons, nothing would be impacted negatively.

It can work if Blizzard would actually for once commit to their design philosophy and stop making stupid exceptions for classes they seem to favor.

"Everyone needs to bring something unique!"

So okay, Tremor as of now is pretty much a PvP thing, ignoring the few instances it's useful in M+, also being next to useless in Uldir, you will never use Tremor unless someone seriously fails.

Mages already have Arcane Int, why do they need Time warp on top of that?
Is too important to pass up even for nhc / hc / m+? Then why do Drums exist?

But they have no issues designing a Boss fight that basically makes 4 Warlocks the Meta choice, hotfix be damned.

Ferals are nothing but bad rogues with a bit of Druid utility, no one gives a shit about Stampeding roar in a world where even immobile classes such as DK and Paladin have short pseudo sprints with Wraith walk and Steed.
(Not saying those skills are OP, but you get the idea)

But on the other hand, both Monk and DH get a debuff that makes them practically mandatory, you won't engage a difficult mythic boss without DH and Monk, unless you seriously cut down on caster or melee dps.
You can't even substitute those buffs like Battle shout, Int or Fortitude.

Especially specs like havoc demon hunters got overbuffed and overloaded with utility old and new (after initial beta nerfs like removing their aoe stun they did 180 degree turn on that), which negatively impacts the viability of the other melee classes except rogues (which have their speciality already that is aoe stealth). In m+ you don't want triple melee most of the time, you want 1-2 tops, you want rogue when you need skips, and then in any other case it comes down to "why bring any other class when I can bring dh?" And it's not that they are rare to find anyway.

DH just has too much. Good single target, good aoe, purge, aoe stun, long duration cc (imprison), immunity if specced, short cd defensive, good mobility, interrupt of course, stealth reveal (useful for temple of sethraliss or atal'dazar), and the magic debuff that helps all the mages, locks and boomkins that are so prevalent in popular m+ comps. Did they really need all this? What else, maybe BL and combat rez as well?

Why would you bother taking a ret paladin, feral or even warrior if you can take a dh?

[seleri]

The community will always perceive something as useless (especially when it comes to PuGs) and since there's no shortage of people they can just grab the flavor of the month. It sucks when the class/spec you love is the one no one wants, but someone will always be on bottom unless they make all classes exactly the same. Class balance could always be better, of course, but it will never be perfect.

The problem is a lot of people think they're an elite, world first raider and insist on min/maxing the game to death even when they're running normal/heroic/low m+. That isn't something Blizzard can fix with any amount of balancing. Find people that don't care what your class/spec is and just play the game for fun.

[Kralljin]

Why would you bother taking a ret paladin, feral or even warrior if you can take a dh?

I agree.

Blizzard simply fails to live up to their own design philosophy.
They alway say "Classes need to have strength and weaknesses" but then you have classes such as Rogue or DH which practically work everywhere.

Take any Moba, there you have alway some set of a classic RPG elements in a Hero / Champion:
1.Tough,tanky but immobile Warrior archtype
2.Fragile,high damage caster
3.Fragile, high damage,agile Melee
4.Allrounder
5.Support

A few classes / specs fall into those categories in WoW, but some simply break them, DH's / Rogue / Monk should belong into category 2., but i look like an idiot if i claim that Rogues / DH / Monk are fragile, especially the former two have one of the best defensive arsenal in the entire game, be it PvE or PvP.

If Blizzard wants to correct those issues, they really have to grab some classes by the nuts or buff the shit out of other classes, neither will probably happen.

The problem is a lot of people think they're an elite, world first raider and insist on min/maxing the game to death even when they're running normal/heroic/low m+. That isn't something Blizzard can fix with any amount of balancing. Find people that don't care what your class/spec is and just play the game for fun.

Thing is, people also want to get things done, that requires a certain performance from other people.
And the solution can't just always be that you ignore your own performance in relation to others, some people overdo it, but turning a blind eye on obvious balance issues that should be addressed is not the right solution.
Some people want to play the class of their choice, be useful and have that reflected in a certain way, be it some strong support buff or looking good on the meters.

[Angeredsoul]

It never came to be because they can't balance the game to save themselves.