Have blizzard given up on any parity of soloability?

[Omedon]

In observing the reactions to the disc priest nerfs, and in looking forward to 8.3, shadowlands, and the arrival of the one-to-five player content, I keep coming back to the same line of thinking:

Have blizzard just abandoned the idea of any kind of parity in respect of the players who are invested in “overworld unfriendly” classes?

I started BFA with my “horde main” being what I called at the time an “invincipline priest.” As a soloing player, discipline had one weakness: they couldn’t really AOE to save their lives, but the “vampiric” nature of atonement allowed them to evevtually whittle down an overworld overpull one target at a time.

That... got “fixed,” and “Invincipline” is no more. I then changed horde mains and the horde story was experienced by a tank character from then on.

And that’s basically been the trend since legion: the overworld game belongs to tanks and pet classes, so that’s where my time has gone and is going with all this solo-friendly content on the horizon. Like it or not (and to say I like it would be a massive understatement, it’s saved the game for me), the future of WoW is that of a main thoroughfare that’s soloable or self-enabled via LFX Queues. Sadly the downside of that refreshing ownership of one’s time is that the mages, priests and most shaman of the world are just... screwed?

My question boils down to this: do the classes not... as intended for soloing deserve some degree of support in the face of horrific visions and torghast, or is the “to” in “one to five” meant to be the answer there? Is it enough that everyone *can* bring friends when hunters, warlocks and most tanks won’t have to? Is the answer “don’t play this class if you want to play alone” acceptable? I mean, that’s basically how I’ve adapted, but I look at my alt-bench of priests and mages and I can’t help but think they deserve better.


PS: Please realize that all the “it’s a an MMO, you should need me to gate your access to content” doesn’t really belong here. I certainly acknowledge that there are viable and supported avenues of multiplayer progression that do and should always exist, but you cannot deny that the core of the game in this modern MMO is and should be aimed at the individual on their own time paying their own subscription. Multiplayer avenues are valid and important, but I’m not talking about that experience here except to ask if the group-scalable content’s answer for some classes might be “bring a friend,” and if that’s fair in the context of how other classes can viably enjoy the same content.

Thank you for reading.

[Tarba]

That's not a bfa or legion trend. It's been like that since at least bc. A tank with self healing ability is king at soloing.
It doesn't mean that the mage tower challenge was easier for a tank.
So you just wrote a big pile of sad boring complaint for absolutely nothing. Because we still don't know anything about the mall.

[Firedemon]

You wonder why something you called "Invincipline" got fixed. Good god.
If it were by me, all healing and tanking specs should do close to no damage. Yet here you are complining that you don't have impressive aoe as a fucking healer.

[faithbane]

So you want to have an argument about solo play in a M.Multiplayer.O game but we are not even suppose to mention the fact that it is a multiplayer game and some classes/roles are suppose to be better at certain things then others because it is designed for group play?

Listening to people like you is the biggest problem in current wow era that lead to the extreme homogenization of classes and blurring of the roles to begin with. Every class/spec is suppose to be able to fulfill every demand and god forbid one class/role is better then others at certain things.. If choose to play a healer in an RPG game, you accept the role of a healer, that is a given. demanding to be just as tanky or just as high dps as other roles is absurd. WoW is already extremely flexible in terms of what you can do as a healer vs tank or dps etc. with overabundance of alternative role spells, pvp talents, and ease of changing specs.

Also, in the current iteration of wow, almost every dps class is capable of solo play because of the variety of self healing and survivability moves available to them, you don't have to be a tank or pet class for it. "this trend since legion" must be something you made up in your head because I was soloing all outdoor contest as a dps without any problem and I play DK, DH and mage mainly, no pet tanks. The burst potential of DPS classes alone make them more viable then tanks on outdoor content.


P.S - Try to use the terms "open world" or "outdoor content" which are more commonly used in this decade.. "overworld" sounds awkward and extremely dated

[owbu]

I don't think "parity of soloability" was ever a thing or has ever been intended to be a thing. Different classes are good at different things. Priests have always had an easier time to find groups. Warlocks, mages and hunters have always been better at soloing stuff than priests. There is similiar pros and cons for pvp and farming, different types of encounters and so on and so on.
Sometimes there is a patch in which a class suddendly becomes good at something it wasnt before for a while. Sometimes those pros and cons are messed up (death knights being gods at literally everything in the beginning of wrath) and that needs to be fixed.
But "my priest cant solo thorghast as well as other classes" is just working as it has been for most of the history of WoW.

[Jazzhands]

In observing the reactions to the disc priest nerfs, and in looking forward to 8.3, shadowlands, and the arrival of the one-to-five player content, I keep coming back to the same line of thinking:

Have blizzard just abandoned the idea of any kind of parity in respect of the players who are invested in “overworld unfriendly” classes?

I started BFA with my “horde main” being what I called at the time an “invincipline priest.” As a soloing player, discipline had one weakness: they couldn’t really AOE to save their lives, but the “vampiric” nature of atonement allowed them to evevtually whittle down an overworld overpull one target at a time.

That... got “fixed,” and “Invincipline” is no more. I then changed horde mains and the horde story was experienced by a tank character from then on.

And that’s basically been the trend since legion: the overworld game belongs to tanks and pet classes, so that’s where my time has gone and is going with all this solo-friendly content on the horizon. Like it or not (and to say I like it would be a massive understatement, it’s saved the game for me), the future of WoW is that of a main thoroughfare that’s soloable or self-enabled via LFX Queues. Sadly the downside of that refreshing ownership of one’s time is that the mages, priests and most shaman of the world are just... screwed?

My question boils down to this: do the classes not... as intended for soloing deserve some degree of support in the face of horrific visions and torghast, or is the “to” in “one to five” meant to be the answer there? Is it enough that everyone *can* bring friends when hunters, warlocks and most tanks won’t have to? Is the answer “don’t play this class if you want to play alone” acceptable? I mean, that’s basically how I’ve adapted, but I look at my alt-bench of priests and mages and I can’t help but think they deserve better.


PS: Please realize that all the “it’s a an MMO, you should need me to gate your access to content” doesn’t really belong here. I certainly acknowledge that there are viable and supported avenues of multiplayer progression that do and should always exist, but you cannot deny that the core of the game in this modern MMO is and should be aimed at the individual on their own time paying their own subscription. Multiplayer avenues are valid and important, but I’m not talking about that experience here except to ask if the group-scalable content’s answer for some classes might be “bring a friend,” and if that’s fair in the context of how other classes can viably enjoy the same content.

Thank you for reading.

If every class was capable of the same things it'd be boring. This is why most people dislike homogenization. If you want to play solo in a group based game you need to accept that only certain classes are going to be able to accomplish that because certain tools are required.

That being said, outside of dungeons/raids, any class can solo just fine, if you only consider soloing to be mass AoE pulls then once again you have to accept that only certain classes will have that. The classes you listed, Mages/Priests/Shamans, can solo fairly well as long as you play to their strengths, that's kind of the point of a class based game.

[Cosmic Janitor]

That's not a bfa or legion trend. It's been like that since at least bc. A tank with self healing ability is king at soloing.
It doesn't mean that the mage tower challenge was easier for a tank.
So you just wrote a big pile of sad boring complaint for absolutely nothing. Because we still don't know anything about the mall.

What does mage tower have to do with this? Horrific Visions and Thorghast have nothing to do with mage towers.

You are right about self healing tanks being gods in these kind of modes though.

[Lochton]

On the downlow, all specs had their strengths and weaknesses, some specs' weakness was to solo. Not all will be able to do the same output though - nor should they.

[Kaver]

I don’t understand people who want to mainly play solo (90+ % of the time) in a MMO. I’m all for some solo content like the Mage Towers, however, the main part of the game is designed to be experienced in group play. It is a MMO.

[spleen1015]

I don't think there has ever been any parity of soloability nor should there be.

[Azrathan]

You wonder why something you called "Invincipline" got fixed. Good god.
If it were by me, all healing and tanking specs should do close to no damage. Yet here you are complining that you don't have impressive aoe as a fucking healer.

Abruptly put, but he has a point...

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don’t understand people who want to mainly play solo (90+ % of the time) in a MMO. I’m all for some solo content like the Mage Towers, however, the main part of the game is designed to be experienced in group play. It is a MMO.

That has an incredibly obvious and simple reason: People want to play when they have time and with the people they enjoy playing this game with.

Forcing people to group with others they have no interest in or requiring fixed schedules - which in turn require you to strcuture your life around a game - are the pure anti-thesis to this.

[Jowany]

What I experienced in Legion and BFA, for outdoor activites (Q's, WQ's, etc.) is tank best option. I play druid and mostly in guardian/boomy or resto and guardian is so easy for outdoor play. At start of BFA I leveled as boomy (had full HC/myth antorus gear and legendaries), and it was really smooth with pulls 5+ mobs.
Now for world Q is easier be tank, you can pull 20+ mobs (ofc with solid gear, I am 446) and you are still full HP and you can AOE it quite fast, maybe faster than boomy (starfall is really weak ). I switched into balance from Zaqul progress, now I mostly play boomy now for outdoor, you can kill everything solo and fast, but with quite big hp loss. So yea, tanks are really godlike (and in PVP too, I can solo 2-3 players).

[Nosgoth]

Why play a tank when doing outdoor content? That's awfully slow. I only switch to tank for elites I can't otherwise kill.

[Sencha]

Play single player games if you want to solo everything...

[Drewbacca]

The truth is that you can level up with any spec or class. Some are faster and can handle larger pulls than others, but you can still level. I leveled all of WotLK as a holy paladin, not including dungeons. I knew I could switch specs back in forth, but I don't like to do that. It was a little bit slower, but not awful. Since then I've leveled up almost every single spec in the game by questing. The point is, there isn't a single non-viable leveling spec in the game. Play the class/spec you want and don't worry if you're not min-maxed to the most efficient character possible.

[Kaver]

That has an incredibly obvious and simple reason: People want to play when they have time and with the people they enjoy playing this game with.

Forcing people to group with others they have no interest in or requiring fixed schedules - which in turn require you to strcuture your life around a game - are the pure anti-thesis to this.

I just don’t understand why you would choose WoW then. If I had no interest in or time to play with other people then I would play one of the amazing single player games on the market like Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed series etc. I cant see the fun in playing an MMO if you’re non interested in the MMO part of it.

[Drusin]

If it were by me, all healing and tanking specs should do close to no damage.

Phew, glad it isn't up to you lol

[Cosmic Janitor]

I just don’t understand why you would choose WoW then. If I had no interest in or time to play with other people then I would play one of the amazing single player games on the market like Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin’s Creed series etc. I cant see the fun in playing an MMO if you’re non interested in the MMO part of it.

Like I said, they want to play with others, but on their terms. Also pretending that wow has ever been the epitome of group play is laughable. Raids in classic were tacked on clearly not very well thought through. Most of the development time clearly went into leveling which is overwhelmingly single player content. As far as MMOs go, wow is probably the least group oriented one of it back at the time. It was probably one of the very few where you could reasonable reach max level without grinding in parties, so frankly I never got why people are so adamant about the MMO part in WoW of all games.

[Drusin]

I don’t understand people who want to mainly play solo (90+ % of the time) in a MMO.

Yo, Drusin here, a guy who mainly plays solo in a MMO I play at least 10 hours a day, EVERY. DAY. so do you have a group of friends for me with the same schedule?

- - - Updated - - -

Play single player games if you want to solo everything...

Morning bob, was waiting for you to comment.
*Shakes bobs hand*
*hands bob a coffee*