Blizzard designed themselves into a corner with M+

[Kralljin]

oh and also i think balance is overrated and people stopped playing pvp not only because of balance, but mostly because of overall changes to gameplay that made pvp worse.. class design is way more important to pvp in wow than balance, way more..

Yes and no.

I think Balance is relevant, if you want to play something but it turns out that it's completely trash is not good, being pidgeonholed into a handful of classes / specs due them simply being stronger isn't fun.

However, the issue in regards to PvP at least is in my opinion that the focus on Arena is what made PvP a lot worse.
Because everybody is forced into this cage match, you cannot pick your fights anymore and everybody needs to have a winning chance against everybody.

It's the infamous arms race some people talked about for years.
Class X is super immobile, mobile Class Y just kites it easily, therefore Class X seriously struggles in an Arena match where Class Y is present on the enemy team.

Now Class X gets some form of gapcloser, despite that the class shouldn't have one, now Class X crushes anyone besides Y because this additional mobility allows it.

The same goes for cooldowns, because everybody got offensive cd's, everbody also needs defensive cd's because elsewise they get crushed in Arena because they just get stomped by those offensive cd's.

Balancing PvP around the microcosmos that is Arena was a mistake, that only works if you design your entire game around that mode.
Battlegrounds would have been far more suited as core game mode, but that's not going to happen because Rated Battlegrounds are basically seen as weird sidekick mode of PvP, which in itself has been the weird sidekick mode of WoW for a long time by now.

[korijenkins]

This sounds like a weird way to try to describe an issue that doesn't really exist honestly?

You make it sound as if M+ is PvP and raiding is PvE, in regards to the old divide, where PvPers got mad that they had to PvE which was something they didn't want to have to do.

M+ is still PvE. Are there some raiders who dislike it, sure. But it's not a huge divide or something. And mind you, M+ does reward powerful items and raiding provides powerful items. Most classes BiS azerite gear comes from residuum, which M+ gives the most of on a weekly basis, while the trinkets from the raid are extremely strong.

His point is that there are a good amount of classes and specs that are nonviable in M+ because they're all speedruns. He compares it to PvP because Blizzard wouldn't balance the game around both PvE and PvP, so classes that were good in PvE could be utter trash in PvP and be worthless in arena comps, rbg teams, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

you can have balance in all facets of the game(or relative balance), but blizzard suck at balancing.. they're bad at realizing what's op and why it is op, they're slow as fuck at fixing stuff, they usually change numbers too much... or they don't change broken stuff at all despite a lot of feedback(remember warrior taste for blood stacks or hunter stampede in mop? or 8 second kidney in wod?)

oh and also i think balance is overrated and people stopped playing pvp not only because of balance, but mostly because of overall changes to gameplay that made pvp worse.. class design is way more important to pvp in wow than balance, way more..

My issue with them has always been their lack of desire to, at the very least, bandaid some of their problems. A class might hit too hard for a reason other than numbers, but that doesn't mean they can't hotfix nerf something to get it in line, even if it's temporary.

[Craaazyyy]

Yes and no.

I think Balance is relevant, if you want to play something but it turns out that it's completely trash is not good, being pidgeonholed into a handful of classes / specs due them simply being stronger isn't fun.

However, the issue in regards to PvP at least is in my opinion that the focus on Arena is what made PvP a lot worse.
Because everybody is forced into this cage match, you cannot pick your fights anymore and everybody needs to have a winning chance against everybody.

It's the infamous arms race some people talked about for years.
Class X is super immobile, mobile Class Y just kites it easily, therefore Class X seriously struggles in an Arena match where Class Y is present on the enemy team.

Now Class X gets some form of gapcloser, despite that the class shouldn't have one, now Class X crushes anyone besides Y because this additional mobility allows it.

The same goes for cooldowns, because everybody got offensive cd's, everbody also needs defensive cd's because elsewise they get crushed in Arena because they just get stomped by those offensive cd's.

Balancing PvP around the microcosmos that is Arena was a mistake, that only works if you design your entire game around that mode.
Battlegrounds would have been far more suited as core game mode, but that's not going to happen because Rated Battlegrounds are basically seen as weird sidekick mode of PvP, which in itself has been the weird sidekick mode of WoW for a long time by now.

i never said balance is irrelevant, i just said it's overrated

also i believe that arenas is the best form of pvp by quite a big margin.. the best state arenas ever were was during wotlk and its not close, the game had insane amount of depth and there were a lot of things you could do to differentiate yourself from other players and game had insane amount of outplay potential

then after wrath slowly but surely they started to homogenize, simplify and make the game more scripted by adding more cds, making them insane, removing abilities, changing the way abilities work etc. etc. and since WoD the game has been in absolutely awful state in terms of PvP and getting worse each expansion

that's why i completely agree with your points about insane mobility and homogenization.. yeah at the highest point of it in MoP the game felt fun, but deep inside i knew it was a fucking joke that every class has everything.. it's just that having a lot of cool buttons was fun and also right now u know what came after MoP is much, much worse, so you feel like MoP was better than it really was

oh and i think that balancing the game around specific part of the game is stupid, but as i said i think that its possible to balance the game to the point where it would stop being completely imbalanced with just numbers.. but ofc it's not always the way the game should be balanced, because over the years there were some abilities that were inherently bad for the game and even though they were actually improving balance in some cases they should've never been added to the game(like saving grace in wod etc., abilities that reduce the skill cap and make the game less fun to play)

[Kralljin]

also i believe that arenas is the best form of pvp by quite a big margin.. the best state arenas ever were was during wotlk and its not close, the game had insane amount of depth and there were a lot of things you could do to differentiate yourself from other players and game had insane amount of outplay potential

You're free to that opinion, i however think that in order to keep Arena intact, Blizzard had to throw a lot under the bus.

I don't think a 3v3 Death match is simply the pinnacle of PvP within an RPG like WoW without having this homogenization occur sooner or later.
I think Class fantasy has a lot to with strengths and weakneses, but that simply is extremely difficult to mix with a mode where you sometimes are forced to fight your hardcounter without having any option to avoid this situation.

[Craaazyyy]

You're free to that opinion, i however think that in order to keep Arena intact, Blizzard had to throw a lot under the bus.

I don't think a 3v3 Death match is simply the pinnacle of PvP within an RPG like WoW without having this homogenization occur sooner or later.
I think Class fantasy has a lot to with strengths and weakneses, but that simply is extremely difficult to mix with a mode where you sometimes are forced to fight your hardcounter without having any option to avoid this situation.

well the homogenization is what made arenas much worse, perhaps the 2nd worst offender behind pruning, they somehow managed to make it so the game has way fewer abilities than it used to and have homogenized classes at the same time, that's "impressive".. and in reality what ruined arenas wasn't them trying to balance the game around it, but rather trying to balance and change the game around pve.. also knowing how they decided to deal with it later by first introducing stat templates(worst idea for an MMO ever) and then introducing scaling which isn't much better.. basically blizzard don't know what they're doing

also while counters existed even during best times, it was possible to play better than your opponent and win simply because, as i said, the game had so much depth and so much potential for outplay that it was possible despite the fact that in certain match ups you weren't supposed to win.. that's why back in the days in wrath and even cata there were way more 3s comps that people were playing.. the only thing that wasn't as good is that at times for a class only 1 spec was "viable", but i never really saw it as that big of a thing(well maybe sometimes) because of how overall classes used to be more enjoyable in general, unlike now where each spec feels like stripped down version of what it should be

[Kralljin]

well the homogenization is what made arenas much worse, perhaps the 2nd worst offender behind pruning, they somehow managed to make it so the game has way fewer abilities than it used to and have homogenized classes at the same time, that's "impressive".. and in reality what ruined arenas wasn't them trying to balance the game around it

Disagreeing on that count.
For example, giving literally every melee an interrupt was something that was clearly influenced by Arena, because specs like Ret asked for it and required it because facing caster cleaves without interrupt on melee(s) was an uphill battle.
Hunters were pidgonholed into MM because it had silencing shot, so every hunter got Counter shot in Cata.

I'd even argue that simple thing such as giving everybody the same base healthpool was also influenced by Arena.

also while counters existed even during best times, it was possible to play better than your opponent and win simply because, as i said, the game had so much depth and so much potential for outplay that it was possible despite the fact that in certain match ups you weren't supposed to win.

Only if you played a comp that covered your ass in every direction.

the only thing that wasn't as good is that at times for a class only 1 spec was "viable", but i never really saw it as that big of a thing(well maybe sometimes) because of how overall classes used to be more enjoyable in general

This gets a big No from me.
This was one of the worst aspects of Arena, if you played a hybrid class and your dps specs just happened to be terrible in Arena (not PvP itself, just Arena), you were fucked, then it was go "go heal or gtfo".

[Ticj]

And that's why competitive players have to do both M+ and raids to stay relevant. It's not sustainable once people start to burn out (hint, they already have).

This is very true. Nearly every single guild that isn't completely casual requires raiders to run Mythic+ throughout the week. As someone who doesn't even really enjoy Mythic+ (I don't like the timed aspect of it), it has pretty much made me only be able to play retail for a couple of months at a time before I inevitably burn out again.

[mvaliz]

Blizzard wanted M+ and raiding to be alternative paths of progression. Unfortunately they ran into the same problem as they did when they introduced PVP and PVE together in Vanilla arenas in TBC.

Fixed that for you.

I mean, honestly, the whole idea of mix-matching PVP/PVE really sucked. That realization was half the reason that drove me from WoW to play D3 instead - because I like the idea of actually getting an upgraded item that FEELS/LOOKS like an improvement, not just a mathematical stat-stick with slightly better numbers on it.

[Ticj]

Fixed that for you.

I mean, honestly, the whole idea of mix-matching PVP/PVE really sucked. That realization was half the reason that drove me from WoW to play D3 instead - because I like the idea of actually getting an upgraded item that FEELS/LOOKS like an improvement, not just a mathematical stat-stick with slightly better numbers on it.

How would the game being PvE only fix that lol

[Craaazyyy]

Disagreeing on that count.
For example, giving literally every melee an interrupt was something that was clearly influenced by Arena, because specs like Ret asked for it and required it because facing caster cleaves without interrupt on melee(s) was an uphill battle.
Hunters were pidgonholed into MM because it had silencing shot, so every hunter got Counter shot in Cata.

I'd even argue that simple thing such as giving everybody the same base healthpool was also influenced by Arena.



Only if you played a comp that covered your ass in every direction.



This gets a big No from me.
This was one of the worst aspects of Arena, if you played a hybrid class and your dps specs just happened to be terrible in Arena (not PvP itself, just Arena), you were fucked, then it was go "go heal or gtfo".

it was influenced by pve, because they added a lot of interrupt mechanics to bosses in cata and no one would've wanted ret in raids if it didnt have a kick.. also counter shot was added in mop for the same reason, for pve interrupts..

also judging by what you're typing you legit never played above 1500 or something, many comps were viable as long as you were good at the game, ofc you had hardcounters but as i said you were able to win still, unlike now where you can't outplay your opponents(at least the outplay potential is severely limited) so you lose regardless, unless your opponents make a huge mistake.. making plays in the current game is pointless, so you play not to lose, instead of playing to win

oh and there were plenty of viable hybrids, like shadow priests, ferals, rets, ele/enh etc.

oh and also pretty much none of the major changes that were ever made that affected whole game were influenced by pvp.. none of them

[mvaliz]

How would the game being PvE only fix that lol

/points at the part where I mention D3


Because I can then actually get a weapon with an actual OHOLYSHIT effect that radically changes the gameplay via introducing new radical mechanics and/or effects?

Because I can get an actual set bonus that has an OHOLYSHIT effects that radically change everything to allow me to jump multiple difficulties???


Do you not remember the reason they scrapped PVP Arena in D3? Because they couldn't find a way to balance that in any way/shape/form because the gear is designed for crazy effects and stuff - and players would just walk in and ROFLSTOP a person in 2 actions. I say "actions" and not "hits" because literally passive effects of abilities can do things. Some weapons/armor can just have passive effects like lightning or what-not that arc off yourself. You can have a swarm of friggin' pets always at your side that do all the high-level damage for you. You can't get that kinda shit in WoW... or if you do, it's incredibly nerfed to the ground in both range, quantity and power to the equivalent of flicking pebbles at someone, purely because it would offer incredibly unfair balance in PVP.

[Dragore]

Raiding is where you should get the best gear.
M+ should give up to a certain ilvl below Mythic raids.
High M+ should reward transmog items/toys/titles/etc.
Maximum ilvl cap on M+.

[Accendor]

Blizzard wanted M+ and raiding to be alternative paths of progression. Unfortunately they ran into the same problem as they did when they introduced arenas in TBC.

They can't balance the classes around raiding because it will affect M+. They can't balance the classes around M+ because it will affect raiding.
There are sizeable raiding-exclusive and m+-exclusive populations. They can't prioritize one over the other because it will cause subscriber losses in the long run.

Raiding can't award powerful items because it will make raiding mandatory for M+ players. M+ can't award powerful items because it will make M+ mandatory for raiders. This is also why tier sets don't fit into the current design paradigm. When they tried to have unique and powerful rewards from different forms of content, Shadowmourne in WotLK arenas happened.

There is an answer to this but no one wants to hear it. Templates for M+ and raiding. But since WoW's carrot on a stick is gear progression, most people won't stick around if you remove tangible gear rewards. If people don't feel their characters get stronger they'll start asking, what's the point of doing this? This is especially true in modern WoW's gear-centric RNGforged / corrupted design.

Once the momentum from Legion wears off and more and more people realize that the current design is boring and unbalanced, participation will plummet. This is exactly what happened with arenas and rated PvP in general. Once people realized that Blizzard would never sacrifice raid balance in favor of PvP balance, they left. The initial hype from TBC sustained it into MoP but in WoD participation just got destroyed and never recovered. And back during the TBC-WoD period there was a much higher population to sustain continued arena participation.

Remember when Arena World Championship was Blizzard's big event? Nobody gives a shit about that anymore. It's all about the Mythic Dungeon Invitational now. But it can only last so long until bad balance starts to drive people away. The writing is already on the wall with some meta classes (looking at you, rogues) being almost mandatory.

This is a classic example of "try to please everyone and you won't please anyone". Except, well, people who play casually. Now is a great time to play casually. You have tons of different content to try and the problems don't become apparent until you reach the very top level. But the parallels between arena's decline and M+ are definitely there. M+ has already become more exclusionary and elitist compared to its Legion iteration.

Tl;dr: Ion, you can't have both tight tuning and different forms of endgame content. Pick one. Super-competitive e-sports with tight tuning or casual gameplay with a variety of game modes. Can't have both.

I think there is misconception in your argumentation that it is a problem that raiding feels mandatory for m+ and vice versa. Its not a problem at all, on the contrary, it is very good, because it prevents raid logging and give m+ players something more difficult to aspire too and an actual story related goal they can work towards.

And before somebody complains: Yes, m+ at high keys is very hard. Yes, mythic raiding is harder than m+ at later bosses. The difficulty from m+ at higher keys only comes from higher damage numbers, while mythic raiding is mostly mechanics.
Both are hard in their own way, however.

[froschhure]

This game lost when they decided to make bfa a expansion and not a patch. I dont curr at all and shadowlands is going to flush through the toilet.stop expecting something „big“. Just my opinion.

[Jotaux]

I don't think this has been an issue at all for them. The classes strong in M+ tend to be strong in raid as well.

[Kralljin]

it was influenced by pve, because they added a lot of interrupt mechanics to bosses in cata and no one would've wanted ret in raids if it didnt have a kick.. also counter shot was added in mop for the same reason, for pve interrupts..

Yeah, because in raids there aren't any other people present that could do this.
Even back in Wotlk, you had 10man bosses which required interrupts and people still managed to kill them, despite Paladins or Hunters being unable to interrupt.

It doesn't whether one person has an interrupt if other people have them in PvE, that doesn't work in Arena.
if you are playing a Melee cleave and one of them doesn't have one, you're at a serious disadvantage against any team that has a caster.
Which is every team because Healers can be interrupted too.

The impact of this change was simply far more noticeable in PvP than PvE, this is obvious.

also judging by what you're typing you legit never played above 1500 or something, many comps were viable as long as you were good at the game

Good thing my rating is not influenced by your judgement.

like shadow priests, ferals, rets, ele/enh etc.

Tell me about the viability of Enhance / Elemental in Cata.
Oh yeah, wasn't there because Lava burst didn't hit as hard anymore because they buffed everybodies healthpool.

Aside from that, you admitted yourself that this issue existed, so no point in denying it.

[Unholyground]

It is pretty simple, bring class sets back and only have them in raids like before where it was a non issue...

[Craaazyyy]

Yeah, because in raids there aren't any other people present that could do this.
Even back in Wotlk, you had 10man bosses which required interrupts and people still managed to kill them, despite Paladins or Hunters being unable to interrupt.

It doesn't whether one person has an interrupt if other people have them in PvE, that doesn't work in Arena.
if you are playing a Melee cleave and one of them doesn't have one, you're at a serious disadvantage against any team that has a caster.
Which is every team because Healers can be interrupted too.



Good thing my rating is not influenced by your judgement.



Tell me about the viability of Enhance / Elemental in Cata.
Oh yeah, wasn't there because Lava burst didn't hit as hard anymore because they buffed everybodies healthpool.

Aside from that, you admitted yourself that this issue existed, so no point in denying it.

well i was talking about wrath.. enh was still pretty decent in cata, ele wasn't but well..

again what i said was more about classes with 3 dps specs having some of the specs being not so viable

oh and again you keep saying how PvP influenced class changes when it was PvE that actually influenced them. Just because some people managed to kill bosses doesn't mean that it wasn't influenced by pve.. i can say the same about ret paladin comps being really fucking good despite rets not having kick.. PvP never influenced major changes in the game, literally never.. even things like them giving dispel to every healer was influenced by pve, not pvp.. and it was all the bring the player not the class changes.. homogenization etc.

Blizzard never took pvp seriously, especially not after wrath, because during wrath pvp was pretty big, but after wrath they said that they dont care about wow pvp as an esport, that's why ESL, WCG, dreamhack, MLG etc. dropped it and stopped hosting tournaments

if you think that any of these changes were because of PvP then there's no point in arguing

[msdos]

I wonder about this. What do you do with the specs? Do you like leave some good at AOE, some bad, some ST only?? I don't get what their intent is supposed to be. Is it intended for arcane to be bad in M+? Same with Affliction. Are these specs just never allowed to step foot in those places just because reasons?

Are they going to make all specs good at everything again? Are all tanks going to be able to deal dmg, rather than just a couple? Do all tanks get good ST, or only a few or some bad AOE, some good.

Like I don't understand their direction. Everything seems arbitrary and then they fall back on this bogus excuse, "we don't like homogenization, ehhhhhhhh" and then you just have bottom of the barrel unique specs. They're unique, but they actually feel bad to play in all forms of content.
They need to fix this.

[Kralljin]

well i was talking about wrath.. enh was still pretty decent in cata, ele wasn't but well..

Considering Arena has existed for a long time, i don't think one should just limit this discussion to a single expansion.
Even back in TBC, specs such as Ele, Enhance, Feral, Ret & Balance were just trash.

Just because some people managed to kill bosses doesn't mean that it wasn't influenced by pve

Still stands that this change had far more impact in PvP than PvE.
And i've never read "I'm not getting invited into raids because i don't have an interrupt", but i've been seeing quite a lot about people complaining that their class has no interrupt in PvP.

Why? Because Interrupts win games.

Fun side note: Blizzard kept telling Elemental Shaman during Wotlk that they won't buff Ele dps because it would make them too strong in PvP.

even things like them giving dispel to every healer was influenced by pve, not pvp.. and it was all the bring the player not the class changes.. homogenization etc.

No, not really.
Because again, Dispels aren't a huge deal in PvE but are crucial to PvP.

Especially the fact that they changed every defensive dispel to remove all debuffs but at CD is 100% PvP based, because there's barely any situation in PvE present where you have more than a single application of a debuff to dispel.
Dispel roulette was a thing until Cata.

Having a single Priest / Paladin in even in a 10man raid was not a problem, even then you could still use a Warlock Imp as substitute.

Blizzard never took pvp seriously, especially not after wrath, because during wrath pvp was pretty big, but after wrath they said that they dont care about wow pvp as an esport, that's why ESL, WCG, dreamhack, MLG etc. dropped it and stopped hosting tournaments

I hate to break to you, but no one outside of the highrated Arena bubble cared about WoW PvP as an E-sport.
Because it simply sucks as an E-Sport, one of the reasons being that's absolutely terrible to watch unless you have complete in depth knowledge of the game.

Even people who just play WoW but aren't playing Arena have no idea what's going on.