How good/bad is class balance really?

[Kalisandra]

In fairness players being dicks is not something that class balance can effectively deal with. Also, I'm not going to pretend to know how ACT works because I literally play FFXIV for the story and nothing else but is it not real-time?

Ah. Yes, it is, but admitting to using it, or quoting numbers, etc. in-game isn't done because using it is against the TOS, so they can't quote evidence even if they have it. The point is, while most of the community is less toxic than WoW's, toxicity and elitism is alive and well in FFXIV too (unfortunately).

[Kralljin]

Corruption does currently fuck over the picture to a large degree.

Right now, any spec that does not scale insanely well with a certain secondary stat and lacks tools to deal with negative corruption effects, is fucked.

In regards to balance in general:
Blizzard is bad at balance and / or doesn't see it has a high priority.
I find it mind boggling how Blizzard seems completely fine with only releasing a handful of balance hotfixes outside of a major patch.

Like, you have to think about, we're stuck with the current state meta for at least another 3-4 months and Blizzard will most likely not even release a few % nerfs / buffs for certain specs / classes.

[Gaidax]

8.3 is quite a bit worse than 8.2.

8.2 was almost perfect as far as raid was concerned, there was one outlier spec, but the rest were almost identical overall.

8.3.is the typical end of expansion patch where Blizz brings out the big guns, so balance almost inevitably goes out of the window. There are 5 classes that have specs than can pump equally hard in raids, but the rest are a notable step down there.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Not bad at all. Only in the absolute hardest content does it matter.
The game just isn't tuned to be that hard.
Its more about patience and planning than class stacking for people who are doing content outside of competitive events like the MDI and RFWF.

[Saltysquidoon]

I find it mind boggling how Blizzard seems completely fine with only releasing a handful of balance hotfixes outside of major of a major patch.

Like, you have to think about, we're stuck with the current state meta for at least another 3-4 months and Blizzard will most likely not even release a few % nerfs / buffs for certain specs / classes.

I concur with this. It's so fundamentally strange to me blizzard has stuck to their style of a patch every quarter and adamant refusal to do spec iteration outside of expos in 2020 when games like lol and fortnite are patching at least once a month.

I find the excuse of "people don't want specs to change" to be a complete nonsense outside the world first window.

[Malix Farwin]

As someone who has played this game for a long time from the lowest level to the highest level, most of the time class balance only means something for specs that are at the bottom by a massive amount or at the top by a massive amount. If you are good and dedicated to your character most of the time you will be topping the charts and a lot of the time when you arent its because of mechanics, gear, or skill.

How the class/spec feels to play is much more important as well as player perception(especially in mythic+, in raids you need 20 people regardless). With that being said whats prolly making class balance worse is all this borrowed powered mixed with limited tuning.

[A Chozo]

Overall it's a nicely balanced mmorpg.

People are very dramatic when they talk about balance. Some players think a given spec isn't viable because it isn't on the top 3 of single-target damage or stuff like that.

[Mysterymask]

In regards to balance in general:
Blizzard is bad at balance and / or doesn't see it has a high priority.

Id say they are mostly fine....

Right now any class or spec can reliably perform to get the highest level of gear fairly relibly. All classes and most specs can perform in PVP fairly reasonably, and everyone can do world content

Now if we are talking pushing Mythic+ for leaderboards, pusing world first Mythic, or high level PVP.....then yeah X spec is going to be better...and preferred and wow will never have perfect balance no matter how hard you try and ask...


Add in most peoples definition of "the game is balanced" is "My spec is winning" and you get heated arguments

[melzas]

Wow, the amount of naive people who think raid represantation = balance is ASTOUNDING.

You realise that even if spec A is better than spec B only by 1%, it will be a lot more popular than by 1%? Just because BM hunter is at 8% popularity and marksman is at 1%, doesn't mean marksman is 7% worse... I'm starting to lose faith in mmo-champ posters...

[Mysterymask]

Wow, the amount of naive people who think raid represantation = balance is ASTOUNDING.

You realise that even if spec A is better than spec B only by 1%, it will be a lot more popular than by 1%? Just because BM hunter is at 8% popularity and marksman is at 1%, doesn't mean marksman is 7% worse... I'm starting to lose faith in mmo-champ posters...

Even then gear is still a wrench in those equations
Been countless points in wows history where x spec was terrible until they got geared and suddenly they were death machines

Vanilla warriors and anything using ARP being besy examples

[Kalisandra]

Just because BM hunter is at 8% popularity and marksman is at 1%, doesn't mean marksman is 7% worse... I'm starting to lose faith in mmo-champ posters...

I don't think anyone has said that.

As for WoW not being terribly hard - people keep saying that, yet a lot of people and groups find it difficult.

And for the people claiming it doesn't matter as long as you can clear content - sorry, but you are wrong. If you think you aren't, go and level a Ret Paladin and then a Mage over in Classic and feel the difference. Both can clear content and level, but one's a heck of a lot faster and easier to play than the other.

Also, when you are progressing through hard content (as in hard for you and your group - it doesn't matter if some other group might find it dead easy), knowing that it would be that much easier if you switched specs or class is demoralising if you're attached to your character as they are. Having 1% wipes and knowing that, even if nobody says it, people are thinking "If our low-performers swapped to a high DPS spec or class we'd have gotten the kill" just sucks.

[OFiveNine]

I mean it's just game philosophy to make some classes better than others to essentially "refresh the meta" given the way corruptions work with classes it has given some classes some pretty wild amps and others seem kinda left behind.

Shame we're so far into nyalotha now that the parses on warcraft logs are essentially just padding so we really can't see actual numbers but I can see there probably is a rough discrepancy of probably 15-20% dps wise atleast difference from the worse to best class.

It also depends on the kind of content. Rogues kinda shitting the bed in nyalotha for example but in m+ godmode also doing pretty well in pvp. Lock/Mage seem to be allstar when it comes to dps in raid environment and pvp with mage blasting lock in terms of m+.


Unfortunately given the way balancing works in WoW i'm not really the type of person who can just play a spec if I enjoy it. For the most part I will play the best spec my class can offer in raids etc purely because if I don't then I feel like i'm letting my team down. But often I will play the spec I enjoy in casual environments like world quests etc

[Mysterymask]

And for the people claiming it doesn't matter as long as you can clear content - sorry, but you are wrong. If you think you aren't, go and level a Ret Paladin and then a Mage over in Classic and feel the difference. Both can clear content and level, but one's a heck of a lot faster and easier to play than the other.

Classic and retail are apples and oranges as far as balance goes.....

[exochaft]

I hear that FF PvE is a bit easier. If that's true, that would explain why all classes are invited to raids.

The easier the content, the less elitist people get.

I feel it's going in the right direction to consider the question of class balance with respect to the content. The question really only matters with respect to the most difficult content in any game, as the balance issues only appear there. In BfA with the corruption system, class balance is all over the place depending upon the content. While there will always be a class/spec that's on the top and on the bottom, how far apart they are and how the relative difficulty of the content changes using said class/spec is very important.

Right now in mythic raiding, there are clear winners and losers due to how Blizz designs the content and it's difficulty. Mages/locks are king not only because of the insane burst damage they bring, but also the utilities they provide to the raid (gateways, immunities, etc) ... both of which are used extensively in many raid encounters. Also helps they're both ranged classes, which are usually preferred over melee in most encounters. The balance problem that arises in this kind of scenario is that some classes/specs bring so many things to the table while other classes/specs do not (or someone else can do it better). This problem has been evident for a long time, and sometimes become almost a running joke, such as Tomb of Sargeras being nicknamed Tomb of Soaking or something similar due to how many immunity soak mechanics occurred in that raid.

Here's another thing to think about: the more tightly tuned and difficult you make the content, the more imbalance between classes/specs shows and matters when clearing the content. As others have said, you can clear most content with classes/specs that are deemed weak, but replacing them with the overpowered classes/specs just makes progression so much better in most cases. Again, this is a function of not only the classes/specs themselves, but how Blizz designs and tunes the difficulty of their content.

[Kralljin]

All classes and most specs can perform in PVP fairly reasonably, and everyone can do world content

I generally think that's just not exactly the best metric to judge balance.

I mean, almost any spec in Vanilla can also "reasonably" perform in PvP and World content, that doesn't mean they are balanced.

Now if we are talking pushing Mythic+ for leaderboards, pusing world first Mythic, or high level PVP.....then yeah X spec is going to be better..

In other words, once it actually starts to matter, said "balance" falls apart.

.and preferred and wow will never have perfect balance no matter how hard you try and ask...

That's just an easy excuse for imbalance.

No reasonable person expects 100% balance, yet Blizzard's approach towards balance strongly implies that they're just not good at it or don't want to put any resources into it.

Right now they could easily implement 2-5% aura nerfs for the overperforming specs (Fire, BM, Destro) while also buffing underdog specs by the same amount and it wouldn't turn the world on its head.

[Saltysquidoon]

There is literally no reason that months into a maintenance mode patch the Ret or WW should be behind any of the pure dps third place meme specs no one plays.

Can I also talk about this silly lie that gets spouted 24/7 here that "BaLaNcE oNlY mAtTeRs FoR tHe 0.00000000000001%", let's do a thought experiment.
If I took two equally bad players and made one play a havoc demon hunter and one play a sub rogue and made them; Clear open-world content, solo elites, do a horrific vision, do a mythic 15 and clear a mythic raid.
Why one is generally going to do those tasks faster and easier than the other?

[ymirsson]

There is literally no reason that months into a maintenance mode patch the Ret or WW should be behind any of the pure dps third place meme specs no one plays.

Can I also talk about this silly lie that gets spouted 24/7 here that "BaLaNcE oNlY mAtTeRs FoR tHe 0.00000000000001%", let's do a thought experiment.
If I took two equally bad players and made one play a havoc demon hunter and one play a sub rogue and made them; Clear open-world content, solo elites, do a horrific vision, do a mythic 15 and clear a mythic raid.
Why one is generally going to do those tasks faster and easier than the other?

Because one spec is easy to play and the other is not.

[Tradu]

Because one spec is easy to play and the other is not.

No, because Havoc is both strong numbers wise and has one of the most disgustingly overloaded kits in the game on top of that.

[Gaidax]

Havoc is pretty mediocre in raids now. For its supposed opness - it suffers from one big drawback, only one dps spec by which it lives and dies. If it happens to be mediocre then it's the end of the road.

[Kalisandra]

Classic and retail are apples and oranges as far as balance goes.....

You miss the point. I wasn't making any claims about Classic's balance. I was pointing out that there's proof, right there, that playing a spec that blows at something (in this case levelling) is a lot less fun (for most people) and efficient than playing one that's good at that thing, even if both can clear that content.

- - - Updated - - -

Havoc is pretty mediocre in raids now. For its supposed opness - it suffers from one big drawback, only one dps spec by which it lives and dies. If it happens to be mediocre then it's the end of the road.

Right now it's showing as right about where it should be - 12/24 DPS, 6/13 melee. This puts it well ahead of Paladins and Monks (who also have only one DPS spec), and all Rogues, and both Shaman DPS specs. It's true that by class DH isn't super-high, but by melee classes it's also right in the middle. However, DH also brings tons of raid utility, and in particular if you don't have a DH tank, the Havoc DPSer brings that +5% magic taken debuff and that means that 5% all the spell damage the raid does come from having a DH in the raid, meaning that the DH counts for at least another half of a DPSer just from that.