Incredibly disappointed with class balancing so far

[Aggrophobic]

What? Blizzard has barely started doing any kind of tuning/balancing on the beta yet.

Yes they have. Thats all they've done the last month or so.
The expansion is out in a few weeks.

[VinceVega]

Isn't balancing and other number pushing literally the last thing they do before the expansion goes live everytime? And we get the same threads everytime?

Balancing i always ok in WoW with some outliners. But overall it is good. You can play every class and spec. There is non you could not play in BfA. Even Ele or shadow was viable.

[Echeyakee]

I'm not talking about numbers really more so mechanics, and stuff which makes it feel exciting and new not like you are just playing the same class you did for the last 2 years or more.
.

Guys chill. OP has (hopefully) accidentally created a bait thread title and misleading initial post that has nothing to do with the actual things they meant. So I guess /thread ?

[Sezh]

Personally i main a mw monk

I am so sorry to hear that. My best advice is to just abandon ship. Blizzard will never care about monks.

[Nyel]

Isn't balancing and other number pushing literally the last thing they do before the expansion goes live everytime? And we get the same threads everytime?

We're just over a month from launch. Isn't this exactly the time before the expansion goes live? If not now, when?

[Lindon]

Do you read patch notes fella?

Apparently I do, guess you forgot.

Not sure you fully understand how long they have ALREADY been working on this....lol

I'm not sure you actually understand what is being talked about here.

[VinceVega]

We're just over a month from launch. Isn't this exactly the time before the expansion goes live? If not now, when?

Working on the expansion will go one until hours before release.
In development terms they are not "close" to release.

[Great Destiny Man]

O love how people complain about balance yet they have absolutly nothing but their own speculation on it. You have no numbers, you havent played beta with its all systems at all yet somehow you all claim pretty much every single class as unbalanced. I really wonder where do you get your data.

Technically there are numbers on class vs class performance (in particular the infamous Wowmeta site), but at this stage they're utterly worthless.

Good quality feedback right now is addressing what don't you like about your own spec and what changes you feel would make it better to play? Feedback in the form of "my class is doing less DPS than his class, REEEEEE" is just whining pointlessly.

[orsraunia]

Balancing is like shaping timber - even when making the initial cuts you try not to make them too wild and rough, but its not your main focus. As time goes on, you refine more and more, and eventually move down to sandpaper and finishing touches. As you mentioned, the difference here is the balancing never ends, but they are still at the very coarse grit sanding right now - their focus will not be on it, but its always in the back of their mind, trying to keep things roughly in line with each other.

They have time - traditionally, the pre-patch launches in a comically bad state as far as balancing goes, with some obviously overturned specs / abilities - i remember a prepatch where my druid was so horribly broken it did 78% of the damage in a 5man (starfall was broken as fuck, iirc). For me, this is absolutely fine - nothing meaningful happens in this phase.

You put it nicely.

Still, pre-patch classes with last xpac high end gear don't work similarly with max level classes with pre-raid new xpac gear, so it's not like they can use much data from pre-patch live to balance SL. Unless the new level/ilvl squish helps with negating much of the difference between those 2 different states. Tbh I haven't be monitoring changes closely, so I don't know. I am just speaking from my experience from past expansion launches, but this time there may be enough differences.

Anyway, it's not like current imbalances are no reason to worry, but shouldn't worry us too much either. Lets just enjoy the launch and worry later on... Like always. In my experience, if numbers is the problem, it will probably get tuned down the road, pretty soon after the release. Still, if class design is the problem, that's harder to fix, like fire mages in the past, lots of other examples too. Such reworks, if they happen, they happen later down the road and not soon after launch.

[Archmage Alodi]

Which in turn means the classes are already as balanced as they are going to get when the expansion drops, ergo OP has a point.

It's always been like that, they won't even get it right for the mythic week.

[InflaterMouse]

number tuning is ALWAYS done the final 1-2 weeks of prepatch and then there is always another big round of number tuning after the first raiding week of normal/heroic before mythic raid is released

I'm aware, been doing this for a while now.

[Echo of Soul]

I'm incredibly disappointed by the hotel that's being built outside from where I work. Granted it's not finished yet but I don't think that's an excuse for it to be incomplete.

[Sezh]

The problem is not really with the classes themselves, the problem are the added systems. When there is a 20% discrepancy between players with exactly the same gear and spec caused by the SL systems that's only rising with evey added item level, we have a potential catastrophe on the horizon. I don't see how Blizzard will manage.

[PaladinBash]

Just play a trash spec so you can be known as "the good X" rather than just being a nameless faceless Mage or some shit. You never hope for anything good or better, you just get pleasantly surprised if your spec is ever not shit. It's pure bliss to play an awful spec because it will keep you from taking the game too seriously.

[Orwell7]

The problem is not really with the classes themselves, the problem are the added systems. When there is a 20% discrepancy between players with exactly the same gear and spec caused by the SL systems that's only rising with evey added item level, we have a potential catastrophe on the horizon. I don't see how Blizzard will manage.

Nah don't worry, they will say something like "no major rehauls during content patches" and here we go.
At least if a spec is strong at the start of the expansion, it will remain strong during the whole expansion.

Rerolling is easier than ever, so that's a plus from me. Balancing was always shit, but the content wasn't so tightly tuned as it is now.
With a multitude of options with covenants, soulbinds, legendaries and conduits, we will see a few combinations per class and that's it. Good old cookie cutter talents, just more convoluted to change / sim them. Nothing new tbh

[Sezh]

Nah don't worry, they will say something like "no major rehauls during content patches" and here we go.
At least if a spec is strong at the start of the expansion, it will remain strong during the whole expansion.

Rerolling is easier than ever, so that's a plus from me. Balancing was always shit, but the content wasn't so tightly tuned as it is now.
With a multitude of options with covenants, soulbinds, legendaries and conduits, we will see a few combinations per class and that's it. Good old cookie cutter talents, just more convoluted to change / sim them. Nothing new tbh

I just don't see how this won't get fucked. The overlaps are too many. For instance, Blizzard will never be able to balance covenants within classes, because the specs are different. NF was OP for Ret so Blizz had to nerf it. But that meant it become a dead covenant for Holy for which it had previously been decent. Whichever way they pull the knob, it will either be OP for one spec or dead for another. Then the soulbinds overlap across all classes but not all covenants, and bring different kinds of buffs. A soulbind that is broken for a haste spec will be decent for a non-haste spec, so once again, certain soulbinds will be either OP or dead depending on what you play.

Imagine this scenari: Spec A outperforms all other players of the same spec with the specific setup of Covenant Y and Soulbind 3 by 20%, while simultaneously outperforming all other specs. The combination of Covenant Y and Soulbind 3 is the best setup for Spec B that is middle of the pack. How does Blizzard balance this? If they nerf Spec A so that the Spec A variant that picks Covenant Y and Soulbind 3 becomes middle of the pack, all other players of Spec A that selected the incorrect combination of Covenant and Soulbind are now trash tier. If Blizzard nerfs the Covenant and Soulbind combination, spec B is now suddenly trash tier.

It's an absolute nightmare.

[Mafic]

Why does BlizZard make it harder for themselves when it comes to class balance? Balance the classes, the specs and even racials. Then worry about adding fun borrowed power.

Borrowed power can not patch in the problems with classes, specs and racials.

[Cæli]

they for sure have a ton of work. I don't know why they announced shadowlands so soon.

[Mafic]

Honestly?

The prepatch and beta are not ready. But it is what it is!

[Soluna]

I just want to say one thing.

Do you guys remember when Holinka became leader of the class dev team, and right before blizzcon announcement of Shadowlands, he posted the following:

''We cannot wait to show you our work at blizzcon. All of the team has been doing excellent work, and I am especially proud of the work my own division has been doing. Look forward to what you will see tomorrow'' or something along those lines. I cannot find it in his twitter, as this seems like a scam now, and he must have deleted it.

But well, he was basically advertising and hyping people over classes changes, and we saw minimal shit throughout Alpha/Beta. If anything, I was expecting them to do a MoP-esque rework, to bring us back to the golden era of class design, and I was even more hopeful of that since they decided to not make a new class. Turns out it was all lies and smokes. As always Blizzard. Instead of actually making classes fun, they focus on making a retarded system like covenants work. Actual idiots.