Incredibly disappointed with class balancing so far

[Doffen]

Even Wotlk and Cata had better class balance, because the devs didn't have worry about balancing a multitude of external systems on top of the current classes.

Don't take this as a "everything was amazing in Expansion X", every era had its share of imbalances and issues, but especially Legion and BfA had serious problems.

I don't think that's right at all, and to look at it from an overall view, Legion from 7.1.5 up to and including 8.2 is the most balanced game we ever had when it comes to dps throughput. Of course there have been issues, but that's been the case since the start. In WotLK we still had "hybrid" tax(or was it?) were we had several specs underperforming the whole expansion. Cata had severe issues at start of the expansion. Balance was indeed better in WotLK than TBC/vanilla which were awful when it comes to balance, and Cata even better than WotLK, but I was playing lesser performing specs in WotLK and I know how scaling for some specs were non-existent and got buffed in every patch because they were so behind.

Especially in the light of the fact that Blizzard has gained amazing tools to actually balance things seperately, back in Wotlk, they just couldn't buff spell X because it might make some hybrid build too attractive or buff another spec (which doesn't need a buff) that happened to use the same spell.
Not to mention that PvP was a massive issue as well, as didn't started to balance PvP seperately from PvE, as they can do now.

The "tuning knobs" (and i don't mean any external power systems) nowadays dwarf what the developers previously had to work with.

It's not really that black and white, and it's just not as easy as to just point to that and say it's unbalanced, especially since they have proven that they can balance it better with them compared to without. And yes, vice versa.

Those corruptions and legendaries involuntarily affected the balance of power between Classes, especially Corruption.

Mages with full Mastery amp. Corruption aren't nearly as OP than without them.
Matter of fact, BfA actually recovered in terms of overall balance since 8.1 and 8.3 was in terms of class changes also a step in the right direction.
Then Corruption came and fucked everything up, because anything that doesn't scale utterly insane with any stats (or can bypass the negative effects of high Corruption as easily) has been pretty boned.

This though, I 100% agree with. BfA was pretty well balanced all the way until 8.3, and the reasons you put out here are the reason for it. It was a system that shouldn't have been brought in the game with how horrible tuning was. As some specs scaled immensely with one stat or two, while other's didn't get that benefit. Then we had the proc ones which favored some specs, while some not at all.

[Kralljin]

I don't think that's right at all, and to look at it from an overall view, Legion from 7.1.5 up to and including 8.2 is the most balanced game we ever had when it comes to dps throughput. Of course there have been issues, but that's been the case since the start. In WotLK we still had "hybrid" tax(or was it?) were we had several specs underperforming the whole expansion.

You can argue over the hybrid tax, but the crux of the hybrid tax that it was offset by the fact that hybrids were still the kings of providing raid buffs, hence the value of these specs was still there.

Just looking at dps in era where a variety of buffs were still a thing is a pretty narrow approach.

It's not really that black and white, and it's just not as easy as to just point to that and say it's unbalanced, especially since they have proven that they can balance it better with them compared to without. And yes, vice versa.

When a team that has inferior tools to work with achieves better / equivalent results, your team needs to get their shit together.
And they are sure as shit aren't making things easier for them with the multitude of systems atop classes.

This though, I 100% agree with. BfA was pretty well balanced all the way until 8.3, and the reasons you put out here are the reason for it.

BfA was also an absolute clusterfuck at the start of an expansion and had the "oops sorry Shadow, Enhance & Ele" thing going on that wasn't really fixed until months into the expansion.
It picked up afterwards, but also came the expense that most specs had only a single viable build, talent balance was completely shelved because they had to salvage Azerite & introduce Essences.

[Doffen]

You can argue over the hybrid tax, but the crux of the hybrid tax that it was offset by the fact that hybrids were still the kings of providing raid buffs, hence the value of these specs was still there.

Just looking at dps in era where a variety of buffs were still a thing is a pretty narrow approach.

Doesn't make it an excuse for balance being shit. We got Monks and DH give 5% damage buffs in BfA, and Havoc has been one of the best specs in BfA. If we are gonna compare then you compare properly. What's narrow is to put everything bad into the two expansions you don't like while excusing those you did like. TBC is my favorite expansion, still balance was awful.

When a team that has inferior tools to work with achieves better / equivalent results, your team needs to get their shit together.
And they are sure as shit aren't making things easier for them with the multitude of systems atop classes.

Still they have better balance than we had before. It sure doesn't make it easier, but they balance it better than before, so in other words they do a better job?

BfA was also an absolute clusterfuck at the start of an expansion and had the "oops sorry Shadow, Enhance & Ele" thing going on that wasn't really fixed until months into the expansion.
It picked up afterwards, but also came the expense that most specs had only a single viable build, talent balance was completely shelved because they had to salvage Azerite & introduce Essences.

Didn't last long, and this happens in every expansion were some specs are absolute shit or overpowered as hell. In start of Cata mages(just an example) were so bad for a little while in the start, they got buffed. Ret and Dks being OP in start of WotLK and even for a longer time. Same as the three specs you bring here. Shadow and Elemental being some of the top specs for the rest of the expansion. So where is the difference?

Truth is, WoW has always been unbalanced, but overall the two last expansion the least of them all, well 8.3 not so much.

[Kralljin]

Doesn't make it an excuse for balance being shit.

No, that's simply the philosophy at play when you don't declare dps as the sole metric for the value of a dps spec.

You have something similiar at play right now, if you want to do Alpha AoE dps, then Warlock or Shadow might be the wrong Class / spec for you.

We got Monks and DH give 5% damage buffs in BfA, and Havoc has been one of the best specs in BfA. If we are gonna compare then you compare properly.

Should i whip out the list of every potential (de)buff in Wotlk and compare it to the ones in BfA that you can literally count on your hand?

Still they have better balance than we had before.

Repeating the statement i'm disagreeing with, doesn't make me agree.

Didn't last long, and this happens in every expansion were some specs are absolute shit or overpowered as hell.

Just the entire first tier.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Doffen]

Repeating the statement i'm disagreeing with, doesn't make me agree.

And that was not the point obviously. The thing is that we won't agree so then there isn't much more to discuss right.

Just the entire first tier.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not the first time that happened. WotLK is a prime example on the other side of the scale, with ret paladin and dks being OP close to the whole expansion in certain areas. We have had so many examples of undertuned and overtuned specs it's practically the norm in the start of the expansions to have outliers. Entire tier you say, it lasted 4 months until 8.1.

I have seen worse. Should it be that way? No, I don't think so, so in line of the original topic, I hope they do better, but I don't think they will. I think that's one thing we can agree on.

[Kralljin]

I have seen worse.

You'd expect that these sort of issues get sorted out as time goes on, because the tools, understanding and capabilities of developers improve.
I'm willing to let Wotlk slide because it was the first time they introduced a new class and sped up combat quite a bit in comparison to Classic / TBC.

Now, a decade later, this excuse no longer flies, there must be a point where the devs get this shit ironed out faster, or even better, before it hits live servers.
The community is also far more involved in these matter and give a lot better feedback than in the past.

And by the way, the first patch to buff / nerf certain specs in Wotlk happened ~3 months after release (3.0.8).
Just to provide some comparison.

[prwraith]

ILet me be clear, 99% of the player base, including both of us, are not good enough for the few percentage points in balance to matter. You would be vastly better served by just playing better on live instead of complaining about it here.

That's a bad mindset, you are assuming that people don't want to be optimal. Or worse they shouldn't want to be.

[Doffen]

You'd expect that these sort of issues get sorted out as time goes on, because the tools, understanding and capabilities of developers improve.
I'm willing to let Wotlk slide because it was the first time they introduced a new class and sped up combat quite a bit in comparison to Classic / TBC.

Now, a decade later, this excuse no longer flies, there must be a point where the devs get this shit ironed out faster, or even better, before it hits live servers.
The community is also far more involved in these matter and give a lot better feedback than in the past.

And by the way, the first patch to buff / nerf certain specs in Wotlk happened ~3 months after release (3.0.8).
Just to provide some comparison.

Can't disagree with that

[Gorsameth]

That's a bad mindset, you are assuming that people don't want to be optimal. Or worse they shouldn't want to be.

Most people don't want to be optimal. I thought that was common knowledge?

Have you ever done LFR? look at that and tell me its full of people who want to play optimally and do the best they can.

It's like the often brought idea that you can remove normal or Heroic raids because when confronted by a challenge people will rise to overcome it. Except for all of Blizzard's data showing that most don't, they simply quit.

[LostLocket]

agreed to an extent. the borrowed power and literal endless farms hard their charm in Legion and overstayed it's welcome in BFA. But having no grinds at all is also problematic, as wow is designed with grinding to a reasonable extent in mind. The problem is that the current devs seem to have forgotten that the grinds should be manageable, the players don't need a game which is a literal chore list to work off as an engagement metrics lure. I wish the devs could go back a bit in design philosophy and let the quality of the gameplay and lore be good enough.

I feel like grinds should be in place more for non ce players then for those pushing the hardest content. I think it is fine to have a mythic item you can spend weeks working towards as a long term goal. I am not alright with that item being some kind of addition outside of the normal gearing system and unobtainable from anyway besides that set one.

[Jastall]

One tier set doesn’t make your class. It simply doesn’t. Being overpowered because of one bonus doesn’t make your class as it can easily be fixed or removed and not much does change (not even the ones you mentioned). Artifacts, Azerite and Covenants ARE your entire class for the duration of the expansion. They are so complex and interwoven that you cannot remove them without drastically changing your class or gameplay. That has never been the case with any tier set. They might have made classes incredibly strong due to an overpowered bonus, but no class gameplay ever relied completely on that tier set.

It’s basically two/three tier set bonuses vs. Soulbinds+Conduits+Covenant Skills / Azerite traits+Essences(+Corruption). There is not even a comparison to the amount of useless complexity added by the latter systems compared to the first (plus how big of a part they are of class development).

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you sleep at night. Remove a really powerful tier set and your class's rotation, stat priority, talent changes and supporting items can be completely up-ended; how that's not an incredibly impactful effect? Hell, nerf one item (Draught of Souls to use the quickest example that comes to my mind, or Unerring Vision of Lei Shen back in Mists for Demo) and you can change a playstyle completely. Using Legion again, some specs used Convergence of Fates, a Nighthold trinket, literally until the BfA pre-patch, it basically replaced Anger Management for Warriors and not having one meant gimping yourself and sometimes missing crucial burst windows. But these things surely aren't borrowed power *scare chord* because reasons.

You're wrong; whenever you accept it or not makes little difference to me. Now, you can say that AP and corruption and such are too man-hour intensive for both Blizzard and the players to be worth it, or some other argument against their omnipresence, and I think there's a much more interesting debate to be had there. But to think that tier sets, alongside powerful trinkets or old school legendaries, didn't drastically affect both balance and playstyles previously is rote ignorance and nothing else.

[Boo Radley]

If you know math thats up to MoP, not included. I could have said 6 years but Cata had it as well. MoP was better than the other ones for the most part. I did not say 6 to 10 years.

Its not a big claim, if anything that was me being gentle. Are you going to say stuff was balanced in vanilla/tbc/wotlk and cata? Now thats a big claim, because it was not.

You are talking about certain corruptions and legendaries being unbalanced, I talk about classes in general vs each other.



Lets pretend vanillla/tbc/wotlk and cata were balanced. Periods of imbalance is what we have these days, aka last few years. Again, its not a claim. People who played back then know how screwed class balance were.

The discussion was how someone claims that borrowed powered breaks or makes classes. When tier sets have done that since forever. Then when we talk about balance, classes was less balanced before overall.

"People who played back then know"

Hi, I played back then. A lot. Thanks for trying to assert authority with yourself as the arbiter of what actually happened, instead of just acknowledging it as your opinion.

[Doffen]

"People who played back then know"

Hi, I played back then. A lot. Thanks for trying to assert authority with yourself as the arbiter of what actually happened, instead of just acknowledging it as your opinion.

Yeah, no, thats a fact, not my opinion. You maybe think vanilla and TBC was balanced or? WotLK was a bit better, but still had huge differences. Its not a opinion, thats just how it was.

If you think vanilla/tbc/wotlk and to some extent Cata was balanced, now thats an opinion. Its widely known as not.

[LostLocket]

Yeah, no, thats a fact, not my opinion. You maybe think vanilla and TBC was balanced or? WotLK was a bit better, but still had huge differences. Its not a opinion, thats just how it was.

If you think vanilla/tbc/wotlk and to some extent Cata was balanced, now thats an opinion. Its widely known as not.

Right... but you didn't see the same class and same spec have 20-40% difference in performance. Maybe you can argue early leggo legendary items if someone had just awful rng but that was considered so terrible blizzard fixed it.

[Doffen]

Right... but you didn't see the same class and same spec have 20-40% difference in performance. Maybe you can argue early leggo legendary items if someone had just awful rng but that was considered so terrible blizzard fixed it.

That is true, and it needed fixing. But that wasn't really the discussion. Well not what I talked about anyway, I might have misunderstood the others.

[keldarepewpew]

Remember folks. We forfeit a new playable class because they would be too busy "fixing classes."

Thats nonsense the community loves to parrot. Alot of idiots saying something doesnt make it true.

[orsraunia]

IMHO this is the problem with Ion and why he needs to go. Over promising and under delivering constantly . Ever since he has taken over they keep trying to re-invet the wheel with ever more complicated systems that just dont pan out.

At least he's playing the game, heh. Do you honestly think we'll get someone better if he goes and thuis get a better game, or are you just venting?

[LostLocket]

That is true, and it needed fixing. But that wasn't really the discussion. Well not what I talked about anyway, I might have misunderstood the others.

I mean... when people are talking about balance saying the game was never balanced isn't exactly productive. I notice this a lot with the forums people seem to pick a side and then come hell or high water they commit to it rather then the spirit of what is actually being discussed.

No one expects perfect balance but having the same class same spec same talents doing massively different outputs is going to be a shit show and I don't really understand the desire to split hairs about that.

[Zenfoldor]

What if perfect balance was boring, and they figured out how to achieve it a long time ago, but discovered that it hurt the game in some way and now they always have a cycle for tuning?

Does it make sense that they Blizzard couldn't balance their classes even after they have live logs? Isn't is strange that occasionally they can appear so obtuse to clear balance issues, and then revert their stance suddenly and without warning? Isn't it strange that so many fans feel they could repair the balance issues themselves with a few small changes?

What if nerfs and buffs were a feature, not a bug?

What if fotm wasn't an organic community creation, but a benevolent plan, designed to give players incentive to try other classes and create passion over the game, while warding off apathy?

Would the game really be as fun without nerf/buff drama?

lol anyway, no this conspiracy theory isn't true. It's just interesting to ask the questions. They try to balance it the best they can. I suspect that sometimes it is a much lower priority for them than it is for players. I bet the balance teams hate damage meters and logging, lol. The reason things aren't perfectly balanced is because it is a work in progress, always, and also because it is impossible to do, it is also a lower priority than we realize, and finally most of it is or will be actually balanced pretty well soon enough. We just demand perfection.

[Doffen]

I mean... when people are talking about balance saying the game was never balanced isn't exactly productive. I notice this a lot with the forums people seem to pick a side and then come hell or high water they commit to it rather then the spirit of what is actually being discussed.

No one expects perfect balance but having the same class same spec same talents doing massively different outputs is going to be a shit show and I don't really understand the desire to split hairs about that.

You are right, on many accounts. I was merely talking about classes vs classes, like mage vs boomkin, or shaman vs rogues.

Corruption is something I didn't like at all, and 8.3 is the patch I have played the least the last 5 years. I even removed it from my gear when I subbed again 4 weeks ago and it feels so good that I do most of the damage. I liked artifact weapon the best of all of the rental powers because that was a class thing, and the weapons were pretty well balanced, both within the class and vs other classes.

What if perfect balance was boring, and they figured out how to achieve it a long time ago, but discovered that it hurt the game in some way and now they always have a cycle for tuning?

Does it make sense that they Blizzard couldn't balance their classes even after they have live logs? Isn't is strange that occasionally they can appear so obtuse to clear balance issues, and then revert their stance suddenly and without warning? Isn't it strange that so many fans feel they could repair the balance issues themselves with a few small changes?

What if nerfs and buffs were a feature, not a bug?

What if fotm wasn't an organic community creation, but a benevolent plan, designed to give players incentive to try other classes and create passion over the game, while warding off apathy?

Would the game really be as fun without nerf/buff drama?

lol anyway, no this conspiracy theory isn't true. It's just interesting to ask the questions. They try to balance it the best they can. I suspect that sometimes it is a much lower priority for them than it is for players. I bet the balance teams hate damage meters and logging, lol. The reason things aren't perfectly balanced is because it is a work in progress, always, and also because it is impossible to do, it is also a lower priority than we realize, and finally most of it is or will be actually balanced pretty well soon enough. We just demand perfection.

I agree with this, well the essence(pun) of it. I don't want perfect balance personally, I find the game more interesting that way. I have played mostly average or underperforming specs through my time in WoW and find it extremely satisfying to perform well on those.

My kind of perfect balance is where the balance isn't perfect lol. I think blizzard try to keep it balanced though, but I don't think its their top priority. It shouldn't either, gameplay should be. I know there are issues on the beta atm, and I know it will be a rollercoaster at the start and that blizzard really should be better at this. But I guess that is a sign that having optimal balance isn't their first thought in line when getting an expansion ready.

I'll see your disappointment in class balancing, and raise you with disappointment in class design.

I'd take shit balance if my class was at least fun. There's always SOMETHING my class can bring...

I'll check on that and do my secret nod which is very telling, but it gets the point across.

:P