1. #1

    Question Class balance - am I missing something here? Why is it still so bad?

    I've been wondering a while now about class balance - it's obviously not great at all, especially considering that range dominate in both raids and higher m+. Granted it has been worse at times, but its still a 20-30% or even bigger gap between the best and the worst depending on what area of the game you look at, and yes I understand that players flock to the fotm specs which widens the gap even more. I just don't understand why they just don't apply small tuning passes every week to try and nudge the specs closer together? What's the reason not to balance/tune more often? There is this argument that people have already chosen their mains for raiding, but I dont get how that would prevent Blizzard from just trying to, at least slowly, make the balance better? Like applying a 2% buff to some specs or spec abilities, then watching the logs etc next week how it plays out, then taking further action if needed the following week. I'm playing another MMO which manages to get the balance of classes within fewer than 10% of each other, with the lower third of classes having some utility/mobility/difficulty advantage in comparison to the top ones.

    Can someone enlighten me about this? Am I missing something? It's been frustrating me a while now, and I just don't understand why they dont do anything about the balance in a meaningful way. And balance matters, even if you're raiding sub-world 100 like I do. Even a world 600 guild would rather pick a class that performs better to make the fight easier, mythic plus too, in both the pug+team world.

  2. #2
    No
    There’s not a 20-30% gap
    Ranged don’t dominate
    Please play the mmo with better balancing

    WW monk is a melee and pretty strong To the point where people who don’t understand how gearing works will call them OP

    The 2% buffs that you speak of are being made weekly

    It’s almost like the expansion is still in the early days and a vast majority of players have a huge gap between them and those at the top with 30 more ilvl

  3. #3
    If I had to guess it's because they don't want to have to buff/nerf classes every week for the rest of time.

    That would be incredibly tedious for Blizzard, but it would also be really tedious for players having to check patch notes every Tuesday to see what classes got buffed and how.

    It's also just really not necessary at all. The number of people who do content difficult enough for stuff like that to matter is miniscule, and the people who do that content are more than willing to reroll to whatever they need to play in order to compete. So it ends up really not being a problem.

  4. #4
    It's a confluence of several factors. Adherence to class traditions/fantasy to the detriment of performance, PvP/PvE overlap and interference, scaling problems in the wake of the squish, and good old fashioned bad design, among others.

    Classes are in need of a serious overhaul, but that's hampered by some of the issues above; PvP/PvE interference especially is making it difficult to sustain some changes without serious ramifications in one or the other, but Blizzard seems hellbent on making sure that there is as little separation between PvP and PvE as possible so people can switch from one to the other with minimal effort (effectively increasing the overall content available to players, and thus the time they spend subbing).

    M+ is another factor that's caught somewhere in the middle, suffering from a lot of ramifications due to various different systems coming together more visibly in a small-group setting.

    Number tuning seems to still be out of whack a little, but it's only half the story. A lot of classes still have serious mechanical issues as well, or scaling problems that work against them. In M+ especially it's not just numbers that are a problem, but also utility skills, which are still abundant on some classes/specs but painfully absent on others (Demonology Warlock for example basically has no interrupt, outside of using actual CC).

    We'd need some serious retooling of some core mechanics to address this, and that STILL wouldn't touch on some systemic issues like the dearth of tanks/overabundance of DPS that is behind a lot of the issues with M+ groups and their focus on meta setups.

    I'd say they need to do three things to get things back in line:

    1. Separate PvP and PvE more
    2. Redesign talent trees to focus more on utility options so they're spread more evenly
    3. Add extra tank specs to existing classes

    Will they do any of those? I doubt it. And maybe there's other things they can do that I'm not thinking of that could help. Will they do those? Who knows. But they better do SOMETHING.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Rucati View Post
    If I had to guess it's because they don't want to have to buff/nerf classes every week for the rest of time.

    That would be incredibly tedious for Blizzard, but it would also be really tedious for players having to check patch notes every Tuesday to see what classes got buffed and how.

    It's also just really not necessary at all. The number of people who do content difficult enough for stuff like that to matter is miniscule, and the people who do that content are more than willing to reroll to whatever they need to play in order to compete. So it ends up really not being a problem.

    Actually, while I think that most peoples check the patch notes anyways, your second argument makes a lot of sense. The number of people for who it matters is indeed small, and alot of people just reroll

  6. #6
    The disparity is rarely as bad as the graphs make it look. What happens is 1 spec is ahead so most of the top players play that spec. That further skews the graphs to make it the disparity look worse than it is.

    It's why Blizzard has their own internal numbers and testing rather than relying on warcraftlogs for information.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Nelinrah View Post
    The disparity is rarely as bad as the graphs make it look. What happens is 1 spec is ahead so most of the top players play that spec. That further skews the graphs to make it the disparity look worse than it is.

    It's why Blizzard has their own internal numbers and testing rather than relying on warcraftlogs for information.
    What? No. This narrative is here for a long time but it is proven by freakin MATH that is false.
    Their own internal numbers are a JOKE, why is this even an argument? I can see that their "standard" builds are more-or-less the same, but the problem are god-tier specs, like fire mage, balance druid and unholy dk. They could easily tune week-by-week with small 2-3% nerfs to them, to make them in line, while buffing bottom feeders 2-3%. Per week, not per month, or per .x.5 patches.

    Yes, good players gravitate towards better specs - that's true, why wouldn't they? But at the rare times there WERE balance, there were a lot more variety in play even in WF raids, not to mention arena and M+.

    The real problem is that Blizzard has a strict "no meta change" policy nowadays. God-tier specs will be god-tier through all the expansion, and maybe some specs will catch up later with hotfixes.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Orwell7 View Post

    Yes, good players gravitate towards better specs - that's true, why wouldn't they? But at the rare times there WERE balance, there were a lot more variety in play even in WF raids, not to mention arena and M+.

    The real problem is that Blizzard has a strict "no meta change" policy nowadays. God-tier specs will be god-tier through all the expansion, and maybe some specs will catch up later with hotfixes.
    Yeah, I'm quite perplexed by this no meta change attitude, I remember even in Legion, there were like balance changes every other week. In bfa, not even the big patches brought any meaningful change.

    And I agree with your first point, wouldn't it be great to have more variety everywhere? I think alot of people would be excited about a more even spec balance. If you follow the world first race for example, or MDI, watchers and casters always get excited when someone brings an underused class, like for example that time when they brought in survival hunter for Azshara

  9. #9
    Its also because balance at the majority of players is pretty close and more comes purely to skill at class, than class picked. If you look at top performance levels from Mythic raiding for example, most of the top guilds will have players change specs for a small increase fight to fight, but they have the skill to pull that off also. The general player, will get more output from a sub par spec they enjoy and can do the rotation well, than playing the top spec but missing a rotation ability or similar.

    Also some people who show up on logs could be alts for split runs, where theyll play what they have the gear and knowledge to play (like a frost mage) as it might not really matter too much for the kills and their gear is likely below that of the mains who might be proper specced etc. This gives the impression the spec is worse than it is, and drags down the specs average.

    The different Ilvl brackets are also all over the place. Take Myth Castle right now, 218-220 ilvl Frost DK is the 3rd best spec overall for dps. At 221-223 they havent even parsed and down at 210ish range they are lower middle to bottom half the standings. Feral druid is number 1 in the 224-226 ilvl range right now and yet at 220 its middle of the pack (the ilvl most the top guilds are clearing Mythic at, at first).

  10. #10
    Class balance is probably the best it's ever been. And Blizz doesn't balance around the 95 percentile parse top item level player. Also achieving balance is literally impossible when you factor in that different classes perform differently in different gear and for different types of bossfights. Also Damage is not everything Blizz takes into account.
    Just look at the world first mythic rosters: Besides Rogue every class is present. Because they bring utility or buff/debuffs. And rogues are always present, if there are abilities to soak. The class as a whole needs some kind of rework though, because most of their abilities are super good in PvP, good in m+ and useless in Raids outside of soaking.

    The rest of the field is pretty fine. Also this matter literally does not matter if you don't raid at the very top, because other factors like movement, ability to do mechanics, coordination, gear and individual player skill are far more important than how your class compares to others. Only if your whole raid consists of 95 percentile raiders (in their "normal" spec) with adequate gear playing a fight perfectly and you still can't kill a boss without players switching off their class, then something is wrong.

    TBF: Blizz doesn't give a fuck about the epeen meter, just because some players whine when they are not at the top.

  11. #11
    Warcraftlogs show DPS as a net result after encounter mechanics. Balancing around a raid tier / mythic+ season week-to-week as the chart evolves sounds tedious to me. There are more to that in the game, and I trust Blizzard with their internal data. Some specs did get a flat % buff, meaning they do know what is going on.

    Personally, I do play the spec I like, and try to make it work. Playing Frost DK is fun, that's what matters the most.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Orwell7 View Post
    What? No. This narrative is here for a long time but it is proven by freakin MATH that is false.
    Their own internal numbers are a JOKE, why is this even an argument? I can see that their "standard" builds are more-or-less the same, but the problem are god-tier specs, like fire mage, balance druid and unholy dk. They could easily tune week-by-week with small 2-3% nerfs to them, to make them in line, while buffing bottom feeders 2-3%. Per week, not per month, or per .x.5 patches.

    Yes, good players gravitate towards better specs - that's true, why wouldn't they? But at the rare times there WERE balance, there were a lot more variety in play even in WF raids, not to mention arena and M+.

    The real problem is that Blizzard has a strict "no meta change" policy nowadays. God-tier specs will be god-tier through all the expansion, and maybe some specs will catch up later with hotfixes.
    Haha, no. There was always cries about THAT STUPID BLIZZ, WHY YOU DONT FIX YOUR GAME. From early BC i dont remember any time, when that illusion of BALANCE was in game. And to add that damn hypocrisy of forum bois and gurls, than we have what we have. Doing like 7% less damage comparing to top spec? Absolutely garbage, litterally 0 damage. Making like 2% dps more? FOTM, OP as hell etc.
    Especially considering that fights can favor specs more that actual tunning pass. You can play Fury warrior and deal 10% more dps that Arms, but when fight is about burst aoe or 2 target cleave - Arms will overdamage quite a bit. But in other boss there are some debuff to +damage once in 1 minute, and warriors have some 1.5 minutes CDs. So you suck in that fight, and some specs with 1minute bursts shine. And that is normal.

    And if they buff like 30% swings, like it was before - it will be cries about changing specs/conduits/legendaries to that specs. Like it was before. So devs accuratelly buffs really underperforming specs to be like 3-4% less dps than better one, so you can still do your job, but without feeling punished to not use FOTM setups. But no one will reroll to that spec, so it scew statistic even more.
    Last edited by Dancaris; 2021-01-13 at 11:53 AM.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by razorpax View Post
    No
    There’s not a 20-30% gap
    Ranged don’t dominate
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/26


    7 out of the top 10 are Ranged Specs.

    Ranged most definitely are dominating.


    Only Melee in top 10 are Windwalker, Unholy and Outlaw.

    Unholy and Windwalker deserve an expansion or 2 towards the top.

    Unholy and Windwalker were bottom feeders in Nyalotha, Eternal Palace and BoD.
    Last edited by AntenoraDK; 2021-01-13 at 11:56 AM.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Extai View Post
    I've been wondering a while now about class balance - it's obviously not great at all, especially considering that range dominate in both raids and higher m+. Granted it has been worse at times, but its still a 20-30% or even bigger gap between the best and the worst depending on what area of the game you look at, and yes I understand that players flock to the fotm specs which widens the gap even more. I just don't understand why they just don't apply small tuning passes every week to try and nudge the specs closer together? What's the reason not to balance/tune more often? There is this argument that people have already chosen their mains for raiding, but I dont get how that would prevent Blizzard from just trying to, at least slowly, make the balance better? Like applying a 2% buff to some specs or spec abilities, then watching the logs etc next week how it plays out, then taking further action if needed the following week. I'm playing another MMO which manages to get the balance of classes within fewer than 10% of each other, with the lower third of classes having some utility/mobility/difficulty advantage in comparison to the top ones.

    Can someone enlighten me about this? Am I missing something? It's been frustrating me a while now, and I just don't understand why they dont do anything about the balance in a meaningful way. And balance matters, even if you're raiding sub-world 100 like I do. Even a world 600 guild would rather pick a class that performs better to make the fight easier, mythic plus too, in both the pug+team world.
    M15s and above -
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...=15&dataset=95


  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by LordVargK View Post
    Class balance is probably the best it's ever been. And Blizz doesn't balance around the 95 percentile parse top item level player. Also achieving balance is literally impossible when you factor in that different classes perform differently in different gear and for different types of bossfights. Also Damage is not everything Blizz takes into account.
    Just look at the world first mythic rosters: Besides Rogue every class is present. Because they bring utility or buff/debuffs. And rogues are always present, if there are abilities to soak. The class as a whole needs some kind of rework though, because most of their abilities are super good in PvP, good in m+ and useless in Raids outside of soaking.

    The rest of the field is pretty fine. Also this matter literally does not matter if you don't raid at the very top, because other factors like movement, ability to do mechanics, coordination, gear and individual player skill are far more important than how your class compares to others. Only if your whole raid consists of 95 percentile raiders (in their "normal" spec) with adequate gear playing a fight perfectly and you still can't kill a boss without players switching off their class, then something is wrong.

    TBF: Blizz doesn't give a fuck about the epeen meter, just because some players whine when they are not at the top.
    "Class balance is probably the best it's ever been"?
    That might be the most silly thing I've read on MMO-C.

    Also, you're wrong.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by AntenoraDK View Post
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/26


    7 out of the top 10 are Ranged Specs.

    Ranged most definitely are dominating.


    Only Melee in top 10 are Windwalker, Unholy and Outlaw.

    Unholy and Windwalker deserve an expansion or 2 towards the top.

    Unholy and Windwalker were bottom feeders in Nyalotha, Eternal Palace and BoD.
    Of course they are. It's just better and easier to be at ranged when you don't have to care (as much) about how others move and such.
    Unless a melee does way, way more damage or brings a buff that is needed for the raid (or rather needed to buff all your ranged players), you always pick a ranged class for every situation.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by AntenoraDK View Post
    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/26


    7 out of the top 10 are Ranged Specs.

    Ranged most definitely are dominating.


    Only Melee in top 10 are Windwalker, Unholy and Outlaw.

    Unholy and Windwalker deserve an expansion or 2 towards the top.

    Unholy and Windwalker were bottom feeders in Nyalotha, Eternal Palace and BoD.
    1 BfA was garbage due to the systems in place
    2 WW scaling is a thing that will always explain the rank
    3 even just hopping down to heroic which is where 99% of players are you see an almost equal split

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