Ion wants to improve class representation in M+

[styil]

From the 'Buffed.de Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Patch 8.2' summary notes:

"The team wants to see more class representation in Mythic + and the MDI and will consider this when adding affixes in the future."

How exactly do you think Ion and his team will go about doing this? How long will it take before they actually start taking action to improve class representation? My guess is that they'll just slam the nerfhammer on the FOTM classes and call it a day rather than surgically repairing the underlying problems with the classes. The usual suspects will remain undesirable after all this and in 6 months they will tell us yet again about how they need to improve on class representation. In the meantime, the changes they make will wreak havoc throughout the rest of the game.

[Vapo]

adding stuff back to classes that allows them to do things would be a start. Would also like if they made dungeons more like legion than what they are now and hopefully the new affies arent more miserable than others atm there are no "fun" affixes, just bunch of less annoying ones.

[Jazzhands]

I think it's, well, more or less impossible while still keeping classes interesting and diverse. I mean, they aren't that now, and balance is still awful.

In the MDI, a .01 second difference is all you need to win, and in that type of situation, even a tiny, minuscule difference is enough to give an edge, so if a class is even slightly better, it's going to be what everyone uses. Every team runs the same dungeons in the MDI, right? So, at least per dungeon, the teams are basically going to be the exact same.

I think the community simply needs to accept the "perfect" balance simply isn't possible, and that at the highest level only a handful of things are ever going to be competitive, even a .1% difference is huge when you're coming down to potentially seconds. It's a good thing only a tiny portion of the community ever plays at that level, but at the same time tons of people like to pretend they do so, sucks for them I guess.

That being said, Blizzard does need to do something about the classes that are just shit in general for any M+. It's amazing to me how they sit around and let classes basically suffer, even a bandaid is better than months of nothing.

[Gaidax]

Sometimes nerfhammer is needed really. The whole stealth/skip meta needs to be made much less desirable or restricted to begin with and this would require nerfs short-term and more concrete changes to way M+ plays down the road like tuning enemy forces counter and adding more counters or checkpoints.

As a whole "checkpoint" packs could be an interesting idea to try out, where in addition to enemy forces, there would be minibosses which need to be killed too with like 5 minibosses in the dungeon placed in strategic points and you needing to kill 3-4 of them to complete the run.

- - - Updated - - -

adding stuff back to classes that allows them to do things would be a start

And get back to the time old complaint about how everyone can do everything and therefore don't feel unique? Nope.

[Seramore]

Ion: "We want to remove a lot of stuns and other repetitive abilities that classes share to add more uniqueness."
Players: Primarily brings classes that kept stuns and utility
Ion: *surprised pikachu face*

[Jaigar]

Once again its lip service. Talk is cheap, and I don't recall them ever balancing with M+ in mind. Certain damage models are always going to perform better in M+.

[A Chozo]

They could homogenize the classes more, granting more utility for everyone.

Of course, all the classes would feel the same, gameplay-wise...
...But they already do, even with all the prunning. Gather resource, speeeend resource.

[Erolian]

They could homogenize the classes more, granting more utility for everyone.

Of course, all the classes would feel the same, gameplay-wise...
...But they already do, even with all the prunning. Gather resource, speeeend resource.

I don't really find that to be a problem. Classes all being totally unique is an awesome concept and interesting in the abstract but in reality they just fail to balance and let some utility and burst aoe classes (one in particular has both haha) be powerful and useful and then let everyone else remain... not useful. Sure if you were on a tournament realm or had access to geared toons of every class it would be cool too. The reality though is that most players are only playing one or maybe a handful of classes and when their utility (if they even have useful utility) isn't needed you just do a basic output rotation and don't interact with your group. I would much rather have a homogenized ability that allowed me interact with my group and the npcs in most scenarios instead of waiting around for that one cool moment that I'm useful.

[Dakara]

You cannot balance 36 specs around content that requires 5 without dramatic homogenization. i.e. all DPS specs get the same utility or none.

Mythic + is simply destined to be an unbalanced mess. If they couldn't get it right with 10 man raids (hence Mythic being 20), they wont get it right with 5 mans.

[Daedius]

More homogenization!

[Aggrophobic]

They could homogenize the classes more, granting more utility for everyone.

Of course, all the classes would feel the same, gameplay-wise...
...But they already do, even with all the prunning. Gather resource, speeeend resource.

I don't know but Blizzard seemed to think that all classes were the same in MoP but I thought the class design was really good back then. Never had as much fun with the classes I play as I did in MoP.

So I don't see that as a big issue.

[Kokolums]

I've always said there is NO way for them to balance it intentionally and that the ONLY way to accomplish this in any real sense is for the game to auto balance by penalizing teams that are using race/specs that are too common. If Havoc is overly represented in the top M+ runs for that dungeon, then the game would autocorrect and future teams with a havoc get a time penalty for that dungeon.

[exochaft]

Removing war scrolls would be the first step.

I'd be happy if they went back to the model where you would have all buffs for the dungeon (I think it was in MoP with CM dungeons). Would probably kill the scroll market to some degree, but considering the state of professions as a whole, that's not saying much. If anything, I'd want the physical/magical damage taken debuffs to be an aura in the dungeons, since you cannot have scrolls for such things in any state.

[Varolyn]

Pruning would not be a viable solution here. Addition by subtraction won't turn out well with how class design is right now. If anything, just add some extra utility to classes that are lacking it rather than nerfing the strong. Sure, some overlap might happen, but what you have to realize that even if there is some ability overlap, each class would still bring something relatively unique to the table cause different classes handle situations differently.

[Varolyn]

Having played a guardian druid the past two expansions, ...yeah there's no evidence that they actually mean this.

Guardian druids were laughably op at the start of Legion, especially once we got a bit of gear. I was only running m+, and it was possible for me to (briefly) hit the armor cap in the first tier of Legion, while I could also give my group great mobility and do pretty good self healing, and I had a million cooldowns. I could kite easily.

Druids were actually significantly nerfed several times during legion because their mitigation scaled so stupidly that every time they released a new patch and item levels rose, they had to nerf druids again.

Then BFA hit. My magic absorb was gone. I had way fewer cds. My self healing was (tremendously) nerfed. I couldn't kite anymore. My threat was nerfed and I had trouble holding aggro. My speed boost was nerfed. I lost an interrupt.

After bears were super dominant in Legion, they are currently 4% of of +15 parses on warcraft logs, and warriors, who were garbage in legion, have 35%. This is after an 11% damage buff and adding a talent option that allows for (extremely limited, short duration) kiting - buffs that literally everyone immediately labelled as worthless.

I'm sorry man, either Blizzard isn't really trying to balance the classes, or they're just really, really stupid.

Perhaps blizz went too far in nerfing druids, but metas changing is something that is fairly common. If one spec remained top dog for the rest of the game, well it would get quite boring tbh. It's good to mix things up.

[f4ncybear]

There is no hope for designers that remove Shuriken Combo but add Keep Your Wits in the same patch.

[Charge me Doctor]

adding stuff back to classes that allows them to do things would be a start. Would also like if they made dungeons more like legion than what they are now and hopefully the new affies arent more miserable than others atm there are no "fun" affixes, just bunch of less annoying ones.

That appears to be the way we're going right now, since DPS values are somewhat equal on M+, everything goes down to best utility.

Affixes are meant to make a run different, and they do exactly that. By the way, having different runs through the same dungeon is definitely fun, since you won't get bored after doing same thing 20 times.

[capri sunset]

Once again its lip service. Talk is cheap, and I don't recall them ever balancing with M+ in mind. Certain damage models are always going to perform better in M+.

Balancing maybe not, but I think there has been a bit of a half-assed shift in design that we'll see more of. Thinking things like aoe sw:p and rip which I personally don't think should ever exist, and other talents that just by reading you can tell they were made for m+. Add on literally designing certain dungeons for shroud and other utility and now even an affix for enhancem... i mean unholy dks, they'd have to be unbelievably dense to not see these things coming. My question is do we really want this, knowing that it takes away from raiding? I'm betting opinions there are quite split.

[Charge me Doctor]

They could homogenize the classes more, granting more utility for everyone.

Of course, all the classes would feel the same, gameplay-wise...
...But they already do, even with all the prunning. Gather resource, speeeend resource.

Utility comes in different forms you know. Giving more utility doesn't specifically means giving everyone a 5 second stun.


It's surprising to me that people disregard "make more various affixes" options, that will give opportunity "to shine" to all classes and specs

[Th3Scourge]

MDI is a stupid metric to gauge class viability.

Anyone in their right mind, given access to any gear/class combination on a tournament round, is going to chose the classes that perform even 1% higher than the next. It's not rocket science.

This is a non-issue outside of competitive environments. anyone doing 20 keys can get away with not having a rogue, for example, because invis pots exist