Ion wants to improve class representation in M+

[Seramore]

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

You're delusional if you think the meta is a non-issue right now.

Spoiler: Just because keys are fine with most comps doesn't mean that there isn't an issue with the meta classes/specs right now.

[Raikh]

Insanely funny thing to state, when current MDI meta is worse and even less diverse than in the last MDI of legion. And even that one was terrible with roughly a third of all specs being represented and a few choices being only preference and being eventually outclassed or highly dungeon specific picks.

Despite them managing to remove the threat of unavoidable oneshot level damage which means that being insanely powerful on the defensive side is no longer a strict requirement the dungeons of BfA are structurally alone sooo much worse than legions.

Its quite astonishing how they managed to make dungeons, entirely designed with m+ in mind so much more ill-fitted for m+ than those who might not have been designed as much around it in legion.

If they want class and spec diversity in m+ then they first need to actually start tuning more. It was never their thing to put numbers together past a certain point where it makes me wonder if they have calculators or if they jsut use insanely bad metrics for any sort of meta development (aka not relying on data where 90% of people push the wrong buttons and balance around that)

Second they need dungeons which actually allow different strategies to enable more niches. If dungeons boil down to a decorated straight hallway with trash being unskippable and jsut ligned up, ofc rogues with enablign skips are going to be emta as long as they are not completely dead dps wise. If all is jsut an AOE fiesta, ofc the AOE classes, especially those with mass AoE and burst AOE capabilities are going to be there. If you need shit tons of CC ofc those classes that have it are meta and so on and so forth. Unless you can decide for specific routes of pretty much entirely different trash packs ranging from mass AoE to more light cleave and ST oriented packs of bigger singular mobs so you can build comps around certain paths or your path around your comp there will always be low idversity because there will always be something the best at beating that one path.

Third. They actually need to give a fuck about spec kits. Some classes have too much, others too little. I personally enjoy powerplay so I dont think we should just take stuff away from the top for the sake of making the poor specs look better. Give people tools to make themselves shine. Give everyone something that is useful to have. CLass buffs and specific healers having specifc dispels is at this point just poor. This is no MOBA where you cna switch characters on a game to game basis. WoW has a lot of commitment to a character and its outright degnerate to try to push people into a very specifc role and then procceed to make eahc role exist ina dungeon so that every spec has a dungeon where its useful. Thats artifical diversity and doesnt contribute anything to the individuals palying the game and basically is just playing statistics.

They have given so little about how the game plays in BfA (even in legion it was already insanely messy) and are suddenly wondering why their features fail. I will gladly follow a carrot on a stick but only as long as there is a path to drag the carriage along and not when in front of me is a fucking cliff because they couldnt be bothered to build the bridge.

[Trend]

The only way I can think of to force representation would be to only allow players to do X dungeons with a certain class or spec with a reset every N dungeons. I actually think it would be amazing to see these teams have to play 'bad' specs and unusual comps but there is no way it's going to happen.

A slightly less crazy but still completely impossible solution would be to have a fantasy-league like point system where each spec has a point value based on a compilation of all the qualifying runs and the total of the 5 players has to remain under a certain amount. I would enjoy watching that too ... "so you want 2 rogues, well looks like you can't have a war tank or druid healer now so good luck!" The strategy of picking specs to optimize individual player skill would be fascinating, but like I said, this is not going to happen.

Without some overhanded manipulation to force players off the optimal specs and comps nothing is going to change IMO.

[Gasparde]

They'll give Shroud a 30 minute CD and call it a day.

[Kithelle]

Bullshit....if he gave a fuck he would have bothered to put work into classes.

[Cwimge]

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.

Nerfs to existing "good" classes. +10 performance will replace pvp performance as the metric by witch sweeping 66.6% damage reductions are meted out

[Uko]

An easy way to bring more class variety would be to add skips that require underrepresented classes in the dungeons. Kind of like how toldagor has all the gates a rogue can pick lock or blacksmith keys. Its nice flavor to the dungeon and can be used to give people a reason to bring classes that aren't that meta.

[Th3Scourge]

You're delusional if you think the meta is a non-issue right now.

Spoiler: Just because keys are fine with most comps doesn't mean that there isn't an issue with the meta classes/specs right now.

Of course there's a meta, but this has no bearing on keys below 18-20 other than community perception

[Ange]

Kind of like how toldagor has all the gates a rogue can pick lock or blacksmith keys.

Imagine Tol Dagor for a second, without the exploit of 30 second Tricks on canons with Rogues. How can a Lockpick dungeon, with fixed shroud skips (100%+) even containt this kind of exploitation, it cancels out every affix and trivialize most reaping packs @Canons and most trash-% @Canons.

The current M+ balancing reminds me to not give to much credits to this minigames in WoW.
PvP allready died for me with the MONTHS of MMR-exploits (good old 5500 MMR RU players autoleaving for wintrading). Most 2.7k+ achievements are from this timeframe, at least its a great way to identify exploiters.

I will just treat M+ as I treat PvP, if it gives me a usefull chest/gear for minimal time investment, I will participate, if not I will just skip it and smile about new players beeing PROUD of their pvp/r.io achievements.

[Kumorii]

I don't see how they can do it. If they want specs to be different and have different strengths, that means some will be better for some affixes than others. It's just how you hings work. That combined with every spec should be viable at all times per demand by players just mean the current spec or class will rotate.

I hope they do stay true to their word because I personally don't care about everything being viable in all situations and I rather have specs being good at different things. That leads to more variation in gameplay and also I find it fun getting multiple sets.

[aeuhe4yxzhds]

almost like they added the % meter for a reason............... dot dot dot...dot...

[Gaidax]

You're delusional if you think the meta is a non-issue right now.

Spoiler: Just because keys are fine with most comps doesn't mean that there isn't an issue with the meta classes/specs right now.

Ehhh? It's definitely a non-issue for standard +10 runs and such.

Meta being an issue for more dedicated M+ players is not an issue that can be really solved - there will always be meta, no matter what they nerf or buff there will always be an optimal way to do various activities in WoW, especially for small group activities. At best Blizz can do what it does every time, whip out the nerfbat and go wild at the worst offenders.

Overall the question is how many players are really affected by this meta and my hunch is - not that many really.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

i don't like this. some mythic plus teams only play with their little 5 man team. nerfing some of those classes just for the sake of making + more inclusive sounds more like those 5 man teams are going to have to have 3 alts each.

i love my alts, but don't force them on people

[jccallah]

Rogue's problem isn't the utility which is best in the game. Its that Outlaw out dpses every class in the game by a mile in mythic +. Also you might say that they meta doesn't matter in low keys however it does to a certain extent. Taking a resto druid for example makes a dungeon so much easier than say a disc priest due to the limited amounts of brezes. I think that might be an issue blizzard needs to fix by adding battle rez to a couple other healers kits. If you did that I think you would see a lot more monks, priests, and pallys in the MDI.

[Todesbote]

What Ion said in the interview is just something he had to say to appease the crying masses who are upset that their class is underrepresented in M+. The harsh reality of M+ is that there will always be a combination of classes to fill the 5 available slots that will perform better than any other combination of classes. No matter how small the performance gab between the different class combinations is the best players will always flock to the strongest classes and the community will always over-exaggerate to this by claiming that those classes are the only viable option to play in M+. This has always been the case and nothing Ion does can resolve this. I'm also pretty sure that Ion knows this is true but he can't come out and say it because people would crucify him even more.

[Blackmist]

So we can either expect (a) a complete rebalancing of classes to make them all do comparable damage in M+ or (b) fiddly mechanics in certain dungeons that can only be effectively countered by one class when you go above about +10.

I'm going with (b).

[Trumpcat]

Not happening. The class weaknesses and strengths he is raving about doesn't exist. There are a few specs which are great in everything and a majority of specs which are mediocre or at best shine in a niche situation.

Whether it is an undying tank, a good everywhere dps or the healer you rather have in raid, m+ or pvp (everywhere), you know who they are. And if you don't then good for you, not playing content where strengths matter.

[Tiberria]

Rogue's problem isn't the utility which is best in the game. Its that Outlaw out dpses every class in the game by a mile in mythic +. Also you might say that they meta doesn't matter in low keys however it does to a certain extent. Taking a resto druid for example makes a dungeon so much easier than say a disc priest due to the limited amounts of brezes. I think that might be an issue blizzard needs to fix by adding battle rez to a couple other healers kits. If you did that I think you would see a lot more monks, priests, and pallys in the MDI.

I'm doubting that adding brezzes to more healers would do all that much, especially since the engineering brezz item exists already and can in theory let you run with no DK/Druid/Warlock if you wanted.

[Baleful]

Just make almost every pack to see through minor stealth, change shroud to only give minor stealth (pull distance reduced to something like 10-15 yd) and invis pots to give major stealth (invisible to almost anything except bosses/big guys packs). That alone would make the rogue much less desirable and dps variety would be a thing.

Healer wise, right now druid is dictated as meta because you are bringing no combat res if you don't have druid, balance is somewhat awful (shamans and hpriests are pretty much garbage at m+); but bringing a variety of different DPS can open up new spots for hpallys, discs and MWs (by bringing a DPS with combat ress).

Give every class a unique buff, so we have more cheesy and varied strats. I'm not up for vampiric aura meme levels, but dk's can pretty much offer 3-5% permanent leech and not be broken per se (healer-less runs should still be pretty much impossible), but help the healer to have more time to DPS. Druid could have mark of the wild back, bringing extra primary stat (STR/AGI/INT) and so on. That makes some classes and comps more desirable.

Tank-wise, which is my mainly played role, you should aim to nerf DHs and Warrior's dmg to a tank level, then give every tank a unique strong utility. Dks already have mass grip, Give Dhs no-CD purges (get rid of mass grip), warriors already have 10% extra ap, give druids mark of the wild and make trash to slow 35-50% on AoE, monks already have RoP, Paladins are already interrupt masters with BoP, LoH and HoF;lots of utility. That would make you to actually choose wich tank you want: need slows? take a durid. Need lots of purge? take a DH. Have almost everything? Take DK for grips or warrior for extra group damage. And so on.

[Jaigar]

Whats funny is with Prot Warriors, they made the same mistakes they undid with Fury and Arms warrior going from Legion to BfA. In Legion warrior was about stacking all your CDs for huge burst windows. Guess what they did for Prot? Added 2 azerite traits that reward stacking your CDs for damage. How does this happen? Do they not understand their own game?