Arcane torrent needed nerf but shadowmeld is fine??

[Terracresta]

So even top M+ players think that Shadowmeld can't make enough of a difference to ultimately matter? Why are people complaining then?

Because they love to whine. "Oh, once in 15 years shadowmeld is useful for more than saving repairs costs in a scenario the vast majority of players doesn't give a fuck about? NERF IT!"

[Mixxy]

This might go in the "niche" reasoning, but let's not forget that Arcane Torrent was also very strong with just one Blood Elf. You didn't need to stack it to make it useful. In order for Shadowmeld to be overpowered (according to the OP) you need to have it on everyone (or everyone who's not a rogue). It's actually kind of interesting if you think about it. It's either overpowered if taken by everyone or meh if a single person doesn't.

That's a pretty good point, too. Shadowmeld is only really useful if you co-ordinate around it.

And using it locks your group out of using any non-nelf classes. So if you really wanted to balance against Shadowmeld, then just give strong M+ tools to Warlocks, Pallies and Shamans.

Hell, maybe we'd actually see more class diversity in high Keystones that way.

[Renixis]

This might go in the "niche" reasoning, but let's not forget that Arcane Torrent was also very strong with just one Blood Elf. You didn't need to stack it to make it useful. In order for Shadowmeld to be overpowered (according to the OP) you need to have it on everyone (or everyone who's not a rogue). It's actually kind of interesting if you think about it. It's either overpowered if taken by everyone or meh if a single person doesn't.

That's literally in my second paragraph of what you quoted but yes, arcane torrent is far more forgiving and convenient in that way.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

No, nerfing something because it is gamebreaking to m+ whether the average player chooses to use it or not. It'd be a good start to have racials removed from MDI, but that doesn't change the fact that its too OP for a racial ability in m+.

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To be fair, you said "nerfing something for MDI" he presented you an example of them nerfing something for MDI. If it needs nerfed it needs nerfed, whether its for M+, pvp, raids, and whether its a trinket, racial, class ability, etc.

*Nerfing a racial or huge aspect to the game***************** is that better?

Gamebreaking? Who says it is gamebreaking? You?

As others have said, the two racials you are comparing aren't really comparable. One is only "gamebreaking" in a very specific scenario, the other is more than useful all the time.

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The fact that far less players in the game play alliance isn't a valid reason to let a racial ability that is clearly OP in m+ and MDI stay OP. My original complaint was for MDI because thats where it has effected me as a viewer of something Blizzard wants to push as an Esport. Other people in this forum have brought up many other circumstances that make it OP in m+ in regular gameplay, if watching MDI isn't your cup of tea. It is due for a change, maybe arcane torrent wasn't THEE BEST example, but it was an example of a racial being OP for m+ and dungeon design that was nerfed. I could have simply put "shadowmeld could use a nerf" as title, which I guess I should have cause everyone likes to bring up the fact that more people play BE than NE as if thats a reason for an OP ability not receiving a nerf.

No, its not clearly - its your biased opinion.

Player ratios matter - they lend information on how strong racials are.

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Buffing dozens of racials doesn't change the fact that shadowmeld single handedly cheeses end-game content. On top of that, buffing that many racials could cause more balance issues while...again it doesn't solve the fact that shadowmeld hardcore cheeses end-game content.

No, it does not. If it was so strong, we would have seen a massive influx of NE players... alas...

[DotEleven]

Which is not a problem in my eye. Rogues/hunters/deathrun can already do that.

Stacking such an ability so you can use it mutliple times is the issue. If it has no shared CD, there is no punishment for it.
If there is a shared CD, it becomes a tactical decision, which makes it more interesting than 'everyone just be a Night Elf period'.

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Being a Rogue doesn't matter, Shadowmeld and Vanish have separate CD's, so it's like an extra Vanish. That's the problem.

Well, being a rogue does matter if you want to be a non-night elf was the thing. If you had say a Dwarf Paladin, having 4 other Night elves with Shadowmeld would be basically useless because you'd have one person not able to drop combat.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

horde is a better faction for raiding,

Oh, okay. Thank you.

[Garymorilix]

Well, being a rogue does matter if you want to be a non-night elf was the thing. If you had say a Dwarf Paladin, having 4 other Night elves with Shadowmeld would be basically useless because you'd have one person not able to drop combat.

Not at all, you can always just rez that one person. Or 4 people.

It's not like you can't use it on one person only. Idk where u got that from.

[Marrilaife]

Disable racials in MDI, problem solved.

Arcane Torrent was problematic not only in m+ but also in pvp where you could lock down a healer for much longer than intended with just class abilties (like stuns and interrupts) with weaving arcane torrents between cc. And if you say "oh it's only once every 2 mins" that's how arenas were rolling, everyone waited 2-3 mins for cds and then go ham, if attempt failed, back to turtling. One reason why they added cast time to warstomp, and then for some reason let arcane torrent and the hmt bull rush be instant. Btw arcane torrent back in the days of tbc wasn't an aoe silence. No idea why they had to buff a racial of already over represented race.

[Gladeheart]

Looking at Raider.io, the majority of keys on the leaderboard are completed by Horde teams. Now I know that not everyone uses Raider.io, but I'd say it's still indicative of Shadowmeld not being nearly as mandatory nor gamebreaking or whatever term you want to use as it's being made out to be.

The MDI is its own little bubble because you're actively racing against another team; on live you can still comfortably complete a high key in time with some wipes, bad pulls, dumb deaths etc. If Shadowmeld was as crazy overpowered as it's being made out to be then I would expect everyone who is pushing very high keys to be rerolling to Alliance, but they're not, they're doing keys as Horde races and still absolutely smashing it because you can just invis pot or death skip instead. Meld is useful, sure, but as others have said it doesn't always work out and you can't have every class being a Nelf anyway

So sure, nerf it in the MDI or whatever if you think it's an issue but I doubt it'll change that much

[js3915]

How does shadowmeld harm your play OP? You're free to roll it if you want to. Instead of asking for nerfs ask for free faction changes. That is about the only way as the racial balance is actually pretty good infact probably favors alliance slightly.

Reason guilds arent changing back is the cost involved.

[DotEleven]

Not at all, you can always just rez that one person. Or 4 people.

It's not like you can't use it on one person only. Idk where u got that from.

Great, and in doing so, you've cost your team time. 5 seconds for every death and the about 10 second resurrection time. Plus whatever kinds of pots/buffs they gotta reapply.

But yeah, totally no big deal.

[Kithelle]

You ask about someone being intentionally ignorant, yet claim everybody is still maining a blood elf on horde (they aren't btw, only about 1/3 are belves) while implying it's because of the racial. Can you not understand that they could be belves because it's the only option for dh and was one of *2* options horde were allowed for paladin until less than a year ago (something that despite it's lore backing, alliance players still cried about), 2 classes that make up nearly half of the belf population?

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Which potion let's you pull mobs for 20-30 seconds, get to a safe spot, then drop combat? I need to get some of those for when meld is on CD.

Who needs to pull mobs when you can just stealth around them? But yeah...lets bitch and get something nerfed because we're jealous little babies because our precious got nerfed. God forbid your pretty little Elves lost a little power....oh no how will you ever live?

[Nadiru]

Alliance racials are being made better and allowed to stay good in order to preserve what little high-skill community exists on Alliance, for both PvP and PvE, full stop. And since the factional disparity between raiding, pvp, and M+ communities are still obnoxiously large, it's likely that not only will we see few changes for Alliance racials, we'll see further nerfs to Horde racials.

[Zequill]

And it will be op from +18...+24...+n. The higher the key the more ridiculous it is that it can completely trivialize large portions of dungeons..

No, because at this point and until you get to the next respawn point, you cannot wipe or be unable to rez someone or you just screw yourself with that skip. In higher key, this might happen. In the aoe fest that is MDI, you are safe to skip whenever you want without fear of wiping.

While removing a OP absorb shield or any other strong buff also scale very well with key without any drawback.

Shadowmelt is a gamble, just like any rogue skip. Arcane Torrent is way too useful ability, comparing to other racial.

[Kithelle]

The really funny thing is people actually think there are groups of players playing Nelves for anything other than these competitions, like they'd actually give up their superior racials or pay for constant race changes just to finish their M+'s a little faster.

[Nadiru]

The really funny thing is people actually think there are groups of players playing Nelves for anything other than these competitions, like they'd actually give up their superior racials or pay for constant race changes just to finish their M+'s a little faster.

If that's really the case, I would expect further kneecaps to Horde racials.

[Trend]

So even top M+ players think that Shadowmeld can't make enough of a difference to ultimately matter? Why are people complaining then?

The progression focus is for raiding, not mythic+. The raids are what require the critical mass in the faction for recruitment purposes. Since a good chunk of the best players are Horde for raiding for the reasons Jdbob described, of course normal keystone boards are going to tend to be dominated by Horde. I think that the imbalance is unfortunate, but that is a separate topic than the MDI issue this thread is about.

I don't really give a shit because I rarely watch MDI's anyway, but if you refuse to acknowledge that it is kind of dumb that pretty much every run is full NE (that it is that imbalanced that there really isn't even a choice to be made), then I don't know what to tell you. I feel like you're trying to be dense.

[CasualGaming]

First off, let me get this one straight: I don't care whether alliance or horde racials are Op, if they are OP i have a problem with it.

You are clearly biased towards alliance side.

Horde racials being stronger for PvE is not a thing for many years now. This argument holds zero relevance toward this topic at all.
Arcane Torrent was OP for a very long time, and I was one of the people saying it should be nerfed. It was.

There is a huge problem with Shadowmelf in MDI because MDI (as you said so) is there to entertain. Shadowmeld cheeses a fundamental part of an M+ run, and if that's the go-to strategy every single time then the show loses entertainment value.
Look at cheese tactics in MOBA games and how fast they are fixed once they start ruining the entertainment on a championship level. Exact same situation.
Problem is, M+ in its current form is here to stay. So Blizz can't just adapt the whole M+ system to one racial, guess what needs to be addressed then.

Raiding has little to no relevance to this topic, but let's see: The big guilds operate at least 4-5 characters per person. That's why Limit went back to horde, they didn't transfer every single one of their characters, just the main ones at that time.
Racial difference in power in current wow is non-existent. The reason why Limit and Method and other big guild are Horde is because: They like that more, and it gives them better recruitment scene. NOT because alliance racials are so garbage that they wouldn't be able to raid. Don't mistake the lack of big Alliance pve guilds to alliance being objectively worse. No correlation there.

You also have to handle last bosses of a raid and M+ differently. Yes, the troll passive was good for Jaina but that's one encounter in one tier and it's a minor passive.
If a boss had a massive raidwide stun on a frequent basis everyone would be orc.
If a boss had a massive raidwide bleed everyone would be Dark iron.
If a boss required constant underwater movement (with no buff like in EP) everyone would be Kul Tiran.
Etc etc etc
These only matter ofc if said bosses are the last bosses in a raid (nobody would care to race change to the first bosses of any raid).
And even then, Trolls didn't trivilize the Jaina encounter. They didn't teleport to the ice arena or anything. It was just very slighty better.
This type of advantage is on the encounter designers, not the class/race balance team.

The problem with Shadowmeld is that the M+ scene won't change. Jaina is a last tier boss now, no-one cares about that. Hell, no-one cared about it after the world first either. Shadowmeld's power will stay because no matter what affix blizz comes up with in 8.3, it won't affect Shadowmeld's ability to trivialize trash packs.

Saying that there is invis potions or shroud or whatever doesn't address the problem either. They are there, and then there is Shadowmeld ON TOP of them. They are not mutually exclusive. If they were (like Shadowmeld shared a cooldown with shroud and invis potions) that would actually solve the problem pretty good imo.
I'd suggest that as a solution, now that I think about it. It's already the case with undead/human racials.

And yes, subtlety rogues WERE deleted (in PvE at least). Tell me when was the last time you saw a sub rogue in any PvE content that required actual group effort.
I can tell you when I did, it was 2018 November. I haven't seen a single sub rogue since then, and I play 3 characters actievely, doing +10 and higher keys and heroic raids every single week.

Shadowmeld doesn't have to be 'really good' anywhere. Like any other racial. Or tell me where Cannibalize, Haymaker, Rocket Jump, Blood Fury, War Stomp, Escape Artist or literally any other active racial is 'really good' to the point that they single handedly cheese end-game content.

It took you a while but you finally, thankfully, realized Shadowmeld only matters in MDI and it's usage inside retail wow is limited, thank you.
As to all the other points you're making, it's got nothing to do with this, and I don't have a point with Shadowmeld in MDI at all, if you watch MDI you will also see that, yes it's good, but also very easy to fck up, as multiple times, less competent people mess it up and either die or wipe the grp due to not properly using Shadowmeld.

As to raids, well you obviously don't get how big the raiding scene is and the money in it now, more and more top guilds are sponsored, literally earning more and more money on this, and the "world first (inset new raid tier)", and since there's continously new raid tiers, it's an endless cycle, and horde racials, however you wanna argue it, have more power and more impact on the raiding scene and current wow.

And about rogues, well shit, they have 3 speccs, there's 36 speccs in the entire game, newsflash, they can't all be balanced, and yes, poor subt rogue, when's the last time you've seen a feral kitty in any kind of competetive scene, and I mean regularly, not 1 out of a 1000.

And good for you, doing +10 keys and heroic raids, not to burst your bubble, but why does racials in the game even matter to you at that level of play? Until +15, numbers are hardly of matter, it's about mechanics and execution, yeah numbers slowly matter at 13+, but, hardly.
Get voice, somewhat competent people and boom, clearing +10 timed is a children's walk, can be done with people around 400ilvl and lower.

And to return to it, yes Shadowmeld is strong in MDI, but not to the point it has to be taken, and it doesn't affect retail wow at all, just entertainement value, and I like to see, especially cause it's not foolproof, many ppl fck it up!

[Malikath]

what? breaking several end-of-tier boss-fights wasn't enough?

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If that's really the case, I would expect further kneecaps to Horde racials.

good, they've been overpowered since vanilla.

[munkeyinorbit]

Sounds like OP is bored of Classic already. Until an ability is abused by a large number of people it is fine.