Heavens. Ok then. You are in one of the top guild in the world. There are 10th of thousands of raiding guilds. And you are in the top 150?
If you want to play the spec that is bad for that expansion... well... sucks. But that is the way it is. But instead of you joining a guild that is maybe not top 150 to play your spec you rather fuck up the game to fit your need?
But no matte what i think: They will NEVER change that.
Most casuals i know actually do not care about their damage.
Also casuals are not really being gatekeeped. They just don't really have the time/ambition/interest in doing the difficult part.
I don't see how completly destroying every difficult part in the game to suit your need helps the game overall.
If you don't make the game ridicoulusly easy the same casuals won't be able to get into the same dungeons. Becuase there will be something else people use as a metric to invite people. Third Party most likely. Like a raider.io on roids.
Freaking gatekeeping myth. No one is gatekeeping anyone. They are keeping themselves back. You can play your own group. You can invest time to get better.
If you don't you are gatekeeping yourself. You can play survival. You can form you own group. You don't have to. If you do it will take longer because you delibaertly choose a spec in a bad state. But you are the one making that choice not me.
If you would be in my guild i would take you with me. If your guild doesn't. Well... your choice again.
Stop trying to delete a complete part of the game many people enjoy to appease people who don't even take part in that part of the game and don't need to. There aren't even special appearances anymore in the higher diffiulties. Another tint. That is it
problem with uniqueness is if its too OP or too important to counter certain bosses. if a class is really strong at a certain type of dps or ability, and a boss encounter is designed for that, all top guilds will stack those classes and trivialize a boss that lower tier guilds will struggle with. or a boss will be close to impossible without a certain class, like mythic blast furnace which was IMPOSSIBLE without a priest with mindcontrol.
or if a boss is a dps race, but billy demonhunter doesnt show up to raid with his magic dmg debuff, the raid is cancelled because it will be a waste of time to even try.
dont get me wrong, i like class uniqueness, but it cant be too unique, but if it is, it cant be too important.
Exactly the same reason, why so many players are against covenants. Class choice shouldn't affect your ability to do certain content. For example class X is strong in PVP, but weak in outdoor. Or class Y is strong against single target, but has weak AOE. Class should be about fantasy and may be playstyle. Base tools should be the same.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
I think you have it the wrong way. You need not unprune classes you need to prune classes to achieve the distinguished gameplay you want. The problem with that is, that this does not work with mythic raids or m+. With a classic-esque class design, all besides mage/wl would be entirely useless in m+.
I don't think LFG is gatekeeping. People in LFG have to play with other people they don't know. So they have to go on what they see. I don't know you. You play survival. I don't take you. Unless you have like a 5000 raider.io rating.
With that logic everything but instant invite is gatekeeping. So no Queues to queue. You put your key in and get 4 people you have to play with. Then gatekeeping is no more.
For me there is no gatekeeping as long as i can play it with someone. I can play it with my guild.
because people will complain its not balanced
IE covanents right now
Believe it or not, no - not EVERYONE, but i would say that the majoirty of players do care to some extent about their performance. However when i used to do some LFR, over half the group didnt have any interest in their performance, only the cool loot they could get. Thats just lfr obviously, but "its just lfr" was their catch phrase.
Becouse its done for sake of balance and compettive part of game and yes it bad they followed this path with rpg game.
The support niche had no vision, it was essentially applying buffs and being useless otherwise. They couldnt make that 'role' appealing without making it required.
There is a very good reason those failed experiments died out.
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The problem is when unique identity infringes on power. I dont think blizz balances utility well for dps specs, but that would be a great area to explore unique identities and flavor without infringing on power (which, due to the nature of this game, shouldnt be infringed on)
IMO hybrids should be encouraged to off heal, plate dps should be holding aggro alongside the tank, and pure dps classes should have utility explored in other areas to match.
Expanding the power budget of utility could afford classes/specs so much more flavor that cannot be expressed through power, and that is where unique flavor can really come into play without making a spec overpowered.
Neither Ret, Enhance or Elemental were useless in TBC, they could still dish out decent damage.
The difference is simply that they didn't have the flexibility that Mages or Warlocks had, which was trade off.
It had a vision, that was the class identity, every Paladin or Shaman brought useful buffs to the table, regardless of spec.
And on a personal note as Shaman player, Blizzard has still failed to implement any solid "class fantasy" for Shaman since then, hence all three spec seriously struggle the second their throughput is not borderline OP.
The primary reason was that Blizzard went way too far with the spec / group specific utility in TBC which then enforced a tight setup with little room for flexibility.
Needing five Shaman on 25 People because of Bloodlust and Totems was a tad too extreme.
That's why Blizzard made a complete 180°, not because it was fundamentally flawed.
This is pretty insane since mythic+ should not be about AOE.
We even have affixes like bursting that encourages single target dps.
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The reason is that a part of the playerbase view this fantasy mmorpg like a competition like DOTA or CS:Go.
This game arent built with the intent of competitive play because even when you pick a class at level 1 you have an uneven playingfield.
The same people dont want uniqueness. They want the only factor that makes them different to another player is their skill at the game.
Just look how the tone of these people have changed the last 5 years. There used to never be any issue about RNG before. People was usually happy if a guilde got a huge rare 2 handed weapon from the last boss and he would suddenly do 20 percent more damage.
Now they play for ego and cant stand someone else having an advantage over them and they have no means to reduce the difference.
Its all about dps and hps output. Tanks used to be kings at positioning and tactical thinking and bulding threat. Now even tanks mostly think about their damage.
If you dont do the same amount of dps as another specc you are considered not viable by these people even though you excel at the more important stuff like mechanics and teamwork.
Its a very sad state for the game and it would require a lot of hard work from Blizzard keep the game alive for the majority of the playerbase while battling this mindset.
Personally I think Blizzard should make the game as entertaining and meaningful as possible for the most amount of people and these people could stop playing the game entirely.
The game was vastly different back in those days, it wasnt nearly as competitive as it is now. particularly looking at raids and how quickly those old raids were beaten when wow classic was released (molten core was finished by raiding groups while leveling) so the bar for 'useful' was set rather low.
In todays more competitive environment, classes that performed significantly lower than their peers would be considered 'useless', so while in tbc they werent considered useless, if the design philosophy of that time was brought forward and applied to todays game, those specs would be considered useless outside of their buffs.
So the balancing concern becomes: are the buffs enough to justify the dead weight? if the answer is yes, then they are required for raid content, if not then they are rejected.
The game as it is played today is more competitive between players who are trying to output the most dps, thats actually pretty healthy as far as the game goes and puts emphasis on performance, if support classes are not designed with that in mind then they will break down the integrity of the game. It would feel pretty crappy to be getting close to top spot on dps only for the shaman to buff your competitor who then stomps you. If a support unit has buffs, then they must be for everyone, single target buffs dont belong in this game anymore (we are seeing the return of some support skills in shadowlands, i suspect they will either be so weak they arent worth mentioning or players will complain about them).
Basically there are 2 things that happen in this game, and everything else feeds into these 2 things: damage dealt and damage taken. DPS focus on damage dealt and that is a sacred competition between competing players. Tanks and healers deal with damage taken. Support cant mess with the 'damage dealt' side of things or the dps competition gets broken, so it instead needs to focus on damage taken, which outside of healing or tanking doesnt leave much room, certainly not enough for a new role.
DPS is by far the most popular role in the game, this is accomodated in raids that require more than double the other classes in dps. I think if they were to bring back 'support' it would simply be utility to deal with damage taken given to damage dealing classes. Healers and tanks are already 'support' in some regard.
The problem is mostly due to Blizzard vastly oversimplifying and streamlining everything in the implementation of DnD to an MMO.
It is the reason for the half baked talent trees that were a problem from the very beginning.
It is the reason for PVP being an afterthought since launch.
But don't get me wrong, WOW, with its more simplified and streamlined DnD elements was still the juggernaut of MMOs.
There are plenty of ways to bring uniqueness to the game based on class fantasy and other games have done that by branching off from the DnD ruleset. But Blizzard has distilled that rule set for the original game and streamlined it even more since then which has the game where it is today. In DnD the combinations of abilities are basically based on the trinity of Tank, Healer and DPS but that doesnt work in an MMO. You need more than warriors, priests and wizards as classes. So the normal way of expanding on the ruleset and providing uniqueness involves other factors. That would typically be cast time of spells, where longer cast normally implies stronger spell, then there is the resource utilization (ie. mana). Another one is mitigation, as in how each class is able to counter certain types of damage (aka resists from vanilla). And we could go on and include things like consumable items (ammo, shards, etc).
Those factors play into both how character classes work but also how PVE opponents work.
That has also been streamlined in WOW where most trash mobs are literally simple tank and spank fests with no variety in composition.
Almost all of these things have been removed from the game and therefore made the uniqueness factor irrelevant.
As a run and gun game, the only thing that matters for every class is DPS or HPS and all the other things have been sidelined.
This goes along with the mentality of making the game more like Diablo which emphasizes speed over strategy and class composition.
Last edited by InfiniteCharger; 2020-09-24 at 04:35 PM.