Incredibly disappointed with class balancing so far

[Great Destiny Man]

I just want to say one thing.

Do you guys remember when Holinka became leader of the class dev team, and right before blizzcon announcement of Shadowlands, he posted the following:

''We cannot wait to show you our work at blizzcon. All of the team has been doing excellent work, and I am especially proud of the work my own division has been doing. Look forward to what you will see tomorrow'' or something along those lines. I cannot find it in his twitter, as this seems like a scam now, and he must have deleted it.

That literally is just standard dev spiel that you get on any game ever developed. That's as much a "scam" as someone at E3 saying "I'm extremely proud of what our team have accomplished". In the gaming world it's one of the most generic sentences you can come out with.

But well, he was basically advertising and hyping people over classes changes, and we saw minimal shit throughout Alpha/Beta. If anything, I was expecting them to do a MoP-esque rework, to bring us back to the golden era of class design, and I was even more hopeful of that since they decided to not make a new class. Turns out it was all lies and smokes. As always Blizzard. Instead of actually making classes fun, they focus on making a retarded system like covenants work. Actual idiots.

Personally I'd say it was pretty clear even in Blizzcon it was never going to be a significant rollback to older iterations, just meeting halfway with returning some flavour from the old days. I agree that class design isn't where I'd like it to be, but then again I never had high expectations either.

[Nyel]

So they just went an entire week without any mentionable class or balancing updates, they just did some minor adjustments and bug fixes. What are they, hibernating before launch?

[Soluna]

That literally is just standard dev spiel that you get on any game ever developed. That's as much a "scam" as someone at E3 saying "I'm extremely proud of what our team have accomplished". In the gaming world it's one of the most generic sentences you can come out with.



Personally I'd say it was pretty clear even in Blizzcon it was never going to be a significant rollback to older iterations, just meeting halfway with returning some flavour from the old days. I agree that class design isn't where I'd like it to be, but then again I never had high expectations either.

You are very right on all your points. I just feel like at this point, blizzard would stop lying to our face. It just makes it feel like everything that comes out of their mouth can't be good, and that there is always a damn catch. If I wasn't playing for friends, I'd have quit the game a long time ago.

[Toybox]

Class balancing is nigh on impossible without these systems, but with multiple of these systems in play, it's not only impossible, but it's impossible to get them close... Well, unless the outcome is nerfing absolutely everything to the point where you don't actually want/need to use it, but then what's the point in having it? Just don't go into PvE or PvP content next tier expecting any sort of tight balance - it's not going to happen.

[Soluna]

So they just went an entire week without any mentionable class or balancing updates, they just did some minor adjustments and bug fixes. What are they, hibernating before launch?

Honestly if you've played beta extensively you'd see that every dungeon is filled with bugs, world quests are buggy, torghast is buggy, everything is literally buggy. They have to choose between either doing class changes, or polishing up this messy turd. Shadowlands could have been an amazing expansion... if it had 4-5 more months in beta, but they won't do that cause $$$$$$$$$.

[Pawpurr]

tldr OP hasn't played beta and has strong opinions about patch notes

[music49]

Normally I would disagree and respond something like "It's just beta, they'll get to it" yet here we are months in with pre-patch just around the corner and launch 5 weeks out gets me worried too.

However, talking to people that are smarter than me, blizzard gets WAY more information and feedback in one day of pre-patch than they do in all of beta testing simply due to the number of people. So all I can say is keep giving your feedback on they classes/specs you enjoy and be constructive about it, not "this sucks".

So yes I am worried about the little tuning that has been done, but there is still hope

[Anchorite]

I'm not talking about numbers really more so mechanics, and stuff which makes it feel exciting and new not like you are just playing the same class you did for the last 2 years or more.
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I would prefer that the classes I play feel broadly the same between expansions though, so the idea that they should add a few abilities(which necessitates taking others away) is a bad idea.

- - - Updated - - -

Normally I would disagree and respond something like "It's just beta, they'll get to it" yet here we are months in with pre-patch just around the corner and launch 5 weeks out gets me worried too.

However, talking to people that are smarter than me, blizzard gets WAY more information and feedback in one day of pre-patch than they do in all of beta testing simply due to the number of people. So all I can say is keep giving your feedback on they classes/specs you enjoy and be constructive about it, not "this sucks".

So yes I am worried about the little tuning that has been done, but there is still hope

Because of exactly the reasons you listed the pre-patch is usually a mess balance wise, there just aren't enough people in the beta and once they start seeing live data they can make better adjustments.

[music49]

Because of exactly the reasons you listed the pre-patch is usually a mess balance wise, there just aren't enough people in the beta and once they start seeing live data they can make better adjustments.

Yup, it still blow my mind how many people play wow and don't use third party websites to get information. Or even follow general news about wow. There is two very different communities in wow. One being us, speculating, complaining, and min maxing every aspect of the game. And the other being the majority of the player base who log in and go "that looks fun, ill do that today"

[Soluna]

tldr OP hasn't played beta and has strong opinions about patch notes

I've been playing beta since the second week of its release after it exited Alpha, and I share the same opinion more or less. I don't personally think that it's only the same classes who get tuning, but the tuning and class changes we get is garbage.

Have you even played beta yourself? Anyone who has played beta is extremely worried about the launch state of shadowlands. Do you live under a rock or something?

[Mafic]

It is obvious they will farm the live client of metrics to balance classes and specs. I said as much many times there are not enough people testing in the beta.

So expect to see major changes to classes post launch along with covenants, soul binds and conduits. This will happen obviously before the new season starts but afterwards who knows?

[Soluna]

Normally I would disagree and respond something like "It's just beta, they'll get to it" yet here we are months in with pre-patch just around the corner and launch 5 weeks out gets me worried too.

However, talking to people that are smarter than me, blizzard gets WAY more information and feedback in one day of pre-patch than they do in all of beta testing simply due to the number of people. So all I can say is keep giving your feedback on they classes/specs you enjoy and be constructive about it, not "this sucks".

So yes I am worried about the little tuning that has been done, but there is still hope

In my opinion that's completely irrelevant, as usually the community is right from beta. They were with classes that had problems, systems like azerite and corruptions, and they will be about covenants, and class tuning/design for shadowlands.

Blizzard actually invites all the people who are credible when it comes to testing, and there are players who are literally the top of every class/spec in there, and know exactly what problems the classes have, or what nerfs are necessary (same with buffs). Bringing random andys from live version to give feedback won't change anything, as these people generally do not think further than 'let's check icy veins/my class discord to see how to play my class and just say it sucks cause other ppl say it sucks'.

And this is not even the correct way to play, as guides like that are not fight specific, and usually there are many different things to take into account for certain fights that only studying logs can answer or creative thinking, or experience. All we will get when shadowlands releases on live servers is that instead of the smart people saying 'X or Y is wrong', we will have both smart people who know how to test, and the hundreds of thousands of sheep just parroting that the class doesn't feel right.

[Thrillhouse918]

I really tried to be optimistic and give the devs the benefit of the doubt. But after getting beta access yesterday and rolling druid the differences are night and day. As Balance I barely live against one target, let alone two. In feral spec, killing a mob was a joke even if I don't use procs on insta-cast Regrowth. This is with the 'starter' gear you get when you roll a toon. Once I upgraded to the honor gear and crafted a legendary, Balance became reasonable, but feral, in general, was still stronger. While I can understand that tuning still needs to happen, having such a discrepancy in power even make it to test servers is brutal. This is more than a simple tuning pass in some cases. Balance's Eclipse system is clunky at base and needs modification. There has been a ton of iteration and feedback on both the Druid Discord and the forums. Like usual, the cries of the masses are ignored. We deserve better with barely a month left til launch and even less before pre-patch.

[Anchorite]

I've been playing beta since the second week of its release after it exited Alpha, and I share the same opinion more or less. I don't personally think that it's only the same classes who get tuning, but the tuning and class changes we get is garbage.

Have you even played beta yourself? Anyone who has played beta is extremely worried about the launch state of shadowlands. Do you live under a rock or something?

I've played Beta, I'm not too worried about Balance.

Let me be clear, 99% of the player base, including both of us, are not good enough for the few percentage points in balance to matter. You would be vastly better served by just playing better on live instead of complaining about it here.

Here's an example: Holy Priest is one of the weakest healer specs in the game for M+ and my 1600 io doesn't even get me into the top ten on my server because all the top 5 are over 2k, so it's hard to believe that those players are massively hamstrung

[Harbour]

I am afraid they actually decided that current balancing is "fine enough" and just roll out release like this.

Which is terrible.

Let me be clear, 99% of the player base, including both of us, are not good enough for the few percentage points in balance to matter.

Thats illogical statement. Bad player with good spec will still do better than bad player with weak spec. The percentage difference will be kept.

[Soluna]

I've played Beta, I'm not too worried about Balance.

Let me be clear, 99% of the player base, including both of us, are not good enough for the few percentage points in balance to matter. You would be vastly better served by just playing better on live instead of complaining about it here.

Here's an example: Holy Priest is one of the weakest healer specs in the game for M+ and my 1600 io doesn't even get me into the top ten on my server because all the top 5 are over 2k, so it's hard to believe that those players are massively hamstrung

A bold assumption for you to make. I've personally done many 99 logs on my warlock since Antorus and 3 rank ones, and I think that I can play my class optimally on mythic for it to actually matter. If you cannot perform your basic rotation perfectly with some mythic mechanics thrown at you (aside from exceptionally rare mechanic combos that you are not used to it due to too little experience on a specific boss), then you are either not a good player on many levels.

There are other variables of course depending on the class, but I've played at a good level and this matters enough for me where even 3-4% difference is important. I don't expect balance or class design to be top notch, but I also don't want it to be as shitty as it is at the moment. Not sure why you used a capital later to say 'balance', but I am not talking about the moonkin spec, if that's what you refer to.

As for your rio thing, props to you for admitting you are not perfect, and I don't think I am either, but I am far above your lower than average 1.6k score m+ player (Imo at least everything on +15 is borderline average at this point in the patch), and I play at a level high enough for this to matter.

Aside from all this, a person who performs bad, will still perform better with the right spec/covenant/conduits than the person who is just as bad performance wise, but is playing the wrong spec/covenant/conduits. It's literally like you are trying to say that 1+1 does not equal 2.

You might think that I am an elitist, or the mean '1%', but you made it all about this by trying to say that I am bad enough for tuning not to matter.

[VinceVega]

Why does BlizZard make it harder for themselves when it comes to class balance? Balance the classes, the specs and even racials. Then worry about adding fun borrowed power.

Borrowed power can not patch in the problems with classes, specs and racials.

Borrowed power can however fuck up the original balance if the borrowed power is class overarching.

E.g: You soulbond gives you x% of haste extra on top. class1 does not need haste. class2 profits GREATLY from it. Nerf it you nerf it for class1 even more. Buff it class 2 gets even stronger

[vashe9]

Remember folks. We forfeit a new playable class because they would be too busy "fixing classes."

There are enough classes/spec, they can't even balance them now... We don't need one extra broken class

[Velerios]

There are enough classes/spec, they can't even balance them now... We don't need one extra broken class

Exactly because of your argument we actually need another class: if they can't balance them even now, why then bother? Just give us more fun playable classes! Balancing later is easier when they have more numbers than trying it now again and again and again. I rather have more classes than the perfect pvp balance.

[A Chozo]

If we reach the first week of Castle Nathria and you are still "incredibly disappointed", then you should totally unsub.