Originally Posted by
Biomega
Of course they make mistakes and are sometimes slow to react, but it's also a bit of an impossible puzzle.
Between raid, dungeon, and pvp, balancing everything to within a few % of each other is nigh-on impossible. There's too many moving parts, too many variables involved. Some things scale like shit, others take off like rockets; some things bomb in single target but are OP in AoE. And so on. Getting it all to fit together so that everyone is satisfied is FAR more complicated than the randos crying "lmao just buff everything by 20% what's the matter with you Blizz" would like to believe.
One of the prime examples is Shadow Priest. It's a class that historically bounced between useless and overpowered probably more than any other spec - not because Blizzard hates Shadow Priests (because who doesn't), but because the mechanics of the class simply put it into a position where it can so very easily go wrong. Making the spec competitive on single-target without making it completely insane on cleave is tricky enough; also making it work in dungeons is almost impossible with tuning alone. The class would need a fundamental redesign first.
I'm not saying they got it all down as best as they could - far from it. But tuning can only do so much in a world of interlocking and interconnected systems that get a scaling reset every few months. They backed themselves into a corner here; we'll have to see if the new talent system in DF helps them get themselves out of it.