Developer Watercooler - Battle for Azeroth Class Design Overview

[Xetenor]

People made some very good observations here about how we went into legion and how we are going into BFA. IMO I too think this is most likely a disaster waiting to happen with more class stacking and more specs being benched. Man do I miss the way classes/raids were in MOP and WOD. Still think I enjoyed the classes and raids bit more in MOP.

[Toxuvox]

@Aggrophobic......Thats a fair few assumption there dude. There are loads of folks that find HC interesting. Not everyone clears HC the first night it's up. Raid bosses can be memorable for a variety of reasons, some game related, some personal. Most of the folks I've encountered, both on forums and in game, have had a pretty positive experience with raiding in Legion....some more so than in any of the previous expansions. You make the mistake of stating each of your opinions as if they are universal fact, and are somehow perturbed when folks share a conflicting opinion. As for your disdain for Legion, I think you belong to a very vocal minority. Personally, I've enjoyed it alot. M+, Raiding, a smattering of PvP, and some pretty cool story telling aspects have made it a definite improvement over WoD in my opinion. It didn't get everything right mind you.

[odiasuda]

Are they saying Survival will have even more buttons to push?

[oathy]

So my take on this.. for destruct locks.
We get the chance to get Shadow burn back? and CATA.
things we had a few expansions ago, The talents are so messed up its unreal.

[Aggrophobic]

@Aggrophobic......Thats a fair few assumption there dude. There are loads of folks that find HC interesting. Not everyone clears HC the first night it's up. Raid bosses can be memorable for a variety of reasons, some game related, some personal. Most of the folks I've encountered, both on forums and in game, have had a pretty positive experience with raiding in Legion....some more so than in any of the previous expansions. You make the mistake of stating each of your opinions as if they are universal fact, and are somehow perturbed when folks share a conflicting opinion. As for your disdain for Legion, I think you belong to a very vocal minority. Personally, I've enjoyed it alot. M+, Raiding, a smattering of PvP, and some pretty cool story telling aspects have made it a definite improvement over WoD in my opinion. It didn't get everything right mind you.

They are just my opinions, of course they are. Different people like different things.
Me and most of the people I play with are not all that happy with how Legion turned out though. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that Legions raiding was better than WoDs but whatever.

I do not belive I belong to a minority as raiding, across the board has been going down this expansion (you can look up clears and such to get an idea about that one) and the overall attitude among raiders seems to be very, very negative.

[Ezyah]

so much text to say nothing

[Tiwack]

I get their intentions, and I understand that it's a positive message to people because of course everyone thinks THEIR class is going to be so much better. But that's not a practicable reality. The trend towards homogenization is taking place FOR A REASON - people don't want to feel left out because their respective class "strength" doesn't happen to line up with what they're trying to do right now. It's the whole "wheelchair" meme all over again, and ToS is perhaps the biggest warning post we can put up against what happens when specialization runs out of control. See how many people appreciated the class stacking and class prejudice that happened there? Do you really want more of that? Because trust me, people will be SO quick to jump on it, 5% DPS difference is enough for them to cry "useless!" or "OP!" let alone more. And you can cry all you want that people are being unreasonable - at the end of the day, they're the players, and they will never be REASONABLE about it because PEOPLE aren't reasonable. Your class design isn't going to change human nature on the internet.

Accurate - but it's easier to stomach when you're helping buff the raid with the stuff unique to your spec than it is to be benched for the classes that are powerhouse fotm completely on their own because perfect balance will always be impossible. CoE duty sucked because your dmg compared to others was often shit but you also knew that single curse debuff more than made up for it the same way a shadow priest knew they were invaluable to spellcaster mana and in rare cases healing as well.

[Biomega]

Accurate - but it's easier to stomach when you're helping buff the raid with the stuff unique to your spec than it is to be benched for the classes that are powerhouse fotm completely on their own because perfect balance will always be impossible. CoE duty sucked because your dmg compared to others was often shit but you also knew that single curse debuff more than made up for it the same way a shadow priest knew they were invaluable to spellcaster mana and in rare cases healing as well.

True, but that's assuming the case of your class strength fitting the demands of the fight.

What if it doesn't, though. What if you bring, idk, reduced magic damage taken - and the fight is literally all about physical damage with 0 magic? Just a random example.

Now, there's two ways this can go: either your buff is nice but not too relevant to the point where it plays no role in any decision making and is just some random perk; or the buff is so good people will stack classes because of it, and consequently those that do NOT bring it will lose spots. I don't see a middle ground, really, not the way people tend to go about these things.

[Marrilaife]

Accurate - but it's easier to stomach when you're helping buff the raid with the stuff unique to your spec than it is to be benched for the classes that are powerhouse fotm completely on their own because perfect balance will always be impossible.

The biggest question is how wide is gonna be the disparity between perfect setup and "bad" setup. From my experience, there are 2 types of mythic guilds - the hardcore (or wannabe hardcore) ones that have long bench, split alts and luxury to class stack, and those who don't - in the second category there are many guilds where people are still fairly skilled, but they don't have time to take the game so hardcore, maintain alts etc. So the question is, how much the second type of guilds is gonna be punished, because outside of top 50 they're the majority of mythic guilds. Things like pre-nerf mythic Avatar without 4 rogues or current coven without tons of multidotters / ranged is SIGNIFICANT difficulty increase just because you have a variety of classes but not the luxury to swap in extras of x type.

Because of class and raid design nowadays even some guild around world 300-400 rank ask applicants / members to maintain 1+ alt for splits. This is really not what Blizzard wanted to encourage - they said openly they're against split runs, they just don't know how to nerf it to not harm the rest of the playerbase. I know many people who despise having to maintain alts, but they're fairly good players on their main. These people will have it harder and harder to find successful guilds and actually raid (instead of bench sitting if huge roster is the only alternative).

I know mythic raiding is a niche, but if we take people inside that niche, is it really worth harming 80% of them to satisfy the 20% who is all the jazz about 40 man rosters, several alts for splits and so forth?

In casual play you might not be concerned about that, but you'd notice other things. For example, vast class changes in Cata occurred to ensure no class is crap to level (adding self sustain to classes that lacked it like rogue or warrior), classes have plenty of cc for Cata-specific dungeons design (it was nerfed later, but the original concept required people to have tools for it... RIP bind elemental), dps specs have appropriate aoe tools and so forth. Do we really want to go back to "diversity" where some classes are notoriously a pita to play in levelling or dungeons? We can already see among casuals easy to level classes are more popular like hunters, all plate, druids, while less easy to level rogues, mages, priests etc. have lower representation.

[berdrek]

finally class uniqueness is back as design mentality, long gone are the horrendous days of ghostcrawlers bring the player not the class horse crap

[sorakibr]

so TL/DR

1. there will be a lot more class stacking and or classes not able to be brought to boss A, C, F, and H because we need this or that ability...but class fantasy

2. making talents less cookie cutter AOE/ST...I welcome them to give it their best.

3. we gated some specs behind the level of their artifact...oops

[Taeldorian]

Ehm... Legion is by far the worst expansion we've had though. With way more RNG than we ever had, poor content and horrible, just horrible raids (the part I prefer the most in WoW). Wrath actually had a good reward system and when it comes to design in every other aspec MoP was the best expansion so far with parts of Cata being really great as well.

You got it wrong though. They said nothing but used a lot of words to do so. The only thing you can actually take from that text is that they will focus less on balance. There is nothing else there.

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That is pretty much the tl;dr, yeap.

Yeah everything your saying is opinion not fact. If you can’t even understand something that simple there’s no reason to continue the conversation.

Yes the RNG with legion is terrible but the systems that it brought (M+, scaling, the best version of dailies,AP, artifact weapons) make up for it. The RNG drags it down but the new systems make it fun. Wrath’s reward system was awful in a different way. The raids were bad for the most part I agree and I wish they’d remove TF or at the very least cap Titanforging because it’s causing all kinds of balancing issues.

MOP was very good I agree. Stayed subbed for the entire expac just like I have with legion. The endless grind of dailies was garbage but the raids were good, reward system was good, there was a cap on warforged gear and a great legendary questline as well as good class design. Legion is just as good in other ways like M+, Artifacts, zone scaling was great, etc.

Either way you’re free to have your own opinions. I think MoP, legion and Wrath are the best 3 expacs we’ve had. You can think otherwise that’s fine but I believe BFA has the potential to be better than both MoP and legion. Need to see where everything goes and when the alpha (or beta?) opens up we’ll start to see what’s up.

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They say that everytime they are about to make a new expansion and even after screwups in major patches so nothing new here really.

Yeah I agree with that. Will see where it goes.

[Weeps]

If only they'd bring back the WoD CoP Shadow Priest I'd un-retire her.

I enjoyed CoP a lot. Just want it to be a class that people WANT in their raid/m+

[Ellerain]

TLDR: we fucked up on class design and are gonna revert back to the way it used to be.

TLDR: we fucked up on class design and are gonna fuck it up even more.
fixed that for you

Nothing could be scarier than this talk about 'differentiation' because I already know how it will go: some randomly selected subset of classes/specs being OP while others get a 'strong utility' that does not matter in the real content. Then blizz will sit on their asses for a major patch or two. Here's hoping I will guess right on what is OP judging from the beta.

[IKT]

Come on lads, it was near perfect in MoP just make it go back to that

Agreed, prot warrior and arms warrior were amazing in mop.

WoD was a kick in the face and legion hasn't been much of an improvement.

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I think MoP, legion and Wrath are the best 3 expacs we’ve had.

I agree with you, class abilities are in really bad shape for me as a prot war and I've bitched about this since the wod prepatch came out.

I find myself yawning playing anything other than high intensity raids, and the raids this expansion have been horrible but the systems they've implemented this expansion have been great. M+ and world quests etc have been great

[jontunnel130]

So has anyone went through these changes in their wow playing days.

Newb, completely green. Reads a blue post and takes them for every word

Been playing for a year and have a great understanding of a few classes. begins to post on forums. Begins to question blue posts sincerity

5 year vet Having mastered your mains class and maybe a few others along with a stable of competent alts: Completely ignores Blue posts for what they are now. Apologies written in completely PC form while also threading in excuses for a certain design flaw, major or not. And most importantly never acknowledging that they done fucked up and should/will not re-introduce said implementation again. Soo you created in the gaming sense a Jar-Jar Binx....own it. Just dont repeat your mistakes

10 year vet. Completely jaded from lack of authenticity of blue posts begins to find immense amusement from reading them, almost as much as their favorite book. Completely revels in the contradiction and misinformation that they think the reader is completely oblivious to.

[Alkizon]

I think you completely missed what I meant in my post.

I didn't mean entire message, just noted this little moment. And then write a bit in general regarding news. I didn't have any special complaints for the rest of the message

[Aggrophobic]

Yeah everything your saying is opinion not fact. If you can’t even understand something that simple there’s no reason to continue the conversation.

Yes the RNG with legion is terrible but the systems that it brought (M+, scaling, the best version of dailies,AP, artifact weapons) make up for it. The RNG drags it down but the new systems make it fun. Wrath’s reward system was awful in a different way. The raids were bad for the most part I agree and I wish they’d remove TF or at the very least cap Titanforging because it’s causing all kinds of balancing issues.

MOP was very good I agree. Stayed subbed for the entire expac just like I have with legion. The endless grind of dailies was garbage but the raids were good, reward system was good, there was a cap on warforged gear and a great legendary questline as well as good class design. Legion is just as good in other ways like M+, Artifacts, zone scaling was great, etc.

Either way you’re free to have your own opinions. I think MoP, legion and Wrath are the best 3 expacs we’ve had. You can think otherwise that’s fine but I believe BFA has the potential to be better than both MoP and legion. Need to see where everything goes and when the alpha (or beta?) opens up we’ll start to see what’s up.

I never said it was anything else.
M+, WQs and artifacts are also part of why the game is worse now. None of thoes add anything positive to the game.

[GreenJesus]

I never said it was anything else.
M+, WQs and artifacts are also part of why the game is worse now. None of thoes add anything positive to the game.

Well that is your opinion. I think mythic+ was the single greatest thing they have ever done for the game.

[Taeldorian]

I never said it was anything else.
M+, WQs and artifacts are also part of why the game is worse now. None of thoes add anything positive to the game.

M+ imo is the best thing added to the game since vanilla. It’s one reason I’d barely want to play on classic realms. It’s extremely fun to push high keys and make timers.

Artifacts add a new way to progress your character. Powering up your weapon with AP and unlocking new traits/skills along the way was very interesting. They did mess it up in the beginning but it got much better after 7.2.

WQs are a much better version of dailies and can even be applied throughout the entire world.

I’m not sure what you enjoy from the game if none of those things are a positive to you. Did you like the hard dungeons in BC? High M+ can be even harder especially with certain affixes.

I get that you don’t like all the RNG. I don’t either, however there was a ton of it present in the past too. The gearing system was more linear and less RNG yeah but the legendaries were still very much RNG in vanilla and BC. Azerite Armor could potentially be a much better gearing system than we’ve seen in the game to date but who knows yet.