TBC - PvP/Arena - Balance Changes to make more classes/specs viable?

[Sinraye]

*This thread is for discussing TBC Arena/PvP exclusively*

With classic TBC likely coming in the new few months I would like to see what the community's stance is on Arena/PvP, in particular if there should be any balance changes made throughout its lifespan.

To those of us who have played TBC, and/or private servers, know that certain classes are more competitive in Arena than others. Druid, Warrior, Rogue, Warlock, Priest and Mage all perform very well and have numerous comps to choose from. However there are three classes that fall behind abit, namely Paladin, Shaman and Hunter. I am not saying you won't see the three latter classes in Arena its just that they are not as good as the first 6 and may be limited in comp choices. E.g. hunter can go pretty far by playing cheese with double healer in 3's or resto druid in 2's by draining mana but otherwise are pretty limited. Now I am not sure if blizzard will release patches with balance changes exactly like back then or if they will use the 2.4.3 balance sheet throughout the entire expansion, but I personally think it will make the PvP scene a bit stale, especially if they do the latter approach. I like veriety and would love to see more classes/specs at the highest level of play.

I don't like nerfs, and I don't think anyone would accept nerfs to their informed choice of TBC class, but giving pvp buffs to struggling classes could in my opinion at least make arena more fun. I am not sure what these buffs would be but nonetheless, I would like to see them.

Below are some examples as I see them, though I am not exactly a professional balance changer.

Paladin:

Weakness: Almost all heals are hard cast, easy to counter.
Buff example: Give holy shock two charges, or a heal over time, or have CC's on paladin last 30% less.

Shaman (resto):
Weakness: Hard casts, no hard CC's beside earthshock, entire Earthshield dispellable with one dispel (has 6 charges)
Buff example: Earthshield dispelled per charge (incl spellsteal), small CC of some kind

Hunter:
Weakness: Squishy, difficulty to create distance, deadzone (until 2.3), limited CC
Buff example: Shoot traps like in retail (insta activated), or jumpback disengage (originally introduced in wotlk), deterrence (wotlk)
Nerf example: Nerf Viper Sting, to compensate for the buffs to allow hunter to play more than cheese comps at high tier.

Bonus:

Small buffs to retribution paladin and feral druids to make them more viable as these specs tend to be quite popular.


Don't focus too much on the buff examples I gave, it's more the idea of balance changes that I am interested to know if people are open to.

What are your opinions on PvP balance changes in TBC?

[Synical123]

Abso-freakin-lutely not my dude

This is not TBC+ or some random private server, I'm not a no-changes kind of guy, but something like pvp balance can fuck RIGHT off. Yes, there are some classes that dominate, just like there always will be. With the changes you're trying to make here, you're just trying to make a DIFFERENT class dominate instead of the other.

Tbc balance is SUPPOSE to be tbc balance. Adding something like "disengage" for hunters isn't a 'minor' or small thing. Mobility is suppose to be low in tbc for a reason.

[rogoth]

no, nein, niet, why is it every time something like a 'classic' version of a game is brought up there's always some muppet who wants to see his/her favourite class/spec playable when at the time they were trash tier and unplayable in most content in the game, i genuinely don't get it, either have it like it was or not at all, wish people would stop with this 'tweak here and tweak there' nonesense.

[Cracked]

I think you will find way more cancerous things that were not meta in TBC in TBC classic.

Hunter/Warlock + 2 healers comes to mind. RMP will still be king due to cross-cc capability, so I don't really care.

[Gotural]

HPal and Shams had their strength in 5v5. It's enough for me.

Actually what I would prefer is for Blizzard to make Classic TBC servers and Classic+ TBC servers separated right from the start so people know what they signed up for, and from a technical point of view it's very easy for Blizzard to deploy small 3% patches to a few amounts of servers ... I could get behind that.

Otherwise, no changes for me.

[Nak88]

Nah, you wanted no changes Vanilla, we will have no changes TBC.

[Freeghost]

I got 2 r1 glad titles with a hunter in my 3v3 comp back in the day. Rest druid / WL / Hunter. Insane mana drain potential. My brother played paladin to rank 1,paladins also did really insane dmg for healers at that time. Cant really speak for shamans but the balance seems pretty good.

Honestly just w8 and see. There might be a very different meta forming and from what u say is good and bad, i only gather that the balance is right where it belongs.

edit: also resto shaman/warrior or pala/warrior were pretty good 2v2 comps. To me it sounds like u want that every class has infinite options to play any combo of classes in every bracket. Thats just not possible and will never happen since some classes just work better with each other than others.

[Synical123]

I got 2 r1 glad titles with a hunter in my 3v3 comp back in the day. Rest druid / WL / Hunter. Insane mana drain potential. My brother played paladin to rank 1,paladins also did really insane dmg for healers at that time. Cant really speak for shamans but the balance seems pretty good.

Honestly just w8 and see. There might be a very different meta forming and from what u say is good and bad, i only gather that the balance is right where it belongs.

edit: also resto shaman/warrior or pala/warrior were pretty good 2v2 comps. To me it sounds like u want that every class has infinite options to play any combo of classes in every bracket. Thats just not possible and will never happen since some classes just work better with each other than others.

Ya shamans were fine honestly. They struggled with rogues and such, but they can instantly counter a lot of warlock or priest comps.

[xpose]

the only thing they should change is having arena timers. No one wants to be in a 45 minute arena match

[Kralljin]

No.
I'm down for minor numerical adjustments or adding a matchlimit, but any mechanical changes of classes primarily for the purpose of balancing Arena is offlimits for me.

TBC Arena is an unfixable clownfiesta, Blizzard admitted over 10 years ago already that balancing the game (or at least PvP) around Arena was a major mistake, no need to repeat it.

[Synical123]

The only “balance” changes I would honestly be okay with it, is things like seal of blood for alliance.

I know tbc has some “flavor” spells like priests with DP, chastise, desperate prayer... but seal of blood is just 100% completely better not even remotely close. A blood elf Ret with equal gear will 100% always kill an alliance Ret.

[Naxxramas91]

The only “balance” changes I would honestly be okay with it, is things like seal of blood for alliance.

I know tbc has some “flavor” spells like priests with DP, chastise, desperate prayer... but seal of blood is just 100% completely better not even remotely close. A blood elf Ret with equal gear will 100% always kill an alliance Ret.

Good, fuck alliance.

[klaps_05]

whole point of getting tbc arena is that u can just roll a completely broken class and dominate easily, why should things be different?

[Synical123]

Good, fuck alliance.

Imagine basing your balance ideas around your personal feelings toward a virtual faction.

[seamnstr]

They don't even fix balance and gameplay issues on retail arena (since launch of SL) which kinda leaves me feeling they won't do that on tbc either.

Either way they are likely to go down the safest path with anything pertaining to tbc, rebalancing the game even if done properly even if it objectively improves the game will cause an outrage among those who wish for nO cHanGeS and those who had planned to play one of the meta classes with original balancing. Even if they were to rebalance i'd hope they would only change tuning and not introduce new spells or change any mechanic. Also changing the meta slightly every few months could be cool.

If they release the game on 2.4.3 I can see the game going stale cause of too small meta shifts during the course of the expansion. Hopefully higher ilvl gear each season is enough to upset the meta and avoid some staleness. But some small rebalancing every now and then would be more effective in keeping the meta fresh.

Fixes they could make that would make arena more enjoyable are putting in place a time limit on arena games, possibly introducing dampening as a necessary evil to combat stalemates. Also i'd argue that the removal of arena teams on retail was a good change that they should consider putting in. Banning double healer comps would also be great.

[Gotural]

The only “balance” changes I would honestly be okay with it, is things like seal of blood for alliance.

I know tbc has some “flavor” spells like priests with DP, chastise, desperate prayer... but seal of blood is just 100% completely better not even remotely close. A blood elf Ret with equal gear will 100% always kill an alliance Ret.

Yes I'm also down for that!

[intenz]

If you want to do arena just don't play those classes. By the way shamans were not "bad" they just weren't good in 2v2. Paladin was the only legitimately bad pvp class and it was better that way since their class design was/is just bad. A big problem in wotlk was in trying to make classes like paladin viable they made pvp really cancerous.

I would consider dampening though, only because resto druid games could go on forever back then.