People are constantly asking for balance in this game; however, actual balance cannot exist without every role feeling the same. So, there is no real point in asking for balance. Trust me, I tried, and all the feedback leads to the same conclusion. Balance just won’t work. Now I see why Blizz never bothered. Too far right and it all looks the same. Too far left and everything is broken. Aim for the middle, and at least 3 classes get wrecked.
The issue in that would be that every class would essentially end up feeling the same though right? Im not apposed to more baseline abilities, say for instance turning warriors rally cry into a brez, but that level of generalization would lead to essentially 3 clases reskinned 10ish times.
Here’s the rub… Balance literally means similar. However, the animations, gear, etc are what give it the true class flavor. The only difference between Shield Slam and Avenger’s Shield is the animation. Both are plate wearing tanks, who use a shield to stun a mob.
The only way we get balance, is by actually balancing roles. The only way to tell them apart would be the casting, animations, and style of the class. Think Subtlety Rogue and Feral Druid. Both have stealth, both have increased power from behind. Do they look the same? Or truly feel the same?
This might be the most incorrect thing that I’ve read on this forum. This is laughably incorrect and largely proof that you don’t know what you are talking about.
I should’ve finished the paragraph because it got even more incorrect.
Overall, no, homogenizing the game down to 3 specs isn’t good. It would utterly kill gameplay for the majority of the playerbase.
I suppose that’s a perspective thing. IMO them actually playing differently is the flavor. Different animations for all the same stuff is still the same (and extremely boring) to me.
You compared a damaging rage generator which is single target, to a multi-target spell that grants a buff to the paladin and applies a crowd control effect (silence) to the initial target. You then said they were stuns. There’s nothing to discuss here, you genuinely do not know how either of these classes plays and I suspect the same goes for the vast majority of classes&specs. You are nowhere near knowledgeable enough to be in a position to describe completely overhauling the game.
I was unaware I needed to be an expert to know tanks are not on the same playing level. The whole purpose of this was to illustrate there is an imbalance and open the discussion to solid and permanent balance.
Classes on each side are basically mirrors of each other but use different animations.
i.e.
The Republic Gunslinger charges up a hail of bullets that hits 10 times for 500 damage a hit.
While the Empire Sniper charges up a heavy sniper shot that does 5000 damage in one hit.
That’s not having one similar ability. You’re asking for them all to only be visually different. That may be enough for you to feel like they’re unique classes, but it’s not for a lot of people. Sure there’s some balancing needed, but until blizz misses the mark and leaves a spec where they can’t complete the highest rewards giving content, there’s no need to ruin how each feels to play individually.
If they were actually balanced, the only difference would be the names of the abilities and the animations. Otherwise, people should just stop asking for “balance” in classes and specs. Cause the literal definition of balance: " establish equal or appropriate proportions of elements in". Can’t be balanced without equality, which translates to being similar… just not identical.
Like most things, it’s a spectrum. Balance can always be improved upon, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of 36 specs in the game. Also, what you are advocating for is identical.
I mean you could really name them anything, but it would be a 0 to 100 “break glass” kind of heal. Each would use existing class healing animation, and Warrior would get something that simply makes them glow red (or w/e).
Making all tanks have the same abilities but just making their animations different doesn’t actually make them feel different.
Perfect balance will always be unobtainable with unique abilities and classes, but you could argue that the difference between them could be a LOT smaller and for a lot less time. But Blizzard doesnt’ want to upset their precious MDI balance, so blatantly overpowered classes last through an entire season while everyone else has to wait. That’s the biggest problem.
Final Fantasy does this with their tanks. Each tank has an aoe, a defense cooldown, and single hit etc etc. And it’s boring to go from one to another because they all play pretty much the exact same way.
The problem is Blizzard needs more people to be working on each individual class, but they’re only doing the bare minimum to cut costs and just make whatever money they can. Just take a look at some of the changes they are doing to the different classes. You can tell there’s like 1-3 people doing all the class changes, and things like Demon Hunters and Monks they have no idea what to with. You have a few people working on a lot of classes and they don’t have enough knowledge about all of them to fine tune them enough. You need a specialized person for each class. They don’t have that.
Just some musings on the semantics of balance. Not countering anything your wrote specifically.
The difficulty in the quest for balance is determining against which to balance. Eg, do you balance against each tank, or the concept of what the “idealized” tank is, or against the content in which the rank is to be played? (And then it can be further varied with the content…)
Balance seems to be just an equation that sums equally between the two (or more) entities being compared. An expression of equilibrium. How can this be translated to variable, almost-infinitely-scaling content?
I muse as a Prot Paladin, though it’s been my main since late 2009
