I’m normally very understanding toward blizzard but I don’t understand why more effort isn’t made toward better balance. We know they can make changes to pvp and pve separately so that isn’t an issue. I’m wondering if they genuinely don’t want classes to be very similar in power level because I feel it would be trivially easy to do a better job while keeping damage profiles the same.
Couldn’t you just do a flat damage increase slowly to get the underperforming specs more in line? Is there something I haven’t thought of?
Here’s an example: next week we are going to increase healing monks damage by 3% and feral damage by 2% across the board in pve only. I’m certain I haven’t disrupted balance and have brought these underperforming specs closer to the average.
It’s fine in theory, but the viability of specs in top keys trickles down to the mentality of 15s …even a 10s. Yes they make changes but they could do it more often with smaller buffs/nerfs .
I had region #1 Auchindoun during Wod and still got declined from random gold runs because they were like “ummm actually we need a ranged, the guide says so!!!”.
When I parse purple and do 11k, and someone else in my raid parses green and does 15k … no, everything is NOT fine.
The 4% buff that Arms is getting is a joke. And it’s not that it needs 3x more than that, it’s that the ST damage of Arms needs TEN times more than that. Flat, across-the-board buffs prove they DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON.
Blizzard’s main problem is they’ll do a 10% buff (whoops… too much), then change it to a 5% buff (hmmm not enough) … and then just walk away.
For some reason, Blizzard DEFIANTLY dwells in milestone numbers. They seem nothing short of terrified of the fact that numbers exist between other numbers.
If 10 is too big and 5 is too small… why not 7? Why not 7.5? Why not 7.54316? Blizzard’s REFUSAL to use these spooky numbers means they will NEVER balance things because these strange numbers are what is REQUIRED to balance 36 specs (as good as you can).
Perfect balance might be impossible with 36 specs, but we’ll never know it with a company that refuses to use the ENTIRE number line!!
They could be better, but it’s more nuanced than that.
And people seem to get really upset when a different spec/class gets put above them, somehow making them feel like they wasted their effort playing the existing stronger class/spec, and now must gear/learn the new better spec.
Also players tend to not change unless the buffed spec is better. Why change for something equal or worse?
And since better players tend to always play the perceived best specs it amplifies the data gap even more.
It also tends to only reflect overall dps which isn’t necessarily what is important in a kill. There are other damage patterns like burst during specific phases, add priority single target, execute damage, spread cleave, etc. that influence the outcome of the encounter that isn’t reflected as well in a single dps number. Also there tends to be a lot of meter padding aoe.
The problem is with players really. Who cries the hardest for buffing your spec.
A “S” tier gaslighter spec would be Boomkins, they cry hard but are usually the best in single or AOE expansion after expansion.
A solid “A” tier for crying is mages, ooo you nerfed me to hard😆
B tier is Rogues tied with maybe warriors.
F/Dumpster tier is Feral druids. Always do terrible damage and bottom of the meters year after year. Just… LoL feral…
So the moral of the story is advocate harder for your spec, somewhere between balance druids and mages. Also if your lawyer plays a feral Druid get a new one.
Some guide or youtuber is going to make a tier list no matter what, and the sheeps are going to listen to it like it’s the bible. 1% difference - oh it’s not viable.
It’s more than 1%, and this is like saying that you can clear a +15 at 220 ilvl. While totally true, you aren’t getting invited to a 15 if you are 220 ilvl or an underperforming spec.
Sims aren’t perfect, but between the sims and our first person experience we have a fairly good idea where the specs fall in the tier list at this point.
Even in a low 20 the difference between a top and bottom performing spec isn’t trivial. You take an average hunter or lock on a fortified 20 something key and an elite feral Druid and the hunter lock is going to do more damage. I don’t care if you have alphazero controlling the feral, the spec just can’t do nearly as much aoe as the top specs. That isn’t perception, that’s fact.
Um, this is not true whatsoever. An elite feral druid player will out dps an average druid/hunter player. Do you know how many hunters or druids I have seen only pull 4k dps?
I have had resto druid pull 6k+ dps and resto shamans pull 1k dps, both in +20 keys.
I have seen mages pull 4k dps in 20s.
Windwalkers seem to do nothing but complain, too. They’ve been complaining since Shadowlands beta that they’re one of the worst specs in the game.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease with Blizzard, though. The more you complain (even if your complaints are baseless), the more likely Blizzard is to cave in.