It’s a literal RNG game mode with zero communication, team work or cohesion where the only indication of skill is an MMR system that’s been bugged and abused.
Yes, melee specs like DH/DK/WW are going to thrive. They will place at the top because they require no set up, they don’t have to cast anything, they don’t need healers to support them, they thrive the most in a RNG blind match up.
Conversely, caster specs that require you to cast don’t thrive as much. Same goes for healer specs. This is why stuff like SP/Demo/Prevoker/Rdru work so well while some other ones never see play.
You made gear and levels easy to grind which is great, but also leads to an overload of people running FoTM melee due to the game mode favoring them so we see an insane amount of them all over the place skewing the ladder even more.
Whatever you do Blizzard, do not balance the game around this game mode.
Focus on balance around actual competitive modes like 2s/3s and let RSS be it’s own little arcade game mode because balancing it around this one thing is going to kill the balance off everywhere else.
I sort of feel like they should… They should balance around where the masses are. I’ve never really enjoyed 1% balancing.
However, they could technically do both. There is so much layering they could do with current trees and PVP talents that could be used to offer choices that are more beneficial in coordinated play versus less coordinated play. The problem is, PVP just doesn’t really get that kind of attention. Updates and changes to PVP talents are very few and far in between.
We’ve literally gotten PvP changes every week since DF launch.
Shuffle balance doesn’t exist. The classes you see being “OP” in Shuffle aren’t represented the same way across the other two ladders, it makes no sense to balance around a non competitive, RNG game mode.
I’m not talking about just tuning. I mean of course they weren’t going to leave half of the cast able to global anyone they looked at, that would be completely negligent. That doesn’t change the fact that PVP talents have been a slow drip and PVP design is by far not at the forefront of developers minds when designing base talents. It’s always and afterthought .
It’s not that hard, there are so many obvious things that could be done that don’t involve tuning that hasn’t, and I’m referring to the past several expansions and entire betas where issues go unaddressed. Don’t act like a few aura nerfs is some grand feat, please.
It’s also not RNG. It’s only RNG because some classes are designed in such a way that they can work in many comps, require less set up, and can either dish out a lot of damage or sustain themselves. It’s a perfectly valid mode, but classes have not been created equality for its existence.
Edit: And to add; the “imbalance” of solo shuffles is pretty exaggerated. It’s not perfect with about 4-5 specs being better than the rest, but literally every DPS and healer has been over 2.4k. With some thought out, targeted changes, it could thrive just fine.
I mean it’s the best tuning we’ve got in a while, every pass they make through on balance involves gutting whole specs for 5+ months at a time. Smaller changes are preferred over massive ones.
It’s 100% RNG. Communication is non existent on any level, even higher CR games are like that. The only consistent thing is your MMR which can be cheesed, even the comps are RNG and you have to get lucky lobbies to climb on certain specs.
It’s not at all competitive, idk how you think they should cater balance around this when actual competitive modes exist.
It’s like making balance changes around LFR when Mythics exist.
And they never will be, Solo Shuffle is an afterthought. They aren’t going to completely redo class balance around a RNG game mode.
I mean idk what the actual numbers are… but that 1% of players most likely make up their most loyal customer base from a pvp standpoint. Not to mention a lot of them stream, which is free marketing for Blizz. Blizz is doing this the right way imo. They may end up completely catering to shuffle in the long run, depending what the financial metrics indicate over time. But if they unleashed gladiator mount/achieve and completely crapped on traditional ladder right out of the gate and threw all their eggs in this one basket of shuffle, there’s no going back without insane backlash from the player base. They have to see how things pan out for the time being and react accordingly.
If shuffle continues to vacuum up participation from other pvp modes for an extended period of time, and it’s evident that it’s not simply because the game mode is new and players are trying it out, we’ll probably see a lot more adjustments where they treat shuffle like the “primary” pvp mode.
The relative disorganization of SS most closely resembles world PvP and BGs, no? Seems like it’s premade that’s the odd-man-out and the only area that wouldn’t benefit from balancing around SS.
That being said, there’s no reason not to make specific changes to one mode or the other to tend to its particular balancing needs. Just like dampening values are different you could have generic buffs/debuffs to different specs based on their performance in that queue.
“Broken” is synonymous with “S-tier” or “OP” to me. I don’t want to get caught up on the specific language used to describe these specs though. They are the clear DPS outliers in every PvP bracket imo thus nerfing them is a safe bet regardless of what bracket you are looking at.
Blizzard should have multiple tags for balance- not just PvP and PvE.
Right now, there’s PvE stats and then a flag for if your are in PvP that modifies your ability damage/healing/talents. IE: wound poison is nerfed in all PvP.
Blizzard should have tags for Rated BGs, 2v2, 3v3, and Solo shuffle.
So, wound poison would be like, 50% power in 3v3, 75% power in 2v2, 40% power in solo shuffle, 60% power in rated BGs.
By having finer grain control, Blizzard would be able to nerf specific abilities/talents/specs for different PvP modes.
But that would require them to spend resources on it so idk. lol.
It will happen bc Shuffle will now be around 80% or arena participation and considering it’s kind of a messy game mode the results will be… “interesting”.
I’m partially happy about this bc 3s “balance” has hindered the development of some specs for some time now, now Shuffle will probably screw everything. Lol.