What did SOD fail at, that would tarnish Classic+?
It can be anything from a small, but egregious mistake, to a very large theme. If carried to Classic+, it would tarnish or even ruin Classic+. What is that for you?
This isnât popular, but I think making paladins a competitive pve dps class almost guarantees that pvp will be bad because it makes the game much harder to balance.
If the plate class with heals cannot do high sustained dps, everything is much easier.
Same goes for druids, they have heals, high survivability and mobility, they should not be viable raid dps or the pvp will suffer.
What if they made it so mastering one of their hybridized abilities caused them to become weaker in the others?
For example a cat DPS ability that brings cats up to par, but the ability itself also reduces all healing output.
Iâm literally just spitballing btw, I have no idea how to handle it other than âTBC GUDâ
Frankly, the ability changes.
Adding new raids/dungeons/zones is enough. We absolutely do not need Blizzard just transplanting retail abilities into classic. It absolutely destroyed the authenticity of leveling and the classic gameplay.
Classic+ should simply be new areas to explore, maybe some new races, new content to run, new BIS gear and tier sets, things of that nature. Not âwe made the game into retail-.â
OSRS is successful because everything is put to a vote and requires a high bar to clear. I do not trust Blizzardâs developers whatsoever with any decisions they make about classic+'s direction after SoD.
2 Likes
Honestly, I think the way they went about it was the real problem. They just cranked up everybodyâs dps dial, paladins included, and thatâs it. I believe they even had to make it so you couldnât attack in bubble because they were so strong.
Iâve spent a lot of time thinking about paladin dps and indeed, hybrid dps in general. If you take a look at things in a larger picture, theyâre actually mostly fine. Paladin DPS sits comfortably in the realm of every other hybrid class, more or less, which is actually a reasonable distance away from where the first pure dps classes (hunters and warlocks) start.
The issue here generally scaling and specifically warriors. If you bring warriors down to the level of the other hybrid classes, the picture suddenly looks a lot better. If you make small tweaks to rogues and mages to bring them slightly down and to hunters/warlocks to bring them slightly up, now things actually start to look really good.
Paladins are actually extremely well balanced, they just have a few small issues in PvE that can actually be solved with some very small tweaks. For example, if you hypothetically gave them mana restore on crit and tuned it accordingly, now they can actually perform their seal twisting rotation in longer-term fights without going OoM. Again, the critical piece is tuned correctly, because you donât want the number so high that it has a meaningful impact in PvP, which are typically much shorter length engagements.
All classes actually should be viable raid DPS. Itâs important to understand that viable does not mean top performing. Your raid shouldnât suffer for bringing a hybrid dps but a pure dps should typically always perform better. The primary reason you want this is because not all fights in WoW are created equally and because power progression changes your raid composition needs.
Early on in a raid tier youâre probably going to be stacking extra healers, sometimes even extra tanks, so you can get through fights. As you raid gets better and more geared, youâll need less and less of those healers. There are also some fights that just need more healers than others. Consider the difference between Noth, Heigan, and Loatheb. The same goes for tanks. Itâs beneficial to have players who can shift into tanking roles for progression fights like Sulfuron, Majordomo, or Four Horsemen.
When hybrid classes arenât viable, it pressure everybody into rerolling as needs shift. Having them be viable lets raids be more flexible with their needs.
Damage from abilities not present in Level 60 WoW exponentially outscaled the ânaturalâ HP growth from Stamina levels on existing gear. Healing from abilities not present in Level 60 WoW was also a major causal factor, but players remember being globalâd more than never being able to kill an enemy because of healers*.
- Phase 1 Priests with Penance in WSG being the notable exception.
Sod pvp is fine pve is fun. Bubule have a counter same as druids and every class is somehow balanced now. No thanks, thereâs no fun spaming frostbolt and heroic strike. Sod is not a fail.
Any content like the Nightmare Incursions with unlimited repeatable turn ins
When you make it that easy to gain experience it completely guts the journey and feeling of accomplishment
Blizz has to always consider how players will try to min/max the content into the ground and build some guard rails in
3 Likes
Set bonuses being more powerful than most runes. I think set bonuses need to be basic like +50 attack power or 2% crit, it shouldnât increase your damage by 30-75%. Set bonuses shouldnât be transformative to your playstyle.
Pretty much all of SoD has damaged the Classic brand irreparably.
It shows how terrible the devs are at sticking to the Classic brand theme of Vanilla WOW.
It was an audition they completely and utterly failed at.
This is why Classic Plus is doomed.
3 Likes
Agreed on set bonuses. I did not like how set bonuses dictated class playstyle. Warriors were forced into stance dancing every 12 seconds to keep buffs up as an exampleâŚ
I do like what they did with the Ashbringer design, though. Having legendary weapons that move the needle on player power, instead of set bonuses, makes them feel legendary
Too many people want too many different things, and the current blizzard development team doesnât have the ability to create new content that Vanilla enjoyers want. Adding future xpac abilities isnât what people want either.
Add in the fact that Vanilla draws out the most toxic part of the playerbase (from meme servers to fresh its been true on all of them) I canât see Classic+ ever being successful.
Sod failed at everything. If it was a success they wouldnât be funnelling you into the pandaland. Theyâd keep the phases going to milk your sub
- Ability power inflation
- Gear itemization power inflation
- ^ destroying pvp balance
- ^^ also requiring pve rebalancing constantly
- PvP trinkets being universal (letting rogue break stuns)
- PvP trinkets being 2min cds
- Just a general inability to make decisions with any regard to pvp existing⌠Arms warriors in SoD where a hardcounter to frost mages, in my experience as an arms warriorâŚCharge in combat, intercept⌠both of those breaking snares/roots⌠then also intervene, and also meathook.
5+6 are a bit contentious, but those trinket changes where designed around an arena mindset, and a larger tbc+ toolkit.m
This isnât complicated or hard⌠Vanilla but:
- More content
- Tone down warrior PvE (rage normalization)
- Make hybrid dps suck slightly less
- NO NEW SPELLS (ie, you boost Ret by baking ~10-15% melee haste into their 31 point talent, while holding a 2h. NOT by ever giving them something that changes their rotation like crusader strike)
- Paladin/Shaman both factions⌠IDC if this involves new race/class combos like undead paladins, or if it involves just adding space goats/Blood elves and their respective starter zones
- Contentious one but add Transmog (have a toggle that allows players to globally disable it on their client, meaning they cannnot see either their, or other playerâs xmogs)
- Dual spec can stay.
- Revamp the pvp/ranking system into a rated solo random queu system. We need to get people playing bgs other than just av, and we need to encourage people to actually give even the slightest damn about actually winning⌠Neither of which occurs in the current system. Can design the system to effectively be a handout with extreme amounts of games, but higher winrates allowing better players to rank up faster.
- Fix the damn WSG jumps/terrain exploits.
- Strongly consider swapping AV to a later expansion system⌠People should need to actually clear at least 2 towers before vann/drek, and mines right now only exist for the quests. Moving the horde start location back was also done for a reason.
- All players of both factions in a single BG queu pool of players. Teams would form mixed faction.
- I donât like the idea of time limits for wsgâŚbecause that leads to obnoxious 1cap + full 10man turtle roof strats⌠That said, Iâd at least consider stacking flag carrier debuffs/mobility reductions to prevent games from going forever. Maybe even something as simple as not letting flag carriers jump at all while holding a flag would fix a ton of issues.
the quest superhub incursion thing was a bad design choice, collapsing players into a single subzone and taking them out of the world.
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Incursions were what killed SoD. Theres no nice way to say it.
The idea of later expansion abilities brought into SoD was fun. The idea of using those to make otherwise weaker specs viable is a great one. The new 5 man and raid content was fantastic. Even the slower pace to 60 they tiered level caps was an interesting one as it showcased power progression for different specs at different points.
But Incursions were the biggest L they took during SoD and it hurt. A lot. I hope its a mistake they learned from and took the lesson to heart.
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Incursions, in my opinion, were an abominationâa prime example of what happens when Blizzard tries to force Retail-style mechanics into Classic without fully understanding what makes Classic tick.
Letâs be clear: Classic WoW thrives on world immersion, community-driven gameplay, and organic progression. Incursions were none of these. They felt artificial, slapped onto the world with no grounding in lore or player agency. Instead of enhancing the Classic experience, they disrupted it.
Why?
- They broke the immersion. One of the defining features of Classic is its consistency. When you enter Azeroth, youâre stepping into a living, breathing world with its own rhythm. The Incursions, with their sudden âevent-styleâ mechanics and arbitrary objectives, felt like an out-of-place minigame, not a natural part of the world.
- They undermined player choice and progression. Classic isnât about being fed constant objectives â itâs about discovery, making your own way, and finding purpose in the journey. Incursions pushed players into chore-like content loops, cheapening the feeling of accomplishment that comes from grinding dungeons, running world content, or crafting gear through effort and community interaction.
- They were Retail design in Classic clothing. Daily objectives, time-limited events, currency grinds â this is the opposite of what Classic players signed up for. Classic is slower-paced by design, and every attempt to âmodernizeâ it with fast-paced systems usually ends up hurting what made it special.
The worst part? Incursions werenât needed. They didnât fix any real problems â they created new ones. They didnât encourage meaningful player interaction; they simply encouraged quick-farming and zone-hopping. There was no real sense of lore or identity tied to them. Just another mechanic for the sake of adding something new.
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I actually laughed out loud when these were implemented.
Runes were a terrible idea.
They literally designed SOD to be this way which was completely goofy. It reminded me of Diablo 3 which is not a good thing to be reminded of.
brand-new Level 60 Hunters doing instant-cast Chimera Shot crits for 3000 was pretty damn lulzy.
Traps in combat? Yes!
Trap launcher? Pretty cool, but should have only been single-target Freezing Trap (PVP) and Immolation Trap (PVE).
Fire/Frost Traps not sharing a cooldown? Probably too much.
Frost Trap having a 39 second duration with a 9 second cooldown? Big Yikes (but fun)
Literally everything. SoD feels infinitely more like retail than it does classic or classic +. By the end of SoD they were doing Cata/Mop levels of DPS. Class identity was a mess. Healing mages and tanking warlocks were just a dumb idea.
All we wanted was them to make all specs viable by maybe adding in some tbc/wrath talents as replacement for certain junk talents and a couple abilities. Like paladin taunts for example. Then add in more raids like 40 man karazhan. Oh yeah, and we didnât even do 40 man raids. What a joke.
What we got was retail level convoluted trash.