After going through most of the Cata heroics on 85 template characters (yes I know they have full heroic gear but I also had no gems or enchants), it has seemed to me and most of the people I’ve grouped with that they seem much easier than we expected.
Perhaps this is because we are remembering the pre-nerf difficulty but it was honestly a bit disappointing. We did not need to use CC on anything, healers were often standing around not needing to heal, and the tuning just seemed off. The group and especially tank were not taking much damage, removing the need for using any CC and most bosses seemed to die extremely fast. Personally, I think the heroic dungeons should start to feel this way after getting a bunch of raid gear, but not at only 346 i lvl. We should need to use CC on trash and coordinate cooldowns for bosses imo until we are raid geared.
Additionally, as most who are aware of the Cata meta know, Blood DKs are way too strong. Not much needs to be said here but perhaps some small balancing changes can be implemented to buff warrior tanks and nerf blood, at least for the early phases.
I can stand behind, dredging out either the pre-nerf heroics or even buffing areas beyond that. They did say they planned on continuing the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma dungeons forward into Cataclysm, so eventually there could be some harder content with those.
With that, I wish they would take notes on the “affixes” that people enjoyed and stop trying to create the “kiss curse” style of design that they attempt in retail Mythic+ and in Wotlk Classic. The only dungeons I wanted to actually run through were Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone because there was no curse, just big damage numbers and no resource cost as long as the group kept moving to maintain the buff. No resource costs was a little much; maybe resource return on crit or killing blow could be more engaging. That is the best way I’ve ever seen Blizzard implement a kiss curse design. The curse isn’t getting permawebbed, constantly stunned, having to move out of a path of frost, or something that just appears under you that forces you to move or get cc’d; it’s a way to reward players that opt into challenging themselves by keeping up the pace. More of that, please.
When it comes to pushing balance changes as a whole, I would prefer a very relaxed sit-back and watch posture as opposed to a proactive one. Your example here of Blood Death Knights being “too strong” is an area of great enjoyment for a lot of players. If I had played a Bdk in the original Cataclysm release and saw that Classic Cataclysm was on the horizon, I would one hundred percent want to relive that experience as it was then without having to worry about a fat nerf hammer falling from the sky on top of me. There will always be a best, and there will always be a worst. There is no problem with any tank class that demands a fix to enter a viable state. They are all more than viable, and they all have their own strengths.
Agree to disagree… I played OG cata and I’d rather they make proactive balancing changes to keep the game and meta feeling fresh.
Instead of trying to relive experiences of the past (which will never happen), I’d rather play in the here and now having new experiences with new metas.
Easy stuff can be a load of fun. That’s why I enjoyed grinding Wrath heroics in the original Wrath. Same reason I enjoyed grinding Rifts in Diablo 3. Sometimes I want to unwind, and blow stuff up, especially when it’s farm content. Sometimes Hulk just likes to smash.
I raid with my guild. And I want my raiding to be challenging. I don’t farm raids, I progress through them, which is why the challenge and difficulty is fun.
I don’t progress through heroics, I farm them. For farm content that I have to repeat hundreds of times, I want something that I can blow up and feel powerful. Knock it out in 15-30 minutes, then requeue for another while I still have time on my lunch break.
100% Incorrect. Bears NEED to be fixed, and before pre-patch goes live. They are currently not getting the threat that should be getting. Anyone who played a bear in Cata, remembers them being great. Anyone who has played on a private server, knows they are great in cata. But currently, they can’t hold threat against any of the dps. Hell even healers can pull off bears right now.
I don’t think having no gems or enchants means much here. If everyone is in full heroic gear, you literally can’t get any upgrades from the content you’re doing. It should be easy in that gear since that level of content no longer offers you any possibility for improvement. You’re essentially fully geared by that content level already and it needs to be doable in much lower level gear since you have to be doing that content to get that gear in the first place in actual release.
We also know they are adding a new 5 man system that won’t be available until some unknown time post-launch which will hopefully be where the 5 man challenging content comes from. Maybe even 5 man content that remains challenging up to raid gear levels? It might just be a gamma clone though, we have no idea yet.
Class balance tweaks could be good for the game but I don’t think they should balance heroic dungeons around being hard when fully geared in the gear that they drop.
I would lose aggro on my bear the first raid quite a lot of times if i had to go full survival, which i did quite a few heroic fights. They changed a heap of stuff at some point during the first tier doh i remember just not having threat problems ever again.
Cataclysm Blood DK here and I concur with your assessment. My main was a lock and I made a DK to farm herbs and ore by myself so I started tanking to level through dungeons and I ended up loving her. I then started Frost 2H PVP and loved that, too. This is the entire reason I’m coming to Classic finally.
Yes, originally in Cata, the tanks had threat reduced from what it was in wrath, and most tanks were struggling. But in patch 4.2, they buffed all tanks threat by 500%. Since this is final patch, all tanks should have that 500% threat increase. Unfortunately, right now, as it stands in the beta, and in PTR, all tanks have the 500% threat increase except for bears, which are still down at the 150% threat. Bears need to be getting that same 500% threat increase that the other tanks are getting, so that they can stay relevant.
Why should they nerf Blood? Because you don’t play them? Because you want people to want YOUR Warrior?
Why not just buff Warriors and leave Blood alone? What about people who enjoy Blood? Should they suffer and whine because you did? THINK!
Since Closed Beta 2004 this never ends.
People don’t just want a slice of the Cake, they(you) want the entire Cake to themselves.
Cata Heroics were nerfed for a reason, Blizzards numbers on player rates don’t lie. You are in a tiny minority liking them overtuned. Their original tuning was nowhere near in alignment with what their rewards were, that was fixed for a reason.
With the continued Alpha/Beta/Gamma system from WotLK there is no reason to once again deliberately overtune content to appease a vocal minority. You want it harder, queue Gamma
They should nerf blood because it allows you to straight cheese pretty much every mechanic in the game while being unkillable and doing dps levels of dps. We had our tank reroll blood in firelands heroic on baleroc/rag and it replaced his 387 prot pally at 350 ilvl and was able to solo tank both of them.
You can’t buff warriors to this point without just straight giving them a spell that increases parry by 100% and increasing their st dps by about 300%, while also giving a ams/bubble type spell so they can avoid mechanics.
Lots of whining.
This is how it was in cata.
The fact you retail kids want it changed just boggles my mind.
I mean… YOUD THINK by the time cata comes out you lot would be okay with some of this stuff, but y’all are STILL trying to shove your retail mindset on people(changing what was).
There will always be a “best” performing dps.
There will always be a “best” performing healer.
There will always be a “best” performing tank.
LIVE WITH IT.
The problem with most this talk is people believe if you aren’t ultra meta then you have no chance which isn’t the case. It is just a mental illness that has ransacked its way though gaming the past 10 or so years to a much higher extreme. Yes, if something is WILDLY to high or WILDLY to low it needs to be fixed, but I have ran with every tank but prot warrior (probably because meta says bad or whatever) on the beta and it was fine. Yes, DK was pretty obviously the best. Just like in WOTLK it was pretty obvious prot pally was the best. But it is not some wild out of control we cannot do any of this content without blood DK.
Blood DK tank and DPS here, I played basically nothing else for all of WoTLK. If things are left the way they are you’re going to see tank homogeneity even worse than it was with Prot Paladins in WoTLK Classic.
Blood DK’s tanking are top DPS in Heroics and on farm bosses in raids will also be top DPS. We’ll live with it just fine, don’t expect to be able to join a guild as any other tank class though.
I’m positive people will run BDK+Feral tanks, since ferals have an easy time (in-combat) switching to dps. Besides you don’t want to neglect buffs for your raid team.
So the situation will be Blood DK as MT and Feral as OT. Warriors and Paladins go to the trash for the next year. Warrior in the trash for two expansions in a row.