What it means has changed over the years. In the past, it was synonymous with raid balance because WoW only had one “pillar” back then. Now though we have M+ where suddenly the ability to rapidly clear trash is important and delves.
Now you might say delves are super easy and don’t really need to be balanced. Well … delves are “balanced” insofar as every class is able to clear them. What is clearly not balanced though is effort.
I kind of regret levelling a Paladin alt. Their plan of attack is literally just run in, spam abilities, and everything will just die. I can’t do that on my Mage, every pull involves kiting and occasionally CC just so I don’t get my head caved in. It makes me wonder why I should continue to play a Mage.
P.S. As for why I don’t switch mains well I’m not really a melee class person. Frankly, if 1-button didn’t exist, I would not have made it to 80.
Thank you for reading my Sunday thread. 
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You cant really balance for the solo experience in one size fits all content.
To be fair, when there was only one pillar, the balance was also not good! Now it is much better than classic raiding was in M+ at least, idk about the rest.
Actual picture of molten core dps balance
I’m no raider but today’s seems a bit better, nobody doing 4x as much as another person getting 75th %
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Literally every melee spec.
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Ive not tried it, but wouldnt having bran as a tank fix your mage issue in delves?
My ret paladin is twice as durable as my shaman in delves.
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This is definitely a problem where a round peg will fit in all the square and triangle holes, but it’s not the same the other way around and there’s not much upside to being one of those specialized pieces unless there’s a massive payoff for it. It also seems to stem from an issue where those said one-size-fits-all pieces also might only have to change a couple talents to go from from one set of content to another, and still does just fine, if not amazingly
Example basically being the current uncapped AoE allstars, they all do extremely well in M+, but then you take them and put them into other forms of content, and some will still be able to swim while the others sink, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also seems like a balancing nightmare with literally hundreds of variables across all of the specs alongside the multiple content avenues you have
Raid Balance since roughly when they stopped having “PvP Specs” and aimed to let everyone be effective everywhere has been pretty solid. Typically like a ~12% gap from top to bottom barring 1 or 2 outliers. Which is pretty reasonable with how many specs this game has, especially when you realize for like 95% of people that gap will be smaller because they’re not the absolute bottom spec competing against the absolute top spec.
(And to be frank, the bottom specs are often skewed more in that direction than they actually are, because the best players are playing the best spec(s) the class has at their disposal, leaving less skilled players providing the data for the lower specs)
Obviously in Vanilla when things were designed differently and for awhile after than when the hyperspecialization got toned down but things like PvP specs still existed weren’t the most balanced. Different game.
It’s REALLY hard to judge M+ balance though. Logs aren’t as cut and dry. Specs aren’t necessarily brought for raw DPS either.
It’s almost definitely worse than Raid Balance just by merit of it being easier to balance around largely single target encounters with the same enemy being fought (no route differences, etc), but by how much is hard to tell.
It’s why we often see lists showing spec representation when discussing M+ instead of actual performance numbers.
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Tank Brann was clear designed for healers only. Without heals to keep him alive, he goes down pretty quick.
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It does not help that Blizzard disables one of the Mage class’s defining abilities, the ability to CC, as and when they feel like it - randomly something will not be freezable and you have to face tank; which is obviously very stressful when you wear cloth and don’t have a huge health pool.
A shame but i suppose bran being helpful would have been a bit of an ask haha
Brann is best as a Healer for most DPS specs. He doesn’t die because he’s not actively tanking, and his healing potions once sufficiently leveled up are like 50% HP chunks, so as long as you’re not pulling multiple groups you can facetank quite a bit by just hovering near them and staggering their use.
They are definitely a bit awkward though. If you clear a pack and want to move on but didn’t use the 3rd of the healing potions he threw out, he won’t throw any more until that one expires, even if you’ve moved 50 yards away and have pulled new pack(s).
So it’s something the player has to be aware of.
(And, again, it requires Brann not being level 6. They’re nearly useless when you first start if you haven’t worked on Brann at all)
I know this goes against the conventional wisdom, but try using Tank Brann.
He pulls/holds aggro very well. He’ll die before long, but you get a fair bit of uninterrupted time to nuke the mobs. And if/when he dies, you can either finish off the pack like you would normally (kite), or just CC the mobs long enough to rez him (I think a single Frost Nova does the job here).
He also heals fast after combat if you just hold still for like 2 seconds.
Bosses are a little more annoying, but totally manageable. Most bosses don’t do enough outright damage to do a whole lot to you while you stand there and rez Brann with the boss beating on you.
Yeah it’s not perfect, but I’ve found Delves much more enjoyable on my Mage since I swapped Brann to Tank.
Edit: I see somebody else mentioned this already. Hopefully my added detail (and the fact that I actually do this myself) is helpful.
I didn’t say anything about survivability.