So here’s the thing about meta classes. Imo they matter more at the lower end I know you won’t agree with this but give me a chance to explain my reasoning. If a player is good realistically their class will not matter prior to 20s if at gear cap sometimes if not at gear cap in specific roles cough tank cough. If a player is mediocre or even bad having an easier to play or better class will put them closer to their max ability than playing an off meta or more difficult class. The average person can do 80% plus of a dh theoretical max within a few hours of play it’s not hard. That same person will probably do 50% of sub’s max theoretical damage because it’s much more complex for not a lot of reward.
If anything meta matters more at lower tiers because let’s be honest we aren’t world first level players who are just going to pick up a class and play it at 90% plus within a couple of hours.
The big thing about wow is most people are awful at it a good amount are decent at one class or role but hopeless at others and then a very small portion are good at the game as a whole.
This is why the balance issues in SL worry me a lot because I think they are going to be even more prevalent than they are in BFA and can see the covenant system as a whole getting legit toxic.
Mythic raiders who play around 80% of a classes (and gear) potential throughput shouldn’t dictate to the rest how or what to play and pick.
Imagine if Mythic raiders kept to themselves for a few expansions, and let the lower end govern the lower end. There will be r\Evolution; the skill floor up will rise over time, and we’ll arrive at a place where the range in player skill is much narrower, and we will all be more happier for it.
Ok. At the moment in Alpha if you choose one covenant over another on certain specs, the delta is wide as 30% to 40%. That is according to sims, if you do everything correct and execute your rotation perfectly, you will be down to 40% power on some specs… (it’s not even accounting for player skill which will widen that even more)
Now you will go, oh but they will tune it…
That’s what I seriously doubt and even IF the tuning brings them within 10% of a delta between each Covenant, that is still 10% x 20 raiders = 200% power difference between a raid who has made correct choices and your casual guild who has chosen whatever based on looks or lore or armour or mounts…
Do you not get this??? This will impact you as much as it will impact mythic raiders. Possibly it will impact you even worse.
This is a grabage system that needs to be trashed as soon as possible if the next expansion is going to be close to good.
Good thing we don’t. The people who dictate that are the people with their own keys lol. The lower end does govern the lower end they are choosing people who they think will make their run easier and more likely to suceed.
Also no there absolutely would not be a revolution if IV wowhead the class discs etc went private for a tier especially an opening tier for anyone who wasn’t at least CE the average play level would drop dramatically.
Average player skill is much higher now with easily accessible resources than when the majority of info was either on EJ or in private irc. This is largely due to the dreaded top end players helping out. Imagine if warcraft logs only show damage but no info about azerite and there was no armory. BM hunters would literally have a 40% difference between people using the right azerite and corruption vs those who just played what felt right.
At the same time you can just choose to ignore all that and go your own way that’s what the people who came up with the thrill of the hunt build that is now meta did. The dude proved it was better with math and got to rub the hunter disc mods face in it. After they admitted their error they also further iterated on it with the ac/kc build.
Oh and I said the average person btw I didn’t say mythic ce level players were playing at 80% of their class’s level most can play at least to 90% if not higher especially in low movement. I specifically said 80% for dh because I could teach someone who never played wow to play the no builder variant to at least 80% in a few hours but sub rogue on the other hand has a lot of complexity.
Not something I experienced, but I understand. If that’s something widespread then it sounds like a balancing issue and content needs a little more tuning to match the skill level of the player. I know that sounds off but what I mean is. Balance based on what % of players you want to finish said content and how difficult of a time you want them to have. This would take them collecting data of course. But those lower tier mythics if they are posing as much of a problem you are saying could likely use a tuning pass to make sure the content is better designed for those they want playing at that level. Granted if they are expecting everyone in mythic all to play like top tier players then it sounds fine.
Or to put this in numbers, if every spec is doing say, 100k DPS, the average player who can hit 80% of a DH’s theoretical is going to 80k, whereas the average Feral who only does 60% can only do 60k.
If you factor in actual class strength, and BM hunters have a theoretical of 120k, but average people can still play them to 80% of their theoretical, they’re going to be at 96k DPS, and only a Feral Druid who is playing perfectly (which is virtually none of them) will equal an average BM Hunter.
The lower skill playerbase gets better by listening to the theorycrafting of the more skilled and knowledgeable players.
Lower skilled players had LFR basically to themselves this expansion with there being no incentive for higher skilled players to do it, and the only outcome from that was like 6 stacks on N’zoth being the norm.
Balance is based on math nothing more nothing less, and blizzard’s math has been shaky lately.
Basically every single top level player called out the immense potential for abuse of echoing void on the ptr the reliability of damage and sheer output was way too strong for even normal dps and stupid good for tanks. Blizz did nothing and it heavily warped the world first race in terms of meeting checks that shouldn’t have been met as easily as they were.
Pretty much every pvper talked about how giga busted destro lock would be with waste stacking and how busted gushing in general was. Blizz still hasn’t fixed one and gushing is still busted in pvp but less so in pve.
People forsee issues and tell blizz about them constantly and they just flat out do not listen. It’s insanely frustrating. Covenants are another issue that basically everyone with decent mythic xp can see coming a mile off, and once again it’s likely blizz won’t listen.
Honestly, my view is slightly shifted. I don’t hate people pushing others to min-max as much now. I actually hate the people that put out the guides and such which suggests to people how to play. Without these while the problem would still exist. It would come much slower and would for a brief time with each patch give people a chance to play the way they like without being penalized by the community for it.
It’s honestly weird to hate knowledge. Not an position I would normally take but this sounds more like the core of the problem.
Yes it is wierd that you hate people who present your with a solution to solve a problem…that’s specifically why this entire opposition to removing power from covenants is so irrational, it’s coming from willfully ignorant players.
It’s kinda depressing really. It’s a pattern that repeats itself constantly.
Knowledgable players: Corruptions will suck, it’s inconsistent to obtain and will lead to huge gaps between players with good and crap Corruptions.
Ralphs: Nah, you’re dumb and doomsaying. Won’t do that.
3 months later
Ralphs: Corruptions sucks, it’s inconsistent to obtain and leads to huge players with good and crap Corruptions.
It happened with Legiondaries, it happened with Azerite Gear, it happened with Corruptions and it’ll happen with Covenants.
I can’t wait until 9.3 when Blizzard finally fix Covenants and SL becomes a good expansion.
They can play how they want though. Nobody is going to look at your azerite unless you are doing stupid low damage then they will bring it up. I just did my weekly on dh earlier today and ended up soloing the last 70% plus of both mobs in the first boss encounter in workshop took me I think 9 minutes. It was very obvious from the get go that they didn’t get how to use the hammer to obliterate tanky boy but we still ended up within 2 mins of timing it. I also got thanked after run for sticking around which was nice since I just wanted to do my weekly so I could sleep before raid tomorrow instead of rushing it.
In that 16 I was 2nd in dps sitting around 40k obviously dropped a lot by that first boss since I ended up kiting a lot because of vents. I didn’t bother looking at their gear or anything I just did the best I could do. Most players do that. Most people who rage are people who just aren’t that good and are looking to blame others instead of working to improve their own play. People have a very skewed idea of top end players because of people like tmsean; watch limit’s world first streams. Their guild environment is much more typical of a top end guild. Nobody wants to play with a screaming maniac unless it’s their only choice to push as high as possible in their region but that hasn’t been the case for a while.
