It depends on the preference of the person, a lot of people enjoy having an important resource as well as having a range of utility from their other specs rather than a higher button count on their rotations.
I’m currently leveling a frost DK and I did was spamming buttons when it’s on GCD. I’m new but I would really like to see what it’s like to not feel so crippled by those limitation. I prefer DMC combat style over Dark souls.
Obviously but a vendor still beats what we have.
rollback to pre bfa classes, hows that?
Honestly though that is entirely the same with classic.
People just take the better classes. It’s always going to be the case.
Affliction Locks in BfA or Feral Druids in classic. Both of them can successfully do the content.
But if player perception is X is better than Y, they are always going to seek out X over Y because they have heard it is better.
It’s more than just perception, it’s reality.
Those classes bring less to the table than others. The higher you push, the more this matters.
Feral druids in Classic need to farm gnomer between raids just to remain competitive. They bring less needed support than other dps and don’t benefit from wind fury.
They have a place but no raid will bring more than a couple druids.
You shouldn’t disregard the meta without first trying to understand it. How are you going to synergise with your party if you don’t even understand what makes each of you special?
But I like my Balance and Resto design…
The person I was replying to was simply talking viability mot competitiveness of the classes. These are both different things.
When you are doing cutting edge content then class imbalances do matter quite heavily.
But as far as general casual play or 90% of the the games playerbase is concerned whilst not particularly great, all classes are viable.
His previous post.
I took all content to also imply all difficulties. If that’s not the case then I am mistaken.
I agree, although viable doesn’t necessarily reflect fun.
Not liking pve is fine and I totally understand that pvp has gotten the shaft for quite a while, but acting like installing dbm instantly gets you mythic kills is pretty dumb. I don’t like pvp but I don’t downplay the community. I just ran a +9 (yes, just a +9) with a friend of mine who we joke as as a ‘pvp hero’ who did 19k dps overall because he died every 2 seconds to the mechanics, and it wasn’t his first time in. Still not going to disrespect his play preferences.
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class design first for sure. would love to see SV back to range.
Other thing I like gone is the rented power design that is surrounded with grind and rng on rng….etc
the other thing is level scaling and ilvl scaling is a bad design for a character power progression. going to hate going back levels for no reason.
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Characters are the lens through which the whole rest of the game is experienced.
They are the multipliers applied to all new content.
If the characters aren’t fun to play, nothing else matters. The OP is absolutely correct.
As things currently stand, most specs are only fun to play for short periods of time. They get dull very quickly.
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Healers feel so far apart in play style right now some of them don’t even feel like healers.
Everyone throws the word around. “Viable”. I think we need to talk for a minute about what “viable” means, especially in a game with all the complex systems that WoW has.
Does it mean possible? Most people probably heard the term for the first time in regards to eggs. Eggs are “viable” if they are alive. It’s a binary state, indicating that they are capable of performing their sole duty, or not.
So, in this regard, all classes are “viable” because they can all do damage, heal, or tank as required by their role.
But viable in a game this complex isn’t binary, because there’s also a social aspect. Having a healing spell does you no good if you aren’t invited to a group to use it.
So it’s “possible” to get into groups, even as sub optimal specs, either by being one of the best players in the game, or forming your own social group, or playing at off times for in-deadman’s roles.
But no matter what you do, no one is ever forming a group, sees a Resto shaman or an affliction warlock and thinks “that’ll work!”, the thought is always “let’s see if something better comes along”, with the timespan being the only differentiator between levels of acceptance.
Is that viable? You CAN overcome your classes shortcomings, but it’s a lot more work. What if you’re an average skill player, or you don’t have leadership qualities. Well, then your class isn’t really viable, is it? The player in the equation is just as important as the tool.
If you’re an average dude, affliction locks and Resto shamans (I use these examples because that’s what I play) aren’t actually viable because you can’t get into a pug group during prime time, meaning you can’t actually play.
Given the complexity of a game like WoW, class viability means having a definable role in a group setting. For example: rogues are AWESOME because of shroud. Even a bad rogue, or a rogue with zero IO, can get into +10 groups with reasonable ease, even during prime time. I proved this out last season by making a rogue at the end of the season and pugging my way to +10 inside of 6 hours /played and barely over 405 item level, all without pairing it to my IO profile.
So, back to the topic: all classes are not viable unless they have a reason to take them. If choosing between, for example, shroud and gate where an actual hard choice. Or if you had to trade of dps for hybrid utility.
The severe homogenization of dungeons content means that one toolkit is best: mobile dps with a short interrupt, healer with a battle Rez, physical tank with the ability to roll cooldowns. There’s no competitive meta outside of that formula, so if you DON’T have some of that toolkit, the hurdle to get into a pug is very high for an average player.
You could make warlocks viable in 5 seconds by allowing gate to placed by eye of Kilrog and extending the range by a lot. Boom, then it’s a replacement for shroud. Or give a summon stone like ability that lets everyone phase into the netherworld and move around as invisible. Add in an interrupt and then they’re golden.
Resto shaman need a more mobile toolkit. make earth shield baseline, buff the hot component of riptide; buff healing stream.
I’m not an expert on all classes, but these 2 changes would have a minimal impact on raids while shaking up the m+ meta. Raids are different, because more people means everyone’s individual impact is less, so outside of great raid cooldowns or just balance tuning, raids are pretty OK.
Did you follow the reply chain or have you hard focus’d on the word “viable”.
That’s a lot of text, my dude. Even in the post you’ve replied to I stated all difficulties.
Edit: You have a pretty well understanding of the meta. I don’t disagree at all.
I focused on the word viable, it was just the 4th or 5th time it had come up in the conversation, and it seemed like both sides were using it differently.
Viable is not the word I would have originally used, I guess I followed with the trend.
You’ve already posted everything I could say on the matter, better than I could.
I very much agree that some classes fit mythic+ better than others while raids are a fairly well even playing field for the most part.
I haven’t played since 8.2 but Resto Sham/Holy Priest felt more restrictive than Resto Druid during keys for instance.
Thank you for putting in the time to make such a detailed post.
I’m sure everyone would appreciate a shake up in the meta. I don’t agree with Blizzard entirely that they need to reinvent the wheel with every new expac but some specs could definitely appreciate a rough rework.
Thanks 
always glad to get positive feedback on any writing, even on a forum.
I’ve advocated for a higher volume of smaller changes throughout the season with gameplay changes between seasons. That would make the jarring feature flood between expansions a little less intense.
Probably been said before, but rolling back the GCD change would help a lot. Also, fixing some classes and specs that were told they would get a fix but never happened, like enhancement shamans, told we would get a fix in 8.1, don’t think that ever happened, all they really did, iirc, was some number tweaking.
Current version of Sub is a shell of what it once was. If you find the current version fun to play you missed out on how Sub used to be.
Assassination is relatively unchanged which is good and bad. The good is that it plays closest to what Rogue used to be. The bad is the quality of life features that made Assassination shine have also been stripped away.
And for the yahtzee spec we do not speak of it in open conversations.