The fact blizzard changed to this format in later expansions proves op is right. The question is is this so detrimental now that these changes should go in SoD. And idk honestly.
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let me guess, you are also the kind of caster who complains about being oom all the time? lol 
Maybe. But in classic no one was getting world buffs then running to raid content. Thatâs a new toxic phenomenon
Small correction: In Vanilla people didnât grab world buffs.
In classic, yes, they did.
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Combo point generation was too low for backstab in âregularâ Classic. This 50% CP generation delta caused SS builds to generally pull ahead.
The addition of the 40 energy rune brings CP generation to parity with SS; however, existing sword builds gained NEW power with runes, instead of bringing them to parity, preserving an imbalance of power.
Deadly Brew (competing Rune slot) allows Rogue to benefit from Windfury and Poisons, and is one of the top performing Runes currently. This means youâre best off (only speaking generally) to avoid Backstab builds and focus on Saber Slash for swords or Mutilate for Daggers, emphasizing the new Chest rune and Poison synergies.
In PVP, Backstab builds offer excellent control of burst damage and may be better suited. But the context of PvE performance, Backstab remains in the back seat.
No warriors were the best back then too, for the exact same reason they are now, and always will be unless fundamentals of the game are changed: their base damage scales exceptionally well, and their resource generation scales with that base damage scaling, giving them exponential potential. Thereâs a reason the only fight rogues consistently outdps warriors on is Vael, and itâs because rogues will always on a fundamental level be limited by energy as a resource, a limit warriors do not have.
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Yes I meant that. The content wasnât the hardest then and when I heard the lengths guilds went to for world buffs in classic I just shook my head. Totally unnecessary
This is what playing a caster is right now regardless if you have more int or more spellpower on gear. A few hundred more mana means you oom 3 seconds later. On bosses, itâs not as bad if you kill quickly, but it feels AWFUL clearing trash. Maybe others donât think thatâs important, but thatâs when you use a lot of aoe spells, which is fun. But aoe is incredibly mana intensive and you have to drink all the time.
Meanwhile physical does more single target damage than caster aoe most of the time, or can press aoe on CD without any thought to downtime. Rets have to drink occasionally. If mages could drink as seldom as ret paladins and still use their spell kit on nearly every pull, would feel infinitely better even if single target damage lagged behind on bosses.
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I donât know why you keep bringing up ret paladins. This is Aggrend weâre talking about making sure that class/spec is top notch.
Obviously he doesnt care about balancing a damn thing besides them.
Oh, I wanted to agree with you. But I also think youâre throwing shade at some the few remaining people trying to preserve Classic as an experience.
Are Paladins and Druids out of control?
Yes. But thatâs kind of the point.
Remember the meme they threw on at Blizzcon?
Make Warriors Less OP? âNo.â
Make Everyone OP? âYes!â
As far as the thread, itâs nonsense. Intellect was never meant to give character power except via crit. All these complaints are solved via BFD itemization. Spell damage is generally solved via the leveling process and gaining access to new spell ranks â new spell ranks of melee abilities generally provide a substantially lower delta than casted abilities, and rely on gear and weapon scaling to make up the difference. That is, your equipment-based characters are more grounded in power on equipment than your character-level characters (and the opposite applies). This is an RPG first and does a good job.
For comparison, attack power gives 1 DPS per 14. Cloth casters can get around 50-60 spell power and preserve Intellect. Spell power assumes a 3.5 second cast time (with talents dropping to 3.0 second cast preserving full spell power conversion integrity). At the top end, thatâs roughly 20 DPS of spell power, which would take Rogue 280 attack power to compensate against. BiS gear for Rogue provides roughly 280 attack power.
Go play the game.
It doesnât really solve the mana pool issue. Fire warlocks are doing well (and they have life tap so donât really ahve to drink between pulls). Playing a caster besides warlock does mediocre to bad damage and have to drink all the time.
If they made some super water that worked in BFD only that would go a long way to making the casters feel better now. It does appear the gaps is closing as casters get more spellpower gear, but that makes sense. They start with nearly zero spellpower because it basically doesnât exist or you have to give up a huge amount of int for it. Also ghoomara takes extra damage from spell damage and there isnât a similar mechanic for physical. That is making casters appear more competitive than they actually are for the overall raid.
Also, warriors are still way ahead of everyone. Either nerf warriors or the other classes simply need stronger runes.
Honestly what I thought would be cool is adding Spell Books that teach a spell rank earlier than the trainer offered, but that would be a later phase possibility. This solution would even be extensible to builds, like Frost, thatâs 1 level away from a new spell rank that could push it over Fire. It would add a sense of progression, at the very least, without feeling anchored to a spell 8 levels old.
Luckily all future phase cutoffs are at the 10x level, so Mages get a new Conjure Water rank at that breakpoint. As a Priest, I havenât had too much issue just using Sweet Nectar as the drink-of-choice. You can use Melon Juice equivalent Mage water, but then you run into the âwaiting too longâ vibe. My Priest spends its money on water, my Warrior spends his money on repair. I guess itâs fair 
Casters should be doing the most aoe dps when they have the mana. The tradeoff is they have to drink if they spend their mana too fast.
The balance right now is physical does more damage than caster aoe and casters still have to drink. Maybe on some super pulls where trash lives, casters can pull ahead, but itâs not the norm right now.
I know this gets better in later phases, but there are easy solutions to make playing a caster feel better in dungeons and raids right now. The era of drinking for 30 seconds to refill mana bar needs to go.
If they want to preserve open world balance, theyâve already introduced consumes that only work in BFD. Why not water/food as well.
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To be fair the mana oil helps a little with this, but it could be more-so.
Oh man, I would love this. A canteen of refillable water that you can only drink in BFD that has like turbo-charged mana regen.
At this point though, I feel like Blizzard is probably shutting down for the holiday, and then when they get back into the office later theyâre probably going to have us ride it out until Phase 2.
Rogue has no AoE at this level. Warrior can only CleaveâŠ
I would bet some caster, like Ele Shaman loses out because it also doesnât have Chain Lightning. Shadow Priest is also lukewarm.
Are there Physical v. Caster archetypes Iâm overlooking here?
Classic AoE doesnât become damage positive until a higher number of mobs, so maybe youâre just saying that 3 target AoE is less than single target damage from those physical classes?
Could have stated it a bit better. On trash, physical does more damage even without aoe abilities than casters can with aoe. Part of it stuff dies to fast, but also their single target dps is that good.
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Boomkin 4 shot kiting me right now no thanks. Casters are fine even meta and will only continue to get more powerful as the phases release
I can also appreciate that the one boss swarm component is almost totally negated by poor mob positioning (murloc swarm during Lorgus Jett). If the murlocs would actually stay grouped instead of enraging at the healer within two seconds or hauling off from a (well-timed?? poorly-timed??) Living Bomb tick, it might play out differently there.
I think Iâm on the same page nowâthanks for clarifying!
PvE shouldnât be balanced around 1v1 pvp. Every class has strong and weak matchups. Maybe if a class has an easy time against every class and spec 1v1, then maybe nerfs are warranted.
The only pvp that really should be balanced is AB and WSG battleground group pvp. AV is too much of a zerg fest to balance pvp around.
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Why should any one class get the âwe deserve to be bestâ role? Rogues donât deserve to be a special snowflake, they already get tons of advantages especially in PvP, so why should they just get the king of dps in PvE because well they are a rogue? Also now that they are technically a hybrid (tank/dps) shouldnât they have their damage heavily reduced since they are a hybrid? I mean if druids, shaman, paladins suffer from the hybrid tax, shouldnât rogues and warriors?