Just who is the least 'developed' in WoW?

Community General Discussion
1

Got bored and spent yesterday copy/pasting all the development cycle patch notes (PTR) into a document to investigate just who really gets the most development attention. Now there will of course be a few metrics to look at, given one class may have huge number of mentions, but only have small changes, where one class may have less mentions, but mountains of changes and text.

The metrics I’ll be looking at over the next couple of days will be:

  • Total number of development mentions
  • Total development word count
  • Frequency of development (when one mention occurs, how long until another)

The data:

  • Development notes have been gathered between yesterday and the Dragonflight pre-patch (when Evokers as the latest class first came on the scene).
  • The total word count for all development notes within the data was almost 260,000.
  • PvE and PvP notes were both included and not separated. At this stage I just want to see where attention is directed, not what kind of attention anything gets.
  • Only Development Notes were included, nothing on live servers.
  • I really hate that some specialisations between classes share the same names. This sucked and really made it harder to distinguish, but got there in the end.
  • This was not fed into a robot. I originally tried doing it this way, but it made SO many mistakes and misinterpreted heaps, so I did it manually. Which means I must take full responsibility for any and all mistakes lol.
  • If you disagree or think any of the data is wrong, I invite you to do the work and demonstrate. Saying this not to be dismissive of scrutiny, but to genuinely fuel more people doing this kind of thing, so we can all get a clearer picture.

Results:
So, the first metric is total number of mentions during development periods and results are as follows:

CLASS SPECIALISATION MENTIONS
DEATH KNIGHT 54
Blood 27
Frost 45
Unholy 35
DEMON HUNTER 41
Havoc 25
Vengeance 20
DRUID 72
Balance 41
Feral 35
Guardian 26
Restoration 37
EVOKER 54
Augmentation 20
Devastation 24
Preservation 28
HUNTER 61
Beast Mastery 39
Marksmanship 33
Survival 32
MAGE 64
Arcane 46
Fire 44
Frost 38
MONK 69
Brewmaster 30
Mistweaver 45
Windwalker 38
PALADIN 71
Holy 41
Protection 33
Retribution 39
PRIEST 55
Discipline 32
Holy 35
Shadow 37
ROGUE 45
Assassination 15
Outlaw 29
Subtlety 21
SHAMAN 65
Elemental 31
Enhancement 41
Restoration 40
WARLOCK 47
Affliction 21
Demonology 18
Destruction 30
WARRIOR 57
Arms 42
Fury 42
Protection 39

This is cool to look at in isolation. It must be said mentions of course does not strictly equal development hours for the class/specialisation (or lack thereof). It will be good to compare each metric against one another when I’m done, to see if things like ‘do classes/specialisations with fewer mentions have more word count than high mentioned’.

So how did your class or specialisation fair? Who should be mad? Who feels their number of mentions doesn’t equal where playability is?

4 Likes
2

Hunters have historically been completely ignored and an afterthought but we’ve genuinely received a lot of attention, most of it good, in the last few years and I honestly can’t complain - I’m pretty happy with the class overall and only really have some minor complaints.

Can I nitpick stuff? Sure. Hunters Mark sucks, our itemisation is bizarre, wailing Arrow needs to come back, the 2 target cleave issue is incredibly irritating but these are all super trivial complaints in the scheme of things.

4 Likes
3

Rogues its your answer.

No wonder its one the least played classes , lacks utility , lacks options (pure melee dps).

5 Likes
4

Interestingly enough I also asked an AI to do a similar analysis and it came up with totally different results than you.

5

But half of the Marksmanship changes are probably “Buffed Aimed Shot damage by 15% (PvP Only)” and “Nerfed Aimed Shot damage by 15% (PvP Only)”

3 Likes
6

they did say that they tried to have a bot analyze the data but it made a lot of mistakes. i’d guess that’s why you got different results

3 Likes
7

WARLOCKS AND ROGUES.

Theres your answer. Hense why locks are soooo horrifically antiquated and rogues are not far behind.

3 Likes
8

Everybody thinks the class they main is the “least developed.”

1 Like
9

DH and Rogue have the same lone dev.

Maybe BlizZard needs to hire more devs?

:thinking:

:surfing_man: :surfing_woman:

2 Likes
10

These numbers are meaningless—the devs fail to understand the issues around balancing. I play Fury. As a Fury Warrior, I am completely disgusted with balancing, especially for M+. The Developers do favor other classes over others. They ignore feedback and make unwarranted changes. Blizzard Communication sucks.

3 Likes
11

In a world where ChatGPT reigned supreme… one poster would challenge the odds to make an original topic.

2 Likes
12

I feel like that fact rather undermines the whole premise of this.

1 Like
13

I feel ignoring the literal next sentence written rather undermines the integrity of your comment.

14

Rogues are in a terrible spot but this is just false. Sap, Blind, Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot, Gouge, poisons, Cloak and Evasion can cheese a ton of mechanics, heck even Cheat Death.

15

Nah. It doesn’t.

16

Dang thing needs to be passive. I keep forgetting to use it.

1 Like
17

This is what I was thinking.

This is probably also why any person can make suggestions in the Warlock or Hunter forums and theirs a chance they’ll make it into the game… because the devs don’t exist.

I feel bad for the one WoW intern in charge of everything Warlock related, who’s given a bucket of coffee and told “figure it out”.

18

u know what all CC’s have in common?

SINGLE TARGET , come on we have classes that have 3 ways to stop mobs from doing attacks on AOE…