I think Druid, Hunter, Warlock, and Shaman are in a great place right now in terms of solo agency. Just from playing Hunter, I can see that these classes have a fighting chance in every situation without Engineering, which should be the aim for all classes. My original main was my Warrior, I wanted to try Protection PvP, and it did not work that well. I will be trying it again soon because I got more loot last night, but it seems non-viable. Other classes that have this problem are Paladin, and some Rogue rune builds. Paladins need Pursuit of Justice and Rogues basically need Shadowstrike because Quick Draw is not really a usable gap closer, at least not one that leaves a significant advantage on the pursuit.
These things will be fixed for Rogue with higher ranks of Stealth and Sprint that increase their overall mobility, and to a lesser extent Paladins get Repentance. Warriors will get Intercept and likely Intervene, too, based on the Warbringer tooltip. What are they missing that would give them the agency the higher tier classes have though?
I know old Paladin flavor is kind of like modern retail Death Knight flavor, where you run to get where you’re going. You don’t have a natural gap closer. Divine Steed in retail isn’t even a dedicated gap closer, it’s just a mobility option. Rogue flavor is all about the finesse and the cooldown management, so Shadowstrike seemed like a more balanced option than Shadowstep because Rogue needs high risk situations to not control almost every 1v1. Warriors have increased potency and pressure with Intercept, but as most Warrior players know, it’s basically only giving you a chance for one, maybe two more globals before the better classes reset the neutral game. In conclusion, I posit that these classes ALL NEED their iconic gap closers to not make this a ranged-heavy meta. As someone who watched most of them come out before I quit WoW pre-MoP, I know that it will be realized that these melee need their gap closers the same way they need interrupts.
On a side note: maybe try to find a gap closer that looks more vanilla-like for each of them? I know Divine Steed would either be really good or really bad based on the cooldowns or durations it’s given because it’s like having a short sprint on a short cooldown, which is almost too good in a meta-framework like original classic where you couldn’t even PvP without 8% speed to boots.
The three strongest DPS classes in PvP are Ret, Feral, and Hunter. And plenty of premades are stacking Warriors with windfury if they have the epic sword.
What “ranged-heavy meta” ?
Stop pretending duels matter.
You splash 1 Mage into your premade for Int, water, poly, rank 1 frost bolt, and CS. You’ve lost it if you think there’s a “ranged meta”.
I don’t think you understand because you do too many premade vs premade WSGs. It’s not the same without coordination; yes, Ret is great in organized pvp, they have some of the best buffs right now, but in terms of SOLO AGENCY, they do not win very many 1v1s right now even with their immunity + full heal that used to give them a fighting chance. I queue with a ret daily that was a ranker in FFXIV PvP, they have Deadly Strike and almost full BiS and still just get pinged to death by Hunter pets, kited to death, and outhealed by Discipline Priests and meta Warlocks.
Yeah, it’s great to think that Classic Era is balanced based on premade comp vs premade comp, but that only really matters for the esports sector of WoW. You’re the one that doesn’t understand that most of the PvPers are dads solo queueing into WSG with their new BFD loot from last raid.
Didn’t ask and don’t care. WoW isn’t balanced for 1v1 and I thank the light Aggrend says their team has no intent to strive for arena-like class homogenization.
Play to your role on the team.
Okay and most players are bad. Coordinate with the randoms in your BG or don’t and lose.
Imagine whining when Rets are one of the strongest classes. Yeesh.
You think you’re gatekeeping some kind of higher knowledge about PvP, you’re not. How a class feels solo has a lot to do with how they feel in a group. If the game ends up like a rock-paper-scissors of warrior-mage-rogue in PvP in Classic Era, then nobody is going to do it just like on Classic Era once AV comes out. People like you don’t value fun, you value winning. The winning is usually done against these “bad” players, too; I do it all of the time, it’s not hard.
Balancing 1vX agency of a class is not arena-like, it’s literally like required of every modern MMO to have some degree of class execution that can make you rise above a lesser skilled player. I come from games that have hard counterpicks like old 2D fighting games, it’s not fun to just lose a fight because you’re playing what you like.
You don’t understand games as entertainment value because you’re still finding your self-efficacy standard in personal performance. Once you’re content with your skill level, you realize games are just for fun again. Trust me.
You know what’s fun? Having unique characters and playing a role in a party.
The fact you’re using fighting games as a comparison point and not something like Overwatch or Team Fortress or DOTA or League of Legends shows you are lost.
Since you won’t ever realize you are wrong, feel free to reply I will give you the last word but know it falls on deaf ears because I have no interest in hearing you vent when you are the one who needs to listen and learn.
I don’t agree with your assessment, however give Priests Spectral Guise and Phase Shift. Thanks. 
I think you mean having a statistical advantage over half of the class varieties in the game is fun. Unique roles can be established without maintaining boundaries of inclusion, not everyone wants to have one of every class leveled for each patch cycle just so they can pick top-tier. If your idea of fun is having unique characters and roles, wouldn’t them having universal viability be more fun because your role as the “good” classes wouldn’t be over-saturated, leaving it harder to find groups/guilds/etc? Your points aren’t good, you talk like people do on retail after they hit 2k rating in Mythic +. You don’t know it all man, otherwise you would just work for Blizzard. I did consider including other team games, but I’m honestly most acclimated to fighting games. I’m not a big LoL player, I’m OK at Overwatch, but I’m just trying to make a point to you about how 10-0 or 9-1 matchups feel. They feel like garbage, you don’t realize this though.
Bads with bad takes and stupid ideas, part 13829123-014
You cannot have balanced 1v1 without turning every class into a clone of one another.
They never were supposed to be a 1v1 class.
If every melee gets a gap closer I want 20% more HP on my mage and another 800 armor thx.