Balance around damage meters and every spec being “viable” in every raid role is hard and bad for the game. It removes class identity and removes the RPG aspect of picking your class and spec based on what you want to do. Versions of the game that tried this are super awful and end up with imbalances anyway.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is better in several ways. Warrior for example; the most difficult to level, the most gear dependent by miles, the most sensitive rotation, the most expensive to play, but if you do everything right are the top Tanks and DPS. Top Tank is a no brainer that’s the class role, but I’d be perfectly happy if Warriors were behind Rogues for melee DPS to be honest. This is a fluke and I don’t think it was intentional and has a lot to do with game knowledge that we now have and the way itemization works (Warriors can equip almost everything).
Druid can do a bit of everything, is one of the easier classes to level, one of the easier classes to gear (aside from BiS), can do several things fine, brings some great cooldowns. It would be super broken if they were also top anything. Druids are balanced in that they can do it all to an adequate level, anything more would not be fair to classes with a far more limited toolkit.
You can balance for a fixed length fight with no mechanics and perfect rotation, but that won’t match the actual stats on warcraft logs (either the top percentiles or middle ones) that incorporate variation in fight length, player skill and mechanics.
And you can’t just make a fixed adjustment based on logs and be done, because changing the damage profile of a class may change it’s BIS, it will definitely change the comp brought by raids and fight lengths. Basically you’re assuming things will shift linearly with buffs or nerfs, but they don’t, which is why balancing is still an iterative trial and error process.
I don’t think trying to make every dps spec the same in a raid would be good at all.
I think in some hypothetical classic wow the gaps can be lessened, especially fury warriors being so over the top compared to anyone else. Mainly due to rage scaling and lack of normalization.
Based on their role I honestly think rogues deserve to be the top single target dps in the game.
I think there is a bit of wiggle room where hybrid casters don’t go oom instantly in longer fights (TBC did that a lot better).
Vanilla WoW was not made for all classes to be equal. We knew that back in 2005.
That was the impetus behind; “Bring the player, not the class,” that emerged during Wrath of the Lich King.
While it did bring more parity between the classes, it didn’t feel like an improvement in the game. All it did was usher in the, “Go, go, go” mentality.
If anything, I wish retail looked more like vanilla WoW - than vice versa.
Exactly. The view that Blizzard can just tweak based on logs is naive.
The other issue is that it puts the responsibility on Blizzard to decide who should be doing what damage. That’s not good game design and doesn’t sound fun to me.
First, warriors are just as easy to level as other classes, there is nothing at all hard or difficult about leveling a warrior. At best warriors might eat a bit more, but bandaging or eating is not hard, in fact warriors will have less downtime and use fewer consumes them most classes that use mana making them faster levelers, though speed is not a indication of easy/hard. As for your example Warriors are actually probably an easier class to level than a druid, so really a bad example, perhaps if you had said hunter, probably the only class you can be afk and level, but at least a hunter is pure DPS class.
Also if you think the warrior toolkit is limited, you seriously need to go to your trainer and buy skills, they have crazy amounts of utility, far more than almost any other class.
Cats while solid dps, have lower dps then a warrior, will take far more damage and are best with single target, while warriors especially after they get the WW axe can take on multiple mobs quite easily with WW/SS. Druids also have no way to deal with casters, unlike warriors who get several options for interrupts, as well as several types of CC including being one of the few classes that gets AOE CC. Druids also can’t use potions in cat/bear form.
The fact that druids can get from point A to point B prior to level 40 also doesn’t make them easier or harder, even if you RP walk everywhere it wont make the game harder, it just makes things slower, and while they can use this as an escape they also don’t get an AOE fear, shield wall, retaliation or other big cooldowns.
All classes are ridiculous.y easy to level and can easily gear themselves thru questing, and no you don’t need a high level alt to make warriors or rouges easy or any class for that matter. Also even if one class is slightly harder or easier, it still wouldn’t be any justification to have them do more damage.
I see what you are getting at but it is more nuanced than this.
Warrior requires more game knowledge. Weapon progression is basically the main thing. Stat priority is not linear where “of the Whale” is better in low levels and “of the Monkey” is relative to your weapon quality and so on. It takes more game knowledge and the better you know the game, melee mechanics the easier it is. A way to do ranged pulls is the first thing you should buy as an example. Beginners and players new to Classic are going to find it the most difficult to level.
Druid is slower but also you can just do the most obvious thing and play in a direct way and it is fine. Your toolkit comes with a great ranged pull, HoT, direct heal, armor reduction, thorns, stealth escapes and other things that lower the barrier to leveling through tough zones.
No, what are you smoking? Apparently reading comprehension is your weak point. I stated whether 5% or 80% all they care is best damage is best. If you do 5% more, you’re best and that’s all that matters. If you do 80% you’re best and that’s all that matters. I’m saying the number is irrelevant as long as it’s best. I recommend reading more carefully next time.
Warriors have never required more game knowledge to level than any other class, and can easily go thru all WOW classic content. Even really new or bad players will have no real issues leveling on a warrior. It’s a simple class to play at a moderate level like all other classes, and blizzard pretty much made it easy for anyone to level with their quest system.
Honestly the only real argument that warriors have around their current DPS and where no balancing is done to boost other classes or nerf warrior scaling is simply “no changes” and honestly thats simply enough if thats how you feel.
Warriors did require more knowledge as their kit didnt allow them to get away with as many mistakes as other classes did, or have just as easy a time with high base dmg as other classes.
Warrior dps is still skewed by World buffs and recklessness on short duration fights, you can litterally look at logs from MC, BWL and even AQ with no Recklessness and a longer fight and warriors equal rogues for the most part. It is again when you stat stack all of the rest on top that warriors bad base scaling but good stat scaling starts to go ham and it only gets ridiculous when they pop recklessness and the boss dies in 20-40 seconds where that recklessness and cds are up through the whole thing.
Exactly how do warriors require more knowledge when leveling? No class really handles mobs above their level well, so do you really struggle with yellow/green quests? Exactly what mechanics made you struggle as a warrior? Why do you feel they can make fewer mistakes then other classes, when they actually have more utility to handle the mistakes then other classes or their higher DPS will simply elevate the issue?
Warrior DPS also isn’t skewed to short fights, they will have just as much or more of an advantage in long fights, as you will see in AQ40 and Naxx. Rogues are similar where they also have higher damage then other classe.
their lack of basically any self healing, pets, cc or resets mechanics ? Pretty standard things, alongside their very low base damage this means they are horrible for questing, unless geared where they become average to slightly above average at best.
In what way does a warrior have more utility to aleviate issues while leveling, what can a warrior do if he pulls too many mobs or a mob that is too high level ?
You cant make a single coherent argument as to why warriors damage is not skewed towards short fights. I provided clear evidence (Recklessness) and the tendency to choose higher percentile logs, means those logs have a high uptime of recklessness and are fights where recklessness was used a higher amount than the amount of times a warrior would have it up for bosses on average. The percentage of top 90% logs on any boss is nearly all using reck and that is a 30 min cd that in most raids is realistically only being used once or twice and does not represent the average boss dps a warrior can do.