Raid Set Bonuses Seem Excessive

WoW Classic Season of Discovery
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I left SoD a while back, no longer motivated to go Rank 13 to 14 because it seemed Shamans were not just OP but to such an unnatural degree, relative to all my years on WoW, and OP for so long, that I lost confidence there was anyone sincerely overseeing the class balancing anymore.

While I know there’s almost always an OP class at any point in WoW, there generally some sense they can still be defeated in Classic times, or sense there is at least some rock paper scissors classes or specs that would have an easier time with the OP class. I liked earlier phases of SoD because it felt like everyone could just nuke each other and die relatively fast. On Retail on the other hand when a class feels OP it can feel like it is a mathematical impossibility, like forever punching and trying to beat up a god, and SoD Shamans started to feel like that, judging from my experiences and the excessive amounts of complaints I would hear during my time on SoD.

Anyway, engage in the usual forum experiences if you will. “lol hunter complaining” “no its not shamans its paladins!!” etc. It won’t change my experiences.

So, despite the whole class balance thing that deterred me for months, I was willing to return to SoD just to re-visit and see the state of things today, because I still love many things about SoD.

The biggest problem is that I don’t raid. Raiding in Classic is even more toxic to me than raiding in Retail. I’m likely never gonna deal with the loot drama and the colossal amounts of time doing something I personally find 1000x more potent than chamomile tea, all simply to have the possibility of the possibility of a loot piece for the week, assuming my group is successful.

During many phases and expansions, WoW is nice to PvPers like me and they offer the ability to be competitive in PvP while not needing to raid. But later in SoD, I first noticed that Warlocks could banish themselves thanks to PvE Raid set bonuses. This seemed a bit much to have something so important locked behind raiding. Then as I looked at the set bonuses of other classes, including my own, I realized that SoD is trying to gatekeep many abilities and significant enhancements behind being a PvE Raider in particular.

It reminds me of when I rejoined BFA after a very long break since quitting Cata, and having to do raids in order to obtain certain critical abilities. It was not fun, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Retail WoW got rid of this in subsequent expansions, allowing PvPers to at the very least mostly do something relevant to their interest in the game (PvP).

So am I misunderstanding something here? Seems like PvPers have the same garbage set bonuses found in regular Classic while PvEers get set bonuses that significantly alter their classes.

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This is what you are missing. this is not sod raiding which is super accessible, and we have player made systems in place to prevent loot drama. further PVP with few exceptions has always been a side format with the PVE being the primary focus. especially in the classic variants where you have to engage in PvE to optimize your PVP(this includes raiding, consumables, engineering, etc). Ill be real with you. If you dont intend to do this your time is better spent somewhere else.

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Truth be told, you’re basically not the target audience for this game mode at this point.

:dracthyr_shrug:

It is what it is.

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On top of the fact that this game mode is really just not built for PvP, it’s way too late into the development cycle of this game mode to make huge changes like this. SoD is pretty much over. They were willing to half damage done in PvP, but that should be a pretty clear example of how much work they’re willing to put into PvP at this stage. Not very much lol.

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There have been many periods in WoW where by not raiding, you are not subjected to such a significant disadvantage in PvP. In Classic for example you can play certain specs and just PvP for most of your gear, and do little things from high level dungeons that are more than enough to function effectively without feeling underpowered. In TBC as well, and also Retail as we know it, players are ensured they can just PvP without having to raid at all. SoD copy-pasting things from Retail, I would copy-paste the logic of appealing to non-raiders.

I wasn’t around between Cata and BFA but the temptation to raid during classic was always for some extra stats or something small like a trinket to help see stealthed characters easier, which I never got because I didn’t care to min-max that heavily. So small & mostly statistical benefits from raiding are fine, but having major benefits to core abilities depend on being a raider, is not normal from Blizzard and discourages the many people I know with no interests in the more extreme form of PvE (raiding).

Since you brought up stuff like Engineer to list as PvE, I’d say that’s all fine. Dungeons are also fine. Raiding is just significantly more impacting on one’s time, and much more of a gamble where I might very well just spend ungoldly amounts of time doing something unfun, unengaging, like a job resume simulator or waiting forever for the right people to join and all the issues with failing and getting locked out mid-raid, blah blah blah. I’ve met many people like myself who would prefer to never set foot in a raid, just PvP and do smaller-scale dungeons without lockouts to ensure they are adequate to have fun, and so for SoD to uniquely discourage this non-raider audience from feeling adequate in PvP, unlike most other versions of WoW which show clear attempts to provide enough functionality in PvP, I think it just unnecessarily discourages a number of players on SoD that would otherwise be very easy to keep.

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So…… you dont raid
You…… arent going for pvp gear since u wont push rank

And you’re wondering why you being destroyed in pvp?

Idk about anyone else but anytime ive run across under-geared players, I rip them a new one.

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Raiding isn’t very time consuming on SoD. Other than HM4 Naxx and SE, pretty much everything is puggable. I am “raiding” on SoD but not on anniversary for that reason. Don’t need to worry about WB’s and consume prices aren’t astronomical. Oh and I’m not limited to some boring one button rotation.