You’re just shifting the goalposts here. You then have to define “competitive.” Thankfully, Riger gave a decent answer.
The reasoning with this isn’t something I have any problem with. Where I see potential issues is that people will still look at the relative standing of their class/spec compared to the others–even if the highest/lowest are within 10% of each other–and cry that those in the bottom third are “undertuned” or some similar phrasing.
For Blizzard’s part, this could be largely a non-issue because it actually would be relatively balanced, but then players who don’t choose the top 50% builds get socially excluded from groups/raids despite being viable.
It’s more about Blizzard having a stronger leg to stand on. Now if they say “no” people rightly argue that they changed their mind previously based on crowd feedback.
With my approach they can literally say “no” and then refer the community to their policy on it. You’ll still get some complainers but it will reduce their numbers and effectiveness. The general perception will be that the process is fair and uniform.
Blizzard actually used to have a team dedicated to balance. They still do in retail I think. Their decision to outsource that to the community in classic is a cost cutting measure.
I mostly agree with that, but we have seen with the gear score fiasco that a significant chunk of this community has zero interest in helping people who aren’t picking the top meta builds/specs because they just want easy runs.
He also doesn’t recognize that I’m merely pointing out his rhetorical mistakes–not attacking him personally like he does to everyone else in nearly every post.
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