What about Guardian Druids? Also a perception problem that the spec received zero spec-related development or class dev comment for alpha/beta/8.0 and is now functionally less than when we had access to legendries and artifact weapon? 8.1’s talent choice change and small dmg aura notwithstanding.
Regarding Ythisen’s post on perception - perception becomes a problem when a spec in a bad state is left to fester. Spec balance peaked at Legion and took a nosedive the moment that prepatch hit. So from 8.0 through to 8.1 - ferals, enhance, shadow and more - were all left in the dark. Those players were actively told “you can’t bring that to raid”, “if you can’t out-DPS the tank then you can’t come to this key”.
If you want to remove that perception then that spec needs to raise eyebrows in a good way. Something that makes people go “That looks fun - I want to play that”. Or “Wow, they really turned spec X around!”. Quietly buff a spec to “average” and next to nobody is going to care. That doesn’t get attention and that doesn’t fix perception. How many people would go reroll once they’ve already gone and geared that alternative spec? How many people would say “I think I’ll make that my next alt”?
Give under-performing specs some way to shine. Something that gives them exposure. Going from awful to average won’t shake the perception that a class is bad.
I did plenty of legion M+.
after I saw they throw the +10 affixes on lower keys, M+ instantly died for me, this new system is bad and should be reverted to legion on 8.2.
people enjoyed M+ on legion why it went downhills on BFA? the big affixes on lower keys, kills most of the pugs without mercy… and of course the terrible “class design” or the non existant “class fantasy” at this point, after legion and the artifact system…
I havent done a single M+ this expansion until the devs come back to their senses and realize that legion system was better and SHOULD be the way to go… my answer regarding M+ will be the same, I encourage to you people struggling with this… either raider io or your personal thoughts, just stop doing them if you’re not enjoying this… you’re not missing out anything but hitting yourself against a wall with the community being so serious and devs being so stubborn.
Tell me more says the MM hunter.
^ I just Laugh…
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There are cases where the gap between “excellent” gameplay and “good” gamplay was just too wide. Feral druids were notorious for being “too hard” to play and therefore bad. So that is one reason.
Another reason is the Blizzard’s insistence that RNG is somehow good or fun.
Farming up multiple sets of Azerite gear is a colossal pain and a step backwards from tier sets swapping with spec back in MoP (or WoD…whichever).
Farming up AP to unlock traits (either on higher ilvl gear) or just base gear … means items I do get are for some stupid reason “underpowered” because Blizzard wants to extend MAUs because somehow that’s supposed to be “fun”.
Then there is the RNG secondary stat distribution that is all over the place on high ilvl gear. Let’s face it, players “should know better” … but whatever happened to not having to sim-stuff or use third-party resources to figure out what is or isn’t good. Then let’s not forget that most folks look for high ilvl over stats when forming pugs…meaning that I am better off as a garbage stat’ed 370 shaman vs. a proper stat distribution 355 shaman (in terms of group finding - even if its detrimental to throughput).
So when you say stuff like “shamans can put up the numbers” … who are you comparing it them to?
Mythic raid geared shamans or the 355-370 average player with whatever the highest ilvl Azerite armor they could find or the best ilvl piece irregardless of stats?
Skill has always/will always matter. However gear has never been this all-over-the-place.
To be honest I’m not sure whether I should angry or just genuinely impressed that you could even keep the game semi-balanced with this much RNG permeating through every aspect of the game.
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Please, Blizz, give us a way to stop GIF’s from running, or make them default to stopped until we click them. This constant running is extremely annoying, and just makes me scroll them off screen and not read whatever post they’re in.
Community perception exists because it is somewhat true, especially from an ‘average’ player perspective.
If spec A, let’s say, Shadow Priest, performs well, but only a handful of people in the world can do well with it, and the average player cannot perform at those levels, then community will say that they suck. It’s because most of the priests they come across aren’t going to be good, and thus it shapes up the community perception.
It was like MM barrage pulling Seagulls in Eye of Azshara, that weren’t even on their screen… Stuff like that gets people away from specs quickly. It is also a human shortcoming that bad news festers and lingers longer than good news. So a spec being perceived as bad happens a lot faster than a spec being perceived as good.
Having said all of that however, it isn’t entirely the community’s fault. The divide between best and worst (for a role type: tank, healer, melee DPS, ranged DPS) should never be beyond 6-7%. Once it crosses 10%, the bottom half start getting neglected.
The issue isn’t why you cannot bring an Enhance shaman to the M+. The issue is always “I’ll just wait out for the rogue / DH / monk / warrior”. Same with Shadow priests - “I’ll just wait out for the mage / BM / lock”.
There are a few simple fixes:
a) Disable the outlier abilities in m+ : shroud, gateway, gorefiend’s grip
b) anytime you pull more than 8-10 mobs at once, they all gain Rampage - increasing their health, damage, and movement speed by 50%.
c) increase the time to beat of instances by X minutes as needed.
d) fix classes that have severe broken aspects. M+, and CMs before them, have always been about pushing a timed run. Therefore, burst, cleave, and heavy aoe or heavy aoe CC specs were always going to be preferred. Even in Legion, shadow was a undesirable spec until the buffs to void eruption and requiring only one dot instead of 2.
But something tells me that the Devs don’t want this happening. They’re happy with having fewer good specs so that they can eventually phase out the unwanted specs from the game. That’s my perception of it at least.
You have mountains of “Feedback” that can answer those questions if ya’ll actually “read” them. Enhancement Shaman had some amazing abilities, but the major problem was Devs kept taking them out and changing them because they want the class to feel “new”, but, like I wrote many times, this actually diluted the class identity to what we have now making the class bland. Now Devs don’t even know how to make an Enhancement Shaman a Fantasy Enhancement Shaman because ya’ll done took away what it was over the years.
Never played enhance much, all I knew was that they were the good dps shaman spec.