So this balance business. A thought

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I’d say pretty much everyone agrees that a lot of the classes, especially niche specs are horrible in vanilla.

Ret paladin is probably the biggest offender as an example, it’s literally a meme.
I’m about as big a #nochanges for vanilla as you can get, but I’m also a realist. You really already changed so much, nor did you give us an honest vanilla experience. 1.12 was a bridge right before prepatch talents. A good example would be enhancement Shaman; its completely gutted. WF attack bonus was what, halved? Two attacks were removed, and it used to be able to proc on itself. The internal CD was changed mid vanilla iirc though, and a good change.

To get to my point here, I don’t think most folks would actually mind balance changes if done correctly. But there are certan tenets that must be adhered to.

  1. No nerfs. I dont care how powerful warriors are, thats how they were in vanilla. Full stop.

  2. No altering how the class actually works or plays, example: enhancement shaman need to remain a 2h class, never DW. That’s how it was in vanilla, and it needs to stay pure to that ideal.

The only way balancing works is if you bring other classes up to a warriors level. We’re already stacking 20+ warriors, dps output would be the same in the end. Wamt to add 30% boss HP? No one really cares.

Possible fixes that I think would be agreed upon;

Hunter; They simply need to scale better. It’s not hard.

Shadow Priest obviously needs their mana costs reduced, mindflay needs to be able to crit, and even after that the class probably needs to scale better.

Enhancement shaman, cut the stormstrike CD by at least 50%, buff the windfury attack bonus, if it still needs more help add an extra attack.
I would love to see stormstrike reliably proc WF 100% of the time, this is probably how it should have been, but I don’t think that should really happen, abilities need to stay the same.

Ret paladin. This is absolute trash, and I have no idea what to do with this, the only thing you can realistically do is buff judgments or their consecration. To bring that up to a Warriors level of DPS, it would have to hit like Thors hammer. I’m sure every ret paladin would love crusader strike, but that’s not vanilla.

I realize this isn’t all of the classes that need help to be brought up to warriors level, but they’re probably the biggest offenders. The simple truth of the matter is is most of them just need to scale better or tweaked to being them up to that level. We don’t want different classes, we don’t want different abilities, But it would be nice to be able to not feel like absolute trash compared to a warrior, and gasp actually invited to a raid.

If change is going to happen, it must be done correctly, and in the spirit of vanilla.

OP, bursty, explodey, that’s vanilla.

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I believe a good buff for hybrid classes would be a backdoor mechanics change in hit and crit. It makes it especially hard to dps in raids in classic as a hybrid because melee crit and spell crit % and melee hit and spell hit % are separate stats. These need to be combined into single stats otherwise you have to over-buff their damage to compensate which cause balance problems in pvp.

For paladins, Judgement should cause 100% weapon damage regardless of the seal used so paladins dont have to chose between damage and a debuff. For the seals that already do damage on judgement they can be modified a bit. For example; Seal of righteousness could cause 60% weapon damage to up to 3 nearby targets (good tanking seal or AOE). Seal of Command could cause an additional 50% weapon damage to the target, 100% additional if the target it stunned or incapacitated.

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One big issue with doing these type of balance changes, particularly where DPS/HPS potential is the metric for balance, is that you’re going to break other aspects of the game.

PvP is the one that immediately comes to mind. Basically every spec has some kind of representation in PvP and some scenario where the excel and shine already.

I can tell you, a lot PvPers would not like Shadow Priest to do more damage and not have the drawback of rationing their mana for instance. They already do really really high damage in PvP and have some of the best utility. Having to watch their mana a bit is the trade off to that.

I also don’t know that DPS/HPS should be the metrics for PvE balance either. Despite what a lot of people say, utility does matter and every class (albeit perhaps not spec) is needed in a well rounded raid group.

Like, people say all druid specs are terrible–jack of all trades master of none type deal. But, you would never run without a druid in your raid because MotW and Faerie Fire are the best buff/debuff in the game. They don’t do the highest DPS/HPS, but they do meaningfully contribute to your group in big ways.

If you take this in tandem with the fact that not everyone has the time and organization or motivation to min/max a 40 man roster, I feel like most everyone can get into a raid and that balance and representation are really not that big of an issue.

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Honestly PvP is NOT balanced in this game, and thats one of the things I love about it.
The day they turn it into retail or even tbc balance is the day I’ll go to pservers permanently.

A geared hunter can 1 shot clothies, a mage can straight up dunk a warrior or rogue.

A warrior can straight up slaughter a spriest or warlock.

PvE damage is where we need balance if they’re going to do it.
PvP is an afterthought. It isnt balanced. Hell I don’t want it balanced, its part of what makes vanilla magic.

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I don’t have a ton of experience with other classes in classic but I have played many paladins both in retail vanilla and classic.

One of the biggest problems with paladins in classic is that as a melee based hybrid, hardly any of their skills are weapon dmg based with SoC being the only one.

Also some of their talents are abysmal. A holy or ret has to dumpster 5 talent points to go into the prot tree (maybe make redoubt give 10% parry if no shield equiped?). Retribution tier 1 has the horribly bad 15% mana reduction to seals and judgement for 5 talent points. This should be 30% or 40%. Sanctity aura should be removed and improved retribution aura should be 5 pts that gives members 5% more dmg. Increased 2h damage in ret should be 10% for 3 pts not 6%. These a just a few examples.

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Your crit ideas are valid. A big problem with ret pallies is theyre just straight up lacking in offensive abilities though.

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Agreed. They do need something that deals dmg besides auto, seal procs, and judgement. Crusader strike seems like a good candidate but it was never in classic. Funny thing is it was in alpha/beta but it was removed and turned into seal of the crusader when tigole and foror took over vanilla when the orig dev left.

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i don’t think they’re touching pvp balance, just tweaking the ranking system :expressionless:

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I hate to admit it but any buffs to non meta classes seems wishful thinking on my part. I don’t think blizzard understand that people play classic because of the content, fun leveling, atmosphere, character customization, and the ability to use items and skills in somewhat overpowered ways. Not because their favorite classes were gimped.

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“I’d say pretty much everyone agrees…”

You are awfully wrong from your first utterance.

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Nah he is on point. His post is great actually.

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So what you saying is that you want to play Wrath of the pitch king or TBC? Basically what changing the classes accomplishes

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I’m not saying I’m right, so feel free to rip apart this opinion, but I don’t think balancing Vanilla would retain what it is. Would it help raiding? Yes. Would it help any other aspect of Vanilla? I really don’t think so.

And part of Vanilla’s charm is it’s absurd lack of balancing.

If I raided again, yes I think the raid scene needs a better representation of every class. But it would really need to be minor things that don’t affect other aspects of the game. Like making Tier sets for each spec and fixing some Hybrid mana issues through the set bonuses.

If I knew a Lazer Chicken suddenly had easily enough mana for a full fight with the DPS of a Warrior, then I don’t know why anyone would play Warrior (aside from guilds forcing 7-8 of them to prep for Naxx)

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I agree, but only in a SoM server. Era is its own beast and needs to remain as true as it can (and they’ve already messed with enough).

The first thing people can’t agree on is whether there should be a “hybrid tax.” If you think there should be, then you need to justify why warriors shouldn’t be nerfed since they are a hybrid class and all the “pure dps classes” - hunter/lock/mage/rogue, should all have higher damage capabilities.

If you think a “hybrid tax” is stupid, you are then suggesting that we actively buff hybrid classes to the point they are within a certain % of each other, like retail attempts to balance. I’m not sure that’s the best option either when a paladin could bubble, heal, dispel, and still pump dps like a warrior.

You can balance most hybrids with small fixes:

Shadow: Reduced mana costs & remove threat from mind blast.
Feral: Everything can bleed, bleed damage scales with attk power, bake wolfhelm and gnomer weapon into talents/abilities/idol.
Boomkin: reduced mana costs for balance and hit talents.
Shaman: I don’t play shaman, so I’m not sure, but I’ve heard that totems need to not share an element and apply across the raid better.

Paladins are their own hot mess. Maybe you make SoC proc more for ret? Have seal of the crusader increase over time instead of decrease? Hell, I dunno how you fix this without crusader strike honestly. Prot is less tricky, give them a taunt, or just attach a taunt to another ability, like holy shield. And reduce the mana cost of consecrate for deep prot pallies.

However, if you make paladins viable tanks, I think that tilts the PvE balance even more drastically in alliance favor, and we know how that went with SoM. If you truly make paladins viable tanks, do we have to tinker with shaman enhance tree to make them viable end game tanks too?

So I guess you have to decide. Where is the line? What constitutes a “vanilla spirit” change and what is crossing the line? It’s entirely arbitrary at this point and that’s the problem.

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Hybrid tax is a misnomer, no such actual thing really exists…

The real problem hybrids have is their gear is not focused to a task in most (not all) situations.

The fact that their stats in many cases are all over the place OR per the tier of content not allocated for their spere of play is the real issue.

Simply giving hybrids more gearing options would help them tremendously.

HOWEVER, this does not mean give them better (higher item level) loot per tier, just means they should turn each class item drop into a token that can buy the item they want…

Not promoting the AQ multi class crap, but individual class tokens as a change to fix the problem, hell this could actually help pure classes a bit too.

You mentioned cutting mana costs for hybrids, that is not entirely a good idea because it breaks PVP where hybrid healing when done well makes them incredibly powerful., if you cut mana costs, then you must nerf the damage output of the hybrid spells to make up for the ability to maintain full zug in a battle since this id not just world of raid craft.

The real issue with hybrids in raids is the way we the players measure value is by means of the DPS meter (parse) but never look at all the other contributions via buffs, cleanse, etc that makes that even possible to do in the first place.

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You’re one of the few that get it., most are way too myopic in terms of class / game design because they only see from their favorite character’s perspective

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That is by design and an example of tangible evidence that hybrid tax does in fact exist. Mages/Rogues have spell/melee hit built into their talents, druids/warriors don’t. Combat rogues even have +Weapon Skill yet even with that, a warrior is able to outperform the pure melee DPS class with supplimental gear. It’s poor design: the tax was in place but still not enough.

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Warriors basically get to ignore hit because of how warriors get to abuse heroic strike making their otherwise auto attack need only special cast cap rather than actual DW cap. Worse, they get more resources by means of haste and crit ( warchief’s blessing and rallying cry) in addition to WF totem and all the other buffs. This is why normalizing rage to give a specif value average per time in game based on actual hits not crits is the way to go.

warrior mains will cry tho

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My point is that hybrid tax exists as a design feature in the Classic, despite Warriors skirting around it.

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My opinion of the hybrid tax was that it was mostly a gear oriented thing, where the gear is less streamlined for any one spec of a hybrid in turn making them more a jack of all trades and master of none, but not specifically a X class is designed worse than Y Class kinda thing.