+weapon skill is a brokenly good stat. The human and orc racials are way over the top for raiding giving +3 to hit and massively mitigating glancing blows. It can’t be intended that wonky gear like the BOE lvl 44 Edgemaster’s Handguards are considered best in slot at level 60 for non human/orc players. The problem is going to be even worse at the lower level cap raids unless if there is an abundance of new +weapon skill gear being added.
Please do something to address +weapon skill. Perhaps adjust the racials so every race is on a more even playing field or put in a lot more/better gear options with the +weapon skill stat. Maybe give other races +weapon skill like Tauren +mace and Drawf +axe. I can’t be alone in being tired of feeling forced into picking human/orc then further forced into what type of weapon type I can use because of race.
Yeah, I think a lack of addressing weapon skill is the main thing missing from what they’ve said so far. I’m hoping this is just a blind spot in the coverage and they just haven’t revealed what they’re planning to do yet. I’ll have fun regardless, and I don’t think better balance is the primary goal of the season, but I think it’d be cool for melee to not have so many ‘incorrect’ race choices.
I honestly would expect the initial release of SoD to be chaotic, unmitigated fun while everyone discovers new ways to break the game, insane builds, etc. It’d be nice but I can’t imagine them really focusing on smaller stuff right now when the big focus is the crazy combinations you can come up with. I really, really don’t think this is the kind of game mode where you are required to min/max to that precise of a degree like Classic usually is - and I think people expecting that are going to be disappointed.
I think when it’s eventually time to end SoD and incorporate the feedback into a proper Classic+ they will address things like this.
You shouldn’t lose at the character creation screen. The people who play wow are people that like to optimize and min max. Sometimes it is up to the devs to help protect the players from themselves.
The way +weapon skill currently is, human rogues using swords or maces are likely to out damage every other race on raid bosses at the level 25 cap because of the racial. There is nothing players of other races will likely be able to do to overcome having 3% less hit and taking full penalty from glancing blows. Human ret paladins will do way better than dwarf rets. The options to overcome the racial difference are few and far between at lvl 60. They are non existent at lower levels.
Again I really don’t think its going to matter much, I don’t see people playing SoD the same way they “solved” classic. If anything in the first level band everyone will be PVPing instead.
You seem to assume how you intend to play SoD will be what “everyone” else intends to do. Even if what you say is true, it is not an excuse to not fix this blatant issue. If anything, this is a great opportunity to try something to fix it.
I think its just that everything they’ve shown for season of discovery is meant to address class balance rather than racial balance (other than factions). There are other impactful racials too (beastslaying, will of the forsaken), but weapon skill for PvE stands out a lot for being worth more than people expect it to be worth.
I hope it doesn’t end up mattering too much, but honestly I’d be surprised if they don’t include weapon skill on any of the new loot as we approach 60. Its an easy W for them to put +polearms on some gear and really mess with people’s heads. If they’re doing changes, I think racials should get some degree of balancing.
With how insane these runes are at adding power, I bet they could remove the weapon skill racials and we wouldn’t notice. Fury is getting like 2 abilities that increase your damage by 25% by lvl 25 alone. Rogues are getting envenom which will ignore your target’s armor, more poison damage with the brew rune, or backstab costing 40 energy instead of 60, who knows what runes we’ll get after 25. Just yoinking the racials out of the game would be fine (maybe), and remove there being mathematically better races.
We shall see. But I believe the lower level cap will make the weapon skill racials stand out even more because of the lack of available +hit and +weapon skill gear to help close the gap for the other races.
People gonna be PvPing for sure. PvPing is a min-max way to farm gear in a level bracketed system like this unless they reset battleground reputation and rank unlocks when they increase the level cap or otherwise nerf PvP gear.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad that +weapon skill is so good, I think it’s more an issue with Classic itemization that so few items actually grant the stat which makes those racials and items like Edgemasters so incredibly valuable.
I suspect in the higher level content that we’ll see a lot of new items that are itemized well and offer stats that are in short supply in standard Classic, such as +weapon skill, spell hit, haste etc.
Restatting the awful gear that was created prior to original vanilla launch with +hit/+spell hit and +weapon skill would be a great solution. That agi on cloth gear and spirit on physical dps gear might of made sense during the alpha/beta of the original game, but it made for useless vendor trash on release.
I like the idea of removing weapon skill from races, but i think it just makes edgemasters etc just that much more sought after. I think it needs to be removed from all items and races or give more options at character creation for a choice in a weapon skill.
And now there will be shaman and hunters after these items too if they want to play melee.
I agree, but gutting the stat entirely isn’t the way to do it. Just make it more available. Night Elves get +1% crit but it’s not a game-changing racial because crit isn’t hard to get.
Taking out the racials but leaving edgemasters would be the worst thing they could do. Being forced to use/buy a lvl 44 boe as bis for game… have shamans, melee hunters, paladins wanting them now too… yuck. Instead of costing thousands of gold they will cost 10s of thousands of gold.