But where we seem to disagree is that every spec must be viable.
My views, and I would enjoy SOD proving me wrong, is that when you make all the specs viable you end up with balancing issues and in the end you will still have some basically useless specs relative to the meta.
But to get there you ended up making all the classes much more similar, turn the game from playing a class to playing a spec, and give buffs to players relative to the world.
There was a good discussion on this forum about that a while back.
I forget who it was but someone basically said something like “for everything pve / pvp / leveling every class should have: 1) a best spec 2) an average spec and 3) a bad spec”
The average / bad specs are where you put the extra 20-ish talents that are left over after filling the best spec. But they can still be used by players that enjoy playing meme specs.
Yea i absolutely disagree with the statement that every spec shouldn’t be viable. Why even bother to waste the time making it? If you do something do it right.
Now do i think ret should beat war or mage in dps? No, but they shouldn’t be a meme spec. I loath the term meme spec. Its just another way to say that the devs couldn’t balance their creations which has led to games like D4 and its ilk.
The game is about classes not specs - some specs are there to augment the class in certain ways, they don’t all have to fulfill some “can tank or dps in raid checkbox”
I agree that there is some homogenization.
The main offenders in my opinion are the tanking Runes and taunts, and the attempts at faction parity giving Shaman and Paladin abilities to other classes.
I wish instead of giving each class the same kind of taunt with very little differentiation, they would tie the abilities like taunt and charge into their class mechanics a bit more to make them unique. I dont think every tank should have an attack me now button, but if they must, they should work differently.
I would like if instead of giving the Paladin Hand of Reckoning, they made unleashing Seal of Justice taunt the target to attack you and maybe deal a little Holy Damage. That still gives the Paladin a taunt, but melds it into their existing mechanics and gameplay.
In regards to giving Paladins Rebuke, I think it would be more interesting to do something similar to make Judgement of Justice interrupt spellcasting, or they could make Hand of Justice interrupt spellcasting, to give them an interrupt on bosses and immune enemies.
Doing things like this would be much better, instead of just giving each class the same ability that would hardly be able to determine which class it belongs to if you took the name and icon off. Give them the ability using their existing class mechanics.
The solution to other classes getting Shaman and Paladin abilities is to have Tauren Paladins and Dwarf Shamans.
Nope, that’s not what homogenization is. Homogenization is making things the same. Giving classes like shaman or paladins a taunt doesn’t make them any closer to a warrior than the taunt that druids already had. Now if earth shock starts stacking sunder, and totems start applying demo shout, you could scream homogenization. But as it stands now, shaman and paladin tanks are in no way similar to warriors.
Not to say that some level of homogenization isn’t creeping in. Giving WF to druids isn’t something I like and apparently horde are getting BoK. I would prefer that they not give away iconic class specific abilities to others, but simply giving classes unique abilities to make certain builds more viable is in no way homogenization.
In every iteration of a traditional RPG, hybrids were hit with a hybrid tax. Druids couldn’t quite heal as well as Clerics. Now it’s up to the players on what they want to do.
But good news is that since this is a new game, we don’t actually know which spec is going to be the best. It could change from level band to level band. Warlock tanks could be S tier to 25, but at the next leveling band at say 35, they could be the worst. And at 60 or the end, mages might end up with a tanking rune and they’d be the best tanks.
In our Vanilla raiding guild we had 3 druids. We were just fine.
Balancing is a nightmare. I don’t know of a single company who got it perfectly. It’s impossible. The only games I think can think of that are somewhat balanced are RTS games. The model being Starcraft Broodwar.
Unless there are radical changes to resists and immunities warlocks are not even viable as raid tanks because they can’t tank MC, onyxia, or BWL which are full of fire immune monsters and bosses and their primary single target threat is searing pain.