Brief history, I been playing wow from around the tail-end of vanilla to the end of CATA, took a break in throne of thunder and came back at the start of legion. I started off as a rogue and it was my main character for a long time. Back when mains were legitimate main characters, where it was very difficult level alts and time consuming. Most players had their main, and about 1-2 other characters that they used for banking, a pvp toon, and possibly another toon for content. I only ever main swapped once, and that was DK. The reasoning behind it, was because even though I loved my rogue at the time, the leveling process was very difficult for me, I was struggling non-stop, and I felt what was the point of leveling my rogue if I’m just going to struggle bus it the whole way to 80. I enjoyed my DK, I was good at it, it allowed me to tank for my friends, and the leveling was 500% easier. Cut to today, I been maining that DK ever since I swapped, and I told myself I’m not going to let the game dictate my decision over playing a class/spec I wanted to play again. I will find a way to make it work.
This is where the ignorance of the community of world of warcraft comes in, the new age of information, and twitch streaming, constant information at the fingertips, and monkey see monkey do. This is where the game upsets me and I hold Blizzard accountable for faster balancing changes, character balancing, and better communication.
All classes/specs are viable, we all know that one friend who plays the odd ball class and destroys on the meter or is doing very on conventional things and making it work. With the rise of streaming, and competitive content that is bringing classes/specs into the spotlight. Other classes/specs are being neglected from content because of this. Ret pally for example wasn’t that great until recently, and now it’s the bee’s knees with amazing damage, utility, and a fun play style, it seems it no wonder why they are in like almost every group. This is where the ignorance comes in, players who watch streamers, do nothing but check out raider.io for the meta comps, and have all the information at their fingertips are poisoning the game because they want to emulate all the information that they are seeing. Honestly they aren’t wrong, particular classes are better suited for one version of content than another, but for the players that are passionate about their spec/classes that best define them in absolute blows. They are being left by the wayside and Blizzard as a company lets their cries for help go unanswered way too frequently. Obviously, I’m feeling this cause I’m playing DK. Prior examples would be warriors in legion, shadow priest, elemental shamans in BFA where it was more damage to be a resto shaman then it was to play elemental. These things hurt; they ruin the experience for everyone. I had my friend quit because of elemental, he was through the frustration of being left to rot at the beginning of an expansion for 10 weeks before getting a band-aid buff, then a rework the next tier.
When players identify the way they do, just how people in real-life identify as one gender or another. It’s easy to see how when someone tells you just “swap mains”. It’s not that easy, it’s like telling a person to go act this way, or that way. The lack of tolerance, understanding, and frustration compounds. It builds to the point where people make choices they shouldn’t have to make. This is where I charge blizzard in being accountable. They need to do a better job of policing their own game, breaking the meta when it becomes too strong, or providing alternative options that are strong and competitive or people are going to start quitting the game again. Losing interest because they don’t want to “identify” as something other than they are.
Partly because people are too ignorant to understand that you don’t need the best comp possible for a +10 key, that you don’t need to emulate everything you see in streams, or the leaderboards. But mainly because of blizzards as a company is to slow to react, balance classes properly, and provide viable alternatives and solutions to current problems.
Perfect example right now. Paladin tanks
Paladins provide, a raid buff, a silence/interrupt off a main ability, a battle res, off healing, and immunity, and cheat death. Why would you bring any other tank right now other than knowing the person, or you’re tired of waiting for a tank in queue. In comparison to other tanks. Blood DK has better self-sustaining heals, but can’t provide a utility to the group, they have slightly better control because of death grip, they provide a battle res, but their damage is about 30% below paladins, and their armor is less, and they way to spiky for the likes of some healers that their play style just doesn’t mess. Druid tanks, well their damage is pretty good, except they have the worst survival of all the tanks arguably, they also provide a battle rez, and a group wide buff, but they have to many cons versus pros. Warriors, the flavor of the month last season, their damage was through the roof, they seem to not take any damage whatsoever, but they provide only half a group buff that focus only melee and hunters, they have no battle rez and that is about it. Finally, DH/ Monks they kind of fall into the same area as warriors, damage is pretty good, Monks do probably the most damage of all the tank atm, but they lack so hard in other department that again what is the point of bringing them.
The whole reason why I’m bringing this up is because at lower content, sub cutting edge within the first few weeks. A tank of any flavor would be fine, but once the meta develops, and it so strong the community latches on like its law. Nothing else matters. The only people that can fix that is the 1 the community itself or 2 blizzard. Getting the wow community to unite over anything I have a better chance of getting ice water in hell. But if enough people make enough noise maybe blizzard/wow would start to take notice and realize that they need to do better job of providing better balancing faster, and doing better accurate QA in their testing, and stop letting issues go unchecked for too long.
If you read all of this thank you, if you didn’t and gave up halfway through, I get it, it gets lengthy. I’m just tired of being in a position where I feel like my skill sets, mindset, experience, and capabilities are not translating into my character because I play at the higher content. It’s what I enjoy, I don’t however enjoy feeling like it impossible because of being limited by my class or spec or being told to main swap as a solution. I appreciate balance and fairness. I would rather get beat or lose to something or someone that is more skilled than myself versus, playing the game “I win” from big daddy and losing because of a character just “wins”.
TL:dr - The current iteration of the game is flawed because blizzard is straying away from the core value of “bring the player not the class”. Partly because of development of content streaming and technology. Blizzard needs to do a better job of balancing, communicating those balances, and breaking a meta when it becomes too strong or developing changes in weaker classes to challenge the meta. But the priority issues spawn from people being too complacent with swapping to a flavor of the month, following blindly, and telling others what to do either directly or indirectly through their actions, speech, or other avenues of communication.
