Can someone explain this logic to me? Im looking at it from a healer perspective by the way.
Instead of nerfing Class X, bring all classes to the same level.
What does this mean exactly? For example, right now Holy Paladins are insanely good. So instead of nerfing them to “bring them in line”, how should the other healers be buffed to be in tune with Holy Paladins? Do Evokers get Rewind back to normal and healing like it was at the very very start of Dragonflight? How about Mistweavers? Shaman? Remember when Disc priests dominated everything with absorbs and you couldnt even do Lich King in Wrath w/o disc priests?
Where is the line drawn? And if you feel other healers SHOULD get some of these buffs backs, then arent we back to square one of needing to nerf heals? Im lost…
It’s healthier for the game (and faster /easier) to nerf the outlier specs down than to bring everyone up to that level. Bringing everyone up to that level also speeds up power creep and makes blizzard have to build harder bosses in order to offset how OP everyone would be.
If they buffed every spec to outlier levels, they’d just tune content around that and it would have just been a resource-intensive gain of exactly zero.
I imagine people know this–they just don’t want to see their specs nerfed.
Nerfing is complex. You nerf one ability, such as health stones, then suddenly other classes or builds become less viable because they needed that healing or interaction. That’s why buffing and nerfing is a constant work in progress.
There’s also outlier cases where there’s an unforeseen interaction that needs to be brought in line with other classes, such as Warlocks towards the end of SL, but those are typically rare.
There’s not much reason not to for M+, it scales to infinity.
Mythic Raid however will always be the reason they don’t.
What they need to do w/ the healers is start incorporating many of the “Is X % stronger when not in raid” buffs to spot heals. Or they could like, tune mechanics in M+ so the damage is more sustained like in raid rather than 180 no scoping people.
The problem with that argument is that specs don’t just exist in relation to each other. They also exist relative to the content that they’re trying to complete. Yes every spec should be roughly equally good at clearing content, but Blizzard also has a set goal for how difficult that content should be. If a spec is above that curve, it should be nerfed.
There will always be a best and a worst. Blizzard devs are incapable of balancing this game and have been for 2 decades. Its just impossible to appease too many different people doing too many different things. Instead the game should focus on making alt progression a priority, incentivizing players to simply reroll instead of being forced to abandon a character they spent weeks on simply because blizz devs make another awful attempt at class balance.
It depends. If holy paladin is the default choice cause it’s the only one that can do what it does, buff the others. If it’s just cause it’s better and the other class can do it just as well, I wouldn’t mind a nerf, would be easier to implement too.
Because player power must not only be balanced between the players but also in relation to the content.
If one spec is so strong that it makes the content easier, they nerf that spec instead of buffing every other spec and then also buffing mobs so that player power is where they want it relative to the environment.
On the one hand, yes, the most logical way to handle a situation is to touch the least amount of specs.
If there’s one spec that outperforms the rest, then nerf it. If there’s one spec too deep at the bottom, buff it.
But, there’s also player perception. It sucks to be nerfed, and a lot of players take it almost as an insult, specially if they perceive that other specs aren’t getting the same treatment. Some players also read each nerf as being the sky falling.
So, the devs need to treat nerfs with caution. You can’t just constantly nerf a spec without alienating your player base or at least making them feel cautious about playing a spec that seems to be the target of the dev’s wrath.
when its in regard to a spec where there is massive underrepresentation and it required for other players to engage in the content, I think sacrificing said content and buffing the class is the right call.
When healing is easy, yes it’s easy to find healers, but the problem is that it turns healers into a fourth bad dps because everyone in their right mind is going to use as many globals as possible to help time the key. The only other way (if healing is easy) would be to literally remove dps from healers (which some people would hate + would break 3 specs) and have healers afk (or apply the occasional cc) when there is nothing to heal.
Ohh, I can simplify the balance problems very quickly.
The entire playersbase, with a few exceptions, would justifiably lose their collective minds though.
Implement DPS and HPS caps.
If a spec can’t hit cap, fix it.
If a spec is hitting cap early in it’s rotation, fix it.
Content can be tuned accordingly to the caps.
There we have it. No DPS/HPS advantage for any spec.
Obviously a system like would cause…well lets just say it would be unpopular for alot of the players and just leave it at that.
I don’t think players actually want real balance between the specs.
If every spec has the same DPS/HPS with the only difference being utilities.
It would also make certain specs “required” and some basically irrelevant.
What would be the fun in that?
Who would roll one of the “irrelevant” specs?
Really this. Some people who are begging Blizzard to nerf numbers are more afraid that Blizzard will take a sledgehammer to gameplay as well and make something both significantly weaker and less fun to play.
You could nerf Class X, which is an outlier and far above the [desired] variance of the rest of the pack.
Or you could buff all other classes to match the performance of X, which is an alternative to achieve a desired variance around the average (i.e., balance).
The first approach costs X developer resources, while the second approach costs 7X (as there are eight healing specs and 7 are below the top by a lot). Obviously the right business decision is to nerf the one outlier.
The “logic” of players asking to “bring all classes to the same level” ignores the business cost and is solely based on the bad feeling that players of Class X will have when they get nerfed to a desired variance around the average. It’s not unwarranted player fear because the devs are not great at balancing and often a class that was way on top (an outlier) falls to the bottom after a nerf and stays there at the rest of the season.
If Blizzard could tune to achieve a variance of no more than ±2.5% from the average for all specs, there probably wouldn’t be much complaining. However, Holy Pally is currently performing 15% above the lowest healer and that spread between best and worse should be 5% or less, otherwise it’s too good to pass up and creates a flavor-of-the-month problem. Holy Pally is just one example but it exists in all three roles (tank, heals, and dps); none of them are balanced to ±2.5% (or 5% spread between top and bottom).
