They have stated that their design philosophy (at least in theory) is to allow each class to have their moment in the sun because complete balance is largely impossible. Usually these changes aren’t mid-expansion but obviously that’s not always the case and you’re right, it does reward those with the luxury of having multiple geared characters.
Thats an incredibly vague statement which is exactly the issue. What does it mean to “experience it as it was back then?” Because “back then” we had arguably worse technical performance, much less knowledge of the game, and in general just werent as refined as players.
Its nowhere near as simple a concept as you guys are pretending.
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Boy, for someone who’s been here commenting since before launch, you sure haven’t paid attention to what’s going on if that’s how you feel.
Here’s the short answer: The NoChange crowd has set up “hills to die on” all over the place, resulting in the game becoming worse for wear, because some things were implemented/changed, and others were not…based on the Community at large’s answers and complaints. The NoChange crowd has done more damage to the game than anyone else.
However, to counter that, I’ve enjoyed my time in Classic and look forward to TBC. Aside from everything becoming about boosting, mage AoE, and GDKP, it’s been a blast.
[C I T A T I O N - N E E D E D]
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I do pay attention. I think you are wildly wrong. There have been tons of changes in classic.
Sorry for the long delay on the response.
Some basic changes that wouldn’t directly effect that classes that they should have done.
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Remove the buff and debuff cap which holds many behind in what they can do making them even less viable while also allowing multiple of the same HoT if cast from other people to be used without overwriting.
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Allow Hunters/Warlock Pets to be viewed in the groups and raid tabs without requiring an addon.
And some that are directly on the classes, keep in mind I am a druid so they will be mainly focused on that.
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Include the “Auto Dismount” ability from future games as it also allowed druids to auto drop form so they don’t have to macro “/cancelform /cast X” to everything they want to do quickly.
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Allow druids the ability to talk to vendors and trainers and use quest items without dropping form. Can’t take the flag in WSG or even take a mage portal while in cat form.
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Fix feral attack scaling and allow rake and swipe to scale.
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Fix the feral cat idol. The bear one is great, but the cat one they impact abilities you aren’t even supposed to use in 5 mans because they are a DPS waste of energy.
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Do something about the Wolfhead helm so it isn’t required from level 40 all the way to Kara at 70 as a BiS item preventing you from upgrading. Maybe make the effect a trainer skill that doesn’t stack with it at 60.
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Redo some itemization to fix the Balance problem with hit.
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Allow Warlock and Hunter pets to scale with gear some when you spec into their trees.
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Have Hunters Arcane shot scale with AP and not Spell damage.
Having mages and warriors being the top DPS is fine, having them so far ahead by such a huge margin while others just aren’t even considered viable because no matter how geared they are and how well they play they will be lucky to hit 60% of that leads to major issues.
I know my direct changes to classes impact druid, but my knowledge of the other classes aren’t enough to give too much information about them.
To be honest, one thing I think they got right in retail is how feral DPS works with weapons so they aren’t locked into just the few tailor made weapons meant for them but that change would be asking too much.
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While the first two are quality of life fixes with no real consequences, the rest of these are strictly DPS improvements that change the overall balance of the game.
You only fix this by making Druid paws scale directly with whatever weapon we equip. This would make Atiesh likely garbage for us compared to Might of Menethil which would become super strong. Rake scaling would require the debuff/buff change to be of use, but if so would likely allow us to put hefty Rip and Rake debuffs up that did significant damage over time, buffing us even further. Finally, Druids in Bear are already doing a ton of damage when we go MCP mode with wbuffs, adding scaling to Swipe at this juncture would just make us threat kings all the time, especially in high Rage scenarios.
The Cat idol, Wolfshead Helm, and Furor are basically all the same things in that they improve our Energy efficiency. I hate, hate, powershifting, but if we shift that kind of regen into more passive methods, we’re just flatly buffing Feral even more.
These are the kinds of things that aren’t just trivial alterations. Feral can already put out pretty strong numbers, but these sorts of things could help us match/exceed the Warriors/Rogues in terms of raw output even with the limited gear we have right now. With the other changes you’re suggesting, the next step would be getting more than just the few pieces of gear we get in Naxx and then we’re just into TBC land with Vanilla scaling, which is all kinds of janky.
Nope. A sincere nochanges guy.
This is probably the best worded way to describe them tbh. Straight up contrarians.
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What do you consider “Strong Numbers”? To clarify, I am talking about in classic, not TBC.
I ask this because I have yet to see druids do what is even remotely considered strong compared to others. I have seen warriors, rogues, mages and warlocks break 900. I have seen Hunters break 700 in 3 minute fights.
How many feral druids have you seen hit those numbers?
no changes is a meme and has already been invalidated by blizz itself
bring on the changes that are needed
Ferals right now are pulling 1.1-1.2k on Patchwerk in the 99th percentile.
Fury Warriors are pulling 1.8-1.9k on the same.
Rogues are pulling 1.5-1.6k on the same.
So right now Ferals are firmly behind Rogues and Warriors in terms of DPS, but Ferals are also firmly ahead of any of the DPS requirements in Naxxramas to be successful. So when I say strong, I mean that. You could bring an army of Feral Druids doing 900+ DPS and you’d slay bosses in Naxx without issue (provided other mechanics weren’t ignored or failed obviously).
The highest Cat DPS on Patchwerk is 1,349.5 DPS over a 2:21 kill, where the Druid pulled 5th on overall DPS for his run, right there among a bunch of other 99th percentile Rogues and Warriors. Every single one of his GCDs were filled with Shred, Ferocious Bite, or powershifting (which he did 28 times).
If we were to just shift some of that energy efficiency over to some passive method instead that gave him the same output, that’s 28 more instant casts of Shred/FB to toss in. If we assume just Shred, which averaged for 1.4k, that’s another 39.2k damage for an increase of DPS to 1,634, putting Cats side by side with Rogues. If he (correctly) used FB as well, then with his ~46% crit chance on Shred for that fight, you’re looking at around 20 Shreds and 8 FBs, making his damage rise by 49.6k damage for a final DPS of 1,709.
And that’s just from fiddling with the Energy mechanics of Furor, Wolfshead Helm, and whatever it is you want to do with that Idol.
If Feral actually got a full set of Naxx-era items, actual scaling with weapons, actual scaling on Rake/Rip and the debuff slots to put them up, etc, we’d shoot up even more. Seriously, just Rip, which currently scales with 24% of our AP, would be insane given how much AP a Feral has even while using an MCP. If we got something like Might of Menethil to actually grant us the equivalent AP that it should (~570+ AP) and we got the AP scaling you want for our Bleeds and we got the slots to use them? We’d be furry little gods and probably could stop relying on Gnomer runs as well.
That’s my point. What you ask for aren’t just mere trivial adjustments, but the kind of changes that can make us not just competitive with the best and luckiest of Warriors, but exceed them. Druids have exceptionally simple mechanics that either don’t scale at all or they scale exceedingly well.
The game, not the players, is being recreated as it was in TBC. Recreating the way we played back then is probably not realistic, but the game itself can be recreated, or at least the final patch of it.
I am looking at it, you are describing patchwork which is the most melee friendly in the game where they can keep sitting on them in full world buffs under ideal situations.
Where Warriors are breakings 2k and rogues are breaking 1.7k. Overall, feral doesn’t do that well and is considered a carry compared to them. And that still puts others too far behind them.
And when I am checking this stuff, to druid is even using his innervate on himself just to push himself to that extreme.
As for the changes mentioned, MCP would be considered garbage and feral AP wouldn’t be near as high to compensate. When I meant weapon scaling, I wasn’t talking about WotLK scaling giving AP to them, I was talking about retail scaling where going into cat form just boosts the DPS of the weapon you have by 40% and that is your paw damage but doesn’t give a huge AP boost.
Sorry for the long delays, still the holidays and got family around and RL > WoW
#NoChanges was a shorter and simpler way to say #WeCantTrustActivisionToNotScrewThisUpDontTouchANYTHING.
The playerbase would have gladly accepted #Changes IF it was still Blizzard, but that was the primary reason why we needed Classic in the first place, so it was kind of a rock and a hard place.
No… modern day blizzard can’t be trusted with changes. So no changes.
You’re missing my point. Any tweak to our DPS capabilities will absolutely change our positioning in the grand scheme. Whether we get AP from weapons or a direct weapon damage application or anything else, none of that specifically matters, only that such changes can only make us stronger.
You nuke MCP entirely we lose a ton of DPS. If the changes are intended to compensate for that then we end up with exceptionally high steady-state damage output that likely can exceed whatever inflection point you’re aiming for. Is MCP supposed to be similar to a KT weapon? An AQ Regalia/Armament? BWL weapon? 5man weapon?
These are tuning nightmares, and they only invite more tuning changes for every class. If Swipe scales does Rend get to scale too? What about Thunderclap? Should Paladins get an AP -> SP or SP -> AP talent? Should Shaman like they do in TBC? Should we keep Idols and Totems and Librams as utility bonuses or convert them to straight stats? Do Paladins get a Taunt?
There are millions of QoL improvements for every class that would not only massively improve us in terms of expected usability, but would just make us demigods for the content we’re dealing with, all while constraining us to the very limited gear options currently available.
It just isn’t tenable.
Sorry if I miss spoke, I wasn’t talking about them doing balancing changes in classic, that ship has long set sail and they should have started a LONG time ago.
I was saying that they shouldn’t make that same mistake this time around in TBC and fall into the same trap we have now where it’s min/maxed to the extreme because everyone came in knowing how classes were balanced and unbalanced and knew that blizzard was just going to shove their thumb up their butt when it came to addressing it.
But I am not saying they try and balance Classic now, it is long too late for that.
We’d have it mathed out before the PTR finished. TBC is only Vanilla+ so unless we literally change how everything works, it is a simple matter of me changing coefficients and modifiers and its largely done.
I mean for Cat, I only have to worry about the new underlying equations, I don’t even have to worry about new skills other than Mangle uptime since we don’t even spam it.
For Bear we’re still just spamming Maul and we toss in Mangle when we aren’t Lacerate or Swipe spamming.
We’ll min/max it, find out who is best, how, and why, and here’s the BiS lists, have fun!
For me, I would change a few things like allowing druids paws to scale and allowing chance on hit procs and so on.
Also, I would also create level 70 heroic versions of all the old instances and raids with scaled gear equivalents to expand on the endgame and allow more gear possibilities and such. The theory crafters would have fun with that.
Have plenty of others I had thought of, made a post about it a while back, but thinking on it, I would probably change some of them now. But here they are.
Extended AFK, later man and Happy New Year.