But if there’s a vanilla-like constant (if slow) churn where different races or classes are more effective at different times, then it gives most players the freedom to just play what they want and deal with the highs and lows, seeing as most players won’t level more than 2 or 3 alts and raid with them. you’d see more variety over time with balance passes every now and then.
In your first sentence you showed that the no changes crowd didnt get their way. So any issues you have with the game was not of their doing
Amazing how long it took you to shove your foot in your mouth…1 whole sentence
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Being on top for a patch only to have your top tier parses fall to the bottom of the heap after you got showered with gear makes no one happy. I remember during WoD how much fun it was for my DK to shoot to the top of the charts when Frost got majorly buffed just before Hellfire Citadel released… and I was very undergeared having recently swapped from my Shaman. I also remember how terrible it made others feel that their class was now in a shoddy place and we needed to reorganize to continue Mythic progression.
I’d rather a known constant, otherwise only the top guilds who can run multiple splits to stack gear will be in a position to cover the meta changes. I casually leveled toons this time around and I have three 60’s all with BWL/AQ40 level gear or better. My current guild has folks that are easily geared up with 6-7 60’s each, and have multiple accounts too. If we get wild swings, those folks would just swap “mains” while feeling the need to maintain 3-4 toons at near-main status. TBC will make this easier to do than Vanilla but still… bluuuuugh.
itt: people who dont understand what no changes means getting mad that they dont understand what no changes means
I admit there’s no perfect answer, but I’ll take the chaotic broil of class turnover over the rotting stagnation of no movement at all. In any case, the best ways to do it would be to make changes FAR less impactful than those that currently happen on retail, so that something that was on top in one month would still be strong in the next, never a full top-bottom fall or vice versa.
The point of classic is to experience it how it was back then. Most changes contradict that goal.
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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