I’m pretty happy with what we got with the anniversary realms. Vanilla with only a handful of nice QoL improvements that don’t really change any core gameplay and will eventually move onto TBC.
And yes we’ll just have to agree to disagree on what #nochanges actually means, I was never expecting the entire experience in classic to be 100% the same as what it was in vanilla. I was always expecting it to be the basic game mechanics with modern accommodations so it would actually run properly. I care that the classes are the same as they were, that the dungeons and world are the same as they were, that spells do the same things etc…
So when I have to use the bnet client or the UI/macros/addons are different or certain weird back end server processes run a little differently I don’t freak out about it, same reason I’m not freaking out about playing on a nice wide screen LCD with 20 MS ping and perfect frame rates instead of dial up on 1024x768 CRT.
Hybrid DPS is decent and they are strong outside of raids when they use their whole class. That’s why.
If you make everyone do “good dps” in raids, then you have retail where druids need to have 4 specs and they sit in one form permanently.
What classic needed was to stick to open world, quests, and a few dungeons instead of becoming only about raiding. The game is not balanced for raiding, which is why the class balance is garbage there.
Some of the QoL changes are fine and make sense. Adding Dual Talent Spec was good because of the gold cost, and it probably goes a little bit towards curbing RMT if people don’t need 100+ gold per week just to swap talents - since there are no built in gold farms (e.g. dailies).
Class changes shouldn’t be on the list. The people who want to play these “meme specs” rolled those classes with full knowledge of how they will be treated when it comes to raiding in this old game with an overblown “meta” established by players.
Every class has a raid spec, you don’t have POM Pyro Mages, Sub Rogues and Arms Warriors in raids either - it comes across to me as people being selfish and oblivious when people whine about not being able to play a spec they like over one that is good for the raid.
The whole point of this post is to -not- wait for TBC. There’s nothing wrong with them being viable now. The OP is asking why no changers are so upset that they become viable. There is a difference in making everything one shot everything and just making hybrid specs that were essentially unplayable, able to be played as normal.
There was never a reason to force classes to do only only thing, and Blizzard knew this and that’s why they were made better in TBC.
The obvious difference is that for say mages all their specs are ranged DPS for hybrids the specs are designed for different roles which fundamentally changes how they play in an instance not just how they pew pew. So it’s fully understandable why hybrids want their other specs more viable.
But yes I agree there aren’t simple fixes for hybrid balance issues that are as easy and minimal impact as adding dual spec. That doesn’t really happen till TBC which wouldn’t make sense for anniversary realms until they move onto actual TBC. Which is also why I didn’t bother playing my druid until TBC in era
Understandable, but the fact remains every class has an optimal raid spec. I really like playing 15/5/31 (Arms/Fury/Prot) as a Warrior in “Vanilla”, but I would be holding my group back if I did. As a tank I am obligated by definition to do what is best for the group/raid, so my view of it is shaded by that. If your deal is that you want to raid as PVP spec then be prepared to only get a spot if they are desperate to fill a raid - same will be true in TBC - or find a yolo casual guild that doesn’t care.
The other side of it is, why is nobody trying a raid with these specs? Go form an all Paladin, Druid, Priest raid and have fun. Why doesn’t anyone in the Classic community try an all Druid raid? The content is supposedly super easy, so go do that and change people’s minds.
versatility is power in and of itself. being able to do 3 roles simultaneously (although to a lesser degree) is super powerful in the right hands
if you were to buff any one aspect of these 3 roles for them they would be insanely overpowered in PvP especially.
everyone do yourself a favor and delete your DPS meters and parse charts so you arent so tunnel visioned on your place on the meters, making you think hybrids are bad.
Which won’t change their minds. Groups want Paladin healers, so if the options after buffs have been covered is to take a Ret Paladin who does less damage than a warrior or an actual warrior, who do you think the community will take? Why take a secondary competitor for plate gear when gearing the warriors will yield better returns? Even if you were buffed to rogue levels of damage, what do you provide a rogue doesn’t if all necessary Paladin buffs are covered by healers?
Now, let’s say Blizzard does buff hybrids to where they are warrior competitive. The community will then begin stacking the new best class, which would see other classes kicked to the curb, and the cycle continues. The ones being kicked aside won’t be warriors unless warriors are no longer on top. So where do we go from there? What about balance in things like PvP? You’ve had to have been around WoW long enough to see the nightmare balancing has been in the instance of PvE to PvP.
Sorry, I just don’t agree. Hybrid DPS are just so far behind the viable specs which gives them their stigma. We still bring classes like warlocks to raids without a second thought, granted they have nice utility but you only need one or two. If utility DPS did around the same DPS as warlocks/hunters you would see a lot more groups being willing to bring them along.
Also just wanted to add I changed the thread title, too many no changers not spending the time to read so they can come to this realization this thread is about classic+ not anniversary.
my issue with hybrid buffs is that they take too much of a pve raid lens.
Vanilla is supposed to be a version of wow that has a variance in playing power across all the specs. Some classes have stronger leveling specs and others really strong pve raiding specs. And many of the hybrids are also really strong pvp focused classes (once geared).
SoD proves too much raid pve lens focused loses that cross-content vanilla feel.
I’ve been just an outsider looking in on this conversation, but I wanted to throw out a point counter to your argument.
MMORPGs have always had at its core, character progression. When the pinnacle of progression in a game is Epic loot, then the activity that rewards the best loot will be considered a core pillar of content expected to be engaged in.
This means raiding is the core content that most people have the ability to participate in while offering the best loot in the game. Only a small amount of players could be max rank PvPers and get the best loot from there, so PVP is not an endgame pillar that most players can benefit from
@Everyone Else
Blizzard released Classic realms and everyone got a chance to play on the closest version of #nochanges you’re going to get. SOD is not classic with some class balance. It’s a completely different game mode that doesn’t appeal to everyone that wants classic, but with more class balance. So you have no more right to what you want compared to those who want classic w/ some changes. So quit belittling others and treating others like trash. Classic players probably average an age in the mid 30’s and that’s not how grown adults should treat each other.
Honestly, there’s always been this weird tribalism around what people play and what people should play. Back near the end of Vanilla I decided I wanted to explore feral, especially going into TBC. I was told a hard no by my guild because druids were expected to heal. It was a hard stance and they weren’t willing to budge. It turned out feral would be one of the best tanks TBC had to offer.
At the time, that guild (and many others) also took a hard stance about warriors doing anything except tanking. That was your job and you needed to do it. If you were trying to dps as a warrior you were a meme. We still had some DPS warriors of course, but nobody knew how to play and they were just filler so that we had enough tanks for 4H.
That same mentality persists today except somewhere along the way (I know this existed in Vanilla) someone figured out that warriors had insane scaling and could do crazy dps if spec’d and geared correctly. Now warriors are exempt, but everybody else still needs to be in the lane they’re given, and it’s just harder to be off spec because warriors set the bar so insanely high.
Small, meaningful hybrid buffs don’t threaten anybody, yet people are threatened by it. I have trouble understanding it too, I always have.
I agree with you here but it’s also worth pointing out that not every community is this way. There are communities that care less about what you bring, but it would still be nice to not be such a detriment to doing so.
Honestly, I think the correct solution is to tone down warriors. I’ve been advocating for a long time that warriors should be left alone and other classes buffed but I think that really just came out of not wanting to ruffle feathers, not what’s good for the game
The other hybrids needs some very minor buffs for sustain so they don’t OoM so quickly, but if you bring warriors down then suddenly everybody looks a whole lot better. I did some digging through warcraft logs to compare the average maximums of each of the hybrid classes (which includes warriors, their primary role was always intended to be tank), then everybody except warriors is all chilling out at about the same place. Then you take a step up when you go to the pure DPS classes, and then another big step up when you get to warrior.
