I understand the hesitation from the #nochanges crowd in giving hybrids buffs so that they can raid as a tank or DPS if wanted. They think any tweaks in talents or abilities can make them dominate in pvp the way they end up dominating in wrath.
So here’s a thought. Is there anything wrong with the damage or threat generated, or is this more of an item optimization thing? I think it’s the latter. If they introduced some mana regen items specifically for hybrids for level 60s to obtain, we’d be able to press our 1 button just as long as the pure DPS classes. Our dmg would probably become competitive enough to bring as DPS considering a portion of our mana pool will still be reserved for handing out buffs and utilizing the rest of our utility kit. So lower DMG than pures, but close enough to where our full kit would make hybrids an attractive option. It wouldn’t break pvp, because it doesn’t increase burst DMG.
People’s utter focus on raiding is what’s silly, since that’s not how Vanilla was designed. Look at tier sets for an indication what role the devs expected classes to fulfill in a raid environment. But that wasn’t the whole game.
Anyway, TBC will be here in a year. For now experience Vanilla for what it was.
They are against it because they don’t want changes. SoD is classic with changes.
Anniversary is classic without changes (or it should be without changes but for some reason they still changed things).
Everyone should know what they were getting into. A warrior show. They shouldn’t level in it then complain when their class isn’t viable endgame. That’s how vanilla was. If you can heal you’re a healer. All of us knew this going in to classic if we made a class that can heal.
As I’ve stated before, every necessary buff a Ret brings is provided by a Holy Paladin, which is essential. Buffing you does squat when they can take a superior damaging class that is over abundant. You are a waste of space. The community has to fix this. Reduce the warrior and mage bloat, and increase the number of available hybrids so you have no choice but to take them and you’ll see change. We took what we had back in the day as we had little choice. People played for fun in those days and weren’t rolling one class to be like their favorite streamer or to flex on their parsing leaderboards.
Honestly if we’re talking about the damage done by dps classes, frost mager already is mediocre, and so is warlock. The only classes that deal worse damage than them are paladins and balance druids.
We have such a rigid idea of what is good in classic, especially without a debuff and buff limit.
But in general feral druid, elemental shaman, dpspriest, and enhancement shaman are all better than any non-rogue non-warrior meta class. At least pre-bwl. The problem with class balance is that non-meta classes fall off in later raids. Buffing hybrid gear would be the way to fix this. More shadow damage on cloth. More nature and arcane damage on leather/mail. Better enhancement weapons.
The only classes that need buffs themselves would be balance druid and ret paladin.
No you wouldn’t. Paladin healer are top tier and cover all the buffs that you as a ret would bring. If you bring nothing to the table other than damage because your buffs are rendered obsolete by an actual role that is in demand within your class, then you better bring damage. So again, if you aren’t doing warrior damage you are a waste of space with holy Paladin in a group. Healers are limited, dime a dozen dps are not.
They think that, but they’re wrong. Minor buffs to mana sustain and damage to any of the hybrid classes aren’t going to disrupt the PvP experience much, if at all. It’s a gross overstatement that also blatantly ignores the fact that Warriors are running around deleting people. Sure they may be crappy solo but guess what, it’s a group based game.
So in a group-based game, why is one class representing almost half the group?
Druids, Paladins, Priest, and Shaman need improvements and Warriors need to be toned down. The changes don’t need to be massive pendulum swings like SoD or Wrath, and they don’t even need to be what TBC brings us. Just some minor tweaks to bring everything in line.
I understand what you’re saying. However, outside of itemization issues for hybrids, what you’re illustrating is a community led problem and, therefore, can be solved by the community. Guild leaders have to take the players (and the classes they play) that are available. If hybrids had the itemization to make them viable in DPS and tank roles, then more people would play them and there’d be less warrior/mage bloat.
Right now, guild leaders likely have a plethora of warriors and mages to choose from because people are steering clear of the meme specs. Fix the issues and I bet you fix the saturation of warriors and mages.
this… i think some people here don’t understand. THAT was it. SoD = classic+. it’s never gonna be different from that. heck, it looks like they are even going to make SoD into permanent servers. they’ll call them the classic+ era servers or something. and that’s it. that’ll be the end of any classic+ idea. it’s over
I don’t think they’ll ever officially label it as Classic+. They’ll keep that door open indefinitely. One of the things Blizz excels at is keeping people hopeful. They’re very effective at stringing players along.
The content is easy and solved. That is how you justify it. Because it doesn’t matter if your warrior does a bit more dps or your ret does a bit more dps. Yes, the warrior does more. But see the first line. It is all in your own heads.
I’ve normally found you to be a solid poster but lately your responses have been very short sighted and inflammatory. Someone asked above if you were just having a bad time and I think that’s a fair question… because “just go play TBC or SoD” is several orders of magnitude away from what anybody is really asking after here in a Classic+.
Hahaha sure, man. You just go ahead and keep telling yourself that
While it is a community led problem, it’s enabled by a Blizzard design problem. They picked probably the worst balanced patch to give to Classic and the community rallied unthinkingly behind #nochanges.
What that poster is referencing is a time when people didn’t know what was what. We all started WoW in 2004 just picking what sounded cool, which resulted in a mix of all sorts in raids and people just made do. In 2019 and onwards, everybody knew what the answer was and so they rolled those characters. It’s a very different climate than it was 20 years ago.
It’s simply the most logical response to all these threads. What they want already exists. There was a seasonal server built for this purpose. Every spec is perfectly raid viable now in SoD. That’s something people have been whining for in Vanilla content for years. Blizz provides it, and it’s not good enough. And I hear time and time again, “But those aren’t the changes I wanted!!!”
That’s an irrelevant comment, because guess what: players will say that no matter what changes Blizz does. From an overall perspective they’re provided precisely what the OP and others have asked for: raid viability for every role for every class. Yet here they are demanding the same in fresh Classic.
And so many are pointing at TBC as a simple way to have smaller changes that provide said viability. And I point out these servers are progressing to TBC in a year. And, again, that’s not good enough either. They have no patience whatsoever. It’s like dealing with toddlers, if you’ve ever done that. Stamp their feet, hold their breath and make demands. And even if they get what they want, they instantly say they want something else. Just wait until these servers progress to TBC. I guarantee these same people will be demanding more changes. Things from Wrath, or beyond. “Why should we have to wait for Wrath for Wrath changes!!”
And round and round we go. So I’ll say it again. They can go play SoD, or wait for TBC. But they won’t do either. They’ll just continue to whine about Vanilla, after choosing to play Vanilla. And then subsequently about every other version of the game.
The same can be said for retail as well, except those are both entirely different games. Even TBC is an entirely different game… one that isn’t available yet. That’s the crux of the issue. We want to play Vanilla… just one with a few minor class balance tweaks that would have happened anyway had the game not progressed to TBC.
Good for those folks? Your argument boils down to “well because some people will likely ask for changes that are not right for the game, nobody should be able to ask for anything.” That’s nonsense. That’s like telling someone who got mugged, “Look, sorry, we can’t make it against the law because then people would just ask for other things to be illegal. Have you considered moving somewhere else?”
We’re not asking for anything crazy. We’re saying, "Hey, pretend you’re a Vanilla designer. You now have these problems. How do you fix them within the design constraints of the Vanilla game? If people want to ask for XYZ feature, let them; however, it always boils down to “Is this something that fits with Vanilla’s design?”
Small buffs to mana longevity and damage to bring non-warrior hybrids more in line doesn’t deviate from the vanilla game’s design intents. Neither does nerfing warriors to bring them back in line either. Something like adding Crusader Strike to the Ret tree does though.
So please put on your thinking cap and stop being so dismissive. It’s certainly easy to just move on over to brown town and roll yourself a warrior, but 5 years of classic where over half the game’s available DPS classes are trivial compared to just one has gotten old. Give us Vanilla+, not TBC, not SoD, and not retail.
It boils down to that this is Vanilla. If you don’t like Vanilla, then play one of the six other versions of the game. Don’t try to turn this into them.
Nobody is. Stop being dismissive of the issues this version of the game has. Stop putting 1.12 on a pedestal like it’s a perfect shining beacon of game balance perfection. If it was, a tank class wouldn’t be 30% ahead of the best pure DPS classes.
Just because you’re happy with the status quo doesn’t mean I have to be. If you don’t like what we’re advocating for, you always have the option to not engage in these threads.
