I asked this in another thread but maybe it’s worth repeating. I think that with recent class balance changes, we as players aren’t really sure what to expect anymore.
I’m not one who is opposed to the #SomeChanges approach, but as far as Classic goes, I think it’s fairly safe to say that nobody really expected this. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but our understanding as to Blizzard’s intentions here have been shaken up a bit. It might be nice to have one of those posts that go over what the thought process around WotLK DPS balance is, but in a broader, overarching design goal sense.
Maybe discussion on questions such as…
Does Blizzard want all dps specs to perform “within some relative amount” of the top dps?
If so, roughly what is that amount intended to be?
Is the “hybrid tax” still intended to be a thing?
Should we expect class tuning to be an ongoing process throughout the lifetime of WotLK Classic?
Stuff like that. I think it just might help to understand some of the motivation surrounding what’s going on behind the curtain
I do and I don’t. The trouble with #nochanges is that it also requires the players to follow suit, which we definitely don’t. We are playing the game differently than we did back then, which has lead to some pretty game/experience breaking behaviours. In a live game, those things would be patched out very quickly, but a mantra of no changes shackles the developers and allows things to persist that are not good for the game.
If we all played Classic exactly as we did back then and didn’t try to find ways to work around game mechanics or hyper-optimize the experience, then we could probably get away with #nochanges. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to be the case
Normally I wouldn’t lump balance changes into this category, but even that is difficult to make a binary decision about because the magnitude of the differences between classes is just so much larger than it was back when players didn’t know as much.
Either way, we live in a #SomeChanges world now and however we, personally, feel about it, I think it might be nice to know what the expectations should be. Or at least, what Blizzard is currently thinking here, fully acknowledging that they may well change their perspective.
Based on the record so far, Blizzard was hoping that 3.3.5 mechanics would hold together well enough that early-phase differences weren’t too bad, and classes suffering social pressure/rejection in the beginning would be compensated later with Charles Atlas levels of power to the awe and adoration from all their friends.
In tbc classic each class would bring a unique dps or utility debuff or buff, many would only effect the group they were in, nowdays only the space goats bring such a buff. With raid wide buffs you need certain I think 10 different class specs to get most or all buffs. So dps matters again once you have all the buffs from certain specs.
I am absolutely a supporter of #SomeChanges, but the current dev team has proven in multiple occasions that they don’t have a deep understanding of classic philosophy and failed to do things the classic way. With a couple of exceptions most of the decisions they made were more retail minded than classic.
Bring in some of the old designers or bring in some of the great great people we have in PServers and they will give you a classic+ that all the classic players will love.
It looks like Blizzard has spoken to this topic, at least somewhat. It was even posted before my post here, but it was in the Community Council forum so I missed it. In the future, Blizzard, it might be nice to cross-post a link like this here (even in the feral buff announcement pinned at the top of this forum) for visibility. I’ll post here though and edit the link into my OP above.
This level of communication is very much appreciated. We may not always agree with what’s happening, but it helps a lot to know the thought process behind it. Even if the end result was, “oops, mistakes were made, our bad”, that’s very easy to move past. For most of us, at least
Speaking primarily for myself, though hopefully for others as well, it would still be nice to have some insights (in the same vein) for the overall thought process, intents, and goals for class balance changes for WotLK in general. There is value in setting expectations here.
Says who? #Nochanges was because we don’t trust modern blizz for good reason. It’s still up to the players to choose how the want to interact with the game, but the game needs to be left as it was.
So if players find an exploit that renders the game unplayable, and that exploit could have been done on the original client, it should be left in because the game needs to be as it was?
The intent is to encourage some thought around what strict adherence to #nochanges actually means and the impossible position it puts Blizzard in by demanding that with no exceptions.
[What is the intent for dps balance in WotLK Classic?]
You’d have to ask the Acta/Bliz marketing department that.
Things have gone to a handbasket after Brian Birmingham left - and it looks as though the marketting and image control departments have taken the lead of the development process.
In my opinion, I wanted to raid in classic to do the raid again with the classes, races, and skills at the time. Timewalking doesn’t really do that. I think its cool they do balance changes, because it adds more variety on a patch by patch basis instead of just static 3.3.5 the whole way through.
People say Blizzard is mucking up WotLK with all their changes, but I think its the opposite. I don’t think WotLK would be as active if they decided to change nothing.
