I can’t ask this question without it sounding like I’m being a smart butt or that I’m complaining. But I am not. I am asking because I don’t know… When Blizz does “class tuning” and does not buff OR nerf certain classes… Does that mean that Blizz thinks the class is fine just the way it is? Or does it mean they have no idea what changes to make?
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Yes
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If you’re talking about Rogue, they are planning a rework. When? I don’t know.
I don’t work there so I don’t really know but I think they balance the game in stages, which is why you see how some get buffed/nerfed and others don’t at that time.
Eventually and overall, everyone gets both buffed and nerfed throughout an expac.
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There’s a variety of things to consider:
- The honeymoon period when something is new, designers will let the community interact with it at large. PTR exists, but there’s a difference between several hundreds of players testing something versus hundreds of thousands of players interacting with it. (This is not just a Blizzard thing, Riot does this too with new heroes. This happens in Genshin Impact too.)
- Data aggregation. Sometimes you just need to wait for more data to inform your decision, or otherwise support your decisions. You also need to validate the data is correct too – sims often have bugs, such as Breath of Eons being allowed to crit, but it’s already an auto-crit in-game. Detecting bugs is hard work.
- Player investment and opportunity costs. This would include systems that involve player effort, such as Legendary items in Shadowlands. “I spent 750k guild and did a bunch of content I do not enjoy just so I could get this legendary gear made. And you nerf it in the ground to the point where it’s not even BiS anymore?!” – This scenario captures the player sentiment: Designers need to nerf something, but they don’t want pull the rug from under those players. (The new talent system has no opportunity costs, and therefore tuning can be made much more swiftly.)
- Player “nerf” fatigue is a real thing too. Getting nerfs and buffs randomly throughput the week isn’t always the best thing. Developers might have a cadence to visit tuning concerns, such as waiting until every other Tuesday. What this helps reduce is the idea of “WarcraftLogs Rankings is foreshadowing buffs and nerfs.” If you’re the top spec by 2% over second place, then you get nerfed by 2%, that might be okay a few times. But imagine doing this every single week? Players would start to blame others for trying to hard and getting their spec nerfed. Players might sandbag more often. The goal is to play the game, and if the players are fearing they’ll be nerfed just for being ahead, it may lead to players no longer wanting to play.
Obligatory: Game Design is really difficult. Tuning and Class Balance is very difficult to achieve in a game like WoW. Players often set impractical standards on developers, like they should be omniscient – this has never been the case, though there are some legitimate wizards in the industry, but even they make mistakes (creativity isn’t a perfect process).
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its all about money, if too many people are quitting over a class being garbage they buff it, if too many people quit about a class being too OP or a rigid comp for m+ or raid they buff/nerf accordingly. The criteria is never the FUN.
Also they use buffs and nerfs to incite grinding or buying tokens/boosts/transfers etc
As a longtime rogue, I’ve learned when rogue gets no changes it’s generally a good thing. You spend less time wondering what the heck they were thinking. Sure there’s times when it’s better or worse, but overall they don’t do well tuning rogues.
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that yes was so perfect it didnt even need a 10 char
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Mostly B and C tier specs do not get buffed or nerfed. But some F tier specs they have a big change planned for get overlooked too. Within a season, S tier specs usually get brought down to A tier, if the nerfs even do anything to them, and Most F/D tier specs get pushed up one or half a tier.