10 man during Wrath in and of themselves did not lead to what we have now class wise. 10 mans in Wrath were easy enough that you didn’t need every single tool from every spec/class to do the content.
Where I will agree with you is that when they put it on the same level as 25 man in Cata they had no choice but to spread the wealth. 10 mans became harder so these things were needed, Blizzard balanced them out and then balanced 10 man around it.
Had they left 10 man raiding as it was in Wrath, a step down, things would have been fine.
Well that was the point. Blizzard moved away from the idea of “required” classes. Instead of making you bring the priest over the druid because the priest can dispel magic and the druid can’t, they wanted you to bring the better healer.
And you CANNOT claim that there’s no difference between druids who heal very heavily on HOTs, and priests who have a well balanced mix between quick healing and preventing damage, and paladins who are desinged around strong focused healing… They’re not the same, they don’t play the same, you’re just again, not doing the hard content.
They never made that decision, ever. Leveling was made easier because so few people were actually doing it anymore. (in Chris Fareley’s voice) FINITE PLAYERS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, UNDERSTAND THIS CONCEPT!!! Too much of a challenge was more of a road block than a challenge. Imagine needing a group for hogger but there’s only 1 other level 10 on, and it’s a night elf in Teldrassil. THAT, combined with the fact that almost the entirety of the people playing the game were in wrath content, is why leveling had to be pushed back as a focus in the game.
Also, about those 10 mans… If they’re a problem, then ZG and AQ20 have to be too.
So you agree with the vast majority of people that Ghost Crawler killed the game.
I mean, look at League, when GC joined the team, every champ remake and new champ started getting a skill shot, a cc, self heal, and maybe some type of HP shred. GC logic = “its not fair others have strengths and weaknesses.”
I mostly agree, which was my point. When 10-mans became popular, the next expansion had to make them equal, and thus create the requirement to have a full toolset, meaning that homogenization had to kick into high gear. 10 mans were added in Wrath, but didn’t break classes till Cata.
Kara was an introduction Raid, like UBRS. While it gave better gear than UBRS equivalents, it was never the top tier raid, even at launch, since SSC/TK were released with the game.
In Wrath, 10-mans became ubiquitous in every tier as an “alternative”, not an introduction.
They didn’t have to make them equal. They were popular in Wrath because everyone of every skill level could do them. Putting them on an equal playing field completely cut the legs out from under what made them popular to begin with.
Blizzard listened to their hardcore minority that wanted it to be equal. Those that it was originally designed for in Wrath got shoved out of the way and eventually got flung into LFR.
“Bring the player, not the class” was Blizzard’s official rationalization for class homogenization. This was mostly a reaction to the ridiculous class-stacking guilds were doing to clear Sunwell Plateau in TBC.
When the 3.0 pre-patch came out, all classes got new abilities that were shared with other classes.
“Bring the player, not the class” is why classes are so homogenized now. In Vanilla and BC every single class had unique utility and was defined by that utility. Once that was gone (through a long series of nerfs, giving abilities to multiple classes, and class redesigns that downplayed utility) all we had was flavors of tank/heal/ranged DPS/melee DPS.
Yes, class stacking was an issue for top raiding guilds but I don’t think it was worth nuking class fantasy over.
Yes this is a huge part of WoW that has been missing from the game since BC. They made every class able to do everything… Every class has a viable DPS spec, every class has mobility (even protection warriors), every class has self healing, every class has CC etc. It’s ridiculous and makes wrath-BFA feel like a joke to play. It doesn’t even feel like a real game to me.