The literal best Paladin players in the world are the only ones actually able to do that. Everyone in one of those groups plans around Ashen Hallow’s existence, and that’s as true in M+ as it is in raiding at a Cutting Edge level. If you nerf Ashen Hallow because of what about three-dozen players are capable of doing with it, you’re hitting every Venthyr Paladin hard, even if they aren’t coming even remotely close to replicating even half of what one of these guys does. And those top Paladins will still be able to make Ashen Hallow look extremely broken unless it’s nerfed so hard that you punish casual players as well.
If only a few dozen players are able to make something broken and the hundreds or thousands of other players who have that same setup are actively worse if they try replicating it without everybody else being on the same page, is it really broken?
I’m of the weird perspective that I don’t think balance matters as much as people think. A greater percentage of the playerbase would just rather “feel” OP. It sucks for people that are dedicated to one toon, but I don’t think that’s much of the playerbase anymore.
Ashen hallow does not need to be pulled around whatsoever. It’s a 4 min CD and is used on bosses mainly. There’s easily 4 mins between bosses in the average group which means it’s available for every single boss fight of the dungeon and requires no foresight or skill in using it. It’s one button that drops it under the boss and literally the only thing that needs to be done to play around it is for the tank to not be an idiot and kite the boss out of it.
Except it absolutely does. The literal best M+ HPal player in the world (aka the guy who literally writes the HPal Bible, Ellesmere) even says if any old HPal is trying to make Venthyr work it’ll be a lot worse than Kyrian 95% of the time.
It’s horrible for the game though. Every season the meta rerolling becomes more and more prevalent for m+. You either play those classes, or struggle to actually ever get invited to play regardless of your IO and capability.
Then what happens is that class representation becomes so saturated from all the rerollers that even raiding in a guild becomes hard because everyone wants to play the same couple of classes.
From my understanding the big nerfs are things they like to do in between patches. As they don’t want to disrupt things too much within a patch. Like in the next patch Affliction looks like it’ll be hit pretty hard with some nerfs and I guess they’re buffing the other two specs.
Sin rogue was pure garbage at 9.0 with Sub and Outlaw out preforming it dramatically, sin is very gear dependent, so them being weaker at the start of an expansion is normal - with that in mind they are naturally going to climb dps rankings as SL progresses without buffs. so they did receive minor buffs to hopefully put them more in line with the other two specs and last I looked it had surpassed Sub but is still below Outlaw.
If you’re talking pugging keys then yes Kyrian would be better in your 1-15 level keys because inexperienced players will be making far more mistakes requiring the hps that kyrian can provide. In higher keys, the group will understand that there’s the trade off for the boss damage a venthyr holy pally brings and will have to compensate by using CDS on prides because they won’t have the HPS to heal through a prolonged pride.
But the fact is if you’re trying to run a 20 as a Kyrian Paladin you’re almost trolling
Sure. But like… 1% of the playerbase, if we’re being generous, is coming even remotely close to touching a 20.
Unless it’s such an absurd outlier that it’s trivializing a boss (think that Haste-stacking Mistweaver cheese in early 8.3) I don’t think it’s ever, ever worth balancing 100% of the game around what 1% of the playerbase could potentially do with it.
And that statement does make sense for sure. But the problem comes when these top 1% players streaming their runs confuse the other 99% into thinking “we need a DH tank for our weekly 15 key”, when that’s completely false and any tank spec is capable of it.
The amount of times I see “need fire mage” and it’s a +10 key is laughable. You could literally time a 10 with 5 monks in the group with no issue but far too many people look at what these top players are playing and think that’s what they need when it 100% doesn’t apply to them.
So it’s definitely not all on blizz. Community perception is equally to blame
Never forget that during BFA’s corruption period that Paladins HoJ was stupid broken and Blizz flat out said they had no plans on fixing it. That is why imbalanced things remain so long. They do not care.
Heals don’t do much for you when you’re going to be the first tank to reach a key level where you get globalled and that’s a fact. The weakest mitigation will always hit their peak the quickest, you can’t outheal something that one shots you.
Especially being the least mobile tank where kiting isn’t as much of an option as any other choice. Lowest mitigation, worst kiting ability, and low damage is just a failure all around
Actually, they had a plan to try fixing it at first.
Problem is, what they would’ve needed to do in order to fix that would’ve absolutely murdered several specs that heavily depended on cooldown reduction gimmicks, with Holy Priests and most notably Fire Mages being absolutely gutted if that went through.
In other words, they tried nerfing it by nerfing how CDR logic worked with instant cooldown reduction (Lucid+Hyperthread, Ineffable Truth+any other CDR, etc.) and quickly realized that they’d basically kill off like 10 other specs if they went through.
Yup. This is what it boils down to. I guess the game devs or whoever is in charge can’t simply look at the data. I honestly have this theory that they rationalize their lack of willingness to bring balance to Wow. They say stuff like, “Oh, well, we think the average player will chose the class and spec they like. Then later, when they are bored of that, they will then switch to the most OP classes. That way they will keep playing the game. If we give them balanced characters they will simply play what they like, get invites when they like, do all they like, and then get bored.” But to this, I say, “No. People will do this, but after they get tired of playing the “meta” and getting invites literally thrown at them, they will then get bored, and have nowhere else to look.”
And maybe this theory is just that–a theory. Honestly, though, most want to play what they like. And in the end, if they can’t get invites on the classes and specs they like, they will probably not enjoy the game. And then they will quit. Furthermore, nobody wants to feel forced to play the flavor of the month healer or what have you. But this is what the game devs seem to be saying when they make Holy Paladin damage insane, they buff Fire Mages when they are already broken, and the list goes on.
Sooooo they did nothing then. I mean I get why they did it, but it’s still on them. It’s on them for not fixing the problem they created and it’s on them for creating the problem to begin with.
Exactly, I feel the same way. The more blizz can entice people to roll alts, the longer they will play, and keeping it fresh with playing a new level toon and the amount of grinding required to get it up to par will mean a lot of extra sub time from that player.
I just can’t bring myself to play a class that I’m not truly into just because it’s meta, then seeing endless waves of other players all playing the same class because it’s fotm when most of them will never even reach a key level to where that even matters what class they are playing.
It’s almost to the point when I see a DH tank, a mage, a boomy etc. I just know they are going to be the worst player in the group and 9 times out of 10 that’s the way it goes. When you see someone with similar IO on an off meta spec there’s a very high chance they will be the better player because chances are they have mained it long enough to master it with not having to reroll every 6 months to something else.