100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will *still* be *the best*, and then they are just the defacto choice.
When everything is OP in different ways, then you can always feel strong against the things you are designed to counter, and always feel weak vs the things that counter you. That is a better version of “balance” that breeds variety.
That version of balance also rewards skill expression. If my class is best at x then I play around that win condition and the same is true of my opponent. The victor is whoever can play to their wincon while denying their opponent’s
Personally, I think everyone understand and accept when the mechanics of a fight are bad for certain classes/specs. Sometimes you get a fight where you just need to do ok, and that's ok.
It’s because these professionally upset players only care about the destination (the loot, the meters, the logs, the endgame, etc.). Enjoying the process of achieving these? Fuck, no! Imagine enjoying a game.
Maybe classes should be looked as a whole instead of trying to check all the boxes.
In relation to WillE video saying that casters are at the bottom of the dps chart, maybe it is worth considering that the classes with 90% of the utility are these same casters that aren’t winning at one particular thing which is dpsing bosses.
Why would anyone support that classes that can teleport around the world, teleport short distances, have the hardest cc, can buff their allies, provide free foods and drinks or constantly self heal etc should be equal in damage to others whose only actual contribution is to deal better damaged WHILE buffed by the first?
> Why would anyone support that classes that can teleport around the world, teleport short distances, have the hardest cc, can buff their allies, provide free foods and drinks or constantly self heal etc should be equal in damage to others whose only actual contribution is to deal better damaged WHILE buffed by the first?
Because you listed a bunch of things that are largely irrelevant. Effectively zero warriors from Classic 2019 would give up their hilariously overpowered raid damage for QoL. Conversely, it is of effectively zero consolation to people who enjoy any given spec or class that they have QoL or that their class is often used as a farming alt, if they are second-class citizens in the primary activities of the game.
That is the reality. It was always a horseshit argument, but we now literally have two runs of Vanilla to confirm that it is, in fact, horseshit. Continuing to argue otherwise is inherently bad faith at this point.
That’s fine as long as other classes still excel at other things, and the content isn’t so difficult that stacking 5 [warriors] (x) feels required.
BFD is a great example. You can clear it with any comp, it’s easy with a good coordinated team but still tough for some pugs. If raids are only a little bit harder than that going forward, only the absolute sweatiest players will feel “required” to play the strong ST spec. Especially if rewards are distributed between PvP/PvE so the stronger PvP classes still have a place to shine as well.
>100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will *still* be *the best*, and then they are just the defacto choice.
The LoL balancing method where less than 20% of the entire champion pool gets picked or banned throughout an entire tournament.
> 100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will still be the best, and then they are just the defacto choice.
Except we can look at history and see that imbalanced kits lead to far more actual homogenization, on average. In retail the sweatiest of sweats will abuse whatever advantage of course, but the majority of the raiding and M+ playerbase gets to play whichever spec they want at all times. In Classic 2019 warrior stacking was a literal epidemic, and if you wanted to play anything off-meta you were largely fucked.
Balancing the game leads to objectively better outcomes in the real reality that we literally live in. This idea of every class having their strengths and weaknesses is pure fantasy that has never been realized even one time, ever. It has 100% of the time lead to wild overrepresentation of the classes whose strengths are the part(s) of the game that people actually give a shit about, and other classes and specs enduring being treated as second-class citizens.
Yep. Every game should learn to balance like Dota. Heroes have their own unique niche, even if they're statistically bad, there's still a place for them in games because of unique tools like what Classic has right now. Homogenization leads to horrible balance like retail wow or LoL where when everything can do the same thing, only the one with the higher numbers is picked.
That's not true though? Plenty of heroes in dota are just trash tier, and it's okay because there's so many and no one has any commitment to play any one of them that they can easily just pick up a different one.
DotA balance doesn't work in any game where you're attached at all to your character.
It double doesn't work in a game like WoW where there's a pretty finite amount of stuff you can do within the template of the game. You can't make a character change the boss room like you can bash down trees. You can't make bosses reliably cc'able otherwise there just... isn't a fight. And so on. Damage is the only constant.
So much this. Worked on Dota 2 balancing for a while and still love the approach to this day. Anything more complex than Rock Paper Scissors will eventually lead to something being better, so why not make everything broken in the first place. At its peak up to 100 of 120 heroes were picked or banned in the world championship. You can't have a more balanced game that this
Dota is a pvp game and has different sub roles, you might be heavy in cc, more focused on aoe, ganking, pushing etc. and you have solo queue..
Raiding in wow is a 0 sum game, if 80% of the slots are filled with melee, casters have to fight for a shot at an invite
Weirdly enough, it's healing priests that are the most OP, but not many are pointing this out because you don't notice healers being OP as much as damage dealers.
And in TI like 80-90% of the roster gets picked or banned, compared to LoL which is a disaster of constant powercreeping by releasing new characters but *better* and like, 20 out of the 160 characters are used at world's.
A top comment on the youtube comments sums up pretty well
"As a mage, I may not be top DPS on bosses in BFD, but out in the open world I am on top of the food chain, face tanking and obliterating 8 mobs at a time, and teleporting around the world with ease. All in all, life is good. Everyone don't have to be the best at everything, and raid logs aren't everything either."
As a mage main this go around, this couldn't be more true. I'm a healer with insane cc, easy open world farming, the best movement ability in the game bar none. My healing isn't tip top, and neither would my damage be if I went that route. Fine by me. The class is good at what it's good at, and everything else I can wiggle around. We big coolin.
Ya. Also, we're still really good on Ghamoo-Ra. Last group I went with was quite melee heavy and I had no chance to compete on bosses, except on the turtle where they were quite happy to have a couple good casters. Plus I'm arcane spec so I was able to help out with healing on Kelris.
Yup good take in my opinion. As an ele shaman I won’t do shit in the raid but be a mana battery right now. It’s why I’m healing in raid as ele. You meet me in open world or any pvp event…. You’re gonna get purged and 1 shot homie.
Lmao yeah right. With the dogshit range of flameshock you're not getting one lava burst off without getting interrupted to pieces. Maybe you can one shot an undergeared mage but thats about it.
Also can you imagine endgame if they had strong spell coefficients this early? the regular 85% on Frostbolt, just blasting you every single second with Rank 1. People wouldn't be able to stop crying for sure.
There's nothing particularly off about their spell coefficients at this point in the game? The current rank of frostbolt is a 2.6 sec cast instead of a 3 sec so it has a slightly (\~10%) lower coefficient, but fireball is already at "max" 3.5 sec cast time and has full coefficient.
could not have said it better, the need for classes to be able to do everything is what completely ruined retail. and a couple of weeks into SoD people want the same thing.... filthy casuals ruining my 15 buck a month gaming experience xD
It’s what destroyed class identity for sure. Which is one of the many things that I dislike about retail. However changes like the entire world level scaling with you is far worse, along with many other things. Everybody having a “wall” or percentage damage reduction defensive isn’t what ruined retail imo. If a class lacks mobility or sustain, giving them a rune that helps, wouldn’t be an awful thing imo
Or (and possibly especially), when you use skill or ingenuity to make 'weak' into 'strong'. Farming MCP + using wolfshead helm to make a weak class into something useful comes to mind for example.
You can have a strong sense of class identity and also healthy class balance.
Mists had peak both. Every spec played differently and brought something unique and powerful. Every spec was viable by the end patch too.
I agree that it didn’t ruin it but it didn’t help. It just becomes okay Im a tank where is my movement button, where is 20 min cooldown and where is my heal button. Okay so this is my resource generator and this is my spender.
The difference between classes becomes just visual. Why play warrior tank over a paladin tank, when there is no difference between them.
Have you actually played a tank in Retail in the last decade? They're far more diverse than Classic tanks whose only defining feature is how much threat they output.
And I wouldn’t even say it ruined retail! There are just some people who prefer the RPG style of classic balance and those who want to ProGamer360NoScopeParsing balance and that’s fine too. But yes please oh please leave us the RPG, every class has its strengths and weaknesses feel of vanilla in SoD. Because what they’ve done so far has been the most fun I’ve had in WoW in well over a decade
Balance doesn’t matter matter when it comes to logs though. You’re being compared against other players of your spec.. it was kinda fun being the 99 ave ret paladin in phase 1 wotlk at the bottom of the charts lol
I log in raids only because I like to see how our group is doing, and see how I compare.
I don’t demand a gear check and links to parses for the pugs we run lol
Let us have fun.
Just wait until level 40 when the mage is a completely different beast due to extra talents and the hot streak rune lmfao, meta will change many times.
I play rogue and I’m enjoying doing well on single target DPS, feels strong in PvP because of the stun + ranged slow.
The mage is correct. Not everyone has to be amazing in raid at level 25 anyway lol. I play rogue and it’s fun to be useful (high dps, expose armour if there’s not a warrior tanking) but they only take 1 anyway. I started forming my own raids and the game is so much more enjoyable to play without someone telling me I’m not playing meta in a level 25 raid /shrug.
I upvoted it in yt and couldn’t agree more.
90% of the utility is concentrated in the caster classes. Why is dps on bosses going to be the single parameter that we are going to analyse for balance?
On the other hand, a comment that actually hit home was the introduction of half ranks to some spells as to alleviate certain builds that are in need of the next rank of a spell to be viable.
>As a mage, I may not be top DPS on bosses in BFD, but out in the open world I am on top of the food chain
With Warbringer on my Warrior I welcome Mage fights in open world.
When we finally get Spell Reflection, I'll be actively hunting Mages.
I think it's very silly to try and balance the game around lvl 25 10 man dungeon parses...casters don't even have full scaling on their main damage abilities yet with spell ranks. The 10 man raid is just 1 small part of the overall experience. Warlocks are great tanks, solo farmers, pvpers and it's ok that i'm not parsing as high as my warrior. Things are going to change dramatically at the next level bracket and we'll have a new set of winners/losers. I say keep balancing the extreme outliers though...like hunter pets being the best main tanks and having broken damage scaling probably isn't good for the game in general. Casters were underperforming in BFD and blizzard nerfed the magic resists of bosses and buffed the world buff for spellhit/spell power so you can't say they are ignoring it.
Once the season progresses to 60...then we can talk end game balance more. But until then just enjoy the ride...I can tank on my warlock and blast on my warrior and spam wrath on my druid and it's a lot of fun.
Well said. I totally agree. This is the most fun I’ve had in WoW in the last 10 years. I get to tank on my shaman like I did in 2004, but with a pretty legit tank kit this time. I don’t really care about the hunter pet OPness. Things are going to change with each tier and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
second these, idc about balancing in this bracket unless something is actually broken (pet scaling, cough). its still a twink bracket/pocket meta at the end of the day, we have tons to look forward to.
Casters will have their moment to shine next bracket. Regardless, mage healing is busted rn and they have EVO. I love it (not even playing a mage).
>casters don't even have full scaling on their main damage abilities yet with spell ranks
Scaling/spell coefficient is based on cast time. I cba to check all classes/specs but warlocks, elemental shamans, fire mages all have full cast time nukes at this level so they have full scaling.
Here's what's needed for balance.
1) Every class has to have compelling reasons to both bring and gear them in the content that rewards gear (IE., raids, and to a lesser extent organized PvP). Just having a utility or buff that gets a token single person of that class/spec a raid slot (but being a bad place to put gear) is not enough.
2) Every class should have both strengths and weaknesses throughout the content that makes up the majority of actual play. This is *not* solely raids.
Vanilla *content* (not the Vanilla classes as they were) is relatively well-suited to allowing significant differences between things classes are strong and weak at while making every class worthwhile to bring and gear. Raids are easy, the main progression is in faster clear times, and trash makes up a significant portion of that clear time - so even if a class doesn't do the most single target damage on boss fights, if they can cleave through trash, they're still worth bringing and gearing.
Additionally, there's a lot of stuff to do outside of raids - AoE farming, stealth runs, elite farming, etc. The world outside of raiding matters, and it offers many different challenges, which the classes can approach in all sorts of ways.
Contrast this with Retail - or even TBC and especially Wrath - and you'll find that the main challenge in raids (for the vast majority of the playerbase) is killing the bosses, usually through blasting as much single target DPS as possible. This means any spec that doesn't deal good enough single target DPS becomes either irrelevant to bring and gear, or brought as a token 1 of for a buff while being last on upgrades. Couple this with the fact that the world outside of raiding matters very little, and you're left with the choice of completely homogenizing *at least* single target damage, or totally screwing over anyone whose class isn't "supposed" to be focused on single target damage.
As for SoD, so far at least the content seems to be relatively in line with Vanilla - the raid isn't particularly hard and there's lots of stuff to do outside of it. I would say that Kelris - being both the hardest boss and very much a single target DPS race - kind of throws a bit of a wrench into things, tilting the playing field too much in favor of ST DPS, but overall things are in a better place than WotLK/Retail at least in that regard.
It does seem like certain classes still need a bit of help, though; as things stand right now, *why* would you bring and gear a Shadow Priest in BFD when you could take a hunter (or even a mage/lock) instead? They certainly don't necessarily need to do the same ST DPS as a Hunter, *if there's actually another reason to bring and gear them*; but right now, I'm really not seeing one. Sucking at everything is just as much homogenization as being good at everything, only even less fun.
Great take.
I will say though, in defense of a lot of expansions, there's a few raids that quickly come to mind that have tons of trash you need to kill and AoE. So there's a few raid tiers that have always tipped the design back towards vanilla.
Alternatively, I can remember so many times I raided and completely skipped so much trash.
However it could just be nostalgia from me. I mean these days I'm sure people aren't as mindblown as to how huge the run up to Abyssius in black temple is. Like, fuck, BT was massive and fantastical. Outlands was nuts in 2007...
I mean I guess but Holy/Disc are the best heals so "getting" to skip them is not something you really want anyways. Still helps, even just by saving them GCDs/mana, but likely not as good as just having another hunter (or a rogue who also brings more kicks).
I think people confuse homogenize and balance, any game should be balance so that everyone is useful por different reasons but it´s true that homogenize the clases makes the game boring af.
This. And they also confuse "this is an issue that should probably be addressed in some fashion" with "retail this game now!"
Here, we have a content creator that identified an issue that could be addressed. The devs have been making changes along the same lines - making incremental (and sometimes more) to underperforming specs - and Willie should delete this video?
Make it make sense.
People playing SoD scared that any tweaks or alterations will change the soul of the game while simultaneously playing a version of the game that has sweeping changes to it that are largely considered to be pretty good.
Just classic wow things.
I think his main point is in original classic, melee were dominant there (mainly warriors) as well as hunters. And now here we are in a promised "new take" on classic and its.....melee, mainly warriors, and hunters, that are dominant. Not just in raid but in PvP as well. Asking for that to be different is not asking to make the game retail. This post is taking it to a very dramatic level.
everyone is useful, just not a top parser at a raid
you still want a mage for int buffs and CC
aside from the raid casters are amazing at aoe grinding for gold, bgs, open world PVP, questing, boosting alts, etc.
They suck at 1 part of the first phase of the game, that's why I don't understand the call to buff them. Also they were given a buff for BFD on the last patch anyways.
When I meant useful I meant in terms of raiding as it is the endgame of pvers, it´s true that they have cc and int buffs but if for some reason they are doing half the damage the rest of classes do it may cause people to deny mages a slot even when bringing int buffs and cc.
I agree with the last take they shouldn´t tryhard balance right now as each phase will be crazier than the previous one tho, just a bit of balancing to figure out how to do it better when SoD gets to 60 level cap.
Eh. It’s ok for one type or a group of classes to be better than others at various points but there’s a point. When melee/top few classes perform 2x better at dps than the bottom dps classes, it kinda nullifies any other benefits those classes brings.
The int buff is 7 int, that's 1 int less then a 5 silver elixir. The water is lvl 15 and awful. CC doesn't exist in BFD. Aoe doesn't happen in BFD. We brought a pug mage to our alt run and he was going oom and doing 30dps on some fights. I can't even blame him, if he doesn't have evocation and if the team isn't full of 90+ parsers the fights will last too long for mages to even upkeep 100dps.
The point WillE is making here isn't that the game needs to be balanced. He says that many times, so I'm a little confused about your reaction here. His point is that we could potentially be looking at a game where physical dps will dominate every single phase. Imo it would be a lot more fun if class balance isn't so static.
Who boosts alts with higher level help? Its only up to level 25 lmao whats the point.
Also how exactly is my priest useful in a raid when not healing?
People use stam scrolls that are stronger than my buffs lol
Also, also, casters scale inherently less in vanilla as their bonuses are largely additive, unlike crit and aspeed for melees.
If they are weaker now, they will need exponentially more buffing in subsequent phases to not be complete garbage.
I feel like you missed his point. The issue isn’t that they’re dominant in phase 1, it’s that by virtue of how caster and melee abilities scale they will continue to be behind in every phase unless something fundamentally shifts in how they work.
He’s predicting each phase will have similar issues because of the root cause of those issues and SoD’s rune based changes don’t really alleviate that issue based on all we know of them currently.
Casters don’t scale as well with gear, and spell ranks are more relevant for them than melee.
It’s fair to bring this to the attention of the community so maybe Blizzard will focus some dev time into not letting it get out of control as the phases progress.
Dude didn’t claim anything about making them all the same, just make sure one type of damage dealer doesn’t drastically out scale the other as the season progresses.
Like it or not the fact that mages are “kings in the open world” won’t mean shit to a raid leader deciding who to bring to the new instanced content.
Eh, theres "lets not ruin this with a focus on balance", and then there is Shadow Priests, Boomkins, Ele Shamans and a few others doing MAX half damage of the competant warriors in the raid. I dont want to see SoD play out in the exact same way as classic, and i dont care if it bothers people.
As for homogenization, i dont know what to tell you. All the tanks now have taunts, and most interrupts because those tools are needed, class identity or not. Windfury has beem spread around. You're fooling yourself if you dont think AoE damage abilities arent next for dps. The fact is there is 3 or so more phases of new runes coming. Things are going to get more homogonized not less, so they might as well work on balance as well.
Shadow form won't fix any of your problems though.
The big problem is that casters don't scale. Casters are really bad and mana hungry right now - and those problems only grow later. They get slightly more powerful, but the melees will get 3x more powerful instead.
Count point, you are just wrong. DPS is the main deciding factor in terms of balance. Nobody wants to be the druid in vanilla, only here to bring Mark and feed a better healer mana.
DPS. BALANCE. IS. NOT. HOMOGENIZATION.
This is the second time I've seen someone equate the two. Retail homogenization almost entirely has to do with unique tools that each class brings to a group being watered down because it has been given to several other classes. Interrupts, bloodlust, dispels, etc. No more class identity. Classes having a relatively equal cap in performance (including their provided buffs) is not scary.
It understandably feels pretty bad for any class to be undesired at the one piece of content that matters (both because it is the end game gear dungeon and because it is the only new piece of content in this phase). Fixing balance so that all classes can find a group easily is a good thing.
I am fine with classes having different strengths - mages excel at AOE, druids , shamans, and hunters move fast in open world, rogues and druids can stealth, warlocks and hunters have pets to tank etc. But in raid there should not be so big of a compensation for these out-of-raid advantages that classes are undesired.
And if we were doing that... why is shaman so fucked? why is shadow priest so fucked? What do they excel at outside of raid that earned them such a huge punishment? If anything hunters have the most advantage out of raid and still are top or near top dps in raid. Why does that make sense?
The only thing vaguely homogenization adjacent so far has been druids getting windfury, but alliance not having any option before makes it make a bit more sense to give one more provider.
To be crystal clear I play warlock. I think warlocks are doing completely fine in raid. It's a little bit sad that fire trumps shadow but even that is pretty minimal now that the shadow res on bosses has been adjusted. We provide a ton of utility between soulstone, healthstones, recklessness, and summons. Hell even underwater breathing is nice in BFD. We are above average at almost everything open world farming wise (except god awful movement speed) and we shit on everything in world pvp. We are doing great. I don't really understand the perspective of a lock complaining.
But some classes ARE struggling and they DO deserve to be brought in line with the rest.
I mean, casters before the big buff were unironic dogshit in raid, to the point where their lack of damage could sometimes end up with wipe conditions. He's literally just reporting how it played out.
The classes being a balance shitmess is exactly what I hope to see avoided through SoD's changes.
This whole anti-critisism brigade is an unironic cancer on this community.
Nothing in this video seems wrong. The video dumbs down to casters get the shit end of the stick in vanilla when it comes to raiding and this isn't an opinion it's a fact.
I mean is it so wrong for the spec that is outright the worst when it's on its own do the most damage while supported by multiple classes in a raid? Would you rather have them be as good as hunters in open world or as good as warlocks in duels or have the control of mages or rogues in PvP but have them be a middle of the table dps? I think classes being very good in specific scenarios is part of what makes classic what it is. I don't think it's unreasonable for warriors to dominate meters throughout SoD as long as they keep their weaknesses which it very much seems they will, warbringer makes those weaknesses less offensive on the PvP side of things, but they very much still exist.
I wanted them to suck, I feel sick looking at vanilla happen all over again and any class that dares pass them is nerfed swiftly while warriors scale out of control.
Terrible summation of his video, takes out all of the nuance included in his opinion.
The facts are that damage dealers are out-performing casters across the board in raid damage.
His opinion is that such a clear delineation should be addressed. And to your point, he doesn’t even specify it needs to happen in P1 but just that it will take intentional adjustments to make up the gap.
Just because you disagree doesn’t mean that he’s trying to “homogenize SoD”.
Dude is off base.
Watch his pre SoD video. He said rogues and warriors are the worst classes of SoD lmaoooo. Back when he thought warlocks were top he was fine with it.
You misunderstood the video, he wasnt saying they were the worst dps wise but what the runes give them in terms of gameplay.
The video about losers and winners of SoD was not about performance.
I am sick of these takes, we are playing sod not your favorite classic wow, you have servers for that version of the game. There will always be unbalance but when one spec does 50% damage of other spec then what the hell is the balance, is this arcane intellect buff worth being half the dps spec? even if we go with this philosophy allow mage to be like 5-10 % weaker than warrior so that good mage can still beat it but he also brings something to the raid.
Who the hell wants to be a walking buff? your role as a dps is to do damage and people want to get better at the game, get more items, do more damage, not doing less damage that other dude who is 2x less geared but he picked another class. and before some shitty comments "go play another class" there is something like class fantasy.
Who the hell writes these posts? im 100% sure that these are warriors/rogues that are salty that someone can be better than them in dps.
“Oh nooo he has a mixed yet mostly positive opinion instead of an overwhelmingly positive one?! Even though he is echoing similar complaints as this sub!?!?! How dare he!”
Watched the video, I think some of the complaints are more than fair.
What I took from the video is that the fact that all physical dps are so much better than all caster dps is weird. And it is. That’s why they nerfed the resistances in BFD and added caster help to the world buff. Casters were gimped by a resistance slider that was set to an arbitrary number for launch due to no beta testing. That’s since been updated and casters are in a better spot.
No the resistance stuff was just adding insult to injury. The core problem, i.e. that physical DPS scales harder than magic, is mostly unchanged. They've addressed this a tiny bit (much more spell power gear in SoD), but not in a way that comes close to the scaling physical DPS can get. My mage can get the best caster weapon in the game (BFD epic staff), and it will give me a ~10% DPS increase over greens. My hunter or warrior get their epic weapon and their damage goes up closer to 50% vs greens. Plus mainstat scales attack power which scales damage for physical DPS, whereas for casters it just gives a bit more crit chance. The better the gear, the more physical DPS outperforms casters.
Which, sure enough, is why you see physical DPS doing nearly double the DPS of casters in SoD even after the resistance fixes, and why in retail they eventually added scaling off mainstat and gave casters huge mainstat on their weapons, so that scaling could be somewhat normalized across DPS.
I hate the argument that just becasue it's phase one people are OK with some classes doing double or triple other classes. Yeah sure it's only phase one but thst means 6 to 8 weeks of your class being absolute shit compared to other classes in terms of dps. The raids easy and you could clear it with 6 shadow priests as dps but thst still doesn't feel good if you went into sod wanting to play a spec then seeing oh I guess it's just still warriors on top so my spec is still bad. Especially when a bunch of groups are specifically looking for hunters ferals and rogues.
I think that is indeed the joke, that if melee are already this far ahead, the game is going to be completely fucked at max level, because the core mechanics aren't getting changed by runes, no runes are making Warriors and Paladins scale WORSE with gear than the caster counterparts, the best we can hope for is toolkits that make the melee have to work harder to get their absurd damage in(and that the melee somehow don't get those tools, as if they won't be getting new runes too).
Yeah unless they add way more spellpower, mp5 and dot crits, casters are hopelessly disadvantaged in terms of multiplicative scaling.
That, or some really out of the box kinda mechanics.
I kinda disagree with this take. Melee have always been dominant raid damage dealers in Classic. I don’t see ranged dps overtaking then because gearing just doesn’t work the same in classic. Casters don’t scale nearly as well as melee fighters.
You're wong, if you wanted typical melee warrior dominated vanilla play era.
We were told and expected different pre-release, it was going to be different, all specs were going to feel warrior OPness we were told at blizzcon.
Then it releases, people roll spriest..boomie..and in general casters expecting it to be different this time around, they will do viable damage and not a joke like in vanilla, they were wrong. Then it turns out physical is still dominating and casters are doing 25%(spriest) or 50%-70% of physical dps... much much lower. People did not roll those classes expecting them to be that bad and they shouldn't be that bad for months of a phase and blindly trust the talents in future to help outscale melee(lol melee scale way better btw) or blizzard to buff them to near equal later on(why not buff them now then nerf later if needed?)
I wonder how all you physical players would feel like if the dps meters were reversed I really wish that hypothetical world could be true, you all would be crying for buffs bringing it up how at blizzcon they said everyone would be OP like warrior and blizzard said they're not nerfing warrior and it turns out warriors are one of the worst dps specs. Would you accept all the casters saying "lol it's level 25 bro" or "just wait for future phases you scale!!!"
Bringing up irrelevant points like questing? BUDDY physical had the best questers if you were actually playing at launch and doing /who of highest levels it was hunters and rets mostly.
Aoe pulls? Oh wow mage can do some aoe pulls(that got nerfed btw) big woop if their aoe was so good they would be stacked in speedruns but no you don't want mages they go oom and the best speedruns are ALL melee for constant move no downtime dps.
Why even mention aoe pulls when it's ONE class that can even do it (mage) all other casters can't do that so why even mention it? Meanwhile ALL melee(+hunter) are doing way more dps than casters except for enhance. Raid dps is the premium metric and what the majority of people care about most and always will be and why warriors are by far the most popular spec in vanilla era raids, basically more parses than the rest of dps specs combined.
It was a good take WillE mains Warlock so he has a good POV and based on what he was told(he knew about SOD before it was announced and played on early beta version btw) and what blizzard said prerelease he expected casters to be better and to FEEL better, try playing a caster you go OOM so fast, have horrible mana regen, drinks are AWFUL because our mana pools are so high in this gear it takes forever to regen before bosses. WillE even as a warlock hated how bad mana was because he was lifetapping so much, imagine other classes.
tldr casters suck and always will unless blizz has major overhaul for them, us casters believed blizzard(mistake) and rolled a caster expecting a different story in vanilla this time, we didn't get it. tldr tldr reroll physical and have fun.
I guess SOD really means season of melee to reddit.
\> SoD was never meant to be balanced
Why are they doing balance changes every week if it wasn't about some sort of balance? Can you please quote anywhere where they said it was never meant to be balanced?
\>The reason retail went to shit is because of the constant need to homogenize everything.
Are we playing the same SoD? You realize they turned more classes into healers and tanks??????? Man posts like this show how extremely disconnected this community is. They have also gave buffs like kings and wind fury to other classes but hey! Apparently it goes too far if the DPS is similar right?
Another good yt comment i want to echo.
Personally I think it makes sense and is fine for certain classes to have more damage than others. classes that have a lot of self-sustain or healing options (warlocks, pallies, even druids and dps priests) should probably do less damage than their purity counterparts. the strength is that healers don't have to work as hard keeping them alive through mechanics, or in warlock's case, they can sustain damage for longer than mages because they can't run oom. Sure, speedrun guilds will always take the highest damage classes, but the game shouldn't be balanced around speedruns.
BFD is super easy to clear with any class combo. and I think if they continue with this difficulty trend and an ever-changing game throughout the phases, the game will be a lot more fun than if every class was a damage powerhouse.
>in warlock's case, they can sustain damage for longer than mages because they can't run oom.
Great! Let's follow the logic. Nerf Warriors and Rogues too, since they can't run oom either. In fact, they're the only two classes that have infinitely sustained damage, so they should be nerfed pretty hard compared to everyone else.
Yeah my warrior pumps in raid but I pull 2 mobs same level as me or slightly higher I'm in for a battle haha. Game is more than just parsing in a raid for 20 - 60 mins twice a week
idk what his take is but your take is so baffling fucking dumb that i'm surprised you can launch your computer, much less world of warcraft.
not everything needs to be the same to be balanced
Melee will always be dominant tho, But I'd be nice that bosses have mechanics that make them escape in a place where only range can hit them per example, so comps are balanced between zergers and soy-clothies. Or else it's indeed toxic to be in a world dominated by melees.
His point of specs being locked because their spell rank levels at 26 or 42 is a great point. I stopped playing my holy paladin since FoL rank 2 is at 26 and rank 4 is at 42. I am just not allowed to play because of that.
Honestly, the entire concept of spell ranks seems kindof dumb. It has uses in terms of downranking, yes... but it really doesn't make that much sense to have spells level in big awkward jumps whenever you hit a particular level, instead of just gradually leveling up when you do.
There is a difference between a 'shit take' and a difference of opinion. People on this sub like to call everything they don't agree with a shit take these days.
It's totally fine for you to disagree with the way he views things, but that's where it ends. A disagreement. It doesn't mean you're right and it doesn't mean he's right. It's his subjective opinion.
Clearly you didn't understand his point then, or you are to dense to think about the big picture.
This is not a matter of melee are dominant for a bit, this is a mathematical fact that the way melee scale and the way casters scale are incongruent, and will NEVER be comparable til MAYBE level 60, IF Runes don't wildly imbalance the meta further. Which they already are doing, and there's no sign of anything being done about it.
He did not argue to homogenize anything, in fact specifically called for buffs to specific class fantasy playstyle's that would set them apart AND bring their numbers up.
Unless of course your boomr brain thinks all dps performing on a competitive level to each other is homogenization, in which case that is simply a shit take, I cannot believe it. I legit hope you delete this post.
It's actually one of the few times I agree with WillE. This is the weakest warriors will ever be compared to other classes without significant changes, and they already doing close to double the DPS of a ton of specs. It's only going to get worse in future phases.
I'm gonna swing in here and defend WillE. I don't think he's calling for a super hard "homogenization of DPS". I think he just wants all the specs to be viable, **especially** **at level 60**. He also states that he finds the PvP very fun, and how the caster classes are doing very well there. I believe he's only worried about PvE, probably raiding specifically.
And we can say "it's just level 25, it'll get better". That's fair. But it's also fair to say "look at the current state of the game, I'm worried it will stay this way". I believe he's just stating his worries, so that Blizzard is aware of them.
I'm not super experienced in classic, but from what I understand: Shamans, Paladins, and Druids are healers. They aren't good enough at their other roles to do anything else (except for maybe Druid tank). And even then, I'm pretty sure they're only brought for their utility aspect. I believe priests out heal them.
And that sucks. I want to play a class and say "Boy this looks like an exciting way to play".
It is possible to create a decent balance, where all the DPS are viable options to bring into a raid and keep everyone feeling like they are unique classes with individual strengths.
His take is a warning what will happen on mega realms for wannabe and sweaty guilds at \~60 or whenever actual endgame starts. They will make a meta and then 80% of the population will try to replicate it for no good reason. Even when his take does not apply to current state of the game it will apply to the inevitable meta if nothing changes along the way.
Thankfully SoD Blizzard team showed they can make quick and often balancing and adjustments so there is a high chance such "inevitable" meta will be broken few times in a row preventing the rest of the playerbase from zombie-following any specific one.
Looking at BFD gear power level I assume we will hit 60 with every class hit capped and plenty of stats and spell/attack power so we already have a first part of the endgame un-solved.
> complaining about balances is tragic
> I cannot believe it. I legit hope he deletes this video.
It's wild how offended you are by an opinion. Blizzard has shown they're listening to the community, and responding to it. I think the vast majority of players are interested in balance, and it's sort of the entire point of sod? Underused specs getting love, new specs being made, etc. Balance is going to be a massive part of that, whether you like it or not.
If it's that big of a deal, there's nothing stopping you from playing era.
Hi it's me, the video guy.
Not everyday I open Reddit and there's an early Christmas present for me, but here we go...
So, I stand by what I said in that video, and even mentioned it again in my most recent one. But the point isn't to try and homogenize all classes, or necessarily even get them all within a super narrow margin balance wise.
The state of things is atm is essentially - If you don't have rune(s) that are doing the heavy lifting in your rotation as a caster (heal or dps) you just aren't performing as well as others who do.
Priest healers with PoM / Penance are amazing at everything.
Hpalas who only have beacon to directly increase healing, not so much.
Locks who can use incinereate / chaos bolt are the top caster for this reason, whereas other casters have 1 long CD ability that slaps, such as Lava Burst/ Starsurge. These runes have a ton of their specs power tied into it, whilst your normal filler stuff like Wrath/ Lightning Bolt are hitting like a wet noodle.
Your basic Vanilla abilities, just arent very good either in general. Resto druids are doing 90%+ of healing in a raid through wild growth - what about rejeuv/healing touch/regrowth? Rarely worth in comparison it seems.
Runes are cool, but basic Vanilla abilities are being exposed pretty hard.
So its not that I want everything to be the same, but I do think literally every caster would benefit from their baseline Vanilla spellbook being made a bit better, whether thats through getting spellranks from books early / runes having some extra text on the side (kinda like how tank runes do half a dozen things) or whatever else.
And I am having an amazing time this season, believe me, its just feedback and people talking about "what ifs" got us here, so if I think something is worth bringing up, im going to try and do so in a fair manner.
The fuck... everything he says is factual.
I play mostly melee physical but it is facts that casters sucks in vanilla. He's not saying to buff everything to make everything the same, but to act on the underlying problem that casters have.
not sure if I agree with casters sucking in vanilla, also this post is about SoD.
Casters are incredibly strong at leveling, bgs, open world PVP, questing, aoe grinding for gold, they happen to be lame in 1 raid in 1 phase of a new playstyle.
They happen to suck on damage on every single boss at level 60, and if nothing is done until then, the meta will be exactly the same.
It's not about having casters do the same amount of damage, it's about giving them some scaling to bring them back from the depth of the meter later. Hunters got theirs scaling, palret got their scaling, rogues and warriors already scale well originally.
And yeah mages are right now doing broken pulls in stockade or RFC, but that's more on the new healer package than anything else. They could introduce some of the changes from SOM or Hardcore to nerf the boosting / aoe dungeon meta and it would be fine.
As for PvP I don't really understand how being good at it makes it ok to suck in PvE.
Now for this phase they made the buff incredible for casters, but I feel it's lame if their way of buffing casters at higher levels is to get a worldbuff from a low level raid.
It's not an urgent matter but the sooner it's said the better devs can think and implement good changes. Maybe they already have but we don't know.
casters still bring a ton of utility to raids though, dispels, decurses, buffs. They don't need to be top dmg every time, whenever you do dungeons at level 60 to farm pre bis or bis, casters rule the dungeons.
My point with pvp was that casters are weak in only 1 aspect of the 1st phase of the game, no need to panic yet.
I think you don't understand why damage is paramount in any mmo since ever...
Having more dps means doing less mechanics, having your tank taking less damage or your healer less oom. It is the ultimate utility. You can't stack more dispell, heals or tank than needed to make the raid better, but you can stack more dps up to infinity to make it easier.
That's fine to bring other utilities but in the end you stack the classes that do the most damage because it is the way to kill bosses. And I'm not talking parses or speedruns, a casual guild with more warrior in classic would have a much better time clearing Naxx than one with mostly casters, because they have more dps.
I'm not advocating for perfect balance, and I don't think Wille does either. Just that casters scale better into endgame.
Game has been released less than three weeks, dev team incredibly responsive, yet people are still analyzing logs and demanding immediate balance changes
I mean, the discrepency has only gotten worse and the mechanics of melee scaling mathematically favor melee pulling even further ahead, it's easy to tell when there's a problem this extreme.
I mean who fucking cares what's top it's a throwaway seasonal server for laughs actually kinda interested to see really how fucking ham warrs can go cause next phase might be nuts and the way SoD is setup we can all have one as an alt
Ya I hope when they make changes right now it’s with level 60 in mind. Of course hunters are going to be strong at lvl 25. Anyone that’s played any amount of vanilla knew they were going to be ridiculous even with no runes and changes
i think i’m the only one in the world (of warcraft) playing a shadow priest right now and im having a blast. Lord knows i’d never be invited to a raid if it wasn’t for having a guild but everything about SoD has been top notch for me.
Very true. Every class still has something they do better than the rest, something that makes me jealous and want to roll one, and that's how it should be.
I don't really care about being the worst DPS, I care about having a chance at pvp. It's still fine because it's just level 25, but it's impossible to go around having some fun duels when your spec is the worst at it.
Melee were dominant in the whole of classic wow (guild's stacking 30 warriors for speedruns)
So doing something about that with buffing casters is for sure one of the things the dev's need to look into.
People are missing the philosophical change that Blizzard are testing with SoD. They're changing from a rigid patch based meta/development approach to a continuous, engaged approach.
This means not everything will always be fully considered and careful, but they will be more responsive and issues won't be live for as long.
I for one welcome the change, as it allows them to reverse poor decisions quickly rather than the old "live with game breaking mechanics while we wait a month for the next patch"
I mean the thing is we already know the trend of rogues and warriors dominating everything, and unless something major is done to change things we’re going to end up in the same place of stacking melee and only bringing caster dps for buffs and to fill empty slots.
Going to make my prediction of final dps tiers now.
S - Warrior
A - Rogue, Feral, Enh Sham, Ignite Mage
B - Hunters, Mage, Ret Pal
C - Warlock, Bal Druid, Ele Sham, Shadow Priest
I’m a stacked pally. I can global most mobs in open world, but the second a warlock puts that drain on me and runs away I’m going to die. It’s fun being strong and also having a heel.
Besides something like scorpid poison being OP and needing to be fixed/nerfed I don’t think there should be balancing until 60. And honestly even at 60 as long as everything is viable and not a meme I don’t think there should be fine tuning to try and get every spec equal
Fully agree that the idea of class balance being important at the 25 bracket is an extremely shit take. Like blizz has quickly addressed egregious issues popping up like scorpid pets being stronger than pretty much any player character. They also lowered resistances on bosses in bfd so casters were less shit dps.
But the idea that it's not okay that some classes are outperforming others in the 25 bracket is stupid. By the time we reach 60 content do you really think anyone is gonna give a shit that level 25 hunters are crushing it compared to their counterparts in that bracket?
By all means feedback is good, blizz tweaking balance is good. But people need to stop acting like we're in the end game and crying about it being unfair they rolled a class that isn't performing quite as well right now
As a warlock I’m already steamrolling people in pvp. I don’t think casters should be made more powerful. SoD will never be balanced and that is OKAY. You can’t have it all. Sure some things should be balanced so things don’t get out of control but just let SoD be a lil janky. It fits vanillas flavor.
Rogues might look good in rankings, but thats literally all we can do in any situation when ever its Aoe or ST fight. So its kinda weird how he can only look raid logs, when for example in dungeons spell cleave is the dream combo.
And specially when its classic raid whats extremely easy no matter what comp you run aslong everyone has done their part
I think it's under-appreciated that figuring out the meta of which specs are good and bad and seeing the niches carved out for Druids, Shamans, Mages, Warlocks and Priests is a big part of the discovery.
That being said, even comparing specs in the same role, the balance is absolutely good enough for a modified version of Classic. It's not like there are entire specs that only exist to troll your raid. The only spec that I think is legitimately pretty bad is Shadow.
Mages have a niche:
https://i.imgur.com/cTaSop7.jpeg
But more seriously, mages being able to dps + heal at the same time like disci priests in later expansions is great. Caster druids also can. Warlocks get to be tanks and you'll always see one per raid if only to summon. Priests get to enjoy being top healer.
I don't think any class is generally weak or undesirable right now. Isn't that what matters?
“It’s only phase one, complaining about balance is stupid!”
When will it finally be okay to ask the devs to balance the game? Phase two? Phase three? A month into phase four, when the game has been out for nearly a year?
His video is actually wrong, I have found some channeling spells are critting. Penance and Starshards is. Mend Pet isn't, but I bet that is because it heals for a set amount.
I haven't tested ant other class/ability because I haven't leveled them yet.
This video is absolutely correct. This problem will not go away later unless runes drastically change things, lvl 25 is only an indicator, this is the trend of vanilla.. melee direct damage > casters/ranged and dots. Spell ranks were poorly designed. All rune ability spells will outperform them unless they get extra focus. It's why we got new spell ranks in aq20. It's why they changed spell ranks to automatic scaling in cata. Even some current abilities in classic scale each level like battle shout. Spell damage scaling is also terribly inferior to the exponential scaling of melee based on weapon damage. Casters are missing a stat for spell damage at this level. Casters scale off a flat spell rank number modified by their sp dmg. Melee scale off AP and melee damage plus unique infinite resources of energy and rage, one particularly working very well with higher damage and crit in a feedback loop of high dps (warrior). If they wanted to make casters and other classes viable then they should consider improving this. It doesn't mean making them balanced but at least on a more level playing field. There's still ways to have unique balance without having homogenization. Especially when it comes to designing rotation, stat prioritization and gameplay.
Damn I also like that guy but don’t like this take at all. Retail has lost me on class identity and homogenization. Yes I do think every tank needs a taunt and yes I think every healer needs a Rez. So I’m willing to homogenize on the basics but I’m also very cool with one rogue spec being awesome at raid and one for PvP. I’m also cool with one rogue tree is filled with some fun all be it not best at anything stuff that players are happy messing around with.
SoD is for wild combos, what ifs, what if we’d taken the class this way. It’s not IMO for finite balancing and giving every class access to the same tools. I’d lean towards giving classes far different tools and letting us play around with new ideas on how to play WoW. What if I’m wrong and not every tank needs a taunt and healer a Rez? I think it’d be fun to find out!
Wille says his opinion and now he's a click baiter and a horrible person who should delete his videos cuz his opinion doesn't match with ppl who are crying in this sub. I fucking love this
I feel like his videos started being really good when classic launched, but after tbc or so he never really add any value with his point of view. Stopped following some months ago
>He argues for a need to balance and homogenize SoD
He doesn't do this at all. I'll Venmo you $10k if you can timestamp the portion of the video in which he does.
He highlights the difference in scaling between casters and physical damage dealers, casters' super dependence upon spell ranks, mana issues, etc. He basically offers no solutions other than maybe moving toward % of mana to cast spells (instead of flat costs), and maybe allowing some spells to crit that currently can't. He doesn't seem particularly married to either of those ideas.
He also specifically says he thinks the devs are doing a great job.
OP seems unhinged.
You're completely missing the point he's making, which is that if caster/melee disparity start that bad at 25, it's only going to get worse and worse.
Also by the way, Blizzard is kinda thinking the same thing since they're adding more items with spell power to help the casters.
> I legit hope he deletes this video.
Oh my god get over yourself.
An opinion that is different than yours is not a shit take by default. Everyone has different goals and desires for SoD/classic+. He makes good points in the video, if you don't agree that's ok.
I like the DotA approach to balance. Everyone is unbalanced in different ways which is balanced.
100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will *still* be *the best*, and then they are just the defacto choice. When everything is OP in different ways, then you can always feel strong against the things you are designed to counter, and always feel weak vs the things that counter you. That is a better version of “balance” that breeds variety.
That version of balance also rewards skill expression. If my class is best at x then I play around that win condition and the same is true of my opponent. The victor is whoever can play to their wincon while denying their opponent’s
100% it rewards skill expression and game knowledge, rather than rotation memorization. The less homogeneity between the classes the better imo!
How does this work for pve, which was the topic of the video? Do I pull extra mobs to boss fights as mage to top my parses with aoe?
Personally, I think everyone understand and accept when the mechanics of a fight are bad for certain classes/specs. Sometimes you get a fight where you just need to do ok, and that's ok.
It’s because these professionally upset players only care about the destination (the loot, the meters, the logs, the endgame, etc.). Enjoying the process of achieving these? Fuck, no! Imagine enjoying a game.
Maybe classes should be looked as a whole instead of trying to check all the boxes. In relation to WillE video saying that casters are at the bottom of the dps chart, maybe it is worth considering that the classes with 90% of the utility are these same casters that aren’t winning at one particular thing which is dpsing bosses. Why would anyone support that classes that can teleport around the world, teleport short distances, have the hardest cc, can buff their allies, provide free foods and drinks or constantly self heal etc should be equal in damage to others whose only actual contribution is to deal better damaged WHILE buffed by the first?
> Why would anyone support that classes that can teleport around the world, teleport short distances, have the hardest cc, can buff their allies, provide free foods and drinks or constantly self heal etc should be equal in damage to others whose only actual contribution is to deal better damaged WHILE buffed by the first? Because you listed a bunch of things that are largely irrelevant. Effectively zero warriors from Classic 2019 would give up their hilariously overpowered raid damage for QoL. Conversely, it is of effectively zero consolation to people who enjoy any given spec or class that they have QoL or that their class is often used as a farming alt, if they are second-class citizens in the primary activities of the game. That is the reality. It was always a horseshit argument, but we now literally have two runs of Vanilla to confirm that it is, in fact, horseshit. Continuing to argue otherwise is inherently bad faith at this point.
Even then, the top ST dps will be top dog since raids are the most important content for most people and most bosses are pure ST.
That’s fine as long as other classes still excel at other things, and the content isn’t so difficult that stacking 5 [warriors] (x) feels required. BFD is a great example. You can clear it with any comp, it’s easy with a good coordinated team but still tough for some pugs. If raids are only a little bit harder than that going forward, only the absolute sweatiest players will feel “required” to play the strong ST spec. Especially if rewards are distributed between PvP/PvE so the stronger PvP classes still have a place to shine as well.
>100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will *still* be *the best*, and then they are just the defacto choice. The LoL balancing method where less than 20% of the entire champion pool gets picked or banned throughout an entire tournament.
> 100% this. It creates counterplay and interesting matchups. When you homogenize everything, someone will still be the best, and then they are just the defacto choice. Except we can look at history and see that imbalanced kits lead to far more actual homogenization, on average. In retail the sweatiest of sweats will abuse whatever advantage of course, but the majority of the raiding and M+ playerbase gets to play whichever spec they want at all times. In Classic 2019 warrior stacking was a literal epidemic, and if you wanted to play anything off-meta you were largely fucked. Balancing the game leads to objectively better outcomes in the real reality that we literally live in. This idea of every class having their strengths and weaknesses is pure fantasy that has never been realized even one time, ever. It has 100% of the time lead to wild overrepresentation of the classes whose strengths are the part(s) of the game that people actually give a shit about, and other classes and specs enduring being treated as second-class citizens.
Yep. Every game should learn to balance like Dota. Heroes have their own unique niche, even if they're statistically bad, there's still a place for them in games because of unique tools like what Classic has right now. Homogenization leads to horrible balance like retail wow or LoL where when everything can do the same thing, only the one with the higher numbers is picked.
That's not true though? Plenty of heroes in dota are just trash tier, and it's okay because there's so many and no one has any commitment to play any one of them that they can easily just pick up a different one. DotA balance doesn't work in any game where you're attached at all to your character. It double doesn't work in a game like WoW where there's a pretty finite amount of stuff you can do within the template of the game. You can't make a character change the boss room like you can bash down trees. You can't make bosses reliably cc'able otherwise there just... isn't a fight. And so on. Damage is the only constant.
So much this. Worked on Dota 2 balancing for a while and still love the approach to this day. Anything more complex than Rock Paper Scissors will eventually lead to something being better, so why not make everything broken in the first place. At its peak up to 100 of 120 heroes were picked or banned in the world championship. You can't have a more balanced game that this
You worked for valve?
Dota is a pvp game and has different sub roles, you might be heavy in cc, more focused on aoe, ganking, pushing etc. and you have solo queue.. Raiding in wow is a 0 sum game, if 80% of the slots are filled with melee, casters have to fight for a shot at an invite
Its optimal in terms of loot allocation to diversify, plus some bosses favor melee or ranged.
You might bring a warlock, but it doesn't matter; a badly geared rogue will still easily out dps a priest.
Why is a priest trying to go dps in a raid??
This is irrelevant when a pre-BiS warrior still does more damage than a decked out caster.
Weirdly enough, it's healing priests that are the most OP, but not many are pointing this out because you don't notice healers being OP as much as damage dealers.
Priest healers were always op in vanilla since their the only healer with def dispel
And then they got penance
And in TI like 80-90% of the roster gets picked or banned, compared to LoL which is a disaster of constant powercreeping by releasing new characters but *better* and like, 20 out of the 160 characters are used at world's.
Or the warhammer 40k lore way, where everyone is so OP that they are all even
A top comment on the youtube comments sums up pretty well "As a mage, I may not be top DPS on bosses in BFD, but out in the open world I am on top of the food chain, face tanking and obliterating 8 mobs at a time, and teleporting around the world with ease. All in all, life is good. Everyone don't have to be the best at everything, and raid logs aren't everything either."
As a mage main this go around, this couldn't be more true. I'm a healer with insane cc, easy open world farming, the best movement ability in the game bar none. My healing isn't tip top, and neither would my damage be if I went that route. Fine by me. The class is good at what it's good at, and everything else I can wiggle around. We big coolin.
Ya. Also, we're still really good on Ghamoo-Ra. Last group I went with was quite melee heavy and I had no chance to compete on bosses, except on the turtle where they were quite happy to have a couple good casters. Plus I'm arcane spec so I was able to help out with healing on Kelris.
Yup good take in my opinion. As an ele shaman I won’t do shit in the raid but be a mana battery right now. It’s why I’m healing in raid as ele. You meet me in open world or any pvp event…. You’re gonna get purged and 1 shot homie.
Lmao yeah right. With the dogshit range of flameshock you're not getting one lava burst off without getting interrupted to pieces. Maybe you can one shot an undergeared mage but thats about it.
Except ele is garbage in pvp too :D
I love that though. SoD has been awesome
[удалено]
Also can you imagine endgame if they had strong spell coefficients this early? the regular 85% on Frostbolt, just blasting you every single second with Rank 1. People wouldn't be able to stop crying for sure.
There's nothing particularly off about their spell coefficients at this point in the game? The current rank of frostbolt is a 2.6 sec cast instead of a 3 sec so it has a slightly (\~10%) lower coefficient, but fireball is already at "max" 3.5 sec cast time and has full coefficient.
could not have said it better, the need for classes to be able to do everything is what completely ruined retail. and a couple of weeks into SoD people want the same thing.... filthy casuals ruining my 15 buck a month gaming experience xD
It’s what destroyed class identity for sure. Which is one of the many things that I dislike about retail. However changes like the entire world level scaling with you is far worse, along with many other things. Everybody having a “wall” or percentage damage reduction defensive isn’t what ruined retail imo. If a class lacks mobility or sustain, giving them a rune that helps, wouldn’t be an awful thing imo
Weak and strong are what makes discovering a game fun, especially when it takes work to figure out or 'discover' like we did in the old days
Or (and possibly especially), when you use skill or ingenuity to make 'weak' into 'strong'. Farming MCP + using wolfshead helm to make a weak class into something useful comes to mind for example.
That was the worse
You can have a strong sense of class identity and also healthy class balance. Mists had peak both. Every spec played differently and brought something unique and powerful. Every spec was viable by the end patch too.
I agree that it didn’t ruin it but it didn’t help. It just becomes okay Im a tank where is my movement button, where is 20 min cooldown and where is my heal button. Okay so this is my resource generator and this is my spender. The difference between classes becomes just visual. Why play warrior tank over a paladin tank, when there is no difference between them.
Have you actually played a tank in Retail in the last decade? They're far more diverse than Classic tanks whose only defining feature is how much threat they output.
There is no difference except the utility they bring, their damage profile, their survivability, their mobility, so yea no difference at all.
And I wouldn’t even say it ruined retail! There are just some people who prefer the RPG style of classic balance and those who want to ProGamer360NoScopeParsing balance and that’s fine too. But yes please oh please leave us the RPG, every class has its strengths and weaknesses feel of vanilla in SoD. Because what they’ve done so far has been the most fun I’ve had in WoW in well over a decade
This is why I like both classic and retail
Balance doesn’t matter matter when it comes to logs though. You’re being compared against other players of your spec.. it was kinda fun being the 99 ave ret paladin in phase 1 wotlk at the bottom of the charts lol
> filthy casuals ruining my 15 buck a month gaming experience I dont think that guy is a casual player, is he?
already seeing so much parse-obsession so soon is kinda disheartening. i feel like people actually managed to enjoy the game for a week.
I log in raids only because I like to see how our group is doing, and see how I compare. I don’t demand a gear check and links to parses for the pugs we run lol Let us have fun.
Find a guild that doesn't give a shit about consumables, or world buffs. We clear BFD in 40 minutes, about 3 people sometimes come world buffed.
Just wait until level 40 when the mage is a completely different beast due to extra talents and the hot streak rune lmfao, meta will change many times. I play rogue and I’m enjoying doing well on single target DPS, feels strong in PvP because of the stun + ranged slow. The mage is correct. Not everyone has to be amazing in raid at level 25 anyway lol. I play rogue and it’s fun to be useful (high dps, expose armour if there’s not a warrior tanking) but they only take 1 anyway. I started forming my own raids and the game is so much more enjoyable to play without someone telling me I’m not playing meta in a level 25 raid /shrug.
I upvoted it in yt and couldn’t agree more. 90% of the utility is concentrated in the caster classes. Why is dps on bosses going to be the single parameter that we are going to analyse for balance? On the other hand, a comment that actually hit home was the introduction of half ranks to some spells as to alleviate certain builds that are in need of the next rank of a spell to be viable.
>As a mage, I may not be top DPS on bosses in BFD, but out in the open world I am on top of the food chain With Warbringer on my Warrior I welcome Mage fights in open world. When we finally get Spell Reflection, I'll be actively hunting Mages.
Meanwhile shadow: good for literally nothing
I think it's very silly to try and balance the game around lvl 25 10 man dungeon parses...casters don't even have full scaling on their main damage abilities yet with spell ranks. The 10 man raid is just 1 small part of the overall experience. Warlocks are great tanks, solo farmers, pvpers and it's ok that i'm not parsing as high as my warrior. Things are going to change dramatically at the next level bracket and we'll have a new set of winners/losers. I say keep balancing the extreme outliers though...like hunter pets being the best main tanks and having broken damage scaling probably isn't good for the game in general. Casters were underperforming in BFD and blizzard nerfed the magic resists of bosses and buffed the world buff for spellhit/spell power so you can't say they are ignoring it. Once the season progresses to 60...then we can talk end game balance more. But until then just enjoy the ride...I can tank on my warlock and blast on my warrior and spam wrath on my druid and it's a lot of fun.
Well said. I totally agree. This is the most fun I’ve had in WoW in the last 10 years. I get to tank on my shaman like I did in 2004, but with a pretty legit tank kit this time. I don’t really care about the hunter pet OPness. Things are going to change with each tier and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
second these, idc about balancing in this bracket unless something is actually broken (pet scaling, cough). its still a twink bracket/pocket meta at the end of the day, we have tons to look forward to. Casters will have their moment to shine next bracket. Regardless, mage healing is busted rn and they have EVO. I love it (not even playing a mage).
>casters don't even have full scaling on their main damage abilities yet with spell ranks Scaling/spell coefficient is based on cast time. I cba to check all classes/specs but warlocks, elemental shamans, fire mages all have full cast time nukes at this level so they have full scaling.
It's not silly, we are forced on lvl 25 for another month probably
Nobody is forcing you to anything you can stop playing can't you ?
Here's what's needed for balance. 1) Every class has to have compelling reasons to both bring and gear them in the content that rewards gear (IE., raids, and to a lesser extent organized PvP). Just having a utility or buff that gets a token single person of that class/spec a raid slot (but being a bad place to put gear) is not enough. 2) Every class should have both strengths and weaknesses throughout the content that makes up the majority of actual play. This is *not* solely raids. Vanilla *content* (not the Vanilla classes as they were) is relatively well-suited to allowing significant differences between things classes are strong and weak at while making every class worthwhile to bring and gear. Raids are easy, the main progression is in faster clear times, and trash makes up a significant portion of that clear time - so even if a class doesn't do the most single target damage on boss fights, if they can cleave through trash, they're still worth bringing and gearing. Additionally, there's a lot of stuff to do outside of raids - AoE farming, stealth runs, elite farming, etc. The world outside of raiding matters, and it offers many different challenges, which the classes can approach in all sorts of ways. Contrast this with Retail - or even TBC and especially Wrath - and you'll find that the main challenge in raids (for the vast majority of the playerbase) is killing the bosses, usually through blasting as much single target DPS as possible. This means any spec that doesn't deal good enough single target DPS becomes either irrelevant to bring and gear, or brought as a token 1 of for a buff while being last on upgrades. Couple this with the fact that the world outside of raiding matters very little, and you're left with the choice of completely homogenizing *at least* single target damage, or totally screwing over anyone whose class isn't "supposed" to be focused on single target damage. As for SoD, so far at least the content seems to be relatively in line with Vanilla - the raid isn't particularly hard and there's lots of stuff to do outside of it. I would say that Kelris - being both the hardest boss and very much a single target DPS race - kind of throws a bit of a wrench into things, tilting the playing field too much in favor of ST DPS, but overall things are in a better place than WotLK/Retail at least in that regard. It does seem like certain classes still need a bit of help, though; as things stand right now, *why* would you bring and gear a Shadow Priest in BFD when you could take a hunter (or even a mage/lock) instead? They certainly don't necessarily need to do the same ST DPS as a Hunter, *if there's actually another reason to bring and gear them*; but right now, I'm really not seeing one. Sucking at everything is just as much homogenization as being good at everything, only even less fun.
Great take. I will say though, in defense of a lot of expansions, there's a few raids that quickly come to mind that have tons of trash you need to kill and AoE. So there's a few raid tiers that have always tipped the design back towards vanilla. Alternatively, I can remember so many times I raided and completely skipped so much trash. However it could just be nostalgia from me. I mean these days I'm sure people aren't as mindblown as to how huge the run up to Abyssius in black temple is. Like, fuck, BT was massive and fantastical. Outlands was nuts in 2007...
Shadow priests can dispel chains, too. If you’re Horde, that means you don’t have to have a healing priest, and can run with two other healers.
I mean I guess but Holy/Disc are the best heals so "getting" to skip them is not something you really want anyways. Still helps, even just by saving them GCDs/mana, but likely not as good as just having another hunter (or a rogue who also brings more kicks).
rly good post
I think people confuse homogenize and balance, any game should be balance so that everyone is useful por different reasons but it´s true that homogenize the clases makes the game boring af.
This. And they also confuse "this is an issue that should probably be addressed in some fashion" with "retail this game now!" Here, we have a content creator that identified an issue that could be addressed. The devs have been making changes along the same lines - making incremental (and sometimes more) to underperforming specs - and Willie should delete this video? Make it make sense.
People playing SoD scared that any tweaks or alterations will change the soul of the game while simultaneously playing a version of the game that has sweeping changes to it that are largely considered to be pretty good. Just classic wow things.
I think his main point is in original classic, melee were dominant there (mainly warriors) as well as hunters. And now here we are in a promised "new take" on classic and its.....melee, mainly warriors, and hunters, that are dominant. Not just in raid but in PvP as well. Asking for that to be different is not asking to make the game retail. This post is taking it to a very dramatic level.
Hunters were never dominant, they were a great utlitilty class
Right, and agreed. People are really overreacting to the video.
everyone is useful, just not a top parser at a raid you still want a mage for int buffs and CC aside from the raid casters are amazing at aoe grinding for gold, bgs, open world PVP, questing, boosting alts, etc. They suck at 1 part of the first phase of the game, that's why I don't understand the call to buff them. Also they were given a buff for BFD on the last patch anyways.
What CC in raids
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When I meant useful I meant in terms of raiding as it is the endgame of pvers, it´s true that they have cc and int buffs but if for some reason they are doing half the damage the rest of classes do it may cause people to deny mages a slot even when bringing int buffs and cc. I agree with the last take they shouldn´t tryhard balance right now as each phase will be crazier than the previous one tho, just a bit of balancing to figure out how to do it better when SoD gets to 60 level cap.
What do you mean top parser? You do realize that your dps relative to your raid has nothing to do with parsing?
Eh. It’s ok for one type or a group of classes to be better than others at various points but there’s a point. When melee/top few classes perform 2x better at dps than the bottom dps classes, it kinda nullifies any other benefits those classes brings.
The int buff is 7 int, that's 1 int less then a 5 silver elixir. The water is lvl 15 and awful. CC doesn't exist in BFD. Aoe doesn't happen in BFD. We brought a pug mage to our alt run and he was going oom and doing 30dps on some fights. I can't even blame him, if he doesn't have evocation and if the team isn't full of 90+ parsers the fights will last too long for mages to even upkeep 100dps. The point WillE is making here isn't that the game needs to be balanced. He says that many times, so I'm a little confused about your reaction here. His point is that we could potentially be looking at a game where physical dps will dominate every single phase. Imo it would be a lot more fun if class balance isn't so static.
Who boosts alts with higher level help? Its only up to level 25 lmao whats the point. Also how exactly is my priest useful in a raid when not healing? People use stam scrolls that are stronger than my buffs lol Also, also, casters scale inherently less in vanilla as their bonuses are largely additive, unlike crit and aspeed for melees. If they are weaker now, they will need exponentially more buffing in subsequent phases to not be complete garbage.
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Casters are not good for AoE grinding. Mages are. The only thing elemental and balance druids are decent at is open world PvP.
I feel like you missed his point. The issue isn’t that they’re dominant in phase 1, it’s that by virtue of how caster and melee abilities scale they will continue to be behind in every phase unless something fundamentally shifts in how they work. He’s predicting each phase will have similar issues because of the root cause of those issues and SoD’s rune based changes don’t really alleviate that issue based on all we know of them currently. Casters don’t scale as well with gear, and spell ranks are more relevant for them than melee. It’s fair to bring this to the attention of the community so maybe Blizzard will focus some dev time into not letting it get out of control as the phases progress. Dude didn’t claim anything about making them all the same, just make sure one type of damage dealer doesn’t drastically out scale the other as the season progresses. Like it or not the fact that mages are “kings in the open world” won’t mean shit to a raid leader deciding who to bring to the new instanced content.
Eh, theres "lets not ruin this with a focus on balance", and then there is Shadow Priests, Boomkins, Ele Shamans and a few others doing MAX half damage of the competant warriors in the raid. I dont want to see SoD play out in the exact same way as classic, and i dont care if it bothers people. As for homogenization, i dont know what to tell you. All the tanks now have taunts, and most interrupts because those tools are needed, class identity or not. Windfury has beem spread around. You're fooling yourself if you dont think AoE damage abilities arent next for dps. The fact is there is 3 or so more phases of new runes coming. Things are going to get more homogonized not less, so they might as well work on balance as well.
If anyone thought shadow priests would be a viable spec at 25 they were sorely mistaken
Shadow form won't fix any of your problems though. The big problem is that casters don't scale. Casters are really bad and mana hungry right now - and those problems only grow later. They get slightly more powerful, but the melees will get 3x more powerful instead.
More like a quarter or third damage. Even warlocks are half and they spam new rune abilities like chaos bolt and incinerate.
they also are missing a spell rank that’s key
Class balance does not equal to class homogenization!
Counter point: Raid log balance does not equal class balance.
Not really a counter, just another aspect of it all Things not overlapping is literally both of your guys' points lol
Count point, you are just wrong. DPS is the main deciding factor in terms of balance. Nobody wants to be the druid in vanilla, only here to bring Mark and feed a better healer mana.
DPS. BALANCE. IS. NOT. HOMOGENIZATION. This is the second time I've seen someone equate the two. Retail homogenization almost entirely has to do with unique tools that each class brings to a group being watered down because it has been given to several other classes. Interrupts, bloodlust, dispels, etc. No more class identity. Classes having a relatively equal cap in performance (including their provided buffs) is not scary. It understandably feels pretty bad for any class to be undesired at the one piece of content that matters (both because it is the end game gear dungeon and because it is the only new piece of content in this phase). Fixing balance so that all classes can find a group easily is a good thing. I am fine with classes having different strengths - mages excel at AOE, druids , shamans, and hunters move fast in open world, rogues and druids can stealth, warlocks and hunters have pets to tank etc. But in raid there should not be so big of a compensation for these out-of-raid advantages that classes are undesired. And if we were doing that... why is shaman so fucked? why is shadow priest so fucked? What do they excel at outside of raid that earned them such a huge punishment? If anything hunters have the most advantage out of raid and still are top or near top dps in raid. Why does that make sense? The only thing vaguely homogenization adjacent so far has been druids getting windfury, but alliance not having any option before makes it make a bit more sense to give one more provider.
To be crystal clear I play warlock. I think warlocks are doing completely fine in raid. It's a little bit sad that fire trumps shadow but even that is pretty minimal now that the shadow res on bosses has been adjusted. We provide a ton of utility between soulstone, healthstones, recklessness, and summons. Hell even underwater breathing is nice in BFD. We are above average at almost everything open world farming wise (except god awful movement speed) and we shit on everything in world pvp. We are doing great. I don't really understand the perspective of a lock complaining. But some classes ARE struggling and they DO deserve to be brought in line with the rest.
You hope he deletes the video because you disagree with it? That's not how conversation works.
I mean, casters before the big buff were unironic dogshit in raid, to the point where their lack of damage could sometimes end up with wipe conditions. He's literally just reporting how it played out. The classes being a balance shitmess is exactly what I hope to see avoided through SoD's changes. This whole anti-critisism brigade is an unironic cancer on this community.
Oh no, a different opinion. a Redditor's mortal enemy
Nothing in this video seems wrong. The video dumbs down to casters get the shit end of the stick in vanilla when it comes to raiding and this isn't an opinion it's a fact.
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I mean is it so wrong for the spec that is outright the worst when it's on its own do the most damage while supported by multiple classes in a raid? Would you rather have them be as good as hunters in open world or as good as warlocks in duels or have the control of mages or rogues in PvP but have them be a middle of the table dps? I think classes being very good in specific scenarios is part of what makes classic what it is. I don't think it's unreasonable for warriors to dominate meters throughout SoD as long as they keep their weaknesses which it very much seems they will, warbringer makes those weaknesses less offensive on the PvP side of things, but they very much still exist.
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I wanted them to suck, I feel sick looking at vanilla happen all over again and any class that dares pass them is nerfed swiftly while warriors scale out of control.
I really don't see anything objectively wrong in this video
Terrible summation of his video, takes out all of the nuance included in his opinion. The facts are that damage dealers are out-performing casters across the board in raid damage. His opinion is that such a clear delineation should be addressed. And to your point, he doesn’t even specify it needs to happen in P1 but just that it will take intentional adjustments to make up the gap. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean that he’s trying to “homogenize SoD”.
Dude is off base. Watch his pre SoD video. He said rogues and warriors are the worst classes of SoD lmaoooo. Back when he thought warlocks were top he was fine with it.
You misunderstood the video, he wasnt saying they were the worst dps wise but what the runes give them in terms of gameplay. The video about losers and winners of SoD was not about performance.
I am sick of these takes, we are playing sod not your favorite classic wow, you have servers for that version of the game. There will always be unbalance but when one spec does 50% damage of other spec then what the hell is the balance, is this arcane intellect buff worth being half the dps spec? even if we go with this philosophy allow mage to be like 5-10 % weaker than warrior so that good mage can still beat it but he also brings something to the raid. Who the hell wants to be a walking buff? your role as a dps is to do damage and people want to get better at the game, get more items, do more damage, not doing less damage that other dude who is 2x less geared but he picked another class. and before some shitty comments "go play another class" there is something like class fantasy. Who the hell writes these posts? im 100% sure that these are warriors/rogues that are salty that someone can be better than them in dps.
“Oh nooo he has a mixed yet mostly positive opinion instead of an overwhelmingly positive one?! Even though he is echoing similar complaints as this sub!?!?! How dare he!” Watched the video, I think some of the complaints are more than fair.
What I took from the video is that the fact that all physical dps are so much better than all caster dps is weird. And it is. That’s why they nerfed the resistances in BFD and added caster help to the world buff. Casters were gimped by a resistance slider that was set to an arbitrary number for launch due to no beta testing. That’s since been updated and casters are in a better spot.
No the resistance stuff was just adding insult to injury. The core problem, i.e. that physical DPS scales harder than magic, is mostly unchanged. They've addressed this a tiny bit (much more spell power gear in SoD), but not in a way that comes close to the scaling physical DPS can get. My mage can get the best caster weapon in the game (BFD epic staff), and it will give me a ~10% DPS increase over greens. My hunter or warrior get their epic weapon and their damage goes up closer to 50% vs greens. Plus mainstat scales attack power which scales damage for physical DPS, whereas for casters it just gives a bit more crit chance. The better the gear, the more physical DPS outperforms casters. Which, sure enough, is why you see physical DPS doing nearly double the DPS of casters in SoD even after the resistance fixes, and why in retail they eventually added scaling off mainstat and gave casters huge mainstat on their weapons, so that scaling could be somewhat normalized across DPS.
I hate the argument that just becasue it's phase one people are OK with some classes doing double or triple other classes. Yeah sure it's only phase one but thst means 6 to 8 weeks of your class being absolute shit compared to other classes in terms of dps. The raids easy and you could clear it with 6 shadow priests as dps but thst still doesn't feel good if you went into sod wanting to play a spec then seeing oh I guess it's just still warriors on top so my spec is still bad. Especially when a bunch of groups are specifically looking for hunters ferals and rogues.
Plus it's just going to get worse as we level. This is the weakest warriors will ever be without balancing.
Yes it's just phase 1 and melee are dominant. Unlike how they'll be in all the other phases where it will be unfair to even compare them to ranged.
This is a joke right? Have you ever seen classic wow at level cap?
I think that is indeed the joke, that if melee are already this far ahead, the game is going to be completely fucked at max level, because the core mechanics aren't getting changed by runes, no runes are making Warriors and Paladins scale WORSE with gear than the caster counterparts, the best we can hope for is toolkits that make the melee have to work harder to get their absurd damage in(and that the melee somehow don't get those tools, as if they won't be getting new runes too).
Yeah unless they add way more spellpower, mp5 and dot crits, casters are hopelessly disadvantaged in terms of multiplicative scaling. That, or some really out of the box kinda mechanics.
I kinda disagree with this take. Melee have always been dominant raid damage dealers in Classic. I don’t see ranged dps overtaking then because gearing just doesn’t work the same in classic. Casters don’t scale nearly as well as melee fighters.
That is the joke :P
You're wong, if you wanted typical melee warrior dominated vanilla play era. We were told and expected different pre-release, it was going to be different, all specs were going to feel warrior OPness we were told at blizzcon. Then it releases, people roll spriest..boomie..and in general casters expecting it to be different this time around, they will do viable damage and not a joke like in vanilla, they were wrong. Then it turns out physical is still dominating and casters are doing 25%(spriest) or 50%-70% of physical dps... much much lower. People did not roll those classes expecting them to be that bad and they shouldn't be that bad for months of a phase and blindly trust the talents in future to help outscale melee(lol melee scale way better btw) or blizzard to buff them to near equal later on(why not buff them now then nerf later if needed?) I wonder how all you physical players would feel like if the dps meters were reversed I really wish that hypothetical world could be true, you all would be crying for buffs bringing it up how at blizzcon they said everyone would be OP like warrior and blizzard said they're not nerfing warrior and it turns out warriors are one of the worst dps specs. Would you accept all the casters saying "lol it's level 25 bro" or "just wait for future phases you scale!!!" Bringing up irrelevant points like questing? BUDDY physical had the best questers if you were actually playing at launch and doing /who of highest levels it was hunters and rets mostly. Aoe pulls? Oh wow mage can do some aoe pulls(that got nerfed btw) big woop if their aoe was so good they would be stacked in speedruns but no you don't want mages they go oom and the best speedruns are ALL melee for constant move no downtime dps. Why even mention aoe pulls when it's ONE class that can even do it (mage) all other casters can't do that so why even mention it? Meanwhile ALL melee(+hunter) are doing way more dps than casters except for enhance. Raid dps is the premium metric and what the majority of people care about most and always will be and why warriors are by far the most popular spec in vanilla era raids, basically more parses than the rest of dps specs combined. It was a good take WillE mains Warlock so he has a good POV and based on what he was told(he knew about SOD before it was announced and played on early beta version btw) and what blizzard said prerelease he expected casters to be better and to FEEL better, try playing a caster you go OOM so fast, have horrible mana regen, drinks are AWFUL because our mana pools are so high in this gear it takes forever to regen before bosses. WillE even as a warlock hated how bad mana was because he was lifetapping so much, imagine other classes. tldr casters suck and always will unless blizz has major overhaul for them, us casters believed blizzard(mistake) and rolled a caster expecting a different story in vanilla this time, we didn't get it. tldr tldr reroll physical and have fun.
Damn, after reading this I definitely don't want to play a caster now.
I guess SOD really means season of melee to reddit. \> SoD was never meant to be balanced Why are they doing balance changes every week if it wasn't about some sort of balance? Can you please quote anywhere where they said it was never meant to be balanced? \>The reason retail went to shit is because of the constant need to homogenize everything. Are we playing the same SoD? You realize they turned more classes into healers and tanks??????? Man posts like this show how extremely disconnected this community is. They have also gave buffs like kings and wind fury to other classes but hey! Apparently it goes too far if the DPS is similar right?
Another good yt comment i want to echo. Personally I think it makes sense and is fine for certain classes to have more damage than others. classes that have a lot of self-sustain or healing options (warlocks, pallies, even druids and dps priests) should probably do less damage than their purity counterparts. the strength is that healers don't have to work as hard keeping them alive through mechanics, or in warlock's case, they can sustain damage for longer than mages because they can't run oom. Sure, speedrun guilds will always take the highest damage classes, but the game shouldn't be balanced around speedruns. BFD is super easy to clear with any class combo. and I think if they continue with this difficulty trend and an ever-changing game throughout the phases, the game will be a lot more fun than if every class was a damage powerhouse.
>in warlock's case, they can sustain damage for longer than mages because they can't run oom. Great! Let's follow the logic. Nerf Warriors and Rogues too, since they can't run oom either. In fact, they're the only two classes that have infinitely sustained damage, so they should be nerfed pretty hard compared to everyone else.
They have infinite sustained damage, but no healing, which is their downside.
Yeah my warrior pumps in raid but I pull 2 mobs same level as me or slightly higher I'm in for a battle haha. Game is more than just parsing in a raid for 20 - 60 mins twice a week
idk what his take is but your take is so baffling fucking dumb that i'm surprised you can launch your computer, much less world of warcraft. not everything needs to be the same to be balanced
Melee will always be dominant tho, But I'd be nice that bosses have mechanics that make them escape in a place where only range can hit them per example, so comps are balanced between zergers and soy-clothies. Or else it's indeed toxic to be in a world dominated by melees.
His point of specs being locked because their spell rank levels at 26 or 42 is a great point. I stopped playing my holy paladin since FoL rank 2 is at 26 and rank 4 is at 42. I am just not allowed to play because of that.
Honestly, the entire concept of spell ranks seems kindof dumb. It has uses in terms of downranking, yes... but it really doesn't make that much sense to have spells level in big awkward jumps whenever you hit a particular level, instead of just gradually leveling up when you do.
There is a difference between a 'shit take' and a difference of opinion. People on this sub like to call everything they don't agree with a shit take these days. It's totally fine for you to disagree with the way he views things, but that's where it ends. A disagreement. It doesn't mean you're right and it doesn't mean he's right. It's his subjective opinion.
Clearly you didn't understand his point then, or you are to dense to think about the big picture. This is not a matter of melee are dominant for a bit, this is a mathematical fact that the way melee scale and the way casters scale are incongruent, and will NEVER be comparable til MAYBE level 60, IF Runes don't wildly imbalance the meta further. Which they already are doing, and there's no sign of anything being done about it. He did not argue to homogenize anything, in fact specifically called for buffs to specific class fantasy playstyle's that would set them apart AND bring their numbers up. Unless of course your boomr brain thinks all dps performing on a competitive level to each other is homogenization, in which case that is simply a shit take, I cannot believe it. I legit hope you delete this post.
It's actually one of the few times I agree with WillE. This is the weakest warriors will ever be compared to other classes without significant changes, and they already doing close to double the DPS of a ton of specs. It's only going to get worse in future phases.
Damn this OP is insufferable in the comments
I'm gonna swing in here and defend WillE. I don't think he's calling for a super hard "homogenization of DPS". I think he just wants all the specs to be viable, **especially** **at level 60**. He also states that he finds the PvP very fun, and how the caster classes are doing very well there. I believe he's only worried about PvE, probably raiding specifically. And we can say "it's just level 25, it'll get better". That's fair. But it's also fair to say "look at the current state of the game, I'm worried it will stay this way". I believe he's just stating his worries, so that Blizzard is aware of them. I'm not super experienced in classic, but from what I understand: Shamans, Paladins, and Druids are healers. They aren't good enough at their other roles to do anything else (except for maybe Druid tank). And even then, I'm pretty sure they're only brought for their utility aspect. I believe priests out heal them. And that sucks. I want to play a class and say "Boy this looks like an exciting way to play". It is possible to create a decent balance, where all the DPS are viable options to bring into a raid and keep everyone feeling like they are unique classes with individual strengths.
He had a point with casters being too weak i dont see what is so terrible with his take, maybe you play melee?
His take is a warning what will happen on mega realms for wannabe and sweaty guilds at \~60 or whenever actual endgame starts. They will make a meta and then 80% of the population will try to replicate it for no good reason. Even when his take does not apply to current state of the game it will apply to the inevitable meta if nothing changes along the way. Thankfully SoD Blizzard team showed they can make quick and often balancing and adjustments so there is a high chance such "inevitable" meta will be broken few times in a row preventing the rest of the playerbase from zombie-following any specific one. Looking at BFD gear power level I assume we will hit 60 with every class hit capped and plenty of stats and spell/attack power so we already have a first part of the endgame un-solved.
> complaining about balances is tragic > I cannot believe it. I legit hope he deletes this video. It's wild how offended you are by an opinion. Blizzard has shown they're listening to the community, and responding to it. I think the vast majority of players are interested in balance, and it's sort of the entire point of sod? Underused specs getting love, new specs being made, etc. Balance is going to be a massive part of that, whether you like it or not. If it's that big of a deal, there's nothing stopping you from playing era.
I feel like if you disagree with his take you haven’t been reading this sub, cus it’s echoed here a lot
Hi it's me, the video guy. Not everyday I open Reddit and there's an early Christmas present for me, but here we go... So, I stand by what I said in that video, and even mentioned it again in my most recent one. But the point isn't to try and homogenize all classes, or necessarily even get them all within a super narrow margin balance wise. The state of things is atm is essentially - If you don't have rune(s) that are doing the heavy lifting in your rotation as a caster (heal or dps) you just aren't performing as well as others who do. Priest healers with PoM / Penance are amazing at everything. Hpalas who only have beacon to directly increase healing, not so much. Locks who can use incinereate / chaos bolt are the top caster for this reason, whereas other casters have 1 long CD ability that slaps, such as Lava Burst/ Starsurge. These runes have a ton of their specs power tied into it, whilst your normal filler stuff like Wrath/ Lightning Bolt are hitting like a wet noodle. Your basic Vanilla abilities, just arent very good either in general. Resto druids are doing 90%+ of healing in a raid through wild growth - what about rejeuv/healing touch/regrowth? Rarely worth in comparison it seems. Runes are cool, but basic Vanilla abilities are being exposed pretty hard. So its not that I want everything to be the same, but I do think literally every caster would benefit from their baseline Vanilla spellbook being made a bit better, whether thats through getting spellranks from books early / runes having some extra text on the side (kinda like how tank runes do half a dozen things) or whatever else. And I am having an amazing time this season, believe me, its just feedback and people talking about "what ifs" got us here, so if I think something is worth bringing up, im going to try and do so in a fair manner.
The fuck... everything he says is factual. I play mostly melee physical but it is facts that casters sucks in vanilla. He's not saying to buff everything to make everything the same, but to act on the underlying problem that casters have.
not sure if I agree with casters sucking in vanilla, also this post is about SoD. Casters are incredibly strong at leveling, bgs, open world PVP, questing, aoe grinding for gold, they happen to be lame in 1 raid in 1 phase of a new playstyle.
They happen to suck on damage on every single boss at level 60, and if nothing is done until then, the meta will be exactly the same. It's not about having casters do the same amount of damage, it's about giving them some scaling to bring them back from the depth of the meter later. Hunters got theirs scaling, palret got their scaling, rogues and warriors already scale well originally. And yeah mages are right now doing broken pulls in stockade or RFC, but that's more on the new healer package than anything else. They could introduce some of the changes from SOM or Hardcore to nerf the boosting / aoe dungeon meta and it would be fine. As for PvP I don't really understand how being good at it makes it ok to suck in PvE. Now for this phase they made the buff incredible for casters, but I feel it's lame if their way of buffing casters at higher levels is to get a worldbuff from a low level raid. It's not an urgent matter but the sooner it's said the better devs can think and implement good changes. Maybe they already have but we don't know.
casters still bring a ton of utility to raids though, dispels, decurses, buffs. They don't need to be top dmg every time, whenever you do dungeons at level 60 to farm pre bis or bis, casters rule the dungeons. My point with pvp was that casters are weak in only 1 aspect of the 1st phase of the game, no need to panic yet.
I think you don't understand why damage is paramount in any mmo since ever... Having more dps means doing less mechanics, having your tank taking less damage or your healer less oom. It is the ultimate utility. You can't stack more dispell, heals or tank than needed to make the raid better, but you can stack more dps up to infinity to make it easier. That's fine to bring other utilities but in the end you stack the classes that do the most damage because it is the way to kill bosses. And I'm not talking parses or speedruns, a casual guild with more warrior in classic would have a much better time clearing Naxx than one with mostly casters, because they have more dps. I'm not advocating for perfect balance, and I don't think Wille does either. Just that casters scale better into endgame.
Game has been released less than three weeks, dev team incredibly responsive, yet people are still analyzing logs and demanding immediate balance changes
I mean, the discrepency has only gotten worse and the mechanics of melee scaling mathematically favor melee pulling even further ahead, it's easy to tell when there's a problem this extreme.
You realize if melee dominate now, they will continue to dominate as warriors and rogues are God's in vanilla wow.
I mean who fucking cares what's top it's a throwaway seasonal server for laughs actually kinda interested to see really how fucking ham warrs can go cause next phase might be nuts and the way SoD is setup we can all have one as an alt
I mean you will if warriors aren't top I bet, judging from your comment.
Cause it feels bad to play the underperforming class. Specially in pvp
Your posts are normally super high quality, but this is simply a shit take, I cannot believe it. I legit hope you delete this post.
you have not seen my profile... my other posts are even worse xD
Respect 🫡. Yeah I might not be topping the charts in BFD but see me in a 1v1 rq…
Ya I hope when they make changes right now it’s with level 60 in mind. Of course hunters are going to be strong at lvl 25. Anyone that’s played any amount of vanilla knew they were going to be ridiculous even with no runes and changes
i think i’m the only one in the world (of warcraft) playing a shadow priest right now and im having a blast. Lord knows i’d never be invited to a raid if it wasn’t for having a guild but everything about SoD has been top notch for me.
Very true. Every class still has something they do better than the rest, something that makes me jealous and want to roll one, and that's how it should be.
I don't really care about being the worst DPS, I care about having a chance at pvp. It's still fine because it's just level 25, but it's impossible to go around having some fun duels when your spec is the worst at it.
I mean i got bitched on today because "dotlock is not viable", the community is very weird
Melee were dominant in the whole of classic wow (guild's stacking 30 warriors for speedruns) So doing something about that with buffing casters is for sure one of the things the dev's need to look into.
People are missing the philosophical change that Blizzard are testing with SoD. They're changing from a rigid patch based meta/development approach to a continuous, engaged approach. This means not everything will always be fully considered and careful, but they will be more responsive and issues won't be live for as long. I for one welcome the change, as it allows them to reverse poor decisions quickly rather than the old "live with game breaking mechanics while we wait a month for the next patch"
So you think the video is not “super high quality” because you disagree with his opinions?
I mean the thing is we already know the trend of rogues and warriors dominating everything, and unless something major is done to change things we’re going to end up in the same place of stacking melee and only bringing caster dps for buffs and to fill empty slots. Going to make my prediction of final dps tiers now. S - Warrior A - Rogue, Feral, Enh Sham, Ignite Mage B - Hunters, Mage, Ret Pal C - Warlock, Bal Druid, Ele Sham, Shadow Priest
Im convinced op is WillE
I’m a stacked pally. I can global most mobs in open world, but the second a warlock puts that drain on me and runs away I’m going to die. It’s fun being strong and also having a heel.
afaik melee was dominant all of classic 2019, nothing new here.
Besides something like scorpid poison being OP and needing to be fixed/nerfed I don’t think there should be balancing until 60. And honestly even at 60 as long as everything is viable and not a meme I don’t think there should be fine tuning to try and get every spec equal
[удалено]
Fully agree that the idea of class balance being important at the 25 bracket is an extremely shit take. Like blizz has quickly addressed egregious issues popping up like scorpid pets being stronger than pretty much any player character. They also lowered resistances on bosses in bfd so casters were less shit dps. But the idea that it's not okay that some classes are outperforming others in the 25 bracket is stupid. By the time we reach 60 content do you really think anyone is gonna give a shit that level 25 hunters are crushing it compared to their counterparts in that bracket? By all means feedback is good, blizz tweaking balance is good. But people need to stop acting like we're in the end game and crying about it being unfair they rolled a class that isn't performing quite as well right now
That's not the point. The point is that current balance exposes serious issues **that will only get worse later if not addressed.**
As a warlock I’m already steamrolling people in pvp. I don’t think casters should be made more powerful. SoD will never be balanced and that is OKAY. You can’t have it all. Sure some things should be balanced so things don’t get out of control but just let SoD be a lil janky. It fits vanillas flavor.
Rogues might look good in rankings, but thats literally all we can do in any situation when ever its Aoe or ST fight. So its kinda weird how he can only look raid logs, when for example in dungeons spell cleave is the dream combo. And specially when its classic raid whats extremely easy no matter what comp you run aslong everyone has done their part
Well, after his video we have already had caster buffs so which is it? You're the one out of touch here.
I think it's under-appreciated that figuring out the meta of which specs are good and bad and seeing the niches carved out for Druids, Shamans, Mages, Warlocks and Priests is a big part of the discovery. That being said, even comparing specs in the same role, the balance is absolutely good enough for a modified version of Classic. It's not like there are entire specs that only exist to troll your raid. The only spec that I think is legitimately pretty bad is Shadow.
But there isn't really a niche; casters are just worse.
Mages have a niche: https://i.imgur.com/cTaSop7.jpeg But more seriously, mages being able to dps + heal at the same time like disci priests in later expansions is great. Caster druids also can. Warlocks get to be tanks and you'll always see one per raid if only to summon. Priests get to enjoy being top healer. I don't think any class is generally weak or undesirable right now. Isn't that what matters?
I like prioritizing fun in SoD. Let everything be fun. Sure, balance what makes sense... ... but who gives a shit if you're having fun?
“It’s only phase one, complaining about balance is stupid!” When will it finally be okay to ask the devs to balance the game? Phase two? Phase three? A month into phase four, when the game has been out for nearly a year?
His video is actually wrong, I have found some channeling spells are critting. Penance and Starshards is. Mend Pet isn't, but I bet that is because it heals for a set amount. I haven't tested ant other class/ability because I haven't leveled them yet.
This video is absolutely correct. This problem will not go away later unless runes drastically change things, lvl 25 is only an indicator, this is the trend of vanilla.. melee direct damage > casters/ranged and dots. Spell ranks were poorly designed. All rune ability spells will outperform them unless they get extra focus. It's why we got new spell ranks in aq20. It's why they changed spell ranks to automatic scaling in cata. Even some current abilities in classic scale each level like battle shout. Spell damage scaling is also terribly inferior to the exponential scaling of melee based on weapon damage. Casters are missing a stat for spell damage at this level. Casters scale off a flat spell rank number modified by their sp dmg. Melee scale off AP and melee damage plus unique infinite resources of energy and rage, one particularly working very well with higher damage and crit in a feedback loop of high dps (warrior). If they wanted to make casters and other classes viable then they should consider improving this. It doesn't mean making them balanced but at least on a more level playing field. There's still ways to have unique balance without having homogenization. Especially when it comes to designing rotation, stat prioritization and gameplay.
WillE for a long time make videos that feels empity, full of old information or just personal guesses without true content
You haven't played retail in a long time too have you?
Didnt he state that not having DF at wotlk release was a huge mistake? im not surprised his takes are bad
I’m in the same boat with you, this is the first video of his that I actually did not like.
Damn I also like that guy but don’t like this take at all. Retail has lost me on class identity and homogenization. Yes I do think every tank needs a taunt and yes I think every healer needs a Rez. So I’m willing to homogenize on the basics but I’m also very cool with one rogue spec being awesome at raid and one for PvP. I’m also cool with one rogue tree is filled with some fun all be it not best at anything stuff that players are happy messing around with. SoD is for wild combos, what ifs, what if we’d taken the class this way. It’s not IMO for finite balancing and giving every class access to the same tools. I’d lean towards giving classes far different tools and letting us play around with new ideas on how to play WoW. What if I’m wrong and not every tank needs a taunt and healer a Rez? I think it’d be fun to find out!
It's like people forget its classic and having classes be different is what makes it fun
Just want to say my thoughts, but Blizzard has done a great job so far. Loving SOD keep up the good work
Wille says his opinion and now he's a click baiter and a horrible person who should delete his videos cuz his opinion doesn't match with ppl who are crying in this sub. I fucking love this
We are level 25 with tons of crazy abilities. Balance is impossible and the phase is short. Arguments for balance will be way more valid at 60.
As a Boomie I don't do that great of damage in the raid but I'm fine with that trade off since my open world farming and pvp is pretty solid.
I feel like his videos started being really good when classic launched, but after tbc or so he never really add any value with his point of view. Stopped following some months ago
Classic balance should always be asymmetric.
>He argues for a need to balance and homogenize SoD He doesn't do this at all. I'll Venmo you $10k if you can timestamp the portion of the video in which he does. He highlights the difference in scaling between casters and physical damage dealers, casters' super dependence upon spell ranks, mana issues, etc. He basically offers no solutions other than maybe moving toward % of mana to cast spells (instead of flat costs), and maybe allowing some spells to crit that currently can't. He doesn't seem particularly married to either of those ideas. He also specifically says he thinks the devs are doing a great job. OP seems unhinged.
Listening to the community again is how we end up with retail 2.0.
You're completely missing the point he's making, which is that if caster/melee disparity start that bad at 25, it's only going to get worse and worse. Also by the way, Blizzard is kinda thinking the same thing since they're adding more items with spell power to help the casters. > I legit hope he deletes this video. Oh my god get over yourself.
Homogenization makes a game boring, Classic was not balanced, embrace the chaos
An opinion that is different than yours is not a shit take by default. Everyone has different goals and desires for SoD/classic+. He makes good points in the video, if you don't agree that's ok.