Balance changes needed based on real information

PVP Arenas
1

All Information in this are taken from Drustvar

I think PVP has some pretty clear balance issues which was well predicted with terribly balanced talent trees introduced in Dragonflight with subsequent further power added in War Within which has made the game more toxic then ever to play. You may argue with this however participation is down drastically across all PVP, and although some will likely say it’s because Classic blah blah, well PVP participation was higher in previous expansion when Classic / Hardcore was much newer and more popular. I think the main issues stems from too many addons, too man buttons, too much player power with too many Cool-downs, mobility and crowd control, and a screen bloat from animation making the game unfriendly to new players.

Now the above issues are expansion level changes and it’s unlikely we are going to get any real expansion pruning to bring class power, animation and addon requirement down until at the very least the end of the World Soul Saga. however the one thing they could do is apply much harsher and quicker balance changes in order to prevent meta from becoming stale and toxic, which i think the game is now.

Now looking at Drustvar, it’s pretty easy to see which specialization need to be looked at with a pretty serious balance slap and I’m going to use the data from Drustvar to prove my point. All the specialization below are the most represented within the top 1000 spot. The logical theory behind this is that if you are within the top 1000, and your specialization is more represented then it’s likely easier to achieve by being stronger the others.

Top 3 Melee specs in Rated 3v3

  1. Feral Druid (141)
  2. Fury Warrior (120)
  3. Retribution Paladin (85)

Top 3 Melee specs in Shuffle

  1. Fury Warrior (233)
  2. Feral Druid (148)
  3. Retribution Paladin (136)

Top 3 Range specs in Rated 3v3

  1. Beast Mastery Hunter (121)
    2 Affliction Warlock (84)
  2. Shadow Priest (77)

Top 3 Range specs in Solo Shuffle

  1. Beast Mastery Hunter (342)
  2. Affliction Warlock (211)
  3. Shadow Priest (179)

Top 3 Healer specs in Rated 3v3

  1. Hpala
  2. Disc Priest
  3. Pres Evoker

Top 3 Healer specs in Solo Shuffle

  1. Disc Priest
  2. Holy Pala
  3. Mist Weaver

I would suggest that any spec that is present across both needs some decisive nerfs and re-composition to overall reduce it’s strengths but offset some weaknesses to not gimp them.

Nerf List

  1. Feral
  2. Beast Mastery Hunter
  3. Fury Warrior
  4. Paladin (utility such as BOP, Freedom, Sacrifice and Sanctuary nerfs and buffed elsewhere). This would target Rets and Hpala
  5. Disc Priests
  6. Affliction warlock

Please bare in mind, any decisive nerfs to Hpala will drastically reduces the effectiveness of the likes of Frost Mages and Shadow Priest whom will in turn drop in effectiveness.

2

No melee needs a nerf besides outlaw rogue. The weaker melee like arms and dh just need buffs.

No healers need nerfs. Druids and shamans and hpriests just need meaningful buffs.

Using Popularity alone is a poor metric to judge the power of a spec. Especially in a game like wow which has such a low sample size.

For example: the best spec in the game (outlaw rogue) has very low representation compared to other melee.

3

If we look at activity in the last 72h

Feral : 2100
BM: 2200
Furror : 2300

Affli : 3000
Demo : 2000
Shadow : 2100
Augvoker : 31

Hpally: 5300
Disc: 4000
Rdruid: 1400

Looks to me like the list of nerfs should be by your concept

Hpally > Disc > Affly > Furror > BM > Shadow > Feral > Demo

And buff Aug to infinity

4

You forgot a big factor, sp and war are always well represented because they can play with every single spec, while some like mage (which is insane now) is terrible with le’ts say, hunter or dk for example.

5

You are making an assumption that the representation in the top of the ladder is only a measure of strength of the spec. It is also a measure of the popularity of the spec. Many people play different classes or specs because the like the fantasy of it or because they have always played it, not necessarily only because of how strong it is.

To get a more accurate read on this data, it should be normalized to how much the specs are actually played, and also other factors, for example how much people reroll to it. Statistics is not that simple and there are many other things to consider.

The data could also be historical, and nerfed specs could be sitting on their rating.

Not saying there aren’t some obvious culprits in your list, but this is the wrong metric to go by.

Also I’m going to call out your secret agenda and go ahead to guess that your main is a shadow priest, because you divided the list into “melee” and “ranged” rather than creating a “spellcaster” category and you chose to call for nerfs of the third most popular spec in the melee list (ret), but not the third most popular spec in the ranged list (sp).

6

my main is a ret paladin.