Class design is at its worst

Keep in mind that my idea of good class design does not mean “balanced”. I don’t think balance equates to anything good, more often than not.

Legion had Discipline Priests and Survival Hunters. Both took a bold new direction with their gameplay and it really payed off.
Come BfA and everything that made Survival interesting, was stripped down to something very basic <— this right here is nothing new.

We saw this with Holy priests in MoP and many classes suffered this treatment as of Legion’s release. It’s not a new concept. Sometimes it’s been deemed necessary. If you erase everything about a class, only for it to come out on the other side with almost the exact same issues, can’t we agree that it’s a failure?

An example could be the Retribution spec.
In WoD you had the option to pick talents that would practically make you a caster for the duration of Avenging Wrath (damage boosting ability). In my humble opinion, this was easily the most fun iteration we’ve ever had for Retribution. Then came Legion and removed this playstyle entirely in exchange for something… Well, something that actually wasn’t even much different when looking at the numbers.

All in the name of, convenience? What exactly is the point of this, guys?
Demonology had a really strong identity from Cata through WoD, but because Demon Hunters became a thing, they had to be rewritten. Why again, exactly? Do you really have so little faith in your playerbase that you think they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a demo warlock and a demon hunter?

Here’s the real sad part: Just like retribution the numbers remained largely unchanged. Once again, you managed to change how a class plays fundamentally, without actually changing their position on the performance meters.

So for all the good intentions you may have, all you really accomplish is to disenfranchise entire communities with the yield resulting in numbers remaining the same, because the playstyle is shallow like a puddle.

I’m asking you to please consider, when you go forward with class design in the future: Please stop destroying what makes specializations unique. If you don’t understand what you’ve made, get some passionate community members to assist you in development. For the fans, by the fans is always a powerful mantra you know?

And here’s why: Gameplay outside the numbers, is far more important than said numbers. When you cater to people who have no respect for your game, you lose credibility on all sides, including your target audience. Ability pruning is not a bad concept in and on itself, but if it comes at the cost of the soul of a class/spec, then it isn’t worth it.

I feel confident when I say that people care far more about how their class plays, than the numbers it might put out. Of course there are exceptions and ideally every specialization should be able to function competitively at a high level, but you need to fix the gameplay before you look at numbers. The type of person that only ever looks at numbers rather than how they feel about playing a certain class, is not the type of consumer that’s going to keep you afloat, let alone profitable.

Right now, every specialization feels like it’s been built around numbers.
It’s incredibly mundane and I can hardly tell the difference between classes anymore. Hunters in WoD suffered from having all three specs feeling like slight variations of one another.

Now it feels this way, across classes, let alone specs.
Even with all this ability pruning and watering down of complexities, you still managed to mess up shadow priests and elemental shamans in early BfA to a point where you conceded to the fact that they were unfinished.

So I ask you again - What is the point of this approach? For all the stripping down of classes, issues with numbers are still prevalent. You can’t even manage to keep numbers clean, even within this design philosophy.

If you have no passion for developing the classes in this game any longer, hire some new blood. Get things rolling again instead of forcing restrictions on creativity in the name of convenience. Convenience is your biggest downfall. You can practically trace every single problem in this game down to that one term: convenience.

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mmm… i just had a déjà vu :alien:

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I agree with the fact that the uniqueness of each class should be the main point. I also feel like the each lass has started to become the same. Even rogues and locks became very similar based on how you try to get either combo point or soul shard and use it to not overcap it - though locks are dead atm where you get like instant invite as a rogue for high mythic runs due to absurd cleave and shroud.

Why do you think people still call it bloodlust? Mage hunter doesn’t matter, because BL was something unique to shammies. I mean if you want other classes to have something desirable I am sure there are options more than giving 30% haste. I like when I see groups seek a specific class for the key runs, yet it should be even more re-worked. Seeking rogue is like the primary motive for nowadays, whereas DHs are just wanted due to their immense cleave. I play lock since the vanilla and the locks atm are only wanted in pug raids for summoning portal and this is even a bit of insulting.

I think many of classes should be re-worked, and from healers to tanks, each should have something different than one another so that depend on the group setup you have, you might wanna seek that class for your runs - or in pvp doesn’t matter.

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dunno if survival hunter payed off, still one of the least played specs even if it’s viable. Most of the people that play it do so because it’s the only good hunter pvp spec anyway, even in legion the numbers weren’t high.

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I am one of the survival lovers. But when you go to i.e. M+ or something and have full melee grupp and then also Holy paladin, then you have 4 people staring at you “errr… hunter … can you go BM plz” and as good team player one would go.

The majority of the classes were built on revolving around the Artifact Weapon, and the benefits that comes with it, now that is taken away from us the class feels dull , I think small adjustments can make a big difference

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tbh, i dont mind waiting, I quit the game at the beginning of BFA Really (prolly a Month in). I’ve returned, Playing classic WoW again made me think why not as i have a Sub to it anyway i may aswell get the reps and stuff done slowly.

I dont like the fact they’ve finally admitted they’ve gone wrong with class design and the prune was too far but given no detail of what to really expect to revert this issue… its going to leave alot of Ideas of what is gonna happen and its going to overall Annoy Some people… if they just gave us a Jist of their aims… we’d have a Idea of what to expect.

Discipline Priest transitioned from being the most popular healer in WoD and MoP to the least popular one in Legion. Survival Hunter transitioned from being the most played hunter spec in MoP and WoD to the least played in Legion.

#GreatSuccess #MassivePayOff

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tbh, Legion Survival hunter was my favorite specc of all time.

Low Popularity doesnt always make it a bad creation, it was a Melee Specc in a Class primiarily chosen for Ranged capabilities… but it did fill a gameplay option for Players who wanted it… and it was beloved by us :stuck_out_tongue:

The stupidity was they They made this option bland for the players who wanted it to try and Streamline it so now the players who Loved it Dont love it anymore and those that hate it still hate it :stuck_out_tongue:

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missed the point entirely.
Had you bothered reading my wall, you would’ve seen that I make a point to talk about how the numbers don’t matter.

Context here also matters, because we went from WoD where hunters felt like 3 different shades of dull and into legion where Survival probably became the most prominent spec in terms of identity.

Because it’s a false point. Numbers are all that matters when determining if something is enjoyable or not, because Blizzard are making the game for their entire customer base, not you in particular and the 3-4 others who were delighted by those changes. Numbers tell the story of how they took two of the most popular specs of each of those respective classes and turned them over night in something far fewer people than before were interested in playing, a trend that continues to this day.

… and took away the option to play their favorite spec from players who already did that. And it turned out the group of players who wanted a melee hunter was far smaller than the group that liked survival as it was. Same for new discipline vs old discipline. Ergo, bad creation(s).

Marksmanship was the most popular spec for WoD PvE btw. So even within your own ideology here, you’re failing to make a solid argument since by that way of thinking, the change to survival was even more warranted.

Also, you aren’t considering PvP whatsoever. Discipline was the most popular spec for Legion up until 7.2 I believe, until 7.3 where it took over again. Survival also topped the charts.

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No, it wasn’t. Resto druid, holy paladin and resto shaman had all been more popular in pvp and pve throughout Legion than disc was. Holy priest was utter garbage bar some gimmick period that ended quickly in nerfs, so nobody played it (in arena) just as nobody plays it now.

It was simply stronger, or rather marksmanship was too weak outside of battlegrounds. Not popular. SV was more present at high ratings, where people make more considerations of strength over fun, while at low ratings BM was by far the most popular hunter spec in pvp, where people actually play what they enjoy, balance be damned. By far.

Just at the end, and just at high level pve, because again of the same consideration: numbers > fun.

Edit: as a matter of fact, a funny thing happened in Legion RBGs. Even though disc was actually better than holy there, holy was strong enough in RBG that far more players still played it over discipline without feeling bad about themselves for doing it. I suspect that if holy would be good enough in arena to not feel like the loser from the get-go, same thing would happen en masse.

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Even for someone who never played a hunter, just knowing how the game works, stating that one spec has been the most played for 4 straight years is ridiculous.
And for those periods that wasn’t, well it just doesn’t count.

There is nothing wrong with taking some specs in new directions, even though for survival you could say it was taken to its roots.

I disagree that Retri design is bad. In fact imo its best its ever been. We have option to choose different playstyle thanks to traits, essences and talent choices. We are good in ST scenario, in AOE scenario. Our survivability is great. There is little to no downtime. We have great trinket choices, great off heal with Word of Glory/Selfless healer. All talent choices except Divine Judgement are great. We can choose to dominate during burst, choose RNG gameplay, DOT gameplay, consistent DPS gameplay. Almost all boss encounters in BFA were great for retri paladin unlike in the past.

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77 survival hunter logs in HFC during 6.2 and 61.643 marksmanship (which was the most played spec during that raid on every single difficulty) logs… Yeah… almost most played. And it wasn’t different in the other raids. If you would try to drop this “everything was better before” thinking then maybe you would remember that survival hunter got reworked into what it is now because players absolutely hated it.

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From what i recall only time Survival Hunter was even slightly popular among players was during Siege of Orgrimmar with that crazy set bonus that made u spam Explosive Shot like mad. All the other times since Vanilla till its rework into Melee it was least played spec and players were always asking for it to become Melee spec. Survival was originally even meant to be melee spec, but bad Vanilla talent trees made it non viable.

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Yeah of course there’s nothing wrong with liking something in its current build.
I make use of a lot of subjective opinions to talk about what I believe has become a very stagnated environment. Out of curiosity did you play the WoD iteration of Retribution? If so, what did you think of it?

Survival as melee really shouldve been a 4th spec. same as i see people suggesting necromancer/ranged unholy/ranged dk spec.
Like sure dk could use it but dont argue for it to replace any of current specs.

And disc change prolly shouldve been extra spec or kind of talent option,focus on shields or dps to heal.

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I quid WOD mid way. Hated almost everything about it. Thats the only expansion i quit due to game itself and not for personal reasons. I am not saying Retri design was bad in WOD btw, im saying im not unbiased enough to make objective observation.