Have you guys seen the Drums of Battle change?

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
263

If I was to choose between nochanges and cash shop/microtransaction/paidboosts/paidservices etc. I would choose nochanges every single time.

Nochanges, has some issues, in my opinion, but it is infinitely better than playing a credit card simulator. Can’t even compare, it is a billion time better to not change anything and keep the drums as they are if they don’t make all these other stuff in the game.

But since they expressed openly that they will change drums in blizzcon, I am just trying to at least have a proper fix to drums, not make them even worse than it is.

As a final note: I am still astonished by the fact that Blizzard managed to find a “fix” that makes it even worse and still doesn’t fix the issue. Like I haven’t seen a worse idea in any platform, it is a miracle how they managed to come up with an idea that is this bad and ridicilous when none even suggested it anywhere. They need to be really trying hard.

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264

Guess what, although I dont fully agree on removing the boost, I’d agree that if nothing were to change it would be a decent move.

But as far as these drums go, imo, if you want that buff then pay the price.

That said you do realise retail isn’t a credit card sim, right?

265

When you think about it, leveling and the boost are pretty similar to this. Leveling is a problem, so how do we fix it? By implementing an option where players have to pay to not be affected by the problem, and the problem is still there and even worsened because you’d have less people leveling, making dungeons harder to do.

Instead of having Blizzard pay to fix problems, players are paying to not get affected by problems.

266

I keep seeing you post the same thing in multiple threads and it seems like you don’t understand the problem. Remove the buff, keep it in the game, I don’t really care but if it’s in the game it’s use will be mandatory and with the way it is just now that means everyone is going to have to go LW to get it which is the problem. We want to have a choice of what profession to use not be forced into some crappy meta where almost 100% of the raid has the same profession.

It’s very easily fixed by either removing the buff or changing how it works. If your solution is just to not go LW if we don’t want to then you’re probably the same guy who told us world buffs wouldn’t be a problem in classic because only HC guilds will require them, we saw how that played out in classic and drums will be exactly the same.

Nochanges isn’t an excuse to not make this easy fix because they’re already making changes, at the moment it’s nochanges except if it generates more revenue for Blizzard - paid mounts, char boosts, increasing mats for drums to incentivize more botting, keeping LW as a mandatory profession means you’re more likely to pay for a boost for a gathering alt. There’s literally no good reason for drums not to be changed to improve the game.

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267

I didn’t say dont go LW, I said if you want the permanent haste buff then pay the price.

And as for changes that was me poking at stick at the anti boost crowd who are now showing their hypocrisy.

Changing drums to either remove LW requirement or other change the game to remove the need for everyone to have LW is a direct change and a QoL change. The very thing anto boosters hate.

Also, has it occurred to anyone that changing the drums issue will just move the problem sideways.

Change drums, ok cool we dont need everyone with LW, oh hey if we now use prof ‘x’ for item ‘y’ instead then we get this bonus. Right everyone not with LW now needs to level this.

The tryhards will find a new meta and new requirements, problem persists.

268

“if you want the permanent haste buff then pay the price” - I’ll say again, I don’t care about the buff and assume most people on this side of the argument are the same, remove it, keep it in with changes, either would be a huge improvement on what we’re about to get. At the moment we’re not being given the choice which is the major problem.

The other professions give boosts to performance sure, but we already know none of them are as close to being broken as drums so without LW it will be more down to personal choice and making decisions on which ones are best for your class which is far more interesting in most people’s opinion.

Of course there will still be meta without the drums in the game, those metas will exist with or without drums . Every game has a meta no one thinks otherwise, we just don’t want 25 LWs in every raid to be part of it.

Drums didn’t become part of the meta until very late TBC and guess what Blizzard did a couple of patches later? They added the tinnitus debuff because they recognised it was broken and not intended as part of the original design of the item. To say that keeping drums as they were is delivering the authentic TBC experience is incorrect because we didn’t have 25 LWs in SSC in 2007 but that is exactly what we’ll get in 2021.

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269

What I don’t understand is why Blizzard said they are going to change LW to make it less mandatory, only to then come back and tell us LW should be mandatory for Sunwell.

Why even say they are going to change it? And assuming they remove it entirely prior to Zul Aman, do they think people are going to be happy to have to drop a profession halfway through the expansion to pick up LW?

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270

Please let drums be usable by every player, not only by leatherworkers. In this way leatherworking will not be compulsory to join raids. This is the best way to enjoy TBC experience without overturn it. Leatherworking should not be mandatory at all…!!!

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271

Leatherworking should be useful just as the other professions, please consider that if drums will be only usable by leatherworkers this will ruin the entire game experience, just as happened with the use of engineering in classic wow.
Otherwise if they will be a normal consumable as potions the professions’ balance will be preserved.

272

I’m so confused by Blizzard’s thinking here. They say they don’t want to make LW feel mandatory, but the solution they present isn’t even related to that, they just introduce a new modified item? It will still be as mandatary as before, unless I’m missing something?

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273

You’re right to be confused and based on what we know at the moment you’re not missing anything. Blizzard acknowledged that the 25 LW meta was lame and said they’d make changes so that wouldn’t happen, and they’ve come out with this change which makes using drums slightly more annoying but doesn’t come close to addressing the underlying issue.

Their latest reasoning for not changing more is that Sunwell is tuned for drums (ignoring all of the other raids that aren’t) and our “fond memories” of drum rotations.

Contradicting themselves completely and the only reason I can think of for not making a change that has overwhelming support in the player base is they’ve realised that keeping the status quo could make them more money through an increase in botting and people paying for boosts for gathering alts.

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274

No you’re missing nothing.

This is what i can only imagine a game director earning six-figures. Who I expect claims to play the game thinks is a good idea.

I’m lost. Maybe there was a gas leak or something?

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275

Your logic makes no sense.
You’re fine with a mandatory profession for most raiding environments.
Blizzard has literally said that drums will be needed for sunwell, thus most of your raid group will need to be leatherworking.
You aren’t meant to feel forced to play a profession in a supposed “RPG?”

276

You know what I realized? The drums have to be completely removed.
Bear with me here. I did a small thought experiment. Imagine if Blizzard kept nerfing the now green drum because people kept using it. They’d change the range to 3 yards, making it nigh-unsharable, they’d double the mats, make it a world drop patten. Still, it’d be essentially a 3rd trinket, that on use gives you 80 haste for 30 sec on 2 min cooldown. That is STILL probably the best pve profession, even disregarding the group benefit. Surely for a Mage it’s better than 12sp from enchanting or ~10 from epic gems. (I mean if you were truly hardcore you could have those and re-learn LW but you get my point). Even with solo drums LW is still best pve prof bar none.
This is a terrible balance situation and would have to be addressed even disregarding the whole group buffing, mandatory for raid and what not. Even solo LW drums are broken.

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277

You can’t just remove the leather working requirement for drums as this is a further nerf to content.

It means you have 5 people with LW rather than 20, so 15 additional people with double ring enchants (for example).

Just nerf drums so they’re not overpowered compared to other profession benefits.

5x healers in a group with drums of resto = 125mp5 each.
5x healers with enchanting on rings = 40 healing power each.

It’s just a broken effect, nerf it. Along with melee leeway.

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278

I find this whole drums thing to be both tragic, and amusing at once. I haven’t yet decided which is the stronger emotion.

The fact that the Classic community are now such absolute, uwavering slaves to the meta, that the thought of just playing the game the way you enjoy it is unthinkable - all fun and enjoyment in downing bosses MUST be sacrificed on the altar of the meta - so you can maybe down that boss 18 seconds more quickly.

All the professions you worked hard to level are going to be unlearned, and through gritted teeth, misery, and ill will, you’ll all force yourselves to level up a profession that is of no benefit to you whatsoever, grinding through the levels, spending thousands on leather, making scores of Rugged Leather Pants - all so you can down that boss maybe 18 seconds more quickly.

25 people in a raid abandoning all their fun rotations so they can spam these drums, stood in a row, so that a boss dies maybe 18 seconds more quickly.

Never, even for a moment, would you imagine just ignoring the Holy Meta and just playing the game the way you like, because in your minds it’s a race. You MUST speed run the raid, and use every possible trick to save time and do it more quickly, all for the sake of the Holy Meta.

It’s utterly sad - yet at the same time, there’s room for wry amusement at this utterly lemming-like behaviour.

We all know that the people driving the meta are the sweatiest, sweatys - the spreadsheet/parsing hardcore uber-nerds, but they’re like the rabbit on a greyhound track, and you all must follow their lead, racing to adopt the Holy Meta.

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279

Considering that Blizzard themselves said they balanced sunwell around the drums, you will have to use them lol.

280

Its sad, yes, but thats how the things are nowadays. Playerbase WONT be able to free itself from the drums meta, and thats why it must be Blizzard to take the reign and implement the fixes needed. To take away the poisonous toy from kids’ hands and save its life.
Instead they make the toy even more poisonous.
BAD PARENTS. BAD!

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281

They apparently balanced Kil’jaeden against the drums, which, in my opinion was a pretty lousy design decision, but then again, only 377 guilds ever defeated Sunwell Plateau, out of 10 milion players, so I guess their thinking at the time was ‘let’s make a niche encounter for the hardest of the hardcore’

You just know for a fact that people will be using drums for Kharazan and Gruul’s Lair.

282

This post would make a lot of sense if we played a game where the community didn’t gatekeep access to guild/raids on meeting certain minimum requirements based on whatever version of the game you’re playing, for classic this was world buffs, in Retail in most expansions it was ilvl/achievements and for TBC it will be drums. Your vision isn’t how the game is and isn’t something that’s going to change any time soon.

If drums are included in the game in their current state they are so powerful that they will be a requirement for all but the most casual raiding guilds to have as one of your professions, this means we can’t simply choose to play the way we want and not follow the meta because it would limit options so much that the least bad option is just to deal with it and go LW rather than what we actually want to play. This doesn’t just impact the “sweatiest of the sweatys” like you’re suggesting. See world buffs in classic for reference.

I wish the community wasn’t the way it is about the meta but the fact is that’s how it is and we have to deal with it. Drums staying in the game in their current state will lead to a boring, choiceless but worst of all mandatory meta when it comes to professions which must be followed if you want to play at any level of competition other than super casual.

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