https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_dZw1iBWL0
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No idea how you get from trade-offs to role-functions.
It is obv. that all specs should fullfil their roles. That being said, from a design POV every class has certain niches, for example if you think of an mage, you think of an glas-canon that is mobile, when you think of an WL you think of an tanky spellcaster… and this goes on.
This all adds flavour to a class, utility is part of this.
This flavour makes it obv. that certain classes do certain things wells, like WL used to be tanky but immobile, and limited utility in dungeons. While mages use to be mobile but squishy, but also somewhat limited in utility and lots of CC… both had high dmg
Shamans used to be THE utility class, while having moderate dmg and bad CC.
This allowed classes in the past to have clear strenghts and weaknesses and therefore made them desirable.
Over the years they removed lots of this tradeoffs by removing and adding stuff.
Sadly, this came in favor of certain classes while handicapping others. For example, for some reason Mage and Rogues are now incredibly tanky, while having more CC and lots of other stuff… (I still try to figure out why shaman is the only class that doesnt bring anything unique to the raid, when it was THE utility class). They basically made certain weaknesses go away, without compensating other classes.
This made a lot of classes rather undesirable especially if they do less dmg.
There is no reason why you would want an ele if mage does the same amount of damage nowdays.
Mages are tankier, mages are more mobile, mages bring BL now, Mages have a better purge, mages can dispell curses, mages can now knock-back, they have lots of CC.
They simply cover 95% of the stuff an ele does, while bringing and int-buff and an absorb for the group + dont need to be babysit.
And yes I am fully aware that this also means that if you buff the dmg of ele too much they can become OP aswell, but they would atleast have the tradeoff of needing the healers attention, which is a huge deal in highlevel content.
These trade-offs not only make classes themselves being more interesting, but also lead to creating comps around these weaknesses and strenghts, not the basic - THE BEST COMP IS MADE OF THE CLASSES THAT ARE STRONG IN EVERYTHING.
For example, for an hunter or ele you could consider a healer with more DRs or mates that offer more tankyness. Classes that have lots of utility and are a bit behind in dmg (not by much) could compansate anothers class high-dmg, low utility profile.
IF everyone does the same DPS you just take the ones that offer the most to the group, if you remove utility too, you just take what its the tankiest… if you make everyone the same, the game gets boring.
That being said, I am not against just giving some classes more access to stuff others have, but it needs to be done the right way. For example, why they gave BL to multiple classes (when there were allready drums) but didnt gave stat-buffs to more than one?
I see a problem in theri inconsistency
But I guess a man can only dream about that.
Edit: This is not only a mage-shaman thing, but was jsut an example.
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Sorry. Misunderstood you there.
I got tradeoff from the definition of tradeoff: You trade (A) for (B). Or DPS for Utility. Or Utility for Tankiness. But the word itself implies you should not have both.
However I still don’t understand what are you advocating for. Are you FOR tradeoffs (as the definition of the word implies) or not?
I think a good example of a trade off is SP, they did nerf their utility. Yet, they didn’t touch mage, who’s utility is very strong too, so idk.
Also, demo locks are tanker than destro and affl. Talking of which, I just played +20 and destro did 88k overall(477ilvl) and affliction 100k and they never pressed their defensive CDs. Just clown show. Honestly did join it for laughs tho
People don’t even understand tho how bad it is when they play around “balance”, I’m so confused, I don’t even want to play much, I like my destro the most but it’s not good at all now… And this week it’s unplayable too. Just staring at starting screen like into the void sometimes. Meh (while having almost all classes at max). Maybe play a boomkin? Very risky at bad groups with boomkin interrupt. But realistically just play mage and try to get attached to that class, since it’s fav blizzard child, I guess 
TIL 2016 was 10 years ago.
The answer is simple: The utility that got nerfed from SP was mainly MD and Soothe.
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Soothe got nerfed because there are no humanoids you can skip in this dungeon pool. So it was an indirect nerf right there.
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MD got its CD increased to 2 minutes. Which makes sense.
And the reason why priest got nerfed was not because some esoteric balancing morality of tradeoffs and what not…
It got nerfed because with those 2 skills you could cheese mechanics nobody else could. And if there is a class that can cheese things like that, you have to ask yourself:
- Do I nerf the ability to oblivion, making it “useless utility” like the tremor totem… or…
- Do I give that to everyone else so everyone can cheese the mechanic like BL and CR.
Sometimes its the 1st, sometimes its the 2nd. But you cant have things that disrupt the game so much monopolized by 1 class. Regardless of the damage they do, and/or how tanky they are.
Like PI, like Aug as a whole… those give problems. A LOT of them. And in the case of mage…
- Mass barrier and the ability to cheese the tree boss in WM with blink.
So we will see where this ends up.
The invis is more OP than the blink tho, Fall on 3rd, 4th boss for example. And many other cases too
Intellect buff is way too op as well
They can also buff other’s utility, warlock’s utility has lots of problems and Kalamazi covered them in the video https://youtu.be/cOh2450mdJg?si=gn7d77uSYobLOQeE
Whats your actual point? Why state random numbers that bad people did in dungeons?
Is that meant to prove something about balance?
Yeah, because Breaths says that we should balance around bad players, and btw, just chatting, since I don’t like the game rn, may I? 
If you are so triggered by me, just ignore me, Deja. You aren’t admin here or any kind of authority.
The intelect buff is not that OP. Depends on comp. Mage Lock Dudu maybe. Mage WW Fury not so much. The stamina buff from Priest is more OP IMO. That one is questionably one that might be a candidate to give to more than 1 class.
And the invisibility is not that OP. Technically, warriors have spell reflect and can cheese other mechanics as well. And instead of a 3 min CD it has 20s CD. Every nelf can cheese Rezan once in the fight.
Its not that OP as you think.
What IS OP is the blink removing roots of WM tree boss. That has a short CD and if the boss targets the mage all the time, the mage can use a blink for each one. Cheesing the mechanic completely.
And this last part is what I meant by disrupting: So if mage can remove it, so should a warrior with Bladestorm for example, or a shaman with Thunder Paws.
OR…
Nerf the mage so that nobody can remove it on a short CD.
I am for Trade-offs.
Yes, this exactly.
Having a base kit that works should be obv.
Having a trade-off dont make you not be able to function if its done normaly. You see this in high-M+ where you still have classes that are somewhat squishy (Hunter) and do higher keys. So it can work.
With trade-offs I also dont mean big big dmg differences.
I want every class to be able to do the base functions so they can perform well… not some classes get everything, and some maybe lucky they are tuned high enough to be viable.
It just seems stupid to me that you have classes that can do everything while others flatout suck. Because this is mainly the reason you simply dont take certain classes.
Why pick ele if you can have a mage?
Why pick a warrior when you can have a Rogue?
Why pick X when you can have Y?
You can have stuff, you dont have to completely remove the utility of a class.
But does a class really need: Strong DMG, Strong utility and strong defences?
Cant it be… Strong dmg, okay tankyness and okay utility?
Or Strong damage, strong defense and bad utility (still has utility)?
Also: It literally makes zero sense that a mage or rogue is so tanky at it is. (from a design pov)
I think a mage should be:
Squishy, mobile, high dmg, lots of CC, not much group utility.
Warlocks should be:
Tanky, not mobile, high dmg, mediocre CC and utility (both limited to either demons or curses, so you choose what you want)
(Ele) Shamans should be:
High utilitly, mediocre tanky, mediocre-ST, Strong AOE DMG, Strong funnel, mediocre- bad mobility. (I am a strong believer that ele should be a spec that gets stronger on more targets)
Rogues:
Squishy, mobile, high dmg (High ST, mediocre-good AOE) lots of CC, not much group utility.
Ofc this stuff needs more nuances but thats the idea of it. And yes Specs shift the Dmg profiles a little)
This would make you think if you really want more high dmg profiles but have to play even more carefull because your healer might not keep up with 2 extreme squishy classes, so you maybe choose other profiles.
There is no reason trying to make every class do the same dmg, when you simply can make every class have pros and cons. (Ofc the difference needs to be reasonable.)
→ Mage was not that good in Raid, it still got invites to progress raid, thanks to its int buff.
And the best? With a good design you can still outperform higher specs if you play better than them.
But thats my dream.
Edit: I just want to make sure that people understand: In this idea every class/spec would still have the means to fullfill the requirements for high tier content.
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I fail to understand why it’s not? If used correctly its way too strong.
It is niche, which is nice.
Problem is the talent greater invisibility, when the spell becomes a 60% DR on a 2 Min CD
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So I read your whole post and honestly, im kinda tired of proving the same things to different people.
The cause of class imbalance is literally Blizz trying to do what you say, or dealing with the legacy of an old system which used to be like you said. With tradeoffs.
And instead of writing a mega parragraph or something like that, il just quote myself some examples:
All that “spec tradeoff” will make some specs cheese mechanics that others cant. And will make the problem even worse, and an Exodia comp even more likely.
So no thanks.
This is contradictory. It will not have the effect you desire. Just to be clear.
This is how it should work in reality and I will give 1 example: Mana regen.
ALL healers need a way to recover mana in combat. That is not a debate.
There cant be healers that do more HPS but less mana regen, or less HPS but more mana regen. Or more or less tanky. That would in practice make certain dungeons unhealable by some classes… which is a horrendous outcome…
To add that “class magic” that you so desire, what needs to change is HOW you recover mana. For example: MW has mana tea, Shaman has Resurgence, and RDruid has moonkin/cat form.
Another one that is open to debate is the DPS a healer can do. And you can see what happens if some healers can DPS while healing, while others cant. Its not a coincidence that the only 3 classes that can do it are currently the meta.
So IMO: ALL healers should be able to do dps while healing (and viceversa) or NONE of them should. But because apparently Blizz insists on giving Disc and MW its “dpsing healer” fluff, they cant delete it. Forgetting in the process that its too big of an advantage to just give it to 2 specs (RDruid will loose the capability next season with a different tier set).
So they have to give it to everyone else. And the class “fluff” is HOW you do dps, is what has to be different.
And why dps while healing and not something else? Because its just too OP to have it. Just like Mana regen. Its too OP to allow only a subset of the healers to have something like that.
And I quote healers because its what I know the most. But same idea with DDs and Tanks.
But why is that a problem? Shamans have that 60% DR too.
A 2 min CD is short, but still acceptable. Because you cant wall every single mechanic a boss does. Only 1. So choose wisely.
Because they also have a 70% DR on a 3 minute cd, and a 20% DR for 40 seconds on a 2 minute cd, and alter time on a 1 minute cd.
It blows my mind that there’s a spec with this many personal defensives, that also has the ability to move / teleport while casting, and has a 30s and 45s cd AoE stop.
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Do any of those things allow the mage to ignore mechanics, or cheese them in any way?
Do any of those mechanics allow them to survive things that other classes cant?
If the answer is NO. Then who cares.
I mean… yes?
If you have this many ways to survive lethal overlaps you can sequence them in such a way that you can survive a lethal overlap every 30 seconds for 3-4 minutes straight, and have mirror images / tempest barrier / spec barrier left over to handle anything inbetween. For context, tempest barrier is about as much as Shadow Priest’s Power Word: Shield, and if you’re playing shimmer it’s obviously off gcd and castable in the middle of casting another spell.
I thought survivability was lock’s thing, given they have so little mobility.
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OK… so how do the other classes deal with an unavoidable lethal overlap?
Maybe because its not that unavoidable…
Still did not answer me the question. Give me 1 example.
(that is not the WM tree boss, cause thats OP and I agree).
In high keys?
Die.
Or burn healer externals (Which will run out) / pray they’re playing with augmentation evoker for the free 10% DR and maybe rescue shield.
I remember planning out defensives for Tyrannical Leymore at the start of the expansion, most of us were living by hairs or relying on perfect play + healer externals to live stomps.
Yalnu would be the obvious example currently but this season specifically most bosses that deal unavoidable damage are getting to that point. The mage boss, the witches coven, WM tree, throne of the tides 1st boss.
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