Popularity Based Per-Spec Aura Buffs

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

TL;DR

Add 1 per-spec aura buff that’s applied in dungeons and 1 per-spec aura buff that’s applied when in raids to every spec. Increase the relevant spec aura buff values by 3 or 5% with each weekly reset if the spec was among the least popular for the previous week in dungeons (for the dungeon buff) or raids (for the raid buff).
No automatic nerfs, only the accumulating 3% or 5% buffs.

Purpose

Zero effort self balancing system to avoid a stale meta or specs feeling left out for long periods of time.

Self balancing because undertuned / unfun / badly designed specs are likely not played as much and hence get automatically buffed until they reach a level where their bad design is counter acted by the raw numbers provided via the buff.

Would manual, well timed and well reasoned buffs be better? Yes but we tried that for 20 years and while there are usually really great changes coming in week 1 or 2 after a new season (which should still happen), there seem to always be a couple specs that are left behind entirely or the changes are just too little, too late.

Baseline Balancing

The current baseline balancing is already in a good state, particularly when looking at raw single-target damage. Most specs are within a few percentage points of each other, with only occasional outliers at the top or bottom.
This level of balance should remain the goal and serve as the foundation for further adjustments.

Popularity-Based Adjustments

On top of this baseline, introduce 1 per-spec aura buff that’s applied when in dungeons and 1 per-spec aura buff that’s applied when in raids to every spec.

The dungeon and raid per-spec buffs are entirely separate from one another, a spec can receive an increase to either, both or neither of those buffs in a given reset. The value is never reduced, it only increases every week (for the least popular) or stays the same (for those specs not among the least popular).

To determine the least popular specs for the dungeon buff: Attendance of Mythic+ with completed Keystone level 7 or higher runs of the last week

To determine the least popular specs for the raid buff: Attendance of the last (2?) heroic raid boss kills of the last week.

DPS: Increase damage done by 5% (or 3%) for the 5 - 6 least popular DPS specs of the last week.

Healers: Increase damage done and healing done by 5% (or 3%) for the 2 least popular healer specs of the last week.

Tanks: Increase damage done, healing done and maximum HP by 5% (or 3%) for the 2 least popular tank specs of the last week.

The value should be noticeable each week and hence ideally not be below 3%. While there might be the theoretical danger that a class might be so bad that it can accumulate 10 or more weeks of buffs (resulting in aura buff values of 30% or even 50%), that should not be the case in practice except for cases with really terrible spec design and there it’s more a feature than a bug: the spec apparently needed it.

Benefits and Implications

Self-Balancing Ecosystem

As buffs accumulate for underrepresented specs, they naturally become more attractive. This creates a feedback loop where meta shifts occur organically as buffed specs gain popularity and once a spec becomes popular enough another spec replaces it as the buff recipient for the next week.

Reward for Complexity or Unpopular Playstyles

Specs that are challenging or less enjoyable to play gain compensation in the form of performance boosts.

Smoother Progression Over Time

This system makes content progressively more accessible as the season progresses, aligning with existing design philosophies in raids.
For Mythic+, this is less of a concern due to its endless scaling nature, key levels will just get higher.

Key Consideration: No Automatic Nerfs

It’s critical to avoid automatic nerfs based on popularity, as this would lead to negative sentiment and unnecessary toxicity. Adjustments should focus solely on uplifting underrepresented specs rather than penalizing popular ones.

How does it work with new seasons?

Reset the buff on expansion launch.
For new seasons divide accumulated percent by 3 or 5, as if the spec received 1% instead of the 3%/5% per week. Ignore the buff entirely for baseline balancing for the new season.

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I have one question: Why do we need to go in great lengths to break the “meta”, while you also state (correctly I might add) that the base balancing is quite good as-is?

There are several issues with this concept, but there are prob even more than I can think of:

  • Some specs and/or classes are less played/popular, this does not mean that they should get buffs every week. It makes absolutely no sense.
  • Some specs are more popular due to other reasons than pure strength, and they will never gain any buff regardless of their state.
  • It becomes relatively easy to get certain specs to gain buffs which last for the rest of the season
  • It can interfere with mid-season tuning, which should happen more often anyways…
  • It doesn’t solve any issue of specs (E.g. Holy Priest won’t gain much by flat output adjustments)
  • At certain points specs will become pure broken in this system. Let Blood DK linger at the bottom for three weeks, get HP+DMG+HPS boost 3 times => mental output for the rest of the season.
  • It doesn’t work well with how specs change in strength over the time of a season due to gearing. Some specs tend to perform decent from start to finish, some have a bit of a steeper curve and get more value from getting better gear. A system like this can absolutely break those specs with a steeper curve.
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Of course such a zero effort system won’t fix everything, no single system ever could. However, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the status quo.

The single target base balancing is indeed very good.
It’s really is not about breaking the meta as much as it is about avoiding a stale meta, aka having it go on for an unreasonably long time.
A recent example would be VDH in DF M+ Season 3 and 4. Sure that VDH dominance was not due to DPS / HPS / Max HP but giving the other tanks buffs to those stats would eventually have made them a more viable choice even without nerfing the VDH stop potential or otherwise giving the other tanks the same stuff.

Once a somewhat reasonable baseline level of numerical balance has been reached, who else should be buffed if not the specs that are played the least?
And in case you’re mostly arguing against the weekly thing: The core idea is to have frequent small buffs that quickly reacts to what the wider player base is doing. The most logical thing for that in the wow context is to do it with weekly resets.

If a class is popular enough to never get the buff they are fine, as determined by the player base. A good example would probably be ret paladin: It’s just enjoyable to play and the numbers are fine, so it’s absolutely no surprise that it is popular.

Like I wrote above, that is indeed the preferred thing, however, we tried it for 20 years and we still have cases like brewmaster, outlaw, feral, windwalker etc: specs that clearly need help just not getting it, at times for whole expansions.
Manual tuning towards the baseline (while ignoring the already accumulated buff) is still highly desirable, at the same time if it was “just” off by a couple 5% buffs (see the multiple resto druid buffs since tww launch) those would be fixed automatically by this system.

Of course it doesn’t fix specs with bad rotations or specs that are by design just bad at certain gameplay modes, however, it at least helps a bit. Being terrible to play and undertuned is certainly worse than being terrible to play but at least overtuned.

The self balancing aspect should prevent that from snowballing into extremes too quickly. As you’re specifically calling out BDK: 10 or even 15% buffs to BDK in M+ would not even be close to breaking anything. The highest prot pala keys are still 2 or even 3 key levels above the highest BDK keys.

When we just take DPS numbers see for example mythicstats or similar websites, the differences in average overall damage between classes in whole m+ runs are much larger practice than what the arguably good single target balance would suggest.

Well, the expectation would be that even the classes with bad scaling would have to be played, aka count towards the attendance, to get the gear they need to start scaling.

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Who does this hurt the most?

If numerical the specs are balanced, then no spec should be adjusted? Popularity is a very bad metric, as it doesn’t say all that much. Let alone if you take a very select group of characters (the top 30% of M+).

No, because “the player base” plays a character for different reasons, and it even depends on other specs and factors. Popularity cannot be used to determine whether a spec is fine.

What do they need? Outlaw absolutely blasts in M+. Feral can pump serious numbers in M+. Windwalker has very decent DPS and decent utility, it just doesn’t peak as high and as easily as Retri or Enhance. Brewmaster? They can manage 18s, 1-2 levels below the absolute top. They’re just fine.

That they’re not meta, is not really those specs’ issue…it would be odd to buff them to change that…

Yeah, so, Retri is far from fine. How they perform compared to their skill cap is out of balance on so many levels. They are very forgiving to positioning as half their abilities are mid-ranged ones and they literally don’t even have a cooldown as that’s baked into their rotation as passive effect. They need a rework, or a significant tune downwards to match the skill cap. Half their DPS is direct proc-based, not ok.

But, that most likely has to do with damage profiles, no? Like SPriests: having to move at the wrong time is killing their DPS. A fight with a lot of swirlies and short-lived adds which spawn frequent will be disastrous for a spec like that. That requires a spec-tuning to tackle, not a plain percentage buff.

You said to buff tanks with DPS, HPS and HP right? That combination sounds just perfect for BDKs. But yeah, otherwise wait a week longer and they’ll be broken. End of the line is…percentage-based general buffs are terrible. Just terrible.

If the base balance is good as-is, or as good as it can get, then the problem lies in the encounter-designs / dungeon-designs. That, and the spell queue change may need to be re-evaluated → that leads to a need for specific utility, a lot of it, and that defines the meta most…

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Given your take on Retri, you seem to actually agree that numerical balance is not everything. Also, quick reminder here that the suggestion includes separate buffs for dungeons / m+ and raids, so the top 30% of M+ would only affect M+ where it is very much relevant.

I can definitely see 2 perfectly valid yet opposing goals for balance:

  1. Balance everything the same at the highest level of play (which is kind of what WoW tries to do)
  2. Balance based on the amount of effort aka taking rotational / situational complexity into account

With this suggestions we could keep the “everything is the same at the highest level of play” as the goal for the baseline while deriving the second approach from popularity.

While the spec brew is capable of clearing that content, there is a reason why (based on Raider io stats) in 12+ for tanks it’s 53% Prot Pala, 18.5% Prot War, 9.3% BDK, 7.9% Guardian, 7.2% VDH and 4.2% Brew or for dps: 0.7% outlaw, 0.7% feral or 1.6% windwalker compared to 14.4% retri, 10.5% enhance, 6.8 Ele, 6.2 Balance.

While the meta is largely based on merit at the top end, it quickly trickles down into the wider player base, even to content where it basically doesn’t matter. That makes it rather difficult for non meta specs to find groups. That is what makes a stale meta undesirable because it just exacerbates the problem and leads to rerolling for those who want to avoid the queue simulator.

Actually let’s just take the overall 7+ data right for who would get a buff in M+ only. That is an admittedly bad example given that this is overall since tww launch but let’s just pretend if it were the results of last week.

DPS:
Devastation
Arms
Outlaw
Feral
Fire

Tanks:
Brew
VDH

Healer:
Pres
Holy

I don’t see a case where it’s undeserved.

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I mean, why not make more classes like that? Kinda tired of the MW monk where you move one pixel out of range and you’re screwed.

Good numbers, not too taxing? Sign me up!

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I see two cases where a complete rework would be required, not a flat buff (Holy Priest and Fire Mage). And one case where a bit of modernisation wouldn’t hurt (Feral). The rest is absolutely and completely fine, so yes, a flat buff would be undeserved.

That would make sense too, if they did it a bit more consistently over the board.

But at the moment, I consider Retri an outlier. So yeah, either tackle the outlier or move more specs into a forgiving spec where an imperfect position doesn’t cut your DPS in half or an unexpected chain pull leads to 14 seconds without being able to multi-dot the bunch…

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This is not a replacement for the class design changes / reworks. I would consider class changes that result in different buttons being pressed separate from numerical balance changes.
Sure those usually go hand in hand as so far all reworks were rather high on the number tuning as well but one doesn’t require the other.
At the same time, I don’t think that a spec that is in dire need for a rework would complain about getting slight numerical buffs in the meantime. And that is exactly the point, yes, the manual well reasoned buff would be better but these kind of automatic small numerical buffs just work right now and make it less likely for a spec to be entirely forgotten for a whole season or two or however long it takes for them to get the attention.

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Agree and disagree. Obviously, it would be better to actually make a spec more attractive to play due to playstyle, rather than performance, but if we can’t have that, then a small buff is welcome.

That’s neither an argument or a reason, just an observation. Which, again, proves OP right.

Really? Explain why. Tell me your grand plan to force people not to play their characters.

It’s a buff that can be turned off by a flick of a finger.

It solves many issues, but not all. If that’s what you meant, then you are correct.

So I guess on the first week of “no one” playing it will already get attractive enough to not be on the bottom. You know, because of the reasonable buff.

Those specs need to be redesigned then. If a flat 5-10% buff breaks it, then it is absolutely un-viable spec. Thankfully, there’s no such thing. But you are free to tell us which specs are those.

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No grand plan required. The plan was to look at keys >=7. That’s approx 30% of the chars? In other words, each individual who plays above that remark has a relatively large, potential, impact. Now think about the fact that any and every change can and will be used to steer towards a desired and potentially undesired output. The whole problem currently is that people follow the top-Meta for content not even remotely the same. Why would we assume that people no longer follow the top players?

In other words…the top 0.1% can easily buff specs they desire by playing something else for two weeks. Great system.

It doesn’t solve anything. It’s nothing but putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. A spec like Feral isn’t non-meta due to their output. Their output is fine. Same for Outlaw in M+. Pres Evoker? Still the healer with the most HPS potential, but we need to buff them because they rather play Aug? C’mon!..

It doesn’t solve anything and it only creates imbalance. That’s, to me, the definition of a bad, actually horrendous, idea.

Not a single buff is reasonable if we base it on popularity. Popularity isn’t objective, nor reasonable.

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Output is exactly what defines the meta for DPS specs but even for tanks and healers it has the biggest impact. Look at mistweaver DF S3, everyone always talks about how terrible they are in terms of utility but suddenly, when they happen to have high (arguably too high) output they are meta.
Look at the season start, prot warrior is the preferred tank due to being able to easily survive things with terrible gear. Later on, once lightsmith dps was buffed to insane levels, prot pala was suddenly the meta which in turn easily enabled the zero interrupt disc priest as healer due to power infusion on the insanely tuned enhance shaman and general higher hps / dps.

If outlaw did enough they would be meta, see DF season 3 or BFA 2, 3, 4. Feral would even need lower absolute numbers considering that everyone would love the extra damage and damage reduction from motw but they are also competing with balance druids.

Mythicstats .com/meta (remove space) is a really neat site to see what was meta in the high keys for a given season.

I would agree if this would be used to also automatically nerf because there are reasons beyond numbers or even ease of play why ret paladin or bm hunter is super popular, just the typical class fantasy.

However, it’s strictly about buffing what is least popular in content where it is the least popular. Those are the objectively best targets to buff as nobody plays them and there has to be a reason for it.

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Such a narrow-minded view isn’t really the truth, is it? Output + survivability + utility (for the content) + compatibility with other specs (and this point is especially interesting), is what defines the meta. And none of those need to be on an edge-level for the content 99% of the players do.

Exactly, so it’s a whole chain - that chain defines the meta. Not just plain output.

Yes, and?

Those are the worst targets as you do not know the reason for it…1 target, 3 target, AoE, those are objective metrics to balance around. Not how popular a spec is…that’s just nuts.

But to go up one level. Why do you even want a less stale meta? Because it drips down to the lower keys, right? So some specs have a more difficult time in finding groups.

So the issue here is that some specs can’t find groups easily, not that some specs are less popular. And buffing lesser popular specs won’t magically change what players invite. You may, at best, shift the mindset of some meta-slaves every couple weeks. But that doesn’t solve the issue; 30 dps for each tank applying early on in the season.

If DPS is in a higher demand / lower in supply, the pickiness goes down, or if tanks are more available, … Simple stuff.

13

I like your approach. And I agree with the objectives you want to acheive. But I disagree on some aspects:

FIRST: you forget that spec performance also depends on the Dungeon and Encounter. And you mention zero about that.

And SECOND : You assume popularity depends on performance. It dosent. The most popular specs by far are Ret Paladins, Warrior DDs, and Hunters. None of which are “meta” or particularly over-performant. They are either easier to play, and/or, have a nice “fantasy” to the spec.

So what your system based on popularity would create is a situation in which Rets, in spite not being the Meta, are continuously nerfed week after week until people stop playing the spec they actually want to play to begin with.

https://raider.io/mythic-plus-rankings/season-tww-1/all/world/leaderboards#role=all:mode=unique:minMythicLevel=2:maxMythicLevel=99

8% of players are Ret Paladins. And are nowhere near the meta.

IMO the solution is the following:

The baseline balancing is NOT in a good state. And the tuning we do get are 2% here, 5% there… completely irrelevant.

We should have weekly turnings. MINIMUM. And not only specs but dungeons as well. And much more aggressive.

Blizzard simply dosent have the guts to do the changes that need to be done. And people (you guys) keep complaining over and over again. So next time they do aggressive tuning and we get 1 spec (Elemental shaman) that is a bit over-tuned stop your whining. They will tune it down ASAP but I want them to continue to do tuning. As often as possible.

Even if in the end we end up with a chaotic season where specs are all over the place. That is GOOD. Because it means that you cannot rely on a meta for extended periods of time. Its better to simply play what you like.

And of course they should tune dungeons as well. Already said it, but I want to insist on this because its what is missing so often.

Then there are 3 more things that need to be done:

  • Raid Buff and utility normalization (not homogenization)
  • Divorce from Raiding and M+. Either total or partial. Both in gear, and expand talents with the phrase "when in a raid group it does X% more or less).
  • The 0.1% title should be awarded by spec. Not overall. To reward off-meta play more than meta play.
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Dungeon encounter don’t matter nearly as much as output, otherwise disc priest, a healer with no interrupts and especially no curse dispells or poison dispells, would not be the meta healer in this season.

Change the minMythicLevel=2 to minMythicLevel=7 and look at survival hunter, historically the lowest played hunter spec of all of them, is played more than beast master.

Really important, nerfs to specs must never happen via this system. I mean you can argue that not receiving a buff and another spec receiving a buff is an indirect nerf to your spec but well.

But then look at mythicstats .com/dps, retri paladin is not really far behind, so they are just upper end of the middle of the pack in terms of dps, a place that is just fine all around.

You cannot and should not have massive swings every week. And weekly manual tiny tunings, sure why not but I don’t see that being any different from this proposal aside from just being a lot more work on their part.

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Not really? I mean, I don’t think many are really eager to be on a rollercoaster ride like that. Aggressive tuning is something for an early PTR. After a week or 2-3 into a season, it should be stabilized and in a desirable state.

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But starts with output and output is the largest consideration

The reasons don’t matter right now, right now they are the classes that need help.

They should obviously still be looked at and are prime candidates for actual, meaningful changes aka reworks, however, those take time. Weeks, months or apparently in some unfortunate cases even years.

You said it best higher up, these weekly buffs are band-aid on a gaping wound. Add enough of them and you eventually stop the bleeding even if other means would be better, if it’s all you have it still helps.

Is there a DPS oversupply, of course there is, however, preferring meta specs is also a pretty big factor in what causes people to wait longer and quite a few of those eventually reroll.
Even when there is a huge oversupply of DPS players, you still need to invite 3 for a run and given about the same ilvl and about the same rating the meta spec will get the invite in most cases.

Also regarding tank supply:
Given that this system also buffs tanks with max hp, which is a huge scaling factor for pretty much all self sustain for every tank, or even kind of the active mitigation in case of bdk, it literally makes tanking easier the longer a season goes on. Which would counteract the well intentioned but terribly executed tank and healer changes.

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There is no such thing as meta spec. Only meta comp and that is where you are wrong.

Disc priest is meta because PPaly and Enh can compensate for that. And also because it has PI. Which is a whole can of worms on its own.

Either way. Dungeon tuning is necessary. For healer performance. For the value of kicks and stuns. Tank busters… ect… All those healers and tanks complaining about M+ is literally that : Lack of dungeon tuning.

Yes. But OP was talking about popularity. And blizzard buffing “all damage by 5%” is exactly the same as putting a aura “+5% damage” on a dungeon.

The have not been doing massive swings every week for 20 years. And for 20 years we are all complaining about the same thing here. So all those “tiny turnings” will simply get us back where we are now.

Might as well select 5 specs that will be meta this season, make them OP and get it over with. Why even try anything different ?

18

Just to clarify, I’m not arguing against (more) dungeon tuning. I just don’t think it really matters for the meta and hence that suggestion would be orthogonal to this proposed spec based aura buff.

The massive swings usually only happen with reworks or at the start of a new season / expansion. That is something that probably should keep happening just to mix things up a bit.
After that it’s usually a couple minor tweaks here and there which exactly has the effect of having a stale meta until the end of the season.

The proposal here would cause tiny, weekly tunings that are much more dynamic as they are based on the popularity of the previous week, so it directly reacts to whatever the player base does.

19

Yeah, for a +20 key where they make calculated pulls. For the average 10 you need a completely different damage profile to be optimal. Following the +20 meta is not gonna do much for the average group…and as long as people don’t realize this, there will NEVER EVER be a solution.

Community perception, is not changed by technicalities.

They don’t wait for a FDK because of their DPS…they wait for a FDK because they can grip those Mages at NC 2nd boss. They wait for a Shaman for an AoE stun, AoE knockup, short cd ranged interrupt.

Maximum DPS potential is irrelevant in lower keys…as nothing in those keys is optimal enough to even get close to those limits anyways.

Changing this to change the meta is…barking at the wrong tree on so many levels.

20

I 100% agree. Every single spec can comfortably do the highest key that gives a reward, aka 10s. And given the small, often single group pulls, something like ret paladin is basically the best possible spec here especially in pugs where you just don’t know what your tank is going to do.

That is where I absolutely disagree. These buffs will change the meta and hence community perception and these changes are just technicalities.

It is indeed not optimal to select the meta classes but it is what happens in practice. The big exception is the aug evoker for good reasons.

But try getting into keys as a feral, windwalker or lots more non-meta specs. Then try the same with a meta spec (assuming similar ilvl and rating ofc), the difference is literally day and night.

There is quite a dynamic behind the meta and what kind of effects it has and what kind of effect those effects in turn have again.
This cyclical / seasonal meta game is going on for so long already that basically everyone knows about it and a large portion of the player base plays into it (again assuming 7+ keys, not the wider player base), that means non-meta specs are playing queue simulator because people making the groups assume that good players will have rerolled to meta specs to avoid the queue simulator thereby exacerbating the problem.