This thread is just me being curious. What is stopping Blizzard from making spec tuning more often?
Everyone can see that a spec like Survival Hunter is underperforming on Single Target damage. This is clear from both logs and simulations. So what is stopping Blizzard from just tuning one of their single target abilities? And I’m no talking about waiting months to do it in 9.1. I’m talking about now.
What is stopping Blizzard from tuning certain abilities NOW?
Cause meta, some people only play meta classes, imagine if they need to reroll each week.
Plus some specs are broken without gear like feral druid on start of expansion and other needs gear like affliction walock.
Havent seen class tunning outside of patch since legion
I believe there was a buff to ST recently on ptr.
https://ptr.wowhead.com/news/survival-hunter-class-changes-in-patch-9-1-ptr-build-38511-guide-writer-analysis-322128
Suspicions mostly point at MDI, the Great Push and similar.
Really wish they’d host those on isolated realms that don’t get patched, and let everyone else have weekly tuning. Honestly don’t think it’s true that most players “prefer” a steady meta where they don’t change over time. Ask a resto shaman how 8.0 felt, or ask a mistweaver what it’s like to be trash tier in PvP for 9 months straight.
It’s not reassuring, it doesn’t let us find our feet or make us feel more stable, it just sucks when we know that rerolling is the best thing we could do for our team.
2% weekly tuning for top 5 and bottom 5 classes, rotate everyone in and out of FOTM on the regular.
#EndTheMeta
Either they are incapable or they dont want the spec to work. Survival is more of a canditate of “we dont want it to work” given how its only real moment of shine was during 8.3 in pvp. The spec is suffering from 2 major problems in PvE. 1: Its numbers are poop. 2: Its a melee spec of a ranged class.
Look at subtlety for instance. They are literally hard failing to fix the spec since its nerf in 8.0
But I’m not talking about gamebreaking tuning that would change the meta. I’m talking about the specs that are extremely underperforming in certain areas. Survival is the best example. On single target they sim approx 5.9 k dps with the best covenant while the best specs are siming above 7k dps. So tuning Survival single target a little bit would not change anything in terms of the meta.
Also, in terms of gear scaling it would help if they did tuning much more often. So specs could be balanced over time based on how they scale with gear.
Yes and that’s good.
But my question is why wait until 9.1? Are there some technical issues stopping them from doing it now.
Agree. But I don’t expect them to fix major class issues right away. But in terms of the numbers being poop it should be a very easy fix. They can just adjust one of Survivals single target abilities by x % and it would at least make the spec a bit more viable without doing anything gamebreaking. Tuning outlier numbers should be something they could do on a daily basis almost.
Blizzard made a blue post at some point. I think it was in Legion. Explaining why they stopped doing frequent balance changes. And it boiled down to people getting angry that classes were receiving small nerfs and buffs every(other) week. Which made people feel like they had wasted their time on a class or spec and now needed to reroll or drop their favorite spec. Because their spec had either just received a nerf, or another spec had gotten a buff big enough to pull ahead.
I understand the argument but to be honest I think it’s a bad excuse. Because tuning the single target abilities of a spec like Survival by a small amount wouldn’t suddenly change the meta.
Again, I’m not expecting them to make meta defining changes. I’m just speaking about the extreme underperforming outliers.
You are absolutely right. But it wasn’t a singular small change. It was the result of several balance patches that made people upset.
Say if SV hunters (and a few other underperforming spec) got a ~3% damage buff and the top performing spec got a ~3% damage nerf several weeks in a row. The meta would change. And people didn’t like it, as it made them feel like they were forced to reroll. Which is silly, but (most) people really only wants to play whatever is currently the best.
But they don’t necessarily have to go that far.
Right now Survival sims 5.9k on single target. Tune it’s abilities so that it sims 6.3 k. It would still be far behind other specs.
Tuning bottom outliers specifically in their lacking areas (st or AOE) is not equal to changing the meta.
Sure that would be ideal. But they just… don’t want to.
“Something something classes should have strenghts and weaknesses”, except for mages. lol. And DH’s apparently because they are getting some decent single target buffs. Which is the area they were lacking in before.
Yeah Ion must have been trolling when he said that.
There had been plenty of class tuning outside of patches in SL.
Just not in the recent months.
I think it’s because they simply abandon 9.0 to focus on 9.1
Then once 9.1 is settled in they’ll focus on 9.2 and leave 9.1 as it is
Blizzard is a multi-billion dollar company but pretends it has the budget of a couple million dollar company. They don’t spend money if they dont think it’ll have direct profit returns. Paying staff to develop content that has already been developed and “sold” to them is nonsensical.
I just don’t understand how it can take more than 10 min to tune one ability.
Harsh reality is Blizzard doesn’t care much about high m+ and that’s the content where frequent balance is required.
They do their tuning for the raid in the first weeks and that’s mostly it.
To be fair they actually did a lot more this season.
I think the balance is kinda good.
The main issues are aoe cap and pride. With those you require certain specs to do high keys.
But for the vast majority of the playerbase I think balance is very good this patch.
And I completely understand the argument of them not wanting to change the meta. But basic tuning for extreme bottom outliers should be possible instantly without changing anything overall.
Also, tbqh, screw those guys.
They can play on an even field with the rest of us, or they can rage and leave to play console games.
Pretty sure far more players would be happier with rapid balance changes and an unpredictable “meta” that changes weekly. Your class sucks this month? Give it a few weeks and it’ll be fine.
Much better than “Your class sucks in 9.0? Wait for 9.1.”
You’d think they’d just… cap AoE for all classes. Or uncap it. Players probably wouldn’t mind either way, but to only cap some classes is just weird.
Those guys are the ones who keep wow alive.
Because people want to be like them and play and try to work for it.
Casuals have left 2 months after expansion started when the only content for them was world quests.
People just need to learn that is impossible to balance all for PVE and PVP. Some will be good on PVE but bad on PVP and vice-versa.
There’s a lot more players that casuals and FOTM rerollers 
Nearly everyone I know is a regular player, dungeoneer and raider. Most of them pick a character at the start of an expansion and that is their raiding main. Very few reroll.
But that’s exactly why there should be weekly adjustments, including to PvP talents. You’re 2% behind this week. Next week you’re 2% ahead. Nobody cares about just 2% anyway, but it’s nice to know it will change.
Meantime it’s no fun at all being way behind with no prospect of anything being different for months more.
Unfortunately it would require Blizzard to hire people to actually look at rankings and raid dps logs, so it won’t happen. They’re not fond of spending money 