prety sure had that in bfa but ofc blizz is blizz and likes to remove stuff that people like/are good ideas becasue i dunno? people having to much fun?
you know whats funny ? you are right i do remember BFA and how mad BL classes were due to this specially during season 1 and 2 where rogue was so good to the point where you would bring 2 of them 
in s3 and s4 mage was house , but throughout the whole expansion shaman was the ultimate joke in all 4 seasons both in raid and m+ guess what was they’re main complain base on public forums and discord class … give us a bUFFF
I’ll tell you something even funnier. While in paper and logically you are correct, the fact is that all the charts and simulations do not consider your buffs as part of your performance. And player perception is dictated by charts and sims.
What I mean is, let’s say that Mage int buff give 5% increased dps for casters and 5% healing for the healer.
Sadly, if Mage’s DPS on the charts runs even 6-10% lower than the top 3-4 classes, then suddenly Mage isn’t META. Doesn’t matter if with Mage, due to the buffs, the damage in the group is even.
So overall, buffs can hurt damage dealer classes that have them.
while i do agree with most of what you are saying this how ever is always the case …
i was a mage main in bfa season 4 we were doing 2x or even 3x in some dungeons like ML of the rest of the classes and in raid we were toping every boss SL cleave 2 target dosnt matter top by a huge gap , and that was history never repeating itself , ever since that tier mage has been a complete meteocre class ( which is why i walked away from it ) and the only reason people still consider a mage even to this very upcoming season is they’re damage profile and toolkit that they bring .
mage is still meta even in the upcoming tier for m+ , mage dmg and only dmg alone is argueably one of the worst in the game from an overall perspective , its abyssmal literally bottom 5 - 10 specs , how ever the damage profile of Arcane is insanely strong ! why ? well because of prio dmg arcane does insane prio dmg due to the nature of blasting 1 mob and cleaving other (similar to what fire was back before ignite rework) and that is the reason despite being extremely low on dmg they always remain meta . which is what mage mains have been complaining that in combination with the intellect buff and boomkin being PERMAMENTLY META , yes i said it perma meta since DF due to again you guessed it right … BUFFS such as mark of the wild and some nice utility that no other class has like beam and vortex which are subpar versions of buffs , is whats making mage a staple choice for m+
and as for raid , well since the re intrudoction nof arcane intellect you have not had a single tier where people dont run atleast 1 mage because if you dont run it you are losing like what ? 10% dmg and healing on more than half your raid ( considering melee is almost always bad ) so its safe to say that a mage will always exist in a raid regardless of how bad they are simply due to pressing 1 button and buffing everyone else , and as for the dmg itself again might not be the best specially in the upcoming tier but you still want one for that buff , they also have acceess to some of the craziest moves in the game , double shimmer in combination with alter time they can be at one place do something and be right back 40 yrds away something that no other class can do .
look the bottom line of what im saying is simple … get rid of buffs tune the classes properly its not rocket science its just a numbers game , we dont need 1 person to press 1 button and make everyone else do more dmg or healing its stupid and lazy .
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I agree that the buffs are a design issue, but I see it as a necessary evil.
You cannot tune the classes to perform exactly the same and to play differently. Simply not possible. Doesn’t matter if you just call it a “numbers game”.
The moment you remove buffs, raid will fill up with one or two specs in each role, and mythic+, well, if you though you heard DPS players complain about queue times, then be prepared for people to threaten with violence next.
but it is just a numbers game …
classes are already like extremely tight if you look at the sims after each season starts within the first two weeks the numbers that are comming out of raidbot are extremely tight specially ST and cleave (5target) .
the way you make the change is simple , you get rid of the buffs , yes all of them every single one that produces Throughput ( aka dmg/heal ) and then you let the ppl play for a week , you introduce weekly tunings every week for like 4-5 after the tier launches then you tighten things up , few % here few % there some nerfs on the overperformers some nerfs on the underperformers bingo bango you have a nearly perfect situation where the throughputs are like extremely tight that outside of some extremely degen high end content ( aka RWF , and highest Key pushers ) no one will even bother swapping to another class for like idk 1% throughput or 2% i promise you no one will even bother …
it will never be perfect ! yes i do understand that but its way better than what we have right now way better like get me out of this Buff fest , literally every class is first considered how is the buff situation looks like then you will consider anything else … if you are not bringing the right buff you aint doing much here AKA hunter/dev mains in shambles .