As a rogue I whole heartedly agree with the idea that there are far to many DPS specs and the idea that they should all balance is probably what blizzard is thinking.

One thing that people have not brought up is the gimmic fights that exist out there. I'm sure that blizz intends for all of the raid fights to be beatable with a wide array of class composition. However, clearly there are some fights that are MUCH easier to beat with a certain combination. Aran, with two warlocks, Karathress, with a shaman to drop grounding totem, etc.

I hope that blizz doesn't see people crying out for a wider variety of roles as their chance to go out and make more of these gimmick fights.

Personally I like what enhance shaman and Spreists are right now, they are a utility class, there DPS is okay but their true use is the massive buff they give to their party/raid.

Also, and I'm sure that I'll catch a lot of flack for this, there are plenty of pure DPS classes out there, is it really necessary that Elemental Shaman, Balance Druids be given viable individual DPS roles? I think that the game as a whole would be better if blizz found a way to make these as usefull to their party as Spriests and Enhance shaman (instead of the more or less token buffs that they have now) and correspondingly lower their individual DPS. If they went this direction I think that it would also open up a lot more interesting ways to put together raids as well. If Ret Paladin, Moonkin Druid, and Ele Shaman all had a utility spec that was on the order of what Spreist and Enhance shaman were then it could really get interesting decided what to put in or take out. It might also get us out of the rut or there being, more or less, one perfect composition and into a situation where whole raid fights could have different stratagies based on the composition with the utility classes taken into account.

So you might say that there are 4 classes, Tank/DPS/Utility/Healers. Utility being severly underrepresented. I would be really interested in seeing what other ideas people had for "classes."

Honestly, I feel like the big problem with balance stems from three things:

1) PvP (or PvE, depending on your point of view )
2) The need to balance solo vs. group play
3) Group roles and the mechanics of those roles are too generic

The problems presented by having both PvP and PvE have been discussed ad nauseum, and I personally believe that it will never be possible to have them both be 100% balanced at the same time. I think that the best blizzard can hope for is that every class has at least 2 specs that are viable in both categories.

The other issue is blizzard's desire to make solo play viable. Thus, DPS must be integrated into every role in order to ensure at least a basic level of solo-ability. Whether or not this is a good thing is a debate for another thread

But the biggest problem imo is that group roles are too generic. Most people talk about the "holy trinity" or tank/heal/DPS, but in most cases, there are actually several other roles, the most prominent being buffing, CC, and debuffing. The problem is that these roles are most often integrated with either healer (Buffing), or DPS (CC/debuffing).

With the introduction of Death Knights in WotLK, there will be a total of 30 class/spec combos. Making each one useful to a raid without making each one required and/or identical seems like a tough task under the current system. But if we vary things a bit, it seems like less of a challenge.

One way to increase the viability of several different specs that do the same thing is to give them radically different mechanics. Blizzard has started down this road a bit, with the differences between the various tanks and healers, but mostly, these amount to giving different strengths and weaknesses, instead of giving a totally different approach to the role. For instance, what if the 4 tanking classes looked something like:

-Warrior: The "tough" tank. Mitigates damage via innate class abilities. Tanks with a 2-Hander, and relies on a variety of timers to reduce the damage taken from individual attacks/spells*. Has a moderate amount of "oh shit" buttons.

-Bear Druid: The "armor" tank. Mitigates damage via extreme amounts of armor and resists*. Minimal emergency buttons.

-Paladin: The "shield" tank. Mitigates damage via blocking attacks/spells* with his shield. Also has minimal emergency buttons.

-DK: The "avoidance" tank. Doesn't mitigate damage, but instead avoids an enemy's attacks/spells*. Dual Wield tank, with a very high avoidance, and the highest variety of "oh shit" abilities to ensure than bad luck doesn't result in his death.

The result is four tanking classes that are very distinct, yet (in theory) can all be made equally good at the tanking role.

*since I'm creating my ideal WoW, I figure I might as well give spells and melee similar mechanics, which is something that's bugged the hell out of me for a long time.

Similar things could be done for all the other roles. Imagine if warlocks were a true debuff class, that did minimal personal DPS, but instead increased raid DPS by a very large amount, or if paladins were true endurance healers, having weaker heals overall, but never running OOM because they used some sort of rage-like system.

The second (and probably easier) solution is to add more roles (or, more properly, diversify the existing ones). As an example, let's consider the current classes that have an in-combat CC, and their roles (omitting tanking, because the current mechanics make trying to cast a CC while tanking a very bad idea :P):

-Mage: Polymorph (DPS)
-Warlock: Banish, Fear, Seduction (DPS)
-Hunter: Ice Trap, Scare Beast (DPS)
-Druid: Cyclone, Hibernate (DPS or Healing)
-Priest: Shackle (DPS or Healing)
-Paladin: Turn Undead (DPS or Healing)

Now, Druid, Priest, and Paladin CCs are rarely used because they are extremely limited, either because most common mobs are immune, the duration is too short, the cooldown is longer than the effect, or some combination of the 4. Now, the roles are already somewhat separated due to the type restrictions on some CCs, but what if this was done even more so. For instance, it could look something like:

-Mage: Humanoid Control (polymorph), Elemental Control (some other spell)
-Warlock: Humanoid Control (Fear), Demon Control (Banish)
-Hunter: Beast Control (Scare Beast), Giant Control (Some other spell)
-Druid: Beast Control (Hibernate), Dragonkin Control (Some other spell)
-Priest: Undead Control (Shackle), Elemental Control (Some other spell)
-Paladin: Undead Control (Turn Undead), Demon Control (some other spell)
-And several other spells for a few other classes

Basically, if every CC class could CC two types of mobs, each type of mob could only be CCd by 2 classes, and many boss encounters featured several types of adds that needed to be CCd, you suddenly have a wide variety of roles that need filling. As another example, tanking could be expanded to include Main tanking (Warriors and Paladins), add tanking (Feral Druids and Paladins), off tanking on bosses that have temporary aggro reductions (Feral Druids and Death Knights), and off tanking on bosses that fear (Warriors and Death Knights).



Basically, I think that in the development of TBC, blizzard was shooting for the diversification of roles, but as the game has dragged on, it really feels like they've changed courses and are now heading towards the homogenization of the various classes/specs, which I think will eventually result in a very bland and uninteresting game. Hopefully the current trend of changes are just stopgaps until they can introduce some radically revamped talents/abilities for the weaker class/spec combos, like they did with 2.0/TBC.

Having pure DPS classes/specs at all is the root of the problem. It would take too much of an overhaul at this point to even begin to fix the issue so there isn't much point really to go deeply into it.

Honestly, the best we can hope for is if they maybe push the synergistic capabilityes of classes and just have them be raid wide, inflate mob HP accordingly.

Didn't EQ have a few pure DPS classes that were left to the wayside because they didn't offer anything more to a raid?

Personally, I would give up 10% of my DPS as a hunter if it meant I brought something more to the raid other then DPS. DPS is fun and all, but I can still do that while providing some form of Utility other then Misdirect.

As hero classes get implemented, blizzard also needs to be wary that they bring so many synergistic buffer classes that there is no room left for the "pure" classes. Melee groups are already suffering from this, with the potential for 3 different non-pure classes in a single group all synergizing with each other.

What if death knights provided yet another great +melee dps group buff? Will groups be warrior/shaman/druid/death knight, with a lone rogue as the pure-dps? What if in expac 5 they add blademasters?

There needs to be a long term plan for player progression, not simply 10 levels of progression tacked on every 1-2 years. Otherwise, class balance is going to go haywire (as if it wasn't already)

If they choose to add more Hero Classes to the game, it would be very detrimental to add another DPS class. As someone said earlier, there are 3x Tanks, 4x Healers, 11x DPS and with the new expansion, there will be 4x, 4x and 12x. More healers please.

Please no, tranq required bosses were just silly, hunters and raids hated it. You weren't taken because you were wanted you were taken because the entire raid was completely hosed if they didn't have tranq shot. As a hunter I want to be taken because I'm genuinely wanted.

One thing many people miss when they try to really start differentiating things is that you can run into very big problems like the whole tranq situation. Not all guilds are min/max or have an ideal class distribution. However you should reasonably be able to complete a dungeon even if its a bit tougher if you have others to fill that roll.

I don't think you can ever settle down and be sure Blizzard won't tweak your class such that your preferred playstyle goes 'out of fashion' for some particular aspect of the game. It's just the nature of the beast. And that means that sometimes you can roll your class for some perceived role and later find that tweaks have meant that another class might have been a better option.

I also don't think they have a big vision for where the classes are supposed to be. Among game designers, it's largely assumed that balance is something you can easily tweak for once the rest of the game is in place, so if one tweak doesn't work maybe another will. I think they do want to give every class a variety of viable specs for PvE and PvP, but viable doesn't mean the same as optimal.

Talent trees largely fail as a game design mechanic - but it has been fun and it's given players access to a wider variety of play styles than a more streamlined approach would have done, imo. ObBalancingPrediction: I believe shadow priests will be 'nerfed' in the next expansion, not by an actual nerf but by a rehauling of the mana regen mechanics which will make them less essential.

Yeah that's exactly what I meant by a gimmick fight. I think that the idea of breaking down the different classes into CC sections would also basically be a gimmick. I think in order for it to work it really has to be a case where there are more utility classes. Thus you are optimized if you have an enhance shaman in the melee group but you aren't totally screwed like you are when you need mages to sheep in TK and don't have enough on.

Another idea that I've though about would be the idea of differentiating more between physical damage (melee/hunters) and magical damage. I think that it would be really interesting if blizz made it possible to have versions of either so that you could run an all physical damage raid or an all magical damage raid. I think the latter is possible already, but the former would require a class that has better aoe. Blademaster that has a whirlwind type ability that can be spammed like arcane nova?

There are fights that do require a specific class when theres multiple classes available to do a single job in order to make the fight go smoothly.

Take the Kael'thas fight for example; You require a warrior to tank lord Sanguinar to counter his AoE fear, a warlock is helpful when dealing with Capernian as they can mitigate some of the damage with soullink while still keeping a decent amount of TPS and Kael'thas himself is alot safer to tank with a warrior due to shield wall and the health they can get from last stand and a nightmare seed if a pyro is going to hit more then once.

Theres also fights such as fathom lord that warriors struggle to tank well because he hits so fast, shield block is used up before it's ready again and the warrior is open to crushings alot. it's fights like that where a druid shines with high AC and health to lessen the damage crushings inflict. and theres the murloc adds that are summoned where a protection specced paladin is great to use.

I think Blizzard need to keep those things in mind when making raid encounters to ensure the unique abilities and strengths a class brings when theres more then 1 class doing the same job is wanted, and if they add further unique strengths, they give them the opportunity to use them.

Giving classes dinstinct strengths over another class doing the same job isn't going to work if they make a fight that doesn't require those strengths. It seems a difficult task though when trying to ensure DPS are also given such diverse roles as theres only 3 types, melee, ranged and AoE. if a fight is melee unfriendly then you simply stack the raid with more ranged dps which could be any of the 3 'pure' ranged DPS classes and if an enounter requires AoE dps, just stick a mage of any type in there.

As for healing, my experience healing most encounters is non-existant so I won't comment on that.

I don't know if I will really be able to explain the difference, maybe it is just me. But what you describe above is min/maxing in my eyes. That's fine there there are differences between tanks. It adds flavor while at the same time not being such a huge difference that you can't go ahead and do the fight without the optimal tank (well you probably couldn't for Keal, but who doesn't have at least one warrior or pally tank in their guild?).