As the title says, I thought it might be interesting to have a discussion about the clarity of the developer vision going into TBC for the various classes. I'd prefer to avoid having this turn into a bitch session about everyone's favorite class's percieved shortcomings, and instead focus on what you view to be well thought out and implemented portions of your class.

We spend a lot of time theory crafting, a moderate amount of time bitching, and some other time puzzled. It might be helpful to have a thread for celebrating the successes of the developement as well.

I'll kick it off. From what I have seen, going into the burning crusade, priests seem to have a remarkably well developed and coherent class vision. They are dps/healer hybrids, with a well structured pvp, healer, damage talent set, and synergestic abilities. In particular, the design of mass dispel and prayer of mending both create dynamic and interesting play decisions, and the interaction between prayer of mending and shadow word death in 5 mans is quite elegant. Add to this a well rounded dps tree, a very nicely structured holy tree (yes there's some problems but the overall appeal is good) and a solid disc tree and I think this class is on target for what blizzard intends. (It also helps that what blizzard intends seems to be very obvious)

So what do you admire about the developer "vision" for wow 2.0?

(I suspect this thread may help some of the people who are dissatisfied with their current class find another class that suits their internal want-list better, assuming we can keep it coherent.)

I was very happy to see Intervene added to the warrior class. While it's been possible to simulate that functionality with intercept and taunt, the "lore" concept of a warrior rushing to someone's defense seems better. Until now, pulling a mob off another player from range has only been possible for other classes (blessing of protection, distracting shot, etc?) so it's about time that warriors got that ability for their role as a group's tank.

I think that Druids have an extremely well organized and coherent class vision. Right Anias? ;)

***

To be serious, I think Warriors are an extremely polished and extremely well done class on paper and most of the time in practice as well.

You have tools for almost every situation you need to deal with as far as tanking goes. Yes, even multi-target aggro is okay, it just gives you carpal tunnel syndrome...oh wait. :P That aside, Shield Block + Revenge has always been elegant, and Charge and Intercept are just abilities that are fun as heck.

I'm pleased that it seems like the tanking role of a Warrior is being emphasized more in TBC, and that it's gotten more difficult. It'll more quickly weed out those players who can't react or act quickly enough when they need to tank.

I am displeased with the flat aggro modifiers we've had because it makes tanking downright hard on the hands these days. I am also dissatisfied with Arms lately these days as well. If not for Mortal Strike, I think all sane Warriors would give it up in a heartbeat.

I think there have been many good changes made to the Shaman class but it still seems very much like they are just trying random things with the hope of seeing what works instead of figuring that out ahead of time.


From 60-70 druids got specific abilities catered to each spec. Lifebloom for trees, feral skills etc. Not every druid might use these regularly but the ones designed for their build they will use all of the time.

Pallies from 60-70 received very specific new abilities to cater to their new tanking and dps roles. Again not every pally will use them all but if they are designed for his current role and playstyle. They strengthen the class roles.

Mages also have new abilities catered to fire/frost/arcane. Abilities designed to strengthen the current class vision. I could go on forever here but the point is clear.

Shaman on the other hand get the totally uninspired addition of a self only water shield and 3 totems. Ofcourse bloodlust is great but it was also a forgone conclusion and does nto favor one build over another. None of these abilities is catered to any of the styles of play. A shaman at level 70 plays *exactly* the same as a shaman at 60 did which I think implies a large failure on the design side. The spell ranks have different names and the totems might be a different type but I was still dropping totems before and I will still do so now, nothing feels different.

This may not be fair but whenever someone professing to be class x starts a thread to talk about how great class y is, it's hard not to suspect a hidden agenda. But I'll bite anyway to point out my main class design gripe...

Blizzard has designed an excellent multifaceted game. We have solo play, small and large party pve, and small and large party pvp. And yet half the classes in the game are allowed to minmax in such a way that specializing for one particular gameplay type can severely limit you for the others to the point that the answer is "spend the cash to respec between raids/arena matches or roll an alt".

They've certainly done a great job with Shadow to give it the kind of utility needed to cross from a "pvp spec" to a useful "pve spec". I think they still have work to do on Holy (and other healbot specs) and Warrior Prot to say the same about them.

<<Note: First i would like to ask for your forgiveness if i went too far on the ranting, but i'm really disapointed with the direction my class is going and the fact that the lack of changes signal that Blizzard is fine with what we got.>>

To be honest i disagree with you completely here, Anias. I think priest class has two fundamental issues: poor implementation of the spells and the discipline tree. All classes can perform their primary role (if they have more than one, such as warriors and druids, but not rogues or mages) with points in just 1 tree. A druid that wants to heal can expend points in the restoration tree. A warrior that wants to tank expends points in the protection tree and so on. Priests need to expend points both in the holy tree and in the disc tree to be good healers. You don't see shadow/holy builds around. Having that said, it removes a lot of versatility from the class, because you have to expend more to get the same results, netting fewer points to expend of offensive abilities.

In theory, priests sound ok, but the implementation of the abilities is pretty poor. Mass dispel sounds awesome at first glance, but the mana cost is so high that it is prohibitive. With that in mind, you will only use it when it is the only option to dispel something (ie. paladin shield and ice block). But the spell has a casting time, meaning it is not so hard to run out of the area or cast a seal to be dispelled instead of the shield. High mana costs is also an issue with the direct healing spells, like Greater Heal and Binding Heal.

Same goes with PW:S. The spell scales at 10% (or 15, don't recall) of your healing bonus. That means that it either is too strong as soon as you reach 70 and gets balanced when people are geared, or it is balanced when you are leveling gear, but is mediocre when you reach epic gear status. In this case, it is balanced for the moment you reach 70. Using it on PvP is nice vs warriors, but pretty weak otherwise, when prayer of mending can cure about the same ammount as an instant cast costing HALF the mana and with no weakened soul effect (and since PoM scales, it will heal for even more later). The lack of spell scaling also affect Lightwell.

Circle of healing (41pt holy) also has a serious problem, which is low HPS, making it weak, when compared to Prayer of Healing (untalented spell).

Back at the discipline tree, it is a mix-match of passives bonuses (unbreakable mind, silent resolve, mental agility), improment to spells (improved inner fire, improved PW:F, improve PW:S, improved mana burn, reflective shield), holy dps talents (force of will, focused power) and nice spells (PI, Inner focus, Pain Suppresion). The tree has no focus, also some passive abilities are critical to healing, like meditation, some are critical to every priest, like improved Fort.

Having a disc tree like this is aint good because it gives nice passive bonuses, but they do not define ANYTHING. If you want to heal you will go holy, if you want to do damage, you will go shadow. Disc is a tree to expend talent points on bonuses that you can't go by without, but you don't see people with 41 points, except for the ones who want pain suppression (a poor choice in my opinion). The tree should have some personality, but i don't see how that is possible without "stealing" abilities from the other trees. Also it will never be a good tree by itself, kind like the arcane tree for mages. You are never an arcane mage, you spec frost of fire and get a handful of abilities there (arcane tree) that are critical to you and you cant go by without them. Some go further down the tree to get Presence of Mind (like PS) for pvp purpouses, but by doing so they lose effectiveness on at all times, except when that ability is up.

All in all, Prayer of Mending is an AWESOME ability and it is the reason i will stick around as a priest. As a sidenote, we had 9 priests when raiding on WoW classic, before we stopped by late november. We are now starting to organize our raid for TBC and out of those, we have 3 priests (1 that will only play because he got a shadow spot). That must be telling something.

As an old priest, I especially appreciated the thought that was put in for a class-only epic quest. I feel that it was an iconic part of the priest experience, and I'm happy I have my benediction to this day.


Conversely, as a new hunter, I'm sad I probably won't get the same chance to go after my Rhok'delar :(

Well, I play most classes at 60 and in a variety of roles. I've also played a Hunter and Mage in Beta, although we fizzled out before the 'raid' content. Regardless, my Mage is unquestionably my main character but I like healing on occasion and love tanking as well.

From my personal experience I would say that the Hunter, Warlock and Rogue classes all have fairly coherent identities. While the mechanics are often tweaked strangely, warlocks especially have synergistic abilities and definitely fill a role in a group that can be fairly clearly defined. Rogues as well, especially if played for group/raid success more than just eMeters domination, are excellently designed. No they are not exactly perfect in my estimation but again that is a question more of needing subtle changes rather than a problem with the core mechanics. Hunters as well have a very strong design and by 70 have access to a variety of important raid and group level tools. They are a bit different though if for no other reason than that they have to fill some oddball roles on occasion (no, I don't count tShot) and sometimes it is a little difficult to see what the intended role(s) exactly are.

The Mage class, I think, has a strong and coherent PvE role. I can and do argue quite often about how well the class meets that role or what it should encompass but perhaps does not but I do think it is likely well-defined in a document somewhere and it shows.

WoW is interesting this way overall. Every class has a defined set of roles but the developers are notoriously hard to pin down on what those roles are. There seems to be an institutional hatred for pigeonholing, even though MMORPGs almost require it. I love using classes and abilities in non-traditional ways as much as the next guy but it does make for a bit too much class balance bitching.

Having played quite a few characters in both high end PvE and PvP, I can honestly say no class is completely terrible.

Some of Blizzard's solution's to certain problems make people feel that Class X is overpowered because they do Thing Y better than them or to them in the case of PvE. But if you look a WoW as a whole, there is virtually nothing that is heavily overbalnced in any direction (with the caveat that once things -are- found to be broken, they at least make attempts to fix them. Reckoning and Kazzak being a good example, 5 man Loatheb being another)

To briefly comment on priests, I find that pure shadow is a very interesting and powerful spec, and a high holy 14 discp/rest holy is also very powerful (albeit rather boring -> the fact that you can skip ALL the 11, 21, 31, and 41 point holy talents and not loose much is sad). So long as one specs purely into healing or dps and does one or the other exclusively, you have a very strong character. High discipline however, is frankly a joke with no redeeming qualities that I can see (maybe a little bit in pvp in certain limited situations), as is any holy/shadow build.

This is all from a raiding/serious pvping perspective incidentally not 5-mans or any other fairly casual pursuits.

As for what I really like, it's frankly druid feral and shaman enchancement.

Feral allows you in a single spec to be a very good tank (perhaps not as good as a prot warrior but better then a non-prot warrior by all accounts), along with a very good dps class with just a change in gear. The recent changes to the strength-> healing talent makes having catform druids dps, then shift out, throw a few quick heals then go back to dps a very elegant way to play. A feral druid who is good at playing all parts of his spec (tanking, dps, and little bit of heal+innervate+bres when dpsing) should be an excellent addition to any raid. Some fights require offtanks where threat generation/mitigation is not as crucial, it seems that a feral druid can fullfill those better then a non-prot warrior, while having nearly (or equal?) to fury warrior dps on fights where offtanks are unnecesary. Throw in LotP too and it's just a very sweet class.

Shaman enchacement, through fast weapons+JoW+Shamanistic rage should be literally a mana battery for healing while doing very decent dps while attacking. With this spec a raid shaman should be able to output decent dps while giving out alot of healing as well (alot like a feral cat druid although probably less dps but much more healing along with better buffs). The main issues as I see it with this spec is that you may be too threat-limited, and your pvp power is somewhat shady. At the very least you'd need different weapons for pvp (slow) vs. pve (fast). This is the class I'm going to reroll to personally.

Whoever thought up Unstable Affliction and Soul Siphon for warlocks is taking the class (and the affliction spec) in a great direction.

Warlocks are experiencing a new master debuffer/kill everything slowly playstyle, rather than the pre 2.0 burst-damage-or-lose class we were.

The devs have always stated shaman are supposed to be an offensive hybrid, and starting with 2.0 it really feels like we are. I've been trying out enhancement since the patch and have been quite happy with the results. In a group with a feral druid, fury warrior, rogue and hunter, the increase in dps that my buffs give are just incredible. If I have any complaint, it's that instead of just sitting back and healing (which is what raid shaman did pre-2.0), I have to get in the thick of things to be useful to my group. It's a radical change in playstyle, and makes enh very different from ele or resto. I also suspect that we'll be seeing some changes in the high end elemental tree soon, which should make the shaman class even better.

My point is you can have two very different playstyles which are both extremely useful to your party/raid. Before 2.0 this just wasn't possible, and it's a clear sign of developers starting to push the shaman class toward a unique roll.

There seems to be a great deal of effort in TBC to provide for alternate-spec synergies to offset not being dominant at a role, e.g. shadow priest VT, ret paladin JotC, enhance shaman attack power buff. I really enjoy this as I've always found alt specs more interesting and these new synergies really make the question of the 'ideal spec' pretty situational.

As for more class specific things I like in TBC/2.0:

- Spiritual Attunement + VE + VT. Such an elegant way of letting priests do DPS while indirectly providing a large amount of healing in the area they're arguably best at, i.e. total group healing. Or, as a reversal, the paladin can use the mana provided by the priest's healing to fuel their DPS, especially consecrate.

- Righteous Defense. What I've found to be most useful is the enormous range on the ability (40 yards). And while the mechanics is somewhat awkward, it can sometimes be beneficial since only the friendly target has to be within the spell's range. The extremely long effective range really makes it ideal as a semi-emergency 'CC' (in that the mob spends time walking around rather than attacking things). Maybe not the greatest raiding tool (yet...I really have to wonder if there's some encounter that could benefit from multiple paladins chain-taunting off each other from 40 yards away) but it's very well suited as a sort-of Blessing of Protection on a much shorter cooldown.

- Light's Grace. The biggest problem with paladin healing pre-patch was the lack of a good, big, fast heal (we were mana efficient, but it was hard to trade mana efficiency for speed). Light's Grace goes a long way to address that problem for healadins. This also helps distinguish between healadins and non-healadins - I realize this is both a plus and a minus in some ways, but I like that spec matters more.

- Emphasis on spell crit for healadins. One of the most disappointing moments in WoW for me was realizing that Eye of the Beast specifically excluded Paladins (there were other crit items with similar restrictions, but EotB was the big one for me). It's good to see that the itemization in TBC specifically favors spell crit for healadins (as does the new talent increasing Holy Light crit percentage), and that different healing classes will probably favor (slightly) different stats.

- New Righteous Fury/Improved Righteous Fury. Righteous Fury now increases the threat generated by all Holy spells, including healing. The talent provides a very impressive 6% mitigation to all damage while Righteous Fury is up, as well as the increase in threat. This feels like an elegant solution to the issue of Paladin heal threat values. Having Improved Righteous Fury means trading mitigation for less healing threat, which at least for me as a healadin is an interesting dilemma. I like that this provides an option rather than an obvious choice as to which is better in all situations.

- New spell coefficients for Paladins. It was extremely difficult to generate significant DPS as a Holy Paladin before 2.0. Now, Holy Paladins can benefit from spell damage about as much as an untalented mage - which is fairly significant scaling with gear that simply didn't occur before. I don't feel like I'm really gimping myself to be a healadin - I'm still not going to be DPSing in raids, no, and I don't expect that my DPS will be anywhere near a dedicated DPS class, but it should be better, relatively. I don't think I'll feel like I'm struggling as much when soloing or farming given these changes.

- Crusader Aura. Going faster is always good.

The net change is that I feel like the healadin role is a bit more dependent on talents (i.e. I feel like my specialization is providing a real benefit), yet I also feel like my support ability has also improved with things like Spiritual Attunement and the ranged taunt. Itemization also looks much better - hopefully less cloth is going to be necessary to do my job well.

I -adore- Cloak of Shadows. It added (wru level 66 :() a level of refinement and strategy to my play that I can't wait to get back, and dovetails nicely with other Rogue defenses by filling a previously neglected niche. In PvP it might have been a touch before its time (many of the 41-point talents were/are), but in PvE skillful use of CoS will further distinguish competent Rogues.

my2c

Classes with clear vision (BC versions)
---------------------------------------------
Warlocks - Vision: Improving affliction. More debuff slots.
Rogues - Vision: lowering cooldown requirements.
Druids - Vision: Master of hots and able to transform into quite a bit of utility. Made better by stacking hots.
Shaman - Vision: Better damage dealers + healers.
Paladins - Vision: Better tanking + damage.
Hunters - Vision: Make the hunter ranged combat system work better

Rest
----------------------------------------------
Warriors - Vision: Don't know
Priests - Vision: Don't know
Mages - Vision: Stagnant (stuck in first beta mindset): Can anyone come up with a vision for the mage class?

Soapbox

I'm pretty happy with two out of three rogue trees, but the last has rather suffered from popularity. Going by order of experience:


Assassination is a lovely tree. The poison talents used to be a mess, but they were streamlined very effectively and brought into synergy with new skills; Mutilate and Envenom both make great use of an aspect of the class that was unfortunately overlooked prior to the new talents. I know I'm gushing, but Mutilate has been a welcome change in gameplay and PvP viability for many raiding rogues I know.


Combat, on the other hand, seems to suffer from a definite lack of vision and coherence. Up to Adrenaline Rush it's a great tree that makes sense, but after that it just starts meandering; I'll try to outline the conceptual problems without falling into whining here.

Blade Twisting, req 25: A two point talent for 10/20% chance to daze your opponent for 8 seconds on using your basic damage abilities. By all accounts a horrid talent, but there's a reason for it's existence: Way back when TBC was first announced, the final Combat tree had Shadow Strikes, a 41 pointer that added 10% shadow damage to your yellow attacks provided that your target was dazed. The synergy is immediately apparent and the consequences were interesting, but Shadow Strikes was scrapped very quickly. We're left with a daze proc talent that devs couldn't be bothered to remove and that almost nobody bothers taking, a vestigial remnant of the tree's evolution.

So what was added in it's place? Surprise Attacks, a talent that made your basic damage abilities (not autoattacks!) undodgeable. It was as ho hum as it sounds, and as people did the math, an amusing fact came to light; Surprise Attacks actually reduced your DPS, due to the way WoW rolls dodges and crits together. Somewhat flustered by this blunder, the devs added a percentual damage increase to the affected abilities, which remedied the DPS problem and brought it to the version we see today. The talent was still pretty ho hum, but it did have an interesting use in PvP; A rogue popping Evasion against a deep Combat rogue was in for a nasty surprise.
Surprise Attacks is getting changed again in the imminent patch, so that it only makes your finishing moves undodgeable and increases basic attack ability damage by 10%. It's more underwhelming than ever, a talent you might as well take if you go that deep into the tree (Combat Potency is the prize to aim for), but that manages to change your gameplay in absolutely no way, shape, or form except raising your DPS somewhat.
10% is a decent bit and I don't mean to sneeze at it, but I expect 41-point talents to be somewhat interesting gameplaywise. Surprise Attacks fails miserably in this respect, and the way it's developed into today's version just gives the impression that the devs couldn't think of anything fun for the talent slot.

One last gripe: Weapon Expertise. I won't go into the whys and wherefores of the +skill nerf, but note that +skill used to be very powerful, and after much clamoring they added a well placed and popular talent. Then they removed what made +skill powerful and thus completely destroyed Weapon Expertise. These don't strike me as coordinated actions following a long term plan . . .


Subtlety I can't talk much about since I haven't had more than five points in it for ages, except that I think it fits the feel of the class wonderfully. With the advent of TBC and higher sta values, it seems to aim to make the rogue a slippery, agile combatant that's hard to pin down and likes to deliver nasty surprises when you least expect it.




Off on a tangent, one thing that's always smacked me as lacking coordination was the % damage reduce talents added to various classes with the TBC talents. Compare the following:

Prismatic Cloak (Mage, Arcane, 25 req): Reduces all damage taken by 2%/4%.

Deadened Nerves (Rogue, Assassination, 30 req): Reduces all physical damage taken by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%.

And lest people demand mage nerfs:

Frozen Core (Mage, Frost, 20 req): Reduces Frost/Fire damage taken by 2%/4%/6%.

Elemental Warding (Shaman, Elemental, 5 req): Reduces Frost/Fire/Nature damage taken by 4%/7%/10%.

I could go on. Perhaps there's some rhyme or reason for this disparity in effectiveness. If there is, please enlighten me, because I certainly don't see it.

The three classes I have played enough to say something about:

Warlocks have two well defined, unique trees, great direction, great balance between them (although if the one DoT-change goes live it might be offset a bit). Both Affliction and Demonology have many synergies and unique talents building up a very good direction and playstyle. Destruction is more or less a wannabe-mage tree, a bit boring in my opinion but still has its merits.

Hunters again have two well defined, clear trees with many synergies - MM gives you more flexibility and options for your gun/bow, BM focuses you around your pet more than anybody else. Survival sadly lacks in any of this. It seems pretty much a afterthought even with the many changes it has received. I think the vision once was that a Hunter was able to switch easily between Melee and Ranged, being strong in both (like the Ranger class in D&D), but somewhere on the way the developers realised it would make a Hunter too strong, and since then the Melee aspect is dead and buried, the Survival tree only exists to give some buffs to some general aspects of the Hunter (more range, more damage against certain groups etc).


Priests. Well, Shadow has a very nice and direct vision, doing damage while regaining mana/health passively with it and sharing this with the group. It is really clever and unique compared to other classes. The other trees lack any direction, vision or motivation. Non-Shadow Priest lack a defined "why should I take a Priest over class x,y,z?". I won't say more since Anias doesn't want any complaints here. ;)

Coming from playing a hunter to now a mage, it was immediately clear to me how humdrum the hunter class was compared to a class that had a clear vision. BC is helping that, but alot of the skill was taken out of the class (you could tell by damage a good hunter from a bad one easily, since timing on rotations mattered so much). I guess the vision the devs have for hunter and the one I have never matched up.

The great irony of this game, is that the "pure" classes are better hybrids than the hybrid classes.

For well over a year, warriors were hands down the best hybrid in the game. Best tank and often the best dps. Throw in pvp viability and warriors were by far the best class in the game. Couldn't do a PuG instance without them, couldn't raid without them, didn't want to do a BG without at least on your team. Warriors were the only class in the game that could come to a raid specced not for their primary role. Despite all the "nerfs" I still think warriors will remain an excellent hybrid in the expansion.

My prediction is that priests will be the best hybrid in the expansion. The dps, and incredible raid synergy in the shadow tree is too good to pass up.

So those are my votes. The two pure classes from the holy trinity, who are ironically the best hybrids in the game (either now or soon)

I must admit that I'm pretty happy with what I can gather of the Warrior class "vision." I think if anything is lacking, it's implementation and balance, but those are difficult to perfect, and sometimes the scales tip too far in one way or another. However, the basics of the class strike me as an interesting mechanic. The interplay of stances and rage, and the idea of rage as mana/energy that is gained and spent during combat...it's cool, and unique in the game (ok, bears have a flavor of it too :P)

(apologies for the double post, but editing one edits the other it seems...) :zoid:

You do have a valid point here, but it's not unique to the priest class. I was going to spell out the implication of it, but you did it yourself - you cannot have a shadow/holy build. But for druids, you cannot have a balance/feral build, it's just never been done. There's probably examples from other classes too, but druids are the one I'm most familiar with. I think of the discipline tree as the "utility" tree. I think of the arcane tree for mages as being the same. And for druids, our utility talents tend to be spread out (nature's grasp in balance, feral charge in feral). I think it's mostly a wash.

I'm not saying you don't have a valid point, just that you're not in a unique situation.

This statement only partially works because two of the classes you're misidentifying as 'pure' were intentionally built as hybrids. Mages most certainly do not function as a hybrid.

With only two roles? Hardly. That distinction will go to either the Druid or Paladin.