World of Warcraft: Current Year

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Caeden

Silver Baronet of the Realm
7,340
11,820
A lot of tech stocks went super soft the past two weeks, but they seemed to get assfucked Se7en style after Blizzcon...where there's smoke....

I'll see if the new stuff is worth seeing. Maybe I'll just be a regular mythic alt guy now if i come back...
 

Koushirou

Log Wizard
<Gold Donor>
4,797
12,039
I've already quit and all, but goddamn seeing that the enhancement rework that they promised us is once again turning some fucking knobs makes me irrationally angry and yet not surprised in the least, either. I'll never understand why the fuck they hate the spec so much.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
19,787
13,294
They don't. The class is OP in PvP so anytime they try to adjust it to be competitive in PvE it starts obliterating everything in PvP and they nerf it because they can't figure out how to balance a class that has as much utility as shaman.

I mean... the class is ridiculous. AoE Stun, AoE Snare, AoE Knockback, 12 second cd ranged kick, Bloodlust, Hex, Reincarnate, Ghost Wolf, Tremor Totem, Purge. Goddamn.
 
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BoozeCube

Von Clippowicz
<Prior Amod>
47,445
278,450
They don't. The class is OP in PvP so anytime they try to adjust it to be competitive in PvE it starts obliterating everything in PvP and they nerf it because they can't figure out how to balance a class that has as much utility as shaman.

I mean... the class is ridiculous. AoE Stun, AoE Snare, AoE Knockback, 12 second cd ranged kick, Bloodlust, Hex, Reincarnate, Ghost Wolf, Tremor Totem, Purge. Goddamn.

If only PvP mattered at all in this game... Goddamn I would like to see a new PvE only MMO that doesn't allow that stupid shit to buttfuck the enjoyable part of the game.
 
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a c i d.f l y

ಠ_ಠ
<Silver Donator>
20,060
99,459
They don't. The class is OP in PvP so anytime they try to adjust it to be competitive in PvE it starts obliterating everything in PvP and they nerf it because they can't figure out how to balance a class that has as much utility as shaman.

I mean... the class is ridiculous. AoE Stun, AoE Snare, AoE Knockback, 12 second cd ranged kick, Bloodlust, Hex, Reincarnate, Ghost Wolf, Tremor Totem, Purge. Goddamn.
And yet finds itself as being fucking useless in PVE because none of that shit is useful or negated while having shit dps or hps. Yay pvp balancing bullshit.
 

Rali

Trakanon Raider
187
321
Seems like a good point to leave my avatar here....

Played a shaman exclusively since 2004 and now considering a main change as their inability to balance my class is pissing me off.
 
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Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,465
4,413
I've already quit and all, but goddamn seeing that the enhancement rework that they promised us is once again turning some fucking knobs makes me irrationally angry and yet not surprised in the least, either. I'll never understand why the fuck they hate the spec so much.

The problem here is 'class balance' combined with 'spreadsheet engineering'.

If your goal is to make everyone average across a fairly narrow range of events then you are already restricting yourself. If you then elect to implement that by a fairly limited set of options then you are walled up pretty tight.

No one can be significantly stronger than anyone else in any singular combat situation and that is a problem. For a DIKU type MMO there were only so many possible knobs that could be turned originally and a bunch of those (CC, short-term buffs, turrets) have been taken off the table by a variety of decisions that led to this point.

Most people on this forum can come up with half a dozen ways to make Enhancement Shaman better without any new engineered functionality, but those would all break the 'balance' in some situation and so those ideas are rejected.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
19,787
13,294
And yet finds itself as being fucking useless in PVE because none of that shit is useful or negated while having shit dps or hps. Yay pvp balancing bullshit.

All of what I listed is extremely useful in PvE but yes they suffer in PvE precisely because Blizzard won't give them good sustained DPS, because their burst + utility is broken in PvP. At least that's my take on why shaman generally suck in PvE.

Elemental can actually do really well in M+ right now but you have to be very geared and an exceptional player. Enhancement falls off hard in higher keys.
 

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
They don't. The class is OP in PvP so anytime they try to adjust it to be competitive in PvE it starts obliterating everything in PvP and they nerf it because they can't figure out how to balance a class that has as much utility as shaman.

I mean... the class is ridiculous. AoE Stun, AoE Snare, AoE Knockback, 12 second cd ranged kick, Bloodlust, Hex, Reincarnate, Ghost Wolf, Tremor Totem, Purge. Goddamn.

not to mention they have the possibility of hitting the RNG jackpot and flurry off 6-7 storm strikes in a row to just blow somebody up. It is really hard to heal somebody being wailed on by an enhance because it goes from okay I can heal this to holy shit my target just exploded wtf. And they have enough CC and interupts its really hard to do anything as a healer vs them that is non instant cast.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
19,787
13,294
I really don't understand what triggers them to make the changes they do:

Keystone Affixes
  • Bursting - When slain, non-boss enemies explode, causing all players to suffer 10% 5% of their max health in damage over 4 sec. This effect stacks.

So they are nerfing one of the easiest affixes to deal with from 10% max health to 5% but leaving the idiotic affixes like Bolstering, Explosive and especially Grievous as is...
 

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,963
Enh shaman have one good thing going for them; They aren't shadow priests.
 
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Leadsalad

Cis-XYite-Nationalist
5,946
11,881
I really don't understand what triggers them to make the changes they do:



So they are nerfing one of the easiest affixes to deal with from 10% max health to 5% but leaving the idiotic affixes like Bolstering, Explosive and especially Grievous as is...
And the combos of affixes like this week’s. Yup, real smrt people.
 

Qhue

Trump's Staff
7,465
4,413
Do people in general use War Mode? I was reading the recent blue posts about trying to even out the faction imbalance and found it amusing. As an Alliance player I never even considered that War Mode would be a good idea. Fuck in Drustvar and Stormsong I encounter way more Horde than I do Alliance and that's with War Mode off, If I go to Zandalar I almost never even see an Alliance player and thus avoid things like the 'harvest azerite from Elementals' dailies unless I do it solely from the shared-tag biggest elements.

This whole expansion all the War Mode talents were just a slap in the face from my point of view. A bunch of baseline abilities that I'd never get to actually use since they don't work anywhere but the contested open world.
 

Korillo

Molten Core Raider
502
340
A lot more horde players use war mode, simply because their faction is so dominant in population. The 10% bonus is worth it for them, as it essentially makes no difference to them in terms of gameplay. I personally play Alliance and war mode was ok for the first 2 weeks of BFA launch. It was reasonably balanced in terms of population and you could get your quests done in a decent amount of time.

However, shortly after this period the horde population started skyrocketing, and warmode just became a huge time sink. If I wanted to complete a champions of azeroth world quest, there would be 10 horde for every 1 alliance player, at a minimum. So you had 2 options, 1) slowly chip away and get a percent here or there while you die repeatedly or 2) try to join a group to complete the quest. Even joining a full 5 man alliance group though often resulted in dying repeatedly as alliance were still heavily outnumbered. It just turned doing a 3 minute world quest into a 20 minute chore. So the bonus was no longer worthwhile.

Warmode is also hilarious in terms of summoning for a dungeon. If you are an alliance player, try going to the Tol Dogor island with warmode on. For some reason, there are just 50 horde players outside that dungeon 24/7. You can barely enter the dungeon without dying, let alone summon anyone. So warmode just becomes tedious.

Honestly, the intention behind warmode was decent but I don't really know what they expected. The result was easily predictable. They would have to balance the faction populations if they want warmode to be a functional experience. And at this point the factions have been imbalanced for so long that I just don't think it's possible to fix it.
 

Mahes

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
4,621
5,214
Warmode would work wonderfully................if there were three factions. This game has suffered from the very start by not having a three faction system. This has nothing really to do with the horrid expansion that is BFA, but it was a topic discussed many many years ago back when gnomes had to walk to school in the snow, up hill, both ways.
 
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Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,690
5,048
A lot more horde players use war mode, simply because their faction is so dominant in population. The 10% bonus is worth it for them, as it essentially makes no difference to them in terms of gameplay. I personally play Alliance and war mode was ok for the first 2 weeks of BFA launch. It was reasonably balanced in terms of population and you could get your quests done in a decent amount of time.

However, shortly after this period the horde population started skyrocketing, and warmode just became a huge time sink. If I wanted to complete a champions of azeroth world quest, there would be 10 horde for every 1 alliance player, at a minimum. So you had 2 options, 1) slowly chip away and get a percent here or there while you die repeatedly or 2) try to join a group to complete the quest. Even joining a full 5 man alliance group though often resulted in dying repeatedly as alliance were still heavily outnumbered. It just turned doing a 3 minute world quest into a 20 minute chore. So the bonus was no longer worthwhile.

Warmode is also hilarious in terms of summoning for a dungeon. If you are an alliance player, try going to the Tol Dogor island with warmode on. For some reason, there are just 50 horde players outside that dungeon 24/7. You can barely enter the dungeon without dying, let alone summon anyone. So warmode just becomes tedious.

Honestly, the intention behind warmode was decent but I don't really know what they expected. The result was easily predictable. They would have to balance the faction populations if they want warmode to be a functional experience. And at this point the factions have been imbalanced for so long that I just don't think it's possible to fix it.
Every census and blizzard themselves say there are more alliance players. My experience is alliance players are worse then horde players on average.
 

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Warmode would work wonderfully................if there were three factions. This game has suffered from the very start by not having a three faction system. This has nothing really to do with the horrid expansion that is BFA, but it was a topic discussed many many years ago back when gnomes had to walk to school in the snow, up hill, both ways.


Yup when you have a two faction system and you went many expansions where one factions racial abilities were simply better and enough better to get people to faction change eventually one faction is stacked and the other gives up trying in world pvp. Without some kind of third faction or forced balancing or some kind of crazy minority buff where the player that is outnumbered gets asinine levels of some kind of balancing buff like wintergrasp used to have I just don't see how warmode will ever really work. Most alliance got such a bad taste in their mouth from the initial issues they won't be willing to give it another try.
 

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,647
1,187
Every census and blizzard themselves say there are more alliance players. My experience is alliance players are worse then horde players on average.

All the people min/maxing for advantage went horde so that means the bulk of the high end raiders AND high end PVPers are on horde because until recently it was a hard advantage to do so. Also if you look at the queue times between factions and the fact that I nearly always have the help wanted bonus honor crap in BG clearly whatever the population is alliance PVP'ers are FAR less common than horde ones.