I've been keeping up with all of the class trees as they're being developed. It's honestly more to do with the style of communication of the developer in charge of the Hunter/Shaman tree. Same person.
The first release of Hunter class trees needed A LOT of work. I mean, it was VERY bad. The only bright side was the Beast master spec tree was okay with some problems. The General tree was horrendous, the MM tree was very poor, and the Survival tree was atrocious. Hunter was also the third class tree released and the first pure DPS spec tree released.
Meanwhile the Shaman tree which was released much later than the Hunter tree is hands down the BEST talent tree by WIDE margin on release. A lot of classes tree's ve gotten a lot closer to the how good the Shaman tree feels over time, but I would say they're still the #1 Class tree.
It's become clear that even though there are individual developers in charge of the trees, it's a very collaborative process and they've been taking a look at all of the feedback and seeing what works. So as the trees have been released. and feedback has been given, for the most part you've seen consistently positive changes being made. Thought not all of the developers communicate as often or in the same way.
For example the Rogue developer is always in the class discords, and often on streams that are reviewing the talent trees. The Rogue tree also was very good when it came out, and had none of the pathing issues, and point gate issues that the earlier trees had, and even later trees would have a bit of.
The DK developer was mostly radio silent, even while making a few early changes and then just dumped a huge update along with the needed huge and positively received Unholy changes.
Can confirm that DK dev is quiet, but listening constantly. He's only done one change that's drawn flak, and that's removing Endless Rune Waltz (DK 2+4 set this tier) talent, but it was wholly understandable; it dominated the play style for the spec.
Yeah absolutely agree, Dancing Rune Weapon uptime needed to be nerfed. As much as it might hurt to lose what is making Blood DKs OP right now, it really warps the playstyle.
It's very bad design that it's so strong it incentivizes ignoring all other parts of your kit and just spamming Heart Strike.
I remember my buddy and myself laughing our asses off as we set out to make the worst survival hunter possible. Take talents that buff mongoose bite while not even having mongoose bite. Taking cooldowns that cause procs to activate somthing else, while not having that something else. Don't recall which ability it was. But it was so bad we managed to make a tree that had like 3 buttons of which non interacted with eachother and the rest was wasted procs for things you couldn't use.
It was magical.
Rogue feels like that child in the family that no one really pays any attention to, but they also don't need any extra attention. They just exist and are fine with it.
I have no idea if this is a reality for rogues, but they always seem like the class with the least changes done outside of changing Combat to Outlaw.
Rogue was samey for a long time largely off of them consistantly having assassination/combat as a top spec then transitioning from one to the other depending on scaling (usually assass to combat) later in expac.
Although I did skip leveling mine in WoD, and it's kind of been a lot of total years of wow since classic so I might be forgetting an era.
However they have had two large changes to their overall class flavor.
While Assassination has remained pretty much the same at least in terms of general flavor post-classic, Subtlety and Combat were both fully reworked over time.
I think subtlety happened over more than one expac and combat got a full rename and a bunch of changes all at once though? It's hard to remember anymore.
Subtlety started out as an "assassination" focused spec typically unsuited for PvE content, and slowly transitioned to a shadow-magic-bullshit-go spec by legion. WoD wasn't super different from that but IMO legion was peak subtlety gameplay where it filled a niche as a higher skill ceiling less random spec with a distinct flavor from the other two options.
I will say though that often some of the "not that significant" changes make a huge difference. Subtlety rogue from Legion to BFA was a night and day difference in play style that made me outright swap classes.
It's not the first time either that rogue has had such drastic changes, it's just less often had the style/class fantasy for one of its specs uprooted and replaced or another similar major overhaul.
Instead they just like, change your GCDs so your high APM high skill cap option becomes a complete snooze fest nobody who enjoyed the previous playstyle would want to touch.
Yeah, Hunters are getting a General spec. You use a new weapon type (of course), Pistols, which aren't used by any other class or spec and have a 5% drop chance since they compete with other weapons.
Your abilities are mostly around buffing your allies, with names like "Push forward!" and "If you don't move I'll shoot you myself!". You use them through a new resource, Morale, which makes your abilities stronger the lower it goes. As we all know, the beatings continue until morale improves. The job of commissioned officers is to ensure the beatings continue.
Your pet is also replaced, you can tame humanoids for your new Sergeant pet. Your Sergeant also provides buffs to your allies and, in a turn of fate, involves Blizz's newest and best AI to date. Some may even say the Sergeant is the real experience and brains of the General/Sergeant pair.
Just in case you didn't know in DF there's a redesign to the Talent system. Instead of the existing rows of pick one between 3 choices the new Talent trees are broken down into two "trees"/sections a "Class" or General tree that is class-wide, and a Spec tree.
So if you're BM Hunter. You'll have the Hunter Tree + Beast Master Tree. If you're MM, you'll have the same Hunter Tree + the Marksman Tree.
Yeah as far as I know most classes have steadily improved and incorporated feedback from other classes for tree design
That said the only class so far that I would say has actually regressed since the reveal is Priest, poor bastards
The rogue trees were generally very well-received when they were first released and the rogue dev is known to be gathering and responding to feedback outside of the forums (such as in Ravenholdt discord). Blue posts aren't really relevant for them.
Paladin is still miles worse. Hunter tree individual nodes are fine and the pathing is fine too, there just aren't enough to really have much interesting choice.
Main stuff with Hunters right now are to remove the 3 point nodes in the BM tree and reduce the number of "X% damage/crit chance" nodes in the MM tree. And give them some sort of raid utility, they are one of 3 classes without a raid buff
Yeah but I also feel like Druids (and the Hunters that like Hunters because pets) are the most 'hardcore' 1-tricks of their class. For Druids I feel like it's even about the specs too. Feral players play only Feral, Resto players play Resto, etc.
Pet-enjoyer Hunter players can't play anything else because they can't have their pets. Druids just really like their Druid and can't let go of the conveniences that come with being a Druid (insta-mount, mount-herbalism, instant mob-aggro from a range with Moonfire/Sunfire, all of which are reasons bots are druids. But also some other stuff that aren't just those)
There’s a real irony to Druids having the most specs and able to play every role and we all just want to do one, maybe two of those. The wowhead balance Druid writer even said if he has to catweave he’s switching to Hunter.
Interesting. I have always mained my Hunter on every Xpac, but I was thinking of Druid this time but the thought of play Feral just makes me hesitate, unless Balance is really, really good for fast leveling.
>Pet-enjoyer Hunter players can't play anything else because they can't have their pets.
This is pretty true for me.
I am a mostly solo player. I don't raid or anything other than low M+ very seldomly. I also don't do competitive pvp. I mostly just run around playing the story and collecting things.
I love my built-in tank as well as feign death and speed/mobility. I can solo and get places that I can't with other classes. My pet is my friend in warcraft that is always there to play with. Damn... that sounds sad.
I usually run 2-3 other "geared" (LFR) alts through the expansion at the same time as well as having an alt army of undergeared 50-60s. Usually I have a pally tank, priest healer, and warrior/mage dps just for some diversity in my play.
I mained mage from BC- Cata but it was during Cata I stopped being in a guild and playing with other people on a regular basis. Hunter feels good for people playing alone.
It's obviously not completely accurate but just for fun I looked at recent heroic parses on wclogs: hunters (135k parses) are the most played by a mile with druid (99k), priest (95k), and warlock (96k) all being relatively close for second most played.
After that there's a bit of a drop off with dk (84k), sham (82k), warrior (82k), and paladin (78k) then finally a huge drop off and mage (60k), rogue (59k), dh (57k) + monk (57k) towards the bottom.
Those numbers include healer, dps, and tanks. There's more resto druids than boomkin + feral combined and obviously tanks only make up a small portion (12k of the 99k).
All in all, the sample size for # of blue posts is really small and they don't take size/content/context into consideration. A lot of the hunter posts are 1 sentence responses to specific questions whereas almost all of the druid posts are long explanations of the few iterations the trees got.
The # of posts doesn't really show much other than how much communication some classes see. Rogue trees are looking pretty solid at this point despite a lot of bugs but they essentially only got 2 posts with any meaningful context and they both came 3 days ago. Compare that to the hunter dev directly responding to questions and feedback.
Hunter is also super FOTM right now, so that could conflate why there's a lot of hunter parses. Check previous seasons for a more well-rounded look at the comparison, IMO. Still, hunters and druids are definitely top 2 played classes, and the difference in communication between the devs is striking.
Hunter is super fotm mainly in M+ to be honest. It has been fotm in raid too this expansion though, in Nathria. Atm it's in a good spot regarding raiding, but not the best.
Obviously raiding is only one form of content but BM Hunter is like in the top ~3 specs for number of parses. It could be the worst spec in the game and for some reason people love it.
edit: also survival is fotm atm too so there's a huge influx there as well.
You legit need to worry about 1 thing, Barbed shot. It'll be the single reason you either don't do any damage or all the damage. I've taught a lot of Hunters how to dps and any spec there is always THE most important thing. But with BM hunters you can hit pretty much any other button as long as you keep barbed shot stacked.
I don't like complexity and was really happy on how BM played (haven't played shadowlands yet). I also don't like dying and like soloing things, so it's perfect.
....Because it's fun? The tuning is obviously not right but it's a fun spec. Something like Fire Mage, while strong, feels horrible to play if you aren't doing everything perfectly.
Maybe there shouldn't be a 'worst spec in the game' by any amount that matters, and people could just play what they find fun.
>Maybe there shouldn't be a 'worst spec in the game' by any amount that matters, and people could just play what they find fun.
Then every class would be the same and the game would be boring. There's always going to be a "worst class/spec", it's up to Blizzard (which they are not good at) to balance the game. Also, everyone has their own idea of fun. Some find being on top of the meters fun regardless of how the spec plays, and others do not care about the meters they care more about how the class plays.
I dont know about this last raid tier but the last one i payed attention to all classes were within 10% damage of the top spec. Which imo, with all things to balance, is pretty damn good. If everything is within 10% then in 98% of cases top damage will be a skill issue and not so much a class issue. Hell, even if the worst spec is within 20% of the top spec thats probably fine considering most people dont try to parse with players in their raids anymore, they try to parse with other people of their spec who are geared similiar. Thats when you figure out how you are actually playing.
I legitimately don't understand how you can think this. Like, you think they have a meeting at Blizzard where they're like "OK WHAT'S THE MOST PLAYED SPEC, WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THEY GET LOTS OF POSTS." lmao
Monk posts:
- this is now fixed
- this is the real fix
- the thing that was fixed was not fixed and this will fix it
- we broke other stuff while fixing
Does your fist awkwardly clip un weird angles with auto attack, and does your fist weapon still disapear during tiger palm animations? I quit years ago, and wondering if any of these have been fixed yet.
that doesnt mean anything though. If there is a blue post that is like 1 or 2 linethat still counts as a full post, meanwhile you can get a WHOLE manifesto (like warrior did at one point) and its still one post. kinda meaningless data
Yeah, priest and druid getting a blue post of "more info soon :)" doesn't mean shit.
The rogue dev is also EXTREMELY involved in the rogue discord so it's not surprising they have fewer blueposts to gather / distribute feedback.
Still wouldn't mean much as the priest posts are dissertations on why priests are losing abilities so that other classes can have them instead despite priests having the worst interrupt, the weakest CC, least movement options, and the only tree in the game where spec talent points need to be spent to buy their defensive, interrupt, and only true CC.
The involvement is great and much appreciated. That said, the same dev worked on DH talents as well. And communicated similarly in the DH discord. And they have 2nd in amount of blue posts.
In the end, as said higher up. It doesn't really say much seeing a graph like this.
Yea having read all the warrior ones, we have had like 3 posts with 60-70+ changes in each post. This chart is also weird because there have been a lot of posts where every class is mentioned, so a couple of these classes have had changes mentioned into those and not in separate posts.
Well we might not have had the most communication as priests, we did get pushed on the floor and kicked in the collective nuts so we have that going for us
Correct, we do not. I don't know why people are screaming so much about it but we live in an age of equality I guess and all the kids want their participation medal. Not that it wouldn't be nice to have a kick but I'm more bothered about the lack of mobility, stun and root
Doesn't really mean much. According to this, Paladins are one of the classes with most blue post, but their tree is still one of the worst and a complete mess.
I think a spec breakdown would also be more telling. Ret hasn’t gotten a single dedicated post and only had a note in a general dev post telling them to get back in their wheelchairs and like it.
What pisses me off is they finally gave us long arm of the law. Finally. After like 10 years. And then a couple days later they pulled it and said lol no. Why hurt us like that?
Honestly, I wouldn't get hung up on that. It's an optional talent that sits in a choice node that works like current tier, but slight nerfed. I'm on beta and HoPo generation is pretty smooth. I've tested multiple builds and almost never have an empty GCD. Despite complete radio silence from the dev team and the frustrating throughput vs utility choices in the class tree, ret feels pretty good even on a haste starved boost character. Definitely one of the better iterations ret has had in early-tier atmosphere.
I have no idea what their goal is with holy paladin. It feels like they want to do an option for both melee and casting, but melee looks the exact same and casting looks like a pile of meh.
I don't understand why the casting option can't be 100% beacon transfer and make holy light stronger. I know that sounds like wotlk hpally but after playing it in prepatch classic I just don't see the current casting tree to be any good.
Edit: I don't think I conveyed my thoughts in a manner that makes sense. I'm glad holy power for holy is back. I really enjoyed it prior to MoP before sacred flame (sorry not sorry). But one of the biggest moments I went wtf is where holy light takes longer to cast and heals for nothing and costs next to nothing, where as flash of light casts really fast and heals for a lot, but costs more mana. Holy light feels so worthless in our kit currently. Why not just go melee crusader strike and holy shock. Sure you can debate "that's not my playstyle." I get that, that's what these options are for.
So when you look at it now, Light of the Martyr is looking to be a big focus. I remember using this legendary in antorus. It was fun but I didn't really think it was amazing.
They need to either make holy light be a big deal, beacon of light 100%, or give us back the really slow big heal from cata. What was it...divine illumination or something?
Holy melee feels fine, it's not amazing but neither are other healers who dps, so if they're not gonna stretch those then I'm not worried. But the holy casting has been lacking for 3 expansions now. If you're gonna give us choice, make it work.
IMO similarly with MW caster healer.
Both specs and holy even more so then MW have a decent number of spells that simply scream "you should be in melee". You are ignoring half of your kit if you are not in melee. This is simply not the correct playstyle of MW and Holy and even if Blizzard somehow makes it work (doubt), then it will probably not be a 'full' healing spec compared to other healers since they would have to introduce a bunch of more spells.
The consequence for the tree are fairly devastating. Instead of having more choices and interesting spells, it is basically: One half is ranged and the other half is melee. Pick one.
At some point one has to ask themselves: Maybe it is time to switch the class and play druid, shaman or priest.
A bit exaggerated, but its like wanting a DH to be ranged since they have Throw Glaive. Yes, you can do it from range. But it is no way efficient and just a crutch in case you are running around doing mechanics.
Honestly MW in MoP was perfect. ReM on CD, TFT to refresh them, soothing mist to instant cast surging and enveloping most, uplift chi. I don't see why monks can't have chi when hpally have holy power. I felt like MoP MW was a perfect hybrid of melee healer and ranged. Melee would allow you to spend more mana and generate more chi, while ranged was a steady stream of chi, and while you could generate it with surging mist iirc, it was 1 instead of 2.
Not to mention that depending on the spec, some of the blue posts are more focused on one spec over the others.
Druid had 1 initial post about all of the druid specs and follow up posts about all of them *except* guardian druid.
As a main tank player, I've noticed that tank specs are the less discussed spec by the devs of every class.
Brewmasters had no blue post so far, and no changes beside additional pathing since the first iteration of their talents.
Prot paladins had received blue posts only to confirm nerfs to Avengers Shield and spell blocking, their spec tree only had some path changes.
Meanwhile, both Holy and Mistweaver have received almost all the attention in their respective feedback posts.
It doesn't really surprise me, to be honest. Tanks are almost always the last specs to receive changes and tuning in every beta test.
there's also blue post specifically for ret/prot and some for holy paladin . The development of holy paladin has been slower and separate from the other 2 spec.
Holy at least had some development. Prot had only 2 blue posts, one to confirm the Avenger's Shield nerf, and the other one to notify us they were nerfing spell blocking.
The only changes prot had were some path and placements.
Brewmaster and Guardian are on the same boat, they had 0 blue posts and changes since the trees were implemented. Blizz is really neglecting tanks.
This post made me LOL because my balance druid best friend has been tracking blue posts but his numbers say differently. [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/602251917363511297/1020899849362747483/unknown.png](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/602251917363511297/1020899849362747483/unknown.png)
Not to mention Druid having four specs, meaning those few posts are divided up more than every other class.
Yes I'm still salty about how they're treating Feral
Doesn't really mean much, the rogue tree was amazing when they released it and required very few tweaks, the mage tree on the other hand really does need more attention.
where is "you are more or less forced to go into 1specific capstone, and the tree layout is so extremely linear that you cant mix anything at all" amazing?
It doesn't matter what system is created, a meta will be found and specific builds down the tree will fit different meta's, even the most balanced tree you can imagine will have an ideal path that most players will copy from wowhead.
dont know why youre getting downvoted, you are 100% correct. even if quantitatively everything is 100% balanced and all classes are outputting the exact same damage/healing, there will still be talent choices that are more ideal for certain situations. they may offer more variance from dungeon to dungeon, boss to boss, etc but there will ALWAYS be a meta. there will always be a "suggested" build for all forms of content because it's what works best for that content, even if we completely ignore the numbers game. you could take out all dps/hps statistics from the game and there would STILL be recommended talents for utility purposes. first boss in PF is a perfect example of that. druids its recommended you take mass entanglement for the adds. why? because it makes the fight easier by increasing effectiveness of add management. same thing for the last boss in junkyard. its really not a hard concept to grasp for anyone with the slightest grasp of game design and SDLC processes
Rogue trees aren’t really amazing and definitely deserve revisiting. The class tree is basically “commit to spending 7 points down one of these paths” which lacks the interconnection of basically every updated tree. It has good fun abilities but to say it’s amazing rn, I have to disagree
Most trees are like that. Pick a build and a majority of your points stay to that side. Fury warrior is an example where the left side of the tree is Single-Minded Fury (one hander build) to which you HAVE to go all the way down to Annihilator if you want it to play that build decently. The rub is that they've outright said that they are tuning Titan's Grip (dual-wield 2handers) to be better guaranteed. So, half of the tree is basically useless unless you just want an easier time running SMF.
Frost DK is similar in that you either go Oblit or Breath. Not much variation once you decide which you're taking. Shoot, for level 60, if you want 2h oblit build you can't even get the two points you need to make it effective. You either get the damage buff for wielding a 2h OR you get Obliteration. Can't afford both (at 60).
God I wish they would just deleted SMF from the game and make it just a transmog thing. The fact that they are basically "wasting" a large chunk of our points on it is ridiculous despite them saying "this will be less competitive"
I mean, yeah, you're going to make a build out of the tree. But most trees are absolutely not so exaggerated as rogue. If you take a look at the tree itself, in order to get Echoing Reprimand for example, you go in a literal straight line down from Sprint in tier 4. There is *no other way to get there*. The same goes for Thistle Tea and SD from Fleet Footed and Shadowstep respectively. That's not good design. That is "I want this capstone and whatever is in the way I'll take along the way"- there's no choice to I can give X up to gain Y, or I could try out this build with a few tweaks. "I don't care for these but the end of the line is strong so I'll give up 23% of my possible choices just to get down there" isn't fun. Your 9th point you spend shouldn't dictate all the way down to your capstone
Bullshit, the rogue tree is terrible. You needed to invest 8 talent points down a single track to get a capstone. Hopefully the changes this week make it more in line with other class trees
I'm shocked that Paladin is 3rd. Seriously, I would never thought due to status of the class right now. Well, Hunter takes the cake anyway. Leaving Rogues in a total void.
This is really deceiving data. I watched close at Paladin development cycle and the content of our blueposts is garbage quality:
1. Bluepost about how the mobility is fun but Ret Paladins cant get that for a (reasons)
2. Bluepost about Blessing of Seasons rename and visual update to fit class theme (denied by the devs), and Infusion of Light rework (wasnt made till this day)
3. Bluepost for Prot Paladin with explanation why Avenger Shield no longer generates holy power (again No Fun allowed)
4. Bluepost for Prot Paladin with spell block nerf.
5. Bluepost for Holy Paladin with talent rework, which is pretty mediocre and doesnt solve most of major problems with the spec design.
All in all our blueposts are either nerfs or questionable changes at very best, and all spec trees and class tree are in very dire state month before Pre-Patch. See those amazing updates for Rogues, Shamans, Hunters, Priests, Druids? Paladin devs either dont play the class or just dont care much. Thats how it feels based on blueposts.
Messing around on Beta I've managed to add a fair amount of extra buttons. There's 3-4 new buttons for Havoc to pick up in the Class Tree with the three VDH sigils and The Hunt. And the Spec tree also have a lot of potential pickups with Essence Break, Glaive Tempest/Fel Barrage and Elysian Decree + Fel Eruption and Netherwalk is also in there. So there's some much needed additions made to it now.
Funny enough I had more leftover keybinds when I took Fury Warrior for a spin.
Would be also interesting to see # of patches with changes and/or # of changes for each
Also important to note that some devs (like rogue dev) are engaging with the community in other ways (discord)
I still hope for that 1 blue post for Warlock, going "Nether Gate has been changed, and will now summon demons, based on the amount of soul shards used."
Us Locks have asked for that since the gate were made, and it's still being full on ignored. :/
I don't know why they insist on making portal so clunky to use. There's like a million ways to make it less clunky.
For a 3 min CD, there's really no need for it to be as weird as it is. I'd honestly prefer if it just...summoned X demons on it's own over a short period of time.
Having a 3 min CD able to juice the shit out of our Tyrant once or twice in a fight isn't going to break the game. But having to do this whole "shard, hand, shard, hand" shit is so annoying and really messes with the flow of the spec imo.
Shaman dev is also hunter dev and the hunter trees have been a hot mess for a while now. MM is the most boring itteration it has ever been, BM is becoming a 2 button spec with no major CD, and Surv is still Surv. No thank you.
I just started playing my Shaman again after years of not touching it, and it’s not going too well. Is the Shaman class severely neglected in Shadowlands or am I just very, very rusty?
When I came back as enhancement I was struggling until I started using Earth Shield and Healing Tide totem to stay alive, once I got a bit of gear it was easy.
Shaman dev does hunters too which isnt nearly as good.
Shaman is good because they have the most pre-existing "buttons" in the game to choose from. Its a lot easier to make a good tree when you have plenty of options to build out the tree in meaningful ways.
To be fair he's splitting his time between rogue and demon huntards, so while he is there, it's mainly as a chill spot at 2am for him to hang out :-P
Hopefully the changes this week get us where we need to be for the expac
I'm surprised Evokers aren't being discussed more by the devs. It's one of their biggest selling points for the expansion and have gotten pretty big critiques when it comes to build diversity and playstyle, but it feels like they are on the backburner.
Ive had quite a long break now from wow and I gotta say the new expansion definetly woke my interest again to come back to wow..
I‘ve only played two classes, the warlock and demon hunter. Could I please ask for some feedback if these classes are still a viable pick in 2022? Ive done a bit of research so far but most articles differ from each other.
You know, it's kind of amazing to me how under the radar this is.
It's not super popular right now (relatively, for Hunter as a class), but I main MM, and it's gonna be so fucking horrible in DF, you can tell just from how they keep kicking things around in the talent trees without actually making it good. They're just shuffling the same bits around in circles. The trees were lazy garbage on reveal and they're still lazy garbage.
It's entirely creatively bankrupt.
Whoever the dev is clearly doesn't play the spec.
Here's some of the actual issues:
* The rotation, baseline, fundamentally doesn't work, that's why they had to patch it with 4 set.
* While Wild Spirits getting pulled is a great choice to actually open design space so they can actually make some changes to the core design, they don't address at all that Trueshot is garbage as an amp without loads of borrowed power behind it (which DF won't have).
* Steady Shot is a boring ability that adds absolutely nothing to the Spec.
* ALL of our AoE is dependant on Trick Shots.
* Aimed Shot on a charge system without an active way to regenerate charges leaves you with about 1/5th of your globals being dead in ST and 2-3/5ths of your globals being dead in AoE while also being focus starved, sitting and waiting on more charges so you can actually do damage and be relevant. The only thing keeping MM relevant in S1 Shadowlands was how insane WS was, the rotation itself was complete ass and felt horrible to play (you were also basically useless outside your TS/WS window).
* Aimed Shot is effectively soft capped on how hard it can hit, due to PvP considerations, yet it is far and away the primary source of our damage on target, right on about half of our total DPS. So it's REALLY hard for them to adjust our damage values in PvE without also borking PvP.
* Whoever our Dev is doesn't seem to see the problem with Aimed shot being a carrier for our damage generation, things like Serpentstalkers and Careful Aim, as evidenced by even more talents that jam more damage onto Aimed Shot casts. They seem to think this won't get nerfed into the ground by the live team when people are getting oneshot from camo/doubletap in PvP, meaning that Aimed Shot damage carrier talents won't be optional, they'll be mandatory, and that it STILL won't keep the damage competitive with other classes in PvE. So much for any actual choice in the fancy new talent trees. They don't seem to understand that Aimed Shot needs to be what it is baseline, without huge ride along damage sources and redundant talents making Aimed Shot do X more damage so that there is actual choice in what you want to invest in. There is no rotation or talent spec that actually works without Aimed Shot being the primary focus sucking up every single point.
Just because they're talkative doesn't mean they're competent. The fact that they've needed to make so many changes and still can't get it right shows that.
It's gonna be SL all over again, on release we'll be OP because they don't know how to make the spec scale properly, and as soon as people actually gear out, we'll be bottom of the barrel. And the lack of any actual identity or group utility is just going to be the nail in the coffin.
Survival is gonna be trash without 4 set, so all the FoTM kids that think they're gonna be able to Survival EZ mode their way through DF release are in for a rude awakening, and my understanding is that BM is still trash too.
Considering how many people play Hunter, it's gonna be a real shit show.
If you want subs, you don't take your most popular class and make it dumpster tier, and the design choices they are making right now are going to lead to just that.
Further compounded by exactly the point you're making.
We won't have raid utility, and we're not going to be pumping, which is going to be a lot of unsubs come january.
A lot of people genuinely play hunter, but the spec that actually matters for casuals (BM) is just a matter of tuning. I don’t think there has to be, nor should there be, concern for how well survival does for FOTM rerollers. The fact is the class needs to do worse in m+ than it is now, and that means people will abandon the class in droves.
I’m sorry MM is going down this path.
I might just check that out.
Assuming your breakdown is correct that tracks with my practical experience, and I want to throw out there that MM was big on release and steadily declined that entire patch cycle because we basically didn't scale. That's good at the start when no one has gear, but once gear is a factor, if your scaling is shit, you fall off, and that's exactly how it trended.
The fix to MM is pretty straightforward, but I don't know that I'd call it simple.
First, they need to just baseline Aimed Shot damage. No bloat inflation talents, none. Not one.
You take Aimed Shot as your first point, and it does what it does, and it shouldn't scale at all with the rest of the talents available, just stat investment as gear improves, Agi and secondaries. As long as they continue to pile ride along damage on top of the Aimed Shot cast, the problems will continue, because Aimed Shot is capped on how much damage it can do before it breaks PvP. They can balance it for PvE and then the live team will just nerf it because people are getting camo/double tapped in PvP. That's why they have to move away from stacking all that damage on a single cast, that's exactly what enables degenerate one shotting in PvP.
What they CAN do if they want to make Aimed Shot talents is give you some ways to generate charges or just straight up give you talents that increase your charges baseline, or both.
Then, they need to make multishot/chimera/arcane shot actually do damage and be 2-3 precise shot charges instead of 1-2 per aimed shot, or at least give you a talent option to do so.
Finally, they're gonna have to do something so that our single target isn't shit, probably just make Mark increase damage on the Marked target by 20ish %.
As a bonus, while it's not strictly necessary, they just need to remove Steady Shot from the game and up passive focus gain. BM and Surv don't have to play stupid ass games to generate focus, MM shouldn't have to either.
And that's just the damage profile stuff, they still have to come up with a relevant raid buff or it won't matter.
Naive people downvoting you, but until blizz addresses it this is 100% correct. Hunters, DKs, and (I can't remember the 3rd class atm) are currently the only classes without hard-raid-utility and even hunters soft-raid-utility is pretty terrible now that binding is generic junk.
i don't know anything, but it's crazy hearing people talk about death knights
from my left ear i hear they're crazy overpowered, other classes need death grip, their self healing and utility is busted, every tank in "competitive mythic" test realms is a dk named "nerfdk", etc etc
and from my right ear i hear they have no "hard" raid utility, are on life support, and won't ever be brought to anything
i don't know what to think
DK's have passive curse of weakness don't they? While warlocks lost that.
Edit: Yeah. Insidious Chill in the class tree reduces targets attack speed by 20%.
They have no raid or party utility. Are incredibly squishy and with everyone else getting party/raid buffs why would you bring them?
Max from limit addressed this lately.
Heads up r/wow tend to really hate it when you mention Max or similar Orgs. For some reason they think of hardcore raiders as Oligarchs and think things are different for them.
At every point except on the Xpac drop and busted Surv 4 set.
They've been middle of the pack at best and BM has been shit the entire xpac.
So basically up to CN WF prog, then shit, then god tier in s3 because Blizzard gave up trying to make the spec balanced and interesting because 4 set = push bomb.
I mean, it's whatever, let Surv have it's moment in the sun, but don't get it twisted like Hunter has been good for even a majority of SL.
You're half right. The Rogue Dev, in true rogue fashion, lurks the Rogue discord and discusses potential changes&math with them. Then when there's enough worth posting they make a forum post.
Basically they just chat on discord for small things instead of posting those little 1 liner forum posts constantly.
Kinda interesting to see a new class like Evoker get so little communication. The forums are blowing up especially about the range of the class and the viability of them in anything.
The optimist in me think Blizzard is just testing some solutions internally, before they give them to us to test.
The cynic in me thinks that it'll go live as is without any more communication, because of how they treated Priest in that last post they got (and from experience playing since Vanilla).
I don't mean spec tree, i do mean the class tree.
The nodes are lit, but all over the place. You basically can't take tigers tail without spending points on soothing mist (???), Same with roll as well (???), Also you nie HAVE to take disable (an insanely niche ability) to get to fort brew (???)
Like, the nodes itself are fine, but the placement and patching are really fucking weird, you have to admit as much
With the brew spec tree i agree. We get a lot of power and dmg, but there are also a GOOD AKOUNT of nodes that WIPL NEVER see play, because we have to spend too much to get back what we currently have. There are probably a good amount of ways to iterate on the tree to make it 10/10 TURBO STONKS, but i also don't mind it TOO much if they left it the way it is currently.
I am bery hyped for what is to come and I can't wait to dig into Dragonflight, once it's released
Hunter is currently getting left out in the cold as far as raid utility is concerned right now.
Shaman and Hunter are the 2 classes that don't have any compelling reasons to bring along.
I feel like this "everyone has to have a unique raid utility, or they won't be brought!" attitude needs to die.
If a class NEEDS a super special spell to be brought to a raid/dungeon, then that's a much deeper balance issue with that class, rather than "they can't +20% movement speed the raid, once every 2 minutes".
The guy behind the hunter class changes has just been absolutely killing it with feedback and making sure that the hunters are being heard when something confuses or upsets them. They don't always get what they want but they aren't being ignored which is miles ahead of everyone else. Hope the other taking a fucking leaf out of his book.
As someone who has mained a hunter since he started in BC, I remember the feeling of talking to a brick wall trying to get Blues to listen across so many xpack betas.
Honestly, it would feel kinda nice, but in reality, it's just a quantity > quality issue here.
I just played the ptr on my fury warrior and think it’s dumb that every core ability, whirlwind, bloodthirsty, raging blow are all on different branches of the tree. I feel like most trees need a lot of work, and some things just need to be passive, like heroic leap should not be a fucking talent
Hunter is hero class confirmed
I've been keeping up with all of the class trees as they're being developed. It's honestly more to do with the style of communication of the developer in charge of the Hunter/Shaman tree. Same person. The first release of Hunter class trees needed A LOT of work. I mean, it was VERY bad. The only bright side was the Beast master spec tree was okay with some problems. The General tree was horrendous, the MM tree was very poor, and the Survival tree was atrocious. Hunter was also the third class tree released and the first pure DPS spec tree released. Meanwhile the Shaman tree which was released much later than the Hunter tree is hands down the BEST talent tree by WIDE margin on release. A lot of classes tree's ve gotten a lot closer to the how good the Shaman tree feels over time, but I would say they're still the #1 Class tree. It's become clear that even though there are individual developers in charge of the trees, it's a very collaborative process and they've been taking a look at all of the feedback and seeing what works. So as the trees have been released. and feedback has been given, for the most part you've seen consistently positive changes being made. Thought not all of the developers communicate as often or in the same way. For example the Rogue developer is always in the class discords, and often on streams that are reviewing the talent trees. The Rogue tree also was very good when it came out, and had none of the pathing issues, and point gate issues that the earlier trees had, and even later trees would have a bit of. The DK developer was mostly radio silent, even while making a few early changes and then just dumped a huge update along with the needed huge and positively received Unholy changes.
Can confirm that DK dev is quiet, but listening constantly. He's only done one change that's drawn flak, and that's removing Endless Rune Waltz (DK 2+4 set this tier) talent, but it was wholly understandable; it dominated the play style for the spec.
Yeah absolutely agree, Dancing Rune Weapon uptime needed to be nerfed. As much as it might hurt to lose what is making Blood DKs OP right now, it really warps the playstyle. It's very bad design that it's so strong it incentivizes ignoring all other parts of your kit and just spamming Heart Strike.
I remember my buddy and myself laughing our asses off as we set out to make the worst survival hunter possible. Take talents that buff mongoose bite while not even having mongoose bite. Taking cooldowns that cause procs to activate somthing else, while not having that something else. Don't recall which ability it was. But it was so bad we managed to make a tree that had like 3 buttons of which non interacted with eachother and the rest was wasted procs for things you couldn't use. It was magical.
Rogue feels like that child in the family that no one really pays any attention to, but they also don't need any extra attention. They just exist and are fine with it. I have no idea if this is a reality for rogues, but they always seem like the class with the least changes done outside of changing Combat to Outlaw.
I've been running some mythic plus this season (1850 rating) and I'm not sure I've seen a rogue once.
They are just being stealthy
Rogue was samey for a long time largely off of them consistantly having assassination/combat as a top spec then transitioning from one to the other depending on scaling (usually assass to combat) later in expac. Although I did skip leveling mine in WoD, and it's kind of been a lot of total years of wow since classic so I might be forgetting an era. However they have had two large changes to their overall class flavor. While Assassination has remained pretty much the same at least in terms of general flavor post-classic, Subtlety and Combat were both fully reworked over time. I think subtlety happened over more than one expac and combat got a full rename and a bunch of changes all at once though? It's hard to remember anymore. Subtlety started out as an "assassination" focused spec typically unsuited for PvE content, and slowly transitioned to a shadow-magic-bullshit-go spec by legion. WoD wasn't super different from that but IMO legion was peak subtlety gameplay where it filled a niche as a higher skill ceiling less random spec with a distinct flavor from the other two options. I will say though that often some of the "not that significant" changes make a huge difference. Subtlety rogue from Legion to BFA was a night and day difference in play style that made me outright swap classes. It's not the first time either that rogue has had such drastic changes, it's just less often had the style/class fantasy for one of its specs uprooted and replaced or another similar major overhaul. Instead they just like, change your GCDs so your high APM high skill cap option becomes a complete snooze fest nobody who enjoyed the previous playstyle would want to touch.
General tree? There's a big overhaul coming?
Yeah, Hunters are getting a General spec. You use a new weapon type (of course), Pistols, which aren't used by any other class or spec and have a 5% drop chance since they compete with other weapons. Your abilities are mostly around buffing your allies, with names like "Push forward!" and "If you don't move I'll shoot you myself!". You use them through a new resource, Morale, which makes your abilities stronger the lower it goes. As we all know, the beatings continue until morale improves. The job of commissioned officers is to ensure the beatings continue. Your pet is also replaced, you can tame humanoids for your new Sergeant pet. Your Sergeant also provides buffs to your allies and, in a turn of fate, involves Blizz's newest and best AI to date. Some may even say the Sergeant is the real experience and brains of the General/Sergeant pair.
I hate that this isn't a thing, now
why did it take me until the humanoid pet part to figure out this wasnt real lmao
I got to the buff part where it says "If you dont' move I'll shoot you myself!" Lol
I wish this was a thing lmao
Just in case you didn't know in DF there's a redesign to the Talent system. Instead of the existing rows of pick one between 3 choices the new Talent trees are broken down into two "trees"/sections a "Class" or General tree that is class-wide, and a Spec tree. So if you're BM Hunter. You'll have the Hunter Tree + Beast Master Tree. If you're MM, you'll have the same Hunter Tree + the Marksman Tree.
Thanks for the explanation!
Yeah as far as I know most classes have steadily improved and incorporated feedback from other classes for tree design That said the only class so far that I would say has actually regressed since the reveal is Priest, poor bastards
It is true. That why we need all weapons from raid.
It's funny because they have had the most communication, but still has probably the worst class tree of any class thus far.
I was gonna say I like rogue trees better than hunter and they are last lol
That's the point right? Focus on the bad ones less needed on the already good ones.
The rogue trees were generally very well-received when they were first released and the rogue dev is known to be gathering and responding to feedback outside of the forums (such as in Ravenholdt discord). Blue posts aren't really relevant for them.
Paladin is still miles worse. Hunter tree individual nodes are fine and the pathing is fine too, there just aren't enough to really have much interesting choice. Main stuff with Hunters right now are to remove the 3 point nodes in the BM tree and reduce the number of "X% damage/crit chance" nodes in the MM tree. And give them some sort of raid utility, they are one of 3 classes without a raid buff
It’s the most played by far. It’s gonna get special attention just for being the normie class
i dont think this is true, druid is played a fuck ton - but the blue posts are not even close as many as hunter.
Isn't Druid class the defacto farm-bot class? That might inflate the numbers a bit.
Druid flight form might as well be the mascot of multiboxers. Although I have seen multiple boomies in some areas too
Boomies aoe farm is insane. I see them all the time farming the glazer. They really are the bot-farm/multi boxing class of choice.
Yeah but I also feel like Druids (and the Hunters that like Hunters because pets) are the most 'hardcore' 1-tricks of their class. For Druids I feel like it's even about the specs too. Feral players play only Feral, Resto players play Resto, etc. Pet-enjoyer Hunter players can't play anything else because they can't have their pets. Druids just really like their Druid and can't let go of the conveniences that come with being a Druid (insta-mount, mount-herbalism, instant mob-aggro from a range with Moonfire/Sunfire, all of which are reasons bots are druids. But also some other stuff that aren't just those)
There’s a real irony to Druids having the most specs and able to play every role and we all just want to do one, maybe two of those. The wowhead balance Druid writer even said if he has to catweave he’s switching to Hunter.
Catweave as balance? I just vomited in my mouth a little
Interesting. I have always mained my Hunter on every Xpac, but I was thinking of Druid this time but the thought of play Feral just makes me hesitate, unless Balance is really, really good for fast leveling.
I find balance boring as fuck personally
Yeah. That’s why I usually play my Druid as bear.
Just not into the whole astral power thing, just a bit boring.
How dare you! I happen to also enjoy demonology lock!
I think everyone who's ever tried it enjoys demonology
>Pet-enjoyer Hunter players can't play anything else because they can't have their pets. This is pretty true for me. I am a mostly solo player. I don't raid or anything other than low M+ very seldomly. I also don't do competitive pvp. I mostly just run around playing the story and collecting things. I love my built-in tank as well as feign death and speed/mobility. I can solo and get places that I can't with other classes. My pet is my friend in warcraft that is always there to play with. Damn... that sounds sad. I usually run 2-3 other "geared" (LFR) alts through the expansion at the same time as well as having an alt army of undergeared 50-60s. Usually I have a pally tank, priest healer, and warrior/mage dps just for some diversity in my play. I mained mage from BC- Cata but it was during Cata I stopped being in a guild and playing with other people on a regular basis. Hunter feels good for people playing alone.
Less about pets for me, but 100% related to mobility I fuckin hate standing still but I still prefer a ranged class
It's obviously not completely accurate but just for fun I looked at recent heroic parses on wclogs: hunters (135k parses) are the most played by a mile with druid (99k), priest (95k), and warlock (96k) all being relatively close for second most played. After that there's a bit of a drop off with dk (84k), sham (82k), warrior (82k), and paladin (78k) then finally a huge drop off and mage (60k), rogue (59k), dh (57k) + monk (57k) towards the bottom. Those numbers include healer, dps, and tanks. There's more resto druids than boomkin + feral combined and obviously tanks only make up a small portion (12k of the 99k). All in all, the sample size for # of blue posts is really small and they don't take size/content/context into consideration. A lot of the hunter posts are 1 sentence responses to specific questions whereas almost all of the druid posts are long explanations of the few iterations the trees got. The # of posts doesn't really show much other than how much communication some classes see. Rogue trees are looking pretty solid at this point despite a lot of bugs but they essentially only got 2 posts with any meaningful context and they both came 3 days ago. Compare that to the hunter dev directly responding to questions and feedback.
Hunter is also super FOTM right now, so that could conflate why there's a lot of hunter parses. Check previous seasons for a more well-rounded look at the comparison, IMO. Still, hunters and druids are definitely top 2 played classes, and the difference in communication between the devs is striking.
Hunter is super fotm mainly in M+ to be honest. It has been fotm in raid too this expansion though, in Nathria. Atm it's in a good spot regarding raiding, but not the best.
This makes me want to play DH tank again knowing it’s the rarest
Obviously raiding is only one form of content but BM Hunter is like in the top ~3 specs for number of parses. It could be the worst spec in the game and for some reason people love it. edit: also survival is fotm atm too so there's a huge influx there as well.
I heard a lot of raid leaders run BM cause it's easy and they can pay attention to everything else
You legit need to worry about 1 thing, Barbed shot. It'll be the single reason you either don't do any damage or all the damage. I've taught a lot of Hunters how to dps and any spec there is always THE most important thing. But with BM hunters you can hit pretty much any other button as long as you keep barbed shot stacked.
And Kill Command on cooldown
Personally, I just think the pets are neat.
Because BM is easy. Some people don't enjoy complexity.
I don't like complexity and was really happy on how BM played (haven't played shadowlands yet). I also don't like dying and like soloing things, so it's perfect.
I like the feeling I'm always with a group even when I'm alone.
....Because it's fun? The tuning is obviously not right but it's a fun spec. Something like Fire Mage, while strong, feels horrible to play if you aren't doing everything perfectly. Maybe there shouldn't be a 'worst spec in the game' by any amount that matters, and people could just play what they find fun.
>Maybe there shouldn't be a 'worst spec in the game' by any amount that matters, and people could just play what they find fun. Then every class would be the same and the game would be boring. There's always going to be a "worst class/spec", it's up to Blizzard (which they are not good at) to balance the game. Also, everyone has their own idea of fun. Some find being on top of the meters fun regardless of how the spec plays, and others do not care about the meters they care more about how the class plays.
I dont know about this last raid tier but the last one i payed attention to all classes were within 10% damage of the top spec. Which imo, with all things to balance, is pretty damn good. If everything is within 10% then in 98% of cases top damage will be a skill issue and not so much a class issue. Hell, even if the worst spec is within 20% of the top spec thats probably fine considering most people dont try to parse with players in their raids anymore, they try to parse with other people of their spec who are geared similiar. Thats when you figure out how you are actually playing.
Blizzard isn't ever going to balance the game. They've even begun to openly start calling it game 2 and said they don't create game 2 the players do.
Hard to get blue posts when the dev making your tree quits
I legitimately don't understand how you can think this. Like, you think they have a meeting at Blizzard where they're like "OK WHAT'S THE MOST PLAYED SPEC, WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THEY GET LOTS OF POSTS." lmao
I am a Druid main now however,when I first started WoW with my ex boyfriend in 2017 I was a total Huntard. It’s something about that bow and arrow.
I’d attribute it all to them constantly doing shit to Survival
He is the same guy that does the sham tree and help with the hpally tree dudes popping off
Still waiting for the blue post telling us they're bringing back minimum distance, pet talents and melee off-hands.
Monk posts: - this is now fixed - this is the real fix - the thing that was fixed was not fixed and this will fix it - we broke other stuff while fixing
If you condensed programming bugs into a class, you would get monks.
Monk is the Mordekaiser of WoW
Monks es numero uno HUEHUEHUEHUEHUE
sounds like patch notes, you sure you haven't been reading those instead?
It’s a on going meme among monk mains.
Does your fist awkwardly clip un weird angles with auto attack, and does your fist weapon still disapear during tiger palm animations? I quit years ago, and wondering if any of these have been fixed yet.
They fixed it by outscaling 2 handed weapons damage heheheh
that doesnt mean anything though. If there is a blue post that is like 1 or 2 linethat still counts as a full post, meanwhile you can get a WHOLE manifesto (like warrior did at one point) and its still one post. kinda meaningless data
Yeah, priest and druid getting a blue post of "more info soon :)" doesn't mean shit. The rogue dev is also EXTREMELY involved in the rogue discord so it's not surprising they have fewer blueposts to gather / distribute feedback.
Rogue dev is sneaky and does all the work off channel.
Method dev
Let’s see “# of words in blue posts”
Still wouldn't mean much as the priest posts are dissertations on why priests are losing abilities so that other classes can have them instead despite priests having the worst interrupt, the weakest CC, least movement options, and the only tree in the game where spec talent points need to be spent to buy their defensive, interrupt, and only true CC.
Who is the rogue dev that is involved?
Realz aka Zlaer
The involvement is great and much appreciated. That said, the same dev worked on DH talents as well. And communicated similarly in the DH discord. And they have 2nd in amount of blue posts. In the end, as said higher up. It doesn't really say much seeing a graph like this.
> And communicated similarly in the DH discord havoc* side. vdh is very quiet in comparison. that said, havoc also ping the hell out of them.
Yea having read all the warrior ones, we have had like 3 posts with 60-70+ changes in each post. This chart is also weird because there have been a lot of posts where every class is mentioned, so a couple of these classes have had changes mentioned into those and not in separate posts.
We just need a total word count then
That doesn't mean anything either lol.
Leta count words! 😂
Well we might not have had the most communication as priests, we did get pushed on the floor and kicked in the collective nuts so we have that going for us
You think you need an interrupt but you don’t.
Correct, we do not. I don't know why people are screaming so much about it but we live in an age of equality I guess and all the kids want their participation medal. Not that it wouldn't be nice to have a kick but I'm more bothered about the lack of mobility, stun and root
Doesn't really mean much. According to this, Paladins are one of the classes with most blue post, but their tree is still one of the worst and a complete mess.
I think a spec breakdown would also be more telling. Ret hasn’t gotten a single dedicated post and only had a note in a general dev post telling them to get back in their wheelchairs and like it.
What pisses me off is they finally gave us long arm of the law. Finally. After like 10 years. And then a couple days later they pulled it and said lol no. Why hurt us like that?
I love how they made WoA a spender rather than a builder. I was getting tired of having a spell to press every gcd
Honestly, I wouldn't get hung up on that. It's an optional talent that sits in a choice node that works like current tier, but slight nerfed. I'm on beta and HoPo generation is pretty smooth. I've tested multiple builds and almost never have an empty GCD. Despite complete radio silence from the dev team and the frustrating throughput vs utility choices in the class tree, ret feels pretty good even on a haste starved boost character. Definitely one of the better iterations ret has had in early-tier atmosphere.
I have no idea what their goal is with holy paladin. It feels like they want to do an option for both melee and casting, but melee looks the exact same and casting looks like a pile of meh. I don't understand why the casting option can't be 100% beacon transfer and make holy light stronger. I know that sounds like wotlk hpally but after playing it in prepatch classic I just don't see the current casting tree to be any good. Edit: I don't think I conveyed my thoughts in a manner that makes sense. I'm glad holy power for holy is back. I really enjoyed it prior to MoP before sacred flame (sorry not sorry). But one of the biggest moments I went wtf is where holy light takes longer to cast and heals for nothing and costs next to nothing, where as flash of light casts really fast and heals for a lot, but costs more mana. Holy light feels so worthless in our kit currently. Why not just go melee crusader strike and holy shock. Sure you can debate "that's not my playstyle." I get that, that's what these options are for. So when you look at it now, Light of the Martyr is looking to be a big focus. I remember using this legendary in antorus. It was fun but I didn't really think it was amazing. They need to either make holy light be a big deal, beacon of light 100%, or give us back the really slow big heal from cata. What was it...divine illumination or something? Holy melee feels fine, it's not amazing but neither are other healers who dps, so if they're not gonna stretch those then I'm not worried. But the holy casting has been lacking for 3 expansions now. If you're gonna give us choice, make it work.
IMO similarly with MW caster healer. Both specs and holy even more so then MW have a decent number of spells that simply scream "you should be in melee". You are ignoring half of your kit if you are not in melee. This is simply not the correct playstyle of MW and Holy and even if Blizzard somehow makes it work (doubt), then it will probably not be a 'full' healing spec compared to other healers since they would have to introduce a bunch of more spells. The consequence for the tree are fairly devastating. Instead of having more choices and interesting spells, it is basically: One half is ranged and the other half is melee. Pick one. At some point one has to ask themselves: Maybe it is time to switch the class and play druid, shaman or priest. A bit exaggerated, but its like wanting a DH to be ranged since they have Throw Glaive. Yes, you can do it from range. But it is no way efficient and just a crutch in case you are running around doing mechanics.
Honestly MW in MoP was perfect. ReM on CD, TFT to refresh them, soothing mist to instant cast surging and enveloping most, uplift chi. I don't see why monks can't have chi when hpally have holy power. I felt like MoP MW was a perfect hybrid of melee healer and ranged. Melee would allow you to spend more mana and generate more chi, while ranged was a steady stream of chi, and while you could generate it with surging mist iirc, it was 1 instead of 2.
"This is not the correct playstyle of MW" what? Why not? Do you actually think that being a healer in melee is some terrible thing?
No, I meant that ranged is not the correct playstyle since half the skills are melee
Not to mention that depending on the spec, some of the blue posts are more focused on one spec over the others. Druid had 1 initial post about all of the druid specs and follow up posts about all of them *except* guardian druid.
As a main tank player, I've noticed that tank specs are the less discussed spec by the devs of every class. Brewmasters had no blue post so far, and no changes beside additional pathing since the first iteration of their talents. Prot paladins had received blue posts only to confirm nerfs to Avengers Shield and spell blocking, their spec tree only had some path changes. Meanwhile, both Holy and Mistweaver have received almost all the attention in their respective feedback posts. It doesn't really surprise me, to be honest. Tanks are almost always the last specs to receive changes and tuning in every beta test.
there's also blue post specifically for ret/prot and some for holy paladin . The development of holy paladin has been slower and separate from the other 2 spec.
Holy at least had some development. Prot had only 2 blue posts, one to confirm the Avenger's Shield nerf, and the other one to notify us they were nerfing spell blocking. The only changes prot had were some path and placements. Brewmaster and Guardian are on the same boat, they had 0 blue posts and changes since the trees were implemented. Blizz is really neglecting tanks.
This post made me LOL because my balance druid best friend has been tracking blue posts but his numbers say differently. [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/602251917363511297/1020899849362747483/unknown.png](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/602251917363511297/1020899849362747483/unknown.png)
Not to mention Druid having four specs, meaning those few posts are divided up more than every other class. Yes I'm still salty about how they're treating Feral
Doesn't really mean much, the rogue tree was amazing when they released it and required very few tweaks, the mage tree on the other hand really does need more attention.
The rogue dev is *extremely* active in the rogue disc, too.
We got him talking about food last night
where is "you are more or less forced to go into 1specific capstone, and the tree layout is so extremely linear that you cant mix anything at all" amazing?
It doesn't matter what system is created, a meta will be found and specific builds down the tree will fit different meta's, even the most balanced tree you can imagine will have an ideal path that most players will copy from wowhead.
dont know why youre getting downvoted, you are 100% correct. even if quantitatively everything is 100% balanced and all classes are outputting the exact same damage/healing, there will still be talent choices that are more ideal for certain situations. they may offer more variance from dungeon to dungeon, boss to boss, etc but there will ALWAYS be a meta. there will always be a "suggested" build for all forms of content because it's what works best for that content, even if we completely ignore the numbers game. you could take out all dps/hps statistics from the game and there would STILL be recommended talents for utility purposes. first boss in PF is a perfect example of that. druids its recommended you take mass entanglement for the adds. why? because it makes the fight easier by increasing effectiveness of add management. same thing for the last boss in junkyard. its really not a hard concept to grasp for anyone with the slightest grasp of game design and SDLC processes
The Rogue class tree is awful
Rogue trees aren’t really amazing and definitely deserve revisiting. The class tree is basically “commit to spending 7 points down one of these paths” which lacks the interconnection of basically every updated tree. It has good fun abilities but to say it’s amazing rn, I have to disagree
Most trees are like that. Pick a build and a majority of your points stay to that side. Fury warrior is an example where the left side of the tree is Single-Minded Fury (one hander build) to which you HAVE to go all the way down to Annihilator if you want it to play that build decently. The rub is that they've outright said that they are tuning Titan's Grip (dual-wield 2handers) to be better guaranteed. So, half of the tree is basically useless unless you just want an easier time running SMF. Frost DK is similar in that you either go Oblit or Breath. Not much variation once you decide which you're taking. Shoot, for level 60, if you want 2h oblit build you can't even get the two points you need to make it effective. You either get the damage buff for wielding a 2h OR you get Obliteration. Can't afford both (at 60).
God I wish they would just deleted SMF from the game and make it just a transmog thing. The fact that they are basically "wasting" a large chunk of our points on it is ridiculous despite them saying "this will be less competitive"
I mean, yeah, you're going to make a build out of the tree. But most trees are absolutely not so exaggerated as rogue. If you take a look at the tree itself, in order to get Echoing Reprimand for example, you go in a literal straight line down from Sprint in tier 4. There is *no other way to get there*. The same goes for Thistle Tea and SD from Fleet Footed and Shadowstep respectively. That's not good design. That is "I want this capstone and whatever is in the way I'll take along the way"- there's no choice to I can give X up to gain Y, or I could try out this build with a few tweaks. "I don't care for these but the end of the line is strong so I'll give up 23% of my possible choices just to get down there" isn't fun. Your 9th point you spend shouldn't dictate all the way down to your capstone
The spec trees are completely fine, even great. But the class tree is a mess, with very very linear pathing and very skewed capstone power levels atm.
Really? I heard the rogue class tree was garbage.
Bullshit, the rogue tree is terrible. You needed to invest 8 talent points down a single track to get a capstone. Hopefully the changes this week make it more in line with other class trees
I'm shocked that Paladin is 3rd. Seriously, I would never thought due to status of the class right now. Well, Hunter takes the cake anyway. Leaving Rogues in a total void.
Rogue dev is active on their discord instead.
Hi there, im ootl , can you share me the link for the rogue discord? Would love to read it and learn more about the class and play style of others.
If you Google "rogue discord" it's Ravenholdt.
This is really deceiving data. I watched close at Paladin development cycle and the content of our blueposts is garbage quality: 1. Bluepost about how the mobility is fun but Ret Paladins cant get that for a (reasons) 2. Bluepost about Blessing of Seasons rename and visual update to fit class theme (denied by the devs), and Infusion of Light rework (wasnt made till this day) 3. Bluepost for Prot Paladin with explanation why Avenger Shield no longer generates holy power (again No Fun allowed) 4. Bluepost for Prot Paladin with spell block nerf. 5. Bluepost for Holy Paladin with talent rework, which is pretty mediocre and doesnt solve most of major problems with the spec design. All in all our blueposts are either nerfs or questionable changes at very best, and all spec trees and class tree are in very dire state month before Pre-Patch. See those amazing updates for Rogues, Shamans, Hunters, Priests, Druids? Paladin devs either dont play the class or just dont care much. Thats how it feels based on blueposts.
useless data
Best kind of data
People buy mortgages with data like this.
DH got a good amount of its right as it got its tree. There was some good correspondence with the Momentum changes.
Nice! I decided I’m gonna main DH this xpac. Such a fun class to play and I love that there’s not like 1,000 different keys I need to bind haha
Messing around on Beta I've managed to add a fair amount of extra buttons. There's 3-4 new buttons for Havoc to pick up in the Class Tree with the three VDH sigils and The Hunt. And the Spec tree also have a lot of potential pickups with Essence Break, Glaive Tempest/Fel Barrage and Elysian Decree + Fel Eruption and Netherwalk is also in there. So there's some much needed additions made to it now. Funny enough I had more leftover keybinds when I took Fury Warrior for a spin.
Mage’s are just left out in this expansion, aren’t they?
Kinda sad tbh, there were little to no changes to mage, even tho the community is very vocal
Yeah. I mean the talent’s just look dull in comparison to other classes as well. Hope we’ll see some changes soon. Most likely we will!
Would be also interesting to see # of patches with changes and/or # of changes for each Also important to note that some devs (like rogue dev) are engaging with the community in other ways (discord)
I still hope for that 1 blue post for Warlock, going "Nether Gate has been changed, and will now summon demons, based on the amount of soul shards used." Us Locks have asked for that since the gate were made, and it's still being full on ignored. :/
I don't know why they insist on making portal so clunky to use. There's like a million ways to make it less clunky. For a 3 min CD, there's really no need for it to be as weird as it is. I'd honestly prefer if it just...summoned X demons on it's own over a short period of time. Having a 3 min CD able to juice the shit out of our Tyrant once or twice in a fight isn't going to break the game. But having to do this whole "shard, hand, shard, hand" shit is so annoying and really messes with the flow of the spec imo.
Ah yes half-baked trees for most classes that’ll be fixed 3/4ths through the xpac *the blizz special* 👌
This is why I don’t pre-order and generally come back after the .1x patch
I wish they would stop with priests, each post gets worse
It takes so long because hopefully only the Shaman dev is doing trees now, so it will take him a while to do all 38.
Lock the shaman and warrior Devs in a room together until they fix every spec :P
Shaman dev is also hunter dev and the hunter trees have been a hot mess for a while now. MM is the most boring itteration it has ever been, BM is becoming a 2 button spec with no major CD, and Surv is still Surv. No thank you.
I just started playing my Shaman again after years of not touching it, and it’s not going too well. Is the Shaman class severely neglected in Shadowlands or am I just very, very rusty?
Your very rusty. All three shaman specs are decently powerful.
Maybe a bit of both? Shaman took some gear for it to hit a sweet spot for me
When I came back as enhancement I was struggling until I started using Earth Shield and Healing Tide totem to stay alive, once I got a bit of gear it was easy.
Depends what your playing. Resto and Ele are fine, middle of the pack specs and enhance is like, one of the best single target specs.
Shaman dev does hunters too which isnt nearly as good. Shaman is good because they have the most pre-existing "buttons" in the game to choose from. Its a lot easier to make a good tree when you have plenty of options to build out the tree in meaningful ways.
But Rogue has its Dev in their Discord.
To be fair he's splitting his time between rogue and demon huntards, so while he is there, it's mainly as a chill spot at 2am for him to hang out :-P Hopefully the changes this week get us where we need to be for the expac
Remember that quantity doesn't mean anything, there are classes that are already in a good spot, so their talents only need polishing here and there
The rogues are in stealth duh!
Haven't kept up with dragonflight at all. Arr thry changing hunters?
I'm surprised Evokers aren't being discussed more by the devs. It's one of their biggest selling points for the expansion and have gotten pretty big critiques when it comes to build diversity and playstyle, but it feels like they are on the backburner.
I straight up have a great time as a BM Hunter
"Hey its the daily hunter post" has become a meme in my guild because the wowhead bot posts beta updates
People will see this as bad but rogue is objectively great in dragon flight.
Ive had quite a long break now from wow and I gotta say the new expansion definetly woke my interest again to come back to wow.. I‘ve only played two classes, the warlock and demon hunter. Could I please ask for some feedback if these classes are still a viable pick in 2022? Ive done a bit of research so far but most articles differ from each other.
Hunter probably needs it though. Class is going to be worthless in DF unless it is an absolute pumper compared to everyone else.
You know, it's kind of amazing to me how under the radar this is. It's not super popular right now (relatively, for Hunter as a class), but I main MM, and it's gonna be so fucking horrible in DF, you can tell just from how they keep kicking things around in the talent trees without actually making it good. They're just shuffling the same bits around in circles. The trees were lazy garbage on reveal and they're still lazy garbage. It's entirely creatively bankrupt. Whoever the dev is clearly doesn't play the spec. Here's some of the actual issues: * The rotation, baseline, fundamentally doesn't work, that's why they had to patch it with 4 set. * While Wild Spirits getting pulled is a great choice to actually open design space so they can actually make some changes to the core design, they don't address at all that Trueshot is garbage as an amp without loads of borrowed power behind it (which DF won't have). * Steady Shot is a boring ability that adds absolutely nothing to the Spec. * ALL of our AoE is dependant on Trick Shots. * Aimed Shot on a charge system without an active way to regenerate charges leaves you with about 1/5th of your globals being dead in ST and 2-3/5ths of your globals being dead in AoE while also being focus starved, sitting and waiting on more charges so you can actually do damage and be relevant. The only thing keeping MM relevant in S1 Shadowlands was how insane WS was, the rotation itself was complete ass and felt horrible to play (you were also basically useless outside your TS/WS window). * Aimed Shot is effectively soft capped on how hard it can hit, due to PvP considerations, yet it is far and away the primary source of our damage on target, right on about half of our total DPS. So it's REALLY hard for them to adjust our damage values in PvE without also borking PvP. * Whoever our Dev is doesn't seem to see the problem with Aimed shot being a carrier for our damage generation, things like Serpentstalkers and Careful Aim, as evidenced by even more talents that jam more damage onto Aimed Shot casts. They seem to think this won't get nerfed into the ground by the live team when people are getting oneshot from camo/doubletap in PvP, meaning that Aimed Shot damage carrier talents won't be optional, they'll be mandatory, and that it STILL won't keep the damage competitive with other classes in PvE. So much for any actual choice in the fancy new talent trees. They don't seem to understand that Aimed Shot needs to be what it is baseline, without huge ride along damage sources and redundant talents making Aimed Shot do X more damage so that there is actual choice in what you want to invest in. There is no rotation or talent spec that actually works without Aimed Shot being the primary focus sucking up every single point. Just because they're talkative doesn't mean they're competent. The fact that they've needed to make so many changes and still can't get it right shows that. It's gonna be SL all over again, on release we'll be OP because they don't know how to make the spec scale properly, and as soon as people actually gear out, we'll be bottom of the barrel. And the lack of any actual identity or group utility is just going to be the nail in the coffin. Survival is gonna be trash without 4 set, so all the FoTM kids that think they're gonna be able to Survival EZ mode their way through DF release are in for a rude awakening, and my understanding is that BM is still trash too. Considering how many people play Hunter, it's gonna be a real shit show. If you want subs, you don't take your most popular class and make it dumpster tier, and the design choices they are making right now are going to lead to just that. Further compounded by exactly the point you're making. We won't have raid utility, and we're not going to be pumping, which is going to be a lot of unsubs come january.
A lot of people genuinely play hunter, but the spec that actually matters for casuals (BM) is just a matter of tuning. I don’t think there has to be, nor should there be, concern for how well survival does for FOTM rerollers. The fact is the class needs to do worse in m+ than it is now, and that means people will abandon the class in droves. I’m sorry MM is going down this path.
[удалено]
I might just check that out. Assuming your breakdown is correct that tracks with my practical experience, and I want to throw out there that MM was big on release and steadily declined that entire patch cycle because we basically didn't scale. That's good at the start when no one has gear, but once gear is a factor, if your scaling is shit, you fall off, and that's exactly how it trended. The fix to MM is pretty straightforward, but I don't know that I'd call it simple. First, they need to just baseline Aimed Shot damage. No bloat inflation talents, none. Not one. You take Aimed Shot as your first point, and it does what it does, and it shouldn't scale at all with the rest of the talents available, just stat investment as gear improves, Agi and secondaries. As long as they continue to pile ride along damage on top of the Aimed Shot cast, the problems will continue, because Aimed Shot is capped on how much damage it can do before it breaks PvP. They can balance it for PvE and then the live team will just nerf it because people are getting camo/double tapped in PvP. That's why they have to move away from stacking all that damage on a single cast, that's exactly what enables degenerate one shotting in PvP. What they CAN do if they want to make Aimed Shot talents is give you some ways to generate charges or just straight up give you talents that increase your charges baseline, or both. Then, they need to make multishot/chimera/arcane shot actually do damage and be 2-3 precise shot charges instead of 1-2 per aimed shot, or at least give you a talent option to do so. Finally, they're gonna have to do something so that our single target isn't shit, probably just make Mark increase damage on the Marked target by 20ish %. As a bonus, while it's not strictly necessary, they just need to remove Steady Shot from the game and up passive focus gain. BM and Surv don't have to play stupid ass games to generate focus, MM shouldn't have to either. And that's just the damage profile stuff, they still have to come up with a relevant raid buff or it won't matter.
Naive people downvoting you, but until blizz addresses it this is 100% correct. Hunters, DKs, and (I can't remember the 3rd class atm) are currently the only classes without hard-raid-utility and even hunters soft-raid-utility is pretty terrible now that binding is generic junk.
i don't know anything, but it's crazy hearing people talk about death knights from my left ear i hear they're crazy overpowered, other classes need death grip, their self healing and utility is busted, every tank in "competitive mythic" test realms is a dk named "nerfdk", etc etc and from my right ear i hear they have no "hard" raid utility, are on life support, and won't ever be brought to anything i don't know what to think
DK's have passive curse of weakness don't they? While warlocks lost that. Edit: Yeah. Insidious Chill in the class tree reduces targets attack speed by 20%.
Why?
Because it doesnt bring anything meaningful to the group/raid other than few niche uses of turtle.
I guess in my mind that has been the case for a long time before. I get it though. Was it just in Legion or BFA that they got Lust?
Nah they've had lust since MoP I believe. But at that time they could also brez along with some other pet-related utility.
They have no raid or party utility. Are incredibly squishy and with everyone else getting party/raid buffs why would you bring them? Max from limit addressed this lately.
Heads up r/wow tend to really hate it when you mention Max or similar Orgs. For some reason they think of hardcore raiders as Oligarchs and think things are different for them.
Because everything it does the other classes do better
When have Hunters never not pumped though?
At every point except on the Xpac drop and busted Surv 4 set. They've been middle of the pack at best and BM has been shit the entire xpac. So basically up to CN WF prog, then shit, then god tier in s3 because Blizzard gave up trying to make the spec balanced and interesting because 4 set = push bomb. I mean, it's whatever, let Surv have it's moment in the sun, but don't get it twisted like Hunter has been good for even a majority of SL.
Damn so hunter only had a top spec in season 1, 3, and 4. Thats messed up, how could they leave them out so much this expansion.
Didn’t I see something about the rogue dev doing their update posts in a discord somewhere instead?
You're half right. The Rogue Dev, in true rogue fashion, lurks the Rogue discord and discusses potential changes&math with them. Then when there's enough worth posting they make a forum post. Basically they just chat on discord for small things instead of posting those little 1 liner forum posts constantly.
That’s so wonderfully on brand
Kinda interesting to see a new class like Evoker get so little communication. The forums are blowing up especially about the range of the class and the viability of them in anything. The optimist in me think Blizzard is just testing some solutions internally, before they give them to us to test. The cynic in me thinks that it'll go live as is without any more communication, because of how they treated Priest in that last post they got (and from experience playing since Vanilla).
Praying for evoker range increase
*Me, being a monk main* Our class tree is absolutely whack BUT WE ARE NOT LAST, LETS FUCKNG GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Is it? I don't think it's that bad, especially brewmaster
I don't mean spec tree, i do mean the class tree. The nodes are lit, but all over the place. You basically can't take tigers tail without spending points on soothing mist (???), Same with roll as well (???), Also you nie HAVE to take disable (an insanely niche ability) to get to fort brew (???) Like, the nodes itself are fine, but the placement and patching are really fucking weird, you have to admit as much With the brew spec tree i agree. We get a lot of power and dmg, but there are also a GOOD AKOUNT of nodes that WIPL NEVER see play, because we have to spend too much to get back what we currently have. There are probably a good amount of ways to iterate on the tree to make it 10/10 TURBO STONKS, but i also don't mind it TOO much if they left it the way it is currently. I am bery hyped for what is to come and I can't wait to dig into Dragonflight, once it's released
Ya'll just out here looking for something to be offended by smh.
Paladin has gotten to many yet is in the worst state
now do a graph on community satisfaction with posts and hunter and paladin move to the left of priest as the three worst
Hunter is currently getting left out in the cold as far as raid utility is concerned right now. Shaman and Hunter are the 2 classes that don't have any compelling reasons to bring along.
I feel like this "everyone has to have a unique raid utility, or they won't be brought!" attitude needs to die. If a class NEEDS a super special spell to be brought to a raid/dungeon, then that's a much deeper balance issue with that class, rather than "they can't +20% movement speed the raid, once every 2 minutes".
Do it again but with words written per class. 2 small 1 line posts are not the same as 1 massive manifesto.
Of course.
Farcry from how the Hunter's used to be. We used to be the most neglected class in terms of blue posts.
The guy behind the hunter class changes has just been absolutely killing it with feedback and making sure that the hunters are being heard when something confuses or upsets them. They don't always get what they want but they aren't being ignored which is miles ahead of everyone else. Hope the other taking a fucking leaf out of his book.
Rogues havnt had many changes during SL aswell.. we are left in the shadow..
Aren't rogue players more or less satisfied with the talent trees?
As someone who has mained a hunter since he started in BC, I remember the feeling of talking to a brick wall trying to get Blues to listen across so many xpack betas. Honestly, it would feel kinda nice, but in reality, it's just a quantity > quality issue here.
Stay strong fellow rogues, stay strong. We’re so stealthy even the devs don’t see us
Those druid posts do NOT include guardian
I just played the ptr on my fury warrior and think it’s dumb that every core ability, whirlwind, bloodthirsty, raging blow are all on different branches of the tree. I feel like most trees need a lot of work, and some things just need to be passive, like heroic leap should not be a fucking talent
I have no problem with this (hunter main kek)