Having read the recent changes to some classes, and having rerolled a Paladin for The Burning Crusade, I've begun to ponder a lot about what exactly the Blizzard developers are thinking when it comes to balancing and tweaking their game.
To be frank, I'll never understand the ideology behind their changes.
Thinking about the recent changes to the Paladin, and Druids, not to mention countless changes to various classes, making them hugely underpowered or overpowered; I've wanted to express my own opinion on the matter, but lacking the nerve to post it on the official boards, since, well, not much good comes out of posting on the European boards anyway (to little moderation, and to many trolls/idiots), and frankly I'm pretty disgusted with how we're treated here by the European staff, but I won't get into that in this blog.
Now to begin, the idea behind this blog, is that I disagree in how Talent Tree's, and classes, especially hybrids, work in World of Warcraft.
From my personal view, a talent tree is there to grant players a variety in play style, so that everyone are different to some extend. Now what I don't understand is, why even have different talent tree's, when only 1 is really needed for a class.
Yes, of course, if you're PVP you spec into 1 part, and if you're PVE you spec into another. But thats not what I'm talking about here. What I'm saying is, that every class should have a choice to freely specialize in whatever talent tree they want to, and still bring something unique and valuable into a raid, for either PvP or PvE, whatever they wish to.
Instead, as I see it in WoW, especially "hybrids", we're locked into specializing in a cookie cutter spec in one specific tree - Take a Druid, not taking into consideration that they were recently buffed into insanity, but now being nerfed into uselessness again - talking DPS of course - they're back into specializing into 1 tree, the resto tree, for healing.
Now thats the problem. You field raids after whats best, and whats best is 1 tree, and 99.9% of the time 1 specific cookie cutter spec.
Instead, every Talent Tree should bring something unique and valuable into a raid, allowing people to specialize into whatever talent tree they want to, and still be wanted. Let's use Druids as a example again - I like to use them as a example since, they were suddenly wanted no matter if they were Restoration, or Feral - Both their Moonkin tree, their DPS tree AND their Healing tree, should bring something unique, needed, and valuable into a raid.
Actually, It'd be easier for me to explain using my own class, the Paladin.
A quick example, Retribution, while yet somewhat usable in a 5 man instance, everyone would easily prefer another DPS class over a Retribution Paladin, since a Holy paladin would bring everything a Retribution paladin have, plus the healing.
Now, one of my ideas (quick brainstorming) to try and fix it, would be removing Divine Shield from the paladin class as a free skill, and instead move it down as the end tier Holy Talent, plus Blessing of Wisdom should be in Holy as a end tier talent as well, and ONLY as a Holy Talent. BoK should be moved deep down as one of the end tier talents for Protection as well, who wouldn't want a Paladin (off)tank now? Retribution would get BoM as a end tier talent, and like Holy, it'd be only be available to Retribution paladins. These 3 changes alone wouldn't make Protection and Retribution desired enough though, there'd have to be more, but I'm just illustrating what COULD be.
The ideology about the above written is that, like I wrote even further above, that every class should be able to specialize into all of their 3 talent tree's, and still bring something valuable and unique into a raid, so that they would be desired and needed, and not being forced into specializing in 1 specific tree in order to play the game.
Where some of you would scream "You rolled a Healing Class, act like it" I say, "You're ignorant" - Since when is either of these classes a healing class, while some classes might have the ability to heal, it doesn't mark them as healing only. There's 3 talent tree's for each class, and everyone should have the option at using them, not being forced into 1 specific option.
I understand that a lot would feel threatened, that every other class now would have an option to do what they do. For example Rogues, the primary melee DPS class, doing DPS is their thing, and they can't really do anything else, their Crowd Control ability is blinding, or stun locking (which don't work in raids 99.9%) They would of course not like that suddenly every other class can DPS.
This is where the Unique and Valuable talents come into play, Rogues would still be the backbone, be desired, because, like all the other classes, they'd have unique talents and skills that are vital and wanted in raids, so they aren't neglected.
Balance is the key word, something I personally don't believe Blizzard have achieved.
Everyone should have a choice to play their class as they want to, Healing, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, it shouldn't matter, and all should be desired when fielding raids.
FREEEDOM!
Mythic or Funcom, free us from this madness.
Any feedback is appreciated, I'd like to discuss it all  Hopefully I stepped on someones toes! |
at least you haven't understood some of it. You want to nuke people? Thats a caster job, you're a melee class, your job is to do melee DPS, or tank mobs. My job as a Paladin is to only heal people, even though I have two other talent tree's, why is that?
<3
