World of Warcraft®

It has been said beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I suspect that holds true as to balance in WoW.

I wonder what your sense of fair and true balance is?

Even more, I am wondering if the developers have some definition of balance that it would be helpful to share with the players.

My own sense and perspective of the term in relation to this game is that state of the game achieved when the classes and specs each and all have close enough tools and mechanics that most of the time, whether it be pve or pvp, the person who "wins", achieves that moreso through personal knowledge and skill, than because of class and/or spec tools and mechanics.

In other words, to me we have fair balance when more often than not the top healer, the top DPSer, the top Tank and the better PVPer come out ahead, REGARDLESS of the class or spec.
I think it is to be expected that different classes and specs do better on different encounters.
But my own sense of balance in that respect would mean that each class and spec would have a fair share of encounters they excel at, as well as a fair share they are relatively weaker at.

Do others have some other definition of what true balance is in this game?
What is it and why?

More than anything, I suspect we would all like to have some insight into what the guys and gals who create this and make the final calls on who gets what, see as fair and true balance.

Edit:After posting this I really wish I had instead posted it in the General Forum. In hindsight, it seems more the place for it. So if a friendly moderator cares to move it there, thank you. Or some other forum if it is deemed even more appropriate.

In other words, to me we have fair balance when more often than not the top healer, the top DPSer, the top Tank and the better PVPer come out ahead, REGARDLESS of the class or spec.
I think it is to be expected that different classes and specs do better on different encounters.
But my own sense of balance in that respect would mean that each class and spec would have a fair share of encounters they excel at, as well as a fair share they are relatively weaker at.

With expectations like that, you are bound to be disappointed.

Until they implement the ultimate homogenization patch, where all classes are reduced to either Heal, Tank, MDPS, RDPS, (or are made so similar they might as well have done that), there will be number disparities.

Holy Priests were at the bottom of the pile for the last half of Wrath. But did I ever see a good Holy Priest outheal a mediocre Paladin or Shaman? Sure. (Let's not mention Druids (oops)). Could Holy Priests complete encounters successfully, even if the class demanded more competence? Yeah. At times it's frustrating to be at the bottom, but as long as the class isn't so down there to be sat, it doesn't really bother me.

And since I dislike homogenization and enjoy class flavors, I'm more than happy to embrace imperfect balancing than watch my favorite class reduced to 'Healer' in the name of equal HPS.

Way I see it, Mages may be at the top of the dps charts, but if you decided to put together your raid with tanks, healers, and then nothing but mages, I don't think things would pan out too well. Damage is part of what mages bring to the table, as do a lot of classes. Mages probably bring more damage than some, but you're not going to bench everyone else just because they aren't a mage, are you?

Balance is about having something to offer. You may not be the best at each of the things you offer, but as long as you're good enough at those things to merit consideration, you're in a good place. If someone is consistently top dps, and has 100% uptime on the boss and no interrupts, while the guy doing 3k dps less has been burning down every add/bonespike/frost tomb and his interrupt is on cooldown all day, I'd say that's pretty balanced too. If all you're bringing to the fight is damage, then in order to be worth bringing, you need to do the most. If you have more to offer than that, then don't sweat it if you aren't topping the meters.

Nice response Jujubar.

I am not in love with making everyone the same as everyone else, and in fact back when it was decided to introduce another class (Death Knights) I had argued that it was more pressing and important to balance what was already in the game, than to further complicate the mix.

But is it really so hard to balance classes and specs out? I mean, I am not a computer guru or even a developer, but there has been a lot of talk of adding knobs to adjust, and what is the purpose of that otherwise? Maybe not being a game developer guru I just do not understand how hard it is.

But this is not a thread to QQ. I am just curious what different players, and on the remote chance the game developers, see as "balance".

Well, it seems to me that the only real way to achieve balance in every sort of sense (or a way that people can't complain about some being better than others) would be to make every healer equal to one another. And by doing that, as Blizzard slightly seems to be trying to lately, you remove most of the unique flavor of each class and spread them around relatively evenly to all so that they share healing mechanics and styles. But then what's the point of having separate healing classes at all?

From what I can see (and just in my opinion), balance is all about trade-offs. I'll give an example:

Back before the patch, holy paladins had ridiculously powerful throughput. They could pump out huge heals very fast for individuals, but in turn had no AoE healing capabilities. A druid on the other hand had massive AoE healing utility, but wasn't really geared appropriately for single-target tank healing. Both roles had their niche, their purpose, but it locked players in to certain roles. Now, following the patch, the paladin at least has been hit with a direct healing nerf and offered a few more healing spells as alternatives to their original play style. Which, in Blizzard's words if I remember correctly, was an attempt to break them free of that mold and allow them to fill other roles as healers that they couldn't before.

Whew.. long-winded, am I!

This game can never be fair and balanced - anymore than Fox News can be.

To me, balance is being able to perform the same as the other classes in your role, albeit with a different style. Balance is not being locked out of an encounter strictly because of the choice you make at the character screen. And balance is not requiring specific classes/abilities for gimmicky encounters.

But is it really so hard to balance classes and specs out? I mean, I am not a computer guru or even a developer, but there has been a lot of talk of adding knobs to adjust, and what is the purpose of that otherwise? Maybe not being a game developer guru I just do not understand how hard it is.

But this is not a thread to QQ. I am just curious what different players, and on the remote chance the game developers, see as "balance".

I'm not a developer either, but with the years of work that has gone into this game, and watching the massive disparities between some classes in vanilla dwindle down to acceptable ones in the expacs, I'd say this is probably as good as it gets. I mean, all 5 healing specs healed all tiers of Wrath content regularly - there were no Frost Mages of PvE healing.

As I said above I think perfect balance - the idea that all classes performing at the same skill with the same gear will achieve the same HPS - is literally impossible without complete homogenization. Even more so with Cata and the death of niche healing.

Nice response Jujubar.

I am not in love with making everyone the same as everyone else, and in fact back when it was decided to introduce another class (Death Knights) I had argued that it was more pressing and important to balance what was already in the game, than to further complicate the mix.

But is it really so hard to balance classes and specs out? I mean, I am not a computer guru or even a developer, but there has been a lot of talk of adding knobs to adjust, and what is the purpose of that otherwise? Maybe not being a game developer guru I just do not understand how hard it is.

But this is not a thread to QQ. I am just curious what different players, and on the remote chance the game developers, see as "balance".

It's not so much that it's impossible; it's actually really easy. I could give each DPS spec a mix of spells/abilities and make the coefficients exactly even. Whether I call the ability or spell "Fireball" or "Shadowbolt" or "Sinister Strike" with different animations means little if each one of them does exactly 1000 damage. Blizzard could go through and give each class a direct damage, direct damage with DoT component, channeled/sustained ability and DoT. They'd all be equal.

That ignores all flavor, though, since you wouldn't notice any kind of actual game play change between classes. Additionally, it would leave zero room for player skill to make a difference, since the optimum spec and playstyle would carry over to every class and spec.

A good way to think of balancing is making up a hypothetical where I challenge you to come up with a way of making a dollar bill in change that uses each coin type as few times as possible. Some new players may opt for 4 quarters, which completes the challenge but is obviously not the best way to meet it. Someone else may say 2 quarters, 3 dimes, 2 nickels, and 10 pennies. This is obviously better but perhaps not the best, but we can say definitively that the second person played the challenge better than the first.

The idea of class balance is obviously more complex, but the same idea holds. Give the players a boundary or challenge (say, raid DPS) then watch as some players utilize their resources more effectively, with the caveat that the potential for each is exactly the same.

My definition of Balance is simple -- no matter what Race, Class, Spec, Role a players chooses, they still rank somewhere near the same place on recount. The mechanics/method of doing that is the job of the developers.

I wish they would leave changes on the PTR longer, and listen more to guys like the guy on elitistjerks who has double doctorates and loves playing with the math.

> What is "balance" in WoW in your eyes?

When skill is rewarded for good players, and not rewarding a class gimmick anyone can perform.

I don't think class diversity is an extinct concept, nor would they want it to be. They just want to make it easier. You should have 2-3 options to fill in a certain vital role - not 1.

I think that's what Cata is all about in this respect - striking the balance between making raid comps more flexible and accessible, but not homogenizing to the point of no distinction between two classes.

The ultimate goal is to give players less of a logistical barrier to showcase their true capabilities. I think that's a good goal.

To me Balance is homogenization. People see Homogenization as bad but look at society. Examples: Fast food restaurants and efficiency.

I just wish fear was more reliable and did not have so many counters. That's why my priest/warlock are punching bags for all melee that have some immunities to fear/psychic scream. For that reason there should be Polymorph totems in addition to Tremor Totems, Berserker rage glyphed (gives immunity to Polymorph), Lichbourne glyphed (you guessed it Polymoprh immunity) etc.

Mage blink is like a free trinket in essence every 15 seconds and so is druid Shapeshifting in a way which liberates them from snares. Now why can't a warlock demonic teleport while stunned? Luckily someone on Blizzard team is balancing the game in the way of nerfs instead of giving classes similar abilities.

I've always kind of felt that priests got the shaft after Vanilla. During vanilla I felt priests were the best healers in the game and rightly so. However blizzard really took a step back during TBC to decide once and for all how to solve the hybrid dilema.

The hybrid dilema is this: If you make hybrids weaker at doing a job then a pure class, then there is no reason to bring a hybrid over a pure class. If you don't make hybrids weaker at doing a job then a pure class, then theres no reason to play a pure one when you could play a hybrid, do the job just as well, and have the added bonus of versitility.

If the treatment druids got is any indication, Blizzard decided hybrids will be just as good as pure classes, and the pure healing class is the Priest.

Priests have 2 healing trees and are in fact the only class in the game that does. Shamans are DPSers with a healing tree. Paladins and Druids are hybrids. Priests are healers with a DPS tree, plain and simple. When you think Healer you think Priest.

I really feel like Blizzard is trying to get away from healer rolls in Cata. No more Pally = Tank Healer, Shaman = Raid healer, everyone will be able to do anything. I think that only weakers priests further as the main attraction to the Holy priest was having the biggest toolbox of any healer.

I still love my priest and he'll be my main in Cata, and I understand other healers need to be able to keep up, but is felt like priests have been dragging behind for some time now when they should be leading in healing.

Class balance for raids, to me, is this: that I want to bring a variety of classes and specs more than I want to stack a single class or spec. For healers that is, assuming relatively equal skill and gear and discounting desires to have all gear drops be useful, I would prefer 1 of each healer spec before I'd want to bring in 2 of a single spec.

On an individual basis, a single class might be slightly more powerful in terms of raw throughput, but the spell differences are sufficient to ensure the other classes are brought because they can cover for the weaknesses of that "more powerful" class. e.g. Holy Priests had relatively powerful burst AE heals, but with cooldowns or other drawbacks, to match up against a Druid's HoTs -- they complement each other, each fills in for what the other lacks, making the raid stronger by having one of each than it would with either 2 Priests or 2 Druids.

Similar sorts of elements would apply for Tanks and DPS -- it should be better for the raid as a whole to have a variety of specs than to stack a single spec. As soon as a given spec has enough of an advantage that you'd prefer stacking (see: Sunwell Shaman), or enough of a disadvantage that you'd never want to bring them (see: Frost Mage), that's when I'd say the classes/specs are no longer balanced.

PvP balancing is a very different thing, and I'm far less versed in that, so I'll leave that half of the topic alone.

Balance is a druid tree. It specializes is treants, starfall, and moonfire.

Also Moonkin, and moonkin /dancing.

I call for Balance on the Mage healing trees because I have Decurse and offensive dispel in the form of Spellsteal. The problem is it only removes 1 curse and 1 beneficial spell on 2 different buttons.

Please we need remove poison also and mash it all into 1 button Blizzard, would also like for Polymorph to stun in all specs, Counterspell to always last 8 seconds and Slow to be undispellable because when someone dispels it and I'm specced into 50% chance of putting a Slow with an Arcane Blast I have to use a GCD to put Slow back up on the Target.

I wish we had 1 more shield for Cataclysm. Mana Shield and Mage Ward is not enough so I gotta go into Frost for Ice Barrier. When Ice Blocked I should be able to DPS like a Paladin in Sacred Shield. Mage Armor is great but I think you should add the Ice Armor into it to slow melee and be usable against casters at the same time.

Umm another thing I would call to be balanced is to put Blink on a shorter CD, a 15 second trinket is not really that good. I also wish I could use Blink while silenced so rogues can no longer damage me. One last thing to balance is invisibility, when active it should be able to see rogues.

Let's say that there was a boss encounter where, on 10 man, the tank took 10k dmg / second, and the entire raid took 500dmg /second each, and throw each healer into it. Each raid member is next to eachother, within 5 yards or so (for shamans chain heal and other classes AoE) and there is no movement needed. Balance would be to have all of the classes, if played by people with the same skill level, pull the same HPS, and same overhealing, something often overlooked.

Now lets say that the tank only takes 5k dmg/second, and the raid takes 1k/second each, but are spread apart so that each AoE only heals 1 target. Now we put the same healers and people in the raid and have each of them preform the same, or within a small amount.

Now you would have to do things inbetween as well, so tank takes 7k, raid takes 700, and AoEs heal half their maximum number of targets, and have everyone preform equally. Now this is not such an easy task. Paladins (pre 4.0) would have been leading the way in tank healing, and druids would outpreform the others in AoE healing, but it should all amount to the same total healing if it is balanced.

How to fix this? Homoginize healing, which they did. They gave every class a big/medium/small heal for single targets, each an AoE heal, and each a HoT. However, in order to still maintain a certain "flavor" to healing classes they would have to be heterogeneous, or all different, the way they were before 4.0. It seems that cata has balanced classes as far as healing goes, but it has lost some of its "flavor" which is what some really want. There's always going to be people who aren't happy and think it is "unbalanced" but then by solving that the people who want "flavor" will start to complain themselves.

WoW has over 11 million people playing it, and blizzard is trying to satisfy the majority of that. If that means that 7 million of those people want similar healing classes, then blizzard is obliged to do it. Heck, if i was in charge of blizzard, I'd go for keeping 70% or my income over 30%.

So i guess really that balance, in my eyes at least, is people of equal skill using each class can preform equally well through out the entire game. If that means that half the game is heavy single target damage where paladins will shine and the other half is AoE damage where druids will shine, and priests/shamans are equal in both, then they should each preform equally in overall numbers. But i guess Blizzard went with the easier fix, homoginizing classes.