Urk_VN posted:

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You know what I find troubling with this data? Looking at it as a whole, and not just any one class or spec, I remember you guys posting about one of the devs saying something to the effect of "we want any class and spec to be viable in groups/raids".

But looking at stuff like this, it's obvious that clearly some specs work better than others in groups, which is why people are still more or less forced into cookie cutter specs.

It'd be pretty interesting if, instead of just giving a boss way more hp/cheap tricks, they made it so that a talent available only to a certain spec did more damage to a boss. For example, a boss that's weaker to frost damage than fire or arcane, or maybe one that doesn't like balance druid spells (although I suppose in the long run this may end up causing players to switch specs right before a boss fight, so maybe the boss should switch halfway in or something). I think this would work better than trying to just give the mobs more hp, which players will inevitably pick the specs that do the most damage overall.

But my guess is Blizzard will just give them more hp, and nerf other classes, since it's easier that way.

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_Kewk_ posted:

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Uuhhh Arcane blows this expansion.

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blizzard posted:

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We’re happy with damage overall. We have very few traditional tank and spank fights (even Argaloth likes to parry melee) so it’s hard to get consistent numbers without very large data sets. Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low. Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them. We aren’t seeing a lot of Subtlety rogues in PvE yet, so that sample size is still small. On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high. Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.

Healing in PvE is working out pretty much as intended. There are some Heroic dungeon bosses that are probably tougher than the required item level average permits. In general, you might have a tough time upon zoning into a Heroic dungeon with a bunch of strangers as soon as Dungeon Finder permits, especially if your group isn’t willing to communicate and work together. We want Heroics to be challenging -- if you want to zerg the content, stick to normal dungeons.
Tank balance overall seems good at this point in time. Threat seems to be in a good place -- good tanks don’t have much of a problem, but they can’t “phone it in” either. We’re seeing all four tanks get a lot of use, even on Heroic raid fights. That could change as more guilds are able to make serious heroic attempts.
Some additional class-specific tweaks (keeping in mind this is not the full list):

Even after we fixed their mastery, Feral druid bleeds still do a lot of damage and are undispellable. We plan to shift some of that damage back to main attacks. They are also a little too hard to control. Given that they are already hard to root, snare, or polymorph, we think the fear immunity from Berserk is too much.

Arms warrior burst damage might still be too high in PvP, while we don’t have a great way to adjust their sustained damage for PvE. The Lambs to the Slaughter talent is a good place to address this. We also might nerf warrior stuns.

We think Arms and Fury warriors are getting too much damage out of Heroic Strike. We want it to be clear that it’s a rage dump and not make it the hardest hitting ability.

For Holy priests, we’re increasing Chakra’s duration and changing Surge of Light so it can now benefit from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit.
We’re making some additional buffs, such as Pain Suppression and Barkskin, undispellable.

We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.

Empowered Touch will now benefit from Regrowth as well. We’re also buffing the Glyph of Regrowth.

We are looking at Holy Concentration (after our most recent buff) and Omen of Clarity to make sure they don’t account for too much mana savings.

We are probably going to remove Drain Mana from warlocks. It is incredibly situational in PvE but causes problems in PvP. This might mean we need to evaluate Mana Burn as well.

Inferno will no longer increase the radius of Hellfire.
Shadow and Flame can now proc from Incinerate in addition to Shadow Bolt.
We want to redesign Improved Soulfire.
Censure will no longer break Repentance.
As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.
To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost.
We want to make it clear that Combat is intended to use fast off-hand weapons. We also want to polish Revealing Strike a bit.
We want to make sure Enhancement shaman avoid caster weapons.
We want to make sure Unholy DKs prefer two-handed weapons.
Necrotic Strike needs to be affected by resilience.
For Cataclysm, we changed Death Strike almost completely into an ability for Blood DK tanks, which is a bit unfortunate. We want to make sure it is still a useful button for Frost or Unholy DKs who need healing.
We also want to address DK mobility in PvP.
We think we overnerfed Every Man for Himself, and are reverting it back to a 2-minute cooldown again. We might evaluate other racials after we’ve seen more PvP.

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vn_jurojin posted:

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Two things that bug me about what they said though.

1. Survival hunter AOE dps might be too high? We have 2 AE attacks, a launched trap that does mediocre damage and a talent that adds serpent sting to multi-shot. I'm failing to see how either one of those could translate into "too high".

2. Forcing Unholy DK back into 2H fighting. I liked the choice finally.

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vn_jurojin posted:

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That's probably true, but instead of forcing 2H why not just pull back dw damage for unholy? As I said, I liked the choice.

*edit* Thought about that for a second and realized that that is probably what they're going to do. So let me rephrase that and say I hope they don't nerf dw damage for unholy enough that it's pointless to do it.

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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My poor combat Rogue.

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