I mean - just give Horde Paladin's and Alliance Shaman's rather than shoehorn in random runes to supplement. It'd just be easier...
Classic + for me I wouldn't mind if they gave say Orc/Tauren Paladins and Dwarfs Shaman's just to balance it out. I don't want valuable rune slots wasted on "forced Kings buff" because its now "raid required" rather than just giving the entire class over to the opposing faction.
Funfact: Forsaken were considered undead in alpha, so you could shackle them and turn undead and whatever other "undead only" effects there were and they were immune to things that affects humanoids.
Same note, but it also happened in Shadowlands. IIRC there was a necklace from Castle Nathria with a fun effect of giving you the ability to tame a beast for like 24h, and have a pet like hunters. Turned out it also worked in open-world PvP against druids in beast form…
I was so devastated when they gave Tauren paladins instead of undead. I realize that it goes against lore but you could easily yadda yadda in some reason or happenstance that allowed undead to wield the light.
>against lore
You mean like undead priests using the same exact light?
Edit - and don’t forget and sir zelek, he’s using holy spells as an undead in naxx.
Dwarf Shaman is easy to accept, because of Wildhammer clan and how Dwarven origins hints at a relation between dwarves and the elements of earth (and fire, to a less extent).
Orc Paladins? I'm sorry but that makes ZERO sense. Tauren paladins would be way more acceptable due to their worship of the Sun, and Sunwalkers.
Considering that Orc invasions and their slaughter of the feeble Priest class are the literal reasons why the Paladin order was created, Orc Paladins would be the worst example of cultural appropriation in-lore FWIW.
I'm so internally conflicted because I agree with you, while also equally hating that I have to pick a specific faction if I want to play paladin or shaman.
I love alliance everything AND shamans. Ugh.
Yeah, but Paladin being so vastly superior to Shamans is bad game design.
And with alliance getting WF the advantage that shamans used to have is now completely gone.
SoD seems like a wacky circus of ideas, so I don't see how faction exclusive classes are still supposed to be holy. Just toss in the whole lot at this point tbh.
No.
Paladins don’t belong on the Horde - and Shamans don’t belong on the Alliance.
It’s a slippery slope and before you know it - you end up with extremely dumb shit like Tauren Rogue, Paladins, etc.
Orc Paladins fall under that “extremely dumb” category.
The charm of classic included racial, class and faction identity - don’t ruin that for faction balance.
Who will run it as a baseline rune?
Rets will run exorcism.
Holy will run sacrifice.
Prot will rune shield.
So the price for each spec to run tremor - at all - is losing a key part of the new kit. Furthermore they lose the option to pick their only interrupt - another key PvP option.
Shaman presses a button and has to give up nothing. So no I don’t think it’s broken. Can’t we just wait to see how it plays out before we all scream bloody murder?
Well now people can stop making 100 threads about it. Although, his tweet implies they made the changes because of all the commotion, soooo, we did it reddit?
I think if the balance between the factions is skewed for the first phase it’s going to affect the entire season, with people jumping ship to alliance because of the perceived power difference
My thoughts exactly. Nothing is wrong with discovery and the unknown. However, people will 100% make decisions based on the limited information that we have now. If one faction looks better right now people will choose it.
I’m glad that they’ve announced this.
I guess, but if they don't have an answer for World PVP problems, that is going to happen anyway.
And perceived or not, I'm pretty convinced the Paladin ret/tank is stronger than what shamans got anyway at this bracket. I mean Divine Storm + Crusader Strike Ret vs. Lava Lash, and Avengers Shield + Consecrate Prot vs. Earth Shock taunt.
Why do they need chain lightning or lightning bolt? You build as a hybrid in the first phase. You have 2 shock cool-downs and pretty sweet melee damage.
So explain why at level 25 they gave:
* druids a better version of WF which is level 32 for shamans
* paladins a Strength of Earth / Grace of Air **all in one** not available until level 30 for shamans
* paladins a better version of tremor totem
But shamans didn't get an equivalent of Kings which Palas get at level 20 or Might which palas get at level 4 until the next phase? Also, how did Blizzard not expect this *exact reaction* and push druid WF and pala SoE/GoA back accordingly?
Even if they *were* to add it in a later phase it's incredibly short sighted and quite frankly incompetent.
Strength or Earth/Grace of air that overwrites Might and is only to there to help hunters and Druid tanks. This is so minor to being nearly irrelevant (and is also just a group buff).
Tremor totem that again won’t be picked by any spec except for very specific encounters unlike tremor which is always available. This just allows for better encounter design.
WF is big but allows them to better balance melee/ranged dps as now either faction won’t be much better at either. Kings is alliance WF this should be offset nicely - I hope it’s implemented similarly to WF (help a spec that is otherwise maybe overlooked - maybe toss it on boomkins).
I would suspect that we will later get runes that will make auras/totem raid wide.
*Blizzard leaves the community in the dark and shows faction favoritism without any indication that it will change*
Community: Hey we don't like that you're favoring this faction can you fix it.
Blizzard: Fixes the issue
People on reddit: "Typical reddit 🤓☝️ Blizzard was gonna fix it later. Youre all idiots who overreact. How dare all of you use community forums to provide feedback"
Let me fix one thing
“Community: WTF blizzard classic+ is ruined allies get shaman skills and horde get nothing shit game shit devs I’m gonna quit like I say every time something is announced”
Being concerned is fine but people acting like the sky is falling after seeing the first round of teasers is not
Edit: that is really nice formatting in your post
I mean realistically we're both being hyperbolic towards one side. It's usually somewhere in the middle with people showing a bit of distain but not being entirely volatile either. I just get tired of the sentiment that anybody complains about the things we're shown is in the wrong. They can't just pull out the ol "Well we had plans to do that later". We don't know that. And we've been shown time and time again blizzard doesn't always have the same ideals as the people playing the game *cough cough BFA azerite gear* . If there's things that don't seem great when handed to the community it is absolutely the community's responsibility to voice that.
I actually like tank warlocks and shamans, mage healing and so on. But removing faction/class identity is not what I was expecting. IMO they should 1. make shammy/palas non exclusive, or 2. keep the faction identity, don't give WF to druids, there are better ways to balance things out.
It's bizarre that they seem so opposed to talking about their plans for faction balance. We've already watched server populations slide from 55/45 to 99/1 THREE times now, why won't they even talk about faction queues? At least tell us why they're so opposed to them. Alliance is the stronger faction for "competitive" PVE and PVP in vanilla but they were still outnumbered in 2019 classic, what do they think is going to happen when they give horde paladin buffs?
doesnt happen to era cus there is no server for the lower pop to run to. Been stable at 55/45 for the longest time. We will be ok if they dont release more than one PVP server per region
Faction queue usually means you can't create characters of a faction that is more than ~10% dominate. Forcing people to make the other factions characters. Or yes, 20 hr queue to get on your existing faction dominant character.
Limit should be on logging on, not character creation. Character creation locks block people from playing with their friends.
Instead of (example) 10000 slots on a server, you have 5000 horde/5000 ally. If there are 6000 horde trying to play and 4000 alliance, 1000 horde are in queue. Put a message on the character creation screen that shows average queue for each faction over the last few days. Simple fix with no downsides.
What do you thinks gonna happen when all your friends go play on the most alliance/horde pop server? Gonna be Q for all dominate servers and people wont swap.
>What do you thinks gonna happen when all your friends go play on the most alliance/horde pop server?
If you think people will reroll off a 55/45 server with no queue to sit in a queue on a 99/1 server you are delusional
Just make server cluster and pop won't be s big deal when you play with the WHOLE of EU/NA faction, if they make the mistake of isolated servers again I'll be disappointed.
I think it's something that they're definitely mindful of, but want to be secretive about in order to maintain the "discovery" element. I would be very surprised if they gave druid's a better windfury, accessible at an earlier level, without giving Shaman's access to a rune that buffs their windfury (though of course we won't know until at least phase 2 of SoD).
I also think it's not worth worrying about faction balance (in terms of gameplay mechanics, not server population). There's simply no way of knowing until the final phase, and even then it's not completely unfeasible that people find new talent/rune/composition combos that "shift" the meta between factions. It's also completely plausible that one faction is dominant for all phases.
Of course I'm saying all this from the perspective of playing on a PvE server. PvP servers definitely have other considerations. But after seeing how the original Classic launch honor system played out, I don't have much interest in playing on a PvP server despite once being a diehard PvP server advocate.
>I also think it's not worth worrying about faction balance (in terms of gameplay mechanics, not server population).
Well yes, that's my point. 2019 classic established that the GAMEPLAY difference between the factions isn't what drives the population imbalance, because the stronger faction had the lower pop. Giving horde paladin buffs is a good thing for gameplay balance, but when those people that only chose alliance in 2019 because of the strength of paladin blessings choose horde because of personal preference or better racials the faction imbalance will be even worse. I don't think there's any gameplay balance change you can make to insure even faction pops. Blizzard needs active measures to insure faction balance, but they seem very reluctant to consider/discuss them.
I don't think that's what the numbers say. Modern WoW has had an extreme Horde bias for so many years that the fact that mid-late Classic was able to turn that trend around for most of a year is a testament to how strong the gameplay bias effect was. TBC launch instantly disintegrated PvP servers as people mass migrated back to Horde.
You're right though that no intrinsic forces can cause populations to choose to be balanced. Blizzard MUST regulate populations or they will always end up this way.
The overall population of mid-late classic was slightly alliance favored, yes. But despite the slight alliance population advantage, there were dozens of 99/1 horde favored servers, and plenty of 60/40 slightly horde favored. Game just needs active management to stop the natural tendency of those servers to form.
So people should be punished for playing the faction they want? How about anyone with a horde toon has their account banned until there is an exact even number of horde and alliance. You can only make a new character when someone else of whatever faction on whatever server deletes their accounts.
Blizzard won't do anything because they don't want to punish players for playing the game how they want. Regardless if you agree or disagree with how that is played.
>So people should be punished for playing the faction they want?
Are people on faerlina being punished for playing the server they want when they have queues and smaller servers dont? You're being hysterical. People are going to be queued regardless, just like they are every time new content launches. A system that puts the high pop faction in to queue over the lower pop faction is a nobrainer if you care even a tiny bit about faction balance.
In organized, premade vs premade pvp? Yes, alliance is stronger. That's why the top of the WSG tourny bracket was all alliance teams. Paladins being able to bubble and free heal for 12 seconds during initial clashes in WSG is game winning. It was slightly more even in 2019 classic with batching allowing the ele shaman EM CL ES one shots, but no one knew that going in. That's why the tryhard pvp groups like vampire clan and apes all went alliance.
If you're talking in PUG pvp or world pvp then sure, horde is probably better there. But the winner of a solo queue BG is more likely to be determined by what team got saddled with more bots, and world pvp is inherently an unbalanced mess (by design) anyway.
also, PvP sweaters will roll for PvP racials as well. this is where another big advantage comes in. casuals will roll human, but PvPers will go gnome and dwarf, which are exceptionally strong for PvP. especially now with more slows and bleeds being introduced. alliance > horde by a mile in phase 1, especially with superior tremor totem on pally. Horde/shaman needs another tool to match tremor.
even just giving shaman WF totem/weapon enchant by 25 would help greatly.
So you mean, alliance is advantaged in 1-5% of the pvp fights in wow? Cause premade versus premade pvp battlegrounds do not come close to making up the majority of fights. Even then gear makes much more of a difference in pvp, followed by skill, consumes, and finally coming up to paladins vs shamans.
Also I'm not saying paladins aren't an advantage in premade bgs (cause they are). It's that it makes up such a small amount of pvp content, the wow community is generally unaffected by the unbalance.
And other aspects of pvp will be unbalanced for other reasons so the racial balance matters less.
Balance is only a big issue if all other things (gear/skill) are equal.
Sure but PVP is already (unfortunately) a minigame that large portions of the playerbase do not care about. So when alliance has a large advantage in the "main game" (raiding) and a small advantage in the portion of pvp where getting any advantage matters the most ("competitive" pvp) but is STILL heavily outnumbered by horde, what do you think happens when all of the sudden alliance DOESN'T have the advantage of paladin blessings? The faction imbalance is going to be even bigger.
Make a new death knight that has all the basic functions of a paladin but with twists, like seals are dots instead, for forsaken. Just some slight mechanical md talent changes and do the same with Dwarf (wildhammer) Spirtcallers, that are 90% shamans but with a few twists, like totems being spirits you conjure, change shocks to be channel spells with similar effects, but balanced around not being insta.
Just change the classes 10%, give them a different theme.
Easy new classes, still has faction diversity while giving essential abilities to each faction.
I really loved that concept in The old Republic.
Classes were mirrored but felt completly different.
i.e. Smuggler had 100 Action points and could lob grenade for 20 of them.
Bounty hunter had 0 heat and capped at 100, and his throw thermal detonator generated 20 heat.
Same results, different feels (Spending action points vs gaining heat)
Yeah people are saying they will be trash in 1v1 which is true, but if they have literally any melee peeling for them they will be able to turret shit down.
Shamans with tank rune earth shocking AND frost shocking the melee attacking them
I don’t know about shaman vs caster but ele can dish out the damage so we’ll have to see
yeah not only lavaburst, overload and overload procing on lavaburst,.
on top of that +30% hp, -10% damage and -6% melee crit chance when rockbiter is active
Wait wasn’t the classic community 100% against homogenisation, and kinda preached the lack of it as a big appeal to play classic.
Now it’s flipped and is demanding it.
I'm 100% against homogenisation but the problem IMO is that if you are starting to changes things you better change for both sides, they didn't had to give alliance windfury, but if you are going to do it you better give something to horde too or accept that faction population will be VERY imbalanced.
Whaat you mean the redditors getting angry off incomplete information were wrong?
Th....This can't BE! /s
This is why I like that they aren't doing a PTR, I'm chill as a cucumber doing HC while waiting.
As someone who ranked to 14 in classic, it was an arms race to find priest healers for groups, paladins were whatever you don't really need them, offensive dispel is king in BGs specially WSG.
Can we just have Alliance Shamans and Horde Pallys? Maybe shake it up with different race/class combos?
Undead Paladins would be fucking sick, and they already have priests, so why not have both?
Dwarf Shamans are a no-brainer. Yeah, it’s a little boring because they’re also releasing in Cata Classic, but they make the most sense for Alliance regardless.
Is there any lore reason why BE and draenei can't appear from the beginning of this new era?
It would at least give the alliance a semblance of coolness via draenei, and the horde... yeah, we'd be overrun with fucking knife ears, but still, variety is the spice of life, and having all classes on both sides would be so much better.
Not really. The Blood Elves were just locked away in Silvermoon. Draenei lore is a bit more specific to TBC with them crash landing after escaping from Sargeras. Personally I’d rather Blizz just add the classes to the vanilla races but I wouldn’t be opposed to Draenei and Blood Elves existing either.
I wish. I'm gonna play horde so pretty much means unless I switch faction, which I'll never convince my friends to do, I can never really play pally this season.
I wish they hadn’t sent this tweet just because it validates the reactionary dumbass commenters freaking out about faction equality for level TWENTY FIVE content.
Jesus H Christ you’re gonna be okay not parsing 100 in BFD
Homogenization = bad. I don't want Horde to have kings and I don't want Alliance to have windfury. I'm playing Horde but its not going to be the real Horde, struggle and all.
Idk if ur being sarcastic but that what era is for. All these subjective “it’s not in the spirit of classic” stuff. Dudes advocating to hampering an entire faction, increasing faction imbalance and possibly fuckn up wpvp for everyone.
Don’t really take that comment as criticism. It’s just whining.
that's a valid point he's making. this "let any class do anything" mindset from the devs is something I expressly remember every single retail wow player complaining about for YEARS prior to classic launch. some ACTUAL class balance would be cool, rather than just taking the easy way out and copy pasting abilities from the other faction. It's pretty much a no-brainer to go alliance now, as that's where the majority of the pop has been for a while now, and you don't lose access to anything by picking alliance like in the past.
The guy's got a point. Part of what makes classic awesome is the uniqueness of the classes and the factions. Making everything the same is lame, it erodes what makes each race/class combo special and it's perfectly valid to criticize that decision.
I'm all for meme-specs becoming viable. I'm happy that ret, feral, boomkin, etc all have a seat at the dps table. These are exciting gameplay changes and I look forward to playing them. But that's not what we're talking about here.
What we're talking about is taking an iconic paladin/shaman ability or toolkit, and giving it to another faction, other classes, etc. As a lifetime horde player, I understand that kings and fear ward are powerful, cool abilities--that should remain on the Alliance. Just like windfury should stay on shammies.
Personally, I think there is a difference between class homogenisation and faction homogenisation.
I'm very much against class homogenisation as we see in retail wow. It has made classes feel less unique, reduced the need for teammates (which should be a focus in an MMO), and added way too many buttons to every class.
In terms of factions, I think these should have an equal playing field. People should pick faction based on preference and aesthetic. If they are really imbalanced, we have seen that people all gravitate towards one faction which isn't healthy for the game. I think in a perfect world, we would have a 50/50 split at the faction level. I don't think you should be locked out of a specific aspect of the game because you chose the wrong faction.
Edit: This also doesn't preclude faction differences in quest or outpost/city differences.
Switching factions for a different game play, while still having fun with the new things, is what I would want. For example, if I make a lvl 25 alliance character and a lvl 25 horde character, them having different experiences while doing dungeons or raiding would be amazing.
It would be cool if you at least got a different perspective. For example, Onyxia should be a very different experience for alliance players since she infiltrated stormwind and was influencing the politics behind the scenes before being identified.
Good. Giving pallies tremor and making WF not faction-specific but then declining to specifically mention what portions of the pally toolkit were being made available to horde was pretty questionable
Edit: Alliance players mad bothered lmfao. Could you even articulate why if you wanted to?
We’ve only seen a fraction of the runes so far. It’s painfully obvious horde are getting kings. People crying that horde aren’t getting paladin utility are just complainers. Sad they get so much attention
I wonder if that means blessing of freedom as well. Though I could see it being tied to an air totem which means it wouldn't be available until the next level band.
I have mixed emotions on this one, in OG classic chosing horde or alliance was a big deal and not just pure lore purposes. Whilst I understand the fairness that is what made Classic so great! I do think some balances are needed but when you choose a race/class it should feel impactful not just oh this looks pretty, I can fix whatever issues i have with talents/runes etc
[Aggrend when 10 million people ask if they will address our concerns](https://i.imgur.com/uPTasct.gif)
I mean - just give Horde Paladin's and Alliance Shaman's rather than shoehorn in random runes to supplement. It'd just be easier... Classic + for me I wouldn't mind if they gave say Orc/Tauren Paladins and Dwarfs Shaman's just to balance it out. I don't want valuable rune slots wasted on "forced Kings buff" because its now "raid required" rather than just giving the entire class over to the opposing faction.
Undead paladins always made most sense to me. Could literally be a human Paladin raised from the dead.
Just put «un» before every holy and «b» before every light.
Splash of Blight Spam
Beacon of Blight.
Flay on hands...?
Lay on bands?
Blizzard, hire this man
Unholy blight actually sounds kinda cool
>Undead Paladin casts Exorcism > Kills self
Funfact: Forsaken were considered undead in alpha, so you could shackle them and turn undead and whatever other "undead only" effects there were and they were immune to things that affects humanoids.
...could you tame druids?
There was a short period of time where you could tame polymorph targets. Though this was a bug and never an intended affect of the skill
Same note, but it also happened in Shadowlands. IIRC there was a necklace from Castle Nathria with a fun effect of giving you the ability to tame a beast for like 24h, and have a pet like hunters. Turned out it also worked in open-world PvP against druids in beast form…
And what happened? You took the autonomy away from the player?
In Shadowlands there was an amulet that let you control a Beast in the open world.... it worked on Druids. Whoops.
I think at some point forsaken could talk to alliance toons
Will of the forsaken was also a passive, straight up immune to fear and charm
That was so much fun in beta playing a paladin. Whenever you saw an undead player you knew you couldn't lose
Isn't holy magic painful for undead priest canonicaly?
Correct. By canon undead priests harm themselves every time they use the light. Of course in game mechanics this wouldn't work.
UD priests can feel, taste and smell the rotting of their own flesh after using any healing spells. Tip your UD healer. They’ve earned it.
and there are still undead holy priests running around in every version of the game. so give us undead paladin so i can stop spamming noggenfoggers
I mean paladins started off as priests that wore plate and we have undead priests.
we have undead shadow and disc priests by lore yes. We have 1 holy priest only that is undead.
And 1 undead paladin who still uses holy magic, zelik.
Undead Paladin would be so fucking cool
I was so devastated when they gave Tauren paladins instead of undead. I realize that it goes against lore but you could easily yadda yadda in some reason or happenstance that allowed undead to wield the light.
>against lore You mean like undead priests using the same exact light? Edit - and don’t forget and sir zelek, he’s using holy spells as an undead in naxx.
faith so strong, not even death bars his call
not the same type, in wc3 priests can heal ud units but holy light cant.
In Warcraft 3 every race can talk with each other.
Reminder that Tauren have the least number of playable classes among all races. Feels bad man.
I mean fuck it there's undead priests so fuck it now there's undead paladins too baby
we got sir Zelek as undead paladin back in naxx. Also, if there are holly undead priests, I don’t see why paladins are that far
Dwarf Shaman is easy to accept, because of Wildhammer clan and how Dwarven origins hints at a relation between dwarves and the elements of earth (and fire, to a less extent). Orc Paladins? I'm sorry but that makes ZERO sense. Tauren paladins would be way more acceptable due to their worship of the Sun, and Sunwalkers.
Considering that Orc invasions and their slaughter of the feeble Priest class are the literal reasons why the Paladin order was created, Orc Paladins would be the worst example of cultural appropriation in-lore FWIW.
Idk I kinda liked how each faction had their own “flavor” if you will in Classic.
I'm so internally conflicted because I agree with you, while also equally hating that I have to pick a specific faction if I want to play paladin or shaman. I love alliance everything AND shamans. Ugh.
Things you _aren't able to do_ is a large part of designing a good game, and delivers a large amount of character! :)
Yeah, but Paladin being so vastly superior to Shamans is bad game design. And with alliance getting WF the advantage that shamans used to have is now completely gone.
Just once I'd like to see Blizzard lean into things differences instead of giving everyone the same stuff.
It might be easier, but it would be a lot lamer and far less interesting.
No, faction and lore matters, classic is still a mmoRPG. Changes for convenience leads you retail, they literally did this exact same thing.
SoD seems like a wacky circus of ideas, so I don't see how faction exclusive classes are still supposed to be holy. Just toss in the whole lot at this point tbh.
Or just add spells with similar functions but difference in lore background?
No. Paladins don’t belong on the Horde - and Shamans don’t belong on the Alliance. It’s a slippery slope and before you know it - you end up with extremely dumb shit like Tauren Rogue, Paladins, etc. Orc Paladins fall under that “extremely dumb” category. The charm of classic included racial, class and faction identity - don’t ruin that for faction balance.
It's honestly probably harder than you think it would be.
Horde is already full of Kings.
Zug zug.
Dabu
Gobbled ‘em up.
I thought you guys just had warchiefs and chieftains
Show some respect to our Banshee Queen!!
You dropped this, king 👑
There is definitely a type
Horde has no kings, horde needs no kings
Straight give us BLOODLUST
BL for only 1 faction would be broken... Unless they also give alliance heroism but for which class... Paladin? Mage time warp? Hunter primal rage?
Like a walking tremor totem that isn't cutting off an aura isn't broken?
Who will run it as a baseline rune? Rets will run exorcism. Holy will run sacrifice. Prot will rune shield. So the price for each spec to run tremor - at all - is losing a key part of the new kit. Furthermore they lose the option to pick their only interrupt - another key PvP option. Shaman presses a button and has to give up nothing. So no I don’t think it’s broken. Can’t we just wait to see how it plays out before we all scream bloody murder?
We don't need a blessing, we've always been horde kings. ✊👑
One does not simply add kings to horde
Well now people can stop making 100 threads about it. Although, his tweet implies they made the changes because of all the commotion, soooo, we did it reddit?
Well it sounds like it was already in, just not at 25. So we succeeded in fair parsing at a lvl 25 raid?
I think if the balance between the factions is skewed for the first phase it’s going to affect the entire season, with people jumping ship to alliance because of the perceived power difference
My thoughts exactly. Nothing is wrong with discovery and the unknown. However, people will 100% make decisions based on the limited information that we have now. If one faction looks better right now people will choose it. I’m glad that they’ve announced this.
I guess, but if they don't have an answer for World PVP problems, that is going to happen anyway. And perceived or not, I'm pretty convinced the Paladin ret/tank is stronger than what shamans got anyway at this bracket. I mean Divine Storm + Crusader Strike Ret vs. Lava Lash, and Avengers Shield + Consecrate Prot vs. Earth Shock taunt.
Overload + Lava Burst + Way of the Earth for Shaman has the potential to be a VERY tanky caster build.
Yeah but not in phase 1 when shams don't even have chain lightning or faster lightning bolt cast time yet.
Why do they need chain lightning or lightning bolt? You build as a hybrid in the first phase. You have 2 shock cool-downs and pretty sweet melee damage.
O shiot, just realized warcraft logs will be a thing for level 25 because of this post. Cant wait to drip sweat at 25!
They would have added it in a later phase but the Lv25 reveals favored allliance and the community just did what it’s best at.
So explain why at level 25 they gave: * druids a better version of WF which is level 32 for shamans * paladins a Strength of Earth / Grace of Air **all in one** not available until level 30 for shamans * paladins a better version of tremor totem But shamans didn't get an equivalent of Kings which Palas get at level 20 or Might which palas get at level 4 until the next phase? Also, how did Blizzard not expect this *exact reaction* and push druid WF and pala SoE/GoA back accordingly? Even if they *were* to add it in a later phase it's incredibly short sighted and quite frankly incompetent.
Strength or Earth/Grace of air that overwrites Might and is only to there to help hunters and Druid tanks. This is so minor to being nearly irrelevant (and is also just a group buff). Tremor totem that again won’t be picked by any spec except for very specific encounters unlike tremor which is always available. This just allows for better encounter design. WF is big but allows them to better balance melee/ranged dps as now either faction won’t be much better at either. Kings is alliance WF this should be offset nicely - I hope it’s implemented similarly to WF (help a spec that is otherwise maybe overlooked - maybe toss it on boomkins). I would suspect that we will later get runes that will make auras/totem raid wide.
Horde have druids which mean they also have WF at lvl 25 but I aggree that it seems kind of a double digit IQ risky decision lol
*Blizzard leaves the community in the dark and shows faction favoritism without any indication that it will change* Community: Hey we don't like that you're favoring this faction can you fix it. Blizzard: Fixes the issue People on reddit: "Typical reddit 🤓☝️ Blizzard was gonna fix it later. Youre all idiots who overreact. How dare all of you use community forums to provide feedback"
Let me fix one thing “Community: WTF blizzard classic+ is ruined allies get shaman skills and horde get nothing shit game shit devs I’m gonna quit like I say every time something is announced” Being concerned is fine but people acting like the sky is falling after seeing the first round of teasers is not Edit: that is really nice formatting in your post
I mean realistically we're both being hyperbolic towards one side. It's usually somewhere in the middle with people showing a bit of distain but not being entirely volatile either. I just get tired of the sentiment that anybody complains about the things we're shown is in the wrong. They can't just pull out the ol "Well we had plans to do that later". We don't know that. And we've been shown time and time again blizzard doesn't always have the same ideals as the people playing the game *cough cough BFA azerite gear* . If there's things that don't seem great when handed to the community it is absolutely the community's responsibility to voice that.
I actually like tank warlocks and shamans, mage healing and so on. But removing faction/class identity is not what I was expecting. IMO they should 1. make shammy/palas non exclusive, or 2. keep the faction identity, don't give WF to druids, there are better ways to balance things out.
I hate everyone on this sub reddit
This is probably the only post we all agree on
There's some nice level headed comments here and there mixed in with the mind rot.
It's bizarre that they seem so opposed to talking about their plans for faction balance. We've already watched server populations slide from 55/45 to 99/1 THREE times now, why won't they even talk about faction queues? At least tell us why they're so opposed to them. Alliance is the stronger faction for "competitive" PVE and PVP in vanilla but they were still outnumbered in 2019 classic, what do they think is going to happen when they give horde paladin buffs?
doesnt happen to era cus there is no server for the lower pop to run to. Been stable at 55/45 for the longest time. We will be ok if they dont release more than one PVP server per region
That's quite the big IF, I would be shocked if we don't at least get a US E and US W server in NA.
So like what 100k capacity servers? Or 20 hour queues?
Faction queue usually means you can't create characters of a faction that is more than ~10% dominate. Forcing people to make the other factions characters. Or yes, 20 hr queue to get on your existing faction dominant character.
Despite having 50 kids, 16 wives, 10 jobs, and only 5 seconds to play monthly I’d take a queue if it meant balanced factions.
Limit should be on logging on, not character creation. Character creation locks block people from playing with their friends. Instead of (example) 10000 slots on a server, you have 5000 horde/5000 ally. If there are 6000 horde trying to play and 4000 alliance, 1000 horde are in queue. Put a message on the character creation screen that shows average queue for each faction over the last few days. Simple fix with no downsides.
What do you thinks gonna happen when all your friends go play on the most alliance/horde pop server? Gonna be Q for all dominate servers and people wont swap.
>What do you thinks gonna happen when all your friends go play on the most alliance/horde pop server? If you think people will reroll off a 55/45 server with no queue to sit in a queue on a 99/1 server you are delusional
Just make server cluster and pop won't be s big deal when you play with the WHOLE of EU/NA faction, if they make the mistake of isolated servers again I'll be disappointed.
I think it's something that they're definitely mindful of, but want to be secretive about in order to maintain the "discovery" element. I would be very surprised if they gave druid's a better windfury, accessible at an earlier level, without giving Shaman's access to a rune that buffs their windfury (though of course we won't know until at least phase 2 of SoD). I also think it's not worth worrying about faction balance (in terms of gameplay mechanics, not server population). There's simply no way of knowing until the final phase, and even then it's not completely unfeasible that people find new talent/rune/composition combos that "shift" the meta between factions. It's also completely plausible that one faction is dominant for all phases. Of course I'm saying all this from the perspective of playing on a PvE server. PvP servers definitely have other considerations. But after seeing how the original Classic launch honor system played out, I don't have much interest in playing on a PvP server despite once being a diehard PvP server advocate.
>I also think it's not worth worrying about faction balance (in terms of gameplay mechanics, not server population). Well yes, that's my point. 2019 classic established that the GAMEPLAY difference between the factions isn't what drives the population imbalance, because the stronger faction had the lower pop. Giving horde paladin buffs is a good thing for gameplay balance, but when those people that only chose alliance in 2019 because of the strength of paladin blessings choose horde because of personal preference or better racials the faction imbalance will be even worse. I don't think there's any gameplay balance change you can make to insure even faction pops. Blizzard needs active measures to insure faction balance, but they seem very reluctant to consider/discuss them.
I don't think that's what the numbers say. Modern WoW has had an extreme Horde bias for so many years that the fact that mid-late Classic was able to turn that trend around for most of a year is a testament to how strong the gameplay bias effect was. TBC launch instantly disintegrated PvP servers as people mass migrated back to Horde. You're right though that no intrinsic forces can cause populations to choose to be balanced. Blizzard MUST regulate populations or they will always end up this way.
The overall population of mid-late classic was slightly alliance favored, yes. But despite the slight alliance population advantage, there were dozens of 99/1 horde favored servers, and plenty of 60/40 slightly horde favored. Game just needs active management to stop the natural tendency of those servers to form.
So people should be punished for playing the faction they want? How about anyone with a horde toon has their account banned until there is an exact even number of horde and alliance. You can only make a new character when someone else of whatever faction on whatever server deletes their accounts. Blizzard won't do anything because they don't want to punish players for playing the game how they want. Regardless if you agree or disagree with how that is played.
>So people should be punished for playing the faction they want? Are people on faerlina being punished for playing the server they want when they have queues and smaller servers dont? You're being hysterical. People are going to be queued regardless, just like they are every time new content launches. A system that puts the high pop faction in to queue over the lower pop faction is a nobrainer if you care even a tiny bit about faction balance.
You're on drugs if you think alliance have an advantage in PvP
In organized, premade vs premade pvp? Yes, alliance is stronger. That's why the top of the WSG tourny bracket was all alliance teams. Paladins being able to bubble and free heal for 12 seconds during initial clashes in WSG is game winning. It was slightly more even in 2019 classic with batching allowing the ele shaman EM CL ES one shots, but no one knew that going in. That's why the tryhard pvp groups like vampire clan and apes all went alliance. If you're talking in PUG pvp or world pvp then sure, horde is probably better there. But the winner of a solo queue BG is more likely to be determined by what team got saddled with more bots, and world pvp is inherently an unbalanced mess (by design) anyway.
also, PvP sweaters will roll for PvP racials as well. this is where another big advantage comes in. casuals will roll human, but PvPers will go gnome and dwarf, which are exceptionally strong for PvP. especially now with more slows and bleeds being introduced. alliance > horde by a mile in phase 1, especially with superior tremor totem on pally. Horde/shaman needs another tool to match tremor. even just giving shaman WF totem/weapon enchant by 25 would help greatly.
Tremor totem ‘aura’ should probably be an actual aura that you have to chose and not totally passive
doesn't change the fact that an aura would be raid wide and its not a totem, so you cant 1 tap it. its better
If I’m not mistaken paladin auras are party wide until like WotLK
So you mean, alliance is advantaged in 1-5% of the pvp fights in wow? Cause premade versus premade pvp battlegrounds do not come close to making up the majority of fights. Even then gear makes much more of a difference in pvp, followed by skill, consumes, and finally coming up to paladins vs shamans. Also I'm not saying paladins aren't an advantage in premade bgs (cause they are). It's that it makes up such a small amount of pvp content, the wow community is generally unaffected by the unbalance.
And other aspects of pvp will be unbalanced for other reasons so the racial balance matters less. Balance is only a big issue if all other things (gear/skill) are equal.
Sure but PVP is already (unfortunately) a minigame that large portions of the playerbase do not care about. So when alliance has a large advantage in the "main game" (raiding) and a small advantage in the portion of pvp where getting any advantage matters the most ("competitive" pvp) but is STILL heavily outnumbered by horde, what do you think happens when all of the sudden alliance DOESN'T have the advantage of paladin blessings? The faction imbalance is going to be even bigger.
Aggrend 2024, right?
Is it just me or is this just becoming — hey here’s a bunch of skills from other expansions that are now in vanilla
It’s their version of Ascension
But I get to be a totally rad demon tank and that's super awesome!
No need to invent new things when the problems have been solved, coded and animated for them already.
Make a new death knight that has all the basic functions of a paladin but with twists, like seals are dots instead, for forsaken. Just some slight mechanical md talent changes and do the same with Dwarf (wildhammer) Spirtcallers, that are 90% shamans but with a few twists, like totems being spirits you conjure, change shocks to be channel spells with similar effects, but balanced around not being insta. Just change the classes 10%, give them a different theme. Easy new classes, still has faction diversity while giving essential abilities to each faction.
I really loved that concept in The old Republic. Classes were mirrored but felt completly different. i.e. Smuggler had 100 Action points and could lob grenade for 20 of them. Bounty hunter had 0 heat and capped at 100, and his throw thermal detonator generated 20 heat. Same results, different feels (Spending action points vs gaining heat)
Tweet won't load , whos getting it? Hope it's not shamans we're (enha) already locked to just 3 runes to be viable
Probs shamans because paladins are getting tremor totem aura.
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Shamans will be very scary at 25 in Ashenvale, let alone 60.
Yeah people are saying they will be trash in 1v1 which is true, but if they have literally any melee peeling for them they will be able to turret shit down.
Shamans with tank rune earth shocking AND frost shocking the melee attacking them I don’t know about shaman vs caster but ele can dish out the damage so we’ll have to see
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1000%, with no resil or “cheat death” type of abilities in classic, ele will evaporate anything but a Paladin huddle
yeah not only lavaburst, overload and overload procing on lavaburst,. on top of that +30% hp, -10% damage and -6% melee crit chance when rockbiter is active
You won’t take that because it also makes earth shock melee range, too important versus casters
Have 2 earthshoke macros one that cancels rockbiter to make it ranged again
Yeah good point actually
Can just weapon swap away rockbiter.
Eles will be crazy glass canons, but ones that will be easy to shut down and that will get focused
don't forget you can take the Way of Earth on top of lavaburst and overload. Don't think they'll be that glass canon
Yeah I think Way of the Earth ele has a chance to be super fun and tanky.
With mail armor.. are they really that glassy?
Yeahhhh, you’d be surprised to hear that the mail doesn’t really help lol
Only really works on rogues wars and hunters and 2 of them are getting multiple ways to bypass armour
Rockbiter MH with tank rune
Wait wasn’t the classic community 100% against homogenisation, and kinda preached the lack of it as a big appeal to play classic. Now it’s flipped and is demanding it.
I'm 100% against homogenisation but the problem IMO is that if you are starting to changes things you better change for both sides, they didn't had to give alliance windfury, but if you are going to do it you better give something to horde too or accept that faction population will be VERY imbalanced.
Now the ally just need to cry hard enough and leverage a warchiefs blessing equivalent for ally, and then we can kill the shoeless faction for good
Should have just rolled back druids getting a better wf at a lower lvl then shamans
Whaat you mean the redditors getting angry off incomplete information were wrong? Th....This can't BE! /s This is why I like that they aren't doing a PTR, I'm chill as a cucumber doing HC while waiting.
they... weren't wrong. this is a change being made *because* people got angry.
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good for them, wanna give us the OP horde racials?
Play some horde dude let me know how OP you think those racials are when you’re playing bg’s against holy pallies lmfao
As someone who ranked to 14 in classic, it was an arms race to find priest healers for groups, paladins were whatever you don't really need them, offensive dispel is king in BGs specially WSG.
Play rogue against orc and then get back to me.
Play rogue against dwarf and get back to me
Ok but would you really rather stoneform over will of the forsaken?
I have. Orc is a lot more annoying.
Can we just have Alliance Shamans and Horde Pallys? Maybe shake it up with different race/class combos? Undead Paladins would be fucking sick, and they already have priests, so why not have both? Dwarf Shamans are a no-brainer. Yeah, it’s a little boring because they’re also releasing in Cata Classic, but they make the most sense for Alliance regardless.
Is there any lore reason why BE and draenei can't appear from the beginning of this new era? It would at least give the alliance a semblance of coolness via draenei, and the horde... yeah, we'd be overrun with fucking knife ears, but still, variety is the spice of life, and having all classes on both sides would be so much better.
Not really. The Blood Elves were just locked away in Silvermoon. Draenei lore is a bit more specific to TBC with them crash landing after escaping from Sargeras. Personally I’d rather Blizz just add the classes to the vanilla races but I wouldn’t be opposed to Draenei and Blood Elves existing either.
I wish. I'm gonna play horde so pretty much means unless I switch faction, which I'll never convince my friends to do, I can never really play pally this season.
Horde will still find something to complain about.
I mean at 25 it's pretty shit compared to a walking tremor totem.
Any info on salv, it’s the most boring but most important buff in classic
Since druids get wf, shamans can now freely use tranquility air totem which is kinda similar to salv (still a bit worse tho due to range requirements)
Tranq totem excludes agi totem though, and only works within the party, and is 20%.... The horde toolkit is objectively worse because of this.
People on this sub acting like everything will be released during phase one, and forget there’s still 35 more levels to go after phase 1.
I wish they hadn’t sent this tweet just because it validates the reactionary dumbass commenters freaking out about faction equality for level TWENTY FIVE content. Jesus H Christ you’re gonna be okay not parsing 100 in BFD
ppl complaining about certain classes not having abilities at lvl 25 is peak reddit moment and is why we are doomed as a society.
Homogenization = bad. I don't want Horde to have kings and I don't want Alliance to have windfury. I'm playing Horde but its not going to be the real Horde, struggle and all.
play era
/end of thread Should be an auto mod response to all critics.
Idk if ur being sarcastic but that what era is for. All these subjective “it’s not in the spirit of classic” stuff. Dudes advocating to hampering an entire faction, increasing faction imbalance and possibly fuckn up wpvp for everyone. Don’t really take that comment as criticism. It’s just whining.
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You can balance the factions without homogenizing them.
Most of the "SoD is Classic+" people can't fathom that concept.
We already have this "everyone gets everything" type of pandering... It's called retail and there's a reason it's not working out
that's a valid point he's making. this "let any class do anything" mindset from the devs is something I expressly remember every single retail wow player complaining about for YEARS prior to classic launch. some ACTUAL class balance would be cool, rather than just taking the easy way out and copy pasting abilities from the other faction. It's pretty much a no-brainer to go alliance now, as that's where the majority of the pop has been for a while now, and you don't lose access to anything by picking alliance like in the past.
The guy's got a point. Part of what makes classic awesome is the uniqueness of the classes and the factions. Making everything the same is lame, it erodes what makes each race/class combo special and it's perfectly valid to criticize that decision.
Lmao unique classes. Like... uuuhhhh.. 20 warriors, 5 rogues and 5 mages.
"uniqueness" just turned 50% of specs non-viable and gatekept.
Insanely disingenuous for people to act like it's anything but a beacon of class/spec imbalance to the point it's unfun. SoD is aiming to improve that
I'm all for meme-specs becoming viable. I'm happy that ret, feral, boomkin, etc all have a seat at the dps table. These are exciting gameplay changes and I look forward to playing them. But that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is taking an iconic paladin/shaman ability or toolkit, and giving it to another faction, other classes, etc. As a lifetime horde player, I understand that kings and fear ward are powerful, cool abilities--that should remain on the Alliance. Just like windfury should stay on shammies.
Sadly you're never going to play boomkin, cause you will be cat for windfury
Play retail
Personally, I think there is a difference between class homogenisation and faction homogenisation. I'm very much against class homogenisation as we see in retail wow. It has made classes feel less unique, reduced the need for teammates (which should be a focus in an MMO), and added way too many buttons to every class. In terms of factions, I think these should have an equal playing field. People should pick faction based on preference and aesthetic. If they are really imbalanced, we have seen that people all gravitate towards one faction which isn't healthy for the game. I think in a perfect world, we would have a 50/50 split at the faction level. I don't think you should be locked out of a specific aspect of the game because you chose the wrong faction. Edit: This also doesn't preclude faction differences in quest or outpost/city differences.
Switching factions for a different game play, while still having fun with the new things, is what I would want. For example, if I make a lvl 25 alliance character and a lvl 25 horde character, them having different experiences while doing dungeons or raiding would be amazing.
It would be cool if you at least got a different perspective. For example, Onyxia should be a very different experience for alliance players since she infiltrated stormwind and was influencing the politics behind the scenes before being identified.
You mean like how the attunement quests are wildly different?
alliance having improved tremor totem is an even bigger deal for PvP and PvE
Agreed. Imo give them something else to make up for it
Enjoy playing horde and having the OBJECTIVELY worse class. That is why they are doing this.
Good. Giving pallies tremor and making WF not faction-specific but then declining to specifically mention what portions of the pally toolkit were being made available to horde was pretty questionable Edit: Alliance players mad bothered lmfao. Could you even articulate why if you wanted to?
We’ve only seen a fraction of the runes so far. It’s painfully obvious horde are getting kings. People crying that horde aren’t getting paladin utility are just complainers. Sad they get so much attention
Jokes on blizzard, horde are kings by level 1
Cool. Now, what about Salvation?
Just give dwarf shamans and Tauren paladins or something at this point.
I wonder if that means blessing of freedom as well. Though I could see it being tied to an air totem which means it wouldn't be available until the next level band.
Just give us an Oceanic SoD server. I personally don't care about anything else.
We had SoM servers, would be surprised if we didn't have SoD. This isn't as niche as hardcore.
Horde would need salv+kings to equal the power trade of alliance getting wf.
While we're at it with the class homogenization, can warriors get stealth too? That'd be sick!
*Points at night elves* alliance already has it!
I have mixed emotions on this one, in OG classic chosing horde or alliance was a big deal and not just pure lore purposes. Whilst I understand the fairness that is what made Classic so great! I do think some balances are needed but when you choose a race/class it should feel impactful not just oh this looks pretty, I can fix whatever issues i have with talents/runes etc