Class Design Status

Hey all. For those who don't know me, I’m Chadd Nervig, aka @Celestalon, a Technical Game Designer on WoW, on the Systems Design team. I focus on class design, especially balance and tuning. I've been posting a lot over in the Theorycrafting thread up until a few weeks ago, when I got extremely busy for a while. I’m going to catch up on that thread, and also start responding to feedback in many other threads in the Beta forums. Please understand, though, that I'll be trying to respond to feedback from 34 different specs, and have limited time, so I won't be able to get to everyone. And again, I’m merely part of a whole team that works on this, not the only one.

So, where are we at on class design? We’re to the point where we're pretty confident in each spec’s ability set, and so we're switching over to focusing on bugfixes, stability, and polish. Mechanical changes from now on will primarily be to solve tuning problems, or where there is a dire need of change for gameplay reasons. We've made a lot of changes for Warlords, and many are controversial. We'll be tweaking things in the future based on feedback and gameplay experiences.

A new beta build just went up, which includes our first round of balance tuning on tanks and damage dealers. It does NOT include tuning for healers – the first round of that should be coming in the next build. And, of course, there will be many more iterations on tuning to come. Our goal with this first round is getting the vast majority of specs to be “close” to right, as far as overall performance. Closer tuning of specific talent rows, and of secondary stats, will come the next few passes.

With this build (and the next one for healers), we feel that things are solid enough for theorycrafters to start really tearing into. I’m going to make a separate thread for the express purpose of posting theorycrafting results. (EDIT: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13841994636)

Thanks all, for all the great feedback, and please keep it coming (with a focus on tuning and balance, now)!

EDIT: Moved to the Warlords Beta Classes forum, where it makes more sense. Thanks for the tip!

Please see source post at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13839984558?page=13 for detail.

08/18/2014 05:48 PMPosted by Zomgdps

08/18/2014 05:37 PMPosted by Celestalon

Our goal with this first round is getting the vast majority of specs to be “close” to right, as far as overall performance.

Would it be possible for you guys to give us a rough idea of what kind of scenarios you are really looking to accomplish this for?

"Close" being single target on dummies? Or mostly a variety of different scenarios? Or perhaps only specific raids and targeted fights?

I ask, since as you know, the performance of each spec varies wildly depending on circumstance. Some insight into what you guys aim for in the "close to right" part, may help us in providing more meaningful feedback/questions.

Sure. This first round was primarily single-target focused. We'll get into AoE (of varying sizes) soon.

Regarding people feeling ignored: It's not some case of ignoring you. I just don't usually have the time to spend on this. I usually respond to easy things on Twitter, because it's small bite-sized chunks that I can respond to while waiting for a build to compile, or a change to save, or a game to launch, or someone to answer a question, or whatever.

However, I'm planning to spend the remainder of my evening here on the forums, responding to feedback. Wish me luck!

Tried to respond to as much as I could tonight. Please understand that we're not trying to ignore anyone; time constraints are just tight. I'll try to be back to discuss more, soon. Thanks for the constructive discussion.