So what is Blizz's "Vision" for each class?

#0 - Sept. 17, 2009, 8:27 p.m.

I personally think it's well past time for us to be told, once and for all, what the actual "vision" for each class is as the developers see it.

When I started this game originally, I played a mage from 1-40, then leveled him up to 60, and played him as my main through most of BC as well. I also played a Rogue, a feral druid (and tanked with him long before druids were "accepted" tanks), a shaman, a warrior, etc. I've put a lot of time into a lot of different classes.

The problem, as I see it, is that people are rolling classes right now with no clear definition of what that class is meant to be. All of the classes have been homogenized quite a bit since the original release of WoW, and we now have 4 distinct tanking classes, 2 of which are also healers and all of which are also dpsers, 2 "pure" dps casters, 1 ranged physical class, 1 pure melee class, etc etc.

We keep hearing however after many nerfs and complaints about each of the classes abilities and roles that certain things just didn't fit with the "vision" of the class, and if you don't like it, just re-roll. But re-roll to what? How do you actually "know" that you're going to spend a ton of time leveling and gearing up a class that you THINK is meant to do one thing, then find out a couple of months down the road that what you made the class for is about to get nerfed into oblivion because it didn't fit with the "vision"?

Sure, leveling now is far easier than it ever was, especially with the introduction of Heirloom items. I just started playing my warrior again after about 3 years, and in not even a full day of /played time I've taken him from level 54 to level 68. The same is true of my Shaman, my Priest, etc. This game is constantly changing and evolving however, and one day I could be playing my DK as an "avoidance/absorbtion/magic damage tank", and the next I hear "oh sorry, we dont want DKs to be avoidance tanks..or have a high hp pool, or have high mitigation..or this..or that"...and suddenly, I'm left with a class that is no longer fulfilling the purpose I started it for. This has happened time and time again over the course of my WoW playing.

Example: As I said, I made my mage as my main originally. In vanilla wow, they were the supposed "kings" of ranged and AoE dps. That stayed true for a long time, until they either got nerfed, or other classes got buffed beyond what the mage was capable of. When we asked the devs "why", they just said "the vision of the class has changed since release".

There are countless other examples of classes evolving and becoming different than what they were originally meant to be, but it would be really, REALLY nice if we could get something a little more concrete, so we're not stuck playing classes in one roll when we started them for entirely different reasons. It would make everyone's lives easier, including the developers, because maybe then people would stop so much with the "my class cant do X, buff it so it can"...because then you really could just say "your class is not MEANT to do X, maybe you should play class Y instead"

#4 - Sept. 17, 2009, 8:57 p.m.

We're sympathetic if players *really* don't understand what their class is supposed to do. Too often in this forum however, players want to see something in writing so they then have a visible target to go after. "You used 'ranged caster' in the warlock description, but in the mage description you just said 'caster.' Therefore, that means mages should be able to stand and fight melee without having to blink away since clearly the're supposed to focus less on ranged combat than are warlocks. Please buff." Players still over focus on the descriptions "master of healing" or "master of armed combat" in old class descriptions to argue how their class should be the best at something even though pausing and considering that design for a moment should suggest why that might not be the best idea for the game.

If you really don't know what the vision is for your class, you can probably figure it out reading class forums, the various fansites, the class Q&As, talking to some players in game or just playing and exploring what works and doesn't. Those avenues are going to give you a much broader sense of how to play, what you should focus on, where your strengths and weaknesses are and the overall vision of the class than anything we can try to convey in 3-4 simple sentences.