Class balance in a post-WotLK World of Warcraft

by Kyle Horner Jan 6th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Classes, News items

Class balance is always a touchy subject, depending on the class a person plays. But WoWRIOT has put together an impressive look a class balance in a post-WotLK World of Warcraft. After looking through much of the post, we're pretty impressed with its accuracy and overall take on current class balance, especially as it pertains to arena and PvP.

Normally, those who actually play the game are much more interested in these kinds of balance overviews. However, the article contains an extensive look at Death Knights and everything about where their place in the game is right now. So for anybody who's been curious as to what's going on with the first new class in World of Warcraft, we'd say the article is definitely worth a look. For everyone who does play the game, it's probably a good idea to at least check out your class (or classes) if only to see why you should or shouldn't be upset with Blizzard.

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Tags: arena, blizzard, class-balance, death-knight, pvp, tanking, world-of-warcraft, wotlk, wow, wowriot, wrath, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

MightyIdle said on 4:41PM 1-06-2009

Warlocks suck in arenas in Wrath? I don't even play anymore and this gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Syme said on 4:42PM 1-06-2009

You should mention in your post that the WOWRiot article is about Arenas. That would save a lot of people the trouble of looking at it.

danarchy said on 4:53PM 1-06-2009

Very few people care about arena, which is sadly ironic since blizzard seems to spend far more time and energy balancing classes for arena performance than pve (which id say is what 90% of us care about). There is already talk of nerfing hunters, rogues, and mages due to burst damage in arena, which is going to leave them underpowered for pve and raiding. Maybe you could make arena servers where the rules are different or something and leave the rest of us alone? Arena sates a very select few who are trying to turn a mmo into a twitch shooter. Regrettably those select few spend the time there not in the arena bitching on forums.

The Claw said on 7:17PM 1-06-2009

"Very few people care about arena"

While I personally do not care about arena, at all, I think this is an assertion which could do with a little more evidence.

I see plenty of people who care about arenas. I see plenty of people who care about raiding. I see plenty of people who care about neither of them. Given that Blizzard is attemption to make a game that appeals to everyone, of course they need to dedicate a fair bit of attention to arena PvP, even if I'd be perfectly happy for them not to.

Graill said on 5:12PM 1-06-2009

I read the article out of curiosity, my views are my own on this subject.

To be fair in an arena all things MUST be equal for both sides starting out, this is not the case in WOW's arena's, and NEVER has been. Blizzard saying they are looking at class balance is like anyone of us looking at a bucket of water, it means absolutely nothing (i guess the ripples are cool)

WOW's arenas need to be rebuilt from the ground up (the mechanics). The simple laziness of the wow devs is amazing even to a person reading about this on the outside. With the money Vivendi makes one would think those french would give some of that money back to blizzard and quit sending it all to france.

(sigh, sad attempt at a quip)

Anyway, until the blizzard devs pull their heads out of their asses, literally, and make arenas fair and balanced they will continue to be unfair cookie toon of the week garbage. Oh and i have a solution, they just need to pay me for it.

I mean really, i can only go over to my brothers house and watch him scream about healing and dps and fear just so much.........

Tasogare said on 5:12PM 1-06-2009

Actually the nerfs coming to hunters are from a purely PvE perspective. They do still do a lot of damage in PvP, but it's not nearly the same problem it was all the way through BC.

Leshrac said on 6:08PM 1-06-2009

I quit WoW - again - because of all of the pvp bullshit and lack of balance. WoW has been a constant nerf-buff-nerf-buff circle. If your class is over or under powered stick around and that will change and flip upside down soon enough.

At what fucking point does the anti-Christ of WoW pvp, asshole Tom Chilton, sit back in his chair and say 'we're done, everything looks good - we will not fuck with your class anymore". Its never going to happen and as a result I will never go back.

I don't play WoW for PVE, the PVE is tired and old - raids and bosses, scripted PVE encounters, that are dissected 2 days after they go live, is BORING.

I play/played WoW for pvp - and its dead, and they just keep killing it further and further.

So, yes, I'm back to playing WAR - and WAR is a glitchy, buggy mess but at least pvp isn't totally fooked and every class has a chance, and encounters aren't decided by gear, or the fotm class.

MightyIdle said on 6:56PM 1-06-2009

WoW tries to balance everything on a 1v1 basis. It's impossible to do. They haven't, nor will they ever, achieve even a decent balance for all classes and builds.

I love PvP but I couldn't stand it in WoW. I agree with you about WAR. I don't think it's quite as buggy as you state, but the PvP is great and balanced for a GROUP effort. Like you said, gear and individual overpowerdness isn't a real factor.

Lemons said on 3:55PM 1-14-2009

"WoW tries to balance everything on a 1v1 basis."

Aha...no...

There have been a bunch of blue posts explicitly saying that they do not design the game on a 1v1 basis. Take this one for example:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=76850425&sid=1&pageNo=2

If they did then there would be 1v1 arenas...which there isn't.

Jack said on 8:12PM 1-06-2009

I play WoW for PVE noting boring about it can not care at all for pvp :)

risrepkel said on 3:10PM 1-14-2009

That entire article is an overview on death knights and how to make them more PvP viable. It does a great job but doesn't offer any balance, just load on more abilities.

Everything else was added just to make the article seem more legitimate. Most of the stuff he says about other classes are stupid and probably speaking out of frustration.

Lemons said on 3:36PM 1-14-2009

His points about mutilate rogues are pretty valid.

In TBC poisons sucked so badly (cept of course crippling poison) that I'd sometimes forget to put them on my weapons in an instance. Their application rate was so terrible that the developers gave rogues shiv.

Assassination rogues had talents to improve the viability of their poisons to a good degree. But now in wotlk poisons are performing well without the Assassination talents, so when you have the talents (Vile Poisons, Imp Poisons, and Deadly Brew) your poisons become OP.

You can have wound, mind-numbing, and crippling on a target constantly, and you proc poisons faster than they can be cleansed etc etc.

As far as Mut rogues wishing they didn't have to take Overkill, sure yes, PVE rogues would wish they could skip it, but for pvp it's insane, when I spec mutilate pvp I usually have enough energy to get in a Cheap Shot > Mutilate > Mutilate > Eviscerate. I think Overkill is a cheap talent that allows Mut rogues to do entirely too much burst damage that was hastily thrown in towards the end of the wrath beta without the devs really thinking about it.

I would take Overkill over Master of Subtlety any day of the week..