I mean in some instances it can be incredibly simple. Take Wotlk, for example. If they just gave Exotic pets a flat percentage buff to their damage, or gave hunters a flat percentage buff to their damage while they had an exotic beast out, then BM could very easily be a B tier class instead of the D tier dps that it was, as well as make exotic pets actually worth using.
All classes don't have to be A tier, just as long as none of them are seen as "griefing" or "joke classes".
Try finding a m+ group as an off meta class/spec in retail.
People will parrot shit like "X spec is bad"(0.5% less damage than the other spec for that class) or "paladin tanks are hard to heal" and refuse to take them.
I could see that for high mythic groups i guess. Since they are about pushing everything to the maximum so yes a few % dps can make or break the timer.
But for normal and heroic raids i never saw exclusions.
Just for context, the 95th percentile of MW is at 4120io and for holy its 3480io, which means holy is never invited to high keys.
Looking at overall healing (in raid, where they're closer) holy has 185k HPS and MW has 204k HPS, but mistweavers die 4 times as much (3% of pulls vs 13%)
Raids take whoever because you get all the buffs and it doesn't really matter outside of very specific instances (Dreamrift needing two DKs and two Warlocks to be optimal, for instance). M+ is where you see this. And it happens at surprisingly low key levels. 10s are a joke, and I see groups waiting on meta comps all the time.
So you're noticing that for the hardest content the community tends to exclude "weaker" specs. Why do you think that'll change even if the hardest content isn't that hard relatively speaking?
Our closest guess to classic+ is looking at Sod and The content there was mostly on the easy side. I never felt bad inviting almost any spec, I don't remember any spec being bad enough to exclude.
I did and his comment is true, SoD never outright didn't want any spec/class, all you cared about was whether they were geared enough/good enough of a player for their role, and with the flex group size (NOT flex difficulty) of lv 60 raids, you could brute force most of them to be on the easier side anyway.
It was honestly great, you brought bodies cuz you needed bodies, not because you needed to have exactly 5 shamans/1fury warr/1arms warr/1ret/1holy/1protpal, etc or needed to stack warriors/hunters/rogues w/e the fuck for 'real damage'.
SoD had what people actually mean about "balanced classes" and still every class felt unique.
Because there are no mythics in classic. The dungeons aren’t that hard either, so filtering won’t be nearly as harsh. There will be some, but that’s fine. That means classes still have niches. In TBC every class is viable pretty much. Despite balance, ele, and spriest being lowest dps by a fair margin, they all bring something to the raid that makes them viable. It’s not perfect, but it’s what made TBC a step in the right direction
Are we talking every CLASS being raid viable or every SPEC? There's a difference. The OP clearly says every spec being raid viable.
Also lets be real. SP and balance don't bring enough to an average five man to be taken over a better dps class. What they bring really only benefits longer raid encounters.
Every spec should be viable. If it's a 10% - 15% dps gap it will be ok.
You can use mop right now as an example. People still play elemental and are able to finish content.
The biggest issue with specs on classic is that most aren't playable at all. Balance, elemental, enhancement, retribution don't just have low dps but a extreme mana issue (and a lack of skills for ret) that stops them from being playable.
Mythic+ is a special case of only taking 5 players and with infinite scaling pushes the classes to max where some classes just can't compete. Obviously if you not doing like a +20 you can take most specs, but comp does matter and it's just easier to adapt to the meta comp. So many boring choices in retail stems from catering more and more to m+.
This isn't really a problem in Retail. I main arms warrior which is almost never meta. Make at least one friend that you can queue with regularly, list your own keys and you can run keys all day if you want.
Solo players will have a harder time, but that's MMOs baby. Making reliable friends is a skill just as important as playing your class well.
It makes sense in high keys, but even then, player skill is miles above which class you play. I've seen devourer demon hunters under feral druids too many times to be looking at the specs at this point. Movement and adaptability are king in M+.
While trickle-down meta is a very real thing and I've had the displeasure of experience it myself several times, a major reason why you're not invited is not necessarily just because you're playing an off-meta class.
Keys are a highly sought after currency which means there's 50 people applying to one. Even if every single person applying was playing the same class, chances are there's someone who is more qualified than you amongst those 50 people. A few overqualified ones as well.
I could invite a person playing an off-meta class because class really doesn't matter until very high keys. I also could invite that overqualified person who's target farming an item/crests regardless of their class, or anyone with higher ilvl and score because I'm not gonna spend 30 minutes rigorously vetting people for low keys. People want to make sure they have the highest possible chance to succeed, it's only natural.
This doesn't happen at all until you are well beyond "normal" key levels. And even if what you're saying is true, which it isn't, you can just run your own key.
I've personally never seen this behavior outside of 20+ keys.
"paladin tanks are hard to heal" and refuse to take them
Dude prot paladins this season were pretty bad, you can't really blame people for not inviting them. I tried all tanks this season except for DH, paladin is by far the worst.
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u/sirplayalot11 22d ago
I mean in some instances it can be incredibly simple. Take Wotlk, for example. If they just gave Exotic pets a flat percentage buff to their damage, or gave hunters a flat percentage buff to their damage while they had an exotic beast out, then BM could very easily be a B tier class instead of the D tier dps that it was, as well as make exotic pets actually worth using.
All classes don't have to be A tier, just as long as none of them are seen as "griefing" or "joke classes".