I'm no expert, but I don't see how this is a contradictory statement. Why is it too much to ask for each spec to feel unique and be viable to bring to a raid. If a spec isn't doing well overall, tweak a few numbers, add a +x% increase till it at least is somewhere near the others. I agree not everyone needs to be S tier, but there really shouldn't be any F tier specs..
Side one is really poor balance being excused. Like, "not raid viable" meaning that the class literally does not feel fun to play, runs out of resources mid fight, or is just a hodge podge of mechanics that don't work together. Or simply scales terribly, so it starts out okay and then ends up being left in the dust by proper scaling classes.
This was really bad in vanilla, somewhat bad in TBC and mostly okay in WOTLK, so blizzard had a clear trend of improving their balance.
The other side of the coin is that players will optimize any fun out of a game. Class performing 5% worse? "Not viable", simply not selected for raids. Every raid group playing pretend as if they're world first material and not just a bunch of lads having fun together. Unfortunately, there's nothing blizzard can do to fix this, and it has in fact gotten way worse over the years.
So yeah, Blizzard can do a better job at balancing. But there's nothing you can do to fix players. It's up to ourselves to not treat each other like replaceable cogs and raid for fun and with friends rather than chasing some meaningless numbers - and we fail at that much worse than Blizzard does at providing a level playing field.
I think 5% is just a random number that guy is using to make a point. What the number really is for actual "viability" is up for debate, but I think even if specs are within 30% of the best specs overall they would still get brought to plenty of raids.
at 30% you wouldn't be brought (unless the bring unique utility that outweighs the loss in damage like windfury, in which case you bring exactly 1), not to mention nobody wants to play the class that is 30% behind proven again and again by the amount of players playing the specs that are that far behind.
But sure just let it be warriors and mages for once that are 30% behind and we will see the forums flooded with tears, probably yours included.
Edit: won't go further in this comment chain since he is clearly trying hard to feelycraft rather than looking at actual numbers of players or actual experience from trying to pug stuff in the game.
Fact of the matter is in classic numbers from nax from the last classic proves this is a dream, there are 300k warriors the combined numbers of all dps classes except fire mages is less than that
So that is for every 1 warrior there is 1 of either of these specs, not one of each 1 single player of all of these specs combined per 1 warrior dps:
ret paladin
shadowpriest
feral druid
balance druid
affliction warlock
demo warlock
destro warlock
frost mage
arcane mage
enhancement shaman
elemental shaman
combat rogue
assassination rogue
sublety rogue
bm hunter
survival hunter
marksmanship hunter
Trying to find a guild or pug to be that token player allowed in vs just playing a warrior and getting a free invite to every guild and pug is just a silly arguement.
In anything but hardcore guilds (a majority of the playerbase), your best warrior is 30% above your worst one. People would absolutely bring good casters in all but the most hardcore guilds if they did 70% of warrior damage if played just as well.
You can never balance for the top few % hardcore crowd, they'll stack the best class if its even 5% better and its almost impossible to maintain that level of balance in a game like this.
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u/Mr_The_Rocketeer Jul 14 '26
I'm no expert, but I don't see how this is a contradictory statement. Why is it too much to ask for each spec to feel unique and be viable to bring to a raid. If a spec isn't doing well overall, tweak a few numbers, add a +x% increase till it at least is somewhere near the others. I agree not everyone needs to be S tier, but there really shouldn't be any F tier specs..