- A simple change (at least in theory), and something that would shake up some bis lists, is to lower the spell hit cap by 5%. Hit cap progression for casters is 3%, 4%, 5%, 16% for lvls 60, 61, 62, 63 respectively. For mobs 3 levels above your hit chance drops by 11% for each level. If possible change this to 6% so the progression is a less steep 3%, 4%, 5%, 11%. This helps some classes like Locks that struggle to be hit capped even in bis gear, while having no knock-on effects on pvp. It's also a massive buff to the hybrid specs like boomkins / ele shammies due to their lack of tier gear. This is one of those things that feels really rough compared to melee classes as the amount of hit required to reach the cap is much much higher but items are budgeted for hit in the same way. Leading to a lot more competition between casters for much fewer items. This is a massive buff to spellcasters in general, but after the wbuff changes I also feel they need the buff much more than melee dps does.
- Allow for classes to have access to other classes ZG enchants from idols. Hybrid classes only getting healing enchants really limits their ability to do stuff outside of healing. Opens up things like locks getting hit from mages, mages getting stam for pvp from locks, paladins having options for spellpower, warriors actually having a dps option + threat option from rogues etc. Just seems fun to shake things up. (This will have a knock-on effect of increasing idol demand) Not sure how much this breaks stuff tbh (probably a lot), but it would be a really fun change :D
- Make flasks last 1 hour, but you can craft them 2 at a time á le Wotlk. Since the removal of wbuffs it's much much harder to clear raids in one flask, and popping a second one with 30-40 mins to go feels like a waste. This would just be a nice qol to smooth out flask usage.
- A big discussion started recently with the changes to e'ko farming, and the decision to make them no longer group wide due to concerns about the economy. This was a pity as there are very few farms for consumes which you can do with your friends. In fact there is very little activities to do with others outside of raids / dungeons / pvp. Is there any way we could make Tea Leaves and Scourgestones group wide similar to how ekos used to behave? Since they are soulbound there shouldn't be any economic ramifications and it would be nice to have more group farm activities in the game that isn't just CC badges.
- Weapon Skill. Comes up a lot, everyone has opinions on it. The easy solution would be to remove it from the game, but I think a more fun and rp solution would be to add more sources to the game. Starting with the races. Some quick ones that make sense within the lore: Dwarves should have axes, Night Elves swords, Gnomes Daggers, Tauren's Maces, Undead Swords (did they forget how to use them after becoming undead?) But honestly, the more the merrier. Choosing a race should have an rp / aesthetic sense to it even if peeps gonna min/max. Consider adding Fist Weps and Polearms into the mix as well. Probably not adding anything new to the discussion here, but I feel it shouldn't be forgotten either.
- I love chase items. Rare items that make geared players want to go back and do lower level dungeons / raids are great. Idols / Mounts in ZG are perfect for this. The raid effectively never becomes outdated no matter your gear level and as a result newer players have a much easier time finding groups to get gear. The epic trinket from HFQ, Ironfoe, Rivendere's mount, Flask Recipes, are all other good examples. Consider adding similar stuff to any new raids or dungeons you add to the game, so that players have reasons to keep going back. You don't want it to end up like Black Morass.
Warriors:
Warriors are in a good place overall though so I don't think they need buffs, just tweaks. I would also not be in favour of nerfing them, but instead of trying to bring other classes up to their level. With that said some of the following would be nice.
- Give all warriors 2 points of Tactical Mastery by default. Just to open up talent options without it feeling clunky to not have. Allows for things like mocking blow and intercept without needing to hold up bloodrage. Mostly a quality of life thing.
- Deep Prot lacks threat compared to Fury Prot, or more accurately it lacks threat scaling. It's fine at lower gear levels. It would be nice to buff the threat scaling of Shield Slam to compensate a little. It currently only scales from Block Value, in terms of threat stats that means crit and str, but you only get 1 extra point of dmg (Block Value) per 20 str. Compared to 18 dmg per 20 str on Bloodthirst. I would buff the scaling, either by having str give more BV, or having shield slam get 3-5 dmg per point of BV (Tinker with the number until you're happy)
- Sunder Armor should deal 1 point of dmg. So we can track it on the logs and with addons. Ideally all abilities that apply an important debuff should do so, just to make it easier to track. This will also make addons which track remaining time much much more accurate as currently they can only estimate the time from first application and can't "see" when other players refresh it as abilities which do not change the state of a mob do not generate a combat log entry. Other abilities would include Faerie Fire, Expose Armor, Demoralising Shout / Roar etc. There may be another way of forcing these abilities to trigger a combat log entry when they hit that doesn't involve them dealing dmg, and if so just do that. But 1 dmg seems like the simplest solution to an outsider. :)
Warlocks:
- This comes up a lot but Warlocks need a hit talent. Making Cataclysm give 1% hit in addition to 1% mana reduction would make choices when spec'ing more meaningful. I would tighten it up as well. Make it a 3 point talent with 2% mana / 1% hit per point. Alternatively, if you don't want to mess with the established specs making suppression 2% aff / 1% destro spells per point would be an easier place to put it. Or add it to any talent already being used. Some other options would be Imp Shadowbolt (Hit applies to Shadowbolt only), Intensity (1-2% per point), Or maybe just add a new dedicated talent for it.
- Have Intensity apply to all destruction spells. Just do it, pushback feels bad. Especially when your other caster friends have talents to counter it.
- Early game Warlock dps feels horrible, but they are very good at high gear levels. Tweaks to their lower end tier sets would be nice to smooth out this transition. Set bonuses are awful and both Tier 1 and Tier 2 severely lack any kind of hit which Warlocks desperately need (1% hit across all of T1, 0% across all of T2). Adding spell hit to these items would be a very welcome change.
- To make fire locks more of an option, have Imp Searing Pain remove the bonus threat and change conflag not to consume your Immolate dot. I think they still will struggle with scaling, but that's a trade off with being less reliant on other locks for Imp Sbolt, CoS, etc. and having synergy with mages instead.
- Split Curses into two groups and allow locks to have one from each group up at a time. Having 4 warlocks in a raid but only one being able to use the good dot isn't fun. Mages don't need to give up on fireball completely to keep scorch up, Shadow Weaving is applied by any spell etc. You also lose raid dmg trying to help with things like Curse of Tongues on Skeram. Let Curse of Shadows, Curse of Elements, Curse of Recklessness be their own thing. Call them utility curses or something and have all the others be offensive curses. (Curse of Agony, Curse of Weakness, Curse of Tongues, Curse of Doom , Curse of Exhaustion etc. in their own other group)
- Curse of Shadows should also affect Holy Res, and Curse of Elements should affect Nature Res. Paladins and Shammies struggle immensely vs mobs with high amounts of these resistances. Having the bonus 10% dmg also apply to their schools would also be nice. But it might be too strong a change. Up to you guys. :)
Rogues:
- Are in a good space tbh, but lack some dps in raids compared to warriors. I would add an extra 5% attack speed to Slice n Dice, just as a minor buff to their dps and as a change that won't mess with pvp.
- Also put an actual good talent at the end of Assassination plx, don't care what it is but anything would be better than what's there. :)
- Rogue tanking, kind of a fun meme spec on this server. But if it were to become something more you would likely need to change how avoidance in general works in this game. As it stands having a 20% chance to dodge just means 20% of your hit table is taken up by dodges. A more interesting move would be to make avoidance entropic. Similar to how evasion works in Path of Exile. Instead of having a 20% chance to dodge, 20% dodge would mean that every 5th hit on you is guaranteed to be dodged. At 50% total avoidance every second hit would hit you, and every other hit would miss you. This is very important from a healing perspective as it makes incoming damage predictable. This would also make rogue tanking something doable at all gear levels rather than being an all or nothing gimmick. Tanking a dungeon in leather but the healer knows you only take dmg from every 4th or 5th hit is completely fine. This would also make avoidance an actual desirable stat for paladin and druid tanks instead of something that just makes healing them more spikey and unpredictable. Warriors won't care, they mostly use avoidance as a way to get more value out of shield block. This is likely to be an incredibly difficult thing to implement though and fundamentally changes the hit table mechanics of the game, so it's unlikely to be feasible. But it seemed like an interesting idea to throw out there.
Priests:
- Buff Proclaim Champion. The numbers are way too low for an end of tree talent, and why does it need to take two buff slots?
- Can PI be changed to affect both the priest and the player being cast on? Not sure how much this breaks things but it would make spec'ing it a lot more fun. Might be fucked from a pvp balance pov though.
- Remove the bonus threat on Mind Blast. Or have the Imp Mind Blast talent reduce the bonus threat by 20% per point. Like why is it even there?
