Final Changelog for Class Changes coming in 1.16.1

[Aomiaz]

i agree with what Lahire said

[Jamey]

I'd like reply to everyone's feedback on this post but I sadly don't have the time to address them all. But I will summarise my thoughts, these are my own and not the team's:

Overall, most comments can be split up into either:
1. Positive comments on our changes.
2. Negative comments with constructive feedback.
3. Negative comments that lean into insults.

We welcome 1 & 2, we do not welcome 3. You can disagree with changes or additions in a polite manner but insulting the team because you disagree is never a correct way to approach discussion.

I'd like to swiftly speak on #3:
The general consensus for these comments is that we as a team don't know what we're doing and Blizzard when designing these classes did. That we are amateurs and that we should leave balance to Blizzard and Blizzard only.

I will not comment on the professionalism of Blizzard in the Vanilla days as there's some things to be said about that, you can check old interviews and see for yourself. I will only say that while the overwhelmingy majority of their decisions were sound and made sense, some abilities,talents or class niches felt overlooked or abandoned which is something we're trying to revitalise with most of these changes.

I will say however, that people that are fundamentally against us changing things because "you don't know what you're doing & it will go wrong" are fundamentally against the spirit of experimentation and emulation. As a team we are trying to extend the Vanilla experience, this is mostly done by translating Vanilla lore into extra gameplay but classes should not be exempt from this.

While these changes may look like a big list that will drastically change things most changes or additions are minor, with the intend of making cumbersome parts of some classes feel less so.

Some of the comments on this thread portray Vanilla classes made by Blizzard as perfect completed classes, yet back in the day with every minor Vanilla patch that brought spell changes Blizzard had to deal with their version of nay and doom-sayers. Still, Vanilla thrived.



Speaking on #1 & #2, we very much appreciate all the feedback going in and will continue to closely monitor people's opinions on things that we might have overlooked with some implied changes.

This is a new chapter for us too and we're as excited as most of you are to see what the community will come up with, with these changes.


Maybe classes are indeed, like Lahire said, Pandora's box. We as a team could've gone the easy route and just kept Vanilla as it is, with some classes / specs in an unfinished state and point to Blizzard who to blame for that, deflecting any negativity to "It's blizzlike". Instead, we've undergone a very challenging task of trying to finish up these underwhelming aspects. While it saddens me that some response to that is "You don't know what you're doing" I think the overwhelming majority of the community welcomes these changes which is refreshing to see.

I think an open mind and a helpful community that's willing to provide feedback the team can use coming up with changes is the best way forward and will result in a memorable experience everyone can enjoy.

[Warmane]

online player numbers wont lie.
Atm the sarver avarages 450 online players each night. If 2 months after 1.16 is released that number stays the same or is increased, than this is a win. If it will go down i'm sure the devs will have a backup copy of 1.16 without the class changes saved somewhere.

Also my 2 cents on pvp (yes yes i know this is not a pvp server, but still, i see at lest 1 wsg pop every hour, so SOME people must be playing it i guess)
With every class getting their dmg inscreased so exponentially, pvp is going to become a oneshot-fest since there's no resilience in game.
There will be absulutely no incentive to play even remotely with any form of strategy or cc or even defensive abilities. Just unload your new enhanced rotation an the target and it's gone.

[Mac]

Glad to hear you're keeping a positive attitude about this. Best of luck on the patch!

[Rafale]

online player numbers wont lie.
Atm the sarver avarages 450 online players each night. If 2 months after 1.16 is released that number stays the same or is increased, than this is a win. If it will go down i'm sure the devs will have a backup copy of 1.16 without the class changes saved somewhere.

Also my 2 cents on pvp (yes yes i know this is not a pvp server, but still, i see at lest 1 wsg pop every hour, so SOME people must be playing it i guess)
With every class getting their dmg inscreased so exponentially, pvp is going to become a oneshot-fest since there's no resilience in game.
There will be absulutely no incentive to play even remotely with any form of strategy or cc or even defensive abilities. Just unload your new enhanced rotation an the target and it's gone.

I really hope more and more players will play here. I try to advertise for the server as much as I can on Youtube so people can hear about Turtle Wow. This is our job too. If you like it, talk to people about Turtle Wow and you will have more people in game.

[Afaslizo]

After playing around again on the new talent calculator I have some maybe very late suggestions concerning Priest talents:

While Shadow feels most in line with the presented vision and actually makes for some good investment and few choices into the tree and discipline on top of that I think that the playstyle of discipline could be improved by some talent swapping between holy and discipline in that certain class fantasies could profit from them.

Discipline was at one time thought to be a melee variance - in my opinion a take on the Friar class from Dark Age of Camelot's Albion realm - before getting mostly scrapped into what feels as an incomplete support tree for the other two with some buffs in line with DAoCs buffbots at the buttom. With the advent of the so-called smite priest I believe moving talents around between holy and discipline could allow for a discipline heavy smite priest who does not have to invest 19 points for Searing Light and Holy Reach in Holy.

I propose thus that Holy Reach is places in the 2nd row of Holy instead of the 4th like now and Silent Resolve and Divine Fury are to swap places. Improved Inner Fire is moved one row above (mostly because thus there is enough space so Searing Light can occupy the same space and the meta for Improved Inner Fire is not that gamebreaking as for example Improved Mana Burn which accessibility realy makes a ton of difference - though moving the latter instead could provide an alternative investment for Shadow Priests).

I don't really want to discuss the viability of Reflective Shields but as I would never set shields on a tank in normal situations because of rage denial it will remain a pvp-Talent with limited use that feels weak for its tier. But the goal of this post is moving talents around for more consistent playstyles and not trying and most likely failing to find better alternatives.

I think that those suggestions could help Discipline from a support role to combine that with not just a lesser healer compared to deep Holy but instead a dedicated smite priest who could access critical talents more easily(possible now but leaves the priest with a build that leaves a lot to be desired) while providing a fun way to experience the game without having to gimp groups.

[Velite]

I don't really want to discuss the viability of Reflective Shields but as I would never set shields on a tank in normal situations because of rage denial it will remain a pvp-Talent with limited use that feels weak for its tier. But the goal of this post is moving talents around for more consistent playstyles and not trying and most likely failing to find better alternatives.

What if the tank doesn't use rage

[Afaslizo]

A talent geared towards one spec of another class is even more of a failure and the server is already saturated with paladins.

[Velite]

I wasn't saying that it was geared towards paladins. I was saying that a tank doesn't always use rage:

hunters, warlocks, priests, rogue, shaman tanks for example. Using power word: shield on them is a no brainer since it doesn't affect their resource gen.

I was more questioning the, ahem, stereotype that there's only 2 tanks in vanilla, and shouldn't really base design on that.

[Afaslizo]

I wasn't saying that it was geared towards paladins. I was saying that a tank doesn't always use rage:

hunters, warlocks, priests, shaman tanks for example. Using power word: shield on them is a no brainer.

I was more questioning the, ahem, stereotype that there's only 2 tanks in vanilla.

Nah, there are three, those others are circumstantial compared to the majority of content. You can make shaman work but not with ease. I tanked two dungeons once as a shadow on another vanilla server but it is not that consistent and useful due to lack of ae. Hunter pet tanking felt lackluster and wl is mostly hit or miss. Reflective shields is not that great of a talent to even significantly help them as shield absorbtion is quite low compared to incoming damage on later levels.

[Snigery]

Given that there are differing opinions all over this topic I think it would be best if any changes that are made are done so in small increments. How are we to know the effect a change will have until it has been tested. Small progressive changes can't hurt and will allow players to adjust.

[Merikkinon]

I think the thing that strikes me is, this isn't going on a PTR. It's straight into the vein.

We don't know how it will affect things - we really do not. And what we also don't know is how, if indeed it really skews the game and balance, what the devs intend to do about that?

We have no idea other than the changes they are looking to make. No idea about recourse should it get ugly.

YOU (team) could certainly speak to that. It seems only appropriate, as you've already talked about changes you'd like to make. Help us out and talk about what you'd do if it turns out to be rather ugly. Help us with faith in the server.

[Fin]

I think the thing that strikes me is, this isn't going on a PTR. It's straight into the vein.

We don't know how it will affect things - we really do not. And what we also don't know is how, if indeed it really skews the game and balance, what the devs intend to do about that?

We have no idea other than the changes they are looking to make. No idea about recourse should it get ugly.

YOU (team) could certainly speak to that. It seems only appropriate, as you've already talked about changes you'd like to make. Help us out and talk about what you'd do if it turns out to be rather ugly. Help us with faith in the server.

The answer is in the first post on this thread.

All of these changes are tentative and subject to change.

There is no broken faith between the staff and the community. Since the release of the announcement, staff had been in close contact with the community and discussed and explained the changes with anyone who had some constructive opinion to give: concerns to raise and feedback to give. Most of those discussions are public, you can see them in the class channels in discord.

[Brandedblade]

I've been watching the paladin discussions on Discord and while the people there aren't in 100% agreeance with how it should be handled. It does seem that the goal should absolutely be to give ret a purpose to be brought into a raids in a manner that doesn't directly interfere with the ability for a holydin to fulfill it's own roles. I unfortunately cannot speak as much for prot as it's the spec I have least familiarity in out of the paladin specs.

The lasting judgments change does seem to have a general consensus of being problematic as while ideally maintaining judgments should be part of the goal of a ret's purpose in a raid, it only proves to make it harder for a holydin who wants to maintain judgments in the absence of one. While I fully believe that others with more knowledge on the matter could potential prove my concepts problematic. I'm personally going to provide my own personal thoughts on what I would suggest if given a say.

Go ahead and keep the Lasting Judgment talent gone, but increase the base duration of judgments to 20 seconds. While 20 seconds may still be obnoxious for the holydin scared to rush into judgment range, it's at least double what they would be getting without it.

Alongside that, I would propose that we give ret something from tbc, the ability to refresh all active judgments on a target. Or rather, at the bare minimum Light and Wisdom. While I'm going to create a point of speculation as to an idea what, I would like to bring up the second thing.

The second point that seems to be intended with the design of Returning old Crusader strike that the Ret Paladin would then be able to maintain either judgment of Light or Wisdom while still being able to buff their damage (and the damage of smite priests) with the stacking debuff. However, without the certainty on whether or not debuff limits would be removed that would likely prove problematic to a raid group that does not want to allow a ret to maintain the CS debuff."

The best thought i would have in regards to this would be to allow ret paladins an additional effect that is deep in their tree that would augment this debuff in a way that is beneficial to other players without adding to the ret paladins own personal damage.

With these thoughts and mind, I'm going to create a second post following this one with some proposals of my own. I do not expect these concepts to be perfectly executed but I hope they can at least provide some thought towards ways to handle the issue with ret paladin going forward.

[Brandedblade]

• Proposed Talents Suggestions:

1. Benediction: Ideally I would like this to apply to *all* instant casts instead of just seals and Judgment, however, if that is not a desired effect, please consider, at the bare minimum, Holy Strike, Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and Consecration.

2.Vengeance: While not something that is a mandatory thought, reducing it to a 3 point talent (with the same final bonus) would allow room in that tier for a decent spot for one of the talents I wish to propose in conjunction. Ideally, I'm looking towards these effects being deep ret talents to help encourage the use of a ret paladin.

3. New Talent 1: This is talent concept that's swimming in my head as a two point talent to nestle in the same tier as vengeance.

Improved Crusader Strike: 2 point talent: Increases the Holy damage bonus per stack of Crusader Strike by X1%/X2% and causes your Crusader Strike to additionally increase the damage the target takes to Fire, Frost, and Arcane damage by Y1%/Y2% per stack.

The idea of this one is simple, grant a more synergistic effect to Crusader Strike that, while hopefully not game breaking, or even a noticeable increase for the Ret Paladin. Would at least help justify the debuff slot as a way to buff most casters. Nature and Shadow not being in the proposed change is merely a matter of flavor, as Enhance Shamans and Shadow Priests already have abilities that cover these damage vulnerabilities. There's is no reason not to change this two a full magic damage vulnerability as it would make it to magic what Sunder Armor is Physical Damage. I intentionally did not put numbers in the values as too allow room to speculate what the optimal tuning is. Another possibility would be to make it a crit debuff just like Improved Judgment of the Crusader in TBC, but i feared that it might be too synergistic to the ret's own output.

4. New Talent 2: I'm having a tricker time placing this talent, but like "Improved Crusader Strike" the intention is too make it a deep ret talent to ensure it's a ret only utility. I've also considering rolling this effect into the other talent, but decided to keep it seperated to prevent the talent from being too bloated. For this speculation I'm going to treat it as if it's a capstone that requires 2/2 "Improved Crusader Strike" where it would theoretically be a pve oriented alternative to taking Repentance.

Crusader's Bounty: 1 Point, Requires 2/2 "Improved Crusader Strike." Reduces the Mana Cost of your Holy Strike and Crusader Strike by X% and causes your successful Holy Strikes and Crusader Strikes to refresh the duration of all currently applied Judgment of Light and Judgment of Wisdom effects currently on the target.

The idea is extremely simple, give the ret a small bone on their sustain (again leaving the values at X to allow others to consider the optimal values) and giving them the niche of allowing them to maintain judgments like in TBC. The Holydin can still maintain Light for parsing or the Tankidin can do Light for the threat, but a ret paladin, hopefully with these combined changes, would be able to at the very least help support the groups caster dps and assist with the group healing and mana sustain of the group by maintaining the judgments for the other paladins. I am aware of the concept of just adding the TBC crusader strike. But I personally would love to see this iteration of Crusader Strike available as a baseline for all paladins for the sake of an extra button to press while soloing. With these improvements being ret only utility to help justify bringing at least one to your group.

While there are other ideas that have been proposed, and I do not expect these concepts to be perfect, I hope they give the development team some ideas going forward.

[Merikkinon]

There is no broken faith between the staff and the community. Since the release of the announcement, staff had been in close contact with the community and discussed and explained the changes with anyone who had some constructive opinion to give: concerns to raise and feedback to give. Most of those discussions are public, you can see them in the class channels in discord.

Nope. Didn't say there was broken faith. Was encouraging talking about things in a way, some level of transparency about potential recourses. I appreciate, and I think we all do, that they are 'subject to change'. I mean, who would commit into such a big project without that as a rule of thumb?

I guess the better question might be, is it possible to set up a PTR for this? Or is that just a major resource issue? (I do not know, and I am not even going to act as if I do).

[Merikkinon]

Also my 2 cents on pvp (yes yes i know this is not a pvp server, but still, i see at lest 1 wsg pop every hour, so SOME people must be playing it i guess)
With every class getting their dmg inscreased so exponentially, pvp is going to become a oneshot-fest since there's no resilience in game.
There will be absulutely no incentive to play even remotely with any form of strategy or cc or even defensive abilities. Just unload your new enhanced rotation an the target and it's gone.

OK, I don't know if this is true or not. Will the changes significantly increase player power (dmg output)? If so, I'm against that. I want to see better balance and increase in acceptable class abilities/capacities, not an increase in power.

So I am asking if what Warmane above is asserting is true?

[Velite]

Also my 2 cents on pvp (yes yes i know this is not a pvp server, but still, i see at lest 1 wsg pop every hour, so SOME people must be playing it i guess)
With every class getting their dmg inscreased so exponentially, pvp is going to become a oneshot-fest since there's no resilience in game.
There will be absulutely no incentive to play even remotely with any form of strategy or cc or even defensive abilities. Just unload your new enhanced rotation an the target and it's gone.

OK, I don't know if this is true or not. Will the changes significantly increase player power (dmg output)? If so, I'm against that. I want to see better balance and increase in acceptable class abilities/capacities, not an increase in power.

So I am asking if what Warmane above is asserting is true?

From what I have read so far, most of the additions are minor at best. I don't see anything that would indicate significant powercreep, unless anyone can prove me wrong.

[Merikkinon]

Well, that sounds good.

[Mooncake]

Would be awesome to let shamans dual-wield, I'd instantly rerolled into shaman if it was done.

[Daaki]

I want to bring up something that doesn't seem to have been addressed so far about shamans and paladins (possibly melee hunters, too? Not sure. I won't discuss melee hunters in this post but I just want to bring up that they may have the same issue). I'm speaking about this purely from a PvE tanking perspective, not necessarily a specific shaman/pally/druid/warrior tanking perspective but an overall tanking perspective in general.

So to start, shamans and paladins weren't completely designed to be dps classes in vanilla. This might be obvious to some, and others they have have already gotten upset with me for saying such, but please keep reading as I'm by no means saying this isn't a problem with vanilla, and I think it is great that TurtleWoW is working to fix it. I'm thankful for the work TurtleWow staff has put in for the new itemization, and the new skills and new talents that will try to make these specs work (as well as the contributions to other classes), but there is an obvious problem dps shamans and paladins will introduce that hasn't been addressed because simply put: they deal much more threat than any other dps class.

People familiar with tanking and threat values/auras will know that warrior tanks in defensive stance with the defiance talent have a 1.45% threat multiplier, an 0.8% multiplier when in battle/zerker stance, that rogues and druids in cat form have a .7% threat multiplier, that healers have a .5% threat multiplier, that pally heals have .25% threat multipliers, and so on. Other dps classes like mages, warlocks, and shadow priests have talents to reduce their threat (and with the upcoming changes balance druids have this too but for some reason shamans and paladins did not get this treatment in the changes). The issue with shaman and pally dps is that their threat modifiers are 1.0, effectively meaning they will be dealing a lot more threat for the same amount of dps as other classes. As more gear and talents/skills are introduced to nurture shaman and paladin dps, their threat output may end up being too much.

This is further complicated with the threshold needed to gain aggro off a tank. Melee dps (which paladins and most shamans will be) only need 10% more threat than the tank to gain aggro, whereas range dps (warlocks, mages, shadow priests, balance druids, hunters) need 30% more threat to get aggro. So even if range dps opt not to get their threat reduction talents (like most warlocks), they will still have more wiggle room before they overtake the tank in threat generation. Ret paladins and enhance shamans will be in the same boat as rogues/cats and dps warriors, only they will be doing 30% and 20% more threat respectively.

The TBC talent tree introduced threat reduction talents, for shamans as part of their parry talent (which unfortunately effectively made them permanently incapable of tanking), and with paladins deep in the retribution tree. I think it is a fair suggestion that, if the goal truly is to make dps shamans and paladins viable, they should have similar options via talents to reduce their threat output. I'm by no means suggesting gut pally/shaman tanking capabilities, but that those that wish to dps with these classes should have the necessary tools available to reduce their threat so they can be on par with other dps in a PvE setting.

I hope this is understandable and can be taken under consideration. Thank you.

[Jorlak85]

i may be wrong but if these class changes are implemented and transmog goes live this will become a meme server

I dont agree that transmog will make this server to meme. Class changes maybe

[Lorencor]

These changes are astronomically bad.

Vanilla wasn't about having "Balanced" specs. You're taking why we play the game, OUT OF THE GAME.
And even then, how are warriors "straight up overpowered"?

Is it because they can taunt?
Is it because you're fighting max-geared warriors in pvp with 5 healers + consumables?

Having a private server doesn't mean you know anything. It doesn't mean you know how to balance a game, and it doesn't mean you know what you're talking about.

If you are going to redesign a class like warrior and use an innocuous statement such as "They are straight up overpowered", please pull your head out of your ass and play the fucking class. From level 1, to 60, with no instance gear and blues.

There is only ONE class that is overpowered in vanilla, and that class is MAGE. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

Here are SEVERAL issues warriors have:

1. Tactical Mastery being mandatory in the arms tree. If you are giving away abilities, you might as well make this trainable and baseline.

2. Rage is a HUGE problem: Getting 2-4 rage per attack makes tanking miserable, especially at early levels. There is a reason you see paladins tanking a lot more then warriors-- because it's easier, and less heart-ache. These buffs will only make this WORSE. I propose upping the rage to a regular 8-10 rage (with a 1hander) and 15-20 rage (with a 2hander). Rage is supposed to be a break from mana, not a hinderance.

3. I hope you understand that Warriors, with no healer, have crap for self-sufficiency. Any buff here would be nice; why not introduce something useful like "Berserker Invigoration" which works like druids Frenzied Regeneration but better (since warriors are a PURE tank).

4. Why not give warriors a baseline instant strike? Like "Brutal Strike" for 80% weapon damage, instant, 6 second cooldown, REPLACED BY MORTAL STRIKE, BLOOD THIRST, or SHIELD SLAM. It would help with leveling big time, but only after the rage issues have been addressed.

5. If you are going to claim warriors are overpowered, YOU SHOULD PROVIDE REASONS AS TO WHY YOU FEEL THAT WAY.
How you can feel that way and not say mages are overpowered when they can instantly fireball you (with 600+ spell damage) for 3-4000 damage is insane to me. Is frost mage a joke to you? What instances are warriors "op" in exactly?
Is it really the talents, or the gear make up? These are things that ANY solid developer should question before "Fixing" and "Adding" things to a class.

6. The Prot Tree is fucking terrible outside of its early talents and shield slam. Why not give prot warriors reckoning? I mean you apparently think a paladin one-shotting with reckoning is completely okay and balanced, especially while being invincible, why not show some love here? Why not give the Prot Warrior a counter ability (like revenge, only it actually deals good damage). What about making revenge cleave instead of being a weak stun that's on DR with rogue stuns?

7. The real reason you think warriors are overpowered in vanilla is because they probably two shotted you. This has more to with the completely low levels of HP in this game (4k at max level with good gear for most classes). But if this is the only way a warrior can win, they aren't op. Any class in this game can do big bursts -- ever play an Ambush/BS rogue with naxx gear? i have. And it's far easier to zerg a priest with one then it is a warrior.

8. Retaliation sucks. The "big three" should be unlinked. The only abiltiy of the three that is broken is "Recklessness". You can make that one an hour CD and noone would care. But retaliate is kind of a meme in pvp and could easily be reduced to a 5 min CD and be fine. Same with Shield Wall.

9. If you really want to ignore me because of my language, I encourage you to look up what "passion" means, because when someone speaks from the heart or passionately, policing their own language is the LAST thing they do. That said, making a warriors life easier in tanking by making sblock cost 0 rage would be ideal. Prot isn't overpowered, at ALL. If it is, it's gear only and not talent or spec or class.

10. Please consider making disarm either A): always work like in TBC, or B): be a 30 second cooldown, because in pvp weapon chains make it completely useless against the classes it SHOULD be good against (rogue, ret paladin).

In conclusion: do not use a term like "Warriors are straight up overpowered in vanilla", because nothing is more false then that statement. Needing to have the best gear, windfury, and a zillion consumables, suggest otherwise.
They have a few things that could be broken, (mainly sweeping strikes and whirlwind), but it becomes the only viable PvP tactic in the game. The current changes will make ret paladins STUPIDLY BROKEN and spriests even more infuriating then they already are.

Sincerely,
Someone who actually cares about the Warrior class (my mains a paladin)

P.S.

Another "aspect" of 'Would-be-OP-in-Vanilla" is Sword Spec.
If you want to nerf something, change that to 10% haste and you'll see a big difference. Remove things or Balance trinkets such as Hand of Justice and you'll see results.

You started saying "These changes are astronomically bad."
But in all your statement you only cared about warrior. LOL
Have you ever tried to play with a balance druid or an elemental shaman?

[Lorencor]

I think changes to some classes are welcome.

But there are some changes that I think are exaggerated (Priests and Paladins).

[Overtyped]

I have a question about the ardent defender talent for the prot paladin.
Will it only activate when you are between 1-35% like in TBC (Meaning, If you are at 40% hp, and you take a 40% hit, there will be no damage reduction and you die.
Or will it be wotlk's version?

In wotlk, any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced)

On paper this comes to 8.3% dmg reduction. Although the effective damage reduction would likely be half that, but, it's still far better, because the TBC version would come out to 0% dmg reduction. Bosses hit hard in 40 mans, even trash mobs will kill you from 34% hp, and that's in the cases where you have extremely good luck, and manage to get your hp to exactly 34% hp to activate the talent, but even then, you will still die on the next hit.

If it is indeed the TBC version, then you may want to consider just leaving that part of the tree unchanged, it would be better to keep it original, rather than offending the purists, and clogging up the prot tree with additional useless talents.

Alternatively, you could get rid of the ardent defender talent, and add 6% dmg reduction to the improved righteous fury talent as they have in TBC. This would be infinitely more useful, and a far less invasive change.

[Reploidrocsa]

Hmmmm, looking at Paladin's Holy Shield...
Seems pretty underwhelming. Yes it has 4 charges but it has a CD of 10 secs, essentialy giving the same effect as a warrior shield block, which is 2 charges (if improved) on 5sec CD.
Since warriors get TC for AoE, doesn't that kill the purpose of a prot paladin excelling as trash/offtank?
How about increasing the charges or reducing it's CD by 1-2 secs?

[Overtyped]

Hmmmm, looking at Paladin's Holy Shield...
Seems pretty underwhelming. Yes it has 4 charges but it has a CD of 10 secs, essentialy giving the same effect as a warrior shield block, which is 2 charges (if improved) on 5sec CD.
Since warriors get TC for AoE, doesn't that kill the purpose of a prot paladin excelling as trash/offtank?
How about increasing the charges or reducing it's CD by 1-2 secs?

Thunderclap is only 4 targets.

[Velite]

Hmmmm, looking at Paladin's Holy Shield...
Seems pretty underwhelming. Yes it has 4 charges but it has a CD of 10 secs, essentialy giving the same effect as a warrior shield block, which is 2 charges (if improved) on 5sec CD.
Since warriors get TC for AoE, doesn't that kill the purpose of a prot paladin excelling as trash/offtank?
How about increasing the charges or reducing it's CD by 1-2 secs?

Yes, Holy shield getting more charges in TBC was one of the major changes to the spec, but given the non-existent role of aoe tanks in vanilla raiding, and the changes to redoubt, more time is needed to examine where the spec will currently perform before you make those kinds of adjustments, since by all accounts even a 6 charge holy shield will allow paladins to perform much better against a boss. Which would infringe on the role of the warriors as the ideal boss tank.

Also, I think Holy Shield is in a much better spot talent wise since it's 21 points, otherwise it would have stayed at 31 points but had more charges. Because 31 points for 4 charges was pretty bad when warriors can get that for a fraction of talent points. So, more time is really needed to say what is needed to adjust.

The problem with protection paladins at the low-mid end is surviving the aoe tanking, the problem with protection paladins at the high end is doing enough aoe threat. Because of scaling boosts the high end problem should be solved, and with redoubt change + argent defender the low-mid end problem should also be addressed. Holy shield doesn't really fit into this since it's primarily a Cleave Tanking/Boss tanking ability, and not a Mass Aoe tanking ability. Warriors are superior cleave/boss tanks and paladins are better mass aoe tanks.

When new raiding content comes out on Turtle Wow I am sure they will factor in the benefits to have a paladin tank in the raid with more content designed around actual aoe tanking. Because in vanilla, the "aoe tanking" is either spamming Earthshakers or kiting with mages, hence a paladin is not needed, but since we are cross faction we don't have to design content without an actual, dedicated aoe tank who needs to tank 5+ mobs at a time. The actual tanking in vanilla is designed around what warriors are capable of.

As an example we take Anub'rekhan. During the encounter, he will cause little scarabs to spawn from a specific corpse. Now, if this encounter was designed in TBC, the mobs would start at 0 threat and you'd want an aoe tank to pick them up. But since warriors are not capable of holding aggro against mages on 15+ mobs, these scarabs will instead fix 5000+ threat on a random player, so the mechanic instead becomes having each of the designated players drag their scarabs together to be aoe'd down. Another example is Nefarian Phase 3, where he spawns the 40 skeletons, they can all be stunned/slowed/rooted so mages just handle them. If they were cc immune you'd need to dedicate an aoe tank to them, but given that their hp is pretty low, you can kill them in 5 seconds with a warrior using a Limited Invuln Potion to take 0 damage after popping Challenging Shout to fixate all of them to attack the now immune warrior. If they had a ton more HP and required a solid 20+ seconds to aoe down, that would employ an aoe tank, but we don't have that design in vanilla. And as far as raid trash is concerned, most raid mobs are designed damage wise to require a separate tank on each. We don't have any High Astromancer Solarian or Morogrim Tidewalker type encounters in Vanilla that need an aoe tank to progress, fights where 2-3 warriors/druids can be used or 1 paladin (hence paladin is superior in this role).

In summary I would tell you not to worry about whether a warrior kills the need for a paladin because Vanilla design kills the need for a paladin, all content can and has been done with 0 paladin tanks in the raid, if even mandated to have zero paladin tanks. There is no situation in vanilla where you can say that a paladin tank is required during raid progression. Post-Vanilla aka Turtle Design can entertain this with different encounter design, and at that point we argue the merits of a dedicated aoe tank and whether another tank infringes on that.

[Overtyped]

I have an opinion about feral druids and resto druids. Ferals were fine as they were, at least in respect to bear tanks.
As long as you gear correctly you can tank all of naxx the same as a warrior can. If you buff them as shown in the new talents(and abilities), you might find the ferals are now better tanks than warriors. Even without manual crowd pummeler, the druids threat was similar to prot warriors(Although of course they weren't as high as later stage deep fury/prot.
If all that ferals got was the ability to use potions and engineering while in form, that would already make them a lot better without any other changes. Or, if weapon effects affected you in bear form, that alone would make them much more powerful.

Resto druids were also fine as healing touch spammers, you usually only brought one, but they weren't awful enough to need an enormous buff. For flag carriers, they were untouchable, so in PVP they have no issues either. The buffs they have now put them over the other healers, when healers in general don't need any buffing.

If your goal is to make all classes perform equally in PvE, it might become more akin to retail wow than vanilla.

[Velite]

I have an opinion about feral druids and resto druids. Ferals were fine as they were, at least in respect to bear tanks.
As long as you gear correctly you can tank all of naxx the same as a warrior can. If you buff them as shown in the new talents(and abilities), you might find the ferals are now better tanks than warriors. Even without manual crowd pummeler, the druids threat was similar to prot warriors(Although of course they weren't as high as later stage deep fury/prot.
If all that ferals got was the ability to use potions and engineering while in form, that would already make them a lot better without any other changes. Or, if weapon effects affected you in bear form, that alone would make them much more powerful.

Yeah but then you get Maexxna to 30% and she 2 shots the feral while stunned because no shield wall. Warrior tank will still have that edge.

If your goal is to make all classes perform equally in PvE, it might become more akin to retail wow than vanilla.

All classes already perform equally in pve. You want every class in your pve raids. In other words, they have equal value, on a class level.

All specs don't perform equally in pve. And this means that they are not all wanted in raids. This means they don't all have equal value. But we aren't talking about, say, a spec performs bad in a certain boss fight or trash encounter, that is fine and that's what we already currently have. The problem is when a spec simply underperforms as a constant. Without any situation where you say "wow the moonkin really carried", it leaves the raid filled with warriors and mages. As much as we say retail is what led WoW to be homogenized, the raid meta in vanilla is INCREDIBLY homogenized. The level of class stacking as a meta is very strong in vanilla.

Why is this the case? Because the value of a dps in vanilla is just that, the DPS. There aren't very many situations where you value a dps for a special role, like say Warlock tanking in Illidan/AQ40/Gruul's lair. Those are very few. You can have mediocre dps specs if they perform a critical function in the group, but with bad dps and no critical function you don't invite them. So when we measure the value of a damage dealer by 1 metric we naturally get the meta in vanilla.

[Mantigora]

Hmm, what do clever people do when they are facing a big problem?
They break it down into smaller problems.

Therefore I have the following suggestion:
Ask every class to come up with a minimal set of changes (2 or 3) that they feel would absolutely improve that class by removing problems that everyone would agree on.

Then put those in the game and see what happens.
If you have too many changes at once, it is hard to see the effects and make ammends if things do not evolve in a way that is appreciated.

Caution is the eldest child of wisdom.

[Overtyped]

I have an opinion about feral druids and resto druids. Ferals were fine as they were, at least in respect to bear tanks.
As long as you gear correctly you can tank all of naxx the same as a warrior can. If you buff them as shown in the new talents(and abilities), you might find the ferals are now better tanks than warriors. Even without manual crowd pummeler, the druids threat was similar to prot warriors(Although of course they weren't as high as later stage deep fury/prot.
If all that ferals got was the ability to use potions and engineering while in form, that would already make them a lot better without any other changes. Or, if weapon effects affected you in bear form, that alone would make them much more powerful.

Yeah but then you get Maexxna to 30% and she 2 shots the feral while stunned because no shield wall. Warrior tank will still have that edge.

If your goal is to make all classes perform equally in PvE, it might become more akin to retail wow than vanilla.

All classes already perform equally in pve. You want every class in your pve raids. In other words, they have equal value, on a class level.

All specs don't perform equally in pve. And this means that they are not all wanted in raids. This means they don't all have equal value. But we aren't talking about, say, a spec performs bad in a certain boss fight or trash encounter, that is fine and that's what we already currently have. The problem is when a spec simply underperforms as a constant. Without any situation where you say "wow the moonkin really carried", it leaves the raid filled with warriors and mages. As much as we say retail is what led WoW to be homogenized, the raid meta in vanilla is INCREDIBLY homogenized. The level of class stacking as a meta is very strong in vanilla.

Why is this the case? Because the value of a dps in vanilla is just that, the DPS. There aren't very many situations where you value a dps for a special role, like say Warlock tanking in Illidan/AQ40/Gruul's lair. Those are very few. You can have mediocre dps specs if they perform a critical function in the group, but with bad dps and no critical function you don't invite them. So when we measure the value of a damage dealer by 1 metric we naturally get the meta in vanilla.

I imagine it would be hard to fix meme specs without making them overpowered in PVP as well. For example, paladins in vanilla can beat a warrior with equal gear in a 1v1 due to their toolset, if they then had competent damage, warriors would look like a joke.

Shadow is also brutally strong in PVP, but have poor raid function beyond bringing one for shadow weaving, but changing them to be more mana efficient would greatly amplify their pvp god status.
Same with geared ele shamans in group pvp, there is perhaps no stronger class in a group than a geared out lightning ele god, but they oom fast in pve.

[Trav]

I appreciate and welcome the Turtle WoW team's dedication to continuous improvement to their version of WoW. Especially in addressing the [lack of] viability of some talent trees in the Vanilla version of the game.

My specific concern is the change to Elemental Focus within the Shaman Elemental tree with regards to attempting to address the issues with Elemental Shamans in PvE. I believe that for endgame group content using the current raid spec, this will be a welcome boost, because the new talent scales with gear, something the current one lacks.
However this change to the talent and boost to endgame group viability comes at the cost of a huge nerf to levelling with elemental spec. Because the new talent scales with gear, it would have greatly decreased value without increased crit chance from gear. While levelling, you also don't have access to Tidal Mastery in the Restoration tree, (and Call of Thunder in the Elemental tree is having its crit chance reduced in the new talent tree, something not addressed in the class changes post). And that's just about mana cost, not to mention the mana efficiency [while levelling] in the current version by maintaining five second mana regeneration due to Elemental Focus having a 100% mana reduction.
As an aside, the change of the talent to rely on crit chance scaling further necessitates Tidal Mastery in the Restoration tree, thus locking an Elemental Shaman into the current spec.
In conclusion: The change to Elemental Focus is fine for endgame raiders with the established endgame spec. Huge nerf to Elemental spec while levelling. Also a nerf to any potential hybrid or solo specs that don't have 30/0/20.

[Lorencor]

I think this Priest Holy addition is exaggerated:

New Talent: Holy Champion (Row 7)

As a suggestion I would keep Lightwell in row 7 Holy spec. And modify the spell functioning.

Example:

[Lorencor]

This idea is nice, but I think it should be otherwise

New Talent: Tree of Life Form (Row 7)
Shapeshift into the Tree of Life. While in this form you increase healing received by 15% of your total Spirit for all party members within 30 yards, your movement speed is reduced by 20%, and you can only cast Swiftmend, Innervate, Nature's Swiftness, Rebirth, Barkskin, poison removing and healing over time spells, but the mana cost of these spells is reduced by 20%.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.

My change:

New Talent: Tree of Life Form (Row 7)
Shapeshift into the Tree of Life. While in this form you increase healing received by 10% of your total Spirit for all party members within 30 yards, your movement speed is reduced by 20%, and you can only cast healing spells, but the mana cost of these spells is reduced by 20%.

The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of Polymorph and Movement Impairing effects.