World Buffs & Cross-faction Stacking Rules

[Seacrab]

If you said classes (and raids) where being reworked without world buffs in mind and added class changes at the same time as world buffs removal, we wouldn't be upset at all. However, you are saying this.

If you are going to remove world buffs do that as the same time as class changes. Not before. Knowing how delayed class changes came out this will be a year before we see any buffs that will actually give more raid viability to hybrid specs. Warriors are going to be even more outdpsing all dps classes with power creep of totems+pally blessings because it benefits them the most (mostly wf being so strong), and as raids won't have 8 shamans to go around to buff every group so only the melee dps will get them. It makes for an unfun raid environment.

Burn out will be real in this inbetween time. Yes we can clear Naxx without world buffs, but why spend extra time, consumables, gold etc to do so when world buffs help speed it up? No one wants to take all weekend to raid Naxx, plus all the extra time consume farming during the week. I rather do it in one 3-4 hour day and be done with it. I can see current guilds struggling to get enough people for Naxx if these changes go as planned, and new guilds won't even go into Naxx because it's "too hard" without world buffs. They will just wait for class changes so they don't need 20+ dps warriors with shamans for every group to clear the place.

Please hold back on these changes. Wait on it please. Thank you.

[Rramage]

My experience: day 1 retail vanilla player. Raided in vanilla through MoP, never a cutting edge raider but always saw all content.
Raided in Light's Hope vanilla pserver
Raided in vanilla classic wow
Raided naxx a million times in wotlk f r e s h pservers

My thesis: games should be fun. Mandatory chores are not fun. Grinding farned instance trash is not fun. Seeing content is fun. Playing meme specs is fun. Speedrunning is fun. Please keep world buffs in raids AND allow shaman + paladin stacking. This will result in a large player power boost and have the following effects:

1) cutting edge guilds who stack optimal raid comps and buffs will clear raid trash faster (slows burnout) and have shorter raid times overall (slows burnout more).

2)middle tier guilds will clear content that they previously couldn't (retains players) and allows raids of good players to bring suboptimal characters and still have decent clear times (more fun)

3) low tier guilds, pugs, and combo raids of small rp guilds will clear raid content at all instead of being capped at 5 man content, without needing to gather every buff possible (more raiders, more fun)

4)hardcore enthusiasts will gain a power boost from shaman and paladin compatibility in 5 man content and clear more (more fun, player retention)

5)crossfaction group play significantly improved in leveling and dungeons (more fun)

The only downside is that cutting edge speedrunners, 1% top raiders, and the like will have less of a challenge in completing content. I don't think that is an insurmountable problem because
1) top raiders can still compete on speedrun times. Perhaps titles could be added for fast run achievements for flex points and bragging rights.
2) if the power creep becomes too problematic, raid mobs can get hp and damage buffs to lower the creep effect.
3) custom twow raids can disable world buffs if balancing is too hard.

In conclusion, keeping world buffs in raids plus allowing paladin and shaman stacking is the best solution in my opinion and experience. It would maximize fun for the maximum amount of players without diminishing the achievements of cutting edge raiders.

[Mekunekud]

Let the pally/shaman buffs stack. World buffs are, and always have been, a terrible thing in raids since the game became "solved". It makes encounters harder to design as the sheer power of world buffs means there's no real way to make a well balanced fight for people who may have wiped that isn't trivialised by world buffs.

this change will hurt raid teams in endgame content significantly. Our raid team has trouble finding any shamans and we use world buffs + pally buffs so this will just make things way harder for us. If this change happens our raid team will probably disband on turtle wow. This change won't even compensate for the loss of world buffs even if we did have shaman because filling the shaman spots with actual dps will always be better than shammy totems + blessing stacking. This also significantly increases the power gap between warriors and other classes.

How do you figure removing world buffs from raids makes warriors stronger? Half of the issue with warriors is that world buffs allows them to stack obscene AP values while maintaining Flurry from even blue gear levels and that coupled with HS queuing means warriors with 9% hit can just focus on AP while hitting the 33% threshold for near constant flurry uptime.
Shamans having issues is due to inherent scaling issues and itemisation. That was always the case from Vanilla until WOTLK brought they a bunch of talents to scale off any gear they might recieve. the only solution Turtle WoW could offer is dual wielding with double 1h WF like early TBC but I don't think they desire yet ANOTHER dual wielding class nor the insane balancing issues that come with it.

[Stache]

@balake @TurtleWoW team these topics are very much dependent on each other and there is no need for a separate vote. Stacking paladin buffs & totems not only complements the Turtle WoW niche but acts as a great buffer to the power gap issue caused by removing works buffs. People will always complain at the sight of change and haters gonna find a reason to hate. This is a great step forward and I'm sure if we notice that the difficulty is simply unmanageable (which it really won't be) I'm sure there are minor adjustments in player/environment power that can be made.

Vote YES and YES people these changes should've happened like yesterday already!

[Xudo]

I suppose that question of the poll intentionally look like "we want to remove big good feature and add little mediocre feature" to provoke discussion.

Some people might get tired clearing Ony, BWL etc when they already at Naxx. They did earlier raids thousands of times and have no reason, except buffs, to return there every week.
In current situation speedrunning earlier instances is not goal, it is necessity to get buffs fast. Speedrunning is probably fun when you compete with someone. But it is not fun when you doing it just to do other job faster.

"One shot" of world buffs is very unforgiving. Some people say like they get those buffs in little time, but I think that not everyone can do the same. For those who spend 4 hours clearing MC, it is very painful to lose them after 10 minutes in BWL. Buffs doesn't help them to try harder instances if they have only one chance. In progression, initial attempts might be failed because of bad organisation. More stats don't help with organisation.
I played dwarf fortress and I know that losing is fun. You fail, think about what was wrong, start new game and lose again. With world buffs this loop will take week. I think it is better to allow people to ressurect the raid and try again instead of "we failed with buffs, so no hope for next attempts this week".
On the other side, people in progression might get attitude "lets do this raid 24/7 until we'll finish it" and burn their members. But it is social problem which should not be solved with technical means.

I perfectly understand that some people like to PREPARE for the raid. They gather every powerup in the game to set bar higher and higher. Bad news, without world buffs, the bar becomes much lower. Good news, it becomes lower for everyone.
I think it is perfectly fine to allow people to spend their extra time to get extra power. Let them gather consumables with static increase buffs, which are no better than regular class buffs.
As for me, I'd like to spend one more hour doing extra attempt on new boss instead of one more hour of preparation.
Min/max players will try to do all possible preparations. So reducing available preparations will force them play more in raids rather than playing more in preparation.

Regarding the idea "devs want to improve underused classes".
After any change people that do min/maxing will eventually find optimal builds and classes in current ruleset. It will lead to another classes/builds become underused. Party buffs "which are better than +1 specialized DPS/Healer/Tank" sounds like good idea to address this on the first sight.
As for me, I don't want to be invited to raid only because my buff is good. I'd rather choose good specialized spec.
It looks like we stacking buffs to let some individuals be the stars of the raid. I want to be good doing my job whether it tanking, healing or damage dealing.

By the way, what happens with other "preparation" things like quest trinkets with "on use" effects like Magic Deflector? I think they look very similar to world buffs: we do some of preparation to get additional power to win.

These times I stick to low level dungeons up to 5mans and not going to play raids. So I don't really care about the features used only by hardcore players. I skip the poll.

[Rurin]

A common argument here is that people who play and raid in Vanilla like world buffs, cause otherwise they wouldn't raid in Vanilla and instead would choose some other game version.

This is false.

Personally, I like Vanilla most of all WoW versions, much more than TBC, or WotLK, or retail. For various reasons. But world buff raid meta is the one single thing I dislike about Vanilla the most, and if I could choose to remove one feature of Vanilla, it would be it.

I speak this as experienced raider, a once class leader in a guild that cleared all WoW Classic raids day1 after their release.

And now, as one of new players on this server, recently having hit hc 60, the mere existence of world buffs kept me reconsidering whether I should seriously engage in raiding on this server and endure this hassle all over again.

Seeing this announcement felt wonderful, and it felt even better to see the majority voted "yes" in the poll.

But then I see how the losing minority instead tries to undermine this whole idea in the comments. The majority shouldn't be listened to! They surely aren't raiders, they will quit soon, they didn't see Naxx on this server ( well, duh...), their opinion shouldn't count!

What you need to instead remember, is that those engaged enough to care about reading discord announcement and then logging to their forum account and casting a vote are players who care about the server, and its future, the most. Maybe they, like me, see the world buffs as obstacle on the road to real engaging experience, a chore that stands in the place where fun should be.

Because of that I only ask the devs to not ignore the voice of community, and to not be afraid of change.

[Ugoboom]

Literally anyone defending this has probably not even cleared MC and has no idea how long AQ40 and Naxx take even with buffs. They also haven't the faintest clue that without buffs to the other classes, this will absolutely CEMENT the warrior meta.

hey whoa theres a cool thing called "class changes arent done yet" wow can you imagine?

[Bayanni]

Is there a point to the poll? It was worded like the decision is already made for us and this is just a formality.

[Blackfox]

World Buffs only reward obedience.
"Be a good boy and stand in the square at 18:50 for an arbitrary increase in power"

And then lose it all because you got feared into the fire...

[Ugoboom]

Is there a point to the poll? It was worded like the decision is already made for us and this is just a formality.

wow yeah that's the same vibes I was getting. Looks to me like the devs just want the poll to back up their decision, but also see what the good considerations are.

I do hope they do learn from what we're saying and do go forward with reducing raid fatigue in other ways.

World Buffs only reward obedience.
"Be a good boy and stand in the square at 18:50 for an arbitrary increase in power"

And then lose it all because you got feared into the fire...

only 2 (3horde) buffs need that. other buffs promote world activity like songflower, DMF, silithyst, having dire maul north run at all...

and yeah there's really no unpreventable RNG that can make you lose your world buffs. we have the tools and strategies to prevent loss from rng. unironically: skill issue

[Tortun]

Как скромный представитель ру сообщества поддержу эту идею. Пусть будет больше в механику и кроссфракцию, чем в кустовые рояли.

[Redmagejoe]

People don't understand this at all. The increases world buffs gives hand cuff the devs when creating new content. If they design it around world buffs then without them its impossible as they are such massive increases which isn't good design. If they design it without world buffs in mind, people who use world buffs will destroy the content easy. This is a super easy choice, world buffs are fun and killing bosses in 40 seconds is hilarious, but it isn't good for the game. I played classic and seed ran at a very high level, so I have experience in the world buff meta and culture, it isn't good for the health of wow's endgame.

Down with world buffs

I will quote this post on every page and beat you all over the head with it until it penetrates your skulls.

[Centurio001]

Don't change the world buff, keep the original and weaker spells, regardless of the character classes, strengthen them by 10-20% to make them more viable. Reduce the capacity of your raids.
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Weaker spells found in some character classes must be strengthened and thus made more effective. Not to change the entire game strategy and experience of world buffs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If you want more difficult raids, so that a boss doesn't take 40 seconds, reduce the raid number limit to 25-30 people. The challenge starts right away. Players will need all their skills if fewer people can enter the raid in the first place.
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[Ishilu]

Just remove World buffs

[Stonnefree2]

My humble opinion is that 20% of the people do 80% of the job in any work place (Including raids), many of the raids are casual on this server and 20% the players in them are actually carrying others, with removing of world buffs that will change and these people will have limits to how much they can carry others, which will result in newer/less skilled players to suffer more, as they won't get carried so easy, the same will apply to the carries That won't be able to do what they used to. Players will start burning out, good players that try hard are gonna start leaving. We have a good example how removing the World buffs out of raids can remove interest from the game. It's called Season of Misery.

About the Paladin and Shaman buffs - This should be a separate discussion.

Considering Majority of guilds here don't mandate world buffs, they are complete choice for the players that want them, the ones that do not want them are not being chased from what I've seen, so I don't see what is the problem of people that want them to use them and the ones that do not want to, just don't take them.

Also having the discussion open to everyone in the server, even to these that never leveled even to 60 or raided even once on this server sounds a bit unfair, as the most clear view of the raiding scene is from the raiders, especially the ones from Macro and TABC as they both clear Naxx, they progressed through all the content and conquered it, only they know what it costs, how they got there and how much of a use world buffs become especially for farm raids.

[Jaccob]

People don't understand this at all. The increases world buffs gives hand cuff the devs when creating new content. If they design it around world buffs then without them its impossible as they are such massive increases which isn't good design. If they design it without world buffs in mind, people who use world buffs will destroy the content easy. This is a super easy choice, world buffs are fun and killing bosses in 40 seconds is hilarious, but it isn't good for the game. I played classic and seed ran at a very high level, so I have experience in the world buff meta and culture, it isn't good for the health of wow's endgame.

Down with world buffs

+1

[Hetfield]

Just drop Xfraction

[Treakon]

Two questions in one!
I would say no to one and yes to the other, so i'm not able to answer with the two questions ansked in one...

[Greatgrass]

pretty simple response from me.
shaman+paladin buff working together is fun.
gathering world buffs is not fun.
there's already enough time and gold wasted getting consumables.

[Greatgrass]

People don't understand this at all. The increases world buffs gives hand cuff the devs when creating new content. If they design it around world buffs then without them its impossible as they are such massive increases which isn't good design. If they design it without world buffs in mind, people who use world buffs will destroy the content easy. This is a super easy choice, world buffs are fun and killing bosses in 40 seconds is hilarious, but it isn't good for the game. I played classic and seed ran at a very high level, so I have experience in the world buff meta and culture, it isn't good for the health of wow's endgame.

Down with world buffs

very intelligent post i agree with as well.

[Nowayg5]

I want to see more duration time on paladins blessings

[Drax]

Removing World Buffs would increase the difference between the good specs and the "meme" specs. And for what gain, that Totems and Blessings can stack? It's super weak trade off for something that can make crap specs more usable. If world buffs gets removed, the less wanted specs will be even way more less wanted.

[Drax]

The reason for these changes being considered together is due to the fact the application of these things separately will cause a massive power influx in both ways depending on the change, which made it necessary for us to do them at the same time or not at all.

The only time removal of World Buffs would be worth is if you weren't afraid to boost the shit out of all specs. Go all out, make them as best as they can be. But if that doesn't happens, then removal of World Buffs is just gonna make people focus on stronger specs and never to bring the meme specs.

[Bayanni]

Players go where there are rewards for their gameplay. They go to Silithus currently for the lords and their new drops. They go rare hunting in burning steppes, blasted lands, WPL, etc. They also go to Dire Maul North, Onyxia, Zul Gurub, Felwood, Silithus, and to a lesser extent UBRS specifically to gather world buffs for weekly raids. Without the rewards for the content, the content won't be done.

Now, not everyone goes to these areas for world buffs, of course. Some go for loot, or quests, or other reasons, but the total number of reasons to go will go down, and the number of persistent reasons to engage in the content is the factor that keeps people coming back and keeps an MMO healthy (without creating an astronomical amount of content to keep up with playtime). Why else would we have RNG for loot drops and weekly lockouts on raids? They were implemented as time-waster mechanics to keep people engaged and coming back, but also, to a lesser extent, to discourage unhealthy habits of grinding out the same content for extended periods of time, something world buffs help alleviate with faster clear times.

If you want world buffs to go away, be aware that a notable section of the community will completely ignore more content and make the world more empty as a result. Additionally, fewer groups will be formed to clear that content and the gear drops from places like Onyxia will be that much harder to obtain. ZG will be mostly farmed for idols and no one except new guilds will do any of the other bosses anymore since the heart will be useless to most. We will have slower raid clears on the top-end of content, meaning more burn out and more lost players at the top end. I'd rather have a solution to allow players to keep good clear times while helping alleviate one of the largest frustrations TWoW has had instead of being forced to choose one or the other. If clear times can be increased through other means, like buffs to classes that need it so we're not stuck in a fury-warrior dps meta, then removing world buffs can be done in a healthy way, which is not what the current proposal is prescribing.

TL;DR: Don't remove world buffs unless you want a deader world, fewer raiders, and less content engagement unless you buff dps apart from fury warriors to be more usable.

[Testaccount995]

Suggestions:
1 - add a neutral response
2 - make sure you account for the silent majority that doesn't come to the forums :)

[Redmagejoe]

The only time removal of World Buffs would be worth is if you weren't afraid to boost the shit out of all specs. Go all out, make them as best as they can be. But if that doesn't happens, then removal of World Buffs is just gonna make people focus on stronger specs and never to bring the meme specs.

Why do you assume they won't? I'm pretty sure it was clearly explained 1.16.1 was not the last time classes would be adjusted. Using your logic, why should we have World Buffs in the way of making informed decisions on precisely WHAT specs need in future patches? You're all making these arguments like we're some sort of pure vanilla server where everyone knows that classes are frozen in time. They're not. They're mutable here. They can and WILL change.

Don't use the argument "it improves crap specs" / "it increases the difference between good and crap specs" because you may find that if this narrative continues, they nerf the good specs instead. Regardless, an external factor that anyone can get should not be used as a standard for measurement of a class's performance ceiling, how content can be cleared, etc. It shouldn't be a reliable and reproducible process every week at least, where it causes a raid schedule to be built around it.

[Drax]

Because to most they will say no and just do slight changes of specs they never played and think it will stick as if you threw noodles at wall? example: Shaman Tank Gear literally everywhere

[Geojak]

I saw a shaman tank aq20 just fine. Including endboss all by himself.

I was amazed. Shaman tank gear works

[Ghola]

Removing world buffs - every class nerfed across the board

adding pally+sham stacking - melee buffed, casters unaffected


this will help reduce warriors in raids how?

[Dean]

This seems like something the team should have talked with raiders in private, especially naxx raiders before this public poll.

Judging from the responses, this seems to have come out of left field for serious raiders and has opinions in favour of removing world buffs from those who are not actually raiding yet or are only casually doing so.

Since the poll seems to heavily favour removing world buffs, an alternative to make up for the huge nerf needs to be addressed.

An idea I have is the last boss of a raid drops a “X Conquerer” soul bound item for everyone that does not have one in the current raid that grants bonus stats that are roughly equal to what all the world buffs currently grant but it only grants those stats if you have that item in your bag for that particular raid.

For example, raid team has never done MC before, is a hard challenge but then beats Ragnaros, “Molten Core Conquerer” item drops for everyone, this now allows them to farm Molten Core more easily but that same item will not work for any other raid, only Molten Core, which means those bonuses won’t carry over to the next progressive raid, BWL and therefore need to gear up in MC before tackling BWL.

This way the challenge is still there, raids on farm are not affected and totem/blessings stacking can be kept.

The only downside I can see is people not visiting certain regions and dungeons/raids anymore since the world buffs were the only reason raiders went to these places normally.

[Lordlasse]

remove the worldbufffs

[Muhsogyny]

Spent years raiding with world buffs in a top guild and world buffs suck, if not having world buffs breaks your raid/guild then your guild has a problem. There are only four difficult bosses in the entire game and the first one isn't until the end of AQ40.

[Torta]

This seems like something the team should have talked with raiders in private, especially naxx raiders before this public poll.

We're against this approach because the leveling folk will become raiders one day, they should be able to have a say on their future.

[Markuis]

It seems like wb are needed right now. And the sham+pal stacking won't be enough compensation. Removing wb would make raids harder (raiders don't want this) and leave many specs out of the raiding scene (because the harder raids will demand raiders optimizing their compositions).

So why not remove them gradually while buffing certain specs, the ones that are behind, in a way that buffs from those specs can make up for the lack of wb? That way both problems are adressed and everyone is happy.

Some wb gives X AP, add that as an aura to X spec and remove that wb only. Then test it and see how it goes. Maybe even make it stack so it is good to have more than one of that spec in the raid (limiting the stack to 3 or something). Just try and learn until its balanced. Then move onto the next wb. That way raiders can spend more time raiding instead of preparing (and I mean doing the raid at the same speed than with wb).

This approach shouldn't just give the specs an aura, but a general buff that makes then viable on their own. People want their specs to be useful and enjoyable, not just give an aura. (I'd like to see auras that are proc'ed, not just passive boring auras).

Lastly, this post gives enough evidence that fury warriors deal a lot of dmg. That should be adressed somehow.

[Ayesha]

It should be 2 separate polls. Do not remove world buffs unless you are ready to nerf Naxx and BWL content.

Besides what casters and healers get from stacking totems with blessings? Some mana? Nice, is that it? It will make melees overpowered without offering anything to casters. I do not agree with that. It will lead to further pushing away of specs like moonkin and shadow priest.

If you want to boost casters as well somehow, then let’s have a conversation.