April 11, 2025 • 26 mins
The beautiful complexity of MMO class balance emerges from WoW's inherent design, where perfect equilibrium isn't just unattainable but actually undesirable for maintaining the game's essence.
• Tips for making gold in Classic and retail WoW
• Why perfect balance would eliminate class diversity and identity
• The difference between static meta and retail's evolving balance
• How certain compositions like Warlock/Druid dominate different versions of WoW
• Why class strengths and weaknesses create engaging gameplay
• Understanding the mathematical impossibility of perfect class balance
• Celebrating imbalance as a feature rather than a flaw in MMO design
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle
Tales from Azeroth.
As always here at the Pig andWhistle Inn in Stormwind, I go
for a variety of subjects withregards to World of Warcraft, so
grab a bottle or a pint, sitback and enjoy Today's subject.
We're going to be going overbalancing WoW.
Now, this can be a variety ofthings.
This can be content balance,class balance, variety.
(01:15):
Why did I put variety?
I'm so confused.
Oh, I'll get it.
Variety in terms of differentsegments of the game, variety in
terms of different segments ofthe game.
So PvP and stuff like that PvE,pvp.
But obviously we will start offwith the weekly stuff for
(01:37):
retail and that is the world.
Bosses this week are Valinorand Morgeth, as always.
So make sure you grab youranima, grab your conduits and
get going with them.
Get them nice done early.
The brawl for this week is PactHouse.
This is just everyone's throwninto a small arena, the arenas
(01:58):
that you'd queue into in a 2v2or 3v3 situation, and it's about
15 versus 15, I believe, andit's just chaos.
You want to be a caster forthis?
You don't want to be a melee?
I will tell you that right now,melee is not fun unless you
have an immunity in there.
So definitely look to be acaster if you're going to do
this brawl.
(02:19):
The weekly event for this weekis burning crusade Time Walking,
so you can do Burning CrusadeDungeons while gearing up some
alts.
As well as it being the lastweek for the Legion Time Walking
, so you have one more week todo your Legion Mage Tower.
If you want a certain transmogfor a certain class, or if you
(02:44):
want the Werebear for the druidstuff like that.
If you just want braggingrights for the uh book, the
spell tome, after doing allseven of the challenges, that
also is available still, butyou've got one more week to do
it and it won't be back until, Ithink, around halfway through
2022, so you'd be waiting quitea while in order to do this
(03:09):
again.
Now we've had a question through.
It's a lot more of a simplerquestion, but I'm more than
happy to answer it.
It reads as follows I'mstruggling to make gold in TBC
and retail.
Make gold in tbc and retailretail for the legendaries that
(03:29):
I cannot purchase, and tbc forconsumes for raiding.
I play warrior and don't reallyknow what to do.
Any thoughts, so making gold isalways a big priority in any
type of wow, whether it beseason of mastery, uh, tbc,
classic or retail.
Now they all have their owndifferent uses for gold.
(03:50):
Retail, like it says in thequestion, has its use for
legendaries and stuff like that.
Um, tbc has more consumes forraiding and season of mastery is
also very consume heavy when itcomes to raiding.
So, the way to go about makinggold, there's many different
(04:10):
ways that you can make gold.
You can passively earn itthrough just killing mobs.
If there's a high uh density ofmobs that drop some very good
trash loot that you can justvendor, that is very nice to do.
If you just want to, uh, mindnumbingly kill something for an
hour, it will, like, over thattime, generate you quite a fair
(04:32):
amount of gold.
This is obviously if you'vejust got time to kill.
You might maybe watch uhyoutube on another monitor or on
your phone in the meantime,something like that.
Uh, depending on professions,you can certainly make a lot of
gold with your professions.
So, depending on if you have agathering profession or not,
gatherers will obviously makemore gold.
(04:54):
So, herbalism, mining, skinningdefinitely mining and herbalism
if you can get lucky with itand find the right herbs at the
right time.
You can definitely get a verygood uh gold per hour sort of
income from that, and you'regenerally looking to do around
(05:16):
the dead hours of the game.
So when people have gone tosleep or before they even wake
up, something like that you canmaybe spend half an hour, just,
you know, flying around a zonepicking up herbs and you can do
that once or twice a day and itwill earn you a couple hundred
gold.
So it can be very simple asthat.
Or it can be something as simpleas you know, selling your
(05:43):
services.
So if you're an enchanter with,say, mongoose enchant, or if
you're an enchanter with, youknow, one of the soul frost I
think it's called one of thekarazhan enchants uh, that's a
lot more niche.
You can certainly make a nicerprofit doing that because you
can ask for tips from people soyou can provide the service.
(06:06):
But it will be a 50 gold tip ontop of it or something like
that, 25 gold etc.
And that goes the same forclasses, that or professions
that you can sell stuff.
So golden spell thread fortailors you can definitely put
that up on the auction forseveral hundred gold and you can
(06:26):
just passively farm these, um,these materials to make it.
So all of these professions youshould be looking at a lot more
if you can.
But raw gold is also not to beunderestimated in tbc, as the
obviously inflation goes up eachand each expansion because more
(06:48):
gold is being generated withinthe world and this is just
passive gold.
It all comes from somewhere andthat somewhere is from mobs out
in the open world, because themobs drop trash items that you
vendor and then suddenly you'vegot five gold from that trash
item and another hundredthousand people have sold five
(07:08):
golds worth of items and youknow.
So on, so forth.
So definitely don'tunderestimate the uh trash mobs
and how much their stuffactually vendors for, because a
lot of people overlook it andit's definitely not to be so.
This is how to do it in TBC.
Obviously, if you're a mage orsomething, you can AoE, farm and
(07:30):
stuff like that.
You could do a lot of otherthings as a mage.
You can boost paladins, canboost as well stuff like that In
retail.
It's very much a similar sortof scenario.
So you can make the legendariesand sell them on the auction
house.
You can make potions, sell themstuff like that.
But really what I said for tbcabout underestimating uh trash
(07:51):
drops.
Definitely do not underestimateuh shadowlands, trash drops.
You get so much raw gold fromjust vendoring, from questing,
from daily quests.
You get about 300 gold gold perdaily quest.
Sometimes if you're doing likethe moor quests or like the
assault quests in the moor, theygive you about 255, I think.
(08:12):
So definitely do notunderestimate them.
It's very easy to get gold interms of raw gold.
It takes a couple hours of just, you know, questing, having fun
, maybe level an ult orsomething, because the bonus
objectives do give gold as well.
So it's very easy.
It's a lot easier to get goldon retail at the moment than it
(08:35):
is tbc, but tbc is also verymuch there.
So I really hope that helpedwith the question and let's get
into the, the episode.
So balancing wow, how would youmeasure?
How would you measure balancein an mmo?
You can't.
That that's the uh, that's mytake on it.
(08:58):
You can't measure balance in anmmo.
If you want it to be fun andengaging, you need different
classes that can do differentthings, because if everyone did
the exact same thing, itwouldn't be fun.
Why?
Why would you pick a warriorover a mage?
(09:18):
If they did the exact samething.
What?
What would be the point?
There is no point, exactly.
So it's the class diversity thatmakes these games what they are
.
You will never get balance inthe game.
You will never get classbalance in the game, I'll say,
(09:42):
because every class has its ownstrengths and its own weaknesses
and they have their owndifferent matchups when they go
against each other, when they'rein raiding and stuff like that.
So an example if you look atTBC and retail TBC, pvp is tough
.
It's very simple, but it'stough when you don't get the RNG
(10:07):
on your side or it makes it alot tougher.
So Warlock Druid is currentlywhat is running rampant in 2v2
in TBC.
It is one of the best classcompositions in the game for TBC
and that won't change.
That will never change the gamefor TBC and that won't change.
(10:33):
That will never change.
That's mainly because TBC willnot be looked at in terms of a
balancing perspective, becausethis is how it was balanced at
the end.
This isn't constantly changing.
This is how it was balanced atthe end of TBC.
All of the classes and stuff.
The raids are changing aftereach phase, sure, but the
classes will not change.
So all throughout tbc, everysingle season, one, two and
(10:56):
three.
Some classes might change.
Some classes might get betterbecause of the better gear and
stuff like that the stats.
But warlock druid is a staplepoint of tbc arena.
It's insane to think aboutbecause it's an absolutely
ridiculous composition and it'sinfuriating to play against.
(11:16):
But if you look at it andcompare it to, say, retail
Warlock Druid, it's a goodcomposition.
It's not bad.
But if you look at somethinglike a Melee Cleave in 3v3, a
Retribution Paladin and a armswarrior, they can absolutely
devastate people.
It's kind of the meta right now.
(11:36):
You're looking at warrior magedruid as a very strong
composition.
You're looking at god comp,which is shadow priest, fire
mage druid.
You're looking at so manydifferent variations and it
constantly switches.
The meta of what composition isgood constantly switches due to
(11:57):
the game being vibrant andgetting, I was going to say,
frequent patch updates.
It gets patch updates.
That's the best way to go aboutit.
But it gets patch updates thattry to the best way to go about
it.
But it gets patch updates thattry to um, nerf and tweak
classes to bring them in line ifthey're over performing or
under performing or anythinglike that.
(12:18):
So it's a constant um fight forthe top, uh, in retail, whereas
that won't be the case in tbc.
It's very much just a stale.
Yeah, warlock, druid's the best,or one of the best.
I'm pretty sure it will be thebest, because warlocks don't die
, druids don't die.
Tanky as hell like, yeah,you're just, you're not gonna
(12:39):
beat it, are you?
Um, the same can be said forraids.
So, in terms of raiding, in tbcyou're obviously going to be
looking at five shamans, becauseyou want one shaman for each
group for heroism.
If you're looking to play itperfectly, you're looking at
multiple hunters, multiple mages, multiple warlocks.
(13:02):
You're looking at a very casterheavy group, mainly compared to
, say, uh, season of mastery,where it might switch up.
It might switch up.
I will say that because you'dusually go for the melee cleave,
not melee cleave, I'm talkingpvp right now.
Um, you're going to be lookingat a lot more melee heavy
(13:24):
composition in the 40 man raids,just because rogues and
warriors do a lot more damageinstant damage than casters,
than hunters and stuff like that.
In that specific era of world ofwarcraft.
This could change because theyare implementing some changes.
They're trying to tweak things,which is really good because,
(13:45):
again, it's trying to tweak thatbalance and have it constantly
flowing, constantly changing.
That's what, you know, I enjoypersonally in the game and
that's what I think a lot ofother people enjoy in the game
personally.
So it's very tough to get araiding composition that's
perfect.
But there are always going tobe those classes that are better
(14:06):
than others there's alwaysgoing to be, you know that are
better than others.
There's always going to be.
You know, the warlocks justoutperforming the warrior by two
times its damage.
Why don't we just bring in, youknow, five extra warlocks
instead of five extra warriors?
It's just double the damagethen, like we don't even need to
deal with some mechanics andstuff like that.
So during WoW you're alwaysgoing to have a struggle for
(14:30):
balance and I think this is whyit is fun, because you're
constantly going up againstdifferent matchups.
So I'm going back to a pointthat I said earlier but I didn't
really elaborate on.
The matchups aren't in favor ofyou.
In TBC, warlock Druid, it willbe a mage priest, or should be a
(14:51):
mage priest, very easily,because the druid just doesn't
get cc'd by the mage at all.
The warlock beats the mageoutright in damage and
survivability and everything.
The priest can't do muchbecause he'll get mana drained,
he'll get cloned, he, he'll getwhatever.
It's not fun.
So if you go up against this in,say, shadowlands PvP, a 2v2 in
(15:14):
the exact same situation, youprobably have more chance to win
as a mage priest than you do awarlock, druid, or it's a lot
more fair, and even grounds, Iwould say, because you know
everything's been tweaked to tryand incorporate everyone's
(15:36):
getting an interrupt, everyone'sgetting a form of cc, everyone
has a form of heal or absorb orsurvivability, defensive
cooldowns.
Defensive cooldowns have alwaysbeen in the game, but they're
making it more streamlined sothat you know it's every minute
that you've got a defensivecooldown instead of, say, ice
block, there's a five minutecooldown, or say something like
(16:00):
divine shield for a paladin,that's a five minute cooldown.
You know warlocks have likedeath pack now which gives them
a 50k shield and it's likeinsane.
It's insane and that's on aminute cooldown.
So it's absolutely nuts.
So you have more of a chance.
But again, there's always goingto be a favorite in these
matchups.
You're not going to get theperfect, uh, the balance
(16:22):
imperfect.
But like I said at the very,why would you pick a warrior
over a mage if everything's theexact same and balanced like
perfectly.
You wouldn't, because you'vegot different play styles.
You might like the charge inzug zug, kill everything and,
you know, hit anything that yousee moving.
Or you might like the yeah,I'll just spam them out with
(16:44):
frost bolts and, you know,frozen.
Or blizzard, I'll just blizzardon the pillar.
They can't go back, they'reslow as hell, they can't even
move and slowly but surely killthem.
That's my favorite, by the way.
Well, they're actually bothvery fun.
I do have a warrior and it'svery fun.
I'm not going to lie to you, Ihave yeah, I have, and prefer
(17:13):
casters a lot more so than melee, and the reason for this is
just mainly because I prefer theplay style, I prefer what they
have, the utility, I prefermobile classes.
I'll say that because I don'tlike having my character be
slowed.
I feel as if it's a form of CCthat I don't necessarily want to
(17:34):
deal with most of the time.
And that's why I main Druid,because I can shapeshift out of
them and stuff like that.
So I can just sort of ignorethem in a way.
But it's all of these differentthings.
Like a druid can shapeshift outof slows, a warrior just has to
trudge through them.
But at the same time, I preferor I like playing my warrior
(17:59):
over my druid sometimes becauseI like just how consistent the
damage is on a warrior comparedto a druid, and stuff like that.
So you've got all these ups anddowns of different classes and
it incentivizes.
You've got all these ups anddowns of different classes and
it incentivizes you to actuallyplay these classes and enjoy
them and learn them.
Not just sit on your onecharacter and, you know, be
content with it and justcomplain about every other class
(18:21):
because it's unbalanced.
No, you play the other classesto learn why they're hitting you
so much, to learn why they'reso good in a raiding environment
at the moment and you canbenefit off of their strengths
in a raiding environment and youcan take advantage of their
weaknesses in a PvP environmentand stuff like that.
(18:43):
So you can constantly learn andyou're constantly updating your
brain to register.
Okay, he's pressed this.
This is when he's actuallyscary.
So this is where I will be.
You know, on the uh, receivingend of balance, being on his
side because he's hitting me for30 more damage or something
(19:05):
like that it's.
You know you get so muchinformation because the game
isn't balanced that it helps youplay the game to a better level
, and that's what's really funabout it.
Well, to me anyway.
Some people hate it.
Some people absolutely despisehaving, um like, different
(19:26):
classes have loads of differentthings.
But I don't understand it.
You're in, you're playing anmmo to.
You know, have differentclasses, experience the world
differently on different likecharacters, and you know it's,
it's just part of the mmo genre.
You will never find perfectbalance in mmos.
It's.
(19:46):
It's impossible.
It is impossible in terms ofthe numbers will need to be
exact for whatever reason.
You don't know how they measureit.
It's very much okay, this hasgot okay.
I'm going to give you an examplehere wind walker monks they
have an ability called spinningcrane kick.
(20:07):
It hits for nothing until youapply a talent to that, until
you apply multiple stacks ofyour tiger's palm to that as
well, until you apply procs ofthe talent that you've picked,
whatever.
And then suddenly it's hittingfor 240 odd percent more damage,
(20:31):
or god knows how much, and it'sone-shotting you.
It goes from doing about fivepercent of your hp to
one-shotting you.
Imagine trying to balance that.
Imagine trying to balance thenumbers that go with all of the
damage increases by percent,damage, increases by number.
(20:54):
Imagine trying to balance allof these numbers, for how many
classes are there?
Oh, this is going to be quick.
12?
10?
I feel like 12 is way too muchAround 10.
I feel like that's an over.
I'm going with 10.
I'm going with 10, just from myheart.
But imagine trying to balanceall of that.
(21:16):
You've got so many things thatyou just need to juggle about
and make sure that somethingisn't too op or too
underwhelming or anything likethat, because people might not
enjoy the class, the class thatthey liked and they loved.
They might not enjoy anymorebecause it's not hitting like it
did or it's, you know, not asfun to play because they've
(21:41):
taken out a system that was inplay but no longer is, because
it was too overpowered,something like that.
So there's many differentthings that you can look at when
it comes to balancing.
Well and, like I said, it goesboth ways.
In terms of raiding and interms of pvp.
It's very, um, tough to everfind balance, but it's something
(22:09):
that needs to be looked atfondly in the MMO genre rather
than looked down upon, mainly,because it's what makes the MMO
genre.
You know, the imbalance, thedifferent classes, the how you
play them, all the differentnumbers, for it being impossible
(22:32):
.
I think they do a very good jobat balancing the game.
Now you could tell me monks andwarriors and melee and all of
that are ridiculous, which istrue.
I mean, I've got my warriorI've never played a warrior
before and I'll just startslapping people.
Like it's ridiculous.
I'll just full zug-zug theirass and just not even care.
(22:54):
I would honestly cleave themdown.
It would be so stupid.
And then I'll go on my warlockand I'm having to do like 20
setups.
You know, fear 20 people at theexact same time while my mage
gets a polymorph and then wemight have a chance to kill.
But it's a different type ofplay style and that's enjoyable.
(23:16):
But again, melee have theirlike time to shine and at the
moment they are very powerfulmelee.
If you look at melee, in theprevious expansions they kind of
a very lackluster.
It's very much been casters.
If you look at mage, mage hasalways been one of the top picks
in like pvp.
(23:37):
In pve they've been very decent, but pvp mage has been a staple
point throughout the entiretyof the game since classic launch
, or like vanilla.
I should say it's insane.
They will never get the balanceright, but it's something that
should be admired in the gamerather than looked down upon,
(24:01):
and that's all I had to say.
It was.
It came across my mind, thisone when I was just I've been
doing loads of arenas.
It was it came across my mind,this one, when I was just I've
been doing loads of arenaslately and it came across my
mind and thinking, wow, it'sinsane how much I just get one
shot randomly by like the sameclasses, compared to, like, how
much it takes for me to set upmy damage on a warlock or a
(24:22):
druid and stuff like that.
So it was something that Iwanted to address, because you
can just laugh it off if you uhget one shot.
It might be infuriating, butit's pretty funny when you one
shot someone.
So you just gotta laugh when,uh, you get one shot as well,
because it is very entertaining.
But I'll leave it there.
(24:45):
There's not really much I cansay more about the balancing.
Well, it is uh, it's a veryweird subject and I will just
leave you with uh, that it willnever be balanced, and that's
what a staple point of the mmogenre is all about.
But I do want to say thank youall very much for this year.
It has has been amazing.
Thank you all for supportingthe podcast and stuff like that.
(25:07):
It's been amazing seeing thenumbers and downloads go up each
and every week.
Seeing constant downloads everyday, you make my day.
Whenever you do click on thedownload and listen to one of
the podcasts, be sure to checkout all of the social medias, of
course.
Check out the YouTube.
Youtube twitch stream on thereregularly.
Videos are going up regularlyon youtube.
(25:29):
Check out patreon andeverything like that.
There are, I think, about thesame amount of patreon podcasts
now as there are normal podcasts.
They are weekly and they arejust, you know, 10 to 15 minute
snippets extra content for youguys to enjoy if you sign up to
that patreon podcast.
So definitely don't miss out.
(25:51):
They are good and I do put alot of effort into them.
Thank you all very much forlistening as always, and go with
valor friend.
Goodbye, thank you.
Thank you, hello and welcome to the Pig and Whistle
Tales from Azeroth.
As always here at the Pig andWhistle Inn in Stormwind, I go
for a variety of subjects withregards to World of Warcraft, so
grab a bottle or a pint, sitback and enjoy Today's subject.
We're going to be going overbalancing WoW.
Now, this can be a variety ofthings.
This can be content balance,class balance, variety.
(01:15):
Why did I put variety?
I'm so confused.
Oh, I'll get it.
Variety in terms of differentsegments of the game, variety in
terms of different segments ofthe game.
So PvP and stuff like that PvE,pvp.
But obviously we will start offwith the weekly stuff for
(01:37):
retail and that is the world.
Bosses this week are Valinorand Morgeth, as always.
So make sure you grab youranima, grab your conduits and
get going with them.
Get them nice done early.
The brawl for this week is PactHouse.
This is just everyone's throwninto a small arena, the arenas
(01:58):
that you'd queue into in a 2v2or 3v3 situation, and it's about
15 versus 15, I believe, andit's just chaos.
You want to be a caster forthis?
You don't want to be a melee?
I will tell you that right now,melee is not fun unless you
have an immunity in there.
So definitely look to be acaster if you're going to do
this brawl.
(02:19):
The weekly event for this weekis burning crusade Time Walking,
so you can do Burning CrusadeDungeons while gearing up some
alts.
As well as it being the lastweek for the Legion Time Walking
, so you have one more week todo your Legion Mage Tower.
If you want a certain transmogfor a certain class, or if you
(02:44):
want the Werebear for the druidstuff like that.
If you just want braggingrights for the uh book, the
spell tome, after doing allseven of the challenges, that
also is available still, butyou've got one more week to do
it and it won't be back until, Ithink, around halfway through
2022, so you'd be waiting quitea while in order to do this
(03:09):
again.
Now we've had a question through.
It's a lot more of a simplerquestion, but I'm more than
happy to answer it.
It reads as follows I'mstruggling to make gold in TBC
and retail.
Make gold in tbc and retailretail for the legendaries that
(03:29):
I cannot purchase, and tbc forconsumes for raiding.
I play warrior and don't reallyknow what to do.
Any thoughts, so making gold isalways a big priority in any
type of wow, whether it beseason of mastery, uh, tbc,
classic or retail.
Now they all have their owndifferent uses for gold.
(03:50):
Retail, like it says in thequestion, has its use for
legendaries and stuff like that.
Um, tbc has more consumes forraiding and season of mastery is
also very consume heavy when itcomes to raiding.
So, the way to go about makinggold, there's many different
(04:10):
ways that you can make gold.
You can passively earn itthrough just killing mobs.
If there's a high uh density ofmobs that drop some very good
trash loot that you can justvendor, that is very nice to do.
If you just want to, uh, mindnumbingly kill something for an
hour, it will, like, over thattime, generate you quite a fair
(04:32):
amount of gold.
This is obviously if you'vejust got time to kill.
You might maybe watch uhyoutube on another monitor or on
your phone in the meantime,something like that.
Uh, depending on professions,you can certainly make a lot of
gold with your professions.
So, depending on if you have agathering profession or not,
gatherers will obviously makemore gold.
(04:54):
So, herbalism, mining, skinningdefinitely mining and herbalism
if you can get lucky with itand find the right herbs at the
right time.
You can definitely get a verygood uh gold per hour sort of
income from that, and you'regenerally looking to do around
(05:16):
the dead hours of the game.
So when people have gone tosleep or before they even wake
up, something like that you canmaybe spend half an hour, just,
you know, flying around a zonepicking up herbs and you can do
that once or twice a day and itwill earn you a couple hundred
gold.
So it can be very simple asthat.
Or it can be something as simpleas you know, selling your
(05:43):
services.
So if you're an enchanter with,say, mongoose enchant, or if
you're an enchanter with, youknow, one of the soul frost I
think it's called one of thekarazhan enchants uh, that's a
lot more niche.
You can certainly make a nicerprofit doing that because you
can ask for tips from people soyou can provide the service.
(06:06):
But it will be a 50 gold tip ontop of it or something like
that, 25 gold etc.
And that goes the same forclasses, that or professions
that you can sell stuff.
So golden spell thread fortailors you can definitely put
that up on the auction forseveral hundred gold and you can
(06:26):
just passively farm these, um,these materials to make it.
So all of these professions youshould be looking at a lot more
if you can.
But raw gold is also not to beunderestimated in tbc, as the
obviously inflation goes up eachand each expansion because more
(06:48):
gold is being generated withinthe world and this is just
passive gold.
It all comes from somewhere andthat somewhere is from mobs out
in the open world, because themobs drop trash items that you
vendor and then suddenly you'vegot five gold from that trash
item and another hundredthousand people have sold five
(07:08):
golds worth of items and youknow.
So on, so forth.
So definitely don'tunderestimate the uh trash mobs
and how much their stuffactually vendors for, because a
lot of people overlook it andit's definitely not to be so.
This is how to do it in TBC.
Obviously, if you're a mage orsomething, you can AoE, farm and
(07:30):
stuff like that.
You could do a lot of otherthings as a mage.
You can boost paladins, canboost as well stuff like that In
retail.
It's very much a similar sortof scenario.
So you can make the legendariesand sell them on the auction
house.
You can make potions, sell themstuff like that.
But really what I said for tbcabout underestimating uh trash
(07:51):
drops.
Definitely do not underestimateuh shadowlands, trash drops.
You get so much raw gold fromjust vendoring, from questing,
from daily quests.
You get about 300 gold gold perdaily quest.
Sometimes if you're doing likethe moor quests or like the
assault quests in the moor, theygive you about 255, I think.
(08:12):
So definitely do notunderestimate them.
It's very easy to get gold interms of raw gold.
It takes a couple hours of just, you know, questing, having fun
, maybe level an ult orsomething, because the bonus
objectives do give gold as well.
So it's very easy.
It's a lot easier to get goldon retail at the moment than it
(08:35):
is tbc, but tbc is also verymuch there.
So I really hope that helpedwith the question and let's get
into the, the episode.
So balancing wow, how would youmeasure?
How would you measure balancein an mmo?
You can't.
That that's the uh, that's mytake on it.
(08:58):
You can't measure balance in anmmo.
If you want it to be fun andengaging, you need different
classes that can do differentthings, because if everyone did
the exact same thing, itwouldn't be fun.
Why?
Why would you pick a warriorover a mage?
(09:18):
If they did the exact samething.
What?
What would be the point?
There is no point, exactly.
So it's the class diversity thatmakes these games what they are
.
You will never get balance inthe game.
You will never get classbalance in the game, I'll say,
(09:42):
because every class has its ownstrengths and its own weaknesses
and they have their owndifferent matchups when they go
against each other, when they'rein raiding and stuff like that.
So an example if you look atTBC and retail TBC, pvp is tough
.
It's very simple, but it'stough when you don't get the RNG
(10:07):
on your side or it makes it alot tougher.
So Warlock Druid is currentlywhat is running rampant in 2v2
in TBC.
It is one of the best classcompositions in the game for TBC
and that won't change.
That will never change the gamefor TBC and that won't change.
(10:33):
That will never change.
That's mainly because TBC willnot be looked at in terms of a
balancing perspective, becausethis is how it was balanced at
the end.
This isn't constantly changing.
This is how it was balanced atthe end of TBC.
All of the classes and stuff.
The raids are changing aftereach phase, sure, but the
classes will not change.
So all throughout tbc, everysingle season, one, two and
(10:56):
three.
Some classes might change.
Some classes might get betterbecause of the better gear and
stuff like that the stats.
But warlock druid is a staplepoint of tbc arena.
It's insane to think aboutbecause it's an absolutely
ridiculous composition and it'sinfuriating to play against.
(11:16):
But if you look at it andcompare it to, say, retail
Warlock Druid, it's a goodcomposition.
It's not bad.
But if you look at somethinglike a Melee Cleave in 3v3, a
Retribution Paladin and a armswarrior, they can absolutely
devastate people.
It's kind of the meta right now.
(11:36):
You're looking at warrior magedruid as a very strong
composition.
You're looking at god comp,which is shadow priest, fire
mage druid.
You're looking at so manydifferent variations and it
constantly switches.
The meta of what composition isgood constantly switches due to
(11:57):
the game being vibrant andgetting, I was going to say,
frequent patch updates.
It gets patch updates.
That's the best way to go aboutit.
But it gets patch updates thattry to the best way to go about
it.
But it gets patch updates thattry to um, nerf and tweak
classes to bring them in line ifthey're over performing or
under performing or anythinglike that.
(12:18):
So it's a constant um fight forthe top, uh, in retail, whereas
that won't be the case in tbc.
It's very much just a stale.
Yeah, warlock, druid's the best,or one of the best.
I'm pretty sure it will be thebest, because warlocks don't die
, druids don't die.
Tanky as hell like, yeah,you're just, you're not gonna
(12:39):
beat it, are you?
Um, the same can be said forraids.
So, in terms of raiding, in tbcyou're obviously going to be
looking at five shamans, becauseyou want one shaman for each
group for heroism.
If you're looking to play itperfectly, you're looking at
multiple hunters, multiple mages, multiple warlocks.
(13:02):
You're looking at a very casterheavy group, mainly compared to
, say, uh, season of mastery,where it might switch up.
It might switch up.
I will say that because you'dusually go for the melee cleave,
not melee cleave, I'm talkingpvp right now.
Um, you're going to be lookingat a lot more melee heavy
(13:24):
composition in the 40 man raids,just because rogues and
warriors do a lot more damageinstant damage than casters,
than hunters and stuff like that.
In that specific era of world ofwarcraft.
This could change because theyare implementing some changes.
They're trying to tweak things,which is really good because,
(13:45):
again, it's trying to tweak thatbalance and have it constantly
flowing, constantly changing.
That's what, you know, I enjoypersonally in the game and
that's what I think a lot ofother people enjoy in the game
personally.
So it's very tough to get araiding composition that's
perfect.
But there are always going tobe those classes that are better
(14:06):
than others there's alwaysgoing to be, you know that are
better than others.
There's always going to be.
You know, the warlocks justoutperforming the warrior by two
times its damage.
Why don't we just bring in, youknow, five extra warlocks
instead of five extra warriors?
It's just double the damagethen, like we don't even need to
deal with some mechanics andstuff like that.
So during WoW you're alwaysgoing to have a struggle for
(14:30):
balance and I think this is whyit is fun, because you're
constantly going up againstdifferent matchups.
So I'm going back to a pointthat I said earlier but I didn't
really elaborate on.
The matchups aren't in favor ofyou.
In TBC, warlock Druid, it willbe a mage priest, or should be a
(14:51):
mage priest, very easily,because the druid just doesn't
get cc'd by the mage at all.
The warlock beats the mageoutright in damage and
survivability and everything.
The priest can't do muchbecause he'll get mana drained,
he'll get cloned, he, he'll getwhatever.
It's not fun.
So if you go up against this in,say, shadowlands PvP, a 2v2 in
(15:14):
the exact same situation, youprobably have more chance to win
as a mage priest than you do awarlock, druid, or it's a lot
more fair, and even grounds, Iwould say, because you know
everything's been tweaked to tryand incorporate everyone's
(15:36):
getting an interrupt, everyone'sgetting a form of cc, everyone
has a form of heal or absorb orsurvivability, defensive
cooldowns.
Defensive cooldowns have alwaysbeen in the game, but they're
making it more streamlined sothat you know it's every minute
that you've got a defensivecooldown instead of, say, ice
block, there's a five minutecooldown, or say something like
(16:00):
divine shield for a paladin,that's a five minute cooldown.
You know warlocks have likedeath pack now which gives them
a 50k shield and it's likeinsane.
It's insane and that's on aminute cooldown.
So it's absolutely nuts.
So you have more of a chance.
But again, there's always goingto be a favorite in these
matchups.
You're not going to get theperfect, uh, the balance
(16:22):
imperfect.
But like I said at the very,why would you pick a warrior
over a mage if everything's theexact same and balanced like
perfectly.
You wouldn't, because you'vegot different play styles.
You might like the charge inzug zug, kill everything and,
you know, hit anything that yousee moving.
Or you might like the yeah,I'll just spam them out with
(16:44):
frost bolts and, you know,frozen.
Or blizzard, I'll just blizzardon the pillar.
They can't go back, they'reslow as hell, they can't even
move and slowly but surely killthem.
That's my favorite, by the way.
Well, they're actually bothvery fun.
I do have a warrior and it'svery fun.
I'm not going to lie to you, Ihave yeah, I have, and prefer
(17:13):
casters a lot more so than melee, and the reason for this is
just mainly because I prefer theplay style, I prefer what they
have, the utility, I prefermobile classes.
I'll say that because I don'tlike having my character be
slowed.
I feel as if it's a form of CCthat I don't necessarily want to
(17:34):
deal with most of the time.
And that's why I main Druid,because I can shapeshift out of
them and stuff like that.
So I can just sort of ignorethem in a way.
But it's all of these differentthings.
Like a druid can shapeshift outof slows, a warrior just has to
trudge through them.
But at the same time, I preferor I like playing my warrior
(17:59):
over my druid sometimes becauseI like just how consistent the
damage is on a warrior comparedto a druid, and stuff like that.
So you've got all these ups anddowns of different classes and
it incentivizes.
You've got all these ups anddowns of different classes and
it incentivizes you to actuallyplay these classes and enjoy
them and learn them.
Not just sit on your onecharacter and, you know, be
content with it and justcomplain about every other class
(18:21):
because it's unbalanced.
No, you play the other classesto learn why they're hitting you
so much, to learn why they'reso good in a raiding environment
at the moment and you canbenefit off of their strengths
in a raiding environment and youcan take advantage of their
weaknesses in a PvP environmentand stuff like that.
(18:43):
So you can constantly learn andyou're constantly updating your
brain to register.
Okay, he's pressed this.
This is when he's actuallyscary.
So this is where I will be.
You know, on the uh, receivingend of balance, being on his
side because he's hitting me for30 more damage or something
(19:05):
like that it's.
You know you get so muchinformation because the game
isn't balanced that it helps youplay the game to a better level
, and that's what's really funabout it.
Well, to me anyway.
Some people hate it.
Some people absolutely despisehaving, um like, different
(19:26):
classes have loads of differentthings.
But I don't understand it.
You're in, you're playing anmmo to.
You know, have differentclasses, experience the world
differently on different likecharacters, and you know it's,
it's just part of the mmo genre.
You will never find perfectbalance in mmos.
It's.
(19:46):
It's impossible.
It is impossible in terms ofthe numbers will need to be
exact for whatever reason.
You don't know how they measureit.
It's very much okay, this hasgot okay.
I'm going to give you an examplehere wind walker monks they
have an ability called spinningcrane kick.
(20:07):
It hits for nothing until youapply a talent to that, until
you apply multiple stacks ofyour tiger's palm to that as
well, until you apply procs ofthe talent that you've picked,
whatever.
And then suddenly it's hittingfor 240 odd percent more damage,
(20:31):
or god knows how much, and it'sone-shotting you.
It goes from doing about fivepercent of your hp to
one-shotting you.
Imagine trying to balance that.
Imagine trying to balance thenumbers that go with all of the
damage increases by percent,damage, increases by number.
(20:54):
Imagine trying to balance allof these numbers, for how many
classes are there?
Oh, this is going to be quick.
12?
10?
I feel like 12 is way too muchAround 10.
I feel like that's an over.
I'm going with 10.
I'm going with 10, just from myheart.
But imagine trying to balanceall of that.
(21:16):
You've got so many things thatyou just need to juggle about
and make sure that somethingisn't too op or too
underwhelming or anything likethat, because people might not
enjoy the class, the class thatthey liked and they loved.
They might not enjoy anymorebecause it's not hitting like it
did or it's, you know, not asfun to play because they've
(21:41):
taken out a system that was inplay but no longer is, because
it was too overpowered,something like that.
So there's many differentthings that you can look at when
it comes to balancing.
Well and, like I said, it goesboth ways.
In terms of raiding and interms of pvp.
It's very, um, tough to everfind balance, but it's something
(22:09):
that needs to be looked atfondly in the MMO genre rather
than looked down upon, mainly,because it's what makes the MMO
genre.
You know, the imbalance, thedifferent classes, the how you
play them, all the differentnumbers, for it being impossible
(22:32):
.
I think they do a very good jobat balancing the game.
Now you could tell me monks andwarriors and melee and all of
that are ridiculous, which istrue.
I mean, I've got my warriorI've never played a warrior
before and I'll just startslapping people.
Like it's ridiculous.
I'll just full zug-zug theirass and just not even care.
(22:54):
I would honestly cleave themdown.
It would be so stupid.
And then I'll go on my warlockand I'm having to do like 20
setups.
You know, fear 20 people at theexact same time while my mage
gets a polymorph and then wemight have a chance to kill.
But it's a different type ofplay style and that's enjoyable.
(23:16):
But again, melee have theirlike time to shine and at the
moment they are very powerfulmelee.
If you look at melee, in theprevious expansions they kind of
a very lackluster.
It's very much been casters.
If you look at mage, mage hasalways been one of the top picks
in like pvp.
(23:37):
In pve they've been very decent, but pvp mage has been a staple
point throughout the entiretyof the game since classic launch
, or like vanilla.
I should say it's insane.
They will never get the balanceright, but it's something that
should be admired in the gamerather than looked down upon,
(24:01):
and that's all I had to say.
It was.
It came across my mind, thisone when I was just I've been
doing loads of arenas.
It was it came across my mind,this one, when I was just I've
been doing loads of arenaslately and it came across my
mind and thinking, wow, it'sinsane how much I just get one
shot randomly by like the sameclasses, compared to, like, how
much it takes for me to set upmy damage on a warlock or a
(24:22):
druid and stuff like that.
So it was something that Iwanted to address, because you
can just laugh it off if you uhget one shot.
It might be infuriating, butit's pretty funny when you one
shot someone.
So you just gotta laugh when,uh, you get one shot as well,
because it is very entertaining.
But I'll leave it there.
(24:45):
There's not really much I cansay more about the balancing.
Well, it is uh, it's a veryweird subject and I will just
leave you with uh, that it willnever be balanced, and that's
what a staple point of the mmogenre is all about.
But I do want to say thank youall very much for this year.
It has has been amazing.
Thank you all for supportingthe podcast and stuff like that.
(25:07):
It's been amazing seeing thenumbers and downloads go up each
and every week.
Seeing constant downloads everyday, you make my day.
Whenever you do click on thedownload and listen to one of
the podcasts, be sure to checkout all of the social medias, of
course.
Check out the YouTube.
Youtube twitch stream on thereregularly.
Videos are going up regularlyon youtube.
(25:29):
Check out patreon andeverything like that.
There are, I think, about thesame amount of patreon podcasts
now as there are normal podcasts.
They are weekly and they arejust, you know, 10 to 15 minute
snippets extra content for youguys to enjoy if you sign up to
that patreon podcast.
So definitely don't miss out.
(25:51):
They are good and I do put alot of effort into them.
Thank you all very much forlistening as always, and go with
valor friend.
Goodbye, thank you.
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