Blizzard is mostly finished with class changes in Battle for Azeroth
@MatthewWRossi
Now that Battle for Azeroth has moved into its beta phase, players are curious to know what that means for class design going forward. Are the classes as they currently are on the beta essentially done? Will more work be done on them or should feedback be limited to determining how strong or weak the current abilities are and if the classes are over or under powered? Well, CM Kaivax has some information for us on that subject. In this forum thread, he answered the question of how locked in the current class design is in solid detail.
The point that as long as beta testing is ongoing, we can’t call anything “locked in” is a good one — but his answer definitely indicates that Blizzard is essentially focusing on a few classes now and that most are basically done with their rotations and play style. He mentions specific specs and classes that will see more work — Unholy Death Knights, Frost Death Knights and Protection Warriors to be exact — and otherwise the focus going forward will be in terms of how the specs play with the new itemization of Battle for Azeroth which is a pretty significant departure from Legion.
Now, this does not mean that feedback is useless: it simply means you’re not likely to be surprised by a whole new talent or ability at this point. There won’t be major overhauls or complete revamps unless something goes catastrophically wrong. Instead, we’ll see incremental changes aimed at balancing out how classes feel and play with the new systems they’ll be engaging with. If a talent change or design alteration is necessary, Blizzard will still do them, but they’re not the focus at this point.
This isn’t a surprise considering we’re looking at four months until the expansion is live. Tests always move from let’s try this out and see what happens to okay to let’s focus on details as they go on and the shift to beta is clearly a shift in priorities.
See all the details in the forum post below.
Hello!
I wouldn’t call anything “locked” during testing and active development. Our development processes are as iterative as they’ve ever been, and we’re always looking for places where we need to make further changes to meet design goals.
Having said that, we’re close to finished with the changes to the rotations and the look and feel for most specs. We’ve still got a few changes coming soon in the Beta to Unholy Death Knights, Frost Death Knights, and Protection Warriors.
We used the Alpha timeframe to make some surgical changes to several other specs, and we’re somewhat finished with that stage of development for this expansion.
In the days and weeks to come in the Beta, we’re going to keep a focus on how every spec plays with regard to the new itemization systems in Battle for Azeroth. While it’s certainly possible that feedback on how Azerite affects a certain spec could lead us to do further development on that spec’s rotation, we don’t expect to need any big changes to talents that would justify the words “severe” or “overhaul”.
Beyond itemization concerns, there may be spots where we’ll do focused problem-solving around rotational issues (examples: “it turns out that simulations say never to use X, but X seems like it should be part of my core rotation” or “my spec is too feast-or-famine, and if I have bad luck with Y procs, I feel useless.”).
As always, thank you very much for testing the Beta and making your experiences testing inform your feedback. Focused feedback is super-helpful.
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