Class Balance Philosophy in Season of Discovery - Damage Output vs. Utility
With Season of Discovery Phase 4 on the way, class balance has been a hot topic in the community. This discussion is particularly centered around classes that bring additional utility and where they rank on the Damage Meters. Historically in World of Warcraft, hybrid classes such as Druids who can play as Damage, Healer, or Tank, and Priests who can choose between Damage or Healer, have shown lower damage output when compared to 'Pure DPS' Classes, like Hunters.
Overall damage in Sunken Temple Phase 3 Week 12.
This can be controversial, as many players choose Priest, for example, because they enjoy Shadow specialization and wouldn't consider healing as a role at all. So, they can feel at a disadvantage when compared to a «Pure DPS» spec. In Season of Discovery, every class except Hunter has an additional role they can fill, however, some classes are now bringing very high levels of Utility, such as Vampiric Touch or Curse of the Elements.
After reviewing the most recent class update, content creator, NoHitJerome, asked WoW Classic Senior Game Producer, Josh Greenfield (also known as Aggrend), what his philosophy was when it came to damage output vs. utility:
NoHitJerome
How do you approach the utility vs DPS problem? Mages/Warlocks bring a lot of utility, but those players also want to do Top 3 DPS. Not easy to keep everyone happy
He has a good point here, it isn't easy to keep everyone happy, as noted in Aggrend's response below:
AggrendWoW
Gonna preface this by saying that the term «utility» is a bit ambiguous and means different things to different people, but let's assume we are talking about things like Curses, Windfury, VT/VE, etc. Majorly impactful tools for the group.
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This answer is going to get me a lot of hate from some circles, but just being honest, utility *is* something the team considers when making changes to output. If you have super heavy utility, the team isn't likely to expend as much effort to ensure you *top* the damage meters. Read more on wowhead.com
