Class Design and Tuning - Wowhead's Dragonflight Pre-Patch Interview with Morgan Day

Posted 2022/11/16 at 2:51 PM by Squishei

Class TuningDuring Alpha/Beta we saw some specs get frequent iteration, while others got less. How often can we expect class tuning in Dragonflight once the expansion launches? Are there any plans for a specific schedule?Through the evolution of the Dragonflight beta, there were definitely different amounts of iteration, on some classes more than others. As you're seeing, there's still balance changes happening, all the way up to the release of Dragonflight. As always, class balance is evolving. We're never done, we're never completely happy. There's always things that we want to focus on and change.

So leading into Dragonflight, yes, absolutely there is a specific… kind of cadence that we look to stick to with: essentially, weekly updates as we go into the initial launch of Dragonflight, and then that will kind of spread out over time. Players might have even noticed there's a kind of a cadence leading up to the raid launch and then post raid launch as well, as we look at things like the race for world first. There's, very much, balance changes that happen kind of at the beginning of our mythic launch where - with Heroic and Mythic launching on the same week this time - we've had to kind of take an eye towards how we might want to adjust that.

So it would totally be possible that we might need to make adjustments the week of raid launch. But if we did do that, it would be pretty early in the week. We would be sure to communicate that to the community, and also as with all things, with our philosophy there, when we look at tuning from a live perspective, we like to kind of maintain the relative balance of things. If we see a class that might be massively over-performing and we feel like we need to make adjustments, the goal there isn't to suddenly put them in the middle of the pack. We want classes to have major strengths and weaknesses. It's just sometimes the gap there might need to be tweaked a little bit. So definitely there are plans for post launch, to continue with live balancing there. And like I mentioned, that's always a work in progress.We saw a lot of iteration towards class trees and you mentioned they're going to be continuing them. Are there plans to do major updates to class trees in the future? And will this occur on x.5 patches or x.0?We realize, not only with the introduction of a new class with the Evoker, but also with the talent revamp, our main goal was to really create a foundation for future updates. This isn't something that we wanted to release into the wild and then just let it be. We wanted to build a solid foundation for Future Us as well. We want to make not only Dragonflight epic, but also future patches, future expansions, as well. So similar to what you might have seen in the past, certainly we'll make changes on the smaller updates, but you won't see those really major updates there. We really feel like those season boundaries where we add a bunch of new content, a new raid tier, we reset the season - that really feels like a great place to make more major adjustments versus smaller, tuning tweaks. We really feel like there's a lot of integrity, certainly with things like the PvP season, that we want to remain intact, and also gives us availability of early seasons to see how that plays out.

So, yes, absolutely, we plan to make larger changes there. The general philosophy has not changed, going from Shadowlands to Dragonflight there. On beta, we saw a 40% player health and creature damage increase. Do you feel like there's been any side effects to this change such the power of damage reduction cooldowns for healers or even non healers and are there plans to keep iterating on that? We've made changes like that in the past where we feel like the overall health pool compared to the damage that players can do to other players, as well as what percentage of healing can you do to a player, might feel like it's not quite where we want it. is something that we identified a little bit later in the beta and took quite a while to really come down to what was the specific change that we wanted to pursue. And, like you said, when you saw the 40% player health and then creature damage went up equivalently, and really the problem that we were looking to solve there was players health bars felt too rubber bandy. It was very spiky. It didn't feel as tactical as we wanted it to. So making that change really helped to slow down that pacing there, so that you feel like you have more than just a split second to react before someone could die.

And yes, there was absolutely some - fallout might be the wrong word - but some other changes that went hand in hand with that. Like, for instance, the thing that players very quickly identified was a lot of our tank tuning was something that we wanted to keep an eye on because a lot of tanks have percent based healing for themselves. So that will change differently than the classes that don't do percent based healing. Hybrid healing is also something that we saw some adjustments to, we've been looking at. So yeah, lots of changes that might happen there as a side effect to that. And we're feeling really good about a lot of the adjustments that have been coming down the pipes. You know, there's been some blood DK changes coming in, some of those other classes that are getting, some tweaks based on, those larger game wide changes. What is the current philosophy behind healer damage in raids and dungeons, both from a passive damage and active damage role? Do you feel like the delta is too big and do you plan on reducing it, if so? So that's something that we talk about often when we discuss certain classes and specs and what their strengths and weaknesses are. We definitely feel like healer damage is a part of that package that they might bring. But there's a lot of other elements to that as well. There's what kind of utility they're bringing, what is their throughput, what do their major cool downs look like? And damage is certainly an element of that.

Ultimately we prefer that healers are spending their time healing, so the combat and encounter team are in constant communication about what kind of damage output should we be putting out there on the player and our encounters? Not just avoidable damage, but unavoidable damage as well. The community often calls it the rot damage and how much is ticking away at you.

So yes, we certainly keep an eye on healer damage. In the grand scheme of things it's much smaller than say what a DPS, or in a lot of cases, even what your tank is doing, but we recognize when you're talking about Mythic Plus, one fifth of your group is your healer, so any damage that they can put out is going to add up over the course of the Mythic Plus run, versus, let's say, if you're in a 20 or even 30 person raid. You know, that healer is a much smaller percentage there. So that's something that we look at. We do consider it in terms of its total package of what the healer is bringing, but ultimately we really focus on how much that is playing into what they're bringing to their group's total contribution. Class DesignHistorically, threat has been a problem that has needed a buff for most, if not all, patches in the past. What is your current philosophy on threat and do you feel it still has a place in this game? Oh, wow. That's a great question. Threat's always one of those fun ones, right? It comes, almost, at certain periods throughout the expansion where we get to see the difference in scaling, like you mentioned, where some of our damage dealers are scaling differently than what our tanks are scaling. Philosophically we feel like if a tank is actively engaged with a creature, then it should be on the tank, right? Like, that's something that we don't feel like should be something that you have to be constantly battling in a, we call them the Patchwerk type encounter, where it's a single boss and it's a big bag of health that you have to beat. That's not something that should be a major focus of the tank there is to hold threat there. But as we've seen in the past, threat still plays a really important role in the game.

An example I always like to point to is back in Legion where a tank could just hit one single AoE button and then they'd have such a giant threat lead on the whole group, They could basically kite in Mythic Plus from like 90% to dead, right? And they never had to hit that creature again, essentially, to hold threat on it. So, if a creature just kind of sticks to a tank because they touched them once, it can definitely spiral and call some degenerate gameplay that we want to keep an eye out on.

But, we've been changing kind of a lot of the content side of things as well. Philosophically, we feel like tanks have a lot that they need to be managing and something that you might have seen going into Dragonflight with our Mythic Plus system, we've actually retired the Necrotic affix. In the past, a lot of those affixes, and some of those mythic plus buckets have been focused at specific roles, right? Like, Grievous is really something that you feel like as a healer you're engaging with a lot. Maybe as a hybrid, you're engaging with some more, but for the most part it's like, hey, this is the healer affix.

We really feel like tanks have a lot to manage in mythic plus, right? Between how they're pacing the pulls, how they're moving the dungeon, hey, do I need to pick up a patrol that just aggroed onto our healer or something. They've got a lot that they're engaging with. They don't also need specific affixes targeting them. So that's something that we took a look at and took a step back on. So there's things like that that we're really focusing on with tanks, but as a whole, we feel like threat still definitely has a role in the game. Yeah, I know it's a pretty big point on every patch, you see oh, threat buffed by 10% again, it's like, Huh?Yeah. Especially with Dragonflight, that's something that we'll need to keep an eye on as well, because there's no Covenant, there's no Heart of Azeroth. Generally those were things that we would put on that little extra line in the tool tip of the tank's ability that's like, oh, and increases threat by, you know, number go up. So this time around we'll have to take a really close look at that patch over patch. During the initial talent tree development, we saw many raid and party buffs get added, however many of them were removed. How do you feel about raid and party buffs now? Yeah, we're launching, so we're pretty comfortable with where we are now. Like you mentioned, I know that was a major topic of conversation throughout the community, and as we were looking into Dragonflight, we were building this new talent system. You know, having interesting choices and build diversity was a major goal of ours with that. And I think you or someone has talked to Ion previously about this, and we really felt like that aspect of supporting your party, bringing buffs, buffing my friends, and having that altruistic gameplay that I wanted to chase, was something interesting that we wanted to explore the design space. So we definitely found the line, walked it back a bit, and also made some additional changes there as well as we were exploring this design space.

I think there's some shaman spells that got changed from party to nearest allies so that group management element that the group leader might have to deal with sometimes was a little bit lessened as well. Certainly there are still elements of that that we think are cool, but we definitely took a look where we thought that was interesting versus where we could loosen that up. We're pretty happy with where we landed there, but, as with all things with Dragonflight and with, the joy of working on World Warcraft, and being a live game, there's always the opportunity to make changes based on feedback. Or maybe something doesn't play out quite the way that we were looking for, and we're always open to make adjustments in the future. How do you feel about 10 spots in raid essentially being "locked in" due to raid buffs and debuffs? You have shaman, DK, and hunters kind of without this raid buff.We just kind of touched on that a little bit. I don't know that everyone would feel that way. You know, like certainly when there are people who are pushing really hard in Mythic raiding progression, there's certainly an element of strategic choice there where you get to determine encounter, is this thing that this class brings worth having one fewer of this other spec who might be really, really good at this particular encounter. So there's a bit of strategic choice there, but we don't feel like that is something, well, certainly that isn't something that we tune around at the lower difficulties especially. So that feeling like “required,” that wouldn't be the goal. It's never the goal with something like that. We just want players to feel like they have cool buttons and cool options to bring to the table.

A major focus of ours on those buffs that we're bringing were specifically class versus spec, right? Like if a specific spec is bringing something that felt unique to a group, that was where we really took a laser focus on and we're really saying, well, okay, is that too narrow? Is that limiting your options too much? Versus, hey, this entire class, as long as you have, like a Rogue or a Monk in your group, you'll have this as a viable option for your group. So that was really a major element of iteration that we went through and a major topic of conversation as we were talking about the kind of buffs and what does our raid composition look like.One more follow up to that. We had Drums nerfed in Shadowlands. Do you consider Lust to be a raid buff? Many players felt that a Lust class is always needed in Mythic Plus due to the nerf of Drums. Do you feel like this change has played out how you wanted it to?Yeah, I mean I think ultimately we're pretty happy with the change that was made in Shadowlands.

You know, the main goal with that was we wanted you to feel like we recognize how important Bloodlust is, so we do want you to have an option there. It's just, what's the delta between, "well, we don't even need to worry about bringing Lust because we've got drums" versus, "this is definitely a huge advantage to still try to get this class into our group or into our raid".

The area we did actually take a really close eye on though is we've been adding a lot of classes over time. Like we've added Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Monks, and now evokers, and none of those classes had added bloodlust. So the percentage of classes that could bring bloodlust to the table had diminished over time. We felt like now was a great time to add a bloodlust as an option for another class, and evokers felt like a kind of a perfect fit there, right? They have all of the schools of magic available to them. This would totally be a space where they could bring this utility to the table. So we feel like, certainly with the popularity of new classes as they launch, they will really help increase the options available to you.After the GCD change was reverted, some abilities still have a GCD that the community has kind of commented on, such as the half-GCD on Death Grip, and full GCD on Frenzied Regen, and Word of Glory. Are there any plans to change those going forwards?No immediate plans with Dragonflight launch. That's something where we're constantly evaluating what the options are there, based on player feedback, based on just how does it feel to play the class, but ultimately we want a GCD to feel worth it, we want it to feel good when you push the button, and we also want to make sure that there is an element of tactical choice as you're playing through your rotation and planning out kind of a few steps ahead of you. No changes to those for Dragonflight, at least that I'm aware of, but that's not to say that the door is closed forever on those. On the talent trees, how do you feel about class utility nodes such as Solar Beam, Cauterize, or Silence being in direct competition with throughput nodes, especially when it's difficult to get to? this idea of build diversity, this idea of allowing for options to be available to a class that maybe weren't even available before, are something that we talked about a lot going into Dragonflight and going into the talent revamp. It's been interesting seeing certainly when we talk about hybrid versus pure classes, the composition of the talent trees do change a little bit. This is one of those areas that as we talk about one of the type of adjustments that we might make going into patches, This is the type of feedback and the area that if we were to make adjustments to things like that, that would definitely happen on almost like a seasonal boundary versus on a smaller patch.

We definitely tried to design a lot of the portions of the talent tree such that while you feel like you gotta get this damage thing, there should be options available to you where you can spend a few points on some of these more interesting, or even situational in a lot of cases, utility nodes before you can kind of move past those gates. So that's definitely like a major tuning knob that we have there in terms of like how many points are you spending on throughput here versus how many do you have where you feel you can go a little wider. Another thing that we think is a pretty awesome tool in our tool belt here is the fact there is multiple types of talent points. We have the class talent points and then the spec talent points. Initially when we were designing the new talent tree, that's not where we started out. We got to that place through a tremendous amount of iteration, and this was a major part of that conversation was hey we recognize how unique of a game this is, we've been making the game for many, many years, we have an extremely awesome community that has some really interesting tools, and their ability to kind of evaluate a talent point is very advanced. They've got a lot of knowledge there and where it might be strange, I can't think of the last time I played a game that had multiple types of talent points, it's been a minute. I'm sure there's a couple out there like Path of Exile has ones but those are a little bit different, but we felt like this is a big tool in our tool belt to be able to say okay, we've got class talent points and maybe we can keep a lot of those focused on you know where am I putting this utility and have more utility options there, versus the spec ones where we know as long as you're spending your spec talent points you're gonna be doing more throughput, more damage, and you know you're gonna be viable and kicking butt in dungeons and raids, so that is definitely an area where we feel like we've got options to make changes in the future if necessary. EvokerMoving on to a quick question about Evoker, are there any plans to include more armor pieces showing while in dragon form?This is a really fun topic, you know our art team knocked it out of the park with Evokers in particular. There's such an incredible amount of customization with them. I'm gonna butcher the number but I've heard the trivia item thrown around at the team where there is more Evoker customization options available in terms of combinations they can create, than there are grains of sand on the planet. And I'm like, I don't know who's gonna verify that, I'm not going to, but I believe you when you tell me that. Someone did the math I'm sure. So yeah, that's something that is really important to us, is having all these customization options available to you and being able to really show them off and see them. And with the Evoker in particular, something that we focused on was the question of is what is the most iconic and most visible pieces of armor? Shoulders immediately come to mind, it's that major silhouette changing, Warcraft has a beloved history of shoulder armor in particular and their scale and size and how big or small they are over time. So that was one we knew we wanted to add there, but we also wanted to make sure that the Evoker's customization options and their identity of that dragon class, that dragon race was still very noticeable. Certainly something that we could change, but ultimately we're really happy with where we landed on that one, and we feel like especially with sets coming back and that awesome class fantasy there we wanted to see that represented on the Evokers, but not kind of completely covering up all those awesome dragon aesthetics. Dragonflight and Season 1What was the intent behind releasing Mythic with the other difficulties for Season 1?Yeah that was a very long conversation and when we were talking about this internally we were I want to say we got up to like plan F, or something. Right, like there was so many different options of okay, what if the raid released like this, what if the release looked this, what if it looked like this, lots and lots of options there but given the launch date, given it's proximity to some holidays, it was just a conversation around what do we think is gonna be the best player experience. Right, what is gonna be best for the players, what will be the most engaging for them, and how do we best support that and make sure it's the best experience it can be?

Essentially we landed on releasing Heroic and Mythic at the same time, it's not something we've done in a while, but also we feel like we have the tools and the resources to really make sure that we're hitting our tuning targets, to make sure that we're gonna release a really epic raid with the Vault of the Incarnates and make sure that that'll be a great experience for everyone from the Normal raider who's gonna be excited to get in there and start progressing, all the way up to some of the Mythic players who might even be going for the world first. So, lots of conversations around that one but we are confident that especially in some ways the release of Sepulcher of the First Ones, that was the first time that we had one, a staggered release but two, going into the back part of the raid were releasing bosses that players had very little, if any, visibility into. So that really increased our confidence that we could execute something like this with the lessons that we learned there.We have unique tier tints for top level raiders and PvPers in Season 1, can we expect a unique coloring for Mythic+? Oh, that's a cool idea. Nothing for Dragonflight launch that I'm aware of. We really look at kind of PvP, Mythic+, Raids and look at the full package of interesting rewards that they might have, and you know we've got keystone master and there's a unique mount there which is really cool which we actually got feedback on and ended up making some changes based on feedback from the beta. But we're constantly looking at the full package that players are rewarded from, not just the item level stuff but also the cool cosmetic stuff right, what are you getting from pushing your keystone rating or pushing your PvP rating? So no unique tint for launch, but that's a cool idea and something that we could for sure explore.Alright. What level do you expect players to get to in terms of Mythic+ in week one, with the changes to scaling and the rewards going all the way to twenty now? Should players be expecting to go twenty week one is kind of the general question there.I guess it depends who you're talking to right? Certainly there will be some players who just get to twenty because they're just so, so good at Mythic+ at this point, and probably spent a tremendous amount of time preparing, kind of studying, running the dungeons already on the beta, you know like there's gonna be that player who before we even launch season one is probably a master at some of these dungeons already. And then there's other players who will be on the different end of that spectrum.

You know that's one of the things we love about World of Warcraft, is just the vast amount and types of players that engage and love the game and we always try to make the best decisions for the broadest audience possible. So, certainly as we went into Dragonflight that was one of the things that we talked about with Mythic+ was when you think about raids, and PvP, and Mythic+, which are kind of three of the pillars of the types of content that players engage with and how they're rewarded.

There's no expectation as a raider that you're going to complete the raid on Mythic or expectation as a PvPer that you're going to be a Gladiator this season. And we felt like Mythic+ was a little bit misaligned there, so we wanted to make some tuning adjustments where we were kind of increasing the ceiling of what the progression might look like for Mythic+, but we were very cognizant of the rewards and making sure that that didn't feel like it was a negative thing, this should feel like it was something that adds more opportunity for progression, for other people to look forward to while they're still feeling very rewarded as they play Mythic+.Final question, how did you find Heroic raid difficulty tuning in Shadowlands? Because it was a step from BFA and previous expansions and can we see that kind of heroic level tuning in Dragonflight?That's always a fun one too because it kind of evolves patch over patch, every time we release a new raid tier the tuning kind of evolves and changes with the player base with the tools that are available to them, so this is something that where given that it's a launch raid we always want to cognizant of that. This could be the first raid you've ever stepped foot in World of Warcraft, so we want to make sure that we have a close eye on a new player type, or someone who is experiencing raids for the first time, and also that you have some progression available to you, right. Maybe you start in Normal and Heroic is where you're gonna end, and maybe there's some guilds that they actually just start in Heroic and then they graduate into Mythic. So we're definitely trying to be cognizant of all of those players types. I can certainly say with confidence that Sepulcher Heroic was a lot harder than where we really wanted it to land, it was a larger raid that was raid bosses versus eight of the Vault, and it kind of felt like instead of adding some more raid bosses in the middle in Sepulcher we just added more of those like almost penultimate difficulties, which is you know not something we would do moving forward certainly. So we're definitely keeping an eye on Heroic and making sure that there is a clear progression there that doesn't feel like it has, you know ah I'm at boss eight and it really feels like the raid has just begun in terms of my progression, we wanna make sure that there is a clear ramp there.

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Comment by wallrochaCtrl + F > Priest > 0 results
HmmComment by PhysulisWhy no one asked about the dracthyr not being able to fly?Comment by Civil4794it's feels MUCH better pressing that lightning-fast clutch heal with word of glory off the GCD, Having it on GCD just makes it a spam key until it comes off the GCD and hope it lands before the player dies.Comment by BonenzNice, an Interview! Wait...where is the video?Comment by Zhovwe like to kind of maintain the relative balance of things. If we see a class that might be massively over-performing and we feel like we need to make adjustments, the goal there isn't to suddenly put them in the middle of the pack.Comment by Sebbywe like to kind of maintain the relative balance of things. If we see a class that might be massively over-performing and we feel like we need to make adjustments, the goal there isn't to suddenly put them in the middle of the pack.Comment by Nonjahwe like to kind of maintain the relative balance of things. If we see a class that might be massively over-performing and we feel like we need to make adjustments, the goal there isn't to suddenly put them in the middle of the pack.Comment by sotababuff swaMMp ass MM Hunter plsssComment by Koumaruplayers health bars felt too rubber bandy. It was very spiky. It didn't feel as tactical as we wanted it to. So making that change really helped to slow down that pacing there, so that you feel like you have more than just a split second to react before someone could die.Comment by MartindeI must say its frustrating to see him / them dodge the Shaman/DK/Hunter raid buff question. Speaking from a Hunters perspective where we have had the pets with difrent buffs that Warr/DH/Monk give, it would make so much sense that the hunter atleast give one of the Attack Damage abilities like Battle Shout / % phys dmg buff.

It fits really good lore wise too I would say, and you could example give MM % dmg buff and BM Battle Shout and SV % spell dmg. Or just one of the three.

Even Shaman could have the spell % dmg buff and DK one of the two phys dmg. Soooo frustratingComment by TwingearHe sure just waltzed past the Evoker question, didn't he? People wanna know about showing armor, but also about the two shoulder options, that are still shown in promotional material, that are not in the actual game.Comment by WikiWeaponn"The GCD on WoG and Frezied Regen feel bad. Can you fix it?"

"We want to listen to feedback on how the GCD feels." *proceeds to ignore community feedback on how it feels*

Between those and Celestial Brew we have 3 tanks with core, lifesaving abilities on the GCD. Poor design.Comment by Seniaaplayers health bars felt too rubber bandy. It was very spiky. It didn't feel as tactical as we wanted it to. So making that change really helped to slow down that pacing there, so that you feel like you have more than just a split second to react before someone could die.Comment by roldy27I must say its frustrating to see him / them dodge the Shaman/DK/Hunter raid buff question. Speaking from a Hunters perspective where we have had the pets with difrent buffs that Warr/DH/Monk give, it would make so much sense that the hunter atleast give one of the Attack Damage abilities like Battle Shout / % phys dmg buff.

It fits really good lore wise too I would say, and you could example give MM % dmg buff and BM Battle Shout and SV % spell dmg. Or just one of the three.

Even Shaman could have the spell % dmg buff and DK one of the two phys dmg. Soooo frustratingComment by MartindeI must say its frustrating to see him / them dodge the Shaman/DK/Hunter raid buff question. Speaking from a Hunters perspective where we have had the pets with difrent buffs that Warr/DH/Monk give, it would make so much sense that the hunter atleast give one of the Attack Damage abilities like Battle Shout / % phys dmg buff.

It fits really good lore wise too I would say, and you could example give MM % dmg buff and BM Battle Shout and SV % spell dmg. Or just one of the three.

Even Shaman could have the spell % dmg buff and DK one of the two phys dmg. Soooo frustratingComment by SquishyyWhy no one asked about the dracthyr not being able to fly?Comment by TobiasAmaranthSo similar to what you might have seen in the past, certainly we'll make changes on the smaller updates, but you won't see those really major updates there. We really feel like those season boundaries where we add a bunch of new content, a new raid tier, we reset the season - that really feels like a great place to make more major adjustments versus smaller, tuning tweaks. We really feel like there's a lot of integrity, certainly with things like the PvP season, that we want to remain intact, and also gives us availability of early seasons to see how that plays out.Comment by SouledkI must say its frustrating to see him / them dodge the Shaman/DK/Hunter raid buff question. Speaking from a Hunters perspective where we have had the pets with difrent buffs that Warr/DH/Monk give, it would make so much sense that the hunter atleast give one of the Attack Damage abilities like Battle Shout / % phys dmg buff.

It fits really good lore wise too I would say, and you could example give MM % dmg buff and BM Battle Shout and SV % spell dmg. Or just one of the three.

Even Shaman could have the spell % dmg buff and DK one of the two phys dmg. Soooo frustratingComment by CedricDur'More costumization options for drachyr than there a grains of sand on the planet'.

Lololol.Comment by Scrotaciouswe like to kind of maintain the relative balance of things. If we see a class that might be massively over-performing and we feel like we need to make adjustments, the goal there isn't to suddenly put them in the middle of the pack.

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