Class Competition
While a portion of the event also included dungeon performance, the core competition used placed custom target dummies inside the Liberate of Undermine raid, featuring players executing 1 minute of pure single target combat and 1 minute of 5 target AOE combat, with the final damage scores used to determine their overall class rankings.
By the end of the competition, Windwalker pulled ahead in single target, while Elemental Shaman dominated in AoE. Note that Unholy Death Knight did not trigger its Blood Beast in this particular run, which was critical to maximizing its damage, though has since been rebalanced over several hotfixes. Keep in mind too that these are short individual tests, so RNG and personal factors can make a big difference without the benefit of averaging.
Single target and multitarget numbers both in measurements of 10,000 (万).
NetEase
Our goal is to invite top players from each class specialization to participate in a dummy dps tournament, allowing them to showcase their understanding and techniques for their current class specialization in the competition, helping players to more quickly understand the new class changes, equipment, and talent choices. At the same time, it also gives these players a window to communicate with devs.
Q&A with Morgan Day
Although the competition took place closer to the start of Patch 11.1, Assistant Game Director Morgan Day was invited to watch back over the footage, offering commentary and insight while answering a few community questions. Do note that this was before Patch 11.1.5, so some comments made here may no longer be relevant or have already been addressed.
- Death Knights are always fun to have, especially in Mythic+ where Death Grip has a lot of potential to save the day. Historically, Frost has always been a very proc dependent class, with a more reactive playstyle that they think is interesting, but they want to make sure Unholy doesn’t start feeling too similar.
- Demon Hunters are another very popular class, with unique mobility that feels like an action combat class. They know that Vengeance is very strong right now, and they’ve gotten a lot of feedback regarding the viability of tank options.
- Balance Druids have such good ranged or split cleave, which made it a really popular class for the Race to World First, to the point that they actually had to make some Mythic raid difficulty adjustments because of it. They want to ensure that Balance Druid AoE feels like a major strength, but it can sometimes cause tuning problems at the very high end if they feel too required.
- Feral Druids changes can sometimes be ambiguous, when they buff one thing but nerf another, making it hard to tell what the actual gameplay goal is. There are a number of people on the Classic and Retail development teams who have a passion for Feral who are always interested in ways to improve the specialization, so they’ll take that feedback into consideration and try to make sure that the intent of their changes are clear.
- Evokers have gone through quite a journey in Season 2, strong out of the gate and well represented in the Race to World First. They bring a lot of awesome utility and impressive burst AoE, so it’s not surprising to see them doing very well; one of if not the strongest DPS specs in the raid, also with a ton of utility. It does have that “mid-range” weakness, but its made up for with quite a number of strengths. Hero Talent representation is something the team is keeping an eye on, to make sure players can pick and choose between the playstyle they prefer, so they’ll continue to keep an eye out for that, as well as to make sure Devastation doesn’t get too far ahead. Regarding Augmentation, they got a lot of changes going into Season 2, and there’s room to buff them (which has since happened repeatedly), though given how strong they were for so long, the team is ok being a little more conservative at the moment.
- Marksmanship Hunter got quite a large rework in the Undermine(d) update, and any time that happens they always know that they’re going to need a little bit of aftercare, with follow-up tuning passes. Since the RWF, both Marks and Survival seem to do be doing very well in the raid, so hopefully the community is happier now than they were at the start of the Season.
- Frost Mage proc management can feel a little overwhelming, especially when its not obvious which proc you should be prioritizing at any given time – newer players may get a lot of out of the upcoming Combat Assistant features in that regard. Mage has also had a lot of its viability dictated by set bonuses, and they try to be really careful to recognize whether a spec is overpowered or its tier bonus might just happen to be out of line.
- Windwalker Monk single target was also really strong during the Race to World First, though some adjustments have since come down.
- Paladin is one of the most popular classes, though there’s been a lot of criticism with how simple Retribution is. Something the team talks a lot about is skill expression, and how high the skill ceiling should be, particularly for classes without multiple DPS specs. If Ret or Shadow Priest is hard to play or has a really high skill ceiling, there’s not really anywhere for a player who loves the class, but doesn’t necessarily have the ability to keep up with its rotation, so they tend to be a little more forgiving by design. In terms of Retribution Paladin, the DPS rotation is a lot easier to execute, but Paladins have a huge ceiling in their utility, like the clutch Lay on Hands or Blessing of Freedom. Having an easier DPS rotation allows more bandwidth to look for those opportunities, so that’s where they feel like a lot of Retribution Paladin skill expression comes from.
- Shadow Priest has a conflict between its damage, survival, and utility talents, and although having a choice between them can sometimes be valuable, the team has tried to make it easier to take really critical talents without having to feel like you’re giving up performance to do so. The team is always looking to make sure that each spec has viable options and playstyle choices, though Priests are again a class with only one DPS spec, so they want to make sure that it’s a little more forgiving.
- Rogues have so much unique playstyle and fantasy between its specializations, and they like that the three feels pretty unique. Outlaw Rogues could probably do better, especially when talking about Target Caps – they talk a lot about strengths and weaknesses, and with a class that has three DPS specs, it can be a challenge to make sure its clear what each of them are supposed to do. Patch 11.1.5 included a number of hotfixes, like fixing Blade Flurry from trying to hit dead targets, which should help lead to more consistent performance.
- Elemental Shaman is fun to discuss, bringing a lot of tools and utility, especially for different affixes – purge, dispels, not to mention a huge amount of raw AoE damage against unmoving targets. Single target is a lot lower, but when discussing strengths and weaknesses, developers try to ensure they’re challenging players with enough interesting content options so that that those strengths and weaknesses feel relevant. It’s not fun to have a strength that’s barely ever relevant, and Single Target vs AoE is a big part of that conversation.
- Warlocks need some reworking on the left side of their class talent tree. It’s a constant evaluation of what the talent trees are bringing and where they need more unique options in those spaces. There’s still a handful of classes that don’t bring a traditional raid buff, but they feel that DK and Warlock specifically have such interesting utility in Death Grip and Gateways/Healthstones that they still bring a lot of value. Traditional raid buffs like Battle Shout are a real easy way to make a class feel required, though Morgan wishes that they could have cool and unique fantasy options for every class. In terms of damage, the team is constantly making balance adjustments. The ~5% to Demonology buff was on the high end of those adjustments, because they want to throw the overall balance out of whack, with a spec that was on the bottom suddenly jumping to #1. Instead, they try to be a little conservative, because they know they can always make another adjustment later.
- Warrior representation tends to be based on which spec is doing better in Mythic+ at the moment. They believe the class does bring decent amount of tools, but that the meta tends to focus more on casters; leading to debates on what kind of cool utility they could give to a Warrior – Battle Rezzing would be kind of hilarious, but it’s something the team has been thinking about looking forward to Season 3. Tier sets have also had an interesting impact on tuning, as sometimes an abnormally strong or weak tier set upsets balance, despite the core class being fine.
Class Competitors
- Erxi（二细）- Paladin
Professional WoW player, with multiple RWF ASIA#1 titles, #1 CN Ret
- Tinphoon（听风）- Shaman
Ele-shaman streamer, 10.0 11.0 Raider.IO Rank 1 Ele
- ShizhongShu（时钟术）- Warlock
CN Warlock guide writer
- Nerfferal – Druid
CN Druid guide writer
- AnjingBushiAnnana（安静不是安娜娜）- Rogue
Raider.IO high rank Rogue, CN guide writer
- Mariatheresa – Death Knight
Mythic raider, multiple season M+ hero title
- Aqiuqiugu（阿揪揪咕）- Druid
Raider.IO high rank Balance Druid
- Zhigengbeihuile（知更被灰了）- Demon Hunter
10.1 Raider.IO World #2, Asia#1 DH DPS, CN guide writer
- Kalaxingge（卡拉星歌）- Monk
WCL All star top 10 Windwalker, multiple season M+ hero title, CN Monk guide writer
- Yujihuashi（雨祭花逝）- Priest
MDI TGP World Champion
- Annisleepy – Hunter
Multiple RWF Asia#1, MDI TGP CN Champion, MDI TGP Best top 4, CN guide writer
- Kxin – Evoker
Hall of Fame raider, multiple season M+ Hero title
- Mayday（原来是MAYDAY啊）- Warrior
Hall of Fame raider, multiple season Raider.IO Asia#1 DPS Warrior
- Semage（雨帆）- Mage
9.0 MDI CN Champion, CN Mage guide writer
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