Remember Blizzard's mantra, "bring the player not the class"?
The seeds of that mantra lay in their design for Vanilla, and you can see that in operation whenever the raiding guilds put out ads in game. Guilds looking for Warlocks, Holy Paladins, etc. are currently seen all over Myzrael-US, and are typically accompanied by "will take any class with exceptional players" as a catch-all just to make sure they're getting the best potential raiders possible. Raid composition is important for the success of the raid, and that unique composition requirement can be found even in 5-man instances.
Take Sunken Temple, for one well known instance.
Sure, you can have a primarily ranged DPS group and do quite well in almost all of Sunken Temple, but when you get to the Shade of Eranikus at the end, his sleep action pretty much requires an off tank to pick up tanking while the main tank is out cold.* I was part of a group without a tank spec (yes, a Healer + 4 DPS run because the tank had to bug out midway through) who managed to take out Erkanikus, but we got extremely lucky in the process that we had another DPS who could effectively off-heal (Shadow Priest), so we were able to heal through the designated tank's sleeping.
The same thing goes for Blackrock Depths, where you put two or three Mages in a group and you can clean up on the Lycaeum (aka the "group check") room filled with rapidly respawning Anvilrage Reserve enemies. Even if you don't have such a composition, having a Stealth class being able to roam through the room and mark the few Flame Keepers out there can be priceless to the success of a BRD run.
What got me thinking of the "Bring the player not the class" mantra, however, was a Lower Blackrock Spire run I was in the other day.
I hadn't been in LBRS since, oh, 2012 or so, and my first run through it (using Az) was pretty rough. It's not that the players weren't skilled, but since none of us save for the Healer had been in there since forever, it took us a long while to get into a groove. Still, we were highly dependent on the Ret Pally for any rezzes, because a Resto Druid only has a Battle Rez.
The second time I got into LBRS however --with Cardwyn-- turned out to be the equivalent of a speed run. It's not that we were trying to do a speed run, because we were chatting and having a good old time, but it just ended up that way. Only one player death, and even when we had an extra mob crash into us during a fight or two we turned out okay.
I mentioned how smooth the run was to the Healer afterward, and he said that the group composition was really good. Several players could remove various debuffs** which took the pressure (and mana usage) off of the Healer, and the ranged DPS (Card and a Warlock) could trade off of each other and mostly keep any ads or runners at bay.
That brings me back to the Blizzard mantra, because these experiences highlighting the utility of certain classes over others is likely what drove Blizzard into eliminating the unique capabilities of each class over the years' worth of expacs out there. If it was perceived as a limitation to bringing a class to a raid, it was eventually removed. Such as the Battle Rez only capability of Resto Druids I mentioned above. Or eliminating the ability of the Rogue to select various poisons for various situations. Or extending classes (such as Druid, Shaman, or Paladin) to other races, so that Horde and Alliance essentially have the same makeup, class-wise.
Some tweaks to the class structures from Vanilla to Burning Crusade were inevitable, and many people I've run with in instances keep saying how BC was their favorite expac for various reasons. But at the same time, they've also said that Blizz has gone too far relying upon their mantra, and that class uniqueness should matter.
And the more and more I've delved into Classic, the more I've come around to that idea. "Bring the player not the class" works to a point, but when it becomes the be-all-end-all of class design you lose sight of what makes a class unique. And for my money, uniqueness matters.
*Unless you have a Shaman who can counter that sleep action, something the Alliance doesn't have in Classic.
**At one point during the run, the Healer asked whether I could counter a Magic debuff. "No," I said. "I only have Remove Curse." "That doesn't make any sense," he replied. "If there's one class that you'd think would be able to remove a Magic debuff, it'd be the Mage class."
The seeds of that mantra lay in their design for Vanilla, and you can see that in operation whenever the raiding guilds put out ads in game. Guilds looking for Warlocks, Holy Paladins, etc. are currently seen all over Myzrael-US, and are typically accompanied by "will take any class with exceptional players" as a catch-all just to make sure they're getting the best potential raiders possible. Raid composition is important for the success of the raid, and that unique composition requirement can be found even in 5-man instances.
Take Sunken Temple, for one well known instance.
Sure, you can have a primarily ranged DPS group and do quite well in almost all of Sunken Temple, but when you get to the Shade of Eranikus at the end, his sleep action pretty much requires an off tank to pick up tanking while the main tank is out cold.* I was part of a group without a tank spec (yes, a Healer + 4 DPS run because the tank had to bug out midway through) who managed to take out Erkanikus, but we got extremely lucky in the process that we had another DPS who could effectively off-heal (Shadow Priest), so we were able to heal through the designated tank's sleeping.
The same thing goes for Blackrock Depths, where you put two or three Mages in a group and you can clean up on the Lycaeum (aka the "group check") room filled with rapidly respawning Anvilrage Reserve enemies. Even if you don't have such a composition, having a Stealth class being able to roam through the room and mark the few Flame Keepers out there can be priceless to the success of a BRD run.
What got me thinking of the "Bring the player not the class" mantra, however, was a Lower Blackrock Spire run I was in the other day.
***
I hadn't been in LBRS since, oh, 2012 or so, and my first run through it (using Az) was pretty rough. It's not that the players weren't skilled, but since none of us save for the Healer had been in there since forever, it took us a long while to get into a groove. Still, we were highly dependent on the Ret Pally for any rezzes, because a Resto Druid only has a Battle Rez.
The second time I got into LBRS however --with Cardwyn-- turned out to be the equivalent of a speed run. It's not that we were trying to do a speed run, because we were chatting and having a good old time, but it just ended up that way. Only one player death, and even when we had an extra mob crash into us during a fight or two we turned out okay.
I mentioned how smooth the run was to the Healer afterward, and he said that the group composition was really good. Several players could remove various debuffs** which took the pressure (and mana usage) off of the Healer, and the ranged DPS (Card and a Warlock) could trade off of each other and mostly keep any ads or runners at bay.
That brings me back to the Blizzard mantra, because these experiences highlighting the utility of certain classes over others is likely what drove Blizzard into eliminating the unique capabilities of each class over the years' worth of expacs out there. If it was perceived as a limitation to bringing a class to a raid, it was eventually removed. Such as the Battle Rez only capability of Resto Druids I mentioned above. Or eliminating the ability of the Rogue to select various poisons for various situations. Or extending classes (such as Druid, Shaman, or Paladin) to other races, so that Horde and Alliance essentially have the same makeup, class-wise.
Some tweaks to the class structures from Vanilla to Burning Crusade were inevitable, and many people I've run with in instances keep saying how BC was their favorite expac for various reasons. But at the same time, they've also said that Blizz has gone too far relying upon their mantra, and that class uniqueness should matter.
And the more and more I've delved into Classic, the more I've come around to that idea. "Bring the player not the class" works to a point, but when it becomes the be-all-end-all of class design you lose sight of what makes a class unique. And for my money, uniqueness matters.
*Unless you have a Shaman who can counter that sleep action, something the Alliance doesn't have in Classic.
**At one point during the run, the Healer asked whether I could counter a Magic debuff. "No," I said. "I only have Remove Curse." "That doesn't make any sense," he replied. "If there's one class that you'd think would be able to remove a Magic debuff, it'd be the Mage class."
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