World of Warcraft: Is class balancing an impossible dream?

Gamer Limit writes "The state of balance between classes in World of Warcraft is something I have always pondered on. Finding constructive and concise arguments, with suggestions on improving its state, are an extreme rarity."

[GrahameG]

there will always be that one class with that can be abused. With so much content it's extremely difficult to balance without constant tweaking and nerfing (which can be good AND bad).

Just lucky I don't play any MMOs.

[presto717]

Look at starcraft. Blizzard makes so much noise on how balanced the races are, but those freaking terrans are overpowered as hell. Nuke, scan, buildings can fly, workers can repair stuff back to 100% HP, emp to kill protoss, irradiate to kill zerg.

I just had to get that out there. I play protoss so it hurts...

[Fullish]

True, Terran is the most played race by Koreans.
But at a non-professional level they are pretty damn balanced.

[evrfighter]

classes will never be perfectly balanced. Mobs on the other hand. If a certain mob is weak to physical damage and drops phat loot. Mages get left out in the cold and vice-versa. They have more of a chance of balancing out classes in the mobs that get created.

[StartWars]

I think the reason WoW is going so well is because it isn't balanced, if it was balanced it would be boring.

[Panthers]

Blizzard is know for having a lot of diversity and still being very balanced. WoW may be too big to balance, but its pretty close I think. But I still say pallys are OP.

[DangerCurtis]

If it's tailored to a rock, paper, scissor idea, it makes it much more interesting.

[BRG9000]

Well, balancing the classes in combat against each other is only half of it. They are also constantly struggling to balance them in how they perform against bosses and other PVE content. The "rock, paper, scissors" system can't really be applied there at all.

[thedoctor]

Don't know anything about WoW, and don't really care to find out.

[BRG9000]

Then why did you post? In fact, why did you even click on this story?

[totallysane]

really lol

[Ziriux]

Like Kevin Garnett has said "Anything is possible".

[syvergy]

It will never be balanced.

[BlackTar187]

Way to much content to get your hopes up for it : )

[Panthers]

Even if it were, we would never know because people will always cry when they die. Its always going to be unbalanced to someone.

[Dead_Cell]

Such a HUGE variety of classes/races/build combinations and any was viable in certain moments. They took Group vs Group and refined it perfectly which scaled down pretty well with solo/smallscale PvP. Obviously the solo wasn't PERFECTLY balanced but that was the beauty of it,certain builds coped better in certain situations, having to rely on your guild/group mates to cover your weaknesses and to beat somebody who may have had an advantage was seen as a sign of skill and competence with the creation you made.

Anyone who is interested in an open world deep PvP game should check out the Shadowbane Emulator, hopefully launching some time in January.

[Tony P]

There is no perfect balance. Imperfection keeps an MMO in business.

[LeGenDx]

same with druids

[SilverDragon1979]

I think they've done a very good job balancing the game to the best of their abilities.

[JeepGamer]

You will never get perfect balance between a multitude of classes, but even if you never got 'perfect' balance, you can do far better than WoW does. The way things stand right now there's simply a massively unbalanced hierarchy of classes in which one to three classes dominate everything else.

Unless they've been adjusted significantly since I left back just after 3.2 dropped then there is NO excuse AT ALL that justifies Paladins or Death Knights.

[Austin_SJ]

I agree