Is Blizzard Overshadowing Their Own Good Design?

Amidst all of the recent uproars over some of the more unapproved changes of 3.1, X classes representation on the TR, and the current state of arena, Blizzard has personally surprised me by making some changes to certain classes that actually seem to be thought out and logical. It's shocking really, but in the process of the developers being swapped out in what feels like a pattern that follows every major patch or expansion to the game, complaints and suggestions from as far back as pre-TBC have suddenly been considered, and changes many players thought would never happen, actually are. While it's been a long time coming for certain classes in terms of viability across the board, some of your more recent PTR changes have actually inspired feelings of optimism towards a brighter future in terms of balance.

One of the most impacting changes is actually the adjustment in mentality on behalf of Blizzard by making an attempt at appeasing to both the PVP and PVE community of WoW instead of one or the other. Yeah, they've made an attempt at doing this before, but clearly there was a small amount of favoritism involved. There's undoubtedly still reason to believe the favoritism still exists, and certain classes are still in the ****ter, but there was a time in which Blizzard would just outright say that they didn't give a **** about the concerns of the PVP side of WoW simply because X or Y tree was for PVE purposes only. Of course whether or not trying to balance all three trees of each class to the point where they're effective in both PVE and PVP environments is actually a good undertaking by Blizzard is still questionable. But if you look at many talent trees of now compared to the same even 6 months ago, many have gone from PVE only to viable in both, or completely broken to almost there.

Let's start by looking at Priests. Without a doubt, Blizzard has always considered Shadow to be a PVE tree. Coincidentally, certain talents and aspects of the tree have always allowed Shadow Priests to find loopholes in the system in that under the right conditions, they could still be quite effective. It really didn't matter what it was - devouring plague if you were Undead, gimmicky dps team makeups, or other classes compensating for your squishiness - if it worked, it worked. However, they were always at the mercy of Blizzard in that they had to simply stand by and pray that the next change for Shadow from a PVE perspective would at the very least, not nerf them in PVP. This still left certain talents such as improved fade, spirit tap, shadow affinity etc. completely useless in a PVP environment, but players were still happy that they could still shine when played correctly. But nothing changed the fact that it was really pure luck that allowed the tree to still be effective.

Now, with 3.1, Shadow has seemingly been changed in a way that it will be potentially effective in both PVP and PVE, without one overshadowing the other. Granted, 3.1 is only the icing on a cake that has been in the making for years, but some of the aforementioned PVE-only talents, as well as those that were decent for both, have slowly been adjusted in a way that make any former designs pale in comparison. In example, over the past 2 years, Veiled Shadows (formerly Improved Fade) in conjunction with imp shadowform and glyphs, has changed from a completely useless talent for both PVE and PVP players, to viable for both. Shadowform, while always generally good for both PVE and PVP, is now arguably one of the best talents in the game. What started as a talent that was a very basic 15% damage reduction from melee and increased base shadow damage, has been changed to 5 talents in one; reduction to both incoming melee and magic damage, anti-spell pushback, 30% threat reduction, and ability for DoTs to crit. Blizzard has cautiously and slowly modified the talent into a final product that is impossible to dislike.

What seems to be the most effective approach for Blizzard, is making sure that the fundamental talents (31,41 etc) are as beneficial as possible to both PVE and PVP players. Going from there, they've seemed to taken a liking to making most talents useful for both, but throwing in a couple of one-sided talents that really address specific relative problems to the side approached. For example, in terms of PVE Shadow is doing relatively decent, and is continually improving. Before 3.1, Shadow was hurting for PVP viability, but with additions such as the new Psychic Horror (which seems to have slipped under the radar as it is ridiculously good and borderline broken), Shadow Priests have the potential to go from crap, to quite good overnight.

It goes beyond just Priests as well. While there's still a lot of work to be done, many classes have seen talent tree's that have never been viable become useful and borderline well-rounded (or gimmick at best). In example, you have Ret for Paladins, Fury for Warriors, Arcane for Mages, Balance for Druids, and Survival for Hunters. If you go back to around season 1/2, some of these trees were so far off from actual balance, it was thought that it would simply never happen. That's not to say that as some specs have risen, others have hit the floor hard, but even those talent trees still have potential if they received even one or two intelligent changes like Shadow recently has.

This will undoubtedly be flamed hard, but in the end, I find it hard to argue against the fact that most of the talent trees we currently play with in WoW, are some of the most well-rounded and intelligently designed in the past 5 years.  While it's subject to opinion, even if you don't agree with the above statement, if you look at specific talents such as Shadow Form, they just plain and simply have never been as good as they are now.

But of course, there's still one huge problem. In the hands of a skilled player, said talent trees that seemed to lack in viability before, could be turned into something that was extremely effective even when considering the original design intentions of the tree. Now, it seems that in the process of reaching the ultimate balanced game, not only can this rarely happen, but Blizzard has overshadowed their own relatively decent design and effort with a couple obvious problems. Unfortunately, pushing a couple of classes to the point where what could only previously be accomplished through the abilities of a player to utilize all of a classes skills and talents well, can now be done with a pathetic combination of half the skills and fat-fingering the keyboard. All because of how high damage is. Players that are at a 2000+ rating can now, more than ever, get away with keyboard turning, back peddling, and not using half of the abilities available to them. Coordination is practically not needed. But the thing is, I think that under the surface of all of this, we're again, seeing some very good talents. If the damage problems are put in check, we might actually see it. The question is whether or not this will ever happen due to what Blizzard caters to in their ultimate design plans.

Note: The above is subject to ****ty memory in regards to specifics designs of old ass talents.