The Caller upended the balance of World of Warcraft. The Caller’s new specialization is one of the most powerful in the game. A Blizzard employee says this is intentional. MeinMMO tells you what’s behind it.
Which class is it about? The Caller’s “Augmentation” specialization is one of the strongest specializations in the MMORPG. In an interview at BlizzCon with PC Gamer, the WoW director defended the Caller’s immense strength and called the decision intentional, while also acknowledging that the specialization was obviously too strong.
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The call for reinforcements caused a stir in the community
What’s the Supporter class all about? For the first time, a class received a completely new specialization during an ongoing World of Warcraft expansion. The Caller has been equipped with the Enhancement specialization, which focuses on boosting the damage, performance, and stamina of fellow players.
But the unique new way of playing caused an uproar in the community after the release of the reinforcement specialization. Since the reinforcement caller himself only causes a small amount of damage, but instead strengthens the other players with buffs, it looked in the DPS meter as if he made little contribution. This resulted in callers being kicked out of groups.
Through a sophisticated tactic, the damage of an Unholy Death Knight in the raid could be increased to an impressive 13 million DPS by being buffed by 22 reinforcement callers. This resulted in the boss literally melting in a few seconds and throwing the balance of the MMORPG into disarray.
In Mythic+ dungeons, for example, a powerful lineup consisting of a reinforcement caller, a shadow priest and a fire mage quickly established itself – which was also referred to in the community as the god lineup.
What exactly does Blizzard say? Game director Ion Hazzikostas explained that the intention behind the power of the Caller’s new specialization was to convince players to accept the new specialization. The developers wanted the class to be on the strong side.
Ion Hazzikostas says:
Something we’ve learned when introducing something new, especially a new style of play – the community is inherently skeptical of things it doesn’t understand, that it doesn’t know.[…]
Ion Hazzikostas via PC Gamer
He admits that they had made the Caller too powerful and compared the situation to the Discipline Priest’s overhaul in the past.
He writes about this:
Remember when we reworked Discipline Priests to deal damage? They were being kicked out of dungeon groups left and right. Why does this healer just do DPS all the time? Where are the healers?
Ion Hazzikostas via PC Gamer
The strategy was to introduce the class strongly and then tone it down a bit. Obviously not as strong as we came out. I think there is still a lot to do. – (Ion Hazzikostas via PC Gamer)
Hazzikostas also said there are currently no immediate plans for another support class. Over time, there is a possibility that several Dractyhr classes will become playable, although they are currently only available as Callers.
He said that the Dracthyr were intelligent and adaptable beings who would eventually be able to learn how to use a sword or a dagger over time.
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