World of Warcraft Classic’s upcoming Season of Mastery will feature a faster content rollout schedule and more challenging raids, but it won’t include changes to the game’s classes.
In a new forum post outlining design intentions for the upcoming WoW Classic season, Blizzard writes that despite raid encounters taking longer and bosses having more health, it isn’t looking to make adjustments to classes.
Fans have been concerned that longer fights will mean that mana dependent classes will suffer compared to classes like warriors and rogues, which use other resources like rage and energy to use abilities and deal damage.
“We’re not insensitive to this concern, but our intention behind increasing the health of raid bosses is to make up for the better itemization on gear and improved talents provided by the 1.12 version of items and classes,” Blizzard writes. “We want to make sure players actually stay in combat long enough to engage with the boss mechanics, and we believe that the changes made to encounters might inspire new strategies for raids.”
Blizzard goes on to state that based on beta testing for the new season, groups which stacked warriors and rogues in raids seemed to struggle more than groups with a greater diversity of classes. That being said, Blizzard admits there are a lot of variables in play, and will keep an eye on the situation and make adjustments if needed.
“A big part of what makes WoW Classic special is being able to relive and re-master the gameplay that bygone versions of WoW provided, and a large part of the WoW Classic project is burning that back for players to enjoy,” Blizzard writes. “We want players to recognize their classes, both their strengths and their limitations, and we don’t want to create a situation where frequent balance changes are necessitated and leave players wondering what’s happening with their class from week to week.”
Season of Mastery will see much more content available at launch compared to phase one of WoW Classic’s 2019 launch. Battleground will be available from the start, along with the various Dire Maul dungeons. Dungeon set questlines introduced late into WoW Classic’s life will be available from the get-go in Season of Mastery, as will level 50 class quests. Players will also be able to earn honor and climb the PvP ranking system faster as a result of Season of Mastery’s faster content rollout schedule.
WoW Classic Season of Mastery begins November 16. Blizzard says that once the season concludes after roughly a year, players will be able to transfer their characters to an existing Classic Era server free of charge.
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