Raid-wide buffs and class stacking: players disagree over which incentive is worse

On 31 October Grimward started a US forum thread, Raid wide Aura's are bad, with a blunt prediction. If a buff reaches the whole raid, they argued, "there'll be zero reason to bring more than one of a class", and once every buff is covered the open spots will go to a single damage class. Their example was warriors, stacked "for the 100th time". Zolmation answered two minutes later that stacking happens either way. Without raid-wide buffs, raids stack the classes that provide buffs; with them, raids collect every buff once and then stack the classes that don't. Of the two, Zolmation thinks the party-limited version is worse.

Radon read the change as a response to small raids. Without raid-wide coverage, they argued, a 10-player group chasing every buff would fill nearly all its spots with buff providers, and 10-player raiding "would have been horrible". In their view the current approach keeps buffs tied to particular classes without rewarding stacking. Like Grimward's warning, it is a forecast of how raid leaders will build groups, not a measured result.

A few hours earlier on the EU forums, Stev2508 asked the question from the caster side. As they read the recent changes, Enhancement and Restoration Shaman and Feral Druids now provide the buffs that used to earn Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids a raid spot. If melee specs supply the same buffs, they ask, why bring Elemental or Balance at all? Their fear is that raids will fill with Mages and Warlocks, which they expect to out-damage the hybrids.