WoW Shadowlands brings back the random factor in damage numbers

Many players in WoW probably didn't even notice that a few small things had changed in the calculation of damage numbers with the launch of Legion. In this particular case, the variance in the damage numbers of your special attacks was removed by some changes to the internal processes. Since then, a crusader strike always does a fixed amount of damage based on your equipment, talents, and other buffs. So if you cast three or four Crusader Strikes in a row and nothing changes to your character in the meantime (procs, buffs, or the like), each of those attacks will do the exact same amount of damage. This is exactly what will change again in the upcoming WoW expansion Shadowlands

because then the developers will reintroduce the variance in the damage numbers into the game. Instead of the calculated value, the Crusader Strike can then hit a little stronger or weaker. With this, the developers want to prevent you from seeing the exact same damage numbers pop up on your screen over and over again and at the same time go a bit more in the direction of classic role-playing games again, where it's perfectly normal for attacks to hit sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker. At the same time, though, they don't want the random factor to make it so that sometimes you do significantly more damage and sometimes significantly less. That's why they keep the variance relatively low at five percent. In addition, this should more or less even out over the course of a fight given the large number of attacks. Here is the original Bluepost from Blizzard:

Blizzard
In an upcoming build, most non-periodic abilities on all classes will have a small amount of variance on the damage or healing of each individual use.

This was standard behavior in WoW (buy now 14,99 € ) for many years (and has its roots in familiar mechanics from many RPGs), but recently was lost as a side effect of some under-the-hood mechanical changes. We're restoring this behavior now to bring back the small bit of texture, and avoid the result where using the same spell repeatedly results in exactly the same 3- or 4-digit number every time.

We're keeping the amount of variance small (5% currently), so that the impact on total performance, over the course of a combat with many events, is negligible.

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But it seems not all players are so fond of the fact that with this change, randomness will play a bigger role in how your character performs in combat. Relatively well-known streamer Slootbag has already voiced his concerns. According to him, it's never good when randomness plays too big a role in combat. In his eyes, most players rather prefer the greatest possible consistency from pull to pull. Game director Ion Hazzikostas, meanwhile, pointed out that the developers didn't come up with this mechanic from scratch, but rather that it's been around for 12 years and is just being reintroduced now.

do you think? Does it feel better when the damage numbers vary slightly or do you prefer consistency?

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