Party Buffs or Raid Buffs?
Party buffs, as we saw in TBC and Vanilla, made it so that players had to bring a variety of classes and specs to their raid team to fully enhance every member of each party. A melee group would have one Feral Druid for Leader of the Pack, one Warrior for Battle Shout, one to two Beastmastery Hunters or Ret Paladins for Ferocious Inspiration/Improved Sanctity Aura, and one Enhancement Shaman for Windfury Totem or Grace of Air Totem.
A Standard "Meta" TBC Raid Team
Because you typically have more than one melee group, this ensures that at least two of each class and spec mentioned above have to be brought into the raid, preventing raid teams from stacking the best DPS class or spec if buffs were raid-wide. If an Enhancement Shaman was the lowest DPS class in the game and buffs were raid-wide, you could only bring one, or potentially none if a Restoration Shaman could drop Windfury for them!
However, this poses a problem with party buffs that gets easily solved if all buffs were raid-wide instead. Players who recently played TBC Anniversary realized that some buffs, such as a Shaman's Windfury Totem, are so incredibly powerful that not having it is a genuine gameplay difference. A Warrior's overall DPS and APM is significantly affected by not having this buff. So there are two problems: a class can play completely differently without certain buffs, and now raid team compositions become incredibly one-dimensional and restricted.
5 Shamans in TBC felt like a requirement for every raid team to have
The latter is a big issue, especially for PUG raids. A PUG raid leader may find themselves looking for an extended period of time to find that class or spec to meet their buff needs, and because of that, take away time they have in the raid. If buffs were raid-wide, then you significantly decrease the restrictions that a raid team would have trying to meet the buff needs for every party. Party buffs and their meta raid compositions to follow tend to bleed more into the general population compared to the problem created by raid-wide buffs: "Class Stacking."
A raid team in Wrath of the Lich King Stacking Unholy Death Knights
"Class Stacking" is when, after you've filled every necessary raid buff slot, you can then fill the rest of the slot with one specific class/spec - often the one that just theoretically deals the most damage. You would see this in expansions like Wrath of the Lich King, where top teams would stack as many Unholy Death Knights as possible to maximize their raid DPS once they filled the necessary roles. So the problem now arises here when raid leaders start saying something along the lines of "okay, we found our one Shaman, now we don't need to invite any more!"
What's Best For WoW Forever?
With both having their pros and cons, we have to ask: what would be best for Forever? "Main" raids in WoW: Forever seem to lean towards the 10- and 20-man raids, where 40-man raids seem to be more of a novelty and "quick raids" compared to the length of the other two sizes. With 20-man raids being the biggest size for the longer raids, would party or raid buffs be better?
Comparing the cons from both, we have restricted raid compositions with party buffs versus potential class stacking with raid buffs. When analyzing these cons, a phrase that players tend to counter each with is "you don't need to do this to clear the content". And this is true: you don't need to have a Shaman in every raid in TBC to clear the raids (although after raiding with one, you definitely never want to raid without one), and you certainly don't need to class stack to clear all the raids in Wrath of the Lich King. But when we look at both and consider a 20-man raid composition, raid buffs may potentially be better overall for WoW Forever.
A standard 20-player raid composition if buffs were party-wide only
If WoW: Forever sticks with party buffs, a meta raid composition could potentially lock in up to seventeen of the twenty slots available. If Forever converted all party buffs to be raid-wide, then only twelve of those slots would be needed to fill all the buffs. With 10-man raids, you can now cover buffs with 10 fewer people as well.
A standard 20-player raid composition if buffs were raid-wide
When also looking at the fear of class-stacking, although this was something that happens with raid buffs, it's only really apparent in groups who compete for rankings in Warcraft Logs - whereas party buff raid comps definitely seem to bleed more into the general population of raid teams. A trade chat pug often struggles to fill a raid team to meet all the specific party buff needs. With raid-wide buffs, this definitely makes filling a pug group much easier. If Forever raid content avoids DPS checks as a raid encounter, then it's highly unlikely we'll see class stacking as a problem.
Blizzard has stated in their latest podcast that they plan to look at buffs such as Shaman Totems and whether they should stay party-wide, so perhaps we may be given an update on buffs in raids or parties before the game goes live on November 4th.
