I'm not sure that mana drains currently being a problem is an automatic link to "don't do this".
I'm a holy priest. I spec discipline when I want to arena and have fun. Mana drain is the bane of my existance. Hunters do it (Viper Sting - fire and forget = suck). Other priests do it. Warlocks do it (through terrain, no less).
Yet, having said this ... I am fully aware that when I get a little more gear, I can basically "tank" warriors and rogues for *long* lengths of time. As it is, against anyone not in full S2+ gear, I can typically tank a rogue/warrior for 30-40 seconds before I either run out of mana, or screw up my rotation and get a spell interrupted at the wrong time.
Maybe I shouldn't be able to do this. Maybe (as much as I hate being nerfed) those melee classes should be given something that can drain my mana as they hit me. Maybe.
But if that's the case, I want a S3 MH mace that has 500 +heal on it *and* gives me 30% resistance in interrupt effects on healing spells. Fair is fair. They can drain my mana, but I can ignore their pummels and kicks. Or at least resist a large % of them.
Things like that, especially if they made them costly in terms of ilvl, would go a long way toward balancing out the system, which I think having read all the pages prior to this, is a reasonable summation of the improvements being suggested. We keep going full circle in this thread -- I've seen the same posts multiple times from different people, including myself. :-(
Mana drain on melee weapons would also serve as a pretty good way to make Rogues (and possibly ferals) more desireable in comparison to Shadow Priests and Warlocks, for that matter.
Mana Drains are already a serious problem in the arena, please don't even consider adding more of them. This proc wouldn't change much though unless it was a high proc rate. If it was then mana classes (except Warlocks) would face even more of a drain problem.
If the mana drain is the problem, make it 5 mana instead of 20. The idea was more to throttle back the burst damage of rogues/warriors, hence the rage/energy components, with a token mana component so it's not completely useless against caster teams.
If the mana drain is the problem, make it 5 mana instead of 20. The idea was more to throttle back the burst damage of rogues/warriors, hence the rage/energy components, with a token mana component so it's not completely useless against caster teams.
But what do you take out of the budget for something like this? Refer to Anenga's posts earlier about the importance of the topend on these items vs PvE. If it's coming from the topend/dps of the weapons then it just means that PvE weapons will be greater in arena and balance will still be out of whack. Exceptions to this rule are obscene procs like Mace spec / Stormherald, though that mace has one of the best topends still.
I think the trend here in this thread, the desire to see the arena weapons "rebalanced" towards pvp-only use and such is missing something important: im talking about weapon itemisation situation in wow 1.0.
I think it is good thing that those good, pve-usable arena weapons are out there, because the situation before was quite awfull. Correct me if im wrong, but the majority of raiding guilds out there weren exactly swimming in those Perdition Blades and Ashkandis, were they? Oh all those threads about rng and "how one guild gave the ashkandi to a paladin, and we havent seen one in all those months" and so on. Symptomatic, useless as those threads on WoW forums were.
Those weapons were quite rare, and even worse, entirely luckbased. Do you really want that again? Say a rogue wants to respec form dagger to sword oder mace or whatever, or a rep pala wants to see if this spec is worth a try, how would you do that if all useful weapons are the ones with a low droprate in a highend dungeon? How would it be to have to dualwield dragonspine trophys? Just like it used to be, thats how.
Now you have to put some effort in it (not like the r14 weapons before the expanion), and you have the weapons that make or brake you class/spec whatever. Even if you "gasp" have to pvp a bit. Somebody who is in a guild that does the pve tier equivalent dungeons shouldnt have that much trouble finding a 1800tish 5on5 team.
To put it short: yes the effort vs reward IS a little off with those arena weapons (compared to the weapon drops in PvE), but it is not nesessary a bad thing! Just _because_ the weapon slot is not just a stat slot, and damage range is so important for some classess. It might not be fair or something but it is a good solution to this whole weaponslot being specially important thing.
It is not like a arena weapon alone will make a melee DD competitive, he'll need those pve-itemized armor slots just as the nuker and the healer and tank. He'll just not as srewed over by the RNG incase those damn weapons just won't drop (or dont drop in sufficient numbers).
This imbalance is actually not one at all, it's a good thing. It encourages the PvE crowd to do some arenas and to enjoy an other aspect of this game too, thats not a bad thing either
But what do you take out of the budget for something like this? Refer to Anenga's posts earlier about the importance of the topend on these items vs PvE. If it's coming from the topend/dps of the weapons then it just means that PvE weapons will be greater in arena and balance will still be out of whack. Exceptions to this rule are obscene procs like Mace spec / Stormherald, though that mace has one of the best topends still.
It's up to Blizzard to determine what tradeoff is acceptable. For instance, if a weapon has low dps (say 75 dps), but the proc is 50% chance on hit, and it takes 30 rage / 30 energy, 200 mana of course people would choose that one as a dps/utility weapon without a second thought. At the same time, no one would use it in pve, because getting 80+ dps weapons with good stats = kara.
That's an exaggeration, but I believe it serves to show that you could have a valid pvp weapon which pve people wouldn't find advantageous to use, yet pvp people would not choose pve weapons instead of them.
Making people do PvP in order to be effective in PvE is not a good thing and it never will be, nor will the reverse. People choosing to do both, whatever. As has been said, both aspects - the scarcity of PvE weapons and the ridiculous availability of extremely powerful arena weapons - need to be changed.
If that logic is true Jebralter than what do you propose to do about the scarcity of high end PVP weapons (S2 melee weapons are a downgrade from Stormherald, the T3 1h mace and of course all BT/MH weapons), not to mention the lack of options in rings, trinkets, cloaks, necks, items with haste and armor penetration and so on?
Is it so bad that some items from PVP get used in PVE when so many items in PVE get used in PVP already?
Yes, something should be done about that as well. That has been said at least thirty times in this thread alone. This is not about greedy raiders wanting there to be only one source of purpz.
But realistically how does one do that? Armor pen, haste on spells and melee, weapons with 70 stamina (the Kael and Illidan staffs), 138 dps 2hs, trinkets with haste and minus armor procs, rings with high sta and offensive power, set bonuses for healing that reduce times off important spells are all going to always be very powerful for PVP. There is absolutely no way with these items existing to make them less powerful for pvp, unless for all of those options you make PVP items superior to PVE items for PVP, which I don't see how to do.
Lets look at a ring. How do we make it powerful for PVP? Put a bunch of AP or Dmg and buff its stamina and resil. Maybe give it some armor too for a caster ring. Thing is there is a resilience cap. But due to splitting of stats, a PVP item like that will always be weaker than a PVE item for classes that aren't focused in PVP. Thus uber pvp ring of spell casting is just not going to be as good as the MH rep ring or the trash ring from BT. So the only way to make great pvp items that compare in all slots with PVP alternatives is either to make the PVP item awesome for PVE and thus have even more PVP epics in PVE, or divorce the PVP and PVE systems of loot by making them exclusive.
But why would blizzard do this? They have stated that they want PVP items to come from PVE and PVE stuff to come from PVP. They want people to do both sides of the game and to reward those who do both sides at the top level of competition with the best gear from each side to mix and max. Thus yes this thread and 200+ posts of people talking about how to get PVP gear out of PVE with only a few talking about the opposite.
It's not going to happen. They are always going to have both and affecting eachother, unless they go back to pre TBC ways of PVE'ers just crushing everyone. So sure make some ratings requirement so only a lower percent can use top epics or whatever, but taking PVP out of the PVE game should be dismissed just as readily as taking PVE out of the PVP game. They're linked together and that imo is the way it should be.
It seems we are going in circles due to some people not reading the whole thread before posting.
There is always a simple way to balance these issues given you have a minimum of creativity and *want* to do it. There were good suggestions in this thread already and there are other solutions like caping the damage from pve weapons as they approach or exceed the ilvl of pvp weapons. Blizzard is free to create whatever crazy mechanic they choose in this game just like they did with resilience.
For me the best arena weapons shouldn't be better than the best weapons from reputation rewards or heroic 5-mans or at most the entry level raid (Karazhan in BC) for pve to bring them in line with the other pvp armor.
There are other (pve) solutions to get the weapons to raiders and these should be improved instead of having them pvp. PvP should be a decent option but not a requirement for raiding and vice versa.
But Furion that would require that Blizzard makes two seperate rulesets for PVE and PVP and divorce those aspects of the game. But everything we've heard from the philosophy of the designers shows they are not going to do that. I mean it makes no sense that Blizzard would split the two systems and even if you think it does make sense to do it, Blizzard has shown they don't have an inclination to. So this whole thread is an exercise in futility and these ideas to make items PVP only and PVE only will never go through.
No it doesn't mean the thread is over, but it means that things need to be thought out a bit more than making PVE items 100 dps + 25 dps against monsters. Or vice versa with PVP items. We've seen and read interviews by the game designers. We have seen that recently they put PVP loot into the drop tables of SSC bosses. I think the focus of the thread should be more about how to make it so that PVE and PVP have a similar level of influence over the other realm and that they are balanced against eachother in an even way. So like Gurg said a person doing PVP and PVE at top levels would be the best at both, but that a pure PVE'er and a pure PVP'er would be at similar level of progressions compared to the guy who does both. Not in that the two rules and ways of playing should be split from eachother.
But Furion that would require that Blizzard makes two seperate rulesets for PVE and PVP and divorce those aspects of the game. But everything we've heard from the philosophy of the designers shows they are not going to do that. I mean it makes no sense that Blizzard would split the two systems and even if you think it does make sense to do it, Blizzard has shown they don't have an inclination to. So this whole thread is an exercise in futility and these ideas to make items PVP only and PVE only will never go through.
I hope Davidson or Exewut will chime in with me about the "1/3 rule" of Asheron's Call 2. Let's just put it this way, it was a complete and utter clusterfuck, with ramifications far and beyond merely "keke, we reduced the burst". Two separate rulesets for PvE and PvP will never work when there's a distinct disability to properly balance even one.
Granted, the current situation has those ramifications as well (Weapons tend to be the biggest sources of upgrade for melee DPS. Without the majority of your melee having 95+ DPS 1h weapons at appropriate speeds, you'd still be farming T5 zones in hopes of the Al'ar fists, the Morogrim sword, Solarian dagger etc, due to not having enough gear to drop them completely), at least for the vast majority of the guilds that today are saying "5/9 BT, recruiting only BT/Hyjal geared applicants because we no longer run SSC/TK".
There's also the issue of "Best weapon spec", with people having their choice of which particular epic weapon type to choose. Chromatically Tempered Sword won't drop? Eventually you'll pick yourself up a Perdition's Blade or Claw of the Black Drake because you start falling behind, even if it's not perfectly optimal.
Honestly, I'm happy with the way arena weapons currently are. I have never seen Malchazeen, Spiteblade, Hope Ender or Talon of Azshara drop (the 90+ DPS Rogue weapons at my current level of progression). In two weeks, assuming that Talon continues to elude me, I'll have a Merciless Gladiator's mainhand. I'm also very thankful that they didn't see fit to provide a raid-dropped fast offhand weapon until BT/Hyjal. Maybe they were expecting Blade of the Unrequited to fill that gap. Sorry, for 0.2 speed and/or 0.1 speed and sword spec, it's an easy decision.
The biggest issue with arena weapons, which has already been dredged up many times in this thread is that they're already so damn entrenched into the system that removing them, nerfing them, making them more PvP-focused, whatever require a complete overhaul of all PvP loot in general (in practice, bringing the S2 armor closer, DPS-wise, to the comparable T5 DPS gear for PvE purposes, thus not really eradicating the problem in the first place).
Jesus don't want me in a sunbeam
Sunbeams are always made on me
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons I'm gonna die
Don't ever ask your kick of me.
...that would require that Blizzard makes two seperate rulesets for PVE and PVP and divorce those aspects of the game. But everything we've heard from the philosophy of the designers shows they are not going to do that... Blizzard has shown they don't have an inclination to (split the systems)....
I have a very hard time seeing how you can get to these strict conclusions. I thought blizzard created resilence for the very purpose of separating these systems and made all pvp gear but Weapons undesireable for raiders, while most pve gear but the very top end is inferior for pvp.
And the proposed rating requirement on S3 weapons goes in the very same direction. While I have to agree that "Blizzard" is not a single entity and even inside their company people might have different or unsettled oppinions about this very issue but I have a hard time agreeing that Blizzard shows no intentions of separating these aspects of the game. They certainly do. The difference between now and vanilla is quite huge and the systems are separated already to a large degree. But blizzard isn't consistent as the Arena weapons and the SSC rings suggest.
And I would like to emphasize that the idea wasn't to seperate the systems much further than they already are. The idea was to bring the pvp weapons in line with the pvp armor. This isn't absurd, its actually consistent to what blizzard has done before with the other pvp gear and it certainly is not impossible.
But all bringing pvp weapons in line with pvp armor means is making it worse. No one has been able to think of a realistic way for melee classes to not just have their weapons based around the damage range and speed being the most important things for them. Look at MS warriors, the S2 weapons are in fact pretty much suboptimal for them given PVE items. Stormherald and BT/MH weapons are just plain better. Even though the PVP weapons have good stat distribution and good amounts of resilience.
The ignore resilience on weapons wouldn't work because then T6 PVE'ers could just decide to not wear any gear with resilience while at the same time picking up the weapons themselves. Due to the resilience cap it would only be like a 250 resil team against a 0 one. And with the 250 resilience team being 1-2 tiers of weaponry behind. What else are you going to do to make PVP weapons better for pve? Put a bunch of armor on a caster sword? Then that becomes the ultimate Pally tank weapon. Load up resilience like crazy? Then you now have a great feral tanking weapon.
And that also goes into the simple fact behind arena PVP now. Stacking resilience and stamina to the exclusion of offensive/healing power is only useful on classes that are being focused. If in your current team dynamic you are not getting focused, then sacrificing dmg for an extra 100 resil and 500 health will actually hurt your team. That's why rogues have switched from having 12 sta everywhere to stacking agi like crazy lately. Or Ice Mages, or paladins and lots of other classes.
So if your solution is to nerf arena weapons (for pve) to get them out of the PVE game, then I'd like you to detail a solution as well to get PVE items out of the PVP game. Which is having a huge impact right now. Especially as some stats like haste and armor pen are only available through PVE atm. Any solution to bring PVP weapons out of the PVE game has to be balanced with getting PVE items out of PVP as well.
Plus of course figure out a way to have arena weapons that can be better for PVP than PVE weapons despite lacking a large chunk of dps on them. I don't see how they can do that (stacking stamina/resil on pvp weapons is not a solution) without introducing game mechanics that seperate PVE from PVP. You should know that resilience is not a PVP only stat, as it is used by many druids in PVE now to reach uncrittable status. Heck in my limited TBC raiding experience I've used my full PVP gear at times on my shaman when doing things like tanking Netherspite.
I am not interested in presenting a full solution to all these issues you are bringing up now unless, maybe, you want to pay for it.
I personally found most suggestions (including my own which was just meant as an example) given in this thread lacking as well and I wouldn't like excessive use of extra mechanics to separate pvp from pve either, since this course can get pretty messy when overused. Generally reducing the DPS from arena weapons to Karazhan level while giving other things specifically aimed at pvp in return seemed like a reasonable approach, though.
Saying this is impossible to do or would only make things worse under the current ruleset seems a bit shortsighted given Blizzard can change it as they see fit.
One of the lead developers stated, that they want to know the detailed issues and not our solutions and part of the reason for that was players being too focused on their own interests and perspective.
I'm quite sure Blizzard can find a solution for players having to pvp to get good weapons for raiding (given they want to), which is my main problem with the current system, and they might find a solution to reduce PvE gear to or below the best PvP gear in PvP again which seems desireable as well.
But I can see your points and this might actually need such a big system overhaul that it won't happen before the next expansion to preserve subscribers. But I kind of expected this already, that is why I referred to the entry level raid and not strictly to Karazhan in an earlier post. The last huge PvP overhaul came with an expansion as well and the general direction seems rather obvious to me.
On a sidenode: I consider Druids using resilience gear more of a druid itemisation problem as they have problems getting enough +def, which would be superior for their tanking role. Additionally we should make sure this discussion does not get out of hand and stays relevant for everyone. So lets stick to the topic, even though I can tell you would prefer to get indepth on a few things that might warrant their own thread.
Last edited by Furion : 09/03/07 at 8:15 PM.
Reason: spelling
Solutions have been proposed - in particular, making a property of the weapon that it gives you AP/damage/healing based on your current resilience. You'd sacrifice too many stats in PvE gear getting the damage/healing/what-not from your PvP weapon. Adding secondary benefits like this to resilience also makes it possible to make resilience-based itemization more desireable whilst reducing its effectiveness in PvE. Basing it on resilience also means that even an arena weapon with 110 effective DPS might be less effective for a Rogue than one with 100 DPS because you'd have to give up ~20% hit on your gear to get it. It's also nice in that it gives PvP players progression in all aspects of the game as they get PvP gear - just that they gear up for PvE much more slowly than they gear up for PvP, much like raiders do.
Saying that "Well, there's no way they could do this in the game now, so any change would have to be an over-the-top one like adding +AP against players/player pets" essentially dismisses the entire topic, just as saying "Well, it's more complicated than just arena weapons are too good in pve - t6 gear is too good in pvp, too," dismisses all the discussion to date. It's being considered.
I hope Davidson or Exewut will chime in with me about the "1/3 rule" of Asheron's Call 2. Let's just put it this way, it was a complete and utter clusterfuck, with ramifications far and beyond merely "keke, we reduced the burst". Two separate rulesets for PvE and PvP will never work when there's a distinct disability to properly balance even one.
Yea the 1/3 rule was a disaster beyond anything I've ever seen for a pvp fix. It got so complicated that if you healed someone who took damage from both players and mobs, you would be healing for 1/3 of the fraction of damage done by players, while healing 100% against damage done by mobs. In the end it didn't even fix the problem they were trying to address, which was to stop people from getting insta-gibed.
PvE players that take game more seriously are forced to do arenas which they don't really want to do.
So I'm not going to argue your point so much as say, "I don't get it." For nearly 2 years, serious raiders were forced -- and yes, I mean forced -- to go farm out gold or a crapload of herbs in order to load up on a multiplicity of elixirs and potions. Now, that's gone. Unless you have the misfortune of being a mana-potion chugging class (my shadow priest for example), you don't have to do that anymore.
Instead, you have the option -- and I'd say that unless you're apping a new guild, it's truly an option -- of farming arena weapons. I can't believe you won't find trying them out a little fun. I find it equally hard to believe there aren't like-minded people in your guild who will also take the games as something different as well as a slow-but-guaranteed means to gear.
And it takes me an hour a week. Perhaps it'll take 2 hours on some servers, I dunno. Fact is if you find the games taking too long, you can simply walk into their start area naked and let them kill you. I mean you'll have to reform your team every few weeks as your rating plummets, but it's not too expensive with the ease of Burning Crusade gold-making.
Originally Posted by Fugazor
PvE itemization holes and RNG loot system.
I would like to see maybe vendor with items that require marks from bosses and reputation from that instance. One each instance or one each tier (simpler). Harder bosses = more marks and more rep. Trash = random marks and some rep.
Simple, nice, no RNG and easy. Just vendors need to have enough items plus need to adjust tokens and rep to match arena effort curve. Maybe even bonuses for players that clear instance faster to reward skill?
So yeah, these are fine ideas. Because I simply don't get this "weapons should be rare" nonsense. It was ridiculous pre-expansion that you could clear BWL or AQ40 for months and not get any of the desired dropped weapons (the Qiraji weapons were a godsend, imo). In fact, the only reason the Brutality Blade and Perdition's and such were common was the sheer volume of MC runs overcoming the RNG.
Further, the fact that "Noobs R Us" could zone into BWL and walk out with the Claw, the CTS and the Staff of the Shadow Flame on their first clear when "Rock Stars" got none of them in 3 months belies the whole notion of what should be cool and rare. A faction-based system at least makes the top guilds get the weapons first. It also means that the magic of "what dropped" would lose weapons, in addition to losing armor. I'm not sure how terrible that is.
My guild was in BWL far longer than it made any real sense to be in order to get people all sorts of drops that people just "had to have". Fact is, AQ40's sidegrades often made that seem logical at the time. Progression-oriented instance loot that gets you to move on pretty much forever after your 12th end boss kill is far more logical than what's their name.
In the meantime, I think the arena weapon availability "fixes" the weapon wait problem just fine. And the fact that it'll take us PVP neophytes much longer than good arena players means that it doesn't harm PVP. I hate the idea of Season 3 weapons being unavailable without a high rating. It just means that PVP will be tiered into haves and have nots -- instead of the current haves and have laters.
So I'm not going to argue your point so much as say, "I don't get it." For nearly 2 years, serious raiders were forced -- and yes, I mean forced -- to go farm out gold or a crapload of herbs in order to load up on a multiplicity of elixirs and potions. Now, that's gone. Unless you have the misfortune of being a mana-potion chugging class (my shadow priest for example), you don't have to do that anymore.
So...we're adding another timesink to compensate for the one that was reduced in severity?
And it takes me an hour a week. Perhaps it'll take 2 hours on some servers, I dunno. Fact is if you find the games taking too long, you can simply walk into their start area naked and let them kill you. I mean you'll have to reform your team every few weeks as your rating plummets, but it's not too expensive with the ease of Burning Crusade gold-making.
That won't remove the five minute queues. It does serve as a pretty good example of just how stupid the arena system is, but that's another topic.
In the meantime, I think the arena weapon availability "fixes" the weapon wait problem just fine. And the fact that it'll take us PVP neophytes much longer than good arena players means that it doesn't harm PVP. I hate the idea of Season 3 weapons being unavailable without a high rating. It just means that PVP will be tiered into haves and have nots -- instead of the current haves and have laters.
For nearly 2 years, serious raiders were forced -- and yes, I mean forced -- to go farm out gold or a crapload of herbs in order to load up on a multiplicity of elixirs and potions. Now, that's gone. Unless you have the misfortune of being a mana-potion chugging class (my shadow priest for example), you don't have to do that anymore.
It was bad and crap. It is still here just nerfed. Plus as you said mana classes are fucked. Delete everything from game besides HP pots and bandages and it will be fine then. Hope they really fix mana with new expansion as announced.
Originally Posted by Mideci
Instead, you have the option
That is great! Arena system is good (besides queues and PvP class imbalance).
Problem is: this is not really an option, it is quite "must to do". If I could choose "hmm wait for that PvE offhand (that drops once per month at least) and spend dkp or play some arenas" it would be fine; "I need to get arena OH because PvE offhand is in at the end of BT and probably never drop" is not fine.
Arena is not broken (well besides that it miss some gear slots for some reason). In fact I would like to see that system to be implemented somehow to bg and world pvp, or even to PvE end game raiding. Thats where they should go: to implement time/reward arena curve in other aspects of the game.
I didn't say there was no way to balance things. Just that they hadn't come up in this thread yet, especially taking into account raiding gear being used in PVP. If PVP gear is going to be nerfed in PVE by either being tied to your own resilience, by being a negative off the other guy's resilience, tied to having 2 piece of equal tier arena armor, etc then why wouldn't it make sense to put similar restrictions on PVE gear in PVP?
And I disagree with saying it is a must do. Having a few people missing PVE weapons is not going to be the end of your raiding progression, especially given some of the rep, heroic and crafted options out there. Vindicator's Brand is worse than Spiteblade for sure, but not by a huge amount. Shamans and warriors its perfectly optimal to use the axe or mace crafted weapons, heck even rogues can do well with them. Hunters there are a lot of good options, and one of the best ranged weapons now is a BOE world drop gun. LC and HH/Thrallmar rep takes care of the caster weapons as well.
09/02/07, 4:29 PM
Just like it used to be, thats how.
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