One part of tuned, in my opinion, is not having any frequently occurring circumstances where a random player has to react in less than 1.5 seconds. With latency and typical raid information overload, this sort of thing ends up being Not Fun, rather than Challenging. Felmyst's Encapsulate is a good example of getting really close to the edge of reasonable reaction times.

I disagree completely, especially in top-end situations such as Sunwell. Encapsulate is in no way shape or form on the edge. With 300 ms which is above average for the average gamer it is extremely reasonable to only ever eat 1 tick of encapsulate, occasionally 2 if you had a slow reaction time for some reason. Which to me is extremely reasonable. A better example of borderline expectations would be consistent 1.0 spirit shock casts (Normally reduced to 1.5) and even 1.0 is doable, rogue can even dps a bit because of 1.0 gcd.

My definition of tuned is removing something like getting hit twice 0.2 seconds post-confounding blow on twins and watching your MT pretty much die in... 0.2 seconds (7-9 confounding @ 0.2 + 10+ with crushings at 0.01/0.00). Removing things that you can 100% honestly say "I got RNG'd", and this does not include say all locks and hunters getting burned on Brutallus, while that is bad RNG in a sense it is not a "flaw" in the encounter's mechanics.

I think you misunderstood me. I think Encapsulate is fine how it is. I meant that if that ability's damage was increased, or the player had slightly less warning time, it would be a bit much.

Likewise Spirit Shock and Gas Nova are actually more reasonable because you only have a select group of players who have to deal with them, know to expect them, and occur within a reasonably predictable window such that they can prepare themselves for them.

The point I was trying to make was that adding RNG to quick reaction situations can easily push things from tuned to overtuned. But that just goes to show how frustrating getting RNG'd can be.

Except shaman right? I honestly can't see anyone killing them with any less than 5 at the moment. That doesn't seem tuned to me though the problem is more with the class than the encounter design. Ultimately we're back to Naxx and TBC 2.0 tuning around consumables, only now we're being tuned around leatherworking and bloodlusts. These types of benefits must make encounter design decisions very difficult to make as if you don't account for the abilities the encounter is too easy, but if you do then it can be impossible without stacking your raid. Still, it is a good fight, you just get insane returns to your success based on your DPS.

Hunters suffer serious penalties on this fight, there's really no reason to bring them, and I don't see the DPS requirements being met with any in the raid until the encounter is nerfed or outgeared.

Eh, might be redundant to mention, but I'm sure the fight is doable without shamans as more SWP gear is farmed and as the execution is perfected.

I don't think this is comparable with the pre-TBC world buff / flask effect at all. Fact is, a profession will probably always yield better DPS results than others for either a specific class or just globally, and if you are pushing for world firsts, then it is only natural that you stack the raid with leatherworkers or whatever profession it takes. It would be overtuned or comparable with the Naxx flask/buff craze if you needed hours of investment to get insane gains back, a la world buffs. This is just picking one profession and going with it, and not like the drums are so expensive to bring to the field. Neither would I call 5 shamans in a raid "raid stacking" per se. It's 1 enh which everyone should have, 3 restos and 1 elemental. And it's definitely not like a few more SWP epics and a bit better execution isn't going to make up for the lack of 1 or 2 shamans.

4 or 5 more leatherworkers in raid and 1 more blood lust in your raid isn't comparable with the naxx flask / world buff effect. It's just a linear gain from stacking the best possible profession / class, it will maybe put you a week or two ahead in terms of SWP epics farming and execution perfecting. And I believe that is perfectly viable as long as the guild in question has the logistics to provide that, e.g fielding enough classes to stack when possible or supporting funds to raiders for the best DPS profession possible when it's called for.

Whatever penalties you think they suffer from are more than made up for by the advantages they bring to the raid on this encounter. Three participating on our kill fly's in the face of your second statement too.

Why balance things around overpowering core abilities and tell people to "gear up more" to compensate rather than nerf whatever it is that makes shaman so desirable?
5/25 is worse than 8 warriors/ 40 pre- expansion- same ratio but we now have an extra class per faction.
For me at least the LW problem is much less significant than the shaman one- it is far easier to pick up a new tradeskill than reroll a totally new class and start from the very beginning.

The only tuning issue that really annoys me is the need for shaman more so than other classes. It makes sense of course, that the hardest fights require the most raid healing/dps, therefore more shaman are the obvious choice. It's just a frustrating situation. Two shaman in our raid (1 enhance, 1 resto) is most common, and we've had to do Kalec->Felmyst with one before. We do have 4 in the guild including the enhance who often respecs, but between recent Western Australian internet issues and attendance, we very rarely have them all online.

The only changes I can think of that can be made to lessen the shaman requirement all have negative impacts elsewhere:
- Flat out reduce their healing output, mainly chain heal. (nobody wants a nurf)
- Nurf Bloodlust and totems. (nobody wants a nurf)
- Reduce raid damage in fights (which would be taking a step backwards in raid design and awareness)

Although while typing those out... a couple of 'possible' ideas came to mind:
- Buff other healers AoE healing spells. eg: Raid wide CoH with limited targets, lower cooldown but less effective tranquillity, possibly brand new paladin spell such as an AoE temporary blessing/shield/buff.
- Though not related to raid healing, some sort of dps synergy by having non-shaman healers in dps groups would be nice.

I'm just pulling ideas out of my arse, but I'd like to think the developers recognise the problem and have ideas in mind for WotLK.

So your screenshot would lead one to believe. And yet I find it difficult to imagine any utility worth a double casting time on a classes main ability on one of the most difficult DPS benchmarks in the game.

Specious reasoning at it's best, I could trot out the "It's a wonder you bring any casters (including healers) to the fight at all" line. Fact is we have killed it with three hunters in the raid, whether you believe me or not is immaterial.

When I look at various raid compositions, the worst tuned thing that I am seeing is shamans. Practically every highly progressed guild has lots of shamans in it.

They have the best raid healing ability in the game, and are unique among healer classes in that they provide a significant dps boost to others through totems/bloodlust/mana tide. As other variants, elemental shaman dps is pretty reasonable (excellent when you take totems into account), and the same goes for an enhancement shaman in a melee group. Plus the very fact that they can fill all three roles (all they can't do is tank) makes them very versatile to switch as required between particular encounters.

Blizzard have done a pretty good job in Sunwell of tuning encounters around what is achievable, and this seems to include having rather more shamans than the 2-3 that a balanced raid composition would dictate.

Ideally for any raid I like to see 3 resto shaman, 1 enhance and 1 elemental shaman. For healing intensive fights such as ET it isn't unreasonable to have the enhance and elemental shaman to go resto, and the alternative would mean you have 2 additional resto shaman on your roster who may virtually never be needed for possibly any other encounter in this expansion. I think its a little silly to generalize that any highly progressed guild has more than 5 shaman on their raiding roster (assuming it only has 30-35 people on it).

Honestly I think holy priests are widely underestimated in all the "brain heal" hype, try bringing a few. However I do feel as if pallies at this late stage in the game are becoming more or more replaceable with the exception of 3 buffs, as it is generally half-retarded to bring more than 2 holy paladins to any given encounter.

It still doesnt change the fact that with the current encounter designs Shamans not only outperform everyone except superskilled priests, but also brings the best group support buffs of all classes bar VT/VE to the table.

I bet WF, WoA, MT, Bloodlust and Fire Elementals make up a very significant chunk of the total DPS of a given raid. Would be interesting to see some actual numbers on that though. I know I can do about ~100 dps more when I get a WoA in my group without counting Heroism. I bet it's significantly more for classes that scale properly.

What does the rest bring? Um... well... priests have Imp Spirit (and lose CoH among other things in the process, reducing their healing output), druids bring a buff and a combat res and pallies bring a buff and an aura. How exactly does that compare to 4 totems, BL and an elemental? As it is to have the best healing team, you bring 1 priest, 1 pally, 1 druid, then as many shamans as you can and then fill with whatever is available, probably taking a 2nd pally over a 2nd priest/druid for the extra blessing.

Something needs to change here.

On a sidenote, the thread's topic was "what is tuned" and not "shamans are too good" and "how can we make dru/priest/pala more viable". So let's leave that for another (new?) thread and stick to the topic.

If the tuning process is incorporating the availability of limitless quantities of Heroisms/Bloodlusts (who's to say that you couldn't bring 10 Shaman to a raid, if you had them?), then it's entirely relevant.

Totems, etc. are no more powerful than Paladin blessings. A Druid's Rebirth, used correctly, can make or break attempts (pick up your Warrior tank on RoS phase 1?). Priests still have the highest physical healing throughput in the game, period.

The only thing that is "out of whack", in the grander scheme of things, is Heroism. It's simply too powerful in its current form. I expect to see a Forbearance-style debuff put in place as soon as Blizzard settles on some other key balance issues - there's no point in addressing it now, with 3.0 and Wrath only months(?) away.

I think warlock curses are far more out of whack than bloodlust. You will be hard pressed to do a raid without a very minimum of 2 warlocks, because COR and COS are just that good. You probably want 3 too, assuming you run with 2+ fire mages. If you think WOTLK and deathknights eating more spots, it should lead to lesser warlocks per raid, which only exacerbates the problem. I think they should merge COS and COE into one curse, and probably have that curse increase nature/holy damage while they're at it.

While a fourth warlock is not nearly as good as the first three (presuming you benefit from CoE), it is still a decent benefit though. The ability to use a personal damage curse and the slight increase in ISB uptime are enough to make them still an excellent damage source.

I do agree however that bloodlust and probably drums will need some sort of mechanical change but we shall see what comes. At least the potential fixes for all these issues is fairly obvious and is more a question of desired effect rather than a problem in implementation.

The forbearance-style debuff on affected players is an extremely elegant solution to the Bloodlust "problem." With a 10-minute "Lustbearance" applied to everyone that receives the buff, each DPS group can only get one Bloodlust per fight and suddenly the perfect number of shamans to bring to boost your DPS is 2-3, which is right where it should be.

I've been worried about this Heroism stacking problem as well. We recently opened up recruitment for another healer, and while the Chain Heals are nice, it was a no brainer to have the spot go to shaman almost purely for an extra Heroism.

I'm not sure that the answer is to nerf Heroism however, while that would accomplish the goal of making endless stacking less desirable, I'd much rather see them give some better raid utility to the other healing classes. With the exception of bring a DS priest (which seems to happen less and less as splash damage increases.) There isn't much advantage to healer stacking for the other three healing classes. Once you hit the wall on paladin buffs, they essentially just consume a raid spot, and with more guilds running Ret paladins for utility reasons, that eats another reason to bring a holy pally.

Paladins:
One thing I'd like to see them consider is to give some more valuable Auras to the paladins, the non-stacking resistances and generally unused Concentration (outside Muru of course,) leave the Aura a perfect place to expand paladin raid utility.

Priest:
While making DS trainable would actually reduce the number of them needed, it would provide a DPS increase to the raid while allowing them to spec CoH, lessening the need for the Heroism stacking. The DPS value of Imp. DS is extremely underrated imo, even if its not as dramatic as say, a 5th shaman.

Druid:
Reverting back to the old tree aura would be a good start, allowing you to use druids to improve the value of the other healers in their group. While I grant the value of the aura in buffing the tanks, it seems that more often than not they have a hard time staying in range, leaving the aura less than used.

This thread has been dealing with "tuned" or not "tuned", but a large portion of this comes back to class balance and raid metrics. Most of the reasons that people are raid stacking is to make up deficiencies that are not being filled by a "standard" raid makeup, accenting some of these underrepresented classes in PVE would help fix the problem.

I dont see a "Lustbearance" fixing the need for shaman much at all. Take Muru for example, a fully Lusted p2 raid (5 shamans) is still a mammoth advantage compared to only two of the hunter/caster/melee groups being Lusted (2 shamans).

Not to mention totems + healing output compared to any other class.

Killing twins with 2 shaman is hell, and was noticeably easier on one of our earlier attempts when we had 3.

Personally I would nurf the duration or haste amount on Lust itself, as well as buffing other healers AOE spells and give them some (more) dps synergy. I'm honestly confused as to how it could of gotten to the point it is now. I dont think one single class has ever had such a clear advantage over any other class in the history of WoW (in a stacking sense, excluding Ret paladin, SV hunter, etc). Fire mages and fury warriors in Naxx? Not even close.

I disagree. WoA alone adds ~100 dps for a scaling gimped class like my shadowpriest. No other class buff adds a full 100 dps and that's just one of their 4 totems.

There is also no group buff that comes even close to the bonus melee get from WF. A raid with 5 shaman healers is always a better raid than the same raid with 4 shaman healers and an extra paladin.

I don't see any real problem with just halving either the amount of haste or the duration. This fixes the problem for all occasions (such as the one Intermission mentioned).