This problem needs to be solved if -threat auras are ever going to apply to anything except exactly a 5-person group. This is required for them to become raid-wide, and this is required for them to make sense in 5-man content, so I want this to happen and have been thinking about how it should. I particularly want this stuff to matter for 5-man groups.
Why not make it apply to everybody except people who are designated as a tank on the raid interface? Then just allow access to the raid panel while in party.
Why bother calling it a totem instead of a blessing? People are trying to make shaman into paladins with chain heal. That wasn't the original intent of the post, nor do I think its a good idea. Really, the only problem I see is that synergy is just too powerful right now compared to individual performance. A bad enh shaman shouldn't be more valuable than a good rogue, and he is. The fact that putting a resto shaman into a melee group that gives him nothing and he's giving them only a gimpy version of what an enh shaman does is still considered a good idea is a sign that those buffs are a bit too powerful.
The other issue is that every time there's a 'having 1 of this spec is amazing' type thing, that's really harsh on any guild that may only have one. Like we have 1 ret paly, 1 enh shaman, 1 moonkin. These people are all consistent enough that having a second one and having one or the other of them sitting out 45% of the time is dumb, but the days when we don't have a ret paladin our melee all lose imp might for normal might, our whole raid loses 3% crit, the dps all lose kings, the whole party loses 2% damage, all the ranged are far worse off for mana, the melee need a bit more healing. All to get a rogue that does a few hundred dps more.
Why bother calling it a totem instead of a blessing? People are trying to make shaman into paladins with chain heal. That wasn't the original intent of the post, nor do I think its a good idea. Really, the only problem I see is that synergy is just too powerful right now compared to individual performance. A bad enh shaman shouldn't be more valuable than a good rogue, and he is. The fact that putting a resto shaman into a melee group that gives him nothing and he's giving them only a gimpy version of what an enh shaman does is still considered a good idea is a sign that those buffs are a bit too powerful.
I don't see how using powerful synergy between classes is a bad thing at all when it comes to balance. The alternative is making everyone do basically the same damage, same healing etc., which would make for a very boring game.
The other issue is that every time there's a 'having 1 of this spec is amazing' type thing, that's really harsh on any guild that may only have one. Like we have 1 ret paly, 1 enh shaman, 1 moonkin. These people are all consistent enough that having a second one and having one or the other of them sitting out 45% of the time is dumb, but the days when we don't have a ret paladin our melee all lose imp might for normal might, our whole raid loses 3% crit, the dps all lose kings, the whole party loses 2% damage, all the ranged are far worse off for mana, the melee need a bit more healing. All to get a rogue that does a few hundred dps more.
You can kill hard bosses without these specific, uber-utility specs. I've personally killed Brutallus with and without an Enhancement Shaman, Ret Paladin, Malediction Lock, etc. I've sat in the melee group, leeching all the good synergy and killed him, and I've sat in the tank group with nothing to leach save LotP and killed him on a night where only 25 people logged on. Is it harder to go without? Yes, but its not impossible and you just have to deal with it sometimes.
Define 'non-tanks.' Now do so in a raid environment, with the Blizz interface. Given that it's an aura, and auras generally hit all affected, whether they get a benefit or not, I don't see this one flying.
Other than that, it's an interesting concept...but this takes a lot of customization out of the game. To be honest, I don't foresee a major overhaul to the current system of buffing, or debuffing. Some classes may simply get additional quirks to them, or changes to existing spells, others may find some of their debuffs' functionality limited or nerfed completely...but a serious overhaul? I doubt it.
Edit: You also have Shadow Priest stuff only in the priest slot. What happens if you have no Shadow Priests? And to continue my thought above, if this made it in, then what would quickly happen is one of each class, followed by filling in the required amount of healers (another 3-6, depending), followed by another 10-12 of whatever happens to be the top DPS class/spec at that particular gear level.
In reality this wouldn't happen in *most* raid groups...but I could very easily see guilds trying for world, or even server firsts stacking their group with 6 rogues and 6 mages, for instance. Melee DPS and Ranged DPS both covered, all other buffs are in place, done deal! Let's go kill Patchwerk 2.0 now. (random boss picked, just because.)
I don't think defining tanks is a significant problem with my idea, but I agree that it has obvious problems just like the current system. I didn't spend much time thinking over the exact details of the buffs, it was more about the general idea that if you want balance the game probably has to be a lot more homogenous. In this system VT would be a general priest debuff, so that's not a problem. Any other buff would be made personal or removed entirely.
The idea of the system otherwise is that those "X%" should be so significant that there's no way that a player that doesn't raid buff could compare with respect to rdps or overall survival. There should never be reason to skip mages or warlocks if you want magic damage since all of the raid buffs should stack with each other. The second member of the class will be less necessary but improve survival (or the other way around if it's a survival fight) so that it shouldn't be impossible to play with only one. The rest will do more damage/healing than the buffers but contribute significantly less to overall raid performance if everything works.
Blizzard has a lot of things to balance. Just for endgame in WotLK, there's 25 man raids, 10 man raids, 5 man groups, 2v2 arenas, 3v3 arenas, and 5v5 arenas. I'm assuming they don't even consider 1v1 or solo play.
DPS is probably the easiest to look at, and of course being a Mage I have a vested interest in the Mage/Warlock balance. Say you want each to have equal rDPS, defined as Personal DPS + Synergy DPS.
Right now, the first Warlock casting CoS has his personal DPS PLUS about 10% of the DPS of every other warlock and shadow priest. His utility is very high.
The 2nd Warlock, casting CoE, has his personal DPS plus about 10% of the DPS of the mages. (I'm just going to ignore CoR for now...)
The 1st Mage has his personal DPS, since Imp Scorch really doesn't provide much to any other class. Even if it did, a 2nd Mage provides nothing.
The current issue, is that the Mage personal DPS is already equivalent or slightly lower than the Warlock, but the Warlock also gets that additional synergy.
One solution is to massively increase the Mage personal DPS (And by massive, when you factor in Synergy DPS, I'm talking like 40% or more here). This does all sorts of interesting things to say, 5 mans, where a Warlock has lower Synergy DPS than a 25-man. Of course, you can play around with restrictions on Mage DPS, like having to focus on a single target or standing still, or buffs to Warlocks like additional CC, but this gets really difficult to balance, really fast, for only 1 of 45 possible class comparisons.
Another solution is to buff Mage Synergy DPS, that is, give them buffs or debuffs to aid the raid on boss fights. Well, what's hard about this? Look at the classes that get stacked, and why. Paladins, really need 3 for the 3 major blessings, because a Paladin can only cast 1 blessing. Warlocks? Again, 3 because each can only cast 1 curse per target. Shamans? Well, no cap here really, but any given Shaman can only buff 1 party, meaning it takes 5 to cover the whole raid. Aside from Kings, none of these are spec dependant. Mages have Imp Scorch halfway down the fire tree, and Winter's Chill in deep frost. Neither of these really benefit any other classes.
I think the GOAL for balance should be increasing benefits for the first 2 of any class, then they bring nothing but personal DPS or marginal benefit (Giving freedom to tailor a group to your guild or the encounter).
A class like Warlocks, yeah, combine all magic into one curse and let them cast both a DPS and a Debuff curse (Keeps Personal DPS pretty much flat as you keep adding, instead of that DPS curse increasing them by 100-200 DPS as you go beyond debuff needs.)
Mages, well, I'm not so sure. It's not really built to be a debuffing class, and there's no mechanic aside from deep talents that prevents 1 mage from doing it all (Which then results in arguements over which Mage gets to play the gimp spec for the week to get talent X). Group buffs neatly get around having 1 mage do it all, but can lead to a "This fight requires 5 mages to proceed" situation. Still, if the buff benefits mana users only (Mana return on Crits? Brilliance Aura?) that could lead to 2 mages needed and a potential 3rd depending on that last group.
There's a lot to balance, across several different play types, but hopefully this time around Blizzard manages it. I've had enough of gimmicks like Spellsteal trying to balance things. I think in the end though, we either have to accept some level of imbalance, or play a game with 1 class and 10 different sets of button graphics.
Well, one really easy way they could increase Mage Synergy is to simply give a secondary effect to Ignite - "Increases Fire Damage done to the target by 10%" or "Increases Fire Crit Chance by 5%" or something to that effect. Yes, this would give a benefit to Fire Spec Warlocks as well, but it would be a very decent boost from stacking Mages and would give you an effect that vaguely reminds people of good old rolling ignites, but not nearly so broken.
I mean the numbers can be toyed with in whatever way, but Ignite seems like a very good candidate for providing a passive raid buff (more Mages = more likely to have Ignite uptime) AND it wouldn't have to completely unbalance anything.
Granted, the second thing I'm still hoping for is to actually give a real raiding use for Slow; they don't have to make it required, but make it actually provide a tangible benefit on raid bosses; something comparable but different to make up for the fact that you're playing a suboptimal dps spec. That could range from something like what Affliction Warlocks get (just a flat percentage reduction in damage dealt) - something that is considered nice, but optional; to giving a secondary effect that increases damage dealt to the target due to reduced reaction time or whatever; a 3-5% raidwide damage boost - something to make up for the fact that you're having to maintain uptime on a spell that is both expensive and has to be recast every 15 seconds.
If nothing else it would be nice to have more options, not fewer. Seeing everyone in the standard predetermined raid specs and stacked in accordance with whatever is the best min-maxed option for a given raid is not even remotely desirable.
I've still enjoyed using my gimmick spec (I've been 41/17/3 for a few weeks now - topped out damage on Brutallus two weeks now - although it was a tie with a Warlock this week - we both had a pretty stacked group; massively topped out Felmyst both in terms of Direct Damage on the boss AND AOE - I had around 600k on Felmyst and 550k AOE; next highest on Felmyst proper was 560k; I did more than double what a Rogue did on that fight) but I understand even still that it is a gimmick that is just giving some bonus raid utility from +360 healing across the raid and some cheap effects usable on Felmyst; no real benefit on the twins and I have yet to have gotten in for any of our M'uru attempts.
It still was just very telling when I looked at my Recount data on Brutallus yesterday. The two of us with top damage were a Warlock and me. I had Fireball, Ignite, PoM+Pyro, and Arcane Blast damage listed (I open with AB for low initial threat, spam it until I feel ready to start nuking) - the Warlock had 100% damage of "Shadow Bolt". They don't even have to try to max it out AND they provide substantial synergy.
Maybe the answer isn't raid-wide totems, but to spread the love as far as uber-group-buffs go.
What if each melee dps class offered their group a buff that was close to windfury? Have rogue's slice-and-dice work just as it does now for the rogue, but also gives +10% (or whatever number) increased attack speed to everyone in the party. Improve a feral druid's aura until it's on par with windfury. Etc. Sure you still pack the melee group with melee, but now each member provides a substantial buff that you can't live without (like windfury is now).
So they key isn't class stacking, but encouraging you to take different classes. One thing I hate about being a rogue is I provide nothing for the group...no buffs, no boss debuffs, no real utility, just damage. I don't think any class should be that way. All classes should provide great buffs in a raid environment.
Instead of looking for ways to give windfury to all, look for ways to have every class provide their own windfury (or whatever buff). And you don't have to make these buffs improve already high-dps classes any further...in my rogue example, the rogue provides more group DPS but has no increased DPS of his own. The goal would be for any group of 5 different melee classes to do about the same DPS no matter which classes were in it.
Implement similar group buffs for casters (not nearly as familiar with them, so I don't have any suggestions). The goal being to promote diversity without over-rewarding any specific class choices.
As I read through this thread, it's fairly synonymous with my trials and tribulations of the BC raiding scene. I'm a Mage, I'm a Raid/Guild leader, and we're a 3 day a week raid group that's been on the council for a little while(attendance issues due to new jobs/moving players/school). I absolutely HATE stacking a raid group simply because most of the people that I raid with I've been raiding with for over 3 years now. I've had to start recruiting more of specific classes to allow us to have an increased amount of flexibility between encounters, which is a form of stacking.
As with Gurg's old thread on the power of consumables, this thread is very much on point with how overpowered some raid synergies are, and how they can only get worse without some sort of intervention on the part of Blizzard in the form of dumbing them down, or making it so that they're not as stackable. There has to be a point of diminishing returns, or we'll see a lot of the "stack or die" mentalities. We need both more, and less synergies, more raid wide synergies, and less class specific synergies.
In early BC we were able to get away with 6 healers for just about everything, and have our Ret Paladin(before ret was popular) heal when we needed an extra healer, and on rare occassions with 7 healers and the Ret Paladin healing as needed. We now run 8 full time healers, causing us to lose 2 DPS slots, with the option of having our Ret Paladin respec, or add another healer for a specific fight allowing up to 10 healers as needed.
I used to maximize the group makeup based upon who I had in the raid group, but I would still take that 3rd/4th rogue even if I didn't have the windfury totem for them, as we only ran 2 shaman in our raid group, Resto and Enhancement. The Mages, for the most part, had the Shadow Priest and Resto Shaman, allowing the Resto Shaman to mindlessly spam Chain Heal, and allowing the mages the option to use Flame Caps/Destruction Potions.
The synergies between some classes are so large that without those synergies their output in a raid group(either healing or dps) comes to the point of being questionable. I'm now running 2-3 Resto Shaman because of their Chain Heal and Heroism. Due to the synergies between some classes, the T4/badge level Enhancement/Resto Shaman isn't a huge loss to the raid group compaired to a mid T6 level Enhancement/Resto Shaman. A Shadow Priest in Tailored Epics is "good enough" for most T6 level encounters when you don't have a Shadow Priest available.
My Personal experiences:
A Ret Paladin does horrible DPS without an enhancement shaman and battle shout(not too huge of a loss)
Mages who don't have a Shadow Priest have to chain drink mana pots, mana gems, and use Evocation to barely finish most fights with any mana at all to make use of their "Magecute" Fire Talents. Recent issue since our Shadow Priest went to Basic Training for his new job, gone for 3-5 months, it's harsh right now.
Destructo Warlocks are slightly nerfed without a Shadow Priest.
Without 2 Paladins(we did this one last week) the group is painfully nerfed, losing out on Kings/Might/Wisdom is a HUGE loss in efficiencies to the raid group, both in terms of DPS, and in terms of overall raid survivability
As a Mage and Raid Leader, I'm now running 1-2 Mages per raid, and 4 warlocks(3 Destructo, 1 Affliction). It's a hard decision on my part to only run that few mages, but I can't overlook the sheer DPS capabilities of the Warlocks coupled with their DPS multipliers to the overall raid, as well as the their health advantage, healability, and lack of a complete reliance on having a Shadow Priest present.
Why bring a Mage? CC?(trash pulls) Gimmick Fights?(yes) Int(HA)? Amp/Dampen Magic?(meh) Food/Water?(go buy some) Portals?(hearthstone) DPS?(Why when the Warlock is better at it spamming 1 button?)
I'm stacking the raid because of the sheer amount of power of certain classes abilities/raid wide utility, and it's something that I hate doing.
I both love and loath playing my Mage, I also play a Feral Druid, Resto Druid, and Combat Rogue, but my Mage is my main character and always will be.
Last edited by Austin : 05/28/08 at 3:53 PM.
Reason: clarification point
You can kill hard bosses without these specific, uber-utility specs. I've personally killed Brutallus with and without an Enhancement Shaman, Ret Paladin, Malediction Lock, etc. I've sat in the melee group, leeching all the good synergy and killed him, and I've sat in the tank group with nothing to leach save LotP and killed him on a night where only 25 people logged on. Is it harder to go without? Yes, but its not impossible and you just have to deal with it sometimes.
By that logic, why bother to have this thread at all? The point I'm making is that not only does the current balance of group and raid synergies lead to stacking certain classes in high end guilds, but it also hurts more casual guilds by an even larger factor as they simply don't always have these classes or specs available all the time. Guilds that have been killing Illidan for ever can rebalance their raid with alts or backup raiders that are comparably geared and not suffer much for it. A guild that's been killing him for a month and then finds out they really want 3 resto shaman for some fight when they only have 1 geared up and he's gone for a week is in a much worse spot. A guild where the holy paladins all have tons of ret gear laying around and have been taking turns going ret to keep from getting bored in BT is fine when the ret paly can't come. A guild with only 1 paly's worth of ret gear suddenly sees a pretty substantial rdps loss from not having jow, jotc or kings in the raid.
People seem to have gotten the idea that 'synergy' = 'static % increase to group/raid dps', and draw the conclusion that the way to balance classes is to give everyone more of these % increases. But really the increases do not need to be static across classes.
As a toy example, imagine the following Curse of Elements (pulling numbers out of thin air) -- "Increases warlock damage by 10%, and increases mage damage by 30%". Suddenly once you have the requisite number of warlocks to have that curse up, it becomes better to bring a mage, so once you hit that number of warlocks you don't want to keep stacking them. Of course there would never be a debuff stated in such a form, but there are cleverer ways to implement it: pre-TBC ignite double-dipping CoE worked in exactly such a way.
Well, one really easy way they could increase Mage Synergy is to simply give a secondary effect to Ignite - "Increases Fire Damage done to the target by 10%" or "Increases Fire Crit Chance by 5%" or something to that effect. Yes, this would give a benefit to Fire Spec Warlocks as well, but it would be a very decent boost from stacking Mages and would give you an effect that vaguely reminds people of good old rolling ignites, but not nearly so broken.
I mean the numbers can be toyed with in whatever way, but Ignite seems like a very good candidate for providing a passive raid buff (more Mages = more likely to have Ignite uptime) AND it wouldn't have to completely unbalance anything.
...
One problem with any sort of percent based uptime is that it greatly favors raid stacking depending on the percents. Take a look at all the theorycrafting on the new Winter's Grasp talent to see this. It takes a lot of work with probability and rotations, and even then I guarantee someone will figure out how to make it overpowered in short order.
If you swap to 100% uptime debuffs via talents the math gets a lot easier, but you wind up in a situation where instead of taking just 1 mage, you take 1 fire and 1 frost mage. Then again, plenty of other classes are brought based upon spec.
Debuffs are another possibility, like the oft heard suggestion of making Amplify and Dampen magic into debuffs of some type. Problem with this one is that there's now a hard line at exactly 2 mages, no more, no less. Of course, if you aim for 2 of each class and then 5 random suited to an encounter this may work, at least for 25-man raids. You bring 2 mages for debuffs + DPS, and maybe another mage if you need decursing, or because he makes funny jokes.
Then you have party based buffs. Now, you have to be careful that they're useful only to specific classes or else you wind up with 5 mages in every raid, so that everyone can get +25% crit damage. Mana or spell related mechanics work well in this regard, seeing that a usual raid contains 3 full mana based groups, and 2 groups with no or only 1-2 mana users each. Now you bring 2 mages, maybe that third if the last group needs it.
Pick the one you like, I think any of the last 3 are valid choices, for any class. Just remember how many of a class you want to aim for.
I think there needs to be more ROS gauntlets type of encounters. Mages are bad on boss but essential for trash? Make the trash part of the boss fight.
It's gimmicky, but so are any class/spec's unique abilities.
Also, if the opponents are more random, like the priestess fight in Magister Terrace, there will be less theorycrafting beforehand and less raid stackage.
One problem with any sort of percent based uptime is that it greatly favors raid stacking depending on the percents. Take a look at all the theorycrafting on the new Winter's Grasp talent to see this. It takes a lot of work with probability and rotations, and even then I guarantee someone will figure out how to make it overpowered in short order.
If you swap to 100% uptime debuffs via talents the math gets a lot easier, but you wind up in a situation where instead of taking just 1 mage, you take 1 fire and 1 frost mage. Then again, plenty of other classes are brought based upon spec.
Debuffs are another possibility, like the oft heard suggestion of making Amplify and Dampen magic into debuffs of some type. Problem with this one is that there's now a hard line at exactly 2 mages, no more, no less. Of course, if you aim for 2 of each class and then 5 random suited to an encounter this may work, at least for 25-man raids. You bring 2 mages for debuffs + DPS, and maybe another mage if you need decursing, or because he makes funny jokes.
Then you have party based buffs. Now, you have to be careful that they're useful only to specific classes or else you wind up with 5 mages in every raid, so that everyone can get +25% crit damage. Mana or spell related mechanics work well in this regard, seeing that a usual raid contains 3 full mana based groups, and 2 groups with no or only 1-2 mana users each. Now you bring 2 mages, maybe that third if the last group needs it.
Pick the one you like, I think any of the last 3 are valid choices, for any class. Just remember how many of a class you want to aim for.
Well, that's directly the situation we have with Warlocks right now in that bringing another Warlock provides you with increased damage (as you have yet another Improved Shadowbolter firing away not to mention the curses) whereas bringing another Mage provides nothing. The goal should be to add more comparable synergies so you have flexibility (and benefit!) to shuffling the raid however you want to within the bounds of xxx tanks, xxx healers, xxxx dps + specialists (depending on the gimmick of the fight, be it cc, enrage, spell steal, caster tanking etc etc etc). As it stands, you have extreme min-maxing that occurs because there genuinely are pretty big gaps in potential due to mechanics. That should be narrowed; DPS should be largely interchangeable with Utility compensating for direct DPS numbers; with some classes that just is not the case.
I don't see how using powerful synergy between classes is a bad thing at all when it comes to balance. The alternative is making everyone do basically the same damage, same healing etc., which would make for a very boring game.
I think some of the suggestions in this thread are leading down that path. You could keep a lot of the group style buffs if you could dynamically change the group sizes in a raid. Is there any reason outside of vanilla dungeons to keep the 5-man structure? This way you would have your healer group, ranged dps group, melee/hunter group, tank group just like you do with Grid. It wouldn't solve the problem of stacking one class ove another, but it could be a start.
I think that raid flexibility Praetorian speaks of is a bit overrated. I agree that if his suggested changes were made RDPS wouldn't change much and flexibility would. But the more stringent breakdown of raiding roles we have now is also desirable. I think it builds a team mentality when you know you can't do as well without THE enhancement shaman or THE MS warrior. In sports we value the teamwork aspect more than a team like the Yankees that simply gobbles up all the talent and exhibits poor team chemistry. Raiding is definitely a team effort and I value a team with teamwork over one without. His suggestions is a step towards eliminating that first level dependency on raidmates and I can't see this happening losing part of that team feel. I guess what I'm trying to communicate is that when you bring someone to a Sunwell raid you do it because they are exactly what you are looking for to fill a specific role. Praetorian's ideas would muddy these roles.
I however should note that flexibility would allow for a raid leader to more easily discriminate based on player skill which does not seem to be a bad thing. For example if locks and magi really were equal you would take the better player every time. I say screw that, get the good players playing the right classes and then you can flourish.
Besides if encounters demand a certain class balance you always adjust to meet it. If you're claiming that five shaman or four warlocks is unreasonable I disagree with you because raid stacking already happens frequently in another respect and it is accepted. It happens in breaking down the number of healers, tanks, and damage dealers you put in a raid. I bet you carry more healers for the twins than you do for M'uru because that's simply what it takes to beat the encounter. No one complains that Gorefiend takes only one tank while the Council takes four. That's written off as conforming to the requirements of the fight. Why is adding a shaman or a warlock any different? Nowhere is it implied that the distribution of raid slots is to be egalitarian across classes. In fact that's totally impractical given that some class can fill more role than others.
I apologize if this is poorly written or if I am unclear but I'm being rushed into preparation for a vacation!
For me the difference is this: if you are simply trying to fill a particular role (healers, tanks, dps) there are multiple classes to fill that role, and it is pretty realistic to be able to find someone capable of that task. It becomes more difficult, however, when encounters are balanced for absurd stacking of one class -- particularly annoying as I said in my experience with alliance guilds and shaman (I have been in several raiding guilds since BC and none were ever able to get a desired number of shaman). If you have a raid roster made up of enough tanks, and healers, and dps, and a decent class balance, I think it's unfair, and poor game design, to be held back in progression by inability to stack an absurd number of one class, because it has nothing to do with skill and almost everything to do with getting lucky with recruitment and what classes people that got bored and burned out happened to be.
I guess what I'm trying to communicate is that when you bring someone to a Sunwell raid you do it because they are exactly what you are looking for to fill a specific role.
I don't think people are arguing with that sentiment, the issue is that you're looking at needing several of one specific role, and 1-none of others and actively having to remove people from the raid for balance (Which is not an issue in and of itself) which is terribly unforgiving towards certain classes (Which is the issue).
I don't have a problem with "The enhancement shaman" I have a problem with needing him and the other 3 shaman, and having to tell my friendly mage that they need to sit on the sidelines because they're not good. Would rather not have to overrecruit and stack the guild with certain classes while long time members sit on the side. Obviously everyone spends time on the wait list, but when you've got 4-5 of some classes and 1 of others that's a balance issue.
I know this has been suggested a lot of times before (and maybe in this thread without me noticing), but a way to make mages "stack" would be to make Mana gems to work exactly the way Health stones work with wells etc. Another mage, another Mana gem (different size based on talents). This would be really nice in Wrath because of the Mana pot-debuff (reducing mana to 0% after one minute afaik). Also make Amplify/Dampen a group buff and increasing duration to 30 mins would be a nice and maybe even buff it (increase spell dmg done + healing recieved or something in that line).
Why not make it apply to everybody except people who are designated as a tank on the raid interface? Then just allow access to the raid panel while in party.
This could work, but it (1) increases the complexity of doing things in a 5-man group, and (2) is really problematic when, for example, the MT dies and the feral druid switches from kittyform to bearform in the middle of a fight. So, I don't like it nearly as much. I'd prefer to piggyback the behavior on things people are already doing, rather than force another setup step. (Can you tell I've been thinking about this for a while?)
Lots of people complain about some fights being optimal for 6 healers and 1 tank and some being optimal for 10 healers and 4 tanks. That's been a constant complaint. While the simple answer is to make your other tanks and healers sit out for the fights where they're not needed, I don't think too many people would really say that the game is better because of that. While some people will always have slightly different strategies, blizzard just stating that 25 man raids are designed for:
-1 primary tank that does essentially nothing but tank (ie prot warrior or prot paly)
-1 secondary tank whose ability to do decent dps is also needed (ie feral druid, potentially deathknight)
-Any other tanking roles will be perfectly doable, indeed optimized for either holy or ret paladins in tanking gear, dps warriors in tanking gear, dps specced deathknights, ranged with a bit of extra stamina or whatever.
-6 healers, 2 primary tank healers, 2 main raid healers, and 2 that vary from fight to fight. This would lend itself nicely to a setup such as resto druid, resto shaman, 2 holy paly, iDS priest, CoH priest.
-5 melee dps not counting your primary and secondary tank
-Fill with ranged
I think that could be great assuming they actually then design the encounters around the idea that something close to that should be ideal but still challenging. Hyjal was that. Maybe 1 extra healer, though we did it almost all with 5-6 healers and a holy paly tanking trash as nothing at all that needed aoe tanked actually hit hard, and a dps warrior, prot warrior, feral druid and shackle more than handled the abombs. Kara was that in 1/2. Mag, maulgar and gruul were that. SSC was that. TK was pretty close to that. Short of completely planning to dust all the loot and just bringing all healers, tanks, warlocks, and shadow priests, that group was pretty much ideal for everything if you assume that your offspecs did still have their heals and decurse keybound for archimonde. BT, for as easy as it was, was easy largely because a lot of the bosses you could just bring 10 healers and it was trivial. But then some of them like for instance RoS, Illidan, Gorefiend, sooner or later if you didn't ever kill the boss you'd run into trouble so healer stacking was bad. It varied all over the place and it was dumb.
The ideal group for kalecgos would have 9 or 10 healers, 8 or so decursers. Then next boss, ~7 healers with 1 mage and 1-2 resto druids. Sure, most anything is doable with a non ideal raid, but encouraging raids to do that sort of thing lowers the enjoyment of the game for many people, which in the end is the goal here. We killed illidan for the first time with something like 10 melee in. It was terrible, but we decided we would rather make it a bit harder than bench 2 rogues when we've had 4 rogues on for almost every raid, doing well for some warlock or something that shows up 1/2 the time and doesn't really try very hard but would still actually be better. Some guilds want to get the boss down asap. Some guilds want to get the boss down without benching people that deserve to be in for things. How many guilds really enjoy the game more because the encounters are designed to reward that sort of thing?
Why not make it apply to everybody except people who are designated as a tank on the raid interface? Then just allow access to the raid panel while in party.
Something like this was recently added for Ret Paladins.
Fanaticism
Increases the critical strike chance of all Judgments capable of a critical hit by 15% and reduces threat caused by all actions by 30% except when under the effects of Righteous Fury.
That same kind of duel mechanics could work on a raid wide threat increase/decrease abilities or effects.
i.e.
Tranquil Air Totem
Summons a Tranquil Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem reduces the threat caused by all party members within 20 yards by 20% except when in Defensive Stance, Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or under the effects of Righteous Fury.
Tranquil Air Totem
Summons a Tranquil Air Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem reduces the threat caused by all party members within 20 yards by 20% except when in Defensive Stance, Bear Form, Dire Bear Form, or under the effects of Righteous Fury.
I think I like this better than my own idea. When I came up with that idea, the -threat version of Fanaticism wasn't out yet.
Werebeef and Gurg's posts are pretty much spot on. Healing ability is entirely determined by encounter design. If you look at even most of the BT/Hyjal fights, shamans are pretty mediocre. Shamans are pretty much inferior to other healers on fights like Supremus, Azgalor, Archimonde, and Council, other than maybe healing people who get hit by consecrate/flamestrike/blizzard. Hell, we have paladins do exceedingly well on Naj'entus simply because chain heal is only really useful on the melee, and paladins get a ton of mana from spiritual attunement that they can use to spam the hell out of holy light.
Paladin healing was nerfed early in TBC as a knee-jerk reaction to mostly arena related complaints and empasis on "tank and spank" style fights in T4/T5 content. If anything, I'd like to see paladins un-nerfed. People crying foul simply because fights favor a certain style of healing are completely off base. You don't see casters/hunters getting retuned simply because of fights that favor ranged.
You don't think infinite mana potential is just a little bit overpowered? I admit, some of the things were knee-jerk, but the way +Crit worked with Illumination would of gotten out of hand. I also cede that the bulk of their "overpowered" state was VE + SA.
Eitherway, this thread is niether here nor there.
But it does bring me back to something. I don't think we'd need another with 2 healing trees because Blizzard is definately trying to make each healing class somewhat unique. Priests are the jack of all trade. Shamans have chain heal. Paladins are the best at single target spamming. Druids have their heal over time.
It IS possible to consolidate and homogenize too far.
On the other hand, have you guys been reading up on the Wotlk / Death Knight thread? With information of melee/spell crit/hit/haste being consolidated? I think this will help a lot. I mean, it is no raid-wide windfury, but I honestly get the impression Blizzard is not happy with windfury to begin with. Assuming of course, all this is true.
I think the current problems don't need any sweeping changes to resolve. No raidwide totems are needed since things really are in quite decent balance. The biggest problems are the cutting edge of raiding.
Totems, chains & lust are strong but not *that* strong. Just adding other classes some neat talents (marginally better than shaman get perhaps) and failing to scale up totems equal to how gear scales really should solve that particular issue. We already saw how from 60 to 70 the str and agi totems didn't scale as much as gear did (infact: did they scale at all?).
Windfury is at least half an issue with how 2-h weapon users scale. De-emphasizing windfury should help the guys with twohanders to hold their own better.
To help with raid setup issues, they could give shamans an ability along these lines:
Totemic focus: allows a friendly raid member to gain the benefits of all your totems. That member does not need to be in your group. Only one target can be affected at a time.
Four shamans could cover 24 raiders (not that healers really need totem coverage), that random rogue in hunter group could still get decent totems etc. Three shamans could give the majority of good stuff. Develop shaman totems more in the direction of aiding melee & casters, while developing a bit deeper hunter/rogue synenergy would mean one less group which doesn't really "need" the totems. Or any such direction where shamans aren't providing top quality buffs for everyone and their mother.
Either way, I don't think any sweeping changes are needed.
Maybe the answer isn't raid-wide totems, but to spread the love as far as uber-group-buffs go. What if each melee dps class offered their group a buff that was close to windfury? Have rogue's slice-and-dice work just as it does now for the rogue, but also gives +10% (or whatever number) increased attack speed to everyone in the party.
So the key isn't class stacking, but encouraging you to take different classes. One thing I hate about being a rogue is I provide nothing for the group...no buffs, no boss debuffs, no real utility, just damage. I don't think any class should be that way. All classes should provide great buffs in a raid environment.
Instead of looking for ways to give windfury to all, look for ways to have every class provide their own windfury (or whatever buff). And you don't have to make these buffs improve already high-dps classes any further...in my rogue example, the rogue provides more group DPS but has no increased DPS of his own. The goal would be for any group of 5 different melee classes to do about the same DPS no matter which classes were in it.
The goal being to promote diversity without over-rewarding any specific class choices.
I think it would be neat if this style was applied, but instead of it aiding an ideal group setup it aided an unoptimized group setup. So for instance instead of 10% haste, make it 10% spell haste. Something that would be a rdps drop from the current cookie cutter groups, but it would be significant enough as to not make the entire raid completely gimped by bringing along that 6th melee dps.
You might end up in a typical melee group where this buff does nothing, or a tank-based pWarrior/fDruid/Warlock/rShaman group where you would buff the warlock and shaman, and get buffed by the shaman, druid, and possibly the warrior depending on the risk of death factor. Another possibility is a 4 caster group where you buff all 4 but get the short end of the stick.
Maybe the answer isn't raid-wide totems, but to spread the love as far as uber-group-buffs go.
What if each melee dps class offered their group a buff that was close to windfury? Have rogue's slice-and-dice work just as it does now for the rogue, but also gives +10% (or whatever number) increased attack speed to everyone in the party. Improve a feral druid's aura until it's on par with windfury. Etc. Sure you still pack the melee group with melee, but now each member provides a substantial buff that you can't live without (like windfury is now).
I think this is a really bad idea - what it encourages is the suggestion a few others have made: you should have one of each spec in the raid. That proposition just makes managing a raiding guild a horrendous proposition. Now I need at least two of each spec in the guild because there will be days when my one moonkin can't make it or my enhancement shaman takes a week off to go on vacation in Cozumel. And if each one brings a unique, irreplaceable buff, I can't do high end content without that one special flower.
Instead, the answer can't be providing substantial buffs you can't live without. It has to be providing some variability/interchangeability in classes and specs without encouraging stacking one far beyond all others. I need to be able to say "Oops, only one mage on tonight. No problem, I'll bring a moonkin."
05/28/08, 2:17 PM
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