Papajan

I think this mentality is an excellent foundation for balancing classes for raiding, and even if it could be achieved in some way other than what you've suggested, it would address the current problems. In some sense, it reminds me of tuning bosses for world buffs before TBC release in terms of the administrative hassles.

There's definitely the hybrid tax (for lack of a better word) that Manly notes and that design makes a lot of sense. I always used to think of it as a situation where all of your dpsers contribute the same raid dps, but for hybrids, a lot of it just shows under other characters' names on the meters. But since the total contribution of hybrids is dependent on the rest of the raid, I can't think of a simple way to express it in a formula and then use that to balance classes such that it's optimal to have 2-3 of each.

BM groups are another example in addition to the warlock one. I don't have four hunters to test with unfortunately, but I imagine 4 x BM, feral would work very well with a ret pally around for JoC/JoW, since Ferocious Inspiration is one of those tricky stacking %damage buffs. If I only had 1-2 BM hunters around, I wouldn't really think of them so much as being similar to shammy synergy, but when there are 3+, I can't tell whether I should consider them as a buffing class or a primary dps class.

 

Renew

Come Lich King we're going to be dealing with an extra class, and also more subclasses will be wanted as the norm in a raid.

The Death Knight and Two Melee Groups
As Gurg said, adding in another melee class such as the DK will probably have raid leaders running two melee groups. We've already had to cut down to 2 rogues per raid to make room for a Ret Paladin.

Shaman, Blessings
Shaman and Paladins were supposed to be faction specific classes, but when 2.0 came along, that was changed. Soo... with the smaller raid cap, the powerful buffs these two classes bring to a raid mean they usually are eating up 8/25 slots.

Paladins can be dropped down to 2 per raid. 1 Holy 1 Ret/Prot. Give blessings classifications like elixirs (Guardian and Battle) and allow each Paladin to bless two each. On top of that, I wouldn't mind seeing Might and Wisdom be a combined blessing for the hybrid classes that can benefit from both. People park alts in group 6 for blessings anyway, might as well remove that tedium... Also, making a Prot Paladin act as a Ret Paladin would be nice... There is nothing worse than sitting there in Prot gear when your mob is dead and doing nothing. At least having Avenger's Shield act like CStrike would allow you to have your Ret Paladin act as your Prot Paladin when you need an AE tank.

There are a few ideas for Shaman, making certain totems like Gurg said work on the raid seems the easiest method. I was thinking that Shaman could get a level 80 spell "Spirit Link" where they can link two groups together. The two melee groups can be linked by one shaman etc.

I don't want to see these classes nerfed, support classes are usually the hardest to get people to play due to the whole "top damage meters" type of mentality everyone has (and Blizzard/others promote). Healers also usually get that type of feeling as well, thus they usually have 'fun' classes as alts.

Where Hunters Fit?
This sort of leaves the Hunters either getting tossed in random groups... That or you sacrifice your caster/melee groups full potential synergy to create a hunter group. Not sure what to do about Hunters...

What If... M'uru-esque Comps
M'uru only requiring 6 Healers means you can fit more synergy into your raid, so what if running light on healers became the norm? Blizzard pushes for DPS over healing all the time anyway (see no PvP healer items till people complained that healing is required in PvP), so why not cut out some healer slots and add more room for DPS/raid synergy slots at the same time.

Raid Progression, Fun
In Wrath I would like to see a lot more of what we saw in Naxx, but taking it to the next level as far as people playing their class and not just a spec. Early on in the content progression having people take baby steps into playing Moonkin, Prot Paladin, etc. Then by the time we get to the final raids of Lich King, people should be competent playing as any spec to their full potential. This would help with having the need to recruit a full time X spec person. You can also take it a step further and design content that even your tanks can have a different role in the fight, so they get the same benefits the hybrid classes have.

This keeps things fresh for your raiders. I enjoy playing my Paladin a lot due to being able to play as Holy part time and then tank when the fight calls for it. It's a nice change in pace and that really keeps the game interesting for me.

DK - 2
Druid - 3
Hunter - 2
Mage - 1
Paladin - 3 ~prot and ret interchangable?
Priest - 2
Rogue - 1
Shaman - 3
Warlock - 3
Warrior - 2

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

glowacks

So in Naxx the complaint was that you only brought 2 warlocks for their curses because their DPS was weak. So in return Blizzard made Warlocks king and completely marginalized Mages. I don't think there would be nearly as much crying from either set of casters if Mage and Warlock DPS values were switched, which given their respective rDPS increases would make a whole lot more sense. Nor would there be much of a complaint when Warlocks were "only" brought for their curses given that all three rDPS are useful, making 3 a justifiable number of Warlocks even if their personal DPS is a bit low.

--

While I initially hoped that the difference between party and raid wouldn't be completely broken down by raid-wide buffs, it really doesn't make as much sense that there's a difference between a certain 4 allies and the other 20 when you're all mixed together. Maybe there's something on the coding end of it that would cause too much processing if it had to calculate whether 39 different people were close enough to receive the buff (assuming AV and outdoor bosses still exist and have a 40 cap), but it seems minimal compared to rest of what goes on. However, if/when more hero classes are added the problem will only get worse.

When there were 8 classes and 40 people per raid it didn't make as much sense to allow all buffs that are now party-only to affect the entirety of the raid, but things have changed quite a bit. In vanilla raids you had 5 of each class; in WotlK we'll have 2.5. As Praetorian said, there would be little increase in overall raid performance but a huge gain in flexibility of raid members and group setups, which given past changes is what Blizzard should really be striving for.

--

I certainly hope that Blizzard intends 6 healers per raid; it's often what my raids have had to make do with and it makes learning things like Morogrim impossible. The only reason encounters like Eredar Twins support 10 or more healers is the fact that they use a hard enrage timer that can be easily beaten with 13 DPS instead of 17. If more fights used soft enrages like Gruul, the problem of stacking healers would go away.

 

Switchblade

I do understand the concern, but I would rather wait and see the numbers pushed by a rogue in top end sunwell gear (the assumption of 10% passive haste from gear). I very confident the class will end strong in sunwell with or without warglaives.

http://ctprofiles.net/1031812

 

Atep

concerning av and outdoor 40-man raids:

There is no reason why a raid-wide totem could not have a 25man/20man/15man (pick your number) limit. Mass dispell already has, and if there are more targets than it affects, some are just not dispelled.

 

Wander

I'm not really sure that's a valid concern - after all, Elemental Shaman doing Elemental Shaman DPS get into 10-man raids, and the utility they offer to a 10-man raid isn't that much larger than a Warlock - in fact, I'd even say for some group compositions in WotLK, it could be less. A DK tank, Shadow Priest and Arcane Mage would all benefit from CoS, and they wouldn't need to be in the same group as the Warlock, easing group restrictions.

As for five man instances, I think Blizzard has been pretty on the ball in ensuring 5-man encounters don't require any kind of a stacked group to complete, so arguing that Curses are low-utility in a party is kind of a distraction; besides, the idea is that if the Curse utility isn't needed, the Warlock simply doesn't cast it and instead casts a Damage curse, which would allow the Warlock to do much better personal DPS, instead - meanwhile, the Elemental Shaman couldn't, say, decide not to drop totems and increase his personal DPS by the same amount.

 

wickedgrey

I wonder how the extra warlocks and shammies show up on Blizzard's "class balance is determined by population, not power" radar[1]. If things were currently balanced that way, raids should be stacking warriors and mages[2], which doesn't seem to be the case (of course, pally/shaman numbers are lower than they "should be" due to the late introduction to horde/alliance). Have there been any direct indications from Blizzard that raid composition is balanced using a different set of criteria?

1 - WoW Forums -> Kalgan confirms: Balance based on numbers
2 - Armory Musings...: Status Update - 1st November

 

• Suggestive

I only used 10 and 5 man environments as an example really, it also extends into PvP, where you definitely get zero use out of those particular curses. I wasn't trying to make an argument about what level of dps warlocks should sustain or anything like that, simply stating that there is a lot more to consider than 25 man raids at the end of the day.

 

Wander

Oh, certainly I understand that it doesn't begin and end in 25 man raiding, but it just seems to me that when considering a Warlock, they have a lot more utility than the DPS they can put out would seem to suggest they should have.

 

Addled

You probably meant to say healthstone here, there's no point in using different ranks of soulstones.

My initial opinion (as you correctly guessed) is that this is an insane buff to raids.

1. WotLK seems like it would have a lot of shadow (duh), fire (undead in Andorhal use fire attacks), nature (Nerubians) and frost (duh) -based spell attacks. Priests can supply the entire raid with Shadow resist, but having totems raidwide means that 1 shaman could provide the entire raid with frost, nature, and fire resist. That seems slightly overpowered, for everyone to have a base 90+ resist to a magic type.

2. Isn't a raidwide Mana Tide -alone- enough to stack shamans? Let's say we bring 5 resto shamans. Each shaman blows Mana Tide every 1 minute. At the end of the 5 minute cooldown, the first shaman is ready to use MT again. So every minute, the entire raid gets 24% of its' mana back (correct me if I'm wrong). Why bother bringing shadow priests ever again? Or the leaked disc priest regen?



There will be a QQ storm of epic proportions if Blizzard even thought of doing this. Not to mention that hybrids would be boned in 5-10mans since personal DPS is more important there.


I'm not entirely sure why everyone screams about Windfury being OP and all, especially since some of the highest damage dealing classes can't even take advantage of Windfury at all. Saying warriors and ret pallies have an overdependence on windfury is like saying mages and warlocks have an overdependence on shadow priests for regeneration, Misery, Weaving, and Elemental shamans for ToW.

 

Meddler

As an alternative to making a number of buffs raid you could also tweak the number of people allowed in a group during a raid. Yes, it's no longer directly compatible with a 5 man group but anyone raiding at 80 should be clued up enough to cope with the discrepancy. Would allow you to balance enhancement shaman around a group size of say 7 others, instead of 4, effectively allowing the construction of a melee group, healing/spell group, misc/tank group and leftover. Doesn't divide well into 25 I admit but nothing stopping you running something like a melee group of 8, caster group of 8, healing group of 4, hunter/OT group of 5 say. A group size of 8 also has the benefit of fitting with the current max raid size (for outdoor/AV purposes or whatever) of 40 as 5 groups so wouldn't be too severe an interface shake up.

Would mean some scaling of buffs needed of course, but that's a comparatively minor issue.

 

Tojara

I've been asking for an 'all purpose' magic curse for quite sometime, and it's silly that it still hasn't been implemented. If we only have two warlocks present at a raid then our mages go without a utility curse. Having them spec arcane or frost is simply not a solution and is a step backwards considering the DPS loss for switching to that spec.

Raid-wide totems would be a welcome change for me personally, and for anyone that bothers to min/max their raid.While I don't think it will fix 'stacking' shamans completely it would certainly be a step in the right direction. Some totems would certainly need to be revamped or be limited to a group still. Tranquil Air, Mana Tide and the 41 pt elemental shaman talent totem (the name escapes me).

I don't think every AoE buff needs to be raid wide though. A certain level of group management should remain. I still believe things like vampiric touch, vampiric embrace, moonkin aura, leader of the pack, ferocious inspiration and many others should remain limited to your group.

At the very least though I think that an all purpose magic curse is desperatly needed for this game. At this point in time it pretty much punishes you for not having 3 Warlocks (for each curse), or take the option that nobody wants to take, that being removing mages from your raid altogether.

 

◊ Praetorian

Right, I certainly don't want to get bogged down in the minutiae of exactly which buffs or totems should have out-of-group effects. I agree Mana Tide is probably excessive. You could keep it group-only, or you could add something like an "AoE cap" like they did for damaging AoEs -- cap the max % regen at some level so that if 16 mana-users are getting the benefit of the totem they only get back 12% of their mana, but if it's only ticking on 8 players then each of the 8 gets their 24%? Anyway, obviously if I were going to be making a more detailed proposal I'd have worked out a lot of the relevant numbers.

I'm more interested in the underlying concept, with an eye towards making sure that WotLK raids don't consist of 21 synergy requirements, 2 tanks, one mage, and one rogue.

 

rochan

The difference is those are hybrid classes: they can heal/tank/dps. Warlocks only have one role: DPS (not counting gimmick tanking which mages also do). Take away their DPS and the class will crumble, a la pre TBC. Also, mages add 15% to warlock fire damage, which actually looks decent in WotLK.

I agree, the way demonic sacrifice has panned out, with 99% of warlocks never using their pet in raids seems like a failure on Blizzard's fault. Personally, I'd like to see CoS/CoE/CoR eliminated (they are just too powerful) and have each warlock cast a curse that only benefits themselves, and have encounters balanced around that.

 

buddhasevil

The issue I am currently having as the RL of my guild is what to build my raid around. For a long time we were building our raid around maxamizing DPS, but as of lately (7/9BT 5/5MH) we are starting to run into threat issues, as all of our DPSers are getting stronger and our poor tanks continue to have the worst drop luck in the game. Here is the move I have made as far as grp comp, building around more TPS for our MT, any help is appreciated.

Grp 1:
MT
OT
Feral
Resto Shaman
Ret pally (me)

Grp 2:
DPS Warrior
Rogue
Rogue
Enh Shaman
BM Hunter

Grp 3:
Prot Pally
Lock
Lock
Surv Hunter (with bird for screech so we can use CoR)
Resto Druid

Grp 4:
Mage
Mage
Ele Shaman
Spriest
Lock

Grp 5:
Resto Shaman
Holy Priest
Random Healer
Holy Pally
Resto Druid

* Do I put the Enh Shaman in the MT grp or rogue grp?
* Our Melee is our strongest DPS atm
* We are phasing out MH, as we have what we need, and moving into Sunwell over the next few weeks.

Also, we currently do not have a Moonkin, and I do not know if it would be worth it to grab one. Any suggestions are helpful.

 

GSH

As I understand it, you are proposing we reduce the number of "synergy" DPS slots in order to make more slots for "pure" dps.

What about another solution: reduce the number of slots required for healers. If raids were balanced around 5 healers, there is 3 or more slots available for pure DPS.

 

◊ manly

Fire Vulnerability, for all means and intent, is a personal dps buff in the first place. Or rather, a debuff I need to keep up to sustain my own dps. If it helps other players, then good, but that shouldn't cause a personal dps loss. I view it the same way as ISB, shadow weaving, winter's chill and stormstrike.

However, COS increases shadow/arcane damage. COE increases fire/frost damage. For as long as warlocks cannot do arcane or frost damage, I would classify them clearly in the realm of 'increases other players dps'. Then there is COR, which I think just reinforces the notion further.

------- edit
Also, I would love to see stacking elemental shamans for raid-wide totem of wraths.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Reducing the number of required healers doesn't really get the job done though, you'd just add more elemental or enhancement shamans.

Ideally you want a situation where having more than three of a class is less than optimal.

 

Tpyo

Perhaps Blizzard would receive an excessive amount of criticism for increasing the raid size to 30, but I believe it would be for the best. Combine the fact that there's plenty of time for guilds to recruit assuming a warning plenty ahead of time and the implementation of death knights will almost certainly reduce the ideal amount of a class to 1, which is unacceptable in my eyes.

 

Axanor

30 instead of 25 really didn't make much sense to me when they released TBC, and it still doesn't make all that much sense now that we're moving to 10 in-game classes. Also, as has been said, a big part of the problem with raid composition is that 5/27 talent trees are designed for healing, yet healers take up 7-10 raid slots.

 

Meddler

Additionally Blizzard have mentioned that the implementation of additional Hero classes is something they still have in mind, leaving you with a situation of either increasing the raid size each time a class gets added or accepting that some classes will be more/less represented than others and that there may need to be a degree of redundancy of essential abilities between classes even in a 25 man.

 

Liebestod

The easiest way to do this would be:

1) Ensure that hybrid specs have unique raidwide buffs (so there's an incentive to take one but probably not more), but not so much for skills which aren't spec-dependent, which would go for many curses/blessings/totems. Make sure that the raidwide buffs are deep in the given tree as well so that anyone brought along for the given skill would have to have honestly specced into it. ie. Move Kings from 10 points in Prot to 30 or something.

2) Adjust downwards the number of useful raidwide buffs that a class can give regardless of spec so that the raid can be covered with 2 of a given class. It's a problem that Salv/Kings/Wisdom are all useful enough to justify bringing 3 Pallies to pretty much any raid, and that CoE/CoS/CoR are all useful enough to justify bringing 3 Warlocks. This was okay for 40-man raids, but not in the 25-man raid world... it's just that Blizzard never adjusted to this. Combining buffs (Curse of Vulnerability) is one option, another option is to make these buffs into talents for a specific spec - such as what was suggested for Kings in point (1).

3) For group buffs that can be given regardless of spec (totems are the main example, Vampiric Touch is another important one though), it might be feasible to make them raidwide with some possible nerfs. On the other hand, this isn't really a problem unless the given buff is so awesome that more than 2 groups would want the given buff. This concern applies largely to Heroism/Bloodlust right now, but imagine if this ability only affected, say, physical DPS.. and that it gave a Forebearance effect as well for 5-10 minutes. Then you'd want as many Shaman as you have melee groups, instead of having issues with having Bloodlust be useful for 3+ groups and usable multiple times per fight. So I think non-specced group buffs can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis in order to preserve this property without encouraging stacking. SPriests are also something of a problem, since the mana return is so great that many raids want more than one. Obviously this would be okay if they were their own class, but they're not, and there shouldn't be a reason to bring more than one. Thus, changing VT to a raidwide mana return (possibly with a lower coefficient.. maybe that's what the devs were thinking in changing it from 5% return to 2%?) and only allowing one VT on a mob at a time would be a good way of preventing SPriest stacking without removing their utility (though they have Misery/Shadow Weaving anyways..)

 

civatateo

The major contraints to raid composition now are (in my mind) as follows:

- Paladins:
You want 3 pallys for 3 blessings. I know it's possible to do most things with 2, but when it comes to class-specific contributions, you can't get much better than blessings.
- Shadow priests:
Aside from the obvious benefits of Misery and Shadow Weaving, some classes are simply dependent on shadow priests to output competative DPS, namely mages, balance druids, and to some extent hunters (a ret pally keeping up JoW has mostly solved this problem though). Warlock DPS also increases by 200+ with a shadow priest since they don't have to waste time tapping. The benefits to giving a shadow priest to healers is also quite high, especially with the recent popularity of haste gear, allowing healers to output more healing while not worrying about inefficiency. It's no surprise that 2 shadow priests seem to be the norm in most raids.
- Shamans:
I agree with Gurg that totems are the main thing here, particularly DPS groups, but one also has to factor in the raw power of chain heal. In terms of healing output, chain heal is rivaled only by circle of healing, which is significantly more limited (CoH is only good for raid-wide group damage, while chain heal covers both that and persistent multi-target damage).
- Warlocks:
The best DPS you can get outside of rogues with glaives, plus 3 curses with significant raid DPS implications.

How can this change in WotLK?

I don't see Blizzard changing the way blessings work, so figure you're still going to need 3 of them. One shadow priest will always be a necessity simply because of Misery and weavings (if your warlocks aren't fire), though the need for additional shadow priests depends entirely on whether or not some DPS classes will be VT-dependent at level 80 and whether or not there are other means, via new talents for exmaple, for other classes to regen mana. Raid totems would go a long way to reducing the required number of shamans required for raids, although I believe that resto shaman will still be the dominant healing spec unless more raid/group healing options are introduced at level 80 for the other healing classes.

However, I'm sure there will new abilities or talents at level 80 that will still mandate that you bring at least 1 of that spec to raids. Coupled with 2 deathknights likely forcing their way into raids, I'm sure guild/raid leaders will be faced with some unpleasant situations when determining their optimal makeup. Regardless of how Blizzard tries to balance class specs, by the time we've been raiding for a few weeks at level 80, I'm sure there will be a pretty clear idea of optimal class composition.

Inevitably we'll just have to decide on a raid makeup and go with it, either working with the people/specs that we have, or taking the more ruthless route and min-max'ing raid composition as much as possible. I certainly enjoy the greater complexity of encounters afforded by reducing raid size from 40 to 25 in TBC, but with every class spec being raid viable (with some being necessary, like shadow priests), certain classes being superior to others, and the introduction of a new class, I'm thinking that it would just be easier to increase the raid size to 30.

 

Wander

I suppose. It's probably not urgent yet, but going to 15/30 might be the best idea as they add more classes to the game.

Allowing ability redundancy is just going to cause hurt feelings and inter-class strife; already, role redundancy alone has people at each other's throats, can you imagine the can of worms they'll be opening if, say, they not only accidentally make Mage subpar DPS compared to other DPS classes but also create another spammable ranged humanoid CC in the name of ability redundancy for raids? I can't help but feel that's too much to juggle for them, given their track record so far just balancing roles between classes.

On the other hand, they may decide to create bosses that require raid-tweaking within the instance; no longer can you "go with what you have", but rather for Boss X, you'll need three Priests minimum; but for boss Y, Priests are less of a requirement, but you need four Death Knights minimum, do you swap out some Priests for Death Knights. Provided the loot tables are designed with that in mind (i.e., the "Mage" Boss drops most of the Mage loot, while the "Don't Bring Warlocks" boss only drops generic caster items that don't particularly excite Warlocks), it might not cause too much strife.

Of course, your could just limit ability requirements during encounters to maximum 1; eliminate the oh-so-beloved "Polymorph everything" style trash pulls, in other words. I don't actually think anyone would miss trash pulls and boss encounters that encourage the raid bring X of a single class just to spam a CC or utility ability; it wastes everyone's time.

 

Addled

I think Praetorian is making the case for equal class representation in raids, not necessarily which roles a class plays. Shamans can still put out raid-quality DPS in either DPS tree.


QFT. Or even turning the basic group limit to 6 players, and making 10mans into 12mans. Only a little rebalancing would be required, and you could exploit hybrids to a greater extent. Imagine a melee group of fury war/enh shaman/ret pal/rog/rog/DK. Or replacing a DK/rogue with a feral druid.

I think we'll see the syndrome you're describing in WotLK. The leaked news and talents about DKs haven't included any raid/group buffing abilities, so unless we see some type of gimmick fight (which is entirely possible), raids could conceivably just run with 1 DK.