Apologies if I come off as rude but please, get a clue?!? If you want to tune raidbosses in such a way you only need 5 healers for a raid, you don't need to make healers more powerfull, you need to change the way the raidbosses deal their damage. Rather then huge abilities that deal large amounts of damage to large group of people, you give the bosses abilities that target less people at a time. With enough creativity Blizzard can easily pull this off in a way that keeps the raid fights fun and varied; with interesting mechanics and whatnot. In what way does this overpower healers in pvp?
The idea in WotLK is diversity. No longer will the prot warriors reign supreme as tanks. With the right specs, all classes will be able to fill their respective roles without problems. Yes, for most current guilds this means some people might have to change specs, but it won't be 100% neccesary. As said, if you have 4 resto shaman and 1 resto druid, that's just as viable as having a holy pally, a holy priest, a tree druid, a resto shaman and a disc priest. Then again, unless bosses have hard enrage timers, you can probably keep bringing your current amount of healers and still take the boss down, it will just take more time because you have less DPS.
Apologies if I come off as rude but I'm a rude person.
If you make bosses do less damage you can cheese an encounter by bringing more healers than required. The only way to stop that is to put incredibly hard enrage timers on the bosses to force you to take as many DPS as possible. Do we really want every fight in the game to be Brutallus/Entropius? How does that fix anything? If anything you're killing your own vaunted "diversity" by tuning encounters for 5 or less healers.
Apologies if I come off as rude but I'm a rude person.
If you make bosses do less damage you can cheese an encounter by bringing more healers than required. The only way to stop that is to put incredibly hard enrage timers on the bosses to force you to take as many DPS as possible. Do we really want every fight in the game to be Brutallus/Entropius? How does that fix anything? If anything you're killing your own vaunted "diversity" by tuning encounters for 5 or less healers.
Get a clue. Balance is never so simple.
I think his point is that you can design encounters for 5-6 healers instead of 7-8 as it is now. And no, you don't have to make the enrage timer that tight so that with 7 healers it would be "easy mode", as there are other ways to make an encounter challenging (Felmyst air phase, collapsing for KJ, and such come to mind). You could make it so that bringing a 7th healer would not give any significant advantage since the damage could be healed with just 5 or 6.
What exactly is it that makes you need X number of healers, and can any of those requirements be made not to get easier when you overshoot the minimum?
Endurance: Whether it's by endurance or regen or what-have-you, adding a 6th healer is the same as adding 20% more mana to each of your healers. Possibly more, if you can switch off for longer regen periods.
Sustained Throughput: Same deal.
Burst Throughput: Less clear to me. I don't play a healing class, but it seems reasonable to me that once you meet the requirements you start saturating the burst, which doesn't mean no benefit, but concievably less than 20%.
Chunkiness: Number of heals potentially landing in between swings to prevent gibbing. Similar but not the same as burst throughput (burst throughput is like 5 5k hits per second, chunkiness is like 20k hits per 2s plus the occassional 20k MS so you need them topped off immediately). Continuing benefit of extra healers, but diminishing marginal utility.
Number of Healing Targets: Say you have two tanks that require two full-time healers but are comfortably healed by those two, and some raid healing that can be covered by one person of the appropriate spec, depending on type of damage. What does the sixth healer do? I suppose in WLK you could arguably have two semi-DPS raid-healers, but two-halves of a DPS and two-halves of a healer isn't different than one DPS and one healer.
So basically various types of tank-and-spank need an enrage mechanic to cap the number of healers, but splitting up the healing assignments makes extra healers pointless, assuming the balance is reasonably accurate for its intended gear level.
As far as capping the number of healers and enrage mechanics, I prefer soft enrages (Gruul) over hard enrages. Gruul allowed one role to substitute for the other, up to a point, so long as that person was actually pulling their own weight. I'm sure there was an optimum mix of healers and DPS for given gear levels, but the drop-off was soft enough that you had leeway between like 5 and 9 healers.
You can shift the raid balance away from higher numbers of healers in ways other than just increasing +Healing or Enrage timers. The key to raid survival with most bosses is damage mitigation. Instead of just ramping up the boss damage to challenge the healers throughput and reaction and tank mitigation, you add boss damage that is mitigated by DPS checks (Curator's Adds, Kael's Pyroblast), off-tanking, CCing, decursing, purging, and miscellaneous fight specific stuff (Mag's cubes).
There are two challenges to this though:
1. In the past, gimmicks like these tended to be very unforgiving.
2. DPS is additive and Healing is probability manipulation. A bad 7th healer can still be a decent insulator somewhere. Your 1st DPS is just as important as your 5th as your 15th.
For a possible way around this, let's say you're taking the Pyroblast mechanic from Kael and re-using it. Instead of making failure an instant gib on the tank, give it to a ton of adds throughout the fight, and each failure is a stacking 2% Mortal Strike debuff on the tank. Now you have a mechanic that is forgiving and punishes healer stacking.
On a different note, Blizzard has been hitting a lot of the raid balance issue that I've been concerned about (capping class stacking benefits at 2 per across the board, promises of redundant raid utility), but for the 10 man progression DPS makeups might end up being very unforgiving. Mixing physical and magical DPS is best for loot distribution, but if you're hitting a DPS check boss, having buff synergy could make all the difference for progression.
Healers are capped in effectiveness because after a point there's simply no more healing to do, where as there is always more DPS that can be done. It's not simply by making hard enrage timers that taking more DPS is encouraged. For example, you can make an easy enrage timer like VR with 10 instead of 15 DPS, but people don't bring 12 healers and 10 DPS to that encounter, they bring 7 healers and 15 DPS. There is simply not enough healing for 12 healers to do to make bringing that many a sensible decision.
I really don't see why if they can design encounters where 7 healers is better than 12 it's that much of a stretch to say they can design encounters where 5 healers are better than 7.
As far as healers losing their raid spots being a point against having fewer healers, I doubt this is a real problem. People will respec or reroll. I think most guilds have a number of healers who would happily take up another class or spec if stacking healers wasn't so required.
More discussion from Ghostcrawler about where they're heading with multiple classes getting a way to provide the same buffs:
We haven't finished our discussions on this issue yet, so I can't provide much of an update.
I do think there are alternatives to having more non-stacking buffs. For example, we could give each DK tree an ability (or abilities if that's what it takes) so awesome that the Enhancement shammies are the ones who have to fight for a raid spot. We could try to give each of the 30 talent trees in the game some amazing buff or debuff for the raid and hope that there aren't 5 specs with buffs so crappy that they just don't get to raid.
We could also just declare that 5 specs are PvP only and assume raids are built with the other 25.
I don't think anyone would argue (except maybe the shammies) that having 5 or 6 of one class in a 25-player raid is good thing for a game with 10 classes. If you are a raid leader, I would definitely not assume that your Naxx and Ulduar raids will have the same composition as your BT and Sunwell raids* -- even ignoring the DK and looking at other changes might suggest that's a bad idea.
One more thing to keep in mind during these discussions: almost every party buff applies to the raid now. That simple change alone means that raiding compositions could end up very different. Do you need 3 shadow priests if they provide mana for the whole raid? Do you need more than one enhancement shaman?
* - Unless you just have 25 outstanding raiders or really close friends and value that over class synergy, which I think is kind of awesome.
And a further reply, dealing directly with the issue of bringing Shaman specifically for Bloodlust/Heroism:
I'll repeat: I don't think anyone would argue (except maybe the shammies) that having 5 or 6 of one class in a 25-player raid is good thing for a game with 10 classes.
If you stack the raid with shammies for Bloodlust, then clearly that's a problem.
The big question then becomes: how are they going to prevent this? Either Bloodlust is going to be nerfed dramatically, and/or other class(es) will get a similar non-stacking buff, perhaps along with a Tinnitus-type debuff. It should be quite interesting to see how this ends up being changed.
I think a lot of Ghostcrawler's arguments for the consolidation of raid debuffs are shortsighted in many ways. For example, in the M'uru encounter, you would still need to run 2 Enh Shaman assuming you do both sides with full blown melee because of the size of the room even with raid wide buffs.
Any encounters that isn't a single spank and tank boss, or people don't travel as a heard of cats (think Twin Emps) you will inevitably run into the issue of range for localized buffs (BS, UR, totems, etc.) being a problem. Altering the current design scheme only works if all of the fights are adjusted to allow for it and, in Naxx alone (or at least old Naxx, assuming no sweeping boss design changes,) these buffs may not function correctly on Sapphiron, Gothik, Thaddius (in some cases)...
I think the issue is more the design of the encounters absolutely requiring buffs to "simplify" them in order to counteract a gear, skill, or composition defect. I'm all for hard fights, but encounters like C'thun you would accomplish sans buffs because the emphasis of the fight was on doing it right. This can be done by relaxing enrage timers in the interest of Healer stacking, or by making encounters that are DPS benchmarks into gimmick encounters. Adapting all encounters in to Heigan-esq movement fights isn't the solution, but giving many people many different assignments is a very good approach (and is one of the reasons the later bosses in Sunwell are so well designed.)
I'm pretty sure everyone is aware that class changes are not even close to done and debuff allocation is not complete, but I really don't think that the direction they're currently going is going to pan out well. I'm not going to boldly state I know how to fix the game, but standardizing some debuffs would be a long way towards relaxing composition requirements:
- Curse of Recklessness and FF having identical non-stacking armor debuffs
- Expose Armor and Sunder armor having identical armor debuff totals
- Making Imp. Scorch and CoE have the same effect
Theres a whole laundry list of overlap that can be accomplished and made redundant, but I still feel that all classes (and sub-specs there of) should retain at least one "unique" buff/debuff to make them desirable in raids. All the over-lapping options should be within the first 3 tiers of talents (Imp. Curse of Weakness, for example) and should be able to be picked up in realistic specs.
If Blizzard really wants to balance out raid compositions going the debuff route, they need to assume at least a reasonably balanced raid composition and should either design encounters to counter-act completely melee/caster biased compositions, or stop with cross-archetype buffs/debuffs entirely. A 10-man for example, idealy, should consist of 2 tanks, 2 healers, 3 melee DPS, and 3 caster DPS. In the current design, bringing a Warlock for CoR, a SP for fuel, and a resto Sham dropping WF skews the raid composition to be more melee-centric (assume one of the "casters" is a Hunter to further drive the point home). This isn't something that should happen and I would go as far as to say Shaman, like Warriors, should require their 31 point talents to truly define their role. Moving CoR to Hunters as an alternative to Hunter's Mark would also make having more than one a large raid asset and would be more in-line with their play style especially if it retains it's stacking nature.
I don't think it's too much to ask that there are 2 of each class minimum in a 25-man raid. I also don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume 8/10 classes in a 10-man should be different classes, but that may be a little more un-realistic. Fuck, I did a ZA Bear run last night with 4 Paladin, but still 7 different classes were represented.
If Blizzard would get out of the grey area and simply state that, for example, Warriors and Paladin are the only "main tank" viable classes in Wrath, they could very easily standardize their debuff set or shift their important debuffs (Sunder Armor, for example) completely off to other classes in the interest of minimizing the importance of tank class selection. If Rogues, Hunters, Druids and Deathknights were responsible for armor reduction debuff management, the importance of class selection for your MT goes down considerably. Even if there is significant overlap in play style for one spec across 2 classes (Prot War and Prot Pally in the case) it is ultimately in the interest of relaxing raid composition requirements, not screwing people out of raid spots.
So, to summarize:
- Making debuffs redundant is a good idea as long as they are core class abilities or easily obtainable in good specs
- Having redundant high-tier buffs/debuffs makes class composition skewed and should be avoided, even if it means making PvP oriented talent trees and "forcing" some degree of raid comp.
- 80% of raid composition should be assumed as standard for buff/debuff allocation purposes and redundant across multiple classes
- Spec defining high-tier talents should be mandatory for ALL classes as to make a more diverse raid
- re-allocating Buffs and Debuffs in relation to archetype or roll would be a huge step in the right direction when trying to water down the importance of raid composition.
No matter what Blizzard does, there will always be an optimal setup, so giving a ton of the tools for success to a a wide array of different classes won't change that. Optimal raiding specs will never go away and as long as one spec generates 50 DPS more than another (either through sheer damage, buffs, or debuffs) the min/maxers will find them.
Apart from the tiny sliver of guilds that do cutting edge progression content as soon as it comes out (they can't overgear it in any way), almost no one cares if one class/spec does 50 more DPS than another one, in the average raiding environment. 50 DPS is a far cry from the massive disparities provided by certain classes being "required" in raids because of the buffs/debuffs they provide. So yes, there will always be min/maxers, but if the best they can maximize is by doing 50 DPS more than the non-optimal way, then Blizzard will have a very balanced class system, far moreso than it is right now.
Originally Posted by dssurge
If Blizzard would get out of the grey area and simply state that, for example, Warriors and Paladin are the only "main tank" viable classes in Wrath, they could very easily standardize their debuff set or shift their important debuffs (Sunder Armor, for example) completely off to other classes in the interest of minimizing the importance of tank class selection.
That is exactly the opposite of what they're trying to do, by introducing more feasible tanking classes into the game, especially for "easy" content (standard 5 man dungeons). Some of us feral druids (and Prot Paladins, and new Death Knights) rather like main tanking, and wouldn't want to just be a DPS that you bring along for Faerie Fire. Sure it would be easier to balance everything if you just cut down the possible tanks, but that's a pretty harsh way to go about it. The same is true of requiring that all specs go deep in their tree, to have the "raid useful" ability.
I'm not trying to pick on the shammies. They just tend to come up a lot in the cases of "My hardcore raiding guildmaster says death knights are poo and he would NEVER bring a death knight to Ulduar if he could bring another shaman instead so y'all better go reroll."
You could use just about any class as an example.
Why bring a Survival hunter to provide mana regen since we already have 2 Shadow priests?
Why bring someone to Expose Armor when we already have Sunder?
Why bring a Fury warrior? Rogue dps is just as good or better, and Arms has a better debuff.
Take that last example. The natural response is to give Fury a crazy debuff too, and maybe boost their dps. Now the rogue have trouble justifying their spot, so then they need a crazy debuff too. At some point you have (at least) 30 crazy debuffs and you have to hope that they are all equal, swap players in and out for different encounters, or just figure out the ones that are least beneficial and kick those 5 from the raid.
If anything the problem is worse in 10-player raids because then you are picking 10 out of the 30 "must have" buffs or debuffs. If +haste is "must have" and mana battery is "must have" then maybe the new Moonkin benefits (which are quite good) still aren't "must have" and those players once again reroll Feral or Resto to get into Ulduar 10.
It isn't my intention to sound patronizing or disturbing. It's a tough problem.
Concerning healer stacking:
Let's say you start out with 3 tanks, 7 healers and 15 dps. Let's say that some specifik boss takes 10 minutes to kill with this setup. If you instead brought 3 tanks, 12 healers and 10 dps, the boss would take 15 minutes to kill. Here we have the basic problem:
Keeping the raid alive for 15 minutes with 12 healers is usually much easier than keeping the raid alive for 10 minutes with 7 healers.
This is what allowed you to cheese many pretbc encounters by stacking healers, though many didn't because it wasn't really needed. The only way to prevent this outside of enrage timers is to simply make it harder to keep the raid alive for 15 minutes with 12 healers than to keep it alive for 10 minutes with 7 healers. There are some ways to do this even now. The two usual ways to do this is to either increase damage over time like gruul or entropius or to have spawning adds that needs to be handled. When you can "dps away" the damage, bringing dps instead of healers is suddenly much more attractive. However, i like the first method best because it doesn't actually punish people for bringing more healers. If you can bring anywhere from 6 to 12 healers and still have a balanced encounter, isn't that perfect?
Yes! A DK should theoretically be 2.5 of those slots. In reality it will be less for any non-healer class because encounter designs work better when we assume there are more than 5 healers. But for DKs to claim even 1.5 to 2 slots, someone is going to have to lose a raid spot. I'd argue logically it should be one of those classes that already occupies 3 or more slots, but you can see how many people think the shaman buffs are so good that DKs will need something Really, Really Huge to compete with that.
I know you guys don't want to see the DK marginalized because you've grown to like them, and after all the effort I've spent on this forum, you should probably safely assume I feel the same way. (And the truth is that we Blizzard guys would look pretty dumb if our first new class was so gimpy that it didn't get into raids, so it's probably not even something to worry about.)
But think about it from a raid perspective -- consider the magnitude of the unique buff (and it's more likely buffs, plural) that a DK needs to bring in order for the raid to push out one of the shadow priests, enhancement shamans, warlocks, paladins or any other class that often gets 3 or more slots. Even if you don't think 3 rogues can make it into a raid, take a look at the moonkin, retadin or survival hunter changes. That might mean a lot more than 5 people have to get pushed out of the raid to make room for the new buffs. But who can you afford to lose?
I keep poking into this issue because I think it's a really useful discussion and I like to see what kinds of solutions people come up with. I'd suggest to anyone to re-read Zurga's post. He (or she) seems to get it.
It will be interesting to see how they make overlapping buffs work without turning it into a case of "bring one of the specs that bring the buff, everyone else can't come" thing.
Well, I think there's a few things to still consider here. While Ghostcrawler's post does indicate the issue we've been discussing here, it doesn't mean that the solution won't necessarily head that way. Yes, encounter designs can work better when you operate under that assumption, but we have already seen encounters where we don't need more than 7 healers, and they're fairly challenging as is. Brutallus is a 7 healer encounter, M'uru is a 6 healer encounter, and Kil'jaeden is a 7 healer encounter.
Yes! A DK should theoretically be 2.5 of those slots. In reality it will be less for any non-healer class because encounter designs work better when we assume there are more than 5 healers. But for DKs to claim even 1.5 to 2 slots, someone is going to have to lose a raid spot. I'd argue logically it should be one of those classes that already occupies 3 or more slots, but you can see how many people think the shaman buffs are so good that DKs will need something Really, Really Huge to compete with that.
What I think, about this, is that encounters COULD be and probably SHOULD be designed for somewhere between 5 to 7 healers. The simplest solution for the raid swapping issues we saw in Sunwell, is to allow for any character, to obtain the ability to have two specs for any given occasion, and to be able to switch between the two without having to travel back to a city and pay 50g to do so.
Now, at first thought, there's a lot of downsides, a lot of "consequences" that have to be put in place, to allow for this sort of versatility. But the question is, is there really a need to penalize this? No. If Blizzard is intending to make a more casual game, this is the most important tool to have, to increase the accessibility of raids in Wrath of the Lich King. Singlehandedly, this ability makes raid balancing a far easier act. It, in most ways, allows every class to play the role of a hybrid, given that they have worked on alternate sets of gear. What it allows you to do, is to walk into a raid instance with a potential four or five tanks, but to also downsize to one tank or two if the situation calls for it. It allows you to walk into a raid instance with five or six healers, but with a potential of nine, if need be. And with all of the new stat consolidations and talents that take advantage of those stat consolidations, is there really any reason not to push this system further? Spellpower, Critical Hits, and Haste Rating already are advocating a seamless transition, and Inscription already allows for a natural "downside" to not playing with your "true" spec. You lose your "Spec Mastery" if you will, because the glyphs are probably moreso geared towards one of your specs, than the other.
Blizzard has already placed precursors for this sort of system. All classes capable of healing in the expansion are getting thoroughly buffed for several things. Mana endurance, AoE healing and single target efficiency. Between this versatility, and with spells like "Mark of Divinity" and raid-wide Healing Stream Totem, and classes like Blood Death Knights and Shadow Priests, the foundations are there.
Instructor Razuvious: But now, if you're doing Instructor Razuvious, and all of your Priests are Mind Controlling, have all three go a Healing Spec, and let the other two heal while one is Mind Controlling. Then, when you get to Gothik, to meet the add DPS requirements, let a couple go Shadow and DPS.
Maexxna:
Or maybe, you're at Maexxna, and your healers are a Restoration Shaman, a Discipline Priest, a Holy Priest, a Restoration Druid, and a Holy Paladin. You have a Protection Paladin picking up Spider Adds, and a Feral Druid tanking Maexxna. You can put your Restoration Shaman, Holy Paladin on healing the Feral Druid, and let the Restoration Druid HoT up the two tanks and focus on the Paladin when he's tanking (Nourish heals more when all the HoTs are in play, as well as Regrowth when the HoT is still there.) Meanwhile, the Discipline Priest heals people in Web Wrap and keeps his Mark of Divinity on the Feral Druid, so a part of his healing goes to the Druid. And when Web Spray ends, the Holy Priest can heal up the Raid while using his Mark of Divinity on the Feral Druid as well, so 30% of all that CoH and PoH healing goes to the tank.
Loatheb:
And then there's Loatheb, where you put that Blood Death Knight in a party with the Main Tank, so all of his DPS heals the tank, and you have your Shadow Priest and Restoration Shaman helping the raid heals with Vampiric Embrace and Healing Stream Totem. Then, you make the 60 second healing shutdown a 25 second shutdown. With Mark of Divinity, you can have the Holy Priest heal another group of DPS and still have some of that carry over to the Main Tank. The DPS requirement is still high, so you don't really want more healers than is necessary, and at best, you might bring 7, if you have a weak link or two. And you can still make the fight work with a bare minimum of 5.
Kalecgos:
Still not convinced? Kalecgos was a pretty healing intensive fight, especially as you stepped out of Black Temple. Up the rate at which CoBA enters into the raid, and up their respective health pools (Kalecgos, Sathrovarr). From that point on, decrease the damage they do to the raid, just enough to remove the need of a couple raid healers. I have seen and been in on Kalecgos raids that completed the fight with 7 healers. And had we had Blood Death Knights, and had those parts of the fight been altered, it could very easily have been the norm. Especially with raid wide Healing Stream Totems.
If you make bosses do less damage you can cheese an encounter by bringing more healers than required. The only way to stop that is to put incredibly hard enrage timers on the bosses to force you to take as many DPS as possible. Do we really want every fight in the game to be Brutallus/Entropius? How does that fix anything? If anything you're killing your own vaunted "diversity" by tuning encounters for 5 or less healers.
My point, in making all these examples, is that the diversity of a fight doesn't need to become Brutallus or Entropius like. It is still very possible to have dynamic encounters, that require certain things of your raid. Nearly ALL the fights in TBC have had some sort of enrage, (and most HAVE had them since Naxxramas). And for the most part, all the raids in TBC, maintained a healer ratio that was about 7 to 9 healers on most fights. This can very easily be altered as new content is released. We're not asking for rebalancing existing content, but to implement mechanics that allow for the number of healers to be toned down.
I don't really see your point, seeing as Brutallus and Entropius are both very challenging encounters, and have diverse aspects to them. And they are also, only two of the most challenging encounters to have graced TBC progression. Raids SHOULD be pushed to their limits, for their gear level, within reason of what is accessible. And as the Progression curve continues, the spectrum always evens itself out.
As we've suggested a few times, we are currently taking a serious look at all of the various buffs and debuffs classes can bring to parties and especially raids. A few of these changes have shown up in the recent build, and more are on the way. I'll first explain why we're doing this and then what generally we are doing.
Why we think this change is necessary:
1) We are adding a new class in Wrath of the Lich King as well as improving some specs that were previously viewed as inferior for PvE. Yet because the raid size is remaining at 25-players (and we expect many people with raid with 10), it may be hard to fit more people into your raid.
2) We are moving almost every buff to affect the entire raid. There are only a few exceptions, and these tend to be short-term, bursty abilities. Most buffs from Battle Shout to Leader of the Pack will affect the raid.
3) While we are likely to increase the debuff limit on bosses, this is a problem we keep running into. Furthermore, it asks a lot of players to be able to parse bosses with 30, 50, 100 debuffs on them. At some point, we need to stop the madness.
4) Stacking a raid in order to get the right buffs has started to feel a little like a crutch, much like stacking consumables felt not so long ago. Because some of the buffs scale so well and have so much synergy with other classes, you may sometimes feel that you should pass over a really skilled player in order to pick up a buff that will bring more to you group. We'd rather get back to bringing good players or, gasp, even your friends.
5) We want the challenge of the encounter to be the fight itself, not collecting all of the buffs and debuffs you need to succeed. Buffs are fun. We don't want to cut them or nerf them significantly. But we do want to make benefiting from them less of a burden.
Some changes you're going to see:
1) Ease and flexibility in getting all of the major buffs in the group, while still having a few spare slots to take the people you want to take.
2) More parity in which classes can raid. While it's probably not realistic to get 2.5 of every class in a 25-player raid, we can get a lot closer than we are today.
3) More overlap in buffs and debuffs and very few unique buffs. If you can't get player X to bring the melee haste buff, maybe you can get player Y.
4) No two classes should have the same set of buffs. This is to make sure that one class can't completely replace another. If you have two players both bringing melee haste, there is a good chance one of them also brings something else you need. Again, the goal is flexibility.
A few examples:
1) To get a spell damage vulnerability debuff on a boss, you can bring a a warlock for Curse of Elements or a death knight for Ebon Plague. They don't stack, but both classes also bring additional benefits in case you want to run with both. The lock brings Curse of Recklesness, Demonic Pact, Curse of Weakness, Blood Pact and Fel Intelligence (depending on spec). The death knight brings Abomination's Might, Improved Icy Talons, various Auras, and a new Str + Agi buff you haven't seen yet (again depending on spec).
2) To get a 5% melee crit bonus, you can bring a Feral druid for Leader of the Pack or a Fury warrior for Rampage.
3) While having a mana battery feels essential in many cases, you can now bring a Shadow priest, Retribution paladin or Survival hunter to fill the role.
4) You can improve health of the entire raid with Commanding Shout or Blood Pact. You don't need both, so perhaps the warrior can Battle Shout or the lock can bring out another pet instead.
I want to stress that none of this is set in stone. A change like this is going to take some iteration until it feels right. While we are pretty happy with the plan, it is certainly possible that some class or spec is going to be hurt by a change more than we anticipated. We don't want to hurt anyone's viability while soloing, in small groups, or in PvP with this change. We aren't trying to slap anyone in the face -- we're trying to make the game more fun.
The goal is to get more people into raids and to let you bring the people you want. Ultimately, that should benefit everyone. Please try and keep that in mind as you start to see the changes.
And of course, please share your feedback on them with us.
------
Mana batteries are a slightly unusual case because you probably want 1 for a 10-player and 2 for a 25-player raid. Assume that you can stack any 2 of the mana battery classes (2 Shadow priests, or 1 Shadow Priest and 1 Retadin).
And, again the point is NOT that you're penalized for having too many Retadins. It's more that you're NOT penalized if you lack a Retadin (because there is some redunancy in buffs and roles).
I would like to see how they're planning on convincing raid leader to bring only 1 mana battery in a 10-man and 2 in a 25-man. If their abilities stack and their DPS is reasonable, I'd bring as many mana batteries as possible.
I don't understand how they're going to stop people from stacking pure damage classes after the raid has all the buffs they need. If rogues do considerably more damage than the buffer melee specs, why not bring 5 rogues to replace some of the melee whos buffs aren't contributing anything anymore? Now that most buffs are raid-wide there's no worry about trying to create more spots in a melee group either. Trying to let people raid with a wide variety of 25 spec combination is a nice idea in theory, but I fear it'll just end up locking out some specs out of raiding. Ater all they'll still have to balance encounters based on the min-maxers.
I would like to see how they're planning on convincing raid leader to bring only 1 mana battery in a 10-man and 2 in a 25-man. If their abilities stack and their DPS is reasonable, I'd bring as many mana batteries as possible.
Doesn't that depend entirely on what levels of mana usage we're talking about? If 2 mana batteries allow your raid to last the entire fight without strain, then what would be the purpose of having 1 more? More Arcane Blast, perhaps?
Doesn't that depend entirely on what levels of mana usage we're talking about? If 2 mana batteries allow your raid to last the entire fight without strain, then what would be the purpose of having 1 more? More Arcane Blast, perhaps?
If rogues do considerably more damage than the buffer melee specs, why not bring 5 rogues to replace some of the melee whos buffs aren't contributing anything anymore?
That "if" hints at the obvious solution. If classes are not brought because of the buffs or debuffs they provide, then they should all potentially be competitive in DPS.
An another subject, how about those mages. Is another class or spec going to gain the ability to make water? Is that viewed as a non-crucial skill since characters can buy food and water?
An another subject, how about those mages. Is another class or spec going to gain the ability to make water? Is that viewed as a non-crucial skill since characters can buy food and water?
Maybe we should put healthstones on a vendor at every inn while we're at it. I think it's safe to assume Blizzard expects at least one of each class to be represented (in 25 man raiding at the very least) and the 'luxury' utility abilities are so far not being balanced around.
Technically the DK has to spec for Ebon Plague as well, but we are cognizant of the potential for "wasted" talents and discussed that in detail when hatching this plan. To be fair, that potential exists today and players typically work around it just by knowing the people they raid with and how they are spec'd.
Q u o t e: If it comes down to needing one of nearly everything... raiders would either have to be happy with getting less playtime in raids or you would have to hope your raiding members are skilled enough to repec to a missing spec... and also geared enough... to fill that role.
This is actually what we are trying to avoid. Our feeling is raids work too much like that now where you have to bring X class to have a reasonable chance of success. There are some buffs that most players would consider mandatory, or at least very powerful. You'll want to get those. You'll want 2 or so tanks and 7 or however many healers works for you. Then just take good people.
Q u o t e: What if, for example, my best buddy is a Feral Druid and I'm a Fury Warrior. Should one of us be forced to respec to get raid spots together? Should we be encouraged not to run 5-mans together because our buffs don't stack, etc?
No, that would be a fail in our minds. You have 23 (or 8) other slots to get the buffs you need. And realize when I say need that everyone's needs are different. Haste is pretty valuable, as is mana return. Is Arcane Int? Is Imp Prayer of Spirit? Your guild will have to decide that. In our design we made sure it was possible to get all the big buffs with as few as 11-12 people. That gives you a lot of room to bring your buddies even if they are the same role, class or spec.
Q u o t e:
Every non-stackable raid buff needs to be the exact same for it to be that great. Like Rampage/LotP. Rampage doesn't heal/give it to ranged. So if you already have battle shout, druid trumps warriors. Etc etc. Its like my original post where I was asking if some things were the same, but now I'm looking at it, they are not.
I will admit that is a logical extension of our argument, but in reality I don't think it will get to that point, at least for 99.9% of us. If Ebon Plague was a 12% buff and Curse of Elements was a 10% buff do you think that 2% means the difference between success and failure? What if one buff has a longer duration or costs less mana? We think you just hit a point of diminishing returns, where as long as you have the big buffs you need, and maybe some of the minor ones, the rest is going to be in the noise. One or two percent may seem a big deal for the guilds going for world first on Kil'Jaeden, but that kind of player is going to go to extremes almost no matter what we do. For most of us, our players being focused and getting lucky with a string of crits probably has a much bigger impact than a 2% difference. Or put another way, a buff that increases your dps by 1300? Yes please. Would I boot that player to get the buff that offers 1330? Probably not.
-------------------------
There's more stuff at the link.
Right now, I'm trying to figure out what the big buffs are, and how they'd get them with 12ish people. Not going to list all the examples, but trying to get an idea of what they're going for...
Melee-
* Attack Power (Battle Shout, Trueshot Aura)
* Haste (Windfury, Improved Icy Talons)
* Strength/Agility (Strength of Earth Totem, Possible DK talent)
* Increased percent attack power (Unleashed Rage, Abomination's Might)
* Critical hit (Leader of the Pack, Rampage)
* -Armor debuff? (Curse of Recklessness)
Caster-
* Percent damage debuff (Curse of Elements, Unholy Plague)
... and after that, I got nothing. A lot of different abilities that all act in different ways. Improved Moonkin Aura is different from Wrath of Air. Elemental Oath, Improved Faerie Fire, Misery, Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill, etc etc. Casters have a lot of unique debuffs that have no obvious overlaps.
The theory that two buffs can overlap if they're similar, if not identical, means that caster buffs simplify down a bit more. It's possible that any of the following wouldn't stack with any other: CoE, Ebon Plague, Imp Scorch, Earth & Moon, Stormstrike. Totem of Wrath and Moonkin Aura may not stack, nor Wrath of Air and improved Moonkin Aura. Focus Magic and Demonic Pact. And that's assuming that these abilities stay in their current incarnation, rather than pulling a Rampage.
Maybe we should put healthstones on a vendor at every inn while we're at it. I think it's safe to assume Blizzard expects at least one of each class to be represented (in 25 man raiding at the very least) and the 'luxury' utility abilities are so far not being balanced around.
But then why are baseline debuff equivalents (curse of elements/ebon plague, battle shout/trueshot aura) being given to other classes? It really does seem like they are trying to say you can bring 0 of a class and you will be okay because you can get the important debuffs elsewhere. Which I just find funny because I think mages will be guaranteed a spot in many guilds just because of water. And warlocks for healthstones too, yes.
I don't really like the way things are sounding, but I will wait and see and hope things work out. It seems like classes with non-stacking debuffs are just going to be less desirable, and group building in 10 mans will be *more* strict in WotLK than it is now, if you want to optimize your raid. It also seems to marginalize talents. Why talent into ebon plague if every warlock can do CoE as a baseline ability? Why talent trueshot aura if every warrior can run battle shout as a baseline ability? I think it would be more interesting if there was some way to allow diminished stacking. Let the similar abilities stack at a reduced benefit, instead of ebon plague + CoE = 20% spell damage increase, make them stack up to 15%
Last edited by kysta : 08/23/08 at 5:49 AM.
Reason: readability
Nobody is going to bring a mage just for water. Or at least nobody who thinks through it logically. The amount of water I use in 4 hours of raiding (at most 40, or 5ish gold) is roughly equal in cost to a single mana pot, elixir or repair bill. It's seriously not worth my time to wait around for a mage (or bring an inferior mage player) just for water.
I don't understand how they're going to stop people from stacking pure damage classes after the raid has all the buffs they need. If rogues do considerably more damage than the buffer melee specs, why not bring 5 rogues to replace some of the melee whos buffs aren't contributing anything anymore? Now that most buffs are raid-wide there's no worry about trying to create more spots in a melee group either. Trying to let people raid with a wide variety of 25 spec combination is a nice idea in theory, but I fear it'll just end up locking out some specs out of raiding. Ater all they'll still have to balance encounters based on the min-maxers.
Don't forget, that hybrids bring a lot more than just DPS and buffs/Debuffs..An SP, for example can PWS, they can dispel, they can mass dispel, ect. An enhancement shaman can cure poisons, diseases, curses ect.
Classes will still bring utility outside of their homogenized buffs....Even today, we find Kal with 3 mages much easier than with 1..We can do it with one+2 druids, but the extra DPS the locks/hunters bring in that slot isn't really worth it, when mages do as much (Or slightly less.) and bring the de-curse. Of course this doesn't hold true for the rest of sunwell because the damage discrepencies between stationary locks (OR a stacked lock group) is too large to ignore..
In other words..If rogues do slightly more, then its not going to matter, because other classes will still be valuable for their versatility. The problem will come up if rogues completely blow other classes away. If a rogue did 2200 DPS, and a shaman did 2100, but the shamans buffs were covered, I wouldn't really care who came, the DPS difference is not large enough to boot a friend/good player. Also, with the shaman, I have an Ankh/Purge/Purify *and* in case my primary buffer/debuffer dies, the shaman can pick up the slack.
So, as long as DPS is only modestly better, I can't see rogue stacking...Even by extremely high end guilds, with the exception of people who compete for world firsts. (Again, the key word here is modestly, Mage/Rogue/Hunter DPS should be slightly better, but it should be by a small increment.)
It seems like their goal is to make it virtually impossible to min/max group make up. Doing this would mean you could bring that enhance shaman instead of the rogue or the mage instead of the lock because of the crazy way all the buffs work (well, y class does this much more dps but since I have x class in the raid, z class can contribute this amount of dps if class a is present... and it just goes on and on). If, in it's release form, WotLK accomplishes this, I think Blizzard will have helped everyone out. From the super casual to the elitist jerk.
Basically, if that didn't make complete sense: If there are an infinite number of variables, there are an infinite number of possibilities.
It seems like their goal is to make it virtually impossible to min/max group make up. Doing this would mean you could bring that enhance shaman instead of the rogue or the mage instead of the lock because of the crazy way all the buffs work (well, y class does this much more dps but since I have x class in the raid, z class can contribute this amount of dps if class a is present... and it just goes on and on).
I highly doubt that is the case - you very certainly could min/max still I believe but it would be in the realm of a few minor % not the huge discrepancies you have in TBC standards.
In the raid stacking thread Ghostcrawler did reply about this situation:
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
If Ebon Plague was a 12% buff and Curse of Elements was a 10% buff do you think that 2% means the difference between success and failure? What if one buff has a longer duration or costs less mana? We think you just hit a point of diminishing returns, where as long as you have the big buffs you need, and maybe some of the minor ones, the rest is going to be in the noise. One or two percent may seem a big deal for the guilds going for world first on Kil'Jaeden, but that kind of player is going to go to extremes almost no matter what we do. For most of us, our players being focused and getting lucky with a string of crits probably has a much bigger impact than a 2% difference. Or put another way, a buff that increases your dps by 1300? Yes please. Would I boot that player to get the buff that offers 1330? Probably not.
It would be a logistical nightmare to try and remove min/max being possible but by covering the big ones (CoE / Scorch*? / Sunder / Demo / TClap / UR / Mana to name a few) most encounters should not be able to be trivialized by overstacking of the perfect combiation and incredibly hard to the point of impossibility without it.
Don't forget, that hybrids bring a lot more than just DPS and buffs/Debuffs..An SP, for example can PWS, they can dispel, they can mass dispel, ect. An enhancement shaman can cure poisons, diseases, curses ect.
Classes will still bring utility outside of their homogenized buffs....Even today, we find Kal with 3 mages much easier than with 1..We can do it with one+2 druids, but the extra DPS the locks/hunters bring in that slot isn't really worth it, when mages do as much (Or slightly less.) and bring the de-curse. Of course this doesn't hold true for the rest of sunwell because the damage discrepencies between stationary locks (OR a stacked lock group) is too large to ignore..
In other words..If rogues do slightly more, then its not going to matter, because other classes will still be valuable for their versatility. The problem will come up if rogues completely blow other classes away. If a rogue did 2200 DPS, and a shaman did 2100, but the shamans buffs were covered, I wouldn't really care who came, the DPS difference is not large enough to boot a friend/good player. Also, with the shaman, I have an Ankh/Purge/Purify *and* in case my primary buffer/debuffer dies, the shaman can pick up the slack.
So, as long as DPS is only modestly better, I can't see rogue stacking...Even by extremely high end guilds, with the exception of people who compete for world firsts. (Again, the key word here is modestly, Mage/Rogue/Hunter DPS should be slightly better, but it should be by a small increment.)
Actually, I think the problem is the exact opposite of what you're saying. If this scenario you pose is the way it ends up being, there is absolutely no reason to ever bring the rogue. As you've said, the shaman brings so much more utility, and it's never bad to have backups for your raid buffs in case one of the primary buffers dies. So you get all that extra flexibility and security, and you only drop a ridiculously small bit of DPS! Why ever think of bringing the rogue?
This is, at least, the argument all the rogues are making, and it's what I'm personally agreeing with (as both my rogue, my druid, and my shaman). My rogue is the least versatile, least useful in a raid, and least flexible. If the other classes bring nearly the same DPS as a rogue, AS A RAID LEADER, I simply won't bring any. And I'm a rogue saying that.
08/07/08, 11:43 AM
Similar Threads
