I'm wondering how they will balance certain perks that classes give (like Soulstone, Combat Res, Innervate) other then these buffs mentioned in the blue post. If all the classes are supposed to do equal dps noone will mind a 7th soulstone when learning fights and noone will mind a 9th combat res when learning a fight (taking it to the extremes here, but you get the idea). This also goes for the classes who give mana back to the raid up to the point where mana isn't really a problem anymore.
On top of that I also find that the raidbuffs are quite unevenly spread amongst the classes at the moment. Some classes like Rogue hardly bring anything and then you have Paladins who are listed on eight of the buffs/debuffs.
This to me is a massive problem with this system. If cat druids are even with or right behind rogues..Why wouldn't a raid just bring more cat based druids? Even if the buffs/debuffs were balanced, Innervate and Battle res make mistakes recoverable, where as a Rogue doesn't have that option. It seems silly not to. At least with rogues, the argument can be made that they have cloak, evasion and vanish, so their survivability is higher, but what about a fury warrior? (OR what about a hunter Vs Moonkin? OR a warlock with soul stones?)
The main problem is some classes aren't just defined by their buffs/debuffs...When buffs/debuffs are even, people will look to DPS, when DPS is even, people are going to look to utility (Poison cure, Agro conceerns, class perks IE Ice block, Divine Shield, Innervate, Battle Res ect.)..The problem is that classes that often lead in DPS, have none of the later.
I like the "direction"..However, I think classes, *not specs*, need those "unique" tricks they all posses spread out a bit more, too, if debuffs/buffs are going to be consolidated.
Even if you could fill your raid with all the necessary utility with just 10 players, leaving 15 slots open for Rogues (or whatever we've TC'd to be the best DPS class), the question you should be asking yourself is "Can I actually find 15 Rogues?" or even "Is it worth bringing 15 Rogues if I know 10 of them are horrible human beings who always move during Flame Wreath?"
Warrior - Sunder Armor, Blood Frenzy, Mortal Strike, Demoralizing Shout Druid - Leader of the Pack, Mangle, Infected Wounds Shaman - Windfury Totem, Unleashed Range, Strength of Earth Totem Paladin - Blessing of Might, Sanctified Retribution, Heart of the Crusader Shaman - Wrath of Air, Elemental Oath, Totem of Wrath Mage - Improved Scorch, Arcane Intellect Druid - Earth and Moon, Moonkin Aura, Improved Moonkin Aura, Insect Swarm, Mark of the Wild, Improved Faerie Fire Paladin - Blessing of Kings, Improved Devotion Aura Priest - Fortitiude, Divine Spirit, Grace, Inspiration Warlock - Blood Pact, Curse of Tongues
Too bad it's a very ugly group that either lacks healing or tanking. It also relies way too much on a couple of classes (Druid and Shaman) keeping up a large chunk of buffs.
This is definitely a huge change. They'll have to look really hard at what each damage class brings. Previously unique buffs and debuffs were the 'meal ticket' for some classes.
I fully expect to see the "why bring a rogue if ferals do just as good damage" versus "why bring a feral when they don't have any unique buffs anymore" argument repeated again and again. For many classes really.
They're going to have to do a whole lot of number balancing for this.
Blizzard will have to bump up rogue dps after this by quite a notch. A properly buffed rogue does roughly twice the damage on a debuffed target compared to solo play. If Blizzard wants us at all in a raid group they have to bump us up and you know what that will result in in a pvp environment
You all know that bluepost about the hemo nerf (which i cant find right now). But this might lead to over-PvPowered rogues to bring them in line with other dps classes with the reduced buffs/debuffs.
The same can be said for more pure dps classes. If pvp damage goes out of control because of less dependency on debuffs, there are many things they can do, such as making some of your damage have to 'ramp up' similar to hunter's mark, shadow weaving and the like.
In general, I'd expect Rogues/Hunters/Mages to get a few more buffs or debuffs. A few classes (Shaman, Warrior, Druid) are bringing too many things to the raid so that it makes 5-mans and 10-mans a bit crazy.
Remember, the ultimate goal is to get people's DPS to be the same so raid spots 15-25 can just be whoever is on, and not the class of the month. Since everyone gets the same buffs, everyone should be able to scale the same way at all levels of the game.
So many comments on why bring X-class instead of Y-class, etc. The idea behind this is you bring this player or that player - with the opportunity cost between buffs, less of a factor than the players' skill.
Saying "Why bring a rogue over a druid" is about as useful as saying "Should my guild use DKP or loot council?" You are the best qualified person to answer that question, because the focus has shifted towards those players, away from their class. In my guild, i'd bring extra rogues over druids anyday - because of the nature of the players. I'm sure other guilds are the opposite. Theorycrafting on the idealised 'best' is pointless, as it will vary between guilds. Now there still are valid fine-tuning concerns, but it isn't really as dramatic as implied here.
So many comments on why bring X-class instead of Y-class, etc. The idea behind this is you bring this player or that player - with the opportunity cost between buffs, less of a factor than the players' skill.
Saying "Why bring a rogue over a druid" is about as useful as saying "Should my guild use DKP or loot council?" Your the best qualified person to answer that question, because the focus has shifted towards those players, away from their class. In my guild, id bring extra rogues over druids anyday - because of the nature of the players. Im sure other guilds are the opposite. Theorycrafting on the idealised 'best' is pointless, as it will vary between guilds.
Except if the idea is to bring this player or that player you need to remove things like battle resses, innervate, clos and feign death from the equation.
Because eventually when everything else is equal, top end guilds will start to focus on those skills as the determinant of which class they recruit (for instance if the hardest fights are agro sensitive you are going to bring more hunters, if mana is an issue druids, etc, etc.). And once the masses realize which class is at the top of the food chain due to these specific skills, the populations will shift towards that class.
If the goal is to homogenize all of the classes, they need to look at these miscellaneous skills as well.
So many comments on why bring X-class instead of Y-class, etc. The idea behind this is you bring this player or that player - with the opportunity cost between buffs, less of a factor than the players' skill.
Saying "Why bring a rogue over a druid" is about as useful as saying "Should my guild use DKP or loot council?" You are the best qualified person to answer that question, because the focus has shifted towards those players, away from their class. In my guild, i'd bring extra rogues over druids anyday - because of the nature of the players. I'm sure other guilds are the opposite. Theorycrafting on the idealised 'best' is pointless, as it will vary between guilds. Now there still are valid fine-tuning concerns, but it isn't really as dramatic as implied here.
Frankly, in a game that leveling 1-60 takes 25 hours nowadays, in many proper guilds you can put any player on any class, as there is enough quality available.
The problem is, this damages the depth of the game if classes are not represent, or present without pulling their weight. The truth is that today, even though some classes are represented more than they should (priest and shaman in some cases), there is still room available for everyone, because of unique abilities they bring to the raid.
Again, the ability to have choices was good. Right now, even blizzard insists that they are allowing raids to make choices, they actually taking it away, because you don't have to make any choices (or sacrifice anything) to have the best possible setup available to you.
So many comments on why bring X-class instead of Y-class, etc. The idea behind this is you bring this player or that player - with the opportunity cost between buffs, less of a factor than the players' skill.
Saying "Why bring a rogue over a druid" is about as useful as saying "Should my guild use DKP or loot council?" You are the best qualified person to answer that question, because the focus has shifted towards those players, away from their class. In my guild, i'd bring extra rogues over druids anyday - because of the nature of the players. I'm sure other guilds are the opposite. Theorycrafting on the idealised 'best' is pointless, as it will vary between guilds. Now there still are valid fine-tuning concerns, but it isn't really as dramatic as implied here.
How many warlocks were taken for the first KJ kill? In the interview, the sole reason SK said they stacked locks was not due to DPS, or skill, but simply due to a talent advantage. I've had players re-roll because they felt they could gain a significant advantage playing another class. You can call it dramatic, but its really not, it only takes a few days to level a toon, its not a huge deal for a player who thinks they can squeeze a little more out of the game. The ironic thing is, it is the players with the character you describe that would do this..Granted, I'm not saying this is doom and gloom, in fact, I think the "proposed" situation is slightly better than the current situation (At least in the proposed wrath set up, raids won't have to be called due to stacking issues..Any classes will be enough to "go with".)
Still, the fact remains..Good players like to feel they bring something extremely valuable, not just due to their play, but also because their class is a unique snow flake..It doesn't have to be major, but blizzard should be mindful of a class feeling too much like a cog in the machine, while others feel like they have an ace in the hole. Because, eventually, when you have a roster of great players, who are your friends, as a raid leader, you have to make a choice based on what helps your other friends the most.
At the end of the day it's still numbers and for theorycrafting there are still going to be better options than others. What this chance mostly does is lower the differences between the best option and the second best option. Which is good, because if the differences between options are smaller then skill or avaliability doesn't get washed away by necessity to such a gerat extent.
Your raids are still likely to be heavily theorycrafted to get the best out of what you have avaliable. But now you can consider "well, we have 5 pallies and only 2 priests" and choose to have both priests play healers is they want because you dont need to have a shadow priest anymore because a ret pally can give a mana buff. If you're really pushing things you might say "stuff that, shadow priests are better than ret, lets get another priest", but many will just say "great, no stress about having no spriests on, lets do it".
There are always going to be ideal setups and things better than other options in this game. It's impossible for it to be otherwise. I don't think that saying this won't solve that is a valid point; it's not really attempting to.
So many comments on why bring X-class instead of Y-class, etc. The idea behind this is you bring this player or that player - with the opportunity cost between buffs, less of a factor than the players' skill.
Saying "Why bring a rogue over a druid" is about as useful as saying "Should my guild use DKP or loot council?" You are the best qualified person to answer that question, because the focus has shifted towards those players, away from their class. In my guild, i'd bring extra rogues over druids anyday - because of the nature of the players. I'm sure other guilds are the opposite. Theorycrafting on the idealised 'best' is pointless, as it will vary between guilds. Now there still are valid fine-tuning concerns, but it isn't really as dramatic as implied here.
I agree with this 100 percent.
Instead of having to stack 6 shaman and sit a more skilled player because he is another class not needed as much, you will be able to bring your 25 best players.
For guilds that have an infinite supply of recruits to choose from this may not be so great since they already have access to any number of any spec of any class they need. But as the leader of a guild that has hard a hell of a time recruiting dedicated and skilled shaman that are reliable, it will be great to not need more than two shaman and to fill my raid spots that people that actually are dedicated and reliable.
Just look at the recruitment thread forums and see how many threads there are looking for shaman (especially resto). If most of those guild would be able to plug any other kind of healer into that spot without missing out on crucial raid buffs, I think they would accept that in a heartbeat.
Except if the idea is to bring this player or that player you need to remove things like battle resses, innervate, clos and feign death from the equation.
Because eventually when everything else is equal, top end guilds will start to focus on those skills as the determinant of which class they recruit (for instance if the hardest fights are agro sensitive you are going to bring more hunters, if mana is an issue druids, etc, etc.). And once the masses realize which class is at the top of the food chain due to these specific skills, the populations will shift towards that class.
If the goal is to homogenize all of the classes, they need to look at these miscellaneous skills as well.
Those aren't ever really going to be on the level of proper raid buffs/debuffs. One extra soulstone isn't going to make or break a fight. The point isn't perfect equality -- it's shrinking the gap and allowing for more flexibility. I think it's also important to remember that part of this picture is a real 10-man raid progression. In a 25-man raid, you can absolutely assume a fair mix of classes -- you don't want to force a perfect min/max'ing of every spec, though, and these changes seem to avoid much of that. But in a 10-man raid, you might have no shadow priest at all, or no DPS warrior, etc. So you need as much redundancy as possible so that more combinations might work.
As with all sweeping Blizzard changes ("omg, 25-man raids??" or "omg, horde paladins??") you need to forget about current content. Don't think about how you're going to kill Brutallus with these changes. Everything can and will be balanced around this. If rogues (or any other class) end up useless, then that'll be addressed, and it's probably an easier problem to fix, relatively speaking, than a systemic flaw like an overdependence on buffs/debuffs. The time to make such a change is now, presumably right before they start to seriously turn to raid testing and tuning on the beta realms.
One consequence of this may be difficulty coordinating talent specs with your raid. As a balance druid, if there is a warlock, a ret paladin, and a shadow priest in the group, I can save myself 11 talent points (at current point costs). That's pretty major and is a side effect of having so many of these abilities be talent based.
Possibly the best solution is to have the talents that give the buffs and debuffs also have a secondary effect. Thus misery for shadow priests could also increase their spell power by a percentage, or the talent for rampage could also give you some bonus strength.
This would allow you to assume that your classes will have the important buffs and debuffs without having to make them baseline. (Giving misery to holy priests would be silly, for instance). This would also prevent you from having to send a tell to your paladin letting them know they can spec out of improved devotion aura since the raid already has a resto druid, and things along those lines.
For guilds that have an infinite supply of recruits to choose from this may not be so great since they already have access to any number of any spec of any class they need
This is a major point that really isn't considered much in this conversation. Some guilds have the luxory to be able to choose from a pool of fantastically skilled players to recruit - and specifically pick/choose what class or spec they would like. My guild sure as hell isn't one of them.
So while people are bickering over "Should we take am exntra rogue or druid", i'm just satisfied that I can take either, with minimal opportunity cost, assuming I can find one extra skilled player of either said class.
Flexibility is a big issue . Alot of us here come from guilds that will happily take any skilled class+player that can fill their buff/debuff category. If people are in a guild that has the ability to very specifically state what/who you want, more power to you.
As an example: I see Gurg put up a post asking specifically for a feral druid that has to meet an enviable standard to get recruited. I'm assuming they find one, because recruitment is closed soon after. If only we could all do that! If I can find anyone good (Warrior, Druid - whatever) to fill the "Melee Critical Strike Chance Buff: Leader of the Pack, Rampage" category, ill take it. If I get a warrior and lose innervates/battle res from not having a druid, it's fine - just want that category filled. I agree there are some valid balance issues, but its being a little dramatised here.
For many guilds, it will just be about filling the category with someone suitable - not assuming you have terrifically skilled players of any class+spec available to choose from, like some of the conversation implies.
I understand it's never going to be perfect, but if you look at raids right now on my server. You have the Sunwell guilds that are progressing reasonably, and kinda take whatever class mix they have available to try and do fights. So for instance you never see them with two feral druids for Brutallus, one or no hunters, no ret pally. Stuff like that.
Then you see the guilds that have cleared through everything and tend to be able to bring the most optimum class mixes available to do the fights, until they are trivialized.
So for the first type of guild, nothing really changes. You're still bringing the best you have available without the ability to really min/max classes. For the second type of guild, instead of focusing on min/maxing debuffs, you are focusing on min/maxing bresses, soulstones, innervates and whatever other secondary skills are deemed most useful.
With the new recruit a friend stuff, and just the general ease of leveling already people will go ahead and level the class with the most useful secondary skills.
To Beef:
Unfortunately that would get away from what they are trying to do. If you give all the effects secondary effects, then raids will be built around the secondary effects, and we start this whole thing over.
Edit: I dunno maybe i'm being pessimistic, I'd just hate to see a raid composed of like 15 druids or something, which becomes more possible with these changes.
And to cover what Tyrian said, that's kind of my point. With guilds like EJ, if you know one DPS class has a decided utility advantage via secondary skills, won't you go after that DPS class when recruiting? Knowing you could find that class at will due to your guilds standing?
I don't really see raids stacking 10+ locks/rogues/hunters just because they are the best DPS class for one simple reason: loot-progression. If you fill up your raid with 10 warlocks, just because they do 5% more dps than anyone else, then you have too many people competing for cloth/caster-drops while leather/mail/plate pieces get sharded on the first drop.
While a stacked raid might be the best on paper, you will want to have a varied, balanced raid in the long run, which is a good thing.
Unfortunately that would get away from what they are trying to do. If you give all the effects secondary effects, then raids will be built around the secondary effects, and we start this whole thing over.
Maybe I worded it poorly but you misunderstood me.
What I mean is that if I'm speccing into a talent that gives a raid debuff, the talent itself will also have a self-only benefit.
As an example, Improved faerie fire could read like this:
Causes your faerie fire to increase the chance spells hit the effect target by 1/2/3%. In addition, your starfire ability has an increased 1/2/3% chance to crit.
This way if I go to a raid where there's already a shadow priest, I don't feel like I've wasted three talent points.
I don't really see raids stacking 10+ locks/rogues/hunters just because they are the best DPS class for one simple reason: loot-progression. If you fill up your raid with 10 warlocks, just because they do 5% more dps than anyone else, then you have too many people competing for cloth/caster-drops while leather/mail/plate pieces get sharded on the first drop.
While a stacked raid might be the best on paper, you will want to have a varied, balanced raid in the long run, which is a good thing.
Depends on how they do badges, tokens etc.
Even if it's not 10+, what if it's 5+ of each, leaving 2 or 3 of the other DPS classes out because "clos" or "fd" doesn't bring enough utility to a raid.
Also we're not discussing damage. Keep in mind this conversation is based off all DPS classes doing the same DPS. This is about secondary skills.
Originally Posted by Lord BEEF
Maybe I worded it poorly but you misunderstood me.
What I mean is that if I'm speccing into a talent that gives a raid debuff, the talent itself will also have a self-only benefit.
As an example, Improved faerie fire could read like this:
Causes your faerie fire to increase the chance spells hit the effect target by 1/2/3%. In addition, your starfire ability has an increased 1/2/3% chance to crit.
This way if I go to a raid where there's already a shadow priest, I don't feel like I've wasted three talent points.
Ah yeah my bad, 3:30am and all, I though you meant a secondary raid wide effect. Yeah a secondary self effect might be good.
One consequence of this may be difficulty coordinating talent specs with your raid. As a balance druid, if there is a warlock, a ret paladin, and a shadow priest in the group, I can save myself 11 talent points (at current point costs). That's pretty major and is a side effect of having so many of these abilities be talent based.
The follow-up to that is ensuring there are actually another 11 points worth of talents worth picking up by sticking them elsewhere -- most likely in another tree. That might not be viable for hybrids unless they sink some pretty solid and broad appealing talents into the lower levels. Taking your Balance Druid example I can't really find many points in Feral or Resto that would make much of a difference raiding-wise. There is Master Shapeshifter although that only requires 12 in Resto and you could get those anyway by going 59 in Balance (not to mention the 10 points you have to spend to get to Master Shapeshifter are mostly throwaway).
Last edited by Metrosexuelf : 08/29/08 at 4:39 AM.
It's a shift in design from "you want to bring 2 of each class, and a 3rd wouldn't hurt but would be nice." There is none of that left in this buff/debuff design, since the mechanism they used to strike that 2-3 balance was buffs/debuffs.
They seem to have set that aside in order to ensure that 10-man has everything it needs without real effort.
I think this is (maybe) good -- but it's hard to absorb, and their track record on fixing DPS disparities isn't that strong (see: mages in TBC.) Nor is their a track record for dealing with how dramatically different some class scaling is (see: melee vs caster; see: recent comments on affliction doing just fine because shadowbolt benefits from crit.)
I think there's definitely ground for skepticism and concern.
That said, if this is done right, it would be very nice. Rosters could run leaner since you no longer have to roster N+1 of every important role, which means more raid time and less sitting for everyone.
(edit) it also brings up some fundamental design points: there was always a bit of a tradeoff with being a hybrid dps class, in that you could become a new 'class' by respecing, but you didn't have as much raw dps. Boosting all that raw dps (which they have to, by definition) makes those extremely appealing classes from a recruiting standpoint, since it's easier to fill holes in your roster via a simple respec, retaining rep, professions, levels, etc. (you don't even need to regear in many cases anymore.)
Similarly, part of what defined the hybrid/dps split was hybrids didn't have active threat dumps. They will need them with the dps boost they will get, and passive threat reductions should be similarly smoothed out.
For balance druids, as it is now, the three points from (for example) Improved Faerie Fire could go into Dreamstate, or Eclipse (both talents that would probably get skipped otherwise).
The follow-up to that is ensuring there are actually another 11 points worth of talents worth picking up by sticking them elsewhere -- most likely in another tree.
This would be bad.
Unless the 'raid boost' talents also give a separate self boost, you're going to have to respec for many raids depending on who else signs up for a raid. For instance I might want dreamstate (mana regen) in a balance build, but if there's no ret paladin I'd want to spec improved moonkin aura instead. Or maybe we'd argue who would get a better use out of those three talent points that are freed up by ignoring the 'raid boost' talents.
Ultimately to avoid this you want to give an incentive to spec into the raid boost talents that benefits you even if the raid boost itself is redundant.
08/28/08, 11:31 PM
Similar Threads
