Pheroz

So once debuffs/buffs are taken care of, and assuming equal players, we might "stack" 6 out of the 10 classes... Don't death knights get an 'anti-magic shell' ability that could put them in this category? So that means warriors, priests and hunters might lose their spots to stacking? But wait, priests can either reduce incoming damage by 90% (dispersion), 40% (pain supression) or prevent death with that gaurdian spirit talent. So does that reduce it to "we might stack 8 out of 10 classes" for survivability reasons?

And really, when have those survivability reasons ever really mattered?

Have you ever waited on a boss attempt becuase a soulstone, battle rez or ankh was on cooldown?? I haven't.

How much consideration to you pay to survivability abilities on fights now? Think about Illidari council. Hell, think about council when it was progression for you. Did you bring in extra druids for battle rez? Did you bring in extra mages for ice block? Did you shun DPS warriors or hunters? Did you make sure every soulstone was used at every opportunity? That fight is a pure 'stay alive and win' fight, and few if any survivability abilities matter in that fight.

Bloodboil is another fight that's all about keepin a specific person alive, and most of the abilities that people are talking about stacking for are not particularly useful. If anything, the survivable mage is the one class that is minimized. Ice block is useless (well, you can take then shed extra bloodboil stacks, but thats relatively meaningless). Bubble, soulstone, ankh are all particularly poor answers to fel rage.

I do remember the initial Al'ar kills with a bunch of level 18 warlocks soulstoning half the raid. But that was an obvious aberration. On most fights, our guild's soulstones dont even get put on anyone. Admit it, your guild is the same way, right?

95% of survival in a raid zone is determined by the person at the keyboard, regardless of the charcter class. I can't imagine that fact changing in Wrath. As such, I can't imagine class survivability abilities on long cooldowns being the determining factor in regular raid composition.

 

rayijin

Perhaps a hypothetical example would be best as to why survivability through buffs matters:

Imagine trying to do Brutalus with your tanks not having kings, fortitude, commanding or blood pact.

Then imagine if they tuned it to be doable without any of these buffs.

Then imagine if you brought all the buffs anyways, because you had the ability to "raid stack" due to having perfect class comp, and made healing trivial (reactive instead of spam healing).

In a 10-man:

There are dozens of viable raid compositions with no more than 2 of each class that have none or one of the 3 unique major stam buffs. (Druid/DK tanks with 2 shamans / druid to heal + assorted dps for one example). If these 3 stam buffs result in a 10-25% increase in maximum health for every player in the raid, then the raid without it will be at a significant disadvantage, period.

Are good players more important than stam buffs? Yes.

Do stam buffs give good players a huge margin for error and put them at a significant advantage? Yes.

Is survivability even more important to average players than good players, due to slower reflexes? Absolutely.

How many 10-man groups composed of friends will consist primarily of average players?

Edit: Apples and oranges. Apologies Pheroz.

 

Sydane

Blizzard seems to be balancing out the static buff issue by making the scrolls of equal value and readily accessible. While not the best solution, it does allow groups missing those buffs to compensate. The one outlier in all of this is still Blessing of Kings, which really should just be gotten rid of. But I do remember at some point someone had datamined items that provided the kings buff within a specific instance, so that may be their solution.

I think the answer Blizzard has given to if some guilds will stack classes based on some unique abilities is "who cares?" They can never eliminate raid stacking, there is always an optimal way to do things. They don't want to completely eliminated raid stacking, because they understand it is part of the appeal to the bleeding edge guilds, and one way to set things apart. Their goal is to make the game more streamlined and playable without requiring large amounts of stacking. Many of the things they implemented were taken part and parcel from this very thread. Each class has unique survivability tools, often varying from spec to spec. On an overarching scale, a few stam buffs mean more than those do.

Is the system perfect now? Of course not. We all know they won't get the dps balance right, that there are still huge holes (mage's spell crit buff, kings, mana tide, innervate to name a few), and things will continue to be tweaked and adjusted. We may see things like battle rezzing spread out to other classes. But really, the various survivability options add a lot of flavor to the game, but don't have nearly the amount of impact that the more common buffs did.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Pheroz

Argument 1: You don't need to drink orange juice as part of a nutritious breakfast.
Rebuttal: If you don't take your vitamins, your going to get scurvy.

WHAT?

The argument was brought up that with the current status of buffs and DPS tuning, personal survivable abilities like cloak of shadows, ice block would be the new raid stack. Ankh's, Battle Rezes and even soulstones were added as corrally to that stacking. I argued that those personal survival abilities were not cuase for stacking. Rayijin responded with a rebuttal that stamina buffs were critical.

Apples and oranges. Have you seen the movie "Thank you for smoking" where Nick Naylor teaches his son about argument with Ice cream? Whether intentional or not, thats what you did.

If you want to argue about the importance of stam buffs and the fact that they aren't easily replaceable enough, thats fine. But please don't do it as a rebuttal to the argument that raids will not excessively stack classes with long cooldown survival abilities.

 

flyingtoastr

How does removing Kings solve anything? For one you hit Paladin survivability in PvP with a massive nerfbat, an area that we already have problems with.

The problem is that Kings is that it is a unique buff that is talented. If it was a baseline class ability there would be absolutely no problem with it as is. Every paladin with it would mean that you could be guaranteed to have the buff in 25-mans, with a good comp and class spread you can get it for 10 mans, and 5-mans have never been balanced around Kings anyway.

This argument is stupid. What happens if you don't have a priest in your raid for Fort (it's about the same effective health as a tank with 2200 stamina gets from kings). Do we need to remove Fort because it's too powerful?

And before you say it, blood pact is half the amount of health Fort gives.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Mman

What about doing a reverse Sunwell Radiance? Have all raid zones give a raid-wide kings buff. It makes having a pally w/ kings unneccesary, but still allows them to keep that buff for solo/5-man/pvp. Maybe add in some other utility on the talent so that it is not wasted in a raid setting.

 

Totemtoter

I just can't see a decent raid leader focusing on wipes over focusing on kills when filling a raid. The survivability abilities will weigh in, but I think any ability that makes tanks tank better, healers heal better, or dps dps better are going to be way more important. If mana is an issue, innervate will be better than ice block. If threat is an issue, misdirect will be better than ice block.

 

Sydane

Fort is replaceable by a scroll, as is Arcane Int. Blood Pact and Commanding Shout don't stack. Mark of the Wild is not replaceable, but isn't as strong, is static, and doesn't replace any of the other buffs a druid can provide. They are also static and non-scaling. Kings is a generic, scaling buff that basically says "in a raid environment, all characters have 10% more stats." What does that bring to the game? It's exactly like salvation, something you have to assume everyone has, but doesn't actually provide anything interesting.

Yes, making it baseline would solve a bit of the issues, but it makes a Paladin required for 10 mans if you balance around it, and it also precludes all the other buffs paladins bring. Tanks are choosing between Kings and Sanctuary. Casters are choosing between Wisdom and Kings. Melee is choosing between Kings and Might if you don't have a warrior (and if you do, you may want commanding anyway). So unless you have two paladins, plenty of people won't be getting Kings anyway. Kings is a bizarre buff that is both very powerful and not that great at the same time. In PvP it's just getting purged anyway, and in PvE it often provides a minimal boost to dps, but a somewhat substantial one to survivability. If you look at the overall benefit to the game that Kings brings, it seems minimal, and would just be easier universally to get rid of it.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

Copernicus

There are scrolls to replace Fort. It probably should fit under a buff for another set of classes though, along with Mark of the Wild and Amplify Magic.

Kings should be removed or another class should gain the buff. A "well-balanced" 10-man raid should not be 9 people plus the required Paladin.

 

flyingtoastr

Then again, why aren't you arguing for Wrath of Air to be given to other classes or removed? It's just as unique and is a shitton more RDPS/RHPS than Kings. Why aren't we arguing for Heroism to be given to multiple classes? God knows you're gonna have to bring a shammy for Patchwerk.

If you're going to remove every unique buff you have to remove every unique buff.

Mark of the Wild is equal to a Kings with 530 in every stat pool, plus the armor and resistances that isn't replaceable anywhere else. Clearly that needs to be given to everyone as well.

EDIT: I just looked, the highest rank Scroll of Stamina is VIII, which gives 135 Stam.

Improved Fort gives 215. You're losing 80 stamina from not taking a priest. Not exactly what I would call replaceable, eh?

EDIT 2:
So does Fort and Mark but if you suggested removing them how do you think the Priests and Druids would react?

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Sydane

I'd remove Kings because it isn't interesting, and it's as much an annoyance to Paladins (especially having to spec into it) as anything. Yes, right now you basically have to bring a shaman, a druid, a mage, and a paladin to every 10 man or you are gimping yourself somewhat substantially. Those are the classes that still have something sitting out there that isn't covered by other classes, and hopefully they will be fixed before 3.0 hits (especially the mage crit buff which is stupidly overpowered). I'd like to see some class gain something similar to Heroism that didn't have the exact same effect but caused the same debuff. If you made Mark and Kings both baseline and both identical that would balance them as well and give 10 mans options. The Scrolls have been stated to be equal, if the top level one isn't equal yet it just isn't in game. Heck they could just make a Scroll of Kings and a Scroll of Mark for that matter.

You speak of Kings as if it's a vaunted buff that every Paladin wants to have on them at all times, which we all know isn't the case. That's the difference between removing Kings and removing Mark and Fort. Removing Kings actually gives people more options with Paladin buffs, not less. The existence of Fort and Mark has no effect on anything else. What if priests who specced into Divine Spirit had to choose between that and Fort? It would be a similar situation, and suddenly you'd never see IDS in a 10 man with only one priest, but again, at least those can be replaced by scrolls. They are also all static buffs, which means their importance diminishes over time, Kings does the opposite. We all know they aren't going to remove Kings, but I stand by the assertion that the game would be better off if they did.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

GSH

Why not just change Mark of the Wild to be like Kings? Baseline it at 5%, and have Imp MotW bump it up to 10%. The only thing you lose are the resists and armor, and as they don't stack with specialized resist auras, it's not a huge loss.

 

Pheroz

On the topic of stam buffs a reminder of what we're looking at:

I don't think the uniqueness is such a concern, rather the fact that the baseline and fully buffed values are so far apart. I really don't think a raid missing 1 of those buffs is going to be in trouble, but a 10 man raid without Kings and a Priest for fort is likely going to be hurting.

Is that acceptable? It's questionable. Remember, not every raid composition is going to be ok for 10 mans, and thats alright. I can't take my 9 warlock friends and expect to go clear 10man naxx, nor should blizzard make it so we can.

You have to draw the line somewhere. I think it's reasonable to expect 1 of each of the classes in a 25 man raid. Now, for balance purposes, the raid should be able to function if your missing a class, but with a sacrifice. A raid without a mage loses a 10% crit debuff, a raid without a shaman loses a spell haste buff, a raid without a druid loses a stat Add buff. It is acceptable to have some loses based on raid composition.

The ugly situation is that you can have a raid with Paladins and still miss out on Kings. That's probably something that should be changed.

Missing 1 stam buff shouldn't be the end of the world. That should be well within range of whats balanced for and acceptable loses. But the fact that there are 4 different +health buffs that can seperate an unbuffed raid from a fully buffed raid might be a little too dangerous.

 

Uglesh

Am I the only one wondering if you guys would just be happy if we all had the same character with one button to push that did everything?? I know it's extreme, but slowly peeling back layers of the giant onion that is WoW is evenutally going to leave you with nothing but a tiny coctail olive.

All this "no one should have unique abilities" crap has to end at some point. Blizz started the avalance by blanding out 80% of the specializations we had, but can we please not give them more ammunition?? Lets face it... the 10 man content is going to be a joke for a large portion of the WoW community unless they throw up some unnecessary cockblock like server wide events or massive resistance fights... and even these will just delay the inevitable.

I think we can all agree that Blizz will create TRUE end game content (read 25 man content) that will challenge us regardless of the state of min/max'ing. If anything there is at least somewhat less pressure to raid stack now and hopefully this will be of assistance for most guilds.

 

Copernicus

So, the unique raid buffs currently-

Heroism/Bloodlust
Wrath of Air
Blessing of Kings
Judgment of Wisdom*
Mana Tide Totem*
Fortitude
Mark of the Wild
Amplify Magic
Spell crit vulnerability (mage only debuff)


* The main issue with JoW and Mana Tide Totem is that it's either a requirement or useless. If mana becomes important AND replenishment isn't enough for a caster class, then a Paladin keeping up JoW becomes a raid requirement. And a shaman providing Mana Tide to their group is insanely powerful. If it isn't then it's a nice boost. There's not much middle ground.

There are a few other buffs that might be problems just because of mana issues, such as Water Elemental, Mana Spring Totem, or Blessing of Wisdom.

----------

And these would mostly only be issues with 10-man raiding... but I want 10-man raiding to be fun in WotLK. And part of the fun is for it to be challenging to a normal group, and not be forced to bring a Paladin/Shaman/Mage to get through the instance. On the other hand, if a Paladin/Shaman/Mage gives such a huge boost that it trivializes the content, that's also not fun.

 

PSGarak

Uglesh: Unique Buffs and Unique Abilities are in entirely separate categories. Unique abilities change how you play your class. Unique buffs change how you stack your raid. Much like the inventory-tetris minigame from DII, the raid-stacking minigame is being demoted from its current throne as the most important aspect of your raid because once you're done casting some spells on everyone before the pull, it has zero effect on gameplay. In short, unique buffs are being removed because they have no bearing on unique classes in any meaningful sense, only a logistic one.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Lieska

It's 10 man and there are 10 classes. Getting some advantage out of bringing one of each class doesn't seem unreasonable as long as it's not an absolute requirement. Where it gets worse is if the unique buff is also spec specific so that you're strongly encouraged to bring a shadow priest, fire mage or similar every time.

 

Uglesh

I see your point, and I am still shocked that BoK is still around given it's very nature and position in the pally prot tree... but the over-arching problem is that these unique buffs were previously used to provide benefit to classes/specs as a way to make up for other shortcomings. Removing these now means that everyone NEEDS to be able to do the same relative dps/healing/tanking or else the stacking will remain. Furthermore, as other people have stated, we now stumble into the issues of survivability balance. The warrior thread has brought up a great points about survivability and how given equal DPS a warrior is far less desirable as a melee class compared to others with Anhks, BRez, Cloak of Shadows/Vanish... and this doesn't even begin to go into the fact that warriors in Beserk Stance recieve 10% more dmg then anyone else.
So the question now becomes.... Since warriors don't bring anything "unique" to a raid anymore, what do you have to take away from everyone else or give to warriors to even this out?? I'm sure there are other classes where this is the case as well, but it really underlines the point.