Mode

It's been brought up a few times. It's just another way of spreading the buffs about. One problem is that there's no way to evenly cut up 25 except for groups of 5, so you'd need to change the raid size to 20 or 30. My personal objection is that building groups is a fun mini-game. I really enjoy getting the leader bit in AV because I start aggressively shuffling people around in groups based on where they're fighting and synergy. I don't know how much it helps, but it makes guarding towers a lot less boring.
Paladins can already get +10% holy damage if they have a retadin in their group. I don't think it would break anything if they got +10% TPS from having a warlock somewhere in the raid. The reality is that paladins are pretty awful raid tanks at the low end and need all the help they can get. Warrior raid tanking takes more button mashing and involves more abilities, so it LOOKS harder, but paladin raid tanking takes more thought about mana management and such. Trash tanking is another story entirely; protadins just faceroll their way through that.

 

◊ Kyth

Moving more dps increases into the form of debuffs rather than buffs would also help the issue. I'm not sure how that would ever work for shaman totems, but JoW is a good example of mana returns in the form of a debuff rather than a buff.

You can make them in the form of stacking debuffs (shadoweaving, scorch, the new hunters mark) which reduces the power in pvp as well, having advantages there.

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james

Why would it need to be even? In current 25 man raiding, you could run with 7 groups of 3 people and 1 group of 4 but it would be very inefficient. The limit is 25 in the instance, not 5 groups only.

By raising the group cap to 10, you could still run with 5 groups of 5 if you wished; or 3 groups of 6 and 1 group of 7; or 2 groups of 8, 1 group of 9; or 2 groups of 10, 1 group of 5, etc. Any combo, really.

 

thesmoosh

While I'm not saying that mage utility on trash is anything to laugh at, you should consider that in our raids for example me (hunter) and our holy paladin frequently play our mages for trash then get our mains summoned for bossfights.

This thread focuses on bosses and I think we should keep the focus on classes that reward stacking. Stacking should be defined as a situation where having 3 or more of a class does not create diminishing returns and in some cases increases utility (shamans and warlocks being the main candidates).

I don't think only one change will fix this problem. I do believe that the stacking definition for some classes should be higher/lower. I think 2 mages a raid are a reasonable number as are four shaman, because for all intents and purposes mage specs are fairly similar while shaman specs could be classified as different classes altogether (certainly more distinct than rogue vs fury warrior).

One change is tweaking warlock damage to be less than a mage's when using a utility curse. This coupled with combining CoE/CoS would lower the initial requirement of warlocks to 2 per raid, down from three. It would not however address the issue of the third, fourth and fifth warlock doing more damage by using CoD. That issue isn't as big a problem as curses however, as there are liabilities to having such a caster heavy raid (and group comp issues) as well as the diminished gain from health stones (soul stones though shouldn't be overlooked).

My favorite solution so far has been 6 man groups and 12/30 man raids. As the guy is in charge of group comp, healing assignments and boss strats I can say my life (and the happiness of my raiders) would be greatly increased by the flexibility that such group sizes would afford. You can finally have that moonkin/ele/mage+lock x 3/spriest group. You can take three rogues and a ret pally and still give them a warrior and enhance shaman. You can put a warrior tank in the hunter/feral/resto group and give them agi as well as extra threat. You could even argue, that having larger groups means you can actually take three shaman instead of four and still sufficiently buff your raid (one for melee, one for casters and one for the hunter/tank group or the healer group depending on the fight)

And IMHO this would make 5 mans much more fun also. For one, it would increase the desirability of CC-less specs like moonkin, ele shaman, and spriest in instances since they can offheal. Similarly boss fights could require offtanking by a feral/ret/dps warrior or death knight, or kiting by a ranged class (hunter/shaman/mage). Imagine an instance where one of the bosses cc's the tank or healer for a few seconds but does reduced damage during that duration, or summons a clone of himself that hits like a truck but can be snared and kited. Basically instance bosses could be like the opera event in karazhan. That would certainly be much more interesting than the regular "sheep star, sap circle, kill skull" x 1000 followed by a tank and spank, and much less aggravating than doing a pug shattered halls with 8 mobs and one tank.

The problem with this is that for one, it's a huge change and raises issues of compatibility with previously designed instances. I don't think anyone believes Blizzard is willing to spend resources and redesign their entire game (nor do I think they should), but they could fix this by simply changing the game to allow 6 man groups in the continent of northrend. The other problem is that some group buffs would be invariably boosted by increasing group size, but I think that is a much easier balance problem to fix that trying to make totems available to the whole raid. Off the top of my head, you could fix this by increasing the dps of non buffing classes slightly, or by reducing the power of group buffs. Make ILoTP 4% down from 5, or lower windfury's proc chance by a couple of percentage points.

I'm extremely interested in hearing some arguments against the 6 man group, because at the moment I can't stop thinking about how much more fun raids and instances would be for me with one extra member so I'm sure I'm missing something.

 

panny

That's an encounter design issue, not a class stacking issue.

Fix Spirit Wolves not responding to commands.
DK/Rogue

 

Wander

I like the idea of a slightly larger basic group; make everything a fraction of 60; it has piles of divisors (2,3,4,5,6,10,12, 15, 20, and 30); you could balance around raids of 30 and a guild would be able to easy incorporate all sorts of content, from overworld quests to 10-man raids to AB to 25-man raids to AV; the basic units of each size of raid would exist within the guild (in a completely abstract sense, of course)

Or perhaps just make the basic unit of the raid 10 rather than 5.

 

◊ Kyth

I really hate to break the news to you and half the posters in this thread but someone is ALWAYS going to do "the most" dps. Always.

It's really not, like, a universal truth that what you said is necessarily an issue. I mean, it might be, but you're really assuming a lot in stating it as fact.

That's why other considerations go into it, and why classes aren't balanced in terms of just an ordering of who does "the most dps guaranteed", "who does the second most dps guaranteeed", and so on. There's nothing inherently virtuous or good-by-definition in guaranteeing that warlocks will do less total damage than a mage even when everything in stacked in the lock's favor (i.e. they're doing CoD.)

But this is where other considerations might come into the mind of a class designer that go beyond things other than dps. Like whether they are more survivable. Or whether they bring needed utility to enough fights that their position is sufficiently justified without being higher dps. Or whether they want the class to be seen as a "raiding" class. Or whether they're creating a "debuffer" and want to redesign the class.

Or whether, indeed, the dps difference is close enough that it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. Because for most guilds, in most situations, the skill variation between two players accounts for far more of their dps difference than does their class (ignoring hybrids.)


A better overall situation instead of forcing strict orderings of DPS (particularly with large gaps), would be some attempt to provide, for the four pure dps classes: "a strong debuff used by more than just me" (scorch and curses both match this), "some active raid utility I get to use more than 1-2 times an expansion", and "competitive dps such that, if I'm a good player and a nice guy, I won't get subbed just because of my class."

None of mages, locks, or rogues provide a benefit to their group. Demo locks may get one with WotLK, BM hunters have one now.


It's a shame Gurg put in his comment about lock and mage dps because I feel it's really thrown this conversation into a bad direction.




Back on topic:

I'm very disappointed that they've added another class and haven't touched group/raid sizes. Seems like a gross oversight, and unless group buffs are touched in some way, WotLK might be annoyingly rocky.

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Spleener

Oh, I'm sure they do, and that's the reason why the 41 and 51 point destro talents are what they are- the designers basically said "well, we can't put a talent that beats DS here without making it disgustingly OP, so let's just put a PvP talent here instead." DS is a PvE talent more than it is a PvP one, so the raiding destro locks will go 21/40(50) and the PvP ones will go x/x/41(51).

 

Addled

Not necessarily. CHeal is only important because of the huge raid damage we're seeing. If Blizzard would tone that down a bit, or even make it a bit more predictable AND allow the entire raid to stand within a small radius, CoH might be useful again.

 

• Playered

You could even go to the extent that removing Mages (or having 1 token Arcane Mage) actually increases RDPS due to not needing to put up CoE (+150DPS) and having an additional Destroloc doing higher damage, this is also releasing multiple debuff slots which are better used by others (No Scorch, no 2-3 Fireball dots, no 2-3 Ignites) at the cost of only one CoD.

Given the choice of a Warlock or Mage (of equal skill) I believe most guilds would take the Warlock which really just shows you the raw strength they have (ignoring Sheeps, Soulstones, Summons, Water, Healthstones etc..).

People spoke with concern early on about all the % modifiers for Shadow currently existing:
Shadow: 20% ISB, 15% DS, 10% CoS, 10% SW, 5% Misery = 60%
Fire: 15% Scorch, 5% Misery, 10% CoE = 30%, then add in DS for Locs (45%) and Molten Fury for Mages (granted, Execute range only)...


Using the horrible WWScoreboard (for what it's worth) you can see the highest DPS on Brut is:- Warlock 2800~, Mage 2500~.
If you removed DS (-15%) from Warlocks you end up with just above 2500~ DPS which then has them fairly equal to Mages in this regard and really it would need very little toning down to achieve some sembalance of equilibrium - not to forget this actually would open up more option of SB/Incin weaving as one half wont always be 15% short.

Early morning math:
Warlock DPS = 160% (100% base, 60% from mods)
( 2800 / 1.6 ) * 1.45 = 2537.5.


Its hardly a 'woe always Mages' complaint where TBC has compounded smaller raids and higher raid utility together, heck I remember there used to be alot of complaints by Priests about how worthless they were untill CoH became viable and being forced to spec iDS to bring any function to the raid worth bringing them for.


Im not really sure how you would go about changing group/raid buffs, perhaps moving them away from % values and into static ones would help in the long term as they would eventually become minor perks in the top end of raiding but they would be rather silly at the start.

 

thesmoosh

I'm sorry, but I do not understand which part of my post you are replaying to. Perhaps you are missing the sentence right after the one you quoted where I said "That issue isn't as big a problem".

I don't recall ever saying no class should be the highest dps, nor do I think it is what Praetorian was addressing. The issue isn't about dps vs dps, it's about stacking potential and how much classes gain from adding the (N+1)th member.

Please please let's not derail this into a discussion of class balance. It is a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of stacking classes that provide significant buffs.

P.S. I chose to not respond to the other points you raised in your post about survivability, utility, etc. I do think the mage v lock discussion is an interesting one though, so feel free to continue this in a PM.

 

Duilliath

In an interview recently, Blizzard said they were quite content with the current 25man size and wouldn't go up to 30man.

I think it was an interview on Worldofwar.net, but my account there is borked and I can't access old content. At any rate, it's probably pointless to wish for a size increase, even though it might appear to make sense (though, as pointed out above, you'd not be bringing one of each spec, no matter how much I'd like to see, say, a Frost, Arcane and Fire mage running around).

It would appear they're adding an AoE heal* to Druids as well, which would give 3 out of 4 healer classes an Aoe/Party heal. Nothing is available with regards to Paladins yet, so it's too early to say if they're adding anything there. This may already deal with the Chain Heal spam issue.

Personally, I'd love to see some things combined, such as Paladin Blessings and Warlock Curses. One could always leave out CoA/CoR/CoD, but making one Curse of Elemental Shadows (buffing Fire/Shadow/Arcane/Nature/Frost) would work just fine. Or even skip the Shadow bit and make that one come from SPriests' Shadow Weaving.

I completely subscribe to the diminishing returns on adding more classes, which obviously doesn't work for a few right now. All else being equal, a Soulstone instead of one more Scorch spam or a Rebirth over a Blessing of Sanctuary can make a huge difference, but they're one-shot only and on a huge timer. Unleashed Rage, Bloodlust or Totems offer a completely different boost and one that stacks every single attempt on a boss.

Though perhaps instead of looking at those boosts, one might instead try to make other classes less dependent on such buffs in the first place. There wouldn't be any need for a Raid Wide windfury if it didn't have such a profound impact on Rage/Threat generation/DPS. Unfortunately, Windfury and Bloodlust and the like keep scaling with how much better the rest of your raid is. If you're clad in greenies with a 95 DPS blue two-hander, you're not going to get nearly the same benefit of that Windfury totem as with a 140 DPS epic one. In short, both the dependency from certain classes and the scaling nature of those buffs are the major issue.

*

 

Anaram

I think having raids with exactly 2-3 of all classes would also be quite tedious. Classes being interchangeable to a reasonable extend is good, it allows a 25-man raid to actually start with only 25-28 people online. If you need a specific setup, then you must usually prepare to have 35 people online to actually get that setup (for majority of guilds this is probably close enough). I think survival hunter is a great example of good intentions gone wrong - there's nothing wrong with how the spec works in raids, but it's tedious to manage the survival hunter spot unless you got a single 100% active one for it.

The problem isn't that you can bring 5 shamans.
The problem isn't that you can go with only 1 mage.
The problem is that you "want" to do this even when a more balanced raid setup is possible.

It's a problem if players are unable to find guilds due to their choice of class.
It's a problem if guilds are unable to find players to fill the roles that need filling.
It's also a problem if you must have too much redundancy just to be able to field the "required" setup. That means people quite easily have to sit out more than they'd want to.

For most classes this means: you shouldn't need more than 2 of that class to get a good setup. Not all classes and specs are equally popular (not even close). It's okay if a raid can be considered "optimized" with only 1 player of a class if some other raid somewhere else might be running 4 and also consider themselves optimized.

--

As for the actual two classes mentioned in the original post. I'd personally go for a straightforward & significant nerf of windfury totem. Ench shamans already got have a scaling buff to give their group, they don't need two big ones. Warlocks could get a +10% spell damage curse (drop resist part? skip nature?). I think the big problem with warlock scaling is presently shadow priests - warlock dps seems to be designed around the notion that lifetapping will be a significant sink, which it presently is not due to shadow priests. There might be some other overscaling besides this also. One thing to remember about totems is that they are still limited range (a thing which was much more significant in some pre-tbc fights with a fairly big battle area).

--

As for paladins, I'd make BoK baseline, nerf salvation to be -10% threat (each class can get their personal threat reductions buffed accordingly) and limit blessings to two non-talented ones (two out of: salvation,bok,might,bow,bol). Talented blessings (and short duration ones like bosac, freedom, protection) could exceed this two blessing limit (stick with 1 per paladin, of course). I'd make away with blessing of light largely or make it a holy talent.

You accomplish quite a few things: third paladin could still do blessings if his talent tree had one (sanctuary in protection). This extra blessing wouldn't then need to be "better" than one of the non-talented ones to get used and still provide benefit (and thus desirability for the spec). Short duration blessings like sacrifice could be more reasonably used since they wouldn't necessarily have to replace some other blessing. This would also better balance paladins against 10/25 man content I think.

 

Darkmantle

2800/1.15 = 2434DPS which is not a touch above 2500 dps

Comparing max dps requires you to evaluate every little group buff that the group contained. Since the max will be achieved based on the most absurd stacking of groups. I'm sure with a boomkin elemental shaman BM hunter spriest warlock group with all the group dps buff necklaces and everyone but the warlock leather worker would produce something close to the highest the highest dps warlock case. This however tells very little about the overall state of class comparisons. A more accurate measure is to use the average over all cases which can be found here. This lists for sunwell, warlocks and mages at:
Warlock 2431
Mage 2342
Which is far more even and doesn't tell much more.

Leaving sunwell aside for a moment since my only experience with is chaining a whole bunch of mobs onto me with an eye of kilrogg. I have just read and searched the entire thread and I haven't seen anyone mention yet:
From the Wotlk spell files and listed on the wotlk leaks page.

Improved Shadow Bolt's damage increase reduced to 3/6/9/12/15%.
Demon Skin/Armor now increase healing on the Warlock by 20% instead of giving health regeneration.
Fel Armor now allows 30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting, but no longer increasing the effects of healing you receive.

So shadow warlocks have already received an almost 5% nerf in damage while losing their easier to heal ability from raids. With the combination of lame deep destro talents it is likely they have already lost 5% more ground in comparison to mages pushing things back to where people want them to be.

 

Braque

I've often wondered why the Blacksmithing crafted stones were never buffed to the point where the competed with WF totem. I don't see anyone being put-out by the addition of a crafted "Windstone" - Enh. Shaman would still be desirable in a melee group for for GoA / SoE / etc.

 

Medusa

First of all, the threadstarter write down allmost exactly my thoughts when i read the comming skills and talents. As a mage i was complaining of course raid viability.

But first i think that Blizzard designed WoW for 5 Man. Instances. With a solid setup of 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS. After a while they decide to fit this in bigger Instances named RAIDS. Well, some of the systems was worked out (many examples given here like Pally buffs, debuffs on Boss himself etc...), but some still are in the core design of a game. I think no expansion wil solve this problem of 5 x N Groups for a raid. It is ridiculous that this 25 (or 10) avatars not realy belongs together, they are only thunks of 5 players lax put together.

The core statement is indeed a problem for each Raidleader: maximising the Raid you must stack some players and substract some of the other classes. No one wants to play a 2nd rank class, believe me.

I will not argue what will be better: raidwide totems/Bloodlust or leave it at party - but this discussion is older. Before BC cames out i remember such discussions on different forums. Now, i think the subject is hotter than ever! Just remember - it was a great gap to lead people to accept that more of a class (different specc) is necessary for Raiding - classic DPS classes feel passed over - and now hybrids/supporter gets even more important. Bud sadly, personaly my feelings strikes into dissapointment.

I don't like the idea of 6 man groups, they should redefine important spells to work Raidwide. I just repead this one from many posts here: just don't let dramaticaly overfill raids with some classes at the cost of others.

 

Arvak

In my opinion (and I realise this is my first post, so my opinion doesn't mean much yet), increasing the size of parties/raid is probably not the correct way to look at things. Simply having "space" for other classes and specs may look nice on paper, but apart from simple logistics issues (no guild will ever have that "perfect" raid where every class and spec is represented, it's pure pie in the sky nonsense), it's not addressing the real issue. The issue isn't that there isn't room for different classes/specs, it's the fact that some of them are far too desirable and far too effective when their number increases; shaman are a massive case in point - their effectiveness when their number increases doesn't diminish like it does with other classes and specs, and this is what I see as the root of the problem.

I primarily play a ret paladin and as such, bring some tools to the raid group. Auras aside, I provide an additional blessing as well as the ability to refresh judgements. The reason that paladins aren't stacked like shaman are (for these "tools") however, is because these mechanics are self-limiting; their effectiveness diminishes the more paladins that are present. I'll explain further:

Blessings
Blessings are powerful buffs that can be applied to every member of a raid, but the way that they are designed is that past a certain amount, their effectiveness decreases. If a raid has enough paladins to provide "essential" blessings such as salvation and kings/wisdom/might, then the effectiveness of another blessing is greatly diminished (the magic number would seem to be 3 blessings, with any more past that being less than optimal).

Judgements
Judgements are also powerful, raid-wide buffs, but as everyone will know, are only as powerful as the paladins who apply them (and then have them refreshed). These buffs are unique in that they require other class members to take time out of their own jobs to apply them (the main limiting factor), and even then, they're designed in a way that past 1 or 2 judgements, their effectiveness greatly decreases.

I think the whole point is that buffs can and should be good, but there has to be some limiting factor (or multiple) that diminishes their effectiveness and discourages (indirectly) "stacking" them. Any other solution just doesn't address this main issue.

In regards to shaman: I was thinking about it tonight while watching my girlfriend play netball (don't ask) and maybe something like a ret paladin-esque mechanic might be worth discussing (and shooting to bits):

Perhaps alter totems into two categories: attack and defense (or guardian and battle, as the case may be); defense totems act like they do now; providing a buff to the party, whereas attack totems affect the boss itself. This would require your elemental shamans and the like to drop their totems in range of the mob that's being attacked (much like paladins have to get close to apply a judgement). These totems would be the windfuries (with reduced effectiveness, of course), the totems of wrath and what have you, and they would place a debuff on the mob that provides the effect that the group totem normally would. This debuff then provides that benefit to the entire raid.

Then, have enhancement shaman function like ret paladins in that they have an ability (let's say something similar to stormstrike, or even a "master totem", as much as i abhor the thought of adding another totem to their already bloated arsenal) that refreshes the duration of "attack" (and their own guardian totems) totems that are in range. This would perhaps reduce the effectiveness of bringing so many shaman on a raid while introducing another mechanic to have other shaman actually need to "do something" to provide the benefits.

I realise this may not be the most ideal solution as it's basically paladin judgements but with totems, but I do agree that something really needs to be done. Whether it's bringing other classes into line when it comes to effectiveness or placing limiting mechanics on the classes that are too effective, remains to be seen.

 

talzar

Then you have a problem with group spells like CoH, and Heroism. Who would want to go with anything less than 10 people in a group when it maximizes CoH spam and Heroisms. You'd have to redesign a lot of stuff that was balanced around 5 people per group.

I'd be much happier with totems affect the entire raid + much larger radius. It still doesn't change the fact that heroism is a retardedly good buff, especially for any kind of DPS race like Brutallus. If they made Heroism only available to Elemental and Enhancement shaman that might even things out. One way or another Blizzard isn't going to fix the problem with Shaman without pissing a lot of people off, but it still needs to be done.

 

Eto

The main problem is that in BC chaman and paladin were mixed without efforts made on the re - design on all class role and talents.

As the mechanism of reset of aggro for DPS classes is a big problem for mage that have to stop its DPS for 5 - 10 sec when the demonist has it instant (ok it resistable) or rogues have the vanish.

And there are a lots of design choices that make somes spec / class less interessant than other for some kind of encounter.
When you watch encounter merely design over DPS course the choices are often made on the stackablility.

 

Addled

Flourish isn't spammable; it might as well have a 7 second cd on it because you have to let the Flourish HoT tick itself off. It's OK for helping to smooth out aoe healing, but it doesn't solve the aoe healing problem entirely.

Debuff slots are already very limited. 3 shamans (with your "attack" totem prerequisite, 1 of each shaman spec) could supply the follow attack buffs: Windfury, Wrath of Air, Grace of Air, Strength of Earth, Totem of Wrath. 5 debuff slots burned, which is a lot considering we're running up against the debuff limit very easily in BC. Not to mention that WotLK is introducing new debuffs (see leaked trees) and that makes every debuff slot worth its' weight in gold.

 

Cryic

It's been said before, but it gets lost in the shuffle. Blizzard needs to combine some abilities and a lot of these choices go from no brainers to "hrm, which player (not class) brings the most to this encounter". CoS and CoE should be combined and toss in Holy and Nature while your at it. Paladins Blessings should be combined. If a Paladin specs for BoK, then any blessing he does also includes Kings.

Beyond that, blizzard either needs to continue it's desire to have super group synergies and give party buffs to pretty much all classes (mages give 1% to crit via a Brilliance aura, Warlocks are getting something already, Rogues give 1% to crit buff etc). Or tone them down by a lot. Everybody hates the thought of "nerfs", but the thought that a class only works if they are grouped in a perfect group is not a good thing. WoW 3.0 is the perfect time to self buff some of these classes and tone down Wind Fury etc.

Either choice works for me, just not this half ass way it's currently implemented.

 

◊ Praetorian

On some level I regret it, but at the same time it's very hard to talk about "why people bring 5 warlocks and 1 mage to Sunwell fights sometimes" without touching on the issue of DPS, above and beyond synergy.

Anyway, regarding Heroism/Bloodlust, I think all you need there is a hefty Exhaustion-type debuff to prevent rotations and Bloodlust-stacking. If you can't rotate your shamans through a stacked DPS group, then "stacking" shamans means that your 4th/5th lusts are going to some healers and tanks.

Part of addressing this problem elegantly means that you want to avoid nerfing classes outright, just because they're good a 25-man setting or promote stacking in a 25-man setting. Let's be honest: Players who focus on 25-man raids are a minority. It's not realistic to expect Blizzard to balance things solely around 25-mans, often to the detriment of classes in 5-man settings. The best types of solutions will be ones like the Mass Dispel change, where it's a buff to the ability in raids, but makes absolutely no difference and is entirely unnoticed by your average player. Or the consumable limits -- the only people in the game who ever stacked flask + 5 elixirs + firewater + juju, etc., were high-end raiders. Removing the ability to stack those, in the interests of raid balance, had no effect at all on the majority of players.

Also, to respond to another point, my idea is not to "force" exactly the same number of each class, but rather to encourage bringing up to 3 of every class, and to avoid rewarding bringing more than 3. With 10 classes and 25 slots, you'll have an average of 2.5 of each class. The idea isn't to create a situation where if you don't have a moonkin, an elem shaman, a ret paladin, a prot paladin, a feral druid, an affliction warlock, a survival hunter, etc., in every raid, then you're screwed. But the idea is to tweak things so that bringing #2 of Class X is probably going to be better for your raid than bringing #4 of Class Y. I don't think they really need to do terribly much in this regard. Right now the main culprits are warlocks and shamans, so I was focusing on them as a microcosm of a broader issue. When's the last time you saw a high-end kill that had 5 paladins? 5 druids? 5 mages?

I don't think you need to revolutionize the way classes work, nor do I expect Blizzard to. It's nice to sit around and talk about how they should make various drastic changes, but there's no chance of that happening so it's just a waste of time as an academic exercise. Again, my basic concept is that if certain synergies are indispensably good, and it requires a minimum of 3+ of a given class to realize those synergies, then they should be tweaked so that fewer players of the class are required to fill that niche, in order to reduce the marginal benefits of bringing a fourth or fifth player of that class.

 

Liebestod

Group/raid size isn't going to be changed to satisfy this kind of theorycrafting, especially when there are solutions which wouldn't require such a fundamental change. I don't see the point in bringing it up.

Disagree strongly here. This logic could easily be extended to all classes with multiple roles... 4 Pallies is reasonable, 4-5 Druids is reasonable, 4 Priests is reasonable, 4 shaman is reasonable... good luck fitting in the remaining 6 classes to those 8-9 raid slots. (2*10)+5 isn't an ideal simply because it's aesthetically pleasing, it's because it allows all players a roughly equal opportunity to raid at a given level (assuming that the classes were balanced in population, which they aren't, but they're close enough.) It's a serious problem if class X is 15% of the total population but is only represented in 5% of high-end raid slots. (If you disagree, then to me this is essentially to render the entire debate moot - "What's wrong with 5 shamans per kill? Reroll a shaman if it's a problem.")

 

talzar

His point was a very valid one being that 3 shaman fill 3 entirely different roles and support different classes. Mages, no matter what the spec, always fill the same role, so having a lot of them in the raid has diminishing returns. The problem of course is that Warlocks have 3 different spec lines that are all caster DPS as well yet they are still highly soughtafter.

I'm with Gurg, we don't need any huge sweeping changes. Make Heroism have a 10-minute Forebearance, combine CoS and CoE, and maybe boost mage DPS so it's at least equal with a Warlock's using CoD. I won't even touch on chain heal since it sounds like Blizzard is changing the healing dynamic a lot already.

 

◊ manly

Thats the numbers looking at sunwell only. The numbers are heavily skewed simply because of felmyst aoe. This is obvious for the simple reason that all the given data does not have warlock/mages as top 2 dpsers, only sunwell. Now if you check the 'Average of highest class dps' for all content then you get
Warlock 2252
Mage 2048

Fel armor has 30% mana regen base, and 39% talented. Are you really complaining there ? And before you mention it -- it is garanteed that you get the talented version because the talent is conveniently there for you to pick up on the way to Demonic Sacrifice.

If you wish to compare armors, mages have a choice between [3% more crit] and [30% mana regen (and debuffs lasting half the time in wotlk)]. Its not even close to [130 dmg, 39% mana regen].

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.