Death Knights currently have a 30 second targeted buff in their Blood Tree that reads "[increases] their Physical damage by 20% [for 30 seconds] but [causes them to lose] 1% of their total health every second". I can see a HUGE synergy with a Retribution paladin, or any other paladin for that matter, right there; even if 30% of total HP remains ~3000-5000 HP, pallies will get, what, 3-500 mana from receiving outside heals for that much? Downside is of course that their Command swings may not receive any benefit (based on wording) but that's another matter.
Would an infinite mana ret paly do more damage than a rogue/dk/hunter with the equivalent of a 30 second PI? Would a ret paly already have infinite mana with the doubling of the mp5/spirit on ds, bow, and jow? The buff is worth 5-6% total dps targeted at the cost of health, this is only really powerful if DKs are close on individual damage to rogues, other wise it is far less than what moonkin, and ele shamans currently bring to the table and they are barely used at all.
Edit: I see DKs in blood presence(stance) also give a 5% strength aura. Not a large buff but a decent one, and certainly encourages DK/warr/enh/ret groups which would push rogues to hunter/feral groups.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 05/27/08 at 4:04 PM.
My point is that at the same time, I want to avoid the case where we say "sorry enh sham 3, can't take you today because we don't have enough rog,war,etc to fill another melee group with you in it."
Maybe a better way to phrase the original intent is that you shouldn't *need* more than 2 of each class. I don't think anyone would argue that it's bad (by itself) to bring 5 of a class; it's only bad if you're doing it cause you were forced to in order to meet dps or other requirements. In the case of hybrid/synergy classes, I don't think you can honor the goal of being able to bring 5 of them without homogenizing the class synergies so that everyone or noone has/uses them, which seems a bit more extreme than what many people were thinking of as a solution. I think mostly the goal is to have more flexible raid comp options, but to have everything completely interchangeable would probably require making all of the dpsers function similarly.
For the first time last night (my personal first, our guild's second) we killed Brutallus with the "6th melee" in a mage/mage/mage/SP group. Both times, that 6th melee was the retribution paladin. Whether or not that is the best decision based on what class takes the biggest hit I cannot really argue with my officers since it took me almost a year of convincing (read: complaining and linking officers WWS from other guilds) that Ret paladins provide reasonable DPS and a good boost to the raid.
What I will bring up is some more solid evidence on how badly it nurfed my personal DPS:
Typical Brutallus attempt (in the melee group): My DPS ~ 1500
Last Night: My DPS ~ 1050
That is nearly a 50% increase for me in DPS to join the melee group. I highly doubt that a 2000 DPS rogue would jump to 3000 DPS (50% increase), but they may jump to 2500 DPS, if moved from a caster group to a melee group. The only benefit I did receive from the group was being able to use top rank consecrate and exorcism for the entire fight: hardly a 500 DPS upgrade.
To those who will say I forgot to add in the 2% dmg increase to my group from improved Sanctity aura: Since rogues (and even our enhancement shaman) always top the meters on Brutallus, it would better serve them than the 3 mages/SP.
Would an infinite mana ret paly do more damage than a rogue/dk/hunter with the equivalent of a 30 second PI? Would a ret paly already have infinite mana with the doubling of the mp5/spirit on ds, bow, and jow? The buff is worth 5-6% total dps targeted at the cost of health, this is only really powerful if DKs are close on individual damage to rogues, other wise it is far less than what moonkin, and ele shamans currently bring to the table and they are barely used at all.
Nobody has done significant theory craft on Death Knights yet, as it's still a little too early. We don't know what their gear will look like, how their Ghouls will work, and their skills seem to be far from finished.
Originally Posted by Adoriele
Yeah, this is actually the big one. People aren't stacking six shamans in five groups for the totems, they're doing it because H/BL is such a huge DPS benefit that it outweighs a lot. Adding an exhausted debuff afterwards would go a long way to removing that ability.
Yeah, I agree, the problem being you'd have to make it literally as long as the heroism cooldown for it to matter. If you make it only 1 minute, for example, then the plan becomes bring 5 shaman, rotate heroisms every 1 minute. 2 minutes, rotate them every 2 minutes, etc, etc. But again, Raid Wide totems with an extended range fix a lot of the shaman stacking problems right away.
Just another thought here, approaching this from another direction, albeit one that we have no control of at all. The demand of buffs and synergistic compositions come from the challenge presented in the design of the encounter. The biggest challenge for Brut was first having the gear and then having the right group online. From there it was just a matter of balancing out your lusts and drums. Whereas fights like Kalec or Archimonde were much less a DPS race, and more about getting the raid to work as a cohesive group. Looking back at all the raid bosses I've beaten I can honestly say that the DPS priority fights have never been engaging as the execution ones. Wouldn't a more elegant solution come from presenting us with far fewer DPS checks?
Obviously the next hero class should have 2 healing specs. Archdruid.
No. Just no. I realize this comment was in jest. But its rather annoying how Priests must put up with two healing specs.
I'd like to ask a question. In my old guild, back in vanilla... class stacking was kind of foreign to us. We always figured 40 people, 8 classes. We'll take 5 per a class, unless 5 wasn't available - then we'd stack with exchangeable classes.
Are we to assume that in vanilla (Molten Core and Blackwing Lair speficially, though I can make the case for Naxxramas, but I'd rather not digress there) that Blizzard indeed balanced like this? I believe 15 healers was the norm, which just meant 5 druids being resto, 5 paladins being holy and 5 priests being disc (because really, deep holy was stupid).
Is it still fair to assume that Blizzard is balancing for 2.5 of each class in a raid? Instead of balancing around the percentages of the class being played? (Oi, I am not sure if I am explaining this well). Okay, so we know Blizzard has data on arena representation normalized to how popular a class is. I am certain Blizzard must have the same sort of data on raids. Therefore, couldn't we also assume Blizzard is balancing on popularity of the class? This does not necessairly mean that a class is -bad- or -flawed- just that it might be unfun for most people (like, for example... I like to heal, but I think Paladin whack-a-mole HL/FoL healing would be tedious and get stale very fast, but I don't mind Priest or Druid... there are clearly a lot of Paladin healers, doesn't mean the design is flawed, just that it's not the right design/mechanic/style for me).
It seems to make some sense to me. I mean, lets assume in a theorethical world of 3 classes and 30 raid slots. The Warrior, Paladin and Priest. If 80% of your players in this world were Warriors, would you design an instance that required 10 Paladins and 10 Priests?
I think its Blizzard job to make sure a class is viable if someone wants to play it. And probably give a helping hand to get at least 1 of that class into the raid. But beyond that, can Blizzard really choose the mechanic/style of class people enjoy?
Blizzard has a lot of things to balance. Just for endgame in WotLK, there's 25 man raids, 10 man raids, 5 man groups, 2v2 arenas, 3v3 arenas, and 5v5 arenas. I'm assuming they don't even consider 1v1 or solo play.
DPS is probably the easiest to look at, and of course being a Mage I have a vested interest in the Mage/Warlock balance. Say you want each to have equal rDPS, defined as Personal DPS + Synergy DPS.
Right now, the first Warlock casting CoS has his personal DPS PLUS about 10% of the DPS of every other warlock and shadow priest. His utility is very high.
The 2nd Warlock, casting CoE, has his personal DPS plus about 10% of the DPS of the mages. (I'm just going to ignore CoR for now...)
The 1st Mage has his personal DPS, since Imp Scorch really doesn't provide much to any other class. Even if it did, a 2nd Mage provides nothing.
The current issue, is that the Mage personal DPS is already equivalent or slightly lower than the Warlock, but the Warlock also gets that additional synergy.
One solution is to massively increase the Mage personal DPS (And by massive, when you factor in Synergy DPS, I'm talking like 40% or more here). This does all sorts of interesting things to say, 5 mans, where a Warlock has lower Synergy DPS than a 25-man. Of course, you can play around with restrictions on Mage DPS, like having to focus on a single target or standing still, or buffs to Warlocks like additional CC, but this gets really difficult to balance, really fast, for only 1 of 45 possible class comparisons.
Another solution is to buff Mage Synergy DPS, that is, give them buffs or debuffs to aid the raid on boss fights. Well, what's hard about this? Look at the classes that get stacked, and why. Paladins, really need 3 for the 3 major blessings, because a Paladin can only cast 1 blessing. Warlocks? Again, 3 because each can only cast 1 curse per target. Shamans? Well, no cap here really, but any given Shaman can only buff 1 party, meaning it takes 5 to cover the whole raid. Aside from Kings, none of these are spec dependant. Mages have Imp Scorch halfway down the fire tree, and Winter's Chill in deep frost. Neither of these really benefit any other classes.
I think the GOAL for balance should be increasing benefits for the first 2 of any class, then they bring nothing but personal DPS or marginal benefit (Giving freedom to tailor a group to your guild or the encounter).
A class like Warlocks, yeah, combine all magic into one curse and let them cast both a DPS and a Debuff curse (Keeps Personal DPS pretty much flat as you keep adding, instead of that DPS curse increasing them by 100-200 DPS as you go beyond debuff needs.)
Mages, well, I'm not so sure. It's not really built to be a debuffing class, and there's no mechanic aside from deep talents that prevents 1 mage from doing it all (Which then results in arguements over which Mage gets to play the gimp spec for the week to get talent X). Group buffs neatly get around having 1 mage do it all, but can lead to a "This fight requires 5 mages to proceed" situation. Still, if the buff benefits mana users only (Mana return on Crits? Brilliance Aura?) that could lead to 2 mages needed and a potential 3rd depending on that last group.
There's a lot to balance, across several different play types, but hopefully this time around Blizzard manages it. I've had enough of gimmicks like Spellsteal trying to balance things. I think in the end though, we either have to accept some level of imbalance, or play a game with 1 class and 10 different sets of button graphics.
Another way to fix it is the Alchemy "solution": make fewer things stack.
This would be complicated, working through every combo, but imagine for example if Curse of Shadows and Shadow Weaving didn't stack. Yeah, you want to have either a warlock or a shadow priest, but bringing both doesn't help as much as it used to. What if Totem of Wrath and Boomkin aura didn't stack? Et cetera, et cetera.
That'd simply mean that people would take the 'best' one when stacking and only when, say, the Boomkin isn't around would the Elemental Shaman get in. In a way, it'd make things easier as at least then you can leave people out instead of needing to bring them.
I think its Blizzard job to make sure a class is viable if someone wants to play it. And probably give a helping hand to get at least 1 of that class into the raid. But beyond that, can Blizzard really choose the mechanic/style of class people enjoy?
But that's basically to say that it's okay if some specs suck or aren't represented, or that it's a problem is this weren't this case because then you'd have two viable+popular specs for a given class and this would lead to its over-representation. Going back to the MC days where all of your Priests/Pallies/Druids are healers (never mind that giving both factions access to Shamans and Pallies undermined the old 8-class balance), all your Warriors are tanks and everything else is DPS is simpler, but it just replaces one problem with another.
So I'm not being completely sarcastic with suggesting another class with 2-healing specs, I'm just pointing out that having fewer types of healers than healing slots needed + having viable offspecs for these healers = potential over-representation of those healing classes. The latter isn't something that should be "fixed", so there's always the former.. and honestly, I don't see what's wrong with another healing class. I don't think having two healing specs is inherently a terrible thing, the problem with Disc was always that it was kind of ill-defined, especially for PvE, but WotLK makes it clear that it's going to be more of utility healing tree, with PI and DS and mana regen to your party and PS and being able to reduce damage to your targets, etc. I don't see why Blizz couldn't add another class with a "pure" healing spec and a "utility" one, or even a true spec that helps healing and DPS in the way Disc. was kinda moving towards for a while. But that's kinda getting off-topic, I suppose.
I think it's a good point that since there's only 4 classes that can heal, and you typically have 8 healers in a raid, and those classes also have other desired specs, that those classes will on average always be over-represented.
Can we stop saying this? It was true before 2.4, it's not true now and the direction of the lock trees makes it even less true in WotLK.
Mages bring +15% dps to locks.
I understand how things *were* but since this is a future-looking discussion, it should be accurate for now, not three months ago.
My guess would be less than 10% of sunwell destro raiding locks are fire at the moment, though I have no evidence to back that estimate off of. Still if the wotlk talents went live like they are now odds are that number would go to well over 50% at 70 and probably over 80-90% at 80.
Regardless of whether mages have buffs for other classes, in general they don't have any raid buffs beyond the first mage.
Speaking towards what Kyth is saying, as it seems to appear now, the tanking tree for DKs is their frost tree. The whole aim of this post is looking foward. How can a frost mage say that increases to frost DPS won't benefit a raid with a DK tank? That's like saying Windfury doesn't benefit threat generation for warrior tanks. And since the change to Emberstorm, Improved Scorch is almost required for Fire 'Locks to be competitive DPS (compared to their shadow counterparts). Many Enhancement Shamans use a Flame Shock/Earth Shock rotation between Stormstrikes, Improved Scorch benefits them as well (albeit not as much as any caster could gain). To say mages don't benefit the raid through means other than their own personal DPS is WRONG. Additionally, ask any fire mage that's been the ONLY fire mage in a raid. Having another fire mage to keep scorch from falling off, especially on high mobility fights, helps greatly. Granted this effect is only shared between the fire mages, but it's more than just "personal" DPS.
I think Gurg's op post is a really good direction to take raiding synergy - but I'm not sure it's enough.
As a raid leader, I really dislike the sub-group synergy metagame, and much prefer the challenge of positioning people in a room. One is an arbitrary split in a dialog, and the other is a very dynamic spatial problem which can be different based on encounter design. Think of the different synergies between door-dps teams on M'uru or the melee group stack on Brutallus. Position is important for a raid-wide totem/shout change as suggested in the op - which is a good thing in my book.
I do think the biggest challenge is fitting the number of class/specs into 25 slots, and I think the heavy focus on specialization has lead to guilds running larger than necessary numbers just in order to have the proper spec+gear available when needed. When we move into WLK, presumably DKs will have 3 specs, and supposedly at least 2 or maybe 3 of them will be raid viable/needed.
The op post stresses flexibility in creating viable raid groups - and I think at a slightly more meta-level you would want to be able to do this for an entire raid - across multiple encounters. Instead of running 35-40 players for a 25man raid and using a revolving bench/sit strategy to meet encounter requirments, I'd much rather bliz move towards allowing players to fill multiple different roles with their character. One approach I've seen discussed on these boards is allowing players to have 2-3 pre-defined specs and allow them to change which one they're using on the fly (perhaps 10min cd, only usable out of combat respec). This would cut down your 27 class/spec combos to 9. You'll bring 2-3 warriors to a raid, not 1 prot, 1 arms. Similarly you'd bring 3 shamans to a raid, not a resto, enh, ele. They'd spec as needed per fight based on their gear and familiarity with the role - and encounter requirements. I see this as vastly preferable to sitting 5-10 people in order to field a viable raid for all the encounters in a dungeon. This approach would obviously require a few changes in how players gear and get drops - perhaps set tokens are redeemable for all your hybrid pieces for the same slot. Or ana/bene switchable items or something.
As to raid synergy, again I think some options are way too specialized requiring exactly that same class. I think there's a lot of room for sharing buffs/debuffs between multiple classes in order to make the raid stacking requirements more flexible. As an example - expose armor and sunder armor should apply the same boss debuff - and it should stack with itself (i.e. expose applies sunder armor the same as devastate from a second warrior). CoR and FF could be turned into the same boss debuff applied by either a druid or a warlock. A buff like ISB could be rolled in with (say) Winters' Chill for a single debuff applied by either mages or warlocks, but benefiting both classes (and perhaps more than just them). Or alternatively roll ISB + Ignite + scorch into a single debuff that again benefits multiple classes and applied by both mages and warlocks. Similarly, combine CoS/CoE into a single debuff as folk have suggested, but make it castable by both locks and mages. There are many many opportunities for this kind of cross-class synergy and these are just a few really quick ideas - but you can easily see how this approach would give vastly more flexibility in choosing which players/classes you bring.
What about completely removing the party system, everyone is in one large "party" persay as there are no group lines. Yes 5 mans are still 5 mans and 25 man raids are still 25 main raids but you give everyone a buff. A mage buffs arcane brillance on one person and it does the entire raid. Shaman totems affect the entire raid leaving the need for only 3 shaman (one ehn, one resto, one ele) to buff the entire raid (Mana spring should now stack though). It would also lessen the stress and need of spreist as they would give everyone in the raid mana back. OP? Not so much as their mana and health return seems to be getting nerfed coming expansion anyway. Paladin blessings more than likely wouldn't change so you would still "want" 3 but 6 out of 25 raid spots for hybird (shaman/paladin) for major raid buffs is not that far of a push for hybird classes.
Giving everyone every possible DPS upgrade would create a threat issue, but I think that would be offset by a tank getting every threat buff as well.
Giving everyone every possible DPS upgrade would create a threat issue, but I think that would be offset by a tank getting every threat buff as well.
If anything, I imagine that this might encourage even more shaman stacking as now bloodlust would buff 25 players; suddenly keeping the raid permanently bloodlusted could prove viable.
I think it's a good point that since there's only 4 classes that can heal, and you typically have 8 healers in a raid, and those classes also have other desired specs, that those classes will on average always be over-represented.
Yeah, this seems like the core of the problem.
The shaman issue partially stems from healing offspecs getting into raids while still having 1/3 of the average raid healing. At the beginning of TBC Blizzard gave into demand and started making offspecs raid-viable, but they chose to do it by giving offspecs a share of the raid's DPS spots rather than reducing the number of healers required.
Assume that you want 8 healers per raid. If resto shamans take an equal share of the healing spots, that's 2 shamans. Now give a raid spot each to the two shaman DPS specs, and you have 4 shamans. If you assume 8 healing spots per raid, and the four classes split them up equally, you have 2 priests, 2 druids, 2 shamans, 2 paladins. If you then make every non-healing spec of those four classes a shoe-in for exactly one raid spot, you add 2 shamans, 1 priest, 2 paladins, and 2 druids.
That's 15 spots - 60% of the spots in a raid going to 4 of 10 classes.
Granted, shamans are taking more than 4 spots in many guilds now, and druids/paladins aren't taking 4 spots. However, eliminating the impetus to run multiple enhance shamans and reducing the benefit of resto shaman stacking would only bring shamans down to 4 spots. And with moonkin getting substantial party buffs from what we know of WotLK, and paladins using the fresh start in WotLK to take advantage of prot/ret viability, I think we'll see druids/pallies getting up to 4 spots per raid.
If the goal is equal class representation with every healer offspec being viable, then Blizzard needs to find a way to build raids around fewer healers. Personally I think this is something Blizzard should be trying to do - healer recruitment has been the bottleneck for countless guilds since Molten Core. Raiding has always encouraged a disproportionate number of healers compared to small-group content. For raiding you want 1/3 of your raid to be healers; for 5-mans you want 1/5 of your party healing, and I still see more 5-mans in LFG looking for healers than looking for DPS.
I think that overall, raid synergy and having the exact right class setup is more powerful than it should be compared to execution and gear. To some extent, I blame both having too many classes or specs and having the majority of encounters favor bringing a raid that is vastly different in composition to the spec balance. Where guilds on K'J or close are complaining that they need to bring too many shaman, guilds a little behind that in progression have all of the same issues, plus the issue that attendance is far more varied in less progressed guilds. Its not hard to imagine that indeed attendance being more varied is actually one of the largest reasons for those guilds being farther behind. The more powerful group and raid synergy becomes, the greater the potential impact of 1 player not being there.
As to actual solutions, I think in general that the talent trees of a class should either allow for vastly different play style and role a la druid, or a choice between pve and pvp viability. This would help cut down on the number of specs that they need to work into a viable raid role. I definitely don't think an attempt should be made to make frost, felguard, arms, marks, subtlety into raid viable specs. I realize that arms is now, but I feel that's a mistake. Arcane and affliction I can see as good to have 1 of but not needed or good at early levels of gear, but doesn't scale as well trees. I think that would be fairly accurate right now if they made amp magic an arcane talent or made the arcane talent that affects it even better. Then arcane and affliction both serve as hit crutch and raid buff specs with fire and destro outstriping them at better levels of gear where your damage exceeds even the raid benefits (again, assuming arcane got some sort of meaningful raid buff). I think this was close to being setup correctly, with a few small changes needed. I think WOTLK would be better with that philosophy in mind rather than an attempt to make every spec raid viable but somehow not make every spec so viable that you have to have it.
Last edited by lairpie : 05/27/08 at 7:02 PM.
Reason: i totally started that addition before he made the next post
Things would be much easier if it wasn't for the pressure on blizzard to make every spec pve viable. I don't see why its ok some specs (real specs, I'm not counting 20/20/21 or joke specs like smite spam/meleekin) for some specs to be useless/not viable in arena like fury warrior/destro locks, yet every spec has to be viable for pve.
Speaking towards what Kyth is saying, as it seems to appear now, the tanking tree for DKs is their frost tree. The whole aim of this post is looking foward. How can a frost mage say that increases to frost DPS won't benefit a raid with a DK tank? That's like saying Windfury doesn't benefit threat generation for warrior tanks. And since the change to Emberstorm, Improved Scorch is almost required for Fire 'Locks to be competitive DPS (compared to their shadow counterparts). Many Enhancement Shamans use a Flame Shock/Earth Shock rotation between Stormstrikes, Improved Scorch benefits them as well (albeit not as much as any caster could gain). To say mages don't benefit the raid through means other than their own personal DPS is WRONG. Additionally, ask any fire mage that's been the ONLY fire mage in a raid. Having another fire mage to keep scorch from falling off, especially on high mobility fights, helps greatly. Granted this effect is only shared between the fire mages, but it's more than just "personal" DPS.
Looking strictly at our last Brutallus kill, of the 2 million or so fire damage dealt by the raid, approximatly .1% of it was from other classes than mages. From my personal experience, it's a Fire mage debuff. No, we don't have a fire lock. And having additional fire mages scorch simply splits up the DPS loss amongst them all. Instead of 1 mage sacrificing 50 DPS, you have 2 sacrificing 25 DPS. Once that first mage puts up Scorch, the second mage provides personal DPS only.
With a 2nd mage, (Or technically 1 really oddly specced mage in WotLK) you can toss up WC, and potentially the new frost debuff talents if they go through. It remains to be seen how the DK tanking really works, but I can pretty much guarantee that unless they generate 10x threat on crits it won't be the impact of CoE.
Regardless, I still see a sharp contrast in Synergy DPS. A single CoE cast by 1 Warlock is equivalent in DPS to both Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill, requiring 2 Mages to maintain. Mages have no benefit for other schools or melee. We leech synergy from most any other class in a group with us, and don't give much back except for one half of one tree for Warlocks, and possibly for 1 of 4 tanking classes/specs. Sarcastic or not, almost every night I hear comments about putting the mage in a different group so they can get someone useful, or dropping us on bosses to get the kill faster.
I don't mean to start in on the Mage/Lock debate, but it's really the only example I know well. Just if Blizzard is going to equalize DPS across classes, they need to do the same for synergy. As an experiment, if you have time, take any WWS report for a tank'n'spank boss. Brutallus works well, so does Gorefiend. For every DPS class, strip off all their bonuses; that is, if CoE was up, strip 10% damage from every Fire mage and add that damage to the lock that cast CoE. Same for CoS, Fire Vuln, Sunder Armor, Heroism, etc. At the end, look at the base DPS and the Synergy DPS. Some classes wind up way up top, some way on the bottom, a few suprised me but it's the size of the gap between the top and bottom that should get your attention (Last Brut kill I analyzed put the top mage around 1400 base and 0 synergy, and the top lock at around 1600 base and 600 synergy; over a 50% increase.)
The shaman issue partially stems from healing offspecs getting into raids while still having 1/3 of the average raid healing. At the beginning of TBC Blizzard gave into demand and started making offspecs raid-viable, but they chose to do it by giving offspecs a share of the raid's DPS spots rather than reducing the number of healers required.
Assume that you want 8 healers per raid. If resto shamans take an equal share of the healing spots, that's 2 shamans. Now give a raid spot each to the two shaman DPS specs, and you have 4 shamans. If you assume 8 healing spots per raid, and the four classes split them up equally, you have 2 priests, 2 druids, 2 shamans, 2 paladins. If you then make every non-healing spec of those four classes a shoe-in for exactly one raid spot, you add 2 shamans, 1 priest, 2 paladins, and 2 druids.
That's 15 spots - 60% of the spots in a raid going to 4 of 10 classes.
Granted, shamans are taking more than 4 spots in many guilds now, and druids/paladins aren't taking 4 spots. However, eliminating the impetus to run multiple enhance shamans and reducing the benefit of resto shaman stacking would only bring shamans down to 4 spots. And with moonkin getting substantial party buffs from what we know of WotLK, and paladins using the fresh start in WotLK to take advantage of prot/ret viability, I think we'll see druids/pallies getting up to 4 spots per raid.
If the goal is equal class representation with every healer offspec being viable, then Blizzard needs to find a way to build raids around fewer healers. Personally I think this is something Blizzard should be trying to do - healer recruitment has been the bottleneck for countless guilds since Molten Core. Raiding has always encouraged a disproportionate number of healers compared to small-group content. For raiding you want 1/3 of your raid to be healers; for 5-mans you want 1/5 of your party healing, and I still see more 5-mans in LFG looking for healers than looking for DPS.
It makes more sence for Hybrid classes with healing specs end up being 2 healers + 1 alternative role and all others having 2 of each class, which results in 24 slots taken - with one left open for rotating mechanics.
You would end up with:
8 Healers (all capable of being replaced for a DPS/alternate of said class if fights require less healing)
2 Tanks (Warrior + DK) with an additional 1 of Pala or Druid
14 DPS slots of which 4 are melee, 4 are casters, 2 are Hunters, 3 are Hybrids (because the 4th is a Tank) and one random DPS slot.
I dont see why you need to have every spec of every Hybrid ontop of two healers of said class though.
Maybe a better way to phrase the original intent is that you shouldn't *need* more than 2 of each class. I don't think anyone would argue that it's bad (by itself) to bring 5 of a class; it's only bad if you're doing it cause you were forced to in order to meet dps or other requirements. In the case of hybrid/synergy classes, I don't think you can honor the goal of being able to bring 5 of them without homogenizing the class synergies so that everyone or noone has/uses them, which seems a bit more extreme than what many people were thinking of as a solution. I think mostly the goal is to have more flexible raid comp options, but to have everything completely interchangeable would probably require making all of the dpsers function similarly.
And that to me, is the biggest problem - the degree to which you are gimped if you don't bring 5 of a class (in this example, shaman). I've been in raids that brought 5 of a class other than shaman because that was what was available to get the required # of healers, tanks, or dps and get the job done, I just don't think that many of one class should ever be the *ideal* group. It doesn't bother me if a particular guild wants to bring 5 of a class because those are the best players they have in guild, or that's whose usually available. What bothers me is when guilds that cannot stack a class that high end up with a "gimped" raid group for bringing 2-3 of class, to me that is not balanced and lessens the quality of raid design. One person asked why bringing 5 shaman is "bad," well it becomes bad when dps requirements become balanced around that "ideal" group, which hurts the many guilds who have made the effort to get to endgame progression (Sunwell) but simply cannot find enough of that class, even if they have the skill for the fights and an otherwise well balanced group.
The fact that shaman are the most annoying class to recruit alliance side in my experience - just not enough to go around - makes it seem even worse I suppose then if it were a common class easy to get (never been in a guild that couldn't get 5 priests if they wanted, for example). I really wish Blizzard had done something about this before Sunwell cause it makes the zone feel less fun/more frustrating for what feels like a very stupid reason, needing to fill 20% of your raid spots with one class out of nine classes to get the ideal raid group.
I think the shaman situation is worse then the mage/lock situation, although I do feel for mages who have lost a raid spot. But in terms of overall group success bringing say, 3 locks and 3 mages, instead of 5 locks and 1 mage, will hurt your raid progression far less then it hurts if you can only manage to find 2-3 shaman, imo.
Raiding has always encouraged a disproportionate number of healers compared to small-group content. For raiding you want 1/3 of your raid to be healers; for 5-mans you want 1/5 of your party healing, and I still see more 5-mans in LFG looking for healers than looking for DPS.
I don't exactly agree with this. For what it's worth:
In a 10man, a typical breakdown is 1.5 tanks (MT/OT) 3 healers 5.5 dps (OT when not needed to tank). Apply the same ratios to a 25man: 3.75 tanks 7.5 healers 13.75 dps. This isn't too far off a very typical 3 tanks 8 healers 14 dps setup.
If we are talking party-sized instances, I think we can all agree it is 9 times out of 10: 1 tank 1 healer 3 dps/cc.
The mid and large sized raiding scenes are proportionally intact. But yes, the difference between raids and parties aren't.
If the goal is equal class representation with every healer offspec being viable, then Blizzard needs to find a way to build raids around fewer healers.
WoW's competition (Age of Conan and Warhammer), healers have to do damage in order to do the best healing.
While the new talents don't reflect that and I doubt the devs will change, perhaps lowering healing requirements will happen. Assuming that, dps spec hybrids could heal 5-mans (heroics too) and in raids need 5-6 healers.
Healing is fun, but for most people doing dps is more desirable.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
At the end, look at the base DPS and the Synergy DPS. Some classes wind up way up top, some way on the bottom, a few suprised me but it's the size of the gap between the top and bottom that should get your attention.
There's a viable (and I think preferable) alternative view to equalizing the Contribution = Personal + Synergy number, and that is to look at the variation in the amount of benefit that different classes/specs receive from 'Synergy DPS'. Some classes are better soaks. Without rehashing some sort of mage/warlock comparison, I'll just raise the current example that you almost always want to give the first heroism/bloodlust priority to fire mages under 20%. Under the system you've proposed, that benefit is attributed to the shaman; but really the mage is equally responsible for the optimality of that heroism.
This view allows for a better balance all around since in a 5/10-man the better soak classes will have less to soak, and the better buff classes will have less to buff, so both types can scale equally.
05/27/08, 3:57 PM
Archdruid.
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