Consolidating Raid Utility (Raid-wide totems? Curse of Vulnerability?) - Page 9

SanSul · 05/28/08, 5:35 AM

Originally Posted by Baern

This is the point I was about to make.

Effectively, that you need an enhancement shaman to justify any other class or spec is wrong.
A ret paladin should be able to justify themselves a raid slot on the back of their own dps + buffs, they should not require an enhancement shaman any more than an enhancement shaman should require them.
If on any given day your 5 melee dps consisted of a Blood frenzy arms warrior, a fury warrior, 2 rogues and a ret pally, you should be able to raid put them into a group and not notice any considerable difference to the overall dps than if one was changed for an enhancement shaman.

Elemental shaman seem about right in this regard, they are a useful addition to a caster group, but they don't make or break it. Enhancement shaman simply offer too much to their group as it stands, making totems raid wide would just mean they offered too much to everyone.

There are other examples, but enhancement shaman are the most glaring.

The problem is, the justification of the Ret paladin is pretty marginal over that of a rogue. Sure Ret gives tiny buffs, but the rogue offers substantially higher dps, so if there is a gain from the Ret paladin, it can't be that large. So it just leads to kicking the Ret paladin out of the melee grp, and now his dps is worthless because he doesn't get all the stacking buffs.

Raids need to completely do away with the 5 man group notion, and switch over to either a 3 or 4 group system. Tanks, Melee, Caster, Healers. Maybe Tanks and Melee are one group, and Casters Healers are the other.

So what if a Rogue gets 3x the buffs then 5man content, simply tune the encounter so that is taken into consideration. With a unified single melee group, there would be less incentive to exclude a Ret paladin, cause he would no longer be taking melee buffs away from another melee class.

• Philondra · 05/28/08, 5:45 AM

Originally Posted by SanSul

The problem is, the justification of the Ret paladin is pretty marginal over that of a rogue. Sure Ret gives tiny buffs, but the rogue offers substantially higher dps, so if there is a gain from the Ret paladin, it can't be that large. So it just leads to kicking the Ret paladin out of the melee grp, and now his dps is worthless because he doesn't get all the stacking buffs.

Raids need to completely do away with the 5 man group notion, and switch over to either a 3 or 4 group system. Tanks, Melee, Caster, Healers. Maybe Tanks and Melee are one group, and Casters Healers are the other.

This is an interesting idea, but it still doesn't solve the problem of 25 man raids needing to have an enhancement shaman or else the melee is terribly, terribly subpar.

SanSul · 05/28/08, 5:52 AM

Originally Posted by Kugala

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.

This pretty much hits the nail on the head of raid stacking trends. Sometimes a particular class has some ability that proves very useful and you want to stack that spell, such as circle of healing. But a holy priest brings less to the raid then a disc priest, and a second priest brings nothing but healing.

Really got to look at what exactly a second person of the same class brings to the raid on top of their damage or healing. You will almost always need 2 Paladins minimum, because Kings scales every piece of gear, and Salvation is absolutely required by most classes, who already are threat capped with it. Blessing of Might/Wisdom don't scale, and they should because gear is vastly outscaling the spells. You can quickly reach a point where BoW becomes irrelevant to the success of an encounter.

Possibly buffing and moving Kings very deep into Protection, and giving Ret Paladins a very strong dps blessing, would likely do miles for helping class representation of Paladins in raids.

SanSul · 05/28/08, 6:12 AM

Originally Posted by Philondra

This is an interesting idea, but it still doesn't solve the problem of 25 man raids needing to have an enhancement shaman or else the melee is terribly, terribly subpar.

Enhancement shamans are the wrench thrown into the machine of the holy trinity. Reducing the benefit of one has the consequence of forcing the class into the most useful spec, not the most fun spec. Ret Paladins are fun, but were not useful, so they were not brought to raids.

If there is no benefit or a very small benefit to bringing a certain spec, that spec simply won't get taken. Progress and min/maxing almost always takes priority over personal spec choice. You often can choose if you want to tank/heal/dps in a raid, but you don't often get to choose with what class you will do it with.

I believe the strongest possible raid should be one that includes all 30 specs. Obviously 5 specs are on the cutting board, and the ones that would be cut would be dps ones. Arms, and whatever is the pvp rogue tree, and say demonology, frost, survival would not be raid viable. Everything else would be. And the best way to get these specs taken to raids is to make the benefit large.

Say 5 Rogues do 100% dps
4 Rogues + Ret do 105%
3 Rogues + Ret + Sham do 110%
2 Rogues + Ret + Sham + War do 115%
1 Rogue + Ret +Sham + War + Cat do 120%

For every additional spec you add to the group, the total groups maximum dps increases 5% or so.

But I don't see how being forced to take an elemental shaman is considered a problem. If you were not forced to take them, and every melee class provided the exact same generic synergy, then the unpopular classes would eventually die out because they would offer no benefit to the more popular classes except a slightly different game play. And since competition for raid spots can be high, what incentive is there to bring the 1 shaman applicant over the 10 rogue applicants when both provide exact same benefits.

And save for giving every class the exact same spells but with a different name, I don't see how Blizzard could possibly make it so one class doesn't have an advantage over the other. I think its the consequence we have to live with for wanting a non "Healer/Tank/DPS" mmo and more variety in the game.

Shakes · 05/28/08, 6:50 AM

I think SanSul drives at an important point: on some level the "buffer" specs have to give a fairly large benefit, because otherwise what's the point? Lets say enhancement shaman don't provide anything over just throwing another rogue in there. Why would any guild want an enhancement shaman? Easier to just have a roster of interchangable rogues who you can just throw in, than an enhancement shaman who you have to build a group around to achieve the same effectiveness.

Even a raidwide buff doesn't solve this, as there surely must be a tipping point in the number of melee where the shaman goes from being worse than a rogue to better than a rogue.

Taja · 05/28/08, 6:56 AM

Agreed on above post, no matter how much balance is being done, there is absolutely no way raids are becoming 2.5 of each class. First it was consumeables which high end raider combined like crazy for results not anticipated by blizzard, then they handled that issue somewhat and tried to give all professions something fun and exciting. Couple months forward and the stupidity that is leather working is being forced upon raids to compete at the highest levels. With new abilities only more synergies will come and certain class will perform better then others. Most of you guys are high end raiders, if there is a possible advantage to get and you have the classes for it it will be done. Free respec's will just lead to people being forced to change every fight for maximum dps/healing whatever. Altough loads of decent suggestions are made in this topic I doubt it will make a difference but its just not possible to anticipate what classes will shine later on.

Zwink · 05/28/08, 7:04 AM

The one thing that is being forgotten here is that in a comparison between Shamans and Priests/Druids for raid healing when Chain Heal can't be used. Priests and Druids come out on top by a long shot. Priests and Druids have more outs and more ways to save lives fast. If a fights healing requirements aren't tuned up to the max or there is AoE damage and the raid can be stacked up, Shamans are of course your best choice for healers due to the fact that they will speed the encounter up or are the best AoE healers if the raid can be stacked. However if the fight forces the raid to be 10 yards apart Chain Heal loses much of its effectiveness and Priests or Druids become much more effective raid healers. Kil'jaeden is a perfect example of this and Method's kill with 1 Restoration Shaman reinforces the fact that when the raid can't stack up Shamans are by no means the best raid healer.

Kil'jaeden is a turn around from almost every TBC encounter in the fact that Chain Heal is not your primary solution to raid damage. Blizzard has a lot of options for balancing the raid game and creating more encounters where Chain Heal isn't nearly as useful as it is right now is one way of doing that. If Chain Heal can't be used other healers come out ahead of Shamans when it comes to raid healing. This doesn't completely resolve the issue of Shaman stacking as you'd just bring more Elemental and Enhancement Shamans to your raids if you brought less Restoration, but it does bring back raid spots for other healing classes that have had their spots more or less taken away on most TBC encounters.

It is possible that Method's Kil'jaeden kill with 2 Shamans (1 Enhancement and 1 Restoration) would have been made easier by replacing 1-3 of the dps classes with additional Enhancement or Elemental Shamans. But if Blizzard made more encounters where Chain Heal wasn't absolutely amazing or even necessary and pure DPS classes were preferred (for example Mage or Warlock AoE compared to what an Elemental Shaman can bring) you would definitely see more variety in the number of Shaman brought to raids. Hopefully Kil'jaeden is a sign of things to come in WotLK. Finding the right balance will be difficult and down the road it is possible we may see the revamping of the totem system or even the addition of a 2nd totem dropping class.

Lujaar · 05/28/08, 7:36 AM

Originally Posted by Philondra

This is an interesting idea, but it still doesn't solve the problem of 25 man raids needing to have an enhancement shaman or else the melee is terribly, terribly subpar.

Exactly what do enhancement shamans provide that melee are "terribly subpar" without them? Are we talking about windfury?

Windfury totem is not an enhancement specific ability. Resto shamans are perfectly capable of dropping it, and any raid leader who doesn't give the melee windfury because he doesn't have an enhancement shaman is retarded.

An enhancement shaman provides two things: Unleashed Rage and totem twisting (GoA, basically). The benefit of putting an enhance shaman in a melee group over a resto shaman is comparable to the benefit of running an arms warrior. Yes, a raid that's optimized for DPS will include an enhance shaman, but guilds don't sit all their other melee because their enhance shaman didn't log on that night either.

Windfury totem is a shaman ability, not an enhancement shaman ability, regardless of what several people who have posted in the last couple pages seem to think.

perkuna · 05/28/08, 8:02 AM

Originally Posted by Lujaar

Yes, a raid that's optimized for DPS will include an enhance shaman, but guilds don't sit all their other melee because their enhance shaman didn't log on that night either.

I wouldn't be so sure about that

.

james · 05/28/08, 8:12 AM

The question of how much DPS a melee group loses by having a resto shaman instead of an enhancement shaman is a good one, albeit one that I'm sure is theorycrafted elsewhere.

Taking a resto shaman away from a caster group also presents its own issues, i.e being able to use WoA and get a shadowpriest, for example.

But yes, there are occasions when guilds have benched their melee because their enhancement shamans didn't login. Nihilum's first Twins Kill, for example.

Lujaar · 05/28/08, 8:14 AM

Heh, I suppose I should have said, "guilds shouldn't sit all their melee." I'm having difficulty imagining how an all-ranged raid would be more optimal than a raid with a resto shaman dropping windfury, but I'm sure someone's done it.

Anyway, from Nihilum's webpage

We started 14.40 today, which means we barely had any people to pick from. We had 0 enhancement shamans, 1 rogue online. That's the only reason we did not use a melee group. I had to ****ing call under geared casuals on their cellphones to log on for the raid. The setup we had is far from optimal both class wise and gear wise. Ill say it again, we only made a hunter group and two caster groups since we didn't have any melees to pick from.

This isn't "we sat an entire melee group because they wouldn't have had an enhancement shaman," this is, "we sat one lone rogue because he wouldn't have had any group buffs whatsoever."

Mano · 05/28/08, 9:26 AM

Originally Posted by SanSul

Really got to look at what exactly a second person of the same class brings to the raid on top of their damage or healing. You will almost always need 2 Paladins minimum, because Kings scales every piece of gear, and Salvation is absolutely required by most classes, who already are threat capped with it. Blessing of Might/Wisdom don't scale, and they should because gear is vastly outscaling the spells. You can quickly reach a point where BoW becomes irrelevant to the success of an encounter.

I'd actually advocate to at least think about going the other way - i.e. make it so no (de)buffs are scaling (or at least are only scaling with the buffer/debuffer, not with those taking advantage of it).

Examples are the SV hunter debuff (scales with the hunter) vs UR (scales with the recipients) or Wrath of Air (static 101 spell damage increase, same from T4 to T6.5) vs. Curse of Shadow (%-based increase).

For example UR could increase the AP of the group by 10% of the shamans AP if you want to keep it scaling. Or by level*2 (or 2.5/3 for a higher rank or something) or so if you want to have it non scaling but not trivial. Curse of Shadow could increase the damage by 10% of the warlock casters spell damage (and this would actually help pulling up lower geared characters as they would receive a proportionally larger boost). Etc.

This might also help combat things like debuffs/buffs making up 50-60% of a casters damage compared to his "base damage".

All that said, as a resto shaman BOW is usually the first blessing I want, closely rivaled by BOK and then BoS.

• Philondra · 05/28/08, 9:45 AM

Originally Posted by Lujaar

Exactly what do enhancement shamans provide that melee are "terribly subpar" without them? Are we talking about windfury?

Windfury totem is not an enhancement specific ability. Resto shamans are perfectly capable of dropping it, and any raid leader who doesn't give the melee windfury because he doesn't have an enhancement shaman is retarded.

An enhancement shaman provides two things: Unleashed Rage and totem twisting (GoA, basically). The benefit of putting an enhance shaman in a melee group over a resto shaman is comparable to the benefit of running an arms warrior. Yes, a raid that's optimized for DPS will include an enhance shaman, but guilds don't sit all their other melee because their enhance shaman didn't log on that night either.

Windfury totem is a shaman ability, not an enhancement shaman ability, regardless of what several people who have posted in the last couple pages seem to think.

I'm also pretty sure that your average enhancement shaman is much better about keeping windfury down 100% of the time and, more importantly, is much more likely to actually drop the WF totem in a spot where the melee are sure to be able to use it. WF uptime will certainly be higher with an enhancement shaman than a resto shaman, despite belligerent posts to the contrary.

panny · 05/28/08, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Philondra

I'm also pretty sure that your average enhancement shaman is much better about keeping windfury down 100% of the time and, more importantly, is much more likely to actually drop the WF totem in a spot where the melee are sure to be able to use it. WF uptime will certainly be higher with an enhancement shaman than a resto shaman, despite belligerent posts to the contrary.

Is changing the range of WF totem a big problem in a thread about totems that affect entire raids and 'Curse of Vulnerability'?

Carmak · 05/28/08, 10:22 AM

My solution to the problem is radical: remove all existing non-personal buffs and debuffs and homogenize within the current system. Each class gets two non-personal (de)buffs as well as a personal (de)buff in the same "slot". The personal should obviously be weaker than the non-personal and the debuff should be slightly stronger than the corresponding buff. One of the (de)buffs is more offensive and the other is more defensive.

Druid (buff)
Leader of the Pack: +X% crit.
Gift of the Wild: +X all resist.

Hunter (debuff)
Hunter's Mark: target takes X% extra damage.
Scorpid Sting: -X% target hit.

Mage (buff)
Magic Amplification: +X% magic damage done.
Magic Dampening Field: -X% magic damage taken.

Paladin (buff)
Aura of Kings: +X% to all stats.
Aura of Salvation: -X% threat for all non-tanks.

Priest (debuff)
Vampiric Touch: X% of damage to target restores <energy> to raid.
Vampiric Embrace: X% of damage to target heals raid.

Rogue (debuff)
Expose Armor: reduces target armor by X and resistance by Y*.
Crippling Strike: reduces physical damage done by X%.

Shaman (buff, 1 totem at a time)
Windfury Totem: gives your attacks/heals a chance to trigger an extra attack/heal**.
Rejuvenating Totem: restores health and <energy> every tick.
(other totems are personal dps/protection like elementals)

Warlock (debuff)
Curse of Shadow: increases magic damage taken by X%.
Curse of Weakness: reduces magic damage done by X%.

Warrior (buff)
Battle Shout: +X% physical damage.
Commanding Shout: +X hp.

* Assumes that mobs generally have relevant resistances.
** Hots/dots could trigger an instant effect.

This is probably too radical at this point, but I think that the principle is reasonable if you consider class balance to be important. I'm not sure where Death Knight would fit in yet, but extending the above system it would probably have two debuffs.

Smurrf · 05/28/08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Carmak

Paladin (buff)
Aura of Kings: +X% to all stats.
Aura of Salvation: -X% threat for all non-tanks.

Define 'non-tanks.' Now do so in a raid environment, with the Blizz interface. Given that it's an aura, and auras generally hit all affected, whether they get a benefit or not, I don't see this one flying.

Other than that, it's an interesting concept...but this takes a lot of customization out of the game. To be honest, I don't foresee a major overhaul to the current system of buffing, or debuffing. Some classes may simply get additional quirks to them, or changes to existing spells, others may find some of their debuffs' functionality limited or nerfed completely...but a serious overhaul? I doubt it.

Edit: You also have Shadow Priest stuff only in the priest slot. What happens if you have no Shadow Priests? And to continue my thought above, if this made it in, then what would quickly happen is one of each class, followed by filling in the required amount of healers (another 3-6, depending), followed by another 10-12 of whatever happens to be the top DPS class/spec at that particular gear level.

In reality this wouldn't happen in *most* raid groups...but I could very easily see guilds trying for world, or even server firsts stacking their group with 6 rogues and 6 mages, for instance. Melee DPS and Ranged DPS both covered, all other buffs are in place, done deal! Let's go kill Patchwerk 2.0 now. (random boss picked, just because.)

folderol · 05/28/08, 11:52 AM

While granting some totems raidwide abilities definitely address some stacking issues, a more generic solution could be something like this:
- rewrite all "group" buffs to provide a global benefit scaled down by the number of affected people
- rewrite all "raid" buffs as a group benefit not scaled down by the number of affected people
- allow raid leaders to create flexible group sizes

This creates some nice opposing trends as "group" buffs optimization will probably mean you want to split your raid in "small" synergistic groups whereas "raid" buffs maximization would favor lumping everyone in one big group. I would expect the optimal result to nicely fit in the "2-3 of each max" realms while still easily accomodating small imbalances in raid composition, aka "the lone rogue syndrom".

As an aside, should such a system be implemented on boss abilities (ie group targetted damage or debuffs), you could have some nice strategic choices impacting your grouping besides buff optimization.

◊ Praetorian · 05/28/08, 12:02 PM

Originally Posted by Zwink

The one thing that is being forgotten here is that in a comparison between Shamans and Priests/Druids for raid healing when Chain Heal can't be used. Priests and Druids come out on top by a long shot. Priests and Druids have more outs and more ways to save lives fast. If a fights healing requirements aren't tuned up to the max or there is AoE damage and the raid can be stacked up, Shamans are of course your best choice for healers due to the fact that they will speed the encounter up or are the best AoE healers if the raid can be stacked. However if the fight forces the raid to be 10 yards apart Chain Heal loses much of its effectiveness and Priests or Druids become much more effective raid healers. Kil'jaeden is a perfect example of this and Method's kill with 1 Restoration Shaman reinforces the fact that when the raid can't stack up Shamans are by no means the best raid healer.

Kil'jaeden is a turn around from almost every TBC encounter in the fact that Chain Heal is not your primary solution to raid damage. Blizzard has a lot of options for balancing the raid game and creating more encounters where Chain Heal isn't nearly as useful as it is right now is one way of doing that. If Chain Heal can't be used other healers come out ahead of Shamans when it comes to raid healing. This doesn't completely resolve the issue of Shaman stacking as you'd just bring more Elemental and Enhancement Shamans to your raids if you brought less Restoration, but it does bring back raid spots for other healing classes that have had their spots more or less taken away on most TBC encounters.

It is possible that Method's Kil'jaeden kill with 2 Shamans (1 Enhancement and 1 Restoration) would have been made easier by replacing 1-3 of the dps classes with additional Enhancement or Elemental Shamans. But if Blizzard made more encounters where Chain Heal wasn't absolutely amazing or even necessary and pure DPS classes were preferred (for example Mage or Warlock AoE compared to what an Elemental Shaman can bring) you would definitely see more variety in the number of Shaman brought to raids. Hopefully Kil'jaeden is a sign of things to come in WotLK. Finding the right balance will be difficult and down the road it is possible we may see the revamping of the totem system or even the addition of a 2nd totem dropping class.

Right, this is actually specifically what I had in mind in not referencing chain heal as a factor in stacking. Chain Heal only really began to shine later in TBC progression. It's nothing special on the majority of t4/t5 fights (except for VR melee, though CoH is arguably even better there). It's nothing special on early t6 fights. But those are largely easy. Teron, Gurtogg, RoS, Shahraz, and Illidan (p2) all reward it immensely though (though CoH remains better on Gurtogg and RoS p3).

And then in Sunwell Chain Heal truly shines, because you have your raid at least somewhat clumped on every one of the first 5 fights, with significant and often random raid damage to heal. But if every fight's raid damage were like Felmyst or Gurtogg, then people would be calling CoH overpowered. We've just seen an inordinate number of fights that play to Chain Heal's strengths.

Basically if raid damage is evenly distributed, then CoH is optimal. If it's random or inconsistent, then CH dominates. If there isn't regular raidwide damage, or if the raid needs to spread out significantly, then shamans are simply the worst healer in the game. LHW is a bad heal (compared to FoL, Flash Heal, Regrowth). We have no HoT. And HW is a terrible heal unless you can stack Healing Way on one target, again leaving us worse off than the other healers when it comes to single-target raid healing. Chain Heal is the only thing resto shamans really have going for them as healers, so I think Blizzard needs to be really careful with it. I think it's more of a raid design issue than a class balance issue. If Blizzard had made every fight in late t6 and Sunwell involve stunnable mobs or spellstealable buffs like the M'uru one, then suddenly rogues and mages might be seen as overrepresented instead. There should be fights where Chain Heal is godly, but there should also be more fights like Kil'Jaeden, Vashj, and Kael, where you have a relatively spread out raid that has to move around frequently.

To tie this back into my original point, I think the stacking we see is mostly a factor of necessary buff synergies, and Bloodlust stacking for tight DPS checks, than it is for chain heal. It's relatively easy, as we've seen, to design a fight where chain heal won't help you very much. It's not so easy to design a fight where lots of additional DPS won't help you very much. And ultimately synergies usually boil down to raid DPS. Where it's CoE on a boss, rotating Bloodlusts, or having Windfury for all your melee, the sacrifice you make for neglecting synergies is DPS. And unless the raid designers are going to find a way to make DPS not matter anymore (not likely!), they should work with the class team to limit the extent to which optimizing DPS encourages stacking specific classes.

BeeLz · 05/28/08, 12:35 PM

Most things have been said in this thread already.
My guild is stuck on Brutallus for 6 weeks now simply because we lost 2 shamans and 1 spriest 2 weeks after we killed Kalecgos and were pretty close to downing Brutallus. Ever since we had 1 or 2 nights on him but for a guild trying to kill Brutallus the first time it's just useless to try it with only 1 shadowpriest and 1 or 2 shamans in the raid. We raid caster heavy so we usually have 3 warlocks, 3 mages and a moonkin who all want a shadowpriest and a shaman just like most healers. It's just annoying that a whole progress raid depends on having 2 shadowpriests and at least 3 shamans. The thing is that semi-hardcore guilds or however you want to call it don't have the luxury to decide what raidsetup they will any given evening but have to take what's available.
So yes, I hope blizzard will discourage class stacking in the future and balance hybrids and buff classes around raiddps and not personal dps.

Douglas · 05/28/08, 1:01 PM

Originally Posted by Smurrf

Define 'non-tanks.' Now do so in a raid environment, with the Blizz interface.

This problem needs to be solved if -threat auras are ever going to apply to anything except exactly a 5-person group. This is required for them to become raid-wide, and this is required for them to make sense in 5-man content, so I want this to happen and have been thinking about how it should. I particularly want this stuff to matter for 5-man groups.

My solution is to make -threat auras only affect things that do not have an explicit threat component or threat boost. Forget who's marked as MT, forget what class and spec you are, base it on whether the ability you're using has a threat formula greater than "1.0 times x plus 0". "Moar Thret" abilities don't get subject to -threat auras.

So, Heroic Strike never gets a -threat aura, Maul never gets a -threat aura, normal attacks in defensive stance or bear form never get a -threat aura, holy damage with righteous fury up never gets a -threat aura.

Yeah, fury warriors who want to spam Heroic Strike will complain, and shaman who want to spam Frost Shock will complain, but it's the best compromise I've been able to think of.

If you really care about those cases, then check for an explicit -threat first (so all attacks from someone in Berzerker stance, or all attacks from someone with Spirit Weapons, or everything by anyone under Blessing of Salvation, fully get -threat auras). But I think that's more complex than needed. But it could work.

Margot · 05/28/08, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by SanSul

Raids need to completely do away with the 5 man group notion, and switch over to either a 3 or 4 group system. Tanks, Melee, Caster, Healers. Maybe Tanks and Melee are one group, and Casters Healers are the other.

So what if a Rogue gets 3x the buffs then 5man content, simply tune the encounter so that is taken into consideration. With a unified single melee group, there would be less incentive to exclude a Ret paladin, cause he would no longer be taking melee buffs away from another melee class.

This isn't a bad solution. Yes it makes raids different from a collection of groups, but it also stops these artificial requirements for "we must bring a whole other melee group if we bring more melee".

Maybe not even label the groups, just give raid leaders the freedom to make whatever blobs of people they want.

Edit: partial list of implications - only one enhance shaman required, only one shadow priest required. Things like moonkin aura become more valuable since they affect more people.

Soladoras · 05/28/08, 1:21 PM

Some of these suggestions are beginning to strike me as a bit ridiculous at this point. With the current state of raid and party synergies, the big picture reality is that all classes are able to succeed with proper support, and the end game is probably as balanced as it ever has been. While mages have a minor bone to pick at the moment, they are still more than capable of producing in a raid setting. I see no justification for throwing the baby out with the bath water, when the raid synergy system as it currently exists, works wonderfully. Every single Hybrid tree is viable in end game raiding. Completely starting from scratch is terribly drastic, considering that the current "high-synergy" system works. What doesn't work is how easy it is to distribute this synergy throughout the raid.

What needs to happen are minor tweaks, such as:

1) Creating a single Magic school curse debuff
2) Raid-wide totems, excluding tree/spec specific totems (Totem of Wrath, Mana Tide)
3) UR as a raid-wide, 20-30 yard range aura
4) LoTP raid wide aura
5) A Forbearance type debuff for Heroism / Bloodlust
6) A very scaled back, yet raid wide VT. Or possibly a slightly less scaled back, raid-wide VT that doesn't stack with itself, so as to prevent SP stacking.

Changes of this nature will make it easier for Raid Leaders to provide the desired raid synergy, without worrying about sitting your melee group because your enhancement shaman couldn't raid one night, or having to further screw around with the 5 person melee group because Blizzard decides to add yet another melee DPS class to the game for god knows why.

However, the elephant in the room is really how raid synergy interacts with mana regen and encounter design. It's not just heroism / bloodlust, and totem synergy that makes shaman stacking so valuable. Encounter design has swung wildly towards massive amounts of raid damage, to the point where massive throughput without regard to efficiency is King on many encounters, very few of which prevent you from grouping your raid closely together. If anything is in need of a drastic revision, I think it would be mana regen as a whole, both via itemization and other means. The regen currently available is currently in a feedback loop with encounter design, where more regen begets more throughput spam which begets more regen. I would like to see this addressed in WotLK, as well as some changes to the functionality of party buffs.

Duilliath · 05/28/08, 1:40 PM

[edit: delete me please]

◊ Lord BEEF · 05/28/08, 1:41 PM

Chain heal is purely encounter design.

On M'uru I significantly outperform all other healers and on Kil'jaedan resto druids are usually the top there as well, though by much smaller margins.

I'd rather the other healers get some unique tools to help them deal with raid damage as opposed to forcing fights where everyone has to spread out or whatever.

Grizlor · 05/28/08, 2:09 PM

Werebeef and Gurg's posts are pretty much spot on. Healing ability is entirely determined by encounter design. If you look at even most of the BT/Hyjal fights, shamans are pretty mediocre. Shamans are pretty much inferior to other healers on fights like Supremus, Azgalor, Archimonde, and Council, other than maybe healing people who get hit by consecrate/flamestrike/blizzard. Hell, we have paladins do exceedingly well on Naj'entus simply because chain heal is only really useful on the melee, and paladins get a ton of mana from spiritual attunement that they can use to spam the hell out of holy light.

Paladin healing was nerfed early in TBC as a knee-jerk reaction to mostly arena related complaints and empasis on "tank and spank" style fights in T4/T5 content. If anything, I'd like to see paladins un-nerfed. People crying foul simply because fights favor a certain style of healing are completely off base. You don't see casters/hunters getting retuned simply because of fights that favor ranged.