Just from an ease of implementation standpoint, Blizzard could just remove Spell ranks greater than 4 ranks below your highest power spell. It's not a really a good solution, but it treats the symptoms of this problem, and with as much stuff as Blizzard has on their plates, a solution like this doesn't seem totally unlikely.
The game doesn't have to be perfectly balanced at all. As long as this breaking point remains theorycraft and you never actually reach the breaking point before next level cap increase (and this can be controlled through itemization), encounters can just be balanced through play testing for "what is, is." Sure I guess that means some older content will get ridiculously trivial but is that really a big deal?
People are not going to get 75% crit rates with healing, I don't see why this is a problem.
Well, they don't necessarily need to change the equations. The ease with which one can max out hit, weapon skill, and defense can easily be counterbalanced by game mechanics - Unbalancing Strike is fairly elementary example of this, but it suggests the encounter designers are aware of the problem.
To speculate for a second, one could easily imagine mobs with somehwat low base damage but much higher crit rates, or mobs with higher than standard defense - in fact, I think C'thun is either level 64 or has a very high defense skill.
The tools for adjusting those problems already exist, it is simply a matter of the designers taking advantage of them.
The thing is, these don't address the fundamental problem. If crits only exist through UBS, then they basically don't exist--all you've created is a weird weapon proc (4% chance to do double damage for 6 seconds). You still haven't allowed for a balance between boss power and tank mitigation.
And that's the essence of RPG progression--stats go up on both sides, and mostly cancel each other out. The fun of progress is in the work required just to keep up. But when scaling fundamentally changes behavior, now the game designers have to work, every step of the way, to prevent things from breaking. And that's what Blizz is doing already. They're fighting it off, by doing things like nerfing +defense, but didn't they realize (in that example) that they'd just be facing the same situation a bit later, with tanks having +140def bonuses? What were they planning to do, just nerf it again? They put 15% Eviscerate damage on Deathdealer--will there be +40% two sets later?
Basically, there are lots of ways to hand-design to be interesting, even when certain mechanics are broken, but everyone would be happier with long-term solutions.
so your spending about 7 mana less on a 35 mana spell
sure it makes the healing per mana ratio go through the roof, but the mana cost per second was low enough that 4-5 less doesnt really matter, maybe i would have to start using pots again which would be irritating heh
it frees up a bit of mana to use in burst healing but its basically of minimal utility
illumination only gets good as the mana/second usage goes up, ie non raid usage or uncommon raid usage (huhuran second phase)
in general paladins will be worse off when optimising healing patterns and gear for illumination than when not
silly buffing is somewhat interisting though, i think the easy ones are 10% ony head, 5% songflower, 3% moonkin which is getting up high enough for a stacked paladin to maybe hit 50%, keep in mind though thats not particularly useful or sensible
every other healer beside paladin has mana reductions for healing of around 10-12% yes this scales differantly but i think reducing shaman heals mana cost at level 20 is the simplest way to balance the +healing thing since druids and priests already have regen advantages anyway
The best part is how zie missed the meat of the post entirely. The stuff about +healing and low paladin heal cost has been standard heal theory since MC, to my limited knowledge.
Originally Posted by Mist
People are not going to get 75% crit rates with healing, I don't see why this is a problem.
This assumes two things. One, Blizzard realizes there is a problem. Two, Blizzard does something about it. And assuming things is always dangerous.
Yes, the problem with massive paladin crit and turning the paladin class into a "2box special" is extrapolation. However, here's some more numbers for you. Paladin crit is currently at 29.5 int per SCrit, approximately. Theoretically, (since i don't have any tests for int/SCrit at lower levels) 1 SCrit per 1/2 level's worth of int. Bump up to level 70, and it's approximately 35 int per SCrit.
523/35= 14.94 SCrit from int, for a total of 24.94 SCrit from int, at level 70 with the gear posted in my original post. total loss of 2-point-fuckall SCrit. And this is assuming gear does not increase AT ALL in a whole expansion.
As a bit of anecdotal evidence, my SCrit rate in BWL gear was approximately 15-17%. Redemption, without any other accessories from naxx, boosts that by 10%. Optimized rings/neck, weapon, trinkets and what have you from naxx could break 30 SCrit quite reasonably. Granted, that's partly an exaggerated value, based on how Judgement's stat allocations compare to Redemption.
If you really don't think high heal crit rates are possible, then just take the current example for HL4 and add consumables. Mana oil, nightfin, and mageblood collectively add 32 m/5. Major Mana potions hit for ~1800 mana every 2 minutes. Or, ~75 m/5. Total m/5 income equals 265.6, HL4 mana outflow equals 274.626. By the time your nightfin runs out at 10 minutes in, you've used 4 major manas cooling down on the next, and are down approximately 2000 mana out of 9000?
As to getting paladin healing nerfed, sounds ok to me. Seriously. I say that with the best intentions in mind. Playing a paladin in a raid is alreadly an exercise in tedium, with little enough difference between a player trying their best to time their heals correctly and choose which rank to use, and the player who's just spamming the MT. Destroying any spell selection at all is only going to turn the paladin class into a bot on follow operating solely by whispercast.
If using "he or she" seems awkward to you, try using a neutral gender term. Some people use s/he, others find that clumsy, and try using variations on pronunciation, such has zer or zier. Unfortunately, English doesn't really have the concept for neutral genders, so there's no real consensus yet. But that leaves room for one to be built.
as long as your using consumables might as well grab an extra 4k mana from some nightdragons, 7k odd from demonic runes and have 18k mana to burn in that 10 minutes, or an extra 150 m/5, throw in a moonkin aura and a ony buff for yourself, bump your crit from 30 to 43
maybe hl7?
using that many buffs is going to make every class heal better but maybe not by quite as much, 13% more to shaman inspiration isnt going to cause any problems either though
have you tried the whisper cast where group members can request aura changes?
anyway illumination could be capped easily enough, it doesnt make sense to go high right now but maybe 50 ilvls down the track 20 item slots with 5 spell crit would be a problem
Well, they don't necessarily need to change the equations. The ease with which one can max out hit, weapon skill, and defense can easily be counterbalanced by game mechanics - Unbalancing Strike is fairly elementary example of this, but it suggests the encounter designers are aware of the problem.
To speculate for a second, one could easily imagine mobs with somehwat low base damage but much higher crit rates, or mobs with higher than standard defense - in fact, I think C'thun is either level 64 or has a very high defense skill.
The tools for adjusting those problems already exist, it is simply a matter of the designers taking advantage of them.
The thing is, these don't address the fundamental problem. If crits only exist through UBS, then they basically don't exist--all you've created is a weird weapon proc (4% chance to do double damage for 6 seconds). You still haven't allowed for a balance between boss power and tank mitigation.
And that's the essence of RPG progression--stats go up on both sides, and mostly cancel each other out. The fun of progress is in the work required just to keep up. But when scaling fundamentally changes behavior, now the game designers have to work, every step of the way, to prevent things from breaking. And that's what Blizz is doing already. They're fighting it off, by doing things like nerfing +defense, but didn't they realize (in that example) that they'd just be facing the same situation a bit later, with tanks having +140def bonuses? What were they planning to do, just nerf it again? They put 15% Eviscerate damage on Deathdealer--will there be +40% two sets later?
Basically, there are lots of ways to hand-design to be interesting, even when certain mechanics are broken, but everyone would be happier with long-term solutions.
I agree it would be more elegant to have long term solutions, but would it really be any more effective than if they simply designed bosses on a case by case basis? I mean, what is it you are trying to accomplish here? If you want bosses to crit tanks more, give bosses more crit. You don't need to start a whole new game system.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with UBS, either. Sure, crits currently only exist during UBS, but do you mean they need to exist elsewhere? Does Ouro really need to crit for 4k and thrash? If so, fine, give him another 1% crit. If any other boss difficulty and design calls for random burst damage through crits, that's doable through a number of ways. Give the bosses more crit, debuff the players to reduce defense, or give the boss abilities that effectively output the same damage. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see why the game is broken because tanks never see the word "crit" in their combat logs (the wonderful Blood Craze aside). We're not designing some system that randomly generates new bosses here; we're talking about individually tuned (over time, anyway) fights that are personally adjusted by designers (even if they are only learning how to do it as they go along).
Edit: And as to other abilities, like Eviscerate and (formerly) Shield Slam, I agree, this is a pretty serious problem. I think part of it started because the entire game up to Molten Core seems to have anticipated the level cap increases sooner and, in fact, quite often. There wasn't much spell damage originally because you were probably supposed to scale through new ranks at new levels. But as I recall Blizzard had a few employee problems and we didn't see a new raid zone for eight months, let alone an expansion. If we could get level cap increases every 9-12 months, I think the problem of static, non-scaling abilities would diminish.
I agree it would be more elegant to have long term solutions, but would it really be any more effective than if they simply designed bosses on a case by case basis? I mean, what is it you are trying to accomplish here? If you want bosses to crit tanks more, give bosses more crit. You don't need to start a whole new game system.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with UBS, either. Sure, crits currently only exist during UBS, but do you mean they need to exist elsewhere? Does Ouro really need to crit for 4k and thrash? If so, fine, give him another 1% crit. If any other boss difficulty and design calls for random burst damage through crits, that's doable through a number of ways. Give the bosses more crit, debuff the players to reduce defense, or give the boss abilities that effectively output the same damage. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see why the game is broken because tanks never see the word "crit" in their combat logs (the wonderful Blood Craze aside). We're not designing some system that randomly generates new bosses here; we're talking about individually tuned (over time, anyway) fights that are personally adjusted by designers (even if they are only learning how to do it as they go along).
Edit: And as to other abilities, like Eviscerate and (formerly) Shield Slam, I agree, this is a pretty serious problem. I think part of it started because the entire game up to Molten Core seems to have anticipated the level cap increases sooner and, in fact, quite often. There wasn't much spell damage originally because you were probably supposed to scale through new ranks at new levels. But as I recall Blizzard had a few employee problems and we didn't see a new raid zone for eight months, let alone an expansion. If we could get level cap increases every 9-12 months, I think the problem of static, non-scaling abilities would diminish.
Well, if they think the whole mechanic of crits don't need to exist (a decision they've made with spells), then maybe they'll keep it this way. Still though, it would mean we've lost something as far as an interesting mechanic for tank progression, so hopefully we'd get something new at some point to make up for it.
I think you're entirely right about the level scaling. They have things handled really nicely for 1-60. The way the crit/agi ratio gradually decreases as you level up, for example. More importantly, the way the damage/Rage ratio gradually increases as you level up. So an overgeared Warrior at 40 gets a bit of extra Rage, but Rage generation stay roughly constant as you level. It only starts increasing without limit once you hit 60, and your damage continues to increase while you always enjoy the level 60 Rage ratio.
05/14/06, 10:54 PM
Similar Threads
