Kerulak

A fellow player from another guild had recently let on that he knew someone who worked at Blizzard. I usually just give people who say such things the benefit of the doubt and wait to hear what they say. In this individual's case, he has been on the money more times than I can count, successfully predicting all sorts of miscellaneous changes that have inevitably ended up in each successive patch. And he usually makes these predictions months in advance. So...at present, I currently lean very heavily towards him telling the truth, rather than just causing mischief.

Yesterday, he let a doozy go. The possibility that Blood Elves will be Paladins and Draenei will be Shamans in TBC.

At first, when I heard him say this, it sounded completely game breaking, and I dismissed it. However, in the back of my mind, I was almost positive I had seen something...somewhere...to lend evidence to this argument. The evidence was this image I found on wowguru, littered amonst a bunch of other blurry TBC shots...

http://www.wowguru.com/gallery/original/1332.jpg

Regardless of whether the image is fake or not...given that Blizzard has certainly done a good job at suprising the hell out of people with changes completely out of left field...and the fact that this friend of mine has been right much more than he has been wrong...

...what does this mean for us? Trying to balance a raid by figuring out how many Shaman slots to cut...to make room for Paladins?

(I almost shudder to ask him what the Blood Elf Priest racial will be...as I expect he'll answer "lol fear ward").

 

Malan

Oh there would not be much to figure out, I think we'd pretty much be telling our shammies to reroll.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Jeht

fwiw, I also play with a guy who works at Blizzard, and while he has never gone on record, he has hinted to the rest of the shaman that we might want to think about rerolling before TBC comes out.

 

• Lurchington

Outside of the minimum number of paladins to cover blessings, do you gain anything by cutting shaman?

My understanding is that you need 3 paladins to cover the raid with their appropriate blessings, are you really better served by cutting 3 shaman over say a priest, a shaman and a druid?

 

Graham

Oh man. The image wasn't fake, but it was an NPC, not a player, and not a trainer.

Aside from that, giving both sides Paladins and Shaman would be such an amazingly huge increase to raid DPS and effeciency that the entire concept of raid balance would go out the window. I very much doubt this.

 

• Maestroquark

I doubt it too, but we already know raid balance as the level 60 raids see it is getting thrown out. Just being level 70 does that. If this change was coming, it would mainly influence brand new instances -> which should be balanced from the start to account for both.

What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?

 

Jeht

It also, in one inelegant but fell swoop, shuts up the horde crying over pve imbalance, and the alliance crying over pvp imbalance.

I really hope that it is not true, or that if it is, it never makes it outside the planning phase. Aside from liking the differences in factions, I really don't feel like rerolling, and I would figure that a horde raid with pallies is going to need 1, maybe 2 shaman to give melee DPS WF, and that's it.

 

jubelio

As long as they did away with tranquil air totem I couldnt see the increase that shaman would bring to an alliance raid to be more than could be easily balanced. Of course that would make horde guilds ridiculously more successful, but that isnt really a balance issue.

 

◊ Praetorian

If I were a raid leader that could use shamans and paladns together I'd want 4 priests 4 druids 4 shamans and 3 paladins as my healing.

Realistically, though, I don't think we can really say things like "man that would break balance" about any speculated change for the expansions. We're going to be getting all-new skills and 41pt talents in all three trees for each class. Our prior conceptions of balance are out the window anyway.

 

jubelio

Countdown to gurg's first real alt(new main).

 

Farstrider

I'd cry.

I hate pallys with a vengeance and seeing the raving numpties with their gutless bubble wrap running around like idiots in PvP on my side would just upset me even more....

Moreover the injustice of basically making 3-5 of every top horde raiding guild reroll as a paladin (shudder) is just harsh.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

Shakkha

That would make some sense i guess.

Blizzard has been annoyed from day one with the constant horde vs alliance whine, this would shut those up once for good, and solve all the loot dropping for a faction and not the other etc. issues.

The only drawback would be the loss of the faction flavor i guess, but in the end it would benefit everyone.

 

henaki

I'd rather they just balance out the classes in an end game perspective using the new expansion abilities in some form. If they can balance Starcraft they can balanced two classes.

Gur - Level 64 Undead Warlock on Hellfire

 

Maledict

It would also break the 40 player raid model, as currently it's neatly balanced at 5 players of each class - whether or not that's optimal is another question, but there you go.

Wouldn't this have the same impact as the EQ era changce, going from 72 player raids to 36 & 52 player raids? Guilds would suddenly be forced to recruit new people to fill in the spots, whilst also having suddenly too many people of certain classes? It would also make the value of healers relatively "less" compared to other classes - 4 classes to cram into an optimal 15 spots for healers in one raid.

And yeah, if they did this, expect Horde guilds everywhere to suddenly go crazy. Adding a shaman into an alliance guild will be nice for the WF buff they get. Adding 3 Paladins into a horde guild would be *crazy*, given BoS / BoW / BoK suddenly on everyone.

 

Sicks

YAY WINDFURY + BOK + BOM + BS. Even now that would put me at well over 2k AP on Windfury attacks. With level 70 and ilevel 100(+) items that would be sweet. Then again those two classes tend to draw the most ZOMG I R HYBRID LEMME SPEC FOR RAID DPS.

Just so you know, pigeonholing yourself as pure damage and refusing to heal isn't taking advantage of your hybrid role anymore than straight healing is!

Sorry for the tangent, continue! Would make pvp interesting to say the least.

Wodin\'s cat changed my life.

 

• frmorrison

3 Pallys is all you need. The combination of BoM/BoK/BoS and SoE/WF totem would be fun with melee classes.

Like others said, it would certainly balance the encounters, and if they continue with the Token system for set drops, it would be easy to add in a Pally token (just add it to the Rogue/Warrior one).

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Ravock

I find this possibility to be highly .... unrealistic. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Personally, I'd just like to see Blizzard fix the totem system. I'm not really sure what the issue is with making totems affect people outside of your party while in a raid. Leave the range limitation in... make totems affect outside of your individual groups. Then the disparity between the two factions when it comes to raiding is cut 10 fold IMO.

It seems to me given the huge population imbalances that most servers face, that Blizzard would buff horde raiding to the point that its actually EASIER to raid on Horde so that it would be more appealing to roll that faction. Meh... I'm ranting, sorry.

 

Nite_Moogle

Horde Paladins and Alliance Shamans would be the biggest cop-out in gaming history. I really do expect more from Blizzard.

 

Malan

According to Blizzard CMs on the shaman forums during the "feedback phase" of the talent review, "raid wide totems" would result in "fewer shaman being taken on raids". You know... as opposed to right now where my guild doesn't even bother setting up groups to use totems unless its a resistance fight. I rerolled a warrior after I asked to have shamans moved into a rogue group on Twin Emps for DPS totems, and was told that it "didn't matter" if they had totems or not.

Edit - I hopped on my shaman just last night to help with healing in Naxx (haven't been in there since it opened really, been on my warrior ever since the 1.11 patch) and even on a fight like Noth, which demands a very high DPS output from the raid, our groups were not set up efficiently for totem mechanics. It seems like nobody cares about it anymore.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Valen

Didn't jeff kaplan hint in NY interview that they will never do such thing?

 

Spartacus

Find a new guild.

 

◊ Praetorian

Then your raid leader is stupid. Totems may have all sorts of limitations, but saying that they aren't worth giving to your DPS is just asinine. The problem is that they involve far too many tradeoffs and 3/8 of a raid typically ends up without them. But for what they are, they are certainly significant boosts to performance where they do apply.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, as I recall, part of the reasoning was that they wanted there to be some animosity between the factions, and difference breeds animosity. Give everyone the same classes and it may as well be Red vs. Blue or Skins vs. Shirts rather than two warring factions.

 

Malan

Not directly, this is what he said-
The bit about "hating paladins" leads me to believe they wouldn't implement this change.

Edit - full transcript available here:
http://www.wowcentral.com/modules.ph...=print&sid=344

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Malan

... and that's why I rerolled after that incident. I only play on the shaman now when the raid is short of some healers while I'm still gearing up my warrior. I went from being the best geared raiding shaman on the server to the most mediocre warrior in the guild.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06