I will say this, for expansion the debuff limit is being increased from 16 to 40, combined with the focus on smaller raid dungeons, Warlock players will have more freedom and opportunity to use their debuffing abilities with less limitation. Beyond this, all classes will have new spells, talents and abilities that they will bring to the table by the time level 70 is achieved.
Lets assume a traditional encounter, with 8 classes, 25 people max, horde side. Mob immune to stuns etc.
3x of everything,except 1 additional priest.
Includes conditionals, and everyone is throwing what they can at the boss.
Up to about 45 there (I lost count at 40)... but there's lots of situational ones there as well as talent based, short time, proc effects, etc. So you can still fill them going all out, but it's better than a kick in the tits.
Originally Posted by Fric
Fingering a girl while she argues with her husband-to-be is perhaps my new low point morally in my horribly debauched life
Not really worthwhile figuring out what debuffs can go on when we don't know what the new ones will be. Who knows, maybe sunder won't be used anymore at lvl70.
My point was, you can fill it at the current level already. They may not be purposeful, but the new spells will likely replace the useless ones. Anyway, you do have to work pretty hard to fill it up, so it's a step in the right direction
Originally Posted by Fric
Fingering a girl while she argues with her husband-to-be is perhaps my new low point morally in my horribly debauched life
That's 23 debuffs that I consider extremely likely with the possibilty of going as high as 38 depending upon spec and whether or not certain abilities are useful in the expansion or that particular fight. Basically 40 is enough for a current 25 man raid. Any new abilites or weapons that leave debuffs and we're already having conflicts.
Edit: I totally spaced on Thunderclap/TF Debuff. Add that in there.
I really want to know why they chose 40. 8 makes sense, 16 makes sense, 32, etcetera. Unless they're doing something really strange with debuffs, 40 seems like it's kind of arbitrary and just wasting memory. Ah well, maybe this kind of thing is part of why they need new hardware.
I can't imagine they've tested 40 debuffs well enough to know that it is somehow a good value to choose.
That's 23 debuffs that I consider extremely likely with the possibilty of going as high as 38 depending upon spec and whether or not certain abilities are useful in the expansion or that particular fight. Basically 40 is enough for a current 25 man raid. Any new abilites or weapons that leave debuffs and we're already having conflicts.
Blizz has always intended debuff management to be part of raid strategizing. Honestly I'm shocked to see the limit increased at the same time as raid size is being decreased, and being more than doubled was an even bigger shock.
That's 23 debuffs that I consider extremely likely with the possibilty of going as high as 38 depending upon spec and whether or not certain abilities are useful in the expansion or that particular fight. Basically 40 is enough for a current 25 man raid. Any new abilites or weapons that leave debuffs and we're already having conflicts.
Edit: I totally spaced on Thunderclap/TF Debuff. Add that in there.
I wouldn't call all those extremely likely. Bringing only two warriors is unlikely since they're arguably the most vital and versatile class in the game, and them both being Mortal Strike/deep wounds warriors is extremely unlikely. That having been said, I agree that 40 slots is plenty, especially if they ever implement a decent priority system. Then again, perhaps increasing the debuff limit so drastically is their way of throwing up their hands on the debuff priority issue.
Well I don't give a jumping fuck if it's intendend. Debuff management is retarded.
To put it another way. Why? What's the point of having a million different debuffs when all they do is knock off useful things? What does debuff management bring to the table in terms of strategy when all it really boils down to is a list to abilites that you don't use because they aren't worth a debuff slot? It doesn't even take any thought to figure out which debuffs are worth it for most people. Someone, somewhere, will do the math that shows Curse of Recklessness is worth a debuff slot over Serpent Sting. Then they post that here, and some guild leader reads it and tells his Hunters "Enough with the fucking serpent sting or you don't get to raid."
So all debuff management really amounts to for 99% of the people playing is "I can't judge Seal of the Crusader because the raid leader told me not to." Wow, holy shit, what a fun and enjoyable experience for that person. I bet they are very glad in their heart of hearts that the designers gave them debuff management.
I wouldn't call all those extremely likely. Bringing only two warriors is unlikely since they're arguably the most vital and versatile class in the game, and them both being Mortal Strike/deep wounds warriors is extremely unlikely.
That's why they're in parenthesis. Sunder, Demo, and Clap are more or less guarenteed on any serious boss. Then depending on spec and how many warriors are tanking vs. damage you might have 0-2 deep wounds and mortal strike. I know you can't have 2xMS on a mob, but I'm not going to go back and edit that.
40 is actually a lot, even more so when you consider 25man raids. I mean, obviously, you can find a way to get more than 40 right now. With 15people if you want. Just get a few sulfuras and lobotomizers(or are bosses immune to this one?). But the point is, in a normal raid, where you don't use stupid shit(I'm sorry but even if you had the debuff slots, holy fire in healing gear or rend for a dps warriors are terrible) just for the sake of filling the debuff slots, 40 would actually probably leave a free slot.
However, that's considering what we know right now. They might(and I sure hope they will) add more debuffs to warlocks for example. Stuff that isn't used to increase mages dps, but to decrease mob stats(a watered down version of cripple? a curse that has a chance on any hit to summon a small demon that will attack the target?the curse those harpies cast on you that makes you sometimes heal what you hit?). And so, you might find yourself starved again on debuffs because of all these new debuffs.
In the end, you'll min/max math every abilities again like someone said, and you'll just remove stupid stuff that might not even actually increase dps(if you had the debuff slot, would serpent sting be viable currently for a hunter, assuming no +dmg gear, or would the mana actually be wasted if the fight was long enough for you to run oom?).
I'm way more happy hearing about the whole ladder/team pvp system than the debuff system being increased to 40slots. Unless they actually get this priority system they talked about 6months ago but have yet to finish(it seems it's somewhat working atm, but not good enough since I can still deepwounds off warlocks' syphons ^^)
So all debuff management really amounts to for 99% of the people playing is "I can't judge Seal of the Crusader because the raid leader told me not to." Wow, holy shit, what a fun and enjoyable experience for that person. I bet they are very glad in their heart of hearts that the designers gave them debuff management.
It's a way of bracketing off different aspects of the game. Female Nefl hunter #78,273 can run around AV gleefully serpent stinging people in his search for spiritual contentment without forcing the devs to automatically assume, "Okay, we've done some initial tuning for this boss. Now let's jack up his hp by the exact amount every class-based DoT in the game will run to, times intended encounter length." Deciding whether, say, a S.Priest is worth all his bloody debuff slots on X encounter becomes more of a subtle thing and can vary guild to guild.
By limiting the debuff slots they allow for variance in encounter design. PvP and PvE are enough of a nightmare to balance parallel to one another as is and debuff slots are one means of keeping this in check. As long as it's not a number that limits class roles (<25) it's fine.
Not to mention there's probably a reason this is going live in TBC and not now.
I think the debuff limit actually made it harder to balance PvP and PvE. Warlocks are the poster children of this. Warlocks were designed to fully utilize dots, and to monopolize disgusting numbers of debuff slots to good effect. They work this way in solo and small-group PvE and somewhat in PvP. But in a 40-man raid setting where they mostly spam shadowbolt, their raid DPS suffers. And because they can't use their debuffs to the fullest, Blizzard has to either leave them underpowered in raids, or buff them in raids and overpower them elsewhere. No good solution there. Debuff management is one thing. Where classes can't use basic class abilities in raids, that's a pure hinderance, as Rambar noted.
Not to mention there's probably a reason this is going live in TBC and not now.
I am a computer scientist by trade. I can tell you right now there are no technical reason for the debuff limit not to be increased. As Praetorian noted, there isn't a good balancing reason either. I think Blizzard just isn't very smart about a lot of things.
I think the problem isn't so much with the debuff limits as it is with all the stupid debuffs that do little to no damage (deep wounds, fireball, being prime examples). If the only way a debuff went up on a mob was when someone pressed a button that existed purely to add a debuff, then I think even with 16 debuff slots, warlocks would be able to utilize their dots a lot better in a raid setting (although if you bring 5 warlocks obviously they're going to step on each other's toes).
I've always felt 16 was still too restrictive for a 40 man raid, but the real problem, IMO, is the ridiculous number of procs, talents, etc, that add debuffs, thunderfury being probably the worst offender =\
Not to mention there's probably a reason this is going live in TBC and not now.
I think Blizzard just isn't very smart about a lot of things.
The rare, valid point. Damn.
It's always rather frustrating wanting to argue against a position that assumes people are dumb. You want to try and defend your honor, but then you remember observing how the world functions every time you're forced to go outside. I run into this a lot.
Not to mention there's probably a reason this is going live in TBC and not now.
I am a computer scientist by trade. I can tell you right now there are no technical reason for the debuff limit not to be increased. As Praetorian noted, there isn't a good balancing reason either. I think Blizzard just isn't very smart about a lot of things.
It would break current raid content. That's why. If they gave us 40 debuff slots tomorrow, raid DPS would increase, and precariously-balanced content would lose that balanced state. Why fix debuff slots today, then spend time re-tuning all the raid content (or having it trivialized), and then have to do it all over again once TBC hits? Since they know that everything is changing drastically in TBC anyway, they may as well do it all at once.
It would break current raid content. That's why. If they gave us 40 debuff slots tomorrow, raid DPS would increase, and precariously-balanced content would lose that balanced state. Why fix debuff slots today, then spend time re-tuning all the raid content (or having it trivialized), and then have to do it all over again once TBC hits? Since they know that everything is changing drastically in TBC anyway, they may as well do it all at once.
What you seem to be saying is that current content is balanced around warlocks being an underpowered single target dps class. Even if that were true, I don't think a fundamental retune of existing encounters would be needed if warlocks did 10% more dps across the board. Perhaps an hp increase.
My personal opinion is that Blizzard doesn't spend nearly enough effort on class design, compared to the amount of work they put into, say, encounter design. There's just a huge list of retarded, easily fixable things in class design that have no business being in the game this long after release.
Not to mention there's probably a reason this is going live in TBC and not now.
I am a computer scientist by trade. I can tell you right now there are no technical reason for the debuff limit not to be increased. As Praetorian noted, there isn't a good balancing reason either. I think Blizzard just isn't very smart about a lot of things.
It would break current raid content. That's why. If they gave us 40 debuff slots tomorrow, raid DPS would increase, and precariously-balanced content would lose that balanced state. Why fix debuff slots today, then spend time re-tuning all the raid content (or having it trivialized), and then have to do it all over again once TBC hits? Since they know that everything is changing drastically in TBC anyway, they may as well do it all at once.
Or perhaps they don't even bother retuning the old content at all.
One indication of this is the fact that Blizz themselves have stated that MC will be 10 mannable at level 70. I'm not sure if this still stands - not seen any retraction at least. However, if true, 10 levels are all well and good but there were bound to be significant changes in hand if the consequence was a four fold reduction in the number of people needed to visit the 'core (and more sophisticated ones than simply making mage DD spells do four times as much damage).
I'm in two minds about this. Whether or not 40 debuff slots is enough in conjunction with the priority system is frankly going to depend on what new debuffs / ranks of existing debuffs classes are getting on the way to level 70. Time will tell on this front.
I never said they'd retune old content. But they can make new content with these changes in mind. Old content will be fairly broken and questionably relevant at 70 anyway, particularly with the new direction things are taking.
I wonder if Naxx will persist as a legacy 40-man that you can obliterate with level 70s. I suppose so.
08/11/06, 11:18 PM
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