Warning for Gediablo: Grammar

• Aldriana · 07/02/08, 3:18 PM

Post: [Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion
User: Gediablo
Infraction: Grammar
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

"ofc" isn't a word. And I'm not a big fan of "atm" either.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by manly

However, its not because they said words like 'king of AOE' 'dps=ZOMG' or 'raw-unadulterated damage' that we should be blindsighted into believing it means a whole lot. I think the comment was wholly uninspiring in the sense that we already knew that. He provided an answer to a question, I don't think we should be thinking further than that. As always, I expect blizzard to know what theyre doing, and I was always confident a fix would be in eventually.

You are definitely more optimistic and have more confidence to the Blizzard balancing and test team than me. Comments like the well known "In test after test, our jaws are consistently dropping at the sheer damage output we've seen from the mage at level 70, so I do think that some of the panic here is unwarranted. These results are directly what have led to some of the changes such as the one to elemental precision. Damage = zomg." or this blue post in reply to my post that the AE range still wasn't as the tooltip described after they 'fixed' it: "When standing still, this effect does appear to have a less than 10 yard range. However, I can confirm that when moving (as you invariably would be when casting this type of spell), the range of the spell is a full 10 yards. This is considered to be an intended feature of the spell, and is working correctly." (This refers to that AE got a 1½ yard shorter range than the tooltip say when standing still or jumping without moving, which according to Blizzard is working as intended.)

I know from other games that balancing and bug-fixing a new game is extremely hard, and personally I expect WotLK on release to be extremely unbalanced and buggy compared to the current live versions. What I don't get is how their development teams can go and proclaim phrases like the first quote above, which clearly turned out false, as it was proven shortly after in the open beta. Not only does it shows extremely poor testing and/or theorycrafting on their part, but it also either eventually piss off the mage community or the non-mage communities - either way a really bad approach.

I also have problems understanding why Blizzard's policy on people commenting on alpha-leaked material is to delete and ban, rather than listen. As you say yourself manly:

Originally Posted by manly

They knew that a quick fix probably wouldn't have done it, so they went for a full scale 'fix' of the problem and delayed the mage dps fix for WotLK. They want to do a better, bigger fix if you prefer.

In other words if the balance is way off, it should be fixed before release, since it is harder to fix underpowered or overpowered classes in minor patches without massive whine. If their internal testing isn't creative/skilled enough to test it correctly (pretty sure no warlock Blizzard tester tried sacrificing a succubus for SB or SoC spamming during their test phase) then what is the harm in letting a community of free eager testers at least do some theory crafting for them and opening up for balancing ideas.

Atm we can ofc only speculate on the design of the encounters. As someone said they might add something like a Corehound-pack-boss encounter that actually requires mage AoE, and justify bringing more than 1 King of AoE to that encounter. But that doesn't change the fact that we can expect a vast majority of boss encounters to be single target dps fights. You cannot make a general PvE balance on classes by adding gimmick fights like having a mage tank Krush Firehand or Council or a warlock tank Leo or Illidan. Those things spice things up and are needed and fun yes, but if bringing more than 1 player of a class to any 25 man raids generally brings less than bringing a 3+ of other similar classes then it isn't balanced. Many guilds brought 1-2 locks and stacked extra mages during Naxx which indicated an unbalance, just like stacking warlocks and bringing 1 mage in especially early TBC raiding (and apparently end of Sunwell too) indicated unbalance. The pendulum swings, and that can't be avoided, but better thinking and testing and listening to the community can make the swings less drastic. I'm much against flavor of the month classes (like often seen in DaoC or SWG), and I do consider WoW overall more balanced than those games.

I don't have the feeling that Blizzard always know what they are doing, however. The cap on AoE spells e.g. - it appeared to be a fast fix to prevent mages to solo/duo farm the non-elite world-spawns during Naxx-release. Yet they never adjusted pre-TBC encounters to this, and they removed the gear and talent scaling part - does it makes sense that an arcane mage in S1-gear does the same AE damage at Felmyst as a 1500 +damage mage with AP running? Instead a fix like changing it to something similar to multi-shot, and capping the damage to x number of targets rather than overall (non-crit) damage would have made more sense. And when this problem starts to show in TBC like at Felmyst they 'fix' it by increasing the cap on 1 AoE spell, rather than changing the basic AoE mechanic. Counterspell and global cooldown another well known balance issue gone wrong. Mage 2xTier5 is another poor 'fix'. Seed of Corruption and Demonic Sacrifice are two warlock examples. None of these examples has been introduced by Blizzard without a reason, but the long term consequences for the classes in all situations doesn't seemed to have been that well considered nor tested.

New content makes more money than extensive testing. Many boss fights doesn't even seems like the internal test teams have been close to defeating with buffed up characters and inside knowledge of tactics. I might be too pessimistic on my view on things, but I believe MMO and WoW history speak for itself here. New content equals more unbalance and new not so well thought ideas.

Originally Posted by alvinrod

For whatever mistakes Blizzard made in TBC, I'm quite sure they've learned from them and have made sure that they won't be repeated again in WotLK. Sure there might be new mistakes, but they'll fix those in the next expansion or patch them up as we go along.

With Naxx being the first instance and having plenty of time for returning it for 10 and 25 man raids, I think we'll see the best encounter and raid balance to date.

I honestly believe that those of you who expect WotLK to be really balanced in the start is going to be disappointed. New talents, new skills, a new class. And they will make some of the same mistakes again. The mage class is going to seem overpowered while leveling 70-80, but melee classes will become insanely powerful with the best gear in WotLK. Some of the underpowered classes/specs now will become overpowered and vice versa. It was like that Pre-TBC, it was like that in TBC and I see nothing so far that prevents it from happening again. For WotLK I hope for a bit more balance 6 months after release compared to TBC, and a bit more equal gear-scaling across classes and specs than during TBC. If something of the new content fundamentally needs changing it should happen during the alpha or beta - SoC didn't get changed during TBC even though it went over the hill in Blizzard's eyes. Blink, Ignite or Coldsnap won't get replaced/fixed in the middle of an expansion no matter if they are documented to be bugged. The new professions Inscription may destroy all the theory crafting here (only to be nerfed to oblivion after a few months). We don't know really. I just try and be realistic - that way the inevitable bugs and balance issues seems easier to handle.