It seems like the warlock uproar has gained such a momentum that Kalgan is breaking the seal of secrecy and is doing his best to calm us down.
Quote:
We definitely feel the need for warlocks to gain some sort of active defense so we don't have to try to balance them around the assumption that they're "tanking" melee classes. For example, an idea we're running with internally is the concept of a warlock being able to cast a spell that places a circle of demonic power on the ground. The warlock would be able to teleport to this location from within a relatively short range (ie: 40 yards), and would also be able to summon demons more quickly if they're standing within the circle.
Note: this idea is intended as a sneak peek, it's not something that we're planning for 2.4, it would be more likely as an expansion ability, and may change entirely before said time.
In short they, blizzard, know that we cannot possibly carry on with the silly design of a tanking class in cloth with no escape mechanism. In short we managed to hammer in their thick skull that this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that mage have a hard time against us in the same way it is entirely bad design that we have such a hard time (impossible) against melee (rogue / warriors).
So nothing still in store to sort out the problem of season 4 gear with armor penetration, still no talk on what cloth users are getting to balance armor penetration and the dps increase of melee weapon. Kalgan just throw a bone on a HYPOTHETIC change in store for us in .... the next expantion.
In the mean time mage obviously go beserk when they heard of the remote possibility of warlock getting a blink. Kalgan swiftly move on to attempt to calm the situation and mention that in the next expantion mage will finally get spell to allow them to better handle warlocks (fair enough).
In all this what do we see?
Blizzard is aware that clothies are getting shorthanded and their play style is turning into a "tank the melee" because of lack of options.
Blizzard should be aware that the population of warrior is one the highest and strangely is growing these days...
Blizzard is still silent on what they are going to change for season 4 to allow clothies to stand a chance.
I think that blizzard is betting on the next expansion to sort things out and have already thrown the towel for clothie: for 2.4 and until the expansion cloth users will just have to bend over it seems. By then either blizzard will attempt to stem the number of people leaving by throwing us bits about the coming expansion and obviously the CM will not answer any thread on balance and will carry on answering the "rickrolls".
Kalganised yet again.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Kalganism at its best.
I was expecting a blue to eventually give us a feedback on the life tap nerf and was rather surprised that Kalgan tried to justify blizzard vision of class balance.
Kalgan posted the data he took into consideration to justify life tap nerfing:
2v2 3v3 5v5
Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5%
Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0%
Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4%
Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4%
Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6%
Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8%
Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9%
Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3%
The problem I see with this data is that it does not show the class representation in relation to the actual wow population. According to Kalgan any class should be roughly at 100% representation, which is the ideal. I do however see a few problems here:
Druid population in comparaison to their representation on this chart.
Mage requiring a buff whereas their representation in 3v3 and 5v5 is actually good.
Priest representation being supposedly over the top when everyone knows that blizzard killed shadow.
No trend showing showing here whereas we, the players, know that blizzard is a few month behind in their analysis: arena is dynamic and Kalgan somewhat acknowledge this by trying to justify their pityfull attempt of class balance by mentioning a month old trend of decline of the warlock class.
The current trend is that hunters are on the rise, double melee dps and cheese the clothie 5v5 is on the rise. This trend is nowhere to be seen in any graph but is real. Armor penetration is adversely affecting gameplay for clothies and S4 weapons are bringing a level of damage not countered by any buff to clothies survavibility or spell damage equivalent. Spell haste does nothing to balance the situation for warlock and I expect a more severe reduction in warlock numbers in all brackets.
Rogues are all powerful is all brackets. Warriors is THE main dps class to have in 5v5. Yet no review of armor penetration or weapons dps is on the horizon.
The simple fact is that blizzard know that they messed it up in season 3 with weapons damage scaling better than cloth defenses and spell damage, armor penetration further imbalanced this situation and the proof is there: the tournament gives season 2 gear, not season 3. I do not think this is a coincidence.
Blizzard should wake up to the fact that people want to play to have fun. This means priests want to be able to be successful in arena playing shadow, not pigeonholed into discipline. The same goes for many shaman lamenting for enhancement to be sorted out. The same again for warlocks that feel that their survival options are so poor that all of them have to take soul link, whereas they wish they could have some trade offs and be able to play destruction with some mage like options of survival.
While it is rather difficult to balance all specs, the fact this is not a priority seems to bug a lot of players and it wont be long before we see people rerolling other classes or just leaving wow out of frustration.
Kalganism might turn out to be a disease that hurt shareholders after all, not players.
Kalgan posted the data he took into consideration to justify life tap nerfing:
2v2 3v3 5v5
Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5%
Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0%
Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0%
Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4%
Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4%
Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6%
Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8%
Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9%
Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3%
The problem I see with this data is that it does not show the class representation in relation to the actual wow population. According to Kalgan any class should be roughly at 100% representation, which is the ideal. I do however see a few problems here:
Druid population in comparaison to their representation on this chart.
Mage requiring a buff whereas their representation in 3v3 and 5v5 is actually good.
Priest representation being supposedly over the top when everyone knows that blizzard killed shadow.
No trend showing showing here whereas we, the players, know that blizzard is a few month behind in their analysis: arena is dynamic and Kalgan somewhat acknowledge this by trying to justify their pityfull attempt of class balance by mentioning a month old trend of decline of the warlock class.
The current trend is that hunters are on the rise, double melee dps and cheese the clothie 5v5 is on the rise. This trend is nowhere to be seen in any graph but is real. Armor penetration is adversely affecting gameplay for clothies and S4 weapons are bringing a level of damage not countered by any buff to clothies survavibility or spell damage equivalent. Spell haste does nothing to balance the situation for warlock and I expect a more severe reduction in warlock numbers in all brackets.
Rogues are all powerful is all brackets. Warriors is THE main dps class to have in 5v5. Yet no review of armor penetration or weapons dps is on the horizon.
The simple fact is that blizzard know that they messed it up in season 3 with weapons damage scaling better than cloth defenses and spell damage, armor penetration further imbalanced this situation and the proof is there: the tournament gives season 2 gear, not season 3. I do not think this is a coincidence.
Blizzard should wake up to the fact that people want to play to have fun. This means priests want to be able to be successful in arena playing shadow, not pigeonholed into discipline. The same goes for many shaman lamenting for enhancement to be sorted out. The same again for warlocks that feel that their survival options are so poor that all of them have to take soul link, whereas they wish they could have some trade offs and be able to play destruction with some mage like options of survival.
While it is rather difficult to balance all specs, the fact this is not a priority seems to bug a lot of players and it wont be long before we see people rerolling other classes or just leaving wow out of frustration.
Kalganism might turn out to be a disease that hurt shareholders after all, not players.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
World of Meleecraft
Saison 3 has been a joke in terms of the buff given to melee via armor penetration and cheezy teams with double melee have quickle got on board the fact that sunder armor + armor penetration means a clothie has no armor left. Once sunder armor is applied 5 times, reapplying once every 30 seconds, if necessary, is enough to keep it up.
Many posts have been written on the subject, yet blizzard feel it is justified in nerfing warlocks even more. In fact blizzard dev are at least 3 months behind. The dynamic nature of pvp has left them unable to properly balance the classes and we are paying the price.
What are warlocks and clothies getting to compensate for BIGGER BADDER melee weapons and more armor penetration?
We are not getting anymore defenses.
Our armor increase between Sets tiers does not bridge the gap of better melee weapons and armor penetration
The increase in spell damage pales in comparaison to the dps increase of melee with new weapons and the usual 10% (roughly) stat increase with a new season set.
No new abilities to add to our defenses
Soul link quickly getting ovewhelmed by melee with pet unable to follow due to lack of resilience (note: a warrior dumping a full rage bar on your pet will instagib it not giving your healers any time to heal the damage)
MS type debuff given to all melee but paladin:
rogue get poison to reduce healing effect and shiv to reliably put it on.
Hunter gets MS with mortal strike and dispell with arcane shot.
Shaman getting MS via two hits of flametongue buff.
What do casters get? We are supposedly getting spell haste. However since this does not have any effect on DOTs, what good is this to us?
Is spell haste going to allow warlocks to survive? No.
Is spell haste going to reduce our fear to .5 sec and shadow bolts to 1.5 sec with a season 4 set? No.
When I play my warlock in arena, I am 95% of the time focused by melee: you cannot possibly cast any fear when focused by melee and have to rely on instants. By the way: corruption is NOT instant by default. In order to cast fear, one can take the risk with a meta gemme proc, but blizzard been so wise decided to nerf this gemme.
Arena representation and nerfs:
It seems that blizzard works out which class to nerf by looking at arena and ratings.
Let look at this rankings:http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/5/all/all/all/all/
5v5:
in all team compositions but ONE, there is a warrior.
The most popular and successfull arena teams have a warrior.
Out of the 6 most popular teams, warlocks are found in 2, warriors are in 7 ouf 8 of the most popular teams. With warlocks being further nerfed, there representation will go down in 5v5 in season 4.
3v3:
The most popular team is RMP with a whooping 17.5% representation. The second best composition is one, you guessed it, with a warrior. We finally find warlocks in the third most popular 3v3 with a representation as half of that of warriors. With the nerf to warlocks, the latter will loose this third place to hunters most likely. Expect more cheezy double dps teams in season 4: warrior, shaman, paladin , double warrior druide, warrior rogue healer, with a "stick the warlock" strat that simply works since the class with be defenseless and with no armor.
2v2:
Two teams take the crown here: warrior again with a druid and warlock + druid. With a representation of 24.5% for warrior teams compared to 13.8% for warlocks. Altough the top class is yet again warriors in 2v2, blizzard decided to nerf warlocks more. the simply effect of this is just drop the warlock from dominating this bracket and being second to letting others like hunters take the second spot.
All in all, one wonders how silly blizzard can be and what process of thoughts they follow to decide what class to nerf. If arena dominance is the main driving reason, other classes than warlocks are clearly dominating all brackets and have well above average class representation in ALL brackets. This further nerfs will just drive an entire community away and it is sad to see how blind the dev are.
If you found the courage to read all this, well done. Just remember one thing, melee weapon buffs, armor penetration, MS debuffs galore with sunders and NO balancing buffs to casters armors/dps means that the game is moving towards melee complete dominance.
Ponder this:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/february/brutalgladiatorgreatsword.jpg
Many posts have been written on the subject, yet blizzard feel it is justified in nerfing warlocks even more. In fact blizzard dev are at least 3 months behind. The dynamic nature of pvp has left them unable to properly balance the classes and we are paying the price.
What are warlocks and clothies getting to compensate for BIGGER BADDER melee weapons and more armor penetration?
We are not getting anymore defenses.
Our armor increase between Sets tiers does not bridge the gap of better melee weapons and armor penetration
The increase in spell damage pales in comparaison to the dps increase of melee with new weapons and the usual 10% (roughly) stat increase with a new season set.
No new abilities to add to our defenses
Soul link quickly getting ovewhelmed by melee with pet unable to follow due to lack of resilience (note: a warrior dumping a full rage bar on your pet will instagib it not giving your healers any time to heal the damage)
MS type debuff given to all melee but paladin:
rogue get poison to reduce healing effect and shiv to reliably put it on.
Hunter gets MS with mortal strike and dispell with arcane shot.
Shaman getting MS via two hits of flametongue buff.
What do casters get? We are supposedly getting spell haste. However since this does not have any effect on DOTs, what good is this to us?
Is spell haste going to allow warlocks to survive? No.
Is spell haste going to reduce our fear to .5 sec and shadow bolts to 1.5 sec with a season 4 set? No.
When I play my warlock in arena, I am 95% of the time focused by melee: you cannot possibly cast any fear when focused by melee and have to rely on instants. By the way: corruption is NOT instant by default. In order to cast fear, one can take the risk with a meta gemme proc, but blizzard been so wise decided to nerf this gemme.
Arena representation and nerfs:
It seems that blizzard works out which class to nerf by looking at arena and ratings.
Let look at this rankings:http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/5/all/all/all/all/
5v5:
in all team compositions but ONE, there is a warrior.
The most popular and successfull arena teams have a warrior.
Out of the 6 most popular teams, warlocks are found in 2, warriors are in 7 ouf 8 of the most popular teams. With warlocks being further nerfed, there representation will go down in 5v5 in season 4.
3v3:
The most popular team is RMP with a whooping 17.5% representation. The second best composition is one, you guessed it, with a warrior. We finally find warlocks in the third most popular 3v3 with a representation as half of that of warriors. With the nerf to warlocks, the latter will loose this third place to hunters most likely. Expect more cheezy double dps teams in season 4: warrior, shaman, paladin , double warrior druide, warrior rogue healer, with a "stick the warlock" strat that simply works since the class with be defenseless and with no armor.
2v2:
Two teams take the crown here: warrior again with a druid and warlock + druid. With a representation of 24.5% for warrior teams compared to 13.8% for warlocks. Altough the top class is yet again warriors in 2v2, blizzard decided to nerf warlocks more. the simply effect of this is just drop the warlock from dominating this bracket and being second to letting others like hunters take the second spot.
All in all, one wonders how silly blizzard can be and what process of thoughts they follow to decide what class to nerf. If arena dominance is the main driving reason, other classes than warlocks are clearly dominating all brackets and have well above average class representation in ALL brackets. This further nerfs will just drive an entire community away and it is sad to see how blind the dev are.
If you found the courage to read all this, well done. Just remember one thing, melee weapon buffs, armor penetration, MS debuffs galore with sunders and NO balancing buffs to casters armors/dps means that the game is moving towards melee complete dominance.
Ponder this:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2008/february/brutalgladiatorgreatsword.jpg
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Brilliant post on wow balance
this is a post by Baek http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4914021721&sid=1
before blizzard just deletes the thread:
This is Maso, the writer of the two FAQ threads stickied up here on the board. I've been playing WoW with little breaks in between since the original game was released. I post frequently on the boards, often read articles and accounts written by PvPers of all classes, and generally try to keep up to date on the PVP trends and statistics.
I will try as hard as I can to remain calm and constructive during this post. I'm sure that whoever actually reads this understands my frustration... or if they don't understand it now, hopefully I will show you why I and a lot of other older Warlocks are angry about 2.4. However I am going to be as direct and blunt as possible and you should not confuse this with anger.
2.4, in terms of PvP class balance, is a flaming, stinking, backwards piece of garbage. Unless you have some weird or radical changes coming later in 2.4, I have no freaking clue what your devs are thinking except that they might be 4 months behind. As if the cloth-hosing itemization of S3 wasn't enough, you continue to ignore OPness of Warriors, and instead nerf every non-physical form of DPS and strategy.
Here's a quick list of things about 2.4 that frustrate me:
-Physical DPS getting BUFFED, and not NERFED
-Nerfs that punish anybody running a comp that doesn't have a Warrior in it
-No action made against Warriors
-Unnecessary nerfs to Warlocks
-Still no pet resilience scaling
-Pathetic treatment of off-specs like Resto, complete inaction towards Affliction and Destruction
-Overall indication and continuing trend that devs are months behind on game changes with a dynamic PvP community.
I will go over each of these posts in the new few posts.
Why the hell is physical DPS STILL getting buffed?
What, cloth-hosing s3 itemization wasn't enough?
MUDflation is an accepted fact of MMORPG's by many gamers. Just by the nature of their classes, physical DPS will always scale better than magical DPS. It's pretty obvious: Warriors are still known to be the most gear-dependent class in the game, and at higher levels of gear are known to be overpowered.
So, instead of actually fighting the common problem of MUDflation, s3 EMBRACES it by giving cloth PATHETIC gains in comparison to s2 but by also giving physical dps the CLOTH-HOSING stat of armor penetration. The fact that resilience was not scaling up but s3 weapons were should've easily been enough.
Why was armor penetration even added? It adds practically no damage against heavily armored opponents, but a ridiculous amount of damage against cloth. You need to understand that only one of your cloth classes is capable of creating any decent distance from a melee class with support, and that the other two, just by MUDflation alone, would've been screwed anyways. The fact that resilience didn't increase at all and +armor only increased by a tiny amount doesn't help at all.
And what do we get in 2.4? MORE armor penetration gear, MORE melee weapons that scale much faster than cloth survivability gear, and MORE buffs to physical DPS talents. This is a problem. Fix it.
Why is every arena strategy except "lol have the Warrior train on someone and oom with MS" being nerfed?
Do you realize that your arena went from a CC-heavy, strategy based game to a mindless, item based zerg system? Do I really need to point out your proof? Okay, here's your proof:
3v3:
Druid/Warrior/Rogue
Druid/Ret Paladin/Rogue
5v5:
Euro comp (Druid/Priest/Mage/Lock/Rog)
The first two capitalize on how ridiculously easy it is for two melee to zerg down any cloth or Hunter armor or below character (minus Rogues), and how ridiculously powerful Sunder Armor and Expose Armor are, especially when you have more than one physical DPS on your team (wtf 20%-30% unremovable damage debuff with a 30 second cooldown).
Euro comp is a little different, and from what I understand, is a comp made especially for zerging Warlocks down without having to worry too much about positioning thanks to lol Cheat Death. Do you want to know why your game is being watered down like this? Why is your game being watered down like this? S3 itemization and 2.3 physical DPS changes.
So what does 2.4 do to fix this? Nothing! In fact, it encourages it! Just like how 2.4 went the complete backwards direction in fixing physical itemization, it goes completely backwards in addressing this issue. Increased physical DPS adds to the problem. Also, instead of nerfing "lol zerg this cloth down with Expose/Sunder" strats, it nerfs mana drains by adding a scaling defense against it without adding a scaling benefit for it.
Mana drain set-ups were indeed a little too powerful in s2. However, they at least required a little coordination and strategy from the team, unlike DRW/DRetW. With the increase in physical DPS, nerfs to Warlocks, nerfs to Druids, nerfs to drinking, and now nerfs to mana drains, you didn't just nerf these set-ups, no. You nerfed them, beat their wife, stole their TV remotes, and stomped on their children.
Why haven't Warriors been nerfed yet?
If 2.4 remains how it is, I don't see much reason to roll any class but a Warrior. I'm lucky that I already have one. Other people have also switched, including Azazael (WArrior) and Unstoppable (Rogue). There is just no better time investment. So many people have rolled Druids, Elemental Shamans, and Shadow Priests only to see their class get neutered in a future patch. Not Warriors though, they are unnerfable.
Warriors have consistently been the top DPS class in all three brackets of arena from the beginning of season 1 to present. Sure, some classes (particularly Warlocks) have taken the #1 spot for periods of time, but those classes get nerfed or outscaled and give Warriors back their righteous place on the throne.
It might get my thread deleted, but I'm going to go ahead and say it. I used to think those "Kalganism" threads were a pile of crap, but now I'm starting to buy into it. You'd have to be blind not to see that every patch that's made at least takes one or two steps towards making sure that the Warriors stay at the top. With s3 itemization, and 2.4 only making things worse, it is glaringly obvious now that Warriors are truly the class meant to own face for free in the arena.
How are Warriors unbalanced? Let's see. They are by far the most unkiteable melee class in the game. You have the unremovable Hamstring. Then you have the 15 second CD 3 second stun instant teleport intercept (I know a lot of classes would kill for an instant 15 cd 3 second stun ALONE). Then you have the RNG based mace stun and Imp. Hamstrings to buy more time for your intercept's cooldown to refresh. Oh... and MS.
Oh, and now Warriors have finally keybinded Sunder Armor, which for any game of decent length, is extremely worth it to stack an unremovable debuff that increases all physical DPS done to a target by 20-30%.
Almost nothing has been done to fix these. No, the pitiful mace stun nerf and Imp. Hamstring on DR doesn't help (though the duration reduction was helpful). Nerfing Hamstring further or MS would neuter the Warrior class, which is NOT what I'm asking for. Nerfing or removing RNG mace stun (with compensation, obviously) would be great. Removing the ridiculous 4pc intercept bonus is another great option.
Unnecessary nerfs to Warlocks
Many people on this forum recognize me as one of the first people who would admit to Warlocks being overpowered. I fought in support for the Drain Life and DoTs vs resilience nerfs. I shot down suggestions to turn UA into a ridiculously OP counter-everything-your-class-has spell. I reported 2.0 DoT coefficients as ridiculous.
However, when I began to see the effects of s3 itemization on Warlocks and other classes (the now extinct Shadow Priest), my opinion began to change. The LT nerf is the one nerf where I see most anti-Warlock posters (Mages, Priests in general, the blogger MIng, others) say that things have gone too far. S3 itemization, physical DPS buffs, nerfs to mana drains, and overall increase in any kind of DPS are already enough to push Warlocks down in the tiers. This is just overkill.
Warlocks are already demanding on healers, because they have the lowest mitigation and avoidance in the game. Yes, we have Soul Link and Fel Armor, and they are incredible at low levels of damage. Fel Armor makes up for our lack of true mitigation and Soul Link protects just as well against burst damage as something with true mitigation... until the pet dies. Oh, and drains are effective in smaller brackets as well.
At the larger brackets (3v3, 5v5) they are not quite as effective. Soul Link helps against burst but still causes the same amount of healer pressure. Fel Armor, the only buff to make up for our low true mitigation/avoidance gets dispelled. Drains become a weaker option because of the number of interrupts and pushbacks a Warlock gets.
I'm not saying that Warlocks are currently underpowered, but they definately have glaring weaknesses which are already exploited enough currently to remove them from the top tiers in 3v3 and (eventually) 5v5.
This is all thanks to armor penetration, increased physical DPS, and Sunder/Expose Armor btw. 2.3 Warlocks are already causing a ridiculous amount of healer pressure, even in 3v3. 2.4, with the LT nerf, more physical DPS, and drinking nerf (which is justified) will only amplify this.
More to come.
No pet scaling
I don't think I need to outline why this is needed, and why its lack of implementation so far is a concern. Please update us on whether or not it is going to happen at all in 2.4, thanks.
Pathetic treatment of certain offspecs
Shaman Resto needs much more than just 30% dispel resistance and the whole mana cost/charges thing, I hope you understand that. I'm not an expert on Shamans, so I don't have much to comment... but what looks to be the best solution to me is to give back Water Shield's full charge mana return on dispel but nerf the amount of mana given back per charge, and then greatly improve the efficiency of LHW/HW via a late talent. Healing Way needs to adapation for PvP.
I see that Arcane is getting a buff, but not Fire. I don't understand why Fire has been ignored for so long, the freaking 41 talent is clearly made for PvP. Remove the 41 talent for a PvE one if you want it to be a PvE tree, otherwise fix. Ret/Enh will start to see a place in PvP now thanks to melee dominance, which really isn't the way to go... both specs need to not be so reliant on mana. As for Feral, I have no idea what you can do to fix them without adding a snare or MS effect (which would be ridiculous).
And for Affliction and Destruction? Affliction, like the Shadow Priest, has gone practically extinct thanks to the problems I've mentioned before. Destruction? lol. Almost every BC change to it was made for PvP, yet the tree is garbage for any serious form of PvP and has not been looked at since the release of the game. Hell, it's being nerfed thanks to the LT change.
Make your decision. If you want Destruction to be a PvE tree, replace SFury, NP, Backlash, Conflagrate, Imp. Searing Pain, Aftermath, Imp. Immolate, and Pyroclasm into PvE talents and make the tree not completely freaking reliant on Demonic Sacrifice. If you want it to be a PvP tree, do SOMETHING... ANYTHING to make it better.
I see that Assassination got a buff to Mutilate in Imp. Backstab. Why hasn't Destruction been looked at at all? You would have to be completely freaking out of your mind to think Assassination is worse off than Destruction in any form of PvP. Mutilate DOES have its place in Rogue/Priest 2v2, certain 3v3 set-ups and 4DPS in 5v5. Destruction has no place anywhere in the arena. That's also not to mention buffs to on-spec trees like the Endless Rage change.
Please buff Destruction or make a decision as to what its place in WoW will be.
Devs are always months behind on changes
This is the point that makes me question why I wrote this novel in the first place. Assuming that, as a Warlock, my feedback even gets to the devs, no action will be made for at least half a year from now... and that's also assuming that we don't get the Shaman "lol fixes are coming some year" treatment.
I understand that it is a tough system. I understand that WoW is a huge game. I understand that things take time. This is my suggestion to make things take less time.
Your 2.4 patch, with continued physical scaling and further nerfs to old, already counter-comped set-ups shows that your devs are not capable of keeping up with a dynamic, ever-changing PvP community. Things are different in PvP. Discoveries are made, weaknesses are found and exploited. It took Warriors and Rogues 2.5 seasons to bind Expose Armor/Sunder Armor on their bars, anod now those abilities are dominating cloth classes in the arena.
I have more evidance that devs are always months behind on their changes. Druids were weak in arena during s1. Then with s2, they become easily the best healer for most 2's and 3's set-ups, and this caught on quickly. So what happens in the next patch? Druids get Natural Perfection, which does very little to cover their 5v5 weaknesses (switches, burst damage) and only further strengthens their 2v3 and 3v3 strength (dominance in low number, low DPS fights).
If you ever want a game like an MMO to ever gain e-sport acceptance, you are going to have to be a little faster and more up to date on your fixes. A competitive community is constantly changing, and if you are so far behind as to nerf what becomes underpowered and buff what becomes overpowered, you are not going to be successful at turning WoW into an e-sport.
I am not a game programmer, and I don't know how information is relayed to the devs, so I don't know what steps can be taken to improve this. My suggestion? Hire more devs.
before blizzard just deletes the thread:
This is Maso, the writer of the two FAQ threads stickied up here on the board. I've been playing WoW with little breaks in between since the original game was released. I post frequently on the boards, often read articles and accounts written by PvPers of all classes, and generally try to keep up to date on the PVP trends and statistics.
I will try as hard as I can to remain calm and constructive during this post. I'm sure that whoever actually reads this understands my frustration... or if they don't understand it now, hopefully I will show you why I and a lot of other older Warlocks are angry about 2.4. However I am going to be as direct and blunt as possible and you should not confuse this with anger.
2.4, in terms of PvP class balance, is a flaming, stinking, backwards piece of garbage. Unless you have some weird or radical changes coming later in 2.4, I have no freaking clue what your devs are thinking except that they might be 4 months behind. As if the cloth-hosing itemization of S3 wasn't enough, you continue to ignore OPness of Warriors, and instead nerf every non-physical form of DPS and strategy.
Here's a quick list of things about 2.4 that frustrate me:
-Physical DPS getting BUFFED, and not NERFED
-Nerfs that punish anybody running a comp that doesn't have a Warrior in it
-No action made against Warriors
-Unnecessary nerfs to Warlocks
-Still no pet resilience scaling
-Pathetic treatment of off-specs like Resto, complete inaction towards Affliction and Destruction
-Overall indication and continuing trend that devs are months behind on game changes with a dynamic PvP community.
I will go over each of these posts in the new few posts.
Why the hell is physical DPS STILL getting buffed?
What, cloth-hosing s3 itemization wasn't enough?
MUDflation is an accepted fact of MMORPG's by many gamers. Just by the nature of their classes, physical DPS will always scale better than magical DPS. It's pretty obvious: Warriors are still known to be the most gear-dependent class in the game, and at higher levels of gear are known to be overpowered.
So, instead of actually fighting the common problem of MUDflation, s3 EMBRACES it by giving cloth PATHETIC gains in comparison to s2 but by also giving physical dps the CLOTH-HOSING stat of armor penetration. The fact that resilience was not scaling up but s3 weapons were should've easily been enough.
Why was armor penetration even added? It adds practically no damage against heavily armored opponents, but a ridiculous amount of damage against cloth. You need to understand that only one of your cloth classes is capable of creating any decent distance from a melee class with support, and that the other two, just by MUDflation alone, would've been screwed anyways. The fact that resilience didn't increase at all and +armor only increased by a tiny amount doesn't help at all.
And what do we get in 2.4? MORE armor penetration gear, MORE melee weapons that scale much faster than cloth survivability gear, and MORE buffs to physical DPS talents. This is a problem. Fix it.
Why is every arena strategy except "lol have the Warrior train on someone and oom with MS" being nerfed?
Do you realize that your arena went from a CC-heavy, strategy based game to a mindless, item based zerg system? Do I really need to point out your proof? Okay, here's your proof:
3v3:
Druid/Warrior/Rogue
Druid/Ret Paladin/Rogue
5v5:
Euro comp (Druid/Priest/Mage/Lock/Rog)
The first two capitalize on how ridiculously easy it is for two melee to zerg down any cloth or Hunter armor or below character (minus Rogues), and how ridiculously powerful Sunder Armor and Expose Armor are, especially when you have more than one physical DPS on your team (wtf 20%-30% unremovable damage debuff with a 30 second cooldown).
Euro comp is a little different, and from what I understand, is a comp made especially for zerging Warlocks down without having to worry too much about positioning thanks to lol Cheat Death. Do you want to know why your game is being watered down like this? Why is your game being watered down like this? S3 itemization and 2.3 physical DPS changes.
So what does 2.4 do to fix this? Nothing! In fact, it encourages it! Just like how 2.4 went the complete backwards direction in fixing physical itemization, it goes completely backwards in addressing this issue. Increased physical DPS adds to the problem. Also, instead of nerfing "lol zerg this cloth down with Expose/Sunder" strats, it nerfs mana drains by adding a scaling defense against it without adding a scaling benefit for it.
Mana drain set-ups were indeed a little too powerful in s2. However, they at least required a little coordination and strategy from the team, unlike DRW/DRetW. With the increase in physical DPS, nerfs to Warlocks, nerfs to Druids, nerfs to drinking, and now nerfs to mana drains, you didn't just nerf these set-ups, no. You nerfed them, beat their wife, stole their TV remotes, and stomped on their children.
Why haven't Warriors been nerfed yet?
If 2.4 remains how it is, I don't see much reason to roll any class but a Warrior. I'm lucky that I already have one. Other people have also switched, including Azazael (WArrior) and Unstoppable (Rogue). There is just no better time investment. So many people have rolled Druids, Elemental Shamans, and Shadow Priests only to see their class get neutered in a future patch. Not Warriors though, they are unnerfable.
Warriors have consistently been the top DPS class in all three brackets of arena from the beginning of season 1 to present. Sure, some classes (particularly Warlocks) have taken the #1 spot for periods of time, but those classes get nerfed or outscaled and give Warriors back their righteous place on the throne.
It might get my thread deleted, but I'm going to go ahead and say it. I used to think those "Kalganism" threads were a pile of crap, but now I'm starting to buy into it. You'd have to be blind not to see that every patch that's made at least takes one or two steps towards making sure that the Warriors stay at the top. With s3 itemization, and 2.4 only making things worse, it is glaringly obvious now that Warriors are truly the class meant to own face for free in the arena.
How are Warriors unbalanced? Let's see. They are by far the most unkiteable melee class in the game. You have the unremovable Hamstring. Then you have the 15 second CD 3 second stun instant teleport intercept (I know a lot of classes would kill for an instant 15 cd 3 second stun ALONE). Then you have the RNG based mace stun and Imp. Hamstrings to buy more time for your intercept's cooldown to refresh. Oh... and MS.
Oh, and now Warriors have finally keybinded Sunder Armor, which for any game of decent length, is extremely worth it to stack an unremovable debuff that increases all physical DPS done to a target by 20-30%.
Almost nothing has been done to fix these. No, the pitiful mace stun nerf and Imp. Hamstring on DR doesn't help (though the duration reduction was helpful). Nerfing Hamstring further or MS would neuter the Warrior class, which is NOT what I'm asking for. Nerfing or removing RNG mace stun (with compensation, obviously) would be great. Removing the ridiculous 4pc intercept bonus is another great option.
Unnecessary nerfs to Warlocks
Many people on this forum recognize me as one of the first people who would admit to Warlocks being overpowered. I fought in support for the Drain Life and DoTs vs resilience nerfs. I shot down suggestions to turn UA into a ridiculously OP counter-everything-your-class-has spell. I reported 2.0 DoT coefficients as ridiculous.
However, when I began to see the effects of s3 itemization on Warlocks and other classes (the now extinct Shadow Priest), my opinion began to change. The LT nerf is the one nerf where I see most anti-Warlock posters (Mages, Priests in general, the blogger MIng, others) say that things have gone too far. S3 itemization, physical DPS buffs, nerfs to mana drains, and overall increase in any kind of DPS are already enough to push Warlocks down in the tiers. This is just overkill.
Warlocks are already demanding on healers, because they have the lowest mitigation and avoidance in the game. Yes, we have Soul Link and Fel Armor, and they are incredible at low levels of damage. Fel Armor makes up for our lack of true mitigation and Soul Link protects just as well against burst damage as something with true mitigation... until the pet dies. Oh, and drains are effective in smaller brackets as well.
At the larger brackets (3v3, 5v5) they are not quite as effective. Soul Link helps against burst but still causes the same amount of healer pressure. Fel Armor, the only buff to make up for our low true mitigation/avoidance gets dispelled. Drains become a weaker option because of the number of interrupts and pushbacks a Warlock gets.
I'm not saying that Warlocks are currently underpowered, but they definately have glaring weaknesses which are already exploited enough currently to remove them from the top tiers in 3v3 and (eventually) 5v5.
This is all thanks to armor penetration, increased physical DPS, and Sunder/Expose Armor btw. 2.3 Warlocks are already causing a ridiculous amount of healer pressure, even in 3v3. 2.4, with the LT nerf, more physical DPS, and drinking nerf (which is justified) will only amplify this.
More to come.
No pet scaling
I don't think I need to outline why this is needed, and why its lack of implementation so far is a concern. Please update us on whether or not it is going to happen at all in 2.4, thanks.
Pathetic treatment of certain offspecs
Shaman Resto needs much more than just 30% dispel resistance and the whole mana cost/charges thing, I hope you understand that. I'm not an expert on Shamans, so I don't have much to comment... but what looks to be the best solution to me is to give back Water Shield's full charge mana return on dispel but nerf the amount of mana given back per charge, and then greatly improve the efficiency of LHW/HW via a late talent. Healing Way needs to adapation for PvP.
I see that Arcane is getting a buff, but not Fire. I don't understand why Fire has been ignored for so long, the freaking 41 talent is clearly made for PvP. Remove the 41 talent for a PvE one if you want it to be a PvE tree, otherwise fix. Ret/Enh will start to see a place in PvP now thanks to melee dominance, which really isn't the way to go... both specs need to not be so reliant on mana. As for Feral, I have no idea what you can do to fix them without adding a snare or MS effect (which would be ridiculous).
And for Affliction and Destruction? Affliction, like the Shadow Priest, has gone practically extinct thanks to the problems I've mentioned before. Destruction? lol. Almost every BC change to it was made for PvP, yet the tree is garbage for any serious form of PvP and has not been looked at since the release of the game. Hell, it's being nerfed thanks to the LT change.
Make your decision. If you want Destruction to be a PvE tree, replace SFury, NP, Backlash, Conflagrate, Imp. Searing Pain, Aftermath, Imp. Immolate, and Pyroclasm into PvE talents and make the tree not completely freaking reliant on Demonic Sacrifice. If you want it to be a PvP tree, do SOMETHING... ANYTHING to make it better.
I see that Assassination got a buff to Mutilate in Imp. Backstab. Why hasn't Destruction been looked at at all? You would have to be completely freaking out of your mind to think Assassination is worse off than Destruction in any form of PvP. Mutilate DOES have its place in Rogue/Priest 2v2, certain 3v3 set-ups and 4DPS in 5v5. Destruction has no place anywhere in the arena. That's also not to mention buffs to on-spec trees like the Endless Rage change.
Please buff Destruction or make a decision as to what its place in WoW will be.
Devs are always months behind on changes
This is the point that makes me question why I wrote this novel in the first place. Assuming that, as a Warlock, my feedback even gets to the devs, no action will be made for at least half a year from now... and that's also assuming that we don't get the Shaman "lol fixes are coming some year" treatment.
I understand that it is a tough system. I understand that WoW is a huge game. I understand that things take time. This is my suggestion to make things take less time.
Your 2.4 patch, with continued physical scaling and further nerfs to old, already counter-comped set-ups shows that your devs are not capable of keeping up with a dynamic, ever-changing PvP community. Things are different in PvP. Discoveries are made, weaknesses are found and exploited. It took Warriors and Rogues 2.5 seasons to bind Expose Armor/Sunder Armor on their bars, anod now those abilities are dominating cloth classes in the arena.
I have more evidance that devs are always months behind on their changes. Druids were weak in arena during s1. Then with s2, they become easily the best healer for most 2's and 3's set-ups, and this caught on quickly. So what happens in the next patch? Druids get Natural Perfection, which does very little to cover their 5v5 weaknesses (switches, burst damage) and only further strengthens their 2v3 and 3v3 strength (dominance in low number, low DPS fights).
If you ever want a game like an MMO to ever gain e-sport acceptance, you are going to have to be a little faster and more up to date on your fixes. A competitive community is constantly changing, and if you are so far behind as to nerf what becomes underpowered and buff what becomes overpowered, you are not going to be successful at turning WoW into an e-sport.
I am not a game programmer, and I don't know how information is relayed to the devs, so I don't know what steps can be taken to improve this. My suggestion? Hire more devs.
Eyeonix succomb to pressure and comes clean.
Quite honestly, we wanted warlocks to take a larger hit to their hit points when lifetapping in PvP. While in PvP, this means they will take a bigger hit to their health, in PvE it will have smaller impact (and actually can be gamed for an improvement via higher intelligence and lower stamina).
This is the answer given for a nerf that is stupid. So if this has to do with arena, let us look ak it:
in 5v5 all that a team has to do is "train the warlock" as a class with no defensive abilities and pet that cannot take pressure, we are talking about your healer trying their best to keep you alive, you as a warlock not being able to do anything beside cast instant, your instant being dispelled and you running out of mana and life even quicker with the life tap nerf. Is this nerf valid for 5v5: absolutely not.
In 3v3, among the top team we find RMP. Basically two different styles clash here: the burst damage of RMP, and here we saw absolutely no nerf to mage and rogue, in fact mage got insane buff in 2.3.3 and are on the way to get even more buffs in 2.4, same goes for rogue with mutilate being a valid burst specs. Any nerf to life tap will certainly increase the already obvious dominance of RMP.
In 2v2, two teams battle it out, and this is the place where warlocks shine. Warlock + druid versus warrior + druid: already warriors have the upper hand by being able to put way more pressure on the warlock and his pet and thus the druid. This nerf will just make warriors the dominant class in 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, since warriors are in no way going to get any nerf.
In short we see quite clearly that the two classes played by Kalgan are on the way to dominance in all brackets, beside mage that get way too much and becomes the top dog in 3v3 and 5v5.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Message to Kalgan
This is a message to Kalgan and his warrior and mage. Since no skill can brigde the lack of skill you have in defeating a warlock, and you find nothing better than destroy the class, here is to you:
……………./´¯/)
……………/…./
…………../…./
……../´¯/'..'/´¯¯`•¸
…../'/../…./……./¨¯\
…('(…………. ¯~/'..')
….\…………….'…../
…..'\'……………_.•´
…….\…………..(
……..\…………..\
And the entire warlock community give you one too. Hope you have a big enough ass.
……………./´¯/)
……………/…./
…………../…./
……../´¯/'..'/´¯¯`•¸
…../'/../…./……./¨¯\
…('(…………. ¯~/'..')
….\…………….'…../
…..'\'……………_.•´
…….\…………..(
……..\…………..\
And the entire warlock community give you one too. Hope you have a big enough ass.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Hunter bug exploit, condoned by blizzard.
Just a repost from the test forum I made regarding a bug in /target and /focus rendering these targetting functions not work as intented by using a bug.
Affect in particular pvp.
If a hunter names his pet the same way as any other guy in his team, the targetting fonctionality such as;
/target name
/focus name
That relies on unique names, do not work anymore, also affected are all mods using these functionality to target such as proximo.
Currently Blizzard is not forthcoming on what their procedure is when someone is reported as using this bug to intentionally gain an advantage. I am therefore reporting this bug in the hope that it gets fixed.
I hope some guys that work in the LUA/macro department give us some feedback on how to go around this problem or wheter a fix might be coming.
I have also posted on the wowace forum and the modders are all adament, nothing can be done until blizzard does something. Until them, manual targetting is the only way.
reply from grayhoof http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=11422.20
another thread on the subjet: http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=10974.0
an article in wowinsider on suposedly a crackdown from blizzard:http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/01/blizzard-cracks-down-on-arena-pet-naming-exploit/
altough I was told last night by a GM that they wont do anything.
the following post were made without getting any official answer:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=74AF9D5F6C6B488514FEFC934B8F5BED.app03_04?topicId=2843907051&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2843565775&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=60A8361D70EA253B644838617F0E3844?topicId=4665487098&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=C4C6B16D9894841CEC16D1DC690C3F46?topicId=4665617619&sid=1
there is no blue tagged post explaining blizzard stance on this since posts on this were moved, some replies are backed up here, although it seems GM are unaware as to how to deal with this.
http://www.wowblues.com/us/petnaming-exploit-legal-3686704359.html
http://www.wowblues.com/us/hunters-exploiting-in-the-arena-4464648200.html
Affect in particular pvp.
If a hunter names his pet the same way as any other guy in his team, the targetting fonctionality such as;
/target name
/focus name
That relies on unique names, do not work anymore, also affected are all mods using these functionality to target such as proximo.
Currently Blizzard is not forthcoming on what their procedure is when someone is reported as using this bug to intentionally gain an advantage. I am therefore reporting this bug in the hope that it gets fixed.
I hope some guys that work in the LUA/macro department give us some feedback on how to go around this problem or wheter a fix might be coming.
I have also posted on the wowace forum and the modders are all adament, nothing can be done until blizzard does something. Until them, manual targetting is the only way.
reply from grayhoof http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=11422.20
another thread on the subjet: http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=10974.0
an article in wowinsider on suposedly a crackdown from blizzard:http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/01/blizzard-cracks-down-on-arena-pet-naming-exploit/
altough I was told last night by a GM that they wont do anything.
the following post were made without getting any official answer:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html;jsessionid=74AF9D5F6C6B488514FEFC934B8F5BED.app03_04?topicId=2843907051&sid=1
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2843565775&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=60A8361D70EA253B644838617F0E3844?topicId=4665487098&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=C4C6B16D9894841CEC16D1DC690C3F46?topicId=4665617619&sid=1
there is no blue tagged post explaining blizzard stance on this since posts on this were moved, some replies are backed up here, although it seems GM are unaware as to how to deal with this.
http://www.wowblues.com/us/petnaming-exploit-legal-3686704359.html
http://www.wowblues.com/us/hunters-exploiting-in-the-arena-4464648200.html
Blizzard pushing shit in PTR.
Yet again, one can only sit and watch the sheer stupidity of what is going on. The dev at blizzard and Kalgan are a bunch of mofo monkeys that have been sucking too much shit.
They keep pushing crappy bugs and expect the warlock community to stay quiet?
Life tap pushed that actually renders a class pretty useless.
bibdy summed it up pretty nicely to these guys:
link here.
Let them carry on, 4 of my friends, not even warlocks have decided to reroll warrior. I just wonder why? May be because Kalgan has one, and it is a safe bet that the class will never suck.
This again a comment from a teenager with obvious problems, but since it speaks from the heart, I will quote him:
I cannot count all the thread that have been started on the life tap issue, but hell this is big, many post just got deleted.
Let us hope blizzard are not that stupid.
They keep pushing crappy bugs and expect the warlock community to stay quiet?
Life tap pushed that actually renders a class pretty useless.
bibdy summed it up pretty nicely to these guys:
"You want Warlocks, a class whose chief defensive 'ability' is a large hitpoint pool, a class who you've spent the last THREE YEARS handing out COPIOUS amounts of stamina and PATHETIC amounts of Intellect on both their PVP and PVE gear, a class that has a 15% stamina increasing talent in almost every known build in existence to lose MORE health and gain LESS mana every time you release a new tier of gear whether PVP or PVE?"
link here.
Let them carry on, 4 of my friends, not even warlocks have decided to reroll warrior. I just wonder why? May be because Kalgan has one, and it is a safe bet that the class will never suck.
This again a comment from a teenager with obvious problems, but since it speaks from the heart, I will quote him:
LIFETAP IS NERFED TO SHITagain from
IT IS NERFED TO USELESS
THANK YOU GOD
I cannot count all the thread that have been started on the life tap issue, but hell this is big, many post just got deleted.
Let us hope blizzard are not that stupid.
Why this blog?
Since it is impossible to write anything on the forums without jerks taking over your thread or CM simply deleting/closing your thread or even banning you, I have decided to start a blog where I can freely talk about wow little annoyances and cheer design stupidity.
This is in essence the child of the 2.4 patch that brought to a whole new level the meaning of "enough is enough"
This is in essence the child of the 2.4 patch that brought to a whole new level the meaning of "enough is enough"
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