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That Warlock Thing
Seems Blizzard is doing some minor change involving warlocks.
Seems warlocks are unhappy about it.
Seems that you have to be over level 60 to even notice this – since my own warlock just dinged 58, my reaction was immediately “Uh, OK“, since like every other caster pre-60, my itemization involved high levels of INT, resulting in a larger mana than health pool. This changes radically post-60. Hi, expansion!
Seems Blizzard admitted through a community rep that the high-end itemization and gameplay style of a class thoughout the entire game was being clubbed like a baby seal thanks to “PvP issues“.
Seems thanks to those PvP issues that most of the reaction from PvPers not warlocks can be briefly encapsulated thusly: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA (breathe) HAHHAHAHAHAH”
Seems that yet again, reationary far-reaching gameplay changes are being driven through a knee-jerk response to PvP imbalances, which tend to be the hard crucible of gameplay competitive min-maxing.
Seems that there’s probably not a lot that can be done about this, since part of what makes MMO PvP compelling is its existence within a larger world, which includes much of a larger gameworld that has – and wants – little to do with PvP.
Seems like the effects of this are going to be fairly far-reaching, and either Blizzard will have to dial back the planned adjustment, or redesign the class entirely. Which you generally do not want to do when the vehicle is in motion. Or perhaps embrace community proposals from a now-panicked class which is staring down the barrel of a virtual gun.
Seems Blizzard is pretty commited to battleground-style PvP, so this probably won’t be the last time something like this happens.
Seems like this has happened before.
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about 2 years ago
Well, considering the overall effect is (seemingly) to change lifetap from a “I can pull forever” mechanic, to a “omg need mana it’s an emergency” mechanic, I can’t really cry terribly much for warlocks. They’ll have to drink after a few pulls like the rest of us mortals with a mana pool.
Now, there will be a bigger impact on raiding. I haven’t raided in WoW at all, but my understanding is you want to stack DPS, and warlocks make really good DPS. Or they did. I assume (smack me if I’m wrong) but the efficiency warlocks had in lifetap enabled them to DPS with little pause, while other classes (mages in particular) tend to go OOM and be out of luck til their mana regens. (No drinking in combat either!) This could have extensive repercussions in raids, in particular encounters where there is an “enrage” timer that will wipe the raid.
Not to mention that Blizzard should, by all rights, re-itemize warlock gear. Oh well.
about 2 years ago
The PvP issues were obvious to anyone who’s ever faced a Warlock/healer team in 2v2, but gimping a class in PvE in order to balance it in PvP is still a bad idea.
about 2 years ago
Ah the left axe fix. That was a hoot.
The deal here with the lifetap changes though isn’t that it is a pvp nerf that will affect pve or that it flys in the face of the existing lock mechanics, talents, and itemisation.
No, the real issue with the liftap changes is that the cost\penalty increases as hp pool increases. This means this ability gets worse as locks advance through levelling, better gear, talents, and even buffs.
Never, ever, design mechanics that punish players for improving their characters. I seem to remember you guys fixing a few things in DAOC along these same lines (can’t remember the details) so I’m quite sure some folks get it.
about 2 years ago
It’s fun to watch the grand experiment.
Even tacked-on, PvP has worked pretty well as a solution to the “holy shit how do we keep people busy between expansions” problem.
Given that the classes were designed almost entirely pre-arena, I’m surprised the problems haven’t been much, much worse than this.
I’m actually quite impressed that Blizzard has taken on the challenge of integrated PvE and PvP, in terms of balance and itemization. The game’s going to be a lot more interesting if they work off similar rulesets, and if people can fluidly move between both types of content (despite the cries of some who want 100% exclusive tracks). It’s a hell of a challenge, but Blizzard is actually dealing with it quite well.
about 2 years ago
That a simple change to a mathematical formula could stir up such emotion.
God I love this industry.
about 2 years ago
Funny how the locks finally got the nerf bat and they cry about it.
This would’ve been nice when I still liked the game.
about 2 years ago
The funny part is that Warlocks never have, and never will, dominate PvP as much as Warriors do, and have done since the beginning of the game.
Also, anyone saying that this change was ONLY made for PvP reasons is misinformed. Warlocks were far too dominant in high end PvE for the same reasons, consistently beating out the two purest damage classes, rogues and mages, in Hyjal/Black Temple. Now warlocks will actually have to think before they lifetap in some raid encounters.
about 2 years ago
Sooner or later I think all games go through this pain. When you allow HP and mana to become interchangeable it always creates issues. EQ had mod rods. They were mage summoned items and basically turned mages into mana replenishment tools. Then it was necros.
The problem, in the end, is if you let the swap be too good there’s no cost. A 1:1 swap is a bad idea because mana is a resource where HP is not (at least not in the same way). Add in that there’s classes who are designed around putting those HP back and you have a recipe for disaster. I’m not entirely buying the PvP nerf concept tho. This one smells more of a “Gee, how will we design this encounter with that problem in place?”
about 2 years ago
High end warlock gear is very heavy on stamina with lots less int and no spirit (spirit effects the rate of mana regen). The entire class and gear itemization is built around this ability. There is even a warlock talent (if you’ve played WoW you know what talents are) that trades spirit for stamina.
As far as warlocks “finally getting the nerf bat”, locks were hit with that bat in every patch in 2007. It’s getting old and this one is a bit over the top.
This list is shamelessly stolen from V’Ming:
Jan 9 – Felguard’s melee damage reduced; damage mitigation component of Soul Link reduced; the bonus that the spells “Corruption” and “Curse of Agony” receive from bonus spell damage effects decreased by approximately 10%.
Feb 2 – Spell damage coefficient for imp removed totally. Reinstated later but at an “obviously lower” level.
Feb 13 – Seed of Corruption can’t proc off explosions from other seeds. Talent Improved Firebolt changed from 0.5 second to 0.25 second reduction per point.
May 22 – All targets over level 60 have slightly larger chance to break out of crowd-controlling effects when they take damage. Death Coil subjected to diminishing returns in the Horror category. Durations of curses of tongues, elements and shadows reduced in PvP. The felhunter’s Spell Lock duration reduced to 6 seconds.
Sep 25 – Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets reduced to 10 seconds. Resilience also reduces the damage dealt by DoTs.
Nov 13 – The healing effects of Drain Life, Siphon Life and Death Coil now affected by healing reducing effects like Mortal Strike. Hellfire does not add casting time to affected casters, nor reduce channeling time, nor prevent flag captures in battlegrounds. Damage bonus of talent Soul Siphon reduced and it no longer affects Drain Mana. Fear Ward made available to all Priests at level 20.
about 2 years ago
I remember a fun game called Nexus, where all casters (including healers) had an ability called Invoke. Sliced off half of your current (not max) HP and totally refilled your mana bar. No recast timer or anything, just hit it whenever.
Combined with even the Mage class having some token healing ability, and it basically eliminated the need for downtime in any fights, ever, since your healer & caster would always have mana whenever they needed it, unless they were getting beat on. Since the game was basically balanced around this occurring, there were no problems. Ah, the good old days.
about 2 years ago
It’s not just the warlocks. Blizzard seems to be doing a shotgun style nerfing in the next patch, hitting multiple classes at once.
Resto druid got the same treatment as warlocks, with their main healing spell, lifebloom, getting a +heal coefficent nerf.
Same situation as the warlocks. Anyone who doesn’t play one can tell you that resto druids were freaking insane in pvp. Small scale especially. But at the same time, nerfing their main healing spell will have far reaching implications for raiding and instances.
about 2 years ago
*grabs popcorn*
This is going be fun to watch.
about 2 years ago
Seems like I need to make a post reminding others how every developer is retarded. Except Lum, of course. I have high expectations that he won’t let class balance go to hell in his MMO!
about 2 years ago
What do I call a warlock nerf? A good start.
Regular warlocks are bitch in an arena. Soul-linked ones are just un-fricking-fun in the extreme. I love listening to them bitch about how unfair Cloak of Shadows is and watching each and every one restore their entire suite of HOLY CRAP WTF debuffs/dots on me no less than 10 seconds after I clear them and stave off what would otherwise be certain death.
Arenas are about quick-strike strategy. Any class that can maintain 100% effectiveness indefinitely is a problem for that scenario. If I pop all my DPS CDs to burn down a target (or to escape) that’s it. Unless the arena lasts for another 2+ minutes those tricks are now gone. Effective/prudent use of those abilities is important.
As for itemization? Yeah. That actually DOES suck. But it does happen to everyone. It could be worse, you could be a Ret pally. I think 2.4 will be the 4th or 5th time they’ve “re-itemized” to try and make crap work right. Blizzard frequently changes tack on that stuff and forgets to include the players on the memo. If you compare iLevels of items (that should indicate comparable “power”) the waters get pretty muddy – even for pure DPS classes. There are times when I really miss [Class: CLR, BRD, PAL] on all but a handful of items. Not all the time, but there are times…
In the T4/5 PvE game Warlocks can drop amazing DPS. But so can mages and hunters. Gee, sure glad half the bosses in TBC are a) anti-melee or b) outright immune to my shit. Grats Blizz, at least after 2.4 I can get back to doing my Average Joe DPS and occasionally kicking stuff. I love my class, I’m geared and I know how to play. It’s certainly a kick to the sack to be constantly decimated by 3 classes in comparable gear who all have a high degree of raid utility.
Buck up warlocks, parity (and mediocrity) is a bitch.
about 2 years ago
Everyone knew that adding Arenas to WoW would bring the hell due to balancing issues.
Even more because Blizzard decided to make Arenas one of the most rewarding aspects in the same way of raiding. So it’s there that the “redesign” act began. They decided to add a new system with new rules and requirements.
This is also a problem not solvable by game design: every time you want to add brand-new layers (PvE, PvP, Raiding, BGs, Arenas) you also add layers of complexity and this makes the balancing harder and harder as it’s already hard to balance one alone.
The only easy way out is to use separate rules for all layers, so that they can be balanced separately, but this wrecks the idea of class, what the player learned, and it’s always a bad thing.
Another way is to know where your game is going, focus on fewer systems and add more depth to them, without making a jack-of-all-trade game that does each task pretty badly.
Also for PvP: make players complete less against each other individually, and more against communal objectives. Arenas aren’t working for that reason. They bring up serious balancing issues because they make PvP focus a lot more on individuality. So individual class issues are coming up.
Imho, Kalgan has done a good work on the class balancing task. But he’s a disaster designing systems.
about 2 years ago
Repeating without typos:
Also for PvP: make players compete less against each other individually, and more toward communal objectives. Arenas aren’t working for that reason. They bring up serious balancing issues because they made PvP focus a lot more on individuality. So individual class issues are coming up more sharply.
about 2 years ago
Seems like creating a PvP template version of every spell that can be altered to only impact PvP is a great idea. EverQuest II for the win.
about 2 years ago
I’m so glad I quit when I did. This really isn’t a PvP issue it’s an itemization every “expansion/change” issue. Blame PvP if you want. It’s root cause is the games basic design.
DiKU style games are mudflation driven. Enhancement, enhancement, partial nerf, total nerf, enhancement, enhancement… Rinse and repeat.
The good thing is that once your game stops getting new subscribers, the cycle slows down significantly. It doesn’t stop but it slows to a snails pace.
about 2 years ago
Warlocks were overpowered in both PvE and PvP. It was more evident in PvP because no matter how much skill a mana user has, he cannot maintain top DPS indefinitely. It was less obvious in PvE because a warlock could maintain top DPS without trying whereas a mage would really have to master mana-management to maintain his DPS throughout a long boss fight.
PvP warlocks are OP for another reason as well: fear. Fear is essentially a castable stun that can only be broken by a ton of damage. It was a clumsy mechanic created to offset the inherent gimpiness of a DoT caster class. No other form of crowd control even comes close in effectiveness.
The writing has been on the wall for some time now.
It is absolutely bullshit though that Blizzard is making changes to class defining features after itemizing it with the old features in mind. Ret paladins and mages were also hit hard in the itemization department.
As far as left axe goes… I can’t believe people are still miffed about that. The formulas were reverse engineered and mathematically proven to be about one and a half times as effective as the other versions of dual wield. To this day Sanya still vaguely alludes to that player’s ability to turn test-realm statistics into Mythic’s own formula when she posts about community management and how to not underestimate what a player with an axe to grind can do.
about 2 years ago
The best part about class changes are the online petitions, the forums that start with “x class is now useless”, and the threats to quit.
The warlock forums are presently pure bliss to read, if of course you’re into emo human-faux-suffering, ala livejournal.
about 2 years ago
I can’t figure why there are 2v2 and 3v3 arenas. If the oft quoted “this game isn’t balanced around 1v1″ is accurate, it’s not a stretch to imagine there will be optimal 2v2 teams that cannot be effectively countered – such as the pairing of an MS warrior and whichever healer (whose class will feel the nerf bat come the next patch).
As someone else mentioned there are several warlock talents in the demonology tree that become much less desirable with this change, and try to avoid those T1 talents that can increase STA. Likewise, the warlock will be less inclined to want to pull out the imp in a raid just to buff the tanks stamina.
about 2 years ago
Me tend to think the non-raiding, non-pvping, Warlock players will not give a tiny shiny shit about this.
I didnt think the harcores still mattered in MMORPG picture.
about 2 years ago
I think the major point that is really being missed is how quickly Blizzard is changing stuff in reaction to Arenas (not necessarily PvP). In doing so, they are quickly turning vanilla WoW into a disaster zone where I am quickly beginning to feel like a second rate citizen to Arena players.
It’s bad that the Arena rewards are so imbalanced, but now the entire non-arena game has to suffer through class changes that negatively affect battleground and open world PvP, along with the aforementioned problems they are causing in PvE.
Blizzard has admitted to PvP being tacked on and in reality they are trying to fix the idea that PvP isn’t part of the core game. Which means they are really gutting the game piece by piece in an effort to rebuild it to pass off as an e-Sport. Sadly, that means the MAJORITY of WoW players WHO HAVE NO INTEREST in the e-Sport, get fucked.
about 2 years ago
It’s not going to go live in this form, I assure you.
about 2 years ago
I enjoy PvP but really think giving PvP and PvE separate skill sets and items is the way to go. That way when you need to make changes to an item or skill set in PvP it doesn’t affect PvE at all and vice versa. Double the work from the start? Sure, but a ton less headaches over time and a lot more flexible and efficient.
about 2 years ago
Hortus: “Some changes are going to be made to lifetap in an upcoming PTR build. Until that time I think we’ve got enough feedback.”
about 2 years ago
Heh when I read the PTR notes I thought immediately of the Left Axe change. Those who forget history…
Anyway, this change won’t make it through as it is on the PTR now. It will have a large impact on PvE warlock DPS and they’d really have to retool all the Warlock tier gear. They’ll have to figure something else out. One suggestion that I read that’s counterintuitive but practical would be to have Resilience affect Lifetap. ie. 400 resilience reduces the amount of mana returned from health. Since it’s a PvP gear only stat this would accomplish the same thing but without affecting PvE or requiring re-itemization. I don’t think they’ll do that though.
about 2 years ago
Abalieno, I disagree with having a different rule set for different game modes. Doing this just pushes the complexity problem into the player’s lap. Only they don’t have the formulas and data bases required to determine why they now need to lrn2play the class that they have enjoyed for so long in a different play mode.
about 2 years ago
These changes being made to the game based on arena balance are really killing the enjoyment of the game for a lot of people. It astounds me that glorified dueling is dictating the direction this game is going. I honestly don’t even know why there are still hardcore raiding guilds. The rewards you get from arena are better for just about everything in the game.
about 2 years ago
I’ve always wondered why they couldn’t just find a way to attach PLAYER-BASED diminishing returns/damage adjustments for PvP encounters. You have to be pretty fucking stupid to think that a mage should be capable of dropping a 6000 damage fireball on a sheeped target.
The gameplay of wow is PvE based. Yes, there are PvP talents and PvP builds and PvP stats, but the raw class design is based on PvE. It HAS to be. If it wasn’t, high-end PvE wouldn’t be possible. The rules that are necessary when a {Warlock|Mage|Hunter} is fighting in PvP would make fights like Brutallus (or even Void Reaver) impossible.
As always, the question is “how”. EVERY MMO COMPANY EVER screws this up from time to time. The only difference with WoW is that there are more people with 70 warlocks than actively played EQ/2|DaoC|SWG|et al
I keep telling our top hunter to enjoy it while it lasts. At some point they’re going to realize that an unstoppable killing machine with no dead-zone, near-perfect itemization AND a pet is O-P and the bats will swing.
about 2 years ago
Good God.
It’s already been said, but let me pile on and say that changing the way a whole class works to fix a problem with the Arena is like turning off water to the neighborhood because you have a leaky sink. Sure the leaky sink needs to be fixed, but why affect the people outside your house with the fix?
Overkill, thy name is Blizzard.
about 2 years ago
@Buur: PvP rewards (even S3) aren’t that great for PvE. Especially high-end PvE.
Season 2 weaponry fills in a bad itemization gap between nub-70 and T5 for some classes (like Sword/Fist/Mace rogues) but it’s only because they’re the ONLY options with good DPS. The first sword drop in T5 is the Talon of Azshara, it’s a tiny bit lower in DPS than the S2 items, but universally considered to be a better (and higher output) weapon due to proper PvE-DPS stat allocations.
PvP items are considered a jump-start for PvE. You swap them out for PvE-drops as soon as you get access to the right stuff.
about 2 years ago
It’s worth noting that where Mythic launched changes, Blizzard puts on them PTR, _changes the changes based on community feedback_ and then launches something the community ends up being fine with.
WoW is both a PvP and PvE game, and Blizzard is currently trying to fend off Warhammer, which means PvP issues will get a bit more prominence, because face it, PvE players have no where else to go. If they quit WoW in disgust, WAR isn’t going to give them any PvE they’ll appreciate and they’ll eventually come back, probably right around Wrath’s release. Whereas Blizzard needs to do everything its power to retain PvP players against WAR, and thus we have what we have here.
about 2 years ago
How is Blizzard gutting the game to make it an e-sport? Everything in WoW is still there, they’re just adding more PvP focused stuff. I sense much overreaction and teeth-gnashing. Relax. Enjoy PvP and enjoy PvE.
@Buur: I get the feeling you don’t know what you’re talking about, if you think the rewards from arena are better than just about everything else in the game. Nor is 5v5 arena “glorified dueling” by any stretch.
@hellfire: Hunters are still incredibly weak, largely because they are a class built around kiting, and guess what, the current arenas are too small with too many LoS issues to make kiting commonplace or viable. Hunters work in exactly one set up in 5v5, the drain team.
about 2 years ago
Abalieno, I disagree with having a different rule set for different game modes.
Then you agree because I said I’m against that.
WoW is both a PvP and PvE game, and Blizzard is currently trying to fend off Warhammer, which means PvP issues will get a bit more prominence, because face it, PvE players have no where else to go.
If this was true then Blizzard would actually do something for PvP instead of glorified dueling. They are only throwing a cookie for those who wanted the open kind of warfare by adding a special zone in the expansion pack. That’s all.
It’s actually Warhammer who’s copying every step of WoW and stupidify DAoC’s PvP in order to go after the WoW’s crowd.
Blizzard never cared about open world PvP, or they would have put a competent designer to do it.
This whole fuck up smells of Kalgan’s elitism. The same way of the Honor system was designed to promote an insane kind of elitism, that was erased because it was terrible to EVERYONE’s eyes (I still have to read someone defending the original honor system that isn’t Blizzard itself), now replaced by the Arena’s system. A gimmick that has been given artificial prominence just because it promotes elitism (through ranks and prizes).
As others have underlined the Arenas should never happen in a game like WoW where the focus should be on a bigger scale. And even if they are accepted, class design just can’t now be derailed to make 2vs2 arenas balanced.
Lum said: Seems like the effects of this are going to be fairly far-reaching, and either Blizzard will have to dial back the planned adjustment, or redesign the class entirely. Which you generally do not want to do when the vehicle is in motion.
Where he is wrong is that it’s not the class redesign to be the culprit, but the addition of Arenas that consequently made severe balancing problems happen and then made Blizzard redo the class balance to fit the new PvP system they made prominent.
They made a game, then made another, and made this other one authoritative over the first. This doesn’t work.
about 2 years ago
P.S.
And this just can’t surprise anyone. EVERYONE who commented when Arenas were announced wondered how Blizzard expected them to be balanced, as the classes were NEVER designed for that kind of gameplay.
We aren’t talking about specialized blog comments, I actually remember interviews on mainstream gaming news asking that.
Everyone (including Blizzard) expected Arenas to bring up severe class balance problems. In fact everyone thought Arenas weren’t the best way to deliver the best rewards as the resulting gameplay wouldn’t be all that fair and balanced.
What people couldn’t expect is Blizzard making Arenas authoritative and compromise the rest of the game.
about 2 years ago
People will bitch about anything. Blizzard is doing a way better job keeping classes balanced for both PvE and PvP than any other MMO has ever. DAoC flat out ignored nearly all PvE balance issues for the lifetime of the game. EQ never had ANY amount of PvP balance.
about 2 years ago
This is a work in progress. It has changed again since this was published, yes? Everybody…*everyone* who plays WoW with any regularity knows of the ‘lock infinite mana-kill loop that class is capable of.
I fail to understand how this is newsworthy apart from the fact that someone is finally trying to balance PvE and PvP at the same time.
about 2 years ago
Abalieno, we can go even further back than the start of Arenas, back to when Blizzard was designing a half dozen battlegrounds. One of which was an arena-style Gurabashi Arena Battleground (based on the actual place in Stranglethorn Vale). Know what Blizzard figured out? Some classes just got slaughtered in the setting and it was shelved for the time being, along with a 40 vs 40 battleground planned in Azshara.
When the community found out about the canceled arena battleground (well before arenas were announced), most people agreed it would of been a terrible idea. Unfortunately, Blizzard started down the path of massive class updates and even reworked a few completely. Eventually Blizzard added the current Arenas to the game, tacked on insane rewards, and has not stopped balancing for arenas since.
I am not sure if Blizzard believes that balancing for arenas will eventually balance the game. I am not sure if Blizzard is melding arena balance in with the next 10 levels and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. But I do know, that every move they are currently making stinks of KNEE-JERK reaction to arena imbalances.
And here is where it cracks me up! Enhancement Shamans, my main class and talent choice since beta, have been horrible at PvP for the longest time. Blizzard announced last week that they were going to make Enhancement Shamans competitive in the 2vs2 arena bracket. Yep, they were going to make class changes based on a fucking specific arena bracket.
Guess what landed on the PTR today (Feb 28th) for Enhancement Shamans? A bunch of insane class changes for Enhancement Shamans that will directly make them effective in 2vs2 battlegrounds. As far as anywhere else? Not so much, other than the fact it will only take 4 seconds to use totems instead of the old 6. Essentially, we give up DPS for anti-healing.
about 2 years ago
Yeah, PvE gear is still better for 25-man raiding. But outside of that I would rather have PvP gear for everything in the game. Farming, normal and heroic dungeons, kara, daily quests, etc. Just seems an odd change from the days when I would run around in full tier3 and maybe have a couple of honor pieces for certain situations.
And the shaman change makes me laugh. Apparently the new solution to any class with arena woes is to just give them MS.
about 2 years ago
The more I read the more I’m glad I’m playing EQ2 now.
about 2 years ago
Genda, EQ2 has had it’s fair share of retooling, so don’t sit on some “holier than though” seat. Remember, SOE is responsible for the NGE, and I don’t think gamers should believe that they are not capable of doing it again.
about 2 years ago
Shadowzerkers were so overpowered.
about 2 years ago
Heartless
Read my blog. I’m no fan of SOE, and it’s pretty much there in black and white. I’m just saying that for me, EQ2 looks like the game with the better future, game-play wise. Add that to the fact that they aren’t tooling the whole game to balance the smallest possible subset of a mini game within the game, and I’ll sit on what seat is most comfortable.
about 2 years ago
Whewn are MMOG designers going to learn that:
1. Balancing for both PvE and PvP at the same time is hard. You should probably do one or the other, but not both.
and
2. Your game should be designed so that abilities and stats and such can all be different in PvP than in PvE. Then you can adjust one without affecting the other.
Bruce
about 2 years ago
Trying to serve two masters (PvE and PvP) always leads to trouble. The hard-core PvPers tend to hate PvE activity. Many PvEers hate any mention of PvP.
Unfortunately, the two have mixed in WoW to form an unholy concoction. The general words for Feral Druids when Season 3 Arena gear came out was, “Suck it up, go Resto, get your arena gear, then go back Feral.” Most feral gear was so much better (and easier to get) than the occasional drops along the way to high end raiding opportunities.
heartless_ wrote:
Genda, EQ2 has had it’s fair share of retooling, so don’t sit on some “holier than though” seat. Remember, SOE is responsible for the NGE, and I don’t think gamers should believe that they are not capable of doing it again.
Yes, but SOE actually improved EQ2 instead of just throwing random changes and praying that they stick. The EQ2 team took lessons to heart, particularly lessons from WoW, and the game is actually a lot of fun to play. So, while it may be fun to blame SOE for all the ills in the world, the two games were ‘improved” (or not) by two different groups.
I think the most shocking thing about this WoW episode is that it shows that WoW really doesn’t learn from other games; this isn’t a new problem that’s totally unexpected in the realm of online games. Of course, they have 10 million billion subscribers at this point and shit solid gold, so I should just to QQ more, right?
Personally, I prefer EQ2 to WoW, just my friends are now playing WoW so I suck it up and play with them.
about 2 years ago
Abalieno, how exactly do you propose to get the “elitism” out of the game? Every game that can be WON encourages elitism to some degree or another. Many people who were good at say, Counterstrike, eventually became huge asshats as their repeated (untracked) victories hugely inflated their egos. In MMOs, it only gets worse because people demand (permanent, useful) rewards for winning. I don’t see how you can get around this, so if you have a way, please point it out for me.
about 2 years ago
It’s been said before, but some people don’t appear to have noticed yet: Claiming this as purely a PvP-based fix is somewhat misleading. Effectively infinite mana for a caster class is downright broken in both PvP and PvE.
Warlocks were pretty much top tier in every field of WoW – solo, one-group, two-group, raiding, battlegrounds, arenas (all three variants), world pvp, farming/grinding…the works. The only other class similar to that would be warriors – and they will get fixed as well, sooner or later. Other classes have strengths and weaknesses (e.g. enh. shaman are decent at PvE, poor at world PvP & battlegrounds and currently mediocre at arenas, and so on).
about 2 years ago
Blizzard is now (and will remain, I think, for a long time) THE biggest and most successful MMORPG. They’ve done that so there is no challenge in this for them anymore. What’s left?
Simple, be the biggest and most successful in the championships kind of game. They have the setting (insane player base with WOW), they have the knowledge (starcraft, warcraft) now they just need to make it happen.
With the state of the game as it is now, PVP rewards are indeed the most useful all around except for a couple of class types: the defensive warrior, the palatank and the feral tank (tank style). For everything else, having a PVP set is easier, quicker and requires overall less fuss than farming 10-25 raids.
Personally I think they should re-work classes for WOTLK, as it was mentioned above, and make a PVE effect and a PVP effect for every single ability, item, and talent in the game. Once done, they should make it so PVP rewards can NOT be used in any PVE instance and can only be used outside when your PVP flag is on.
I doubt they’ll do that however and I’m starting to really wonder how WOTLK will be…
about 2 years ago
Abalieno, how exactly do you propose to get the “elitism” out of the game?
I’ve said this many times. At higher PvP levels I prefer game design pushing toward collaborative mechanics. So that instead of “everyone on his own”, the goals are shared and can be accomplished with general teamwork (and rewards come from the best cooperation).
Instead of making design build inner competition (the top VS the bottom), you make them cooperate constructively and just put the competition where it should be (factions against factions).
It has been said many times that the previous honor system and the arenas now are about alliance competing with alliance, and horde competing with horde.
about 2 years ago
Case in point: the Ahn’Qiraj war effort.
It’s likely the single time WoW has ever seen massive and wholly uniting faction and even realm pride and teamwork. Granted, and somewhat ironically, it was ultimately still fueled by the simple greed for loot, but it still brought many of the factions and realms together like they had not and still haven’t before because they had a single massive common goal. Beggars cannot be choosers, after all, and WoW is certainly a beggar when it comes to faction identity within the WoW community.
By common, also granted, I do speak mostly to the endgame commoner — certainly there were niches of greed within the war effort yet. Also, some servers did not experience similar pride for various reasons. But there were enough servers that were brought together that it serves as a good example of what’s achievabl,e even in a self-interest focused game like WoW, with the right design.
The original Honor Rank system was basically the complete opposite. It was in your best interest to throw as many people under the bus as possible, whether ally or enemy. It’s still somewhat, though not completely after the years since, baffling that they’d choose it of any possible PvP system for a game that came from a series about faction war — to not even go that far; a game with any interest in not forcing the community to cannibalize itself, it was still stunningly illogical.
about 2 years ago
Sorry for the necro but I wanted to touch a few points:
Locks are not OP in every facet of the game. Arena in particular lock performance in any bracket is merely mediocre (as in probably where they should be, before these changes). You are welcome to your opinions but I encourage you to go look up the stats. Locks are already well known as the initial default target in 5s not because of their threat but because they have zero escapes and make the best heal sponges.
PvE performance is more subjective and I am not going to bother breaking it down by group size but the overall point is that even in endgame raiding they are not the clear-cut dominating force.
This discussion went far afield. The major point that everyone seems to be missing is the shoddy design of having any mechanic where an ability gets more expensive\worse the farther you progress your character. There is simply no way to justify percentage based penalties. It doesn’t matter if you think lifetap should be nerfed or hate locks or any such dribble. What does matter is that unlike anything else in this game it will be worse to have more hp for locks.
Percentage-based penalties are stupid. I remember crafting “spells” in EQ2 being percentage based. The player response was to craft naked (to shrink their mana pool) and the best\most efficient crafters were very low level players whose mana regen was more than enough to cover the paltry costs.
BTW AQ war effort was a joke and prime example of how not to do things. If non-raiders could have donated to keep the gates closed I think you would have seen a very different uniting force across the servers.
about 2 years ago
Sullee said:
This discussion went far afield. The major point that everyone seems to be missing is the shoddy design of having any mechanic where an ability gets more expensive\worse the farther you progress your character. There is simply no way to justify percentage based penalties. It doesn’t matter if you think lifetap should be nerfed or hate locks or any such dribble. What does matter is that unlike anything else in this game it will be worse to have more hp for locks.
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Wait… that’s amusing. Because last I checked, Druids pay a percentage of their mana every shift, so getting out of your roots costs more as they get more gear. Oh, and every healer/decurser in the game pays a percentage of their mana do decurse all those lovely DoTs you spam, again, costing more and more as they add gear. So maybe we should go back and say that the fact that a S3 priest pays more to remove your CoA than a S1 priest is bad design?
Or just give up the Warlock ‘poor me’ routine. Maybe it’s not a perfect solution, but it is NOT some random new horror Blizz thought up to persecute Warlocks. It’s the same mechanic that has been used widely and successfully before to slow down decurse-spamming. And now it’s being used to slow down Infinite Mana spamming.
So maybe percentage-based solutions are not preferable, but they’re not stupid. And maybe Lifetap is or isn’t balanced, but it seems that the devs think having a sustainable and scaling hp to mana conversion wasn’t what they wanted out of the class… and somehow the rest of the classes haven’t been falling over themselves to provide support for the warlocks. Unlike what’s happened in the past where raiders and guilds enmass have protested certain class changes.
Seems to bring back the great Hunter NGE patch… you know, where they ripped the guts out of the hunter mechanics and changed everything around? End of the world right? Well, it was until they finished testing on the PTRs and players got a chance to test it and find out that it wasn’t really the end of the world. Anyway, it’s still on PTRs. Cry some real tears when it hits live realms.