Lots of changes from Blizzard as of late...

faust

faust

New Member
I looked over the changes in the upcomming 2.1 patch. Like most people I like some of what I see, and other changes not so much.

One thing that struck me though is the sheer number of changes. Anyone else feel that since 2.0 they have been radically changing this game, and that the rate of changes doesn't appear to be slowing down?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want change. At the same rate I don't like being hit with patch after patch with not just a few changes for a few classes, but massive changes for every class in the game in back-to-back-to-back releases.
 
During the initial alpha testing, the devs were set in two camps. The ones wanting to focus on casual/small group gameplay and those (the eq'ers) who wanted to make massive raid content. Well the raid devs won out, some of the casual devs quit and headed over to GuildWars. Once the game hit beta, it was clear of the changes that were coming around - massive raid content.

However, the casual/small group game play already had 4 years of dev time dedicated to it. So when WoW hit the public, the masses were drawn into the smaller content to start their adventures while the big raid content was a carrot dangled before them . . . leading them into the trap of gear upgrades.

This game has one simple deceptive angle, it plays on people's wants for "stuff"...imagniary stuff at that, stuff that is stored as electronic bits of data on a hard drive somewhere. And from that angle came the "Oh, you want better stuff? Well I have crazy content that you and 39 of your friends can do to get it"

Since TBC, what I see is a massive back-peddling. The game is being taken back to where it WAS during original testing, and no doubt players are feeling a kind of whiplash from the changes.
 
Honestly I still feel the development of this game is leaps and bounds over what Ultima Online ever was.. I do miss the pvp and travel aspect of UO quite a bit, however UO got boring.. Leveling your charactor was as simple as running a program called EasyUO overnight that repeated skills or spells over and over until you reached skill caps. UO had very neat charactor development, but at the same time, it just got old.. To someone who actually wanted to level their charactor without using easyuo (read, those who didn't want to cheat) really had nothing other than killing mongbats over and over until their magery got up or their swords skill got up etc.

I don't get that with wow. It is very rare that I'm bored, and I absolutely LOVE questing/hitting dungeons int he outlands.. The loot is always worthwhile..
 
IMO the content is fine overall, what has me feeling like I have "whiplash" (love the term, very apt) are all the changes to the character classes.

It used to be a major tweak to one class like they used to do with the class reviews. I personally thought that was a good way to handle change. That way the folks at Blizzard could think about each class in detail and really focus on how to improve them and mold them into the class they envision them to be.

Recently though it's been massive changes to all classes all at once in 3 significant patches (I am in essence treating the xpac as a patch, and 2.1 as the 3rd patch).

Just seems like they are changing far too much too quickly. Balance between classes for pve and pvp doesn't appear to be... well balanced.
 
While I'm still smarting from the nerf of Illumination -- I see the need for the nerf but it will realllllly hurt solo play -- overall I think that the balancing changes are healthy.
 
Neirai the Forgiven said:
While I'm still smarting from the nerf of Illumination -- I see the need for the nerf but it will realllllly hurt solo play -- overall I think that the balancing changes are healthy.
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I am afraid I disagree. Just taking a step back which classes should be tops in the dps meters? Which classes should be the top healers? Which classes should be viable tanks?

Please feel free to debunk any of my thoughts here, but this is how I would rank things (pve wise, pvp is entirely a different matter):

Top Ranged DPS: Mage -- Lowest health and armor by far in the game, absolutely no way to heal outside of potions+bandages. Has no pet to help either (unless you are deep frost and you get a pet some of the time). Warlocks have a self-heal. Both warlocks and hunters have pets that can off tank if need be. Both warlocks and hunters have instant aggro shed abilities (soulshatter for warlocks, feign death for hutners), whereas mages have either ice block or invisibility. Ice block doesn't actually adjust the amount of aggro a mage has, nor do many raiding mages have it anymore since you have to invest heavily into frost in order to get this talent (most go fire now-a-days to try and compete in the top 5-10 in dps). Invisibility takes a total of 5 seconds and any damage taken will cancel the effect, as will any "aggressive moves" (I understand that bandaging is one of those types of moves, parhaps a lvl 68+ mage can verify).

Top melee DPS: Rogue -- Outside of sap (initial CC) and a pseudo mortal strike like debuff they bring little to a party... aside from what they should bring amazing DPS. From what I hear from just about everyone, is that in the new end game content top dps is being done by warlocks primarily, followed by a mixture of mages and shadow priests, and then rogues.

Top healing classes: Holy/Disc Priest, and Restoration Druid. Both of these classes when specced as their healing specs have greatly diminished solo capabilities. Though I would argue that the holy/disc priest is even weaker, considering that some of the restoration talents that many healing druids select also strengthen their feral forms. Restoration druids can often have 5 or more points left over to put into the feral or balance tree if they wish as well, these points are purely for solo dps/utility. Having said that I think the difference is small.

Top tank: Prot Warrior. Bar none, they should be vastly superior to other tanks. Vastly. Right now they are better, but for the 5-man content the margin is very slim. Protection warriors sacrifice a lot of solo effectiveness in order to be tanks. The same can not be said for either druids or paladins. Because of how their respecitive trees are structured talent wise, feral (tank/bear) specced druids can be passable kitty form druids. Also feral druid in bear form solo quite well, due to their relatively high dps (for a tank). Paladins can spec heavily into protection, and can spend plenty of points in either holy or retribution trees as they see fit. If they spec into holy, not only can they tank, but they can be very effective off healers. Protection warriors do just one thing effectively: tank. While I would agree that in general paladins aren't as effective single target tanks as either druids or warriors. Both warriors and druids are fine single target tanks.

I could go on, but I don't want to make this any longer than it already is. Suffice to summerize: I feel that the classes are more unbalanced in many ways than ever before for both pve and pvp. Perhaps that's just me, not sure.
 
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Well, one thing I need to disagree with is your top dps slot being held by warlocks. I am wondering what warlocks you are partied up with that is taking over the dps spot. After the last batch of changes my lock gets powned by fire mages with less damage gear then I have. Before when said mages were frost, yes I had the top slot but not know. And if I am in a group with Esua, I might as well not even considering trying for the top spot because it will be a big let down.
 
I believe when you have comparable gear / opportunity / access to the same loot tables, you should find rogues / mages / locks / hunters at the top, in that order. There will always be exceptions and there are definitely some encounters which favor one class over another. It is very hard to say where you should land but I look forward to seeing our rogues/mages/locks ahead of us hunters in the charts, all will be right in the land at the point :)
 
*chuckle*

Trying to keep up with Adam in DPS is like racing a thoroughbred on foot :/

That being said... I'm not so sure that Blizzard is flying blind without a vision. I just think that they're tremendously narrowly focussed on a stupid one.

The Arenas. If you look at this patch from a purely Arena perspective, almost all the class changes (except maybe Rogues, who are getting a much needed PvE boost), everything starts making a cynical sort of sense.

I've heard persistent rumours on the WoW message boards that Blizzard is pushing WoW Arenas as a competitive 'E-Sport' (and commented irritably on that more than once >.> ), and their current behaviour tends to bear that out. Unfortunately, they seem to still be working under the delusion that perfect balance (without making everything homogenized) in PvP is possible... and that it's possible without lethally maiming PvE capability.

/shrug

Hope I'm wrong, but we'll see.
 
I think greater balance in both pvp and pve is possible, but that sort of balance should be the goal from the game's inception... and these sorts of major balacing issues should be worked out in beta. There is way too much play balance being worked out in the live game for my tastes as of late.

IMO, many of these additions are focused on addressing some class balance issues at lvl 70. With little concern for balance from 1-69, which is less of a problem for us on a PvE server; however for the large percentage of players who play on PvP servers the 1-69 unbalance is daily brought to their attention. To be fair, some of these balance issues occur at lvl 6x for various classes, but the point remains the same. For example this has been a problem in the past: Warlocks for example don't get DC until lvl 42, however from lvl 20-41 dealing with melee classes as a warlock on a pvp server is an exercise is personal patience... while you watch your lock die a sure death and then have to wait out the inevitable corpse camping all because Blizzard doesn't care to address the interclass balance issues one iota in that range (for a game that rewards and encourages solo questing, the story of: get a friend to help does not wash imo).

That is not to say that this game isn't fun, but sadly the speed and severity of the changes as of late have been eroding away my enjoyment of this game.
 
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