Dear Blizzard - A few comments on your PvE balance pass, Warrior PoV

[Artunias]

When we approached the end of the beta and there were no changes is why I retired from raiding.

The gameplay of both specs is pretty shitty, and was hounded on near universally for 7+ months and alpha and beta. The same comments the whole time. Blizzard is completely out of touch with the community and class design. See warlocks, hunters, spriests, Warriors.

Legendary items are just salt in the wound. It's terrible design to have such powerful items be at the total mercy of rng.

While I still play, I only play casually with my friends in mythic+ and can't imagine any progression raider enjoying this new atmosphere.

[Deleted]

When we approached the end of the beta and there were no changes is why I retired from raiding.

The gameplay of both specs is pretty shitty, and was hounded on near universally for 7+ months and alpha and beta. The same comments the whole time. Blizzard is completely out of touch with the community and class design. See warlocks, hunters, spriests, Warriors.

Legendary items are just salt in the wound. It's terrible design to have such powerful items be at the total mercy of rng.

While I still play, I only play casually with my friends in mythic+ and can't imagine any progression raider enjoying this new atmosphere.

yes, im totally not enjoying it right now. and its not because im whiney and didn't get lucky with legendaries or anything. I got my legendary and I got my gear, rngesus was nice to me. The gameplay was ok for all three warrior specs (im playing all 3, have all artifacts up to 2+ gold traits), but dps warrior is dead once again. Im ok with doing good damage when the gameplay is shitty and vice versa but right now it will be both. Falken did point out the right things, nobody gives a shit about Warriors ST if you can have a rogue that can do his job, but also excels on AOE and on surivival. Simply not buying Blizz bullshit anymore.
If I see myself being dumpstered next wednesday, I'll happily take my role as 3rd tank and call it a day, never looking back at dps warrior again.

[Archimtiros]

It's pretty simple support@blizzard.com is the email address.

More dramatic than the combination of Stormwind and Barrens chat combined.

/tears

Support is for technical or billing issues, not gameplay feedback. If you bothered to read the OP, he made a thread on the blizzard forums, and this thread is to generate discussion among other Warriors.

Again, this is a Warrior subform on a WoW forum, on a WoW-centered website. This is the appropriate place to discuss ideas, concerns and other topics concerning Warriors. If you don't like it or don't feel like participating in the discussion, feel free to see your way out.

[Plasma]

I can agree with the sentiment, but not everything included therein. Arms Single Target was too high and needed to be brought down. The Exploit change was necessary because that trait was far too powerful in relation to the others, though the resulting loss in gameplay was a negative that wasn't needed. The better option would have been to tune down FR further (say 20-25%), tune down Exploit as they did, and then buff the base chance of Tactician slightly to make up for the average loss from Exploit, thereby accomplishing the goals of the nerf, but retaining the gameplay.

Now concerning Arms balance specifically, I'll reiterate: it's single target was inordinately too high, and extraordinary single target is not an excuse for low multi-target. I'll also point out that Arms does have multi-target potential, albeit on a long cooldown, and some of the best 2-target cleave in the game.

Here's the thing people seem to forget (or like to ignore): Single Target is always useful, Multi-target is not. Even in a heavy cleave fight, there's almost always a single target boss that needs to die, and total DPS isn't always a good measurement of actual performance. A simple example of this would be Immerseus - lots of AoE, and AoE classes might look considerably more powerful than a single target class, but the adds don't really need to die. Killing them (talking about the AoE pack, not the split phase adds) doesn't do anything to hasten the end of the fight other than take minor pressure off tanks. Thus their inflated DPS isn't really important. Just like pure single-target may be a bad measurement for overall balance, DPS isn't always a good measurement of contribution to success.

The TLDR here is not not equate total DPS with performance. If another class is doing 100k higher DPS on Elerethe Renferal, but substantially less single target to the boss, there's still very much a place for the lower DPS - higher single target player, as the adds only need to die fast enough to adhere to mechanics, while the boss needs to die to end the encounter. To even more TLDR it: Good multi-target is sometimes useful, good single-target is always useful.

The real problem in my opinion are the classes that do everything very well. Fire Mages, Windwalker Monks, and Outlaw Rogues are good examples of specs which flat out excel in every area, which is what causes the greatest disparity in balance.

While I do agree that arms single target was overtuned and needed some nerfs, I don't think there's really an issue with it being strictly better than other classes for that niche. Feral druids basically fill the exact same niche as arms, without the ability to 2-target cleave well, and they went completely untouched. Meanwhile, the classes that you listed are extremely competitive for single target, as well as having top tier aoe to boot. While having high single target is always a good thing, having mediocre single target that's still heavily reliant on RNG and nonexistent AoE is just the makings of a dead spec.

I think we can all agree that blizzard has made, and continues to make, bad design choices when it comes to class tuning. It's something you come to expect when you play this game, but the artifact and legendary system just works to rub salt in the wound, especially when they specifically stated that no large-scale balance changes would be made.

As for the current dps sims, I think another big hit to arms, other than the target nerfs is the nerf to potions. Arms was one of the most heavily scaling specs with potions due to mastery, and it's another case of blizzard not looking at the whole picture when throwing darts at the board of nerfs.

[barrsftw]

Do you have a source that says they use sims rather than actually numbers from raids? Was the point of waiting a week not to gather data from actual raids?

[Archimtiros]

Do you have a source that says they use sims rather than actually numbers from raids? Was the point of waiting a week not to gather data from actual raids?

They use a combination of internal tools, internal raid testing, and watching player performance.

The real issue however, is because they wait until live to do these things, they fuck with the players. We have extensive alpha and beta tests for a reason, and none of these balancing issues are new since then; they're all things we've been clamoring about for half a year.

"Waiting for data" is bullshit double speak. The only thing they're waiting for is to see how the terrible players perform in relation to the good players (which is one thing you'll notice with Feral, the terrible feral players do very poorly in relation to the great players doing excellent, which is why it goes unnerfed), but anyone player or dev could have seen that specs like Arms, Fire, Arcane. WW, Outlaw, Assa, S2M, and MM would be overperforming long before the expansion released, much less raids themselves.

[Crispin]

Annoyed about how they assured players that they wouldnt ruin a spec, to make sure saving up artifact points didnt end up beeing a waste, and as it is now, that's exactly what they're doing.

As someone else wrote earlier, I can live with doing subpar aoe and cleave if my st i good, I'd suffice with doing average st if cleave and aoe was good aswell, but as it is now, we'll end up with a spec that imo isnt much fun and performs quite badly in fury, and arms which will have far worse rng on st on top of the 2nd nerf within weeks and still do crap aoe and cleave, sure lining up cd's with bladestorm will pad the meters, but running with an outlaw who pull similar numbers on every pull and matches you on st bosses, really leaves you wondering why they did not compensate our aoe/cleave at the same time.

The worst part, is that I cant be arsed to level up one of the 100 alts, leveling up to 110 isnt the annoying part, redoing the rep required for 2 dungeons and especially artifact points seems like a horrible chore.

[Plasma]

They use a combination of internal tools, internal raid testing, and watching player performance.

The real issue however, is because they wait until live to do these things, they fuck with the players. We have extensive alpha and beta tests for a reason, and none of these balancing issues are new since then; they're all things we've been clamoring about for half a year.

"Waiting for data" is bullshit double speak. The only thing they're waiting for is to see how the terrible players perform in relation to the good players (which is one thing you'll notice with Feral, the terrible feral players do very poorly in relation to the great players doing excellent, which is why it goes unnerfed), but anyone player or dev could have seen that specs like Arms, Fire, Arcane. WW, Outlaw, Assa, S2M, and MM would be overperforming long before the expansion released, much less raids themselves.

I'm not sure why they even bother attempting class balance when they clearly have no idea what they're working on and don't really have any intention of better understanding it. I don't know why they don't just fire their entire balance team and hire big community members from each class to submit data and work with eachother and their respective class communities to come up with solutions. Hell, I'm sure most would do it for free if it meant their class was at a functioning level.

[WarTV]

feels like streamers and their influence on viewers been running the balance for blizzard.

[Haveth]

I have a similar thread in the US General Forums - I think there's a higher chance of being noticed there than in the class section.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20749256065

[Archimtiros]

I have a similar thread in the US General Forums - I think there's a higher chance of being noticed there than in the class section.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20749256065

I'd like to point out that you missed the fact where those minor Fury buffs, and indeed minor buffs to most low performing classes (Frost DK, Ele Shaman) only made up for the reduction in potion damage. While this does put them slightly closer to other specs overall, as they were reduced due to the potion and (some) spec nerfs, it still leaves them in the same abysmal state of relative balancing.

[Haveth]

I'd like to point out that you missed the fact where those minor Fury buffs, and indeed minor buffs to most low performing classes (Frost DK, Ele Shaman) only made up for the reduction in potion damage. While this does put them slightly closer to other specs overall, as they were reduced due to the potion and (some) spec nerfs, it still leaves them in the same abysmal state of relative balancing.

Someone mentioned it on the first page, but I'll add it to the OP, I was planning on reformatting it a bit better anyway since it got a bit rambly. especially the Fury section.

[reighnman]

Arms isnt that bad and if youre really hardcore you keep pocket alts ready to go to adjust because you knew this was going to happen. (my alt has more legendaries than my main )

[ehxy]

I don't even need a cheeky observation.

Cheeky? So he went down to the corner store to let the clerk know the banks are corrupt too. Awesome.

[thomaswrocks]

I rarely post on MMO champ but I had to come in here and say what a well written piece you've wrote. I agree 100% and although I am levelling other classes up I am so demotivated after spending nearly a month getting BiS / Artifact gear on my Arms / Prot Warr.

[ehxy]

Support is for technical or billing issues, not gameplay feedback. If you bothered to read the OP, he made a thread on the blizzard forums, and this thread is to generate discussion among other Warriors.

Again, this is a Warrior subform on a WoW forum, on a WoW-centered website. This is the appropriate place to discuss ideas, concerns and other topics concerning Warriors. If you don't like it or don't feel like participating in the discussion, feel free to see your way out.

Yeah it is, it's not to read about ultimatums some person sent to blizzard. You always see these things when nerfs and buffs happen before they are even applied like how we all predicted that monks would be getting the nerf bat, like the rogues before them, like the <op fotm class here>. It is a reoccurring story repeating itself more than Bruce Wayne's parents dying.

I didn't know this forum was "Post your ultimatum letters to blizzard here" this is literally holding a gun to your head until your parents buy you that video game console bullshit and it's laughable. The nerf sucks but I will tell you when things were going good and the procs were aligned I have pulled off some insane shit that wasn't right by far. The point of it is, this letter is ultimately useless.

The idea of how the class functions needs more tweaking to normalise it to a state that isn't overblown. This nerf doesn't change what the problem is, it simply lowers the explosive ceiling we could reach. Lower the damage but bring up the procs could theoretically fix and make the spec more fun to play. Basically enhance shaman.

Writing hey you nerfed my class you big jerks I'm taking my ball and going home ultimatum is pure comedy, weird because you're serious and ultimately disregarded. Then you come back the next day and things are all awkward and pretend you didn't really rage quit and everyone is just laughing behind your back.

[cFortyfive]

The point of it is, this letter is ultimately useless.

Kinda like 90% + of the forum content including very much so your post ? Don't see much of a point there. So now shoo back to the thrall fanboy forum.

[xmr1]

I know it's kind of cliche and easy to say Blizzard is out of touch and doesn't understand their own game, but situations like this I have trouble coming to any other conclusion.

[TheValkyrie]

Even if Arms was still as good as it was before the nerfs it still isn't a spec I want to play for the entire expansion. It just isn't fun.

[Nautyless]

i honestly think the focused rage nerf was well-deserved and should have already been nerfed in the beta long ago,however i think their analysis and execution of the Exploit the weakness relics nerf have been very lackluster, it was well found out by fellow warriors in the beta that ETW relics made a huge dps gain for warriors but this was not resolved in the beta but in live servers.

In my honest opinion, if they do not want warriors to rely on the ETW relics, Tactician's proc chance should be increased while ETW is removed from the game or we could go back to WOD like the archimonde trinket/Prenerf T184P where a spell like rend or slam or auto-attacks have a chance to reset the cooldown of collosus smash.