Celestalon seeks advice on class balance

[Deleted]

How about he just reads the fucking Official forums (PTR, Class, etc) instead of asking on Twitter.

No point making a Twitter account to shame that stupid asshole because you'll just get ignored, banned, etc.

If you are talking to him like that, then its absolutely justified if he ignores you. I mean really, do you think he wants to read profanities like that on his feed?

[Baine]

like i care same as he cares about my opinion(or other player opinions in their feedback) which is actually a reason to shit talk..

No it is not.

We are humans and decency should apply. Maybe decency will not change anything but shit talk even less.

[llewllew]

Shame with all that superior intelligence a person can't communicate with people in a way to highlight their points without getting banned. I bet If I was half that smart, I could talk to people without getting banned.



What happens if, the highly skilled players, the upper 2% want things in a way that gives them a real challenge? Where does that leave the 98% Joe scrubs? People complain there aren't enough spells now, how many is right? Do all specs need a good 10-15 spell rotation that must be executed 100% properly else your DPS\Healing will be 50% of maximum? Should all classes be able to counter every other class?

What would a basketball court look like if Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain got to design it? Would that be best for the game?

I like you.

[Sansnom]

How about he just reads the fucking Official forums (PTR, Class, etc) instead of asking on Twitter.

No point making a Twitter account to shame that stupid asshole because you'll just get ignored, banned, etc.

Problem with forums is that not all post are constructive. Although that would also apply to Twitter.

[dextersmith]

They ask this after telling players to shut their mouths because they're not devs?

[Stormspark]

They ask this after telling players to shut their mouths because they're not devs?

Let me translate his post. What's he's actually saying is: "You think you can do better with balance? Prove it. Put up or shut up."

[Ianus]

No it is not.

We are humans and decency should apply. Maybe decency will not change anything but shit talk even less.

they had enough credibility for 12 f years and still not listening feedback..so shit talk is only way

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Let me translate his post. What's he's actually saying is: "You think you can do better with balance? Prove it. Put up or shut up."

this /10 chars

[Qnubi]

One of the main issues with Balancing is who do they balance off of?

If you balance all specs to the gameplay style of the top raiders of the world, even if they are 100:100:100 people will still complain, since some specs require extra management so regular players would do maybe 100:80:50 and complain they are weak when in fact they are just under performing for their spec.

If you balance it around casual/mid pack players so that every spec can comfortably be 100:100:100 even when played mediocre, you then get high level raiders that may play the specs mechanically perfect so they end up like 130:110:100. Casuals then see the top players playing the 130% spec and change to it and assume the 100% spec is sub-optimal at their low level of play when it is actually competitive.

Most idiots on this forum just whinge and complain their class is undertuned most of the time just due to themselves not wanting to admit they are just bad players or that others are better players using other specs.

You can't perform a spec higher than 100%, that's mathematically impossible when the maximum possible output is obviously 100%. There is RNG variance but that is not due to playing the spec better.

[jayinjersey]

His question is dumb and shows no real depth of the problem.


If class A has spec X Y Z doing 100, 80, 70 DPS and most other classes are 100...buff Y to 100 and z to 100

Case closed.


Unfortunately game design isn't as cut and dry as this dumbass scenario...

[FelPlague]

His question is dumb and shows no real depth of the problem.


If class A has spec X Y Z doing 100, 80, 70 DPS and most other classes are 100...buff Y to 100 and z to 100

Case closed.


Unfortunately game design isn't as cut and dry as this dumbass scenario...

you seem to be shitting on his scenario when you arnt even reading it



the dps is FOR REAL 100 80 70
but because all the good players go to the first (since its better) it LOOKS LIKE
its 100 70 50

so if they buff 70+ 30 and 50+ 50 to make all three 100, but then the players go back to all 3
then people go back it will be 100 110 and 120
then its even more fucked up, everyone goes to 120 and then it becomes

70 90 120

then how do you balance?

[xZerocidex]

If you are talking to him like that, then its absolutely justified if he ignores you. I mean really, do you think he wants to read profanities like that on his feed?

Then explain his justification for him ignoring the ones who doesn't resort to profanity when they make constructive threads.

[Deleted]

you seem to be shitting on his scenario when you arnt even reading it



the dps is FOR REAL 100 80 70
but because all the good players go to the first (since its better) it LOOKS LIKE
its 100 70 50

so if they buff 70+ 30 and 50+ 50 to make all three 100, but then the players go back to all 3
then people go back it will be 100 110 and 120
then its even more fucked up, everyone goes to 120 and then it becomes

70 90 120

then how do you balance?

100/100/100?
cuz even bots cant reach 120, when max (potential) dps is 100...

Celestalons simplification of the most complex issue in WoW is PR, and nothing but PR, cuz class balancing is less about raw dps, but more about dps peripherals (like mobility, burst tools etc).
a shitpost by bzzd, cuz said scenario (1 100% class all ppl play) hasnt and will never happen (apocalypse):

this (balancing) issue btw provides not only optimal marketing, but great monetarisation potential, cuz rerolling FOTM = +gametime.

the haters "analysis" of bzzd (Celestalons) intentions isnt false, but itz more than just provocation.

[FelPlague]

100/100/100?
cuz even bots cant reach 120, when max (potential) dps is 100...

Celestalons simplification of the most complex issue in WoW is PR, and nothing but PR, cuz class balancing is less about raw dps, but more about dps peripherals (like mobility, burst tools etc).
a shitpost by bzzd, cuz said scenario (1 100% class all ppl play) hasnt and will never happen (apocalypse):

this (balancing) issue btw provides not only optimal marketing, but great monetarisation potential, cuz rerolling FOTM = +gametime.

the haters "analysis" of bzzd (Celestalons) intentions isnt false, but itz more than just provocation.

where was the max dps 100? where did he state max dps was 100...? were talking dps
but he decided to use 100 instead of

630,353 583,238 523,439

[Baine]

they had enough credibility for 12 f years and still not listening feedback..so shit talk is only way

The problem is your feedback will be even less considered with shit talk.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

People who clamor for balance would be given automatic sixth month bans.
I wouldn't give out nerfs, only buffs to other classes.
Eventually I would disable the tooltip and require people to play by ear.

[darklogrus]

you seem to be shitting on his scenario when you arnt even reading it



the dps is FOR REAL 100 80 70
but because all the good players go to the first (since its better) it LOOKS LIKE
its 100 70 50


then how do you balance?

Isn't that the initial problem for which the snowball starts its decent? If you make 1 spec out of the gate 30% better then you pretty much putting yourself into a hole.

[Epoch]

Then explain his justification for him ignoring the ones who doesn't resort to profanity when they make constructive threads.

He has no justification. All he has (like a good number of devs) is an over-inflated, unwarranted ego. The mere fact that devs have been using Twitter to communicate with their playerbase when forums for wow exist that do a much better job, is in itself beyond idiotic.

If I helped in making or overseeing a product, then alienated my users by telling them things such as: "you don't know what you want, we know what you want", or asking for their feedback and then either ignoring them or listening to the top 1% players (which sadly can and has ruined specs) while taking to a 3rd party social media to converse with said users, while their are many forums which are full of ingenious people who can and have given highly intelligent solutions which will fix their issues, I would come off looking like a blithering moron who does not deserve to be anywhere near this game.

[Mhyroth]

He's not seeking advice but using Twitter to have proper conversations is a bad idea.
How does he want to come over as someone who's good at his job (or any person working for Blizzard) if you prefer using an external website/app instead of your own website to bring information.

[God Save The King]

Stopped at survival is in a good place

Survival is a meme, it was in a good place last expansion and every expansion before. People would still all reroll survival if it was the best spec. It's not

Stopped at "stopped at"

Thanks for reading 5 words. Woo.

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They should aggressively balance during beta / PTR / early expansion while being more timid later on when people are already invested in a spec (gear / stats prio / trinkets and in legion artifact and legendaries too). They should seriously stop slacking during beta, having a 1 year long beta where feedback went ignored and classes fully reworked at last moment or 3 months into live is unacceptable. What is class design team doing while the graphic artists or encounter designers do their jobs on deadline? Drink coffee with interns?

Common misconception, but there is not a dedicated "class designer" at Blizzard. Just game designers, world designers, quest designers, exterior level designers, and lead designers. The classes generally fall to game and lead designers. But they also do other things. Note - I agree with you that they should be more aggressive during Beta. Maybe hire some more designers specifically for classes.

If they don't have time to rework every single spec then leave some in peace ffs, less people will be bothered if their spec didn't mechanically change than when it changes but for worse. The risk is high and the gain is small so why the heck they rework specs every expac.

Generally to keep it fresh and interesting. Idk about you, but I generally get bored of the same rotation after a tier or two.

Legion should never have launched in the state of "let's all jump on fire mage bandwagon". Now if they nerf fire mage they only piss people off, if they don't nerf them, they'll piss off some other people. Gratz, you brought this upon yourself.

Mages were one of the worst offenders, but the delta between top line fire and top line frost was within like 10-15%. From a design standpoint, that's pretty good. Even if fire was 2% better than the other two, everyone would've hopped on that bandwagon. They could've made it a bit tighter though.

How come people were saying during beta that guardian druids are stronger than other tanks or priest / monk healers are weaker than other healers (there are videos dating back to mid beta about it!) and this is still true after beta, live and into 3rd raid?

Monks and priests are in a good spot, it's just for Priests, disc is hard and holy competes with holy paladins and shamans too much, who edge out slightly ahead. Paladin healers were the only real problem going into EN.

Can't speak for tanks, but before the IP nerf warriors were gods.

And most importantly, they should get some humility and stop with the PR bullshit saying stuff like "we're more happy with class balance than ever" and that was said when shadow priests were op as fuck while some other specs like dps dks were complete shite for pve at least. It's the same as them claiming "6.2 is the biggest content patch EVAH!" only to be seen as a lie few weeks later when people saw this "biggest content" was 1 raid and 1 zone of uninspired design (rare camping, fill the bar dailies and grind mob rep).

Well PR is going to be bullshit to anyone who reads into it. All companies are like that. PR is how they get you back into the game and try it. Blizzard will rarely come out and say "this sucks" or "this is bad" because it only hurts them. People wouldn't have come back for 6.2 if they said it was a moderate patch with minor content.

Misleading PR is a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem itself. PR only tries to put a coat of paint on the rusted out banger.

[Katchii]

Isn't that the initial problem for which the snowball starts its decent? If you make 1 spec out of the gate 30% better then you pretty much putting yourself into a hole.

I think he's just using that as an example. The hardcore min/maxers will find the "best" spec, even if that spec in a perfect situation isonly 5% better than the other 2 and squeeze every last bit of DPS out of it. But now because all of those players gravitate towards Spec A and the vast majority of people now playing Spec B aren't as keen to squeeze every last bit of DPS out of it, the difference looks like it's greater than 5%, sometimes much greater. The discrepancy looks bigger than it actually is, and a lot of the folks discussing the discrepancy aren't expert players so if they "balance" the specs by buffing Spec B, now all of a sudden, Spec B is 10% higher than Spec A when played by the hardcore min/maxers and the representation for Spec A drops and the discrepancy now looks like it's 20%....

Without an equal amount of good, quality data to compare the specs it's almost impossible to balance them appropriately. Additionally, it's impossible to design a class/ spec that will perform exactly the same for every single person playing it in a game like WoW. There will be some discrepancy between classes/ specs by virtue of player skill, but also in what the spec is designed to be and do (AoE vs ST vs Burst vs sustained vs DoT vs direct damage etc...). How much discrepancy is acceptable between specs/ classes? How much discrepancy is acceptable between min vs max performance of the same spec? But more importantly again, how do you accurately define and identify exactly how big that discrepancy is if the data coming in doesn't accurately reflect how the spec performs?