Holinka's interview

[rda]

Oh, I forgot one. That doesn't defeat my point, you can look at the graph yourself.

You didn't forget one (you forgot almost every DPS spec by that measure of "once went under 1%" if you insist on it), you used a wrong method to assess what is viable / balanced and what isn't - you threw away 90% of your data.

Again, our graphs don't contradict each other.

Here, let me try one more time --- you say: "I am taking the data from the VIABLE specs and comparing them. Your graph shows VASTLY much more imbalance when comparing the VIABLE specs above 1% representation, when that clearly isn't the case."

Our graphs show THE SAME imbalance. That imbalance manifests in numbers of different scale, because one of the graphs accumulates the other. When you are looking at your graphs and see a couple of specs near each other in the same column, you can not conclude that they are close to each other in terms of real power - you have to look into other columns, because the column you are looking into contains a lot of high-frequency noise (the graphs go up and down on your graph as wildly as they do NOT because the balance changes that way from one week to the other, most of the variation happens because people decide to play / not to play / play different specs and have different luck, that's it). Once you do that looking into different columns a couple of times, you will get the bright idea of "maybe I should try summing them to see the differences clearer". That's when you will get to my graph.

- - - Updated - - -

Last, I hear your point on the balance this season being comparable to that in other seasons. I won't even contest it, I don't need to. The balance has been bad and it continues to be bad. That's in the numbers.

[Krusza]

You didn't forget one (you forgot almost every DPS spec by that measure of "once went under 1%" if you insist on it), you used a wrong method to assess what is viable / balanced and what isn't - you threw away 90% of your data.

Again, our graphs don't contradict each other.

Here, let me try one more time --- you say: "I am taking the data from the VIABLE specs and comparing them. Your graph shows VASTLY much more imbalance when comparing the VIABLE specs above 1% representation, when that clearly isn't the case."

Our graphs show THE SAME imbalance. That imbalance manifests in numbers of different scale, because one of the graphs accumulates the other. When you are looking at your graphs and see a couple of specs near each other in the same column, you can not conclude that they are close to each other in terms of real power - you have to look into other columns, because the column you are looking into contains a lot of high-frequency noise (the graphs go up and down on your graph as wildly as they do NOT because the balance changes that way from one week to the other, most of the variation happens because people decide to play / not to play / play different specs and have different luck, that's it). Once you do that looking into different columns a couple of times, you will get the bright idea of "maybe I should try summing them to see the differences clearer". That's when you will get to my graph.

- - - Updated - - -

Last, I hear your point on the balance this season being comparable to that in other seasons. I won't even contest it, I don't need to. The balance has been bad and it continues to be bad. That's in the numbers.

Look at other graphs on the site from other seasons.

There is always a clear grouping with the unviable specs, there is commonly a large gap between a group of a few specs around a similar low percentage and a large gap between them and the next spec.

I didn't throw away 90% of my data, I'm comparing it to other seasons. I want you to take a look at the percentage differences, and the distribution, between these seasons:

(deleted as it took up too much room, just check the page)

You can see that balance is currently much better than other seasons on the archive, and I'd say it's fairly balanced.

You cannot expect 100% balance. That is incredibly stupid. Balance is better than it has been in the past, and that is demonstrated on this website. When something like arms warrior has 20% representation, that is the sign of a terribly balanced season. When the best spec is peaking at 7.9% representation like this season, you can say it's not THAT bad.

I know my graph doesn't contradict yours - I'm saying that 2200+ is a more accurate measure of measuring balance.

I accused you of cherry-picking graphs that suited your narrative of "look guys, balance is bad" despite there being better ways to measure balance. 2200+ indicates that people there have an idea of what they're doing at least.

You didn't forget one

Indeed, I actually looked again and saw that MM wasn't one to forget - It was above 2% as of the current date.

I'm not throwing out data - nearly every season there is clear a cutoff between a group of lowly percentaged specs and the next spec.

It's about comparing the range of representation percentage. There are always going to be unviable specs, if you can clearly see where those specs lie, the best you can do is compare the % range of representation.

[Crruor]

The holinka hate is so pointless, ashran was designed very well as a BG, people didnt like it because they had to do it but it was quite well done. Almost all changes done by holinka in the last 2 expansions were extremely good, catch up conquest, no pve gear mandetory in pvp, boxes in wod and so on. He got screwed by the class designers more then anything else.

Balance has almost no impact on the fun of pvp, pvp is fun if its fun, not when it balanced. Parts of wod were balanced extremely well, yet total shit to play. Class design is what matters, and do you really think holinka has the power to change class design?

Almost all the pvp aspects of the game he has control over are working very well, the stuff he cant control i.e pruning, class design, world pvp and so on are what he is getting hate for. Templates werent put into world pvp not because of the pvp, but because it would screw pve over. Classes have no buttons because of the direction of the game, not because of how he wants it.

The game is quite balanced at the moment, at least concerning 3v3.


I mean do you really blame the lack of abilities, the class gameplay and so on on the PVP(!) developer? Its clearly the fault of the pve part of the dev team. You can blame holinka for the lack of honour gear, honour talents (again, "qq they took away abilities and then gave them back via honour talents, that isnt content as those arent new talents its a cheap ripoff" isnt due to holinka, they removed the abilities for pve, the talents are his only way of giving them back), balance and sort of rewards. But very little else.


Pvp is fun or shit depending on the class designers, not the pvp dev, he just does the stuff around it!

[Omaski]

Ret was hard because it was poorly designed for PvP? You mean all that utility they had was bad PvP design? Right.

Yes Ret was, until legion, badly designed as a PvP spec. Ret was pigeonholed into a "support spec" which isnt a desirable role for PvP. Focusing a Ret, spammable CC or having dispells countered a Ret heavily. Nobody actually looks for "support" when constructing an arena/RBG team.

[shoegazing]

The holinka hate is so pointless, ashran was designed very well as a BG, people didnt like it because they had to do it but it was quite well done. Almost all changes done by holinka in the last 2 expansions were extremely good, catch up conquest, no pve gear mandetory in pvp, boxes in wod and so on. He got screwed by the class designers more then anything else.

Balance has almost no impact on the fun of pvp, pvp is fun if its fun, not when it balanced. Parts of wod were balanced extremely well, yet total shit to play. Class design is what matters, and do you really think holinka has the power to change class design?

Almost all the pvp aspects of the game he has control over are working very well, the stuff he cant control i.e pruning, class design, world pvp and so on are what he is getting hate for. Templates werent put into world pvp not because of the pvp, but because it would screw pve over. Classes have no buttons because of the direction of the game, not because of how he wants it.

The game is quite balanced at the moment, at least concerning 3v3.


I mean do you really blame the lack of abilities, the class gameplay and so on on the PVP(!) developer? Its clearly the fault of the pve part of the dev team. You can blame holinka for the lack of honour gear, honour talents (again, "qq they took away abilities and then gave them back via honour talents, that isnt content as those arent new talents its a cheap ripoff" isnt due to holinka, they removed the abilities for pve, the talents are his only way of giving them back), balance and sort of rewards. But very little else.


Pvp is fun or shit depending on the class designers, not the pvp dev, he just does the stuff around it!

1. Ashran is pretty terrible for most PvPers, but yeah hardcore PvPers weren't the target audience. It's 40v40 BG (large scale so I don't feel bad if I don't carry my own weight) filled with gimmicks (racing elephants around a circle? lol?) intended to be a gentle introduction to PvP for those who aren't already into it. It did decently at that, but the problem as you pointed out is that certain BiS gear was locked around RNG Ashran drops when competitive PvPers just want to q up for 3v3s and don't want to have their time wasted by this dumb gimmick.

2. Speaking of RNG gear, that IS something that Holinka can control that hasn't gone well in this xpac.

3. Yes balance changes have been more frequent and responsive in this xpac, largely due to the templates affording the PvP team the ability to perform their own tuning. The system isn't perfect and needs to have some changes made to it though. Stat customization is important. People like to experiment with different stats. Yeah there might be a cookie cutter 'best' build for your class but honestly that can vary quite a big based on whether you're doing large scale PvP or small scale PvP, and even within 3v3 arenas it can depend on the type of comp that you are playing. Do you want the stat that increases your burst? Or would you rather have better rot/spread pressure? This is a choice that should not have been taken from the players. Another issue is that these templates need to be active in duels because dueling should be a viable option for people trying to practice and learn different class mechanics.

4. Holinka is not to blame for ability pruning, that's 100% on Celestalon and the entire team of PvE class devs. However he can still comment on it. He can still say "we hear your concerns that class depth isn't what it used to be in PvP". And he still has control over the honor talents. You mention the complaints that pruned abilities were returned via honor talents, hah, I wish my class had it that lucky. Subtlety Rogues had something like 15 abilities pruned and only a handful were returned via Honor Talents. Most of our PvP talent tree is pretty passive and not very interesting. And there are many problematic PvP talents that encourage dumbed down gameplay and remove decision making from the player. Relentless, Autotrinket (Adaptation), Autobubble, Cut to the Chase, Pure of Heart, etc. The system itself is the right kind of system to offset the horrible pruning done by PvE devs, but the current implementation isn't achieving that. That's on Holinka and the PvP team.

[Deleted]

Yep, they are only going to answer questions like "y u not ad mor bg!!!" because it's easy to answer.

If they said "we are pruning more abilities to appease the casuals and make it easier to get into the game" there'd be an uproar.

They would probably come up with some other bullshit reason that pruning is good for the game because blah blah blah. Holinka seems to be the worst kinda of dev for pvp and Lore is just anoying.

[RelaZ]

I never said I completely filled out each weapon, only that I got the gold traits on each of them, in a short period of time. (Because I did.)

As far as your other concerns, RNG gear should not bother you as much as it is (same goes for most). Gear means next to nothing these days, especially when you are talking about going from 865 to 880 in a slot or two. Your desire to fill gear slots is an artifact of previous iterations of this game.

You didn't really get my point did you?

First off, in order to be competitive you need to fill out your artifact, all of it. At the very least all traits increase stamina which matters a lot more than some think.

Gear does matter, stop acting clueless. And the variance on my gear is 30 ilvls and if I'd been lucky I could've had about 12 or so higher total ilvl, just because of luck. Multiply that difference by 3 and it's a whopping 3.6% difference, on top of possible honor talent/trait disadvantages. Oh and in before "3% is nothing, gear doesn't matter", yeah so why dont we go ahead and nerf your spec by 3.6% and see how you like that, doesn't matter huh?

RNG gearing sucks, stop defending it.

Yep, they are only going to answer questions like "y u not ad mor bg!!!" because it's easy to answer.

If they said "we are pruning more abilities to appease the casuals and make it easier to get into the game" there'd be an uproar.

This, so much. They're staying away from all the hard questions regarding design because their answers would all be "Well, we disagree with you, we value casuals and PvErs opinion on PvP class design more - so fuck you" which would cause an uproar in the PvP community (which they of course want to avoid, they still want our $$$).

I'm certain about 90-95% of PvPers rated 2.2K+ (or even 2K+) think the current class design (philosophy) is retarded (everything from AoE in damage rotations to CC to mechanics, passives etc). The only ones defending the current design seems to be the "vanilla warrior, loved pvp back then havn't done any PvP content for 7 years - fuck cc, pillar hugging and skillfull gameplay" and the "I got 2k+ first time ever in legion <3" type of players.

The PvP community wants depth and skill back, Blizzard just don't care about the PvP community (so far), it's that simple.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes Ret was, until legion, badly designed as a PvP spec. Ret was pigeonholed into a "support spec" which isnt a desirable role for PvP. Focusing a Ret, spammable CC or having dispells countered a Ret heavily. Nobody actually looks for "support" when constructing an arena/RBG team.

What? Seriously? The role of the Ret spec is the exact same as it's always been, the only difference is the class got wheel chair'd. Blessing of Sanctuary, auto-bubble and damage while bop'd combined with the removal of other talents. Ret's worse of design wise than it's been for a long long time. Also Rets have had several times during the history when they've been good (s5, s11 and well all of wod they were decent - comes to mind), so claiming no one wants the ret toolkit is bullshit. Removing a classes weaknesses in favour of retard auto-mechanics is not good design.

[Krusza]

They would probably come up with some other bullshit reason that pruning is good for the game because blah blah blah. Holinka seems to be the worst kinda of dev for pvp and Lore is just anoying.

Idk to be honest, from my interactions with Lore and seeing him speak about the game in general, it seems like he actually has some idea about the game. He's not a PvP dev so he doesn't really have the power to do anything.

[Deleted]

Idk to be honest, from my interactions with Lore and seeing him speak about the game in general, it seems like he actually has some idea about the game. He's not a PvP dev so he doesn't really have the power to do anything.

Lore is the same guy who tried to defend that stat templates shouldnt be implemented in wpvp because fun? (wat?). He is also the guy picking the questions prolly.

[Krusza]

Lore is the same guy who tried to defend that stat templates shouldnt be implemented in wpvp because fun? (wat?). He is also the guy picking the questions prolly.

Their defense for not adding stat templates in world PvP was that they want gear to be powerful. I don't think they want to have gear completely irrelevant in all aspects of PvP.

Even as a long time world PvPer on the side, I don't mind it being broken. The stat templates still aren't balanced around 1v1, so it's not going to be good even if they implemented them.

Then again, I do like being underdog when possible in world PvP so it might just be the way I see it.

[Ohmega]

You didn't really get my point did you?

First off, in order to be competitive you need to fill out your artifact, all of it. At the very least all traits increase stamina which matters a lot more than some think.

Gear does matter, stop acting clueless. And the variance on my gear is 30 ilvls and if I'd been lucky I could've had about 12 or so higher total ilvl, just because of luck. Multiply that difference by 3 and it's a whopping 3.6% difference, on top of possible honor talent/trait disadvantages. Oh and in before "3% is nothing, gear doesn't matter", yeah so why dont we go ahead and nerf your spec by 3.6% and see how you like that, doesn't matter huh?

RNG gearing sucks, stop defending it.

I'm certain about 90-95% of PvPers rated 2.2K+ (or even 2K+) think the current class design (philosophy) is retarded (everything from AoE in damage rotations to CC to mechanics, passives etc). The only ones defending the current design seems to be the "vanilla warrior, loved pvp back then havn't done any PvP content for 7 years - fuck cc, pillar hugging and skillfull gameplay" and the "I got 2k+ first time ever in legion <3" type of players. .

The second I hit cap on both my hunter and my DK, I entered battlegrounds. I played Survival on the hunter and Unholy on the death knight. I topped the damage meters in both of those games, going 12-0 in one and 18-1 on the other. I leveled those characters from 100-110 in about three days a piece, and thus had pretty much zero artifact points. Let me rephrase that, I hit cap and entered battlegrounds without any decent gear and without any artifact traits and topped the damage meters. Gear is not as important as you make it out to be, and I would have no problem dealing with a 3.6% nerf to my class (I would not even notice it).

Every person I play with and have played with since Vanilla (each of us participating in arenas in each season, all above 2k - some of us as high as 2400 in various seasons) is of the mindset that Legion PvP is on the right track. I am of that mindset as well.

[sarkarin]

My own personal gripe was that he didn't talk about the gearing problem. If you're not highly rated you can't get good gear which alienates 90% players who can't get high rated (I'm one of them) but still want to PvP and get geared steadily.

There is so little on the horizon for PvP that it makes me think they are out of ideas entirely. It makes me angry because this is one of the most passionate and driven communities in the gaming world and it is failing to reach it's potential. There is a way to make PvP work for everyone and not break the game. We're not lacking ideas but we are lacking the willpower from the people in charge to address the problems.

Also, I can't help but feel aggrieved about how little there is in that Q&A given how much time has passed since release. I don't understand how such a small amount is done in such a huge amount of time. All of the things in that Q&A look like less than 2 days of officework. Unless Holinka has huge responsibilities outside of proposed PvP changes then we are looking at someone who basically does barely anything at all and he is in charge of this super important fucking thing called PvP that he is ruining for millions of players.

[Krusza]

The second I hit cap on both my hunter and my DK, I entered battlegrounds. I played Survival on the hunter and Unholy on the death knight. I topped the damage meters in both of those games, going 12-0 in one and 18-1 on the other. I leveled those characters from 100-110 in about three days a piece, and thus had pretty much zero artifact points. Let me rephrase that, I hit cap and entered battlegrounds without any decent gear and without any artifact traits and topped the damage meters. Gear is not as important as you make it out to be, and I would have no problem dealing with a 3.6% nerf to my class (I would not even notice it).

Every person I play with and have played with since Vanilla (each of us participating in arenas in each season, all above 2k - some of us as high as 2400 in various seasons) is of the mindset that Legion PvP is on the right track. I am of that mindset as well.

So you're fine with pruning and the dumbing down of the game in general?

- - - Updated - - -

My own personal gripe was that he didn't talk about the gearing problem. If you're not highly rated you can't get good gear which alienates 90% players who can't get high rated (I'm one of them) but still want to PvP and get geared steadily.

There is so little on the horizon for PvP that it makes me think they are out of ideas entirely. It makes me angry because this is one of the most passionate and driven communities in the gaming world and it is failing to reach it's potential. There is a way to make PvP work for everyone and not break the game. We're not lacking ideas but we are lacking the willpower from the people in charge to address the problems.

Also, I can't help but feel aggrieved about how little there is in that Q&A given how much time has passed since release. I don't understand how such a small amount is done in such a huge amount of time. All of the things in that Q&A look like less than 2 days of officework. Unless Holinka has huge responsibilities outside of proposed PvP changes then we are looking at someone who basically does barely anything at all and he is in charge of this super important fucking thing called PvP that he is ruining for millions of players.

The Q&A isn't the only way they talk about their ideas. Twitter and forums normally have a lot more substance.

The gearing problem is alleviated by the fact gear doesn't matter.

[netherflame]

Not surprising.

The fact they let incompetent people like this develope the game is why I will never play WoW again. it's beyond saving because the developers are fucking idiots. You can't fix the game when the B team working on it are halfwits

If you honestly think hes going to agree to make changes because of some fan question you are the halfwit, I'm sure they don't just sit in their meeting rooms scheming over how they will screw over players. If you don't understand how development actually works you should stick to the macro topics and not try to drill down into how they will be implemented because on the surface they are much easier to explain through. Given the age of this game and the amount of people that have most likely touched it there can be alot of unintended consequences when they make changes.

[Deleted]

If you honestly think hes going to agree to make changes because of some fan question you are the halfwit, I'm sure they don't just sit in their meeting rooms scheming over how they will screw over players. If you don't understand how development actually works you should stick to the macro topics and not try to drill down into how they will be implemented because on the surface they are much easier to explain through. Given the age of this game and the amount of people that have most likely touched it there can be alot of unintended consequences when they make changes.

Except they have 12 years experience, you'd think they learned something by now.

[Saverem]

Summary of Holinka's interview (see the front page - permalink):

* We are looking into A, B.
* We are thinking about C, D, E.
* We don't think we are going to do F. <Spends tons of time mulling over the complexities that are so first-level basic that it becomes clear this is the first time Holinka thinks about the topic.>
* That thing you are worried about is working fine, we just have to do a better job explaining how it works.
* We aren't sure about doing G, please send more feedback.
* We sometimes think about H. Don't know if we are going to do it.
* J is a real challenge. No commitments.
* The team is aware that you don't like K.
* By the way, it's all good. We found a metric on which PVP ladder in Legion looks fine compared to ladders of previous expansions. (Or maybe this is false and we just think nobody would pin us on the numbers.)

The only things Holinka said like "here, we did / are going to do this" are:

* Leveling PVP is going to reward more experience (a change of a multiplicative factor, 5 minutes of dev time).
* Rated weekly quests will have bonus rolls (a change of a flag on several quests, same as above, requires next to no time to do).
* They will show the title cutoffs by themselves (at best this is a very minor addition to the bnet API, at worst just a blog post).
* They are extending PVP cups (e-sport, bla bla bla, not something the dev team even does, but whatever).

These guys are officially doing nothing. They have a whole team and the amount of work they can show after several months is less than half of a work day of a single dev.

Disgusting.

But hey, if you pay him, he'll retire and live the rest of his life on his pension and the hard earned money you sent him!!!!!!

[Dizzeeyooo]

cute how this sub-forum is basically the same discussion happening in endless threads each time, until the legion pvp lovers get tired and afk until the next thread

[Divinexve]

pvp should be more realistic imo

[Deleted]

Their defense for not adding stat templates in world PvP was that they want gear to be powerful. I don't think they want to have gear completely irrelevant in all aspects of PvP.

Even as a long time world PvPer on the side, I don't mind it being broken. The stat templates still aren't balanced around 1v1, so it's not going to be good even if they implemented them.

Then again, I do like being underdog when possible in world PvP so it might just be the way I see it.

being oneshotted by dhs is not fun at all. At least make the stat templates enable during duels.

[shaunika123]

This is a terrible metaphor...did they remove a class? Or a whole damage dealing type (i.e. melee)...no. They're transitioning from having buttons that are situational to actually having to use all the buttons you have, again I don't quite understand what people are complaining when they say "lolz pruning sucks" feel like that's just a meme at this point haven't seen an actual GOOD example in months (and a lot has changed since then).

look at rogues to see how bad pruning is when it's done wrong.

for pve it's great, in fact i have more buttons to press than ever before

but what that basically entails, is that pvp is now also just a pve rotation of dps

we lost 3 CC abilities in one fell swoop