Frost Mages have pretty much been super strong the entire expansion, and I'd say Fire Mages are right up there with them this season. Rogues have been pretty wild this season. Healers in general (Resto Druids generally being an exception) are also pretty silly this season.
But nothing's being done about it. Is this just a result of "MoP will fix it," behavior? If that's so, why have Frost Mages been so silly throughout the entire expansion?
In regards to more mechanics-based things, why haven't they really done much about Battlegrounds despite them flaunting Rated Battlegrounds as being a selling point for Cata? They've made some minor tweaks here and there, but the only significant change has been the graveyard change in Warsong Gulch. Actually, didn't they change graveyards in Twin Peaks as well? So that's two changes.
But people have been bitching about Battle for Gilneas pretty much all expansion (mostly because due to its nature, whoever is the first to get two bases typically wins) and I don't remember them doing much about it - something about the flag capture speed being too slow compared to map size and graveyard-to-flag distance.
Because all balance has been at major content patches, and any issues that have arisen in between then have been left. Some comps have become incredibly unbalanced since 4.3, but there have been no adjustments. Just look at ret-based triple dps comps. There have been screenshots of 130-150k WoG's, and there are comps that literally cannot win against a properly played triple, but Blizz have not only done nothing, but haven't even said anything. Or look at resto druids. They've needed throughput and/or survival buffs since 4.2 but didn't get any, and with the buffs to melee are in the worst position they've been in since S5 DK's removed hots. Blizz's response? "We'll look into it in 5.0". Zahrym even had some blue post saying roughly "people don't like their characters changing too much, so we won't change them too much".
They used to balance classes around arenas, no one can deny that. But with rated BGs the pressure decreased. So in a sense rated BGS saved PVP.
That wasn't actually fair- I did know why but I said what I said in order to get you to say something like this.
Your issue isn't that Blizzard has done nothing; it's that they haven't done enough for your satisfaction. So you've conflated nothing with not enough.
Blizzard admitted they messed up with gear and such this expansion a long time ago. And looking at the ATR, it's obvious that Rogues are only imbalanced because of gear.
The eternal complaint about Frost Mages continues, but reality hasn't borne it out yet. Frost Mages aren't over represented anywhere, and don't dominate comps. People complain because they are the class most capable of keeping them from playing. People complain about Frost Mages even when they win.
And Frost Mages have lost a lot of CC in MoP while other classes have gained methods of breaking it. But people continue to act like the changes aren't available and they'll just have to wait until MoP launches before they know anything.
they need to make a separate arena for us keyboard turners who cant get past 1800
I'm a little divided on the OP's statement.
If they're going to balance it at all, they may as well balance it from a micro sample as much as possible, it's quite complex I wouldn't know how to go about it really.
The real issue here is that Blizzard are insanely slow to respond to PvP imbalances anyway, for example this season RBGs have gotten absurdly out of hand due to PvE heroic item abuse to the point where you won't get into a good team without the legendary staff or daggers, or heroic cunning for casters.
I can agree with what you said. I'm sorry if it sounded like I was saying Frost Mages are overpowered - arena stats have borne out that they aren't overpowered, but they are immensely frustrating to deal with... though I'd say that applies to Fire Mages as well (less because you're controlled 98% of the time than you can't fucking catch the little prick.) Which raises an interesting question - is it okay for a spec to be frustrating as hell to fight against as long as it isn't actually overpowered?
As for Blizzard not doing enough - yeah, they definitely haven't done enough. I'd also say you could feasibly call it "nothing," because problems have existed the entire expansion - in many cases problems they have acknowledged - and haven't had anything be done about them.
Listen, PizzaSHARK, reading all of your posts is kind of frustrating, and stands against just about anything I stand against, this game is insanely frustrating as is, but that's because the satisfaction of beating such teams is just that much greater, I believe you are quite too shalow to understand that with true 3v3/5v5 balance RBGs would pale, however they'd be alot more balanced than now, and to make it even worse you assume a great deal of stuff, even more than the people who are guessing that Blizzard doesn't give a fuck.
Warriors were the prime imbalance in this expansion followed by LS combos, they've both been nerfed quite badly, however they still stand their ground, granted LS combos are still strong as hell, whereas warriors are in a spot far below. You don't grasp that Blizzard has different numbers, and, you forget that blizzard doesn't actually pay attention to what's happening at the top over and over..
I feel it doesn't matter as long as I can win, there isn't a single combo or class that's unbeatable in this game at the moment, it's better than s9 and better than s10, but it's worse than s6/7, however way better for what I pay so I don't mind.
MoP will fix it though, as one of the main selling points is arena becoming an eSport, while you think RBGs would do better, they're actually really boring to watch and it's a strategy fight, more than an actual fight, whereas arena has constant back and forth RBG's are more dramatic, and way more frustrating to watch, because of stalemates and constant gay play resulting in breaking the design. To put it simple RBG would be spat on by most of the pvp community, as it is today, the very pinnacle of pvp spits on all rbgs and only does them because they don't do arena as they're sitting ratings, with a rating decay they'd have something to do, and RBGs would die out(Not something I don't welcome). RBGs are fun, for some, great for others, but incredibly boring and frustrating for every inferior class. Try to understand why arena is the pinnacle, and why skill is shown there, whereas errors are permitted and easier to look after in rbg's. I believe it's quite easy to do RBGs with a good leader, whereas arena never will be that easy, not where it actually becomes a challenge.
afflocks that cry about balance in pvp make me sad.
WoW PvP will never be taken seriously as an eSport as long as they're still designing the game around PvE. There's just no way it'd ever be balanced enough. You could separate things into an "eSport build" and a "live build" but then that'd result in Blizzard designing and balancing two games, pretty much. Blizzard would also need to develop and design better casting tools, because arenas are a clusterfuck right now - remember the arena matches back at that Blizzcon? Game was over in a few seconds, and even the casters didn't really have time to react until well after it'd happened. There was no lead-up, no tension-building: just blam, Deep Freeze, game over. Exciting!
What you forgot is that I said that the RBG system needs work. None of the BG maps have had a real, hard, serious review to ensure they're setup for competition. At most, we've had a couple of fairly minor terrain alterations for CTF to prevent graveyard cheese (well, ONE kind of graveyard cheese), and I think that's about it for any kind of significant changes.
RBGs definitely need work, and if no work was done on them, arena would absolutely be more fun to watch. But to say that team deathmatch would be as exciting, interesting, and involved as CTF or Conquest if Blizzard actually put in some effort? No way, man; you need to go watch some professional UT or Quake CTF and see what I'm talking about.
But in TBC the game was designed around pvp, same goes for WoTLK, and well yeah I tell you watched the blizzcon matches I said, yep that was the times back then. Today it takes quite abit more now, which is actually a better design imo, slower but better, maybe cata arena was a gathering of data so they could fix it all up duration wise.
I don't know if you've watched the recent blizzcon, but it was a hell of alot more fun to watch and easier to pay attention to, and tons more back n forth, unlike wotlk where it was 100-0 or nothing, the reason the system is so flawed is because they don't have a moving camera, they only have focus cameras that move with the players, and the players don't really give a good view. Not to mention some of the shoutcasters if not all of them were preety horrible at actually following arena and had little clue at all(EU female shoutcaster anyone?).
The NAO spectator mod is actually quite a bit better than the blizzard one, or well I'd have to say it's the russian mod, but I have no idea what the russian companies name is =(. And perhaps you should try playing quake and the other games, it's so easy to cheese/camp.
I admit I really hated when Dakkroth's MLS beat EG's shadowplay on the cheese tactic running around fuckin dalaran sewers(stupid map as hell) on blizzcon, that seems a hell of alot easier to watch. And to be clear I have friends that play professional quake, and while it might be fun for some to watch that, I find it rather boring to watch FPS streams and tournaments, all fps games are so boring to me, as what it boils down to in the end is how fast do you aim/shoot. My friends all like deathmatch better, a free for all game is insanely more fun than a team match in all of the fps's anyway.
Again you forgot the CC aspect of Arena and that essentially it is better than CTF or Conquest style. Thinking about it you seem not to understand that arena is more about controll, reacting to enemy actions and situations, it's more intense than an FPS, in an FPS there is no real coordination apart from movement, an arena swap is alot more intense than an FPS CTF attack, think about it. RBGs are just too large for the type of pvp that is currently in WoW, therefore they can't really play that big of a role, as they are, and will be impossible to balance.
afflocks that cry about balance in pvp make me sad.
The same issue exists for Rogues and to a lesser extent Warlocks- And I think the jury is out on it.
Obviously, classes that have heavy CC, even if their damage is terribly low, are judged harsher than say a giant bomb burst class like Ret.
Yeah, but if you ask a Feral Druid, they'll tell you their class has changed twice is crazy significant ways.As for Blizzard not doing enough - yeah, they definitely haven't done enough. I'd also say you could feasibly call it "nothing," because problems have existed the entire expansion - in many cases problems they have acknowledged - and haven't had anything be done about them.
But what's been an issue the whole expansion? Not Rogues and not Frost Mages. Twin Peaks graveyards maybe, but I don't think they're too bad. And the issue with Gilneas is a design thing that has to be tweaked in some significant way.
I'd say that if an issue was actually an issue for the whole expansion, then it was an issue that couldn't be tweaked (hotfixed) or patched.
Which begs the question of: how did this survive beta? But I think everyone knows the Cataclysm beta was rushed (Cata seemed to be kicked out the door well before it was ready, because money), and I guess it could've been something that didn't become apparent until after several months.
Honestly, I'd just settle for at least some transparency; it's so much easier to understand why they're doing what they're doing when they're explaining it. They did this in the SC2 beta and it was fantastic; instead of having some kind of knee-jerk OMFG ROKIT BLACK GUY NOT OP WTF BLIZZ reaction to a change being made, you can read the "We felt this aspect of Rokit Black Guy was too strong, so we changed it like this to try and fix that" and have an understanding.
On the other hand, it seems like any time Ghostcrawler (or anyone else) pops in to tell players what's on their mind, they get thrown under a bus by the people who aren't interested in balance and just want their class to be "the best," whether they're aware of that desire or not.
Really? You don't see it? Like.. every content patch is PvE and they barely gives anything new to PvP once every expansion?
Quite honestly, Battlegrounds, Arenas will now compete with.. pet battle system as stuff to do when you're not doing PvE.
Don't get me wrong, you can actually skip PvE completely now in WoW except level 1-10, and I do enjoy it, but it's never been the main focus of this game.
Putting aside the hyperbole and completely unfounded statements, the only issue I've seen that's substantial is the BoF as it applies to rateds, if it's an issue at all.
Nothing else really comes up that's not an expansion type design issue. And beta is too far done for expansion level changes because it doesn't just take a week or two weeks to pull it off.
They have been transparent. I can't think of a single issue (once again outside BfG) that hasn't been addressed.Honestly, I'd just settle for at least some transparency; it's so much easier to understand why they're doing what they're doing when they're explaining it. They did this in the SC2 beta and it was fantastic; instead of having some kind of knee-jerk OMFG ROKIT BLACK GUY NOT OP WTF BLIZZ reaction to a change being made, you can read the "We felt this aspect of Rokit Black Guy was too strong, so we changed it like this to try and fix that" and have an understanding.
On the other hand, it seems like any time Ghostcrawler (or anyone else) pops in to tell players what's on their mind, they get thrown under a bus by the people who aren't interested in balance and just want their class to be "the best," whether they're aware of that desire or not.
Your issue is that you give Blizzard more credit than they deserve.
When they constantly promise changes for the better but deliver changes for the worse, people like Pizzashark decide that not doing enough, or making things worse is pretty much equivalent to doing nothing at all.
I'll site: burst, CC and the dispel system. All things that were on the table to be changed for Cataclysm but instead were either utterly ignored or exacerbated.
And if I'm remembering correctly, I remember you specifically saying something about Blizzard not being transparent enough earlier today Stanton.
Last edited by Flaks; 2012-05-29 at 07:46 AM.
Originally Posted by High Overlord Saurfangi7-6700 @2.8GHz | Nvidia GTX 960M | 16GB DDR4-2400MHz | 1 TB Toshiba SSD| Dell XPS 15
- A revamp of the dispel system was cited as being one of the major planned changes for Cataclysm, specifically that "dispelling would be a decision." As far as I'm aware, dispelling is still "is your teammate debuffed? k, dispel it."
- Similarly, healing was supposed to be about decision-making and be less of a brainless "mash heals, get points" system like it was in WotLK. That actually happened... for one season. Once people became aware that INT was a god stat (and were able to get enough of it), mana ceased being a concern. I don't really remember seeing anything by Blizzard admitting that this was an issue in PvP (I saw an admission of it in regards to raiding, but it didn't touch on the effects it's having on PvP), and they certainly haven't made any efforts to do something about it.
- They've been well aware that Frost Mages, if not necessarily overpowered, have been enormously frustrating for players to deal with throughout the expansion, and yet they never really stuck with it. They did implement some somewhat minor changes with diminishing returns timers earlier, but that still didn't really make Frost Mages go from "holy motherfucking horsedicks I wish I could play my game," to "okay this is acceptable!" I'd wager there are other examples of these kinds of things existing (things that are not necessarily overpowered, but are at the very least extremely frustrating to play against), but I think everyone accepts Frost Mages as being a concrete example.
- People have been pointing out Rogues as being silly this particular season for quite a while, and I still haven't even seen an acknowledgement of that, let alone anything saying they're planning on even doing anything about it. You mentioned Retadins being burst machines, and I've seen some pretty silly arena videos of Fire Mages, too. Even if 90% of the stuff we see is just illegitimate whining, what about that other 10%?
I don't know man. I really, really want to believe that Blizzard's working on things and I want to have faith that they'll be able to get things fixed in a reasonable amount of time once they're determined to be problems but I just don't have the kind of faith in Blizzard that you seemingly do.
I dunno, maybe things will be improved with MoP, but at this point I'm still not even sure I'll be getting MoP... I guess I'll have to wait until level 90 premade characters are available for me to PvP with to see if it'll be worth my money.