Hey, I wanted to discuss the problem with burst damage in arena or basicly PvP in general once again, sadly I'm banned from the official forums so I had to post it here. Maybe someone would be kind enough to copy it over to the forums?
Also incoming wall of text.
1. Burstdamage troughout the Expansions
2. Burst Damage in 1v1 situations compared to 3v3 situations
3. Control troughout the Expansions
4. Control in 1v1 situations compared to 3v3 situations
5. Critical Strike Mechanics
6. The problems listed and how to address them
Burstdamage troughout the Expansions:
People tend to complain more and more about the current burst damage of various classes especially in arena. People get killed in several seconds due to people activating several offensive cooldowns at ones, focussing one target with them.
However if you are playing the game for a long time you will actually see they have nerfed burst damage every expansion in PvP. All the time the burst damage gets lowered but people don't seem to notice/appreciate it. Compare it to Vanilla and TBC:
Skip to 17:00 http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=27354 This player oneshotted people on his level. An ability without cooldown. No offensive cooldowns, no proccs yet it does around 70-90% of the enemies health.
TBC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14sFYHIKpX0 2k crits occured a lot more often but resilience was implemented, the healthpool was more than doubled.
WotlK: Healers were really strong in WotlK especially holypaladins or double healer combos in arena. Spamming dispel on a warrior with 2 heals was pretty much overkill, burst pretty much stayed the same as in TBC but healing and other mechanics got "stronger"
Cataclysm: Burst was reduced but a lot instant crowd control was added to the game, increasing the pressure of enemies while also providing more and more selfheal to classes which made combos like triple dps viable
What does all this mean? Damage itself is not the current problem we have. Burst becomes a problem in PvP when there is: too much selfheal (lol what burst is a problem when selfheal increases?), too much instant CC, cooldown stacking(hence why PoM+Arcane Power was nerfed in WotlK)
2. Burstdamage in 1v1 situations compared to 3v3
The immense decrease in burst damage in the game can be noticed especially good if you are dueling someone, some duels last very long especially moonkins and warriors have a very good selfhealing and no one kills eachother within 10 seconds of a duel due to popping cooldowns. Also it is much more easier to control the enemy in 1v1, allowing it to ruin his burst incase he pops everything at once.
Now if we shift the same thing to 3v3 arena. 2 People popping both of their cooldowns, focussing one target. They both provide immense amounts of damage and even if you stop one player there still is another one bursting. 2v2 arena just confirms this. Matches last forever and healers are near invincible due to it only being one DPS.
What this means is not the damage itself is the problem but the amount of players. Burst is not too much but it becomes too much when multiple people do it.
3. Control troughout the Expansions
Now basicly we analyzed that burst damage got lower and lower but selfheal increased. This means more uptime for DPS classes to deal damage before they die or have to play defensive. Aswell as the fact that damage itself is not the problem but the amount of players. Now we will continue with CC
TBC gave us silencing shot, shadowfury and cyclone which is one of the strongest CC abilities due to it preventing bubble, being undispellable, not breaking and even stopping heals and mana regen. This is okayish 1 good CC in the whole expansion was added, now let's take a look at WotlK
Deepfreeze 5 second instant CC
Shockwave 4 second instant CC
Hex 10 second CC
Strangulate 5 second instant CC
Freezing Arrow which now allowed hunters to have a ranged scatter+trap
Hungering Cold 10 second instant (AoE!!) CC
Predator's Swiftness which now allowed Cyclone to be used as another form of instant CC
Shadowdance which allowed rogue to spread a lot of his cheapshots in arena effectively locking out 2 or even 3 people at the same time.
Psychic Horror 4 second instant CC
This is a huge raise in crowd control while not really reducing the damage much but giving more classes selfheal to heal against it. However most selfheal does not work while being CC'ed or can't be activated while CC'ed.
Control in 1v1 situations compared to 3v3 situations.
Cataclysm and MoP brought us even more instant CC and selfheal instead of reducing overall damage. In 1on1 CC is not that much of a problem due to classes having mostly CC's of the same school like fear or stun effects but the moment another player with a different school of CC's assists in providing more CC which does not DR eachother along with the burst we talked about earlier it starts to become a huge problem.
Critical Strike Mechanics
Another problem that has not been discussed much in my opinion is abilities/mechanics/talents that allow an abillity to crit guaranteed or with a very high chance. Examples are:
Killing Machine (DK
Recklessness (Warrior)
Shatter mechanic (Mage)
Rogue talents/mechanics
Chaosbolt (Warlock)
If we take a close look. What do we notice? All classes that have these mechanics received a lot of complain about their damage. Cooldowns that increase the overall damage along with these mechanics result in too much burst due to several people critting someone all the time with damage increasing cooldowns. Some arena combos just prove this aswell:
TSG
Mage+Warr+Rshaman
RMP
6. The problems listed and how to address them
- Too much instant CC -AND- selfhealing
- Not enough damage reduction (This was started to being adressed again as we seen over the last couple weeks/months, and it turned out much better)
- Cooldown stacking aswell as mechanics that increase your crit chance by a lot even with these offensive cooldowns.
- Two people at the same time provide too much damage against a single target
1. Tune down instant CC AND selfhealing.
2. Keep adressing nerfs in damage instead of providing more selfheal and CC to counteract against it. Eventually shift some damage to DoT damage like it was done for lynx rush
3. Stop some cooldowns with stacking or disable crit increasing mechanics while certain cooldowns are active. E.g Recklessness doesn't work with Avatar and Trinket but with Skullbanner. Killing Machine doesn't work with Pillars of Frost + Trinket or only provides 30% more critical strike while those effects are active instead of 100%
4. Implement a whole new mechanic: 2 People attacking a target at the same time reduces their damage done by 20% of each individual OR If you are focussed implement a buff that reduces damage taken from each individual source by 20% OR turn hard hitting abilities into cleave effects but with 20-50% less damage
This are just some -SUGGESTIONS- I came up with. I'm really interested in other people's opinions but please no flames and if you think these suggestions are not good please explain why and what can be done instead.
Also as I said I'd be happy if someone posted this on the real forums :c
Greetings,
Fleepz