1. #1
    Deleted

    The Problem with Burst in Arena

    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

  2. #2
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    One thing you did mention is rogues spreading CS in Sdance. While this is very powerful CC, the rogue must sacrifice a fair amount of damage (not so much now, ambush hits like a wet noodle). I think there should be more choices like that, where the player has to choose control or damage. Another CC you forgot to mention is rogue stun -> sap.

    Concerning what you said about the damage output for some classes, people who complain about other classes damage rarely have even touched that class, much less understand it. A prime example is CB, 3 sec cast time should be enough for someone to LoS, interupt, silence, stun, etc. and the warlock's damage outside of their burst is not stellar. As for the rogue, all the abilities that had baked in crit were all abilities that had position requirements. The rogue was not meant to use those abilities all the time, but when they could, it was meant to hurt.

    My main beef with self healing is really only second wind. Doesnt need to be activated, no cooldown, no max durration and it is extremely potent in combination with def stance. In 4.3 rogues could spec to make recup godly (I know I did :P) but it was over nerfed in 5.0, just like the rest of the rogue's abilities. I'm more than fine with self healing with things like ember tap, large instant heal but they give up a ton of damage to do so. I will say this a million times if I have to: rogues were not the problem in 4.3, it was the gear scaling + free legendary + OP pve trink.

    Sorry if this ends up looking like walls of text and for any typos, I am typing on my iPod.
    Why is there no "Demonhunter" hero class yet? He was only the coolest hero in WC3. Get busy Blizzard.

  3. #3
    You know what, I was going to reply with something along the lines of "Obviously you haven't been pvping and looking at warriors and cleave teams and whatnot."

    Then I thought about what's getting nerfed this patch.

    It is almost exclusively survivability and cc. Very few people are seeing their overall damage or even their burst damage reduced; some classes are seeing buffs to one or both.

    I don't know that second wind needs to be nerfed, we'll see if the nerf to Dstance will do it. The problem with warriors as opposed to other melee is that they have no other self healing outside of 2nd wind. Pallies, kitties, Enhancement, DKs, all have some sort of on demand self heal. Warriors *could* take Impending victory, but why would they with 2nd wind available.

    The biggest problem I see right now is how strong cleaves are, they are very hard to peel, in many cases. I don't think balanced comps or caster cleaves are as strong as cleaves and I think it's not due to damage, but things like AMS, Recklessness, Divine Shield, freedom, etc. And then the needto peel both the BM hunter and his pet off of someone, cuz the pet does so much damage. Well, that's just plain irritating.

    I don't think the solution is to do less damage when multiple people are attacking the same source, that's an odd solution; I don't think it would be easy to do technically, for one, and I think it would severely limit playstyle options.

    In my MLS team we sometimes split damage to drain mana from the healer, and sometimes burst one target to get cds, you nerf our damage on that one target by 20% and we may not be forcing cds. I just don't think it's a workable solution.

    I also don't like removing CD stacking. It gives options. do you blow everything, and risk being without damage cds for several minutes, trying to get a kill? Do you stagger them for increased pressure. The answer is to lower overall damage and healing, not cd stacking.

    agree completely on instant cc, should be few and far between, with long (30 second plus) cds.

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