GC's spriest comments are disconcerting

[Yvaelle]

No, everyone can still be competitive. 99% of players will do better by playing better. The other 1% are the players in top 10 guilds, and those players are more likely to switch to a fotm class like lock to get that extra damage. 2-3% difference isn't a huge issue, it is not the reason you are or aren't killing bosses. If "topping the meters" is your idea of competitive, that's your issue, not the class. Just switch if you care that much.

This is a logical fallacy. Let's say you play... Football/Soccer (or pick your favourite sport) - the equivalent would be saying that only Spain and Germany should be allowed to complain about bad calls by the refs. Every other professional team, every university team, every kids team, and every for-fun game in the park all aren't good enough (in your eyes) to complain about an unfair game.

In reality, if the ref is the mother of one of your opponents, and she's clearly making biased calls - a 6 year old can see that and legitimately complain despite that the 6 year old is not Mesut Ozil. Just because it's a game in university, and they aren't pro - doesn't mean their desire to play a fair game, or their desire to win - is any less valid.

A shadowpriest can legitimately feel they are struggling with single target, come to the forums for help, talk directly to many of the best spriests in the world (not something footballers get to do) - and discover that, 'here is what you can improve, but you are right to be concerned to some degree. The Refs decided all Spanish players would grow 20% longer legs this season'.

People's concerns, informed by facts, are perfectly valid to express - without you attacking their raid progression. Topping the meter in single target isn't what anyone is asking for, right now we're bottoming the meter (ST) - and that's not fair either - given we don't top the meter on any style of fight. Since we're apparently not meant to compete with Locks for multi-dot, it follows that we should not suck at single target.

For example:

Iron Juggernaut is a single target fight, it's the closest thing to a Patchwerk this tier - note that Affliction is 60k above us, tied for second place (this has been a consistent trend all expansion). Shadow is the lowest top spec of any given class.

Some locks are below us, but any lock who cares about beating Iron Juggernaut is Affliction - which says those locks are either not trying, not informed, or both. Ditto for Hunters who do the fight Marksmen, when they could do 70k more by swapping to Beast Master. The only spec below us who could give legitimate complaint is Ele Shamans - because they can't easily swap Enhancement - and their complaint is with bad balance just as is ours - it's not a complaint against Shadow's contention of being bad at Single Target. Further, by exploring those logs a little more, the top Ele's are pulling 330k+ DPS, but quickly fall well below that - which suggests that Ele Shamans just aren't being brought to raids much by top guilds (access to BIS gear).

Edit: For example, here's General Nazgrim - probably our best fight this tier - Shadow does pretty well on it via multi-dotting, Cascade, and near-permanent ToF uptime (plus it's a damage buffed fight, which always multiplies off ToF for an inordinate Shadow bonus). We do pretty well on it, but to spot the Affliction Locks - you'll need to look 20k above us.

Interestingly, you'll also notice that as raids gear up, and mobs therefore die faster, Shadow's ToF uptime is dropping - so while all the other lines are gaining DPS each week, Shadow's plateau'd and is now beginning to actually lose DPS despite rising gear levels. So, as the tier progresses - Shadow even on our best encounters are being automatically nerfed by the gear increases of our raids - faster than the benefit of our own gear increases is improving us. I think that's also a perfectly legitimate complaint.

[justflayin]

No but doing comparable damage all the other dmg dealers in the raid is desirable. Sure there's a lot of qq going on, but a lot of it is legitimate. Fighting on the mters to be top dps is fun competition. Starting 10% behind is not fun.

[Elestia]

This coming from the man that thinks its neat when specs are allowed to shine in specific circumstances...

The devs so far have done a great job, but sometimes the things GC says are disconcerting and detrimental to their best design intent. Just look at what happened to DPS warriors. Warriors in MoP were actually designed to be actually competitive early in an expansion--unheard of. Instead, because they couldn't just nerf Taste for Blood in PvP, they nerfed it across the board, and ruined Warrior PvE viability permanently until 5.4.

The same can be said for Shadow Priests-- suffered low dps numbers due to badly built dots which don't do anything until the haste plateau of 8.4k. The only fights shadow were valuable in were multitarget, like elegon, and even then, that damage was mostly cascade--something not really even skill based.

It'd be great if GC could actually play a caster, and attempt to do the damage of even a mid-range damage Spriest. And then try to manage an optimal multidot scenario. If he can come back and say, 'wow that really is a bitch to get that kind of damage, gg'- which is what he would say, then maybe we could actually get somewhere in a conversation about class design.

All I know is I wanted to play a Shadow Priest this expansion. But I didn't. Why? They're so bad in MoP, that I wouldn't be able to handle being the suboptimal raid dps without hope of actually competing (despite being awesome, b/c shadow is awesome). My priest remains an alt, in 490 ilvl gear, barely able to eek out 60k dps that I was able to do with a 440 Ele Sham, 430 mage, or if I really wanted to brag my 424 balance druid (previous main).

I even sometimes get upset when my mage (540) (currently my main alt) is able to do the single target dps of my shaman (560) as frost. (It can also cleave pretty darn hard on 2-3 targets, where the sham does not quite as well.)

My main criticism of class balance, is not necessarily concept of class balance, but rather this pretending that there actually is class balance, where there is absolutely no consistency or lateral ties between specs at all. "Class balance" is basically lets see what happens and then we'll just rescale the inner workings of abilities, or n# of X stat=1%. This causes absolute bedlam in what primary stats and secondary stats say they do and what they actually do. For instance, easy example, Elemental Shaman: Crits do 250% damage. Well that's great. Critical strike must be worth a factor of 2.5. Wrong- because LvB always crits, you're going to have to subtract the percentage of your total damage that LvB does and multiply 2.5 against the remaining percentage of your total damage to realize an actual factor. Shadow priest, haste plateau? Basically the point where your dots tick one tick extra, and MB is about 1s GCD. Makes sense when you think about it, yet again very irritating that there is a point where stats just stop working, or don't work at all. Even more frustrating, when you're low level, only stacking haste and getting bad dps, because the devs have "balanced" for gearing past this break-point. Or Fire mages- continually nerfed patch by patch because crit was yielding exponentially more damage and huge combustions-- which is now such low DpT that its almost not worth wasting the GCD (for low levels of gear.)

The solution to this is to design abilities which benefit more from type of secondary stat than others, rather than this mashup of some kind of secondary spec synergy. For example, if you want strong dots, fast dots, stack as much haste as you want. You want strong burst damage / hard casts, stack crit. Essentially getting back to the basics Blizz said they had in mind for specs waaaay back during the mid to end of Wrath. Instead, there's still a lack of transparency, a lack of straightforward design, and a lack of balance. /end rant

[Caliph]

What makes me laugh about that statement is has he seen what arcane mages are like? With their mastery boosted dot (NT) - they can multidot as well as any other dot class (if not better), on top of having superb single target damage. To say that spriests can't pull too much single target damage because : why play a non dot; while ignoring the abilities of other classes to do just that. Why indeed, just roll arcane mage and get both. Ridiculous.

Normally i don't come down on him but that statement seems so out of touch with the reality of game currently.

This is true. I know that because my 87 mage is arcane and i can lay 4 NT (nether tempest) one x four mobs and then single target them and man they blow up fast. Yes it's only low level dungeons on normal mode but it's unmistakenly high multidot damage. Not to mention all of the cds and high single target dps. It's not even fair to tell you the truth.

[Drye]

They wont ever be able to balance us as long as our lvl 90 talents heal. They're just too strong.

[Yvaelle]

They wont ever be able to balance us as long as our lvl 90 talents heal. They're just too strong.

I think that's definitely part of the issue - but using Healthstones on cooldown yields 25k HPS as well - it just doesn't get reported. Add in that Locks have pretty significant selfhealing / Sacc Pact to negate mechanics - and their overall HPS, if we were counting Healthstones as their utility (which we Should) - is probably at least comparable, if not higher - than Shadows.

So, I can understand the concern that for example on the last fight Halo (which I was using mostly for damage anyways) did 74% of my 29k HPS - that seems pretty strong. On the other hand, we were all nomming Healthstones too, but that doesn't show up on the meter: that's a double standard.

It's less of a concern from the other Pures, but the other Pures don't occupy the same raid niche that we do: so they're less of a threat.

I'd be ok with level 90 healing nerf if it meant they'd compensate for that in other ways.

[justflayin]

And this is all without mentioning the continuous PVP nerfs that directly nerf PVE dps. "Spriests are too tanky" *removes dmg reduction from all classes* *gives locks a glyph option* Just...what? why?

[Murderxx]

I am pretty sure SWP only got nerfed because they clearly didn't expect to see 80%+ ToF uptimes on over half the fights on normal.

NOT true! please provide some logs to support your statement. I only can think of 3-4 fights where you can get +80% uptime on normals!

[Dierdre]

And this is all without mentioning the continuous PVP nerfs that directly nerf PVE dps. "Spriests are too tanky" *removes dmg reduction from all classes* *gives locks a glyph option* Just...what? why?

Too bursty: nerf Glyph of Mind Spike, nerf power infusion
Off-Healing is too powerful: Nerf our biggest raid utility
Multidot too strong: Nerf all the dots (then buff locks and mage bombs)
Ok, now shadow is undeniably crappy: Buff dots, nerf them next week.

And so on and so forth...

[Masochist]

i dont get why people make such a big deal over what gc says

he is not the only person that runs this game

if he was, tosan would still be bitching about getting one shot 10 seconds into a match

[Dierdre]

NOT true! please provide some logs to support your statement. I only can think of 3-4 fights where you can get +80% uptime on normals!

Maybe not 80%. But 60%+ is very achievable in Protectors, Norushen, Sha, Galakras, Shamans, Nazgrim, Spoils and Garrosh.

[Nigel Tufnel]

The SW nerf is 3-5% of our overall damage. It is not "sky is falling" worthy. Just shutup and play the game. You and 99.9% of the players playing this game don't play at a competitive level enough for the kinds of class balance changes you're crying for to make a difference.

Just shutup, play the game and stop comparing yourself to other classes, specs, players, raids, difficulty levels etc.

My jaw dropped when I read this. Surely he's trolling?

I know Yvaelle and others have answered it already but...

Your argument is demeaning to all those who aren't in the 0.1% of top hc raiding guilds. It's patronising bollocks. There are casual raiders who invest large amounts of time in progressing their characters, min-maxing etc. but for whatever reason (work, kids, hours available, whatever) choose not raid at the highest level. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to compete / participate on an equal playing field at the level they do choose to raid at.

The gap between top and bottom (single target dps) is too great. This is indisputable. "Bring the player, not the class" was a long time ago now and still the developers are ballsing it up.

[Keosen]

If X did as much damage as Y single target, there would be no reason to play Y

Can we stop this nonsensical logic please?

[Deleted]

Hybrid tax is still alive and well. They just don't talk about it anymore. It's been like this with every hybrid I've ever played. In Cata/FL elemental could almost top on one fight right after arcane mage, so of course they nerfed elemental, buffed mage for next patch. Warlocks have had some spec topping on most fights this expansion, so it should be pretty clear to everyone by now that regardless of what they say, they want warlocks in the top. I don't think they're so incompetent that they can't balance the specs if they really wanted to.

[Deleted]

Not long ago he preached the concept of bringin' the player and not the class and now he says this. Turbo facepalm.

[Aleaa]

easier way to increase single target dps is add spell like Haunt or Vendetta

harder way increase vt and swp base duration for free globals, increase DP dot partion damage with gradual magnification
(like agony) and increasy MF/MB/MSp damage

[Jax Omen]

They wont ever be able to balance us as long as our lvl 90 talents heal. They're just too strong.

Enhancement and Elemental have insanely strong healing talents (level 75 tier) and Enhance at least is the second-best melee dps spec for single target AND quite good at AoE as of 5.4.

Having healing talents does not mean you shouldn't be allowed to do real damage.

Honestly, what blizzard needs to do is buff Mind Flay ala Malefic Grasp. Give Mind Flay a damage increase for each of your dots on the target.

[Caliph]

Greg Street ‏@Ghostcrawler 21h
@H0TB0DI Class diversity? Why make a non dot spec if your ST damage is always going to hold back your AE?
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1:13 PM - 1 Oct 13 · Details


This is a GC retort to people lambasting him with facts. Perhaps we should change our argument to focus on how other single target kings can also effectively multidot and aoe close to spriests without all of the tab targetting. i'm looking at you mages, locks, druids, warriors. Perhaps that kind of data will make him move a little.

[Yvaelle]

Greg Street ‏@Ghostcrawler 21h
@H0TB0DI Class diversity? Why make a non dot spec if your ST damage is always going to hold back your AE?
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1:13 PM - 1 Oct 13 · Details


This is a GC retort to people lambasting him with facts. Perhaps we should change our argument to focus on how other single target kings can also effectively multidot and aoe close to spriests without all of the tab targetting. i'm looking at you mages, locks, druids, warriors. Perhaps that kind of data will make him move a little.

Ya.

For example, the top single target caster specs are Affliction and Arcane - Affliction beats us handily on mutli-dot, and is also one of the best at single target. Arcane is competitive with us on multi-dot (and will outscale us now that ToF uptime is beginning to decline for top guilds), but arcane is also the top single target spec.

By comparison, Shadow is well behind Affliction in multi-dot, tied with Arcane (for now), and.... last on single target. The question he's asking should be reversed.

[Forsay]

It looks like Affliction warlocks got Curse of Agony stealth-nerfed by 10-15%. (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...age-than-agony)
If this is true, then it's ~4-5% nerf to their multidot and ~2% nerf to single target. Atleast something. I'd prefer if they just buffed us , but nefing op specs is also a way to go..
And btw about Arcane mages, they are competive with us on multidot yeah, but when it comes to spell-cleave, they just destroy us.