Patch 3.0.2 - On Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

[Varithorn1]

So opening spots for the previously underdog specs is indeed GOOD.
Thinking of it as bad because you are less wanted now is SELFISH.

So shadow priests being out of a raid spot is a good thing? I like your thinking. If this goes live, a large amount of the hardcore playerbase will vanish to play warhammer.

[Karpalo]

Well, judging by the way it's written, it's not a mechanic to be tested on the PTR/Beta and then removed/changed/tweaked based on feedback. It's something that will go live no matter what.

And it would be a lie to say that I'm not a casual, but I'm still raiding alot, and probably gonna get my 5th T6 item soon. So I KNOW how you and the other guys feel, I felt the same way initially, but instead of thinking how your raid utility got nerfed, think of how other specs' utilities got buffed to now compare to how imba you are. This does make you less imba now, but that's just to let other people enjoy the game by getting them some raid spots which were ninja'd by utility classes like you.

So opening spots for the previously underdog specs is indeed GOOD.
Thinking of it as bad because you are less wanted now is SELFISH.

Apart from the fact that it`s still not balanced. All this will change it will make certain classes UN-usable unless they go over with some drastic changes.

What really happened here. Blizzard has to rush the 3.0 on live servers cause WAR is about to be published. And they couldnt balance out certain problem classes in time so they came up with this bullshit. I mean week or 2 ago they reworked imp scorch for fire tree and now they make it indentical with frost tree one? This idea has to be pretty fresh and doesnt seem too well thought out if im honest.

[Valance]

I really really really want to rant...but Im going to test this first. I will bet with 10million players they did alot of internal testing before they would make changes like this because if done poorly it could ruin the game.

Valance

[Tigercat]

I like this change.
Really.
What are you people crying about?
Dumbing down the game?

A dumb game is a game that lets you form a raid based on what classes give the most utility and dps.
A smart game is a game that lets you form a raid based on player skills, where classes that share the same amount of utility also have equal DPS-potential.

Shadow priests aren't dead because there's no reason taking a retadin or a surv hunter if you can provide better DPS, which is now possible because as I said, DPS potential is based on your raid utility.

Instead of throwing shit at every change in this game, be it big or small, remember that QQing will get you nowhere by the fact that it's changed, PERIOD, and you can do nothing about it, so you better start embracing that fact, understand that it's actually a good change, love it, and keep playing the fucking game.
If you can't, just quit.

Changes these big aren't made to anger the players, they are made to make them happier, so players would keep playing and pay subscription fee so Blizzard could get more money.
And Blizzard is really good at getting more money.
So even you really really honestly truly think this change is teh sux, people will still play just as much if not more as they did before that change.

I'm not trying to make you guys angrier, I'm just trying to explain to you that Blizzard simply won't do such a drastic change in game mechanics unless they were absolutely sure it's a better, more profitable solution.
I'm not saying they're always doing stuff right, obviously. They still have a lot of phail history, but was mainly on PTRs and eventually every content patch was completely cleaned of phails (that's what PTRs are for), and the game you play now is the combined result of all those patches. And there wasn't any point in the game where it saw a downfall because of a big bad change in some content patch. That's because Blizzard is a good company, they wouldn't let such a big change make it into such a big patch unless it was clearly an upgrade.

So by reading that post in the front page you can easily realize that it's not just a thing Blizzard is testing to see if it's actually a better solution. It's a mechanic that WILL be implemented in 3.0.X, and it wouldn't be if if Blizzard didn't think it's good. And what Blizzard thinks is good = is also good for you, whether it takes you days or months to realize that. Because most of you will keep playing, even Shadow Priests :P, and you will still have fun playing despite your furious QQs, and believe me, after this change you will have more fun.

Wow, you should run for office. You just typed all of that, without actually saying a damn thing.

/le sigh

[Karpalo]

I really really really want to rant...but Im going to test this first. I will bet with 10million players they did alot of internal testing before they would make changes like this because if done poorly it could ruin the game.

Valance

Yeah clearly they did a lot of their "internal testing"

[Axalrofl]

APRIL FOOLS.

Oh shit, it's August...

[Zokten]

Funny thats the same way a Survival hunter feels right now.

Wha? Survival hunter > then SP so idk what your talking about.

I like this change.
Really.
What are you people crying about?
Dumbing down the game?

A dumb game is a game that lets you form a raid based on what classes give the most utility and dps.
A smart game is a game that lets you form a raid based on player skills, where classes that share the same amount of utility also have equal DPS-potential.

Shadow priests aren't dead because there's no reason taking a retadin or a surv hunter if you can provide better DPS, which is now possible because as I said, DPS potential is based on your raid utility.

Instead of throwing shit at every change in this game, be it big or small, remember that QQing will get you nowhere by the fact that it's changed, PERIOD, and you can do nothing about it, so you better start embracing that fact, understand that it's actually a good change, love it, and keep playing the fucking game.
If you can't, just quit.

Changes these big aren't made to anger the players, they are made to make them happier, so players would keep playing and pay subscription fee so Blizzard could get more money.
And Blizzard is really good at getting more money.
So even you really really honestly truly think this change is teh sux, people will still play just as much if not more as they did before that change.

I'm not trying to make you guys angrier, I'm just trying to explain to you that Blizzard simply won't do such a drastic change in game mechanics unless they were absolutely sure it's a better, more profitable solution.
I'm not saying they're always doing stuff right, obviously. They still have a lot of phail history, but was mainly on PTRs and eventually every content patch was completely cleaned of phails (that's what PTRs are for), and the game you play now is the combined result of all those patches. And there wasn't any point in the game where it saw a downfall because of a big bad change in some content patch. That's because Blizzard is a good company, they wouldn't let such a big change make it into such a big patch unless it was clearly an upgrade.

So by reading that post in the front page you can easily realize that it's not just a thing Blizzard is testing to see if it's actually a better solution. It's a mechanic that WILL be implemented in 3.0.X, and it wouldn't be if if Blizzard didn't think it's good. And what Blizzard thinks is good = is also good for you, whether it takes you days or months to realize that. Because most of you will keep playing, even Shadow Priests :P, and you will still have fun playing despite your furious QQs, and believe me, after this change you will have more fun.

Fail post fails.

[player404]

So shadow priests being out of a raid spot is a good thing? I like your thinking. If this goes live, a large amount of the hardcore playerbase will vanish to play warhammer.

Thinking of it as bad because you are less wanted now is SELFISH.

I suggest you to actually read the posts you are quoting from.
And a large amount of the hardcore playerbase will vanish to play warhammer regardless of this change I think...

[Varithorn1]

I did a little thing called sarcasm back there.

[bbr]

OK, this change just made the hunter pet worms and wasps completely useless then.

No change for rogues, as we weren't allowed to stack our expose armor on top of the tanks ANYWAY.

/sigh.

-

These didnt stack anyway : Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike

Ranged Attack Power Buff: what about improved hunter's mark?

Attack Power Buff (Flat Add): Battle Shout, Blessing of Might : Ack, damnit >_<

Stamina Buff: Power Word: Fortitude : does this mean the battle song in sunwell and stamina scrolls will now stack with fort?

Health Buff: Commanding Shout, Blood Pact : Lame....

Percentage Increase Healing Received Buff: Tree of Life, Improved Devotion Aura : huh that's new.

Cast Speed Slow: Curse of Tongues, Slow, Mind-numbing Poison. : These already didn't stack iirc.


--

Shadow Weaving: Buffs only self. : sigh
Improved Shadow Bolt: Buffs only self. : le sigh
Shadow Embrace: Buffs only self. : oh ffs..
Expose Weakness: Buffs only self. : Bye bye survival hunters. The 1 reason to bring their nurfed DPS along gone out of the window !!!! What is blizzard thinking...

Improved Faerie Fire: No longer benefits melee and ranged hit chance, only spell hit. : WTF.... >_< Nerf melee much?

Improved Hunter's Mark: No longer grants melee attack power. : I guess that answers the earlier question...>_< more melee nerfs ftl.

Heroism: / Bloodlust: Cannot be recast while caster has Sated debuff, and those with Sated debuff cannot be affected by it. : Much like the tinnitus debuff.. they're nerfing our bloodlust.

Vampiric Touch: / Hunting Party: / Judgements of the Wise: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on Judging. Why on earth nerf this?


--

Again, not a single word about rogues.

[Mäkelä]

We all knew something like this was going to be implemented when they first said they were making most buffs/auras raid-wide.

It's also impossible to say that any class will get shafted before all the class changes get finalized.

These changes also in no way make it easier to balance raids, at least for those of us in the hardcore camp, as each raid buff/debuff slot should have the BEST of that slot available.

Furthermore, encounters with multiple bosses (Thad), or bosses with a lot of adds (Kel), mean that you'll benefit from having multiple classes that share a debuff slot.

Classes that are seeing nerfs to their raid utility will probably see their dps increase quite a bit. Classes gaining more utility might see their dps drop.

If WotLK progression is anything like TBC progression it will also mean that spec desirability will change for each raiding tier; i.e. mage's frost-fire-frost-fire in TBC, with arcane somewhere in there at some point I recall.

Though what do I know? I'm a healer, and those are always needed. :P

Edit addendum:

These changes also greatly benefit small guilds who desire to go with 10-man progression. Damn casuals, getting their casual buffs.

[Mandible]

Can only say that so far it sounds like things will be abit more boring since we can't stack so many things anymore, and as said some of the pets are becoming semi useless, seeing as you most likely wouldn't have a raid without a prot warr or rogue able to place a higher armor debuff on the target at hand instead of using a pet.

You could however imagine a raid with a feral and a pala tank, or dk for that matter and a rogue in raid so expose armor would have some benefit there.

The mana regen makes me wonder ALOT...

One "funny" thing I could notice is that the priest racials Hex of Weakness and Touch of Weakness wasn't even mentioned at all as either damage modifyer or healing modifyer debuffs. Which I take as a kick in the head really.

[Mäkelä]

Call of the Wild (Tenacious pet talent) also wasn't listed on there, and it is a party buff currently...

[Erlon]

So in wotlk you will stack up tanks and healers as needed with as few support classes as possible to get all possible buffs and fill the rest with the top most DDs (whatever class(es) this will be in wotlk). Those minmax-raids will find out the best combination soon enough and everybody else will use that composition as well. How on earth does that make "players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance"?

[Diedel]

While I think that you can balance something like this, I am very worried about how late they implement this, because nothing in the beta atm seems to be balanced around this, so they will start now with this totally changed world.

I really hope Blizzard get this right or it will destroy many specs in a raid.

[kriS411]

Melee Hit Chance Reduction Debuff: Insect Swarm, Scorpid Sting

DKs Fridged Dreadplate is missing here, maybe someone can post that in the US Forum.

[Mandible]

So in wotlk you will stack up tanks and healers as needed with as few support classes as possible to get all possible buffs and fill the rest with the top most DDs (whatever class(es) this will be in wotlk). Those minmax-raids will find out the best combination soon enough and everybody else will use that composition as well. How on earth does that make "players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance"?

Sounds about right for a 10 man raid, and add a few extras to fill out dead people I guess on the 25 man raids - and no it won't fix it for the major raid guilds, but will bring alternatives for smaller guilds overall.

[player404]

Those minmax-raids will find out the best combination soon enough and everybody else will use that composition as well. How on earth does that make "players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance"?

Well, the aim is to have several "best combination"s, so to be more correct let me fix myself and say: they will form the rest of the raid based on who they want to play with, after they have one of the best raid combination.

[Mäkelä]

So in wotlk you will stack up tanks and healers as needed with as few support classes as possible...
...How on earth does that make "players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with...?

Currently if you need a particular niche filled you have to either have someone exactly the right class and spec, or you have to recruit from outside of those you already know.

These changes mean that with your current raiding guild, any raids that require different raid makeups you can probably fill with your current guild membership. And reducing the number of specific utility specs mean those who are extra can be whomever you currently have online. It takes a huge headache out of the equation for raid leaders trying to fill a raid. Minor respecs can suffice, as the gear is getting homogenized a bit.

It eliminates the raid day where all of x class/spec is absent, so you can't raid even though 35 raiders are online, or your raid synergy blows so nobody can min-max to their fullest. Just one example.

I imagine they will attempt to balance dps so no one class far out-dpses another. Hybrid classes doing roughly similar dps (maybe differing on specific encounters or instances), and pure dps classes doing reasonable amount more.

[Brickwall]

And this, boys and girls, is what happnes when developers don't call shots anymore, top management has started to show it's face. And they want to dumb game down so they can make more $$$. First sign of that was rushed annoucment of PTR 3.0 patch which clearly is marked as greatly unfinished by developers, but hey, who asks them for they opinion anyways. It must come out before WAR does, beacuse bosses said so.

I belive that developers are trying to make WoW good game, but their marketing department keeps screwing them over with rushed dates and demand for walfare content.