Patch 3.0.2 - On Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

[rothomp3]

According to most classes (even all of them), future WotLK raids will have no members, because none of the class/spec is required.

Meanwhile, GMs and RL pray to have enough players to go to kill something.

aaah, well.

This.

Read the fucking blue post. Every word, don't just skim it. I mean it. Actually read the damn thing. It's going to affect every class. Every single class is now claiming there's no reason to bring them to a raid... and that is exactly the point. There is no reason to bring any class to a raid, so you can bring whoever you want.

[Skrr]

I'm not gonna go into classes in depth now, but something really caught my eye. I don't like the (upcoming) raid stacking idea at all. I'm one of those who worked long hours to get people with proper utility geared up from Black Temple to get Brutallus killed. Now I see most of the work has just gone down the drain; Given that no further massive changes are made to this build. What I don't like either is the fact that raid dps will go down, I believe that is very obvious. Nice one, nerfs to Sunwell bosses incoming, just lost my fun in doing the hardest instance in game, imo. And what's this crap idea of buffs not stacking really? Every single dps class, whether you were hybrid or pure, will be doing pretty much the same dps, since if you fall back in dps, there is just gonna be some other class taking your buffs/debuffs over. That is gonna lead to problems since for instance spellcasters and melee scale in a different way. I don't wanna see a fix every 2 months adding some more damage to a certain class to make them viable for raiding.

[Flamingcloud]

This.

Read the fucking blue post. Every word, don't just skim it. I mean it. Actually read the damn thing. It's going to affect every class. Every single class is now claiming there's no reason to bring them to a raid... and that is exactly the point. There is no reason to bring any class to a raid, so you can bring whoever you want.

Basically they removed the guarenteed raid slots from everyone. Peoples job security is gone, and it is making them nervous.

[Sarevokcz]

Eh? You would need an Ele shaman, two aff locks(with improved cor and improved coe), a ret paladin, and a spriest to cover all of the moonkins buffs. Then moonkin have innervate and rebirth on top of that. More likely you are just gonna bring a ret paly and a moonkin and no aff locks, ele shamans or spriests. This also has the side benefit of allowing the locks to use damage curses instead of coe/cor.

the thing is, MkA and imp MkA are raidwide,BUT they are rangewide, if groups will be spread, u would need to cover the whole raid 2 ppl with those buffs, and i doubt u will bring two boomkins, it will be more efficient to bring eleshammy and providing things on the other side of the raid along with 5% spellcrit, which arent on the moonkin side (flat dmg, +crit to ALL, not just casters) so hopefully ill keep my spot in LK

[Flamingcloud]

Why not just take a second moonkin.. Moonkin do better dps than ele shamans, bring innervate/rebirth. Totem of wrath is almost certainly inferior to demonic pact, and the +crit to all doesn't stack with ret paladins(which are pretty much mandatory for refreshing judgements anyways.

[rothomp3]

Why not just take a second moonkin.. Moonkin do better dps than ele shamans, bring innervate/rebirth. Totem of wrath is almost certainly inferior to demonic pact, and the +crit to all doesn't stack with ret paladins(which are pretty much mandatory for refreshing judgements anyways.

Read the fucking blue post. Every word.

"Moonkin do better dps than ele shamans" you say? HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW WHAT DPS CLASSES DO AT LEVEL 80?

And can you tell me next week's lottery numbers? Just PM me, don't want others getting in on it.

[Sarevokcz]

Why not just take a second moonkin.. Moonkin do better dps than ele shamans, bring innervate/rebirth. Totem of wrath is almost certainly inferior to demonic pact, and the +crit to all doesn't stack with ret paladins(which are pretty much mandatory for refreshing judgements anyways.

afaik judgements arent refreshed by retris anymore? if so, show me, kinda thought they are gonna change that
also moonkin doesnt do better damage then elemental, now, and with new spellrotation, i doubt they will, since they got nothing new to their cycle
shaman brings bloodlust and can fill up with totems missing buffs on other side of raid, manaspring, agi, ToW, WoA, also atleast ankh, so prolly shaman > second moonkin imo
tho i dont get it, why they changed ToW 2 weeks ago to better justify its use and place and now they are making it completely redesigned, and also debuffing totem

[Laotzu]

VT currently lasts 15 seconds Unless they change it. Replenishment will restore 0.5% of someones maximum mana per second.

Lets assume you have a 15,000 mana pool.

Thats 15,000 x 0.5% mana per second. Thats 75 mana/second or 375 mp5 (to 10 people).

Hunting party only restores mana on a crit from arcane shot, explosive shot or steady shot. Even with a high crit rating thats not going to be nearly as reliable as every tick of VT unless it triggers replenishment with a duration of X number of seconds (eg each crit causes 3 seconds of replenishment or something like that). Otherwise thats 0.5% mana back to 10 people on each crit. 75 mana per crit is going to be a pretty low level of mp5.

Judgements of the Wise - 10 second cooldown (reduced to 8 seconds with talents). Unless it causes replenishment with a set duration (say 5 seconds) then thats 0.5% mana back every 8 seconds. Assuming no lag thats 15 judgements every 2 mins. Assuming 15k mana pool and it granting a single tick of mana regen on each judgement - thats 75 mana/judgement x 15 = 1125 in 2 mins (562.5 mana per minute or 45 mana per 5 for someone with 15k mana). Thats very poor.

VT doesnt seem too bad - but JotW and Hunting Party seem very poor in the level of mp5 they are likely to give unless replenishment has a duration of several seconds each time its triggered by those abilities.

EDIT: Maths edited as it was out by a factor of 10 as noted.

[Ygorl]

Your math is off by a factor of 10.

[Skrr]

Correct, instead of 750 mana per second, it's 75 mana per second in that situation.

[Delondial]

Holy pandemonium Batman!

I think a thread written that said "This is Blue, we hate you, end." would get less QQ

yikes

[Amgyn]

is there any way to find out if a buff you receive is overriding a buff you already have?
(other than 'a more powerfull spell is already active' )

ie: when you get a commanding shout will it override the imp buff or will they both show up on your bar?

[Cookiecutter]

Lets get this straight here..

if you like this change, you're an idiot, this change WILL RUIN WOW!

SWG Combat Upgrade anyone? This will be the same, with this change, raiding becomes a bland stupid thing, fill up raid, faceroll lolololllool boss down gg.

Bye WoW. It was fun.

I'd say this is [change that would ruin WoW] #3562, OH! IT'S STILL GROWING!

Funnily, i hear a lot of "gg moonkins are useless in raids qq" same with some other off-speccs, they change the buff/debuff to make every class viable (so people wont be forced to specc a certain way) and people complain anyway.

GEEZ.

[Mahtamori]

I can find only one thing actually worth complaining or causing a fuss about, and that's Retribution Paladin mana regeneration which is implied to be reduced to a state where the specialization is completely unplayable.

As for the min-maxing. It will happen. Most classes will be moved to a redundancy position when they are brought, leaving only one concern. There's one non-buffing class. Rogues. Will that class remain balanced for not buffing or will it be rebalanced for a scenario where half of the people who'd otherwise buff aren't buffing, either?

[nemesisevil]

Ahhh great....

I don't get it. Why not make everything stack (not X2 of any same effect though) and just tweak the raids to balance this out? I really don't want to be left out because one class is (and inevitably will be) superior, offers the same buff as I do so the raid decides to leave me out.

[morose]

So unless I'm totally reading this wrong. Blizz thinks this will help make raid management easier???? Now you have to make sure certain classes dont used their buffs or debuffs depending on your raid make up because it will screw up the buff/debuff you wanted to be there. I can see it now:

"Leroy you just battle shouted you idiot, now all of the pallys have to rebuff the melee dps mid fight"

Bye bye mana pools. Dont get me wrong the idea of raid wide buffs is cool but this almost seems like another PVE nerf because blizz is trying to balance the game for PVP.

On a more personal QQ about a nerf note: What sense does it make that they nerfed Hemo for rogues in the last patch? The reasoning that T6 rogues were coming in without resil and beating the crap out of people it kinda dumb. Why not just take the Hemo buff off of T6 gear, its not like ANY rogue in his right mind would raid while spec'd Hemo anyway. Sorry just had to get that off of my chest.

[stupid11]

Thats where you are wrong. They just removed guaranteed raiding spots for he buffing classes. They just guarantied the pure classes extra spots.

You might not see it atm - but I hope some day you realise that a guild that is going 25 man encounters will not have good players with the same buffing spec now. Before it was ok to go in with 2 dps warriors (or have a tank go dps). Now you are forced to leave one out and take ret pala (for example) instead. Now... I thought this was done for the sake of good players.... Exept good players can obviously not be of same spec anymore....

THis will strengthen the pure classes to extent of filling half of the dps spots. Yes.. You might not see it but ... You do realise that the classes that CAN change spec and then use same gear WILL dominate this game from now on.

Wrong. You are forgetting the 2nd part of this change.

BECAUSE BUFFS DON'T STACK, THEY CAN MAKE "SUPPORT" CLASSES DO AS MUCH DPS AS PURE CLASSES.

A huge part of WotLK is making players able to keep up with other classes in DPS as long as they're equally geared and skilled. If they did this before, it would make all pure classes worthless, because why would you bring a 2000 dps rogue when you can bring a 2000 dps fury warrior that adds 5% crit, attack power buff, etc....

Also, note the part at the bottom:

In most cases, fully-talented players will have exactly equal power on the strength of these buffs and debuffs. Fel Intelligence is an example of where one ability is weaker than others. The buffs in the "Increased Spell Power Buff" category are also not all the same potency, as they scale and grow in radically different ways. In virtually every other case, however, the buffs are equal. This means, for example, that fully-talented Battle Shout and Blessing of Might now grant the exact same amount of attack power.

So no complaining about "omg imp gives 1300 HP and commanding gives 3000 HP, my imp buff is useless!" because THAT WON'T HAPPEN.

[Sarevokcz]

Wrong. You are forgetting the 2nd part of this change.

BECAUSE BUFFS DON'T STACK, THEY CAN MAKE "SUPPORT" CLASSES DO AS MUCH DPS AS PURE CLASSES.

thats not gonna happen, because that way, hybrid support classes would be extremely strong in pvp, and kalgan would not stand the fact, that he has to use some skill to beat em in arenas

[Stormhammur]

Thats where you are wrong. They just removed guaranteed raiding spots for he buffing classes. They just guarantied the pure classes extra spots.

You might not see it atm - but I hope some day you realise that a guild that is going 25 man encounters will not have good players with the same buffing spec now. Before it was ok to go in with 2 dps warriors (or have a tank go dps). Now you are forced to leave one out and take ret pala (for example) instead. Now... I thought this was done for the sake of good players.... Exept good players can obviously not be of same spec anymore....

THis will strengthen the pure classes to extent of filling half of the dps spots. Yes.. You might not see it but ... You do realise that the classes that CAN change spec and then use same gear WILL dominate this game from now on.

wrong.

The buffing slots will be 1-12 (maybe 13) which leaves an incredible 12 slots available for whatever classes you want to bring.

At this moment logic would dictate you fill it up with pure classes but for all we know Blizzard might actually get something right and give nice unique very powerful talents deep in every tree that brings something to the raid where you could possibly see;

25 different specs forming up a very good raid... imagine;

MAIN and OFF TANKING (any combination below totaling 2 prot and 2 non-prot specced)
Protection Warrior
Protection Paladin
Feral Druid (adds dps)
Death Knight (adds dps)


HEALING (any combination below totaling 7)
Holy Priest
Disc Priest
Resto Shaman
Resto Druid
Holy Paladin

CASTER DPS (any combination from below totaling 7)
Shadow Priest
Warlock (all specs!)
Mage (all specs!)
Moonkin
Elemental Shammy

PHYSICAL DPS (any combination below totaling 7)
Hunter (all specs!)
Ret Paladin
Enh Shaman
Rogue (all specs!)
warrior (arms/fury)
Deathknight (blood/unholy)



Just imagine not being PIDGEON HOLED into needing x number of a specific class and more importantly spec (destro lock etc) and instead a world where you can bring all of the folks above and each in their own right brings something very good to the raid (deep in their own trees).

Now balancing all this is Blizzard's huge job but the very idea is GREAT


Raiding right now is TERRIBLE - needing to bring 7 shamans and 4 destro locks and 2 shadow priests is STUPID to say the very least -

[Sarevokcz]

" needing to bring 7 shamans and 4 destro locks and 2 shadow priests is STUPID to say the very least"

terrible class balance on higher gear levels i might say, btw how many of those shammys are resto? all but one enha, so go figure, they already improved raidhealing in LK

IF htey leave several SPEC KEY talents nonstacking, than it would be great, like ToW, Imp. MkA, Misery for example, that way all those 3 hybrids would be unique with unique buff, but wouldnt be needed more than 1 in raid anyway, since personal dps aint matching that of pure classes