Ulduar gear quality
It's not likely. Some of the heroic dungeon and heroism gear is fully comparable to some of the Naxx 10-man stuff. Keep in mind though that heroic 5-man and heroism progression won't be keeping pace with 10-man Ulduar when it comes out. You won't be as likely to find items in 10-man Ulduar that are sub-par to the heroism and heroic 5-man loot. (
Source)
Class balancing / Target Dummy DPS
We don’t treat classes like children, making sure everyone has the same number of cookies. I see players sometimes listing patch notes as “Their class got 41 buffs while ours only got 12” which is a silly thing to say on so many levels. We buff when we need to buff and nerf when we need to nerf. We don’t dwell on how often or what magnitude those changes are. We are more concerned about balance than fairness, if that makes sense (note to self: you will almost certainly be clarifying that statement for months to come). When we don’t make a change that we want to, it is almost certainly because there is a technical or design limitation preventing it. Players may perceive that as “it doesn’t matter if they’re overpowered for awhile.”
One more thing I would like to add is that there is no concept of “hunters do X dps.” You can generate numbers on a target dummy, or numbers on Patchwerk, or numbers for Naxx, or numbers for Naxx bosses. All of those are numbers are likely to be different, and that is something we want. We want every encounter to be different. We want some classes to so better on some fights than others. It’s more interesting that way than if every encounter in the game always produced the same classes in the same stack rank. A big disconnect between the community and the developers is that we don’t accept dps as an absolute number. It is relative and it is nebulous. The community with its spreadsheets and target dummies more often views it as an absolute. (
Source)
Buffing vs Nerfing
Look, all things considered we would much rather buff than nerf. Players love it when they get buffed. The sun comes out and the birds are singing. When we nerf a class we get (I kid you not) death threats. So we must have a really good reason for nerfs.
Usually the reason is that we have absolute, not relative targets. If you are in a raid and someone is doing 8000 dps, sure the "fun" solution is to buff every other class up to that point. If we end up over-buffing someone to 8500 dps, well then we can go back and give everyone else additional buffs. Maybe at level 90 everyone will be doing 12,000 dps, but inflation is inflation, right? Right? Of course we'd have to buff all the monsters too. We'd probably have to buff gear and talents because otherwise their contributions might seem paltry (I get 20 more dps when I do 8000 dps? lol.). In short the changes necessary to avoid a nerf just spiral out of control.
I am talking mostly about PvE here. The balance for PvP is quite different and while raw power is certainly a factor, specific abilities and their cooldowns and synergies are usually far more important. The same thing is true though. If a particular form of CC is too potent, then in order to avoid nerfing it, we would have to give lots of other classes better ways of breaking CC. Then the original player feels gimpy so we give him the "this CC cannot be broken" ability. The vicious cycle still exists. Sometimes a single nerf, even if it's unpopular, is a ton less work than a lot of buffs, and sometimes it is just better for the game regardless.
Some players ask: Isn't this what betas and PTRs are for? That is true. But it often isn't enough. MMOs are living games. Things change over time. Players are crafty and find new ways of using abilities to do things we didn't anticipate. Software has bugs, and sometimes they aren't uncovered even with the most rigorous QA. Rather than denying that these problems can arise, we would rather just be open about them and get them fixed as quickly as we can. (I didn't say "quickly," I said "as quickly as we can.")
One of the things we are trying to do is get changes turned around in a more timely manner. In the past if a class or spec was too weak they often had to just suck it up until the next tier of content is released. I think the community wasn't necessarily prepared for this, which is why you see some "roller coaster" feedback. Other players, we know, are thrilled that issues might actually get looked at quickly instead of going on and on. And to be fair, we can be even faster and there are problems that have persisted for longer than we would like, but WoW is a big game and supertankers don't turn on a dime. (
Source)
[EU] New English Realm - Saurfang
The basics
Realm name: Saurfang
Language: English
Realm type: Normal (PvE)
Battlegroup: Misery
Migration: No
Realm forums:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=8637322
In a few words
Today we're opening a new English Normal/PvE realm, named Saurfang, in the Misery Battlegroup. This is a fresh realm, thus no migration will be allowed to the realms during the first 90 days. Also, the Ahn'Qiraj gates and Sunwell will be closed, and you can't create a Death Knight on the realm until you have another level 55 character there (or 90 days have passed).
The realm will open this afternoon.
Please note that the starting areas may be quite flooded in the beginning, and the population cap is intentionally set a bit lower than normal to not have them even more flooded. The cap will be raised over the coming days as the population spreads out more.
Class balancing methodology (
Source)
1. Lets accept that class balance for PvP when it comes to this forum (Healing) is at an all time low.
If you mean there are too many paladins and not enough other healers, then we agree.
2. Lets agree that by opening up the raiding content to everyone by easing its difficulty level you have increased the number of players who will express their opinions about the state of their class.
We also agree. We also think this is a good thing.
3. We all already agree that balancing classes around both Arena and PvE is what creates many of the problems here.
It creates problems, sure. I’m not sure I would argue it is the overwhelming factor though. Many players are worried about, e.g. whether their raid buff merits being invited to a raid, which has no PvP ramifications. Many players want to have more CC or CC breaks, which has very few PvE implications.
4. Lets agree that Recount stats and WWS reports dictate how players feel their class stands up against others and that you re-balance spells based off this data. (Dont take this to mean only effective healing/damage numbers)
Players place too much emphasis on this. It’s a tool. Balancing around recount stats is like using a thermometer to predict the weather.
5. Lets agree that out of the thousands of posts made to expore ideas for balancing a specific class that only 5-10 posts, made by extremely knowledgeable individuals who have skill at being able to express their ideas in written form, merit your full attention.
I disagree a little. Sometimes the most misinformed, confused players are the ones who will benefit most from a blue post. There are plenty of players who don’t speak English as their first language who may be extremely knowledgeable but can’t express their ideas as clearly as a native speaker. Their posts are not invalid.
6. If every so often you made a post which outlines all the core issues the developers are concerned with it might alleviate some of the frustrations players have of trying to pick your brain.
We do, but probably not as often as you would like.
This gets a little bit into the player 2 mindset though (less so this specific post than similar comments in this thread). Usually when players say this they mean “I didn’t like that you responded to that post and I think you should have responded to this other post.” (Many but not all times “this other post” is theirs.) This is why I implore players to not raise a stink about where I post. It's not productive and not really the intent of this forum. When we want to outline the issues we are concerned with, we'll do that. Selfishly, we get a lot more out of player posts than we get from offering a Q&A. I don't mind a Q&A from time to time, but understand that 90% of my motivation to be here is selfish -- it helps us make the game better.
I think the majority of posters need to realize that there is a more complicated decision-making process involved in improving a game like WoW than simply looking at pages of angry threads and saying "ok, we'll do this".
Believe it or not, Blizzard eats its own dog food. They understand pretty well how their game works and if 10 million+ players see a problem with something, chances are PRETTY good they do too. Community feedback always happens and is encouraged, but that shouldn't automatically translate to a decision to appease the masses. Blizzard doesn't make changes to shut you up. They make changes to improve the game. If improving the game shuts you up, bonus.
Well said.
Hunter (
Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
New hunter mechanics announced at Blizzcon?
Yes, your role will not change. We have some long-term plans for mechanics but it is way too early to talk about them. Blizzcon maybe. (
Source)
Shaman (
Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
Unleashed Rage
When we have an announcement on changes I'm sure you won't miss it. But yes we recognize this talent is expensive in a way the same buff is not for other classes. We didn't change it at the time because Enhancement was doing great damage. That is still the case, so we need to take a bigger look at the whole tree to make changes, but we hope to do so for 3.1. (
Source)
Limited PvP -> PvE Free Character Transfers
Mythic+ Dungeon Adjustments - 27 April
AI-generated Fan Art Megathread - Create and share your character!
MMO-Champion
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Originally Posted by Nowyn
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