Upcoming Cataclysm Dispel Mechanics

[SiegeFlank]

I for one welcome any change blizzard implements to make this piss-easy game more difficult/skill based. That they're also dividing up the types of buffs/debuffs dispelled de-homogenizes the classes slightly, which is excellent.

As far as pvp goes, it's way too early to be crying that it'll be imbalanced when we don't even know how they're changing the other classes/mechanics yet.

[Parnello]

AND no more DPS being able to dispell/decurse etc. - nice! Yeah, that should be the healers job, not the dps one. And it's just not fair, because not every dps spec has his own decurse etc. skill.

May want to give that post another read:

Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.

Seems they're only taking them away from hybrid dps. Can't wait to see what they get in return.

[Barook]

Bears went from a fairly healthy population pre-Wrath to an endangered "Huh, haven't seen one in ages" species post-Wrath.

The fact that GC, who has himself admitted multiple times that bear representation went way down, actually likes what they did to bears, let alone wants to do that for all tanks, is one of the scariest things about this whole mess.

I dropped my bear during Wrath as well. It simply wasn't fun anymore after all those changes to ruin its identity. Armor and health were simply the attributes for bears, but with those things being nerfed to hell and being forced into wearing DPS gear with loads of ArP and Agi as the only, auto-included evasion stat (diminished return says "Hi!"), they took away all the fun in gear choices.

But that's rather a design problem of shoehorning a leather DPS class into the role of plate tanks.

[Depravity]

It's already like this. They're just normalizing it to "everyone can deal with three things". As it is Druids can only deal with poisons and curses, while Pallies can deal with everything except curses. Plus it's three different spells for Druids (with two of them removing poisons, but using different mechanics, WTF?), but all Pallies have to do is Cleanse and it deals with everything. Meanwhile, Shammies put down a totem at the begininng of the fight and goes, "LOL! Disease? What's Disease? Or Poison? These are funny words."

This is a fairly good way to normalize healers so they can distribute dispels equally, but at the same time not make all healers the same. I'll miss the "fire and forget" dispel on Abolish Poison, but at least I won't feel like I got shafted since I can hardly get rid of anything and Pallies can get rid of everything.

As for PvE it doesn't normalize dispels at all besides dispel magic. Instead of shaman getting three defensive dispels they just gave it to druids instead. From a pve perspective druids and paladins get to cleanse 3 vs shamans and priests only get to dispel 2. Healers very very rarely are required to offensive dispel in pve and it usually only happens when the dps whose job it was dead. If they wanted to make it equal it should each class gets 3 defensive dispels. So give priests either remove curse or poison and let shaman keep either disease or poison. As for offensive dispels it shouldn't be counted as one of the three and if they need to further discourage spamming pvp, let offensive dispels even have a higher mana cost then defensive dispells.

[Swordsmanzan]

While I'm sure there are all sorts of balance issues being addressed by the changes to dispel mechanics, it strikes me as odd that, for instance, you'd take the ability to cure diseases and poisons from Shaman and replace it with magic dispel.
I mean, a shaman is otherwise known as a medicine man. Does it make sense that they wouldn't have the ability to cure diseases and poisons? Would it make sense that they'd be able to dispel magic? This guy is the village healer, shouldn't he/she have some ability to deal with diseases? Poisons? The ability to cure these seems far more useful to a village healer than the ability to dispel magic. I mean, not every village has a bunch of people running around afflicted by magical maladies whereas disease is likely rather common.
I don't really have any concerns about balance issues and whatnot, it just seems strange that you'd choose to give Shaman an ability that seems so inappropriate to their class while taking away a number of abilities that made a lot of sense.

[damaniac82]

Shaman without poison and disease cleanse?


W
T
F

They must be joking.

[Geex]

What every happened to playing the class that you loved, or that was just the most fun to you.

My main is a Shaman because it's always fun to me. If changes to the class make us useless in PvP... play a PvP alt or don't PvP.

Everyone wants to have the most OP class that can beat every other class... when 10 different classes want to be the best there is bound to be some issues there. Maybe blizz will just boil it all down to 1 class 1 spec so all that matters is your L33T G4M1NG SK1LLZZZZZ??

[LXIX]

Ok so stick with me guys. Because this is a long stretch.

When I read about the hybrids losing their defensive dispels and in the case of shaman their offensive ones, a light came on. Maybe they will be making it to where certain specs lose the ability to heal therefore justifying 100% dps balance. There will no longer be "Oh hybrids are going to be 5% behind because they can semi heal."

Or am I dreaming?

[Amabael]

Does this mean that Purge is going away? They mentioned cleanse totem and poison/disease but what about one of the most defining shaman abilities?

[Emek]

*Sigh* shamans can't dispelled diseases and poisons? Stupidest things ever, if any class was able to to do so it should have been a druid and shaman. I rather NOT get dispel magic and retain my ability to take away diseases and poisons.

[Gauwins]

Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.

Retribution PVP is dead. As of right now.


You see, if you want to give utility to a tree...you dont take it off.
Im serious. As off now ( And since s1) The main thing a ret is doing in 2v2 is dispelling. Same goes for 3v3 If you playing with a shaman or a druid healer.



Im Not happy.

[Rezothered]

woot for more reasons that druids are king as healers in pvp?! *sigh*, these changes just sound like one big headache to me.

[Tangster]

*Sigh* shamans can't dispelled diseases and poisons? Stupidest things ever, if any class was able to to do so it should have been a druid and shaman. I rather NOT get dispel magic and retain my ability to take away diseases and poisons.

This, i am very much going to miss my cleanseing totem and cure poisons.
However if blizz delivers on their promise to make cleanseing less "spammy" then maybe it wont be such a big deal...

[Maneken]

Ok so stick with me guys. Because this is a long stretch.

When I read about the hybrids losing their defensive dispels and in the case of shaman their offensive ones, a light came on. Maybe they will be making it to where certain specs lose the ability to heal therefore justifying 100% dps balance. There will no longer be "Oh hybrids are going to be 5% behind because they can semi heal."

Or am I dreaming?

Have strange feeling that enh shamans and ret paladins will be in some way limited more in healing also.

[Granyala]

Good going friend...glad you have the patience to respond to these morons,lol.

Plus you can also see how pvp and arena have really screwed up the PVE game......just by a few of the comments,these changes are great for the game.

Not really. It accomplishes only two things:

1.) The "you must dispel this or you are dead" is now available in 10 Man as well since every healer can dispel magic (actually a good thing, it juices up the 10 mans a little)
2.) The dispel-problem is now more or less entirely a healer problem. I know I won't dispel diseases as a shadow If I drop out of my form every time. Especially not when they up the mana cost. Ret & Prot can't help anymore....

I don't care about PvP so I can't make a statement about that topic

[Skinnyslim]

mmm, ret pally tears sustain me

[Alensia]

Hahaha it's not even beta and retrib PvP is already ruined! GG Blizzard ???

[Sylvan]

Does this mean that Purge is going away?

Purge removes offensive magic; so, looks like Purge is going to stay:

Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses

[Naaren]

I'm afraid what most people said already is true.
With Cleanse gone, Retribution PVP is dead and gone.

What I hope, is that along with this Blizzard overhauls PVP completely to be more action-focused and way less CC-focused, as it is now.
Because either this, or they give us Rets new way to break off CC apart from Hand of Freedom and the trinket-racial.

[Entity]

You're a fucking moron, and you're just sipping the Blizzard kool-aid.

Haste and Crit also "only" increase melee (physical) damage through a different formula, why aren't you getting rid of those too?

ArP vs. other stats isn't even close to the same as Spell Healing vs. Spell Damage. Both of those stats added to spells in the EXACT SAME WAY, just that one of them applied to less spells than the other and cost less item points.

ArP isn't even CLOSE to being the same as AP. ALL offensive stats simply "boost melee damage" for physical classes, are you saying we should go down to 1 stat on gear?

Stop buying the Blizzard PR about "complexity is bad design." You sound like a moron parroting back what Ghostcrawler put in your mouth.

Don't like being told that you can't design video games, do you?

Here's the bottom line: AP (which is STR, AGI, whatever form it comes in) makes the baseline number above the mob's head bigger. ArP makes the baseline number above the mob's head bigger. They're the same effect.

Crit throws a multiplier onto the baseline number above the mob's head.

Haste makes the number above the mob's head show up more quickly.

The latter two are different mechanics that represent something very different in the game world than simple attack potency, which is exactly what AP and ArP are. By potency I mean how much damage your character is capable of wielding in a single strike. Crit would represent placement of a strike in a choice location and haste represents ability to attack quickly with a weapon.

Oh, in case you didn't know, at least some superficial grounding to reality is necessary to make a game like this at all meaningful (and not in a moral sense). You have to have something that people can relate to for the non-real world part of the universe to take off from. (Just because I see the "WoWz isn't real nub" argument coming a mile away.)

WoW's _massive_ popularity has never been due to complexity of stats. It's a piece of the game that plays to a minority audience (the hardcore metagamers) and one that Blizzard has evaluated and found certain parts of to be unnecessary. I don't need Ghostcrawler to make clear the problems of gratuitous complexity. I've known about Ockham's Razor a lot longer than this game has existed.

If you want a Rube Goldberg MMO why don't you go pitch it to some game companies and see how far off the ground it gets. I'll bet it'd be a real winner.