A look back on Cata so far - DPS & Raid Lockouts

[Unrully]

So now that we're partway through 4.2, couple of the top guilds creeping into Firelord territory, I'd like to take a look back through Cataclysm so far.

As I was posting this on the official forums, Paragon reached Firelord status. I'd like to offer my personal congrats to Paragon for Firelord about 20 minutes ago. Good job guys. I have to say I was rooting for Vodka, but nobody puts in the time and effort like Paragon does.

Disclaimer: I do not PvP.I don't care about PvP. I hate PvP. If you have any disagreements with this thread pertaining to PvP, take it elsewhere. This is coming purely from a PvE perspective. My characters include my Main, a Rogue, a Resto/Ele Sham, Prot Warrior and an MM Hunter.

A bit of history on myself, so this can be taken into context. I started raiding in BC shortly after t5 content started with a guild progressing through Kara, and worked my way up through most the content in the tier in a couple guilds of varying degree - Casual for kara, semi-hardcore for t5, and a hardcore guild for a few months in t6/Sunwell. In WotLK I formed my own guild and we did pretty well for ourselves, at the end of the xpac ending up 7/12 hardmodes with some casual 2-night a week raiding. In Cata, the guild eventually fell apart and I'm now currently in <Temerity>, who is, at the time of this posting, world #1 25m guild for 3-night strict a week raiding according to wow-progress and we're US #31 25m overall.

Now, I'd like to touch on a couple topics here. First a foremost, raid lockouts.
Before I breach this topic, I'd like to mention that I'm very very happy with the raid content. The content in general is great, it's a huge refresh coming off ICC to see some raids that are taking a step forward in difficulty. This is coming just from the raid lockout perspective.

Coming from a person who has been doing raid leading since he started raiding in Kara, through guilds and PUGs alike, I think the raid lockout change is a good thing. It allows for a lot less stressful pugs, as it's muchmuch easier to find 9 competent people to do a quick raid at any given time of the night compared to 24 people. The same goes with guilds - You see tons of 10man casual guilds that weren't possible back in WotLK and BC, and they have fun doing that.

Now the problem with it. Looking back at t11 hard modes, and even the normals to a lesser extent, it's is insanely hard to balance. Blizzard, you knew this going into it and yet you wanted to try it anyway, and I commend you for it. It's a sound system - Problem is, I repeat, it's impossible to balance.. Look at Heroic Halfus, for example. This fight was much, much easier on 25-man due to the fact that you needed to have 3 tanks to do it, which was a huge deal on 10-man. Look at Al'Akir, who was never really balanced to begin with - That fight was much more forgiving on 10-man as you didn't need nearly as much DPS. In current tier, I've heard reports of guilds downsizing to 10mans to kill Ragnaros such it's much easier. Baleroc, the pure mechanics make 10man much easier, and you see a lot of top guilds getting their first (and subsequent) kills on 10-man. The fastest kills in the world are a solid minute faster on 10-man then 25-man. A minute. I know the question everyone is going to ask me - How do we fix this? Really, there isn't a right answer, and I won't pretend to know what the right answer should be. Should we go back to 10/25 lockouts being split with 10's being easier? Should they be forced to do more testing? Should *all* content be gated when it comes out?

Personally, I'm a 25-man raider through-and-through. I'm not a huge fan of 10-mans, though I do run them with my alts quite a bit. So if I was being biased, yes, I would like to see the lockouts split like they we're in WotLK and have everyone on equal footing. But that causes problems elsewhere, like having to farm 10-mans for that one piece of BiS gear that is lower iLvl, Blizzard having to completely design 2 sets of loot (plus heroic pieces) for each, etcetc. I do really believe that Blizzard has tried to make the content as fair and even as possible for everybody, but being the massive MMORPG giants that they are, I personally expect nothing but the best from them in this regard, and we haven't seen it this expansion. I know I'll be extremely happy if the next Dev Watercooler means we get to see some insight from GC and the devs about what they think on this topic.

Now, the other topic I'd like to tackle in this..mini-blog, would be the DPS balance. I won't get onto healers, as I'm not a hardcore raid healer by any means. I'll make this one short, I promise.

Class balance has gone pretty well in Cataclysm. You can argue this anyway you want, but we've come a long way since WotLK. Yes, part of this is class homogenization. I'm ok with that. Classes do have to be the same to an extent if you want balance, it's just a part of the game. Most of the classes right now are mostly equal in a Patchwerk fight, the problem comes down to target switching, which most raid fights have. Let's have an example - Fury Warrior vs Assassination Rogue.

Fury Warrior ramp up time depends on if they need to sunder or not. If they don't, no ramp up time. If they do, 3 GCDs.

Assassination Rogue ramp up time - This is almost like Kitties in WotLK. Best case scenario with extremely lucky RNG, we can ramp in ~7 seconds. That means SnD has to have 10+ seconds, redirect is up with CP 4-5 CP on target, and we can redirect->Rupture. Worst case scenario, our ramp up time is closer to 35 seconds. On average, it's between 15-20 from real-world experience.

What's the tradeoff here? Do rogues do more DPS once their ramped up? No, no we don't. I'm using Warriors & Rogues as an example here, but it's not the only example. Overall, it seems as if the Devs are balancing around patchwerk fights, and not much else. The solution would not just to be "Hey, Rogues have terrible ramp time, they need more DPS". I'm ok with doing the same DPS as Warriors - I'm just saying we need to somehow make the ramp times for *all* classes a little closer together.

Something else I should mention before I close this out is Shamans. DPS Shamans...who is anyone kidding? DPS Shamans are just outright terrible when played in a hardcore environment. Enhancement shammies are decent enough at the beginning and middle of a tier, but they don't scale well at all with gear, and by the end of the tier they're always solidly far down on the DPS meters. Elemental shamans are the same way, they hover along the bottom of the meters, and when movement is involved...they go even farther. Granted, I know with patch 4.2 Blizzard was working on some of these issues. Being able to cast LB while moving is pretty substantial and will help, but it feels to me like a quick fix. Class balance in raids comes down to class balance in PvP - Why can't we just split the two up? Yes, it would be a little confusing to people at first. But it would save many, many headaches in the long run and solve a ton of the crying that happens on a daily basis. Trying to balance around PvP and PvE is a lot like trying to balance 10m raids with 25m raids, if you get my drift.

I appreciate any feedback or corrections to this, let's just try and keep it civil, eh? I'll be reporting posts from anyone who wants to be directly harmful to the discussion.

[Coldpro]

Good read. You're right, Blizz does need to work on ramp up times for certain classes. As for raid lockouts, no, I think they need to keep them the way they are now. Why? Because if they seperate them, hardcore guilds will just run 10 and 25 to maximize on gear so they can get the WF Kill that much faster. What Blizzard needs to do is try to balance better. Instead of not testing bosses or poorly test them, they need teams of decent players to thoroughly test them to ensure they're balanced.

[Mordewraith]

1 thing ive neva understood as you brought up is balancing between PvE/PvP, im sure they can change the mechanics of a spell/ability in a PVP enviroment to react differently to how it would react elsewhere, they use this already in Arena where it prohibits you from using certain items so why not for abilities? that way they can tune PvP without affecting PvE and viceversa.
Cata was awful 2 start with, crap dailies, poorly designed raids compared to previous ones, 10man 25man so called even balance is rubbish, but id say they went a long way to fixing this in Firelands, v well designed raid and environment, daily hub etc, only prob id say is only 7 bosses.

[Deleted]

The reason they don't want to change how abilities work in PvP and PvE is that once you go down that road too much the game gets too complicated and becomes a lot less smooth. It's sort of the cheap way out, it works but it's not the 100% ideal solution. They already do this as a last resort when some ability or mechanic is just too impossible to balance otherwise, but on the whole they prefer to make the classes work in such a way that they are balanced in both PvE and PvP without resorting to such measures.

Overall I think they've done a pretty good job of it so far. Even the classes which I've noticed to be lowest (shamans like the OP said are a good example) are receiving buffs to things they need and I've seen them be played competitively by good players. Maybe it's not as easy to top meters on said class as it is on certain other but then again some people like that challenge aspect in a spec.

[Kagonos]

You are absolutely right about one thing. PVP and PVE MUST be separated to allow for true balance in the two COMPLETELY different environments. It honestly would not be terribly difficult (thought it would definitely be time consuming) to have abilities perform or not perform separate and different functions on players and NPCs. this really should be looked at since it makes tweaking DPS and abilities much easier. Short, crappy answer, but I wanted to agree with that one point at least.

[Unrully]

I'll start with this, as this is the easy one:

Overall I think they've done a pretty good job of it so far. Even the classes which I've noticed to be lowest (shamans like the OP said are a good example) are receiving buffs to things they need and I've seen them be played competitively by good players. Maybe it's not as easy to top meters on said class as it is on certain other but then again some people like that challenge aspect in a spec.

Right. Like I said, I think they've done a pretty solid job with the classes so far in this xpac. Looking back over the years of my raiding since Kara, we've gone from BC times where you had just a few DPS specs able to do much, the rest just there to give buffs, to WotLK with some buff consolidation and bringing the hybrids less "hybridy" (I guess would be the word) and closer to the pure DPS classes. Now, as I've seen GC state, hybrids are qualified as hybrids by the fact that they can respec to do other roles. Respec, key word. How often do you see a boomkin tossing out heals in a raid? Not very often. Generally that happened on fights like Nef, to help people from dying on pillars. Or in current content so far - Towards the end of Heroic Beth when your pushing over 25 stacks, having the DPS shams pop a Healing Rain down helps. Is it a lot of heals? No. And they lose DPS doing it, but you can't argue the fact that Blizzard has come a long way in balancing the classes.

Good read. You're right, Blizz does need to work on ramp up times for certain classes. As for raid lockouts, no, I think they need to keep them the way they are now. Why? Because if they seperate them, hardcore guilds will just run 10 and 25 to maximize on gear so they can get the WF Kill that much faster. What Blizzard needs to do is try to balance better. Instead of not testing bosses or poorly test them, they need teams of decent players to thoroughly test them to ensure they're balanced.

Now, I'm curious. And I don't want it to seem like I'm arguing with you in a hostile way here, because I'm not, I'm just trying to get some discussion going on why you (or others) think that. First off, I agree. I absolutely do NOT want to go farm 10-mans just so I can get my 25-man kills (In case you didn't catch it - I'm in a top50 US guild). Secondly, and I've had this thought before, but I don't know how I really feel about it - What would be your opinion if they kept the 10/25 lockout, but then made 10-mans easier with slight lower loot? More of a mix between the new and old system. On one hand, it gives something for the more "casual" people to do, but on the other hand, those hardcore raiders who don't like 25-mans will be forced into a 25-man system. Upsides and downsides, and I don't see Blizzard drastically changing it one way or the other anytime soon, but I would absolutely love to see GC blog about his opinion on the raid lockouts.


And @Mordwraith
There's actually quite a few abilities that do function exactly like I described. They strictly just have a different function in PvP. Why I would love for them to split them completely, it would be drastically different and confusing for people. That is a problem. I don't have a solution to the problem, but the problem is neither does Blizz.