Caster dominance in PVP - is it something worth addressing?

[Deleted]

I'm not sure if we're allowed to talk about this but perhaps just for information's sake since many people might not realise what the current class representation in arena is.

I see a lot of misinformation around about how different classes are doing in PVP and this is just to clear up some misconceptions.

As a discussion point, I would ask this:

- Is current class representation a problem; that is, is it something that Blizzard should be looking to address in patch 4.3? Or do you think PVP balance is not a big priority and the game should be only balanced for PVE?

- What ideas would you have (outside the already available portion of the 4.3 patch notes on PTR) to address the issue - and do try to be specific here, just screaming for nerfs/buffs doesn't really help.

The following data is updated as of 8th October 2011:

[insmek]

I think the problems all come back to one of the most central issues of Cataclysm PVP: Interrupts, stuns, and CCs. The relative power of those three things have made classes possessing them significantly more powerful from the beginning, and the necessity to keep them in the game because of PVE design has forced Blizzard to buff casters immensely to compensate. Now you've got skilled players who are able to out-play the crowd control mechanics and use those buffs to completely dominate.

I think it's something that needs to be addressed. Casters should be able to cast without fear of failing every single time, but the casts that they do get off shouldn't be so powerful. It's a fine line, and it's a classic example of how difficult class balance is in WoW.

[Wolfdragon]

fact is casters are too strong, because they have too much controll, on the other hand melee has alot less controll, apart from ferals and rogues and that's where it's balanced around, fact is lock and mage have too much cc for the ammount of damage/pressure they put out, and warlocks ingeneral are stupidly designed full duration not breaking with only UA on a target, fact is cc needs polymorph design or it is overpowered, like fear. Point is casters are counterable, to some extent but a great player on a caster can really flourish, on a melee he is constantly the underdog the chaser, and you're often only left winning over casters who make mistakes, often alot more than you're allowed to make.

[Dyrtnap]

Yes, something needs to be done when there are statistical imbalances like that. Hopefully the change to AP buffs will help out certain comps but in no way will it help outside of them. PHD, KFC and Enh comps will make a little bit of a rise but even with that 10% AP is in no way going to make up for the control, pressure and Mage mastery burst issue.

Damage alone won't fix the issue. Frost DK's still have almost exactly the same damage this season as they did the last one but the big change was survivability and CC which took DK's down by about 8% in representation.

Casters need either large control nerfs or large damage nerfs or maybe a little of both.

[Sevaara]

Melee cleave pressure is also stupidly good. Like, really really painful :s so I guess it's fine. Any 'cleave' is going to be 'OP' really oh and umm, rsham/lock synergy just owns anything really xD hence why rsham/lock takes 51% of the teams in your filter.

[Dyrtnap]

Melee cleave pressure is also stupidly good. Like, really really painful :s so I guess it's fine.

Meleecleaves are hit and miss though. Right now with Warriors and DK both kinda sucking things aren't nearly the same as they used to be. Meleecleaves don't have 80%+ win ratio's they have around 60% because they either net a win in 30 secs or once their immunities wear off they are caster food. I just don't see Meleecleaves in the same light this season. Part of the reason that casters are dominating is because there are no super strong meleecleaves that can put them in their place anymore.

rsham/lock synergy just owns anything really xD hence why rsham/lock takes 51% of the teams in your filter.

Agreed

[Morogoth]

Why I have the impression that people in this thread never played a caster? Sure, casters have strong comps in 3v3, but what about 2v2, Rbg's, duels, etc? Have you ever tried to cast something when a melee is on you? Fake casting, interrupts, stuns, it's not as easy as people think. Try playing an elemental shaman, Boomkin or a Warlock without a healer and have fun being destroyed. The only caster who is really strong against melees is a frost mage.

Also, why people always need to link the top 100 comps to justify everything about PvP balance? Are you in the top 100? Those are the best players in the world, what about everybody else?

[Pud'n]

Now you melee will know how it felt being a caster in Vanilla - Wotlk .

I wounder how many posts it'll take before I get flamed by someone saying "X" caster was OP during "Y" season. My bet is on 5.

[Morogoth]

Now you melee will know how it felt being a caster in Vanilla - Wotlk .

I wounder how many post it'll take before I get flamed. My bet is on 5.

But it's true, it's like saying death knights, rogues, enhance, ferals and warriors are weak against every casters... I see a lot of people who always link AJ to justify a nerf, but AJ is only a really small portion of the PvP community.

[SpecialVillain]

Now you melee will know how it felt being a caster in Vanilla - Wotlk .

I wounder how many posts it'll take before I get flamed by someone saying "X" caster was OP during "Y" season. My bet is on 5.

You lose.
Locks were OP during S2-S4

While I do believe there is some validity to the whole "casters are dominating pvp" argument I don't know that it is as prominent as it may seem. Sure there are certain class matchups that are very unbalanced at the moment (Frost Mage vs Ret Pally). However I don't know that it is an issue of "X caster class" is better than "Y melee class" as it is that casters seem to have more of a synergy with each other in arena matchups.

[Yotei]

If you're talking about Caster Representation, sure.. there's a lot of them. Look at the popular comps and top comps (by win %) though, it's not like they're all spell cleaves.

Don't get me wrong, Blizzard does need to work on certain classes some more on the far left list. I'm not denying that. :P

[Dyrtnap]

Are you in the top 100? Those are the best players in the world, what about everybody else?

How in hell did you get the top 100 out of that? Those are only players above 2400. I'm really not a great player and could break 2500 playing PriestHD last season so 2400+ is not anywhere near "the best players in the world" its the top 10% of arena players roughly (depending on BG).

If you look it shows class % top comps by popularity above 2400 and top teams win % (last one is kinda useless for this argument). When ALL caster classes are above ALL melee classes there is an issue. LOWEST caster is 14% HIGHEST melee is 9% and is only that high because of RMP and RLS.

DK's and Warriors which were strong are now in the UP range only slightly beating Hunters. Rets obviously aren't doing well because even with all the Holy's in the Duelist range Paladins aren't above Rogues. Rogues are stronger now because they aren't as effected by positionals and because of SYNERGY.


Ferals, Resto's and Boomkins COMBINED are 4% lower than the lowest caster class.

So yeah we have an imbalance...

I think a big issue is that in the 1500-2000 MMR range Meleecleaves are still strong (relatively) because people aren't using all their toolkit properly to survive the first 20 secs thus winning the match 90% of the time. Since that is a much bigger group than the 2400+ crowd there is a false belief that Meleecleaves are as strong as ever when really they are strong only in relation to how bad the opponents are.

Why I have the impression that people in this thread never played a caster? Sure, casters have strong comps in 3v3, but what about 2v2, Rbg's, duels, etc? Have you ever tried to cast something when a melee is on you? Fake casting, interrupts, stuns, it's not as easy as people think. Try playing an elemental shaman, Boomkin or a Warlock without a healer and have fun being destroyed. The only caster who is really strong against melees is a frost mage.

Been there. Done that. And I think that your making too much out of how hard melee makes a casters life. Most of the casters I hear stuff like this out of keyboard turn and think walking through someone while they are casting is "cheating"

Fake casting, interrupts and stuns I want to introduce you to Fear, Disarm, Nova, DC, Silences, Roots, Stuns, Ring of Skill, Slows and last but not least DAMAGE AT ANY RANGE THAT DOESN'T BREAK CC 80% OF THE TIME.

PvP isn't balanced around 2v2 or RBG let alone the lolness of duels so lamenting because it isn't is not conducive to this conversation. You also pick 2 absolutely terrible examples by choosing 2 of the worst caster "classes" (in that they are the caster spec of their class). Locks can get eaten up by melee on certain maps and against certain melee classes but are by no means weak against melee

[Stanton Biston]

4000 people IN THE WORLD above 2400?

Bad stats are bad.

[Stanton Biston]

True, although i'd still advise leaving the thread open for discussion on the subject.

I will.

I'd just like to point out that there was some anomaly around 9/6 if you look at the graphed trends. I have no idea what's up, but it's suspect.

[zcks]

Afraid if your expecting WOW to ever be balanced for pvp then your going to be waiting forever.

Off the top of my head I can think of 2 things that would need to happen first.

1: The current management team & some/many of the designers needs to be fired, they have openly expressed dislike/hatred for specific classes/specs in the past & while they have not done so recently its hard to let such feelings go. It's also obvious they still have some of said feelings when you look at how the delegate time for design & development of some of those classes/specs when even by their own admission those specs have far reaching problems with their toolkit, mechanics, resource management & design philosophy. (after that replace them with people who have shown neutrality towards the different classes/specs)



2: Have the new designers & management create separate effects for many of the abilities that each spec/class for pve & pvp. (this ensures that some effects which are needed for pve are not OP or complete crap in pvp)

In the end you would be far better off just accepting that the people working at blizzard's WOW division are just far more interested in pve then they are in pvp & that some of them have had long standing biases against some specs (and that some of those people have done things to ensure their biases are enforced in game).
If you find this to much to tolerate then I suggest you try another game, GW2 could be a good bet. Most of that games designers are former blizzard employees who quit due to "Design Philosophy Differences" they had with GC & his hand picked staff back in vanilla. If that doesn't float your boat then I suggest FPS multiplayer games as they are much easier to balance then an MMO.

[Wolfdragon]

Ok as regards to meleecleaves are bad or whatever, meleecleaves are still strong, dk feral hpala is as strong as ever, hell it's the ONLY meleecleave counter to MLS (that's likely the reason it's as strong as it is) my point still stands, casters let players flourish whereas melees really can't, we're left with small windows where we have to do as much damage or pressure as we can, or lose, sure I can pop out and cast clones force CS's on me make them cry and save cooldowns, but that in general isn't really skill, playing melee is more challenging than playing a caster however.
But not because melee classes are hard to manage or speccifically hard to do damage on ( aside feral druids ) it's the fact that their opportunity windows, their kill windows are so small, that it's no surprise you feel bad when you play melee, hell I meet MLS and I am preety much guaranteed to sit in cc for over 20sec of the game if it lasts 30sec, thankfully my dk will force SL totem within the first 20sec, then I'll just blow the shaman up with second TF+serk+pvp trink, obviously this would never work unless I had pvp trinket off cd--

Leading towards my final point, melee in general are strong whereas some melee are weak in comparison to others but it balances out, main point being feral has no immunity ability whatsoever, as opposed to dk's who have AMS every 45seconds, rogues who have CoS every 2min and warriors who have BS every 1min30sec, but all in all neighter are feral druids or ret paladins in an awfully bad spot- no we do more damage than the other melee therefore we are more suspectible to cc

but here is where it gets interesting, mages and warlocks have enough controll to controll 3 people at a time all the time, infact it is possible to controll 3 people for an entire match if you're extremelly exceptional and you counter the opposing combination- not a single melee team can do that, not in a milion years, fact is melee plays off damage- but the highest burst lowest time investment/resource investment class is actually frost mage and warlock is the strongest on sustained damage on multiple targets, these classes absolutely flourish in the 2 aspects of pvp (sustained and burst damage) and exceptionally excell at controll with spammable 8sec cc which in most cases can not be dispelled- and is topped off by nova's which seemingly never seem to go off unless you juke CoC, which isn't likely towards the point we make a casters life hell, no we don't we don't even get to touch you for 90% of the match, for the 10% of the match I get to touch you you are obviously shocked that I am able to even scathe you so it's OMG PANIIIIIC HE IS TOUCHING ME FILTHY MELEE, fact is against the 2 most controll oriented classes in the game, only 1 combination in the game manages to counter it, and it is likely the hardest meleecleave ingame aswell--I don't understand Blizzards disregard to fix this- as melees we're fixed from last season TSG can't global you anymore infact it's barely strong nothing in the game apart from LS/X actually sticks out that much, it's the fact that blizzard ignorantly dismisses the fact that affliction warlocks are overpowered in pvp, and they are continiously dismissing the fact that restoshamans while strong in castercleaves are utter crap in meleecleaves, hell if a shaman doesn't have a warlocks peel I can literally guarantee he is dead within 35 seconds, yet the nerfed class is the shaman- not the warlock Big mistake.

[Dyrtnap]

@zcks - Hey bro how's the weather in Tinfoil Hat Land?

Most of that games designers are former blizzard employees who quit due to "Design Philosophy Differences" they had with GC & his hand picked staff back in vanilla.

You realize you're either an idiot or a straight up liar right? You realize he didn't start working there until 2008 right? You realize they left Blizzard in 2000 right? You realize this is 8 years before he worked there right? You realize they worked on WC and Diablo 1 & 2 right...and not WoW right? You realize Greg Street had nothing to do with them leaving because they were all gone before he EVEN STARTED WORKING THERE right?

I'm all for disagreeing with someone or a design philosophy but I hate people that FLAT OUT LIE on the internet. Its people like you that spread stupid shit like this that other simple minded people pick up and spout off as fact just because some retard on the interwebz told them so.

1: The current management team & some/many of the designers needs to be fired, they have openly expressed dislike/hatred for specific classes/specs in the past & while they have not done so recently its hard to let such feelings go. It's also obvious they still have some of said feelings when you look at how the delegate time for design & development of some of those classes/specs when even by their own admission those specs have far reaching problems with their toolkit, mechanics, resource management & design philosophy. (after that replace them with people who have shown neutrality towards the different classes/specs)

Honestly do you realize how stupid this sounds? Are you 11 years old because otherwise you should know that business is business and personal opinions don't have ANYWHERE near as much of an effect on the game as you claim.

Secondly where are your sources? Where and when exactly did the Developers say they specifically hated a class let alone a spec? Can I see a link? Cuz you really just sound like the president of Tinfoil Hat Land until you can provide a little proof that they hate a class and purposefully screw it up because they hate it oh so much.

Blizzard is a multi-BILLION dollar business. Key word there being BUSINESS. It is bad business to purposefully damage 1/30th of your specs let alone 1/10 of your classes as your claiming let alone MULTIPLE specs and classes. ANYONE who did that would be fired by Activision if GC didn't do it immediately himself simply because purposfully destroying highly marketable product is insanely stupid. ANYONE with any kind of real world understanding knows you don't throw away money (read hundreds of millions of dollars a year) just because you prefer something else a little more.

that some of them have had long standing biases against some specs (and that some of those people have done things to ensure their biases are enforced in game).

Can I get some examples? Some names of Developers, Classes, Spells, Specs and dates all this stuff supposedly happened

2: Have the new designers & management create separate effects for many of the abilities that each spec/class for pve & pvp. (this ensures that some effects which are needed for pve are not OP or complete crap in pvp)

I actually agree with this...

But again from a money stand point it takes an enormous amount of development time and thus money to do this. On Tinfoil Hat Land they done the math decided that the people they lose to being upset about game balance are not worth all the expense and they decided to purposefully imbalance the game so that more people would quit so they didn't have to read the PvP forums so much... or back on earth because it takes away too many resources from game design and future content (which is what the large majority screams for) and ends up being more cost efficient to make tweaks here and there rather than go complete overhaul. I'm guessing there is a chance that they will do this next xpac since the whole "shifting the focus to RBG's" didn't work this go round.

I don't always agree with their design philosophy and I think there are much better ways to approach things sometimes but I also exist in a real world (read not Tin Foil Hat Land) and don't get too terribly bent out of shape about this game's imbalances because I understand how big of a boat WoW is to turn and that there are 10000 things I don't take into when I have an idea on class balance.

[Iyarashii]

When a caster has 100% uptime on me and I only have 75% uptime on him, with a healer that can't dispell due to lock's ua and roots, then there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

[Deleted]

When a caster has 100% uptime on me and I only have 75% uptime on him, with a healer that can't dispell due to lock's ua and roots, then there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

This is more what I was thinking of as it addresses a specific issue, dispel protection for casters.

While the data only shows a n=4000 sample, statistically that's not too bad and is worth using as a basis for analysis.

Allow me to pose the following precise questions regarding dispel protection and CC chains:

1> Dispel protection

- Do casters synergise too well with each other due to dispel protection - or not well enough with melee since melee don't have a use for dispel protection?

- Mages are not balanced around having dispel protection. Yet, if they are comped with a warlock, do they gain excessive dispel protection with UA?

- Is the combination of UA and Sin and Punishment too much dispel protection?

----> Would arena be balanced around casters having less dispel protection?

2> Crowd control overlap

- Arena is a lot about CC chains and being able to control the fight; are casters better at doing this than melee and if so, what can be done to address this?

- Do casters benefit too much currently from CCs that don't DR on each other? This is perhaps where melee can synergise better with casters by perhaps having melee/caster CCs not DR each other?

----> Would the synergy between casters and melee be improved by changing which CCs DR each other?

[Zephyr Storm]

I actually agree with this...

But again from a money stand point it takes an enormous amount of development time and thus money to do this. On Tinfoil Hat Land they done the math decided that the people they lose to being upset about game balance are not worth all the expense and they decided to purposefully imbalance the game so that more people would quit so they didn't have to read the PvP forums so much... or back on earth because it takes away too many resources from game design and future content (which is what the large majority screams for) and ends up being more cost efficient to make tweaks here and there rather than go complete overhaul. I'm guessing there is a chance that they will do this next xpac since the whole "shifting the focus to RBG's" didn't work this go round.

On the contrary. Guild Wars doesn't even have a subscription fee in place and yet they found the time and money to start separating skill changes into PvE and PvP versions. You're telling me that Blizzard, who has more employees and more money, can't find the time or resources to enact such a simple, yet excellent idea into WoW that would probably fix a TON of PvP issues instantaneously? I highly doubt it. It's more along the lines of "Blizzard doesn't give a shit and are to damn lazy to incorporate something into their game that could dramatically change PvP for the better and actually make it balanced and worth playing."