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  1. #1

    Warlock Class Designer

    Recent tweet:

    Is there a new Warlock class designer? and if not why? really like how the last one interected with us on MMO.
    We don't have individual class designers. We work as a team.

    This is 100% contradictory of how Xelnath explained blizzard design.

  2. #2
    The thing I got from Xelnath was that there were only a couple people that specialized in one class. At the time I think it was only him and a rogue designer. I'm sure a vast majority of the class design work is done by a team.

  3. #3
    Its obvious they work as a team, but Iam sure they have a couple of ppl per class that are more expert and/or spend more time on said classes.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Hellfury View Post
    Its obvious they work as a team,
    Yes just more than one team and the teams don't always know about other class abilities.

  5. #5
    Warlocks and Rogues were probably given dedicated devs as part of the effort to improve the classes, but they still worked as part of a wider team.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Netherspark View Post
    Warlocks and Rogues were probably given dedicated devs as part of the effort to improve the classes, but they still worked as part of a wider team.
    and when the devs try communicating with the community, they get canned. A shame really, Xel really had bright ideas for our class.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by lockedout View Post
    Recent tweet:

    Is there a new Warlock class designer? and if not why? really like how the last one interected with us on MMO.
    We don't have individual class designers. We work as a team.

    This is 100% contradictory of how Xelnath explained blizzard design.
    Gonna nip this one in the bud right now. The class design team *is* a team and everyone contributes to all classes.

    That said, when you're doing something major, like a new class, an overhaul, what-have-you, there needs to be a vision holder who makes the majority of the decisions to make a cohesive whole. Then you take what you've planned, present it to the team, with justification as necessary, then do the work to make it a reality.

    On Warlock, that's what I was. What you guys saw daily was me coming here to confirm or discuss my micro decisions.

    What you didn't see was the 8 other guys who helped me think of alternative mechanics (Harvest Life for example was an idea from a raid-boss designer), supported good ideas on the cutting board (at the 11th hour, I almost cut burning embers, because I lost faith in my design, but Watcher, the new encounter lead told me I was right and defended the design), helped me fix insanely subtle bugs (Demonic Leap was built by the guys who made monk roll and the new mage blink), or just took the time and effort to help me understand when I was blinded by my own attachment to ideas (Dark Apotheosis came out grossly overpowered, because I didn't listen to Jimmy-the-numbers soon enough).

    Grimoire of Sacrifice would never have happened if Ghostcrawler, Koraa and many others hadn't supported it. My original demonology ideas were terrible and it wasn't until an artist told me how much he'd wished that demon form mattered a lot more that I decided to push in that direction.

    I'm just a guy who decided to talk to you while working on a highly risky class-remake. It's the inspiration and talent of a lot more people that made the class you love amazing.

    And to be fair - I really agree with the direction they're going with you guys overall. The PvP improvements increase the Warlock polarity without making them offensive CC monsters.

    In the end, I really love my new job and stay in touch with a number of my old coworkers. I am just sad that you haven't had the opportunity to see all of the people who help everyday to make this game great.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Xelnath View Post
    I am just sad that you haven't had the opportunity to see all of the people who help everyday to make this game great.
    Might not have seen it, but I'm pretty sure most people with a clue know it's going on. The only people who don't are presumably the ones that think GC is the only one making any decisions and is single handedly responsible for ret paladins being both OP and nerfed to the ground at the same time, TOC, cancer and doomguards being unaffected by haste.

  9. #9
    Scarab Lord Triggered Fridgekin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nagassh View Post
    Might not have seen it, but I'm pretty sure most people with a clue know it's going on. The only people who don't are presumably the ones that think GC is the only one making any decisions and is single handedly responsible for ret paladins being both OP and nerfed to the ground at the same time, TOC, cancer and doomguards being unaffected by haste.
    That's just a silly assumption.

    Bashiok is responsible for everything wrong with the game. General forum keeps telling me so!
    Last edited by Triggered Fridgekin; 2013-01-14 at 04:56 AM.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Xelnath View Post
    Cut for space-saving. Great post!
    It's interesting though not really surprising to hear that designs, spells, and talents all come from various employees within the team. Of course, with a full-on redesign, you'd need someone to put all these ideas together. I rarely post but often lurk here, probably more than I should, reading posts on various classes including during the recent redesign process. Personally, I just couldn't play a lock before the redesign. They seemed overly and unnecessarily complicated. The redesign made each spec clearly and uniquely defined and lots of fun to play. I now have 2 locks around 80ish, different specs, and have a blast with both of them. A similar redesign is exactly what I think they should, and hope they will, put in place for rogues... as I main and am truly a rogue at heart but honestly it is boring as HELL right now and each spec is far too similar to have much fun with.

    That aside, I personally would like to thank you for discussing ideas daily with the peons so to speak, taking reins of one of the 2 most underrepresented classes and making them playable for simple people like me

  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans PickleballAce's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xelnath View Post
    Gonna nip this one in the bud right now. The class design team *is* a team and everyone contributes to all classes.

    <snip>
    Thanks for the insight, as always.

  12. #12
    Scarab Lord Nicola's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xelnath View Post
    And to be fair - I really agree with the direction they're going with you guys overall. The PvP improvements increase the Warlock polarity without making them offensive CC monsters.
    What improvements? Warlocks went from very good in cataclysm to good in MOP, with a moment of being OP ( chaos wave), to "ok" right now and "free honor" in 5.2.
    Sure demonology is better than in cataclysm, but affliction is a joke compared to cataclysm. About destruction, I feel like it's worse than in cataclysm, despite being more viable in arena now. One would say it's because immolate no longer being important.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by ecca2 View Post
    It's interesting though not really surprising to hear that designs, spells, and talents all come from various employees within the team. Of course, with a full-on redesign, you'd need someone to put all these ideas together. I rarely post but often lurk here, probably more than I should, reading posts on various classes including during the recent redesign process. Personally, I just couldn't play a lock before the redesign. They seemed overly and unnecessarily complicated. The redesign made each spec clearly and uniquely defined and lots of fun to play. I now have 2 locks around 80ish, different specs, and have a blast with both of them. A similar redesign is exactly what I think they should, and hope they will, put in place for rogues... as I main and am truly a rogue at heart but honestly it is boring as HELL right now and each spec is far too similar to have much fun with.

    That aside, I personally would like to thank you for discussing ideas daily with the peons so to speak, taking reins of one of the 2 most underrepresented classes and making them playable for simple people like me
    I completely agree, locks were extremely intimidating to start and play during cata, they really did an amazing job with the rework. In cata I got my lock to 85 the week 5.0 went live, when i got on him for the first time then, I had a blast and still am, I might even start a new one to see what leveling is like now with DA.

    Also, my main is a rogue too. Would love to se something like what locks got at the start of mists.

    Xelnath seems like a great guy, I wish I had started reading forums earlier.
    Why is there no "Demonhunter" hero class yet? He was only the coolest hero in WC3. Get busy Blizzard.

  14. #14
    I don't know it feels like we got a lot of what we wished for with the latest PTR build. It really made me think that whomever replaced Xelnath reads this forum.

  15. #15
    Deleted
    Or everybody wants more or less the same things and they read their own forums

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Niberion View Post
    What improvements? Warlocks went from very good in cataclysm to good in MOP, with a moment of being OP ( chaos wave), to "ok" right now and "free honor" in 5.2.
    Sure demonology is better than in cataclysm, but affliction is a joke compared to cataclysm. About destruction, I feel like it's worse than in cataclysm, despite being more viable in arena now. One would say it's because immolate no longer being important.
    I hate to agree, since I liked Xelnath, but I certainly wish they hadn't done so much to affliction, soulshards needed a revamp, but the overhaul seemed to be far too heavy handed, changing things just for the sake of keeping up with the changes that the other 2 specs needed. Went from feeling like the most solid and unique warlock spec to a poormans shadow priest, a problem that plagued dest for years - being a poormans mage.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zumzumzum View Post
    Or everybody wants more or less the same things and they read their own forums
    We've rarely got what we want in the past - plenty of feedback was ignored even as recently as the MOP beta, it's startling how accurately some of the fixes have mirrored what was being asked for on MMO.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Niberion View Post
    What improvements? Warlocks went from very good in cataclysm to good in MOP, with a moment of being OP ( chaos wave), to "ok" right now and "free honor" in 5.2.
    if an OP feature gets nerfed, it's an improvement. OP things don't benefit anyone when it's about fun. others won't like to fight against us. and we will have no right of bragging on victories, since we "only won because we're OP".

    so yeah, balance is important.
    Warlorcs of Draenorc made me quit. You can't have my stuff.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    I wonder who the hell might think that only one guy handle solo a class-design/choices + bugs correction + short-term/mid-term/long-term changes in such a big game & company as Blizz.

    It's probably people who never worked for a big company, in my job, i would never take solo decision without brainstorming with the 10ppl of my team + discussing with other teams to see what's working and what's not working, sure the decision must be for a limited number of persons at the end, but you can't be more expert than the experts themself.

    And furthermore, even if i do take the decision, i never speak of the decision as "my" decision but always as "our" decision, same as when something wrong happens : it's "our" fault.

    I think GC understood well the question and indirectly response to those who didn't get why Xel went over the lane, He answered very clearly, and i understand it this way : "from now (aka after Xel story), take wow dev teams, leads etc as a whole not as individuals"

    my 2 cents
    Last edited by mmoc60b912d8f2; 2013-01-14 at 12:30 PM.

  19. #19
    Scarab Lord Nicola's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by checking facts View Post
    if an OP feature gets nerfed, it's an improvement. OP things don't benefit anyone when it's about fun. others won't like to fight against us. and we will have no right of bragging on victories, since we "only won because we're OP".

    so yeah, balance is important.
    Yes, as long as it is actually balanced. We are below mages and spriests speaking of casters, and we get hard countered by all melee due how little defense we have. We can run, and that's it.
    In cataclysm you could actually take a melee face to face, right now if you don't teleport away instantly or pop cooldowns, you are dead.

    When something is overpowered, I don't mind it gets fixed, that's good. But so many things that were not overpowered are changed.
    Affliction only needed a few things changed such as soul shards and that stupid stacking debuff we had in cataclysm, whatever the name is.
    Destruction only needed a rework on havoc, improved soulfire and less dependency on immolate ( which we have now) instead of all our damage being poured into 1 hard to get off cast.
    (To those who don't agree destruction was good minus the lack of a dispel protection, I suggest looking up videos of adouken, cobrak, drakedog, etc... where you can see how good destruction actually was)


    Demonology needed an overhaul, destruction and affliction didn't need one, they just needed some QoL fixes.

  20. #20
    Deleted
    If you designed Soulburn: Soulswap, i should send you a basket, that single spell is actually improveing quallity of life when playing a warlock dramaticly. even if it's too strong or too weak i hope this never goes away, just tweaking the numbers instead.

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