Theorycrafting / Spreedshets and class balance
Spreadsheets and simulations are awesome and some of them have become quite sophisticated. There are still plenty of situations where actual players can't get anywhere close to those theoretical maximums. Now there are other situations where really exceptional players can bump up against those predicted numbers. For most players, their potential dps (in game) is a lot more relevant than what the spreadsheet says their potential dps could be.
As an example, imagine that Survival required a really punishing shot rotation. Very good players (the kind that get insane actions per second on Starcraft maybe) might eek 14,000 dps out of that rotation. Mere mortals might only get 9000 dps though. On the other hand, imagine Marks could pump out 10,000 dps for almost any level of player. If you're going by the spreadsheets alone, you'd be dumb not to play Survival. Going by your logs, you'd be dump not to play Marks (unless you're in the 1% bracket). You could come up with similar examples for one spec only beating the other with best possible gear, or one spec only beating the other on fights with no movement. And so on. (
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Survavibility as a DPS
Yeah, this is exactly what I was referring to. Survival does matter in terms of being able to beat the boss, and I think we would be in a better place if more dps players took some responsibility for survival instead of assuming the design was that they focus solely on dps and blame the game (or the healers) when they die. That doesn't have to mean socketing blue Stamina gems in every piece of armor. It could mean "Hey, maybe I can afford the 2 talent points for this survivability talent. That drops by maximum dps by 6%, but I'll do more damage alive than dead." (
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Classes homogenization and tanking niches
We try and prevent homogenization among classes when we can. It's actually very important to us and obviously more important to us than many players who would be satisfied with us just smearing critical abilities across all of the tank classes.
Having said that, we don't think well-defined tank niches are very good for the game. We've even backed off of well-defined healing niches and we'll continue to do so even more in Cataclysm. It comes down to a numbers problem. In a 5-player dungeon you get one tank. If the dungeon happens to be an AE tanking dungeon (Shattered Halls comes to mind) then groups want a paladin and not another tank. Likewise if we positioned DKs as the magic tank, they'd be underpowered on any dungeon without a lot of magic damage. Now maybe that's okay for a 5-player run, but it gets a lot trickier when you're talking about a 10-player raid with 2 tanks. When you're up against the most challenging content, you'd likely want to swap out for the best tank for the encounter, which means keeping a stable of 4 tanking classes ready to come in at a moment's notice. Some amount of swapping is hard to discourage, but we definitely don't want to design dungeons around the expectation that your paladin tank doesn't mind sitting out on the single target fights just to shine on the AE ones. She'll miss out on a lot of badges for one.
It is definitely a challenge to keep classes feeling unique while giving players enough flexibility that they don't feel like they constantly have to ask their friends to reroll and / or recruit the missing puzzle pieces into their social circle. (
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"Perfect" DPS balance
That's not actually a goal, or a realistic one anyway. I drop that 1% number a lot because it seems sometimes that's what the expectation is. The goal is that you should be able to play what you want and still be able to raid (and ideally PvP, but we're a lot farther from that). We've always said that taking on the most challenging content is going to take away some of your flexibility, and for the most part, players capable of beating that content are okay with that level of min / maxing. In fact, they kind of enjoy it.
There's just no realistic way to have every dps spec in the game anywhere close to 1% of each other given how different the encounters and gear are, not to mention player skill. We'll continue to get as close as we can and will keep looking at specs that are just not taken seriously for raiding. I understand that may be a subjective call, just as the interpretation of "viable" is somewhat subjective. We determine it by looking at who is actually brought to raids as well as what their dps is when they do so. (
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Hunter (
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Beast Mastery in 3.3.3
So what are you saying about those players who estimate BM will be very close to Survival with the changes? Are they wrong? If so, talk to them instead. We don't really expect the community to come to a consensus on anything, but on the other hand, when some players are saying "they're close" and some players are saying "they're not" then more than likely, someone is wrong.
Again, if you really like BM, you should be able to raid as BM with this change. Your raid leader may ask you to respec for the hardest Icecrown fights, but if you're on those fights, then you're probably used to being asked to make specific changes in order to maximize even the most marginal efficiency gains. At that point "close enough" might not be enough. At that point swapping for a 1% dps gain might be worth it. We're not going to get every class within 1% of each other in every situation, and players on that content know that.
On the other hand, if you've been wiping on normal Festergut for the last four weeks then I can almost promise you that swapping from BM to MM is not what's going to suddenly buy you success. (
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Ferocious Inspiration in 3.3.3
In 3.3.2, Ferocious Inspiration rank 3 says: When your pet scores a critical hit, all party and raid members have all damage increased by 3% for 10 sec. In addition, increases the damage dealt by Arcane Shot by 9%.
In 3.3.3, Ferocious Inspiration rank 3 says: All party and raid members have all damage increased by 3% within 100 yards of your pet. In addition, increases the damage dealt by Arcane Shot and Steady Shot by 9%. (
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Theorycrafting hunter specs in 3.3.3
Using something like Shandara's dps spreadsheets in 3.3.3, yields something like 15,000 for Marks, and 13,500 for Survival and BM. BM may be slightly below, but it's not by much, and given that this is a spreadsheet and not a raid parse, I think it's safe to assume that's within the human margin for error.
There was a recent interview with two of Paragon's hunters in which they offered that they thought BM and SV were close and MM was maybe 1500 ahead in best gear. That's pretty consistent with the numbers I pulled out of the air above.
If you think sources like that are in error, feel free to bring that up. But you kinda need to do so before saying "every spreadsheet model" etc. point to a massive disparity. (Assuming what you're arguing about here was my saying BM and SV are close.)
Ideally all three numbers are 15,000 and that's a good if probably unrealistic goal to shoot for. In the mean time, BM should be close enough to Survival that you can raid with it, given that there are plenty of Survival hunters raiding today. If you don't get anywhere near 15,000 dps today (and current hunters are closer to 11 to 12K as highest dps in Icecrown), then the delta is likely to be even smaller, perhaps below 1K. (
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Mage (
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Arcane Mage too easy?
Players like to wave this banner, but it's just not true. If all you do is look at their damage logs, yes, a lot of damage comes from Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles. Does that mean any Arcane mage can faceroll his way to 12,000 dps? Hardly. The good mages have a lot of things to manage in the way of mana and cooldowns.
"Requires skill" does not mean 20 sources of damage. It can also mean you have to juggle a lot to maximize the damage from 2 sources. That is the design of the mage in a nuthsell: a dominant nuke with a lot of infrastructure to prop up that nuke.
Off topic, I know, but this is a myth that needs to stop getting perpetuated. (
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Paladin (
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Using Seal of Command as Protection Paladin
I'm not sure the answer is just to prevent Prot from using Seal of Command. We like sub-speccing to some extent. I think part of the problem is the way HoR and SoC interact, but that doesn't mean the solution has to be one of them dies in a fire. (
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