Explanation of 4.2 Balance Changes

[Shadowsaint]

Appreciate the explanations, nothing too severe and glad to see Holy Paladins getting some love in PVP and Elemental Shamans on their way out of the grave.

^ This is sarcasm right? ^ Holy Pallys getting buffed in pvp, I'm confused? In two's I can push a draw by myself on my pally. I do play in the 1500's but I believe that is where the majority of the wow community is. Anyways I'm not happy because when we are forced to play agaisnt another holy pally it more times then not ensures a Ridiculously long match. <I'm just shaking my head in disbelief> Good luck to the Rogues out there, I feel your pain.

[Deleted]

Kudos for the explanations. You cannot keep ALL of the people happy ALL of the time, but these explanations are a nice way to provide the rationale behind the nerf/buff. Well written and hope to see this level of communication going forward .

Indeed. I like this more than those failed Q&A things.

[Samic]

Because Hungering Cold is such a critical PvE talent.... ?

I don't get it. The cast time won't really hurt in PvE cause even when mobs push the timer back, it is only 2 seconds.

Even tho it's only a few seconds the mobs remain frozen in a raiding enviroment, that's still two seconds with NO damage ongoing to the tank. I fail to understand how people can eliminate that as a raiding perk.

[valiorik]

My bear became crapy warrior like. Time to go on vacation and hopfully not come back to wow.

[pdude]

hard to enjoy the game when its hard to kill anyone now. as a warrior i cant 1v1 nobody down in battlegrounds cos the warrior class is a joke and dnt say l2p ranged classes eat warriors alive, then u got rogues dismantle which is there iwin button and pallys with there bubble and heal and dk's well there jsut op seriously warriors are the worst melee class for abilitys and mobility cos every class has a better version of what we got

What? I primarily raid on my warrior, and once in a while I'll do a random BG, and I can 1v1 people pretty well. I suck at PvP too.
Not even sure why you would 1v1 in a BG, just follow someone around and double team them.

[Shadowsaint]

just follow someone around and double team them.

That's what SHE said!

[Pasture]

This blue post explanation thing is great. People will bitch and moan about it because people like to bitch and moan about everything, but this is definitely a tradition that should continue.

[Exeris]

I'm pretty much happy with every change in 4.2, they are doing an ok job given the challenge of balancing this game. People I know are either accepting or agreeing that this is going the right way.

[Bloodbladez]

You're right, any frost Dk speccing into Hungering Cold is doing it wrong. The only exception possibly being if that Dk's sole purpose is to kite, where I could see it being only a slight hindrance, you'd just have to use your brain and cast it pre-emptively.

You need to spec into Hungering cold in order to spec into Howling blast, i'd rather have hungering cold a a lone talent rather then having to spec into it.

[Cuj0u812]

Oh no, Hunter nerfs, does this mean I can no longer pull off 20k dps while eating a sammich with one hand as BM? I guess I'll have to put down the sammich,

[RussW210]

Very happy with most of the changes. Warrior and DK OP has been obvious and the hit to a warriors burst and DK's insane survivability should mitigate a lot of the OP'ness.Much like Ret was slightly OP when they increased the crusader strike damage, they broke the class by putting a 20sec CD on WoG and now are making it fair again with a 10sec CD (via talent pts). As my main it makes me happy, though I have pretty much given up on ret because of how insanely boring it is compared to playing other classes.Hunters still remain garbage in PVP and easy high dps in PVE. My first character since I started playing 1.5 years ago was a Hunter and he was absolute garbage in PVP so I switched to Pally and never looked back. My main reason for switching to a pally was to get even with rogues, who ate my hunter alive. And now that I've been playing with the rogue a bit, I realize how useless hunters are. Stand a few feet back, watch the hunter drop useless traps, wait out deterrance, use his launch back, shadowstep myself, dead.

[Floplag]

you know people always belly ache about why this or that was done... here we have a concise, clear explanation of why. 1 for one appreciate this as it helps make sense of things. I/We may not agree with the position they are taking but as have a more narrow view of things than they do so i for one thank GC for posting this information.

[Deleted]

Hey I'm a boomkin, not an idiot, Blizzard can't nerf us every damn patch. What the hell are they thinking? Do they think that We can't do math ? Shadow priest multi dot was nerfed and because of this They have compensated it with buffs to their direct spells Moonkin multi dot was nerfed, with it they nerfed mobile dps reducing it to 0 The buff to Wrath and Starfire is accounting for the loss of t11 4piece bonus, not for multi dot nerf..... I'm still waiting our compensation. They have managed to buff elemental shamans pvp and mobile dps + their aoe damage now is pretty good They cannot however fix us in pvp and give boomkins mobile dps like every other class in the game Not to mention the fact that every damn fight in firelands has a burst aoe phase where we can't do anything with dots and 10sec cd mushrooms....

---------- Post added 2011-06-17 at 04:16 PM ----------

WTB old text editor...this one prevents multi row comments

[psycho42]

I like that they explained the reasons for most of the changes, hopefully they continue to do this. If they were doing this before though, i must have just missed it.

[miracles]

My point of view in all this which will get some to think im a fool i know. Mage, hunter,warlock and rogue's are pure dps classes, and i think these should top the dps meter anyday. They dont have anything to choose from than dps. Warrior, paladin and dk's should have good defence and good agro and what tanks can use more, since they are the plate wearer, right now they have a pretty pretty good dps too, which i think isn't right. Priest, druid and shamans should have their top prioritet in healing. Not that i say they should have bad dps tanks and healer classes, but they can choose from several spec's. If tank and healer classes want high dps they should make a dps class insteed of expecting to be top in every spec they got. I know its blizzards fault to like give a paladin all kinds of spec , it can heal, tank and dps. maybe we just should have this one class then there woundn't be this QQ all the time. But to point out once again we got 4 classes in WoW that ONLY can dps and nothing else, keep nerf that and those classes wont be played anymore. Well some might but why would anyone want those in raids when all the rest can cover it all by themself. Just some thoughts i had, and i know i could have written it better if i took my time :P

[Ninurta]

You're right, any frost Dk speccing into Hungering Cold is doing it wrong. The only exception possibly being if that Dk's sole purpose is to kite, where I could see it being only a slight hindrance, you'd just have to use your brain and cast it pre-emptively.

Perhaps you don't play a dk because if you did you would kno that hungering cold is a required talent to get howling blast, so think before you type please.

[FalinMor]

Wow, surely the most logical argument that's articulated to it's utmost should ALWAYS change your stance and force change, else you're being wilfully ignorant or deceitful.

You're mistaking "logical" for "correct".

They're not always the same thing.

[Deleted]

What's really sad about all these nerfs/buffs is the fact that most of them are based around PvP. Blizzard should really make some changes to spells/abilities like they did with Colossus Smash instead of nerfing/buffing/redesigning mastery, passive bonuses from talent specializations and talents over and over and over like they do.

Just look at Arms Warriors. According to simulationcraft they are gonna be fifth worse dps spec? That's without using Charge of course. And for those who don't believe me...

http://www.simulationcraft.org/420/Raid_T11_372.html

Yes, I do realize it's called "NoCharge" but just look at it anyway.

[RussW210]

So warriors in pve are dead..

No, it will just take some effort this time to get DPS rather than going in and mashing buttons. I can't wait to see the flush of PVP players that charge, rip off armor, 2 big hits, kick down, 2 big hits and wonder why their target isn't dead for their "efforts".

[slimj091]

Lol. You can't just buff everybody up to the level of the top performers. Then the content will become trivial. The idea is to bring the top performers down and the bottom performers up, keeping the average roughly the same.

and if warriors were miles above everyone else on every fight i could see your point. but when warriors are only better than everyone else by 1% on one or two fights that is not making content trivial. nerfing warrior dps means that they will be even more horrible on every other fight that they are not top performers on.

you can't just nerf a class because they happen to be on top by a little bit. otherwise you are just constantly nerfing everyone to the ground sooner or later. balance is not nerfing warriors to the point where a raid leader asks his/her one warrior dps to sit for a class that now out performing him/her by a large margin thanks to the nerf.

also.. i do not think a lot of people enter this variable into the equation. some warriors are very well geared. some of the dps classes that they are out dpsing are not so well geared. is it fair to nerf the warrior class because of another person's crappy gear? should warriors in full tier 13 do less dps than a mage in half t-11, half 346 gear? because that is exactly why we will get majorly nerfed again in 4.3. everything equal my left buttock.