Explanation of 4.2 Balance Changes

[Mithfin]

>> We boosted Feral damage to compensate for their losing the attack power from Strength. Net DPS shouldn’t change much overall, though burst may be slightly higher. (We didn’t want to buff bleeds since that was a problem before in PvP.)

So, their intention was to "compensate dps loss", not to buff the worst PvE spec. No wonder buffs was so weak. Seems 20% is new 5% in terms of 'acceptable dps difference". What a freaking retards.

[Exorbitant Rage]

I think this may very well be the first post by Ghostcrawler that doesn't straight up make me want to punch him in the face. It isn't because I think the roulette of class balance is spinning in my favor, either, it's because he shares some base level of reasoning, the thing intelligent players want for their changes. I really can't stress what a momentous day it is that he did something that didn't make me absolutely hate his guts...

[Wingwraith]

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.

Oh how insiteful. Except of course for the fact that you can't not spec into it.

[Firehorse]

That Hungering Cold nerf, just because of PVP. Yet another example of why blizz should add a PVP only talent spec so the PVE players don't get screwed.

Becasue we all know pve mobs are pro at runnin away from a dk who start to cast HC

[Biggiej]

This type of full disclosure is very strange. I wonder if it will make people happy or simply lead to more QQ from those who think the reasoning is unsound. Now they have a concrete statement to argue against instead of their own conjecture.

I think some people are happy to see things confirmed. But at the sametime, the way they try to justify nerfs for PvP and PvE at the sametime, will cause a lot more rage. PvP and Pve completely different. you can't nerf them both and say it works out for both.

[ScottsdaleHokie]

Why does that dumbfuck still have a job?

[echopally]

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 .

[fangless]

Likewise it doesn’t make sense to buff and nerf for each individual encounter. (Say a boss buffs casters -- do you then nerf casters as a consequence?)

Also, like you nerfed DK ae damage based on Maloriak and (useless) Magmaw damage?

[Snakez]

They should hire people that actually play the game

[Bruxby]

seems ok i guess

[Firehorse]

Nice fail blizzard. Affliction goes from being viable for raiding and heroics to utterly worthless since you get probably 1 maybe 2 soul swaps max per trash fight unless the group is really worthless. Once again blizzard fails pvp and makes pve take it up the rear.

Are you really comimplainng about a nerf to your trash dps? It was over powered in multi target fights. They bumped up te skill level a bit and that will cause a dps loss to some I figure

[Nyoa]

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 .

That is actually only illusion of communication cause if it doesn't work both ways it doesn't work at all. First we were shouting at a huge, fat wall made out of obsidium and only heard the echo of our own voices. Now we hear a small little chinese voice from a recording machine shouting some gibberish we can't decipher and we go "HURRAY WE HAVE COMMUNICATION YAY!" even though the fact that the people behind the wall are not listening a shit haven't changed.

PS. about the chinese guy, a wall made me think the great wall of chine hence me speaking about lil chinese voice. So no intended racism there

[Kira2169]

please do tell what cooldowns DK's have that are similar to those classes? there must be some reason why DK's are instantly focus nuked down when they enter the arena. 20% physical damage reduction and lesser version of CoS. compared to immunity + melee immunity that is also castable on team mates, + stunbrake if you want to compare to IBF. cos, CR, evasion + reset. warriors have it hard but they have better shieldwall, granted it will lock your damage but save you from focus nuke, spellreflect and regeneration. Ferals have barkskin that can easily be improved to 50% with talents, also bearform and enraged regeneration.

I argue that DK's have the worst cooldowns against focus nuke in the game. Even shamans have 40% all damage reduction in shamanistic rage and the totem shield

Care to link said talents, or are you talking about SI which has a 3min cd?

[Vutar]

After reading yet another load of crap from blizzard I am more glad than ever my subscriptions ran out today. Good riddance.

[Raze666]

"We’d still like to try a model where dispels have a long cooldown but remove everything, but that is too big a change for now." If that cd is not a 1 min or longer don't even think about.

[gvd13]

The pvp nerfs to dks really hurt their survivability, utility and ability to solo older content in specs other than blood. One fight that these nerfs will really affect (pve-wise) is Nefarian. Frost DKs will not be able to kite the adds as effectively for phase one and it will severely diminish their survivability during that phase (if something goes askew). On Chimaeron I typically will use death strike as it is enough to keep me at enough health but with this change I will have to severely impact my dps to self heal through that. Yes, I understand that these fights will no longer be new as they will be nerfed and typically we will no longer be running these raids but still, if any new fights are added with similar mechanics I can see a problem.

Dude.. join the rest of us. As a rogue I have to impact my dps to heal myself. And my heal isn't even instant. What about hybrids that have to stop dpsing completely to heal?

[Nyoa]

Care to link said talents, or are you talking about SI which has a 3min cd?

I stand corrected, yes i was talking about SI. Anyways it's on the same cooldown as icebound fortitude and that was my point. I was refering it to other classes shield wall equivalent.

[Dorac]

Holy Crap an explanation.

It is very nice to have some of their reasoning behind the changes. Id be nice if they did this for all their changes all the time.

[gvd13]

Ha I think all PVE rogues are pretty happy right about now. Survivability cooldowns are meh and mut got a nice dps buff. Woot!

[Spoogles]

They need to create another game "WoW-PvP" since the current "WoW" was designed around the PvE enviroment.

There are already some spells today that change between PvP and PvE why can they not do it for everything, is it too much effort :'( ?

Like Blind for example: Blind atm is a 3min CD that last for 10secs in both pvp and pve.

Next patch tho

PvE: Blind will be 1min
PvP: Blind will be 10secs

Why not implement something like that too everything ?