Defining an exploit vs. "clever use"; the Ensidia and Paragon debate

[Gmollster11]

IMO, as long as the players arent hacking the game, anything that CAN be done in game is OK.

Blizz has hundreds of programmers/testers and if the player base figures out a way to exploit a fight mechanic in a way that wasnt planned for, GOOD FOR THEM.

At any rate, who really cares about progression raiding anyway. Its not like these players are special. Its a game.

[Deleted]

How can people want to spend so much time on stuff that doesn't concern them in the slightest...

[Hermanni]

Unfortunately, Paragon actually expects us to believe this crap.

Excellent job in passing the entire point of my post to cling into one thing. And nobody is expecting you to believe in anything, you're entitled to have your own precious opinion, et cetera. I don't see how you make 4 healers a standard setup for one of the most healing-intensive bosses in the tier. 7-8 healers isn't too uncommon to have in 25HC, why do you think 9 is somehow an absurd amount to bring?

And your "I don't care but I made this huge analysis" is as wrong as it could be. The strength of a single ability for Stolen Power is not determined by how much of your total damage output it deals, it's all about the DPET in a single cast. UH Death Knights might very well be the best users for Stolen Power after druids, or possibly Fire Mages. Sure not all classes have great DoTs, but anyone can still crit Nefarian for over half a million any time with just a normal DD skill. A feral druid could rip the boss for 2-5M total damage depending on gear and cooldowns, but to achieve that he had to keep 5 combo points up on the boss and hold his cooldowns and do terrible DPS until he got that MC. Any class could just casually DPS the boss and still drop a relatively big hit without sacrificing his normal DPS. My normal Dooms and Immolates would do around 1.5M, a mage Pyroblast could go up to a million followed by Ignite and even that rogue could Envenom 800k if he managed to get 5 combos in when Dominion was casting.

You don't have to think of it as a borderline perfection clean kill or anything and I'm not trying to make you do so, but like I said the legitimacy of it is not up to an opinion.

[Deleted]

I always go back to Blizzard's "Working as intended" quote. If it's working as intended, then it's not an exploit, right? If that Nefarian power thingy was working as intended, why was it hotfixed? At the end of the day it's still Blizzard who decides who gets banned and who doesn't, wether you agree with it or not.

HOWEVER, what bothers me is that Blizzard hasn't banned anyone this expansion for exploiting. The last real banned exploit we heard about was Ensidia and the Saronite Bombs. This expansion has had multiple bugs on multiple encounters and people used them to their advantage without any consequence whatsoever.

What I fear is that this will become "common sense" to find a loophole or exploit to get a certain World First or to get a headstart in the race for World Firsts. Because they got the achievement anyway, right? A means to an end.

List of known "Not working as intended" (which ended up getting hotfixed):
- Halfus evade bugging the drakes
- Atramedes: First by using Line of Sight and going out of the room (Out of room) and the other one just totally bugging out the gongs (Gong bug). Also Method's kill is at the door, using at least line of sight (Method kills Atramedes Heroic) and Paragon fails to produce either a screenshot or a movie (which they conveniently have of every other kill). Neither of them are saints in this case.
- Nefarian's power thingy with Rip and Bane of Doom

[Belial]

I wouldnt call being able to dark simulacrum her ability is an exploit, the ABILITY IS SUPPOSE TO WORK LIKE THAT, maybe it isnt intended on that fight but the ability DOES exactly what it did to sinestra.

and this is where you are wrong. Dark Simulacrum is NOT intended to work this way.. read the tooltip before stating such nonsens http://www.wowhead.com/spell=77606/dark-simulacrum

[Brett Skullcrack]

I personally consider this an exploit but well it doesn't come to me to make the decisions on who gets banned and who doesn't.

Your personal opinion doesn't matter. You probably have never even tried the fight on hardmode. What counts is Blizzard's opinion, which is clear: The kill was legit. Otherwise Paragon would not have their achievements and would've gotten a ban.

[DiamondTear]

I always go back to Blizzard's "Working as intended" quote. If it's working as intended, then it's not an exploit, right? If that Nefarian power thingy was working as intended, why was it hotfixed?

Here's an example of a hotfix. It's a good example because it comes with an explanation

The passive healing bonus from Walk in the Light has been reduced to 10%, down from 15%. This change is to balance against the fix to Conviction, but still results in a small overall buff to paladin healing.

The talent was changed from 10 to 15 % on beta. Completely intended - and it also worked as intended, giving us 15 % more healing. Still, Blizzard decided to change it to 10 % because of the reason you can read above.

Take home message: Blizzard hotfixes even things that are working as intended to improve class balance in the game. It's the reason they hotfixed Rip and it's the reason they hotfixed Walk in the Light.

[Itakas]

I agree with everything in this post other than one thing. I don't know if I feel it should be banned. I think I would much prefer no bans, and thus forcing Blizzard to have a standard of making a good fight without possible bugs/exploits. If someone finds one, Blizz fixes it but doesn't retroactively remove what the guild achieved because Blizzard messed up on creating an encounter

Ye, tbh i agree that it shouldnt be a ban if its something the guild found out first and wasnt rly aware of the fact it wasnt ment to work that way, rather just remove the achi and loot.

Also, most ppl here are talking about what is an exploit and what is clever use of game mechanics, which in 99% of cases is rather obvious for me at least. Exploit is when you use a bug for purpose to kill a boss in a way it wasnt ment to be, while abuse (clever use) of mechanics is when a fight is not polished out, or well the fight is somehow undone in a way that you can use the poorly done part of the fight in you advantage, thus making the fight easyer. Imo, its the same if you kill a boss with bug usage or with abuse of some mechanic, the punishment should start at same point, that point beeing removal of achi and loot. Ofc if it was some major abuse of bug a ban also.

Yes some will say, but the fight was still hard, it wasnt free kill, but where do you draw the line what is acceptable and what is not. Since if you say that its ok what they did because it was still a hard fight, noone can say that what Ensidia did on Hodir or think it was Paragon on Anub, was ok, since the flower power abuse on Hodir and pally perma stun on Anub, did make the fight a free kill and yet it was same thing as it is now a mechanic that was not working as intended, or well blizzard overlooking an ability that when used made the fight piss easy. So as you see you cant rly draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable, imo, since it all comes down to the same thing, they killed a boss in a way it wasnt ment to be, blizzard admited that when they hotfix the fight and no matter how big the clever use of mechanic was, did it make fight trivial or was the fight still hard, it all come down to its not a kill that should be counted, thus achi and loot should be removed, fight hotfixed and if they are rly that good they can beat the fixed fight.

[Alfador]

If you completely trivialize a mechanic that was clearly intended not to be trivial, especially if it requires something obscure like a profession, you'd have to be stupid to assume you're not exploiting. I'm sorry. It's just that obvious. The same was true for the exploited "first kill" of yogg 0. Staying back in a phase that you're clearly supposed to be done with, and if I recall correctly causing the mobs to evade? Couldn't get any more obvious than that.

I suppose the problem is that it's a little abstract and there is no universal line between where a fight "breaks" and where it is just made easier. As far as I'm concerned, if you find out one ability does more damage than another, and as a result favor that ability, even to the extreme of stacking more of a given class to use that ability, it's legit. Everyone has their own definition of what is right though. Did they get the world first kill? Yes. Blizzard recognized it as legitimate, and to be honest, that's what matters. Is it kind of important that they go back and do it with the fix? Probably.

Paragon worked within the rules of the fight to find something that was to their advantage. From my point of view, what Ensidia did was essentially find a way to step outside the rules. It's almost the difference between taking advantage of a legal loophole (type of vehicle, etc) to park in a no-parking zone versus actually going out and vandalizing the signs so you can say it wasn't posted. Shitty analogy I know but maybe it gets the point across.

[Deleted]

Halfus Atonement was one thing, there was also 'evading/outranging' drakes thingy. While Atonement could be counted as "creative use of game mechanics" - even though bypassing Mortal Strike was stretching it - being able to almost entirely ignore adds was just plain exploiting, akin to YS guardian evade. Obviously, it wasn't really needed by top guilds, but then again, it's like Blizzard completely ignored the problem.
There's also obviously Atramedes. Dozens of kills, all exploited (or maybe there are some legit ones now), no bans. Both methods bypassed intended boss mechanic, making him far easier than he should be. Once again, that's not "creative", it's just plain exploiting. Suprise suprise, no bans, multiple hotfixes.

I find arguing about Rip doing too much damage to be amusing. We have 2 obvious exploits that have been hotfixed for quite a while and no one got banned. Now that's a big question about Cataclysm. Did Blizzard suddenly chang their policy? Is it fine to use anything to kill a boss, or maybe it's just because it's not final boss of an instance? Would using "instakill Sinestra" bug mean ban, or would that be ignored as well? Is Blizzard content with just fixing bugs and people abusing what they can as long as its possible? Now that's something I'm interested in. Rip is kinda like Hodir 2 minute kill for me

I completely agree with this post and also wish people would pay some more attention to the Atramedes everyone exploited. I was wondering too if Blizzard has changed its banning policy. As I stated in my other post, I fear it will just become common sense for people to find a loophole to exploit and more easily overcome an encounter in a clearly unintended manner.

[Mixon]

IMO neither of them deserved a ban, they looked at the fight they were given, accessed the situation they were in, and devised a plan that would allow them to succeed at the game.

All's fair in Love and War -

but then again.....

close seems to,... only count in horseshoes and saronite bombs.

PS: They stopped the first wave of Deathwing's followers from destroying Aseroth, we and the designers should be fricken happy. i mean come on your all acting like women, i they bring you flowesr you want chocolate, if they bring you chocolate, you wanted a puppy, if they get you a puppy you wanted a fluffier one..... they saved your fricken world be happy and thankful, its pretty obvious none of us were gonna do were happy just sitting here ragging on them on the forums for doing it a way we don't really like.

[Citaxis]

7-8 healers isn't too uncommon to have in 25HC, why do you think 9 is somehow an absurd amount to bring?

Enrage timers.

The strength of a single ability for Stolen Power is not determined by how much of your total damage output it deals, it's all about the DPET in a single cast.

The strength is about the total amount of damage the ability deals over the period of time (if any) it is active on the boss. Rip, with a decent amount of mastery and 5 combo points, is the hardest-hitting DoT in the game. Hence why Feral DPS druids were used. An Unholy death knight's Blood Plague during one duration is not going to out-damage a Rip. Hence why Rip is second on a Feral druid's overall damage done on a normal fight, and Blood Plague isn't anywhere close on an Unholy death knight's, with equal duration uptime on both.

UH Death Knights might very well be the best users for Stolen Power after druids, or possibly Fire Mages.

Right, and that little word "after" is exactly why there were stacked Feral DPS druids, and not stacked Unholy death knights or Fire mages. I'm not sure how you think proving my point disproves it. I don't care whether some classes come close. I don't care that Feral druids were the best. You are, however, lying through your teeth that you weren't aware Blizzard did not intend for Stolen Power to be that strong for Feral druids, and that you replaced the DPS you would've normally required with Stolen Power balanced with healers in order to give you a more comfortable time healing. This is a good strategy. It worked just fine. It doesn't circumvent boss mechanics, but you keep trying to deny that you didn't know what was going on. The Feral druid stacking gave that away, as did the 9 healers in your video. In a balanced fight, the typical group composition maximizes all possible buffs while not sacrificing DPS. In a known non-balanced fight, stacking of the flavor class occurs. Hence Method's Potion of Illusion screenshot.

I see while you tried to complain that I was skipping most of your post, you completely ignored about 95% of mine.

You don't have to think of it as a borderline perfection clean kill or anything and I'm not trying to make you do so, but like I said the legitimacy of it is not up to an opinion.

I didn't say the legitimacy was up for debate. Paragon killed 25-man Heroic Nefarian first in the world, without exploiting. Maximizing mechanics is not exploiting. What I said, that you apparently didn't read, was that Paragon is attempting to insult our intelligence by claiming that they had no idea that the ability wasn't balanced. I'm attempting to explain to you exactly how obvious it is to everyone that you did indeed know, and that it would be far less irritating to simply own up to it. That's all. If you want to keep denying it, go for it, but don't whine when people get annoyed at you. Or when Method posts...unusual...screenshots. Like I said, congratulations on the kill. I'm not being sarcastic about it, that took some significant work, despite the stacking, and I realize that. It took strategy, skill, planning, and effort. It also took you stacking Feral DPS druids, but however you do it, it was still done fair and square. Just quit claiming you had no idea what was going on with Rip and everyone will be happy.

[Hermanni]

Are you trolling me or are you seriously posting walls of text to tell me something I already know? Why the hell do you think we had that many feral druids, to look pretty in the killshot?

And I haven't been lying because, as I said, I've never had a magic 8-ball that would tell me what Blizzard intended. What, a poor boss design that isn't balanced? That's a new one.

[Citaxis]

Are you trolling me or are you seriously posting walls of text to tell me something I already know?

No, but you're apparently trolling me. You have just told me you already know what I was telling you, which is that we know you guys were aware that you were making the most of an oversight on Blizzard's part (i.e., letting Stolen Power hit for 5 times what it does with other classes).

Why the hell do you think we had that many feral druids, to look pretty in the killshot?

Because you knew it was unbalanced in favor of a Feral DPS druid's Rip.

And I haven't been lying because, as I said, I've never had a magic 8-ball that would tell me what Blizzard intended. What, a poor boss design that isn't balanced? That's a new one.

Apparently your first and last sentences disagree with each other. You knew damn well that it wasn't balanced. What I'm telling you is that we know you knew. Your stance is that you had no idea that Blizzard hadn't intended for Rip to be that much stronger than any other ability. That is where you are lying to us. Or you're agreeing. I can't quite tell, since you seem to change in the middle of your replies.

[hellbent]

Ummm.....

Exploit

-verb

"to take advantage of (a person, situation, etc), esp unethically or unjustly for one's own ends"

So how was the encounter NOT exploited? Kudo's to them for being 'creative' enough to figure out a way to faceroll the encounter but they did not get the first kill with the content mechanics as intended by Blizz. That's just the way it is. This happens with every major content release....but the consequences vary. As long as there is a 'reward' people will cheat....oops, I mean....get creative.

[Lydie]

And I haven't been lying because, as I said, I've never had a magic 8-ball that would tell me what Blizzard intended. What, a poor boss design that isn't balanced? That's a new one.

So wait, didn't Paragon try telling us that their kill was legit and they didn't exploit. Well aren't you just saying that you "used" a poor boss design that wasn't balanced? And isn't that basically saying you "exploited" a poor boss design that wasn't balanced?

Honestly no one says anything about the legitimacy of Methods kill. Why do you think people question paragon's. If half the wow population thinks its kind of iffy maybe it is.

[xaar]

What I said, that you apparently didn't read, was that Paragon is attempting to insult our intelligence by claiming that they had no idea that the ability wasn't balanced. -- Just quit claiming you had no idea what was going on with Rip and everyone will be happy.

Here is the essence of the problem.

If you have an encounter where the dps potential of classes are like this (numbers not accurate, but probably in the ballpark):

Druid - 50k
DK - 45k
Mage - 43k
...
Rogue - 26k
Warrior - 22k

Are druids balanced overall in that totem pole? Of course not. Everyone can immediately see that. They're dealing almost 2.5x the damage of the bottom classes. What about DKs or Mages then?

This is roughly what the damage potential looks like on Nefarian. It is very hard to justify bringing a Warrior instead of a DK or a Druid. If you take that replacement one step further - what if you had the option of bringing 10 Mages? Or 10 DKs? What about 10 feral Druids? At which point is it not okay to bench a lesser dps for a better one?

Some would argue that that it's at zero. Others would say it's somewhere below 10, but not at 10. That's entirely up to you.

The fact of the matter is that raid setup optimizations like this play a big role in the top raiding game. You find what yields the best results and go with it. On every single encounter. That is why you see such two-colored healing comps for example. That's why we benched melee on Ascendant Council.

There is no clear way of evaluating what is ok and what is not. I'm sure the developers intend for the game and encounters to be balanced, but that doesn't happen in reality. Every single world first kill (and I really do mean every single one) uses something that is not in line with design intent, from class stacking to straight out exploiting - usually it's just bringing 3-5 of the highest dps classes. You could say that half of the whole top raiding game is about finding imbalances and using them. Perhaps we get some communication errors from being too numb to that.

Bottom line: we thought Rip was imbalanced, but not too imbalanced. Like so many things on so many encounters before. Which is exactly why we brought 10 feral Druids. It may be stretching the boundaries, but that's only a good thing - perhaps there will now be less encounters that have mechanics like this that inherently cause massive imbalances between classes.

[Deleted]

It would be like entering a code to get a "the light of dawn" title in LK or paying a guild to get you the title. One is outright cheating(outright wrong) the other is getting in a way it was not intended(subverting Blizzs intent but still able to do - feels wrong).

More like entering a code to disable adds vs. taking enough people who can do stuff useful to the fight. Tranquility on Electrocute was useful too. Bit like saying "Alright, we need Disc priests for the Lich King because of Infest." No one carried Paragon to victory but themselves.

IMO clever use is like the strategy in Age of Empires 2 where you pick those guys that have super strong villagers and immediately rush to their headquarters and kill the enemy in under 5 minutes. It's certainly not an exploit, but it's pretty cheap and dishonorable.

I'd compare it to going 15-pool in StarCraft II as Zerg (i.e. sacrificing a lot of early pressure and defense for a higher economic build-up gain). Age of Empires 2 isn't exactly the epitome of balance if a worker-rush is actually viable. Or a 6-pool (basically all-out no-economy get-yer-troops-and-go, leaving you utterly fucked if it fails to kill the opponent). The issue is the trade-off and deduction that your opponent would be vulnerable to it in the given situation.

Also, in the SC: BW and SCII community, there exists the concept of "cheese" (doing fancy shiet that isn't straight-up, e.g. hiding a cannon or barracks near your opponents base to bottle them in), but this is perfectly tournament-legal, even (I'd say especially) in the highest echelons of gaming. If a player can rip a win (see what I did there?) with cheesing, he's earned it. Of course, if a player wins by using hacks or other shenanigans, it's an outright punishable offense.

So how was the encounter NOT exploited? Kudo's to them for being 'creative' enough to figure out a way to faceroll the encounter but they did not get the first kill with the content mechanics as intended by Blizz.

Emphases mine. This made me laugh. Why yes, let's all faceroll Nefarian 25 HM! I hear Fire Mages aren't fixed yet, let's use Pyroblast + Combustion, because a hard DoT immediately means Electrocute disappears, ph2 doesn't exist and there is virtually no incoming damage to the tank... oh wait. Also, the "as intended by Blizz" bit - what? *goes to read the ToS agreement* ... Nope, nothing about disallowing more than 8 healers or more than X amount of Ferals. Sorry, better luck next time, hellbent.

I'm finding it really cute that also e.g. Citaxis is telling us (including correcting a Paragon player) about "intended raid compositions" or "standard raid compositions". Unless you actually play in, say, vodka or Premonition (or something thereabouts), I'm just going to laugh at the claim. I can tell you for a fact I don't play in a top-guild nor know about "intended or standard comps", and thus I'm not foolish enough to start making claims, other than a personal opinion, possibly. Really. "Omg you have too many healers, you have to pay extra fees for taking that many healy peeps in your overhead luggage. Us normal mode players who will never do Hard Modes can't field nine healers and nearly a dozen Cats! It's unfair because other world-n:th guilds have exactly the same opportunity to roll other classes of characters, gear them up and use them in raids."

Because you knew it was unbalanced in favor of a Feral DPS druid's Rip. [...] You knew damn well that it wasn't balanced.

See Xaar's post just above this one.

I (and I think other people too) know damn well that Subtlety Rogues are not doing good dps, nor are Arcane Mages. I also know damn well that Unholy Death Knights, Feral Druids and Survival Hunters are doing great single-target damage, more so than many on some fights (I personally tend to kick my fellow raiders' arse as Cat on the ODS despite being mediocre on other fights). Would I take a Sub Rogue over a Feral Cat? Not if I was racing for the kill. If I cared a lot about a given fight (such as world-n:th), and I had ten skilled players who can bring Feral Cats, and Cats were good on a fight, I'd bring them.

Sort of, can people bring one Cat? Sure, no one can refute. Can they bring two? What about three, four... five, six? Where is the limit to what is "morally acceptable"? You're entitled to an opinion, Citaxis, but just explain it - what is "right" and what is "wrong"? Is seven of a high-dps class *cough Yogg* wrong? Do people have to bring lower-dps classes because... why?

E.g. even our humble guild realized that a Bear tank was good on the Lich King, because at our gear levels soaking Soul Reaper with HP was relevant. Should we have brought a Warrior instead, because taking the best class is amoral? What if a world-n:th guild would have brought the best tank classes and the best healer classes? What is the difference? Because Nefa has a mechanic that Cats can use the best? There's a Haste buff on Sinestra - would bringing Haste-based caster classes be wrong there? How many constitutes "wrong", and why?

My point in short, why is using supposedly "OP" classes morally wrong?

[anyaka21]

I'm kinda not sure on this one. While I understand the competition for world firsts etc, I understand that raid stacking will be done and I have no issues with that. However, I do consider both to be bugs in the encounter.

First, lets state that LK by Ensidia was LK normal, not H25LK, thus in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter whatsoever. Even a 3day ban probably didn't do anything other than give those guys a few days off to study game film or drink beer non-stop.

The only issue I have is that, in essence, all raid group are basically playing a beta encounter. Buggy mechanics that haven't been clearly fleshed out, thus feral stacking rip bugs, saronite bombs having unintended consequences. Thus in both cases, I'm more of the "take the achievement away, but don't ban them" for the simple reason that the encounter mechanics were fubar, not really the players.

The fact that Blizzard fixed the error in a hotfix tells us that something was wrong. Was Paragon wrong by using it to attack? Still debatable, still questionable. However, I'm pretty sure that they did that in full light of Blizzard, and I'm sure Blizzard probably had their ghost watchers eyeing the encounter too and they were probably getting feed back from Blizzard at the time too. This is world firsts, so Blizzard developers like to watch in real time.

But as said, either way, the encounter got changed heavily with the change in the rip mechanic, thus making it more of a beta testing world first. Thus again, take away the achievement and the title, but don't ban them.

[Citaxis]

We thought Rip was imbalanced, but not too imbalanced. Like so many things on so many encounters before. Which is exactly why we brought 10 feral Druids.

You made some excellent points, this is the only thing I would disagree with you on. It appeared that you knew that Rip was significantly more imbalanced than simply "a little", thus the benching of everything but some token buff bringers.

I freely agree with you that when potential DPS is added up, and there is a clear maximum, it is a good idea to prefer those classes, and I wouldn't fault anyone for that. I don't fault you or your guild for that, it's exactly the kind of thing that gets you the quicker and more sure kill. You're dead on with that, why take a warrior if you don't have to, right? My only annoyance is that it's still insinuated that your guild was not aware of exactly how out-of-line it was to stack classes and ignore everything else, and it is a bit insulting to the intelligence to be told that, since it's quite obvious that you were well aware of the disparities.

However, disagreement aside, I appreciate the info on how you guys looked into this, and the clear points you made. The reasoning behind the character switches was perfectly sound, and I can't find fault with the decision. Gratz on the kill, and good luck with the next content expansion pack.



And while the Paragon poster I replied to showed some consistent and thought-out mathematics, I noticed someone a little lacking in that area.

Emphases mine. This made me laugh. Why yes, let's all faceroll Nefarian 25 HM! I hear Fire Mages aren't fixed yet, let's use Pyroblast + Combustion, because a hard DoT immediately means Electrocute disappears, ph2 doesn't exist and there is virtually no incoming damage to the tank... oh wait. Also, the "as intended by Blizz" bit - what? *goes to read the ToS agreement* ... Nope, nothing about disallowing more than 8 healers or more than X amount of Ferals. Sorry, better luck next time, hellbent.

"Not intended by Blizzard" does not mean "violates the Terms of Service contract". It usually refers to "using a game mechanic with consequences that lessen the difficulty beyond Blizzard's design". Just an English translation, since you've noted you're from Finland.

I'm finding it really cute that also e.g. Citaxis is telling us (including correcting a Paragon player) about "intended raid compositions" or "standard raid compositions". Unless you actually play in, say, vodka or Premonition (or something thereabouts), I'm just going to laugh at the claim. I can tell you for a fact I don't play nor know about "intended or standard comps", and I'm not foolish enough to start making claims, other than a personal opinion, possibly.

So...when you raided ICC, you took 6 tanks and 2 healers, and when you head into Baradin Hold, you take 1 tank and 12 healers? I wasn't talking about guild preferred setups, I'm talking about mechanics, damage output, and Enrage timers that are designed around an approximate role composition. Blizzard doesn't just randomly throw encounter numbers and mechanics into a raid and let us work out the raid composition, they have a role composition in mind when designing encounters. Not a class composition, a role composition. I find it cute that you don't read.

"Omg you have too many healers, you have to pay extra fees for taking that many healy peeps in your overhead luggage. Us normal mode players who will never do Hard Modes can't field nine healers and nearly a dozen Cats! It's unfair because other world-n:th guilds have exactly the same opportunity to roll other classes of characters, gear them up and use them in raids."

I hear encounters are designed with Enrage timers based off of 3 DPS doing 5k apiece.

I (and I think other people too) know damn well that Subtlety Rogues are not doing good dps, nor are Arcane Mages. I also know damn well that Unholy Death Knights, Feral Druids and Survival Hunters are doing great single-target damage, more so than many on some fights (I personally tend to kick my fellow raiders' arse as Cat on the ODS despite being mediocre on other fights). Would I take a Sub Rogue over a Feral Cat? No. If I cared a lot about a kill (such as world-n:th), and I had ten skilled players who can bring Feral Cats, and Cats were good on a fight, I'd bring them.

This isn't about class DPS balance overall. This is a specific mechanic on a specific fight that has since been rectified by Blizzard and acknowledged that the encounter was not intended to have that much damage dealt from a single ability. They didn't do the entirety of BWD with 10 Feral DPS druids. That's the heart of the matter. Please try and pay attention.

Sort of, can people bring one Cat? Sure, no one can refute. Can they bring two? What about three, four... five, six? Where is the limit to what is "morally acceptable"? You're entitled to an opinion, Citaxis, but just explain it - what is "right" and what is "wrong"? Is seven of a high-dps class *cough Yogg* wrong? Do people have to bring lower-dps classes because... why?

Also keep in mind, that, had you read my posts instead of replying to...someone of the same name, posting something entirely different, apparently, I didn't fault them for bringing in maximum damage-dealers. I faulted them for telling us they were unaware of how unbalanced the mechanic of Stolen Power was on Rip for a Feral DPS druid. Please read what I posted before replying.