Dev Watercooler -- The Role of Role, Blizzard Q4 2011 Conference Call Reminder

[Demonakat]

He called Paladins girls. BOOYA!

[Lac]

This quote from GC proves that not only does he not play WoW, he isn't even helping design it anymore. How out of touch can you be and still be allowed to talk publicly?

you are reading into his statement what you want to based on your own bias. He said they don't have MANY raids with burn bosses not they don't have ANY. I'm pretty sure you cant just stand there and DPS all the fights in DS. Ultraxion is the only real stand still and smash buttons boss.

In Cata, here are the stand still and burn bosses

DS: Ultraxion
FL: none, although Baleroc is close but you still have to move a little to do crystal phases and on heroic everyone has to move around.
BWD: none, You can stack for parts of some fights, Chimeron is close to a burn boss but not quite and Magmaw has burn phases but you do have other things to do. Same with Maloriak. None of the fights have you standing in one spot burning for the entire fight.
BOT: None, some bosses have burn phases but no standing still for the whole fight
TOFW: None. lots of movement on all fights.

Lets look at Wrath:

NAX: Patchwerk
Maly: None
Ruby: None
Ulduar: None, a little stacking on ignis and razor but still have other roles to perform so cant just stand there and DPS
TOC: None
ICC: None, quite a few burn phases on some bosses but no stand there and dps bosses
Ruby: None

I'd keep going back in expansions but I think you get the idea.

[Static]

He called Paladins girls. BOOYA!

Considering there are 987745461345646464 female Blood Elf Paladins, I don't really blame him.

[Kaleredar]

If you were there, you would know, that is untrue.

80% might be overstating it, but several of the old fights required much less movement than fights currently... and when they did, they more often than not either required a select few people to move or a simple "run to spot X and continue DPSing while standing still." Very few fights of yore required anything resembling Alysrazor or conclave levels of movement.

[isendims]

Which is best? thats a no brainer... Model one. The class and spec you choose should be equal with any other class and spec. Nothing is worse then being yelled at for playing a spec you like.

"It’s more balanced, yes, but does it lack depth or flavor? Is it fun?"

Uhh, yes? Knowing I can play any spec I want, I can be Frost on my Mage, or I can be Assass on my Rogue and still be 100% viable, and not be forced into specs I hate raid after raid unless I want to be benched sounds extremely fun.

100% agree with this

[lilbuddhaman]

Model One – Everyone is equal all the time

Model Five – Don’t have multiple DPS roles

Blizz is doing Model 1 + Model 5 to the game, slowly but surely. Take away abilities, make everyone have everything, but just a generic version or name change of it. Eventually there are only 3 classes in the game, tank, dps heal. Then...healing will be automatic (ahem monks?) and there will only be Dps and Tanking. And then it'll only be dps and you'll be basically playing a single player beat-em-up.

[Mikehuntz]

Blizz is doing Model 1 + Model 5 to the game, slowly but surely. Take away abilities, make everyone have everything, but just a generic version or name change of it. Eventually there are only 3 classes in the game, tank, dps heal. Then...healing will be automatic (ahem monks?) and there will only be Dps and Tanking. And then it'll only be dps and you'll be basically playing a single player beat-em-up.

You're so all knowning please link sources of this confirmation

[Chickat]

Model 1 is the best. Its the easiest, and will create the least amount of player QQ.

[Sarella]

Now that druids are going to 4 specs, it's a good time for them to modify pure dps classes (and dks/warriors) to ensure it's not about simply balancing dps.Mage - remove frost and bake it into fire (renaming it Elemental and ignoring shammies having one of the same name) so you have frostfire bolt leading the charge, with some frost and some fire abilities being used for primary dps. Have Arcane better for standstill single target fights while frost/fire is great on the aoe and control.Warlock - remove destro and have affliction (maybe increase afflictions burst to compensate). Turn demo into more of a melee lock class (allow it to be at range but increase shadowflame to be more important and perhaps alter incinerate to being a shorter range.Hunter - Remove BM so their pets aren't quite so important, and lead MM to be single-target while Survival has superior aoe.Rogue - remove sub entirely. Turn ass into single target and have Combat aoe (change blade flurry so it's 20% but all targets in range or some such)Definitely a lot of work, but ultimately now's the best time to address pure dps classes having to sim every new patch which spec to use.

[Vengfulr3ap3r]

I got that impression too. While reading on and on I literally said to myself: "Ghostcrawler just has no idea what he wants to do with WoW anymore." He's lost all focus entirely.

I completely agree with this, I've felt that way for a while now.

Edit; In my opinion. Moral is they'll chose which ever option requires the least amount of time to fix. Reason being is because as they've already proven. What ever the player wants. "costs to many resources". I personally really like the idea of pvp being separated by PVE I think that would be a great way to start, but as they've said... that's to difficult for them to do. And I also like the idea of hybrids. Thats what I liked about swtor, you pick your class.. you pick your advance class and you're stuck with it. If they made everyone hybrids the game would ultimately be boring. Why? Because if everyone can do everything.. whats the point. Thats the exact reason I hate gc's direction of "everything/something for everyone" Because it destroy's peoples drive to play.

[Deleted]

A paladin can choose from among specs that let her be a tank, melee DPS or healer, and can shift around which role she fills in a raid or BG team from week to week. Through the Dual Spec feature, she can even do so within a single evening. If her group doesn’t need another healer, or if she needs a break from tanking, she can become a DPS spec fairly easily without having to swap to a different character.

Ghostcrawler plays with a female paladin ...

[Keristrasza]

I agree with what the druid said
"I'm very pleased GC brought model 4 up. The concept, like GC said, was much acceptable in Vanilla. Also, back then we were looking at how to improve our dps with gear and not by spec (atleast I did). I think that's the way you have to go. Make certain gear hard to obtain (make epic, epic again). I think that the dps output should be gear dependent and not spec dependent.the specs in between can have slight dps differences, but when you keep obtaining stronger gear, your dps should increase by a fair amount and the spec you have should have less to none impact.at least this is what I have understood by playing runescape in the past =/"make epics, epics.

So basically, revert the game back to Vanilla 100% and kill wow entirely? Don't know where you have been the last year or so since Cata launched but uh, even a hint in that direction lost them a chunk of subs and the further they go with "Hardcore Epic" model loses even more. Vanilla and the epics for hardcore raiders only model is dead and needs to stay buried. Resurrecting that dated game play system would be the end of this game, only the 1% of raiders and the wanna-bes who are terrible but want to pretend they are gods would like that model.

[Rioo]

The easiest way to make sure problems like the class stacking issue on Spine never happens is to don't add such a specific requirement into an encounter. It's the same with DG/Knockback on Ragnaros heroic, even if that wasn't nearly as bad.

[Verdig]

"but this time around the Annual Pass and Patch 4.3 may soften the blow."

I like how you say that with context that you or we should still care about this game.

Weather MoP is a success or not, everyone lost some faith in blizzard when they saw pandas was the next expansion. out with the old which originally made this game so popular and successful and in with the new 100% casual "everyone gets a cookie" attitude. Which I pray to god will finally give this game the merciful death it's been waiting for since cata.

[Deleted]

Warrior heavy archer spec would be cool. Doesn't need a pet as they have plate, and minimum range is being removed in MoP anyway. You can't argue with how badass shooting someone in the face with a crossbow at melee range would be. :P

[Bongomadness]

My bet is they won"t show us Diablo 3 or MoP till their "Annual Pass" deal is finished or close to finished, so they can reap their money with less dropouts from subscription. This last patch isn't enough to keep us till september guys...

Exactly what i have been saying for a while now.
Also im sure alot of people are sweating atm waiting on them sub numbers to be made public, gotta love that pathetic thread thats going on in the other part of the forum that ended up after a few posts becoming a wow vs swtor battle.

[Nocturnes]

Something is wrong with the dates, it says the conference call is at the 9th of february at 1.30PM PST while Bou said it's tomorrow. /confused now

[subanark]

There is also the option of adding additional roles and having some specs fill out those roles. In Rift, there is a support role in addition to the tank healer and damage dealer, which performs a combination of the 3 specs and helps maintain buffs in the group. The problem however with adding too many roles is that causes raid makeups to be more restrictive.

[dproject]

So basically, revert the game back to Vanilla 100% and kill wow entirely? Don't know where you have been the last year or so since Cata launched but uh, even a hint in that direction lost them a chunk of subs and the further they go with "Hardcore Epic" model loses even more. Vanilla and the epics for hardcore raiders only model is dead and needs to stay buried. Resurrecting that dated game play system would be the end of this game, only the 1% of raiders and the wanna-bes who are terrible but want to pretend they are gods would like that model.

Reverting to Vanilla style is good idea though, because it will wipe out people like you who keep downgrading the quality of the game

[Malackai]

Rift did it, Bard spec rogue.

God I loved that spec so much in rift