Balancing from the Bottom Up ?

[Shiekyerbooty]

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Blizzard would say that Warlocks are fine when Warlocks performing at 95 percentile are being out DPS'd by other classes performing at 80 percentile or even lower, but then I ran LFR with my friend yesterday.

My friend is a VERY casual player, he is a clicker, and although I've tried to show him rotations and give him pointers in the past he never was really " good " at warlock. In fact he had to come over to my house and have me show him how to do the silver proving grounds a few weeks ago. In MoP when his gear should have allowed him to do around 350k, he would be doing around 250k at best. I'm not trying to put my friend down, I'm just trying to give you an idea of his skill level.

I guess his current ilvl is around 640 ish. Anyway, back to the meat. We ran LFR me on my kitty and him on his destro lock. I was literally shocked... he did 18k on kargath and 19k on Butcher. Keep in mind from my knowledge of my friend I expected him to be doing around 13-15k.

See I was under the assumption that if top end Warlocks couldn't top the meters, then it would be even more difficult for average or more casual Warlocks to put up decent numbers, but it seems to be just the opposite with the WoD iteration of Warlocks.

Warlock is much easier to do average on or slightly above average on than it was in the past. Instead of being skill capped, Warlock seems to be glass ceiling capped because of tuning.

Perhaps Blizzard is having a hard time seeing a problem with Warlocks because top end Warlocks are doing OK, and even the worst locks are doing better than they ever have.

[Grizelda]

With respect, I don't know that one anecdote from one LFR is compelling evidence for any argument.

[Shiekyerbooty]

With respect, I don't know that one anecdote from one LFR is compelling evidence for any argument.

I'm sure you're right, but it did get me thinking. Honestly I've never seen my friend do so well, you'd have to know the guy.

I guess for shits n giggles I could run more LFRs and inspect the locks.....meh

[Baconeggcheese]

See I was under the assumption that if top end Warlocks couldn't top the meters, then it would be even more difficult for average or more casual Warlocks to put up decent numbers, but it seems to be just the opposite with the WoD iteration of Warlocks.

MoP destruction is a very intuitive spec.

It is probably one of the best examples of blizzards intended design philosophy of *easy to learn, hard to master*. That's a lot of the reason why for the entirety of mop, even when destruction was our lowest spec, that there were tons of more casual players playing it. and you continue to see this behavior going into wod.

It really is a well designed spec, and the other two specs while simple to begin with became more intuitive with the changes that happened in wod.

I'm not sure blizzard doesn't realize that locks are a little on the low side right now so much as they are being ultra cautious because they somehow didn't manage to realize what effect their changes over the course of mop would have, and probably still don't understand everything entirely.

For affliction and destruction all of our ST spells are also used in how we handle multi-target situations. Which makes it really difficult to balance either, because if you make say... destruction very high single target then it becomes insanely good at aoe and cleave (which is what happened in mop) and on the same note if you move too much damage into affs dots then it gets out of control as well.

Blizzard just has very few knobs they can turn for these specs, and I don't think they really realize that. So instead of turning what knobs they can they're kind of just shooting in the dark while being extremely cautious to make sure that we don't end up like MoP again.

They'd rather us just be "good" than repeat the huge mistakes they made in 5.4 that they still probably don't get.

[Brusalk]

MoP destruction is a very intuitive spec.

It is probably one of the best examples of blizzards intended design philosophy of *easy to learn, hard to master*. That's a lot of the reason why for the entirety of mop, even when destruction was our lowest spec, that there were tons of more casual players playing it. and you continue to see this behavior going into wod.

It really is a well designed spec, and the other two specs while simple to begin with became more intuitive with the changes that happened in wod.

I'm not sure blizzard doesn't realize that locks are a little on the low side right now so much as they are being ultra cautious because they somehow didn't manage to realize what effect their changes over the course of mop would have, and probably still don't understand everything entirely.

For affliction and destruction all of our ST spells are also used in how we handle multi-target situations. Which makes it really difficult to balance either, because if you make say... destruction very high single target then it becomes insanely good at aoe and cleave (which is what happened in mop) and on the same note if you move too much damage into affs dots then it gets out of control as well.

Blizzard just has very few knobs they can turn for these specs, and I don't think they really realize that. So instead of turning what knobs they can they're kind of just shooting in the dark while being extremely cautious to make sure that we don't end up like MoP again.

They'd rather us just be "good" than repeat the huge mistakes they made in 5.4 that they still probably don't get.

You make good points, but I'd like to point out that 5.4 was not the entirety of MoP. Destro was not played basically at all in 5.0, and only started seeing popular use for casuals in SoO where Blizzard over-buffed AoE due to trying to fix single target concerns.

[bennafflock]

I feel they made destro a tad bit easier, but it's always sort of been an easy class to play and do good numbers, but a hard class to play WELL and put up huge numbers. But that's just my two cents.

[Dastey]

Around the 50th percentile destruction may be one of the easiest speccs in the game to play.
However when you play at the 99th percentile, that isn't the case anymore. You need to use your trinket, weapon enchant and ring proccs to absolute perfection with Havoc and Chaos bolt or you won't be competitive at all.
Additionally you need to use Havoc + Shadowburn like a beast. Try precasting Havoc 10 seconds before mobs go under 20% and then triple shadowburn followed by another havoc and triple shadowburn.
I don't personally think this is hard but im ranking in the 99th percentile on quite a lot of Heroic Highmaul, but my point is that Destruction can be played (imo) pretty nicely at the 50th percentile compared to other classes where it at the 99th percentile might be a little more difficult

[Nakotsu]

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Blizzard would say that Warlocks are fine when Warlocks performing at 95 percentile are being out DPS'd by other classes performing at 80 percentile or even lower, but then I ran LFR with my friend yesterday.

My friend is a VERY casual player, he is a clicker, and although I've tried to show him rotations and give him pointers in the past he never was really " good " at warlock. In fact he had to come over to my house and have me show him how to do the silver proving grounds a few weeks ago. In MoP when his gear should have allowed him to do around 350k, he would be doing around 250k at best. I'm not trying to put my friend down, I'm just trying to give you an idea of his skill level.

I guess his current ilvl is around 640 ish. Anyway, back to the meat. We ran LFR me on my kitty and him on his destro lock. I was literally shocked... he did 18k on kargath and 19k on Butcher. Keep in mind from my knowledge of my friend I expected him to be doing around 13-15k.

See I was under the assumption that if top end Warlocks couldn't top the meters, then it would be even more difficult for average or more casual Warlocks to put up decent numbers, but it seems to be just the opposite with the WoD iteration of Warlocks.

Warlock is much easier to do average on or slightly above average on than it was in the past. Instead of being skill capped, Warlock seems to be glass ceiling capped because of tuning.

Perhaps Blizzard is having a hard time seeing a problem with Warlocks because top end Warlocks are doing OK, and even the worst locks are doing better than they ever have.

So wait you shitty skilled clicker friend is doing semi ok damage which im assuming was better then yours and you think warlocks are not tuned well? That makes sense.

[Shiekyerbooty]

So wait you shitty skilled clicker friend is doing semi ok damage which im assuming was better then yours and you think warlocks are not tuned well? That makes sense.

Why would you assume these things ? I was on a 654 feral druid ( my alt ), and he was on a 640 lock. I said that I was surprised he was doing as well as he was, that is all.

[sasofrass]

I feel they made destro a tad bit easier, but it's always sort of been an easy class to play and do good numbers, but a hard class to play WELL and put up huge numbers. But that's just my two cents.

they moved a lot of the damage away from bolt and more into the generators. also made a 100 talent which does 30% of your damage and is entirely passive. it's been really dumbed down. you can essentially play destruction on a seemingly higher level while lacking the level of skill.

timing your ember spenders with proc/trinkets are essentially the only thing which makes a good destro stand out, and of course how well they can cheese with havoc.

destruction is probably one of the easier specs in the game where anyone can play it and do seemingly well.

[xskarma]

There's plenty of threads on the forum where this train of thought could have been posted and this (again) did not need it's own thread. Closing this.


Ask yourself what good it is to have the board overrun with several threads, all discussing the same thing. Stick to existing threads, like this one: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...rding-to-Blizz


CLOSED.