The 3.2 Balancing act...
Posted 06-24-2009 at 02:54 AM by Rialév
Well, there's an uproar about this coming patch from many players across the board. Frankly, I find myself waiting in anticipation as well.
The new content additions are going hand in hand with the dread that some playstyle mechanics are recieving yet another change. Which goes hand in hand with the eagerness to re-learn the way to do it. Which in fact, I always look forward to. Now I could blabber on forever in thick theorycraft... and though... I might still do that
Right now I'm just offering some of my own anecdotes to this next patch.
As the devs have stated time and time again, the changes they make to class x and class y are for balancing purposes. Surely this is all fine and good, those that see the changes to the Death Knight would most likely call it a nerf.
Now, I'm not one to call it that, but I will say that it's going to put a far greater challenge on the Death Knight tank to be a successful tank. Now that is what interests me as far as this patch is concerned. Granted this change is going to really constitute for a hell of a lot more incoming damage, it's also going to constitute a forced awareness from my own perspectives on how to deal with this new threat.
However, though it's a change, and another one is bound to come after this one, and another after that, and another, and so on and so forth and a partridge in a pear tree, I too view it as a balancing act.
When Death Knight's were first introduced my own opinion was that they were severely unbalanced as far as the contrast with the other classes was concerned. Slowly they were brought down to a realistic level, which is when it started to get fun.
If you play the class because it's OP, in my opinion that is not what I call fun. It's what I call lazy. Now I suppose that it's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black in this scenario, since after all... I'm a Death Knight... and i've been playing a death knight since shortly after the launch of wrath. So i've seen the Highs, the really really highs, and now the norms.
However, from a player stand point, it's much funner than it was at release. The class has become its own, and has made a worthwhile impact to the game. Despite its unbalance release, it has still been a very strong addition to this expansion. One worthy of my seal of approval, and normally blizzard falls short on that.
This really can be described as just that. I've read up on several of the focuses of the Devs currently, and where I find myself worrying the most is not whether or not my class of choice is getting nerfed... but what changes my fellow tanking classes are recieving.
As often as it has been stated, i agree with the sentiment that it's not us versus them. That is a very childish way to look at how you scale among others.
However, considerring the mild disdain that the non-dk tanking community may have towards this class, I can understand that point of view.
But when I read a note from one of these developers stating that they think that there's just too many warrior tanks doing all the work... I find myself a bit slighted. And I find the warriors yet again, riding the bullet. Now, once again the change to Rage Starvation mechanics have been brought up. Once again it's been stated that they are just too leary to try and fix it right now.
But maybe they'll give it a nice band-aid. Now, as a tank, though my knowledge of warriors doesn't extend as deep as I should like, I'd like to think that we're pretty much, not a fan of band-aids. Right now, this 3.2 balancing act, looks as though there will be a high number of attempted band-aids. This is in no way a call to arms against blizzard for the "nerfs"
Rather it's a sentiment, that they would rather push back the idea that currently the diversity in the tanking industry is just... well too lopsided.
Where they say that there's just too many warrior tanks... I say, there's not enough. And why should there be... One can only imagine what they go through with rage starvation. I very much recall our warrior in TBC switching 1 piece, 2 pieces of gear to a lower armor class, just to run a heroic and not get the lock killed.
Now, if I read this quote correctly, it would seem to state that they are just too OP. Now I'd really hate to think that the warrior tank is just too OP. Rather, it simply blends well with the others. With the up and coming change to the Death Knight, I believe it will only blend better. However the mechanic still remains the same that there's a problem with rage. Regardless of how they go about fixing a mechanic that has existed since the game was launched... this could really play a large part in what could possibly be a tip in the balance.
I could see this greatly effecting both sides of the coin, DPS and Tanking alike... let alone what it could potentially do to PvP. Now warriors have recieved very little love to the PvP aspect as of late. Regardless, they still greatly impress me.
And though I think that they MAY be on the right track with how these classes mix with one another... a band-aid isn't going to speed the process up at all.
The new content additions are going hand in hand with the dread that some playstyle mechanics are recieving yet another change. Which goes hand in hand with the eagerness to re-learn the way to do it. Which in fact, I always look forward to. Now I could blabber on forever in thick theorycraft... and though... I might still do that
Right now I'm just offering some of my own anecdotes to this next patch.As the devs have stated time and time again, the changes they make to class x and class y are for balancing purposes. Surely this is all fine and good, those that see the changes to the Death Knight would most likely call it a nerf.
Now, I'm not one to call it that, but I will say that it's going to put a far greater challenge on the Death Knight tank to be a successful tank. Now that is what interests me as far as this patch is concerned. Granted this change is going to really constitute for a hell of a lot more incoming damage, it's also going to constitute a forced awareness from my own perspectives on how to deal with this new threat.
However, though it's a change, and another one is bound to come after this one, and another after that, and another, and so on and so forth and a partridge in a pear tree, I too view it as a balancing act.
When Death Knight's were first introduced my own opinion was that they were severely unbalanced as far as the contrast with the other classes was concerned. Slowly they were brought down to a realistic level, which is when it started to get fun.
If you play the class because it's OP, in my opinion that is not what I call fun. It's what I call lazy. Now I suppose that it's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black in this scenario, since after all... I'm a Death Knight... and i've been playing a death knight since shortly after the launch of wrath. So i've seen the Highs, the really really highs, and now the norms.
However, from a player stand point, it's much funner than it was at release. The class has become its own, and has made a worthwhile impact to the game. Despite its unbalance release, it has still been a very strong addition to this expansion. One worthy of my seal of approval, and normally blizzard falls short on that.
This really can be described as just that. I've read up on several of the focuses of the Devs currently, and where I find myself worrying the most is not whether or not my class of choice is getting nerfed... but what changes my fellow tanking classes are recieving.
As often as it has been stated, i agree with the sentiment that it's not us versus them. That is a very childish way to look at how you scale among others.
However, considerring the mild disdain that the non-dk tanking community may have towards this class, I can understand that point of view.
But when I read a note from one of these developers stating that they think that there's just too many warrior tanks doing all the work... I find myself a bit slighted. And I find the warriors yet again, riding the bullet. Now, once again the change to Rage Starvation mechanics have been brought up. Once again it's been stated that they are just too leary to try and fix it right now.
But maybe they'll give it a nice band-aid. Now, as a tank, though my knowledge of warriors doesn't extend as deep as I should like, I'd like to think that we're pretty much, not a fan of band-aids. Right now, this 3.2 balancing act, looks as though there will be a high number of attempted band-aids. This is in no way a call to arms against blizzard for the "nerfs"
Rather it's a sentiment, that they would rather push back the idea that currently the diversity in the tanking industry is just... well too lopsided.
Where they say that there's just too many warrior tanks... I say, there's not enough. And why should there be... One can only imagine what they go through with rage starvation. I very much recall our warrior in TBC switching 1 piece, 2 pieces of gear to a lower armor class, just to run a heroic and not get the lock killed.
Now, if I read this quote correctly, it would seem to state that they are just too OP. Now I'd really hate to think that the warrior tank is just too OP. Rather, it simply blends well with the others. With the up and coming change to the Death Knight, I believe it will only blend better. However the mechanic still remains the same that there's a problem with rage. Regardless of how they go about fixing a mechanic that has existed since the game was launched... this could really play a large part in what could possibly be a tip in the balance.
I could see this greatly effecting both sides of the coin, DPS and Tanking alike... let alone what it could potentially do to PvP. Now warriors have recieved very little love to the PvP aspect as of late. Regardless, they still greatly impress me.
And though I think that they MAY be on the right track with how these classes mix with one another... a band-aid isn't going to speed the process up at all.
Total Comments 3
Comments
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I think the hate on DK tanks is wrong. The Warrior problems are the same problems the class has had since the beginning of the game. They tried to band aid the Rage issues in February 2005 and while that made levelling up easier/better it didn't fundamentally solve the flaws in the mechanic. Those changes got gimped when they needed to nerf Fury warrior DPS for T2/T3 and they offered us terrible Devastate instead of fixing the problem.
It's been like 4 years with a broken class. Yeah they put in some gimmicks to force you to bring them along (ala disarm and supression rooms) but the core mechanics have never functioned properly. It's tougher when the other guys who do your job better or the same as you also get to breeze through it with well designed tanking mechanics. That's where the misplaced hate is coming from I guess.Posted 06-24-2009 at 04:08 AM by minrog 
- As usual, I enjoy your post. It's not your normal funny but I suppose you run out of those from time to time.
Anyway, you put it in a good perspective, and as I have seen written, the good players will continue to be good players that make adjustments, it'll be the those that relied upon the OP DK that may have issues. I love this game too much to worry about what will or will not be changed. Am I always happy with the changes, of course not but I pay to play and if I didn't find so much enjoyment from the game and the people, i would have been gone a long time ago.Posted 06-24-2009 at 07:42 PM by Bigal - Well, i wouldn't exactly call it misplaced hate, so much as I'd call it an attempt to re-vamp how raid mechanics are going to be executed.
I do think that it will adjust the reliance of the tanking classes to a less than Death Knight dominated front line. Though I think that they will still be a very solid tanking class, we aren't having the same issues as warriors are. Our issues are more along the lines of absorption, not through Armor, but through talents and cooldowns. I think blizzard is trying their damndest to lessen a 91 percent Cooldown uptime in a minute fight.
The problem with that mechanic however, is that fights normally take longer than one minute. As it stands right now as a frost tank a Death Knight has a 76% uptime on cooldowns in a cooldown cycle.
I don't know much about the other three classes, but I do know that that is a hell of a long time, and that is a hell of a lot of absorption.
The only problem with this however, is that 24 percent we don't have something up and running, we are taking some pretty wicked hits.
Now i've been greatly on the side of blizzard thus far, with how they have been applying changes to the Death Knight, I find myself a little worried about the reduction from armor to Toughness. That is a pretty significant decrease, which however, can be made up for with a trinket and enchantment swap, however that will severely limit my itemizations.
The one thing that those screaming about the nerfs, is that they aren't quite balancing the issue with the Death Knight out with the overall environment of the game. Wherein, the changes applied to the Death Knight seem (from what it sounds) to go fairly streamlined with the changes to the professions. Wherein, though we are taking these reductions with reluctance, but acceptance at the same time, we are also going to see possible balancing with the itemization possibilities. And I can't speak for every Death Knight tank out there, however, I chose my professions for a maximizing. And as a Blacksmith and a Jewelcrafter, I can give a somewhat educated guess that the increases to Jewelcrafting will balance out the decreases to at least our Stamina. Our Armor, i'm not certain, however there are ways around tat.
As for warriors however, I still regard the warrior as being the one tank you can rely on. They were that way in the beginning, and though they have continuously struggling to overcome their internal problems, those that perform well, can really impress you. Their outer mechanics are extremely solid, especially to those who really know how to play one. However their internal mechanics are really putting a damper on how well they CAN perform.
The popularity of the warrior has decreased because of this, and it's a damn shame.
However, there have been some ideas as to how to fix this mechanic, but I'm a bit shaky to a good many of them. Granting them rage from avoidance, though a solid way to gain rage, could really put a dominance on the class. I could be mistaken, simply because Death Knights do have that similar avoidance mechanic with Rune Strike. Which is a high damage, high threat ability.
What i struggle to find balance in though, is Warriors base everything off of their rage bar. I'm not entirely sure that raw avoidance should determine how well a tank can tank. Though I'd love to see a test on that, if it were to become a possibility.
I'm not the greatest theorycrafter in the world, but that is what I think right now. And like i've said, and many others have said, it's not an us vs. them, its a balance issue. And I'd love to see a more diverse tanking environment, where each tank has a solid mechanic to rely on.Posted 06-24-2009 at 11:31 PM by Rialév
