PST - Episode 84

This week:
0:29 - Would legendaries work as a guild-wide reward?
3:36 - Could a game really be successful without providing lots of different things to do?
8:46 - Is it better to have many short raids or only a few longer raids?
13:44 - With valor point gear gone, will more casual players be left behind?
17:34 - What can help me choose which class to play in MoP?
21:03 - Is WoW starting to get too many abilities per class?
26:26 - Does Blizzard actually consider the suggestions on the forums?
31:49 - What did you like and dislike the most about Cataclysm?

I think picking tank balance as an example of excellent class balance was a mistake.

Druid couldn't AoE tank until Savage Defense was fixed. You basically had to have a Prot Paladin for the overwhelming majority of hT12 (pre-nerf). Many heroic T11 encounters drastically favoured one tank over another (Al'Akir for example).

Heroic Yor'Sahj was an overwhelming joke if you had a DK, but significantly more difficult if you didn't. Ultra, Blackhorn, Spine, and Madness were substantially easier if you had a Feral as your 2nd tank (pre 10% nerf). Warriors were by far the best option for Bloods on Spine. The existence of Divine Guardian forced them to include raid wide cooldowns for every other tank as a set bonus.

I think as an overall group DPS was probably the most closely balanced. In terms of percentage both Tanks and Healers had far too many outliers the entire expansion.

And yet, tank balance was still better this expansion than any other.

You can only really compare tank balance to wrath cause that is when all tank classes could tank(warriors only pre bc and warrior MT and pally OT in BC). And it was better I agree.

About the Legendary: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...99669?page=1#2

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Originally Posted by Lore

And yet, tank balance was still better this expansion than any other.

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Better than Wrath.....yeah probably. But still not "well balanced" by any means.

The keybind issue is a big deal to me. I play a number of classes/specs and paladin is hardly an issue for either prot or ret. Some of them though really need some buttons taken out just to reduce the reliance on manual dexterity (does feral cat really need to have 3 different possible combo point building attacks in addition to a buff, possible debuff, 2 bleeds, and a finisher?). I've posted what you said before and am really in favour of the idea that you can have a large number of abilities as long as only a few of them require extremely fast reaction speed to use effectively. I think one thing that ties in with this is a change they seem to have made in Cata by decoupling AE and single target effects which worked out ok for paladin ( substituting crusader strike with another ability in the rotation for prot and ret ) but it really seems like some other classes go overboard.

Everything you said about there not being a WoW killer (even including a list of competing games that had failed to dethrone it) was said about Everquest prior to 2005 when WoW eclipsed it within about 2 months of release. Blizzard's position is not unassailable and they've only kept it because they're actually pretty good at maintaining the game. Sure it would have been better for hardcore players had they just spent a bunch more money to hire developers to both revamp 0-60 and keep their eye on endgame content but that revamp will continue to pay dividends for years. It will have value when a new player starts the game in panda, ilidan strikes back, return of the lich king, and pandland part II. It really was one of the smartest things they've done and they really learned from Everquest's mistake in making the game unplayable for new players after a while.

this is a somewhat new topic why not just make legendarys goten by achievements like kill heroic rag or someone

I thought of this after I posted I think I left some things out, such as someone could pay a guild to carry them through an end boss kill. so why not make it kill all of the bosses normal and heroic?

I'm going to have to disagree with you on class balance, Lore. I can see where you're coming with on tanks though. Except in Dragon Soul. HM Dragon Soul had several fights (Yor'sahj for instance, or Hagara) which were just plain easier with a DK tank. Or were just harder as a Warrior maybe (hmm k, "the tank without self heals and missing a tank CD" is not a good flavor for a tank).

Healers were particularly problematic. Shaman and Holy Priests were weak the whole expansion, and Druids and Pallies were OP the entire expansion. Sure you could complete instances with any or all of the healers, but you definitely would struggle more with certain comps than with others.

For two tiers, melee were the red-headed stepchildren of raid DPS. Then we walk into Dragon Soul, and they overcompensated and now we have ridiculousness like Blade Flurry basically doubling Rogue DPS on several fights, Gurth'alak making Warriors DPS Gods, and basically making any caster without DTR feel pretty worthless. I feel like this was also a source of the "boringness" of DS - they wanted to make fights that were less punishing for melee...so we got a lot of "single target, stand still and DPS for awhile" fights - Ultraxion, Madness, Morchok, Zon'ozz and Yor'sahj, even Hagara really (when you're actually DPSing her, you're mostly just standing there).

There was a really interesting post over at WOW insider about which classes and specs were most popular with HMs. You see a ton of Hunters, Rogues (obviously although even w/o the legendary issue Blade Flurry was too good), Mages, Shadow Priests, Disc Priests, and Holy Pallies. Like, there were almost more Shadow Priests raiding than all specs of Warlock. Holy Pallies were just ridiculously overpowered in DS. There were several fights (HM Spine for instance) where if you were a Warlock or a (especially) a Balance Druid, your best advice was "sit out this fight so the raid can bring an arcane mage or a rogue or something". And poor Shaman: underpowered seems to be a class feature for those guys (and Ret seemed weak too compared to other melee).

T11 I actually enjoyed. I think a big part of that was the number of bosses. Loot was really annoying for me in DS and FL (the lack of Spirit cloth infuriated me). I liked Al'akir, and Tot4W in general (it was a nice break from all the DARK raid instances, and it was just absolutely beautiful on its own) and most of BWD. I didn't like BOT as much (maybe the color scheme, or the number of bosses).

FL - honestly, I didn't like the trash. There was too much of it, and it had a lot of annoying mechanics. The fights were fine, although we went 6/7 HM and never even gave HM Rag a second thought. We were just DONE.

DS - the fights were boring, the setting was boring, the trash was annoying, and DTR ruined class balance. A pretty terrible tier, all said and done.

Here's hoping they focus a bit more on raiding and actually do a BETTER job of class balance - but that new legendary doesn't fill me with a lot of hope.

I liked hard heroics (although it didn't make me use CC, it just made me muscle through them). I liked hard normal modes -nef felt like a real accomplishment. I agree there should have been more casual content, but hopefully challenge modes and LFR will take care of that. I'd hate to see 5 mans go the way of the do-do, there were some really nice 5 mans at the start of Cata, and ZA was also really nice (although it was the only way to farm VP for too long and ZG just sucked). The last 5 mans I didn't really like at all. They were (like you pointed out about DS) *too* story driven and there were too many gimmicky mechanics. I still think the ICC 5 mans were some of the best they ever made.

Lore, you either misspoke or misunderstood horribly; all the lvl 90 dungeons will be heroic, there won't be any normal 90s.

If PvP gear can't be upgraded with VP, won't there be issues with using PvE pieces?

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If PvP gear can't be upgraded with VP, won't there be issues with using PvE pieces?

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As long as they keep the rate of acquisition the same, it shouldn't be a problem. Or just let folks upgrade their PVP gear with Conq points in the same way (honestly that would be amazing if it cut down on the gearing grind in PVP).

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As long as they keep the rate of acquisition the same, it shouldn't be a problem.

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Huh? The rate of acquisition of gear or of VP?

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Or just let folks upgrade their PVP gear with Conq points in the same way (honestly that would be amazing if it cut down on the gearing grind in PVP).

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If they were to mirror VP with CP, would that not just make a redundant system?

I can't see them restricting PvP gear from being able to upgrade, but to go along with that you'll need to get some VP from doing PvP as well, which really shouldn't be too hard to do; just add it to the normal rewards.

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Huh? The rate of acquisition of gear or of VP?

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As long as you can get gear in PVP just as quickly as you can get gear in PVE, then the new resilience system should work and we won't see people using PVE gear in PVP.

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If they were to mirror VP with CP, would that not just make a redundant system?

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Not if they were separate. Technically if you look at it that way the system we have now is redundant; you get points for doing stuff, you buy gear with points. There's just a division between PVE and PVP points.

The new system would be: you get points for doing stuff, you spend points to improve gear you already have. As long as there were still PVE points and PVP points, it wouldn't be redundant - you'd have to participate in your endgame activity of choice in order to get gear for that same activity.

Kind of worrying that players may not have a reason to run 5 mans once they have acquired the drops.

Hope Blizzard aren't plotting a repeat of Cataclysm where they slay their golden goose....

Large numbers of players like running 5 mans because in Wrath and 4.3 at least they are short bite sized events which suit the majority that have relatively short session lengths in which to play.

Sure RF exists but for a lot of players that is a problem due to the increased session length - on a par with say a DM HC in 4.0 and we saw how well that went down. Plus of course you can only do it once per week.

Not sure logging on one evening a week to clear RF (assuming they can spare the time) will be enough to satisify those that liked to log on for 30 minutes every day to run a quick dungeon in a tight knit group with a few friends or via DF.

Without the gear carrot people won't bother and I think Blizzard are kidding themselves if they think that upgrading the ilevel on exactly the same gear item is enough of a carrot to keep people coming back.

I am afraid Blizzard may not have learned their lesson from the almighty screw up that occured with 5 mans between Wrath and Cataclysm - if a large percentage of players are handing you ca$h each month to repeatedly play a bit of content then might I suggest that it would be a bad business idea to say "nah we don't want you doing that anymore".

Lets not kid ourselves here Toypop, the majority of people in wow who do 5 man dungeons are not after the drops in them they're there to farm valour/satchels or just have fun. you still get valour from running them. That hasn't changed in MoP, you still can farm Valour/satchels, you can still do it just for fun. the only things that's changed is that you don't buy a new piece of gear with the valour earned, you upgrade a piece of gear you already have. Which actually makes it even more important to run 5 mans to get the drops in the first place.

At present you don't care about 5 man drops because it just doesn't matter, you buy better gear anyway

In MoP you care about the 5 man drops because you need them to spend the Valour on.

I run 5mans to top up the VP I need for the weekly cap because it is less painful and goes faster than LFR.

Re: Suggestions:

In terms of class balance and mechanics, there may not be many examples to point to, but there are a ton of elements of the default UI today that originated in the mod community before being baked into the game. How many of us remember using Cosmos to get better extra action bars (A functionality a lot of us still turn to Dominos/Bartender for, granted), or CTRaid for raid marks, tank designations and ready checks? Today's spell alerts were directly inspired by (and are a lamer version of) PowerAuras. There's a lot of other small changes out there too. Remember when they added 18 million more mailboxes to Dalaran/Stormwind/Orgrimmar, put auction houses in more than one capital city per faction, or decided that actually, it wouldn't ruin the whole game if they let us fly in Dalaran after all?

How your class should work is a complex topic, and something everyone has a different opinion on, but when it comes to quality of life and gameplay enhancements, they've always had an ear to the ground to hear what we've been grumbling.

On Keybinds:

Yes, it's getting nuts. I run a mage, and I use every button on the naga, plus 1-6, alt 1-6 and shift 1-6 on my keyboard, and I have a "reserve bar" of abilities, macros and items that are only used on some fights (Ultraxion/Madness Extra Action Button, Ring of Frost, Counterspell, Spellsteal, etc.) that I swap in to bound buttons as needed.

A small part of that annoyance is that they continue to insist that we have to cast spells that really could just be passive, at this point. Arcane Brilliance lasts an hour, and is basically free. There's no alternative spell I can cast that would take that buff slot instead, so why does that need to take up a button? The same applies to Fortitude and Mark of the Wild.

We also have some utility spells that were pretty cool ideas, when we first got them, but in practice they just don't have a lot of PVE applications outside of fights specifically designed for them. It's pretty annoying to have to keep Spellsteal around for occasional 5-man use, or the once-per-expansion that there's a raid encounter where it is actually called for. It's nice that flame orb helps you fish for procs once a minute, but just raising the proc rate of those abilities would have given us the same benefit, and spared us a button. We're almost getting to that point with AOE abilities now too: It's great that Blastwave triggers Flamestrike, but then Blastwave goes on cooldown, so you have to have regular flamestrike on your bar too. And then it turns out that on Madness of Deathwing, Blizzard procs spellweave way more than either of those abilities, even as fire, so now that's three buttons tied up with AOE abilities that I only use on one and a half (Yor'sahj, sometimes) raid encounters, but that still need to be bound to places where I can get at them really easily. So it's a lot of bloat, yes.

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Originally Posted by Kagitaar

Lore, you either misspoke or misunderstood horribly; all the lvl 90 dungeons will be heroic, there won't be any normal 90s.

If PvP gear can't be upgraded with VP, won't there be issues with using PvE pieces?

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They are normal 90s.. they call it heroics just because people are used to that, but it's same difficulty as let's say Halls of Origination normal. They did level 90 versions of the level 85-89 dungeons as well, but they are not meant at all to be difficult.

That would be challenge modes.