I Do Like Ghostcrawler

[Theotherone]

While I do think he can be a bit caustic in some responses, which is understandable when dealing with some of the rocket scientists on the wow forums, he does, more often than not, hit the nail on the head.

The following is a response to a healer QQ about spike damage in ICC. The key, IMHO, is the reference to "healing being challenged". Which goes to the ever more common healer QQ about squishy tanks?

"60K damage in less than a second sounds as if you aren't handling some of the fight mechanics right. No tank could realistically be able to survive that and no healer would realistically be able to heal that.

Now, healing is going to be tough on some of these encounters. This is not Halls of Stone. If it takes a few weeks to beat some of the Icecrown bosses, that's not the worst thing in the world. You might have to gear up a little or look at your normal healing strategy. We see a lot of the same complaints about Northrend Beasts when that content was new, but of course players figured out how to heal through that too. Just make sure you aren't calling every situation in which your healing is being challenged excessive, unpredictable burst damage on the part of the bosses. "

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - What ever happened to spiky tank damage...

[Nale]

My friends and I have only experience in the first part of 10 man, the first week without any sort of nerfs and the rest with. We two healed just about the whole thing, having my brother on marrowgar do his offspec heals on his shaman to help out. Marrowgar seemed to be spikey from the healing perspective for the first week. It seemed we would work one tank up and the other would drop, almost like their health was linked. Our third time we did down marrowgar and proceeded to one shot just about everything else. I am interested to see where everything else is from the healing perspective because nothing has ever seemed as spikey as anything in icc yet, even before all the uld nerfs. Kind of off topic... I find it funny they complain so much about dodge, and with me playing my warr again for random dungeons, I find it a little crazy that there seems to be one stat in common with anything that has defense on it... a crap ton of dodge. I think this was intentionally done to hold people back... Queue crazy twilight music and put on tinfoil hats for conspiracy theory... IMO they haven't come close to finishing ICC and have been splitting up resources in too many places and have done the gating to hold people back. This all seems a bit too much like EQ, where stuff was made impossibly hard to stop people from advancing and asking for more. Someone I know from Vanilla that was in the top guild at the time doing AQ 40 said that C'thun for a month was impossible and had problems and they knew it and people refused to test naxx until it was fixed. Suddenly they did a single fix and everyone downed him instantly the following day after a fix. I guess sort of a god complex if you will.

[Proletaria]

I'm a fan of sarcasm, and I agree with what GC said in the post you quoted, but GC does an extremely poor job at communication.

If you check the history of his forum crawlings, you tend to see a pattern: he responds to the "rocket scientists" (idiots, ignorants, whatever you want to call them) a hundred to one over intelligant posts with theorycraft, math, logical conclusions, and hypotheses for what is going on.

I understand he deals with a lot of forum ground to cover, but really, it doesn't take a blizzard CM to skim a post (or even the title) and tell if it's just a worthless flame/troll or actual worth-while thread. That is my problem with GC. If he is willing to placate dozens of "WHUZ HIT BEY CRIT FOR 900000 DMG, WTF" posts, then why can't he give more than a sentence per 6-month period on issues he should comment on.

[Eisen]

I'm a fan of sarcasm, and I agree with what GC said in the post you quoted, but GC does an extremely poor job at communication.

If you check the history of his forum crawlings, you tend to see a pattern: he responds to the "rocket scientists" (idiots, ignorants, whatever you want to call them) a hundred to one over intelligant posts with theorycraft, math, logical conclusions, and hypotheses for what is going on.

I understand he deals with a lot of forum ground to cover, but really, it doesn't take a blizzard CM to skim a post (or even the title) and tell if it's just a worthless flame/troll or actual worth-while thread. That is my problem with GC. If he is willing to placate dozens of "WHUZ HIT BEY CRIT FOR 900000 DMG, WTF" posts, then why can't he give more than a sentence per 6-month period on issues he should comment on.

Because stupid questions can often be answered quickly and simply. Complicated ones with 5 pages of theorycrafting require a little more work.

[Theotherone]

Because stupid questions can often be answered quickly and simply. Complicated ones with 5 pages of theorycrafting require a little more work.

But I can fully understand not answering those. General feed back from players is fine, but game design is Blizzard's; as a customer I'm paying them to do that. I trust they have a plan and know far, far, more than any player.

[Warwench]

He's a big fan of answering questions that werent asked, or answering a question other than what was asked, sarcasm and L2Play.

I enjoy reading his stuff except where the thread title has me thinking "oh sweet, i want to know that" only to find his answer was fluff, useless or totally about how to post on the forums etc and not answering the question in anyway.

[Hammerfists]

He's still just a person. I would answer some of those posts like that as well if i had to sift through hours of qq and outlandish idea posts. One reason GC wont post in long theorycraft posts is because it detracts from the posters idea into a "hey GC tell me if its right/or whats the formula for...". The dumb posts usually have a basic question at the center which can be answered quickly. You have to feel bad for the guy a little when you see all those qq rogue posts recently.

[Proletaria]

He's a big fan of answering questions that werent asked, or answering a question other than what was asked, sarcasm and L2Play.

I enjoy reading his stuff except where the thread title has me thinking "oh sweet, i want to know that" only to find his answer was fluff, useless or totally about how to post on the forums etc and not answering the question in anyway.

I tend to agree with this.

[KnThrak]

He's still just a person.

Has this been proven yet? I thought he's an Asbestos-Elemental, considering the amount of flaming he withstands. :P

[Proletaria]

Has this been proven yet? I thought he's an Asbestos-Elemental, considering the amount of flaming he withstands. :P

Thanks for the daily lol at work.

[Papapaint]

I tend to agree with this.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually have any insight to Blizzard stuff, and he's just some guy they gave permission to troll forums with pretty blue text.

[Hammerfists]

Actually he's the Lead Systems Designer. Be glad someone that high up takes the time to respond when more often than not he takes pot shots from the community.

[Proletaria]

Actually he's the Lead Systems Designer. Be glad someone that high up takes the time to respond when more often than not he takes pot shots from the community.

Who cares if he's posting when the thread/reply is only for the lulz?

I know some people get anxious with no blue posts in a month, but honestly they're worth no more than the other troll posts on the wow forums. I don't gain any insight, nor do i have any more confidence in the design team when i read his posts. Frankly i'd rather have him post a facepalm ascii each day to get his angst out.

[kolben]

GC could use some work in not having to clarify what he says in posts. Not implying that he's lying or doesn't know what he's talking about - but he doesn't communicate simple straightforward answers well. That's fine if it's someone like .. me but if you are a Lead Designer and have people hanging on your every word and linking what you say across the planet - that's not ideal.

[Hammerfists]

its always good to have some abiguity, gives you some wiggle room. People will always get mad at him because he is the messenger of the "nerf bat" and thats what people remember the most. Take the blue posts for what they are, templates and ideas tossed around the forums to see what the reaction would be. Im just glad they communicate most games will have a forum with little to no responses from management.

[Maèl]

The new bosses really made me rethink my policy not to upgrade from ilvl 245 gear until I had all the really juicy drops I really wanted. GC is bang on with his remark.
I upped my SP by 300 on one weekend and my MP5 by 200.
Damn, I was lazy. WotLK had been too easy on healers up to now.

[Proletaria]

its always good to have some abiguity, gives you some wiggle room. People will always get mad at him because he is the messenger of the "nerf bat" and thats what people remember the most. Take the blue posts for what they are, templates and ideas tossed around the forums to see what the reaction would be. Im just glad they communicate most games will have a forum with little to no responses from management.

I agree, if you compare his communication with that of SoE, or other notable mmo companies who just plain don't speak out unless it's in patch notes: then he's doing well, but I think blizzard does hold itself to higher standards. I don't think he ought to, or gets paid to, give a lengthy thesis on game issues every week, or even quarterly, but his "templates" are more often than not just plain wrong, off-topic, or lacking sufficient information to draw any conclusions what-so-ever.

Take his post about DK's in heroics: He said that block was problematic, that he did not like the fact most tanks could be almost damage immune in heroics, and even admitted that deathknights took around 15% more damage (with proper cd usage) than other tanks in a multi-target scenario. However, he also claimed that this had no carry-over into raid content and left it at that. No clues as to whether or not they found this to be a balance issue, no suggestion as to what the devs had in mind to balance things, and no admittance at all that this logically did carry over into any raid content involving fast attackspeed or multipul mob encounters.

I don't want to derail the thread, that particular instance was just an example, and im sure people have their own "wow that was a terrible blue post," moments.

[Bovinity]

Take his post about DK's in heroics: He said that block was problematic, that he did not like the fact most tanks could be almost damage immune in heroics, and even admitted that deathknights took around 15% more damage (with proper cd usage) than other tanks in a multi-target scenario. However, he also claimed that this had no carry-over into raid content and left it at that. No clues as to whether or not they found this to be a balance issue, no suggestion as to what the devs had in mind to balance things, and no admittance at all that this logically did carry over into any raid content involving fast attackspeed or multipul mob encounters.

Well, that's not entirely fair because they've acknowledged the issues of "lots of small hits" and block. And they're revamping block entirely in Cataclysm, so we really can't say that they're ignoring the issue or aren't aware of it.

[Hammerfists]

He doesnt want to come out right and say "hey DKs are gimped" because he knows people will turn around and say to their guild "sorry DK you cant tank GC said you are gimped and i want my phat lootz". He did come out with some ideas like D&D might cost 1 rune for tanks. But in short expect DKs to be "built" up in Cataclysm. Go back to BlizzCon and you will see that they had no idea at the time about how mastery was to work with DKs. I predict that they will have to break down and say this is the tanking tree since mastery takes the place of defense.

Example: Paladin

• Holy - +% Healing, +% Spell Crit, +% Crit Heal
• Protection - -% Damage Taken, +% Health, +% Block Amount
• Retribution - +% Melee Damage, + Melee Crit, -% Ability Cooldown

Taking this as the rough draft for pallies (got this from MMO which took it from a slide presentation by Blizz) I dont see how they can make mastery without making a tanking tree for DKs. Believe me Ive been stressing this idea as well since my guild currenty has no DKs and Im the second Pallie tank in my 25s. Im planning on going DK in xpac and i know that blizz has a lot in store for DKs.

[Proletaria]

Well, that's not entirely fair because they've acknowledged the issues of "lots of small hits" and block. And they're revamping block entirely in Cataclysm, so we really can't say that they're ignoring the issue or aren't aware of it.

It's something they've been aware of since druids were given savage block months ago. The fact he assumes "mums the word," on anything but how they're going to modify block in cata is silly. We've had two full content patches where a lack of block was a serious hindrance to our capability to perform in heroics, to say nothing of raid content which we can debate to your heart's content elsewhere.

I fully expect cata to yank rugs and turn tricks on all kinds of tanking spells, abilities, and talents, but that we'll get to it in cata stuff isn't sitting well with the entire dk tank population who hope his next blue post won't be another swing and a miss. I can't understand why he would hesitate to say dk tanks were at a disadvantage. He flat-out supported their math in his last post, but he continues to avoid concluding anything other than "block" has issues. We know block has issues, we don't have block, and how does telling us about how block isn't what they want it to be apply to a dk trying to stay relavent in his guild as a tank?

Again, this is part of a larger point i'm making. GC's posts in general don't have much for their intended audience other than comic relief for those who don't have a vested interest in the subject. I'm under no illusions that he will even change the way he posts. I just find it frustrating as heck when I care at all what he is commenting on.