Interesting GC post

[swelt]

Most warrior abilities have been changed to work in the stance aligned to your spec. i.e. you no longer have to be in battle stance to charge or mocking blow. There are a few examples where stance dancing takes place, and it's generally to do something more significant (i.e. shield walling as a dps, or shattering throw as prot or fury). I don't think there's any problem with that, nor with druids having to make a bit of effort to summon someone back from being dead. Saying it's a baseline ability belies the significant of Resurrection.

I'm old enough to remember when you could have an OOC rezzer hanging at the back of the 40 man raid, who's job it was to stay out of trouble, rez those that died and send them back in. That rather cheesy strategy got rightly nerfed, but I think that the modern design ethic could go back and improve the overall position on resurrection in combat. Let's take a step back a moment...
- In an internet based game with RNG, random stuff is going to kill people who didn't really deserve to die. There should be a way to recover from that for the sake of all our sanity.
- If dying is a minor inconvenience, an interruption while you wait to be picked back up, there's not much incentive to avoid deadly mechanics, and cheese strategies that involve player suicide to bypass encounter mechanics will increase.
- Wipe recovery used to be a big deal, as dying deep into an instance meant a long walk, which is what soul stones and ankhs were generally reserved for. As instance design has improved, so these tools are now more commonly used for in-encounter recovery. Soul stoning raid members with alts outside the instance was en vogue for a while. Cheese-tastic.
- Although we tend to focus on the raid environment, whatever mechanics that apply here probably need to apply in 5 mans, solo pve, battlegrounds, etc.

So why change the restrictions on resurrection in combat. Give it an exhaustion type mechanic, but on a diminishing return. First rez places a 1 minute debuff, 2nd increases to 2 mins, 3rd to 4 (effectively meaning you get 2 rez per short encounter, maybe 3 in a longer one). No need for new spells, druids can still have the niche for a fast cast rez, but any class that can rez normally could do so if not prevented by the exhaustion. I'd also look to apply some limitations on soul stones and ankhs - maybe only 1 of those allowed while the raid group remains in combat.

I guess it comes down to this: how much fun is it for one or more players untimely deaths to result in a wipe -vs- how forgiving of mistakes should the raid game be?

[mavfin]

Yesterday I was suprised my shouts didn't get overwritten by every other buff in the book. They have been made irrelevant by pally blessings, diminuitive entities of a demonic persuasion(just to stay PC) and quite a few other, more convenient way to either buff HP or AP. Speccing into them only makes sense when you know your exact group composition.

The usefulness of X class's buffs is more likely to show itself in 10-man content than 25, really. In 25, you're generally going to expect to have most, if not all, of the buffs, and will have some redundancies. In a 10-man, not so much. It's for the 10-man raiders that the redundancies exist, imo, because you can't count on having X class in your raid in 10s. I've been in plenty of 10-man raids where Battle Shout and/or Commanding Shout were useful, and not 'taken over' by another class's buff.

[thecrazyman]

I think you pretty much nailed it with how much is a death play and should it matter enough for us to balance around it? I think most healers wouldn't mind getting a in combat rez but then how do they balance it? One method is the stated buff but call it something like "Rezzed" that last as long as blizzard wants and the pally bouble issue is worked out to be similar to the stated buff. Then they could actually balance the fights around the class roles instead of a certain class might/ might not be their. They are more in line with the balance for 10 man raids verse 25 mans.

If we were to consider giving combat rez to all healers then the cost in combat would be instant but then members in party / raid would be affect by the buff for how ever long they want - say 2-7min's. This would bring in the element of who to rez over who not to rez. Looking at their desire to bring the player not the class it would make more sense IMO to give all healers the rez be it instant or a cast time to remove the "need" for the extra's that this class brings.

Shaman's got ther lust given to mages and all tanks got balanced pretty fairly as of late it might be time to truely balance up the healing team. They already giving all healers defensive magic via talent so that in it self to me say's they are trying to balance them.

[Fenier]

Rezzing has nothing to do with 'balancing healing' Rezzing is what happens in absence of healing. The two are not at all the same.

Combat Rezzing should fall into the utility balancing of classes because of the fact it has nothing to do with keeping people alive.

Additionally, while I am aware that Shouts compete against blessings, this shouldn't be a issue unless you have two Paladins in your raid since it's more optimal in most cases to go with Shout / Kings then Might / Drums. I think it's quite possible, esp if you run 10 mans, to be overstating your case that your shouts are always overwritten.

Lastly, Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring are exclusive, and GC said they may merge the effects on Mark of the Wild and Kings and create redundancy that way. That would leave the only unique paladin buffs to be their various Hands and Prot's Blessing of Sanc.

[Petninja]

I heard someone suggest that Light Well be redesigned to be a sort of Combat Rez that you would use proactively (which is kinda like soulstone, just less specific to the person). I don't remember specifically how they envisioned it be redone but it was basically dropped during combat and your normal rez would suddenly work in combat once and rez the person at the light well.

[Steakdinner]

So are they ever going to make paladin blessings 30/60 minute durations instead of 10/30? I never understood why that was not changed.

[Kazeyonoma]

pft, you'll get your 30/60 minute blessings when warrior shouts stop being 3/5 minutes (pst, it aint happening)

[Airowird]

The baseline is 2 minutes, not 3 Kaz. But yeah, they do need to be 10 min buffs (like Horn of Winter, if you want to look at it like that)
And to be fair, it could worse, I remember when totems were 2 minutes at most and died in AoE >_<

[Arikak]

Ghostcrawler hinted that they might be making Kings and Mark the same buff. Interesting...

Really I would just like to a fully improved Demo Shout without the insane cost to do so.

[Kazeyonoma]

you mean like retpallies?

[Arikak]

you mean like retpallies?

Exactly like Ret pallies. Well, not so much copying the application method but just the number of talent points associated with it.

[Martie]

And the single target, not 100% uptime aspect as well?

[Arikak]

Basically, in some form that doesn't take 5 talent points.

[TheYanger]

The baseline is 2 minutes, not 3 Kaz. But yeah, they do need to be 10 min buffs (like Horn of Winter, if you want to look at it like that)
And to be fair, it could worse, I remember when totems were 2 minutes at most and died in AoE >_<

To be completely fair, horn is a 2 minute buff, 3 with glyph, NOT 10 minutes. When they give rage like horn gives RP I don't think you'll be too worried about it, you'll actually want to hit them anytime you have the spare chance.

[Glaive]

My biggest beef with this is the current sorry and massively messed up state of buffs themselves.
Adding a timer on something like Brez is not only counterproductive but accomplishes nothing.

If you take a look at two sample classes you will see what I mean:

Deathknight blood spec, their buff doesnt stack with Hunter's Marksmanship aura, worse, if a Hunter enters the raid zone before the Deathknight, their buff doesnt show nor can it be cancelled. If the Deathknight enters first, their buff shows but the hunter's doesnt and cannot be dispelled voluntarily.

Before, when the buff procced it didnt affect the steady presence of the hunter's aura, and when it did proc it affected only the deathknight if a marksman hunter was present ( the selfish component kicking in ). Now since both are constantly present, there is no selfish component as one cancels the other so someone is allways missing something.

And worse, they are both 100 yards radius, how often will you have a distance greater than 100 yards between all raid members so that both buffs dont cancel one or the other out?.

Shouts... Battle Shout doesnt stack with might, might lasts longer, so hardly anyone uses the shout unless you dont have a pala on the raid. Com Shout, if itnhad a greater duration like it does Glyphed itd be perfect, as it stacks with other STA buffs, giving healers an easier ride and letting tanks have that extra unsquishiness so very much appreacited by themse,ves and healers alike.

Having BS generate rage, when it is overwritten or inefective once might is up, and until might is cancelled renders BS useless and pointless.

So, what will happen? how will such buffs as those in example here work with a "selfish" component? since they are mutually cancelled/exclusive?.

In all likelyhood they wont work properly like they dont work properly now.

For instance, my guild's usual composition of a 10 man is:

Tanks:
1 War Tank - Boss/OT Tank
1 DK/Pala Tank - OT/Pack/Boss Tank

DPS:
Hunter ( Surv/Marks )
Mage/Lock
Shamman
Paladin (Retri)
War (Arms/Fury)

Healers:
Druid
Shamman
Paladin/Priest

The combinations in some cases have to be fiddled with a bit, mostly bexause we lack a rogue on the guild, and getting a good lock seems hard in our server. The main problem being that the Priest STA buff still feels mandatory for the tanks and the spirit buff still feels mandatory for all casting classes ( Mages, Palas, Druid, Shammy ) as well as the advantage that having a Surv Hunter placed next to the casters gives them due to the regeneration buff provided.

See the problem? a number of classes have crossed-over buffs.

The buff concept should not only be "selfish" in some way, but it has to absolutely avoid exclusions. You want to bring everyone and their dog, not just a few guys and leave others out or bring them but they are then not quite as useful as they could be, because some of their buffs, or even their major buffs to a raid are cancelled out by the buffs of others.