PST - Episode 114

[Lore]

This week:
0:18 - Should the next class added to WoW use intellect plate?
6:51 - How do you feel about realm first achievements? Should there be more rewards?
13:14 - What can I do to minimize loot drama in my 10-man heroic raid?
19:00 - Why don't classes have special niches anymore?
25:53 - What do I need to get started with live streaming raids?
32:11 - How should I approach spending my Valor points in the weeks leading to 5.2?
36:02 - Should all ranged classes be able to cast while moving?
42:30 - Should there be a solo rated queue for WoW PvP?

[peacemaker91]

I could see a spellblade type class potentially working. It could play as a mix of warriors and shamans. It could have 2 dps specs and 1 healing spec. The healing spec would use fire, lightining, and ice magic to heal in creative ways(ex: cauterizing wounds, jolting energy into a target, etc) Both dps specs would be melee with the first focusing on using intellect plate to boast spell damage. This spec would have weapon enchants similar to a shaman along with instant or quick spells to use. The other spec would focus on str plate to do more raw weapon damage with some spells mixed in. Both dps specs could duel wield and the healing spec would use a 1h and shield.

[Squirrels]

I could see a spellblade type class potentially working. It could play as a mix of warriors and shamans. It could have 2 dps specs and 1 healing spec. The healing spec would use fire, lightining, and ice magic to heal in creative ways(ex: cauterizing wounds, jolting energy into a target, etc) Both dps specs would be melee with the first focusing on using intellect plate to boast spell damage. This spec would have weapon enchants similar to a shaman along with instant or quick spells to use. The other spec would focus on str plate to do more raw weapon damage with some spells mixed in. Both dps specs could duel wield and the healing spec would use a 1h and shield.

Assuming the current stat/gear system is still around in the future, I could definitely see some sort of a "battle-mage" type class. Not sure if it needs to be a healer or not or what skills it should have, but some sort of a "cast who can take a melee blow" would work out.

[Nagassh]

Don't know if I've missed something, but is there a reason Legendary is delayed / not being posted on Tankspot?

[Banzhe]

Four plate wearing classes wouldn't be an issue, unless I'm not understanding the question to begin with.
You can't seriously claim possible issue just because your including a new classes off-spec, since that "issue" already exist within the leather users unless you chose to disregard druids as 4 different specs.

It's based on intellect, meaning in any raid.., you'd have between 1-3 hyping for the same items, which isn't uncommon today amongst other items.

[SasoriRinku]

Just a comment on the niche class roll discussion, I have a few additional comments:

I too played a Holy Pally for the longest time, as he was my first and main toon. Personally, I love the style of healing that Holy Paladins used to have. The whole role of being a godly tank healer just appealed so much to me that I played him over any other healer that I tried. However, once Cata came out (and only more so in MoP so far), that style of play completely changed. I don't think I can quite stress enough how significantly the play style has shifted. I speak from experience when I say that in Dragon Soul, I went from using my array of single-target heals to spamming Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn for huge sections of most of the encounters.

Now, I'm aware that some of that is based on DS's encounter design (or lack thereof), but it's been a recurring problem since the launch of 4.0. Blizzard hasn't really 'balanced' the roll of the Holy Pally as much as it has destroyed its old identity to make it fit with the other specs - it's originality is mostly gone. To further evidence this, just look at the paladin tier 3 talents. When I saw Eternal Flame (Riptide) and Sacred Shield (PW: Shield, to an extent), my first thoughts were: "Now they want me to be a Shammy or Priest..."

I realize that that's a mostly reactionary statement, but it is hard to argue against that line of reasoning. In an attempt to draw Holy Paladins closer to the other healers, I feel as though Blizzard has taken what made the spec so unique and enjoyable away. While I realize that balancing is an issue and that encounter design is changing (Rare is a boss fight that is majority tank damage, anymore), I have to ask this: Is it really so terrible that one class/spec is nearly mandatory for an encounter? So long as it is not overpowered for every encounter, I personally feel that it's acceptable to allow each spec to have a time in the spotlight where they can take advantage of what makes them unique.

-Rinngo (Korgath-US)

[Tengenstein]

Still think unholy DKs should use Spell Plate. After all they're warlocks possesing dead pallies. Give them passinves make them gain AP from int, Hit from spirit and their plate specialization goves them bonus int, they can still use str DPS trinkets/rings/cloaks/weapons.

[Gregasaurous]

Question 5: Them Saturday morning Loretoons!

[Anghio]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/8586239

just in a few hours ago that valor is not going to justice.

I def gonna cap out and get that neutral necklace, if it stays neutral.

[Tengenstein]

Lore derides it on TWM; Blizzard make the change.

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[tawnos]

Still think unholy DKs should use Spell Plate. After all they're warlocks possesing dead pallies. Give them passinves make them gain AP from int, Hit from spirit and their plate specialization goves them bonus int, they can still use str DPS trinkets/rings/cloaks/weapons.

Really would have made sense from the start to make them a ranged spell plate class. The DK in Warcraft2 was ranged and it could have helped to mitigate the obvious overabundance of melee to have another available ranged class. Its probably too late to change it now though.

[Knighterrant81]

They need to reduce the amount of damage ranged classes can do, not increase it. Already as a Raid Leader I feel pressure to sit melee for ranged because melee just take more damage and don't really bring anything that a ranged can't also bring. Garalon shows just how far Blizzard has to go these days to actually make a fight that favors melee over ranged. DPS while moving abilities just exacerbate this.

[Thels]

While a 4th plate class seems a bit overkill at the moment, I could very well imagine a 4th spec for Paladins or DKs (or both), that would be more caster oriented, and share gear with Holy Paladins.

Another option, since Caster Mail is also only used by 2 specs at the moment, is to give Holy Paladins an imbue ability that allows them to upgrade mail to plate, and then remove all non-tier intellect plate from the loot tables. Though this method has 2 downsides:

1) The appearance might be off. Or would the imbue ability also change the appearance? That would be kind of odd.
2) It might be a bit before people realize that holy paladins would need the caster mail, and until then they'd be accused of ninjaing, or being denied their gear by raid leaders.

[Mwawka]

Really would have made sense from the start to make them a ranged spell plate class. The DK in Warcraft2 was ranged and it could have helped to mitigate the obvious overabundance of melee to have another available ranged class. Its probably too late to change it now though.

I have to agree with this. If we could have a time capsule, making Unholy a plate/int spec would have been a great way to go and really made a lot of sense. We have to remember tho, that when the DK was first introduced, it was designed so that each spec could tank or dps, a design that ended up being a failure in Blizzard's view. I'm not sure what sort of fury there would be among those who play DK's if the change were to be made now, but I suspect there would be a lot of upset people. If it were me, I'd embrace the change, but I can imagine it would be a tough transition and a tough sell.

[boogi]

Any chance for a link to that Mike B video you where talking about?

[tawnos]

They need to reduce the amount of damage ranged classes can do, not increase it. Already as a Raid Leader I feel pressure to sit melee for ranged because melee just take more damage and don't really bring anything that a ranged can't also bring. Garalon shows just how far Blizzard has to go these days to actually make a fight that favors melee over ranged. DPS while moving abilities just exacerbate this.

Really strongly agree with this. The extent of the ranged advantage in PVE is well beyond absurd as it is and the only plausible reason I could ever think of as to why such an obvious problem wasn't fixable was that to reduce the ability of ranged to dps while moving in PVE to bring them back in line with where they should be in relation to melee would cripple them in PVP. They don't seem to even want to remove the impediments to melee dps (how many mechanics consist of 'don't be near the mob' or 'don't be near this spot where the mob has to be'?) but what was intended to be the impediment to ranged dps was long ago ditched.

[eald]

Is it really so terrible that one class/spec is nearly mandatory for an encounter? So long as it is not overpowered for every encounter, I personally feel that it's acceptable to allow each spec to have a time in the spotlight where they can take advantage of what makes them unique.

-Rinngo (Korgath-US)

The problem is the opposite, to be godly tank healers you have to give up aoe, now in FL that was a problem because Holy Paladin are really popular and many 10man had two of them, gl doing single target healing there, that is the moment when the shift started; in DS, not only paladins, but every healer, in 10 man casting single target spell was a heavy HPS loss, tanks survived with CD's and the their portion of the two/three healers doing aoe, with some ST from time to time.

And then everything that Lore said come into place, if you have this single target godly healing toolkit, people will start shifting to that class, then either they nerf it or make the fight in a way that ST healing isn't that relevant, then you can't bring those ST healers because is better to use AOE healers, and then you either...wait wait that was just what I wrote in the previous example.

There will be changes, if you follow healing in general, GC has said that the old toolkits don't apply to modern encounter design, we see how druids are bad and will be bad no matter the buff, disc priest is OP and boring PoH spamfest and the alternative is spam PW:S while not in SS, they will update toolkits (next expansion), hopefully more in line of the encounters but without giving up too much of the flavor of each class.

[eald]

About the Plate Int class/spec.

TL;DR: I agree with Lore, it creates more problems that it fixes. But I would prefer a totally different set of rules for gear in WoW.

I dont like the idea of adding a plate-spec user because then you create shamans 2.0, you have two set of pieces that works for one spec and could work for another just worse. You can create a new class that is caster only DPS, DPS, Healer or you just expand the problem to a new level. I like more the idea of giving something that makes the hpaly to use the shaman gear.

But that comes from one person that doesn't like the way WoW handles gear. Rift for example if you are a cleric, you could either be melee, caster, healer, and you have passive that convert your Spell power to Attack Power, and spirit and so on; of course the BiS is different for each spec, and the set bonus is in another item of gear so you can interchange it with ease, this solves this problem, itemization for small tiers and dual specs gearing but again in Rift, you are expected to switch spec every time you change the type of content or from trash to boss or to another boss. BTW this isn't updated info, maybe they change it for the expansion.


About solo ranking queue.

TL;DR: It dies because ranking is not enough in the WoW mentality (where is my gear?) or you give enough incentive to make it kill RBG (not sure if this is bad for the game).

I like the concept with one caveat, how do I rank? Per win, excellent. Per performance based on Honor/HK? Worst thing ever. Per objective related actions? Better use the "Per win" criteria so is easy to create.

But in the end I don't think it will work here in WoW. LoL, SC relate so much to chess, there everything that happens in a match is toward the victory. In WoW what matters is the gear, I can put examples of how this changes the way people play but I think is clear that not everybody tries to win random BG's. In addition, there are not so many PVPers so lets talk about the queues:

To create this you either have a dynamic queue that tries to allocate the worse players with their similar and the top with theirs, and -magical- mathematical things for the middle of the pack that make people play as fast as possible with a relative balanced team.

Or you can do it in simpler ways, but any other way, that is semi-static tends to a higher number of concurrent queues, which means longer queues. In addition to this, which queues are you going to create? Only random for all bg? If you allow black list or queue for only one BG, your times will increase. Will you remove AV and IoC because of the size? Will affect to how people reacts to each queue.

You can expect that in order to people play this you need to give a bigger incentive than normal queue, that means that you are going to have a viable alternative to RBG's (for the non-competitive player that I think are the majority of the game that care about the gear). Lore has talked about how is harsh for the newcomer in PVP to try RBG's because the way people reacts to each other, you create a way for each individual to progress without the need of an organized group, you kill the organized groups.

[Tengenstein]

Yes it s bad that one spec/class is mandatory for an encounter.in a 10 man guild you're only going to have two (or maybe three) and say you need a bear+DK combo to tank that encounter, and your usualy tanks are warrior/paladin. do you ditch them? do you just never get that encounter down? even if it balances out so that each tier each tank has one encounter where they're mandatory that would mandate that every guild had a full roster of tannks and you end up with either 60% of your tank roster sits out EVERY encounter or your tanks are required to have an alt or 2 in a 10 man guild.

And what about pugging? are people really going pug 5 tanks for a 10 man? is the RL going to have to commute back to the nearest city after each kill to get the appropriate tank for the next encounter.

Fuck that.

EDIT: and Sacred shield is nothing like Power Word: Shield its more like, well, like Sacred Shield from Wrath.

[Knighterrant81]

Really strongly agree with this. The extent of the ranged advantage in PVE is well beyond absurd as it is and the only plausible reason I could ever think of as to why such an obvious problem wasn't fixable was that to reduce the ability of ranged to dps while moving in PVE to bring them back in line with where they should be in relation to melee would cripple them in PVP. They don't seem to even want to remove the impediments to melee dps (how many mechanics consist of 'don't be near the mob' or 'don't be near this spot where the mob has to be'?) but what was intended to be the impediment to ranged dps was long ago ditched.

The problem they have is that because every melee has an interrupt, in order to make ranged playable at all in PVP you have to give them lots of instant cast damage which = damage on the move. Also, you can make boss fights that cause range DPS to be low and melee to be high (Saurfang, Garalon) but its really hard to make mechanics that will make you sit ranged completely. Saurfang needs ranged, so does Garalon. However, there's no fight in the game that I've ever run into that can't be done with a full ranged group (we cleared all of FL and most of t11 with just such a group). You certainly can't say that for a melee group. As it is, the only thing that's preventing melee from being completely superfluous is the need to have geared tanks and the way loot drops work (you need a warm body to soak up that Str/Agi gear).

I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to add things like KJ's Cunning (maybe they were running out of ideas when making the new talent system) but it just really puts melee in a tough spot in PVE.