Ghostcrawler Addresses Class Balance Issues

Buffs and nerfs have been implemented to balance out DPS issues.

UPDATE: Ghostcrawler has posted the changes that have been implemented regarding these buffs and nerfs. You can read all the changes after the jump.

UPDATE 2: Some more changes have been posted. Check after the jump!

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street just made a post that addresses class balance as of today, Oct. 13, and it focuses solely on DPS levels. Here's a quick summary:

  • Mage, Shadow Priest, Destro Warlock, and PvP DPS is too high.
  • Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution DPS is too low.

You can expect incoming buffs and nerfs. Read Ghostcrawler's post after the jump for all the details.


Class balance as of Oct. 13, 2010

Rather than try and address multiple threads, I'm just going to plop our current thoughts in this one post. Please excuse the brevity.

1) We think Fury, Arms, Feral cat and Retribution dps is too low and we will be buffing them.

2) We think mage dps is too high, especially Fire, and will be nerfing it.

3) We think Shadow priest dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Shadow Word: Death spam, which is tough on healers. We'll be fixing that.

4) We think Destro warlock dps is too high, but that's largely a result of Searing Pain spam, which is tough on tanks. We'll be fixing that.

5) As we suspected, PvP dps is just too high given that the health pools of Cataclysm haven't kicked in yet. While competitive PvP is over for the moment, we still want the environment to feel better so we will be buffing resilience. This change might be reverted at level 85.

There will probably be more changes after another night of raiding and BGs. Many of the bug fixes we have made today will affect dps as well. Stay tuned.


Re: Class balance as of Oct. 13, 2010

We made many changes yesterday. A lot of these were bug fixes, and many bug fixes will affect damage one way or the other. So just because you don't see a specific change referenced below, doesn't mean it didn't change.

With that said, here are the specific changes we made in reference to my previous post:

1) We buffed the base points and coefficients of many warrior dps abilities. We didn't do as much to tanking abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Ret abilities.

We buffed the base points and coefficients of many Feral cat abilities.

2) We lowered the base points and coefficients of many mage abilities, but lowered Fire more than the other two.

3) We nerfed Shadow Word: Death, but it is possible we didn't nerf it enough. It should not be Shadow's biggest spell.

4) We returned Searing Pain's damage to its 3.3.5 levels.

5) We increased the benefit of resilience by 50% for players level 80 and below. The tooltips will probably not reflect this change.

We don't have any other changes to announce at this time. I am reluctant to mention additional classes or specs that we are looking at currently for fear of instilling excitement or panic.


Re: Class balance as of Oct. 13, 2010

Here are some more recent changes:

Shadow Priests – we lowered the damage of Shadow Word: Death, except when the target is at the 20% wounded state, at which point it will do full damage. We also fixed a bug where the energize from Masochism was causing too much threat. (This is just a clarification on the above note -- we have not nerfed it twice.)

Balance Druids – we lowered the base points and coefficients of several Balance spells, especially Insect Swarm.

Affliction Warlocks – we lowered the damage of Drain Soul slightly.

Comments

Post Comment
this is nuts
# Oct 15 2010 at 12:45 AM Rating: Good
***
1,882 posts
Some of the ideas were great. Like I like the *idea* of the new talent trees. I also like them simplifying stats. But I think they went a bit too far with it.

The game is just way out of control right now. My shadowpriest friend and my holy paladin 2 manned a decent junk of HEROIC UK. A shadowpriest was TANKING three mob pulls (including the ones with the protodrakes) and I wasn't breaking a sweat. My mana pool never broke 2/3s.

Something is just WAY wrong with that. Don't give me the "they are balancing it for level 85" line. What does 85 have anything to do with 80? With that reasoning you could give level ones one shot kills to level 30 mobs. It has nothing to do with level 85 and everything to do with poor testing.

I mean it took me about 30 minutes tops to realize my characters were now totally overpowered and out of control. My level 64 prot warrior was running around underbog aggroing mobs as big as possible. I TRIED to pull enough to wipe the party just to see what it would take and I could never find enough mobs aggroable to make it happen. And the healer's mana? He dropped from 9k to 5k after my worst pull.

I've spent most of Lich King arguing that I don't think the game has been dumbed down, just made more accessible. But THIS is NUTS.

How can Blizzard who is making the game who has supposedly been testing the game for months (or longer?) not figure out something was out of control? When you walk into a battleground and its more or less instagib (I list no specific class. everyone in the 40 bracket was obliterating each other...just a matter of who got the first couple of shots off).

Its so mindlessly easy I felt like I was using cheat codes as I rolled my face across the keyboard... this needs to be fixed badly...

Edited, Oct 15th 2010 2:45am by ekaterinodar
pallies
# Oct 14 2010 at 5:13 PM Rating: Default
I was all for the nerfing of pallies ( cause I play one ) but it was too far and it still is a bit too far... from doing 12-13k dps and now struggling to do 8k is kinda of a joke... Yet my mage ( Arcane ) went from 6-7k dps to 15k dps and has much much lower gear/rotation/talent then my pally.

Things to fix, Divine storm is 100% pointless the way it is now.. restore it and make it = to crusader strike by restoring 1 holy power

Concentration- reduce manna cost and cool down a bit more.. 30 seconds and 2k manna.. knock it to 20 seconds and 1k manna and we are talking business without OPing

With those 2 fixes ret pallies will be back to the 10k dps range.. oh ya and changing armor pen to crit but not 100% making up for the damage armor pen gave pallies ( yes I understand not as much as haste but it was pretty damn close and sometimes better.. I could out dps and HASTE capped pally with 600 haste and 600 arm pen because of DBW's 2 procs)

It was a rushed patch and people listened to the whining of children over facts...

One more problem.. the major ***** over of DK frost tanks....

I know many people had them and they were just as good as blood tanks and even better/worse depending on the situation...

The were better at generating threat and taking melee damage but worse at absorbing spell damage and health regen.... now all those frost tanks are worthless and have to go get new 2H weps and learn a whole new rotation.. it made since that ICE is harder and would be a tank spec. So why change what wasn't broken if not please people not knowing how to tank as frost compared to the simple tanking blood made?


I have no advice how to fix DW tanking while maintaining 2 1handed weps. The threat gen is no longer there so ur best to spec blood and hope for a good group with the tank gear on and trying to keep your threat up to gain your wep. People will ***** but hey thats all you can do....



Now for the OP section

Arcane mages.... from 10k DPS to 25k DPS in VOA and ICC... just wow! My mage struggled to break 6-7k dps now I do 15k with the exact same rotation.. Slow, arcane blast X4, missles. pretty much 3 buttons...


Shadow Priest - who needs manna pots? Oh wait shadow fiend is on cooldown.. 10 seconds later.. ohh cool down again.... oh cool down again.. dps mass improvement but a bit too much without shaddow word death.. from 5k dps to 9k dps.......



Disc priest- Mastery is awesome 9-10k bubbles. Let me bubble you stand there with my ***** in my hand cast smite 3 times pop my mini-wings and oh ya rinse repeat.. for the hell of it bubble the whole raid, cast renew, cast Barrier, oh look the tank might need a heal now lets just cast bubble again, smite 3xs, and so on.. oh the meter whores are complaining your only doing 1.5 k heals but no one is taking damage.. so whats the point?



Locks - need I say more......



Personally I like the buff on Disc priest. Its about time a bubble was A BUBBLE, and not falling below 50% manna comes in handy but still.. OP is OP....


Forge/mastery- major issues with this...

Now for healers since Spirit = manna regen and it tends to only really come into play when your not casting then why do you need it? I spent all my spirit points on my priest into mastery and my normal abilities tend to keep my manna above 50% at all times.. If I don't heal for 15-20 seconds I pretty much get back what I used in bubbling the whole group and my barrier along with my manna regen from my ability....

For Ret pallies - yes it increases the chance on a normal melee hit to give you credit for 1 free max holy power move but they need a better notification like they do with mages. I mean my whole damn screen changes when Arcane Missles are ready. When Hand of Light procs I get this tiny little icon on my buff screen and a light noise I usually miss...... maybe if I made a UI for it that screams at me and puts on my screen FACEROLL maybe Ill finally be able to see when it procs....


For Prot Pallies- Yes lets reduce our parry and dodge which are 100% damage avoidance for block which is 30% ( but doesn't diminish. This also makes no since..


For Arcane mages - so the more manna I have the more damage I do? But I still need crit for DPS so what stat ( outside the spirit on my t9 gear) am I going to drop for that? Can't drop crit cause if I speced into fire ( like most arcane have) the more crits I make the more mana I get back. So it makes forging into mastery counter productive


For Shaddow priest - really same complaint about mages.. I either drop haste ( F that) or Crit ( ok maybe cause I really don't see where crit comes into play) or a little bit of hit ( ya its easy to over cap on hit as a SP)


For Tanking DKS - Yes blood has the WORST one IMO. Let me loose my avoidance to gain a crap shield. I'd rather dodge or parry the move ( now that we lost Def points our dodge and parry has gone to hell) then put up a shield that absorbs so little when a DIS priest can give me a shield I can use and I also have my anti-magic shield as it is to absorb spells...





So who tested these and sucked bliz off to make them think they were great? I mean yes there were MONTHS of testing done but obviously it wasn't enough. With this many problems why didn't the PTR catch it?

Also me with 53k HP should not be 3 shoted by a boomkin period. ( ok it was 4 shotted but by the time the 2nd one went off I could see him up on a clif laughing at me, ( I would of too but still)


So PVP is broken, Caster DPS is broken(OP), tank aggro is broken (Under powered), Melee dps ( with the exception of rogues and shammies) is broken, and the fact that EVERYONE'S argent lance was pretty much destroyed ( needed repaired before use 25g repair on an item that should NEVER BE BROKEN IF U NEVER HAVE DIED) who was testing this? A bunch of blind retarded monkeys? Def not your players or crap like this would of been found.



Now things I like

The graveyard deal..... about time if u get lost trying to find ur body u can just click and rez ( not like I ever needed it but still it was great for running people's alts through crap)


The raid bars...

Now addons were better but it beats the same idiots always asking "Who is my tank" when they just had to look at HP.. now they can look at the bar to the left see their tank and what their tank is targeting so they don't attack the wrong target and wipe the raid ( still happens but now even less of an excuse).. they are still missing manna bars.. would be nice for druids to know instantly who to give manna to.




So these are my complaints... so many things to fix and not much time to do it in.. I think my mage ran a toc 25 within 15 min. 9 mages... 15-22k dps per mage, faction champs down within 1 min win NO CC at all just straight Target blast, target blast, target blast... we knew the nerf bat was coming from that one.

Now from a Vanilla player's prospective, Ret pallies were taking it in the pooper until a month before Wrath where they became a bit OP. Wrath balanced them out but made hunters a bit OP with their class benefits from Armor pen ( which is now gone). Now casters of all shapes and sizes seem to be the MAJOR dps again... Can bliz just buff one class without nerfing the rest?


Suggestion: Leave casters along and buff up melee and tanks a bit. DROP DIMINISHING RETURNS!!! When they dodge let them keep dodging.. the boss isn't getting any more tired of swinging the BIG club at me so why should i get tired ducking or parrying?


UP Haste benefits to melee classes by at least 20%... more hits, more procs, and more dps without all the fuss.

Fix the duel wield issue... 24% hit for Furry Warriors? knock down to 16% ( 8% being a 2 hander.. so 16% should logically = 2 1 handers)



I might be one guy but hey I play 4 classes.. Mage, Pally, DK, and Priest.. all duel spec... so I can see where there still needs improvement and where things need to be cut back a little :)

Thanks for everyone's time who read my rant :)
pallies
# Oct 15 2010 at 5:43 PM Rating: Good
**
713 posts
darkpoetinc wrote:



Forge/mastery- major issues with this...

For Prot Pallies- Yes lets reduce our parry and dodge which are 100% damage avoidance for block which is 30% ( but doesn't diminish. This also makes no since..


You can replace hit and expertise with Mastery. No one said anything about you having to replace parry or dodge.

The whole idea behind Reforging is to allow people to swap out excessive/unwanted stats for stats that are more favourable.
Not quite fixing the problem.
# Oct 14 2010 at 4:41 PM Rating: Decent
I don't like the change-the-coefficients solution, at least on the buffs.

A lot of the problems with DPS, as far as I can see, is messy/unclear rotations (as far as I can tell, from a Fury warrior friend) and poor tying-in of the new stats and gear.

For those experiencing abnormal DPS gains, the problem seems to be that spam-heavy rotations are encouraged, and again, stat balancing is being handled poorly.

Whether it's messy rotations, or spammy rotations, neither are fun to play. One's currently frustrating because of the low numbers, the other's giving people happy fits because of the high numbers and how "easy" it is, but it's going to get boring once the numbers even out. Both are going to create weird separations (or lack thereof) between skill levels.

For once it sounds like rogues and hunters are doing fine DPS-wise (and performing where Blizzard wants them to be), and players of both are reporting that rotations seem to be clean and straightforward. Both have historically been screwed around with pretty hard in each update, so I'm surprised, but the clean rotations and proper DPS levels seem to support my theory.

Note: Much of this information I'm working with is gathered from friends that are currently playing, forums, beta-related discussions, and my own half-assed theorycrafting on what I can see. I may be wrong about the spamminess or cleanliness of some classes. Also, when I say "rotations," I don't refer to simple 123123 or 112112 actions (though some classes have these), but the whole concept of ideal button pressing, including priority-based play like Ret paladins and Fury warriors previously had.
hmm
# Oct 14 2010 at 10:36 AM Rating: Decent
Scholar
Avatar
****
4,445 posts
I think the problem with PTR is most of the players on there seem to be your hardcore elitist players. The play style of that is a lot different then than average joe gamer which still struggles to see all of endgame content.
____________________________
Hi
Low-level BGs need attention too
# Oct 14 2010 at 6:52 AM Rating: Good
I hope they pay attention to low-level PvP as well. I was in some BGs last night with my Lv. 28 disco priest and got torn to shreds if anything even LOOKED at me. I'm used to getting killed quickly as a clothie, but this was ridiculous.
Low-level BGs need attention too
# Oct 14 2010 at 2:43 PM Rating: Good
***
1,882 posts
Yes, it does. It wasn't so much that I died a lot, but it was obviously WAY imbalanced. They herald the end of burst damage would come in Cataclysm... not.

I was in 49 bracket PvP on my boomkin. It was pretty much whoever attacked first won. End of story. I knew if I started attacking first anything would be dead before it had a chance to get damage off, and vice versa. It was like instagib battlegrounds. We won and damage was off the charts, but it really wasn't fun beyond the first two or three roflstomps.

I know there will be imbalances at lower levels as classes fluctuate in strength and ability, but I think the overwhelming atmosphere just wasn't fun.
I dont use SW:death
# Oct 14 2010 at 2:02 AM Rating: Decent
*
70 posts
and i dont pvp and for once im happy that shadow priests actually get a decent buff in damage/dps(though crappy crappy aoe).
Of course once they nerf the classes its once again going to ***** with PVE which is still like 75% of the game to alot of people if not more.

What they need to do is not Nerf just buff those that are lacking in PVP since those of us who raid need our good dps.
Holy Paladin
# Oct 13 2010 at 9:53 PM Rating: Decent
Drama Nerdvana
******
20,674 posts
PTR and Beta both showed what we are currently seeing.

They kept on with the mantra "it will balance at 85" and from what beta is showing it really isn't. Fix it!
____________________________
Bode - 100 Holy Paladin - Lightbringer
Why Bother Testing?
# Oct 13 2010 at 9:32 PM Rating: Decent
SO... just wtf is the test realm and Beta servers used for? Before they release this xrap they should already have figured this out. Instead, after they already screwed around not only with our stats, gems, and rotations... they also screwed around with all of our bars (like the easy access to odd spells, food, etc.), AND our entire Video set-up etc.? Now they add more nerfs to people who just re-figured out what to do.

Yeah a bit ticked at having things look the way I want them and have to re-figure the settings again.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 8:33pm by ScubaShark
Why Bother Testing?
# Oct 13 2010 at 9:49 PM Rating: Excellent
It is clear that this patch was rushed and not thought out fully. This is the 1st major patch since launch that I wouldn't mind a large part of it reversed. The talents are so...dumbed down it is silly. After filling in the required 31 points in a tree you actually have all but 2-3 talents in that tree. Why even bother picking the talents, just have the game autofill them in.
I have always had specific talent builds for my exact play style, now my characters will be exact clones of everyone else.
The rest of the patch is great but the lack of just about any flexibility in the talents is putting a sour taste in my mouth.
Why Bother Testing?
# Oct 13 2010 at 10:25 PM Rating: Good
This has happened when they released the big patches before previous expansions, too. Before Wrath was released paladins were so strong to the point that players were making arena teams consisting of only paladins. They were brought down a notch or seven.

Not enough players join the PTR and even fewer make groups and raids. Often people who download the PTR do not do so to test things out but to see an early preview of little things. Until the entire player base has a chance to try things out, Blizzard is not going to have enough data to accurately judge everything that is going to be needed.

They put out the PTR to try to catch the worst bugs in a small environment and hopefully some numbers but until the patch launches where they can really get down to it.

Besides, current level 80 content really doesn't matter any longer.
Why Bother Testing?
# Oct 14 2010 at 11:10 AM Rating: Good
That's why they should use their own QC/testing people. I am sure they have them and I am sure they gotten quite a bit of negative feedback from paid and unpaid testers alike.
The move to cookie cutter dumbed down character development should have had alot of feedback during testing by unpaid and paid alike as well.
Yes balance issues will be addessed and fixed now or when the expansion goes out but we are going to be stuck with these horribly dumbed down oversimplified talents.
Why Bother Testing?
# Oct 14 2010 at 2:39 PM Rating: Default
seriously? you're just now seeing these talents? there has been previews of them for the last few months, and they announced that they were going to this sort of set up for a while.

I'm not saying your assessment of them is invalid, just a bit surprised at how shocked you seem to be.
Post Comment

Free account required to post

You must log in or create an account to post messages.