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.