Raid Stacking in WotLK, Q/A, Beta Blues

As usual after a new build, there is a surge of blue posts, and some of them are really interesting such as the one on raid stacking. If you missed it, don't forget to check out our build 8820 changes list.

Raid stacking in Wrath of the Lich King

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

As we've suggested a few times, we are currently taking a serious look at all of the various buffs and debuffs classes can bring to parties and especially raids. A few of these changes have shown up in the recent build, and more are on the way. I'll first explain why we're doing this and then what generally we are doing.

Why we think this change is necessary:

• We are adding a new class in Wrath of the Lich King as well as improving some specs that were previously viewed as inferior for PvE. Yet because the raid size is remaining at 25-players (and we expect many people with raid with 10), it may be hard to fit more people into your raid.
• We are moving almost every buff to affect the entire raid. There are only a few exceptions, and these tend to be short-term, bursty abilities. Most buffs from Battle Shout to Leader of the Pack will affect the raid.
• While we are likely to increase the debuff limit on bosses, this is a problem we keep running into. Furthermore, it asks a lot of players to be able to parse bosses with 30, 50, 100 debuffs on them. At some point, we need to stop the madness.
• Stacking a raid in order to get the right buffs has started to feel a little like a crutch, much like stacking consumables felt not so long ago. Because some of the buffs scale so well and have so much synergy with other classes, you may sometimes feel that you should pass over a really skilled player in order to pick up a buff that will bring more to you group. We'd rather get back to bringing good players or, gasp, even your friends.
• We want the challenge of the encounter to be the fight itself, not collecting all of the buffs and debuffs you need to succeed. Buffs are fun. We don't want to cut them or nerf them significantly. But we do want to make benefiting from them less of a burden.

Some changes you're going to see:

• Ease and flexibility in getting all of the major buffs in the group, while still having a few spare slots to take the people you want to take.
• More parity in which classes can raid. While it's probably not realistic to get 2.5 of every class in a 25-player raid, we can get a lot closer than we are today.
• More overlap in buffs and debuffs and very few unique buffs. If you can't get player X to bring the melee haste buff, maybe you can get player Y.
• No two classes should have the same set of buffs. This is to make sure that one class can't completely replace another. If you have two players both bringing melee haste, there is a good chance one of them also brings something else you need. Again, the goal is flexibility.

A few examples:

• To get a spell damage vulnerability debuff on a boss, you can bring a a warlock for Curse of Elements or a death knight for Ebon Plague. They don't stack, but both classes also bring additional benefits in case you want to run with both. The lock brings Curse of Recklesness, Demonic Pact, Curse of Weakness, Blood Pact and Fel Intelligence (depending on spec). The death knight brings Abomination's Might, Improved Icy Talons, various Auras, and a new Str + Agi buff you haven't seen yet (again depending on spec).
• To get a 5% melee crit bonus, you can bring a Feral druid for Leader of the Pack or a Fury warrior for Rampage.
• While having a mana battery feels essential in many cases, you can now bring a Shadow priest, Retribution paladin or Survival hunter to fill the role.
• You can improve health of the entire raid with Commanding Shout or Blood Pact. You don't need both, so perhaps the warrior can Battle Shout or the lock can bring out another pet instead.

I want to stress that none of this is set in stone. A change like this is going to take some iteration until it feels right. While we are pretty happy with the plan, it is certainly possible that some class or spec is going to be hurt by a change more than we anticipated. We don't want to hurt anyone's viability while soloing, in small groups, or in PvP with this change. We aren't trying to slap anyone in the face -- we're trying to make the game more fun.

The goal is to get more people into raids and to let you bring the people you want. Ultimately, that should benefit everyone. Please try and keep that in mind as you start to see the changes.

Raid stacking in WotLK - Q/A Session

Quote from: Ghostcrawler (Source)

If it comes down to needing one of nearly everything... raiders would either have to be happy with getting less playtime in raids or you would have to hope your raiding members are skilled enough to repec to a missing spec... and also geared enough... to fill that role.
This is actually what we are trying to avoid. Our feeling is raids work too much like that now where you have to bring X class to have a reasonable chance of success. There are some buffs that most players would consider mandatory, or at least very powerful. You'll want to get those. You'll want 2 or so tanks and 7 or however many healers works for you. Then just take good people.

What if, for example, my best buddy is a Feral Druid and I'm a Fury Warrior. Should one of us be forced to respec to get raid spots together? Should we be encouraged not to run 5-mans together because our buffs don't stack, etc?
No, that would be a fail in our minds. You have 23 (or 8) other slots to get the buffs you need. And realize when I say need that everyone's needs are different. Haste is pretty valuable, as is mana return. Is Arcane Int? Is Imp Prayer of Spirit? Your guild will have to decide that. In our design we made sure it was possible to get all the big buffs with as few as 11-12 people. That gives you a lot of room to bring your buddies even if they are the same role, class or spec.

here's an idea: lets just keep that cruise control for "easy mode" on and just speed up a few more years down the road...*all classes now have every possible buff in the game as soon as they enter an instance - we want it to be fun and easy for everyone to enjoy...screw brains and effort LETS ALL HAVE CAKE!*
It isn't our intention to dumb down the game. In fact, we want the challenge to be more about the encounter itself and not the buffs. When you think about it, it's not a big mystery what buffs you need for a good raid. The challenge is in finding good people who can fill those roles while explaining to good players that you just can't use them tonight. That's a logistical challenge I guess, but we are making the assumption that most players would rather face strategic or tactical challenges. In a game as large as WoW there will be exceptions of course. We view this similarly to actions we took when raids ran around getting the Zul'Gurub or Onyxia buffs before going on a raid. That wasn't particularly fun, but people felt like they had to do it or they'd be surrendering a big potential advantage. The flask stacking and consumable stacking got to be a similar burden. I'm not sure a lot of people wish for those days again, but no doubt some do.

Every non-stackable raid buff needs to be the exact same for it to be that great. Like Rampage/LotP. Rampage doesn't heal/give it to ranged. So if you already have battle shout, druid trumps warriors. Etc etc. Its like my original post where I was asking if some things were the same, but now I'm looking at it, they are not.
I will admit that is a logical extension of our argument, but in reality I don't think it will get to that point, at least for 99.9% of us. If Ebon Plague was a 12% buff and Curse of Elements was a 10% buff do you think that 2% means the difference between success and failure? What if one buff has a longer duration or costs less mana? We think you just hit a point of diminishing returns, where as long as you have the big buffs you need, and maybe some of the minor ones, the rest is going to be in the noise. One or two percent may seem a big deal for the guilds going for world first on Kil'Jaeden, but that kind of player is going to go to extremes almost no matter what we do. For most of us, our players being focused and getting lucky with a string of crits probably has a much bigger impact than a 2% difference. Or put another way, a buff that increases your dps by 1300? Yes please. Would I boot that player to get the buff that offers 1330? Probably not.

As the "only true hybrid" class, what extra value are we bringing to a raid over, say, a Druid or a Death Knight? More specifically, why would a raid leader consider an Enhancement Shaman over a Feral Druid or Death Knight when both of these classes can DPS, provide excellent bufs (LotP, icy talons, the "str/agi" buff you mentioned earlier), provide utility (interrupts, silence, battle rez), as well as fulfill a crucial tank role (and possibly main tank role) in a pinch without respeccing?
Well for one thing, flexibility. If you end up just not being a stellar healer or decide you hate healing, you can respec to two kinds of dps, while the rogue who can't dps just has to go home. One of the strengths of the shaman class is flexibility. While someone else might offer a haste buff, you do have other totems you can drop. Even if there are enough players to cover all of your best buffs, if you're a good player, most guilds would take you anyway. They might have trouble doing that today on live because bringing you might mean no armor debuff or spellpower buff. It's easier to have coverage with the new plan. If you're sad because you thought it was awesome that your group got to bring 6 shamans, well then it might be harder for you now. But I don't get the sense that is your concern.

The dungeon designers are number crunchers, and they often design bosses around the most optimum raid setups.
The dungeon designers are down the hall from me. They design the encounters around the stats and abilities of the classes. If we tell them what buffs they can expect, they can use that information to balance fights and make them interesting. If we tell them they can’t count on there being a MT who can Shield Block, then they won’t make an attack like Shear.

Think about some of the later BC encounters – they were designed to challenge the current status quo. Nobody runs out of mana? Okay, we’ll hit the tank really hard. Paladins can heal the tank forever? Okay let’s make them run around a little bit. The raid can achieve X dps because Heroism / Bloodlust (and drums, and chain chugging pots) is up a big chunk of the time? Cool, they know how much health the boss can have. If we thought it worked out better for the game for the MT to have 16K health, do you think Patchwerk would hit for 19K? While we misjudge and make mistakes sometimes, the design of the encounters is to challenge whatever players can currently offer. It’s a sliding scale.

WotLK Beta - Blue Posts

Premades lvl 80
Premades will be available at a later date and on a different server. (src)

Storm Peaks Closed- 8/22/08
Due to some issues that are occurring with Storm Peaks, we are closing this zone until further notice while we work on correcting them. We will notify everyone when this zone is available once more. Thank you for your continued patience and feedback. (src)

Arthas encounter requirements & 10 man
Exact details on what players can expect when facing Arthas (and with how many) is still being ironed out. Players WILL be able to face him (as of this point in time) with both 25 and 10 player encounters, however, there may yet be some additional thought put into just how 10 player groups will be able to access him. It may not come until after a 25 player group has killed him first to unlock the 10 encounter. This will be decided and made known at some point in time, but in the meantime, there is all of Northrend that still will need to be encountered and his forces to cut through. (src)

Sunwell Radiance like debuffs won't come back in WotLK
We've learned a lot about itemization since then and certainly have no plans of going back to Sunwell Radiance. But don't expect to get 100% avoidance any time soon. (src)

New PvP rewards - Set bonuses will be redesigned
Some of the set bonuses are slated for re-design, when that will actually happen in the development cycle has not yet been determined. (src)

MT & Off-Tanks
We don't want to have to constrain encounters (or even parts of the same encounter) to always requiring the same number of tanks, because that just really limits how creative we can be in offering you a fun fight. We are specifically trying to improve tank dps and / or healing to make you more functional when not doing the tanking part. We are also looking at the tanking trees a lot and trying to remove must-have talents (e.g. Defiance), and trying to combine some of the mitigation talents. Ideally, a tanking tree would have some mitigation and threat, but also a lot of tools and just, well, some options.

When I talk about talent trees (and the state of the game in general) I am almost always talking about what I see at my desk. The beta builds are done with data that are several days old, and it's hard to keep track of exactly what has gone out the door or not. Tanking trees in particular are going to be late coming. I wouldn't eagerly download the beta each update in hopes of seeing brand new tanking trees there. There is a build going out right now (Aug 21) and I don't think there are any changes to Prot, Prot or Feral. (src)

Druid
Swiftmend to be fixed in the next build
Unfortunately, the data was pulled when some abilities were temporarily broken. It's fixed for the next build, apologies! (src)

Balance polish inc
 Currently working on a polish pass of the Balance tree. Get ready for more bloat! (src)

Hunter
Upcoming Tenacity pets changes
Next patch Tenacity pets will lose Dash and gain Charge. See how that feels. We'll switch the Boar back to benefiting from Charge as well.

We're not pulling Charge from Ferocity. The ideas is that Charge is generally better than Dash, but is deeper in the tree. Under this new change, for Tenacity Intervene is better and deeper. (src)

Kill Shot
The knockdown doesn't really matter very much if the target dies right after the shot, which is what the ability is intended for. It's a little unclear right now because it can also be used when the target is at any health. It's most likely going to only be usable if the target is at the 35% or lower health, and just do a high amount of damage base (instead of the conditional it has now).

If you use it and the target doesn't die, then somebody's a huntard (basically).

That said, not sure if we're going to keep the "knockdown" effect. We'd like to keep it, but if it hampers the ability too much then we can re-work it. (src)

Separation Anxiety
I agree it's the actual damage it gives you is a bit lackluster comparatively, I think the design of the talent is fine though. We can bump it up. (src)

Improved Stings increases ALL damage by 30%
This is a bug and will be fixed for the next build. (src)

About Pet specials
They should scale with AP, though many of the numbers themselves are definitely placeholder. (src)

Heart of the Phoenix cooldown
Unfortunately this is a limitation of the talent. Hunter pets reset all their cooldowns when they are summoned. So without this up-front cooldown, you could use the ability instantly every time the pet died, because death resets the cooldown. Originally, we had this talent as an automatic, but that was less useful. (src)

Pets - Worm's armor debuff in raid
The worm and wasp abilities won't stack with similar player abilities.

The idea is that if you have a tank that doesn't debuff armor and nobody else in the raid in a position to do it, then the worm becomes an interesting choice.

The dps between ferocity and tenacity shouldn't be that extreme in any case. We didn't want tenacity only ever used for tanking and only ferocity pets brought on raids. (src)

Pets - Roar of Sacrifice
Almost all of the pet specials were changed to cost no Focus but be on a longer cooldown. That way they aren't competing so much for your Bite Focus and you can use them when you want them.

Having the pet take damage from Roar of Sacrifice is still a bug waiting to be fixed. (src)

Lock and Load not triggering
This will be fixed in a future build. Data was pulled while we were still working on a lot of things. (src)

Mage
To be honest, our DPS tests right now are mostly worthless. Some talents aren't working correctly, some ranks of spells aren't there yet, etc. How things work is usually some designers create the spells, then other designers balance the numbers. We've done most of the design, but very little of balancing the numbers. That is what we're working on now. Initial tests showed some mage builds doing ~8K DPS while our best Rogue was doing ~3K DPS (mostly because of Frostfire Bolt and the % modifiers it currently has access to). So yea, something was wrong there, and in that sense Kalgan is right that the Mage is doing too much damage (and also the Rogue not doing enough).

Note that we test things in level 80 greens, level 80 blues and level 80 epics. We also do trials with fully debuffed mobs with fully buffed raids. The way the mage from QA was able to do that DPS was through a very specific build, which I haven't seen emulated from the beta testers yet.

Just because Kalgan says "the mage is doing too much damage" doesn't mean we're going to nerf Frostbolt or Fireball by 10% or anything like that. The issues we have with the Mage's DPS right now is with talents and abilities that do not exist in the game yet. (src)

Paladin
Judgments not working on beta realms
A lot of spells seem to be broken for several different classes. We'll see if it's possible to get any of this hotfixed. (src)

Paladin changes? not yet
We didn't work on paladins a lot for this patch. Any changes you're seeing are liekly because a designer was monkeying around with mechanics and numbers a little bit trying to come up with something he or she liked. Whenever you see just a few subtle changes, particularly if they are undocumented, it is more likely experimentation than anything else.

When we start to discuss next steps for the paladins, I promise to drop by and lay a few on you. But if I don't post anything, it's because I don't know anything new. (src)

Warrior
Prot tweaks in the next beta push
Prot should be soon. Maybe next beta push, depending on when that is. (src)

Rampage and Prot tree
You can probably guess the intent of Rampage. It's a nice buff to a raid, but one you can also get in other places, so that ideally none of the specs who bring it are mandatory. Hopefully there will be enough buff coverage though that even if your bring the same buff as someone else. We want to give you more flexibility in who you can bring rather than it being a checklist of buffs.

I don't want to say much about Prot until we're sure we can deliver on some of the talents that are in there now, but we are definitely placing a premium on talents that look so fun that you'll just have to get them (without making a progression-minded tank sacrifice TPS or survivability). (src)

About the new Devastate sound
Yeah that current sound is pretty not awesome. (src)

Stalwart Protector
We might try to just bake in the Rage on Parry / Dodge. It was a slightly awkward talent, since it really only benefitted the tank who wore epic gear into a 5-man. (src)

Death Knight
New core ability boosting Str & Agi
The death knight brings Abomination's Might, Improved Icy Talons, various Auras, and a new Str + Agi buff you haven't seen yet (again depending on spec). (src)

Heart Strike / Removal of Obliterate from Might of Mograine
I hope someone can explain why this gets referenced everywhere. Rank 6 Blood Strike hits for 273 and Rank 6 Heart Strike does 355 damage per disease. It sounds like there might be an issue with Sigil of the Dark Rider not affecting Heart Strike, but that was just an oversight, and in any case should not have changed this patch.

Heart Strike should always hit for more than Blood Strike. Ideally it should always hit for less than Obliterate *unless* you have every possible talent to buff Heart Strike, but those numbers may need massaging. (The logic being that Death Rune Mastery is less sexy if you don't want to do more Heart Strikes.)

If the difference between ZOMGBLITERATE!!!1! and (shrug) Obliterate (shrug) is Might of Mograine, it could be that the talent gives way too much dps for its points.

We'll get around to a number pass eventually. (src)

Rune Strike & Global cooldown
It sounds like the data is older than I thought. It should be off the GCD and any melee ability should benefit from AP and other melee stats. It's a fun ability. (src)

Howling Blast is not going to cost RP
Howling Blast costs 1F,1U. We can't control what other sites (Wowhead & MMOChamp in this case) post, so please always take them with a grain of salt.
Obliterate will often be better vs. single targets and Howling Blast will often be better for groups, especially when they are out of melee range. Howling Blast may also be better in situations where you only have Frost Fever up. Your exact talent allocation may skew one slightly ahead of the other. (src)

Was RP generation changed this patch?
It's exactly the same except for a buff to one of the runic power generating talents. Death Coil and Frost Strike are cheaper. (src)

DK abilities scalling & Blood Aura threat
All DK abilities scale off of AP. Don't worry about the healing threat from Blood Aura. It's intended to be a benefit not a kiss / curse mechanic.  (src)

Chains of Ice animation
It just looked dumb having someone walking along dragging that big set of crystals and chains with them. It worked better when Chains of Ice had a root. Hopefully the art in there at the moment is not the one we'll ship with. (src)

Merciless Combat & High Frost Damage
The funny thing is the only change to this talent (IIRC) was increasing it from 20% to 35% to bring it line with similar talents and abilities. Mobs at 20% (or even 35%) don't last long these days. I think people are just starting to discover what Frost can do, though improvements like Rime and a lower CD on Howling Blast definitely help. (src)

Imp Icy Talons & Windfury Totem
Imp Icy Talons and WF Totem are alternatives to achieve the same haste benefit. (src)

Obliterate & Runic Power generation
While Obliterate generates half as much runic power as 2 Heart Strikes, it does its damage twice as quickly too. Putting more damage per GCD is almost always beneficial. If Obliterate did more damage and runic power per GCD, it feels like there would never be a choice about using it and talents like Death Rune Mastery might start to feel underpowered.

We can try increasing double rune abilities to generate 15 runic power, though I have the standard concern that runic power will be too easy to generate, especially with Death Coil and Frost Strike at 40. (src)

Why Vampiric Blood and Unbreakable Armor are not using Runic Power
When too many types of abilities are on runic power or runes, it's hard to fit in any more. Icebound Fortitude and Anti-Magic Shell cost runic power. You will always have runes coming back, but you can't assume (and we can't assume) that you will always have plenty of runic power. (src)

Raise Dead & Reaping
As posted elsewhere, I believe Raise Dead just stopped showing its duration. It still has one.

Reaping no longer works off of Death and Decay. It ended up not being a very good mechanic because you couldn't really do much different with 3 Death Runes. Instead we switched it to Blood Boil to play off the change to Scourge Strike as UF. (src)

Unholy and Build 8820
Not sure what is up with the Ghouls. That ability mix seems strange. They are not supposed to be up permanently. That's what Night of the Dead is for. Ghouls have always had the ability to Explode though.

Master of Ghouls was only ever intended to have a pet bar for players that wanted extra control over exactly what the Ghoul did. Hence 1 talent point.

Corpse Explosion is supposed to be Nature damage. That's just a bug.

Bone Shield and the other two tanking abilities are supposed to be short cooldown buffs you can throw on yourself, like Icebound Fortitude. They aren't intended to be permanently up as passive mitigation. We are going to keep tweaking the numbers until they are approximately equal but because they do such different things, that isn't just simple math.

We raised the cooldown on Army of the Dead because we found tanks were basically waiting for it to do any boss pulls. It's supposed to be an emergency ability, not something you bust out every fight.

From looking at other forums, it sounds like several abilities for all classes are broken. We don't do a ton of testing on them because we want to get stuff out in a timely fashion, but with so many people pouring so much content into the game at once, it can sometimes happen. (src)

Frost Rotation
Integrating Hungering Cold into a standard rotation hasn't a big design goal for us. It's designed more for emergencies and special cases. I don't think we'd want to give DKs an ability to do a massive group freeze every pull. We think making a decision between Frost Strike and Hungering Cold is fine.

We lowered the cooldown on Howling Blast and it's possible we can lower it some more. But it hits big and crits bigger, so if we got to the point where you were throwing out 3 a rotation, that would be bad (though not for the DK). I think in this case, having it hit hard is more fun than having it hit often. We aren't trying to design the trees so that e.g. Frost never uses Obliterate. They are the exact same cost for a reason. The only exceptions are Heart Strike and Scourge Strike which are intended to completely replace thier analogs.

Having finally made Frost Strike fun on runic power, I don't think we'd be likely to change it again. It was an unloved button for too long. Now I generally only hear complaints about Scourge Strike (which I think we solved) and possibly Icy Touch and Deathstrike (and maybe Obliterate) not doing enough damage.

Frost can already Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Howling Cold -> Obliterate with Blood of the North, so I'm not sure why their rotations feel any more awkward than anyone else's. But feel free to enlighten me if I'm just missing something.

It is entirely possible that Frost's dps just can't keep up, which would be a lot of fun to fix up by letting Icy Touch and friends hit a lot harder. Frost used to be a blast for big crits (esp. against wounded targets) so I'm not sure why it fell out of grace except that Blood started doing a lot / too much damage. (src)

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