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3k Arena Rating Cap Reached
Congratulations to two 3v3 teams from US-Bloodlust on reaching the cap for arena team rating of 3000. Both big furious joke (
) and sup fresh our turn baby (
) reached the rating the last time the armory was updated; a rating that Blizzard previously said should probably never be possible to reach.
Blue Posts
Balancing Around Class Representation (Source)
Let's consider a totally hypothetical example (and I am being serious about that):
Say we did some extensive data extraction from Ulduar and found that only 5% of guilds use Feral tanks when learning hard modes. Assume for the sake of my very contrived example that we could somehow select for those guilds with a potential to beat the encounters, but that the encounters weren't on farm yet. Assume that the sample size was somehow large enough that the statistics are not at fault in any of this data collection. (I'm trying not to let you Kobayashi Maru your way out of being able to resolve the scenario.)
Now, let's also assume that we convinced ourselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that using a competent and appropriately geared Feral tank made most of the hard mode encounters significantly easier. Assume that the community also felt the same way -- that it wasn't a dark secret.
The fair thing to do from a balance point-of-view would be to nerf Feral tanks. This will likely cause the percentage of them to drop from say 5% to 2% or virtually nil. A game designer should look at that and say: Yikes!
You can argue that maybe the bear is just a horribly frustrating spec to play and so nobody does it despite its advantages. I don't really buy that though. Players tend to say that about all of the classes, and I don't see a lot of evidence that Ferals are somehow unique in this regard. Furthermore, many of our players will do things that are soul-crushingly frustrating if they think it might confer to them a small advantage, which is often why we nerf such things -- to save players from themselves so to speak. It's just hard to resolve how, in this particular example, why more guilds don't go stampeding towards druid tanks if they are overpowered.
It's a tough question -- what to do with the overpowered but underplayed spec, assuming it doesn't have any crippling gameplay flaws? What do you do with the spec that is wildly popular but underpowered? Do you make them somehow less fun (even if it's relative) so players try out the other specs? I think saying "just make all the specs as fun!" is a cop out. We try to do that all the time, but I don't think that will ever result in as many shamans as warriors.
This is why I say we don't balance around representation. We don't tweak numbers until we have 25% of each tank in Ulduar.(Or should the number skew higher towards DKs since they have more than one spec? Or should the numbers skew lower for paladins and druids since fewer races can be them?) But we do have to consider representation when we're making changes.
Blizzard's Definition of Hybrid (Source)
But you think Elemental shamans do fine in PvP and the reason is because they can heal? I think some players would disagree with both of those assertions. Our definition of hybrid isn’t that you can fill two roles at the same time. It’s that you can change your character to fill a different role without having to go back to first level.
"Bring the Player, Not the Class" (Source)
The opposite is "Bring the class, not the player" where you leave behind a good player because you already have a hunter or whatever and some other mouthbreather brings a really essential buff. Not crazy about playing that game myself.
You should get to raid because you are good at WoW, not because your presence magically makes everyone else better.
Player versus Player
Future Battleground Changes (Source)
We've been discussing the population imbalances in Battleground matches a lot lately. If you read the Battleground Q&A we did a few weeks back, you may remember Cory Stockton mentioning that we have a lot of plans for Battlegrounds -- including rated, performance-based Battlegrounds providing access to higher-quality rewards -- actively in the works. We'll be discussing more of this at BlizzCon, but I'll add that the issue of faction imbalances in Battlegrounds you mention is something we recognize as an problem we plan to address when we're prepared to roll out some revitalizing touches to the Battleground system.
Many of our plans are not fully conceptualized to the extent that I'm able to share details with you at the moment, but I'm confident you'll hear more at Blizzcon and perhaps the weeks to follow the event.
Druid
Resto Druids / Tree of Life (Source)
I think the best way to explain it is that when the Shadow priest has a model to follow – there are dps casters and in this case, a class with healing capabilities is deciding to turn its back on those abilities in order to be more like those casters. You can debate the relative power and utility of say Shadow priest and warlock, but at a high level there is a lot of overlap there. Now consider the Resto druid who decides to go Tree of Life. He is becoming a new type of character – he isn’t like the other healers, because they aren’t giving up buttons (except for those already absent from their talent tree). The Resto druid is giving up buttons, and for what? To be as effective a healer as the others. (You can argue Resto druids are overpowered if you’d like, but it certainly isn’t the design that Tree of Life allows druids to be the best healer in the game).
Form Shifting (Source)
That is what I was getting at with the druid as a shifter. The idea is that a Balance druid would sometimes leave Moonkin form, but we haven’t made it easy enough to do so. We also don’t want to just adopt a model where say you shift to caster form to decurse and shift back – that just means your decurses take 3 button clicks (or a macro). It should be more tactical than that – do I want to be in Moonkin form for a little while, or would I rather be in caster form (or possibly even bear or cat)?
Feral Tanks (Source)
Feral druid tanks are somewhat rare, especially among some of the most hardcore, progression-focused guilds. Now, as I say below, hardcore guilds may be the most likely to stick with their current MT (who to be fair, is likely a warrior because these guilds have been around awhile). There are definitely Feral tanks out there -- there are a lot of WoW raiding guilds after all. But if they are as good in 3.1 and 3.2 as some players predict, then why aren't there more of them? Why isn't every guild recruiting one? It's an interesting phenomenon and I'm not sure I could adequately explain it.
Druid Leveling (Source)
I found leveling a druid to be much, much easier than leveling a warrior once you get cat. My warrior leveled on a stack of health potions and a high repair bill. Paladins are trickier, because they have some really nice benefits and some really slow aspects of leveling. I will leave you with the tidbit that paladins are the least likely class to be abandoned at low level. What does that mean? I'm not sure I have any idea.
Priest
Shadow Priest Healing (Source)
That’s possibly something we’d consider. I think you could make a few changes and insure that Shadow priests were about at the same healing level as say Ret or Elemental. You’d still have to decide if their healing got any better just from dropping Shadowform. If not, then there is probably no reason to ever drop Shadowform, and it should just be a passive talent not a spell. If so, then you'd have to make sure the spec wasn't too powerful over all as a backup or emergency healer, especially in PvP -- remember, we'd be talking about a Shadow priest who heals as well as Ret when in Shadowform, but better than that when not in Shadowform.
5Cap - Abandonation
For those of you that remember Honor Killz by the Azerothian 6, Abandonation is back with a short video called 5Cap. The song is written and performed by Abandonation, the video itself is by RedEyeLobine.
Song Written and Performed by Abandonation from The DruidBoyz
http://www.youtube.com/user/Abandonat...
http://www.youtube.com/user/Demineonz
Machinima by RedEyeLobine
I'm terribly sorry especially to Abandonation for the amount of time this took to complete. I hope this somehow makes up for it.
PROGRAMS USED:
WoW
Assassin's Creed
WoW Model Viewer
Sony Vegas 8.0
After Effects CS3
MultiQuote
