Entry 17: U heal Mara?

That was the whisper Shatterhoof got as I was unloading his bags at the AH in Ogrimmar last night. For a moment I was overcome by a wave of surrealness (surreality?). Instantly it seemed that every time I'd ever blindly whispered for a healing spot in an instance run flashed across my mind's eye. I recalled the vacant, blind depression associated with a blind tell, with the knowledge that the person will more than likely tell you no. I recalled the terrible sinking feeling as the clock ticks to the ten, twenty, thirty minute mark in LFG. I remembered the increasingly ambivalent party messages from the other group members, the sight of their little map icons shuffling off to the daily quest areas, or worse, to the battlemasters. I was acutely reminded of the sick feeling of knowing a run is dead before it even started.

Then the person whispered me again, 'U heal mara??'

To which I calmly replied, 'I'm spec'd for enhancement, but I can try.'

The party invitation popped up so fast I hardly had time to blink.

Now, I'm no expert at healing, and by this point Shatter is pretty deep into Enhancement, with absolutely zero investment in either elemental or restoration talents. He's a melee dps'er, and his gear is not meant for sustained heals. So, since I had a nice cushion of gold from dual gathering professions (yay!), I hopped on the AH and picked up some cheap 'of the Eagle' gear and a nice +healing staff. Whatever right, if I'm going to heal I'm going to at least make an effort of it.

Alas, my eagerness proved unnecessary. Five minutes later our tank dropped because of work related issues, and then I get another tell from the guy who recruited me.

'U tank in bear form??'

LOL.

/p Thanks for the invite everyone! Good luck!

/leave party Continue reading 'Entry 17: U heal Mara?'

Entry 7: A Tale of Two Warcrafts

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of gearing yourself through PVP was at best a fool's errand, and at worst a massive time sink that led not a few High Warlords to outright quit as soon as they reached the top. The changes to the honor system and the introduction of Battlegroups made group PVP - gasp - fun again. This post isn't about the BGs, though. It's about the relatively sudden shift I've felt in the way the game is being managed, most notably, by the seeming reversal on the way the developers seem to be handling class balancing issues.

All of this, of course, stems from the introduction of the Arena system.

For those of you who have never attempted it, the Arena system allows players to organize themselves into teams of 2, 3, or 5 and engage in gladiatorial matches against other such teams. Players earn arena points, rank, and require both to purchase the Seasonal gear (or S1 for Arena Season 1, S2 for Season 2, etc). The Arena gear is a PVP mirror of equivalent Tiers in the PVE gear sets. S3 is roughly equivalent to T6, for example. Blizzard has tried to time the releases of new Seasons to coincide with new PVE sets becoming more frequently distributed throughout the game population, and in this way maintain a balance in itemization between PVE and PVP. They are trying, it seems, to avoid the problem that was so prevalent during classic WoW PVP where guilds who had the end-game instances on farm could, at a whim, enter into the battlegrounds and obliterate the opposing side. Now that the PVPers have gear on-par with the Raiders, that doesn't happen quite as often.

Let me go on-record saying that, as a player, I have no problem with the gear that people can get through PVP. I think it's a great way to let players earn their equipment on their own terms. There is enough of a difference in both the way PVP is played versus PVE, and in the critical stat values specific to the two sides. Eveyrone in PVP needs a healthy amount of damage mitigation, for instance, while in PVE the non-tanks (barring the odd resistance-skewed fight) don't have to worry about it as much. In some cases there is an overlap in gearing objectives, such as with PVE tanks using Resilience to help improve their survivability against raid bosses, but for the most part they are separate animals. A fully-geared PVP-er will not do as well as a fully geared PVE-er in PVE, and vice versa. Fair enough.

The problem seems to run much deeper than that. Up until just recently, Blizzard has maintained that it does not try to balance classes against each other, but rather against the game as a whole. That's why we have the rock-paper-warlock, er, scissors, relationship between the different classes. A warlock has an advantage against a mage who has an advantage against a warrior, and on and on. As a warlock, I recognize that some classes will just beat me into the ground more often than not (*cough*Rogues*cough*), and try to work with that limitation.

Now take a look at what Kalgan just posted on the official forums, in regards to the revoked Life Tap changes. Take your time, I'll continue when you're done.

Did you see the switch?

The developers are using the relative representation of the classes in the top tiers of the Arena ladder to determine class balancing issues. Any class that is 'over performing' might be due for a nerf, and one that is grossly under-represented due for a buff.

That is what sparked the whole Life Tap incident, it seems. They were starting to see too many Warlocks in the top tiers. Apparently though this data was more of a flux than they originally thought, because new numbers indicate that the Warlock Trend was receding. No problem = no nerf...at least for now.

Anyone else find this really disturbing? They were ready to implement a class-sweeping change over what ended up being a spike in PVP numbers, and it certainly doesn't seem like anything the community brought up swayed their opinions at all. That, in my opinion, is the whole problem with using the PVP world to manage how classes interact with one another: the information is too volatile to support any concrete conclusions on class imbalance.

PVP, more so than most other aspects of Warcraft, is the aspect of the game that is most intensely affected by human performance. Sure, the skill of raiders is instrumental in the completion of a new encounter, but bosses are predictable (to an extent). They can be learned, tested, mastered. It's not like Attumen has three talent trees that he can play around with to "surprise" raiders the next time they come a'calling.

Players discover new interactions, new synergies, all the time. Some of these synergies provide them with tactical advantages over other teams. These synergies are not limited to in-class interactions (let's face it, talent trees have been analyzed to death), but more importantly to cross-class interactions. The SL/SL spec would not nearly be so effective if the pairing was sub-optimal, say (forgive me if I offend), with a prot-spec warrior. Of all the talents and abilities of all the classes, it does not surprise me that some combinations prove to be more effective than others. But these trends, at best, should be transitory. Players learn and adapt, they ferret out the weaknesses of the reigning strategy and depose it. Engaging a sweeping change because of a spike in a particular strategy is poor game management because it's so short-sighted. If Blizz keeps this up, they'll be playing whack-a-class forever.

If the new Tournament Server is any indication, Blizzard seems very determined to springboard the Arena game into the spotlight of competitive, legitimate sport gaming. Excuse me, but Warcraft will never be Halo, or Unreal Tournament. The key to any digital sport is the emphasis that it's player skill, not class design, that determines victory. Every character in Halo is the same, with the same access to weapons and defenses that everyone else has. It's a level field. Warcraft, by the admission of the developers themselves, is NOT a level field when it comes to PVP. Forcing the game to be such not only flies in the face of its basic premise and design (that of a cooperative environment where every class has a distinct role to play), but seeks conform the majority of game play to suit a perceived discrepancy in a comparatively minor field.

To be fair, we are likely only seeing the tip of the iceberg that is the reasoning of the developers when it comes to class balancing issues, but let me reiterate: it's a pretty ugly tip. How do you resolve the problem of having a class be perfectly suited to PVE, yet grossly unrepresented in PVP? Do you buff it to the point where you break the PVE game? Do you leave alone the class that is doing well in PVP, yet has horrible representation in the end-game of raiding? How is one metric more important than the other?

There now seem to be two Worlds of Warcraft, one firmly entrenched in PVE, and the other fighting it out in PVP. The abilities critical to successful PVE are deemed overpowered and un-fun for PVP, and the specs necessary to survive in PVP are sub-optimal for PVE. Just how much further is this schism going to grow before Blizzard bites the bullet and either implements totally different mechanics for problem abilities, or just makes a whole new game entirely?


Postlude

It just occurred to me. Perhaps this is all just a smokescreen? Perhaps Kalgan made that comment about class representation in the top tier as some elaborate distraction. Perhaps, in reality, the developers are just trying to avoid coming outright and saying that, yes, they really screwed up and were very sorry for the whole misunderstanding.

...how compelling. I loves me a good conspiracy theory. Continue reading 'Entry 7: A Tale of Two Warcrafts'

Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap

((Copied from a post I made on another blog forum. The blogger was asking for an explanation as to why warlocks were freaking out over the proposed change to lifetap on the PTR.))

Greetings. As one of the angry mob, let me do my best to provide a concise and meaningful response to the changes proposed in patch 2.4.

The problem with the new lifetap is that it no longer fits into the design of the class as a whole. As many other players have pointed out, this change was designed to negate the bonus stacking stamina provided to warlocks, both in pvp and in pve. On Live, stamina falls into place as the third most critical stat for warlocks to focus on in PVE (Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina), whereas in PVP it falls closer to second place, right behind Resilience.

Everything about the warlock focuses on stamina. We have two talents that provide a passive boost to stamina (Demonic Embrace and Fel Stamina), and one of our pets, the Imp, is designed as an unkillable party buff to stamina (Blood Pact). Much of the item budgets for warlock-centeric gear tends to stack stamina much more than it does intellect.

The change to Lifetap on the PTR flies in the face of all of that.

The class as a whole has a very precarious position as a caster; we lack the myriad defense and escape mechanisms of mages, and thus must rely almost solely on our often large stamina pools to allow us to survive under focus fire. The entire concept of "drain tanking" in pve requires a good chunk of stamina and spell damage, so that we can effectively take hits and still survive long enough to drain the life back.

We cannot Blink, Iceblock, Frost Nova, or use our mana as a damage buffer. We must spec for pvp survivability (Soul Link), and for our supplementary vampiric spell (Siphon Life). The only other method of effective mana regen available to warlocks is Dark Pact, and that is a 31 point talent in Affliction. There is no Evocate. We have little to no Spirit to speak of. For the majority of warlocks, Lifetap is an indispensable tool both in solo play and in group functions because it helps provide the class with the longevity necessary for our DoTs to be truly effective.

Put it simply, warlocks seem to be designed for the long haul, both in how we deal damage and how we recycle life into mana into life. This change seems very heavy handed, and goes against the grain of the entire class by making incremental gains in one of our primary stats WORSE the more we get.

The suggestions for adaptation have been maddening at best. Eyonix's own suggestion of stacking Int to somehow "exploit" the change seems to ignore that on all of our class-specific gear, Stamina grossly outweighs Intelligence. Our T6, for instance, supplies somewhere along the lines of 248 stamina and 145 intellect, nearly twice as much. Compared to our stamina buffs, we have one talent that increases intellect passively. How, then, are we supposed to "stack int"? Roll on mage gear? Have you ever met a warlock whose mana pool exceeded his health?

Other players have suggested removing party buffs like Fortitude. We would be the only class doing so. The fact of the matter is that warlocks with higher HP become a drain on the raid over time, as healers are forced to heal back a proportionate amount of HP. It just doesn't make sense.

Blizzard is implementing this to change the dynamic is Arena PVP. Fine. Clearly there is something wrong with the set up, as they're hitting Lifebloom pretty hard too. It may not seem like the biggest nerf ever, but the repercussions are many and far reaching. I only hope that Blizzard either takes the time to re-evaluate how they itemize for us, to reduce the gear focus on stamina and make it easier to keep the two bars level, or shelves the idea in favor of something a little less counter-intuitive.

Will it be back-breaking? Probably not; these things always tend to get blown out of proportion, and dedicated warlocks will find ways of adapting. Will it make me gnash my teeth at the profound dearth of consistency and logic for the sake of nerfing one PVP strategy (Siphon Life - Soul Link)? Absolutely.

I hope I didn't rant too much. Did that help frame the discussion at all? Continue reading 'Entry 5 - Regarding Lifetap'