Ghostcrawler posted:

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We’re happy with damage overall... Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low... On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high.

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Ghostcrawler posted:

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• As part of the Marks and Beastmaster buffs, we’re buffing Aimed Shot, Kill Shot, Chimera Shot, and Kill Command.

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Ghostcrawler posted:

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We also want to make sure the epic PvP gear isn’t too easy for just anyone to obtain, given that the PvE endgame content is more challenging than it was in Lich King. We don’t want the player base to just migrate to the most efficient epic delivery mechanism; we want you to participate in what you find most enjoyable.

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Unstruck posted:

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/facepalm at all the planned changes.

I don't know why, maybe it's just burn out, but I'm tired of all this ping-pong.

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Arcilite_I posted:

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I miss the early days of WoW, when the devs played and had a f*cking clue.

This is...ugh

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Cawlin posted:

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The fact that Survival is the de facto pve spec right now is more a result of BM and Marks being UNDERpowered than Survival being OVERpowered - apparently the dev whose GF dumped him for the hunter guy that was banging her in closed beta has left the team or finally got over it.

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GC posted:

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We’ll make a pass to make stats that aren’t attractive (but are supposed to be) more attractive. For example, we don’t want Assassination rogues to dismiss crit or Feral tanks to dismiss haste. We are considering making some physical attacks such as Lacerate, Steady Shot, and Slam scale with haste.

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Kriegprojekt posted:

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Healing in Cata 5 Mans - Not an issue at all IF you change your group makeup and bring a hybrid DPS/Healer class along with your two "pure" DPS. This has been discussed in another thread. A few decent secondary heals here can make a huge difference in mana management for the main healer.

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BlizzardDude posted:

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Priests are a little weak in PvP, especially at mobile healing.

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BlizzardDude posted:

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Arms warrior burst damage might still be too high in PvP...We also might nerf warrior stuns.

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slythetove posted:

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Kriegprojekt posted:

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Healing in Cata 5 Mans - Not an issue at all IF you change your group makeup and bring a hybrid DPS/Healer class along with your two "pure" DPS. This has been discussed in another thread. A few decent secondary heals here can make a huge difference in mana management for the main healer.

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So in your estimation it's a "non-issue" if a class specced and geared to perform a role in a 5 man isn't adequate in itself to perform the role? That's unreal.

--Sly

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slythetove posted:

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I honestly believe Activision is rushing the development.

--Sly

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Kriegprojekt posted:

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slythetove posted:

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Kriegprojekt posted:

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Healing in Cata 5 Mans - Not an issue at all IF you change your group makeup and bring a hybrid DPS/Healer class along with your two "pure" DPS. This has been discussed in another thread. A few decent secondary heals here can make a huge difference in mana management for the main healer.

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So in your estimation it's a "non-issue" if a class specced and geared to perform a role in a 5 man isn't adequate in itself to perform the role? That's unreal.

--Sly

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Not really. I dont believe anyone ever said a single healer was all that was needed in a 5-man going forward into Cata, did they?. I think thats the general concensus based on WoTLK 5-mans though and has been ingrained in everyones mind. Not to sound to Ghostcrawlerish but maybe going forward, players need to adapt to a new playstyle. I dunno about that and I dont know if this is what the devs wanted players to do. It is working for us though.

Maybe a single healer is all that is needed if they are in 346 gear. Maybe the devs want everyone to run regulars until they can farm enough JP to get a full set of 346 gear and then move on to heroics. Who really knows what they are thinking behind the closed doors over there.

Its a non issue for our guild group because - we play together everynight, communicate and know each others strengths and weaknesses. Granted, its very hard to get 1/2 of that done (communicate) with most people if you que for a DF heroic. Getting through a heroic will be a lot more difficult on everyone, especially a healer in a DF group I think.

What I do know is that we were having a lot of issues WITHOUT using a secondary healer. We dont now. Regardless of if this is how we are "supposed to play", I dont really care. All I know is that it works for us much better then just relying on one person healing. We are doing the dungeons more efficiently with almost no downtime now.

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slythetove posted:

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If you think about the idea that you feel you "need" to bring an "off healer", if that's ok with you, that's insane. Do you bring an offtank for a 5 man?

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Elaok posted:

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http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1829962#blog it was depressing reading his latest blog

Healers working as intended... i lol'd Druids and Shaman could really use some love and seriously? raid encounters?

we were lied to about raid encounters they are doable yeah but the aoe damage from WOTLK raids stayed while healers got changed i'm finding it to be harder and harder to deal with it all healing that is required for the Magmaw encounter it is the most frustrating fight for me right now and Halfus with the primordial behemoth up is as well

It makes me want to choke the raid designers

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slythetove posted:

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Why on earth would you be ok with the fact that a player dedicating their character to performing the role of healing isn't sufficient to do the job? If you think about that for a second you start to see just how marginalized healing has become. They've broken the role, and taken the fun out of it in five short levels.

Yes, dungeons can be completed. I did heroics on my priest over the weekend. However, it's still boring and not fun. Spam Heal or be punished. Terrible.

WoW was the first MMO to make healing enjoyable, and it had more healers per capita than any prior MMO by a mile. In this xpac they've gone backwards 10 years to EQ garbage.

--Sly

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Unstruck posted:

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Sly, I see your point entirely. When I made my "disc DPS at level 85" thread, I noted how much fun it was to heal AND DPS at the same time. The whole Tank, 2.5 DPS and 1.5 Healer make up seemed like a great idea.

What I did not take into consideration, was how even more bored our dedicated Paladin healer was during the run. By having to take an extra healer, the main healer's role becomes more trivialized.

You're right in that at its core, the fundamental problem is that healing, in its current "spam heal" state, is NOT fun. That's what made me even try the DPS as Disc spec, which in turn made it not fun for our other healer, too.

The whole "adapt or move on" mentality applies to this game with every sweeping change they make every other effin patch. I'm tired of the ping pong, tired of the drastic changes in gameplay, and tired of having to reconfigure crap out every two weeks.

Just give me a fun game to play with my friends, and stop changing the meaning of "fun" just cause Bob from Blizzard accounting was bored on his disc priest.

In the meantime, I'm moving on. Thankfully, many of my gaming friends feel the same way, so we'll be migrating together.

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Cawlin posted:

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Unstruck posted:

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/facepalm at all the planned changes.

I don't know why, maybe it's just burn out, but I'm tired of all this ping-pong.

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Arcilite_I posted:

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I miss the early days of WoW, when the devs played and had a f*cking clue.

This is...ugh

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It's somewhat funny, somewhat cathartic to see posts like this in this thread.

Hunter players have said the same thing since pretty much vanilla and have witnessed the schadenfreude from everyone else when we complained.

I won't rub it in too much, but yeah...

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Arcilite_I posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Unstruck posted:

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/facepalm at all the planned changes.

I don't know why, maybe it's just burn out, but I'm tired of all this ping-pong.

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Arcilite_I posted:

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I miss the early days of WoW, when the devs played and had a f*cking clue.

This is...ugh

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It's somewhat funny, somewhat cathartic to see posts like this in this thread.

Hunter players have said the same thing since pretty much vanilla and have witnessed the schadenfreude from everyone else when we complained.

I won't rub it in too much, but yeah...

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My first ever character was a hunter. I played him solely for the first two years of WoW. PvP, raids, etc

The difference between you and me is I never made myself a martyr over it.

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Cawlin posted:

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The whining is DELISSSSSHUSSSS!!

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-Myk- posted:

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The healing and tanking changes is why I have pretty much quit WoW. I did enjoy healing (shammy/Druid) and tanking (Pally/Druid/DK) then they decided to make it more "FUN" and killed it all for me.

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Unstruck posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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The fact that Survival is the de facto pve spec right now is more a result of BM and Marks being UNDERpowered than Survival being OVERpowered - apparently the dev whose GF dumped him for the hunter guy that was banging her in closed beta has left the team or finally got over it.

---

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The_Korrigan posted:

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- We have healing priests in my guild.
- They do pretty well.

=> learn to play?

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Auenwing posted:

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(Seriously, Korrigan, sweetheart, there are other hardcore players out here. That are raiders. That have raided. That have led raids. In multiple games. WoW is not hard. Being elite in WoW is a joke. This isn't a L2P issue.)



Thanks for the laugh.

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Auenwing posted:

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We have developers in Blizz.

-They apparently do not fully comprehend the customer experience

=> Learn to code?


(Seriously, Korrigan, sweetheart, there are other hardcore players out here. That are raiders. That have raided. That have led raids. In multiple games. WoW is not hard. Being elite in WoW is a joke. This isn't a L2P issue.)



Thanks for the laugh.

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Arcilite_I posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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(Seriously, Korrigan, sweetheart, there are other hardcore players out here. That are raiders. That have raided. That have led raids. In multiple games. WoW is not hard. Being elite in WoW is a joke. This isn't a L2P issue.)



Thanks for the laugh.

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Just because it bears repeating. Not that you made a dent in Korrigan's egoarmor, but yeah, words have never been more true.

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Unstruck posted:

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Just give me a fun game to play with my friends, and stop changing the meaning of "fun" just cause Bob from Blizzard accounting was bored on his disc priest.

In the meantime, I'm moving on. Thankfully, many of my gaming friends feel the same way, so we'll be migrating together.

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slythetove posted:

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Yeah reading your thread reminded me of how much fun I had late in Wrath healing as a smite Disc priest. I was so impressed that they had found yet another way to make healing interesting. I really enjoyed healing 5 mans that way.

Then they blew it in 5 levels.

I thought for sure they screwed up some coefficients somewhere, but this latest post saying healing is basically working like they want makes me very very sad. They WANT this. I can only shake my head and ask "why?"

--Sly

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Alpha_Swift posted:

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"To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost."

Hey Blizz, we wear cloth....we need control to avoid death.

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Alpha_Swift posted:

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"To reduce mage control, we are discussing reducing the duration of Frost Nova and Ring of Frost."

Hey Blizz, we wear cloth....we need control to avoid death.

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Tatundra posted:

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To help settle the Sly/Kriegprojekt debate-

Does the DF always add a hybrid dps/healer for the 3rd dps role? If not, and the DF can throw together 3 "pure casters" for DPS, than that answers the question.

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siujoey posted:

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Arcilite_I posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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(Seriously, Korrigan, sweetheart, there are other hardcore players out here. That are raiders. That have raided. That have led raids. In multiple games. WoW is not hard. Being elite in WoW is a joke. This isn't a L2P issue.)



Thanks for the laugh.

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Just because it bears repeating. Not that you made a dent in Korrigan's egoarmor, but yeah, words have never been more true.

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Just because it bears repeating.... again. For the record, Korrigan's egoarmor is not purple- it's orange. And item level infinity.

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Grimlik posted:

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Technically this is a design issue, has nothing to do with coding. Once a design and development has been settled upon coding and implementing it is just the next step. Some would say that the coding and implementation of any project is the easiest part.

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SlyLoK posted:

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Blizzard cant win.. First the game was getting to easy. Now it seems the game might offer a challenge and people dont like it.

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Foojo posted:

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It was laughably easy.

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Cawlin posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I honestly believe Activision is rushing the development.

--Sly

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Probably correct. WoW's QA efforts were already pretty weak.

However, MMO subscribers have set the bar for this because we don't demand better.

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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slythetove posted:

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I honestly believe Activision is rushing the development.

--Sly

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Probably correct. WoW's QA efforts were already pretty weak.

However, MMO subscribers have set the bar for this because we don't demand better.

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The hell we don't. Those of us who do get ridiculed as trolls for pointing out glaring issues.

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Blizzard posted:

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For example, the Retribution mastery, Hand of Light, is fun, but it doesn’t contribute enough damage. To make it contribute enough damage, the proc would need a very high chance, which then can cause paladins to devalue other sources of Holy Power. Instead, we are redesigning Retribution mastery to add a percentage of the damage of Templar’s Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm as Holy damage (which also plays better with Inqusition).

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Auenwing posted:

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[quote=SlyLoK]Blizzard cant win.. First the game was getting to easy. Now it seems the game might offer a challenge and people dont like it.

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Sociop posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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PS: and yes, it's an MMO, the dev is never gonna have all of the customers happy at any one time. ESPECIALLY WoW, which has so many diverse playstyles.

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True but they seem too consistently, at least since BC was released, have far more unhappy than happy and that is never a good thing.

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Trigeminal posted:

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Almost done downloading Rift beta updates... oh wait... this was a thread about how warcraft sucks. My bad.

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Ugh_Lancelot posted:

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I'm interested in seeing how they try to clarify "healing in PVE is pretty much working as intended."

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Malachi256 posted:

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My initial impression when I read over the changes was that they all looked reasonable, based on my time soloing, 5-man normals, a few heroics, and some BG / TB pvp.

edit: It's worth noting, my wife has done the holy priest thing since BC, and she's one of the many unhappy people with cataclysm. It's funny because from my perspective (dps, group leader to some extent), she's been doing fine, and the fights have been fun and interesting... but apparently she's rather unhappy with the whole experience. "Frustrating" is the most commonly used word.

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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Malachi256 posted:

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My initial impression when I read over the changes was that they all looked reasonable, based on my time soloing, 5-man normals, a few heroics, and some BG / TB pvp.

edit: It's worth noting, my wife has done the holy priest thing since BC, and she's one of the many unhappy people with cataclysm. It's funny because from my perspective (dps, group leader to some extent), she's been doing fine, and the fights have been fun and interesting... but apparently she's rather unhappy with the whole experience. "Frustrating" is the most commonly used word.

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Of course she may appear to 'be doing fine'. If she's like any of us who are good at their classes, we can make the best of crappy situations... however having to work (read not have fun) to achieve those same results isn't enjoyable or fun at all.

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PallyDog posted:

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good stuff

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SlyLoK posted:

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Blizzard cant win.. First the game was getting to easy. Now it seems the game might offer a challenge and people dont like it.

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Sociop posted:

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True but they seem too consistently, at least since BC was released, have far more unhappy than happy and that is never a good thing.

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Ugh_Lancelot posted:

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I'm interested in seeing how they try to clarify "healing in PVE is pretty much working as intended."

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Malachi256 posted:

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My initial impression when I read over the changes was that they all looked reasonable, based on my time soloing, 5-man normals, a few heroics, and some BG / TB pvp.

edit: It's worth noting, my wife has done the holy priest thing since BC, and she's one of the many unhappy people with cataclysm. It's funny because from my perspective (dps, group leader to some extent), she's been doing fine, and the fights have been fun and interesting... but apparently she's rather unhappy with the whole experience. "Frustrating" is the most commonly used word.

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Sociop posted:

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True but they seem too consistently, at least since BC was released, have far more unhappy than happy and that is never a good thing.

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slythetove posted:

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Meanwhile, for the first time in 6 years I feel like I'm running uphill, against the wind, in the snow... naked.

--Sly

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Boone-Eldar posted:

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Sociop posted:

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True but they seem too consistently, at least since BC was released, have far more unhappy than happy and that is never a good thing.

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And yet their subscription numbers have stayed about the same over the past 3+ years.

How can that be if there are so many more people unhappy with the game than there are happy?

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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To my knowledge they have never released a history of active subscribers, just a number of how many subscribers they have had. if you have a source that gives the actual data on it, that'd be nice to see.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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According to the best numbers anyone has outside of Blizzard offices, WoW was in a slow decline for the last two years before Cataclysm released.

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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This is not an unusual situation for a successful six year old game by any stretch of the imagination.

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Boone-Eldar posted:

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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To my knowledge they have never released a history of active subscribers, just a number of how many subscribers they have had. if you have a source that gives the actual data on it, that'd be nice to see.

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They claim over 12 million subscribers. Somehow I don't think they are making it up.

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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Boone-Eldar posted:

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Festus_Stundagin posted:

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To my knowledge they have never released a history of active subscribers, just a number of how many subscribers they have had. if you have a source that gives the actual data on it, that'd be nice to see.

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They claim over 12 million subscribers. Somehow I don't think they are making it up.

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

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Right, that's the same info we're all privy to in the press releases they occasionally make regarding subscriber base. I've always wanted to know how they come to this number with a breakdown by country. The way they count 'game room' subscriptions is something I've never understood as they are a different payment model and are widely used in asia where the population is astronomical. Seeing a monthly result of subs would be cool to see but we'll likely never see that.

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IndridCole posted:

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•We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.

I think this is just funny. What this says to me is.."There is a dev member who is crying because a cool spell he/she thought up no one uses."

LOL!

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slythetove posted:

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Korrigan I honestly don't know if you are just trying to be a jerk or not, but for the off chance that you aren't:

It's not that the class doesn't work in PvE (although it really didn't before the massive buffs 1 week in). It's that it is boring boring boring. The healing play "vision" this guy has is boring. His stated goal was to make it more fun, and have more variety than spam 1 button. The reality is he's made it far far less fun.

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Boone-Eldar posted:

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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According to the best numbers anyone has outside of Blizzard offices, WoW was in a slow decline for the last two years before Cataclysm released.

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Reference?

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Boone-Eldar posted:

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Broken_Kayfabe posted:

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This is not an unusual situation for a successful six year old game by any stretch of the imagination.

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How many MMO's have been successful into their 6th year? None. Hell most are lucky to make through a year or two these days before going FTP.

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Arcilite_I posted:

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IndridCole posted:

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•We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.

I think this is just funny. What this says to me is.."There is a dev member who is crying because a cool spell he/she thought up no one uses."

LOL!

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My exact thought too. Shouldn't the players be choosing what's cool and what isn't? If the spell wasn't being used it's because it's garbage lol

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Arcilite_I posted:

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IndridCole posted:

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•We’re buffing Wild Mushroom. It’s a cool spell that isn’t getting enough play.

I think this is just funny. What this says to me is.."There is a dev member who is crying because a cool spell he/she thought up no one uses."

LOL!

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My exact thought too. Shouldn't the players be choosing what's cool and what isn't? If the spell wasn't being used it's because it's garbage lol

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st0rmie posted:

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slythetove posted:

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Korrigan I honestly don't know if you are just trying to be a jerk or not, but for the off chance that you aren't:

It's not that the class doesn't work in PvE (although it really didn't before the massive buffs 1 week in). It's that it is boring boring boring. The healing play "vision" this guy has is boring. His stated goal was to make it more fun, and have more variety than spam 1 button. The reality is he's made it far far less fun.

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I press more buttons healing on my priest now than I have at any other stage of the game's history.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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A MMORPG whose dev think the players are always right is bound to failure.
Part of success is definitely to know when to tell your players to shut the hell up, and do the changes even if they don't like them.
Shall I remind you all the DAoC nerf rounds which came from the most vocal whining class back then?

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The_Korrigan posted:

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There is nothing worse for a MMORPG balance that to start listening to the player whining and use it as the base for class changing patches.

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The_Korrigan posted:

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Considering your forum nickname, it's safe to assume you're an (ex) DAoC fan.

You forget a very important factor in your reasoning...

Most if not all nerfs/boost in DAoC were made after whines for nerfs/boost on the forums. A class was perceived as overpowered? The devs would not even look at their own numbers (my guess is that they had none anyway), they would just nerf it into oblivion the next patchG

In WoW, it's very different. Good or bad? Not always. But better than listening to whiny player? Definitely.
I prefer having the developer team take their responsibilities than to be dependent of the amount of whining that is done against my class on the forums personally. No matter how much people bleat about Ghostcrawler here, I still trust him way more than <insert random wow forum troll number 129393 pretending to do better than the devs> on some fansite.

There is nothing worse for a MMORPG balance that to start listening to the player whining and use it as the base for class changing patches.

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Liquid741 posted:

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Figured I'd see some nice healing changes, but I guess they would like to see more reg. runs then H runs. I was surprised about the sub. rogue comment. Not sure why at this point you would run that spec in PVE...not enough data, because the spec sucks.

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Voqar posted:

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Liquid741 posted:

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Figured I'd see some nice healing changes, but I guess they would like to see more reg. runs then H runs. I was surprised about the sub. rogue comment. Not sure why at this point you would run that spec in PVE...not enough data, because the spec sucks.

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There's nothing wrong with healing. Bliz can't fix stupid. Play less stupid, and healing isn't such an issue.

Healing is a group responsibility now. Healer needs to be efficient instead of spamming stupidly selected spells. Use the right spell for the moment. Think. Your dps need to be smarter. Get out of puddles doing fatal damage after 2 seconds. Interrupt stuff. Move if you're taking damage and don't have threat. Tank needs to be more considerate of healer - use those cooldowns (most are way shorter CDs now), use those trinkets, spec to mitigate/reduce damage as much as possible. Use CC, focus fire, minimize incoming damage.

Healers I run with almost never have to dump their bars, because we play smart, and we still blaze thru any and all heroics. You actually move faster if you play smart and manage damage better, because you're spending less time watching the healer sitting on their arse drinking. I rip our dps, especially melees, if they're failingto interrupt and/or standing around taking boatloads of dmg when they could be moving and/or paying attention.
Any healer that actually gives a crap, isn't a whiner, and wants to learn how to play refines their spec, refines their approach, and adapts.

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