Author Topic: Druid Tank Issues
Vault_News 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Bashiok posted:
After the designers looked into this issue more, there appears to be a pretty complex series of bugs that may have led to where we are now. I'll do my best to explain.

Early on in Cataclysm, it was concluded that druid tanks took too much damage and we deployed a hotfix to buff their armor through Thick Hide. Originally, we had thought that 4.0.6 was just updating the Thick Hide tooltip as well as the armor display on the character sheet for the earlier hotfix, but we think now that the armor buff itself was actually correctly applied with 4.0.6, and the previous hotfix had never taken hold properly.

The reason we missed this is because there is no easy way to know what your armor actually is when you can?t trust the tooltip ? you have to have things beat on you and see how much damage you take. This test was tainted by a second bug however, where some druid characters were invisibly retaining the 12% damage reduction benefit of the obsolete Protector of the Pack talent. Even though we removed that talent, its effects were still benefitting some characters, and we didn't know who or how many. Again, there is no easy way to know if your druid was affected without a lot of testing. We knew about the Protector of the Pack bug but were hesitant to try and mess with it too much via hotfix since bear survivability was where we wanted it to be for those characters and we didn?t want to risk making anything worse. In any event, those characters appeared to be taking the correct amount of damage, so we thought the Thick Hide hotfix was successful. In reality, we think we were seeing the Protector of the Pack damage reduction and not the Thick Hide armor buff.

We believe the 4.0.6 patch finally removed the Protector of the Pack effects while finally getting the Thick Hide buff applied. Characters who had the Protector of the Pack benefit won?t see their survivability change much (they lost damage reduction while gaining armor), while characters who lacked that talent will see their survivability improve (they gained a lot of armor). The good news is that current bear survivability in 4.0.6 appears to be where we want it to be for everyone.

We?re still not 100% sure that the above explanation is what happened, but it seems consistent with our observations. Again, as of 4.0.6, bear armor should now be correct.


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Malachi256 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Kinda scary that there isn't some "developer layer" of information that they can just look at to see that a druid still has the 12% damage reduction (or whatever). The whole "we just have to have something beat on a druid and look at the numbers" sounds completely ghetto, like something an end-user would do.

 

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Arcilite_I 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
This is what pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a month gets you, developers who don't know a god damn thing.

 

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NukeMage 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
I usually tend to be more on the "fanboi" side of things, but the above statement is pretty ridiculous. How can a major developer NOT know if/what abilities are being applied? Are there not internal testing tools that would show what effects are coinciding at the same time? How are they testing changes and new abilities if they are unable to see what is currently affecting a character?

What "other" things are going on that they are completely unaware about and apparently incapable of figuring out?

 

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Broken_Kayfabe 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
NukeMage posted:
What "other" things are going on that they are completely unaware about and apparently incapable of figuring out?


That their lead designer, Ghostcrawler, is utterly incompetent comes immediately to mind.

 

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TinMan52 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
NukeMage posted:
I usually tend to be more on the "fanboi" side of things, but the above statement is pretty ridiculous. How can a major developer NOT know if/what abilities are being applied? Are there not internal testing tools that would show what effects are coinciding at the same time? How are they testing changes and new abilities if they are unable to see what is currently affecting a character?

What "other" things are going on that they are completely unaware about and apparently incapable of figuring out?


You would think that they could do some automation testing using scripts to see if certain skills, spells and/or talents are working correctly in terms of damage and damage mitigation.

I like that the development cycle has been shortened, but all the hot fixes recently definitely give me concern. One the one hand, it's good that Blizzard is being responsive to production related issues. On the other hand, why does a software company have to patch so many live problems?

 

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-Peo- 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Broken_Kayfabe posted:
NukeMage posted:
What "other" things are going on that they are completely unaware about and apparently incapable of figuring out?


That their lead designer, Ghostcrawler, is utterly incompetent comes immediately to mind.



Its funny, I said this a year ago and got heavily mocked. Like I said a year ago, in 3 years GC will be a punchline not a developer. And it is getting closer and closer to a reality.

 

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Renegade. 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Can we have our threat back now? I have a feeling that is "bugged" atm as well.

 

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Kriegprojekt 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Arcilite_I posted:
This is what pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a month gets you, developers who don't know a god damn thing.



They are really suffering under the B Team right now.

 

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slythetove 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
NukeMage posted:

What "other" things are going on that they are completely unaware about and apparently incapable of figuring out?




Based on what Cataclysm was like at release, I'd say a LOT.

--Sly

 

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Sociop 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Kriegprojekt posted:
Arcilite_I posted:
This is what pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a month gets you, developers who don't know a god damn thing.



They are really suffering under the B Team right now.


Its called going from bad to worse and since Ghostcrawler is still the lead it really was their only direction.

 

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Sprawl-zero1eye- 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
IF YOU WOULD STOP FREAKING HOTFIXING EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN PATCHING AND UPDATING PERHAPS YOU CAN KEEP IT ALL STRAIGHT!

I don't like to pile on to the naysayers just because I'm not playing WoW, but my respect for the dev team wanes in the recent months.

 

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Groooovechampion 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
applause (seriously meant!)

I know it is naive to think that coding such a game and class is that easy. Yet, I always thought Blizzards dev had a way to see where what is coming from in the code. Unless it is some psycho mathematical formula embedded in the tachyon-proton matrix during the matter-antimatter process and somebody screwed up on a minus.

 

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Renegade. 
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Subject: Druid Tank Issues
Hotfixed 10% dmg back into mangle. At least I have my single target threat back. Still using Taunt on CD though. DPS in the RDF environment refused to give me 1.5 seconds to establish threat, and follow kill orders. :P

 

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