[WoW] WotLK - Beta Patch Notes

[Zehn - Vhex]

The "You can just respec!" argument is pretty much just as retarded as the "But we're melee we take more damage!" argument. You'll never see people stop using it though.

We discussed it at length a couple pages back but the basic gist of it is the same. Blizzard is constantly trying to balance utility vs. raw dps. When you do that though you run into 3 problems.

1) What 'utility' do you count towards gimping dps? Being able to respec as a retadin sure as shit doesn't help my protadin when we enter phase2 M'uru. It's not like I can ask Entropius to hang on a second while I hearth, respec, grab my gear and then run back.

2) Diminishing returns. Any healer past the 6th/7th is a liability on your raid for Brutallis. Any tank past the 2nd is a waste. How do you factor that into your utility vs. raw dps calculation? You can stack rogues up to infinity because their utility stacks very well as opposed to say, a retadin's. If you have a protadin and healadin, the only utility a retadin provides is a cloak of shadows on a 5 minute cooldown.

Or shadow priests in the expansion. What exactly is a shadow priest going to bring other then terrible dps in a raid setting? Why not bring a survival hunter who will do more damage and bring the same kind of raid utility?

3) Situational usage. In all of TBC there are only maybe 4 fights where being melee will negatively impact your dps to a noticeable degree. There are also a handful of fights where being in melee range will increase your dps relative to casters (IE: Shade of Aran). So should you count or neglect melee range as a factor?

How about other situational uses? Cloak of Shadows is fucking -insane- on fights like Brutallis. Should a rogue be penalized for that? How about kick? As nice as earth shock is it doesn't begin to compare thanks to the rogues 1 second GCD and kick not being subject to the 1% resist rule (though that's going away in Wotlk thank god). So should rogues be penalized further?

How about wound poison? Thanks to wound poison you don't have to waste a slot on shitty arms dps warriors. Should a rogue incur even more of a dps penalty? I mean, wound poison alone prevents at least hundreds of thousands of damage from having to be done to certain bosses.

How about AoE fights? There are maybe 3 fights in TBC where AoE is vital to winning. (Morogrim, Solarian and M'uru? Correct me if there are more.) We all know how fucked up mage vs. warlock balance is right now.

The list goes on and on. So many classes have so many situational abilities. Grounding totem is awesome on like 2 fights. Blessing of Protection is awesome on like 3 fights.

Even shit like rogue/hunter misdirect. On some fights it's incredibly useful throughout the entire fight (M'uru, felmyst, etc...) on other fights it's only really useful at the start (Kalecgos, Brutallis, etc...).

Anyways...

Honestly, how do you balance that shit? How can anyone say "Rogues should do more damage because everybody else can just respec!" when rogues have more situationally useful abilities and lower diminishing returns then nearly every other class?

By the same token how do you say "Paladins should do more dps!" when the first paladin brings -incredible- utility. The second paladin brings mediocre utility and the third paladin brings a dick in a box.

It's an impossible situation.

The best they can do is make sure that every class brings roughly the same dps relative to the stackable utility they bring, and then make sure the value of the non-stackable utility that the first of the class brings is as valuable as every other classes.

Anyways...

[Lejina Bloodbath]

Originally Posted by Danth

"You can be a second-rate damage dealer today, and a second-rate healer tomorrow!".

I see your point but let's keep the bullshit down a bit. There's no pure healers (or tanks for that matter) that a druid would "have" be subpar to. There's only 4 classes who are pigeonholed in a single role and they are all dps.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Lejina Bloodbath

I see your point but let's keep the bullshit down a bit. There's no pure healers (or tanks for that matter) that a druid would "have" be subpar to. There's only 4 classes who are pigeonholed in a single role and they are all dps.

Except if you nerf the shit out of hybrid dps for this reason you've basically just pigeonholed warriors and priests into a single role. Fury warrior/shadow priest dps is a joke and their utility no longer makes up for it. Same with DK's if you nerf their shit. And since shaman don't have a tank spec to fall back on they're stuck being just healers.

So that leaves paladins who can switch between healer mode (which is pointless now...so really you're either prot or you sit out. If they don't fix JoTW then Paladin is going to be the only 'hybrid' that actually has the freedom to switch between spec's as needed). And then you have feral druids...but since DK, protadins and warrior are fighting for the two~three tank slots druids pretty much because relegated to pure healer anyways.

It's a terrible argument.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

1) What 'utility' do you count towards gimping dps? Being able to respec as a retadin sure as shit doesn't help my protadin when we enter phase2 M'uru. It's not like I can ask Entropius to hang on a second while I hearth, respec, grab my gear and then run back.

You cannot act like it shouldn't come at some price. How would you feel if 2 of your 3 trees were just deleted? I mean heck, you don't need them when you enter phase 2 right? So surely you wouldn't mind. It's kind of embarrassing that someone who is regarded so highly here can be so dense. It is the mere fact your class is multi-faceted. No you can't do them all at once. You can't even do 2 without going to a trainer. But so what?

This isn't an argument of "Well you can tank one day and dps the next." Most "hybrids" prefer only 1 role anyway. Your class being given more options is alone a reason enough to lower the glass ceiling a bit. It isn't "utility" at all.

2) Diminishing returns. Any healer past the 6th/7th is a liability on your raid for Brutallis. Any tank past the 2nd is a waste. How do you factor that into your utility vs. raw dps calculation? You can stack rogues up to infinity because their utility stacks very well as opposed to say, a retadin's. If you have a protadin and healadin, the only utility a retadin provides is a cloak of shadows on a 5 minute cooldown.

Of course the ideal situation is complete stackability but unless you want to see people with multiple BoK's it's never going to happen. You don't deserve any special treatment as the first of your class in a raid just because the 3rd isn't as good.

Or shadow priests in the expansion. What exactly is a shadow priest going to bring other then terrible dps in a raid setting? Why not bring a survival hunter who will do more damage and bring the same kind of raid utility?

Are you honestly going to tell the spriests in your guild to fuck off and roll hunters just because of game mechanics?

The rest is mostly gibberish. It is so much easier to just sit at the back and spam nuke after nuke hitting 1 button and never worrying about any melee-range dangers than constantly micro-managing.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard

Yeah, so do away with all other classes and let's play druids. After four years all those druids could roll a mage or rogue if they want to be nothing but dps. The fact your class has massive flexibility between roles is the price you should pay for having slightly reduced effectiveness at the single roles. And, if this whole shitstorm comes up about, "Waaaah! I won't get an invite!" then maybe start playing with friends rather than min/maxing fucking accountants who only want you because you contribute 50 dps more than the next class on the roster.

I'd like to hear your definition of "slightly". For many people slightly less efficient means 20% less efficient, aka useless.
A feral can shift out and heal is another argument I heard in the past, today it's "you can respec, durrr!".

In all honesty, fuck off all of you hating hybrids.

If I like playing a feral druid, I don't WANT to respec, I don't give a fuck about moonkin or tree of happiness forms. If I picked druid because I liked the feral tree, I should not do 80% of a rogue dps or tank 20% worse than a warrior or a paladin or I'll be fucking useless except in guilds I don't even want to be part of.

We're not talking about "50 dps more" guilds here, we're talking guilds where half of the dps'ers cannot beat the tank, those would probably be the only ones to use a feral druid if rogues/warriors could have it their way (see vanilla wow).

The same can be applied to all classes and all talent trees, except those that cover 1 role only.

You are what you spec, nothing else. I can cover another role with "just" a respec and a new set of gear? You can too with "just" a reroll and a new set of gear, pretty much the only difference is grinding again those 70 levels or giving two hundred bucks to a random chinese to do it for you, but who among long time players doesn't have at least 2-3 level 70s already?

Another thing I keep hearing is "raid utility" and "buffs" in the same sentence. Realize that many buffs do not even need the buffer to be present, for what is worth you could park 25 warlocks outside an instance to soulstone every raid member and give them a full array of motw, fort, int, spi and a blessings galore on top. Two mages can summon enough cookies for everyone.

Start filtering this shit out of posts concerning raid utility: if you have an aura, totems, shouts, procs and similar things, then you're really bringing utility along, otherwise you are replaceable with a bot wearing ZERO gear parked outside an instance.

Last thing: No one would give a flying fuck if mono-job classes would do 5-7% more damage, hell even 10%, but when the gap is way higher than that, even played by retards, I think there is a problem.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Except if you nerf the shit out of hybrid dps for this reason you've basically just pigeonholed warriors and priests into a single role. Fury warrior/shadow priest dps is a joke and their utility no longer makes up for it. Same with DK's if you nerf their shit. And since shaman don't have a tank spec to fall back on they're stuck being just healers.

So that leaves paladins who can switch between healer mode (which is pointless now...so really you're either prot or you sit out. If they don't fix JoTW then Paladin is going to be the only 'hybrid' that actually has the freedom to switch between spec's as needed). And then you have feral druids...but since DK, protadins and warrior are fighting for the two~three tank slots druids pretty much because relegated to pure healer anyways.

It's a terrible argument.

Sounds like heaven to me.

[Makata]

Originally Posted by Miele

If I like playing a feral druid, I don't WANT to respec, I don't give a fuck about moonkin or tree of happiness forms. If I picked druid because I liked the feral tree, I should not do 80% of a rogue dps or tank 20% worse than a warrior or a paladin or I'll be fucking useless except in guilds I don't even want to be part of.

Then go play a fucking rogue. There is a reason your class has mana and 3 completely separate trees. If you want to pigeonhole yourself that's fine but that doesn't mean you magically deserve to be a rogue.

[Mageling]

Originally Posted by Makata

Then go play a fucking rogue. There is a reason your class has mana and 3 completely separate trees. If you want to pigeonhole yourself that's fine but that doesn't mean you magically deserve to be a rogue.

Do you understand that feral can fucking tank?

Go take your Rogue and tank a boss?

Yeah, that's fucking cute.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Miele

Another thing I keep hearing is "raid utility" and "buffs" in the same sentence. Realize that many buffs do not even need the buffer to be present, for what is worth you could park 25 warlocks outside an instance to soulstone every raid member and give them a full array of motw, fort, int, spi and a blessings galore on top. Two mages can summon enough cookies for everyone.

You don't even need to go that far. For a few weeks I would log on my priest just to buff the raid with divine spirit for m'uru attempts. Added a negligible amount of time to each attempt.

For nearly any buff where the cooldown is shorter then the duration the buff should be infinite duration if the caster is in your raid, 5 minutes otherwise.

Anyways...

It truly is a beautiful thing...

[Genjiro]

I strongly disagree with the idea that you can ever compare situational tools to the ability to completely fucking alter your characters dynamic as far as their role is concerned. If you choose to intentionally sweep that difference under the rug like it doesn't matter, well, I think you are just being incredibly biased and selfish personally.

Yea, I'm seriously going to level up a warrior, rogue and priest just to have the same access to experience that part of the game + get faction etc on all of them. What a fucking inane argument. The people who argue that point, are 9/10 times...people who play hybrids..

Please Miele, you honestly believe you should be able to tank equally as a warrior and dps equally as a rogue in one fucking tree in one class? Give me a fucking break, when my dps characters can switch their raid roles on a whim, then we can talk.

[Chrisb3]

Druids should do less melee damage than the other melee do and be situational tanks.

One talent tree and one set of gear should not get you the Tanking ability of a Warrior and the DPS of a Rogue. However they will still be the best offtank and will be needed in raids.
I don't know much about Deathknights but it seems like they will be sharing the Feral Druid Role.

Other than the Druid/Deathknight issue everyone else should be just as good at their job.

Everyone has three trees with different roles. If a "Hybrid" class should do less damage because it can respec and heal/tank, a "Pure" class should do less damage because it can respec and crowd control better.
A "Pure" class has DPS trees for PvE, PvP, Crowd Control or Utility. "Hybrid" classes tend to only have a tree for one of those.

Noone here is on their first character, and even if they are then they have had lots of time to get to lv20 and realise it isn't the class for them. You knew damned well what each of your three talent trees did, and if you don't like then it is your own fault.

[Pyros]

I don't really see an issue with ferals doing as much dps as rogues, considering it requires a specific spec, and specific gear. If I'm a tree druid and I want to go pewpew rogue DPS, I can't just snap my fingers and tada, I'm a rogue, it takes time investment. The only decent point of argumentation is I can collect rogue gear when playing as a healer, while a rogue who also has a holy priest reroll can't.

It's really an issue with class design anyway, there shouldn't be an argument on why some classes can't perform as well as others, unless they can perform all their roles at once. If ferals were like VG disciple, aka doing melee dps and doing heals at the same time, then yeah it's understandable than either, or both of their roles should be inferior to a pure dps. But in wow it's simply not the case, you can't switch roles, or play multi roles, in the same fight pretty much. You actually can, but due to gear itemization, you're already being nerfed at one of the role. If you DPS in tank gear, you don't do quite as well as a pure DPS, so why should the class be designed to do even less DPS on top of that. If you're in protadin gear, you can heal once you're done tanking, but the heals are ridiculous or your mana regen is. Should they nerf paladin tanking because of that? It's not like you're gonna use a protadin in protadin gear to heal in a fight anyway, it's just something shitty they do while they wait for the next boss where they might be useful.

That's the thing with hybrids in wow, while if you're a rogue, you'll probably do 95% of the fights as your rogue, as the same spec as usual and doing what you chose to do, if you play an hybrid, you'll have to sit for half the fights on progress/new fights, unless you actually have the gear and the will to play more than one role. You might say people could have rolled rogues if they wanted to DPS, but some people don't want to wield poisonned daggers, they want to be a cat. Just like not every DPS likes being a rogue, or a mage, and that's why they have multiple classes pretty much doing the same thing.

Overall it's a very old argument, most people won't agree with each other anyway. If you listen to people who think hybrids should always underperform though, you go back to vanilla wow, with 1druid if that for every 40man raids, and shamans and paladins all being stuck doing one thing, the thing they suck the least as, healing. Might as well remove all the hybrid shit then, and just have 3 classes, warrior priest and rogue. Or add a 4th one, call it mage, for the adventurous people. Yeah real fun game.

[Genjiro]

Ok I can make the argument I've had to sit around forever while waiting for X class just to run an instance, while hybrid friends rarely if ever had that problem.

It was a real fun game then too.

My lock should get healer in affliction, dps in destro, and be able to tank anything in demo np. Get your asses on that blue.

Its ultimately one of those agree to disagree cases, and until there is a legit game with a job system which isnt gay, this argument will always exist.

[Clug]

The hybrid classes should be deleted, because apparently according to all the hybrid classes here they are only interested in one tree to begin with. Thus said tree should be just as strong as the pure classes tree.

So, delete the hybrids please and just play the pure class who's role you want to be.

Simple solution.

[madmaan]

Please shut the fuck up with this shit. You can't have your cake and eat it too. I don't care if you write a 12 page essay on why you don't think it doesn't matter if you're hybrid or not, still doesn't change that fact.

At level 80, 50 gold is going to mean even less than it does now. At level 80, getting quality gear is going to be easier than ever for all 3 specs.

Stop beating this dead horse dipshit. Zehn - Vhex, you are taking this hybrid/pure class debate to where makata took the pvp debate.