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WOTLK and game balance
Antipathy
Member UncommonPosts: 1,362
A few months ago, I visited this site, and raised the question - was the expansion being released too early - in particular were the classes properly balanced and tested. Several people on these forums vehemently disagreed with me, and stated stuff like "I've been playing beta, and everything's fine".
Since then, like many of you, I've spent a lot of time playing. IMO there are some really good parts to the new expansion. The level 70-80 questing is excellent, and is far superior to the questing experience in either vanilla wow or in many other MMOs.
However, I believe many of my earlier points about class balance have been bourne out. In my experience:
- Rogues seem to have become a rarity in any PvE context. They're not remotely viable without exploiting a game bug, and if they do so they become completely overpowered.
- Warlocks are also a rarity. With hard work they can be viable - but so many people seem to have found them too difficult, and have re-rolled to something easier. There seem to be only 2-3 decent locks left on any server.
- My own class, hunter, seems completely overpowered in some contexts (i.e. with low gear levels, and in 25-mans). So they are being heavily nerfed. However, I'm in a 10 man guild where hunters feel fairly balanced (I top DPS meters if people bring the right buffing classes along, and come bottom if they don't). Post nerf I'm not sure I'll be viable at all in 10-mans.
- Retribution Paladins seem completely overpowered in PvP
- Death Knights seem completely overpowered in both PvE and PvP
Comments
No game will ever be balanced, especially one that really tries to have so many different playstyles as WOW and makes efforts to make sure every spec is viable in every aspect.
1. Pve - solo
2. Pve -small group (5 man)
3. Pve - raids
4. PvP - Arena (2-5 man)
5 PvP - world/large pvp ( Wintergrasp, AV)
And then you have to go into the fact that the devs have to 'reasonably' balance things for leveling 70-80... and again have to balance things as players progress in gear at endgame. They have to balance Arena now, and then again when most players have this seasons gear.
That is basically what the issue is with hunters right now. They are powerful (probably highest dps) at the beginning of lvl 80 raiding (nax)... but what may happen to them is what happened to mages with BC.. as we progress through raid content, they may become less and less powerful until they are in the lower half of the dps classes. The devs are going to nerf hunters now (because they are too good currently in raiding), but have said they might need to revert some of those nerfs later on as we get into more raids. They are aware of what happened with mages, and won't let it happen again.
I really do disagree about DKs though. They are overpowered at low levels (58-65) because they have great gear that is perfect itemized for them. But at 80, DKs are not that good. I would say they aren't even in the top 50% of classes. Ret pallys were nerfed at the end of wrath beta testing. They were OP for most of beta, but they aren't OP now.
There will always be situation where you can pick one aspect of the game and say one spec is OP.. but that is really dependant on your character and the difference between OP and 'average' really isn't that much... especially compared to some other games. I mean look at WH/WE's in warhammer. At least in WOW, there are like 6 classes that get called OP ( rogues, hunters, DKs, warriors, druids, pallys).
I had rogues in last 4 Pickup groups for Nexus and UK
- for one of the runs, even had 2 rogues
- locks were in 2 of the UK/Nexus runs too
probably varies by what server you play
personally,
Ive seen less priests in regular instance groups but I'm not going to generalize ...
EQ2 fan sites
Well to hear the Fanbois tell it WoW is Perfectly Balanced and should never be touched again, Dks Rogues and Paladins should not be nerfed at all. PvP is wonderful just the way it is and we should all thank Blizz for Finally making WoW perfect. The fierce pro DK stance seems to indicate MANY bad players rerolled DK.
LoL
As a level 80 DK, I can out'dps anyone that matches my level and gear. In fact, I've topped the damage charts in every instance I've ever been in...except 1 where I had a level 80 lock beat me by about 20k dmg. Not to mention he was in full t7 and epics, while I was in greens and blues.
Everyone has his own "angle", here is my arena view on DK.
In arena the most dangerous thing is a rogue (build up and terrible good damage outbursts), but once you can stun them they fall as flies. Every time I see a group with a DK I am glad, because DK can't beat up a healer one on one.
Combos yes, but individual DK's are all about melee and after a few weeks of resilience build up you already see their weaknesses.
We have much more difficulties with ranged spell combo's, when they survive the initial burst, they play with you.
It's ALL about fast reflexes and the art of eye hand coordination.
Like I said in another post, I challenge everyone to give me a class which isn't represented in the top 100 of the world: http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/3v3/
So some (new or changed) classes are more used, but this is no excuse for not reaching the absolute top as the list shows.
At LEAST with Arena we have a measuring tool that keeps getting monitored and actively changed. And a mere 2 months after release and after 3 weeks of arena,we see....
ALL classes can make it to the highest levels in Arena. As long as all classes are represented with numurous numbers in the 3vs3 fights in the top 100, I think you can speak of a pretty damned good balance effort.
ROFL at the haters
)
I've never said wow is perfectly balanced. It can't be, there are just to many areas to balance it for and too many different specs.
That argument only works for those who have only played WoW. The great lie that balance even the attempt at balance is impossible is pure Kalganism. Take Guild Wars sure there are some gripes right now but they are minor to say the least and are not game breaking. Skill based MMOs usually don't have this problem either, UO WAS balanced until then Dev Kalgan ruined it, notice a pattern. The former lead Dev of WoW left for the most part to prove it NC Soft got most of them they went on to make games like Guild Wars and Aion. So really Dev teams direct game mechanincs you can tell by thier history on how a game will turn out, Original Dev team Vanilla wow , guild wars and upcoming Aion, new Dev team Kalgan, a few from EQ Age of Shadows, WOTLK, Burning Crusade, see the picture? One side obviously caters to a more pvp centric view the other is more in tune with gear farming high level dungeons and could care less about class balance, never has, never will. Learn who these people are and when you see there name on the game Dev list you know to either be happy and ready for an expected suprise or to simply run like hell.
I do not question the fact that there is not a single game that can truly be equally balanced, my point of objection with WoW is how all class balance blatantly aim for arena situations as it has become increasinly clear from the latest remodelling this was in fact one of the reasons for why I quit playing...personally it ceased to be fun after the 1st season and after witnessing the 4 others that followed and everything remaining as is, between the OP classes going back and forth and the pvp system that virtually forced players to do arena or the joke that is to pvp and gain badges for pvp gear...so blizzard implement resillience in pvp gear to separate pvp from pve and they mix in the things again? Personally it doesnt make much sense
I had a warlock. Its not fun anymore. Its true they arent so bad at pve, but im not going to pay for a pve pvp game where i get stomped by any class any spec in any gear unlss they are napping. WoW pvp was alot more balanced and fun in original and even in BC, but I am suprised they can release a game where some classes are so under represented and some classes wipe the floor with ridiculous superiority. A Rogue for instnace will do more damage than a warlock, yet has more defenses, in fact an adequate rogue could keep a warlock from getting them to 75% health between cheapshot kidney shot cloak of shadows if they wanted blind, my ONE defense, deathcoil, will get trinketed, ill get a few seconds of dot ticks, thats about it. Demon portal < sprint. 35 yards is notihing hwen you travel at 30% speed and your enemy is going about 210% and can interupt from far away. So why does this class have so much defense and blow me out of the water in damage too? That is what we call NO BALANCE AT ALL. Paladins can bubble and practicly kill me before its over. They have enormous damage, alot more than i could do in any pvp situation, but they are also decked out in plate armor, have an array of dispels, heals, slow immuiniy, melle immunity, and an instant cast long stun...and more damage. NO BALANCE AT ALLLLLLL!!!!!!!! It doesnt matter how well you play when you have 2k armor and a bitch nerfed demon when a raging divine storm cursader strike attack bubble repeat hammer, i mean the initial hits will take out 25% of your health if they dont crit, but then i have to sit through a 12 second immunity that isnt deserved at all and a 5 second stun!!!! NOOOOO BALANCE AT ALLLLLL. I could go on to mages, feral druids, death knights and maybe a few others, but for a class to get this owned by that many classes with literally no defense and no help is horrible game design.
lol agree lol
I feel your pain - I tried to state about this in the pally/arena thread but of course get flamed because pally/dk can kill me even when they're 7-8 lvls lower than me - bubble kinda makes the fight a little unfair when, like you said, they can just trinket my fear/DC - and howl of terror is a joke - most times mine doesn't even work eventhough I'm 21pts in afflic w/ deep demo talents - its just sad. Most times I quit the BGs because I get so mad at how nerfed we are compared to those two. A rogue can kill me as well when they know how to play it like how you've encountered. The only ones I can gank are those that are either 1. focused on someone else or 2. can't play their job worth a crap. You don't really see that many locks in the BGs because you're always the one they go for as an easy kill. /sigh can't we have plate/mail or something besides drain life - cause I don't know about you, but mine doesn't drain hardly at all unless they're almost dead.
UO was never balanced. Do you remember before trammel when 75% of players were mages that carried halbards?
UO was never balanced. Do you remember before trammel when 75% of players were mages that carried halbards?
It tilted towards magic but a Dexer could kill a mage easy. But pre ren you were either a mage type, Fighter/dexer or hybrid and all did well. Uo may have had lack of diversiity within it's skills so there were just so many of each player type you would see, that doesn't mean it was horribly inbalanced. Inbalancing is the numerous Theme park addons Evocare added to the game and and the inclusion of Gear based over skill based stats in a skill based game as well as item insurance so no bad things could happen to the shiney things you had collected. Not to mention the OP skills he added in AOS to make Necromancy more popular, ironically one of the more popular builds is a Necro/Pally which was similar in many ways to the DK in WoW I almost feel like he was trying to recreate it.
WOW has always been about constant balance and retooling. Look at previous patches and see for yourself (or look into your memory if, like me, you've played for freaking ever). Balancing twelve classes through multiple aspects is insanely difficult (of course, SWG tried it with twenty two plus jedi, but that's a whole other can of worms). There's no way to make all classes roughly equal in terms of end-game power (PVP or PVE), levelling ease, gear availability, and min/max vs generalist potential.
This becomes even more apparent when you look at the classes as they've evolved with the release of TBC and WOTLK. Every class has become more specialized than ever. They are insanely good at one thing (depending on talents) or insanely good at being decent at multiple things. Just look at the end-game abilities and talents at lvl 60 (old base game, pre 2.0.1 patch) lvl 70 (pre-WOTLK) and lvl 80 (post WOTLK) and you'll see what I mean.
The game is in constant balance, and sometimes it's just waiting for people to realize how they need to play the classes now. Things change, people adapt. Give it a month or three and then see what sort of balance issues there are and how often you see class x in raid Y.
Looking at overall Arena ratings is misleading. It simply doesn't matter sense to compare ratings gained in one battlegroup with those from another. Some battlegroups are more competitive than others. Some battlegroups are simply bigger than others (large battlegroups create more variation in ratings).
So lets have a look at a few individual battlegroups:
Firstly - EU: Cyclone(3v3). This is often quoted as being the strongest battlegroup in europe, possibly strongest in the world. All top 5 teams have a paladin. 3 of them have death knights.
Now lets look at my battlegroup - EU-Misery 3v3. In the top 4 teams, I only see 3 classes represented (paladin, death knight, hunter).
Now lets look a couple of strong battlegroups in the US:
Bloodlust (3v3): Only a single team in the top 20 3v3 teams doesn't contain a paladin. 4 out of the top 5 teams contain a death knight.
Rampage (3v3): 5 of the top 8 teams contain a paladin + death knight.
---
I'm starting to detect a pattern here - and it isn't balance.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
I completely agree with what you've written above. There is simply too much variation in wow. Too many different classes, too many different specs, too many different areas where people compete (raids, heroic raids, instances, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, battlegrounds and soloing). Not to mention the different advantages classes get in different situations (e.g. some are better at aoe fights, some at mobile fights etc). Balancing WoW is a vastly more difficult job than achieving game balance in a game such as Guild Wars.
Which is why I think the recent sharing of buffs etc was a bad move. Because it made balancing so much more important. You no longer get taken for your buffs - because the buffs are there anyway. For many players, their only reason for being in a raid is their DPS. So if DPS isn't high enough - you don't get to go.
The supposed 5% margin that pure classes (i.e. those offering less utility) have over hybrids simply doesn't work. Nice theory, but a 5% margin is meaningless when Blizzards attempts at game balance seem lucky to hit a 20% margin. The supposed "advantage" is lost in the noise. This will become even more important when free mid-raid respecs become available (i.e. soon). This will be vastly more useful to hybrids. Out of the 4 pure classes, maybe a couple of them will be lucky to be on the right side of Blizzards latest buffs/nerfs, and to come top of the DPS meters. But the other two will, for some reason, be unlucky and not shining (currently this is rogues and warlocks). Why take them over a hybrid who can change between a DPS and a healer at a moments notice and 0 cost?
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
The main problem lately has been that gear has progressively gotten more powerful, and while classes are more specialized, a hybrid with proper gear is still better than most pure classes with slightly worse gear. It makes pure classes, like you said, not worth taking unless you are going to gear them specificially, and take a lot of time to do it.
Good luck getting gear as a pure class in a raid. A hybrid class can always ask for non-spec gear (whether or not he gets it is up to the LM or GM) a pure class can only ask for one kind, and if he's going on a raid chances are he's outfitted to a decent level anyway and still may not get it.
More specialized hah All they have done is Necro the abilities from other classes. The constant balance fanbois speak of at WoW is ridiculous there is no constant balance only constant inbalance.
Group Vs Group Pve balance is what is being passed off as game balance at Blizz, it is hardly 1v1 full class balance especially not pvp balance. Other games somehow manage class balance yet when faced with it Blizz states that it is too hard or just IMPOSSIBLE, how can anyone expect us to balance classes when were trying to OP our alts, I mean the coding for that is too hard, gimme a break. The game has become a theme park for the WoW devs every lie leads to another BS lie just like When SOE was gutting SWG from the inside out. But just because you fanbois believe balance is impossible and can never happen because a black hole will rip into the earth tearing the space time continuity apart doesn't mean it's true. WoW is broken oh soo broken.
BS.
Give me another MMORPG with the tools of Arena to balance classes.
You can't.
You have one problem: the complete Wow community is always there to analyse the complete structure of the balances of classes. We are talking thousands of websites here.
It's open and everyone can see the results: EVERY CLASS is represented multiple times in the top 100 Arena teams. Taking "only" some BG or only top 10 teams is ridiculous: make your data as big as possible and you will see that EVERY class can become super gladiator.
That's the meaning of arena dude. So the system regulates itself.
All other MMORPG's are a laugh in balance compared to this system.
No game can achieve this without the support of the millions of Arena fights that are getting analysed.
So you just killed your own theory.
IF there was a class that did NOT appear EVER in these charts than you could say they'd had to boost that class. But that's NOT the case.
But even now a mere 3(!) weeks after the new season EVERY CLASS can make 2200 rating in one of the 3 possible setups of arena and do top 100.
Wow is the ONLY MMORPG that shows a continuing cycle of attunement. Tx to the excellent Arena stats.
Go somewhere else with your frustrations and see what "group balance" means in other games. Laughing really.
BS.
Give me another MMORPG with the tools of Arena to balance classes.
You can't.
You have one problem: the complete Wow community is always there to analyse the complete structure of the balances of classes. We are talking thousands of websites here.
It's open and everyone can see the results: EVERY CLASS is represented multiple times in the top 100 Arena teams. Taking "only" some BG or only top 10 teams is ridiculous: make your data as big as possible and you will see that EVERY class can become super gladiator.
That's the meaning of arena dude. So the system regulates itself.
All other MMORPG's are a laugh in balance compared to this system.
No game can achieve this without the support of the millions of Arena fights that are getting analysed.
So you just killed your own theory.
IF there was a class that did NOT appear EVER in these charts than you could say they'd had to boost that class. But that's NOT the case.
But even now a mere 3(!) weeks after the new season EVERY CLASS can make 2200 rating in one of the 3 possible setups of arena and do top 100.
Wow is the ONLY MMORPG that shows a continuing cycle of attunement. Tx to the excellent Arena stats.
Go somewhere else with your frustrations and see what "group balance" means in other games. Laughing really.
If they had these ( tools) to balance class they might have wanted to start using them sometime during or after the BC release lol. The rest of what you said is mostly just made up jibberish so I can't really make it out but it looks like your trying to say the WoW supercomputer is the only way to gain true class and arena balance even though WoW itself is terribly Inbalanced, You fanbois remind me Of the Heavens gate cult you will believe any BS all the way till the point of following Marshall Applewhite into space with ziplock bags over your heads.
Thats where WoW class balance is.
No actually - pretending that a rating of 2200 in EU-Cyclone means exactly the same thing as 2200 in EU-Nightfall is the ridiculous thing. Different battlegroups are different...
None the less, to humour you, I've gone through the top 16 teams in the "all 3v3" table. I counted numbers from each class:
Paladin 13
Death knight 10
Hunter 6
Rogue 4
Druid 4
Warrior 4
Priest 3
Mage 2
Shaman 1
Warlock 1
That's not remotely balanced !
In my first post I hadn't seen these statistics and I was still able to name the two classes that would be top. If the game was truely balanced then any class would have the possibility of coming top, and predictions would have been impossible.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Oh don't worry the hunter number will go down when they do the planned steady shot nerf, gotta make more room for the top 2.
No actually - pretending that a rating of 2200 in EU-Cyclone means exactly the same thing as 2200 in EU-Nightfall is the ridiculous thing. Different battlegroups are different...
None the less, to humour you, I've gone through the top 16 teams in the "all 3v3" table. I counted numbers from each class:
and I was still able to name the two classes that would be top. If the game was truely balanced then any class would have the possibility of coming top, and predictions would have been impossible.
I clearly stated that in taking top 100 ratings you see multiple entries of ALL classes.
Only taking top 10 or top 20 are such a small sample, it's useless statistically.
We are talking here about 40 to 50 players on a total possible 11.5 million players.
The fact that EVEN then in the top 16 of the complete million competition EVERY class is represented means that balance is very very fune tuned for an MMORPG.
So your whining post fails as indeed - EVEN in the not representative top 16 teams there is a representation of every class.
Now take these samples to the TOP 100 or top 500 teams and you'll see the stats will even out.
ALL classes are there. IF the game was really foolishly unbalanced, some classes would never be seen in these top 100 teams.
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/3v3/
It is very clear in the link above.
And still we are talking here about 300 players out of a possible 11.5 million.
But of course that doesn't suit your arguments.
No other MMORPG comes even near the balance of Wow classes. Not by a long shot.
And the reason is VERY simple. Tx to the arena system classes are constantly fine tuned to AVOID long term domination of some classes (which really isn't important). and of course AVOID long term nerving of classes (which really is far more important).
The moment you reread the above paragraph a few times, you may finally understand HOW the system works in Wow and why its balancing techniques are more polished than any other MMORPG.
No actually - pretending that a rating of 2200 in EU-Cyclone means exactly the same thing as 2200 in EU-Nightfall is the ridiculous thing. Different battlegroups are different...
None the less, to humour you, I've gone through the top 16 teams in the "all 3v3" table. I counted numbers from each class:
and I was still able to name the two classes that would be top. If the game was truely balanced then any class would have the possibility of coming top, and predictions would have been impossible.
I clearly stated that in taking top 100 ratings you see multiple entries of ALL classes.
Only taking top 10 or top 20 are such a small sample, it's useless statistically.
We are talking here about 40 to 50 players on a total possible 11.5 million players.
The fact that EVEN then in the top 16 of the complete million competition EVERY class is represented means that balance is very very fune tuned for an MMORPG.
So your whining post fails as indeed - EVEN in the not representative top 16 teams there is a representation of every class.
Now take these samples to the TOP 100 or top 500 teams and you'll see the stats will even out.
ALL classes are there. IF the game was really foolishly unbalanced, some classes would never be seen in these top 100 teams.
http://www.arenajunkies.com/rankings/3v3/
It is very clear in the link above.
And still we are talking here about 300 players out of a possible 11.5 million.
But of course that doesn't suit your arguments.
No other MMORPG comes even near the balance of Wow classes. Not by a long shot.
And the reason is VERY simple. Tx to the arena system classes are constantly fine tuned to AVOID long term domination of some classes (which really isn't important). and of course AVOID long term nerving of classes (which really is far more important).
The moment you reread the above paragraph a few times, you may finally understand HOW the system works in Wow and why its balancing techniques are more polished than any other MMORPG.
I see now that you've lost the argument you want to say because out of the millions of wow players some of them are not DKs and Palandins that there is full class balance and WoW is a perfectly polished gemstone. As for your Fine Tuning When more than half of the top teams are DK/Pally combos is not class balance and by every class being represented adding in players who are ON DK, Pally teams or who are by all means being carried by DKs and Pallies is parsing your arguement to fit your warped logic.