Designer Scott “Daelo†Mercer thoughts on Cataclysm dungeons and raids.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/4488898/
I am definitely enjoying the LFR and the Hour of Twilight heroics; they are indeed correctly tuned for the average level of player gear. I really got involved in end-game only at 4.3, the length of the Heroics 5 man at the beginning was killing me. I'm looking forward to MOP and the players challenge.
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Cataclysm post mortem dungeons and raidsFollow
It's a little sad that they seem to be happy with the easy of dungeons atms. Not that I think we necessarily need a return to BC, or even the start of cata level difficulty, but it'd be nice to have at least a little challenge.
75 Rabbit/75 Sheep/75 Coeurl/75 Eft/75 Raptor/75 Hippogryph/75 Puk
75 Scorpion/75 Wamoura/75 Pixie/75 Peiste/64 Sabotender
51 Bird/41 Mandragora/40 Bee/37 Crawler/37 Bat
Items no one cares about: O
Missions no one cares about: O
Crafts no one cares about: O
75 Scorpion/75 Wamoura/75 Pixie/75 Peiste/64 Sabotender
51 Bird/41 Mandragora/40 Bee/37 Crawler/37 Bat
Items no one cares about: O
Missions no one cares about: O
Crafts no one cares about: O
Karlina wrote:
It's a little sad that they seem to be happy with the easy of dungeons atms. Not that I think we necessarily need a return to BC, or even the start of cata level difficulty, but it'd be nice to have at least a little challenge.
Challenge modes in MoP should be quite a bit harder.
Non-Challenge modes are said to be Wrath-type or HoT-type. Your average player who just wants their JP/VP can enjoy faceroll dungeons while those hardcores who love a challenge can try the challenge mode.
Sounds win-win to me. *shrugs*
Here's what I'm thinking -
If Challenge Mode (CM) drop better gear or more Valor - they will become the standard. If they only offer achievements or they don't offer anything special - they will not be done very often. If they are the standard - they will be nerfed to the lowest common denominator. They will start off vastly too difficult. The time, skill, and/or teamwork to complete them will not exist in a 5M LFD. However - if the gearing is better (or Justice/Valor) - it wont' matter. Players will attain the lowest possible ilvl required to enter and then complain until Blizz makes them possible at that ilvl.
Most people want challenge, but offset by the ability to complete it. Most people want a 5-M to be completed in <45 mins. 30 Minutes would be optimal (Assuming a roughly 10 min queue). Most people claim they want CC or interesting trash, but they complain when they wipe to it. What they really need is a balance. They need to take a good assessment of the best/worst instances out there and figure out why they are liked/hated.
Bliz also needs to realize that anything that is able to be skipped will be skipped. (Take, for example End Time - Baine... More people wipe to attempting to skip the trash than do to the boss. If it's able to be skipped - players will risk wiping just to skip it. Also - Think about HoO. No one completed it... Why would you?)
Finally - IMO there should be another tier of gear. Blue gear is too quickly replaced. After a few weeks of Tier 1 - it's essentially useless until the next Expec. They need another tier. Possibly making HM gear that new 'tier' (Green, Blue, Purple, Red?) would help.
If Challenge Mode (CM) drop better gear or more Valor - they will become the standard. If they only offer achievements or they don't offer anything special - they will not be done very often. If they are the standard - they will be nerfed to the lowest common denominator. They will start off vastly too difficult. The time, skill, and/or teamwork to complete them will not exist in a 5M LFD. However - if the gearing is better (or Justice/Valor) - it wont' matter. Players will attain the lowest possible ilvl required to enter and then complain until Blizz makes them possible at that ilvl.
Most people want challenge, but offset by the ability to complete it. Most people want a 5-M to be completed in <45 mins. 30 Minutes would be optimal (Assuming a roughly 10 min queue). Most people claim they want CC or interesting trash, but they complain when they wipe to it. What they really need is a balance. They need to take a good assessment of the best/worst instances out there and figure out why they are liked/hated.
Bliz also needs to realize that anything that is able to be skipped will be skipped. (Take, for example End Time - Baine... More people wipe to attempting to skip the trash than do to the boss. If it's able to be skipped - players will risk wiping just to skip it. Also - Think about HoO. No one completed it... Why would you?)
Finally - IMO there should be another tier of gear. Blue gear is too quickly replaced. After a few weeks of Tier 1 - it's essentially useless until the next Expec. They need another tier. Possibly making HM gear that new 'tier' (Green, Blue, Purple, Red?) would help.
Back before the random dungeon system was put in, you got JP from killing bosses in heroic dungeons. Long dungeons with lots of bosses were the best for getting the most JP for your time spent in the dungeon which was important since heroics often took an hour or more to complete. If you only wanted the crafting 'orb' at the end or if you didn't have as much free time, you would try to get a group for one of the shorter dungeons since speed mattered more than total JP.
The random dungeons (with LFG) changed all that by putting the emphasis solely on getting to the final boss of a dungeon as quickly as possible since that was the only way to get VP from heroics. The JP became secondary to all but the most undergeared players so dungeons having lots of bosses were spurned in favor of the quick and easy ones.
So, unless they change it so players get better rewards for longer dungeons with more bosses, most people will ask for the quickest dungeons so they can get their VP farming out of the way for the week. Dungeons have become simply a means to accumulate VP. The gear dropped, the JP, the 'story' of the dungeon, the challenge are all things that have become secondary and discardable when designing a 'successful' dungeon experience.
I remember back when you'd ask people which dungeons they enjoyed and why, they would mention dungeons like Deadmines, Stratholme, Black Rock Depths and Shadowfang Keep because they thought the fights were fun or the scenery was epic or because getting to the end boss often felt like an achievement in its own right. People who talk about how they enjoy the most recent dungeons usually mention they enjoy them because they are fast and require little actual effort to complete. This makes it sound like the thing they enjoy most about the new dungeons is that they don't have to suffer through them for long?
Is this a good trend for the game to follow? I guess it depends on whether or not the primary reason you play is to get better gear or not. Fast VP farming through heroics certainly gets people the good gear faster and it does make a lot of people happy. If you play the game more for the other experiences the game offers then the streamlining of heroics may leave you feeling a bit unsatisfied.
I know I am in the minority but I didn't find the Cata heroics to be any harder at the start of the expansion compared to the LK and BC heroics at the start of those expansions. People yelled about how hard the Cata heroics were but really the only thing that had changed was the fact that people went from being extremely overgeared for LK heroics to being adequately (sometimes not even that) geared for Cata heroics. The emphasis on grinding VP for gear made many people do anything they could just to get into the heroics they weren't really geared enough to do in hopes that they would get carried through by people in the same way new 80s would get carried through by the people in ICC gear.
I understand why the change in focus happened, but I don't have to like it. I have been in the new heroics only a couple of times because there just isn't anything in the experience to make me want to go back. Sure, I could use the VP right now but I would rather just do things in the game that I find fun.
The random dungeons (with LFG) changed all that by putting the emphasis solely on getting to the final boss of a dungeon as quickly as possible since that was the only way to get VP from heroics. The JP became secondary to all but the most undergeared players so dungeons having lots of bosses were spurned in favor of the quick and easy ones.
So, unless they change it so players get better rewards for longer dungeons with more bosses, most people will ask for the quickest dungeons so they can get their VP farming out of the way for the week. Dungeons have become simply a means to accumulate VP. The gear dropped, the JP, the 'story' of the dungeon, the challenge are all things that have become secondary and discardable when designing a 'successful' dungeon experience.
I remember back when you'd ask people which dungeons they enjoyed and why, they would mention dungeons like Deadmines, Stratholme, Black Rock Depths and Shadowfang Keep because they thought the fights were fun or the scenery was epic or because getting to the end boss often felt like an achievement in its own right. People who talk about how they enjoy the most recent dungeons usually mention they enjoy them because they are fast and require little actual effort to complete. This makes it sound like the thing they enjoy most about the new dungeons is that they don't have to suffer through them for long?
Is this a good trend for the game to follow? I guess it depends on whether or not the primary reason you play is to get better gear or not. Fast VP farming through heroics certainly gets people the good gear faster and it does make a lot of people happy. If you play the game more for the other experiences the game offers then the streamlining of heroics may leave you feeling a bit unsatisfied.
I know I am in the minority but I didn't find the Cata heroics to be any harder at the start of the expansion compared to the LK and BC heroics at the start of those expansions. People yelled about how hard the Cata heroics were but really the only thing that had changed was the fact that people went from being extremely overgeared for LK heroics to being adequately (sometimes not even that) geared for Cata heroics. The emphasis on grinding VP for gear made many people do anything they could just to get into the heroics they weren't really geared enough to do in hopes that they would get carried through by people in the same way new 80s would get carried through by the people in ICC gear.
I understand why the change in focus happened, but I don't have to like it. I have been in the new heroics only a couple of times because there just isn't anything in the experience to make me want to go back. Sure, I could use the VP right now but I would rather just do things in the game that I find fun.
I'm glad he admitted (sort of) that they botched it a bit with the starter heroics. I was among those complaining; they took for-freaking-ever to complete, and that's assuming you got and kept a group together long enough to complete them. CC is fine, and when I started the game mid-Wrath cycle there really was no CC, but to have near mandatory multiple CCs on every single pull else wipe . . .was just too much. New expansion, scrub gear, random lfg'ers . . just ugly.
I'm not sure where he got the idea that the Troll dungeons were successful though. Because people ran them? Well of course, the drops were a tier higher than everything else, we kind of had to. But I don't think I've talked to a single person who didn't range somewhere between dislike and outright loathing of them. You know I ground those things for months and *still* have never completed most of the quests in them? People were simply unwilling and/or unable to do so.
Again, really long. And then add in being a confusing maze.
Then we get to the end of the expansion and the HoT runs are completely hand-held and straightforward with no CC required (that I can think of) and only a couple boss interrupts. Plus you get massive encounter buffs on at least 2 of them. Seems THAT should have been the starter style dungeon set and leave the others for later in the xpac.
Hopefully they've learned from this. Doesn't sound like it though as he seems to think the whole thing went masterfully.
I'm not sure where he got the idea that the Troll dungeons were successful though. Because people ran them? Well of course, the drops were a tier higher than everything else, we kind of had to. But I don't think I've talked to a single person who didn't range somewhere between dislike and outright loathing of them. You know I ground those things for months and *still* have never completed most of the quests in them? People were simply unwilling and/or unable to do so.
Again, really long. And then add in being a confusing maze.
Then we get to the end of the expansion and the HoT runs are completely hand-held and straightforward with no CC required (that I can think of) and only a couple boss interrupts. Plus you get massive encounter buffs on at least 2 of them. Seems THAT should have been the starter style dungeon set and leave the others for later in the xpac.
Hopefully they've learned from this. Doesn't sound like it though as he seems to think the whole thing went masterfully.
Having played heroics in BC, I actually appreciated the difficulty of heroics...at first. However, with an entire player base conditioned to the laughably easy "heroics" of Lich King it was a terrible idea. Nobody knew how to use CC and everyone had been brainwashed that "CC was for terribads". So I remember my first Cata heroics lasting in excess of 3 hours. A good group meant a good challenge, but a bad group meant it was horrible. So grinding out heroics was painful...all for blue gear. And back tracking on BC and WOTLK design schemes, they didn't even give us epics on the final boss to make it feel like you've accomplished and gained something...other than a 3 hour headache.
To make the problem even worse they made getting geared for the heroics initially painful. The average ilvl needed was just high enough that grinding out regulars hurt...and hurt badly. I remember on some of my characters being stuck weeks in regulars because those elusive drops wouldn't drop and epics were far, far too expensive. It was a much welcomed relief when the regular 85s started dropping JP. It was few enough that it wasn't a viable grind...but enough that you wouldn't spend weeks of unlucky drops.
My biggest complaint though comes in the way of how they handled it. After we all had the gear, after we were all accustomed to it, and after the heroics were starting to become almost too easy THEN they nerfed them silly. The same thing they did with Lich King. As our gear went up, they REDUCED the difficulty. Our gear had already reduced the difficulty...and they felt the need to now nerf it. This made heroics a joke. My problem with that is, for some of us, heroics are end game. So until LFR came out there was a large majority of the players who wanted a challenge without having to delve into raid content who were more or less stuck either playing a game that had been tuned down to the point it was mindless button spamming or quit...and I've dropped my subscription more than a few times during Cata because I realized if I was going to be mindlessly grinding I might as well do it in something productive like life....
To make the problem even worse they made getting geared for the heroics initially painful. The average ilvl needed was just high enough that grinding out regulars hurt...and hurt badly. I remember on some of my characters being stuck weeks in regulars because those elusive drops wouldn't drop and epics were far, far too expensive. It was a much welcomed relief when the regular 85s started dropping JP. It was few enough that it wasn't a viable grind...but enough that you wouldn't spend weeks of unlucky drops.
My biggest complaint though comes in the way of how they handled it. After we all had the gear, after we were all accustomed to it, and after the heroics were starting to become almost too easy THEN they nerfed them silly. The same thing they did with Lich King. As our gear went up, they REDUCED the difficulty. Our gear had already reduced the difficulty...and they felt the need to now nerf it. This made heroics a joke. My problem with that is, for some of us, heroics are end game. So until LFR came out there was a large majority of the players who wanted a challenge without having to delve into raid content who were more or less stuck either playing a game that had been tuned down to the point it was mindless button spamming or quit...and I've dropped my subscription more than a few times during Cata because I realized if I was going to be mindlessly grinding I might as well do it in something productive like life....
Borsuk wrote:
Here's what I'm thinking -
If Challenge Mode (CM) drop better gear or more Valor - they will become the standard. If they only offer achievements or they don't offer anything special - they will not be done very often. If they are the standard - they will be nerfed to the lowest common denominator. They will start off vastly too difficult. The time, skill, and/or teamwork to complete them will not exist in a 5M LFD. However - if the gearing is better (or Justice/Valor) - it wont' matter. Players will attain the lowest possible ilvl required to enter and then complain until Blizz makes them possible at that ilvl.
Most people want challenge, but offset by the ability to complete it. Most people want a 5-M to be completed in <45 mins. 30 Minutes would be optimal (Assuming a roughly 10 min queue). Most people claim they want CC or interesting trash, but they complain when they wipe to it. What they really need is a balance. They need to take a good assessment of the best/worst instances out there and figure out why they are liked/hated.
Bliz also needs to realize that anything that is able to be skipped will be skipped. (Take, for example End Time - Baine... More people wipe to attempting to skip the trash than do to the boss. If it's able to be skipped - players will risk wiping just to skip it. Also - Think about HoO. No one completed it... Why would you?)
Finally - IMO there should be another tier of gear. Blue gear is too quickly replaced. After a few weeks of Tier 1 - it's essentially useless until the next Expec. They need another tier. Possibly making HM gear that new 'tier' (Green, Blue, Purple, Red?) would help.
If Challenge Mode (CM) drop better gear or more Valor - they will become the standard. If they only offer achievements or they don't offer anything special - they will not be done very often. If they are the standard - they will be nerfed to the lowest common denominator. They will start off vastly too difficult. The time, skill, and/or teamwork to complete them will not exist in a 5M LFD. However - if the gearing is better (or Justice/Valor) - it wont' matter. Players will attain the lowest possible ilvl required to enter and then complain until Blizz makes them possible at that ilvl.
Most people want challenge, but offset by the ability to complete it. Most people want a 5-M to be completed in <45 mins. 30 Minutes would be optimal (Assuming a roughly 10 min queue). Most people claim they want CC or interesting trash, but they complain when they wipe to it. What they really need is a balance. They need to take a good assessment of the best/worst instances out there and figure out why they are liked/hated.
Bliz also needs to realize that anything that is able to be skipped will be skipped. (Take, for example End Time - Baine... More people wipe to attempting to skip the trash than do to the boss. If it's able to be skipped - players will risk wiping just to skip it. Also - Think about HoO. No one completed it... Why would you?)
Finally - IMO there should be another tier of gear. Blue gear is too quickly replaced. After a few weeks of Tier 1 - it's essentially useless until the next Expec. They need another tier. Possibly making HM gear that new 'tier' (Green, Blue, Purple, Red?) would help.
I 100% agree with you. As long as they offer better gear/rewards they will be the standard, and the game will be made for the lowest common denominator. I look at this differently than heroic/hardmode encounters in raids as it only requires the 5 people to be there and it can be a lot easier to do with LFG than not.
Red was always supposed to be 'Artifact' gear coloring [which has still never been used] but it wouldn't hurt to differentiate it more now that purples are [and have been] the new blues since wrath and the end of TBC.
Borsuk wrote:
Finally - IMO there should be another tier of gear. Blue gear is too quickly replaced. After a few weeks of Tier 1 - it's essentially useless until the next Expec. They need another tier. Possibly making HM gear that new 'tier' (Green, Blue, Purple, Red?) would help.
I don't think so. In fact, they already did that in Cata, and it was one of the major turn-offs for me. Things would have been a whole lot smoother had they skipped the annoying 346 tier for heroics or brought the first raid tier down to it in item level and difficulty like it was in Wrath. Week after week in Cata I felt like I was getting absolutely nowhere. When my second toon reached 85 and hit the very same roadblock I quit for a couple months.
Same deal with the troll grind. Tried for a while, got annoyed, then started hiding in some PvP and leveling my other toons and eventually quit until the Molten Front stuff would actually allow me to catch up quickly while skipping the other crap.
I didn't start truly enjoying Cata until 4.3 came out.
I don't really have any issues with the content. In fact for 5 man and raid content I was pretty happy at a HM level in terms of challenge. Even running a normal with a pug felt reasonable.
My issues with Cata was class balance, or the complete lack of it when the expac went live. Hitting 70 in TBC and gearing up in 5 mans while being in greens and quested blues was challenging because I was undergeared for the content. Hitting lvl 85 and gearing up in 5 mans was challenging only because most classes were broken in a way that we have never experienced at an expac launch in this game.
Edit - later it was the direction of healing in general. It quickly became spam your AOE heal as much as your regen allowed you. Not my cup of tea, but one of a myriad of reasons why I ended up calling it in this expansion.
Edited, Mar 11th 2012 3:48pm by bodhisattva
My issues with Cata was class balance, or the complete lack of it when the expac went live. Hitting 70 in TBC and gearing up in 5 mans while being in greens and quested blues was challenging because I was undergeared for the content. Hitting lvl 85 and gearing up in 5 mans was challenging only because most classes were broken in a way that we have never experienced at an expac launch in this game.
Edit - later it was the direction of healing in general. It quickly became spam your AOE heal as much as your regen allowed you. Not my cup of tea, but one of a myriad of reasons why I ended up calling it in this expansion.
Edited, Mar 11th 2012 3:48pm by bodhisattva
Bode - 100 Holy Paladin - Lightbringer
bodhisattva wrote:
I don't really have any issues with the content. In fact for 5 man and raid content I was pretty happy at a HM level in terms of challenge. Even running a normal with a pug felt reasonable.
My issues with Cata was class balance, or the complete lack of it when the expac went live. Hitting 70 in TBC and gearing up in 5 mans while being in greens and quested blues was challenging because I was undergeared for the content. Hitting lvl 85 and gearing up in 5 mans was challenging only because most classes were broken in a way that we have never experienced at an expac launch in this game.
My issues with Cata was class balance, or the complete lack of it when the expac went live. Hitting 70 in TBC and gearing up in 5 mans while being in greens and quested blues was challenging because I was undergeared for the content. Hitting lvl 85 and gearing up in 5 mans was challenging only because most classes were broken in a way that we have never experienced at an expac launch in this game.
I remember trying to quest in Tol Barad as a Ret Paladin after they smashed them with 20 Second Word of Glory. Players kept saying "Don't! This is stupid! Give us at least 10 second WoG!"
Did Blizz listen?
NO.
They bent us over and made us take it.
Then guess what? Rets were suddenly more squishy than Combat Rogues and DPS Warriors, despite the fact Paladins have self-heals. Even Tol Barad questing was ridiculously difficult with 20-second WoG. Many Rets went Prot just to solo quest, otherwise they risked getting killed anytime they had more than 2 mobs on them.
Then, all the sudden, "10 Sec WoG for Ret Paladins!"
If Blizz had listened to us in the first place, much player annoyance could have been avoided. Now, Rets are OK again. Still a bit too random, still a bit too inconsistent but at least they aren't totally squishy in solo questing.
Quote:
Edit - later it was the direction of healing in general. It quickly became spam your AOE heal as much as your regen allowed you. Not my cup of tea, but one of a myriad of reasons why I ended up calling it in this expansion.
Edited, Mar 11th 2012 3:48pm by bodhisattva
Edited, Mar 11th 2012 3:48pm by bodhisattva
They utterly dropped the ball with Healing and dropped it Hard. They fell way short of their "We don't want tanks to go from 100% to 30% in 2 seconds, we want healers to choose their spells and play triage healing" ... hahahaha yeah right, sure. That's why in Heroics, most bosses.... yup, full to almost dead in a couple seconds. Now, the only difference is, healers run out of mana way too fast at least they did early in the expansion.
And now, all non-healers heal for such piddly amounts that casting heals to heal yourself in solo PvE is about useless. Greater Healing Wave on an Enhancement Shaman last I tested, heals for a piddly 18,000. My Enhancement Shaman has a health max of 120,000. Oh wow, I heal 1/6th of my health with my strongest heal that eats 30% of my mana!?!?! I could use Healing Wave, the so-called "low cost, main heal" but it does like 6k. *whistle* That's not even 10% of my health. Yeah, I really want to stand there for 60+ seconds doing nothing but casting Healing Wave over and over again should I ever end up getting hurt badly. I'd do better to sit down and eat food... *rolls eyes*
Hopefully they fix healing and make it actually work in MoP....
Lyrailis, I could type enough "^This." to get me banned from these forums and still not agree so completely with what you said (especially about ret paladins). The problem was really right from the start. In the 5 years I've played WoW I have only a couple of times ever agreed that a spec has been outright broken...and ret was VERY broken. I had at least 232 gear going into the starting zones for my ret set and I remember having to sit and eat after practically every fight. If I had 2 mobs on me I had to use lay on hands or bubble and if I had 3 mobs on me it was almost surely death. I've been playing ret since the early days of BC with great proficiency. So it wasn't a lack of understanding of the class. It was horrible.
DPS was okay when given the time to ramp it up on a boss, but solo play was so horrific I can't believe anyone at Blizzard thought it was okay. In comparison, my DK which I had leveled as a side distraction who once I hit 80 with him was pretty much shelved, still had Northrend greens, TORE through the starting zones like a bat out of hell. I could easily aggro three or four mobs and just chop them to pieces without a thought.
It was then I realized how horrific the issue was...and what is worse is how long it took them to even admit there was a problem let alone do something about it. Rets in the end of Lich King were pretty decent. Yes, at the beginning they were roflstomp OP. But that was fixed fairly quickly. Could a good ret beat the tar out of you? Yes. And so could a good anything. And I think that much of the hate paladins got from Blizzard came from the whining and complaining that rets received throughout all of Lich King.
It still angers me that my death knight is significantly more survivable than my ret paladin. WoG nerf is downright crap. It was completely and totally uncalled for. It's bad enough we had to pick between "live" and "kill". Now our "live" is so laughable its more like "futile waste".
DPS was okay when given the time to ramp it up on a boss, but solo play was so horrific I can't believe anyone at Blizzard thought it was okay. In comparison, my DK which I had leveled as a side distraction who once I hit 80 with him was pretty much shelved, still had Northrend greens, TORE through the starting zones like a bat out of hell. I could easily aggro three or four mobs and just chop them to pieces without a thought.
It was then I realized how horrific the issue was...and what is worse is how long it took them to even admit there was a problem let alone do something about it. Rets in the end of Lich King were pretty decent. Yes, at the beginning they were roflstomp OP. But that was fixed fairly quickly. Could a good ret beat the tar out of you? Yes. And so could a good anything. And I think that much of the hate paladins got from Blizzard came from the whining and complaining that rets received throughout all of Lich King.
It still angers me that my death knight is significantly more survivable than my ret paladin. WoG nerf is downright crap. It was completely and totally uncalled for. It's bad enough we had to pick between "live" and "kill". Now our "live" is so laughable its more like "futile waste".
Lyrailis wrote:
And now, all non-healers heal for such piddly amounts that casting heals to heal yourself in solo PvE is about useless. Greater Healing Wave on an Enhancement Shaman last I tested, heals for a piddly 18,000. My Enhancement Shaman has a health max of 120,000. Oh wow, I heal 1/6th of my health with my strongest heal that eats 30% of my mana!?!?! I could use Healing Wave, the so-called "low cost, main heal" but it does like 6k. *whistle* That's not even 10% of my health. Yeah, I really want to stand there for 60+ seconds doing nothing but casting Healing Wave over and over again should I ever end up getting hurt badly. I'd do better to sit down and eat food... *rolls eyes*
It's going to be worse unless they change up some stuff that I've seen on the MoP page. Right now they only have one heal for non-resto Shamans and that is the Healing Surge which eats more mana and heals for less than Greater Healing Wave. Currently I have been fairly happy with the state of my enhancement self-healing. While the heal isn't huge (at least on my undergeared Shaman alts), as long as I cast it with Maelstrom procs, it is free or at least cost-reduced at less than 5 stacks. On my ilevel 383 enhancement Shaman, I have seen self-heal crits over 70k in raids (I must have had some AP proc at the time), but even my non-crit Greater Healing Wave heals me for about 25k. That is enough to counter a lot of incidental damage and gives the healers time to get a real heal onto me in an emergency situation. The days of jumping in and keeping a tank up if the healer goes down though are long gone. If I'm not hitting stuff, I just can't get the mana back to be casting more than a couple of heals.
ekaterinodar wrote:
It still angers me that my death knight is significantly more survivable than my ret paladin. WoG nerf is downright crap. It was completely and totally uncalled for. It's bad enough we had to pick between "live" and "kill". Now our "live" is so laughable its more like "futile waste".
How do you like that stuff where Blood DKs do very comparable damage in solo PvE to Ret Paladins, but yet are much, much, MUCH more survivable these days? I pull 40k crits in 340-ish gear, easy with my "Mash this button" move (Death Strike), meanwhile I can pop Inq, Guardian, AND Wings and I only very occasionally see a 45k Templar's crit while wearing 369 avg. I-level tank gear. Yes, almost 30 I-level higher, and my Ret does less damage than my Tank DK. And, let's not forget that my Blood DK has a hell of a lot less buttons to push, too! I push 2... 2... buttons to do Solo PvE combat -- Death Strike and Rune Strike. Sometimes I throw in Heart Strike for sh*ts and giggles. Meanwhile, as Ret Paladin I'm juggling procs, cooldowns, and having to stand and cast to heal myself while out of combat sometimes. As my DK, my most damaging attack is also my best heal. It is simply ridiculous.
And how about that vengeance nerf? Blood DK is still quite strong in PvP, but now Prot Paladins are useless except for flag carriers and IoC/AV boss tanks. That's nice. Blizz wanted to nerf the ridiculousness of Blood DKs, so they drop a huge nuclear bomb on the problem... only they blew up everything except the intended target.
That's like grabbing a shotgun to shoot a bank robber who has a hostage, and end up killing the hostage and the bank robber runs away and escapes. lol.
Edited, Mar 12th 2012 7:07pm by Lyrailis
I feel the same with my Druid Tank, i just don't die...Period!
RAWDEAL wrote:
I feel the same with my Druid Tank, i just don't die...Period!
Yeah, but unlike a Blood DK, you don't do ridiculously good DPS, either. Not unless you switch to cat form, then you lose your survivability.
Blood DK has both the survivability AND good damage. And they can heal themselves every Death Strike, for amounts comparable to Word of Glory. The only difference is that Death Strike's heal can never crit and always does the same amount (unless you take a huge amount of damage). Still, though. I've found that my Blood DK has survived a few battles that I think even my Prot Paladin might have suffered some good damage in. As long as your Death Strike out-heals incoming damage, you literally will never die. And even then, you still have Rune Tap.
Edited, Mar 12th 2012 9:43pm by Lyrailis
Well, even now at the end of the expansion with nothing new to come, classes are still way out of balance.
My blood DK tank is routinely at or near the top of dps & damage done charts while I'm tanking. I've tried a few times messing around with dps specs for questing or dungeons but blood is so OP I can do massive damage and great heals so just never really bothered. My wife's pally tank is just now, at all 397 gear, starting to do respectable damage while tanking, though still not outdoing any dps'ers.
My beloved warlock, who was my main since I started playing, has been so frustratingly impotent this whole expansion I've basically shelved him. If I'm really really careful and have full concentration and perfect timing I can get middle-of-the-pack dps out of him. But my hunter blows him out of the water with very little effort. And I just dinged my mage and have found the joys of 1-button dps. And I look back at my warlock. And I wonder wtf the devs were thinking. They made 1 pure-dps class so complicated you need a perfect weave of 9 different spells and procs to be mediocre and another so simple you blow up charts with 1 button and a handful of cds.
I always love going into LFR and watching Recount. 9 times out of 10 I see blocks of people sorted perfectly by class. Spriest on top, 2-5 are hunters, 6-8 are mages, 9/10 are rogues . . .there is rarely any differentiation or mix. Depending on what classes are present, they are almost always in blocks.
My blood DK tank is routinely at or near the top of dps & damage done charts while I'm tanking. I've tried a few times messing around with dps specs for questing or dungeons but blood is so OP I can do massive damage and great heals so just never really bothered. My wife's pally tank is just now, at all 397 gear, starting to do respectable damage while tanking, though still not outdoing any dps'ers.
My beloved warlock, who was my main since I started playing, has been so frustratingly impotent this whole expansion I've basically shelved him. If I'm really really careful and have full concentration and perfect timing I can get middle-of-the-pack dps out of him. But my hunter blows him out of the water with very little effort. And I just dinged my mage and have found the joys of 1-button dps. And I look back at my warlock. And I wonder wtf the devs were thinking. They made 1 pure-dps class so complicated you need a perfect weave of 9 different spells and procs to be mediocre and another so simple you blow up charts with 1 button and a handful of cds.
I always love going into LFR and watching Recount. 9 times out of 10 I see blocks of people sorted perfectly by class. Spriest on top, 2-5 are hunters, 6-8 are mages, 9/10 are rogues . . .there is rarely any differentiation or mix. Depending on what classes are present, they are almost always in blocks.
Pantherfern wrote:
I always love going into LFR and watching Recount. 9 times out of 10 I see blocks of people sorted perfectly by class.
That's something I notice too.
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