Blizz and Holy Paladin in 4.2Follow

I was more concerned with the fact that they are making changes with no forward thinking, which is leading to every class getting huge changes each patch.

OR, and I know this is a difficult concept, they could check the math on changes they make and adjust them according to how they intent to scale gear. That way, any necessary patch changes and minor, and we don't see 12% drops in almost all S.Priest abilities...

Eh, the SP change doesn't really bother me that much. That was more to prevent the OP multi-dotting that the more skilled shadow priests were doing. It doesn't even affect the majority of players since most did not have that skill. Plus I'm okay with doing slightly less dps on multi-target fights. I'll still kick *** regardless.

That's not a valid excuse, imo.

First of all, you are overestimating their reliable source of data by a massive margin. I highly doubt they'll be able to extract information easily from Chinese players, since the game is actually licensed to a Chinese company.

Then consider that a sizable chunk of players don't have a toon at cap. Of those that do, not all raid or run dungeons.

So, really, the actual pool of data is far, far lower.

In testing, Blizzard assumes that most players will be using the spec/rotation/priority list that proves to provide the best dps. Their simulators are probably far superior to those of TCers (since theirs can actually consider the technical aspects that players can only try and figure out).

And simulators are what TCers use to find the best rotation. Even if they manage to find something Blizz missed, it should NOT be a large enough difference for them to have to do the kind of balancing acts they have been attempting each patch.

In case you forgot, TCers NOW check rotations against higher gear levels. They generally systematically increase stats to see how they influence each other with various rotations.

If they can do it with their limited resources, it should be much easier for Blizz.

My point is that they probably balance by assuming everyone will use the top-dps spec/gear they can.

I'm SURE it isn't hard for them to figure out what the top rotation and spec will be at specific gear levels. I mean, they create the rotation. And it doesn't take a genius to realize many of the important issues, like the Druid eclipse problems, or that (for many classes) DoTing or using ST rotations is superior to using their dedicated AoE skills (even at high numbers of enemies).

Can people occasionally do things they didn't intend? Yes. Can those occasionally be used to up your dps higher than Blizz wants it? Yes. But those are generally rare.

What we are seeing here is Blizz making balance changes according to gear levels of the immediate future. This isn't the result of them seeing data coming back from the PTR or live realms. They knew they would need to make many of these changes when gear got to this point, and they had to make them because they haven't bothered ensuring that classes scale properly.

Healing and tanking, however, are *sometimes* something else that's more encounter specific.

GC on balance anyone?

I actually do hope they do a Dev blog about class balancing and such sometime. It could be quite an insight into things.

The problem I see with balance is the problem I see with any/all AI (Read: Programming)

*There was an interesting article in Bloomberg this week about how console (PS#, Xbox, etc) systems are dying.

Players, like water, flow downhill. They take the easiest path. When you realize that you can save Princess Zelda by hugging the left wall because Gannon’s fire never hits you there – you hug the left wall.

Modern games allow for Dev’s to fix glitches like this, but with every ‘fix’ there is the law of unintended consequences. Unless Blizz goes completely boring and makes every class an equal and opposite of another class (The Rocks, Paper, Scissors method of combat) – there will always be imbalance.

The problem, as I see it, is that the Dev’s have been missing things and/or have provided an unclear focus.

Players have complained about issues (Hugging the left wall) and nothing has been done about it for months. Or Devs have made claims (We don’t want you to hug walls to avoid damage) and then the player base has entered dungeons to find that despite the claim about anti-wall-hugging… Players are once again forced to hug walls.

The terribly erroneous assumption that Blizzard's access to game data somehow equates to a balanced and godlike understanding of the game and balance is something I hate to see from the community. The top end community or anyone that has paid attention to class balance from early beta to now can really see the fallacy of that almost blind and childlike appeal to authority.

Just looking at Paladin's alone there were issues that top end players addressed on the beta forums in May/June of 2010, and solutions proposed to those issues made by the same players that are just being implemented by Blizz in June of 2011.

The community voiced their concern about balance in beta, a lot of the top end community did not believe that Blizzard could make a Dec 2010 release due to the lack of class balance. What we saw was that Blizzard released the game without class balance. Anyone that cares to refute that or try to make the limp wristed claim that WotLK or BC had similar balance issues for class on release is obviously dealing with a precarious and rose coloured grip on reality, so I won't argue them. The fact that GC and the dev community had to actively discuss and apologize for the fact that classes were changing so much weekly that players didn't know how to gear, or perfect a rotation speaks volumes the actual master list of class changes from Dec to Feb is even more proof.






Edited, Jul 4th 2011 5:43am by bodhisattva

Edited, Jul 4th 2011 5:44am by bodhisattva

The fact that there are balance changes with just about every major and minor patch, as well as many hotfixes, is testament to that fact that Blizzard doesn't always get class balance right. What I think gets lost in a lot of the noise is that Blizzard can't just balance around the top 5% while neglecting the rest of the level-capped community. I think it's an acceptable goal for them to get something that (mostly) works out the door and into mass consumption, then do the fine-tuning.

Priests got 2 decent masteries (iirc, they at least didn't avoid mastery like the plague), but the Druid Mastery had to be totally redone, and Deep Healing had to get a 50% buff and changed to affect all Shaman spells before it became anything but a basement-level stat.

According to EJ, Disc mastery modifies Divine Aegis as well.

Fair enough, I think it is safe to say that at release balance across the board, not just for one class (and also not just looking at mastery), was broken and almost non existant in Cataclysm. That isn't just at a top 5% level. It until about February to get to a basic "live" level of play.

Which is why from Dec till Feb you saw almost game changing balances changes on a weekly level for almost every class. Since then it has stepped back to a more "fine tuning" level, such as resolving broken masteries, balancing tanks, ensuring certain dps specs are viable etc.


On a side note there is an interesting thread by a top end paladin about stacking mastery. For any paladins interested. Basically it requires a change in playstyle to only healing the tank with HR on cd for raid healing but the shield and HP generation for healing your beacon target allows decent tank healing with minimized damage spikes which allows you to heal the tank and the raid healers to focus soley on the raid.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2743690008


Edited, Jul 5th 2011 7:10am by bodhisattva

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