Some days, I really hate BlizzardFollow

Today is one of those days. I just read something that made my eye start twitching and my brain implode. It was Blizzard's justification of the Hemo nerf. Allow me to quote that for you.


Seriously, what the ****? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Let's examine the sequence of events leading up to this.

1. Rogues complain about having only one tree useful for any situation, Combat.
2. The devs respond by buffing Hemo. It opens up interesting hybrid specs and Rogues everywhere rejoice at having a little leeway when choosing a spec.
3. Less than two weeks later, Blizzard sees that lots of Rogues are using Hemo, and uses this to determine that it's overpowered.
4. Blizzard CM spews garbage from his mouth trying to explain why this nerf happened.

Seriously. My mind cannot get a grasp on this. Rogues didn't want to be full Combat for every application, so Blizz buffs hemo. People use hemo, so Blizzard nerfs hemo. Good ******* job Blizzard. Crack team you have working for you.



Aside from this being incredibly stupid, that last little bit has got me twitching and muttering obscenities every few seconds.


******************* This has only two possible meanings. A, it's supposed to be a group/raid support tree. B, it's supposed to support our other trees and help us do more damage or survive longer. Let's examine both possibilities.

A. Well, seeing as there are exactly zero group buffs available to Rogues, much less the Subtlety tree in particular, this is just ********* Hemo could qualify if you were retarded, but even a halfwit can see that sacrificing more DPS than you give to the group is a bad decision. This obviously cannot be true.

B. Well, in 2.3, Subtlety became exactly this. Many people specced into Subtlety to support Combat and Assassination. This is what caused Blizzard to nerf us, so this obviously can't be their motivation. On a side note, if this is true, it means they don't care if deep subtlety sucks or not, because they don't want you to make this your main tree.

You do the math. If A is false, and B is false, then Blizzard is full of ****. I'm ******* tired of this attitude of "We never make mistakes, and if we have made them before, we have already corrected them." This public response to the outrage over the Hemo nerf is absurd. It's an outright lie, and as such, it shows that Blizzard doesn't give a **** about what we think.

Christ I need a drink.

I was planning to switch to Hemo. But not because Hemo being overpowered, but Muti being underpowered.

After a hemo-nerf, every rogue will switch back to combat. And then what? Something like: "The developers felt that Sinister Strike was overpowered. Pretty much every rogue was switching to Combat." And hey, nerf SS.

And WTF. Almost any class has 1 tree that's used the most. So when is Blizz gonna nerf frost mages?

Any DPS class really does have a choice for arena, especially locks, hunters, and rogues.

Shamans do too, as both resto and elemental are very highly regarded by high-end arena teams.

Oh yeah, and disc is a really bad spec for arena; most are going to be shadow or holy/disc.

Edited, Dec 10th 2007 1:13am by Theophany

You're TOTALLY RIGHT.

http://www.geekboys.org/arena/index/2/all/priest/all/all/

Oh, wait. That says that you're completely wrong.

guys seriously, you dont think hemo NEEDED the change? 110% 42 debuff is that offensive? it shouldnt out-DPE, out-CP gen, out-control, AND out-macestunprocwtfpwn our other move choice

and considering getting hemo ALSO gets you right next to prep, our BEST talent pvp-wise straight up... hemo should only be as good as a 3/3 agression 0/5 lethality ss, maybe less to compensate the extra cp gen

played at 100% 10 debuff, this is still a godsend for me.... just realise when **** needs adjustment, i know rogues need and want a solid pvp build... but the current ar/prep hemo outclasses everything so much that theres little argument against it as the best.... it just shouldnt be like that i think =\

Hemo didn't out-DPS Combat. It was slightly inferior, now it's even more inferior. CP generation and control are what it's always been good for, so yes, it should.


This isn't about AR/Prep, this is about Hemo. There are other ways to balance AR/Prep. Nerfing hemo ruined other builds that weren't overpowered in the least.


The reason every Rogue was Hemo was because they were tired of Combat and wanted a change. This trend would have changed soon enough, and we'd have a fair mix of hybrids and combat specs.

Anyway, this thread wasn't about the nerf, it's about their justification for it. They buffed something to where it was useful, then nerfed it to where it wasn't because we used it, and call that balance. Next time we get a buff, everyone make sure not to take advantage of it, lest it be deemed overpowered.

I didn't say it was logical per se... but meh.

Most classes have a PvP tree and a PvE tree(s), although obviously most classes hybridize to some degree. I think the intention was to make Hemo better for raids (unclear if they did this, since I haven't run the new debuff numbers) and worse for PvP, which is... odd, but sure.

Arena-wise, nearly every Mage is Frost, nearly every Warriors is MS (they'd better be) and nearly every Warlock is Demo.

PvE-wise, nearly every Mage is Fire, nearly every Warrior is Fury and nearly every Warlock is full Affliction or Destruction.

They buffed a talent, and every Rogue went from whatever spec they were using before to getting Hemo _in both PvE and PvP_. So, they panicked and reverted the changes somewhat. It'd be like if they changed one talent and all of the sudden every single Mage in the game went Arcane, since they removed the cooldown from PoM. Not saying that makes it right, but that's where they're coming from.

Because of course, the stats gathered in the first 2 weeks of a new seasons are an ironclad indication of what is best right?

Hell, Druids were still deep in obscurity 2 weeks in S2! Look how that turned out by the end of that season! But had we been going with your mentality Theo, we'd have been yelling druids were useless 2 weeks out of the gate.

I'm a firm believer that Disc is much more powerful then Holy and that baring some very specific team matrix, shadow priests are a dying breed.



You honestly believe that?

You guys are pretty whismsical and seem to believe everybody else is. I can assure you the main reason people went Hemo was because it kicked ***, and 'being bored of combat' was a distant secondary reason.

And as the weeks would have progressed, the few remaining combat and muti rogue left would have eventually switched over.




It needed a change, yes - I don't think hemo should be the king of pve dps - Combat should be. When Rogues using Warglaives comment that they're getting huge dps upgrade by going hemo instead of combat... there's a balance problem.

But I don't like the ramification this change has on pvp, where I finally felt we had reached the power level we were supposed to be at. The nerf is not a good change overall. If we end up going back to combat for both pve and pvp... the situation is the same (1 spec rules all), except we've just gone back to our lackluster pre-2.3 power level.



The logical choice would have been to make combat (or even assassination) more interesting for pve...

Edited, Dec 10th 2007 6:19pm by Tyrandor

Odds are I'll still be 33/28 for pvp and just go back to good old 18/43 for pve.

It's still a flat out nerf thought to our pvp abilities, one that I don't believe was necessary.

The fact that this nerf to rogue is coming in the same patch as a buff to mages makes me rather glad my Mage is getting geared up nicely (264 resi now...).

Edited, Dec 10th 2007 6:06pm by Tyrandor

For those of you looking for the actual post in question by the CM on the oboards here it is:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=1905630623&pageNo=1&sid=1#11

If this isn't allowed/wanted I'll remove the link later.

Uh, you realize Ming isn't that good at all and is generally laughed at by rogues worldwide, right?

If you wanted to show that you know the rogue class, name Neilyo, Nitrana, or Xecks.

He's laughed at in general. He's a pompous asshat who thinks he's above everyone else.

^

this is something of another example of blizzards backasswards way of balancing talents. they usually do this when the alternative (make something better instead) would result in taking something thats for the most part balanced and making it stronger to the point of being imba.