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Once again, I'm talking about PvP over the past ~4 years. You realize arenas haven't even been around for 2 years yet, right? Not even mentioning serious arenas; ofcourse they took ~2 months to properly balance when they were just released - Aside from the fact that they weren't exactly "unplayable by specific classes" in the first place.



Same thing. That's nowadays' PvP, what it's been like for at most 6 months. The time I'm on about is if I recall correctly about 6 months before TBC. I very well recall the general idea that PvP healing sucked and priests should spec shadow for PvP. At that time I was playing a holy priest in AV and had no problems whatsoever. And heck, I wasn't even half as good a player back then as I am now.



No, you wouldn't. You basically pointed it out yourself. There are all sorts of classes who excell in all sorts of content. You see more of class X in bracket Y, and more of class Z in bracket A. And you see classes B and C rise in popularity after patch D. At the moment it just so happens to be so that Shamans are somewhat out of tune and have ended up appearing least of all classes.



What if the 'less powerful' character is more powerful in another field of expertise? Or against another specific class? Which in turn eats the 'more powerful' class? There can be balance without equality, as long as something makes up for the loss of a specific character's usefulness.



I said FAIRLY balanced. Ofcourse there is *SOME* imbalance. There is nearly always imbalance if you don't make every class exactly the same. It's just that over the past ~4 years, no class has been THE complete underdog of PvP. There are just a few classes who were somewhat undertuned. I'm pointing back at Warlocks and Paladins here. And they got buffed. Compare this to your other avarage MMO and WoW's balance is pretty damn good.


I'm going to end my post with your #1 so I can immediatly explain my reaction to it.



Believes or understands? You for one are still missing my point.

To go back to my opening statement, I'm saying that over the past ~4 years, PvP has been fairly balanced; there have never been serious balance issues with 1 class being completely out of tune. Your reaction to that has been stating over 2 posts that in the CURRENT version of the ARENA Shamans and paladins are least represented. And claiming I think healers are underpowered in CURRENT PvP. And as the most recent example, 5 lines up you claimed I said "PvP is balanced".

Normally I couldn't care less for ratings, but do you now see why I it annoys me? People completely miss my point and therefore downrate me. You do the same and get rated up for it. People want to downrate me? Fine, but for god's sake; first at least *attempt to* find out if I'm actually wrong. Thank you.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2008 5:38pm by Mozared

Stop right there.

Unfounded; yes, perhaps, since I had not laid out arguments yet in my first post here. Because I didn't felt the need to do so as I thought the point I was trying to make would be pretty clear to anybody who has played since launch.

Erronious; no. Not until proven at least, and so far I've yet to see solid proof.

Discredit others' arguments? Maybe. JadeMonkey said he had hope that shamans would be fixed. Jiade said his hope was based on nothing but faith. I replied to that by saying "I don't know about him, but 'faith' isn't really a weak argument if you consider the following...". It's not like I was attacking him or such.



Clear-cut SPECS, perhaps, not classes. There have been from time to time classes who were at 'the top', but it wasn't like they were dominating everything all the time. They were generally slightly overpowered. They could at all times be killed and were as well. That's what I've been trying to say all the time; WoW's PvP balance has actually been pretty well since launch. There has never been an all-powerful roundhouse that constantly kicked everybody's ***. The closest to this point would have been rogues just pre-TBC who could 'perfect' people. But this was one hell of a job, didn't work on a fair amount of opponents, was rarely done in your avarage PvP day, and was nerfed when resilience.



From my experience, people do both. The rogue forums are the most obvious example. People disagreeing with Theo (or more importantly, his way of communication) ALWAYS get downrated. There have been more than enough posts in which Theo missed said poster's point, proceded to yell at him and got the person un'fair' downrates.

Never dominated my priest or rogue. I remember the whining about them, but I really can't say I've ever had major problems with the class.



Obviously... That's basic Cookie cutter "behaviour" you're on about. If I'm right, you're thinking I mean to say "Spec X on class Y always owned class Z". I'm trying to say "Spec X on class Y always owned spec Z on the same class for PvP".



Would you prefer "Can be killed but are generally a notch harder than a couple of other classes"? It's plainly what I've been saying all along; some classes where somewhat overpowered in some periods, making it easier for those classes to perform better in PvP content. But never was one class so badly overpowered that he could go up against any of the other 8 classes and win barely without effort. Like I said, closest to that point were rogues who could 'perfect' people.

This is pretty much what we're getting at here, Mozared.

When asked to produce evidence that the PvP is currently unbalanced, we can pull up representation in the arenas. Unfortunately, most of the websites that track this don't track individual spec, but we can fudge on that a little by using conventional knowledge to suppliment (this is key, and I'll get back to it shortly) the statistical data. When people talk about Shaman in 2's, it's pretty safe to assume they're talking about Resto. 5's, either Elemental or Enhancement.

Our issue with your current argument is that your current argument is this: "Everyone knows PvP used to be fairly balanced, and because of that, I submit that it is currently more balanced than you claim it is and will be in the future as well." There are several problems with this statement.

For starters, "fairly balanced" is being subjectively defined and submitted. We don't know what "fairly balanced" means for you, and it may mean something entirely different for us. We might consider "fairly balanced" a 40-60 spread. Or maybe 30-70. You might consider, "This one time at BG camp I happened to kill class A specced B with class X specced Y." That seems to be the case, but we don't know.

Second, you are submitting conventional knowledge from over a year and a half ago not as supplimental material, but as the entire basis for your factual claim. If we're arguing only conventional knowledge then both of us might as well just give up right here. As the saying goes, "There's nothing common about common sense." I doubt the three of us could agree on accurately defined parameters for what constitutes conventional knowledge as of five minutes ago, as is made pretty clear by the fact that you apparently contend that current PvP as still "fairly balanced" whereas Jiade and I obviously do not.

I really did not want to get involved but Mozared you do understand just because Arena is the new thing doesn't mean it is not the main focus of Competitive PvP...

If you are about hardcore PvP and collecting the best gear, and trying to be the best known PvPers in your battle Group you do arenas, BGs are easy anyone can rock in a BG players in BGs are generaly casual PvPers if you can even call them that, more realisticaly they are just trying to upgrade there fresh 70s gear by hanging out in BGs since many people seem to do it.

But lets look at the real picture, Arena is where yopu compete for top notch gear and ranking and also can get into real competitions for actual money just cause it is not that old, doesn't mean it is not one of Blizzards and Players main focus on real and competitive PvP.

Using arena statistics to judge "balance" is tricky at best, considering how much the data manipulation can potentially effect the results. Does one normalize the numbers to the total population of 70's of that class/spec or no? Does one include data from previous seasons (especially with the rampant win trading that used to occur)? Does one exclude 2v2 and 3v3 data because it is generally considered impossible to balance small scale pvp without completly homogonizing the classes? What about the effect of racial choice (human rogues especially come to mind here)? What about normalizing the team composition data, which might show some strange comps doing well (for example right now I'm looking at the sk-gaming site and they have a 2.6k rated 3x hunter rogue shammy comp shown in 5s data... unconventional comp to say the least)?

There is a plethora of statistics out there, but two people could reach two very different results based on how that data is interpreted.

I'd have to say that given the vast variety of abilities, racials, classes, types of pvp in the game and the juxtaposition of pvp/pve, it's amazing that pvp is as good as it is.
WoW can never be "balanced" in every single aspect, but I'd say that all things considered it's pretty good. Perfect no, but pretty good nontheless.

The simple fact that I really can't come up with a situation where one class used to be extremely overpowered. Problems with PvP from other games (like LOTRO) still stick out for me; I remember a big problem there being the fact that the monsters in Ettermoors were ALWAYS outnumbered. In nearly 4 years of PvP there was never a class that completely rocked me; on either my priest or my rogue. The biggest imbalances that have stuck to my mind are probably the time just after 'locks got death coil and the time when paladins in the BGs were somewhat scarce.

I'd say that most people agree heartily with that statement in general, but there is a good arguement that can be made for the "counter class" idea (think of "rock paper scissors"), such as the classic frost mage v. warrior fight. More difficult for the warrior, but still possible to do.

Locks without DR basically meant they had an advantage against 4 or 5 other classes. It wasn't an I-WIN button though. Also, DR got added very shortly after the warlock "rise" and locks dropped down a notch.



Perception was awful, but not completely game breaking. Having it increased the rogues chances of winning against TWO (out of 9) other classes by a fair amount; and even then, it's not like perception was an I-WIN button



People dealt with them, though? To for example a rogue, a good restodruid was (and is?) harder to beat than for example a good priest, but they could still be tackled. Ánd, restodruids were only 'overpowered' in 2v2 and 3v3. Alone, they broke even 90% of the time. And in 5v5, they are far from as good as in 2v2 or 3v3.



Remind me, when was that?



Perhaps. At the moment, PvP is pretty much messed up anyway. I'm not entirely sure where blizz is going, but I think they want to keep the 'uber-DPS system' and balance it out more at 80. A bit like how PvP was just before TBC, when people started to realize that healing in PvP won games. I'd be happy with a change like that, really... Current PvP is too much like Unreal Tournament and post-patch PvP was too 'boring' since 90% of the fights were cooldown/trinket longevity runs. I like to kill people when I PvP, not spend 60% of my time DPSing some target I know is going to get healed anyway but which I need to DPS regardless to run the healer OOM.



PvE is easier to balance since there is less odd factors and weird RNG-play involved. But you're right here.



Yes, but it has never been terrible. Like you said, that form of balance is unobtainable without giving everybody the same abilities. Which is why I reckon a wider view of balance has a better place here; when a player is at a disadvantage against another toon, he should generally have abilities that make him stronger against other toons. It's a bit like Theo's vision of skill; he seems to think that anybody <2K rating is a bad player. Result of that kind of measurement is that he also considers 99% of the players in a BG to suck. That's all very nice, but if you ask me your methods of measure are wrong if about 90% of the players players fall into the lowest category your measurement has to offer.



Ofcourse there has been and is imbalance; I'm just saying the imbalance that has been there over the past 4 years barely affected game play; at pretty much any time you could own with any toon if you wanted to. And thát is what I praised Blizzard for in my earlier post, and why I've got faith they won't ***** over Shammies. 'Cause yeah, looking at that movie makes me feel sad for PvE ele shammies.

This.

Err, what? Let's not exhaggerate here. In my forays into arena I know I was expected to keep WF down, weave in grounding totems between WFT, keep tremor totem down, inturrupt casters, purge the crap out of the focus target, occasionally keep poison cleasing totem down, as well as popping heroism. That's a heck of a lot of GCD's and cooldowns to keep track of.

Ecchhh... /facepalm indeed.

Mozared you're arguing that if you add together all the imbalances over the years you get roughly zero, so it has been roughly balanced. That is true in a temporal sense in that most classes have had a rise to pre-eminence at once time or another, but that means the game is not balanced properly. That's like slamming yourself against alternate sides of a rocking boat; if you are mathematically minded and take a time-average the boat is stable, but anyone with any common sense knows that boats arent supposed to do that.

To add my can of gasoline to this blazing stable, 'balanced' simply means that when two classes of equal gear and skill engage, the result is not basically a foregone conclusion. Warlocks against Rogues is a foregone conclusion; in that sitation the Warlock is toast. Same goes for Mr. Frostie vs Warrior, and recently Arcane Barrage Mages too. These are examples of horrid and crippling imbalance, because it removes the feeling that you have a fair chance. It reduces PvP to something akin to looting a boss; you hope you get the roll you want. If you get a bad roll your anticlass shows up and owns you, a good roll and you find your nubsmack and proceed to ruin his day.

That isnt balance, it is ritualised imbalance.

I hate that on my Warlock I have no chance against Rogues that don't suck; same for Shamans actually. I also hate that on my friend's Resto Druid I am more or less unkillable by the hands of Man. That sucks, and it makes the game suck. Just because you dont have one UUUUBER class doesnt mean the game is ok, and it doesnt mean Shamans will not get reamed in the future.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Let me 'draw' it up for you;

Underpowered<--------------|--Z-------Y---X---Y--------Z--|-------------->Overpowered

X = Completely balanced.
The two |'s are the borders. In between them is "balanced", everything outside is slightly to badly under/overpowered (I.E; nearly impossible to kill at all, or such insane healing/DPS that nobody stands a chance... Think current Retardins).
Basically, what I'm saying, is that over the past years, most classes have been at the position of Y. Then there was the occasional 'real imbalance'... Like Warlocks pre-DR. They were located on the position of Z. But even as they were very close to being really over/underpowered, they all got buffed/nerfed rather quickly.



No, it's called the rock-paper-scissors system which for a large part I still believe in. Every class has a class they have a tough time against (except current Retardins).



With that reasoning you must hate a game like stratego or risk?



They might've reached 2300 or 2400 if they actually bothered, yes. And seriously... "Lots of people solo others to 2K."? So what do you do when this "uberclass" soloing to 2K gets a mirrormatch?