All he said was that Warriors are more popular. And have a certain history to them which brings with it expectations from players. And that as a result he, and his team, must be more careful in making changes to it.

The more people playing a given class the greater the impact of changes are to the game as a whole.

And the more history people have with something the more critical of change they become. And they’re apt to see the worst in the Blizzards well intentioned efforts to balance game play for everyone.

I understand, theoretically, that certain tanks are better in certain situations, but in my guild we only have 4 tanks: 2 druids, a warrior and a paladin. Usually a druid and warrior tank while the other druid and paladin DPS, not because one is better than the other, but because the other druid and paladin are damn good DPS while the first druid (me) and the warrior are not.

Nowhere did GC explicitly say that Warriors as a group would be intentionally left underpowered. He said that they didn’t *balance* around population or past history (which is neither positive nor negative), and that they wouldn’t *over*buff.

The closest comparison I can remember is the fallout of the Ret Paladin nerfs after 3.0. The quote was roughly “If there’s one spec we never want to overbuff again (so that we don’t then have to nerf it as a result), it’s Retribution”. That was months ago. And you know what? Ret Paladins didn’t suddenly disappear overnight because they were left intentionally underpowered.

I know that one gets emotionally attached to the character, and by extension, the class, but it does verge on the silly to hatch Blizzard conspiracies by inference from a post that doesn’t say anything of the sort.

I’ve held off commenting on this rather good blog becuase I didnt want to have a impact on what got said. Cats in boxes and all that. Whilest surpressing guilt at ‘listening in’. I’m pretty good at surpressing guilt and other such fluff mind.

Blizz have harped on about ‘Bring the player not the class’ and I dont think they’re quite there yet at the top levels…but its not a bad maxim for all that.
I’d rather have a good warrior tank than a mediocre Dk tank. Would I pick x good tank over y good tank? I should be so lucky….I’ll worry about that when Ensidia head hunt my l33t Restoness….

Hi And I do feel for you with the resto shaman, being told that your class was overpowered in Sunwell isn’t really what you need to hear. But just as you say, we really really notice when you (the player) aren’t there. Especially when relying on paladins-who-must-not-be-named

My view on reading GC’s post is that Warriors are a little behind the curve and will probably get nudged slightly towards it…no major buffs coming but a minor plus some nerfs to the DK’s. However its easy to read positive when its not your class thats behind the curve.

Of course my (main) class is behind the curve right now so I’m told [As Spinks will already have guessed I play a Resto Shammy]. And there I do really feel that pain. I have never once had ‘my moment in the sun’. My first raider was a Hunter:- not the top DPS of the time and my guild had two much better geared hunters that happened to be Raid Leaders. Right when I was being told Resto Shamen where the Kings of Raid Heal I was ‘stuck’ in Kara and heroics.
So I rolled an alt affliction ‘lock. Got to 70 the major nerfs were announced.
Getting stuck with ‘uncool’ characters that arnt the flavour of the month will I think mean that hard-modes and top end raids might not be open to you. That does suck. However at mid-low level (ie non hardcore) I really dont think it matters.
My ‘non flavour of the month’ resto Shammy does just fine on healing and normally edges out the other more ‘cool’ raid healers on the meters (which means nothing) and I’ll tell you….we missed having our Prot Warrior Tank along last night. No offense to the Off-tank who stood in but really if we’re not running with full set of Main Tank _players_ then we’re in a world of hurt…..and I’m not talking about new Bosses or those that we’ve only killed once or twice but things we’ve had on farm for a fair while. Tanking is an art and Warriors may not have every latest fashionable tool but they still deliver the goods.

Again, the sin here is that Ghostcrawler explained things, and he just upset a lot of people because of it. Would you have even reacted to this if he had not said anything? Probably not. But, yet, people always want the developers to explain things even though it often just leads to pain.

At any rate, I find it risible that you think you would put in the “same amount of effort.” There’s a link at the top of this page called “Warrior Guides”. Usually someone who knows enough to write a guide has put in more than the minimum amount of effort. If some überguild won’t take a Warrior tank just because they come out to be 2% (or whatever) weaker, then they’re stupid (especially given the hue and cry about how all the hardcore content is being made so simple).

So it’s not really going to change anything. Just now I feel more miserable. Also I am forced to examine my assumption that if I put the same amount of effort into my character as the other tanks, I’d be on par with them and that there was a sense in which all classes were equal.

Despite what Tesh (and others) says, an MMO developer can’t help but engage in some social engineering in design by default. Popularity is a factor in balance for multiple reasons. Even in Spinks’ original article she puts her complaints in terms of popularity: Druids and DKs are more recruited, so there must be a problem with Warriors. (Actually, it might be that raiding guilds already have all the prot warriors they want/need, and are trying to find other tanks to round things out.)

On the face of it, what Ghostcrawler said makes sense: Warriors are popular, Warriors are slightly underpowered, buffing Warriors could lead too people thinking Warriors are the only viable tanks. Sucks to be playing a Warrior and hearing you’re not going to get a bunch of goodies anytime soon, sure. The problem is that if they didn’t have this philosophy and they did buff warriors and they are right, it would lead to more screaming from DKs, Druids, and Paladins about why they’re not viable tanks.

In my opinion, for any competent player, this is no big deal. The philosophy of “bring the player, not the class” means that things won’t get too far out of whack. As someone who did 5-man offtanking in Druid Bear form in vanilla WoW, I know a good player can play despite what the actual nature of class balance is.

Sadly, the sin here seems to be that Ghostcrawler actually spoke what the devs were thinking in terms of class balance. This is why it’s not always a good idea for a developer too be too honest about things.