Comments on: On warriors, and nerf/ buff cycles

By: Kring

Kring — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:29:36 +0000

I had people drop group when they saw that the tank was a paladin for SH. It happened. People had to learn how amazing paladins are before they accepted them.

By: Balthazar

Balthazar — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:27:11 +0000

The paladin who made the comment about being tossed out of SH because he was a pally is living in a memory of the game I never experienced. Everyone wanted pally tanks in SH. It made it super easy.

By: myaltisa

myaltisa — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:49:09 +0000

Makes sense this comment from Blizz, that seems to be Blizzards design solution to PVP vs PVE, stack dps up over time. More threat less damage is also a good solution, but people will always look at damage meters without too much heed of TPS (unless they are playing mages!). Most DPS characters stack up their damage already for reducing PVP burst or have burst specs with no sustained damage.

They’ll get it right I’m sure!

By: Stabs

Stabs — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:30:13 +0000

A lot of what Blizzard gets right is quite subtle. The “easy to play hard to master”.

Take Heroic Strike. A powerful blow that does +N damage and extra threat. This is actually quite a complex ability about which pages and pages of theorycraft exist but anyone can look at it and grasp what it does.

Now if you start tweaking it around you could end up with:

does N damage in PvE (unless it’s a raid in which case it’s N+17) but only does + half N in PvP (except against Rogues against whom it does N squared). Non-player mobs in pvp battleground are considered pvp opponents for the purposes of this abilty (except on Tuesdays).

You now have an EQ2 ability, not a WoW ability.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:21:08 +0000

They were very unpopular in the early days. That was before their stamina talents: they had a couple of thousand life less than a comparably geared Warrior. Remember early on even mobs in the slave pens hit for up to 8k and a good tank had 10k life.

They became more and more popular as the expansion wore on, certain hit point imbalances were fixed and people realised how good they were at aoe aggro.

By the end of the expansion they were everyone’s favoured 5 man tank because they had way better aoe aggro than anyone else. Thunderclap was crap and only hit 4 targets.

By: Bane

Bane — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:55:36 +0000

In the Dev Twitter chat yesterday, they made the comment “We’d also like to boost sustained Prot damage (for PvE) without adding too much burst (for PvP)”. So maybe they’re getting the message?

By: spinks

spinks — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:35:20 +0000

I’m sure they have realised this by now But it does seem that they’re quite dedicated to trying to go with a single ruleset.

I think they generally do a decent job. Part of the problem is that PvP will tend to magnify balance issues anyway, and designing tightly tuned raid encounters also tends to stress class balance but in a different way.

By: evizaer

evizaer — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:37:14 +0000

Taking both PvP and PvE seriously (without doing something funky like PvMP in LotRO) means balancing two very different games at the same time by tweaking a few shared mechanics. It’s almost impossible. I’m surprised Blizzard hasn’t realized this and devise some solution akin to how they rejigger balance specifically in arena matches.

By: Longasc

Longasc — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:23:39 +0000

I honestly can’t believe that people have taken any other tank over a Paladin in Shattered Halls. This was no matter of taste, it was a matter of fact that they were and probably still are better at AoE tanking.

By: spinks

spinks — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:15:50 +0000

Really? I remember being thrown out of Heroic SH because I wasn’t a pally.

And really I’d be happier if we were just all on par. I’m fine, you all need a nerf