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  Blizzard's Vision |
10/29/09 08:33:18 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Nyteshayde |
Q u o t e:
We actually have a pretty good vision for the paladin. In fact,
we've always had a strong vision for what the class should be, but
that vision has also changed over time.
I think the bigger issue may be that we don't necessarily have the
same vision that some players might have.
Taken from this thread:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677581780&sid=1
If the players have a different vision than the development
team...well whose job is it to convey the vision of the classes of
WoW? Even in the thread where you state the player base probably
has a different vision you don't tell us yours nor Blizz's vision
of the Paladin.
Paladins didn't officially find out we were supposed to be healers
in vanilla WoW until the Q&A a few months back when the dev
team stated it. In vanilla WoW there were numerous post from blues
and annoying players (i.e. Ellia) pretending Ret and Prot were
completely viable in vanilla. And in the Q&A we find out
vanilla never intended Ret or Prot to be viable end game specs.
Even though all signs pointed to Paladins being pigeon-holed into
healing end game there was never any official mention of it. Which
left many Ret and Prot pallies banging their head against a brick
wall that only gave way when the development team decided Paladins
should DPS and tank.
The blame for this falls at the feet of your team GC.
Here we are, many years later and the vision of Blizzard apparently
differs from that of the Paladin base yet again. Many players
(Paladin and non-Paladin) don't feel Ret should be viable DPS
because we have a valid tanking tree and valid healing tree. The
tanking/healing hybrid is being thrown around now. Many believe Ret
is fine in PvE (I agree) and that Holy should be our PvP spec (This
seems to be the popular view these days but I don't agree).
The question that remains to be answered is, "Which vision is
shared by Blizzard?"
It all boils down to communication. Can Blizzard truly say they
have clearly communicated their vision with the Paladin community?
I think not. Even something as simple as saying, "The intended and
most efficient role of a Paladin in arena is Holy" (yes...Prot/Holy
is more efficient atm) but at least we know what direction GC and
his team are headed. At least we know Blizzards vision.
At that point the argument may change to "Blizzard's vision of the
Paladin is all wrong" but with all the changes in directions to
Paladins (which seems to coincide with expac releases). I don't
think it is entirely unfair to say, "Blizzard has no vision of the
Paladin". Because your vision hasn't been communicated
properly.
[ Post edited by Nyteshayde
]
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10/29/09 11:40:43 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
While I agree Ret should be viable in arena, I can't be certain
Blizzard does. Since Ret representation has dipped, what steps have
been taken to correct it?
Ret should be viable in Arena and all aspects of the game. You have
to be very careful when you analyze Arena statistics however. If
say Shadow priests aren't viable in Arena, then many Shadow priests
would rather stop competing than to go Disc. We have found that
many paladins will switch specs at the drop of a hat for PvP
purposes. You individually may not, but that doesn't prove the
trend invalid. So if actual Ret spec paladins are low, you have to
ask yourself how many of them are essentially behaving like Ret
paladins but going to get a great talent deep in Holy or Prot. How
many of them switched to Prot because Prot is too good at healing?
You can't just jump to a "buff Ret" solution.
Q u o t e:
Normally a statement about the actual vision should follow
but it didn't. I'm simply asking what is that vision?
The point of that whole post I made was that nearly always when
experienced players are asking what the vision is, it's not because
they don't know or because not knowing somehow affects their
gameplay. It's because they want to have a handy weapon in their
arsenal for arguing for buffs or nerfs. "Blizzard said we have
potent defenses. I die too fast. Therefore Blizzard has to buff
me."
Players who are very new to WoW might legitimately wonder the
difference between a paladin and warrior or a mage and warlock. If
you're here posting almost by definition you are not new to
WoW.
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11/02/09 09:53:19 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
People are failing to realize the actual point of the SS change and
what Blizzard is minorly attempting to do with this patch. The
Paladin class has always suffered from one core issue - too much of
their healing utility is base-line with very little actually coming
from Holy talents. We see this time and time again with each and
every real change made to the Paladin class. Holy simply does too
little in terms of providing healing out-put. this puts down an
issue where not only does the Holy talent tree need to change
drastically, but so too does the base-line Paladin
abilities.
Quoting Murmurs here, and it's probably worth going back to read
his whole post.
I'll add it's also a problem where paladins as a whole are too
defensive and not just the Protection spec ones. You see people
describing fighting a Retribution paladin as a three phase boss
fight. You might get them down, but then they can reset the fight
with Lay on Hands. You get them down again and they bubble and
heal. Compare this to an Arms warrior -- do they do great damage in
PvP? Yes. Are they invulnerable? No. It's cool for paladins to care
more about healing than do warriors, for I hope obvious reasons.
However, if you are up against a Holy paladin, you should know that
one of your greatest challenges should be dealing with their
capacity to heal. If you are up against a Prot paladin, you should
be concerned with their capacity to take hits. If you are up
against a Ret paladin, you should be concerned with how much damage
they should deal. You should not, generally, be nearly as concerend
about the Prot's ability to self-heal or the Ret's ability to tank
you.
I said this recently, but to reiterate, for most of the other
hybrids, picking a role in a fight is much more of a commitment.
Sure the Arms warrior can go Defensive Stance and put on a shield,
but that doesn't turn them into a Prot warrior. Nobody is super
concerned about Feral druids shifting out to heal. We had big
problems with DKs earlier being able to tank and deal damage with
the same set of tools, but that's in a better place now. Shaman
maybe the only other class besides paladins that are able to shift
on the fly from dps to healing, but with their mail armor and lack
of major defensive cooldowns they just don't feel as hard to
kill.
Q u o t e:
The post you made seems self-defeating, or I'm not understanding it
at all. At the beginning you say Ret should be viable in Arena...
yet at the end of the paragraph you're saying Ret paladins are
going deep into Holy and Prot--doesn't that mean Ret *isn't*
viable? Ah, but I know what you'd say--you'd say "representation
doesn't necessarily reflect viability."
Yes, that is all I meant. When A >>>> B, you can't
really claim B is too weak vs. other classes or specs based only on
the evidence that so many people choose A. Try to focus less on
linking to easily found statistics on Arena comp or max dps. Most
players are aware of them and without really strong analysis, just
linking them is rarely contributing much to the discussion. Many
threads between this one and my original mocked this as ?GC sez go
Holy.? Make fewer inane conclusions like this and you will probably
see me post more.
Q u o t e:
I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard keeps changing the
"view" of each paladin spec. The OP is correct in that Blizzard HID
the fact that the only end-game viable spec in Vanilla was
purposely Holy.
?Keeps changing? = Vanilla has 1 spec. BC has 2 specs. LK has 3
specs.
I don?t think it was much of a mystery that paladins were supposed
to heal in Molten Core. There was no Arena back then, so it?s
impossible to talk about what the Arena-viable spec was supposed to
be. All of the changes since then have been to prop up Protection
and Retribution as ?real? specs. Sometimes we overcompensate and
make them too good, at which point we have to nerf them. We haven?t
really changed the vision of the paladin other than embracing that
the class has multiple specs and some players like one more than
the others.
[ Post edited by
Ghostcrawler ]
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11/02/09 09:53:28 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
1.Why are you targetting SS when it was never a big factor to begin
with? Why can't ret, which had it damage reduced use SS as it does
now? Where is Ret utility. We have very little. Why is SS being
targetted to Holy when Holy is the spec that needs it the
LEAST.
Holy needs it the most in our opinion. Holy needs to be a tree that
specializes in healing (and damage prevention as a source of
healing), not just the more healing-focused tree of a very
healing-focused class.
Q u o t e:
2. Why does Blizzard use an AXE when a knife should be used? I
think there were 1000 ways presented to fix SoC before the huge
nerf. Now that SoC is next to useless in almost all scenarios we
aren't even taking it. SoC is THE ret seal. What gives?
This is just ?don?t nerf me, bro? talk. We have been so gentle with
paladin nerfs because we?ve been so concerned with returning to
lolret, that paladins as a class are still very powerful in
end-game LK in both PvE and PvP. Yes, it?s not fun to be nerfed. We
get that. There is very little evidence we have over-nerfed
paladins at any time in the past couple of years. There is plenty
of evidence that we haven?t nerfed them enough.
And now for a housekeeping note:
Q u o t e:
Quite honestly from the responses the only thing im gathering is
their intention is to never help ret paladins at all because holy
is way too much OP. so i guess It's time to start leveling a new
character.
Sigh. Banned for excessive QQ. QQ won't help you here. All it will
do is silence you. Make us spend less time deleting the garbage and
we would have more time to make posts that players actually care to
read. Why is this such a difficult concept? Go back and look at how
much the post numbers jump around in this thread and you will get a
sense for how much moderation it has required (and to be fair, not
just from paladin posters).
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11/02/09 01:46:36 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Lay on hands has a cooldown that makes most of these points
moot.
We don't think "Sure I can heal myself for 25,000+ health as a dps
spec or 50,000+ health as a tank, but not very often," is balanced.
Abilities can be unbalanced even if overall a character is
not.
This isn't a non-issue just because it doesn't affect Arenas. Also,
it doesn't mean paladins are being singled out for one-vs-one duel
balance (though I'm sure I'm going to be reading that for months to
come).
If we gave warriors (especially Prot warriors) an ability to cause
50,000 damage in one hit with no preparation on a 90-minute
cooldown, most reasonable players would call that a balance
problem. The long cooldown doesn't save it. Beyond some point you
can't balance a very powerful ability just by increasing the
cooldown.
In general, we've been moving away from long cooldowns
anyway.
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11/02/09 03:06:27 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Why "especially prot warriors"? I thought we were talking about DPS
specs? You know, the specs WITHOUT all those built in survival
talents that they have to give up DPS for?
It's (marginally) okay for a healing spec to have a gigantic heal.
It's a concern when a dps spec has a gigantic heal. The example I
was making that if a non-dps spec had a huge dps button that the
fact that it had a super, duper long cooldown wouldn't really
satisfy anyone.
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11/02/09 03:32:19 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
WE CAN'T USE LOH IN ARENA, REMOVE THE @!!*ING ABILITY WE DON'T CARE
HOW HARD IS THAT TO UNDERSTAND??????
WHEN I POST IN CAPS CURSE SPEAK FOR ALL PALADINS AND REFRAIN FROM
PUNCTUATION EXCEPT AT THE END OF MY SENTENCE WHERE I USE EXTRA YOU
CAN'T ARGUE WITH MY LOGIC!!!!!!!
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11/02/09 04:57:58 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
The 1 thing and 1 thing i Hope GC and The Dev team get from all of
This is That the Core paladin Class does not reflect their current
vision of the Paladin class and hasn't since Vanilla.We are no
longer a defensive support class that since in the back and support
heals while tossing around buffs and some powerful defensive C/D.
We are a class with three talent trees each with a ditinct role.
Either we are frontline 2 handed warrior of the light, Bastion of
light healing our allies so we can bush the battle line or we are
defensive tanks taking the damage from our brother.
Your last sentence isn't bad. That's what I would call the current
paladin vision. I agree that the old "defensive support"
description really isn't valid any longer. Surely there aren't a
lot of paladins posting on this thread confused because they are no
longer defensive support. I assumed a lot of it was "Well, you
nerfed abilities I liked so clearly I must be playing the class
wrong." I don't really think that's the core issue though.
Abilities can be overpowered without a class's identity being in
jeopardy.
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