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  Druid Q&A: The Twilight Zone |
07/15/09 03:40:27 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Frapstastic |
Taken from Druid Q&A
Q u o t e:
What we don’t want is a class that can do all things with a
single spec...
Q u o t e:
We are currently wondering if druids sacrifice too much just to be
as good as a healer as everyone else.
We don't want you to do everything, but we feel healers should be
able to dps, Twilght Zone? Is this just me? If i'm healing I
usually ignore my balance spells because there's no point
How about this: ToL-Increases overall healing done by X% but
increases the mana cost of all healing spells by Y%.
That way it becomes a play style choice, do I want to do bigger
heals and actaully LOOSE mana or do i want to continue to be
zomg-never-ending-mana-mana with same healing amount? It's a
choice but you still have a shapeshift.
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07/16/09 02:07:21 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
It's a bit hard to explain, but we
think giving up healing to dps for Shadow priests or Balance druids
works. Giving up everything to heal doesn't work, maybe because the
other healing specs don't have to do it.
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07/17/09 01:13:17 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
The other hybrid's DPS speccs don't give up the ability to heal
either. Given that tree's are pretty well represented, while
Moonkin and Shadow Priests aren't, wouldn't it make a heck of a lot
more sense to be talking about them getting healing abilities back
than resto druids retaining their DPS abilities?
That’s possibly something we’d consider. I think you
could make a few changes and insure that Shadow priests were about
at the same healing level as say Ret or Elemental. You’d
still have to decide if their healing got any better just from
dropping Shadowform. If not, then there is probably no reason to
ever drop Shadowform, and it should just be a passive talent not a
spell. If so, then you'd have to make sure the spec wasn't too
powerful over all as a backup or emergency healer, especially in
PvP -- remember, we'd be talking about a Shadow priest who heals as
well as Ret when in Shadowform, but better than that when not in
Shadowform.
Q u o t e:
I want to understand why it's okay for an Elemental Shaman to have
access to heals, but not Moonkin or Shadow Priests. These two specs
get crushed in pvp. It's mind-boggling that you are talking about
buffing Resto druids more by letting them dps in tree form while
Balance druids are crying and begging to be addressed.
But you think Elemental shamans do fine in PvP and the reason is
because they can heal? I think some players would disagree with
both of those assertions. Our definition of hybrid isn’t that
you can fill two roles at the same time. It’s that you can
change your character to fill a different role without having to go
back to first level.
Q u o t e:
Holy Paladins kind of already do this though. They have zero
offensive utility/prowess, in my mind; no CC, a terrible interrupt,
no mana drain, no spammable root (I'm sure you get the idea).
"Shield Slam" (Warriors at least get a dispel with theirs),
Judgement, and Auto Attack sure hurt! >.>
I disagree. You can say that Holy paladins are missing those
things, but it’s very different when you see those buttons in
your spellbook or possibly even on your bar and just can’t
hit them until you change to a different form (usually costing
mana) at which point they light up again.
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07/17/09 01:13:21 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
I think the best way to explain it is that when the Shadow priest
has a model to follow – there are dps casters and in this
case, a class with healing capabilities is deciding to turn its
back on those abilities in order to be more like those casters. You
can debate the relative power and utility of say Shadow priest and
warlock, but at a high level there is a lot of overlap there. Now
consider the Resto druid who decides to go Tree of Life. He is
becoming a new type of character – he isn’t like the
other healers, because they aren’t giving up buttons (except
for those already absent from their talent tree). The Resto druid
is giving up buttons, and for what? To be as effective a healer as
the others. (You can argue Resto druids are overpowered if
you’d like, but it certainly isn’t the design that Tree
of Life allows druids to be the best healer in the game).
Q u o t e:
Moonkin actually have a reason to want to spend more time in
caster or feral forms, but mechanics of the class just prevent
shifting out of moonkin in PvP to really be viable. Giving moonkin
the ability to spend time outside of moonkin form would solve a lot
of moonkin's PvP problems.
Yeah, we agree. That is what I was getting at with the druid as a
shifter. The idea is that a Balance druid would sometimes leave
Moonkin form, but we haven’t made it easy enough to do so. We
also don’t want to just adopt a model where say you shift to
caster form to decurse and shift back – that just means your
decurses take 3 button clicks (or a macro). It should be more
tactical than that – do I want to be in Moonkin form for a
little while, or would I rather be in caster form (or possibly even
bear or cat)?
Q u o t e:
We don't just give up dps or utility. We give up the ability to see
our gear or to even look different from any other tree. Healing
used to be in caster form, then ToL was introduced and some healing
specs and situations involved being tree, but you could heal some
content and pvp without ToL. Even in progression content, there
were reasons to shift out. Now, we go tree and stay there. There's
a 59 page thread with a vast majority of people weighing in on how
this is not a fun aspect of the class. Did it occur to the OP that
maybe this is some of the "sacrifice" that GC was talking
about?
Yup. But honestly I think even before LK that Tree of Life wasn't
situational enough -- it was just strictly a mistake to be in it
nearly all the time in PvP. As I said with the Balance example
above, it might work better if you decided "Okay I am going to be
in Tree form for a little while because of the situation." It's a
pretty different model, but imagine a druid changed forms at least
once or twice a battle. That feels a little more like the
shapeshifting druids from Warcraft lore.
I think the people arguing against this are of two camps: they
either just love the tree and want to stay in it, or they think
druids are currently overpowered and that’s either by design
(to justify ToL) or that druids don’t deserve any design
iteration because they are currently good.
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07/18/09 12:26:03 AM
Patch 3.1.3
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
I don't want to derail the
conversation, because it's a pretty good one, but I'm going to
answer two off-topic questions.
Q u o t e:
2) Can you guys speed up your design processes/thoughts a little
bit? Create little "experiment servers" in house to play around
with. Its incredibly frustrating to always be told "one day" or "we
are looking at" or "our long term goal is" when this game isn't
exactly fresh out of the box. As a thank you to all of us who have
stuck around couldnt we get some faster implementation on these
goals?
It's tough. We made a lot of changes in the 3.1 patch, and one of
the things we heard loud and clear from a lot of players was that
they couldn't keep up with such extreme class changes from patch to
patch. Now, it doesn't have to be at either extreme of no changes
or too many changes. But we do need to keep those in mind.
Q u o t e:
I know that there are a lot of people on the forums who only care
about what class is strongest, but I'm not one of them. Cosmetics
and playstyle are why I prefer certain toons, so I appreciate when
Blizz pays attention to the aesthetics and fun/flavor of a class. I
like to mash lots of different buttons. I like to shift. I like to
change roles. I like to jump when I cast. Yeah, I'm lame like that.
It's probably the ADHD in me. I was glad to see the "Is ToL Fun?"
thread and the answer in the Q & A.
These role forums in particular are dominated by players for whom
numerical balance is among the most important parts of the WoW
experience. But they don't represent all of the WoW players, and
likely not even a majority. I dwell on the numbers a lot in these
forums. But that doesn't mean that's all our game design consists
of. Aesthetics, cosmetics and flavor are all really important. Fun
is the most important concern of all, and the only reason we obsess
with the numbers so much sometimes is because that is a key
component of fun for some of our most hardcore players. But theirs
is not the only voice that counts.
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