10/29/09 11:12:48 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Frayya |
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677352541&sid=1
Heh, after all the "We don't want it". Oh well, it does keep in
line with what they wanted, for us to take smoother damage. The
real interesting question is, was it inevitable and for a fun
discussion, what do you think they could've done to prevent
it?
Some points that have been made.
1. They're still looking in to the effect on Rune Strike.
2. They haven't commented on Revenge.
3. This will NOT affect DR in any way shape or form. GC has flat
said it's after DR.
4. This does NOT affect bears worse than other tanks. If anything,
it's better for them.
[ Post edited by Frayya
]
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10/29/09 11:19:33 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Our original estimations for tank
avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra
tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the
expansion.
The Cataclysm design will keep tank avoidance at more manageable
levels. The loss of defense skill counts for a lot right there. We
are also considering giving bosses expertise or other ways of
baking in Icewell Radiance -- basically the concept that bosses
scale with gear rather than just hitting harder and taking more
hits.
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10/29/09 12:07:32 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
It would still be fine if the itemization team had designed the
gear accordingly. In a full 258 setup for warrior tanks, precisely
two pieces have anything but a 3 way split of pure avoidance stats
on them. There's 3 different avoidance stats on 3 different
diminishing returns, and pumping them all up like that can really
make avoidance numbers go way out of whack. Meanwhile, we lose out
on things like Expertise, and the preciously rare Hit Rating which
is available on *1* piece of 258 tanking gear and end up having to
swap gear around to cover those deficiencies.
You are making the common mistake in thinking that our goal for
itemization is to give you the best possible gear that we can.
Itemizing your character is supposed to be a choice. There will be
better pieces and worse pieces. There will be pieces that combine
stats your really want with stats you don't really need. Wearing
the best gear for their character (which is not the same as wearing
the best gear) is one way players have to demonstrate mastery of
the game.
This is also why I always preach to take BiS lists with a grain of
salt. Merely reaching for the item declared to be BiS by a
spreadsheet or system you might not even understand could lead you
to making bad gear choices, often of the variety of passing over
the good upgrade because it's not the best possible upgrade.
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10/29/09 12:11:19 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Also, if you're going to give mobs expertise, can you please make a
spell or some kind of method to determine the level of expertise
without us having to do parses?
Yes. We would probably just let you see the numbers directly. I
consider it a design flaw that players have to experiment to
determine thinks like hit and expertise caps. We're all for
experimentation and theorycrafting, but we don't think it's fair to
require some players to go out and do a lot of work to generate
specific numbers that all players feel like they need to
know.
[ Post edited by
Ghostcrawler ]
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10/29/09 12:14:38 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Putting so much avoidance on gear isn't a bad idea because
other stats are better. It was a bad idea because it causes tank
scaling to fail and makes Radiance necessary.
That logic doesn't really work. It's like saying instead of nerfing
armor pen, we should have just put less and less on higher level
gear.
If we had avoided avoidance on tank gear, then every piece of tank
gear would have hit and expertise (and maybe crit, haste and armor
pen). Stamina and armor are static amounts, and if they were not,
then those pieces immediately become the only pieces players would
pay attention to.
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10/29/09 12:24:01 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
If you want ICC damage to be steadier, why don't you just walk over
to the item team and say "Hey, we'd like less avoidance, can you
cut out half of the avoidance from the ICC gear and replace it with
stamina?"
Or if you're worried people will get too much stamina, make it
Frost Resistance and put in so much Frost damage you couldn't hope
to survive long with TotGC gear alone.
We just don't think that works. If you put very unattractive stats
on gear then players just go back the previous tier of gear and
complain that we don't know how to itemize. If you put bonus
stamina on the tier 10 gear, then that means the next tier of gear
better have bonus stamina as well. If it has avoidance instead of
that bonus stamina, tanks just shrug and go back to the tier 10
gear.
This is not a tank only problem. Casters won't upgrade to gear that
doesn't have more spell power on it, because spell power tends to
trump everything else for purposes of their dps or healing.
We put a little bonus armor on non-armor items (necks, rings,
trinkets and the occasional cloak). We don't put bonus armor on
gloves and chests because that gear would be too good.
It's an item level problem. If we added another raid tier to Lich
King, we couldn't just keep avoiding avoidance and avoid it for
every tier going forward. We just need a system where you avoid a
Naxx boss 30% of the time and an Icecrown boss 30% of the time, the
same way the Icecrown bosses have e.g. 30% larger health bars and
thus take 30% more damage to kill. Otherwise the stats don't scale
and bad thing happen (in this case the boss having to land so much
damage to account for the fact that it misses so often).
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10/29/09 01:09:06 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
You realize there are items where dodge or parry have been replaced
by +armor right?
There are some plate ones. There aren't leather ones any longer,
and even the plate ones as you mentioned become so attractive that
it's hard to get players to replace them. I'm not sure we'll
continue to be able to do them in the future.
We're going to continue to itemize different gear differently. We
don't want the PvE gear to become even more like the PvP gear where
all the stats advance in lockstep with item level. Fundamentally,
we just don't buy the argument that if we didn't put avoidance on
gear that avoidance wouldn't get too high. Stats increase because
players power level increases, not because of the mix on a
particular tier piece.
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10/29/09 01:10:34 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
So you're saying that all players might get something like Beast
Lore in Cataclysm that shows us our chance to hit/crit/avoid their
attacks?
We'd be more likely to just put it on the stats screen as a tooltip
for your hit chance for example. To get the information from
particular creatures will require a little more work on our
part.
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10/29/09 01:14:06 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Yes, after thinking about it, this "Icewell Radiance" is giving me
serious concerns about DK threat. With our main threat mechanic
being based off of how much we dodge or parry, and the 20% dodge
nerf being implemented, that cuts Runestrike procs by ~50%, give or
take.
In 3.2, we're already at the bottom of the totem pole. A nerf to
threat due to this "Icewell Radiance" is unnecessary. This needs to
be addressed somehow, as it seems to have been an oversight by
developers.
It's not an oversight. The question is how many times are you
prepared to use Rune Strike but can't because you haven't gotten a
dodge or parry. If you are replacing most of your white swings with
Rune Strikes, then you shouldn't see much of a difference.
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10/29/09 01:15:44 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Your stripping defense is going to solve the issue, so I guess its
a non-issue in regards to that. However, I think DKs have a pretty
big concern that is very warranted. What about rune strike,
GC?
Yeah, per my previous response we are looking at Rune Strike. We're
not convinced it will be a problem yet.
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10/29/09 01:20:25 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
That can't possibly be accurate. We would have had more avoidance
leaving naxx than we will now with this ability and the increased
DR we got last patch. Certainly the extra tiers didn't help, but
Icecrown Radiance was going to come with the original
calculations.
I don't think so. We didn't decide until last night to do the
Icecrown Radiance. Without the extra tiers that the Ulduar and ToC
hard modes included, then the max gear level might have been more
like ToC normal 25 is today, and we didn't add Jormungar
Radiance.
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10/29/09 02:58:27 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Itemize mitigation and threat, drop avoidance from
itemization, problem solved.
And your tier 10 gear looks exactly like your tier 9 gear with just
13 more stat points.
Even worse, many tanks will decide that threat isn't their problem
to solve or else they can't afford the luxury of threat since they
need to survive, and those stats will be considered junk.
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10/29/09 03:02:27 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Well, all I'll say is that I really hope the damage will be
smoother, and tanks won't be getting 2 shot without a significant
heal in between. Because in sunwell avoidance was reduced AND each
boss hit was really hard.
I am pretty sure on day one of 3.3 going live this forum will be
filled with tanks who died and respond with "I thought bosses
weren't going to hit hard."
It's Icecrown. It's not going to be Naxx.
Naxx was but a setback....
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10/29/09 03:08:03 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
This would actually be BAD. If I am in T10 gear and go back to do a
T7 Boss, I expect that boss to barely touch me. I expect to dodge
more, parry more, block more, etc, etc. If you did this, it would
be called: "The Hogger Effect". Meaning that what killed you at
level 10 would kill you at 20 or 50 or 80.
I'm talking about an Icecrown boss being tougher than an Ulduar
boss, not that the Ulduar bosses look at how much gear you have and
scale themselves up accordingly.
Bosses get more damage and health. If they also got more expertise,
defense and maybe armor then as character item level grew their
relative strength to boss stats would not increase. As it is they
increase enormously, requiring the bosses to have even more health
and even more damage. Shifting some of that health and damage to
other stats would fix a lot of problems.
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10/29/09 03:10:24 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Gotta love the ICC tanking trinkets.
Item - Icecrown 10 Normal Tank Trinket - Each time you dodge an
attack, you gain 24 stamina for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10
times.
Item - Icecrown 10 Heroic Tank Trinket - Each time you dodge an
attack, you gain 27 stamina for the next 10 sec, stacking up to 10
times.
/endsarcasm.
Look, I understand the reasoning behind the avoidance nerf. Its the
design behind some items that leave me scratching my head in
confusion, from the libram, to the T10 4pc bonus for Paladins to
the tanking trinket.
If you conclusion is that anything that improves your avoidance is
now bad as a result of this change, you should think through it a
little more. If you didn't like avoidance before, nothing changes.
If you liked avoidance before, nothing changes. You just have less
of it now. The relative value should not change, unless you get to
the point where bosses no longer two-shot tanks so much, in which
case the relative value of avoidance increases.
Q u o t e:
Yup, if these trinkets go live, I don't think any self respecing
tank will touch them with a 10-foot pole. With dodge basically
nerfed to the ground and then some......what are the chances of you
getting 10 stacks up and keeping them up for any sustained amount
of time???
Nerfing dodge does not make the dodge stat worse. It only makes the
amount of dodge on your dude worse. Would you stop stacking stamina
if we nerfed your health?
[ Post edited by
Ghostcrawler ]
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10/29/09 03:20:05 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
If you truly believe it will not be a problem please explain your
logic. As many people have stated, DK threat is already in a weak
place. Especially snap threat. So much so that DKs have macro every
single ability to Runestrike in order to ensure it's immediate use.
Let's just use some rough numbers. If I have 30% raid buffed dodge
and that is dropped to 10% with the debuff. That is a 66% less
chance to dodge then I had before, causing 66% less rune
strikes.
There are a couple of flaws in your argument here. DKs macro Rune
Strike not because they suffer for threat, but because more threat
is generally better for a tank and there is no real penalty for
macroing the ability. Players tend to macro attacks when the macro
performs for them, not when they are really, really desperate to
use the ability.
Second, you can't assume that less dodge turns into less Rune
Strikes in such a simple manner. You have to look at how many white
hits you convert to Rune Strike now and then how many you would
convert to Rune Strike after losing dodge. If you have enough of a
window in between dodges to still get a Rune Strike off, then you
would see no effect. I suspect that's not the case, but I also
don't think you'll see your threat plummet.
We also don't see too many appropriately geared tank of any class
having sustained single-target threat problems in cases where you
aren't supposed to have threat problems. Yes your dps classes may
sometimes get dangerously close to pulling. That is part of the
game. We're a long way from when the warlock would crit on a Molten
Destroyer and wipe the raid because he didn't wait for 5
Sunders.
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10/29/09 03:24:42 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
So, will you be helping druid tanks in another way? Since druids
really only have four methods of increased survivability (Health,
Armor, Dodge and Savage Defense) and the other three tanks all have
Parry and two of the three have Block.
I just feel like I'm getting the shaft again, as a druid tank I've
seen several nerfs and not very many buffs this expansion pack
while other tanks (mostly warriors) have gotten many buffs. I know
death knight tanks also have received nerfs, but I don't play a
death knight so I'll leave their issues to them, since they know
their class better than I do.
Also, I do hope that you don't leave the bosses hitting so hard
that they can still 2 shot a tank... if that's the case then all
you'll have managed to accomplish is increase the number of
occurrences that a tank is 2 shot, increasing player frustration
and drama.
You "feel like you are getting the shaft" by just assuming this
must be a nerf without really taking the time to understand if it
is or how. This change does not change the relationship between
dodge and parry. If it has been a nerf to parry, then it would have
been a bigger problem.
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10/29/09 03:28:17 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Wasn't there just a post by GC about how Avoidance is still
important and EH isn't the be-all, end-all stat the community makes
it out to be?
And now they're lopping 20% off of everyone's dodge.. So.. won't
Stam-stacking (and as a byproduct, EH) be even more important
now?
It arguably makes stam less important (though it will always be
important for tanks). Many players are probably telling you right
now that only stamina and armor are important because if you ever
fail to avoid two boss hits in a row that you're going to die.
Under that environment, avoidance loses a lot of value.
If bosses hit for less in IC (which they will, since they will hit
more often) then the value of avoidance for purposes of survival
increases.
I still expect many tanks will die in two hits until they get
geared up a little. But they will, and then the ability to survive
two hits in a row won't be as big an issue.
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10/29/09 03:39:51 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
I wouldn't blame only the Itemization team at all.
It is more of a disconnect I think between the teams, which if you
have ever worked in a large corporate environment isn't a hard
thing to accomplish.
I'll address this one more time and then leave it because I think
players are more interested in trying to turn this into a huge
tanking nerf than understand what's going on.
We would not have this problem if Icecrown gear had been item level
245 or so, as we originally intended. We added a few extra tiers of
gear to support heroic modes. We felt like we had to do that to
have different difficulty levels and make raiding more accessible
overall. We felt like we had to reward the harder modes with the
better gear or nobody would have been very interested.
The proportions of relative stats on your gear are not the problem.
They are proportional, give or take a little, at every tier except
for stats like hit that cap out. The problem is not the class and
item teams being out of sync. In fact, they are the same
team.
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10/29/09 03:42:04 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
You should pick and choose, which is fine but flawed.
No, picking and choosing is precisely the intent. If every new
piece was always an upgrade, then loot would start to feel a lot
less interesting pretty quickly.
You also need to cut the conspiracy theories. They aren't
appropriate here.
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10/29/09 03:58:36 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
So if you're essentially removing 20% dodge from us all does it
alter the Diminishing Returns relationship between parry and dodge
at all?
i.e. Is a dodge rating of 30% going to have the DR applied to it as
though it were 30% or 10%? Is it now a case of Parry is king
period?
I'd also like to second the notion that you don't do something
stupid like put in a boss such as Brutallus that can 2-shot a tank
at the same time as you nerf our avoidance.
The 20% nerf is applied after diminishing returns. That is why I am
saying it won't affect the relative value of dodge and parry. The
Icewell Radiance won't get you closer to diminishing returns by
itself.
The whole point of this change is so bosses can hit less hard but
more often, for the same damage over time but with fewer deadly
spikes. That should feel better to everyone overall. The reason I
am reluctant to say that is because some players are going to go
into Icecrown, find it hard, and then expect us to buff their
class.
It won't be Brutallus hard, at least most of the bosses and at
least on normal mode. We're not going to be particularly
sympathetic to players who find heroic mode too hard.
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10/30/09 09:57:26 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
So you are going to sit there with a straight face and say that
this will not harm our threat more than all the other classes when
we only have 2 abilities with a threat modifier and this is going
to effect one of them?
I will sit here with a straight face and say we like to balance
around numbers, not hand-waving. :)
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10/30/09 09:59:19 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
They don't care. They really don't.
This whole X-Pac has but nothing but patch after patch of 'oops we
didn't forsee...' fill in completely obvious results of silly
scaling. They have no interest in balancing the game, they really
don't care if one class is more OP than another. It takes 2 seconds
for them to toss on BIS gear of a level 80, and walk into an
instance and see how things work, if they wanted to, on top of
knowing before hand all the equations (and not having to reverse
engineer them from combat parses) and they can't be bothered to do
even that.
Banned for excessive QQ.
If you can't help yourself, please just read along and don't feel
the need to post.
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10/30/09 10:01:43 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Like how you're not particularly sympathetic to players who find
ToC hard too easy?
When I find one, I'll let you know. Most of the raiders I have
talked to who have beaten heroic Anub 25 consider him one of if not
the hardest boss in WoW.
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10/30/09 10:05:18 AM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Heroics/Nax 10 - 200
Uld 10 / Nax 25 - 213
Uld 10 H / Uld 25 / ToC 10 - 226
Uld 25 H / ToC 25 / ToC 10 H - 239
ToC 10 T / Toc 25 H - 245
ToC 25 Tribute - 258
The fact that we now have iLvL 275 cloaks is "your fault". This was
a simple problem that could've been fixed easily, and you can see
in my list that it woudln't be hard to match PvP gear at those
tiers.
Of course it was "our fault." We're not blaming anyone. I was just
explaining why avoidance still got so high despite our best
intentions. You may have scaled the gear down had you been in our
shoes, but we picked the numbers we thought would be enticing
enough to get players to try the hard modes while still allowing
everyone to feel like they could upgrade their gear.
It wasn't inevitable either. We debated Chill of the Throne long
and hard. We easily could have gone the other way. We think the
encounters will be more fun with the current implementation
though.
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10/30/09 01:09:46 PM
Patch 3.2.2a
Ghostcrawler
<Lead Systems Designer> |
Q u o t e:
Also, lowering your avoidance does not make damage steady, it makes
it much more spiky. Spikes are caused by consecutive hits landing,
higher avoidance drastically lowers the frequency of that
occurring. The only way higher avoidance can cause things to get
spiky, is if you are trading tons of health and armor for it, so
that each hit is for a larger portion of your health pool. In this
case, our health and armor are not increasing, we are simply losing
avoidance, so spike events will be much more common. For a tank
with 65% avoidance, they'll see in increase of 3 hit chains by
about 425% under Icecrown Radiance, a tank with 45% avoidance will
see an increase by about 250%.
I think what you are comparing here is a tank with high avoidance
to one with lower avoidance. Your definition of "spiky" here is
just that the tank with lower avoidance gets hit more often. That's
usually not what players are talking about though. If you compare a
tank with 50% avoidance to a tank with 0% avoidance, then the
latter guy is taking a ton more damage, but he is taking the same
damage every hit. For every unit of time, the incoming damage is
the same, which is generally easier for healers and the tank
himself to plan around.
When people say high avoidance causes spikes, what they usually
mean is that a tank who chooses avoidance over mitigation (armor)
will avoid some damage completely but then suddenly get clobbered.
That's a spike. By reducing the amount of attacks that a boss fails
to land (because of dodge), we can lower the amount of damage that
a boss does per hit while still keeping the same boss damage over
time. We need to keep the same damage over time because that is
scaled to healing over time. If we just nerfed dodge without
adjusting boss damage, then we'd just be killing tanks more
often.
Q u o t e:
So the bosses hit faster for less damage, so really the bosses
aren't doing any less damage over all. Avoidance is just cut by
20%.
"A durrr we dun put it in fer Sunweel! Lets dun put it n
nao!"
Remember how fun tank healing was in sunwell? Oh boy I can't
wait.
Three points:
1) Bosses won't swing faster. More of their swings will hit.
2) Tanks that avoid less are generally easier for healers to heal
(provided the numbers aren't just too great).
3) Tank healing was fun in Sunwell, IMO. Sunwell was challenging.
That's what a lot of players are looking for in the final raid
tier. If you don't like the challenge of healing a tank then I'm
not sure why you'd want to be a healer. Now as I've said, we're not
saying Icecrown is only for the Sunwell crowd. But I am pretty
convinced there are going to be a lot of "Icecrown is too hard
because my tank died" posts here when it goes live.
Q u o t e:
Tanks do not stack Parry. Even though you have evened Parry out
with Dodge point-wise, Tanks will not stack Parry. You don't know
why. When we Parry, we get a faster next attack on a mob which we
are standing in front of, which has a change to Parry us, giving it
an extra attack.
There were many things in your post I don?t agree with, but I?ll
pick on just this one. Tanks don?t stack parry because it?s more
expensive to gear for parry than dodge (and usually gearing for
armor and health when available are superior to both). The reason
parry > dodge (which makes it more expensive) is because parry
gives you a slight threat increase over dodge because of the weapon
swing speedup. The ?parry gibs? phenomenon you are describing was a
much bigger deal in the age of crushing blows (which ironically you
are nostalgic for). Today, the increased damage that a
parry-stacking tank would suffer from parry speedup is pretty
trivial. Besides, we turn it off on many bosses for which it would
cause a problem.
Q u o t e:
These are not dodge trinkets, these are trinekts that proc off of
dodging.
I may have quoted an inappropriate post above. My bad. I was trying
to offer a response to all of the misinformed folks who said ?You
are nerfing dodge so now my +dodge gear is bad.? I agree the
trinkets that proc on dodge will need to be buffed to compensate
for the change. Rune Strike might need to be buffed to compensate
for the change.
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