|
  Class Q&A Series: Warrior |
07/16/09 10:12:07 AM
Patch 3.1.3
Bornakk |
Today we continue our class Q&A
series with the development team, in which we're taking a look at
each class and answering some of the top questions brought forward
by their communities. Next up, we explore the most asked questions
from the warrior class and find out more about the design
philosophy and expectations for the class, as well as what may lie
in store for it in the future.
Warrior Q&A with the Voice of the Class Design Team,
Ghostcrawler
Community Team: We’d like to start things off by
asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very
purpose of each class. In this case, we’re looking
specifically at warriors, which have been stalwart base for
comparisons since the start of World of Warcraft.
Q: Where do warriors fit into the larger scope of things
currently and where do you see them going from this point
forward?
A: Historically, warriors have always been one of the most
dominant classes in World of Warcraft. In Molten Core and for raids
afterwards, warriors were THE tank, no question. DPS warriors could
also top the damage meters, and were a very potent PvP force. We
think we allowed the warrior class to overshadow some other
classes, which is probably to be expected given the iconic nature
of the plate-wearing fighter in RPGs that long preceded World of
Warcraft. We think they are in a fairer place now, in that there is
room on the stage for other classes, yet they are still a very
powerful and popular class to play. The warrior class has been a
very tricky one to balance, largely due to the way rage converts
into damage (which converts into rage, which converts into
damage...), and we haven’t completely nailed that design just
yet.
One of the things we want to do in the future is take a hard look
at the Arms and Fury trees. There are several talents which just
haven’t weathered the course of time well and pale in
comparison to some of the newer Wrath of the Lich King talents.
We’re happiest with the Protection tree -- we made a
conscious effort to pare down that tree and remove a lot of
mandatory talents in order to give the warrior more flexibility to
take some more fun or utility-oriented talents. We need to make the
same pass on the dps side of things. The reason we haven’t
done so yet is that warrior dps is in a pretty good place and we
don’t want to have to nerf the class across the board just to
make some talents a little sexier. We will eventually do this
though. We also need to make some decisions about the difference
between Arms and Fury. Traditionally, Arms was the PvP tree and
Fury was the PvE tree. We understand some players prefer that
model, but we don’t like the way it cuts off such a big chunk
of the class from players who might not have much interest in the
PvP or PvE parts of the game. However, we would like to reinforce a
little more the kits of Arms and Fury. Everyone (I hope) gets the
difference between Frost and Fire mages. Arms is supposed to be
about weapons and martial training and feel
“soldierly.” Fury is supposed to be about
screaming barbarians in woad. You get a sense of that, but it could
be stronger. With the death knight, we allowed all three trees to
more or less be able to tank. There is a desire among some players
and designers to see Arms tank with a two-hander while Prot tanks
with a shield. We’re still not sure that’s the
direction we’ll go -- it’s a ton of re-design and will
never work for say the druid or paladin classes.
Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other
classes?
A: The big ones are stances and rage. Other than warriors,
only bear druids use the rage mechanic, and that is pretty much
just because that form is intended to mimic warriors. Rage is an
unusual resource because it is infinite over the course of minutes,
but can be very limiting over the course of seconds. While the
basic mechanic of rage is interesting, it has caused us lots of
balance problems over the course of World of Warcraft -- sometimes
in the favor of the warrior and sometimes not. It’s probably
time to give the mechanic another look.
Stances are intended to be a major battlefield decision for
warriors, though we realize it doesn’t always pan out this
way. You have access to different abilities in different stances,
but pay a rage cost as well as sacrificing the potential to use
other abilities. More on this below.
Warriors also have some unusual mechanics like say their ability to
move quickly around a battlefield, to survive massive physical
damage through plate armor and Defensive Stance, and game-changing
abilities like Spell Reflect.
Community Team: Warriors have quite a few abilities that are
contingent on certain circumstances like Overpower and
Intervene.
Q: What is the reasoning behind this and do we have any
plans to change that type of gameplay?
A: We like situational abilities. When specs don’t
have situational abilities, it’s easy to fall into a very
fixed rotation. We call this the metronome. Push button 1, 2, 3 on
your keyboard over and over until the bad guy drops loot. We have
made more of an effort in all the classes to have certain moments
that require players to pay attention a little more and then reward
them when they both cause those situations to happen and then
execute on them.
Q: What would be the impact of changing those class
mechanics?
A: I think if anything, abilities like this need to be more
prominent. You should be less effective at your job if you ignore
them, and ideally you’d also be less effective if you just
macro’d them in. We like macros (obviously, or we
wouldn’t have them in the game), but we like for them to
simplify chains of things that you have to do often without making
decisions in between point A and B. We don’t like it when
playing your class becomes how clever your macro can be to the
point at which you are pushing one button to play your class.
That’s not playing an RPG -- that’s programming a
robot.
Community Team: Stances have long been a debated aspect of
warriors’ gameplay from the pluses and minuses each one
offers to the restrictions they apply on what abilities are
available for use.
Q: What is the overall purpose of stances and how are
stances intended to be used?
A: The purpose of stances is for warriors to have to make
decisions in combat. How badly do I want to Intercept now? Should I
pay the cost of Spell Reflect? Ideally, we want warriors to switch
stances in combat -- not every few seconds, but a few times over
the course of a battle. Now we realize it’s going to be
harder to enforce this in raid fights unless you have a battle with
a lot of movement or other unusual circumstances.
We get a fair number of suggestions from players trying to
basically slip the stance concept out of the warrior class: make it
not take rage, or let them do more abilities per stance so they
don’t need to switch stances so often. That’s not
really what the warrior is all about though. You should care what
stance you’re in and it should be a decision to change
stance. Note that if you pay too high a price to change stances,
that counts as there not being a decision though.
Q: Has there been any thought on moving away from
restricting abilities based on the stance a player is in?
A: No. The design intent of warrior stances is that you
change your toolbar when you go from one stance to another and that
that decision isn’t a trivial one. Now, the third part aside
from the rage cost and ability limitations is the penalties (such
as 5% damage taken in Berserker). We cut those in half recently,
and we’d eventually like to get rid of them altogether. We
just don’t want to see Arms warriors in PvP in Defensive
Stance 100% of the time. We have seen DKs stick with Frost Presence
in PvP despite losing 15% damage, so I don’t think you can
just argue “Oh, no warrior would EVER do that.”
Community Team: There has recently been a growing number of
concerns with warrior damage, as a whole.
Q: What are our thoughts on the overall damage for warriors
in each of the three specs?
A: Warrior damage was too high in Naxxramas and then a
little low early in Ulduar. We think it’s in a pretty good
place now and warriors will get a small damage buff in 3.2. Part of
the concern here is we used to exempt warriors from the design
philosophy that pure dps classes should do more damage than hybrid
dps classes. We try to no longer play favorites here. Warrior
damage should look like that of Feral druids, Enhancement shamans,
Retribution paladins, and death knights. If their damage
isn’t at that level, then it’s possible our numbers
need some tweaking. However don’t always assume that you
can’t possibly improve your gear or your button mashing
either. =) Also remember that some fights just favor one class or
spec over another. We’re totally cool with that, so long as
it isn’t always the same exact class or spec that gets to
shine.
Community Team: Warrior shouts have added some unique
utility to the class in the past, but now they tend to be used very
sparingly.
Q: What is the reasoning behind their short duration and do
we have plans to improve the duration similar to the buffs other
classes already provide?
A: The shouts are supposed to be buttons that warriors push
in combat. They aren’t intended to be pre-fight buffs like
Arcane Intellect or Prayer of Fortitude. We had a discussion about
this recently and decided with glyphs and talents that the duration
isn’t a problem. If you lack Booming Voice and the minor
Battle Shout glyph, it might be more annoying.
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07/16/09 10:12:14 AM
Patch 3.1.3
Bornakk |
Q: Demoralizing shout tends to
have a very minimal impact in most situations, are there plans to
improve this ability?
A: I think by "most situations" you must mean
"PvP." Demo Shout has a massive benefit against raid
bosses. It's probably 20% less damage from a typical boss and
literally like 50% against say Thorim's Unbalancing Strike.
However, removing 400 attack power from a Feral druid with 9000
attack power, or a Shadow priest who doesn't care about
attack power at all is of much more limited use. Monsters and
players use pretty different combat formulae (which is one of the
weird things about the old design of say Vindication). We would
like Demo Shout to be more useful in PvP, at least against
characters who rely on attack power.
Community Team: The rage mechanic as a whole is very unique,
but sometimes leads to situations where players aren't able
to perform due to lack of resources. A prime example of this is
when a tanking warrior's gear is much higher than the content
they are at, by taking less damage they get less rage which results
in less threat and therefore cannot perform at a higher
level.
Q: Are there any considerations in store for improving this
mechanic and allowing more rage generation in these
situations?
A: Yes. In 3.2 we changed Shield Specialization to provide a
little rage on a dodge, parry, or block. This will help in say the
5-player dungeons or in the first few seconds of a raid boss fight.
It does not solve the problem of the Prot warrior who is not being
targeted (because they are there to pick up adds later in the fight
or something). We want to solve that problem by letting Prot
warriors generate more rage through doing damage. It could be in
the future that we shift most of rage generation to damage done and
have little or none in damage taken (and we would have to change a
lot of other mechanics to make this work obviously).
Now, long-term we need a better solution to rage generation. Tying
it to damage done is logical in the theoretical world of game
design, but has problems in reality. When your gear sucks, you have
rage problems. When you have great gear, you are no longer limited
by rage. That's just not a great model, and one of the
reasons warriors are overly gear dependent.
Q: Where do we feel warriors fit into the current raid
environment and where do we see them progressing in the
future?
A: Obviously warriors were the traditional tanks and pretty
much the only tank in much of World of Warcraft's history.
Warriors now share tanking responsibilities with three other
classes, which can feel psychologically like a nerf. In Ulduar, we
think warrior tank balance is about where it should be -- death
knights were a little ahead, paladins were a little behind, and
druids were about even with warriors. We are making a few Prot
changes to 3.2 to help in some of the areas where they fall short,
such as damage done. Death knights are getting a nerf, paladins are
getting a buff, and druids might get a nerf or stay as-is. There
are plenty of guilds progressing through hard modes with warrior
MTs on almost every fight, and we don't see that changing in
the Crusader's Coliseum.
We're happy with warrior dps in Ulduar. Whether you go Fury
or Arms probably depends on whether you need Trauma or Rampage, and
we know warriors in good guilds who flip between both specs. There
is some evidence that Fury may overtake Arms dps once you get
really good weapons. Dual-wield yet again shows its propensity to
scale very well. Warriors will get a slight dps buff through
Armored to the Teeth.
Community Team: Sticking with raiding content for a moment.
Many tanking Warriors have felt the there is little value in both
Strength and Block Value attributes.
Q: We have expressed an interest in improving Block Value
for tanking warriors in the past; do we have any definite plans to
update this?
A: Shield Block Value just isn't a strong mitigation
stat these days. However, the amount it would need to be increased
is enormous in order to make a difference vs. bosses that can hit
for 40K. The problem with improving shield Block Value by so much
is that Prot warriors would be nigh invulnerable -- they literally
might take no damage -- against large groups of adds, in easier
content where opponents don't hit that hard, and in PvP. The
real problem is that the amount blocked doesn't scale with
the amount of the swing. We think block needs to be a percentage of
damage blocked in order for the stat to do what we want. But the
trade-off would mean that warriors (and paladins) couldn't
block every incoming hit, especially from large groups. Avoidance
might also need to come down across the board, and many talents and
abilities would need to be redesigned. This is a major change that
isn't the kind of thing we can crowbar into 3.2 with a clean
conscience. It is almost certainly the future for the block
stat.
Q: With strength on tanking gear currently providing a very
minimal benefit and still using up a lot of stats on items, do we
have plans to improve how this stat works for tanks?
A: Strength is good for dps and threat. It's not a
super mitigation stat (through block) but we also don't know
that it needs to be. We have made some big improvements to Prot
warrior dps in Lich King, but too many players still view the
primary role of the tank to stack avoidance and mitigation and then
complain when their threat is low because they avoided all dps
stats. Now, we do think the game of survival is more fun than the
game of the threat management, but we also need to get players out
of the mindset that it's okay for tanks to ignore dps stats
and just do trivial damage. They don't need to top the
charts, but their damage should be a meaningful component of damage
done. We're willing to change the way the game works to
accomplish this goal.
Community Team: Let's jump over to the topic of
player-versus-player interaction. Discussions on the survivability
of warriors in PvP have been ongoing.
Q: Do we have any plans to make warriors less reliant on
healers in PvP conflicts?
A: We have taken small steps with Enraged Regeneration and
increasing the healing on Bloodthirst. We don't want the
warrior to be great at healing as say a Shadow priest or death
knight. On the other hand, we want healing to be a major part of
the PvP experience. We're okay with the occasional all-dps
Arena team, but they need to be rare or a major chunk of the game
just gets marginalized.
Not related to PvP, we do think warriors have too much downtime
when leveling. Healing may not be the solution to that, but we
think it needs a solution.
Q: With strength being the stat that provides the most
benefit in dps scenarios, do we have plans to implement PvP gear
like cloaks and rings that have strength instead of attack
power?
A: Doing that just means the item isn't of any
interest to say leather or mail wearers, which means we have to
create twice as many kinds of rings. The problem is that some
classes value Strength and some value Attack Power. Things would
work better if some valued Strength and some valued Agility, and
Attack Power was a useful secondary stat to both. This has the
added benefit of solving the whole problem where leather and mail
look attractive to warriors. If leather had Agility on it and plate
had Strength on it, then it's pretty clear who is getting
what item. Strength for rogues and Agility for warriors
wouldn't be junk stats, but they wouldn't be as
attractive as the other stat. Again, this is a big change. We
wouldn't just gut rogue dps by stripping Attack Power off all
of their gear.
Follow-Up Questions:
Community Team: Some players feel that, while tanking,
having to continually hit Heroic Strike to match your
weapon's swing can become somewhat tedious.
Q: Do we currently have any plans to change Heroic Strike to
make it no longer necessary to hit that button on every weapon
swing?
A: Yes, we really don't like way Heroic Strike works.
On-next-swing attacks just don't feel right and for tanks
especially you can convert every white attack into a Heroic Strike.
Unfortunately, they do the job, which is why we haven't
changed it yet. It's job is to let warriors bleed off excess
rage by converting it to damage and / or threat. It's
possible to fix this in other ways, such as perhaps the hit
consuming more rage the more you have Execute-style.
Community Team: It appears that many players who enjoy the
Warrior class for its damage aspects continue to feel that, without
best in-slot items, their class's performance is very
truncated.
Q: Is this an issue that we have seen in the Warrior class?
If so, do we have any plans to accommodate those players who do not
have best in-slot items, while still keeping those with the very
best equipment from being too powerful?
A:This really just gets back to the way rage works, which is
that damage leads to rage so you have to pick a point at which you
balance warriors. High damage and high rage? Low damage and low
rage? The way to fix it is to normalize rage even more so that you
always get X rage per second regardless of gear. But once you
always get X rage per second you essentially just have rogue
energy. So, as with the previous question, we don't like the
way it is working and want to change it but we don't have a
perfect substitute in the can just yet.
[ Post edited by
Crygil ]
|
07/16/09 02:47:42 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
Prot Warriors have to rely on so many different stats to be
effective, we have to get stam, str, dodge/parry/block, def, hit
and expertise. It seems like we're spread out all over the place.
Our dps would be better if we could just focus on our basic
stats.
This is a valid point and we do have plans to discuss the future of
tanking stats at Blizzcon. We are also working to make certain
stats like block rating and block value, are in a more valuable
position and truly add mitigation as intended.
[ Post edited by
Crygil ]
|
07/16/09 03:21:32 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
Q: What is the reasoning behind this and do we have any
plans to change that type of gameplay?
A: We like situational abilities. When specs don’t
have situational abilities, it’s easy to fall into a very
fixed rotation. We call this the metronome. Push button 1, 2, 3 on
your keyboard over and over until the bad guy drops loot. We have
made more of an effort in all the classes to have certain moments
that require players to pay attention a little more and then reward
them when they both cause those situations to happen and then
execute on them.
Care to explain my ret dps rotation????
i could put a dancing cat on my keyboard and top meters.
Sure, we are not happy with Retribution damage rotation. Don't
expect it to stay as minimal as it is now, we've expressed this
before. Some changes are coming in 3.2 and I would expect that
there may be more changes down the line.
|
07/16/09 03:35:33 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
I love how even in our warrior Q&A they decide to respond to a
PALLY issue but won't comment on the fact that their Q&A
answered very little WARRIOR concerns.
We're working on getting some more of the Warrior questions
answered as we speak. Unfortunatley, it just takes more time to
broach some of the more complicated questions that the Warriors are
presenting.
|
07/16/09 09:04:57 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
Okay, so it's been about an hour or two... where's those new
answers?
Unfortunately, it takes a bit longer than a few hours. We collect
the questions we see here and then we send them off to the
development staff. Needless to say, our developers are hard at work
all day and as soon as they get a chance to answer these questions,
they will. As it's gotten a bit late tonight, I'd imagine I'll
receive an email some time tomorrow with updated information.
|
07/16/09 09:11:40 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
It is true. If you have no rage, you can't hit your special attacks
and your damage is lower. If you get a little bit of rage, you can
hit your attacks sometimes. This is how warriors are designed to
work -- you have a resource and it's limited. You are not designed
to be able to hit your buttons just as fast as you can. However, at
some point in gear, warriors can hit for so much damage that they
have virtually infinite rage and can't spend it fast enough. At
that point rage no longer becomes a mechanic. You don't need to
even have the bar.
Now, the situation would be worse if your yellow attacks also
generated rage -- that's a positive feedback loop, and what I fear
a lot of players interpreted my comments to mean. I just meant that
having more rage increases your damage (through specials) and
having more damage increases your rage (through gear). As a result,
well-geared warriors are much better than poorly geared warriors,
much more so than the gear stats themselves would account for. We
don't think that design works well because we have struggled with
it since WoW's launch.
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer
Here is a very good post from Ghostcrawler on rage generation and
mechanics.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18326621060&pageNo=1&sid=1#1
[ Post edited by
Crygil ]
|
07/16/09 09:15:48 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
Sweet We are GETTING AN UPDATE FOR OUR Q&A Blizzard offers to
give themselves a second chance yeehawww
Note that I'm only asking a few questions. This will not be a
complete restructuring of this Q&A. However, this will not be
the "one and only" Q&A we are doing. We fully intend to make
the Q&A's a fairly regular occurrence. So, if you weren't
satisfied with this particular session, don't fret, we're going to
do more.
[ Post edited by
Crygil ]
|
07/16/09 09:53:05 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
I appreciate the honesty, Crygil. This Q&A session was mostly
frustrating to many of us, myself included, and probably was seen
more as a slap in the face. It's hard for long-time warriors such
as myself to look at the Q&A and not basically read it as
"warriors are fine, l2p" especially in light of other recent
comments about taking population into account while balancing
Protection Warriors
I hope we can get some reasonable solutions to our problems, the
foremost of which I'd like addressed as a tank is Heroic Strike
spam.
Cooldown inequality would be second, as I don't quite understand
why we have to use not only two talent points but two major glyph
slots to have competitive cooldowns with other classes.
I'm not sure this directly relates to Heroic Strike spam, but... we
are looking at making changes to abilities such as Devastate. These
changes will increase the amount of damage that a tank will be able
to output. These changes are still in testing (and thus did not
make it in to this Q&A). If all goes well, Protection warriors
should have a decent damage increase.
|
07/16/09 10:49:57 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Q u o t e:
Really Blizz needs L2P Warhammer maybe I have never had more fun
playing a tank then i did the Black Orc man they are just a damage
sponge, a warrior should be the best TANK period, I did a capture
the flag with my Black Orc and the whole 7 defenders needed to
focus to kill me and it took them a good 20 seconds at least to do
it while my lil buddy ran off with the flag :P Damm that was
great.
Takes 7 players 20 seconds to kill you... 7 players...
I don't think we'll be implementing that.
[ Post edited by
Crygil ]
|
07/21/09 07:19:19 PM
Patch 3.1.3
Crygil |
Aside from some of the other
questions that we have been able to answer throughout this thread,
we have also gotten additional feedback on what we have observed as
being very pressing issues to the Warrior community. Those
questions and their answers can be found below.
Follow up Question:
Community Team: Some players feel that, while tanking,
having to continually hit Heroic Strike to match your
weapon's swing can become somewhat tedious.
Q: Do we currently have any plans to change Heroic Strike to
make it no longer necessary to hit that button on every weapon
swing?
A: Yes, we really don't like way Heroic Strike works.
On-next-swing attacks just don't feel right and for tanks
especially you can convert every white attack into a Heroic Strike.
Unfortunately, they do the job, which is why we haven't
changed it yet. It's job is to let warriors bleed off excess
rage by converting it to damage and / or threat. It's
possible to fix this in other ways, such as perhaps the hit
consuming more rage the more you have Execute-style.
Community Team: It appears that many players who enjoy the
Warrior class for its damage aspects continue to feel that, without
best in-slot items, their class's performance is very
truncated.
Q: Is this an issue that we have seen in the Warrior class?
If so, do we have any plans to accommodate those players who do not
have best in-slot items, while still keeping those with the very
best equipment from being too powerful?
A:This really just gets back to the way rage works, which is
that damage leads to rage so you have to pick a point at which you
balance warriors. High damage and high rage? Low damage and low
rage? The way to fix it is to normalize rage even more so that you
always get X rage per second regardless of gear. But once you
always get X rage per second you essentially just have rogue
energy. So, as with the previous question, we don't like the
way it is working and want to change it but we don't have a
perfect substitute in the can just yet.
|
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