Utility, Utility, Utility…

Yep, I’m back to discussing class utility. However, this time it’s in a response to Firespirit’s post discussing the failure of the hybrid tax, specifically in the case of the paladin, as well as reiterating some previous thoughts from my last post where I discussed the mantra “bring the player not the class”, and finally more concrete ideas as to class mechanics. I suggest taking a look to read over Lightfury’s post, as I’ll be referencing some of the excellent, well thought out points he made.

I’m not going to try to summarize his post, but suffice it to say that Firespirit rather successfully argues that the 5% dps tax that is applied to hybrid classes (to make up for the fact that they can do other things outside of dps) simply isn’t effective or working at all. He cites the fact that for a paladin, his dps will be better on fights that don’t require as much movement, but also have multiple targets to hit with his AoE spells (very similar to a DK, in fact). However, other fights, such as Patchwerk, will see him behind other casters for dps, as they can finally stand still and don’t have to avoid circles of doom or fire raining from the sky.

This is where I originally came in and stated that it would be nice if they gave hybrid classes more utility. It’s VERY rare to ever see a druid have to pop out of cat form to heal. Occassionally they’ll use a battle rez should something happen, but when was the last time you saw one help heal? When was the last time a shaman stopped dpsing and tossed out some heals? Or see a warrior switch stances to have to tank? It’s happened, yes, but quite rarely. Not even once per Naxx run, which means you can easily go 20, 30 bosses between different raids and never have to have that happen. So just because they CAN do something doesn’t mean that they will.

My initial response was actually going to be to point out that Retadins can put up the Heart of the Crusader debuff on bosses to increase damage dealt by 3%. Then I realized that all 3 kinds of paladins tend to have it, and use it often. Tanks often spec into the ret tree for extra damage (afterall, extra damage increases threat), and healadins often spec into it for extra crit (we looooooooove our crit!) and it occurred to me that, once again, because it is so early in the tree, Retadins lose out on a mechanic that can be quite valuable to raids.

And that’s when I realized that one of the things Blizzard could do for all classes is to take a page out of Warhammer’s book and make each class quite unique by coming up with mechanisms that aren’t shared as easily as Mortal Strike or Replenishment. I say it over and over again, but Shadow Priests were in such a good place during BC. If their health/mana regen benefit mechanic had been kept more or less in tact into WotLK, then with the buffs that Discipline got (finally), Priests would have been an amazingly balanced class. Each tree is different and unique enough in play style and utility to make them desireable in raids and Arenas, and not that boring to play.

I will make one amendment to my earlier post. While I think it would be a positive benefit to all raiders to have raids that require specific abilities, perhaps what would be even better would be to allow certain mechanics to work on raid bosses that don’t currently always work. For instance, having them makes the fight simpler (not a ton, but a little bit) and makes it worthwhile to have a certain class/ability in the raid, but doesn’t make it essential. For example, Tranquilizing Shot wasn’t necessary in ZA, but it did make the Lynx boss easier. Whereas Instructor Rasuvius requires a Priest, perhaps the fight should have been designed to be very difficult without a Priest, but not impossible.

In addition, I think it would be very helpful if many classes got different kinds of abilities to make them useful in a raid (or arena) environment. For instance, I still don’t understand why Survival Hunters have a replenishment…it doesn’t make any logical sense. Hunter’s suddenly have super magical abilities that mirror what Shadow Priests used to do? How does that even make sense? Mages I can understand–lorewise, mages have very tight connections to the arcane. Paladins were a stretch, but tolerable. But Hunters? Really? If, say, replenishment were buffed up (remind me why it’s getting nerfed again…?) and removed from Hunters and probably Paladins (hold on a second Retadins) and kept to just Mages and Priests, then it would make it NICE to have them in the raid, but not necessary.

But wait…what if the mechanisms were different? What if Shadow Priests had their old mechanism back, but Frost Mages had the ability to,  I dunno, “freeze” the usage of mana? Bear with me now–suppose that they were able to apply a raid-wide buff that, instead of giving back a certain crappy percentage of mana regen (I shouldn’t say it’s crappy, it’s helpful on longer fights…right?) but instead, reduced the mana/energy/rage/runic energy cost of abilities, or made every Xth ability used have its mana/energy cost reduced by 50%, or something like that? The abilities are inherently similar in that they help with mana/energy conservation and allow for more heals, but functionally quite different.

What if Heart of the Crusader were moved down the tree so that Tankadins and Healadins didn’t have full access to it, so that a Retadin was actually more unique when it brought it to the raid? Or better, still, have a talent deeper in the tree (maybe tag it on to another talent, say Swift Retribution) that increases the effectiveness of Heart of the Crusader by 33/66/100% and increases critical strike damage bonuses to party members by 1/2/3%. That’d be awesome for everyone, tanks and DPSers included. Maybe it doesn’t help healers that much, but Heart of the Crusaders never really helped them that much anyway.

There are so many mechanics that can still be toyed with. Certain silence mechanics, for example, that work in heroics but not in raids. What if a boss has a spell that is a 2 second cast that he casts 5 times in rapid succession (as soon as one finishes casting, the other one starts) that does lots of AoE damage/single target damage to one target of his/her/its choosing and needs multiple different interrupts (KT doesn’t count) to prevent lots of damage/death? And what if it becomes immune to a certain classes interrupt after it had been used for 60 seconds? All of a sudden you have a use for multiple classes to use their interrupts. Even if the silencing effect doesn’t work, the interrupt does.

And I’m not just talking about PvE stuff here either. In PvP, why can’t the force taunts for tanks be on a seperate, longer CD when used on other players and have it change the target player’s target to them? Or give the tanking specced classes an ability deep enough in the tree that another tree can’t go down 3 tiers and still have it. And so many PvE abilities can come into play in a PvP environment, especially when “Replenishment” means different things depending on the class, so it changes up the makeup of your team. Have 3 casters in addition to the healer? Maybe a mana replenishment might be more useful. Got a warrior and a rogue on your team? Maybe you want your abilities to cost less so you can use more of them faster.

And all of this can be achieved as the compromise for a “hybrid tax” or used on specs where DPS is lower and Blizzard doesn’t want to fix it.

The point being, if Blizzard were to pull back from number charts and comparing DPS/HPS/TPS from one class to another on different boss fights, and thought more creatively about how to implement different skills a class could use that would change the way a boss fight works, then maybe more players would feel more useful to a raid without any raids ever feeling like they HAVE to have a certain class.

Make the Numbers Go Away

Two posts in one day. You guys are lucky.

In short, I’ve been thinking more and more about the reasons I enjoy WoW, and the many different aspects of the game. A little background on myself–I like to be intellectually challenged, and I like to have to think about, consider, and analyze any and everything I do in my life. This goes from my academic work to my extra-curricular activities to my down time, recreational activities.  For me, WoW has provided an outlet for my creativity and story telling capabilities (through RP, which used to be my primary focus and is what got me into the game) while allowing me to learn to manipulate and change aspects of the game to my liking while being different (my avoidance of cookie cutter specs).

Recently, a lot of the changes to the game have been really frustrating to me on an intellectual level. There is a lot of emphasis on “bring the player, not the class” which has been changed, as Critical QQ put it, to sometimes mean “bring the classes, not the class.” My question is this: why? This especially became prevalent as mages the entire game over saw Frost mages get a Mortal Strike buff to their Permafrost Talent tree, and asked the same question: why?

In case you haven’t gotten it yet, this is going to be a ramble, a verbal flood of thoughts that aren’t extremely organized. Comment away, and hopefully my responses will be able to clarify everything I’m saying. I also state that you “need” things a lot. Note that I am saying this in the context of a raid that is entering the instance without any of the gear found within it or any gear of raids of equal difficulty or beyond. For instance, entering Naxx 10 in heroic gear. Just to be clear.

Anyway, here we go.

First of all, I really want to know: what the hell is so bad about wanting to bring along a class for a specific skill or set of skills they add to the raid? For example, Shamans. Everyone loves Shamans, but we ESPECIALLY love them because of Bloodlust. If you have one Shaman in the raid, even if their dps is only mediocre, you have Bloodlust. That’s an awesome talent that helps the entire raid. Great. Class utility right there. If you have a Druid along and someone dies mid-battle, like one of your healers or one of your top DPSers due to an unlucky lag spike or whatever, BOOM! Battle rez, and keep on going. Class utility. It’s another reason to have a Druid in your raid.

So, Blizzard, why do you insist on spreading abilities around, like handing out ice cream at a 5 year old’s birthday-party? I’m a fan of a more socialist outlook on life in general, but this would make even Marx roll over in his grave. Let’s consider this for a moment, and to do so, we are going to go back to the Burning Crusade (I’m not familiar enough with Vanilla WoW, so we have to go there. Apologies to all who would have better examples). We’re going to go back to our favorite starter instance: Karazhan. And we’re going to look at one Boss in particular: Shade of Aran.

For those of you unfamiliar with Shade of Aran, let me break the fight down for you as best as I can remember. He does several things.

1.) Casts Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Missiles.

2.) Sucks everyone into the center where he is standing, casts a raidwide “Slow”, and casts a massive “Arcane Explosion” that mages only see in their wildest dreams, killing anyone who didn’t get out in time.

3.) Has a funky aggro table, a tank favorite.

4.) Summons 4 water elementals about 2 minutes into the fight.

5.) If his mana gets to 20%(maybe?) before he is dead, he casts a raid wide Polymorph that cannot be broken, drinks, and casts a raidwide Pyroblast.

If I’m forgetting anything, it’s not important.

…False. I forgot the worst part. I don’t know how I did, but I think it’s funny that I did which is why I’m letting you all know that I did. Get it?

6.) FLAME WREATH! He casts it, if you move, the raid wipes. Don’t argue with me. You know its true. Even if 4 people live, its still a fucking wipe. Don’t be a prick about it.

So. The thing about this guy is that his three mage spells are interruptable. What people forget is that the first time they did it, it probably wasn’t with a group of 70′s in mostly T5 or better gear. You went in there with blues, maybe a few Heroic epics or badge gear, but that was it. And this fight was all about utility. You NEEDED to have melee classes who could interrupt his spell casts. You NEEDED ranged classes that could also interrupt (mages or spriest). You NEEDED healers who could toss up HoTs on the move, especially when the Water Elementals come out (usually Renew was fine). If you didn’t work out who was interrupting what spell when, chances are a lot would go through and hit random raid members, which wasn’t good, because they hurt. Shade of Aran was a very good fight, and as much as I hated him, I loved him because it told me very easily who in the raid only cared about the damn numbers which mean NOTHING if the raid wipes.

Fast Foward to Netherspite. Basically, stand in the beams that increase stats, including things like mana costs, and don’t let them hit Netherspite or you wipe. You NEED two tanks for the debuff. You NEED a priest in the raid so you have the fort buff, or else some of your DPS won’t be able to stand in the beams due to low health (remember that whole non-T5 or better gear thing?) Naxxramas has a fight that requires Mind Control, and Noth requires some decursers, but otherwise, I can’t think of another fight that requires a certain class. Even KT, sure it’s nice of you interrupt the Frostbolts, but they don’t hit as hard or as often as the Shade of Aran spells, so thus it isn’t as crucial. Blizzard has changed everything to a numbers game, so the heals are just bigger to counter the damage done, and everyone’s damage is increased to make the fight go faster.

What I would love to see is a fight that requires the use of a certain classes abilities (like requiring a mages “spell steal” for Gruul’s Lair, or needing one of every kind of CC for Hex Lord in ZA). To do this, however, Blizzard needs to return certain class abilities to the classes. Make the abilities require timing and skill to use, so that the fights are no longer just plowing up and pew-pewing your heart out. Consolidate abilities to one or two classes, even changing the mechanics slightly for each of those classes. Now that what, 5 classes (and several specs beyond) have Mortal Strike (Frost Mages, Shadow Priests, Rogues, Hunters, and the original Warrior), it’s no longer a unique ability that one has to plan for. You know it’s going to happen in Arena’s, especially 5v5, even though there is no effective healing counter.

Some people might complain that it’s not fair to require certain classes to progress in a raid. I disagree. If you can’t manage to get 2 priests for 25-man Naxx for Instructor Rasuvius, something is wrong. If you can’t manage to get one mage or druid to decurse on Noth, something is wrong. Maybe some of the 12-year olds (or youngers) who play the game might find it to be too difficult. A Google search will indicate that the average player age is somewhere in the mid-20′s to mid-30′s. And those are probably the people who go to Blizzcon and have multiple accounts–they have jobs and thus can afford it, or at least choose where to spend their money.

I understand that Blizzard is a company and aims to maximize their profits. But (and this is the same complaint I have about the most recent Harry Potter movie) please stop fucking catering to the people who don’t give a damn about anything they see on the screen besides the colors. I’m sorry, but you would make MUCH more money and not lose as many players if you catered towards your biggest fan base. I’m certainly not in the biggest fan base, as I’m not a super hard-core gamer, but age/maturity/intellectually speaking, I’m certainly in the same ballpark.

There has to be a compromise and a priority. If you fear homogenization so much, why do many players feel like characters and classes are becoming more and more similar? Why is it that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been asked to use Polymorph in an instance, or seen any other CCing class use it? Why is it that Warlocks, Elemental Shamans, Boomkins, and Mages all seem to do around the same dps (in comparable gear) the difference being that it’s in different colors, yet really don’t add much more to the raid besides a random assortment of buffs?

So I turn to you, players of World of Warcraft: Do you think Blizzard has succeeded in creating a game where “bringing the player, not the class” has coalesced with non-homogenization? Are you pleased with the way classes differ from one another? Did everything get screwed up with the introduction of Dual Specialization as well? I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses!