RSS feed2008-09-11 09:58:37
Sorry we could not get this out ahead of time to give you a head's up.
We have posted in many of the class forums already explaining why you saw so many changes to abilities and numbers this time around. The designers sat down and ran through every spell and talent in the game. We were looking for the following:
-- Mechanics that we didn't think we'd be able to get working right. They might feel off or buggy. For some of these, it was time to change them and move on.
-- Talents that were confusing, trying to do too many things or just weird for some reason.
-- Talents or abilites that gave too much of one class' special abilities to another class. This is a tough one. Sometimes an ability feels so useful that we need to spread the love. Other times we fear the classes are just blending too much together if everyone does the same thing.
-- Looking for talents or abilities that were under or over budget.
Let me explain that last part in a little more detail. We balance most of the game to a budget. We have an idea for example that a talent point should be worth around a 1% dps increase. For a variety of reasons, it doesn't always work out that way and there are plenty of examples of talents that violate that goal -- it's not a hard and fast rule. But there were many talents that were doing too much for their cost. Talents that offer so much for their points quickly become mandatory. They may be fun in that you get a lot for your money, but they work against the design goal of being able to build a customized talent tree for your character. They also make spec parity or class balance a lot harder when there are these inflated numbers scattered throughout the talent trees. Some talents were under-budget and were buffed, but to be fair, most were over-budget, which is just the human nature of designers when we're trying to come up with something cool and exciting.
What this patch was NOT was a comprehensive numbers pass. We didn't nerf you because your healing, dps or mitigation was too good compared to other classes. We really don't have enough data yet to make those conclusions (especially in PvP), but we're getting more and over every day, both internally and from helpful beta testers.
What can you do? Get out there and try out the build. There are probably some cases where we nerfed an ability too far. These changes are not set in stone. The game isn't done. Please try and be clear and concise in your feedback because that makes it a lot easier for the designers and community managers to quickly read your posts. If you lost an ability that you felt you desperately needed or were really excited about, that's useful feedback.
We love all of the classes, and ultimately the best outcome from our point of view is for everyone to be excited to start leveling when Lich King goes live. That means giving you mechanics you're excited about, but it also means not getting destroyed or totally outdone by other classes with talents or spells that are too good.
Hopefully the next patch or two will have more numbers changes to get everyone closer to parity. But I don't need to remind you that this is a big, complex game, and it's going to take some time.
We have posted in many of the class forums already explaining why you saw so many changes to abilities and numbers this time around. The designers sat down and ran through every spell and talent in the game. We were looking for the following:
-- Mechanics that we didn't think we'd be able to get working right. They might feel off or buggy. For some of these, it was time to change them and move on.
-- Talents that were confusing, trying to do too many things or just weird for some reason.
-- Talents or abilites that gave too much of one class' special abilities to another class. This is a tough one. Sometimes an ability feels so useful that we need to spread the love. Other times we fear the classes are just blending too much together if everyone does the same thing.
-- Looking for talents or abilities that were under or over budget.
Let me explain that last part in a little more detail. We balance most of the game to a budget. We have an idea for example that a talent point should be worth around a 1% dps increase. For a variety of reasons, it doesn't always work out that way and there are plenty of examples of talents that violate that goal -- it's not a hard and fast rule. But there were many talents that were doing too much for their cost. Talents that offer so much for their points quickly become mandatory. They may be fun in that you get a lot for your money, but they work against the design goal of being able to build a customized talent tree for your character. They also make spec parity or class balance a lot harder when there are these inflated numbers scattered throughout the talent trees. Some talents were under-budget and were buffed, but to be fair, most were over-budget, which is just the human nature of designers when we're trying to come up with something cool and exciting.
What this patch was NOT was a comprehensive numbers pass. We didn't nerf you because your healing, dps or mitigation was too good compared to other classes. We really don't have enough data yet to make those conclusions (especially in PvP), but we're getting more and over every day, both internally and from helpful beta testers.
What can you do? Get out there and try out the build. There are probably some cases where we nerfed an ability too far. These changes are not set in stone. The game isn't done. Please try and be clear and concise in your feedback because that makes it a lot easier for the designers and community managers to quickly read your posts. If you lost an ability that you felt you desperately needed or were really excited about, that's useful feedback.
We love all of the classes, and ultimately the best outcome from our point of view is for everyone to be excited to start leveling when Lich King goes live. That means giving you mechanics you're excited about, but it also means not getting destroyed or totally outdone by other classes with talents or spells that are too good.
Hopefully the next patch or two will have more numbers changes to get everyone closer to parity. But I don't need to remind you that this is a big, complex game, and it's going to take some time.
[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ]
