Do you have any data on Horde/Alliance W/L rates in SoD?
Did you see Aggrend say the weapon skill thing might happen before it did, or did it catch you off-guard?
When you say “Can you show me any data that says the Horde are supposed to be this overpowered?” do you understand that you are responsible for defining “this” because that is your argument and not mine? Do you understand that you have not presented any data that even says horde is overpowered? So how overpowered is “this?” Do we win 75% of matches? 80? 51? Are you going by kills? Caps? Honor/faction? Performance in STV?
Because if we’re to balance anything, we need to know where we are.
If you do not know something, then saying “I do not know” is a good place to start.
I’m going to ask you to read this again. How should I reply to this?
Bro you realize the toolkit that ret paladins have? Warriors can use every CD they have and still not bring down a ret. It has ALWAYS been this way. You can fear>enraged regen>bandage, disarm and it still isn’t even close. Paladins damage other than auto attacks isn’t mitigated by armor, warriors is. That isnt even to mention the fact that they can bubble heal, bop, loh, hoj> heal. you playing a hero class. The very fact that you don’t realize this is a testament to likely how bad you are. Toolkits matter and paladins have always had the best toolkit in the game.
Oh look its Semicasual talking out of their behind again, pretending to know anything and putting other people down!
Anywho you are wrong - SR stacks. Everyone can use it at the same time and you get x instances of the mana restore buff. No clue why you think it doesn’t.
Are shamans vs. paladins the only deaths that occur in PvP? Are they the majority? What percentage are they?
Because if you say “combat only lasts five seconds” and what you mean is “combat only lasts five seconds when I have an elemental mastery CD in my pocket and am playing a certain class” that’s almost as misleading as saying “they’re giving Fear Ward to the Horde” when they’re giving it to everyone.
Don’t you think it would be a nerf to my intimidating shout to have more Fear Wards running around on all flavors of priest? Do you get that’s not the whole truth? I don’t mind - it makes me play more cautiously.
Tools that extend the time people live in combat, like the blanket +25% to HP in battlegrounds or STV are there to fight this, and it’s not that you say things I disagree with. It’s that you:
Mislead by leaving out things that do not benefit you.
Do not have anything to back things up except memories from a game neither of us are playing, that you didn’t enjoy.
Counter requests for data like “can you show me PvE should show an advantage to any faction” with “can you show me the horde should be this overpowered?” This not only doesn’t answer my question, it’s called “begging the question”
Offer anecdotes of the matchup you don’t want to play in a best case scenario as the “meta” rather than just saying “y’know, Blizzard doesn’t release that, maybe that’s data as a community we should ask them for.”
When you say “warriors and rogues shouldn’t expect to be top of the heap just by being warriors and rogues” how does it make you feel when you read:
From Aggrend’s Twitter:
“ Humans have been the undisputed king for any melee for all of vanilla forever. I think it’s okay if we spread the love a bit for seasonal content. We said from the very start that humans and orcs wouldn’t be the default choice for PvE.”
So do you think you can say “everyone” when you mean “everyone including the Horde?” Because that affects balance? Do you understand, if not agree, why every single time you say that, I feel it’s inflammatory, not because it is untrue, but because if the shoe were on the other foot and they gave everyone Shattering Throw, say, and I just said “to the Alliance” that would be hitting below the belt?*
-Horse
*if you don’t like shattering throw which I picked here because it strips armor and removes bubbles, which is bad for me, but borderline lethal to you, please select a better example
After seeing Aggrend’s comments on the Paladin Discord? Yeah I have to throw my support behind this. This is ridiculous that Paladin STILL isn’t online at level 50.
To Aggrend: the point of an MMORPG is to make the game enjoyable at all levels. Not at level 60 only. You all started with that but clearly forgot that idea.
I’m paraphrasing because I don’t have the screenshots (am not at home) but they came down to:
“Hey balancing is really hard.”
“You guys are getting your full toolkit in phase 5”
“We’ll balance once you get your full toolkit. changes right now might have to be undone once you get your full toolkit”
Unless their toolkit is a 200-300% increase in dps? I don’t forsee any of that being an issue. They SHOULD be balancing out the stuff they currently have. If the foundation for a house is bad you don’t fix it after the roof is put on.
Aggrend basically said that they want to leave their biggest class tuning for all classes until everyone has all their runes. Pretty much the zitch, some classes and talents will over perform and some under perform, it happens once everyone is max level and all runes are found is when they’ll really start messing with class balance.
Which this is my issue. They SHOULD be resolving known issues now. If Paladin is having DPS issues and there’s issues around their judgements uptime as well as a lot of their toolkit just isn’t super useful? That needs to be fixed NOW when there’s less moving parts.
And that’s totally fair. While I come down (hard) on some folks when numbers and hyperbole materialize from the aether, all PvP is shamans v. paladins, of which I play neither (but would like to), not everything has to look like a doctoral dissertation. Just the gist of something and a source can really be helpful in filtering
“Alliance should be better at PvE than Horde”
from
“You’re not balanced, we know you’re not balanced.”
The former isn’t plausible, the latter is, developers putting something off.
In addition, them being a little more forthcoming with the data they use to balance things would be really helpful here as a community so we’re not all stuck using WCL two weeks in. I’d love to see some more insight into the tools and calculus they use to do class balance.
I mean I agree, but I also see their point of view. Phases are roughly 8 weeks, they have a lot of stuff to create for the next phase. We know the fixes are coming so we just gotta sit tight. I say this as a ret pally raiding, We’re solidly bottom/middle but at least I know the changes are coming. I would like to see stuff tuned now, but I would also like to avoid a situation that range hunters had in which they got hit with the nerf bat in P1 only to be bottom dog all of P2 and then get some use in P3 with a true shot aura.
I agree with both of you - and in this case, you can have something approximating both - “Hey, we know this isn’t right, but it’s something that has a synergy coming down the pike that we can’t talk about right this second because rune” as well as “Here’s a temporary fix for mana and an update for non-SoM play because there should be fixes right now for things that aren’t great right now.”
And to that end, we are seeing some progress. Paladin and the Alliance in general got two fixes in this last batch.
That doesn’t mean we’re done yet, and I don’t want the fixes to stop.
I do want to make one thing clear: I do not care about PvP.
I totally get that PvP plays ENTIRELY different from PvE. Talking from a game design perspective? BGs should have ENTIERLY different scaling and abilities. Those two need to be two separate games. PvP Shouldn’t influence PvE and Vice versa. PvP in general is a massive can of worms that Blizzard SHOULD be looking to separate from PvE so we can have a good BG experience without worrying about picking a faction or (ugh) Warrior syndrome where you pick something specifically for PvE but are forced to PvP where you are prompty destroyed by the proper pvp classes such as Mage Rogue and Shaman.
I have to throw my support behind this because Aggrend has repeatedly made bad game design decisions (as someone who’s worked in the industry)
The solution right now which Aggrend said is for anyone who wants to main paladin to just unsub and quit the game for 2-4 months while they fix paladin (because paladin will take a month into p5 to fix BARE minimum and they’re not doing any major changes until P5) This isn’t a solution that would fly at corporate. If this solution was presented to the executive team at Blizzard they would ask whose paycheck the unsubs are going to come out of. They’d ask why this decision is costing them money and why there can’t be even a small team dedicated to actually fixing the issues Paladin has. It’s not due to lack of ideas, there are plenty of veteran paladin players, many who know good game design, who have good suggestions on fixes. The Zeal mechanic posed here? Genuinely interesting. Hord of Loderon just a skill? Yeah, agreed it should be. Refreshing judgements with crusader strike? I’m genuinely wondering why that isn’t already a thing.