A sustainable strategy is one which can be repeated week to week, isn't reliant on bad luck and can survive a small number of deaths. It's basically the difference between farm status and getting a kill. Increasing gear level even one step, like pre-Naxx to post-Naxx or Naxx to Ulduar can make weak strategies viable, but you should avoid falling into this trap. For example, in Burning Crusade I did Void Reaver the normal way many, many times. Months later, just before the release of 3.0, I did a pug with a small guild on my server. Their strategy hurt my brain. Ultimately, they had everyone in melee range except for two hunters who ran in circles avoiding explosions. No one in the middle had to worry about the orbs but 23 people were taking VR's AOE instead of the normal 10 or less. Additionally, everyone had a 10% threat ceiling instead of the standard ranged 30% window. A few star healers were healing so much that with VR's knockback they would pull aggro halfway through the fight. The strategy is definitely viable but it's significantly harder than the standard "stay at range and avoid death balls" strategy. The prevelance of badge gear, however, allowed them to occasionally succeed with that kind of madness.
One of the primary goals for a sustainble strategy is for it to be simple. For one, complexity can be very hard to repeat or sustain; For a time our strategy on Ignis relied on no less than four players working perfectly. A Death Knight had to get mobs into a scorch, a druid would root them there, a hunter would Distracting Shot them into the water and a warlock would kill them. Keeping up a chain like that is extremely difficult and the entire thing was replaced by the death knight learning how to play (I take all the fault for that one >_>). Additionally, complexity is extremely hard to transmit. If one of your raid members has to be replaced imagine how you'll feel explaining the job to their replacement. "When the death knight calls for it, you root the enemy in scorch. However, be sure to have a different enemy targetted so that you can root it and free the first one whenever it's called out or the hunter won't be able to pull it around later." vs. "DPS the boss". Personally I trust most of the core of my guild to pick up even complex strategies reasonably quickly but it's mostly unnecessary; A complex strategy is a sign that you might be doing something wrong.
Additionally you should avoid strategies based on luck unless you hate your raid members. If part of your strategy involves, "pray that this event doesn't happen" then it will happen on your most perfect kill attempt. I can't think of any good examples that have happened to my guild, but I'm sure there have been Sartharion strategies where the MT getting a void zone results in an automatic wipe due to tricky or very tight positioning. If you've failed to account for any mechanic in a boss fight and you're just hoping that it goes well, you need to change your strategy. Focus on aspects of a fight which can become much easier or harder based purely on luck and find a way to do it better. Something similar if not exactly what I'm getting at is Auriaya. During our first few attempts we all stacked then killed the defender. It leaves a void zone which kills people extremely quickly and having the whole raid there meant some people would die every time. To combat this, we tried to Grip the defender out of the raid then stun it. However, the defender is unpredictable and its pounce causes it to ignore pretty much every pull mechanic, thus we can't guarantee that the defender will die where we want it to. An easy way to deal with this is to have the raid spread out; The defender will die on top of someone and only one person will have to move out of the void zone each time rather than the entire raid plus we don't have to deal with trying to move around a wildly pouncing cat.
If possible, personal responsibility should be thrown onto a few specific players. For example while fighting Freya she will occasionally spawn a Gift of Eonar- A small tree which grows for a while and then heals all of Freya's allies. Rather than say, "Anyone who sees a tree should kill it" say, "Johnny and Bob focus on killing trees." We have our guild leader and one trusted rogue focus on killing any trees which happen to spawn; This frees up a lot of DPS so that they no longer have to think about anything but killing whatever happens to be in front of them. Just make sure that it's people you trust to perform their role! You don't want someone to be like "But wait, how do I click the manticron cube? It failed and I have this debuff...."
A higher-level aspect of sustainable strategies relies entirely on trust. Mimiron is a perfect example of this- If you trust everyone that isn't you to perform their job properly it frees up a huge amount of mental strain. I don't worry about calling out missiles or spinups for other people; I assume that they'll deal with it themselves thus I don't have to spend the time processing where a missile is going or who is going to be hit with a spinup, I just get away from it myself. In phase 4 I focus only on the small set of attacks which is dangerous to me and ignore which direction the middle or head is facing; It's not important. A similar idea is letting the back half of 4H work on their own- For example in 10 man you have 8 people in front and two in the back, a tank and a healer. Now the entire back of the room doesn't matter to the front, it's something they don't have to worry about. The same situation happens in Sartharion+3; By leaving one tank and two healers on Sartharion, Sarth is effectively not part of the fight for the other 22 raid members. Ideally they won't spend any time whatsoever thinking about Sartharion's position or breaths- That's ALL dealt with by the 3-man Sartharion Squad. In the same vein, the 3-man Sartharion Squad shouldn't have to worry about anything the other 22 people are doing; It's useful to know when adds in the portal are going to die but it's not really necessary since you can just watch Sarth's buffs and act accordingly.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that you should make sure your strategies are sustainable or else a small change in guild roster, raiders, bad luck, or a small stupid mistake could destroy a perfect attempt on a simple raid boss.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Personal Responsibility
Personal Responsibility is the largest factor in turning an easy fight into a hard fight without significantly changing mechanics. Lets examine two concept fights quickly to see how this plays out.
In our first fight, we're up against a giant demon. There's a cube in one corner of the room. Every 45 seconds on the dot, he begins a 5 second cast. At the end of the cast, he enrages and does a ton of damage to the main tank unless someone in the room clicks on the box.
In our second fight, we're up against a giant demon. There's a cube in one corner of the room. Every 45 seconds on the dot, he begins a 5 second cast and tosses one player a key. At the end of the cast, he enrages and does a ton of damage to the main tank unless the player with the key clicks on the box.
There's nothing stopping you from tanking him at the box. It's not an issue of "One player has to run over, taking more time." The only change is that the boss chooses which player has to click the box rather than your raid choosing. This tiny change has a huge impact on the difficulty of the fight.
A second huge distinction is the difference between an improper reaction killing one player vs an improper reaction killing an entire raid. This is the difference between Mimiron and Deconstructor. In Mimiron, if you're targetted by a misile and you don't move, you die. But who cares? If one retarded DPS dies, our Mimiron attempt isn't over. Of course, there are individuals like the main tank whose death can signal the end of a fight but in general it's not a big deal. On the other hand, if you don't move out of the raid with Light or Gravity bomb you might kill everyone and effectively wipe the raid.
So, we have two questions- One player or any player and one death or a raid wipe. There are examples of all possible combinations of the two, though the rarest by far is any player-one death. A good example of this is something like Yogg-Saron's portals, where any player can choose to enter the portals and work on his mind but any player who fails inside the portal dies (without wiping the raid).
It all comes down to personal responsibility and quality of players. There are fights like Hodir where you can let your terrible players kill themselves and laugh it off while they're dead, but you'd better get on replacing them right quick; A badly timed gravity bomb on one of those same players has a good shot at wiping you on Deconstructor.
In our first fight, we're up against a giant demon. There's a cube in one corner of the room. Every 45 seconds on the dot, he begins a 5 second cast. At the end of the cast, he enrages and does a ton of damage to the main tank unless someone in the room clicks on the box.
In our second fight, we're up against a giant demon. There's a cube in one corner of the room. Every 45 seconds on the dot, he begins a 5 second cast and tosses one player a key. At the end of the cast, he enrages and does a ton of damage to the main tank unless the player with the key clicks on the box.
There's nothing stopping you from tanking him at the box. It's not an issue of "One player has to run over, taking more time." The only change is that the boss chooses which player has to click the box rather than your raid choosing. This tiny change has a huge impact on the difficulty of the fight.
A second huge distinction is the difference between an improper reaction killing one player vs an improper reaction killing an entire raid. This is the difference between Mimiron and Deconstructor. In Mimiron, if you're targetted by a misile and you don't move, you die. But who cares? If one retarded DPS dies, our Mimiron attempt isn't over. Of course, there are individuals like the main tank whose death can signal the end of a fight but in general it's not a big deal. On the other hand, if you don't move out of the raid with Light or Gravity bomb you might kill everyone and effectively wipe the raid.
So, we have two questions- One player or any player and one death or a raid wipe. There are examples of all possible combinations of the two, though the rarest by far is any player-one death. A good example of this is something like Yogg-Saron's portals, where any player can choose to enter the portals and work on his mind but any player who fails inside the portal dies (without wiping the raid).
It all comes down to personal responsibility and quality of players. There are fights like Hodir where you can let your terrible players kill themselves and laugh it off while they're dead, but you'd better get on replacing them right quick; A badly timed gravity bomb on one of those same players has a good shot at wiping you on Deconstructor.
Percentages
Just quicky while it's on my mind; Percentages are bad.
For example:
10% of 60,000 is 6,000
115% of 6,000 is 6,900
200% of 6,900 is 13,800
Lastly, 13,800 twice every 10 seconds is 2760 HP/S.
Assuming a reasonable/sane critrate, it is only 2,000 HP/S though.
But hey, if you want me to be able to solo heroic content when I'm raid buffed, then thanks for lettuce gnomes. I'll see if my numbers work out in game some time tonight...
Aww, Death Strike can't crit. That means it tops around 1400 HP/S, about the same as a terrible L80 healer can pull; I've survived instance runs with a healer at ~1k HP/S.
For example:
10% of 60,000 is 6,000
115% of 6,000 is 6,900
200% of 6,900 is 13,800
Lastly, 13,800 twice every 10 seconds is 2760 HP/S.
Assuming a reasonable/sane critrate, it is only 2,000 HP/S though.
But hey, if you want me to be able to solo heroic content when I'm raid buffed, then thanks for lettuce gnomes. I'll see if my numbers work out in game some time tonight...
Aww, Death Strike can't crit. That means it tops around 1400 HP/S, about the same as a terrible L80 healer can pull; I've survived instance runs with a healer at ~1k HP/S.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Four Types
I would argue that there are four types of raiders in WoW. A player can be either Aware or Unaware and either Good or Bad at their role.
I'll add a diagram in here later on.
Lets take a look at each of our four corners.
A player who is Good/Aware is what you want all your raiders to be. This player will make you fall over sideways when you see the DPS charts for Hodir. They'll never die to void zones, fires, falling rocks, poison clouds, or other retardation. They'll move when they get Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb. They might pull aggro here and there but 90% of the time it'll be the tank's fault for not getting enough threat rather than the DPSer's fault for attacking early. Good/Aware healers will never let someone die. Their mad feats of survival will be spoken of unto 8 future generations. Vezax clouds stop functioning and they get no mana return during the fight? Who cares, they don't need it. A tank in this category will always get an add off the healer, can hold multiple adds or a boss and adds, and STILL manages to dodge lightning in Thorim, or missiles in Mimiron, etc.
The rest of the corners are slightly more depressing. Lets go with a Good/Unaware player. This guy is the bane of your Naxxramas run, because he'll seem to do pretty damn well. He might top the meters on patchwerk or blow you away on Gluth. He might die on Thaddius, but hey I bet he just lagged or something, right? As soon as you hit Ulduar, this player disappears. He kills everyone on Deconstructor. He can't kite eyes on Kologarn. He eats Flash Freeze. His DPS is solid when he doesn't have to move around or think much about what he's doing but as soon as you put him on new content or challenging content he'll bite the dust left and right. Sure his DPS is great on farm content, but if his DPS drops 80% on new content and he dies half the time, is he even useful anymore? Healers in this category are likely to forget to heal themselves or can't pay attention to more than one or two people at a time. Tanks in this category are fine MTing a boss, but never ask them to do anything more complex; They won't be able to handle constant add streams or move enemies around much.
Next on the list is a Bad/Aware player. This guy is interesting. His DPS on Patchwerk is atrocious. He's beating the tanks, sure, but not by much. You're never really sure why his DPS is 50% of that of other players of his class in the raid, but apparently there's something your other DPS is doing right that he's doing wrong. On the other hand, his DPS never changes and you've never seen him die. You just have to wonder, does it MATTER that he isn't dying? Who cares that he's alive if he's not putting out any DPS? A healer in this category should always be placed on raid healing. If you put them on the MT, the MT will die. Whoops, my HP/S was too low! But on the raid, they can always see who's taking damage and heal them back up. Just takes... a couple... seconds... to... finish... Tanks in this category pick up all the adds everywhere in the room, then die. At least he got them off the healers! Too bad he only has 30k buffed HP and all his gear is gemmed for spell penetration!
Last, we have the terrifying and horrible to behold Bad/Unaware. This guy makes you cry every time you have to invite him to a raid. As a ranged DPS, he dies to patchwerk 90 seconds into the fight. You didn't think it was possible, but he does it anyway. His damage is atrocious during the 5% of each fight where he's alive. In the thirty seconds it takes for him to find the nearest void zone or eat the first breath on Sartharion he doesn't break 2k DPS. Tanks and healers in this category are extremely dangerous to have. A bad unaware tank won't pop cooldowns to survive incoming burst and will stand in fire at the same time. A healer in this category will probably die pretty early on, but it won't matter because their healing on the MT isn't noticeable and they let people die all over the place if they're raid-healing.
I don't feel like the four corners are entirely distinct; It's a huge gradient and people can end up anywhere on the map. There are levels of skill as well as levels of awareness; Some people will live on Thaddius and Deconstructor but can't quite match up a cozy fire with Starlight. Some people can kite Constructs into the fire every single time but can't react to a random spawn add entering a fight. You can probably think of hundreds of other examples.
Naxxrammas let a lot of people slip through because it's so easy. There are many fights where it's difficult to tell where on the awareness scale someone falls. You might notice a lot of players' DPS decrease from what it was in Naxx because they can't handle the movement in Ulduar well. You might notice some people faceplanting that you weren't worried about before. These are the people that just can't react fast enough in new content but didn't need to since they memorized Naxx
I'll add a diagram in here later on.
Lets take a look at each of our four corners.
A player who is Good/Aware is what you want all your raiders to be. This player will make you fall over sideways when you see the DPS charts for Hodir. They'll never die to void zones, fires, falling rocks, poison clouds, or other retardation. They'll move when they get Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb. They might pull aggro here and there but 90% of the time it'll be the tank's fault for not getting enough threat rather than the DPSer's fault for attacking early. Good/Aware healers will never let someone die. Their mad feats of survival will be spoken of unto 8 future generations. Vezax clouds stop functioning and they get no mana return during the fight? Who cares, they don't need it. A tank in this category will always get an add off the healer, can hold multiple adds or a boss and adds, and STILL manages to dodge lightning in Thorim, or missiles in Mimiron, etc.
The rest of the corners are slightly more depressing. Lets go with a Good/Unaware player. This guy is the bane of your Naxxramas run, because he'll seem to do pretty damn well. He might top the meters on patchwerk or blow you away on Gluth. He might die on Thaddius, but hey I bet he just lagged or something, right? As soon as you hit Ulduar, this player disappears. He kills everyone on Deconstructor. He can't kite eyes on Kologarn. He eats Flash Freeze. His DPS is solid when he doesn't have to move around or think much about what he's doing but as soon as you put him on new content or challenging content he'll bite the dust left and right. Sure his DPS is great on farm content, but if his DPS drops 80% on new content and he dies half the time, is he even useful anymore? Healers in this category are likely to forget to heal themselves or can't pay attention to more than one or two people at a time. Tanks in this category are fine MTing a boss, but never ask them to do anything more complex; They won't be able to handle constant add streams or move enemies around much.
Next on the list is a Bad/Aware player. This guy is interesting. His DPS on Patchwerk is atrocious. He's beating the tanks, sure, but not by much. You're never really sure why his DPS is 50% of that of other players of his class in the raid, but apparently there's something your other DPS is doing right that he's doing wrong. On the other hand, his DPS never changes and you've never seen him die. You just have to wonder, does it MATTER that he isn't dying? Who cares that he's alive if he's not putting out any DPS? A healer in this category should always be placed on raid healing. If you put them on the MT, the MT will die. Whoops, my HP/S was too low! But on the raid, they can always see who's taking damage and heal them back up. Just takes... a couple... seconds... to... finish... Tanks in this category pick up all the adds everywhere in the room, then die. At least he got them off the healers! Too bad he only has 30k buffed HP and all his gear is gemmed for spell penetration!
Last, we have the terrifying and horrible to behold Bad/Unaware. This guy makes you cry every time you have to invite him to a raid. As a ranged DPS, he dies to patchwerk 90 seconds into the fight. You didn't think it was possible, but he does it anyway. His damage is atrocious during the 5% of each fight where he's alive. In the thirty seconds it takes for him to find the nearest void zone or eat the first breath on Sartharion he doesn't break 2k DPS. Tanks and healers in this category are extremely dangerous to have. A bad unaware tank won't pop cooldowns to survive incoming burst and will stand in fire at the same time. A healer in this category will probably die pretty early on, but it won't matter because their healing on the MT isn't noticeable and they let people die all over the place if they're raid-healing.
I don't feel like the four corners are entirely distinct; It's a huge gradient and people can end up anywhere on the map. There are levels of skill as well as levels of awareness; Some people will live on Thaddius and Deconstructor but can't quite match up a cozy fire with Starlight. Some people can kite Constructs into the fire every single time but can't react to a random spawn add entering a fight. You can probably think of hundreds of other examples.
Naxxrammas let a lot of people slip through because it's so easy. There are many fights where it's difficult to tell where on the awareness scale someone falls. You might notice a lot of players' DPS decrease from what it was in Naxx because they can't handle the movement in Ulduar well. You might notice some people faceplanting that you weren't worried about before. These are the people that just can't react fast enough in new content but didn't need to since they memorized Naxx
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Suboptimal Performance
Ghostcrawler made the comment recently that players do not perform at maximum efficiency. Ever. This is an interesting point. It's relatively simple to figure out the optimal rotation and from that optimal gearsets for individual characters. But how do we know what someone is going to do wrong? There's probably only one BEST way to play your character, but there are hundreds or thousands of ways to play your character WRONG.
To be honest, I struggle with this one. My best guess is that Blizzard has projected numbers for situations. For example, using purely hypothetical numbers, they want a Warlock to do 5,000 DPS at the optimal level in a specific tier. Then they can balance hard-mode content off something close to that number. My guess as to normal mode content is that blizzard cuts it by a percent, I'd say roughly 40%. So, if they're seeing 5,000 DPS from top of the top players, they'll balance easymode content for the assumption that an average Warlock is doing 3,000 DPS.
The big problem is really the PTR. You see, it's very easy to tune content to hardcore players via the test realms. Players in high-end guilds are more likely to have scheduled raid times that aren't being utilized because they're clearing current content too fast thus giving them scheduled blocks which can be spent on the PTR. They're more likely to go to the PTR as a guild rather than individually, allowing easy group setup and testing. They're more likely to stick around through bugs because they've dealt with it all before. All of this means that Blizz most likely doesn't get good numbers for easy-mode testing on the test realm.
The Beta, on the other hand, is a different story. Sure there were a multitude of high end guilds that did serious testing in beta, but there was also a multitude of mediocre or downright terrible players that were in beta for reasons like Blizzcon or various contests.
Blizzard has stated many times that Ulduar was intended to be more difficult than Naxxramas, and it definitely has been. But it's interesting to think that if Blizzard intended for the easy mode of each to be clearable by 90% of the playerbase and based their tuning off the PTR for Ulduar vs the Closed Beta for Naxx, you'd see roughly the same difficulty increase that we actually have.
Correlation is not causation. It probably isn't meaningful or sane. Just something to think about.
To be honest, I struggle with this one. My best guess is that Blizzard has projected numbers for situations. For example, using purely hypothetical numbers, they want a Warlock to do 5,000 DPS at the optimal level in a specific tier. Then they can balance hard-mode content off something close to that number. My guess as to normal mode content is that blizzard cuts it by a percent, I'd say roughly 40%. So, if they're seeing 5,000 DPS from top of the top players, they'll balance easymode content for the assumption that an average Warlock is doing 3,000 DPS.
The big problem is really the PTR. You see, it's very easy to tune content to hardcore players via the test realms. Players in high-end guilds are more likely to have scheduled raid times that aren't being utilized because they're clearing current content too fast thus giving them scheduled blocks which can be spent on the PTR. They're more likely to go to the PTR as a guild rather than individually, allowing easy group setup and testing. They're more likely to stick around through bugs because they've dealt with it all before. All of this means that Blizz most likely doesn't get good numbers for easy-mode testing on the test realm.
The Beta, on the other hand, is a different story. Sure there were a multitude of high end guilds that did serious testing in beta, but there was also a multitude of mediocre or downright terrible players that were in beta for reasons like Blizzcon or various contests.
Blizzard has stated many times that Ulduar was intended to be more difficult than Naxxramas, and it definitely has been. But it's interesting to think that if Blizzard intended for the easy mode of each to be clearable by 90% of the playerbase and based their tuning off the PTR for Ulduar vs the Closed Beta for Naxx, you'd see roughly the same difficulty increase that we actually have.
Correlation is not causation. It probably isn't meaningful or sane. Just something to think about.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Ulduar Released
Yeah as you probably know 3.1 is out, which means Ulduar is out, which means my guild has been running late nights trying to get in the freaking instance and get things done, so I haven't had a lot of time to post.
So far, we've been destroyed in the 25man due to server stability issues. Day one we did Flame Lev in one shot, and Razorscale in 3. Ignis destroyed us because of bugs on day 1 and we didn't go back day 2.
Day two we messed with Deconstructor for a bit and didn't realize we were effectively doing the hard mode until our third attempt. Our fourth attempt, we got him to 50% but had some issues with adds. We'd have killed him on a fifth attempt, but we had to wait between 30 and 60 minutes between attempts due to server stability issues (HURR DURRRRRR)
10man, we did FL+1 and Razorscale day 1 before getting stopped at Deconstructor due to RL issues- My internet was down, so I was playing from a net cafe, and the place closed in the middle of our last attempt, gfg. Day two we killed Decon, attempted Ignis for a while, decided he's too hard and walked on. Two-shotted Kologarn, three on council, effectively one on Auriaya, then went to Hodir. Watching a raid of people that've been up for three days trying to dodge icicles was amazingly hilarious. More 25m tonight, cleaning up 10man late friday.
Soon as I'm not spending all my time focused on Ulduar, I'll get back here with something useful.
So far, we've been destroyed in the 25man due to server stability issues. Day one we did Flame Lev in one shot, and Razorscale in 3. Ignis destroyed us because of bugs on day 1 and we didn't go back day 2.
Day two we messed with Deconstructor for a bit and didn't realize we were effectively doing the hard mode until our third attempt. Our fourth attempt, we got him to 50% but had some issues with adds. We'd have killed him on a fifth attempt, but we had to wait between 30 and 60 minutes between attempts due to server stability issues (HURR DURRRRRR)
10man, we did FL+1 and Razorscale day 1 before getting stopped at Deconstructor due to RL issues- My internet was down, so I was playing from a net cafe, and the place closed in the middle of our last attempt, gfg. Day two we killed Decon, attempted Ignis for a while, decided he's too hard and walked on. Two-shotted Kologarn, three on council, effectively one on Auriaya, then went to Hodir. Watching a raid of people that've been up for three days trying to dodge icicles was amazingly hilarious. More 25m tonight, cleaning up 10man late friday.
Soon as I'm not spending all my time focused on Ulduar, I'll get back here with something useful.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Interesting Solutions to Difficult Problems.
Iron Council in Ulduar has 3 bosses. The hard mode is based on killing Steelbreaker last.
Steelbreaker has a one-shot attack called Fusion Punch on a roughly 15 second cooldown. He also picks a target and causes them to meltdown; i.e. they do an absurd level of damage, then after 60 seconds they die. It's like Vaelestrasz from BWL if you remember that. However, he ONLY picks the main tank.
Every time a player dies, Steelbreaker's damage goes up by 25%. Blowing cooldowns, you can survive with ONE death. A second death will be pretty much GG.
Thus, we have a roughly 2 minute timer from the start of the Steelbreaker phase. Present theory is that you have two tanks on him. Tank one gets Meltdown, survives for 60 seconds, then dies horribly while tank two taunts, tries to survive maybe two fusion punches, and if he's not dead and you're out of CDs you lose, or if Meltdown ends on the 2nd tank, you lose.
I pose a different theory; Note first that I have not attempted this fight as the PTR has been unstable every time I've logged on and no kind GMs have ported me into the instance freely to allow my guild to test content. Alas.
What if a non-tank soaks the first Meltdown? And the second?
As a Death Knight, I should have the survivability via IBF and AMS to survive 6 consecutive fusion punches (IBF, AMS, VB, VB(Still), AMS, IBF). That puts us at 90 seconds deep, with one tank instead of two (So a little more DPS), and one DPS is doing ridiculous damage because they get Meltdown, meaning that the kill should happen EVEN FASTER, allowing more wiggle room.
Did Blizzard consider this option? Is it prevented in some manner? If Meltdown is unpredictable, then I could see it being non-viable, but if even the first Meltdown can be caught, this is an extremely simple way to nullify some of the difficulty of the fight. I'd bet money that the sum total of Blizzard's design team and the raid testers that have seen all the content is better than my top of the head creativity, but who knows? There have been some exciting issues in the past.
We'll see what happens when Ulduar hits; I'm pretty optimistic that the design of the dungeon will be flawed in many places, allowing us to make clever use of game mechanics to get a solid set of hardmodes down in week two. Onward, to Ulduar!
Steelbreaker has a one-shot attack called Fusion Punch on a roughly 15 second cooldown. He also picks a target and causes them to meltdown; i.e. they do an absurd level of damage, then after 60 seconds they die. It's like Vaelestrasz from BWL if you remember that. However, he ONLY picks the main tank.
Every time a player dies, Steelbreaker's damage goes up by 25%. Blowing cooldowns, you can survive with ONE death. A second death will be pretty much GG.
Thus, we have a roughly 2 minute timer from the start of the Steelbreaker phase. Present theory is that you have two tanks on him. Tank one gets Meltdown, survives for 60 seconds, then dies horribly while tank two taunts, tries to survive maybe two fusion punches, and if he's not dead and you're out of CDs you lose, or if Meltdown ends on the 2nd tank, you lose.
I pose a different theory; Note first that I have not attempted this fight as the PTR has been unstable every time I've logged on and no kind GMs have ported me into the instance freely to allow my guild to test content. Alas.
What if a non-tank soaks the first Meltdown? And the second?
As a Death Knight, I should have the survivability via IBF and AMS to survive 6 consecutive fusion punches (IBF, AMS, VB, VB(Still), AMS, IBF). That puts us at 90 seconds deep, with one tank instead of two (So a little more DPS), and one DPS is doing ridiculous damage because they get Meltdown, meaning that the kill should happen EVEN FASTER, allowing more wiggle room.
Did Blizzard consider this option? Is it prevented in some manner? If Meltdown is unpredictable, then I could see it being non-viable, but if even the first Meltdown can be caught, this is an extremely simple way to nullify some of the difficulty of the fight. I'd bet money that the sum total of Blizzard's design team and the raid testers that have seen all the content is better than my top of the head creativity, but who knows? There have been some exciting issues in the past.
We'll see what happens when Ulduar hits; I'm pretty optimistic that the design of the dungeon will be flawed in many places, allowing us to make clever use of game mechanics to get a solid set of hardmodes down in week two. Onward, to Ulduar!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Stamina Treadmill
The state of tanking and healing in WoW really seriously bothers me.
Say you have 50% avoidance and bosses are hitting for 60% of your HP, attacking once every second. This means you need to be healed constantly. To be precise, you need to be healed for on average 30% of your HP each second with spikes up to 60% of your HP each second. Next tier comes out. You get to 60% avoidance, but even with more stamina, bosses are hitting for 80% of your HP once a second. There's no buffer zone. Healers are crying. ALGALON SMASH or some such (We can pray). Now, you need to be healed for on average 48% of your HP each second, with spikes up to 80%. But, does the average mean anything anymore? The odds that you'll be struck at least twice in three seconds are 35%. I would posit that in such situations, healers have no more leeway with 60% avoidance than with 50% avoidance. I would posit that up until maybe 75% avoidance or higher, healers would not see any significant breathing room. In other words, stacking avoidance in this scenario does not in fact help you survive in any way shape or form.
So say that of your 60% avoidance, 10% is from gems. Switch it out. Swap it allll to Stamina. We've shown that reducing incoming damage won't offer you significant survivability, thus your only option is to increase your HP, giving you a bigger buffer zone. But wait! Now that our HP is higher, the boss is only hitting for 70% of our total HP. This isn't as challenging as Blizzard intended, and thus they increase the boss' damage until he's hitting for 80% of our new HP. And now our poor avoidance tank from the beginning is getting hit for 90% of his HP. If healers though healing the stamina tank was scary, they think healing the avoidance tank is an absolute nightmare, even though he's taking significantly less overall damage.
This CAN be mitigated via avoidance. When you reach roughly 80% avoidance, you're dodging and parrying SO many attacks that healers can actually notice and respond to easy patches. However, the levels of avoidance necessary to provide breathing room for healers have been removed from the game since they were ridiculously unbalanced. I wholeheartedly agree with that, but it still means that stamina stacking is basically a necessity.
Right now, the game for healers is based around HP/S. Blizzard can increase the strain on healers by increasing the damage that a tank takes, forcing them to heal higher, spikier damage. Mana is no concern, the only question is whether they can pump enough heals in few enough GCDs to keep a tank alive through ridiculous burst. I disagree with this model entirely. It funnels more and more healing to one target, actually makes RNG much worse because the odds of getting an unlucky 10+ consecutive hits enters the realm of probability.
How do we fix it? The way GC has talked about before. What if we tripled everyone's HP and torched mana regen and HP/S? What if the game wasn't always about OH MY GOSH IT SPIKES SO BIG and instead was about some bosses being big spiky damage, some bosses being medium but constant damage, and some bosses being spread AOE damage (with mixtures of the various types of course)? Tanks would have to balance surviving spikiness with decreasing overall damage taken, or else healers wouldn't be able to keep up, or would run OOM! Yeesh, I haven't heard things like that in months. Healers would have to know which heals are efficient, and when they can use big slow efficient heals versus fast medium OH GOD heals, etc etc.
I can't claim that this idea is necessarily a good thing, I can't claim that everyone hates the current mechanics, and I can't claim that this will ever get changed. I just absolutely despise the fact that as each tier increases, we MUST stack stamina above basically all other stats to have a reasonable chance of survival.
Edit: Friends of yore, forgive me, I'm becoming an EHP tank :(
Say you have 50% avoidance and bosses are hitting for 60% of your HP, attacking once every second. This means you need to be healed constantly. To be precise, you need to be healed for on average 30% of your HP each second with spikes up to 60% of your HP each second. Next tier comes out. You get to 60% avoidance, but even with more stamina, bosses are hitting for 80% of your HP once a second. There's no buffer zone. Healers are crying. ALGALON SMASH or some such (We can pray). Now, you need to be healed for on average 48% of your HP each second, with spikes up to 80%. But, does the average mean anything anymore? The odds that you'll be struck at least twice in three seconds are 35%. I would posit that in such situations, healers have no more leeway with 60% avoidance than with 50% avoidance. I would posit that up until maybe 75% avoidance or higher, healers would not see any significant breathing room. In other words, stacking avoidance in this scenario does not in fact help you survive in any way shape or form.
So say that of your 60% avoidance, 10% is from gems. Switch it out. Swap it allll to Stamina. We've shown that reducing incoming damage won't offer you significant survivability, thus your only option is to increase your HP, giving you a bigger buffer zone. But wait! Now that our HP is higher, the boss is only hitting for 70% of our total HP. This isn't as challenging as Blizzard intended, and thus they increase the boss' damage until he's hitting for 80% of our new HP. And now our poor avoidance tank from the beginning is getting hit for 90% of his HP. If healers though healing the stamina tank was scary, they think healing the avoidance tank is an absolute nightmare, even though he's taking significantly less overall damage.
This CAN be mitigated via avoidance. When you reach roughly 80% avoidance, you're dodging and parrying SO many attacks that healers can actually notice and respond to easy patches. However, the levels of avoidance necessary to provide breathing room for healers have been removed from the game since they were ridiculously unbalanced. I wholeheartedly agree with that, but it still means that stamina stacking is basically a necessity.
Right now, the game for healers is based around HP/S. Blizzard can increase the strain on healers by increasing the damage that a tank takes, forcing them to heal higher, spikier damage. Mana is no concern, the only question is whether they can pump enough heals in few enough GCDs to keep a tank alive through ridiculous burst. I disagree with this model entirely. It funnels more and more healing to one target, actually makes RNG much worse because the odds of getting an unlucky 10+ consecutive hits enters the realm of probability.
How do we fix it? The way GC has talked about before. What if we tripled everyone's HP and torched mana regen and HP/S? What if the game wasn't always about OH MY GOSH IT SPIKES SO BIG and instead was about some bosses being big spiky damage, some bosses being medium but constant damage, and some bosses being spread AOE damage (with mixtures of the various types of course)? Tanks would have to balance surviving spikiness with decreasing overall damage taken, or else healers wouldn't be able to keep up, or would run OOM! Yeesh, I haven't heard things like that in months. Healers would have to know which heals are efficient, and when they can use big slow efficient heals versus fast medium OH GOD heals, etc etc.
I can't claim that this idea is necessarily a good thing, I can't claim that everyone hates the current mechanics, and I can't claim that this will ever get changed. I just absolutely despise the fact that as each tier increases, we MUST stack stamina above basically all other stats to have a reasonable chance of survival.
Edit: Friends of yore, forgive me, I'm becoming an EHP tank :(
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Ten Percent
Random is everywhere in WoW. Most spells have a range of damage. All weapons have a range of damage. Did you hit or miss? If you hit, was it a crit? Did your talents proc? How about your trinkets or weapon enchants? Maybe your embroidery?
In each action, a multitude of things can happen or not happen entirely randomly. When we talk about increasing DPS, increasing healing, or increasing survivability, we invariably talk about the midpoint, the average DPS something will grant. Moving from 20% crit to 26% crit is generally an increase of about 5% total damage (126/120). But if at the end of a fight you cast precisely 100 spells and 40 crit, how powerful was that increase to your crit chance? And what if only 15% crit?
So, this led me to a question. If we look at the *average* damage a player will do, what are the odds that he'll spontaneously do 10% more than normal? I'm going to be dealing only with crits here. Proc chances and things are beyond the scope of this project.
Lets normalize. We're casting 100 spells, each spell does 10 damage. A crit is 20 damage. At 30% crit, we're expecting 1300 total damage. This equates to 70 hits and 30 crits. A ten percent increase would be 1430 total damage, or 57 hits and 43 crits, or 43% crit chance.
The odds that we get 30 crits within 100 attacks is given by (CritChance^(NumCrits)) * ((1-CritChance)^(TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) * (Number of possible combinations of NumCrits and (TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) For example, given 2 coin flips of a fair coin, the odds of getting one head and one tails is .5^1 * .5^1 * 2 ([HT] or [TH] are both viable) which is .5 * .5 * 2 or .25 * 2 or .5, which makes sense, as there are four total options and two lead to the desired result. So, that math definitely works, and I feel better.
Crit Chance, Num Crits, and Total Attacks are all determined by our calculation. However, the number of possible combinations of crit/hit is harder to get at since we're dealing with reasonably large sample sizes (100). This is actually given to us by the formula [(Total Attacks)! / ([Num Crits]! * [Total Attacks - Num Crits]!)] or in our case 100! / (30! * 70!)
Thus, our whole formula is
(CritChance^(NumCrits)) * ((1-CritChance)^(TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) * ([TotalAttacks]! / [(NumCrits)! * (TotalAttacks - NumCrits)!])
In the case of 30/100 crits with a 30% crit chance, this is:
.3^30 * .7^70 * 100! / (30! * 70!) = 8.68%
And this tells us... What? Pretty much nothing. The odds of getting EXACTLY the right number of crits is relatively low. Hopefully you already knew this. But see, we're looking for something more. We want the chance of a range of values. For example, the chance of getting AT LEAST 10% more damage means the chance of getting 43 to 100 crits. Ultimately, we have to use summation. As in, we have to pick a total and a crit chance, then calculate it for each integer value. I don't like doing that by hand, so I wrote a small program to do it for me. I won't be reproducing intermediate steps, just end results.
43-100% crit, or 10% or higher improvement: .4% chance
0-17% crit, or 10% or higher drop: .2%
37-100% crit, or 5%+ up: 8% chance
0-23% crit, or 5%+ down: 7.5% chance
Hmm, with 100 casts, the odds of a 10% increase are almost nil and the odds of a 5% increase are pretty unreasonable. But nothing right now takes that long. For example, with a 2 second cast spell, killing Patchwerk in 2:30, we're looking at 75 casts. And the burst phases of most fights are much shorter, for example the Tenebron phase of +3 should be lasting less than 45 seconds or MAYBE 30 casts. So lets say 40% crit, 30 casts. Midpoint should be 12, 16 is roughly a 10% increase.
30 casts, 40% crit
16-30 crits: 9.7% chance
0-8 crits: 9.4% chance
5% variance:
14-30 crits: 28% chance
0-10 crits: 29% chance.
Interesting. Even on a short fight with a high crit chance, the odds that you'll crit significantly more than you should is pretty low; a 10% increase is definitely possible for an individual, but you'll almost never see the whole raid get even a 5% DPS increase.
I'm quite surprised, I was expecting to see crit give a much higher variance. This is actually pretty cool, since it means that a bad group will almost never get lucky and do a ton of DPS, and a good group will almost never have terrible luck and lose a ton of DPS. Which means if you're seeing variance in your raid's DPS, you should probably look at external factors, like void zones spawning three deep around your mobs.
Edit: Source for the program is here-
http://www.saichotictech.net/WoW/Binomials.lua
In each action, a multitude of things can happen or not happen entirely randomly. When we talk about increasing DPS, increasing healing, or increasing survivability, we invariably talk about the midpoint, the average DPS something will grant. Moving from 20% crit to 26% crit is generally an increase of about 5% total damage (126/120). But if at the end of a fight you cast precisely 100 spells and 40 crit, how powerful was that increase to your crit chance? And what if only 15% crit?
So, this led me to a question. If we look at the *average* damage a player will do, what are the odds that he'll spontaneously do 10% more than normal? I'm going to be dealing only with crits here. Proc chances and things are beyond the scope of this project.
Lets normalize. We're casting 100 spells, each spell does 10 damage. A crit is 20 damage. At 30% crit, we're expecting 1300 total damage. This equates to 70 hits and 30 crits. A ten percent increase would be 1430 total damage, or 57 hits and 43 crits, or 43% crit chance.
The odds that we get 30 crits within 100 attacks is given by (CritChance^(NumCrits)) * ((1-CritChance)^(TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) * (Number of possible combinations of NumCrits and (TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) For example, given 2 coin flips of a fair coin, the odds of getting one head and one tails is .5^1 * .5^1 * 2 ([HT] or [TH] are both viable) which is .5 * .5 * 2 or .25 * 2 or .5, which makes sense, as there are four total options and two lead to the desired result. So, that math definitely works, and I feel better.
Crit Chance, Num Crits, and Total Attacks are all determined by our calculation. However, the number of possible combinations of crit/hit is harder to get at since we're dealing with reasonably large sample sizes (100). This is actually given to us by the formula [(Total Attacks)! / ([Num Crits]! * [Total Attacks - Num Crits]!)] or in our case 100! / (30! * 70!)
Thus, our whole formula is
(CritChance^(NumCrits)) * ((1-CritChance)^(TotalAttacks-NumCrits)) * ([TotalAttacks]! / [(NumCrits)! * (TotalAttacks - NumCrits)!])
In the case of 30/100 crits with a 30% crit chance, this is:
.3^30 * .7^70 * 100! / (30! * 70!) = 8.68%
And this tells us... What? Pretty much nothing. The odds of getting EXACTLY the right number of crits is relatively low. Hopefully you already knew this. But see, we're looking for something more. We want the chance of a range of values. For example, the chance of getting AT LEAST 10% more damage means the chance of getting 43 to 100 crits. Ultimately, we have to use summation. As in, we have to pick a total and a crit chance, then calculate it for each integer value. I don't like doing that by hand, so I wrote a small program to do it for me. I won't be reproducing intermediate steps, just end results.
43-100% crit, or 10% or higher improvement: .4% chance
0-17% crit, or 10% or higher drop: .2%
37-100% crit, or 5%+ up: 8% chance
0-23% crit, or 5%+ down: 7.5% chance
Hmm, with 100 casts, the odds of a 10% increase are almost nil and the odds of a 5% increase are pretty unreasonable. But nothing right now takes that long. For example, with a 2 second cast spell, killing Patchwerk in 2:30, we're looking at 75 casts. And the burst phases of most fights are much shorter, for example the Tenebron phase of +3 should be lasting less than 45 seconds or MAYBE 30 casts. So lets say 40% crit, 30 casts. Midpoint should be 12, 16 is roughly a 10% increase.
30 casts, 40% crit
16-30 crits: 9.7% chance
0-8 crits: 9.4% chance
5% variance:
14-30 crits: 28% chance
0-10 crits: 29% chance.
Interesting. Even on a short fight with a high crit chance, the odds that you'll crit significantly more than you should is pretty low; a 10% increase is definitely possible for an individual, but you'll almost never see the whole raid get even a 5% DPS increase.
I'm quite surprised, I was expecting to see crit give a much higher variance. This is actually pretty cool, since it means that a bad group will almost never get lucky and do a ton of DPS, and a good group will almost never have terrible luck and lose a ton of DPS. Which means if you're seeing variance in your raid's DPS, you should probably look at external factors, like void zones spawning three deep around your mobs.
Edit: Source for the program is here-
http://www.saichotictech.net/WoW/Binomials.lua
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Standard WoW Forums
Profession Balance
C/Ped my discussion on professions over here, and ended up doing quite a bit more math to prove that JC is overpowered. Pasting that back here:
I *will* go ahead and do the math for everyone having epic gems. I'll use my current armory as a base for the math.
--
Socketed pieces + Bonus
Head
Obsidian Greathelm
B: 8 str
Shoulder
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders
Y: 4 crit
Chest
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece
R,Y:6 resil
Gloves
Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets
B: 4 crit
Waist
Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle
B: 6 str
Legs
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards
R,B: 6 str
Feet
Death Inured Sabatons
R,B: 6 hit
So, with rare gems, the max str we can get is
10 * 16 = 160 Str (A red in each socket, ignore the socket bonus)
With JC gems, the max Str we can get is
7 * 16 = 112 (Red gem in every socket that doesn't give a str bonus, and in the red on the legs)
3 * 27 = 81 (JC in the Head:B, Waist:B, and Legs:B)
6 + 6 + 8 = 20 (Socket bonuses)
213, a 53 str increase. The bonus is intended to be 32 (Without the socket bonuses it'd be 33, a perfectly viable number)
Stormjewels grant 20 str. Assuming that's right for epic gems, max without JC:
10 * 20 = 200 Str
With JC
7 * 20 = 140
3 * 27 = 81
6 + 6 + 8 = 20
241, an increase of 41, still over 25% more than other classes get.
But wait, I totally gave in on the idea of meta sockets. Assuming that we MUST activate a crit+Critdamage meta, that means we have to have 2 blues in the non-JC setup. Minimizing the impact puts a purple in the head and in the legs. The rare-gem setup drops from 160 str to 158, making JC a 55 str increase at rare-gem levels, and the epic-gem setup drops from 200 to 194, making JC a 47 str increase at epic-gem levels, or almost 50% more than the 32 attainable by other professions.
Once again, this is only really meaningful if you're stacking one stat to the extreme, but when you are the benefit from JC is significantly higher than that of any other profession. It will get better with epic gems but it still won't be balanced.
--
The results of posting this over there are a study in why I stopped reading the WoW Forums. A long time ago, I played a warlock. There were some things we'd proven, and for a while any time someone said, for example, "Use Curse of Weakness, Curse of Recklessness is too dangerous" I would post math to the contrary. After a while, I got tired of reproducing the math constantly, and just said, "X is wrong, Y is right." By the time I started doing that, I had so much of a following that it didn't matter WHAT I said, people would follow me, and even if I was wrong I had a horde of people saying "Listen to Psy, for he is right, because he was right before."
That sort of thinking, along the lines of, "I'm not going to back up my position with anything other than a gut feeling and some anger," along with the community's acceptance of it, really destroys the forums' usefulness.
C/Ped my discussion on professions over here, and ended up doing quite a bit more math to prove that JC is overpowered. Pasting that back here:
I *will* go ahead and do the math for everyone having epic gems. I'll use my current armory as a base for the math.
--
Socketed pieces + Bonus
Head
Obsidian Greathelm
B: 8 str
Shoulder
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Shoulders
Y: 4 crit
Chest
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Chestpiece
R,Y:6 resil
Gloves
Deadly Gladiator's Dreadplate Gauntlets
B: 4 crit
Waist
Flame-Bathed Steel Girdle
B: 6 str
Legs
Hateful Gladiator's Dreadplate Legguards
R,B: 6 str
Feet
Death Inured Sabatons
R,B: 6 hit
So, with rare gems, the max str we can get is
10 * 16 = 160 Str (A red in each socket, ignore the socket bonus)
With JC gems, the max Str we can get is
7 * 16 = 112 (Red gem in every socket that doesn't give a str bonus, and in the red on the legs)
3 * 27 = 81 (JC in the Head:B, Waist:B, and Legs:B)
6 + 6 + 8 = 20 (Socket bonuses)
213, a 53 str increase. The bonus is intended to be 32 (Without the socket bonuses it'd be 33, a perfectly viable number)
Stormjewels grant 20 str. Assuming that's right for epic gems, max without JC:
10 * 20 = 200 Str
With JC
7 * 20 = 140
3 * 27 = 81
6 + 6 + 8 = 20
241, an increase of 41, still over 25% more than other classes get.
But wait, I totally gave in on the idea of meta sockets. Assuming that we MUST activate a crit+Critdamage meta, that means we have to have 2 blues in the non-JC setup. Minimizing the impact puts a purple in the head and in the legs. The rare-gem setup drops from 160 str to 158, making JC a 55 str increase at rare-gem levels, and the epic-gem setup drops from 200 to 194, making JC a 47 str increase at epic-gem levels, or almost 50% more than the 32 attainable by other professions.
Once again, this is only really meaningful if you're stacking one stat to the extreme, but when you are the benefit from JC is significantly higher than that of any other profession. It will get better with epic gems but it still won't be balanced.
--
The results of posting this over there are a study in why I stopped reading the WoW Forums. A long time ago, I played a warlock. There were some things we'd proven, and for a while any time someone said, for example, "Use Curse of Weakness, Curse of Recklessness is too dangerous" I would post math to the contrary. After a while, I got tired of reproducing the math constantly, and just said, "X is wrong, Y is right." By the time I started doing that, I had so much of a following that it didn't matter WHAT I said, people would follow me, and even if I was wrong I had a horde of people saying "Listen to Psy, for he is right, because he was right before."
That sort of thinking, along the lines of, "I'm not going to back up my position with anything other than a gut feeling and some anger," along with the community's acceptance of it, really destroys the forums' usefulness.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Professions, Continued
This is the 2nd in a 2-part series. The first part is here: Professions
Please read that first.
I actually didn't know how Mixology worked until researching professions. Now that I've looked into it, I feel that alchemy is the most flexible profession since its benefit changes every time you pop a new elixir. Tired of getting a +37 spell power bonus? Pop a mageblood flask and your profession is now granting you additional Mp5. The issue Alchemy faces is that aside from four specific stats granted by flasks, you must pick one offensivee and one defensive stat in which to gain a bonus. Also, if you're not doing farm content and your greatest benefit comes from elixirs rather than flasks, you'll go broke extremely fast popping two elixirs every boss attempt.
Scaling
Most professions do not scale. Their buff is static, from now until the next expansion. Note that Blizz never added new ring enchants or gave us a different set of flasks; We were basically using the same things at the end of Sunwell that we used learning Kara and Gruul.
The two exceptions to this rule are BS and JC. Blacksmithing grants a bonus proportional to available gems. When epic gems are released, the bonus granted by BS will grow. Right now, BS has relatively equal power compared with other professions, but its flexibility is arguably tied with Mixology. With the release of epic gems, BS will be significantly more powerful than any other profession, and still arguably the most flexible.
JC scales inversely with gem level. When epic gems are released, the benefit per JC gem will drop. However, JC still has the bonus of being able to get you socket bonuses and meta activation for free. With epic gems, JC will most likely grant you equal base power with the other professions, but will be slightly stronger than average because it allows you to stack one stat very high while still activating metas and getting set bonuses.
So, now we have a scale of professions. There are five rough tiers
Jewelcrafting
~~Blacksmithing and Alchemy
Leatherworking, Enchanting, and Inscription
Tailoring
Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism
So, I have two questions and two suggestions
First, my questions--
Is Blizzard happy with the balance of gathering professions being significantly weaker than other professions?
I could see this going either way. Personally, I feel that the external use of a profession should not affect its raid viability but my roommate feels that since gathering professions tend to be easier to level and more rewarding, they should be less powerful in terms of buffs. I will leave discussion of HOW they can be made more flexible for another day.
Which profession is closest to "balanced" in your eyes? Do we want to buff everything up to the level of Jewelcrafting, or do we want to nerf JC down to Alchemy level and buff the rest up to there?
Personally, I feel like BS/Alchemy are the "best" professions balance-wise, as they give you huge flexibility without going overboard in terms of power. It'd be nice to see everything below those two become more flexible, and JC drop down to their level. However, it's entirely possible that JC is the baseline that we should be aiming for, in which case we should crack down and figure out how to buff the other professions to provide equal buffs elegantly. For my suggestions, I assume current BS/Alch are the baseline.
On to the suggestions--
Switch Dragon's Eye gems to standard colors instead of prismatics
If JC gems followed the color of base gems, then we would not have the issue of stat-stacking in JC that we get currently, since JC gems could never give a larger-than-intended bonus. They would also provide no benefit in terms of meta activation, which would also help decrease stat stacking along with the overall power of JC. JC gems may need slightly more stats to combat the advent of epic gems, but if this change does not go through, JC will still provide more stat benefit than any profession in addition to free meta activation (And thus huge flexibility)
Change the BS sockets to be colored, one yellow and one blue, and affect the socket bonus on the piece of gear they are added to.
This would help decrease stat stacking, since you couldn't place, say, a full stamina gem in both and still get the full effect of your profession. Additionally, it pushes you toward using split-color gems, which helps prevent stat stacking, and with a blue and a yellow socket it gives you viable options without forcing reds everywhere (People might do it anyway, but at a cost.) This gives you the same sort of split that Alchemy does with elixirs where you must choose one offensive and one defensive benefit, preventing you from stacking any one stat really high, except flask buffs.
Make the BS sockets "Tiny" sockets that can only handle rare-level gems
This will prevent BS from scaling while no other profession scales along with it. It wouldn't be too hard to come up with some sort of meta explanation ("The sockets BS can add to your gloves are very tiny. Epic gems simply don't fit") and the transition to epic gems won't cause problems.
With the changes I've presented, all non-gathering professions except Tailoring and Engineering would be on very even footing. Some would be more flexible, some would allow slightly more of one stat or another, but the differences would be minor enough that no profession would be "The Raider Profession."
I haven't studied Tailoring in depth, nor have I taken a significant look into Engineering. I feel that both are weak right now. I know engineering is getting a significant buff. If this thread turns out well, I'll see if I can make comparisons between the effective DPS improvement of Eng and Tailoring vs the other professions, since simple stat comparisons won't work. There are two overall schools of thought regarding these two professions. The first is that they're unique and we should balance them taking uniqueness into consideration. The second is that different is inherently inequal and they should be homogenized into the standard +Stat role in some manner. I'm a bigger fan of uniqueness, but it does make them extremely hard to balance
--I will be crossposting this to the WoW forums to get some feedback on my questions and suggestions, hence some of the wording. Putting it here as a reference to get some feedback from friends first.
Please read that first.
I actually didn't know how Mixology worked until researching professions. Now that I've looked into it, I feel that alchemy is the most flexible profession since its benefit changes every time you pop a new elixir. Tired of getting a +37 spell power bonus? Pop a mageblood flask and your profession is now granting you additional Mp5. The issue Alchemy faces is that aside from four specific stats granted by flasks, you must pick one offensivee and one defensive stat in which to gain a bonus. Also, if you're not doing farm content and your greatest benefit comes from elixirs rather than flasks, you'll go broke extremely fast popping two elixirs every boss attempt.
Scaling
Most professions do not scale. Their buff is static, from now until the next expansion. Note that Blizz never added new ring enchants or gave us a different set of flasks; We were basically using the same things at the end of Sunwell that we used learning Kara and Gruul.
The two exceptions to this rule are BS and JC. Blacksmithing grants a bonus proportional to available gems. When epic gems are released, the bonus granted by BS will grow. Right now, BS has relatively equal power compared with other professions, but its flexibility is arguably tied with Mixology. With the release of epic gems, BS will be significantly more powerful than any other profession, and still arguably the most flexible.
JC scales inversely with gem level. When epic gems are released, the benefit per JC gem will drop. However, JC still has the bonus of being able to get you socket bonuses and meta activation for free. With epic gems, JC will most likely grant you equal base power with the other professions, but will be slightly stronger than average because it allows you to stack one stat very high while still activating metas and getting set bonuses.
So, now we have a scale of professions. There are five rough tiers
Jewelcrafting
~~Blacksmithing and Alchemy
Leatherworking, Enchanting, and Inscription
Tailoring
Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism
So, I have two questions and two suggestions
First, my questions--
Is Blizzard happy with the balance of gathering professions being significantly weaker than other professions?
I could see this going either way. Personally, I feel that the external use of a profession should not affect its raid viability but my roommate feels that since gathering professions tend to be easier to level and more rewarding, they should be less powerful in terms of buffs. I will leave discussion of HOW they can be made more flexible for another day.
Which profession is closest to "balanced" in your eyes? Do we want to buff everything up to the level of Jewelcrafting, or do we want to nerf JC down to Alchemy level and buff the rest up to there?
Personally, I feel like BS/Alchemy are the "best" professions balance-wise, as they give you huge flexibility without going overboard in terms of power. It'd be nice to see everything below those two become more flexible, and JC drop down to their level. However, it's entirely possible that JC is the baseline that we should be aiming for, in which case we should crack down and figure out how to buff the other professions to provide equal buffs elegantly. For my suggestions, I assume current BS/Alch are the baseline.
On to the suggestions--
Switch Dragon's Eye gems to standard colors instead of prismatics
If JC gems followed the color of base gems, then we would not have the issue of stat-stacking in JC that we get currently, since JC gems could never give a larger-than-intended bonus. They would also provide no benefit in terms of meta activation, which would also help decrease stat stacking along with the overall power of JC. JC gems may need slightly more stats to combat the advent of epic gems, but if this change does not go through, JC will still provide more stat benefit than any profession in addition to free meta activation (And thus huge flexibility)
This would help decrease stat stacking, since you couldn't place, say, a full stamina gem in both and still get the full effect of your profession. Additionally, it pushes you toward using split-color gems, which helps prevent stat stacking, and with a blue and a yellow socket it gives you viable options without forcing reds everywhere (People might do it anyway, but at a cost.) This gives you the same sort of split that Alchemy does with elixirs where you must choose one offensive and one defensive benefit, preventing you from stacking any one stat really high, except flask buffs.
Make the BS sockets "Tiny" sockets that can only handle rare-level gems
This will prevent BS from scaling while no other profession scales along with it. It wouldn't be too hard to come up with some sort of meta explanation ("The sockets BS can add to your gloves are very tiny. Epic gems simply don't fit") and the transition to epic gems won't cause problems.
With the changes I've presented, all non-gathering professions except Tailoring and Engineering would be on very even footing. Some would be more flexible, some would allow slightly more of one stat or another, but the differences would be minor enough that no profession would be "The Raider Profession."
I haven't studied Tailoring in depth, nor have I taken a significant look into Engineering. I feel that both are weak right now. I know engineering is getting a significant buff. If this thread turns out well, I'll see if I can make comparisons between the effective DPS improvement of Eng and Tailoring vs the other professions, since simple stat comparisons won't work. There are two overall schools of thought regarding these two professions. The first is that they're unique and we should balance them taking uniqueness into consideration. The second is that different is inherently inequal and they should be homogenized into the standard +Stat role in some manner. I'm a bigger fan of uniqueness, but it does make them extremely hard to balance
--I will be crossposting this to the WoW forums to get some feedback on my questions and suggestions, hence some of the wording. Putting it here as a reference to get some feedback from friends first.
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