One Shotting Is Here!

[MongoJerry]

On occation, I've lamented that offence has been growing too fast compared to defence in WoW and that two and eventually one shot deaths are just around the corner. Well, my guildmate Vendetta just posted this screenshot on the Blizzard mage forums:



The original post is here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...ge&T=673105&P=1

For the record, that 6070 damage pyroblast before any damage from the pyroblast dot was taken was helped along by this combination:

Arcane Power + Talisman of Ephemeral Power + ZHC + Arcane Elixer + Brilliant Wizard Oil + Flask of Sup power + Zerking

Yes, it's true that Vendetta has excellent equipment and is using the berserker buff. On the other hand, this is also something that due to Pressence of Mind, he can do instant cast and on the run.

This is not a post asking to "nerf mages." Rather, it's to point out just how far along offence has outstripped defence in this game. Just a couple days ago, in a more normal situation I was in an epic'd out game where this mage sheeped me in WSG as I was going up the ramp into the enemy base. OK, no problem, I thought. My usual response is to wait out the first sheep if possible (usually mages expect a trinket and are ready to resheep) and save my PvP trinket for the second sheep on the theory that "I can take a hit" with my high health and ability to quickly shield and renew myself. The mage proceeded to Arcane Power+trinket Pyroblast, improved counterspell (silencing me for 4 seconds), Pressence of Mind fireballed me, and finished me off (I'm at 300 health at this point) with a Cone of Cold. This mage killed an epic'd out priest in less than six seconds with no repercussions for her. (Note: If I had trinketed out of the first sheep, she would've just sheeped me again and done the same thing).

It's easy to say, "Yeah, but it's only those crazy people with all their BWL gear who can do that," but it's getting easier and easier for more casual players to get this kind of equipment, and the newer offence-oriented equipment that will be dropping in AQ is only going to make this situation worse.

It is my basic contention that a tier 2 epiced out player should be able to last as long against another tier 2 epiced out player as they did when they were both wearing blues. Obviously, this issue is of utmost importance to priests. In earlier levels, battles would last 20 or more seconds, and a priest's power would derive from the fact that we could heal ourselves during a fight. However, as people get epic'd out, battles are now lasting less than six seconds, making it nearly impossible for priests to heal themselves, especially if the priest spends most of that six seconds stunned, silenced, or pummeled.

It seems like there are three possibilities:

1. Items need more defensive stats on them like stamina, armor, +defence, and resistances. In the item generation budgets, these defensive statistics need to be cheaper so that more of them can be put on items without sacrificing in offence or +healing too much. PvE mobs would have to have their damage adjusted do compensate, of course.

2. Taking a cue from Diablo II, there could be an across the board nerf in damage in PvP. Say, for example, all damage gets reduced by 50% in PvP.

3. Or, there could be a more smooth nerf to damage in PvP. That is, in PvP, there could be diminishing returns on +damage, attack power, and critial strike %. So, a spell cast without the benefit of +damage gear would still do the same amount of damage. However, if you load up on +damage gear, you'll get a diminishing returns effect for your efforts. Having extra +damage would always help, but in PvP, having +600 damage on your gear might only equate to having, say, +400 damage when the damage calculations are made. A similar diminishing returns formula could also be used to reduce the effective attack power and critical strike percentage of physical damage classes in PvP combat.

[Watto44]

Hmm, I'm not sure that I like your fixes for this problem. (And yes, you can add me to the growing list of people who have been one shotted by a mage, although my pyroblast was a far more moderate 4500...nerf perception. :P )

Would the diminishing returns on +damage and +crit be wedded with a similar diminishing returns on +healing? If not, I can envisage a purepwnage situation where I can't out damage your renew. :shuriken:

Solution two wouldn't really solve the problem, it would just extend the argument. Again, the healing classes would benefit far more from this than anyone else, unless healing was similarly nerfed. As is stands now, my damage is insufficiant to beat a paladin and I rely on crits to defeat holy/disc priests.

The first solution seems the best. However, given the way resistances work, it would hurt the caster classes far more than the melee classes. Fire mages are already hurt by the amount of fire resistances available in MC, and if FR was mage more redily available that situation would be exacerbated.

Any across-the-board increase to resistances would need, in my opinion, to be accompanied by a rethinking of the way resistances work. If Blizzard could rework the somewhat all-or-nothing nature of resistances - perhaps placing them in-line with smother scaling of armor - then I could see a broad increase in resistances working.

While I agree that the scaling of offence and defense needs to be addressed, some care is required.

[Zarathustra]

I honestly don't see a problem with this. One must use both trinket slots and spend a ton on reagents, as well as use a spell that has a cooldown, to get that kind of damage.

People complain that mages aren't the damage-dealers the players thought they'd be. Then once they are, people say it's too much.

[MongoJerry]

I honestly don't see a problem with this.  One must use both trinket slots and spend a ton on reagents, as well as use a spell that has a cooldown, to get that kind of damage.

The cooldowns are short. It can be repeated every two minutes when the trinkets are back, and you can do it more than once before the trinkets wear off. Also, note that in my original post, I gave a more realistic example where the person doesn't have all the reagents. Also note that Vendetta's pyroblast would have done 10k damage with the dot, if the person had lived long enough for the damage to tick.

And also note that while Vendetta was showing off by throwing everything he had into it, the fact is that you can get away with a lot less and still kill someone in under five seconds. This is making PvP in WoW a joke, and for healer classes, this destroys their primary weapon -- their ability to heal. You can't heal if you or your target dies before you are able to cast your heal.

People complain that mages aren't the damage-dealers the players thought they'd be.  Then once they are, people say it's too much.

Once again, please read my original post where I said that this was not a call to nerf mages. It is instead used as an example of how offence in general has increased over defence. This is true whether it's a rogue two or three shoting a spellcaster or a mage powering up and blowing a warrior away. The main problem here is both the enormous burst damage allowed combined with the fact that offensive stats and power has increased rapidly over defensive stats and power. Fights that used to take 20-30 seconds to complete are now over in 5-10 seconds. It's making PvP a joke. If you think that this is only a problem for those rare players who have BWL epic'd out gear, keep in mind that such gear will become more and more common as time progresses and dungeon nerfs happen. You'll see that it's a real problem, and it's something that should be thought about and addressed by Blizzard right now.

[Concillian]

I remember the days where if I met a mage with my priest I could just stand in one spot and heal myself until he was out of mana, then kill him. They had to get lucky with crits and/or stun procs to win.

Oh how the times have changed.

[Quark]

I honestly don't see a problem with this.  One must use both trinket slots and spend a ton on reagents, as well as use a spell that has a cooldown, to get that kind of damage.

People complain that mages aren't the damage-dealers the players thought they'd be.  Then once they are, people say it's too much.
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Mages right now are at two broad, broad spectrums.

Those that have Arcane Power, ZHC, ToHP can pretty much gaurantee a kill when their cooldowns are ready. Gauranteeing a kill isn't exactly balanced. Physical damage is jumping faster than mitigation, and this is a problem too. But Blizzard's solution seemed to be to give casters either still too little damage (well, too little compared to physical damage) or, when the cooldowns are ready, "IWIN" buttons.

Blizzard did this at the same time they were getting rid of things like negative resists to help smooth out damage. The item designers apparantly didn't talk to the class designers at all.

Nerf Mages? No, stop killing the game through itemization.

[oldmandennis]

Solution two wouldn't really solve the problem, it would just extend the argument. Again, the healing classes would benefit far more from this than anyone else, unless healing was similarly nerfed. As is stands now, my damage is insufficiant to beat a paladin and I rely on crits to defeat holy/disc priests.
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Hmm I don't know if your talking about your shaman or your druid.

If it's the druid, well you are sortof screwed for a while. Most of the good offensive gear either requires rank 10 or AQ20/40. You can still be effective in PvP, killing just isn't your thing.

If its the shaman, you just need to know how to handle it, though Paladins will still take a long time. For both of them, purge a couple of times to begin with, and everytime you see them buff themselves. You can't purge the godshield, but you can purge the melee one. Earthbind works great versus pallys, they can't clense it, and it means any time you like you can step away and heal. Against priests, its close weather you should use that or tremor. Grounding totem is also your friend, and searing is annoying and stutters casts. For both, whenever you see the holy casting animation, earthshock immeadiatly. Get MobHealth or some such addon, and wait for their life to slip below 1100 or so, then NS-CL-FS.

[Icebird]

Doesn't Pyroblast have a 1 minute cooldown? It seems like that in your example MJ at least one of the spells was a normal Fireball.

Blizzard have generally worked to reduce spikes in damage. Case in point: the nerf to Curse of Shadows and Curse of Elements. It used to give a variable bonus in damage of anywhere from 0 - 100% (25% was the most common, with the overall damage increase averaging about 20%). This allowed warlocks to generate some outrageous crits on rare occasions.

There was a long argument by fire mages on the official forum that the amount of fire resist gear players were wearing was making them ineffective. As a warlock I'm simply thrilled that Shadow and Fire resist are the easiest resistances in the game to boost.

Chris

[Watto44]

If it's the druid, well you are sortof screwed for a while.  Most of the good offensive gear either requires rank 10 or AQ20/40.  You can still be effective in PvP, killing just isn't your thing.
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Sorry, I should have clarified.

I was talking about my druid. :)

With my current setup - decent blue hybrid gear - similarly geared paladin's are really an unending fight and holy priests take forever (unless I get lucky). If damage got a straight, across the board 50% reduction, both fights would, in reality, never end as neither party would be able to outdamage the other's mana regen.

PS. Just a FYI, it's pretty easy to crack 800 AP and 20% crit in catform without rank 10 or AQ20. (Which equates to about 600ish AP in bearform.) :) You'll hurt your mana a bit (although you can still have over 4k mana if you're specced for Heart of the Wild), but you can do it quite easily. :)

[Bob the Beholder]

Guy in my guild one-shotted a gnome warrior on our server with a 6354 frostbolt in similar conditions. (Dunno about the flask of supreme power. I know this was right after our first rag kill, and that he used one for that fight, but I don't know if it was still active afterwards).

Spell damage over everything.

[Artega]

I see no problems with this; magic damage is simply starting to catch up with physical damage, only it's requiring expensive reagents and items.

Mortal Strike Warriors can inflict several thousand damage in less than six seconds (which is likely faster than your Mage buddy can do, on average) against a Cloth or Leather target, and that's not counting an Execute to finish.

Fury Warriors can inflict even more damage over a slightly longer timeframe, and have the best passives Warriors can get, to boot.

Rogues can do quite a bit of damage very quickly (though I'm sure Quark would argue, this coming from an ignorant Warrior :) ), and they can do it from invisibility.

While you're right in that defensive boosts need to take place on the items (I'm a Protection Warrior; my damage remains relatively static, while my defensive capabilities increase a great deal more slowly than others' offensive capabilities), I see nothing wrong with casters being capable of dealing the same damage as the melee classes.

[Quark]

Rogues can do quite a bit of damage very quickly (though I'm sure Quark would argue, this coming from an ignorant Warrior :) ), and they can do it from invisibility.
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I would argue the invisibility point, not the damage point :P

My concerns are in no way about Rogue damage. In PvP, it's about how easy it is to counter stealth (and that aggravating Feign Death + Freezing Trap macro), besides the shared concerns of many people -> everyone, once targetted, dies too quickly. It's the fact that I can be running right behind someone, close enough that my melee attacks hit and that my specials light up like I'm in range, but then I click one and it says "Out of Range." It's watching mage bombs in AV and carefully skirting the edges, trying to just stay in stealth long enough to find someone to kill before I die. Ironically, the Horde on our server have almost completely forgotten how to mage bomb, so I haven't thought much about that lately.

In PvE, it's about having some use. Blizzard is repeating the line that they don't want to have any true damage king class. Are Rogues top sustained right now? Yeah, but is the difference enough to make up for the fact that we've got utility in one spot of the entire raiding game? Not in my eyes. Especially not when we're in constant fear of more Rogue nerfs.

Of course, Caydiem's counter to Rogue vs Warrior damage comparisons was "you're comparing unequally geared characters". It's too bad that it's Blizzard's fault the gear is unequal -> there is no mainhand dagger upgrade in BWL.

But all that's a thread derail. The fact is, Blizzard is touting the line of reducing burst damage while at the same time they're actually increasing it. AQ40 will only make the overall situation bigger -> since none of the set gear has +resists, they've got mostly pure damage bonuses on them. Besides the new weapon upgrades.

[MongoJerry]

I see no problems with this; magic damage is simply starting to catch up with physical damage, only it's requiring expensive reagents and items.

Mortal Strike Warriors can inflict several thousand damage in less than six seconds (which is likely faster than your Mage buddy can do, on average) against a Cloth or Leather target, and that's not counting an Execute to finish.

Fury Warriors can inflict even more damage over a slightly longer timeframe, and have the best passives Warriors can get, to boot.

Rogues can do quite a bit of damage very quickly (though I'm sure Quark would argue, this coming from an ignorant Warrior :) ), and they can do it from invisibility.

While you're right in that defensive boosts need to take place on the items (I'm a Protection Warrior; my damage remains relatively static, while my defensive capabilities increase a great deal more slowly than others' offensive capabilities), I see nothing wrong with casters being capable of dealing the same damage as the melee classes.

As I said in my post above, this is not a request to nerf mages. It is a comment that *all* offense has been growing far faster than defense and that this is a major problem. This is a major problem whether is a rogue two shotting a cloth wearer or a mage powering up and one-shotting warriors.

At first, you might think, "What's the big deal? Physical damage dealers get their wtfpwnbbq skills and items and now casters are getting their wtfpwnbbq skills and items. So, what's the problem?" Well, the thing is that this situation is in a effect a major nerf to those classes (like say priests) whose power derives from their ability to heal themselves and others. If fights devolve into 1-3 shot fests, there little or no time to heal oneself or one's target. Priests don't have any IWIN buttons to push. We depend on being able to dish out damage over time while keeping ourselves alive with heals. If fights are just a few seconds long, especially when the said priest spends most of it stunned or silenced, it's a massive nerf to the whole class. Similar statements can be said of druids, paladins, and shamans, although at least they have their own ways to mitigate damage to themselves. It's still a massive nerf to their abilities, though, since again part of their power comes from their ability to heal. If fights get too fast, there's little chance to heal someone, and a major part of thier power gets removed.

[Rinnhart]

Similar statements can be said of druids, paladins, and shamans, although at least they have their own ways to mitigate damage to themselves.
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That greener grass on the otherside of the fence?

It's astroturf.

[MongoJerry]

That greener grass on the otherside of the fence?

It's astroturf.

In this case, I believe it.

[The Gnu]

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=18638

Where do I get the equivalent for physical damage? :lol:

[Hedon]

Thats why I don't do PvP with my holy priestess anymore.


At first there were only rogues who could kill me this way. Well, I thought, thats what rogues are good for: catching people off guard and ripping cloth wearers to shreds.
Then came the epic warriors, who, adding insult to injury, didn't even need to catch me by surprise like rogues have to. Just charge in and mortalstrike.
Then came hunters, who could suddenly deal obscene damage from the other side of the field.

Well. at least mages and warlocks couldn't stand a chance against a priest, could they? Isn't healing so much more mana efficient than damage dealing? All I need to do is to heal out the damage and wait for them to go OOM. But with the current amount of burst damage dealt by casters, this is a purely academic.

Everytime I join a BG channel on our guilds vent I hear mages bragging their crits and how they one or two shotted some poor bastard who happend to cross their way.


Perhaps someday when I have accquired enough spelldamge (and not only +healing) gear I will respecc shadow and oneshot people with mindblasts. Until then I level my rogue alt (lvl 49 now) to have some fun in PvP.

[Xanthix]

I might disagree with the sentiment that it's getting "easy" to boost your offense towards one-shotting people. I mean, a lot of you guys have MC or BWL purples and I think a lot of that stuff is still out of range of "casual" players, AQ or no. So to some extent I agree with the idea that people who put the time and effort into high-level raiding should get high-level rewards.

But I do agree with the assessment that it seems offense is growing faster than defense. But I would guess that this is just people valuing +offense gear over +defense gear, and that Blizzard is catering to that. I mean, assuming each new dungeon has great tanking gear and great damage gear, which are people going to wear to the battlegrounds?

[Baajikiil]

I mean, assuming each new dungeon has great tanking gear and great damage gear, which are people going to wear to the battlegrounds?

The point that Mongo is making is that a character equipped with the best damage gear can still kill a character who is equipped with the best tanking gear in seconds.

The high end tanking gear will not add enough survivablity to compensate for the high end offense gear that is available.

BTW, if high end survival gear *did* allow a character to survive long enough in PvP to allow be useful, guess what, people might use it sometimes. It would at least create a choice between survival and offense. Right now most classes are better off with simply offense, and those classes that must rely on outlasting their opponents such as holy priests simply get nailed in end-game equipment setups.

[Darian]

I might disagree with the sentiment that it's getting "easy" to boost your offense towards one-shotting people. I mean, a lot of you guys have MC or BWL purples and I think a lot of that stuff is still out of range of "casual" players, AQ or no.
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I am fully purple on armor -- 5 might, 1 wrath, and 2 MC purples which > might -- and am at the complete mercy of a trinket mage who's not in cooldown. I have even tried to PvP in my "I can tank Rags" FR gear, and I'm still a sitting duck.

In other words... trinket mages >>>> Ragnaros offensively. That's an issue.