05-03-2006, 06:03 AM
Quark,May 2 2006, 06:14 AM Wrote:Blizzard stopped looking at this from a game-balance perspective, and actually started listening to all the stupid complaints. Honestly, if raids have problems with Balance/Feral, that's their issue. Game balance shouldn't be affected because people are too narrowminded.
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I disagree. I think this was precisely because Blizzard started thinking about it from a game-balance perspective. Innervate was simply far too powerful not to give it to everybody.
Think about it. If I'm designing an encounter, what do I assume? Do I assume no innervates? Then most times, if the druids are specced innervate, they'll utterly trivialize the encounter. Do I assume they all have innervate, then? Well, then anything but 31 Resto is useless.
Blizzard clearly disapproves of spec-requirement. They don't want success to be linked to spec, and for the most part they've avoided it well. But Innervate is so raid-changing, so absolutely dynamically powerful, that you have to factor it in. When designing an encounter you have to know how much healing a raid can realistically put out, and Innervate is like having another healer's worth of endurance along; it's a huge swing.
The Blizzard designers are okay with mandating class requirements for certain bosses. They are, from observation, not okay with game design forcing spec. That is what this change avoids. Innervate is certainly not required for any encounter currently in the game. But Gurgthock from Elitist Jerks offered an opinion which I agree with, that Naxxramas probably features an extremely heavy mana-intensive fight (none of the current fights qualify as mana intensive, by the by) that demanded that a decision be made about Innervate now. This was it.