Offense vs Defense

[Xame]

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To put it simply, at base, a Mage deals damage at a certain percentage of the rate at which a Priest can heal. This percentage must stay constant at all gear levels, or class balance has changed. Right now, the percentage is increasing in the Mage's favor as both the Mage and the Priest gear up.

That isn't even really the point of my post, though. The purpose was to try to inform people about the exact nature of proportions vs additions of rates, and the mathematical consequences thereof. That's why it's so long. I'm simply tired of hearing things like "Heal scaling is fine, L2P noob priest, theres to much +healing already." Complete with incomprehensible English and other such gibberings.

I couldn't disagree more with Xusilak. This is looking at two unrelated classes and trying to make some rational discussion about how they should scale.

Let us first look at PvP. In PvP a mage trys to kill a healing target in <15-20 secs. That is because he must use cool downs to get that level of burst. If a mage fails to get a fast kill the 3x healing gear means that any healer will be back at full health. In any fight >15secs the healer's mana pool will outlast the mages and without the cooldowns the mage cann't kill a healer. Without the cool downs, priest could and have just wanded mages to death. Most people who don't play mages equate fast kill with overpowered. But mages with their very low health pools die equally fast to other classes. If we extend the scaling to level X, mages either get crazy nukes or priest's healing must become equal or less then mages nukes (ie. if a mage nukes and a priest heals, the mage should make some forward progress on the priest's starting health pool and shields) to produce a coin flip to see who wins.

In PvE, the comparison is also different. A mage needs to convert their mana pool into damage equal to the mobs health or in parties/raids last the fight (note: damage done by the mob is NOT a function of mage design since we don't get hit). Priests need to heal through the damage incoming compared to damage put down by the mob (raid or solo). Thus in mage design the health of the mob verses mage dmg+mana pool is important but in a priest it is a function of incoming damage and healing through it.

Thus mage and priest are an apples/oranges comparison. I would suspect that priest/warrior are balanced together and would make for a more interesting scaling discussion. Both priest/warrior have been scaling too wildly pre-2.0 patch and Blizzard needed to clamp down on both classes to build interesting instances. Warriors with endless rage and priests with never ending mana pools (because of down ranking and crazy +healing gear) makes for some pretty stupid fights (see the never ending group of Ony 5-10 man'ed videos).

If I had to beg Blizzard for one thing, it would be a collection of defensive skills/spells. The mage "spell steal" and the new warlock dot "unstable affliction" are nice starters (but also very offensive). But there should be more for melee and different spell schools. Currently, we only have our health bar and some classes have shields. Thus all we can talk about is dmg + stuns vs health bar + escapes as an offense vs defense discussion. Sadly I dream for more.