patch 2.0.10 notes on the PTR

[nobbie]

Sigh, so true, Nobbie

I've put my level 70 Bear Druid on hold for now and will play around with other characters. Too disheartened to gear up any further

It's not that bears will suddenly become unable to tank. It's that it will be pointless to have the Druid do tanking when you have a Warrior available and there's always spare Warriors around ...

Bait and switch?

--> Clicky!

What Blizzard did is a little more complicated than what you might think.

I should preface this post by stating that I have absolutely no insider information of any kind about their corporate workings...only an eye for the obvious.

When Vivendi bought Blizzard, much of Blizzard's developing talent left. Some of these were Diablo and Starcraft developers. They went to various other projects, including Hellgate: London and Arenanet. It's unclear whether they were fired, or merely quit.

Now let's look at Blizzard's remaining talent pool. To call this leftover talent pool "shallow as a kiddie wader" wouldn't be an understatement. I'll focus on their most notorious developers: Rob Pardo ("Enoyis"), Jeff Kaplan ("Tigole Bitties"), and Alex Afrasiabi ("Furor Planedefiler"). These guys were hardcore Everquest guild leaders, the sort of people who thought 24 hour raids should be the next olympic sport. Between them is zero prior MMORPG design experience.

Furor and Tigole hated hybrid classes. Their anti-hybrid stance was notorious in Everquest. Furor was an obnoxious baby who organized server crash protests because Paladins out-tanked him in the EQ Planes of Power expansion. He was a loudmouthed brat who didn't care a lick about taking all the fun out of the game for other people.

Tigole was his best friend.

With several of the original WoW developers gone, these two geniuses were suddenly in positions of influence, in a game with three hybrid classes. Two guys who crashed servers because, for whatever petty and childish reason, they saw red whenever someone with a mana bar out-tanked Furor's pwecious warrior.

Talk about a perfect storm.

Then the class nerfs began.

Paladins suffered from nerf after nerf, beginning with a complete gutting of the class one week before the end of open beta. This culminated in a class review wherein the class was outright lied to by CMs, their forum trolls were praised, and almost none of their major concerns were addressed. They became a pure support class, almost identical to the Everquest Cleric. Big surprise, nobody wants to play them, either. Seen how many endgame WoW Paladins remain?

Shamans fell behind as other classes saw buffs. They were no longer PVP gods, and their PVE abilities were already behind. When their class review came around, they received very little feedback from CMs, their concerns were ignored, and they basically turned into this mishmash of burst damage and poor support, which no one really wanted.

Druids were treated better. Then again, they have several tame CMs. As a result, they enjoyed a great class review. Too bad it didn't last: Like the other hybrids, itemization and talents still pigeonhole them into pure support roles.

Now combine this with World of Warcraft's total, 100% raiding endgame focus (I mentioned they were EQ raid guild leaders?), and you have a situation where one-third of character classes are being forced to do something they didn't sign up for, from the moment they hit level 60 until they either reroll or move on.

... and last, but not least: Clicky!