Offense vs Defense

[Bolty]

People hear me quote the whole "offense is outpacing defense" thing and wonder what the hell I'm talking about. It's something you will have noticed in WoW if you played a "defensive" (aka healer) class over the past 2 years.

A Recent Post on the WoW Priest forums is one of those gold nuggets in a sea of trash, as the WoW boards tend to be. It expounds in more detail what is meant by "offense is outpacing defense" in World of Warcraft. Since such posts will eventually disappear off the forums, I'd like to capture Xusilak's article here. He writes in relation to spell power only, but there are equivalents with ranged and melee classes as well and the way their gear scales them ever upwards in damage while healer gear is far more linear in growth. This, in effect, makes characters like my healing Priest less and less useful as time goes on, and nobody likes being marginalized.

A phenomenon I frequently notice on these forums (and in-game) is that many people simply do not understand the concept of proportional scaling. They see +damage on one item, +healing on another, and note that the +healing is almost twice as high, then think, "Wow, healing scales really well." This reasoning is because they only understand rates of power. They believe that because Ability A gains X DPS per +damage, and Ability B gains X HPS per +healing, everything is fine, because after all, healers are getting better returns per item level point, right?

Honestly, Blizzard perpetuates this line of reasoning with the way they have built their spell progression system: their system is completely based off addition of rates. For the most part, adding X spell power will increase all spells by Y power per second (PPS). It does not, in any way, take into account the fact that Spell A might have a lower base PPS than Spell B. What happens if you then proceed to take two hypothetical spells, Spell A of 10 PPS and Spell B of 100 PPS, then using Blizzard's system of rate addition, add 10 PPS to both spells? Spell A becomes 20 PPS, and Spell B becomes 110 PPS. This is all fine, because both gained the same rate, right? Wrong.

Let's discuss proportions for a moment. Take two classes, Healer and Nuker. Healer is designed to be able to heal about three times as much damage per second as Nuker can deal. This is so that Healer can have a significant effect as a support class in group PvP, enabling group strategies, and also giving Healer a bit of a bonus for playing a support class instead of a damage class. However, this is not about class design philosophies; it's about proportions. So, take Healer and Nuker. At base level, Healer is healing three times as much per second as Nuker is dealing damage. This ratio is decided to be the ideal point for class balance. Still, note what has happened here: I've established a ratio of power between two classes' abilities. This is also known as proportion. Nuker's power is 0.333x Healer's power. This is important, because if this value ever changes, then class balance has changed.

Now, currently, Nuker has absolutely no way to defeat Healer in one-on-one combat. So, let's give him some precisely tuned abillities that, if used correctly, will allow Nuker to defeat Healer directly about 50% of the time. Note that these abilities are tuned for this 0.333x proportion of power. If this proportion increases, then these abilities will be too powerful. Consider that for a moment.

Okay, now that we've set up our two classes and they can frolic in joy while PvPing in a balanced setting, let's add some gear into the equation. We need gear that improves their power output, right? So let's use Blizzard's system of rate addition, since it's already there. Let's say that, right now, Healer has 300 PPS and Nuker has 100 PPS. Let's say that our new gear stat, Spell Power, increases PPS by 1 per point. Okay, we've got some gear. Now let's outfit Healer and Nuker in some nice high end gear of 200 Spell Power. Healer now has 500 PPS and Nuker has 300 PPS. Looks good. Except, wait a minute, Nuker's proportion of power to Healer is now 0.6x! Nuker will now win every single encounter with Healer, because his abilities that were tuned to confront Healer when his power was 0.333x are now grossly overpowered! Not only this, but our entire design philosophy for the two classes is broken. Nuker can now practically ignore the presence of Healer in group PvP. Using the basic Calculus concept of a limit, we find that as Spell Power approaches infinity, the ratio between Nuker and Healer approaches 1:1. If you have trouble understanding this, then just keep imagining the ratio between their power at higher and higher levels of gear; at 500, at 1000, and so on. As it keeps increasing, Nuker becomes closer and closer to being able to equal Healer's healing rate. Clearly, if the proportion ever became 0.9x or more, there would be serious balance errors.

Consider the previous paragraph carefully for a moment. It is crucial to understanding overall game balance. If relative power changes, then game balance has changed.

Now, let's go back to World of Warcraft. Nuker and Healer directly parallel Mage and Priest. The proportion of Healing:Damage is approximately 3:1 at the base level. This proportion changes as gear increases. For the same reason as before, this is a balance failure. Blizzard has applied many attempted fixes to their Spell Power system to try to correct the more egregious problems resulting from differing base rates among spells, but as demonstrated, this system is fundamentally flawed when dealing with abilities that have varying base rates. The only way to fix it is to give every ability its own, unique coefficient based off its power in relation to some baseline.

By far, the easiest way to construct a Spell Power progression system is to make it multiplicative. Multiplicative bonuses aren't even foreign to World of Warcraft; Critical Strike bonuses are multiplicative. A simple linear rating value, much like critical strike, that multiplied your power output would be perfect for preserving varying rates of power. This is known as proportional scaling. When people talk about scaling, what they really mean is proportional scaling. Scaling is the concept of taking an object and then multiplying it up to a different size. When someone is talking about different scales, you don't hear about additions or rates; you hear about things like "1:5200th scale." Scaling, in reality, always refers to proportions.

With that in mind, the next time Healer tells you "my heals scale terribly" and you laugh at him because you saw an item that had almost twice as much +healing as your +damage items, remember this post. He is talking about proportional scaling.

On page three of the thread, Niimue chimes in with a more "tldr" (too long, didn't read) version:

Very well thought out post, although somewhat lengthy.

A more consice way to state the OP's point is that the spells are designed initially at around a 3:1 heal:dmage ratio. Additional gear scales around 3:2 heal:damage, so that damage goes up much faster than healing.

Here is an example:
Priest GHeal 5 (no gear, untalented) heals for around 2080
Mage Fireball 12 (no gear, untalented) hits for around 680
This around a 3:1 ratio of healing to damage

Priest 8/8 Tier 3 (no enchants) adds +483 healing
Mage 8/8 Tier 3 (no enchants) adds +313 healing
This is around a 3:2 ratio of healing to damge

With just the Tier 3 gear, the mage now hits for a non-crit average of around 1000, and the priest heals for a non-crit average of 2500. What used to be a 3:1 heal:damage ratio is now a 2.5:1 ratio. It continues to get worse as gear and enchants are added until it levels off to the 1.5:1 ratio of the added gear, and not the original spells.

With equivalent gear, damage dealers outpace healers.

Xusilak's post isn't really a balance post, though. He's not so much complaining about balance between offense and defense; rather, he's pointing out how a scaling system makes more sense, is cleaner, and benefits all caster classes. Two more quotes explain this:

Yeah, Stamina certainly came to mind many times while writing that post, but that's a seperate issue entirely, and supposedly one that is being addressed in The Burning Crusade.

I've considered scaling systems like what you propose before, but realistically, just switching to a pure multiplication system is so clean and simple that I really don't understand why Blizzard went with this addition-based system at all. Back in the initial WoW testing phases, I noticed the +damage mechanic and immediately went, "Wow. That would be really broken for small, fast spells." Cue the numerous band-aids, such as cast time-based coefficients and level penalties. As time goes on, the system just gets more and more convoluted. I'd really like to hear a justification from Blizzard for why the choice was made for an addition-based system, when a multiplication-based one is so much cleaner. With the newly devised rating system they have, it wouldn't even have the problem of scaling with level; Spell Power rating could be less of a multiplier as you gain levels.

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 really agree more with Xusilak, but I'm wondering if any math wizards can find flaws with this system. There are some spells that Blizzard clearly doesn't want to scale 100%, such as Mind Flay, but I'm sure that can be handled even with the more simplified Spell Power system. Also, I'm not too big a fan of the concept of a single stat that boosts a Priest's damage AND healing at a similar rate that that it would a pure DPS class. This would make Priests overpowered. Cleoboltra's ability to heal at gargantuan rates cannot be coupled with the ability to nuke or you have some serious imba. Even still, there could be a healing spell power rating and a damage spell power rating, keeping the 3:1 ratio.

-Bolty