Quote:*Or maybe "internal testing" is a code phrase for something else. Let's try some out:
1. "Our [Losing Arena Record] has shown that PoM needs a cooldown, Druids need a DPS nerf, and Warriors need a Rage Buff,"
2. "Our [Sadistic Need to Hear the Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth by Healers] has shown that PoM needs a cooldown, Druids need a DPS nerf, and Warriors need a Rage Buff,"
3. "Our [6-Beer Lunch] has shown that PoM needs a cooldown, Druids need a DPS nerf, Warriors need a Rage Buff, and Buffalo Wings are AWESOME...wait don't put that last part in the patch notes,"
Games companies are odd as they combine office politics with the gamer's passion for his own little self-interested perspective on the game
I suspect that there are factions at Blizzard and that these decisions are heavily influenced by the internal office politics which is in turn influenced by employees' experiences as players, expressed passionately over their six beer lunches
With TBC there was clearly a decision to motivate and retain players of the four heal-capable classes by offering us extra raid roles. We wouldn't just be stuck in the healbot role. Wonderful stuff and we all got really excited. At this stage it doesn't actually adversely impact anyone while getting us healers all enthusiastic about WoW so you can understand this game design philosophy gathering momentum at this stage
When people started to raid not only did players and staff notice that most of the healbots are tanking or dpsing nowadays while the raids still require the same proportion of healers but they also noticed that given a level playing field some of them dramatically out-performed the pure classes with which they were competing. This hit tanks the hardest because one person usually does most of the Main Tanking and if it was a Druid the Warriors were (justifiably) wondering what the hell they were going to do from now on. I read a lot of the bleeding edge reports from Druids and usually they said something like I tanked because our two Prot Warriors were slow getting to 70 or some other valid reason (valid in the context of competitive tanking)
The problem is that both classes had been unrealistically hyped. Warriors have been assured since day one that they were the premier tanks in the game. Druids were assured that we would be valid tanks in TBC raids.
So in keeping with the promise made to Druids we were indeed valid raid tanks and where we put more effort in than the Warriors did, we got the job ahead of them
This patch breaks the promise to Druids in favour of keeping (or resuming) the promise to Warriors.
It also supports what will undoubtedly become a trend in the next few patches of gently ushering healers back into their healbot roles. They have to do this, if all the healers want to dps who is going to heal? There's no way that Warriors, Mages and Rogues in any significant number are going to re-roll healer. Not least because soon all the healer forums will be like the current state of the Druid forums with level 70 players asking each other What game are you going to play instead of WoW then?
I think WoW has really screwed up. Instead of a genuinely hybrid raid experience which would have many of us hybrid players tanking for 6 months, dpsing for 6 months then healing for a year many of us are re-rolliing dps or warriors since the perception now is that those characters are favoured over healers. That may or may not be a valid perception but it's certainly a widely-held one
Another creeping malaise is the problem Bolty has raised here of dps power out-stripping healing power in pvp. This problem seems to be worse at level 70 than it was at level 60 despite a stated intention to achieve the opposite through itemisation. I just speak for myself but whenever I've tried to heal in bgs I've really struggled to out-pace the damage. I think the itemisation solution is failing because there are both survivability and damage options and people almost always pick the latter to pvp with
So the future for healers is bleak as healing in pvp gets more and more marginalised, healing in raids means a commitment to only doing that and none of the fun alternative roles we've been promised and for many healers will start to become more pressured as guilds become more demanding because they need their healers to turn up regularly and play well and they have fewer of them. Anyone who has been the only Priest buffing a 40 man raid will know what I mean here - it really isn't pleasant to be under-staffed as a healer
Now WoW is trapped by its own commitments to other players to pursue these policies. They can't let paladins and druids main tank raids because the warriors find it grossly unfair. They can't let shadow priests and dps shammies be viable as dps in the long term or there will be thousands of frustrated mages and rogues who can't get raid spots
Ironically the system where healers felt that being able to raid as dps was something of a luxury special treat and only one guild in 5 had a shadow priest and one in 25 had a moonkin did kind of work
By upsetting the status quo they've brought into open conflict those healers who want to play a diversified character (not just a healbot) and the rest of the WoW population. They can't alienate 80% of their population by supporting the healers so they have to screw us over. This month its Bear tanks and Shadow Priests. Next month I predict Elemental Shammies will get hit
There isn't much they can do with regard to the general trends but there is something they can do in the management of it. The main thing they need to do is move towards little and often rather than dramatic redefinitions of a class's power. Next they need to rediscover why they had a policy of buffing rather than nerfing. They spent 12 months buffing the classes one by one and now they've forgotten that finesse and are hitting a class with a nerf sledgehammer.
They also need to re-evaluate healers and tanks. My server is starting to get really short of healers and tanks. It's not unusual to get a group of dps rogue dps mage dps hunter dps priest and dps warrior all arguing about the tanking and healing chores. My rather belated conclusion is that it's not worth playing anything in WoW except dps. People value the classes that can top damage meters, top Killing Blows, win duels, win arena matches. Itemisation supports dps and dps usually wins in pvp. If you raid and you're dps you get better at pvp, raiding and grinding otherwise you just get better at raiding
To cap it all, if I'm right and the decision-making is being influenced by the developers' experiences as players, deeply involved passionate players who are not objective, then future decisions will not help the minority groups like prot Pallies and moonkin druids which in turn will crush the healers and when the healers leave so will everyone else
I should get a placard saying "the end of the world is nigh" made, sorry to be so gloomy everyone and I hope that this analysis encourages some of you to influence the future of WoW in a more enlightened direction :blush: