patch 2.0.10 notes on the PTR

[Monkey]

Those are only 5vs5. And that is less than 200 people out of 7 million that play the game. I wouldn't say that is a very accurate representaion of anything. From what I've heard from arene play all the druids and warlocks are probably destorying everyone in 2vs2 and 3vs3 to be busy in 5vs5 :P.

Well, allow me to direct you to some composite analysis by a player named "Chao" on Frostmane. (Link). He looks at all Arena Team Types, Accounts for population imbalances, and weights his results according to the arena points weighting applied by Blizzard. I've sorted his results highest-to-lowest for reference:

Composite Class Power Index:
Paladin: 178
Priest: 122
Shaman: 119
Rogue: 98
Warlock: 93
Mage: 85
Warrior: 82
Druid: 62
Hunter: 61

There are significant criticisms of his analysis:
1. Arena teams are self-selecting and not affected by population imbalances
2. He only looked at team composition and failed to account for unplayed characters on arena teams.

However--neither list reflects a PvP need for the nerfs in the 2.0.10 patch, so Warlock's assertion that these nerfs are intended for PvE holds some weight. And that makes me angry.

Ahem.

{rant}

If players can reverse engineer threat levels, build simulators and carry out an evening's worth of tests resulting in hard data on threat generation--Why couldn't Blizzard do that prior to release of TBC? It's insulting that they think we won't see the gap in their claims about "Internal Testing". To say nothing of the absurdity regarding the PoM nerf.

Here are the blue explanations I find galling:

Prayer of Mending was intended as a heal that bounces around a group of players. However, players were spamming Prayer of Mending repeatedly on a target to ensure that the target was healed every time he was hit. As such, a cooldown was added to this spell.

Oh, so Blizzard's priest testers never thought of casting a heal twice on the same target. Right, because that's madness--what healer would cast the same healing spell more than once on the same target? That's something I've NEVER done.

The changes being made to Druids were done due to the fact that their damage, mitigation and hitpoints were higher than intended. We based our decision on internal tests, not complaints or feedback from other classes. Even with these changes, Druids will still be viable tanks, and very capable in player vs. player encounters.

Are these the same internal tests that said druids were fine at release? If so, why should we believe them when they say we'll still be all those lovely things? {/rant}