Massive Warrior Infodump

[stabby]

Kalgan (presumably a developer of some sort) wrote an enormously large response to one of the many warrior issue threads that plagues the official forums.

Several major items contained within stand out for me.
1) Warriors are supposed to gain some rage when their attacks are blocked, parried, and dodged. This not happening currently is a bug, and will get fixed.
2) He admits that Improved Thunder Clap is a total joke. This alone brings a smile to my face.
3) Execute eating an entire rage bar when it misses is a bug, and will be fixed.
4) Massive insight into their balance methodology with regards to 1h + shield vs. 2h vs. DW.
5) Bloodrage is apparently being changed to be "less punishing" to encourage its use. Given that I use it whenever it's up if I have a healer grouped, and even sometimes when I don't, this can only be a good thing.

[Ruvanal]

Agreed on those points.

I also like that he called the orginal poster on the sensational ways that he tried to make his points. Bad comparisons and such do not make for generating credible responses in most cases.

[Skandranon]

I liked reading it. It was very detailed and told me a lot about what Blizzard has in mind for the Warrior.

I didn't like the response thread or the people posting in it. So many of them simply ignored what Kalgan had to say and reiterated old and possibly game-damaging wish lists. Most of them didn't seem like they'd read any of it, and then accused Kalgan of not answering the questions. *sigh*

[stabby]

Yes, the whiny buggers who should've rolled rogues to begin with were out in force in response to what was both unprecedented forthcomingness from Blizzard, and a lengthy, well-written, and revealing post. Bloody ingrates.

Edit to add that I just found this excellent post regarding miss rates on humanoid vs. non-humanoid enemies.

[Concillian]

1) Warriors are supposed to gain some rage when their attacks are blocked, parried, and dodged.  This not happening currently is a bug, and will get fixed.
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If you read carefully, he did not say this. He actually never stated whether the 'events' were on an attack being blocked, parried, or dodged by your opponent or by your character.

There are the relevant passages of Kalgan's text:

Warriors (and druids in bear form) are intended to gain some rage on block,dodge,parry events

and

Generate rage on parry/dodge/block? Consider it done! ;]

Note there is no specific information on whether the block/dodge/parry is generated by you or by what you are fighting or both. I'd be careful on ASSUMING that it is when your attack is dodged/blocked/parried as that may not be the intent of what he said.

If I had to guess I would guess it's on your character blocking/dodging/parrying, as that would be more consistent with current rage generation, and it wouldn't make sense for you to generate rage when your attack is dodged, but not when you miss.

[Ruvanal]

Note there is no specific information on whether the block/dodge/parry is generated by you or by what you are fighting or both.  I'd be careful on ASSUMING that it is when your attack is dodged/blocked/parried as that may not be the intent of what he said. 
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I think in this case that you are missing what the second quote is in reply to.

Rage Build: Either allowing rage generationg for Miss/Parry/Dodge/Block, or...

Which is where Kalgan is specifically excluding the 'Miss/' portion of the above.

If I had to guess I would guess it's on your character blocking/dodging/parrying, as that would be more consistent with current rage generation, and it wouldn't make sense for you to generate rage when your attack is dodged, but not when you miss.

It would make sense to me see someone getting enraged more from when they 'know' that their blow should have connected but instead was having its damage averted through some means such as parry/dodge/block. This happened enough in real life table top gaming where we had to calm the attacker after the defender did the successful averting of the damage. It was the attacking player that was the one that would get steamed up (sometimes even throwing the dice about the room and such), not the defender (who was usually more grateful that they were not take out in the game or by the thrown dice).

[Skandranon]

Edit to add that I just found this excellent post regarding miss rates on humanoid vs. non-humanoid enemies.
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And one of the first replies is an idiot criticizing Kalgan, having not read his post at all.

Still, it's good to know that all the misses I'm seeing on non-humanoids are intentional.

[Occhidiangela]

If you read carefully, he did not say this.  He actually never stated whether the 'events' were on an attack being blocked, parried, or dodged by your opponent or by your character.

There are the relevant passages of Kalgan's text:
and
Note there is no specific information on whether the block/dodge/parry is generated by you or by what you are fighting or both.  I'd be careful on ASSUMING that it is when your attack is dodged/blocked/parried as that may not be the intent of what he said. 

If I had to guess I would guess it's on your character blocking/dodging/parrying, as that would be more consistent with current rage generation, and it wouldn't make sense for you to generate rage when your attack is dodged, but not when you miss.
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Generate rage on parry/dodge/block? Consider it done! ;]

The way I read that was that if you block, dodge, or parry, you generate rage. I am gratified to see that there is more than one way to read that. :lol:

Thanks for the insight.

I also loved the response by Kalgan, it was very well reasoned and professional.

Occhi

PS: I wonder if he is as old as me, and is making a pun on "Calgon" bath oil beads with his name.

[Guest]

I beleive thats the case. Its true it could be read either way.
But I feel sure he is saying when the player is attacked but not hit then the player will gain rage.

[Raziel]

Personally I think he was referring to when the warrior parries/dodge/blocks, and quite possibly when the enemy parries/dodges/blocks as well.

Why? Because the former works best with the 1hs defensive approach where you are blocking a lot (thanks to shield block) and parrying/dodging. The latter works best with the zerker approach where you are attacking constantly (likely without a shield).

If only the former comes in i'll still be happy. If only the latter, well, not so much as that benefits an offensive style that is already doing damage and thereby having less rage problems than a defensive style.

[Concillian]

It would make sense to me see someone getting enraged more from when they 'know' that their blow should have connected but instead was having its damage averted through some means such as parry/dodge/block.  This happened enough in real life table top gaming where we had to calm the attacker after the defender did the successful averting of the damage.  It was the attacking player that was the one that would get steamed up (sometimes even throwing the dice about the room and such), not the defender (who was usually more grateful that they were not take out in the game or by the thrown dice).
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Rage is clearly not tied to "anger" as in that case you would lose rage on each successful hit and gain far more than you do just on being hit... or you would gain more rage on being hit than you do on successfully landing a blow. Rage is simply not equivalent to anger, and to think of it this way just muddies the water.

Think of the way the game works. The game works on if you improve your character's abilities, then you do better. If you gained rage when your opponent parries, then you get better rage generation through your opponent upgrading his character? That doesn't make sense in how the game works.

I just don't think it would fit in with the game very well if you gained rage when your opponent dodged. I mean currently you gain range when the opponent successfully hits. Don't you think it should give an even larger "reward" when you successfully avoid an attack? Currently you gain no rage if you are able to avoid an enemies attack due to your abilities. This is counterproductive. It makes sense that increasing your ability to parry, dodge, and block should allow for BETTER rage generation instead of having to find an opponent who parries better.

The final argument is found in the second of Kalgons postings in how mobs that don't have a shield to block with, or a weapon to parry with, have those chances mapped to a miss. If you generated rage when you failed to land a blow, but only on a dodge or block or parry, then you would have a lower rage generation on beasts than on humaoids who can block and parry.

He says that the reason they mapped these to miss was to ensure all the mobs were relatively balanced for all the classes. So then why would they be adding rage on a block/dodge/parry of an opponent? This would be exactly opposite what Kalgon said they strived for in terms of mob balancing between beasts and humanoids.

[Malakar]

PS:  I wonder if he is as old as me, and is making a pun on "Calgon" bath oil beads with his name.
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I find that the random names I come up with often times mean something or make some reference unintentionally. For example, people often inform me that Malakar is a cuss word in greek. One of my other favorite names that I made up and thought was original is Soren, which I found out is a European name and also used in some books/movies. :rolleyes:

[Ruvanal]

The final argument is found in the second of Kalgons postings in how mobs that don't have a shield to block with, or a weapon to parry with, have those chances mapped to a miss.  If you generated rage when you failed to land a blow, but only on a dodge or block or parry, then you would have a lower rage generation on beasts than on humaoids who can block and parry.

He says that the reason they mapped these to miss was to ensure all the mobs were relatively balanced for all the classes.  So then why would they be adding rage on a block/dodge/parry of an opponent?  This would be exactly opposite what Kalgon said they strived for in terms of mob balancing between beasts and humanoids.
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I think you need to go back and reread that second link by Kalgon. The server engine is still calculating and treating these events internally as block/dodge/parry events. It is message sent for the user that only shows as some default "non-hit" message (for melee this is usually 'miss' and in the case of spells/wands it is usually 'resist').

1. When fighting against mobs that do not dodge or parry, those events still actually happen, but are translated into "misses" by the UI. While there are some other subtle but important differences between humanoids with weapons and/or shields and other types of enemies (like beasts, elementals, etc), the translation of "dodge" and "parry" into "miss" is an important factor in ensuring that fighting a giant spider is relatively equivalent to fighting against a humanoid of the same level that is using a weapon/shield.

The extra emphasis is mine.

Since these events are tracked internally in the server as block/dodge/parry events, it is rather easy to have these events still generate rage for the warrior even if the UI does display a 'miss' for the player to see.

Also look to the overall content of what was being brought up concerning warriors experiencing what has been considered an undue amount of misses in their combat. The ones complaining are referring to their hitting a target and the subsequent lack of rage that then incurred for being able to keep up a somewhat steady rate of skill use. Compared to the classes that auto generate the energy/mana to start a fight off. A string of 'misses' at the start of a fight or even in the middle of a fight can seriously gimp the player for that fight and end up dramatically increasing their downtime since they would not have as ready of access to use their skills compared to other classes.

By the way, this translation of the miss/block/dodge/parry events was not done at the beging of the closed beta. It was easy then to see what was really going on, most mobs had about the same amount of miss/block/dodge/parry events ratios. This did in essence balance the varios types of mobs that you could run into and the also the various classes since even the spells were subject to these events. Consider how it looked to some of use to use an Arcane Missile at an opponent and see 'block' on one them when the attack was coming at their back. Personally I quickly shrugged it off as realised what they were doing and just started thinking of the matter as 'hit' verses 'non-hit' events. The difference was that some of these subcatagories could be increased or decreased in different ways or that they opened up the option to use certain skills (i.e. Overpower).

Now most of the disscussion has been centering on the chance to miss being 5% for an equal level mob. Also the blocks, dodges and parry chance are also usually looked at again when comparing to an equal level mob. But what is the case when looking at having to take on an a mob that is a few levels higher? From my experience and what seems to be others also is that all of these increase in this type of situation. For a rogue a 'miss' in this situation basicaly means that they will need to wait the same amount of time for energy to replenish, the same as they would for lower level mobs. For the mana using classes it works out similar, they would need to do the same thing to recover the mana just as they would when facing lower level mobs. But for the warrior this changes, if they do not get hits they do not get rage unless they are hit. They will only be the primary target then if they can maintain the aggro on themselves, but that can be difficult if they do not get the aggro since they are missing more and consequently lacking the rage to fire off skills that generate rage. While they might get a Taunt off to get the aggro on them, if they are not hitting or getting off more skills that generate the aggro; they will likely loose the aggro to another player in the group quickly. By having the strikes that they do against the mob that are blocked/dodged/parried also generate aggro for the warrior, they then will be able to get the rage up more reliably in spite of having a lot of 'misses'. This in turn will make it easier for them to quickly grab the aggro focus of the mobs by using some of their skills and not at times forcing the group to wait as long while the warrior works at building up an aggro advantage before they can start in on the fight. It can also ease off on the attitude that the warrior has to pull all the mobs so that he can get beat upon enough so that he has the rage he needs just to use his skills.

I have been in the situation in the closed beta where it was paramount for the warrior to get enough rage to use skills and fighting a higher level mob was horrible due to the overall 'non-hit' rate. The rage generated for getting beat upon did not raise the level fast enough in most cases to let you use the skills nearly as much as was needed. This was even worse at the time since Taunt cost rage to use and could frequently take more than one success if you needed to pull a mob off of anouther player. I those situation you were dependent on being lucky enough to get an unlikely string of hits so that you had enough rage to fire off the Taunts as fast as you could.

P.S. Concillian, I see in that second thread (page 11) that Voyager did address you about the warrior getting rage from the warriors blocks/dodges/parries. From his obsevations the warriors already appear to be getting rage generated in these cases. This does match what I seem to recall being addressed at one point during the beta, but my memory is a little fuzzy on that since it was not something that I was persuing to any degree at the time. That just puts it back toward what myself and most of the others are interpeting to be what was said: a portion of the warriors non-hit attacks will also be genenerating rage when the bug is fixed.

[Concillian]

I think you need to go back and reread that second link by Kalgon.  The server engine is still calculating and treating these events internally as block/dodge/parry events.  It is message sent for the user that only shows as some default "non-hit" message (for melee this is usually 'miss' and in the case of spells/wands it is usually 'resist').
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So, you are suggesting that they would implement it such that the server side would keep track of whether it was a parry or a miss, and you would get rage for a parry and not for a miss?

But in that case, the client would see a "miss" in both cases. One time getting rage and one time not. That would bring quite the inconsistent gaming experience, and I doubt Blizzard would do that. It would confuse the player on the other side of the monitor.

As for gaining rage currently on character dodge/block/parry? You think I didn't test it out? You quite simply do NOT generate rage when your character blocks/parries/dodges. Go find a grey mob and stand there while he attacks you. I did. I got about 1/2 to 1 rage per hit. Then I got a string that went:
Wolf hits you for X
You parry
You dodge
wolf misses
You parry
wolf misses
wolf hits you for X

And I gained ZERO rage in that string.

I find it hard to believe you are actually touting a single random post in the Official forums like it is the paramount of credibility.

I simply do not see a way that Blizzard could implement opponent block/dodge/parry events generating rage without imbalancing the game or creating a glaring inconsistency. I think all evidence points to the fact that it will be character events triggering rage generation, despite the wishful thinking of the her in the official forums.

I was mostly asking Kalgan because I think they will have quite an uproar when they implement it and it's not the way the herd thought it would be. The official forums will be full of mad people and people who are calling Blizzard liars because they were too shortsighted to even think that they would be talking about character generated events.

I see ZERO good reasons why they would implment rage generation on opponent block/dodge/parry events (aside from trying to satisfy the forum whiners, but Kalgan's jabs at some of the statements made lead me to belive that is not their primary goal) and at least three good ones why they would implement it on character events.

[stabby]

Just stopping in again to note that, after reading things through again, it does seem fairly obvious that the intended effect is rage gain when the warrior blocks, dodges, or parries. I'm really not sure how I misinterpreted it in the first place. In any case, that's superior to my original thought, given that I block, dodge, and parry far more than the things I fight do.

Leaving my original post intact to preserve discussion continuity.

[Taeme]

I have no idea what Concillan is going on about but damn does it ever seem like a lot of fuss over a couple extra rage points.

The missrate thing is the biggest issue for me, but I hadn't heard about the execute thing and that's REALLY good news. I adore execute but often avoid using it at 40 or so rage, since burning that much rage on a miss is a really big pain in the old ass.

I find that the random names I come up with often times mean something or make some reference unintentionally.

Someone on Illidan randomly came up with my LAST NAME for his character name. I was a bit surprised, as it isn't too common a name.

[Raziel]

Rage gain when the warrior blocks, parries or dodges = big Defensive stance win.

Why? Shield Block = almost guaranteed block = almost guaranteed rage.

Probably not very MUCH rage, but hey, it's more than I get right now from blocking. And it would make that 1 point in Improved Shield Block even more powerful.