January News/Discussion

[Swiss Mercenary]

EDIT: And I really do think Blizzard's starting folks off with not nearly enough Resilience and Stamina for the amount of DPS being thrown around, especially clothies. I can at least rely on plate+shield to be able to take some hits (and it gives me a huge advantage against Rogues, believe me), but clothies... man, I feel sorry for them right now.

My boomkin partner blows holy paladins up pretty quick. ;)

Could I have trinketed? Well sure, then I'd fear, then he'd trinket, then I'd die anyway. Without even touching the Rogue at all. Maybe I'd get off a PW:S to draw the fight out another second or two.

Yes, that was a 1v1 situation and not group pvp, where it would be assumed someone could peel the Rogue.

That's what the auto-silence at the start of the match on the peeler is for, of course!

But in the situations GC was talking about - 2 dps on a healer - the dps should win.

The way I see it, against an appropriately geared healer, the 2 dps should be able to win by either correctly timing their shutdowns, and controlling the partner, or by OOMing the healer over... Maybe 60 seconds? Quite a long shot away from "Letting DPS classes win through not CC, drains, but DPS." Because that's just doing your PvE rotation on another player.

All those crowd controls either have diminishing returns or cooldowns. I believe that Ghostcrawler is simply saying that when those crowd controls (or stuns or silences or whatever) aren't working (for whatever reason), pure damage should still be able to do the job.

And if you think there's no skill in pure damage, well...

So, when the enemy team is able to counter your stuns, control, shutdown... You should be able to mash your PvE rotation for 6 seconds, and win the match?

I'm sorry, but there is very little skill in doing a DPS rotation for the vast majority of classes in this game. Being good at dealing damage comes from high combat presence...

GC: But if you are anticipating a point where you just laugh at warriors or shamans or other classes without brutal CC and drains, then you might be disappointed.

Mortal Strike isn't a drain team all in itself? That's funny, because just about every match I've lost to a warrior team consisted of them OOMing me, seeing as how I had to heal every point of damage they dealt twice. Don't forget the pummels and stuns they use, to force bigger, less effective heals. Again, I'm not sure if Ghostcrawler is playing the same game, here.

GC: My point was that we don't give every spec the ability to stunlock, sheep or silence. And we're not going to. But those specs still need to feel like they can contribute in an Arena. Understanding the concerns now, I should have said something more like "It should still be possible for warriors and shamans to take on and sometimes defeat healers (even if it takes 2v1 or 3v1 or whatever)." Crowd control should not be the dominant factor in Arenas. Neither should burst damage.

Is there a single DPS spec in this game without the ability to stunlock, sheep/fear, or silence? Enhancement Shamans? If GC wants to have them kill people, without giving them stuns or silences, then he'll either have to double their DPS compared to rogues, DKs, paladins, and mages... Or we'll be stuck in the same boat as we are today, where every other "DPS" class can kill healers with their DPS alone - the control just means the healer has no chance.

The bottom line is... Despite what GC may think, there has never been a time in this game when a healer could just stand there, and tank an equally geared DPS class all day. Druids had to run away, root, cyclone, bash, and drink. Paladins had to rely on the warrior not having trained pummel. Priests would go OOM without CC+Regen time. Taking steps to avoid that situation is plain stupid, because it never came up. DPS classes were always capable of DPSing through a healer that just... Healed. They just had to use all their abilities, at the right times.