Comments on: Chill of the Throne thoughts

By: Nighcol

Nighcol — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:50:49 +0000

I don't really get why you talk about this leading to changing priority to stamina. Ghostcrawler himself said in the text you quoted that Chill of the Throne will actually make avoidance more valuable so not gemming etc. for it does not seem like a very solid conclusion. .-= Nighcol´s last blog ..Sopeutuvasta vaikeustasosta peleissä =-.

By: Linedan

Linedan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:38:56 +0000

I’m looking forward to this as a warrior tank (even though I’m a dodge-heavy plate tank). Fights like Gormok in ToGC where I take 54k damage in about .4 second are not much fun, for me or for the healers. Like Mike, I’m loading as much stamina as I can…but you can’t out-stamina an all-or-nothing, dodge-or-die fight like Gormok.
.-= Linedan´s last blog ..The Raid for the Cure =-.

By: Boobah

Boobah — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:50:16 +0000

You wanna try that again Pete? Leaving out the 4.4% Miss chance you get for your 400 Defense against a raid boss, the penalty means your bear with 60% avoidance will get hit 50% more often. So far so good, except that designing an encounter to hit more often does not mean that the boss does more damage.

Since the boss is designed with the dodge penalty in mind, it hits for 33% less damage-per-swing. If you could (barely) survive a two-shot before, you can survive a three shot now; your healers go from having ~4 seconds to react (those four seconds include latency and reaction time on top of cast time) to the first hit before you’re gibbed to ~6 seconds. The lowered boss damage-per-hit also means that blocks (and pseudo-blocks) mitigate a larger proportion of boss damage, further boosting survivability. Spending more time not topped off also means that HoTs are going to deliver more effective healing, further allowing the big heals to be used more reactively.

By: Pete

Pete — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:51:43 +0000

A bear tank going from 60% dodge to 40% dodge, will take 50% more damage.

50%.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:03:32 +0000

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. As a warrior tank, I take dodge as it comes, but have prioritized Stamina personally to be able to eat more of those damage spikes without going down like a $5 whore. That may be because I only recently started tanking again, the last time that I played my warrior at endgame being in vanilla wow, but I usually value health and mitigation over avoidance. I wish they’d come up with this change for 3.2, tanking ToC for my guild has been a pain because even as it is the RNG can drop me in 2 seconds. So I personally like the swing towards mitigation.

By: thunderpaw

thunderpaw — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:13:52 +0000

I fully understand they did some switcheroo stuff in the middle of things. But they didn’t have to add an entire new layer of equipment and thus distort the growth pattern they wanted. But they did it anyhow. So they could apparently have known the results of their decisions, and went ahead with it anyhow, forcing them into a last minute scramble to cover their er, design asses.

Because, if “You are making the common mistake in thinking that our goal for itemization is to give you the best possible gear that we can.” is true, they didn’t need to create a new layer of items. Just different itemization because “There will be better pieces and worse pieces”.

This doesn’t fill me any sense of relief. :)

Meanwhile, this bare continues to muddle onwards. “REMEMBER, DURIDS IS BEST! WHEN U IS HAF SUM FUN, ALL DURIDS IS HAF SUM FUN WIT U!! ALSO, DURIDS IS ALWAYS FRENDS, SO PLAY NISE, OK?”

By: Insertname

Insertname — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:13:59 +0000

@ thunderpaw – I have seen similar comments on various forums and I do not really understand that. The reason for the change has been clearly explained by GC: they had to increase gear levels well beyond their original plans in order to implement hard modes. That’s not really a lack of forethought or understanding of game mechanics, it’s a mid-way shift in the design of raiding. Blizz was looking for a way to both expand raiding participation to a higher audience and give the original hardcore raiders a significant challenge. The experiment with HC modes started with a portion of Ulduar and apparently Blizz considers it successful enough that it has become the new raiding model. That has only recently happened with ToC. I think you can argue that the original raiding design was flawed and Blizz should have realized it or that you don’t care for the current one, but I don’t think that really is related to Blizz’s ability to foresee the effects of gear scaling.

With regards to the future of bear tanking and icewall radiance, if anything this may make bears the better tank because we still retain an advantage in stamina scaling, and depending on encounter design we may get to a stage where other tanks have slightly higher avoidance, but bears have much higher health pool. If it crosses the point where bears can take one more unhealed hit than other tanks, then bears become the “safest” tank and we’ll possibly see a bear health nerf. Of course that will depend not just on bear effective health but also on encounter design (healer’s mana, healer’s movement, type of boss damage etc.).

By: Alerre

Alerre — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:51:32 +0000

@Thunderpaw: the part BBB quoted about “Our original estimations for tank avoidance would have worked fine had we not decided to add extra tiers of gear to reward heroic boss kills halfway through the expansion.” explain this, I think. They did have it worked out, but then changed the plan to meet some other goal, which broke their original assumptions. So, the consequence of changing the plan in the middle of Wrath is… another gimmick. Yay.

By: Thunderpaw

Thunderpaw — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:05:40 +0000

I find this to be a very discouraging and dismaying topic.

Blizzard said way back at the beginning of WotLK, that they wouldn’t want to have a “Sunwell Radiance” effect again. It was too much of a gimmick, too much of a band-aid. Yet, once again, it’s back.

This indicates to me that Blizzard lacks the very basic ability to foresee the results of their own actions. Given they know exactly how their engine works (spaghetti code notwithstanding), and the proposed item(s), I can’t really see how they can fail to have a very solid indication of what avoidance levels can be every step of the way.

By: Steevee

Steevee — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:52:19 +0000

This post from GC actually made me smile a little…

Whenever I read about major game play changes being proposed or implemented by the peeps at Blizz, I immediately try to take a step back and see what their ultimate goal in doing so is.

Steevee is my main and most loved toon. I just love playing my Bear/Boom combo. Oodles of fun to be had! However, I do have other toons that I play frequently and also enjoy, not just my main tank toon.

What I generally see when changes like this are coming is that Blizz is doing their damndest to keep this game balanced and enjoyable to all. Yes, it hurts when one of my favorite toons gets a nerf (even though this won’t really be a nerf), but it also provides me with a new challenge in my game play and style on said toon. For example, I can usually no longer depend on my set casting rotations and I have to figure out new and better ways to play my toon that best fit with the new game changes. New game play for $0 additional cost to me. Pretty cool in my humble opinion.

Does that mean that I love getting nerf’d? No. I feel the pain just like everybody else, but I choose to see it as a new challenge to be tackled (invisible achievements?).

I remember when I first started playing the game. I was introduced to WoW by a friend at work. I was looking for something entertaining to do over my lunch break. Enter WoW. Then came that first Tuesday lunch break when I tried to log into WoW only to find that I couldn’t log in due to updates/patches/whatever…

I walked over to my buddy’s cube and got the low down on why Tuesdays suck in the WoW universe. I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. The game I bought was not the same game I would be playing 6 months from now? There is actually a game out there that isn’t static, but developers make an effort to continually improve it? It was at that point that I realized that WoW may be the greatest, most complete game I had ever played. So began my love affair.

All that is to say this, that Blizz doesn’t hate us. In fact they are doing everything in their power to keep the game fun so that they can keep on charging our credit cards. If their game changes end up sucking, they will make another change to fix it. It’s happened before and will happen again. Choose to enjoy it and come along for the ride!