Spooncraft

In reference to my last post about the raid stacking discussion in Wrath of the Lich King; here is a Q&A session pertaining to that. (src)

If it comes down to needing one of nearly everything… raiders would either have to be happy with getting less playtime in raids or you would have to hope your raiding members are skilled enough to repec to a missing spec… and also geared enough… to fill that role.
This is actually what we are trying to avoid. Our feeling is raids work too much like that now where you have to bring X class to have a reasonable chance of success. There are some buffs that most players would consider mandatory, or at least very powerful. You’ll want to get those. You’ll want 2 or so tanks and 7 or however many healers works for you. Then just take good people.

What if, for example, my best buddy is a Feral Druid and I’m a Fury Warrior. Should one of us be forced to respec to get raid spots together? Should we be encouraged not to run 5-mans together because our buffs don’t stack, etc?
No, that would be a fail in our minds. You have 23 (or other slots to get the buffs you need. And realize when I say need that everyone’s needs are different. Haste is pretty valuable, as is mana return. Is Arcane Int? Is Imp Prayer of Spirit? Your guild will have to decide that. In our design we made sure it was possible to get all the big buffs with as few as 11-12 people. That gives you a lot of room to bring your buddies even if they are the same role, class or spec.

here’s an idea: lets just keep that cruise control for “easy mode” on and just speed up a few more years down the road…*all classes now have every possible buff in the game as soon as they enter an instance - we want it to be fun and easy for everyone to enjoy…screw brains and effort LETS ALL HAVE CAKE!*
It isn’t our intention to dumb down the game. In fact, we want the challenge to be more about the encounter itself and not the buffs. When you think about it, it’s not a big mystery what buffs you need for a good raid. The challenge is in finding good people who can fill those roles while explaining to good players that you just can’t use them tonight. That’s a logistical challenge I guess, but we are making the assumption that most players would rather face strategic or tactical challenges. In a game as large as WoW there will be exceptions of course. We view this similarly to actions we took when raids ran around getting the Zul’Gurub or Onyxia buffs before going on a raid. That wasn’t particularly fun, but people felt like they had to do it or they’d be surrendering a big potential advantage. The flask stacking and consumable stacking got to be a similar burden. I’m not sure a lot of people wish for those days again, but no doubt some do.

Every non-stackable raid buff needs to be the exact same for it to be that great. Like Rampage/LotP. Rampage doesn’t heal/give it to ranged. So if you already have battle shout, druid trumps warriors. Etc etc. Its like my original post where I was asking if some things were the same, but now I’m looking at it, they are not.
I will admit that is a logical extension of our argument, but in reality I don’t think it will get to that point, at least for 99.9% of us. If Ebon Plague was a 12% buff and Curse of Elements was a 10% buff do you think that 2% means the difference between success and failure? What if one buff has a longer duration or costs less mana? We think you just hit a point of diminishing returns, where as long as you have the big buffs you need, and maybe some of the minor ones, the rest is going to be in the noise. One or two percent may seem a big deal for the guilds going for world first on Kil’Jaeden, but that kind of player is going to go to extremes almost no matter what we do. For most of us, our players being focused and getting lucky with a string of crits probably has a much bigger impact than a 2% difference. Or put another way, a buff that increases your dps by 1300? Yes please. Would I boot that player to get the buff that offers 1330? Probably not.

As the “only true hybrid” class, what extra value are we bringing to a raid over, say, a Druid or a Death Knight? More specifically, why would a raid leader consider an Enhancement Shaman over a Feral Druid or Death Knight when both of these classes can DPS, provide excellent bufs (LotP, icy talons, the “str/agi” buff you mentioned earlier), provide utility (interrupts, silence, battle rez), as well as fulfill a crucial tank role (and possibly main tank role) in a pinch without respeccing?
Well for one thing, flexibility. If you end up just not being a stellar healer or decide you hate healing, you can respec to two kinds of dps, while the rogue who can’t dps just has to go home. One of the strengths of the shaman class is flexibility. While someone else might offer a haste buff, you do have other totems you can drop. Even if there are enough players to cover all of your best buffs, if you’re a good player, most guilds would take you anyway. They might have trouble doing that today on live because bringing you might mean no armor debuff or spellpower buff. It’s easier to have coverage with the new plan. If you’re sad because you thought it was awesome that your group got to bring 6 shamans, well then it might be harder for you now. But I don’t get the sense that is your concern.

The dungeon designers are number crunchers, and they often design bosses around the most optimum raid setups.
The dungeon designers are down the hall from me. They design the encounters around the stats and abilities of the classes. If we tell them what buffs they can expect, they can use that information to balance fights and make them interesting. If we tell them they can’t count on there being a MT who can Shield Block, then they won’t make an attack like Shear.

Think about some of the later BC encounters - they were designed to challenge the current status quo. Nobody runs out of mana? Okay, we’ll hit the tank really hard. Paladins can heal the tank forever? Okay let’s make them run around a little bit. The raid can achieve X dps because Heroism / Bloodlust (and drums, and chain chugging pots) is up a big chunk of the time? Cool, they know how much health the boss can have. If we thought it worked out better for the game for the MT to have 16K health, do you think Patchwerk would hit for 19K? While we misjudge and make mistakes sometimes, the design of the encounters is to challenge whatever players can currently offer. It’s a sliding scale.