Posted by Spooner | 1 Comment

More on Talents in WoW Cataclysm

It’s obviously pretty early to be getting too deep into these kinds of discussions, but it’s damn interesting all the same. Ghostcrawler had this to say on the forums recently (source):

We’re not going to be able to get all damage out of the trees. For example, Improved Frostbolt, a talent that makes Frostbolt cast faster is essentially a passive damage increase, but it does it in a more interesting way than a talent like Arctic Winds, which grants +Frost damage to keep it from being a PvP only talent.

See I can understand that, not every talent is going to be interesting and dynamic. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of the no brainers. A perfect example would be Cruelty for Warriors. There isn’t a single build at all across the board that DOES NOT have that added 5% to crit. That’s 5 whole points that an be better spent in other places no? The same can be said for Rogues with the 5 point talents that add flat crit/hit/offhand damage and such. There isn’t a single build that doesn’t want these talents.

I don’t know that Improved Overpower will make the cut, since you pretty much always want to Overpower when you can so it isn’t that interesting a talent. Taste for Blood is an interesting talent even though it’s pretty much just more damage at the end of the day. Trauma is not particularly interesting, but it’s an important group buff which makes it marginally more interesting that a talent that just passively improves your own damage. Something like Deep Wounds is tough. It’s pretty passive but it’s also pretty iconic for the Arms tree. If crit chances are lower in Cataclysm, and they will be, then it’s not the no-brainer it is today, but I still can’t imagine an Arms build without it.

This reiterates the fact that talents you feel that you must have regardless of your spec are counter intuitive. We as players want to find the best way to DPS right (or heal or tank) and so everybody ends up following the cookie cutter which defeats the entire purpose in my eyes of 3 different specs. The word spec itself refers to specialization, so what should each tree be specialized in?

Ultimately, what we want to do is just give players a lot more flexibility in how they talent. Some of the trees currently have a “cookie cutter” spec that says something like “Spend the last 3 points wherever you want.” We want to get that feel in all the trees, and hopefully with more like 5-8 points spent wherever you want. We also want to make sure you aren’t able / forced to skip over the utility talents just to get the +damage, healing or survival talents.

So Beast Master, Marksman, and Survival Hunters should all be able to deal mad DPS. The perfect world, BM does all their damage with their pet and their pets should be just unbelievable. Marks should be the mack daddy sniper. Survival should have traps and tools falling off the cart to manipulate and control the environment. Makes sense?

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Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

Something is wrong!

You guys finally drove Ghostcrawler off the edge. This is the double edged sword of official game forums. When you have a place that says “we as developers can read your complaints here and take suggestions etc” it acts like a beacon for discussion both good and bad. Its the internet, the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory is pretty much SEEPING with confirmation by checking the WoW forums. For heaven’s sake we have special trackers to follow blizzard posts on the things.

You take the good with the bad, but I still think Blizzard should chill out with the replying to everybody. They went into this thing not knowing the full extent of how the gamer community at large is nothing but a bunch of emotional cripples that treat forums on the web like the womb of their own mother.

I understand wanting player feedback and that’s a wonderful thing. But be ready to deal with the backlash when one player’s idea was put in game and another’s was ignored. That’s akin to giving one sibling special treatment and shunning his brother. That’s just how some of these forumites take it, which is crazy.

If there is something you think is wrong with the game that we have’t addressed, usually one of the following is true:

1. We don’t think something is wrong. In this case, repeatedly posting the same thing over and over is unlikely to change our minds.
2. We think something is wrong, but we aren’t ready to announce a change yet. This could be because we don’t know how we want to fix it yet, we know how we want to fix it but require new tech to implement it, or because the change is going to take awhile.

In both of these cases, posting the same thing over and over again or bumping a thread when you have no new information to add isn’t going to have the effect you’re looking for. The goal often seems to be to post over an over either because you’re so angry you can’t take it anymore, or because you’re stubborn and are looking for that blue post that finally says “here’s how we’re going to buff you.” That happens, but it doesn’t happen that often, and in those cases it is always because we agree something is a problem, not because you wore us down.

I know some of you just want a thumb’s up or thumb’s down answer on a community question or issue, but even that is beyond what we want to do with these forums. We don’t have the time nor inclination to respond to every issue, let alone every thread. Furthermore, simple answers are rarely enough for a design-savy community that wants to know why, wants to explore edge-cases or perhaps even wants to see hard proof. Short blue answers rarely “solve” anything and more often throw fuel on a fire.

Here is how the process should ideally work: If you have an issue, bring it up. See if other players agree with you. If they disagree, don’t shut them out. Once you’ve explored the issue a little bit, you’ve done your job. You don’t need to keep starting new topics on the same issue nor bumping those already so long that no reasonable person is going to read them (though I try to).

Sometimes we’ll respond to a topic and sometimes we won’t. But given the realities of developer time and the number of WoW players out there (even the minority of forum-posting ones) you should interpret those responses as almost random and not suggestive of a topic’s severity or merit.

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Posted by Spooner | 0 Comments

Solving the Itemization Problem…

There’s a lengthy post about Druids and itemization since a lot of Druid players are trying to blow another Ghostcrawler quote out of proportion. Remember a little while ago how GC spoke about spell power plate and the issues with changing Holy Paladins? Yeah somehow that translates into Feral Druids wanting tanking leather and DPS leather.

All of this stems down to a general issue with itemization, we obviously can’t go rebuilding every single class core mechanic or make all the loot dropped from bosses change to tokens. I’m thinking the way gear is done in WoW there really isn’t a solution that will make everybody happy.

The system now isn’t broken, on the contrary its perfectly fine. Sure there are going to be times where undesireable gear drops and the feeling of RNG can make you go crazy but that’s just kinda how things are. Loot in this game has to be at least a little random to keep things interesting. Maybe if the player spec in your existing group when the boss is killed can affect the loot table. Though I imagine that’d be a nightmare to code and regulate with hybrid specs or pre-fight respecs.

We actually like the Feral solution and would love to implement something like that for Holy plate. We just haven’t figured out a way to make it work yet. The Feral tree is designed to have some crossover between dps and tanking and some degree of being able to use the same gear for both cat and bear. If you could use “rogue leather” to also heal and do ranged dps, then it might be a problem. That’s one of the risks in making paladins heal using dps plate. There are solutions of course, but we haven’t liked any of them sufficiently well to pull the trigger.

We can appreciate that not every Feral player is going to applaud the current implementation and some would prefer another solution, such as just having tanking leather again. We’re not often going to come up with a solution for any class issue that is viewed as ideal by an overwhelming majority of people who play that class. We think it has worked out pretty well. I think Feral, bear and cat, is one of the success stories of LK in PvE.

Just to be clear, creating items isn’t the problem. The problem is that when a boss has a loot list that offers specialized gear for every spec (and technically sub-spec in the bear case), it feels very RNG. Go beat on Emalon a little and pretend that was the only way possible to get that gear. I think you’d pull your hair out pretty quickly.

Now maybe you meant give the itemization team some more work in the sense that we haven’t come up with a solution yet that lets us drop say 20-30 types of armor off a boss without players getting really frustrated when theirs doesn’t come up, without having the boss drop 10 items, or without converting the entire loot system to a token-turn in system. In that sense I’d agree with you.

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Posted by Spooner | 12 Comments

How does Blizzard do it?

So lets pretend that we don’t already have a thousand blue posts about how this game is developed and designed; Ghostcrawler is at it again. I’m going to do something different here because I’ve been thinking way too much about the subject at hand while I’ve been out of commission. So I’ll post the actual Q&A from the forums and I’ll throw in some Spooner-speculation after each.

You can dare to argue with me in the comments section below, I’d like to hear what some of you folks think about the state of affairs. Miraculously enough there are some damn smart readers on this site that actually post replies.

Get ready for a fucking MASSIVE wall of text crit. Also a slight disclaimer, I’m not actually mad at all. I still play and love WoW more than most people do their own internal organs. I’m just giving and editorial opinion in the hopes some of you will dust off the old gray matter and start using it.

Spoonwolf boss has become enraged.

Question #1: Pure VS Hybrid DPS
I think the community as a whole understands and accepts the fact pure DPS classes need to do the most damage due to the inflexibility of their roles. My question is there is a large gap between certain hybrids and their counterparts in other specs. Currently, DK’s and Feral cats compete almost, but not quite, with the pure dps classes. In no particular order, priests, moonkins, ret paladins, shamans, warriors lag significantly behind, or, at least currently in 3.1. I know you have taken steps to curb feral DPS, and you have removed some of the “Splash” damage of DK AoE, but is it your intent to bring DKs/Feral cats DOWN to the other hybrids, or bring the other hybrids UP closer to the to their kitty/death knight counterparts?

• DK and Feral dps should both be lower in 3.2 compared to 3.1. A few other specs received slight buffs, but overall we’re pretty happy with the PvE dps balance. You have to look at a lot of different boss fights and break the data down in different and relatively complex ways before you can really stack rank damage done with any kind of authority. As soon as we add a new boss, it’s all going to change anyway. Nobody’s dps seems so low that it’s a liability to bring them. The few damage-oriented specs that are low in PvE have alternative specs in other trees that work out fine. It’s always going to be the kind of thing we tweak a lot — it’s a process not a destination.

Ok see this is where Blizzard has a lot of issues. After experiencing other MMO class systems and observing how unreleased games are planning on doing things, I’ve come to crave a sense of STABILITY. There should be a set standard of rules or laws in the game’s design core. Blizzard follows this but they are constantly making exceptions which cause a lot of drama and headache and community oriented bitching. There’s a whole mess of different balance scales in effect with classes that need to be treated with a little more reverence by the developers and the players alike.

You’re a hybrid = you can fill more than one role in the game so because you have this strength, you must be balanced with a weakness to maintain the integrity of the game. Simply put, hybrids really shouldn’t be doing as much damage as non-hybrids. Trying to change that basic fundamental concept of an MMORPG is ultimately bad for the game.

You’re a pure class (either tanking, DPS, or healing – only DPS exists in WoW) = you’re going to only have one single role compared to others. The reason you’re brought along to groups is because you excel at that role. To deal with competition against other pure classes that fill the same role you’re given certain utility. The scales have to be balanced with that as well because if you have more utility, then that strength needs to be met with a trade off weakness – your main role (DPS for example) suffers at the cost of more utility.

In the end I just think Blizzard has a problem saying NO to people. Giving everybody everything they want without any real cost is just creating a player base of spoiled little brats that never seem content with anything for more than a week.

Question #2 Caster DPS VS Melee DPS in PvP:
Even the most jaded of melee classes will admit (I hope) they are dominating in PvP, which the possible exception of frost mages. In this author’s view, it is because mages have the ability, much more so then any other class, to “open the gap” and prevent the melees from making contact. I’ve seen from your previous responses you don’t want to have every other class have warmed over or simply reprinted mage skills, and I know I personally agree with you. But I think it’s fair to say a little tweaking needs to be done to the casting dps classes, specifically, to make them not want to pound their desks in frustration. I know you don’t want to give everyone Frost Nova, but it seems casters, from warlocks to shadowpriests to moonkins, desperately need a way to get out of the speeding truck we call melee.

• This is a really large topic that’s beyond the scope of a brief answer here. In general I think the “melee owns casters” mantra is too simplistic. As you point out, Frost mages generally do well in 3s and Enhancement shamans are not generally feared to the degree rogues and DKS might be, so you already have to caveat it a lot.

All of this boils down to the problem of WoW PvP where battles are decided within the first 10 seconds of combat. I agree 100% with Blizzard’s decision to change resilience again in Patch 3.2 to simply retard all incoming damage by a certain % based on the amount of resilience you have. Hopefully that will slow down the amount of crazy burst damage being dealt. Its not a problem of casters or melee being OP, its a problem with damage being way too fucking high right now as the game has grown. By level 100 we’ll all have base 50k health and be critting for 3,000 with auto attacks.

Question #3 Spellpower Plate
I’d have to say a good 80% of the people who raid WoW are really, really sick of spellpower plate dropping in raids. When SP plate drops one spec of one class can use this, which means you have 29 out of 30 disappointed specs. God forbid two pieces of spell power plate drop from the same boss. The oft-suggested and effective fix would probably have a passive talent trainable by Paladins to convert Attack Power into Spellpower. I realize this would take some rebalancing of Paladins, ensuring Holy Paladins had mana(converted from Strength?) and roughly equivalent spellpower to heal. The talents Sheath of Light and Guided by the Light would probably need to be adjusted and maybe those spots in the talent trees might be a good place, and this is just me brainstorming, to have prot paladins run a little faster (they hardly need more threat or another tanking CD, come 3.2) and give Ret paladins an interrupt that they do honestly need.

• We would like to get rid of spellpower plate, but we don’t have a great system yet to make loot work without it. We want Holy paladins to wear plate and we don’t want them to be great at say damage or tanking without having to swap gear.

Its an MMORPG. This argument is stupid. The same can be said about spell power mail dropping or spell power leather. If they ever make a monk class that uses cloth armor and is a melee DPS role, there will be bitching about the non-spell cloth. The only issue I can think of with this is that Blizzard made all the caster classes use shit armor for the most part but gave one healer alone the best armor class in the game with arguably the most health and mitigation on it. Its really hard to kill a holy paladin.

Question #4: Tri Specs
Give us an inch, we’ll ask for a mile. Now that we’ve had a taste of the sweet life of dual specs, we realize how useful it is. And, for this we thank you. But I know there are classes who would like to experiment with the last tree of their class, or perhaps build a pure pvp spec without the not-quite compromise of the guild who require their hybrids to have both specs PvE optimized for raiding. I don’t really think this would totally break your raid style encounters, do you? Any word on this?

• Talent spec is still supposed to be meaningful. We don’t want characters to be swapping through talent specs the way they do gear sets in Equipment Manager or your favorite mod. The Dual-spec feature was intended to make it easier to flip between two commonly-used specs. It wasn’t supposed to make spec not a commitment. It will be a long time, if ever, before we take this to more than 2 specs.

I don’t buy that whole idea that Blizzard actually wants us to commit to something. They obviously don’t. You incentivized being indecisive and changing specs every few seconds. Name changes and 3 day server transfers pretty much made it so you could be a complete piece of shit and your reputation could be wiped clean as a whistle with the drop of a few dollars. You give people the power to change their character’s gender, and in the near future they can outright change their faction. This entire fucking game has become enveloped with the ideal of non-committal. You don’t have any consequences that work as a deterant for making choices. The weight of our decisions in WoW are so light that it’s laughable.

Question #5: Achievements
My fifth and final question is about haste scal…just kidding. I don’t think I would be wrong in saying the community as a whole would really like something to do with our achievement points. This would also make good business sense for you if you set the bar steep enough. Something unique in game, such as our names written in gold or perhaps a master ( in my case) priest class tag. Perhaps a passenger mount that flies or a 2nd hearthstone location. Something to do with our hard won achievement points I think would be a fun addition to the game.

• Achievements are not intended to improve player power. They are supposed to be a totally optional path to achievement. Even though they don’t improve player power, they are still enormously popular, so we don’t think we need to do anything to make them more enticing. Other games may use their achievements as a form of character progression, but we think we’ve got that covered already with things like character level, gear progression, reputations, etc. The 310% speed mounts were an exception, but they’ve also been an extremely controversial and problematic exception and I’m not sure we’d handle that the same way if we could do it all again.

• We will continue to explore “vanity” or “prestige” rewards that don’t inflate character power. We still wouldn’t require you to spend points as a form of currency though. Generally, except for tweaks we make to the system, achievement points should only go up.

Good. Blizzard actually admits that making the 310% speed mounts as rewards for achievements was a stupid idea. And don’t lie to yourself, it was. So much headache and so much game changing bitching and crying over achievements has pretty much muddied up the game to a degree where there is no turning back. Players are quite hung up on achievements right now and what was originally meant as another “side system” to make the game more fun – has become a driving force for game change and strife within the community.

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Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

Warrior Q&A with Developers

This is a Q&A that I actually like. Personally I think Blizzard gives the player too much freedom in their game. Let’s not kneejerk here and start freaking out about how Spooner wants the game to be strict and boring. I’m simply saying it lends to the game’s structure and definition if we knew what the hell the design goals were. I want to know what Blizzard wants a class to ultimately be. The different talent trees make it really hard to get any kind of outline on your character since just about every single player, can be solid viable top DPS.

You can check out the full QA below but here are the keynotes:

• Arms and Fury need to be looked at a lot more. Prot is actually pretty set right now.
• “Arms is supposed to be about weapons and martial training and feel ’soldierly.’ Fury is supposed to be about screaming barbarians in woad.”
• Blizzard doesn’t like the negative aspects of stances like damage nerf in defensive and survivability nerf in berserker.
• They want warriors (especially prot) do get rage from dealing damage, not so much taking it.
• Warrior tanks should want some DPS stats as well.
• Leveling as a Warrior is slow because of the excessive downtime.
• Block is going to be changed to a percentage based if Blizzard wants ti to not suck anymore.

Warrior Q&A with the Voice of the Class Design Team, Ghostcrawler

Community Team: We’d like to start things off by asking a question that players often ask in regard to the very purpose of each class. In this case, we’re looking specifically at warriors, which have been stalwart base for comparisons since the start of World of Warcraft.

Q: Where do warriors fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward?

A: Historically, warriors have always been one of the most dominant classes in World of Warcraft. In Molten Core and for raids afterwards, warriors were THE tank, no question. DPS warriors could also top the damage meters, and were a very potent PvP force. We think we allowed the warrior class to overshadow some other classes, which is probably to be expected given the iconic nature of the plate-wearing fighter in RPGs that long preceded World of Warcraft. We think they are in a fairer place now, in that there is room on the stage for other classes, yet they are still a very powerful and popular class to play. The warrior class has been a very tricky one to balance, largely due to the way rage converts into damage (which converts into rage, which converts into damage…), and we haven’t completely nailed that design just yet.

One of the things we want to do in the future is take a hard look at the Arms and Fury trees. There are several talents which just haven’t weathered the course of time well and pale in comparison to some of the newer Wrath of the Lich King talents. We’re happiest with the Protection tree — we made a conscious effort to pare down that tree and remove a lot of mandatory talents in order to give the warrior more flexibility to take some more fun or utility-oriented talents. We need to make the same pass on the dps side of things. The reason we haven’t done so yet is that warrior dps is in a pretty good place and we don’t want to have to nerf the class across the board just to make some talents a little sexier. We will eventually do this though. We also need to make some decisions about the difference between Arms and Fury. Traditionally, Arms was the PvP tree and Fury was the PvE tree. We understand some players prefer that model, but we don’t like the way it cuts off such a big chunk of the class from players who might not have much interest in the PvP or PvE parts of the game. However, we would like to reinforce a little more the kits of Arms and Fury. Everyone (I hope) gets the difference between Frost and Fire mages. Arms is supposed to be about weapons and martial training and feel “soldierly.” Fury is supposed to be about screaming barbarians in woad. You get a sense of that, but it could be stronger. With the death knight, we allowed all three trees to more or less be able to tank. There is a desire among some players and designers to see Arms tank with a two-hander while Prot tanks with a shield. We’re still not sure that’s the direction we’ll go — it’s a ton of re-design and will never work for say the druid or paladin classes.

Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes?

A: The big ones are stances and rage. Other than warriors, only bear druids use the rage mechanic, and that is pretty much just because that form is intended to mimic warriors. Rage is an unusual resource because it is infinite over the course of minutes, but can be very limiting over the course of seconds. While the basic mechanic of rage is interesting, it has caused us lots of balance problems over the course of World of Warcraft — sometimes in the favor of the warrior and sometimes not. It’s probably time to give the mechanic another look.

Stances are intended to be a major battlefield decision for warriors, though we realize it doesn’t always pan out this way. You have access to different abilities in different stances, but pay a rage cost as well as sacrificing the potential to use other abilities. More on this below.

Warriors also have some unusual mechanics like say their ability to move quickly around a battlefield, to survive massive physical damage through plate armor and Defensive Stance, and game-changing abilities like Spell Reflect.

Community Team: Warriors have quite a few abilities that are contingent on certain circumstances like Overpower and Intervene.

Q: What is the reasoning behind this and do we have any plans to change that type of gameplay?

A: We like situational abilities. When specs don’t have situational abilities, it’s easy to fall into a very fixed rotation. We call this the metronome. Push button 1, 2, 3 on your keyboard over and over until the bad guy drops loot. We have made more of an effort in all the classes to have certain moments that require players to pay attention a little more and then reward them when they both cause those situations to happen and then execute on them.

Q: What would be the impact of changing those class mechanics?

A: I think if anything, abilities like this need to be more prominent. You should be less effective at your job if you ignore them, and ideally you’d also be less effective if you just macro’d them in. We like macros (obviously, or we wouldn’t have them in the game), but we like for them to simplify chains of things that you have to do often without making decisions in between point A and B. We don’t like it when playing your class becomes how clever your macro can be to the point at which you are pushing one button to play your class. That’s not playing an RPG — that’s programming a robot.

Community Team: Stances have long been a debated aspect of warriors’ gameplay from the pluses and minuses each one offers to the restrictions they apply on what abilities are available for use.

Q: What is the overall purpose of stances and how are stances intended to be used?

A: The purpose of stances is for warriors to have to make decisions in combat. How badly do I want to Intercept now? Should I pay the cost of Spell Reflect? Ideally, we want warriors to switch stances in combat — not every few seconds, but a few times over the course of a battle. Now we realize it’s going to be harder to enforce this in raid fights unless you have a battle with a lot of movement or other unusual circumstances.

We get a fair number of suggestions from players trying to basically slip the stance concept out of the warrior class: make it not take rage, or let them do more abilities per stance so they don’t need to switch stances so often. That’s not really what the warrior is all about though. You should care what stance you’re in and it should be a decision to change stance. Note that if you pay too high a price to change stances, that counts as there not being a decision though.

Q: Has there been any thought on moving away from restricting abilities based on the stance a player is in?

A: No. The design intent of warrior stances is that you change your toolbar when you go from one stance to another and that that decision isn’t a trivial one. Now, the third part aside from the rage cost and ability limitations is the penalties (such as 5% damage taken in Berserker). We cut those in half recently, and we’d eventually like to get rid of them altogether. We just don’t want to see Arms warriors in PvP in Defensive Stance 100% of the time. We have seen DKs stick with Frost Presence in PvP despite losing 15% damage, so I don’t think you can just argue “Oh, no warrior would EVER do that.”

Community Team: There has recently been a growing number of concerns with warrior damage, as a whole.

Q: What are our thoughts on the overall damage for warriors in each of the three specs?

A: Warrior damage was too high in Naxxramas and then a little low early in Ulduar. We think it’s in a pretty good place now and warriors will get a small damage buff in 3.2. Part of the concern here is we used to exempt warriors from the design philosophy that pure dps classes should do more damage than hybrid dps classes. We try to no longer play favorites here. Warrior damage should look like that of Feral druids, Enhancement shamans, Retribution paladins, and death knights. If their damage isn’t at that level, then it’s possible our numbers need some tweaking. However don’t always assume that you can’t possibly improve your gear or your button mashing either. =) Also remember that some fights just favor one class or spec over another. We’re totally cool with that, so long as it isn’t always the same exact class or spec that gets to shine.

Community Team: Warrior shouts have added some unique utility to the class in the past, but now they tend to be used very sparingly.

Q: What is the reasoning behind their short duration and do we have plans to improve the duration similar to the buffs other classes already provide?

A: The shouts are supposed to be buttons that warriors push in combat. They aren’t intended to be pre-fight buffs like Arcane Intellect or Prayer of Fortitude. We had a discussion about this recently and decided with glyphs and talents that the duration isn’t a problem. If you lack Booming Voice and the minor Battle Shout glyph, it might be more annoying.

Q: Demoralizing shout tends to have a very minimal impact in most situations, are there plans to improve this ability?

A: I think by “most situations” you must mean “PvP.” Demo Shout has a massive benefit against raid bosses. It’s probably 20% less damage from a typical boss and literally like 50% against say Thorim’s Unbalancing Strike. However, removing 400 attack power from a Feral druid with 9000 attack power, or a Shadow priest who doesn’t care about attack power at all is of much more limited use. Monsters and players use pretty different combat formulae (which is one of the weird things about the old design of say Vindication). We would like Demo Shout to be more useful in PvP, at least against characters who rely on attack power.

Community Team: The rage mechanic as a whole is very unique, but sometimes leads to situations where players aren’t able to perform due to lack of resources. A prime example of this is when a tanking warrior’s gear is much higher than the content they are at, by taking less damage they get less rage which results in less threat and therefore cannot perform at a higher level.

Q: Are there any considerations in store for improving this mechanic and allowing more rage generation in these situations?

A: Yes. In 3.2 we changed Shield Specialization to provide a little rage on a dodge, parry, or block. This will help in say the 5-player dungeons or in the first few seconds of a raid boss fight. It does not solve the problem of the Prot warrior who is not being targeted (because they are there to pick up adds later in the fight or something). We want to solve that problem by letting Prot warriors generate more rage through doing damage. It could be in the future that we shift most of rage generation to damage done and have little or none in damage taken (and we would have to change a lot of other mechanics to make this work obviously).

Now, long-term we need a better solution to rage generation. Tying it to damage done is logical in the theoretical world of game design, but has problems in reality. When your gear sucks, you have rage problems. When you have great gear, you are no longer limited by rage. That’s just not a great model, and one of the reasons warriors are overly gear dependent.

Q: Where do we feel warriors fit into the current raid environment and where do we see them progressing in the future?

A: Obviously warriors were the traditional tanks and pretty much the only tank in much of World of Warcraft’s history. Warriors now share tanking responsibilities with three other classes, which can feel psychologically like a nerf. In Ulduar, we think warrior tank balance is about where it should be — death knights were a little ahead, paladins were a little behind, and druids were about even with warriors. We are making a few Prot changes to 3.2 to help in some of the areas where they fall short, such as damage done. Death knights are getting a nerf, paladins are getting a buff, and druids might get a nerf or stay as-is. There are plenty of guilds progressing through hard modes with warrior MTs on almost every fight, and we don’t see that changing in the Crusader’s Coliseum.

We’re happy with warrior dps in Ulduar. Whether you go Fury or Arms probably depends on whether you need Trauma or Rampage, and we know warriors in good guilds who flip between both specs. There is some evidence that Fury may overtake Arms dps once you get really good weapons. Dual-wield yet again shows its propensity to scale very well. Warriors will get a slight dps buff through Armored to the Teeth.

Community Team: Sticking with raiding content for a moment. Many tanking Warriors have felt the there is little value in both Strength and Block Value attributes.

Q: We have expressed an interest in improving Block Value for tanking warriors in the past; do we have any definite plans to update this?

A: Shield Block Value just isn’t a strong mitigation stat these days. However, the amount it would need to be increased is enormous in order to make a difference vs. bosses that can hit for 40K. The problem with improving shield Block Value by so much is that Prot warriors would be nigh invulnerable — they literally might take no damage — against large groups of adds, in easier content where opponents don’t hit that hard, and in PvP. The real problem is that the amount blocked doesn’t scale with the amount of the swing. We think block needs to be a percentage of damage blocked in order for the stat to do what we want. But the trade-off would mean that warriors (and paladins) couldn’t block every incoming hit, especially from large groups. Avoidance might also need to come down across the board, and many talents and abilities would need to be redesigned. This is a major change that isn’t the kind of thing we can crowbar into 3.2 with a clean conscience. It is almost certainly the future for the block stat.

Q: With strength on tanking gear currently providing a very minimal benefit and still using up a lot of stats on items, do we have plans to improve how this stat works for tanks?

A: Strength is good for dps and threat. It’s not a super mitigation stat (through block) but we also don’t know that it needs to be. We have made some big improvements to Prot warrior dps in Lich King, but too many players still view the primary role of the tank to stack avoidance and mitigation and then complain when their threat is low because they avoided all dps stats. Now, we do think the game of survival is more fun than the game of the threat management, but we also need to get players out of the mindset that it’s okay for tanks to ignore dps stats and just do trivial damage. They don’t need to top the charts, but their damage should be a meaningful component of damage done. We’re willing to change the way the game works to accomplish this goal.

Community Team: Let’s jump over to the topic of player-versus-player interaction. Discussions on the survivability of warriors in PvP have been ongoing.

Q: Do we have any plans to make warriors less reliant on healers in PvP conflicts?

A: We have taken small steps with Enraged Regeneration and increasing the healing on Bloodthirst. We don’t want the warrior to be great at healing as say a Shadow priest or death knight. On the other hand, we want healing to be a major part of the PvP experience. We’re okay with the occasional all-dps Arena team, but they need to be rare or a major chunk of the game just gets marginalized.

Not related to PvP, we do think warriors have too much downtime when leveling. Healing may not be the solution to that, but we think it needs a solution.

Q: With strength being the stat that provides the most benefit in dps scenarios, do we have plans to implement PvP gear like cloaks and rings that have strength instead of attack power?

A: Doing that just means the item isn’t of any interest to say leather or mail wearers, which means we have to create twice as many kinds of rings. The problem is that some classes value Strength and some value Attack Power. Things would work better if some valued Strength and some valued Agility, and Attack Power was a useful secondary stat to both. This has the added benefit of solving the whole problem where leather and mail look attractive to warriors. If leather had Agility on it and plate had Strength on it, then it’s pretty clear who is getting what item. Strength for rogues and Agility for warriors wouldn’t be junk stats, but they wouldn’t be as attractive as the other stat. Again, this is a big change. We wouldn’t just gut rogue dps by stripping Attack Power off all of their gear.

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