Nerfs: Math is fun
by Chris Miller 
Jan 26th 2007 at 3:32PM
So, we here at WoW Insider get letters. Some of them are great story suggestions, some of them are good things to know, and some of them are, well, not very well thought out. A case in point. An email from a hunter wondering why we did not have sufficient coverage of the "ricidulous" hunter change in the previous patch, that apparently "sucks huge." Especially since "mages got buffed and locks were untouched."I sit at work all day, and read these when I get a spare moment. This letter just kinda stuck sideways in my brain. Besides the bad spelling, bad grammar, and so on, well, let's look at the claims here.
A hunter nerf. Since I play a hunter, I was somewhat concerned, but rather than waging a vast war on the Warcraft forums, I sat down with my good friend Excel and poked the numbers in. For a hunter at level 60 with 1000 ranged attack power, which is a decent value for a marksmanship spec hunter without a lot of epic gear, this is a decrease in damage output of 17%. Which sounds like a lot, until you realize, it's a nerf of 70 hit points on a non-crit against an unarmored target. Seventy. Hit. Points. There was another damage reduction to the marksmanship tree involving Multi-shot. The talent reduced the critical hit chance bonus some, but it also reduced the base damage bonus. How much? My good friend Excel and I came up with 2 percent. The interesting thing about the change to multi-shot is that it actually scales DOWN with gear, so the better your ranged weapon is, the less effected you are by the change.
So, yeah, a fairly sizable nerf to an instant-cast spell with a reasonably short cooldown that was extremely mana inefficient. The other change, the "multi-shot" change, was a gimme. Basically this is the kind of change hunters should be thankful for: it looks really bad to anyone who doesn't play the class, but, in reality, it's a very small change in the amount of damage done. The change in critical strike percentage is actually worse, but even that's a very small change.
Now, let's look at the rest of the list.
"Mages got buffed." No. Mages got nerfed, hard. The damage coefficient change means that their spell power gear is not worth as much as it was before. This is a change that will hurt more as more damage gear is added. So from a gearing up perspective, this is a far worse nerf for mages than the multi-shot nerf is for hunters. The counterspell change must be what the correspondent was referring to, but that was actually a bug fix, apparently counterspell was put onto a cooldown in 2.0.1, and the cooldown was removed now.
"locks were untouched" Fair enough, in this patch there were no changes to the warlock class. That's because in 2.0.3 they had a 27% across the board nerf to all spells that do damage over time, which for many warlocks is the majority of the active casting bar. Also, pet damage output was reduced significantly, but armor was increased. So warlocks got huge nerfs to two very popular talent trees. And not that long ago either.
The change I didn't particularly care for was the change to the priest DoT coefficient. Any hunter who whines about their damage reduction because they are trying to level really should play a priest up to, say, level 30, then respec to Holy or Discipline and see how fast you can level. I have a lot of respect for the priests who are healing me in raids right now, because keeping enough points out of the shadow tree to have excellent healing while we all n00b it up in Hellfire Citadel means they aren't going to level very fast at all when they're trying to solo.
So next time before you head off to the forums to complain about hard nerfs, you may want to consider loading up a spreadsheet and actually looking at what's going on first.
Filed under: Hunter, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Chad Jan 26th 2007 3:43PM
2 points for you sir.
Smithra Jan 26th 2007 3:44PM
You've violated the first rule of picking on anyone's spelling or grammar. You must make sure your own is impeccable. Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb.
Kaziel Jan 26th 2007 3:49PM
Minor point about Counterspell: Not a bug. The devs specifically said that it was an intended change making it affect and be effected by GCD. Originally it was planned to be effected by it, they changed it, then basically the making it affect GCD was a decision they made because they believed it would be more balaned. The problem was that mages had (and still have) some issues fighting against casters, when CS is not on GCD. With it on, we were getting beat up like red headed step children. And it couldn't be counted as a buff, but a counter-nerf. Basically it was returning us the previous status quo.
OTOH, the change to Mana Shield is the only thing that could be considered a buff, but even that is really stretching it. While the change actually makes it a much more usable spell (honestly I only ever used it to keep me alive a little longer as I ran away), it's still not a grat spell because it uses up your mana pool far too quickly. It still falls into the catagory of "Run away tool", IMO.
Hypothesis Jan 26th 2007 4:38PM
I just wanted to say thanks for the shout out to holy priests! I've been a holy priest, with some discipline on the side, all the way to my current level of 63 but I haven't really thought of my class being that difficult to solo. Yeah, we pretty much are only good at healing, but if you know what you're doing soloing is pretty easy. The decrease in my one DoT does kind of suck because I rely on shadow word: pain a lot even as holy spec and the little damage it did to begin with doesn't gain any help by being scaled back a bit.
As for the hunters, my alt's a 29 hunter and I just love them. I'm not going to say nerf them or anything, but it's just so much less stressful being a hunter compared to a priest. And a lot quicker leveling too...and that doesn't seem like much of a nerf at all the way you explained it.
Jonathon Pop Jan 26th 2007 4:10PM
I'm going to agree with you here on the priests nerf. does it really matter if our shadow word: pain does a little more damage? Rogue: "Oh no, that priest just cast a dot on me thats gonna do 1300 damage over about 15 seconds!!! Let me go hit him twice each for 2000+ damage that'll teach him." You could substitute Rogue for just about any class...
I am one of these Holy/Disc Priests that has a hard time keeping points out of the Shadow tree. Leveling for us just plain sucks. I can fight about 2 or 3 mobs before having to sit and drink. But its just so much more beneficial to a group to stay holy/disc. And let me tell you, lets just hope I get those mobs solo, otherwise i just spent all my mana killing one mob.. Is it not enough that our Holy fire spell takes 14 minutes to cast?
We priests are used to getting the shaft though. You know if they made our +healing gear do +holy damage as well. Give us holy form, instead of taking away our holy spells like shadow form does, holy form would remove our shadow spells, but let our holy spells do alot more damage. 600 damage for a spell that takes over 3 seconds to cast is just not viable option for soloing or doing the rep grind.
My whole point is, why nerf that? Were us priests really going to just do so much more damage with 1 spell that you couldn't leave it in there? Every class out there has a build that lets them solo relatively well, as well as be an asset in a group. most classes are one in the same. Lets face it, no one wants a shadow priest in a group unless theres another priest in there, in which case its alot of fun.
Tseran Jan 26th 2007 4:34PM
I didn't notice much of a change to the damage I am doing as a hunter, of course I am not sitting there watching my damage charts most of the time. I would rather kill things then worry about how fast I am killing them. Sure, i would love to kill things very fast, but that's just not reasonable. I'm not a rogue after all.
I agree that priests need something in the holy & discipline trees that help them solo and be good in groups. I have great respect for the priests in our guild, especially the ones staying priests. Ironically, lately, our Pally's have been stepping up to be main healers for most of the 5 mans we do. That actually works out well, since it means if a mob peels off for the healer, he can take a few hits, or even off tank if necessary.
Matt Jan 26th 2007 4:39PM
The mage nerf was completely unnecessary and inconsistent with other classes' talents. Why didnt they nerf Bane? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, especially since Blizzard has stated that mages should be the top direct damage dealer in raids and such. Seems like other classes get their damage buffed to mage levels, while keeping their survivability, where mages get their damage output crushed and still remain as frail as ever.
Will Rogers Jan 26th 2007 5:31PM
Smithra,
You're the one who's wrong:
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/015.html
Zuuler Jan 26th 2007 5:40PM
Just so you know, Warlocks were nerfed a few patches back. This was an undocumented nerf, but if you check out some warlock forums you will see that dots were nerfed. So all yu whiners out there that have been screaming "nerf locks" can quit your complaining. Locks have their strenghts just like other classes, and they also have their weaknesses. Find them and exploit them instead of asking for more.
Kabira-Fenris Jan 26th 2007 5:52PM
@4 - If you take a look at the holy and disc trees for priests, you can make a pretty cool holy damage build - and what is the only class of magic that you can't buff your resist for? Holy. A lot of it doubles as good healing stuff too - +spell crit et cetera. That spec is what my priest was after I got sick of shadow.
Matt Jan 26th 2007 5:53PM
But thats not how it should be. Locks are supposed to be debuffers, and mages are supposed to be ranged direct damage. Why would you nerf a DoTer's DoTs and trim a direct damager's direct damage? Makes no damn sense to me.
Jp Jan 26th 2007 5:53PM
As someone who is a hunter, and enjoys math, I found this post particularly enjoyable.
I applaud you sir, and grant you two points, as well.
Kaziel Jan 26th 2007 5:55PM
@Matt: Actually Blizzard has shown a tendancy to do balancing change or nerfs (depends on your POV) towards a certain type of talent or spell over the course of a few patches. Take the DoT change: Initially it hit only Warlocks, but now it's been also changed so that the other class with a similar effect, Priests with SW:P have also been equalizied. And while I'm quite sure this will get an outcry from those reading this thread, it's entirely possible that Serpent Shot will get a similar change, since it's basically the same effect as SW:P and the various other ranged DoTs in the game.
Kaziel Jan 26th 2007 6:00PM
Addendum to my previous post: What I meant about it being balanced out over a number of patches, that in the next few patches I would be surprised if the same effect was not placed on each talent that gets a bonus from spell damage, based on the 3.5 second cast time equation. Basically what they intended on doing is making spell damage gear apply it's bonus based on the actual casting time of the spell, not the unmodified casting time of a spell.
The Anon Jan 26th 2007 6:01PM
'Mages got nerfed. Hard'
Not really. Frost mages more than Fire or Arcane mages. Frost only gained like 85% of spell co-ef to start with, losing another 10% off that is a total 12% reduction in Frostbolt's +spell. Fireball gets 100%, ergo it's a simple 10% reduction for it. At most with +815 spell it would be like a 5% reduction in a Fireball's actual damage. Of course none of this takes in to account the fab new 70 spells for mages. Arcane Blast has possibly the highest Damage per Mana in the game, before debuffs, at 3.59. Even Ice Lance (which is also a great spell, albeit more situational), even against frozen targets, only gets 3.48 DPM. With 3 debuffs it rivals Fire Blast for base DPS (483 for Fire Blast rank 9, 467 for AB), even if it's a huge mana hog.
Counterspell was not a 'bug fix', it was deliberately changed and now it has been restored. Whilst technically not a true buff (more a restoration), it certainly feels like one after using it since it got altered.
Lastly: No mention of the mana shield buff? Absorbing spell damage finally allows Fire/Arcane mages absorption against casters in PVP, even if it is a mana hungry solution. But then I've got over 8.2k mana and I'm not even 70.
@5: I always though that Holy or Disc should get a very deep talent that increases spell damage by a percentage of your healing, perhaps a short self buff that did such a thing or maybe a percentage of your Intellect.
Eep /rant over.
Pete Jan 27th 2007 3:27AM
Smithra, Will Rogers
Actually, all three of you are wrong :)
Chris should have used "affected" in his sentence:
"the less effected you are by the change"
Effect can also be used as a verb, when it means "to bring about". Affect when used as a verb means "to influence".
Chinotto Jan 27th 2007 8:00PM
I know this guys e-mail. This guy lives in Venezuela plays a Night elf on maelstrom, his characters name is Galipan, and send me an e-mail so I can forward your e-mails to him.
My e-mail is chinotto.pwng@gmail.com
Ender Jan 28th 2007 10:02PM
DOT's weren't nerfed, their coeffecient was nerfed. What this means is as gear got better and better they grew in power too much compared to other spells. Might sound like the same thing but there is a difference.
Its very important that spells scale about equally so one class doesn't grow in power too fast as we hit raid gear, thats what the dot coeffecient changes are about, its what arcane shot change is about and its what rage normalization was about. We don't want another situation like Feral Druid DPS pre patch where it was balanced in greens but too low in raid gear.
Atie Jan 29th 2007 2:54PM
Galipan...lol
I do believe I have run across him before. :-)
Kazzaam Jan 29th 2007 4:57PM
Your attidude may affect the effect of your criticism. Constructive criticism may effect an improvement in your subject's writing. But careless criticism may have a negative effect upon his affect.
How will the new patch affect mages?
A buff will effect an improvement in your mage's performance. But a nerf will have a negative effect.
-- All dis grammar make me head hurt. Dat's why I play Horde. Da Horde dont spell. Let da stupid humans worry bout da spellin an da gramer. We got betta tings to do. Like skinnin Gnomes.