DoTs and Resilience
by Eliah Hecht 
Jun 20th 2007 at 7:23PM
Resilience, a stat introduced in the Burning Crusade, has quickly become very important in the new Arena-centric PvP world. In a nutshell, it reduces your chance to be crit, as well as the damage taken from any crits that do get through. And since PvP is all about burst damage, it makes sense that attacking crits would help. It helps against melee damage, ranged physical damage, magic nukes, anything that can crit. However, one very important class of damage is incapable of critting: DoTs.A DoT can't crit, and therefore it doesn't care about resilience. So what, you ask? Well, this means that as PvP gear improves, and gains more resilience, it protects more against all kinds of damage except DoTs. Which means that, relative to other types of damage, DoTs get buffed as PvP gear improves. Dahis of Shadow Gaming calls this "classist item scaling," and presents as plausible solutions "Either nerf DoT base damage and allow crits, or rework resilience with some flat damage reduction component, or just add some aspect that pertains directly to DoTs." And it looks like Blizzard is listening to the growing concern; in a discussion on resilience, Drysc said "We're looking into it."
So what do you think? Does the DoTs/resilience situation need to be addressed in some way, or is it good as is? For more in-depth analysis, do read the article over at Shadow Gaming, which has several good points.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Classes
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Rich Jun 20th 2007 7:39PM
Resilience is there to keep you from getting one/two shotted, not to prevent damage.
It decreases the damage from crits and it just decreases the chance you will get hit by a crit. Sure having 4 or 5 DoT's stacked on you sucks, but no matter what you still will take the same amount of damage each and every time. With attacks than can crit, you never know when a crit will land. By mitigating the crit chance, you ensure you will live the extra 5 seconds.
DoT's vs resilience is just fine. Need to mitigate the damage? Wear +Shadow resist.
ThePosterAboveMeIsDumb Jun 20th 2007 7:54PM
Hey Smart Guy, How much arena gear do you wear with +shadow resist? Oh thats right.. NONE of it has any resist of ANY kind of magic on it. Maybe Blizzard should start putting Shadow Resist on all the arena gear and make you eat your words.
anon Jun 20th 2007 7:49PM
As a lock I might be biased but I do not think that DOTs should be effected by reslience. Almost every class has a (potential) out from DOT damage; cleanse, cloak of shadows, iceblock, spellstone, etc. These spells & talents can be used before the DOT even has time to cause damage (DOT damage doesn't occur until first tick). No one has ever been 2 or 3 shotted from a DOT, its that kind of immediate, devastating burst damage that resilience is trying to even out. If resilience effected slow, prolonged damage what would be the point of fighting, no one would ever take damage.
Freehugz Jun 20th 2007 7:52PM
The solution is quite clearly to buff druids.
Aldrel Jun 20th 2007 8:17PM
@4
Hey Dumb Guy,
You do realize that you can swap out gear before you get into combat, right? If you see locks in an arena, put it on and you'll be fine. Or you could keep whining about something you can fix and keep losing.
Gurei Jun 20th 2007 8:19PM
Rich is right,resilience works fine right now and prevents people from getting 1 /2 shot as at 60,dots arent burst and can be dispeled by any good team anyway so why change anything there?
Its not like the game even had many locks or Spriest in high arena teams.
Now if something was changed for 1vs1 balance to make resilience afect dots,something would also be needed against healing then because healers wont be affected by it right?
Then maybe CC heavy clases might need to be affected by it?
Reduce healing recieved,reduce time under CC and what else if resilience was n all around defense skill?But no guys dont loose the point its just there to prevent burst damage from crits .
lolwtfstfu Jun 20th 2007 8:49PM
to number 1, he probably plays a warlock or plays on a 1300 arena team
Its a very well point that as Arena gear gets better and better (more resilience) so do DoTs (get better and better with more SP), wheres the balance, isnt PVP gear supposed to help reduce overall dmg?
I feel that my 350 resilience is useless when im fighting a warlock/shadow priest, its doing nothing effective at all and the difference of Tier 5 and Merciless Gladiator is the resilience. I sacrificed stats (sta) for the resilience and fighting warlocks and sp priest, it does nothing at all
And i laughed hard when you said wear high sta gear and SR, yea right, this is supposed to be the ULTIMATE PVP GEAR
What kinda PVP gear would it be if it did not reduce the dmg of dots, seriously?
I used to not care about the issue but now having alot of resilience, i see a difference when im being meleed and NO DIFFERENCE at all when im being DOTed up.
The sta increase isnt enough to survive, resilience uses enough of the ilvl and for it being useless against 2 classes... tis a shame
lolwtfstfu Jun 20th 2007 8:54PM
@ 2 you heard of Unstable Affliction? Try to cleanse dots with that on, thats the reason they made UA, so that the DoTs cant just be cleansed off..
I forgot to add that It's really OP when my Resilience does NOTHING AT ALL, when im being DEATHCOILED and FEARLOCKED until im at 2000 or less HP and then i have to heal myself to KEEP my hp at 2000. That's right, 850 SP and i have to use Heals to KEEP myself at 2000, so youre DoT's theoretically put a 100% Mortal Strike on me. Does that show a new perspective for you?
Tylenol Jun 20th 2007 8:53PM
If Resilience affected DOTS it will be a huge nerf. The caster already has his main weapons: Nukes fall under resilience. It will be a huge nerf. If they make resilience affect DOTS then make it also affect white damage from say rouges and the likes to make it fair. Why allow it to affect all the casters damage and only the melee crits.
lolwtfstfu Jun 20th 2007 8:55PM
hmm another comment is ARENA GEAR supposed to prevent you from getting 2-1 shotted ONLY or Help you PVP (Survive) ?
Aldrel Jun 20th 2007 8:57PM
Why not complain about armor then? It does nothing for spells.
lolwtfstfu Jun 20th 2007 9:11PM
Well blizzard has actually enabled alot of moves to completely block spells, such as Interrupts, stuns (that applies to melee too) and dmg interruptions and silences and for shamans case, Grounding Totem.
And well Armor i honestly think suits classes, well that Warriors have high armor but are susceptible to spell damage (giving the game a rock papers scissors)
Spells are not like Melee attacks is what i'm trying to say.
and @8, resilience effects All dmg but DoTs. It already effects white damage of a rogue and if you had enough resilience, you can definetly see the difference
lolwtfstfu Jun 20th 2007 9:14PM
ok 8 i got a great idea, how bout we make DoTs change to a cast where the duration of the cast is the duration of the DoT?!
theRaptor Jun 20th 2007 9:35PM
People just need to wait for a month into season 2, when warlocks will be massively over represented in the high brackets. Getting around resilience will be a massive benefit against high ranked teams that have most of their gladiators gear already.
Devega Jun 20th 2007 9:45PM
It seemes to me the idea of resilience is to reduce unpredictble damage spikes. Otherwise, resilience would've just reduced all damage taken by a certain amount (like damage reduction for you D&D players out there). Since dots are a flat line rate of damage, I don't see why they should be affected.
Matt T Jun 20th 2007 10:56PM
ZOMG!
This one time, I went in the arena and I was totally beat by a Warlock! So I QQ'd a lot, and whined, and cried, and finally they got the nerfses!
So now I don't ever have to lose to a lock! *strokes epeen* I so PWN locks now!
............
Jesus people, shut up about Warlocks. If you spent half of the energy spent whining about warlocks learning to use your skills in your class - you would see it is all good.
Some classes have strengths against other classes, some not so much. This constant QQ fest about Warlocks is getting REALLY OLD!
Lets just fix it all and WoW can have one race (Nerfs) and one class (Nerf Whacker). everyone has the choice of one piece of gear for each location, and only one type of weapon. Now what will the QQ'ers have to cry about?
You get to pick different races and different classes to suit each persons playing style and idea of fun. Just shut up and enjoy the game! The constant QQ about who needs a nerf and who needs buffed just sounds like a bunch of 6 month olds whining (waah waah Warlock waah waah Druid waah waah nerf nerf nerf nerf nerf!) GOD! SHUT UP AND PLAY!
It seriously took you dweebs this long to figure out that LIFE ISN'T FAIR AND BALANCED?! Oh poor babies, you got killed by a warlock, oh man... we should just remove warlocks so that never has to happen to you again.. poor wittle babies!
Niko Jun 20th 2007 11:20PM
@15: The reason DoTs are so powerful against people in arena gear is the fact that the classes who use them (shadow priests, affliction locks) do not regularly use a SINGLE ability that is designed to crit. Shadow priests use mind flay, devouring plague, and SW:P for the most part and warlocks use...well...we all know. In essence, shadow priests and warlocks are able to COMPLETELY ignore resilience, whereas all other classes are properly hindered by it. THAT is not fair.
Nogun Jun 20th 2007 11:47PM
Shadow Priests and Affliction Warlocks are the only 2 classes that are virtually forced to use gear with spell crit (90% of the caster gear has it), a stat that is wasted on them yet pay for the item budget like any other. Is that fair?
So now some want to take away the ONLY advantage of not relying on burst damage.
Laukidh Jun 20th 2007 11:53PM
Its too bad that arena gear doesn't also have extra stamina to mitigate the damage from dots.
Twalname Jun 21st 2007 12:12AM
"It seriously took you dweebs this long to figure out that LIFE ISN'T FAIR AND BALANCED?!" -Matt T
But, unless I've been mistaken we're talking about WoW here, not life.