Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUpcoming class and item balance changes
by Adam Holisky 
Jan 7th 2010 at 8:17PM
There has been a lot of good discussion lately concerning various aspects of the DPS status quo. Some classes are putting out too much compared to their cloth counterparts, and others have suddenly found themselves too powerful in certain areas of the game. Blizzard recognizes this, and this evening the Lead System Designer, Ghostcrawler, came out and enumerated a few things Blizzard believes are true.
Ghostcrawler has left the door open to these class and item balance issues being fixed (if Blizzard decides to pursue such fixes) in either a hotfix or through an upcoming patch. Chief among these changes are an increase in warlock DPS, a decrease in rogue DPS, a change in protection warriors to limit their utility in PvP, and refinements to Icecrown Citadel weapon procs.
When looking over this laundry list of areas to change, it's important to remember that Ghostcrawler is not promising a fix, and that he and his team are not ready to share specifics. He has not promised you the pony, so don't be mad if some of these changes don't happen.
Ghostcrawler's full statement after the break.
Ghostcrawler has left the door open to these class and item balance issues being fixed (if Blizzard decides to pursue such fixes) in either a hotfix or through an upcoming patch. Chief among these changes are an increase in warlock DPS, a decrease in rogue DPS, a change in protection warriors to limit their utility in PvP, and refinements to Icecrown Citadel weapon procs.
When looking over this laundry list of areas to change, it's important to remember that Ghostcrawler is not promising a fix, and that he and his team are not ready to share specifics. He has not promised you the pony, so don't be mad if some of these changes don't happen.
Ghostcrawler's full statement after the break.
From Ghostcrawler:
As many of you have suspected, we think rogue damage is too high. We will be making hotfixes to lower the maximum damage output of Assassination and Combat rogues. The Combat nerf will be slight. Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn't be beating out other specs to such a large degree.
Other things on our radar that you might see soon -- none of these are promises and we have no specific changes to announce yet:
- Warlock damage in PvE is a little low.
- Protection warriors have too much utility and damage for PvP. (We don't want to hurt their tanking in PvE of course.)
- We are considering adjusting (not replacing) the Elemental 4 piece Tier 10 set bonus.
- We'll continue to refine and look at the Icecrown weapon procs.
- Other stuff (yes, we've heard your concerns), but these are the big things we are focusing on at this time.
We usually don't make such general announcements before we're ready to share the specifics, so we'll see how this works out.
Filed under: Patches, News items
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 9)
dissenter Jan 7th 2010 10:31PM
Did Blizzard once claim massive melee DPS coupled with surivivability was OP? Check.
Did Blizzard once claim massive DPS coupled with with utility was OP? Check.
Did Blizzard once claim massive DPS coupled with PvP utilitity was OP? Check.
When the duration of "Cyclone" ends, area buffs such as "Leader of the Pack", "Tree of Life", and "Moonkin" will now be correctly resumed.
"Bear Form" now grants 25% increased stamina instead of 25% increased health.
"Dire Bear Form" now grants 25% increased stamina instead of 25% increased health. In addition, the armor bonus has been reduced from 450% to 400%.
The multiplier on base weapon damage for "Mangle (Bear)" ability has been changed from 130% to 100%. In addition, the bonus damage has been reduced by the same ratio.
"Savage Fury" no longer affects "Mangle (Bear)".
"Savage Fury" no longer applies to "Maul" or "Swipe".
The critical damage bonus on "Predatory Instincts" reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10%.
"Improved Leader of the Pack" can no longer get critical heals.
Does blizzard afford PvP specced melee rogues the same treatment they did melee specced pvp druids?
...
NOPE!!!
K Jan 7th 2010 10:45PM
You are obviously forgetting that Blizz adjusts DPS differently for hybrids and pure classes.
vinniedcleaner Jan 7th 2010 10:53PM
"Both specs should still do just fine on damage meters (assuming skill, gear etc.) but shouldn't be beating out other specs to such a large degree. "
in other words, "We gave in to the mage and warlock QQing."
Oni Stardust Jan 8th 2010 12:07AM
"Considering that I was complaining just a few days ago that I can't get my 80 rogue in blues & purples to reach 1k dps, I'd say yes."
My main is a Rogue, she's only been 80 for about a week, and in my first few lv80 instances I put out 1500 DPS on average with mostly blues, a couple greens, and no epics. Now with a mere handful of epics she can do DPS in the area of 1900-2000.
So gear is not your problem.
Deathgodryuk Jan 8th 2010 12:37AM
A rogue who knows what they're doing can break 2k single target easily in quest blues, I did it when I first hit 80 shortly after the release of wrath and rogues were nowhere near as powerful as they are now.
I don't like being nerfed any more than anyone else but we rogues really need to admit that we're blowing all other classes (except hunters & geared dps warriors) out of the water. I am a little confused as to why those two other classes will remain untouched by the nerf bat but as an overpowered rogue I feel somewhat comfortable in saying that we've had it coming for a while and the most recent change to deadly poison just made it more obvious.
Valt Jan 8th 2010 8:15AM
If rogues honestly QQ about their damage its bullshit mostly.
Go to world of logs and see icecrown damage meters on pretty much every fight apart from putricide so far. If you cant be arsed I just type it here:
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Combat rogue
Assassination rogue
Arcane Mage
Assassination rogue
Arms warrior
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
Assassination rogue
I know logs are not "everyone in wow" but honestly if theres 8 pages of rogues topping meters with almost no other classes in sight theres "something" wrong here. And yes I say wrong because it doesnt IMO seem pretty balanced. Ofcourse rogues might flame or QQ because who wouldnt want to top meters and do sick damage? I know I would. But hey, other ones than arcane mages and rogues should have their spotlight too.
Mihn Jan 8th 2010 10:08AM
@Valt
Are those parses from one rogue throughout an entire raid?
If those are single fight damage meters and do not represent the whole raid, I say they cant be used as evidence that we need a nerf. Its flawed and slanted. From personal experience, I end up 3rd or 4th sometimes higher than that for the raid overall. So, while I may shine on one fight, I dont kick ass all the time. Your charts, might show who is doing great damage on one fight, but, overall dps is what should be looked at and studied.
To those who say we shouldnt be tops, I ask why not? What else do we bring to the raid? If you take away our ability to do massive needed damage on a mob, then, you take away our reason for coming to a raid.
We were already on shaky ground, now, they want to pull the rug out from under us, and send us back to PvP.
Valt Jan 8th 2010 12:06PM
@Mihn
World of logs have this "top dps ranks" list there. And again, I know its not "all wow players" but I could say that If I was blizzard I would be kinda concerned that theres pages and pages of rogues. Why? Because eventually even those "not hardcores" get ICC gear where they can pull out those numbers without EJ math with their ToC25 hc gear. Ok fair enough, no need to nerf rogues before even bads get "full icc gear" but we know it is coming eventually im sure.
Logs count all bosses not "entire raid". So far every boss from Lord to plague wing (apart from professor) has tons and tons of rogues. I mean even lady.. where melee has to actually move (gasp) and ranged not so much.
asdfghjkloo Jan 8th 2010 12:58PM
What?!?! Rogue nerf? There is no reason why my Assassination Rogue SHOULDN'T be doing 4.2k DPS in Naxx 10/25 gear. :)
Worcester Jan 8th 2010 7:50PM
In this particular case, I might buy into the nerf because it's aimed at leveling out other rogue builds to be more or less equal. Now I've been out of play for a few weeks... but I always hate to hear that "Rogue DPS is too high". Compared to what? Other classes? Other pure classes?
We should out DPS any hybrid. We DPS, that's it. We don't tank and we don't heal. Those abilities should come at a DPS cost. That's the point of a pure class. We do one thing, so we should do it better than anyone else.
Frankly, I think we should out DPS the other pure DPS classes too. Why? We're the only melee DPS class. We stand right in the heat of battle, in some of the lowest armor in the game. We take melee damage, we take ranged damage, we take aoe damage. The ability to rely on a pet, or stand at range (hunters and warlocks do both) should also come at a DPS cost.
Now if I could just get used to this n52te, I might actually become one of those elitist OP rogues. Hopefully not :)
The Silent Dawn Jan 7th 2010 8:29PM
I much preferred the picture with the Nerf gun. Made me lol IRL
mayjest Jan 7th 2010 8:30PM
"Class and item balance changes" implies changes a lot different to what these actually are:
"Yes, rogues are OP"
"Yep, Warlocks are rubbish. Our bad, we thought they'd all rolled Death Knights already!"
"Huh, turns out giving Prot Warriors that much utility in PvP *is* inbalanced!"
"We hoped that giving weapons procs rather than stats would help with stat capping problems, but it turns out that people would rather overcap stats than deal with underwhelming procs :("
"Yeah, Elemental Shamans are only in the raid for therir Bloodlust after all. Our bad."
From what I can tell, this is a complete, 100% reversal on everything they've been saying since about a month before 3.3 came out. Up to and including what they said yesterday. I thought Ghostcrawler was supposed to be the lead developer, yet he seems to be the most misinformed press secretary since Nixon's Whitehouse!
(Not a personal attack on GC. I just wish Blizzard would get their stuff together and stop changing their minds. I'd be OK with classes being imbalanced if they'd just come out and admit it, rather than pretending everything is fine until 10mins before they announce the nerfs/buffs)
mayjest Jan 7th 2010 8:35PM
Huh, I re-read this and realised that the first bit is complete nonsense. Editing on the fly in an effort to get the comment out earlier clearly does not work :(
Grubba Jan 7th 2010 9:48PM
Your post has been (not surprisingly) downrated, but it's true. It's ridiculous the way that they will insist that things are fine all the way up until the day before changes to those things are intended/incoming because they think things aren't fine, with no word of explanation behind the turnaround or even an acknowledgment that they're reversing their position.
Chris Anthony Jan 7th 2010 10:34PM
Can you point to where GC actually said "we don't have a problem with rogue damage"? Because I can't find it anywhere. He teased the people complaining about rogue damage, and said "if we had a problem with rogue damage, we'd nerf them" - and sure enough, they had a problem with rogue damage and nerfed rogues - but I can't find a place where he said "we're okay with rogue damage as it is".
I think what's happening is that you're interpreting his not saying "we're nerfing rogues right this second" to mean "we like rogues where they are".
Grubba Jan 7th 2010 10:59PM
I'm less concerned about the rogues and more concerned about the prot warriors. They *have* stated in no uncertain terms that they didn't think that prot warriors in pvp aren't a problem, even though they "can be annoying" to fight.
I don't pvp on my prot warrior and have no interest in doing so, and I hate hearing about pvp-related nerfs that will affect pve, because my tank DPS is already so much lower than other classes' tank specs.
spsteevoe Jan 7th 2010 8:31PM
Yes yes, rogues are finally doin the dmg we should be.... seems right to nerf us. Heaven forbid you do something useful and fix vanish or something...
valkry Jan 7th 2010 10:39PM
Even when you were doing poor damage, you were still doing more than elemental shammies, we are first in line for dps buffs, not you!
Joyous_Oblivion Jan 7th 2010 11:13PM
Elemental shammies should never and hopefully never will be as good of dps as a rogue. Blizzard has said many times now that hybrid dps will not be as good as 'pure' dps, and nor should it be. You have the option to heal as well, we can only dps.
I'd very much doubt you'll ever see your dps on par with rogues again, assuming similar gear and experience of course.
jorge_av Jan 7th 2010 8:32PM
I'm glad they noticed a slightly under performing lock damage. It's not by much but you can notice it pull to pull.
@ ryaneford: It's not as bad as it used to be. It's kind of like the current lock damage. Sometimes I really see a dive in damage, but other times my shadow priest is beating rogues in better gear. It's just some encounters, aoe is good, single target boss fights are good, single target trash is pretty bad.