@Crumble

My thoughts exactly. I don't go on the forums that often but it is enough. Blizz and the other devs have more than enough to stress to deal with, just leave them to their work and wait until Cata comes out.

Or... Play God of War 3 or something.

The End.

There's a difference between going apeshit over an update and pointing out the likely outcome based on pattern recognition... Blizzard's ways may be mysterious, but if something just screams "I'M OP, NERF ME" or "I WILL NEVER FIND A SPOT ON YOUR ACTION BAR", then a seasoned played can pass pretty accurate judgments.

People tend to get real defensive in both cases, I wonder why...

While I agree that people tend to get panicky and the forums tend to devolve into an echo chamber ("I'm outraged!" "I'm outraged too!" "Look at how many people are outraged!"), I think it's important to separate "OMG, why did you nerf me" complaints from "Your statements seem to have a logical hole in the middle of them."

Balancing PvE healers around offensive dispels (especially when they lack the proper hit rating and the cost is going up), for instance, makes little logical sense in a game where DPS (and even prot warriors) are able to assume the same role. DPS won't have to switch targets to do the dispel and two seconds of lost or diminished DPS will (in almost all cases) be less of a burden than two seconds of lost healing. While it may be true that defensive magic dispelling will be the only required function, the blues stated there will still be curses, poisons and diseases, meaning that guilds (especially those who are on the cusp of downing a boss) will be penalized for taking a shaman or priest.

Also, there's the problem of trusting Blizz's ability to implement their vision. Remember when GC said they wanted healing to be less spammy? In some fights in ICC, it definitely feels more deliberate... And then there's Bonestorm. And Koralon and Toravon (the VoA bosses being all the raiding some people do). I would prefer if the start of Cataclysm wasn't like the start of Wrath where resto shaman were mediocre tank healers if they stacked enough crit in Naxx, then not-particularly-effective spot healers in Ulduar and finally Chain Healing turrets in ToC and ICC when haste stacking started to work. That's three different mechanics for the same class/spec over the course of one expansion. As a result, it's difficult for me to take on faith that Blizz knows what it's doing, has a vision and everything will turn out roses.

I'd rather comment now, explain my concerns and have things shipped in perfect shape than sit back and assume that everything will work out fine.

If you think its bad now, wait til the pally changes come out.

SKY FALLING! I REPEAT! SKY IS FALLING!!

I'd say don't freak about changes to other classes, and don't freak about new stuff to your class. Go ahead and freak about things being taken out of your class. That stuff nearly never changes well in beta, and you know you like it, and that it's gone. New stuff you don't know how you like and how it's balanced.

I'd much rather have a "cataclysm" expansion that completely revamps the game's core mechanics, and changes everything from top to bottom over Blizzard releasing an all-new-and-improved WOW2. The subscribers are already here - the community is already here - the time invested is already here...

While I understand what you are saying, it is important to note this is the beta..... alpha..... something. Yes you could sit down and say nothing. Then once the changes are permanent suddenly argue like all hell has broken lose, but by then it's too late.

This is the point where the feedback people give count the most. To many of you, that may seem like QQ, but to us it's a situation we do not like.

Just remember it's always easy to pick on someone who's got a concern because it's not your class and jump to GC's aid. Though this is not about GC's personality at all, or his integrity, or his mom :|. This is about the changes that some of us might not agree with fully. Not all of us can worship the golden blizzard statue together, sometimes there is going to be argument.

It's important to not group all these people into a QQ group. Some of us are quite calm about the changes and just would rather see something different happen then what we are seeing. Some people are QQing and I don't doubt that, but some of us are trying to have an intelligent argument without being branded as one.

The more you know......

Yeah, sorry, in some places a little outrage is kinda justified.

Take the Priest preview... a class that has been sputtering and clattering along, whose preview was posted ~3 minutes before the due date.

Here is a quote from the 84th page of the Priest preview, I'm putting the portions that the OP underlined in quotes:
start--
We want to improve Discipline's single-target healing capacity. "One key is to make sure shielding isn't always a more attractive option than healing."

Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we've also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and "a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage."

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.
--end

This is a contradiction. Blizz wants to make absorption mechanics less attractive than healing, but give Disc more shielding tools to deal with damage, and make their mastery bonus increase shield absorption. So... will shields always be weak, even with mastery? Will Disc's heals be bigger? Will they be smaller so that they have to constantly spam heals between shields (spam heal is also something Blizz says they want to move away from). How about mana? Does this mean shielding will be expensive, that Disc can't shield a whole party? These statements raise more questions than they answer. It could be great or terrible depending on the way it's done.


The Holy mastery is also troublesome. If you get 3 heals off on someone, it's likely that they're okay... unless you're tank healing. If healing is going to be more expensive, and less spammy, and you cast less spells, it's pretty unlikely you're going to be throwing around the same spell a lot. So, it's likely that you'll either gain the mastery bonus when you don't need it (i.e. healed up the tank, now you get the bonus), or you'll constantly be changing the bonus you have (tank is fine, now raid heals). So, this also seems to raise more questions than it answers.


Shadow... holy moley.

So, Shadow will get a single-target spammable nuke. Okay. This nuke applies a debuff that increases the damage it does. Okay. So, it isn't instant cast, so it won't stack its debuff quickly, and since it will do the most damage when its debuff is fully stacked, it has back-loaded damage. So Blizz's solution to SPriest back-loaded damage is a cast-time nuke with back-loaded damage? What?

Shadow's gameplay will also be entirely changed by the new mastery mechanic, Shadow Orbs... except... we have no idea what they will do (Blizz gave a loose possible examples). So Shadow will be entirely different, in some way we can't predict and have no indication about.

Shadow is losing its only substantive raid/party benefit, the hit buff from Misery. Blizz says they don't want people gearing around who is in a raid... okay, fine, however Mages have their same DPS and are getting Bloodlust too. To replace the marginal benefit of Misery, SPriests are gaining.... well, we don't know. Blizz didn't say if they were getting anything at all.

While on talents being cut, Blizz has stated they want to move away from passive +DPS talents. Nearly half of the Shadow tree are passive +DPS talents. If you add in talents that are passive utility bonuses, like increased range or reduced mana cost, you get up to about 75% of the Shadow tree. So... close to half the tree is composed of the types of talents Blizz says it wants to ditch... but we have no idea what they will chuck, keep, or replace.


The Priest preview was terrible. Utterly, entirely terrible. Honestly, I wish they didn't post it.