Why survivability matters in Cataclysm class design

A player was complaining about being forced to take utility talents to reach the bottom of her tree, and she gave as an example a talent that reduced the magic damage taken. She pointed out that the only time you'd take damage was if you stood in fire, which should never happen anyway.
Ion could have pointed out the many, many boss encounters in which the room just pulses unavoidable AoE damage throughout the fight, but instead, he went in what I think was a very insightful route when he responded:
This is pretty much spot on. We've had a lot of discussion recently about combat rez changes -- but just like no one should ever get hit by a void zone, so too should no one ever die if everyone is doing his or her job. But they do, and combat rez is a great ability. With healers at risk of running OOM in Cataclysm, anything that reduces your damage taken or increases your self-healing is going to help your raid. After all, dead DPS do no damage, and wiped raids kill no bosses.In an ideal world, none of these things would be needed, right? In an ideal world, something like combat rez wouldn't be a useful ability because no one should ever die. In reality, people die.
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Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
andoring Nov 9th 2010 8:51AM
I'm actualy looking forward to dieing in Cata dungeons.... it can't be nearly as bad as leveling through Blackrock Depths. That place is huge! The graveyard is way the hell across an entire zone, and there's always somebody who doesn't know the way back and inevitably "falls" into the lava and can't seem to find the ramp out. Though, it is pretty cool to think that somewhere down here Deathwing is getting his armor nailed on. : )
Kroof Nov 9th 2010 10:42AM
I love that utility abilities are becoming useful in a big way.
Even back in the days of Naxx my warrior would glyph for bloodthirst. (This was before glyph of cleave was so amazing).
I also had lifeblood from my herbalism.
Sure I had extra health from being plate, but those two abilities really helped keep me alive when other "higher" dps were laying on the floor with 0 dps.