Shifting Perspectives: Bear and resto druid changes ahead for patch 4.1

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-08-2011 @ 5:34PM

Shade said...

You seem pretty keen on calling out frost mages as OP. I've said it in a lot of other venues over the past few weeks, but here it is again:

By definition of "OP", the only way for you to not get wrecked by an OP class is for you to be OP in a balancing capacity. There is no such thing as a "non-OP counter" to an OP class or playstyle. Conjure the image of someone "overpowering" someone else. That means that no matter what the other person does, it is completely impossible for them to survive the encounter.

Think Superman in a fistfight. You can be the best martial artist in the world (read: most skilled player), but no measure of skill will ever give you a chance against him, since he could flick you on the head and make your brain explode. If, on the other hand, you were given a big chunk of Kryptonite... well, that's not exactly fair either. Just because it's balancing you against an OP player doesn't mean you can't take that rock and smash in the heads of the "balanced" classes with it.

This is not a defense of frost mages or a claim that Blizzard has any right or need to keep one class OP. This is a reminder that OP doesn't mean the same thing as "annoying" or "difficult", and that employing double standards isn't going to solve the class imbalances.

3-08-2011 @ 6:19PM

Artificial said...

"I've said it in a lot of other venues over the past few weeks..."

Well, when you feel the need to leap into repeating it at the slightest tangential mention of frost mages, that'll happen. It's pretty much an off-topic comment here, but, uh, thanks...

3-08-2011 @ 6:27PM

Shade said...

@Artificial

I feel the need to repeat it "at the slightest tangential mention of frost mages" because that 'tangential' mention has, for the past several weeks, always been chained to a feral complaining about the removal of shift spamming.

Given that an entire section of today's article was dedicated to the discussion of how the change to Feral Swiftness affects shift spam, I think I'm justified in dedicating a comment to that particular part of the article.

Thanks for straw-manning, though. My point was that ferals are complaining about being underpowered when for a few weeks now they've been using an OP class as a standard of what "balanced" means. I didn't offer a single bit of analysis about frost mages.

3-08-2011 @ 6:53PM

Sterb said...

I'm sorry, I read through your wall of text three times and still couldn't figure out what you're trying to say.

3-08-2011 @ 7:08PM

Shade said...

@sterb

Sound byte version: Shift spam was OP. Blizz killed it and that was the fair decision. Frost mages are still OP but that has absolutely zero bearing on whether Blizz was right in killing shift spam.

3-08-2011 @ 10:20PM

Sorro said...

So, how often did you complain about shift spam before the announced 4.0.6 nerf?

Yeah, I thought so. Sorry, but your princess is in another castle.

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