How encounter design plays into game balance
by Tyler Caraway 
Feb 24th 2012 at 5:00PM
Game balance is a very frequent topic when it comes to WoW. With every nerf or buff, there comes a vast explanation from the player base as to why it was and was not justified. Perhaps one of the most common lamentations regarding a nerf that we see is when Blizzard "nerfs PvE for the sake of PvP." While Blizzard does make PvP damage adjustments from time to time, there are far more damage changes that are made due to PvE concerns than there ever has been for PvP. It's an easy fallback to take up; blaming the aspect of the game which you don't actively take part in, yet it would be far more accurate for PvP players to complain about PvE.
There's another trap that's easy to fall into: that PvE balance is easy to do. To be fair, balancing against Patchwerk encounters isn't that difficult, although you'll still never get it perfect, but WoW has only had a single Patchwerk encounter, and that was Patchwerk. For all the damage juggling that Blizzard does, the largest factor in game balance is always going to be the encounters themselves. Each fight has unique mechanics which mingles with the way specs operate and it is that which determines how a spec fairs just as much as any damage balancing on Blizzard's part.
What you fight matters more than you think
For better or worse, specs generally have certain strengths and weaknesses attached to them. This allows for the gameplay to be more dynamic, for every spec to feel more unique, yet this inevitably sets the game up for failure. To achieve the perfect balance that players often say that they want, no spec can be unique in any way; no spec can have any strengths nor weaknesses unless all specs have those same attributes. This is the phenomena we experience which creates spec niches.
For example, currently a fire mage will have higher AoE than an arcane mage, but an arcane mage will have higher single-target burst than a fire mage. On the surface that might seem rather innocuous, but it's a strong determinant over which is considered by the community as "the spec" that a player should use. Spine of Deathwing is a fight that hinges on nothing but the burst damage that a player can do in a short time frame, which is arcane's strength, therefore arcane performs far better than fire on that encounter. Conversely, Yor'sajh has extremely high AoE requirements, which favors fire instead.
How specs perform on Patchwerk style encounters does go a long way in selecting what the "spec of the month" is, but it isn't the only factor. Tier 11 was a fantastic example of this. Balance druids didn't, and still don't, have strong Patchwerk DPS in comparison to others, they run more middle of the pack, yet they dominated that Tier. While their far too strong set bonus played a part in that, a larger factor was that the encounter styles of Tier 11 played to their strengths.
Balance druids were great at multi-target and AoE damage, which comprised a significant portion of the encounters players faced. Halfus, Maloriak, potentially Magmaw, Twin Dragons, Ascendant Council, and Cho'gall all features AoE or dual-targets, and in all of them, balance druids shined. By having more encounter mechanics favoring their strengths, balance druids became an essential part to many raids.
Raid and spec favoritism
Specs have always fallen into a specific niche list, especially for pure DPS. That's the AoE spec, that's the single-target spec, that one is for movement. We see it all the time, and it those concepts which truly dictate how a spec is going to perform overall within a given raiding tier. Blizzard generally tries to find a balance with their encounter design by providing a mixture of all the different styles of encounters that you can face, but they still often fall into a pattern with every tier.
ICC had a lot of heavy movement encounters, and movement DPS was the hot topic of the time back then, players, especially ranged characters, were very concerned about their movement DPS going into Cataclysm; to the extent that it was a directly stated goal by Blizzard to equalize movement DPS. Tier 11 had an strong emphasis on multi-target and AoE DPS, which became the hot button issue then. Firelands had the most focus on control as well as AoE DPS, and now Dragon Soul is mostly about pure single target damage.
Raids come in flavors, and it's these flavors that heavily control which specs the community at large considers to be viable.
Damage is not the only thing which encounter style dictates either. Mechanics also control how useful player abilities are as well. Here's a fun little tip, did you know that the associated cost for arrows was actually justified in Blizzard's original design as a means of making up for the reduced repair costs that hunters incurred from raiding? It's true! Due to Feign Death's ability to allow a hunter to skip dying on a wipe, Blizzard fully believed that hunters suffered lower repair costs than the rest of the raid and thus charged them for arrows. This was mentioned by GC back in WotLK when the viability of Feign Death was brought up in the hunter community.
It's more than just silly abilities such as that which encounter mechanics control, though. Again, I'll reference balance druids. When Typhoon was first added to the balance druid toolkit in WotLK, there was no PvE use for the spell. It wasn't really used for damage, there wasn't really a need to knock mobs back outside of soloing, so whether you had Typhoon for raiding or not was entirely up to the player. Then Blizzard made Saurfang and Typhoon became an mandatory ability for controlling the adds.
Ever since then, Typhoon has become a raiding staple, but only when the encounters demand. Within Dragon Soul, a balance druid could give up Typhoon and you'd never no the difference, but it was horribly important during T11 and T12. Look at Firelands. Beth'tilac, Rhyolith, and Ragnaros all benefited from Typhoon. Three out of seven encounters is pretty good for a niche ability that only two specs have.
Yes, this can apply to damage abilities too. Rogues have a hard time using Killing Spree on Ragnaros, feral druids aren't able to Shred Ultraxion, some adds are susceptible to being stunned, which changes how Deep Freeze works for frost. Mechanics can be harsh. In the Ultraxion case with ferals, it's a pretty significant DPS loss to the point where they're often seen as a liability on the heroic version of the encounter.
What can Blizzard do about it?
Like it or not, encounter design has a huge impact on game balance. The question then becomes, what do we do about it? Do we make sure that every spec has an equal option to every situation? Do we strive to make sure that raid encounters offer a true mixture of encounter types? There isn't an easy answer to the question, but it's the question Blizzard faces with each new raid.
Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. Be sure to look up our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric advice, visit Raid Rx.
Filed under: Raiding, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
bilbomoody Feb 24th 2012 5:13PM
"What you might matters more than you think"
0.o
Titusx Feb 24th 2012 5:48PM
I think its what you Fight, not might.
Nyold Feb 24th 2012 5:42PM
Not stricly related to the article, but I'm glad to see Tyler still up and kicking!! I'm sad that he won't be writing warlock columns though :(
Lhivera Feb 24th 2012 5:57PM
One of the main things they can do is attach significant penalties to changing specs and raid personnel (or, conversely, attach significant bonuses to completing raid objectives without spec and personnel changes, which is just another way of saying the same thing). Say that achievements are awarded only if the raid configuration does not change, or each boss that is killed with exactly the same raid configuration as the previous one drops extra currency.
Strong encouragement to "go to war with the army you have" and meet the challenges head-on rather than reconfiguring constantly to make encounters easier would go a long way toward assembling balanced, rather than stacked, raids, with a wide variety of specs to balance out each other's strengths and weaknesses -- and would also make it far more possible for people to play the spec they want to play, rather than the optimal spec for a particular encounter or tier.
Stilhelm Feb 24th 2012 6:46PM
This wouldn't really accomplish what you think it would accomplish. You'd suggest not getting the achievement for a raid until you used the same 10 or 25 people for every encounter? That would have a pretty adverse affect on guilds like mine, where we have 15 or so raiders for a 10-man raid, so we sub people in and out depending on who needs what from each boss, who feels like raiding the most, as well as covering for people who arrive late/leave early, and making sure we have reasonable raid buff coverage. Progression 25-man guilds (like world first guilds) probably have 35+ raiders they can pull from to make up their group.
Also, there is no "world-first" achievement, only server first. World-first is recognized by the community, and the raiding community in general wouldn't recognize this kind of restriction. And even if they did for some reason, the world-first guilds would just do even more extensive PTR testing, and arrange their group for what they needed on the hardest encounter.
Stilhelm Feb 24th 2012 6:55PM
Also, raiding is a group effort, and as such, playing the spec the group needs is the proper thing to do. I'm not sure why there is such a stigma attached to this for some people. If you want to play the spec *you* want to play regardless, then there are 5-mans and LFR, and normals after nerfs+gearing, which are so easy that it doesn't matter what you do. If you want to clear normal modes the first couple weeks, and move on to heroics, then you should be interested in what helps the success of the group as a whole, not your own personal preference.
For example, my raiding main is a hunter. We've been fortunate that all 3 specs are pretty close this expansion. However, if you want to be a hunter killing heroic Beth'tilac, then you need to be MM or SV, BM need not apply unless you already have an MM or SV hunter in your raid doing the hunter duties (yes, other classes can handle spiderlings but MM hunters do it best). If you want to kill many heroic modes in T13, you owe it to your raid to be SV. I don't care for BM personally, but if that was required to get a kill then I'd happily respec, reforge, and do my best as BM and be happy with the kill. As a pure dps class, it's my duty to my raid to know all three specs and bring the one that helps the raid the most.
James G Bentley Feb 25th 2012 1:04AM
People complain because unlike us hunters there are huge skill gaps in other classes specs. A mage that did well in FL with his 1-button spam suddenly can't handle the more difficult fire rotation and QQ's about how he "doesn't like the fire playstyle" because he's bad at playing it. Similar thing happens with BM hunters, since BM is the easiest spec to play people consider themselves "BM hunters" because they aren't good at the harder specs or just don't want to put the time in to learn.
vegetto375 Feb 24th 2012 5:57PM
While not all changes to PvE are derived from PvP, PvP does have a big inpact in PvE game play. Taking a look at 2 specs that have been very bottom of the barrel thru Cataclysm; Frost Mages and Beast Mastery Hunters.
Frost Mages have possible the best CCs in the game and that gives them alot of utility in PvP. if frost mages also had a great burst or sustain high DPS this would be a huge thing in PvP, while it would probably had been a change to make them competitive in PvE.
Beast Mastery hunters have what could be considered the best "dot" in the game; A big red pet that will follow after you. for these reasons BM hunters DPS in itself is quite low as a strong pet that you cannot LoS plus a strong DPS hunter would again make a big diference in PvP. While on the PvE side most encounters in cataclysm have the 2 biggest things that affect BM DPS in PvE; movement and add switching. After the big changes of how the pet UI works this affected Bm the most of all pet classes, boss movement can affect wheter your Kill Commnd hit or not, while add switching makes it hard for you to keep your pet-on-target which again affects KC a BM's signature and heavy hitting move.
In the end because PvE and PvP are two diferent work horses and in order to keep raid fights interesting various mechanincs that make the player more aware of their surrounding it forces this "Best Spec" for figts and by the same note makes it so some specs cannot ever hope to reach that lelvel with out some serious reworked to their play styles.
Revnah Feb 24th 2012 6:52PM
May I add the example of kitty druids: Bleeds got nerfed for being OP in PvP, however strong bleeds are our saving grace in movement-heavy, target-switching fights. As it stands in Dragon Soul, kitties are the bottom dps spec (compare also the "state of dps" article by Frostheim a few weeks into the patch).
Stilhelm Feb 24th 2012 7:05PM
BM is in fact not much behind MM at this point, and in T11 and T12 was only slightly behind SV. While it has been our lowest dps spec this expansion, it's not by much. In fact when my guild was working on Ascendant Council in BoT, I went BM specifically for that fight, because while the bosses were teleporting around the room while I was looking for tornadoes or vortexes, I never had to worry about where my pet was...he was chasing the boss around chewing on his backside!
milindpania Feb 24th 2012 10:40PM
@Vegetto375
I don't know what game you're playing when you say that Frost Mages don't have burst. Mage burst during Shatter combos with enough mastery can hit a PvP-geared person for crazy amounts of damage. My warrior has 4.7k Resilience and I've taken 28k ice lances, frostbolts and frostfire bolts, each.
@Revnah
That had also a lot to do with the fact that Ferals would line up bleeds on a target, then bound away and sit in bear form while abusing tanking cooldowns. They still do abuse tanking cooldowns but the bleeds don't kill someone in a matter of seconds anymore.
Revnah Feb 25th 2012 3:43AM
Yeah, I know. But my point is, if a spec is either too strong in PvP or too weak in PvE, then maybe the two *should* be separated. They've already made some abilities weaker in PvP than in PvE, I wish they'd do that for kitty bleeds too. Buff them for PvE only, problem solved!
Imnick Feb 24th 2012 6:48PM
Deep Freeze's uneven damage mechanic would matter more if it were actually possible to do competitive damage as Frost ):
DarkWalker Feb 24th 2012 7:41PM
As for what Blizzard can do about it: use the Talent and Glyph options to allow players to tune their strengths.
Say, a specific talent and glyph set results in the highest sustained damage but reduces burst. Another set might add single target burst but cut down on AoE. And so on.
Allowing players to choose their strengths and weaknesses independently of the spec would allow them to keep the spec they want - and thus the play style they prefer - without having to sacrifice performance.
BTW, the new talent system makes this way easier to do in MoP than in any previous expansion.
Lipstick Feb 24th 2012 8:46PM
Healers have been kind of laughing at blizzard for demon soul. A lot of healers feel like rather than fix the issues with a few classes which have had issues for all of cata, they simply changed encounter design this tier to make those issues a non issue -- with what the healer community is a strong hope they plan to fix it for the next expac/mists.
The time to make fundamental changes to a class do seem to be around the time of a new expansion as players expect to have to relearn their classes with the launch of a new expac as apposed to each patch, or they fall victim to the paladin treatment, or the DK treatment during most of wrath where every new patch meant completely relearning your tool kit.
I think many healers keenly feel the balancing issue, more than DPS classes do. I say this because there are less of us, so our sins/faults don't hide as well in the pack as others do. We're often called upon to cover for the mistakes of others to some degree. One model which blizzard seems to have moved towards against players wishes over the years is the idea of shaving a healer for heroic content, to bring more DPS. While this is a boon for the DPS player, or the healer who also happens to be really good at dps.. it feels like this is more rare than it should be.
Although it doesn't work one way without another. As many classes screaming for buffs are no doubt not really in need of buffs persay so much as current content has exposed a weakness in their ability that someone else excels at.
It just depends on if blizz wants all classes to be equal or roughly equal. They're really not the same thing.