Friday, September 26, 2008

Bloated Rant

First off, I've scrapped the part three of my WotLK Spell series that was supposed to look at the talent Eclipse. I did it for a couple of reasons.

1. Murmurs has already done a lot of math on the WoW forums and specifically looked at Eclipse. You can find it here. The short version her analysis is that Eclipse is bad.

2. I saw this quote:
While I'm sure every class would say this, it's probably no surprise to you that Balance damage was low.

Way too low.We are addressing most of it through base spell damage changes to Wrath, Insect Swarm and especially Starfire. Hopefully that will give you some more talent choices because some of the damage talents will feel more optional (or as optional as more damage ever feels), instead of the bare minimum you need to be close to other casters. (src)


This quote seems to suggest that the bloat is here to stay. If they don't trim the balance tree then it will be impossible to pickup Eclipse, all of the damage increasing talents, and all of the mana regen talents. Something has go give, and we all know how important our mana and damage talent are. A gimmicky talent like eclipse just cant survive.

Blizzard's Faulty Bloat Logic:
It never ceases to amaze me how little blizzard understands it's players and how they play the game. Here is a basic truth about DPS players, DAMAGE TALENTS ARE NOT OPTIONAL. They never have been and never will be.

Increasing the base damage on our spells is great, but does anyone really think that is going to change how players spec?

Players that are serious about raiding are going to min/max there talent build. If a talent increases my DPS then I'm going to pick it up if at all possible. It's not an option because my primary roll is to DPS. If I'm not pushing out as much DPS as I possibly can the I shouldn't be in the raid, even if I'm first on the damage meter.

Optional talents should be situational in nature. Gale Winds is a perfect example of an optional talent. It provides a real benefit that isn't needed all the time. If my raids are short on AoE then it is a great pick up, but I'm not not going to take 2 points out of a talent that boosts my DPS 100% of the time to put them in a talent that I will use infrequently. A real option is do I want more AoE, more survivability, or pushback resistance.

The real kicker to this quote is how it shapes the comparison between Resto Druids and Moonkin. Now that Spell Damage and Healing have been combined into one stat (Spell Power), the differences between the two roll's is almost entirely Talent build.

As it is, a resto druid will be able to pick up many of a moonkin's key DPS talents by putting 31 points in the balance tree. They would still have 40 points to spend in the resto tree. This would result in a toon who's DPS isn't much below a "deep" moonkin's and can significantly out heal said moonkin. The only thing it costs is most of the raid utility, that now can be easily provided by other classes.

/end rant.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if I'd worry TOO much about PVE resto/boomkin hybrids for the same reason you stated earlier. If you're not doing your ubermost dps then you shouldn't be in the raid. Current raids are willing to trade out toons for specific encounters so I don't think that will stop. As far as I understand it Blizzard wants Boomkins to do the same amount of damage as mages and warlocks. That way if your buddy is a boomkin, you can take him instead of the mage you don't know.

Whether or not we should worry about Resto/Balance druids for PVP, that's probably a different story, but I don't like PVP anyway :)

Graylo said...

I agree that we are not going to see a lot of restokins in raids, but it is a little disheartening.

We end up spending 24 more points in the Balance tree and don't generate a ton more damage.

I guess I would prefer that they buffed us through talents more and slimmed the tree down a little bit.

The worst part about it is I know it's going to happen eventually. It's just going to take 2 or three content patches for them to figure it out.