Why are we not balanced this way?

#1 - July 29, 2012, 11:54 p.m.

Is there a reason damage spells can't effect players diffrently? I will just use a random example here. Lets say spriest are doing to much pve dps ,but are sucking in pvp. Why can't blizz make mindflay do 10% to players to help fix the problem? Does somthing in the data prevent this the same way warlocks can't have green fire ,but can have red banish? Like only some spells can efect players diffrently (stuns and debuffs). If blizz found a way to make spells work diffrently on players it would make things SO MUCH BETTER.

I am shure blizz knows this ,but is there a legimit reason why they can't?

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#22 - Aug. 1, 2012, 2:14 a.m.

We do this already. Look at abilities such as Colossus Smash and even the concept of PvP CC durations, which has been in the game for a long time.

It's not our option of first resort because it's not intuitive for players and it means anytime we want to make balance adjustments, we must change two sets of numbers.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#57 - Aug. 2, 2012, 2:09 p.m.

I think some of you are making big assumptions about how the spell data work. I realize that the mechanics behind our data can quite obtuse, but you'll just have to trust me that having two sets of numbers is just more risk than one. It is a risk worth taking sometimes, but it is a risk. Set bonuses, talents, tooltips, basically everything that can modify a spell need to modify two spells instead. There are opportunities for bugs to creep in, and long term players know how many strange bugs or quirks show up in character spells already.

(Armchair programmers at thIs point can argue how our data structure *should* be set up, but you'll also just have to trust me that it's probably a more complex problem than you give it credit for.)

In any case, I'm also not convinced at all that even if we could easily manage two different sets of numbers that it would really solve the problem. I think sometimes in players' minds, they say "Man, I just can't kill anyone in PvP. It is a truth universally acknowledged that my dude's PvP damage is too low, but Blizzard can't buff it because I do well in PvE." The shortcoming in that logic of course is that the truth is rarely universally acknowledged, and in the case of PvP there aren't even logs or target dummies to look at. In some cases your damage is just fine and it's not the game rules holding you back. In some cases you lost not because the deck was stacked against you, but because you got outplayed.

I'm not saying there aren't PvP balance issues. There are and there may always be. But I also don't think players would suddenly become much more objective about their own personal skill just because we adjusted more numbers independently.