"Bring the player...", DPS, Raid Encounters

Q u o t e:
I am not sure what you are saying. If Blizz reached their stated goal (which I will boil down to equally skilled pure dps should have a slight advantage (5% or less) over equally skilled hybrids (i.e. good ret beats so-so rogue, etc.)), then I see no problem with DPS races and enrage timers. They've not met that goal yet, which I think even GC would admit. So far that's not a problem as all raid content available is tuned to be entry level. However if the class imbalances that currently exist persist when more challenging content is released and said content contains a hard-DPS timer, I for one will feel guitly (depsite being the raid leader and GM) about bringing myself to said hard-DPS timer, instead of another hunter/lock or DPS warrior.

Q u o t e:
Blizzard never stated that. Ever. They did say classes would be close, but they also specifically said rogues would top DPS by a small margin (at least on rogue friendly bosses). And with all classes close, classes wouldn't matter, just player (and their gear). There is no problem with the theory.

I wanted to quote these two because they said what I would say probably better than I would have.

Q u o t e:
Now, obviously most raids are going to be made up from a range of players of differing skills and different gear. You are not going to see very many raids where the DPS is all within 5% of each other.

However, balance should mean that you simply get to pick your best 3 tanks, best 7 healers and best 15 DPS and go and raid something.
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But that's what blizzard wants; all DPS within 5% of each other.

You have to be a little careful if you sling this around. What we don’t want is for your class mechanics to hold you back if you are vying to do the best dps you can. We are not at all guaranteeing that every raid will end up with all the dps classes within 5% of each other. The biggest factor will be skill, followed by gear and then just random luck.

We know heroics and raids are a little easy right now, and we're okay with that. Consider:

1) If you're 80 already, you are a relatively hardcore player. Most WoW players are not 80 yet. If it's easy for you, it's not easy for everybody.

2) We want more players to see the content. Naxxramas and Malygos are cool! We want people to see them. Heck, we brought Naxx back in part because so few people had seen it.

3) Very few of the people who are saying WoW is EZ mode have done Satharion with 3 drakes yet. Give that a shot then get back to us. :)

4) Ulduar will be harder. It still might be do-able by more than the most elite 5% of players, but it will be a lot more challenging. And we'll continue to have "hard modes" that are even more challenging. We'll make sure some of these challenges offer appropriate rewards.

5) We knew we were messing with class balance quite a bit, so it's nice that things are a little easier right now. It gives the players time to learn the new spells and abilities and gives us a chance to see how things really work out in the actual game with thousands of people beating on the mechanics. We'll continue to make adjustments as necessary. It's an MMO. Things change over time.

A very interesting thread. Thank you for all the responses.

A couple more points about Naxx: many of the guilds who cleared it quickly already knew the encounters from 40-player days, AND were allowed to practice extensively on beta. By contrast we gave players very little exposure to Kil'jaeden on the PTR.

But really, trying to slow down worldwide progression by making encounters insanely difficult is a losing proposition. We're in the world now of professional guilds with corporate sponsors and players willing to put in enormous numbers of hours and attempts. We can certainly (and will) make very challenging encounters for which guilds can take pride in server firsts. However, I would not expect to see encounters that are so difficult that the entire WoW community wipes on them for months before achieving success. I just don't know if that game exists anymore.

On rogues specifically, I wanted to clear up some perceptions:

Q u o t e:
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Q u o t e:

So why again are you not going to let mages compete with rogues for #1, along with hunters and warlocks? It really is horribly frustrating to have rolled a mage all those years ago and still have to play with this crap :(
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Rogues are the purest MELEE dps class in the game. They bring almost nothing to a raid except dps, i really fail to see how this is even argued. Sure mages and hunters are pure dps classes also, but they bring more utility, and best of all they bring RANGE. They can stay in most fights more consistently, and I'd even say easier, then a rogue can. Please don't bring the hunter pet QQ into it because for all those cleaves the pet might take, the rogue is taking also, and any movement can completely destroy his rotation.

If you balance rogues, hunters, locks and mages to all do the same dps on target dummies, then what you find in a raid is that the ranged dps comes out on top because the rogue has to spend a lot of potential dps time on positioning and running out of fires. This isn't true of every encounter, but it is true of a lot. (If there is an encounter where a rogue should shine, it's something like Patchwerk.) So rogue dps on a combat dummy probably needs to be higher so that net dps in a raid is about the same as other classes. Make sense?

And once again, if you are taking an inexperienced rogue in blues and PvP gear in a raid, then don't be surprised if expert Moonkin, Retadins, Fury warriors and Enhancement shammies (and all the other hybrids who will Suspect Something Is Up if I don't mention them) blast past him on the meters.

We're not sure if PvE rogue dps is too low. Some players clearly think it is. You can't just average out rogue dps across all WWS reports because you have no idea of the skill and gear involved without a lot of digging. Rogues are very sensitive to buffs and a lot of other factors. It's complicated and the solutions are tricky too. Just buffing rogue damage across the board could do bad things to PvP. Making them better now could make them way too good two tiers from now. These things take time sometimes.

We're also not going to keep anyone weak in PvE just because they are good in PvP or vice versa.