Blizzard's Silence Regarding Burst Damage

#0 - Jan. 22, 2009, 11:02 p.m.
Blizzard Post
It may be that they realize there is a problem and just don't have a solution implemented quite yet that they are satisfied with and so they are just not acknowledging the problem and using "the jury is out" as a way to buy some time for the development team to come up with a suitable solution. This seems likely after reading this post from GC on the healing forums:

Q u o t e:

Heh. I try to be very honest, and we're generally not at all afraid to make people angry. We are going to do what we think is right for the game, not what will earn us the most immediate kudos on the forums. Elemental dps was too low coming into Lich King and would have lagged behind as players got more gear. Warlocks were too easy to kill in PvP. Unholy DKs were too good in PvP and dual-wield DKs were too good in PvE. Those are mistakes we made.

There are others we are working on that we aren't ready to talk about yet (generally because we haven't finalized a solution). I have mixed feelings about announcing problems when we don't have solutions. Those postst tend to generate a lot more anxiety (and launch dozens of threads) among the players than if we are also able to add "and here is what we are doing about it."

I don't even have a problem telling the community "We don't know yet," though that often causes equal frustration. ("How could you NOT know? It's so clear to us. We've been telling you since beta and you IGNORED us.") Players are right a lot. They are wrong a lot too.

I suspect that what you're getting at here is that you just disagree with me, can't understand how that possibly could be the case, so conclude it as deceit on my part.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14498463262&pageNo=1&sid=1#1

Notice in the second paragraph he says there are others "we are working on that we aren't ready to talk about yet (generally because we haven't finalized a solution)." Could this possibly be a reason that there has been no blue post acknowledging the problem with burst damage in PvP right now? It could be likely that they're juggling a few options. Raising HP across the board on PvP sets, increasing effectiveness of resilience, allowing resilience to reduce damage done on normal non-crits as well. I believe that PvE is really the road block in getting things implemented. Just like PvP is often a road block for PvE changes. It's hard to do one without thinking about the impact of the other and any change to overall health or resilience would have to be done cautiously on their part as they don't want to make PvP gear more desirable for tanking than raid gear.

As players, I think that all we can do is continue providing feedback about damage and giving ideas. The ideas themselves may not be directly implemented, but it may help spark other ideas or help them understand what exactly the problem is and how they can better fix it.

But after reading this post, I am hoping and praying that Blizzard notices that there is a burst problem and they just don't know what to do about it yet and are trying not to make a hasty decision and end up causing long term problems.
#13 - Jan. 22, 2009, 11:50 p.m.
Blizzard Post
We think PvP is too bursty. What we haven't announced is what we are going to do about it. Risks of making ill-conceived changes include just shutting out classes or specs without a lot of CC potential, or perhaps having long stalemate-ish fights where nobody ever dies. But that doesn't mean we won't do anything.

We are also still discussing whether this is a problem only with certain classes (rogue, mage, paladin, DK and possibly Feral get mentioned the most) or whether damage is just too high in general.

Resilience will still make a difference. When you talk to players sitting at say 500 resilience they can notice a difference and by 800 or 900 they feel like they can stay alive (caveat: this is a very generalized statement and obviously isn't going to apply to every player or every situation).
#96 - Jan. 23, 2009, 1:38 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
1) Reduce everybody's damage output
2) Drastically improve everybody's health
3) Make Resilience reduce ALL damage taken by a flat percentage

#1 and #2 have serious PvE side effects and will most likely never go into action. #3 is a very simple fix that has been waiting to be implemented since beta.


#3 does have a serious side effect. With your change, resilience would look like a very impressive tanking stat. We would have to balance the numbers very carefully to keep tanks from stacking it in order to trivialize encounters or possibly to even keep stacking defense and traditional tanking stats.
#188 - Jan. 23, 2009, 4:30 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:

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Q u o t e:
You know perfectly well it would have to only function in PVP =/ The responses in this thread are valuable, at least make your question dodging less transparent.
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While technically possible, it would be a pain in the rear probably for them to code it to only function in pvp, unless they made it based on which area was within, like whether in a battleground zone or not, but, in that case, the damage reduction doesn't have to be tied to resilience anyway.


Some players do actually PvP outside of Arenas or BGs. There are whole PvP servers after all. Likewise, not all PvE content takes place in instances. Restricting when and where resilience functions feels overly, well, restrictive.

I'm not suggesting that the problem is unsolvable by any means. I am just trying to point out that when players say "It's SIMPLE, just do X" that it rarely is.

We have some options we are exploring.