Petition: Bring Back Chess (Burst Damage)

#0 - March 23, 2009, 5:12 a.m.

I am going to post this open letter found on Arena Junkies for the sake that those who dont go to can see it here I think it is a well thought out letter and honest assessment of the state of pvp now from a SKILL base level

*NOTE*:I did not make nor do I take credit for what I am about to post.

Dear Blizzard,

Like many players, I'm frustrated with the current state of PvP. I don't want to get into specific examples here (though they can easily be found if you're interested), but the current state of arenas is way to burst and gib oriented, to the point of being almost unplayable. While I'm sad to see arenas in their current state, it's not something I can't wait out. Those of us who have done our research, run the numbers in spreadsheets, and made use of the PTR knew that this was coming. We knew that 3.0 would be a joke (R.I.P. ESL Philly), and so did you as evidenced by the early cutoff of season 4. We knew that level 80 would not fix it. We knew that getting level 80 pvp gear would not fix it. And we know that the difference between our current 800 resilience and the extra 200 or so we'll be able to get with full deadly gear isn't going to be enough either. We know that in order to balance out new talents and talent points spend on offensive power rather than survivability a game mechanic change is necesary, something to fill the role that adding resilience and increasing stamina had in TBC.

I'm pretty patient, so I'm willing to wait for such changes. Clearly you rarely rush into large scale balance changes. I was expecting pvp to be broken for quite some time before the necesary changes are made. However, I have become very concerned about the comments I've been reading recently and the developer direction they seem to indicate.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/13909386074-gc-rumors.html

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14135703530-chess-match.html

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/13909426107-are-you-kidding-me-seriously.html

These and other quotes like them give the impression that pvp at level 70 offered too much survivability, that getting kills in the past was somehow too hard, or that the game is better in it's current state. Simply put, that's wrong. Obviously there is a correct balance for survivability. Considering that the top 5v5 comp of S4 was 4dps with bloodlust (JAC) I have a hard time believing that survivability was too strong. Even in 2v2, where druid/x dominated due to the strength of druids in that bracket, double dps comps did fine when compared with all other healers.

Throughout season 4 coordinated burst was always viable for getting a kill. It was true for JAC, Cleave, Euro and 234X. It was true for WLD and RMP. It was even true for Warrior double healer.

The operative word here is "coordinated". Good players know how to coordinate. For a team of players to be able to burst a target doesn't require too much burst from any individual player. In fact, if a single player is able to burst solo then in concert with others that burst becomes simply overpowered and unstoppable. As I've said, burst itself is good and necessary. Burst needs to be able to punish players who are out of position, or in conjunction with cc.

This brings to mind another quote I saw.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/13587719113-ive-never-seen-something-move-obvious-since.html

In fact, I maintain that CC is was a weapon of a more civilized age. When facing cc, players had options like LoS, defensive dispels that actually worked, or very careful defensive play on the part of their team to outlast the cc. Not only was cc more counterable, but setting up a cc chain on an oponent takes more skill than simply dumping damage into them with a big red button (alla pom pyro). Nevertheless, suppose one decided that cc was bad for the game, that it's best to leave healers uncced all the time and create kills solely by bursting before the healer can react, because somehow this is considered more desirable. In that case we'll expect ccs to be reduced or remove. In fact, the opposite is true. We've seen the addition of strangulate, hex, deep freeze, mirror image polymorphs, and others. Not only are there more cc options than ever, but the state of burst has made a certain type of cc way overpowered; silences. Improved Counterspell and Strangulate are instant cast from a long range, AND UNTRINKETABLE. Players who "complained endlessly" about being chain cced at least had the option of trinketing in the past (in addition to the far greater options for avoiding ccs with a cast time), but in the current state of the game as much damage happens in one silence as used to happen in a full duration fear or polymorph, and the recipient has no option to avoid or get out of it except for Divine Shield. Is it any surprise that Mages, DKs, and Pallies are doing so well?

Ghostcrawler

#45 - March 23, 2009, 8:35 p.m.

Q u o t e:
How do we reconcile "Burst Damage is too high thread" with "How can I kill a healer" thread?

This (how to reconcile) is the problem we see.

That said, we do think burst damage has been toned down a lot and will be in an even better state in 3.1. Despite all the giggly posts to the contrary, resilience does help. I think in the future we need to make sure that players have the ability to step into the early Arena seasons with higher resilience on day one. (This doesn't mean we think Arena balance is a solved problem. We still have some work to do.)

You can interpret lower Arena participation in a lot of different ways. A big one is that in BC it was easier for players to get epics from the Arena than from raiding. It has almost completely flipped the other way now, and by contrast, the percentage of players raiding is way up. I think the strongest conclusion you can draw is that players like loot and will engage in the most efficient way to get it.

Ideally, we want players to PvP or raid because they like PvP or raiding, not because they feel like either is the only real option for improving their character.

Ghostcrawler

#112 - March 23, 2009, 11:40 p.m.

Couple of answers or clarifications:

We recognize some players like BGs but not Arenas. We recognize some like 5-player dungeons but not raids. That's cool. We just don't yet offer the best epic items except in Arenas and raids.

We think it was too easy to get the best PvE weapons in LK, at least relative to the difficulty of getting PvP weapons. In BC it was probably the other way around, at least for the earlier seasons. The goal was not that everyone rocks their KT weapons in Arena. Part of this was the relative ease of Naxx, and part of it was not making the PvP gear available early enough.

We're still evaluating the best way to offer starter PvP gear. The intro gear we had this time around was a little hard to get and didn't offer enough survivability, so coupled with the ease of Naxx epics, the blue(ish) PvP gear just were not very attractive. If players had all walked into Arenas with say 300 resilience or its equivalent and then worked their way up higher, I think the burst damage problem would have been much less of an issue (particularly if there weren't so many potent PvE weapons around at the same time). Logistically, that could mean that it's easy to get resilience up to 300, or we just change the way the ratings work so that 0 resilience provides as much crit protection as 300 or so does currently.

"Burst damage" is a difficult thing to qualify. As I have said, we absolutely feel like there needs to be a way to kill people in the absence of 30-min long mana-drain or chain-CC fights. However, that doesn't mean that every fight should last 10 seconds because one team blows up someone on the other team immediately. Toning down burst does not mean no burst. There can be something in between immortal healers and glass healers.