[Feral Nerfs]. Why no dialogue?

Often times, we will wait before making a response to a particular change. It depends sometimes on the temperature of the forums. When I see a lot of ranting and QQing, then I suspect making a post then won't accomplish much except making more work for the moderators.

We often benefit a lot from seeing the response from other players. It is natural to see the class or spec that is nerfed express their unhappiness about the change or argue that it was overdone. The response from other players is relevant though, which is why we decided to move these balance discussions to shared forums in which many classes participate. Blue posts can sometimes answer questions, but they can also completely shut off the conversation with a definitive answer, or even worse, derail the conversation into other, often irrelevant, topics.

We made some adjustments to Feral damage in both PvE and PvP settings. Most of the nerfs are pretty straight forward, so it's probably easy to understand what we were trying to accomplish with them.

Specifically on the topic of Arena representation, you have to be careful how you interpret those data. Consider:

1) Depending on which numbers you present, your data can be used to support your argument more or less.
2) When a class has low representation, you have to decide is that because they are too weak or others too powerful. For example, some specs are popular because they counter other popular specs.
3) Popularity and viability have a correlation but it is not 1:1. Druids have never been the most popular class in WoW. There are a ton of DKs right now. Some players will abandon them when their power is more in line, but others will continue to play them because they like the class or have already invested in them.
4) The community mindset typically seems to be: just keep buffing under-represented specs even if that means giving them potentially overpowered abilities. We try to balance from a broader point of view. For example, if you make an ability too overpowered you are just going to have to nerf it later. We try to peer into the future a little bit and address potential balance problems before they get out of control.

Q u o t e:
I need to say though that the BIGGEST CONCERN I have with these nerfs, is that when/if we actually start to perform badly, we won't ever see any recovery from that. Given GC's responses, it seems as though the developers are going to shrug it off as "well, nobody ever plays feral druids, so that's why they aren't doing well, so they don't need any adjustments."

No, that would be a terrible reason for us not to fix a problem. I was more arguing from the other extreme, that we don’t try and “solve” popularity differences by just adding more and more damage until everyone plays that class or spec.

To be clear, we used to be happy with cats doing relatively low dps and bears being inferior tanks, and low Feral PvP representation was acceptable since druids had a very potent PvP spec as an alternative. Our design has evolved for LK, and we want cats to be doing similar dps to say warriors, paladins and shamans, bears to be able to MT, and for Feral to be viable as a PvP spec.

Q u o t e:
It's sad all these hybrids wanna do pure damage.

Let’s not drag another thread into whether you support the our goal for pure vs. hybrid dps. There have been plenty of threads on that already.

Q u o t e:
What about the nerf to Primal Tenacity? Is this some kind of shortsighted tanking nerf against bosses with stun mechanics in the encounter?

No it was strictly for PvP. Short of cases like Maexxna, we’re not convinced it's a huge tanking issue and we definitely don’t want to try and carve out some kind of ill-conceived niche for druids as the best tanks while stunned.

We just weren't happy with the way that talent worked. Relative power in Arenas is something we take into account, but it is not the only thing we take into account.

Q u o t e:
less than two weeks ago you said feral druids on live were not doing enough dps then you nerf them what kind of sense does that make.

Feral druids in 3.1 will still do more damage than on Live, even with these nerfs.

Q u o t e:
Attacking him won't get the response we need. I only hope GC reads the thread by the feral gladiator.

I did. I read all of these threads. As I said, I don’t (and can’t) respond to all of them. That then leads the debate about whether or not I respond to “the right ones.” Since that is subjective, I am not particularly interested in that debate. :)

Did you notice all of the “Why you are here, can I ask you about an unrelated issue (or class) posts?” Sometimes the best thing to do for good discussions is not to put a blue comment in there.

Q u o t e:
Looks like the same ugly problem we had in BC WRT extremely poor scaling is going to come back and bite us in our furry butts.

Let me say a couple of words about scaling. I’m not trying to single you out here, but we have definitely noticed an uptick in player responses of “With this nerf, we won’t scale.”

Here is what scaling means specifically to us: Players improve with gear. Once you hit max level, that is pretty much the only way you are improving because you don’t gain any more ranks of your abilities. If another class or spec scales better with gear, then the risk is that at some gear level, you will start to fall behind. The specific point at which you fall behind is very important. If it only happens at 20,000 AP or 20,000 spell power, then it is a non-issue until the next expansion, at which point we can give you new ranks of abilities. So to convince us that scaling is a problem, you need to be specific about when that is going to occur. Is it going to occur in Ulduar? Big problem. Is it going to occur in Icecrown? Less of a problem. Is it going to occur at some magic number far in the future? Really not a concern, because so much is going to change between now and then.

(I used PvE examples, but the same thing is true of later PvP seasons. The PvP gear however is easy to predict because the formula is very regimented, while the PvE gear can change its stat splits, etc.)

Some of the Feral changes in 3.1 were to handle scaling problems, some which would have made druids too good or not good enough. Savage Roar made AP trump all. The armor changes were made in part because bears we were worried bears were going to hit the armor cap (esp. with procs up, etc.) It is something we keep an eye on definitely. However, I also think “we won’t scale” tends to get a little over-emphasized in some of these threads.

Q u o t e:
In my experience, when developers say absolutely nothing about a class but talk about others, the class/spec absent discussion gets nerfed. So, no news is bad news. This is no different than the 2.0 to 2.0.8 nerfs. Nor would it be, evidenced here, any different this time around. This tends to lend to the perception of 'bait and switch'. From a developer perspective, I doubt this probably registers as such with you.

No, it doesn’t resonate with us and I kind of want to stomp out any idea out there that you have to come be loud on the forums in order to prevent nerfs. We have made nerfs to communities that were vocal and we have made plenty of buffs that players respond with “Um, thanks, but we didn’t ask for that.” That is because we don’t balance around community feedback. If it at all appears that way to you, it is probably because this is the only part of the development cycle with any transparency for you guys. But that does not mean it is the only part of the development cycle. We greatly appreciate your feedback. I can’t say that enough. But don’t attribute more power to it than it actually has. If you need more proof of that, go search for the phrases "didn't listen to any of our suggestions" or "ignored our feedback." We listen to you guys, but that does not translate into doing everything you ask for.

Q u o t e:
Yeah, it's Blizz's forum, but I find it very funny they (ghostcrawler) can't take any sort of criticism. Blizz is gonna do what they want with druids, even if it's nerf them into the ground (or not). Just try not to have a pissy fit if someone doesn't agree with you and calls you out on something you said. :P

Do you not read these forums regularly? Nearly all of them include criticism of the design in some fashion. We have no problem with that. Players get banned for making inappropriate posts. Inappropriate posts typically follow the format “Blizzard is a poopyhead because I don’t like the changes they made to our class.” We tend to not publically humiliate the players who make bad posts, though sometimes I wish we did. :)

Q u o t e:
you haven’t answered my question yet.

Players are here with a lot of different questions and my goal is not to answer every single one. I rarely post just to answer laundry lists of questions. I usually post with the intent of trying to share our design philosophy behind the changes we make. Those tend to communicate to the most players at once.

If your question was on Primal Gore, we think it was responsible for too much of damage increase. If the question was why did we remove Rake instead of cutting the bonus for multiple abilities in half, it’s because doing it our way leaves us the opportunity to add Rake back at another time (such as a set bonus or glyph maybe). Cutting the number in half wouldn’t have let us do that.

Q u o t e:
I just thought it was ironic that GC was saying he considers our feedback valuable - if it answers his questions, but doesn't consider answering our questions equally valuable. It's the "do as I say, not as I do" approach that's fairly laughable.

You are posting here with an unrealistic expectation. I spend several hours on these forums every day and I can still respond to but a few posts. There are 12 million of you and only a few of us. If we wanted the forums for Q&A we would have set up a very different format of the kind typically used in these situations, such as submit your questions and we will draw a few at random to answer. Instead, the goal of these forums is to provide a place for players to discuss class mechanics and balance in a place where they are sure we will see the feedback. If you don’t want to provide the feedback because I haven’t somehow earned it by answering your questions, then you certainly don’t have to. By far the majority of our players do not post. That’s cool.

Q u o t e:
The question I have is, can blizzard not check the scaling of a class/spec while it's in the testing phase?

Of course we can. And we do. My point was that if you want to post asserting that you have bad scaling, your post will have more impact if you can provide some numbers to back up your assertion. I’m not saying “please balance the game for us.” I am saying “If you are challenging our design, then you need to support you argument.”

Q u o t e:
So, just to be clear, you're saying that you were happy with feral druids being terrible at every aspect of the game in BC? That didn't ring any warning bells with you guys?

Nope. That was our design. The design was that Feral druids pay a price for being versatile. We have since decided we are not happy with that design and changed it for LK. I think the reason we weren’t happy with it is probably the reason you weren’t happy with it: it’s not fun to always be mediocre even if you can be mediocre at a lot of different things. The difference is in LK we give you a chance to commit: if you want to be a great bear, you have to give up some cat dps through talents. If you want to be equal at both, you are going to be less optimal than a player who focuses heavily on one.

Q u o t e:
I'm afraid I agree with this. Our past experience with developers has not lent to any other logical conclusions.

Okay. If you’re not going to be convinced by anything we say, I’m not sure what else you’re looking for in this thread then. :)

Q u o t e:
These are the questions that the people who started this thread originally had. Already on live with our "survivability" it's a game of train the kitty till he goes bear and can't do anything. With the current changes, we literally bring nothing to the table in terms of CC, or interrupts while actually doing some sort of damage if we're being focused.

This is exactly the point though. All throughout LK we have been trying to force players to choose offense vs. defense in PvP. Almost every time we have allowed players to us defenses in an offensive manner, we’ve had balance problems, and paladins and DKs are the poster children for that. If you want to do damage, go cat. If you are being focused on, go bear. Though the Primal Tenacity change is really hurting bear survivability more than cat though, so maybe I misunderstood your point.