GC are you happy with Fury where it is now?

#0 - March 31, 2009, 6:10 p.m.

I just want to know if you really think Fury is OK in its current state on the PTR. Are you happy with how fury was balanced in 3.1? Do you feel these changes will be sustainable in the future or will we need to revisit them again and again every major patch?

I will fully admit that fury needed to be retuned. I don't think we were OP, I think we scaled improperly once we had BiS gear sets loaded with leather and insane stats wielding BoH's. You didn't see poorly geared fury warriors posting 6k on Patchwerk. So this isn't a QQ post saying how we shouldn't be nerfed, or how we deserve to be as good as pure dps, or any other nonsense. I'm just concerned about playing a class that has fundamental design flaws that cause for massive restructuring every major patch.

So just a few philosophical questions:

1.) Are you happy with warriors scaling up and down with gear at a much higher rate than most other classes? What would you do differently if you could redo 3.0?

2.) Do you plan on balancing fury around Best in Slot geared warriors or more average geared warriors in Ulduar? How will this impact fury warriors in 10-man groups where their gear will always be lower quality than 25-man geared warriors?

3.) Will the devs ever consider scrapping TG entirely to revamp the fury tree and create a more balanced spec that won't be plagued by constant and drastic rebalancing due to scaling?

This is important. Balancing around BiS means that we will be very sub-par until we get all our upgrades, and only then can we compete. If you balance around the low-end (which seemed to be the case in 3.0) then we become way too powerful in our BiS. I'd like to think there is a good middle ground that will enable us to start off slow, ramp up to competitive, and still end up powerful when in BiS.

Without a major redesign of fury you will never get us away from the scaling problem. Are you ok with us being powerful once we've gotten all of our best gear? Or do we need to suffer through mediocrity until then just to become marginally competitive?

Ghostcrawler

#23 - March 31, 2009, 10:30 p.m.

Q u o t e:
1.) Are you happy with warriors scaling up and down with gear at a much higher rate than most other classes? What would you do differently if you could redo 3.0?

Warrior scaling has always been tough to balance around. The class suffers when it doesn't have enough rage and is too good when it is unlimited. We might end up (in the future) re-re-normalizing rage so that we can control the endpoints a lot more tightly.

Q u o t e:
2.) Do you plan on balancing fury around Best in Slot geared warriors or more average geared warriors in Ulduar? How will this impact fury warriors in 10-man groups where their gear will always be lower quality than 25-man geared warriors?

We don't balance classes against each other only by considering the best gear. Very few players have the best gear. It doesn't make sense to be balanced only for a very small percentage of the game.

We do some balancing of groups against bosses by only using best gear though.

Q u o t e:
3.) Will the devs ever consider scrapping TG entirely to revamp the fury tree and create a more balanced spec that won't be plagued by constant and drastic rebalancing due to scaling?

I wouldn't ever say never, but we like Titan's Grip. It's very game-changing in the sense that you used to worry about acquiring one-handed weapons and now you need to think about two-handed weapons. Titan's Grip is not the cause of warrior scaling problems. Rage is. (And possibly the sources of damage from various attacks.)

I know TG has something of a black eye among Fury warriors at the moment, but that is our fault for failing to balance it properly when LK shipped. If it had first shown up in beta with the current damage penalty and kept it the entire time, I think the talent would not be viewed as such a problem child within the community.

Ghostcrawler

#30 - March 31, 2009, 10:43 p.m.

Q u o t e:
It wasn't nerfed around Warrior's wearing leather. If you had followed TG from the beginning, you would remember nearly every time GC posted about TG he throws in "too much of a damage increase for a single talent point". That alone is the reason for the damage penalty. Nobody seems to want to listen to this logic, though. Too much of a damage increase for a single talent point. Repeat that a few times until it sinks in.

We didn't nerf TG to make warriors pay for wearing leather. We think Fury's damage was too high even in plate. Because TG was a gigantic dps increase for one talent point (maybe 20 to 30%) it was a good candidate to nerf. Originally we tried a couple of other penalties with TG, including a hit penalty, but that didn't work well. Ultimately what the talent does is improve damage, so toning down its damage felt like the right call.

Q u o t e:
I pray you don't end up going to far with this - I'd rather Rage not be Energy but with a red bar and a chance to fail to work (or even without a chance to fail to work, it would still suck).

Totally. That is why it is something we might experiment with in the future, but is too big a change given where we are on 3.1. Rage is a fun mechanic when it works. But when you have no rage or too much it doesn't work as a mechanic, and if its income is too predictable, it feels like Energy.