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Fire Mage PvP Observations and Analysis

Forum Avatar
Tagan
#0 - March 29, 2009, 12:43 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Fire PvP

Preface: I understand if you don’t care about Fire in PvP. I understand if you feel that several other classes/specs have it harder than Fire Mages and require more urgent and immediate attention. I get all that, and on some level I even agree with you, but that is not what we are discussing here. So if you don’t want to discuss Fire Mage PvP, this is not the thread for you.

Furthermore, I make no claims on originating all of these ideas, and I have no illusions that these proposed changes will solve every problem with the tree, so thanks, but no need to tell me so.

Personal History
I’ve been playing WoW since the early days of classic. I remember before there were any battlegrounds, when the best PvP had to offer was duels outside IF and the TM/SS zerg and counter-zerg. Before there was Honor points and LONG before there was Arena.

I was never amazing, but for a while I was pretty damn good. Was in the best PvP guild on my server in classic and had arena teams in the low 2000’s for every bracket in BC. I made PvP videos, 4 of them, that were highly praised at the time. In my final video before I quit in BC I sought out and fought literally every single good PvPer on the server for arranged 1v1’s, and had a winning record vs. all of them save a SL/SL lock and a Resto Shammy. SL/SL Lock, SS Rogue, Disc Priest, I could win vs talented players using all of the above.Say what you will about PvE servers, but several of my opponents/teammates in that video have gone on to become semi-professional gamers (BMFC, they even upset Pandemic last year http://gameroom.mlgpro.com/view/ksGz2Zmgp5s.html?video_page=3). I’ve also raided everything except BT and Sunwell.

On a non-WoW related note, I got my BA from Emory University in 2006 with a double major in Psychology and Theater. I am also an award winning dramaturge and, consequently, am proficient in the analysis of themes, motifs, and other substantive issues in dramatic texts.

Problems:

Too much RNG (core problem)

To help illustrate this point, I made a count of every talent in the Fire tree that concerns some aspect of RNG. This includes crit talents, but does not include +% damage talents, as those are a set number. I then compared that number to every other talent tree in the game, just for reference.

Now, the normal disclaimers apply. Yes comparing the number of RNG talents in each tree is not telling the complete story, and yes you can’t compare the trees in a side by side manner like this and expect them all to have exactly the same amount of RNG, and yes, RNG is an integral part of the game and won’t ever (and moreover shouldn’t ever) completely go away. I am merely using these figures to prove a point and create a launching point for discussion.


• Tree RNG Talents Total Talents % RNG
• Fire: 39 70 56%
• Arc: 27 81 33%
• Frost: 29 74 39%

• Ele 20 73 27%
• Enh 21 81 26%
• Resto 14 76 18%

• Dest 28 75 37%
• Aff 22 70 31%
• Dem 25 71 35%

• Shad 11 67 16%
• Holy 19 79 24%
• Disc 17 74 23%

• Bal 33 75 44%
• Fer 22 78 28%
• Resto 22 80 28%

• Blood 32 72 44%
• Frost 18 76 24%
• UH 19 77 25%

• Beast 28 74 38%
• Marks 32 75 43%
• Surv 34 78 44%

• Ret 39 66 59%
• Prot 21 71 30%
• Holy 23 74 31%

• Ass 32 74 43%
• Com 28 79 35%
• Sub 20 71 28%

• Arms 37 80 46%
• Fury 32 80 40%
• Prot 25 67 37%

As you can see, the Pally Retribution tree is the only tree that has more RNG than the Fire tree. Even trees famous for their RNG nature, such as the Warrior Arms tree, fall a full 6 points and 10% below Fire in terms of sheer amount of RNG. It is also worth noting that while, yes, much of the RNG in the fire tree is centered around Crit, it also encompasses unique abilities that are the cornerstone of Fire’s Offense and Defense, things such as Blazing Speed, Impact, and Hot Streak.

The side effect of having the tree this saturated with randomness leads to the following problems:
Forum Avatar
Ghostcrawler
#124 - April 14, 2009, 9:55 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
Yeah, him locking that says a lot.


It was a QQ post beating us up because we "promised" in an earlier preview that Fire in PvP was something we wanted to improve for 3.1. We don't promise ANYTHING, and threads that just go on about how we don't love certain classes are not the kind of thing we want to promote.

We still want to get Fire in a better place for PvP. We want to do it without totally displacing Frost or Arcane. Having multiple viable PvP builds is hard, and we've been much more succesful with the hybrid classes in that respect than the pures.

You have to understand that from our point of view there are always a thousand more things we'd like to do than we can actually get done. That doesn't contradict with "When it's ready." In fact, knowing when something is ready is a graceful art of deciding when you've done enough, because left to their own devices, Blizzard developers would keep honing and perfecting a product for years and never actually realease it. :)

I'm not sure if we will do previews for patch 3.2 given the response this time around, but Fire in PvP will still be on that list until we think we've accomplished something. So far we don't feel that way (ditto for Frost in PvE).

We explained our logic on Impact before. The goal of removing proc'y stuns trumped the goal of trying to get Fire in a better place for PvP because mages already had viable PvP specs and Fire was already quite good in PvE. That said, I don't think the re-design of the talent is worthless either.
Forum Avatar
Ghostcrawler
#147 - April 14, 2009, 7:55 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
What dissapoints me is this perception that the previews are to blame. What gets me is the subtle inference here is that it's all our fault - ok, you wrote a preview, and we all ran with it. Bad players, how dare you create expectations! Then nothing came of it, and people are angry, so the answer is... don't preview anything in future. Somehow, that feels punitive.

Perhaps a better way of approaching things would be to have a solid idea of what will and won't make the cut and get out ahead of it a little sooner, noting that certain issues are known/acknowledged but won't make it. For starters, that tells people that their concerns are at least heard (usual caveat about stupid people) and secondly it deflects some of the anger by being upfront that it won't make it.

Instead folks sit around hoping for a last minute miracle, and only when mmo-champion posts the final patch notes does everyone finally say, "wow, they really didn't address this at all". Hence this thread, and no doubt there will be many more about all the other ponies you promised but did not deliver.


But do you see how you made the jump from "Blizzard makes a preview" to "Players get angry / sad when the things they want to be addressed are not addressed"? We are going to be the ones who make the decision about what to work on, not the community. We post here with the intention of keeping you informed and to get your feedback, not to let you decide how we should design the game.

Waiting until we are "really sure" about something before announcing it would result in making the previews something like two weeks ago, long after players have been seeing patch notes.

Staying in close contact with the community every step in the way so they know our current priority on things is not a commitment I can realistically make. If making previews is always coupled with that extra level of more-or-less mandatory work, it's going to be hard to do them.

I'm not at all trying to blame the community here so I hope it doesn't come off that way. But we do need to figure out a way (whether it's anything from wordsmithing to a totally different format) to be able to talk about our future plans without setting players up for crushing disappointment if we change our minds, go in a different direction, or just put some changes off for another day.

Q u o t e:
Real live Actibliz execs tell me they have resources coming out of their ears.

They do what they want to do. What they really suck at is controlling the mouths of some of their staff, who go out and admit the truth--they have the capacity to handle changes. The people who are blabbing are not the people who make the decisions.


This is a common misunderstanding that I correct when I can. WoW is a very succesful game. No argument there. But that does not mean "They must have 1000 designers and the ability to hire more at a moment's notice." WoW is succesful in part because we DON'T do that. We would definitely be able to make even more class changes if we hired 12 more class designers. Would they be good changes with so many people working in potentially different directions with different visions? I am skeptical.
Forum Avatar
Ghostcrawler
#183 - April 15, 2009, 8:45 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
I'd like to know what the design team actually thinks the problem with Fire PvP is. Do they think the burst is too unwieldy, or too much to be made controllable? Is the survivability just not there? Is it just a matter of efficiency?

We can throw around ideas about what we think the problem is, and this thread is a great resource for that, but if they conflict with, or do not parallel the team's idea of a successful Fire PvP spec it's all a bunch of hot air.


In an attempt to get the thread back on track and away from Blizzard communication, I'll throw out the following:

Frost has a lot of control and survivability and an ability to summon up some burst damage when needed. Arcane has a lot of burst damage and a reasonable amount of mobility (esp. for a caster). Fire lacks the control of Frost and can't gaurantee the big crits land when they need them. Survivability may be an issue, but some specs can handle this fine just with better control.

Can we give Fire a really good control button of some kind? Of course. Can we do that while making Fire vs. Frost a really interesting decision in PvP? That's a lot harder. If Fire gets an awesome ability (like the new Earthbind change for shamans or even Psychic Horror) it might be very easy to push all PvP mages into Fire. Since Fire already is dominant over Frost for PvE, that means we just wouldn't need Frost mages anymore. They'd be a dead spec. On the other hand, if the ability was seen as clearly inferior to what Frost can offer, then most serious mages would stick with Frost (possibly Arcane) for PvP and Fire would just be a gimmick. Getting it "close enough" is challenging. It's not impossible, but it takes some time and tuning and isn't the kind of thing you just slap in the game and hope it works.