GC, why is "Burst" such a bad word?

#0 - April 24, 2009, 9:28 p.m.

I've been playing a Ret Paladin since the bad old days of auto-attack / alt-tab porn downloads and the universal premise surrounding Ret Paladin damage has been either we burst you with a few seconds or you survive, escape and then round and round we go. This theory was especially true when fighting against a healer 1v1 as we do not have a healing reduction ability nor spell interrupt. So why is it now a revelation that our burst abilities are overpowered when CS and DS are basically glorified auto-attacks?

I personally like the flavour that Ret has now and I salute you on your attempts so far in order to fix what felt like a forgotten spec among the devs for a long period of time. I don't want to stack combo points, or have one ability required in order to make another ability stronger. A Paladin is a unique character and I feel that its fighting abilities should remain unique as well. As was said in another post, we have many other abilities that are required on the fly in order to help our team (BoF, Cleanse, BoP and the always unexpected...Leet Ret Pally Heals!)

If at the end of the day, you still deem our burst to be overpowered, then my solution to the conundrum that you as developers face is that our abilities should hit for less, but more often - lower the cooldowns on Judgement, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm and see what happens there.

Ghostcrawler

#13 - April 25, 2009, 12:56 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Burst is a tool that should be used to finish off wounded foes. Burst should not be a viable tactic to open with. It is a fine line.

I like this quote a lot.

The term "Burst" has kind of taken on a life of it's own, much like "scaling" and "stealth nerf." It's not a bad word. Too much burst is bad, just like too much CC, too much healing or too much mana regeneration are bad.

Burst on demand is a useful mechanic. But we don't think the matches are as fun when someone just crushes your face in while you have very limited options in countering it.

It can be frustrating to be crowd controlled too much, but at least in that situation every player has a trinket, and many classes have additional ways to break out. Being blown up in just a few GCDs doesn't leave you a lot of options, and it often doesn't even require much skill or finesse from the burster. On the opposite extreme, not being able to finish someone off before a heal lands, means that fights go on forever.