#0 - May 26, 2009, 3:57 p.m.
Q u o t e:
Players complained about burst and DKs last season and had every right to. We think both are in a better place now.
There are definitely some situations where you can get into with a class and die too quickly. There are also situations where CC or healing or dispelling are too dominant. Arena balance isn't perfect and we'll continue to make changes as we go along. However, we don't feel like you can just summarize all of this season as being too bursty (which we do think happened last season before people got enough resilience). If you look at a lot of the complaints coming out of Arenas right now, they are about healing (Disc, Resto druids and various paladin specs at least) and melee (or at least Arms, Unholy, Ret and rogues) vs. casters.
This will probably come across as overly-sarcastic and I'll get flamed for it for a few weeks, but make sure you catch up on what the cool kids are actually talking about this season and not just parroting what everyone was saying about PvP a few months ago. ;)
I question the wisdom of this active correction approach to dealing with balance issues in arenas. Perhaps the fact that balance issues require active correction on Blizzard's part is an indication that the system itself is flawed and it would be a more efficient utilization of Blizzard's resources to redesign it to utilize passive correction as opposed to active correction.
I have observed that all classes are not equal. They contain fundamental differences that lead to specific advantages that one class will have over another class in a given situation, assuming that the players know to utilize them. Instead of approaching a class as being broken if it does unusually well, it would be a better approach to utilize a system that accounts for this, such that each class is handled as separately.
To elaborate, let me explain how the current system works. In the current system, players are awarded rating depending on whether they win or they lose. Having a given class can make it easier or harder to win or lose and therefore affect rating. Rewards are based on upon rating and when it is time for them to be distributed, the notion of class is ignored by the distribution method, such that if one class does better relative to all of the other classes, it is possible for that class to receive all of the rewards while the other classes receive none. This is the reason for Blizzard's active attempts to balance arenas.
In the passive approach, which I believe would be more effective, players will be awarded rating depending on whether they win or lose. Having a given class will make it easier or harder to win or lose and therefore affect rating. Rewards will be based upon rating and when it is time for them to be distributed, the top percentiles of each class will receive rewards, such that if one class does better relative to all of the other classes, it will be impossible for it to receive all of the rewards. Furthermore, if the majority of players reroll to that class, it will become more difficult for them to attain rewards, as they will be forced to compete, not against players with characters of other classes, but among themselves, even though their matches will be fought with and against other classes.
In this passive approach, in attempting to gain an advantage by rerolling, players will be making it more difficult for themselves to gain rewards by contributing to the population of that class, while it will become easier for others to gain rewards because in rerolling, they will have evacuated the population of another class. This provides a strong incentive against rerolling, which will prevent one class from dominating all others, even if its performance is superior, which in my opinion, would best suit the majority of Blizzard's user base.