Tanks thoughts on the Warrior Q&A

#0 - July 16, 2009, 7:02 p.m.

World of Warcraft is always in development. Design goals factor in to thousands of discussions on these forums every day, and those goals often change with just as fickly as the weather. However, communication from blue has often times been the highest honour a thread can be bestowed, yet many counter the comments by blue with ignorance, arrogance, and a mighty bad attitude. I ask that any comments about this discussion be focused ON the discussion.

I am pointing out here specific examples of design mentioned in the latest Q&A Series. Even though this Q&A was written to address Warrior concerns, several class wide goals were mentioned with how situational abilities and macros affect the class. I wish to urge the community and Blizzard into discussing how some current classes do or do not follow these goals. I wish to outline examples relating to Paladins.

Q u o t e:
We like situational abilities. When specs don’t have situational abilities, it’s easy to fall into a very fixed rotation. We call this the metronome. Push button 1, 2, 3 on your keyboard over and over until the bad guy drops loot. We have made more of an effort in all the classes to have certain moments that require players to pay attention a little more and then reward them when they both cause those situations to happen and then execute on them.

Can this be construed as a comment that Blizzard is not happy with the current state of Protection Paladins? Interesting how these comments are made in the Q&A for a class that doesn't exhibit these issues, but was entirely blown over on the Q&A for a class that does. Perhaps I will simply assume that there weren't enough questions pertaining to that very specific subject.

How about situational abilities for Retribution? It was mentioned before that Retribution would be given a more dynamic rotation, something that took actual skill to complete. My mind envisioned a system where maximizing DPS was done through clever juggling of resources, global cooldowns, and perhaps even quick reflexes.

Instead, Retribution plays in PvE the way it currently plays. Art of War does not force a decision in PvE as your main goal is to maximize your damage. With the frequency of Art of War procs and the nature of a duration based buff, the Paladin will cast Exorcism at the exact same time as he does in live. Pressing Crusader Strike more often does not change the fact that the system is still a FCFS mashfest.

Q u o t e:
I think if anything, abilities like this need to be more prominent. You should be less effective at your job if you ignore them, and ideally you’d also be less effective if you just macro’d them in. We like macros (obviously, or we wouldn’t have them in the game), but we like for them to simplify chains of things that you have to do often without making decisions in between point A and B. We don’t like it when playing your class becomes how clever your macro can be to the point at which you are pushing one button to play your class. That’s not playing an RPG -- that’s programming a robot.

If macroing a rotation is supposed to be less beneficial than actually pressing the buttons yourself, then will we see a change in how Protection Paladins work? Currently it is possible to macro the rotation to maximize your TPS in the same way that you would maximize it without the macro. In many cases, the macro can actually AID by reducing human error. (Note: I do not condone using a macro for Tankadins, I am only shining a light on the fact that it can be done with no adverse effects in TPS)

Those who disbelieve the notion that Protection Paladins have only a single rotation may find more information on the maintankadin forums here:

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/

A TPS analysis thread is posted in the Advanced Forums which includes an in depth analysis on Paladin rotations. The results show the 969 as the highest available TPS. This rotation simply alternates between the 6 second cooldown abilities (Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous) and abilities that are treated as having nine second cooldowns (Judgments, Consecration, Holy Shield). Alternate between an available 9 and a 6 and you will consistently maintain your highest available TPS without ever clashing or having to wait through a global cooldown.

Q u o t e:
It could be in the future that we shift most of rage generation to damage done and have little or none in damage taken (and we would have to change a lot of other mechanics to make this work obviously).

Could this design goal for Warriors also be construed as a classwide design goal? Should ANY tank require the need to take damage to gain resources? Any rage change would immediately affect bears in the same exact way, but what about the current need to place at least 1 point in Spiritual Attunement?

Ghostcrawler

#104 - July 16, 2009, 11:36 p.m.

Q u o t e:
- If your models show strength as a "good" stat for protection warriors, you might want to re-check the math in them. Expertise, hit, agility, and block (yes, block!) all contribute more damage and threat than strength, point for point. Strength does beat out haste, though!

I realize a problem we've had with the QAs is I'm not always clear enough about whether I'm talking about the intent or the reality. I said "Mages shouldn't run out of mana." What I meant was "We don't want mages to run out of mana routinely." What players read, understandably, was "If you run out of mana, L2P."

The old intent was that warriors didin't have a lot of dps stats so they needed block to boost their dps. We changed that a little in LK by putting more Strength on gear and we want to push things even more in that direction.

Q u o t e:
- Yeah, we stack avoidance and mitigation. Not to put too fine a point on it, but whose fault is that? We certainly did not design bosses that strain the heal team to the point of insanity if we don't strongly emphasise those stats at the expense of threat and damage. Especially when first learning encounters.

The point I was trying to make is that the main things you're doing as a tank are trying to get the boss to beat on you and trying to survive that beating. Ever since I have been playing WoW, tanks have embraced that second part of the game to a much greater extent than the first part. When tanks can't survive, they work diligently to learn the encounter and acquire more gear. They rarely blame the designers even in the most insane encounters. On the other hand, when they can't generate enough threat, it's our fault. You don't often see a tank stack a lot of dps to where threat isn't an issue and then complain that they can't survive. It's always the opposite. We need to somehow solve this puzzle (on our end) to where tanks take both roles seriously and can gear for both without having too many characters who go to one extreme or the other and cause bad things to happen.

Q u o t e:
Q u o t e:
They don’t need to top the charts, but their damage should be a meaningful component of damage done. We’re willing to change the way the game works to accomplish this goal.

Not to harp on the point, but please do! Even when expertise and hit capped, protection warrior damage is sadness.

We are waiting on more Patchwerk PTR parses to evaluate survival, dps and threat. We suspect warrior dps is a little low and will likely buff it. When I say stuff like "suspect" it's because we have changed quite a bit of stuff in 3.2 and we don't want to assume that problems in 3.1 automatically still exist in the new data. We have gotten ourselves into trouble on that before -- often fixing a problem in several different ways then the first solution worked and just hadn't had time to do so yet. We calculate what our changes will do, but we've also learned that those estimates are never as good as the "reality" of a boss encounter.

Ghostcrawler

#119 - July 17, 2009, 12:09 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I guess my main question is, are you going to listen to and give credence to the data we provide on those Patchwerk tests. The Wotlk Beta testers were largely ignored, the PTR testers more so.

We get the data we need from our PTR and beta tests. You shouldn't confuse those data with forum posts. What I mean is that we designed WoW encounters and classes long before there was a forum here for players to discuss tank mechanics. The discussion here is helpful, but it is not the only discussion, and certainly not our only avenue for game balance.

If you feel that your feedback isn't useful or valuable, then my suggestion would be to stop posting. Posting about how you feel ignored isn't anything most players are interested in reading.

I hate to keep saying this, because it sounds harsh, but we're not going to turn over WoW's game design to the community. You are welcome to provide us feedback and we greatly appreciate it.

Ghostcrawler

#125 - July 17, 2009, 12:23 a.m.

Q u o t e:
The oft-proposed suggestion of tying shield slam damage directly to strength or to strength via AP would go a long way for this (and of course give you more leeway for more radical changes with block value).

We considered that, and might eventually go that direction, but it's not a change we're prepared to make for 3.2. It might have some ramifications that we can't fully test in the current PTR environment, such as a tank able to Shield Slam just as much with a gray shield as with an epic drop, or the risk that dps warriors will switch to Shield Slam. A more likely candidate is something like Devastate or Revenge.

Q u o t e:
Of course you can't do every change that every person here proposes or you end up with tanks on the top of the dps charts, and some ideas are "yeah, nice idea but..." Finding that bunch of small changes that adds up to the total change you want - definitely not something that falls into place immediately. We're passionate, though, and get frustrated =)

Yes, that is typically our design. We have had some unfortunate incidents where, for example, we buffed a class that was weak. Then next week they were still weak (duh, the patch hadn't gone out) so we buffed them again. By the time the patch shipped, there were multiple buffs.

I totally understand about being passionate and getting frustrated. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that I was on the other side of the forums wondering why I just couldn't get through to those thick-skulled developers who had clearly never played my class. Just remember that we do ultimately want the same things you guys do... most of it anyway. I try to be as upfront as I can, but I can't always share every change we're considering.

Q u o t e:
I do think that many tanks don't take offensive stats seriously enough - if you clicky my picture at any given time, I am generally in a set that has at least 45 expertise. Does that cause the occasional problem? I am sure that at some points I have run out of green bar simply because of the few hundred or thousand and what health I could have had instead. The returns on threat that allow my DPS to start at time=0 and push is much more often worth it. With that said, I am generally of the opinion that stuff just hits too hard which limits us even more, which is where I was at in my original comment. With that said, watching a druid race up the threat charts after you while not getting hit - not fair!

Stuff does hit too hard. That's just where we are with tank avoidance where it is and healers able to heal what they can without mana limitations. All of that, sadly, needs to change (but not for 3.2 - don't panic). We also don't want to go back to the point where tanks felt like they had to use daggers to maximize their tps or whatever. But we do want tanks to take dps stats seriously.

Q u o t e:
As a software guy, I can sympathise with the unintended side-effect thing, absolutely. I would also submit that Patchwerk is a useful tool, but not the only tool. Nobody moves for a fight like that, and movement has a definite effect on threat output for tanks and for DPS from mages, to name two off the top of my head. A mage can show awesome numbers for Patchwerk, but there aren't many "real life" encounters where you get to just stand still. A Patchwerk that randomly drops void zones (4 or 5 at a time, just a yard or two across, on random players, that disappear after 10 seconds but do 20% health per second) might be very useful too.

I try to say this over and over, but one of the reason we make the bosses so diverse is so there isn't a generic case that players can point to and say "See? My guy sucks." I spin it as a PR move but it really isn't. It's because WoW is very mathy and our players are very sophisticated, so it's easy for them to look at simple encounters and know who is the best and who is the worst and by how much. With more complex encounters, the formulas are very challenging to solve. Sometimes your ability to move is critical. Sometimes your ability to CC is important. Sometimes it's about rounding up adds. Sometimes it's about surviving without heals. Players have to approach the encounters differently, down to considering swapping out gear or talent specs. The same characters aren't always at the top of dps charts and the same tanks aren't the best for every encounter. That's a good thing! It makes testing hard though. We at least want to know what happens in a very simple tank and spank, even if we never actually design that encounter.