The problem with balancing by Representation

This (kind of crazy) thread is talking about two different things.

If warrior MTs are standing aside because DK OTs can handle the fight much better, and this is happening for a lot of encounters, then that's a problem. If it happens for a few encounters it's probably not a problem and if the advantage the DK conveys is modest, it's not a problem. This isn't an issue of how many warrior MTs there are. It's an issue of whether one class has a much, much easier time on certain encounters. DKs probably had too easy a time on Sarth +3 and Vezax.

The second issue is: should we nerf warriors because there are so many warrior tanks and we want other tanks to be more common? I think most reasonable people, including us, would say that's a bad reason to nerf someone. However, players also infer a lot of design intent to our actions. We've finally gotten to a point where there are 4 classes that can serve as your raid's MT. If we turned around and buffed warriors a lot while nerfing the other classes, players might mistakenly assume that we want the warrior to be the "real" tank, which is certainly an understandable conclusion given that it was the design for the first 3-4 years of WoW.

Now, where I think I lost some players in the thought process was in a discussion combining those two issues (power and representation). If druid MTs are so much better than warrior tanks, then why don't we see more of them? Furthermore, why aren't warriors stepping aside for druids on those fights where they are currently (in 3.1 I mean) stepping aside for DKs? Maybe there are just a lot of DK tanks because the class is new (and has at times been overpowered). But why aren't there more druids if they are a superior tank on many encounters? Do we nerf druids anyway, knowing this will probably lead to there being fewer of them? What if they don't really convey as much of an advantage as players think? Now we've made an unpopular spec weaker.

Players sometimes (and often depending on the argument they are trying to make) argue that representation equals power. There is a correlation there, but it's not 1.0. These things are rarely black and white. I think sometimes some players try to distill everything down too much into rules like this. You can't feed variables into a computer and have it spit the right answer back out at you. That's not intended to be a criticism of player logic powers, more of an explanation of why we sometimes might view things differently.

Q u o t e:
Because feral DPS is OP on live.

I understand your point, but you're setting up a situation where groups can't get Feral tanks to make their jobs easier because the Feral players are having too much fun being cats. I think guilds would find a way. DK damage has been OP at times, but that didn't seem to drop the number of DK tanks out there.

Likewise, you could argue that bears just aren't fun to play. But players argue warrior or paladins tanks aren't fun to play either. Even if bears were just terrible to play (which I wholeheartedly disagree with), I still can't imagine that guilds would just suffer with a gimp tank instead of finding one.

I think more is going on than that.

Q u o t e:
Representation shouldn't count AT ALL.

---> Your role is to make every tanking class the most "equal" possible

---> Our role is to play the class we enjoy.

That's not actually true from our perspective.

Our job is to make the game fun. For many players, that means balanced, but that's not sufficient to make a fun game and various factors are more or less important as well depending on the individual player. Some will pick the most powerful class. Some will pick the most fun (for them) class.

Representation counts because it is often indicative of other things going on.

I'm just not comfortable with the following logic: Guilds are replacing their warrior MTs with overpowered death knights. Guilds are not replacing their warrior MTs with overpowered druids because druids are somehow not fun, hard to level or do high dps as cats. I don't find any of those reasons satisfactory or in some cases even true. It makes me wonder if maybe the druid advantage doesn't manifest itself as well in encounters as it does on paper.

I also think the whole phenomenon of MTs getting replaced is vastly overstated, but it still makes me curious about what exactly is going on.

Q u o t e:

Min-maxing guilds will always take the tank that has more mathematical survivability than the others. It is who they are. They live for the top tps, dps, hps and mitigation classes.

Yet we know that’s not true. Many of the guilds generally held by the public to be top guilds tank all bue perhaps 1-2 fights with a warrior. Yet if you came into these forums without a lot of game experience, the conclusion you would draw (recently – it varies from patch to patch) is that they are horribly gimping themselves by doing so. Established guilds have established players who have made a lot of investment in their characters. They will switch if forced, but only if forced. I've said this before, but if we made an encounter where say a paladin in cloth gear conveyed an enormous advantage, these guilds would have one within the space of a week. Some of these guilds do things many of us would never dream of doing, like re-glyphing and re-specing for every boss, or even swapping tradeskills halfway through a raid. If druids made their fights significantly easier, I think these guilds would use them. Druids got some use on Sarth, but not as much as DKs, and we haven’t seen nearly as many druids in Ulduar. They are good for say Thorim hard with Unbalancing Strike.

Q u o t e:
And that's the crux of it, the example GC keeps going back to is Druids and there is a notion we are OP on the forums and on paper but you don't see those very guilds using us in droves like they did DKs, even on fights in which we have an exceptionally strong advantage. People have come on and said because we aren't fun but that would make no sense for such min-max type guilds.

Yup. And I still don’t find the “Druids aren’t fun” argument compelling. Plenty of warriors and paladins want their class mechanics changed too. I’ve tanked with a bear. It doesn’t want to make me claw my eyes out more than say Shield Block and Heroic Strike carpal tunnel from Burning Crusade. I think all of the various things players have mentioned in this thread about how druids can be improved have some merit. But I don’t think that makes them so unplayable that guilds wouldn’t flock to them if they made fights significantly easier.

Q u o t e:
Because we bring it up all the time. Every time a new change comes in, the sky is always falling around here and it sounds like every guild is running out to get their new "god mode" paladins.

Meanwhile, in reality land, things go on. A few guilds replace their tanks. Probably some top guilds, too. Most guilds only change tanks when things happen like the tank gets a job or gets married and can't come on Thursdays or whatnot. I've seen tanks get replaced because they do better dps in their offspec than the other tanks. A lot of guilds will actually acknowledge the shift in tanking power but just grumble about it.

Quoting Communism too.

Q u o t e:
So lets say after 3.2 (after you nerf DK tanks), DK tanks are still getting more representation than other tanks. Are you gonna keep nerfing DK tanks again?

It’s not a question of how many DKs there are. There are a lot of DKs. They are new, relatively polished, have a cool starting experience, and get to skip over 55 levels. We would nerf them if we saw respected guilds swap out for a DK tank on numerous encounters because they felt there was no other way to approach the encounter. If it’s one fight, it’s probably not that big a deal provided the disadvantage isn’t crushing. If it’s a lot of bosses, then yeah, that’s a problem. I don’t think that will be a problem in Coliseum for DKs though.

Q u o t e:
You are correct, that was indeed Ghost, he was discussing BM hunters vs. Survival/Marks. He said they didn't have a problem with Surv doing more damage because its a harder spec to play well.

If the easiest spec to play also does the highest damage then it’s kind of a no-brainer. It’s also an issue of spec more than class, and pretty much only an issue for pures with three damage-dealing trees.

Q u o t e:
THE issue is Death Knights (STILL) being overpowered.

Just because they've been nerfed a bunch, does not mean they're anywhere near a level of balance. They're totally, completely overpowered in every possible facet.

They make the best tanks. They can lead dps. They are the easiest pvp class, and arguably the best.

“Many players will disagree with me, but they are all wrong. Me: right. Others: wrong.”

Q u o t e:
All I have to say is that the class discussion panel at Blizzcon should be interesting. Don't be surprised if you guys get heckled and/or have some hard questions come your way during the Q & A session. This expansion has left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths, especially among tanking players.

Yeah, tank balance was so much better in Molten Core and Sunwell. Oh wait…. :)

There are definitely some PvE balance problems we still need to solve. But I would try to keep things in perspective. PvE balance is probably closer than it has ever been in WoW’s history (and I won’t make that claim for PvP balance). It’s fine to say “Here are some things that could still stand to be improved.” It’s over the top to say things are horribly broken. I understand the way to get your voice heard on the internet is to be over the top. You won't find that as effective here.

Also, if you’re coming to Blizzcon to heckle, I kind of thing you’re wasting a big opportunity.

Q u o t e:
Every single fight in Ulduar is done easier with either DK or Feral Druid in 3.1. In 3.2 every fight is done easier with a Paladin or Feral Druid. This is not relegated to only a "few" fights, if that were the case you would see guilds swapping tanks for progression, which they don't. They use their DKs.

The problem is guilds aren’t actually doing that. I can understand why you might have that impression from reading the forums. Some guilds are doing it, no doubt. Yours might be. But overall most fights are still tanked by warriors. So it’s easy to make the argument that the advantage can’t actually be that significant in reality. I'm not saying that argument is correct. But the argument that an on-paper DK and druid advantage has not at all killed warriors is harder to counter.

Q u o t e:
The reason I think ppl aren't flocking to druids to tank is simply what a few above me have said, why would a druid who's toping the meters be asked to tank, in other ppls eyes this is a dead class

I still don’t buy that. DKs have topped meters too, and I think we have evidence that if one tank is clearly the best that many guilds will find a way to get that tank. I don’t want to turn this discussion into Ferals aren’t fun, because I just don’t think that’s the issue here. (I also think Ferals are fun, but your mileage may vary.)

I don’t buy that a spec can be so not fun that nobody will use a clearly overpowered tank. That’s not the way WoW players tend to behave. If we make a tortuous dps rotation, players will adopt it in order to maximize their potential even if they're cursing us all the while. If farming consumable conveys an advantage, players will do it, even if it kills them.

Q u o t e:
You mean the instance you had to add a zone wide aura to because druid tanks were so much better than warriors and paladins?

editing because i hit enter instead of shift

Yet most guilds still used warriors as the main tanks in sunwell even though druids were clearly superior at that time.

Are you arguing Sunwell had good tank balance? If not, then you’re sort of agreeing with me.

Q u o t e:
The problem is that you're assuming, with this post and pretty much all the ones before it that you've posted, that people only play a class for a role if the discrepency between that class and the other classes capable of that role are not huge. That's not true. There's many many reason already pointed out for people to stick to their class despite overwhelming disadvantages. Not the least of which is sentimental value, which really has no way of being quantified. There's also gear, achievements, experience, etc. Maybe some people just like the gameplay of one class over another?

That's why you can't use class representation as a reason in any sort of argument in an argument about whether or not a class is balanced. Balance may correlate loosely to representation, but it doesn't cause it. There's a significant difference. Saying that people haven't started switching to druids en mass doesn't mean druids are not overpowered. Saying that warriors are still a highly represented tank doesn't mean warriors are okay. It just doesn't work that way.

I agree with all of that. I've tried to say as much in several of my posts. Representation is a variable and you over-interpret it or ignore it at your peril. There are a lot of reasons players would or would not choose to reroll. That’s not really something we try to get into too much. Some players really like trying out different classes and some are loyal to a favorite. There isn’t a design intent one way or the other as long as they’re having fun.

However, I still don’t think that completely answers the question for why guilds wouldn’t switch to a tank that would offer them a clear advantage. You’re kind of suggesting that raid stacking isn’t a problem because some players like to play what they like to play. Yet we have plenty of past evidence that guilds will replace gimped classes with more powerful ones. What makes this case unique?