Bring the Player, Not the Classâ„¢: Heroism/BL

#0 - Sept. 24, 2009, 4:26 p.m.

I have led many raids over the past 3 years, and have seen many changes come to WoW, but one of my favorite, even though incomplete, is the Bring the Player, Not the Classâ„¢ change. I have led in the hardcore mentality along with the casual raiders, but one thing has always stood out to me. You must create the group with the encounters in mind, because not all groups are created equal. However, with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, that began to change. It has changed because many of the critical buffs and debuffs that you may need for any individual fight are out there, or there are ways around having a particular buff / debuff. But the solution isn't quite fixed yet.

I love the Bring the Player, Not the Classâ„¢ mentality, and honestly I think its becoming a reality. However, the one 'buff' that is still incredibly desired yet only available to one class is Heroism/Bloodlust. As much as I hate to say it, some fights really take a huge hit without a heroism buff on the raid.

Now, I know that Blizzard prefers to see numbers with these types of arguments, but the numbers won't do you any good here. Everyone knows just how valuable a heroism can be when there are strict enrage timers, or particular portions of a fight that more DPS can be gained via a particular buff.

For instance, heroic 10 man Champions was incredibly difficult for our raid to master without a heroism, but once we got a shaman in the group, it allowed to win the fight in only a few attempts. Not to say that the heroism was the ONLY reason we won, but the damage gain in the hardest part of the fight (beginning) was unbelievable, and truly helped us to get over the 'hump' in that particular encounter.

Another fight that benefits from heroism an incredible amount is hard mode Hodir, which is certainly possible without it, but for a team that was learning the encounter could easily push them over the edge. 30 seconds of haste in a 2 minute fight is pretty crazy after all.

In the end, I hope that Blizzard continues with their idea to bring the player and not the class, but ensures that at least 2 classes have each buff that a group would find important, which minimizes the chance that you have to seek out a particular class in order to defeat an encounter. The most notable, in my opinion is Heroism/Bloodlust. Give it Paladins, give it to Warlocks, give it to whomever Blizzard feels it would make sense for, just give it to someone.

Thanks for listening, and if you agree, help a guy out with a bump.

Ghostcrawler

#31 - Sept. 24, 2009, 5:31 p.m.

Bloodlust / Heroism is a very strong buff. No argument here. I can understand the point of view of players who think other specs need to offer it. Currently three specs offer it, but they are also specs that fill relatively different roles. The fact that all three specs belong to one class makes it a special case.

In general, we balance 25 hard mode content assuming you have 1 shaman for Bloodlust or Heroism. We balance 10 hard modes without that assumption, though you still need to have a reasonable mix of the stronger buffs. We don't think that typically replacing a good say mage with a bad shaman will turn a failure into a success, but each group is a little different so it is possible.

Ghostcrawler

#294 - Sept. 25, 2009, 5:30 p.m.

Q u o t e:
There is one thing I fail to understand GC. What (de)buffs do you assume 10 mans have? You've already stated that you assume that AP debuff is not present, but that Attack Speed Debuff and Replenishment are. What debuffs/buffs does the design team assume is present for 10 mans?

You need some buffs and debuffs for the harder 10-player content. You need most buffs and debuffs for the harder 25-player content. There really isn't any golden rule beyond that because the individual groups will still vary enormously beyond their raid comp.

If you are failing on those fights, it's probably not your buffs and debuffs. They can definitely help though.

Ghostcrawler

#297 - Sept. 25, 2009, 5:34 p.m.

Q u o t e:
This is the truth and this is the problem. It does not matter what Ghostcrawler says, nor does it matter what GC thinks they are balancing around. The people who organize raids ARE balancing around bloodlust/heroism.

A lot of groups will only accept fully Ulduar-geared characters for Ulduar raids. We can't necessarily balance around public perception.

One of our guys was in a raid the other day on his priest. He is very, very good on his priest. The raid leader told him "U have to spam holy nova this fight." The priest healed in a manner he thought was more efficient than that. The raid leader said "No, we wiped because you didn't spam Holy Nova." So he spammed Holy Nova. He did *not* come into work the next day and say "We should nerf Holy Nova."

Ghostcrawler

#305 - Sept. 25, 2009, 5:46 p.m.

As a few players have pointed out, the reason we gave up back-up versions of Kings, Gift and Fort is because those affect the health of the tank. It is difficult to balance how hard bosses can hit when tank health varies with and without those buffs (again generally talking hard modes here for appropriate geared groups). There aren't many situations where Bloodlust / Heroism will absolutely make the difference between making or failing a dps check. It can be really advantageous in some situations though, such as blowing up a faction champions healer quickly.

Offering a drum (or whatever) version of BL / Heroism isn't totally off the table, but as we've said before, we don't want to have to go to Shadow Protection or Spirit consumables or whatever.

Ghostcrawler

#307 - Sept. 25, 2009, 5:49 p.m.

Q u o t e:
This is one of those issues where GC is just going to keep tap dancing around without acknowledging the blatant inconsistency in design philosophy.

You could say "I disagree" and save a lot more pixels. There is no "tap dancing" involved. You just have a different perspective on the topic than we do. You think it's a problem. We get that. We don't think it's a problem. That isn't a "blatant inconsistency." Words tend to lose their specific meanings when people use them imprecisely.

[Not tracked]

Ghostcrawler

#409 - Sept. 25, 2009, 8:58 p.m.

Q u o t e:
What the poster was referring to was the fact that in the Sunwell era mages got zero invites and Blizzard did not acknowldeg this fact (and the problem that mages had with scaling or the problem that warlocks had with to great of scaling with their synergy with shadow priests) nor did they every fix the problem until the next expansion.

That is a fair criticism, but we just operated under a different balance philosophy back then. We tried to set up the classes for success and then tried not to tweak them too much in the major patches. There are reasons for not constantly changing numbers -- players feel like they are trying to hit a moving target, they get whiplash from being buffed, then nerfed, then buffed again, and so on. Nevertheless, the model we operate under today is to make changes as necessary, sometimes even between patches or as hotfixes.

If you "didn't scale" or whatever in Black Temple, I can understand why players might get upset, because they might not get any better for the next few tiers. These days, scaling problems (with gear anyways -- scaling with group size or buffs is a little different) are much less debilitating because we can adjust the classes before your peers get more than a few item levels worth of scaling ahead of you.