2nd Wing out, DPS in raids....

Our new design for Cataclysm bosses is they will all stand in one place, not require any movement, not summon in adds, and not buff or debuff anyone. Then we can guarantee that dps will be identical for every skilled player on every boss. I hope the fights are still fun though. :(

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Way to not troll and keep things on topic.....I'm sure you have banned people for less.....

I'ts on topic. Much of this thread (and many others) are essentially arguing that it's not fair to have too many melee friendly bosses in a row, implying that we should alternate the melee boss and the caster boss (as if things are that simple). When ever we have a single "most important" boss (like Sartharion, or even Anub) then you'd still have the problem anyway.

Providing creative and fun boss encounters is tremendously important to us and too an awful lot of players. We're not going to guarantee that every boss will be equally good for every spec, nor even that there will be an even and alternating pattern of them. We don't even want raids to fall into a predictable pattern like "Oh, here is the gear check single target guy. Here is the lots of adds guys." The game is five years old and we've gone through a lot of bosses. Our team will commit to keep throwing new fights at you.

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So i guess a good question would be if and when melee are dominating dps charts for most of the fights in Ice Crown.......and you guys see the same data sets and agree, rogues, DK's, etc are consistently ending up well above casters - especially pure casters - are there going to be any steps taken, not saying nerf Melee....but honestly, all things being equal (gear, skill) - if the fights turn out to be a lot more melee friendly - can we hope to see some love on the caster side?

If we think DKs or rogues (to use your examples) do too much dps, then we will nerf them accordingly. We'll make that decision based on a lot of information and evidence (and on more of a night's worth of raiding). It's never just as simple as the stereotypical forum post that says essentially "He beat me so I need a buff." If you're the kind of poster making more substantial arguments than that, then your arguments carry more weight. A list of which bosses were "won" by X class are only minimally useful in that regard.

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Why bring warlocks to a raid.

Seriously why.


Because DP buffs healers.

Why bring a spriest?
Why bring an ele shaman?
(moonkin can stay because they help the arcane mages down saurfang adds faster!)

And yet all of those specs are still being brought by both casual and hardcore guilds. Those players are contributing. Subtlety rogues (and a few others) aren't contributing. Those guys have a legitimate beef. The reason I poke a little fun at some of these other "winning the meters" arguments is because they like to portray the sky as constantly falling.

It is a big deal, in our minds, if some specs are legitimately holding back progress. The problem comes when players believe in their hearts that this is either happening or will happen in the near future. It rarely happens anywhere to the degree that it is expressed on the forums. Most hardcore guilds tend to run with the best players they have. Most pugs tend to run with whoever they can get. There are misinformed raid leaders out there who say dumb things like "I don't bring Elemental shaman on my raids," but we don't balance around the misinformed.

If we things will get too far out of whack, we'll adjust them accordingly. In the mean time, focus on beating the bosses not beating your fellow raid members.

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Im going to ask again are you not worried about melee stacking in ICC ? Because so far with the 2 wings being that way its more then likely going to happen ?

Nope. Not worried.

Now some guilds will constantly swap people in and out for particular fights, because that's just what they do. Fewer guilds than you probably think actually do this.

But do we think mages, warlocks, Elemental shaman, Balance druids, hunters or Shadow priests are going to be "Sunwelled" (defined here as parked at the curb because the group benefits more from bringing someone else), no, we don't think that's going to happen.

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Hypothetically, is it justifiable to have systematic DPS imbalances (i.e. approximately the same classes tend to be at the top, middle and bottom) across most fights between the pure classes, in the case where no one is being sunwelled?

No, I would say it's not. However, assuming or proving those systematic imbalances are pretty tricky for players to do.

If mages et al. have an important job on a boss, then defeating the boss is partially contingent on mages doing that job well. What puts me in sarcastic mode is the contention (from some of you, certainly not everyone posting so maybe this doesn't apply to you individually) that because mages have to manage adds or dodge poison clouds or whatever that they aren't important on that fight or that it's not fair that they can't do rogue damage because they're doing other things.

If the mage and the rogue can't compete on the theoretical perfect fight target dummy then it's a problem and we'll get it taken care of. If rogues out dps mages on Saurfang (given how the Saurfang fight works) then we're not worried about it.

I agree players do and should care about their dps. My advice is to work hard to make sure your dps is as good as it can possibly be. If you think you're doing that, well I'm skeptical, but beyond that, gratz, you won WoW.

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Personally I've been curious about this for a while now (ever since GC let it slip), but here's the question:

Why do tanks get balanced around encounters, while DPS get balanced against a target dummy?

If this has already been answered, I'd appreciate it if someone would repeat/link the answer. Thankee :)

They don't really. They both get balanced around the encounter. Nobody really cares about winning the target dummy (at least they shouldn't). But when you balance a fight around an encounter what that means is that you shouldn't really have the expectation that dps will be similar at all depending on the encounter mechanics. Wow, DKs and Fury does great on Anub'arak. Well, sure, they can cleave everything to death. WoW, Arcane mages do awesome on Jaraxxus. Wonder why.

One of the things I try to stress over and over is not to treat max dps as some real world number the way you can measure temperature or miles per gallon or clicks per minute. There is no test bed case for dps under idealized circumstances because those circumstances don't exist in a raid. In some sense every fight if a gimmick fight. Yes, it's possible for your dps to be too high or too low and we adjust that when we think it's out of alignment (and players will come here to try and convince us that it is or it isn't). But for the most part, you should focus on maximizing your contribution to your raid. There are specs that still do underperform in raids, and that is something we want to get fixed, but at least those classes have alternative specs that fulfill the same basic role. For the most part everyone else is getting to raid if they are interested and halfway decent. If you're not getting a boss killed, I can almost state for a certainty that it's not because you have e.g. more mages than rogues in your group.

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I don't think you'd have as many people complaining on the forums if classes were competitive (ok, since it's the internet you might).

Yeah, I'm pretty sure we would. I strongly encourage you not to try and draw any kind of conclusion based on the volume, tenacity or anger of forum posts. The sample size is very small and people who post are nearly always the ones who are worked up about something. The posts that say "I am indifferent to this" are rare and get buried anyway.

Make intelligent arguments. That's the only factor we really pay attention to. If you have done that, then great, you've won the forums.

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The issue is that even when other DPS focus primarily on Saurfang, rogues still out DPS them by a significant margin

Rogues, and especially Mutilate rogues, really shine on fights where they don't have to move or deal with adds. If there were 3-4 adds, DKs and warriors would probably dominate instead.

Let's look at ToC just because everyone is more familiar with it now and isn't still learning the fights.

Who does well on Northrend Beasts? Rogues, but also mages, locks and hunters. It's arguably the most "normal" ToC fight, if "normal" even means anything anymore.

How about Jaraxxus? For the most part mages, and for the most part Arcane. It's pretty easy to figure out why.

Who does well on Faction Champs? DKs. Disease dots rule on that fight.

How about the Twins? More of a mixed bag. There are rogues, but also mages, locks, Rets, warriors and DKs.

Anub'arak? DKs and warriors. Cleave, Whirlwind, Blood Plague and DnD rule for tightly packed adds.

Now you can say most of those fights don't count for various "gimmicky" reasons, but ultimately they are still mechanics you have to worry about unless the only thing that matters to you is dps in a vacuum (which it isn't for us). If you look at Beasts, the most normal of the bunch, then mages, rogues, locks and hunters all have a good chance to "win the meters." If Beasts just consisted of Gor'mok standing in place with no snobolds or fire, then it would probably shift more towards Mutilate rogues, or even Ferals, the specs that have the most to lose by moving or swapping.

And again remember these are sweeping, sweeping generalities. We've seen Ret paladins do 10K dps on Anub'arak, Enhancement (and Elemental!) do 9K on Rotface, and Shadow priests do 9K on Beasts.