DKs at the bottom of every bracket again

It's easy to make statistics support a lot of different arguments if you aren't careful. Yes, overall the percentage of DKs compared to other classes in 3s is low. But if you look at the actual highly rated comps, DKs are in the second most common comp after RMP. So using stats like this, what you're really arguing is that DKs don't have a lot of comps in which they function really well (compared to say paladins or shaman who have a few different options). Or put another way, they have great synergy with warriors and maybe hunters. That's a different argument from saying DKs just can't do well in Arenas. If you're a good DK, clearly it's possible to get 2200+ rating or into the SK 100 or even into the top 10.

There's a reason there is a sticky above saying don't make a post that is just a link to Arena representation. That reason is that historically those posts have had no actual analysis of the numbers and try to let the numbers speak for themselves... even though they are often saying different things that what the poster believes or is trying to portray.

Q u o t e:
Ultimately I think the biggest problem DKs face in competitive pvp is Ghost Crawler's hubris. If he could admit they went too far and ease back on the nerfs of the past 6+ months I think the DK community would be alot less angry.

Oh please. We admit we're wrong all the time.

Q u o t e:
With all due respect there is no way to quantify arena success if this is how you feel.

It's definitely possible to quantify Arena success. You can't do it just by linking to a website that lists the most common high ranking comps or classes though.

We're also not trying to assign you guys the task of quantifying Arena success. I don't think that's a great use of these forums. We'd rather see discussion about what problems you think your class has, or areas of the design that aren't fun or aren't working for you. (Though out of respect to the above posters, I would suggest that you do not try to do all of that in this thread.)

Q u o t e:
When the first post starts off with a list of url's to arena representation, you can be fairly certain that it has nothing to do with damage dealing and everything to do with pvp.

Dealing damage is part of PvP. That's an appropriate topic for this forum. If you are talking about the design of the Arena maps, or the way MMR is calculated or things that aren't really class related, then it belongs in the PVP forum. There's going to be some overlap, and we don't want to get carried away with enforcing what topic is discussed where.

The list of urls, as I've said, is not particularly informative without a lot of analysis to go along with it. Anyone smart enough to participate in forum discussion is smart enough to find sites on the web that list Arena representation. You're not saying anything new by pasting in links to other sites (if that's all you do).

Q u o t e:
Ghostcrawler, you speak as if you were a statistical analyst. You have not done any sort of studies in the matter, and you work as a game developper. Please keep your narrow statistical understanding for yoursself, clearly it is not a topic for you.

Was I just pwned? I' m pretty sure I was just pwned. :)

Look, I'm not an analyst, but I was a scientist, and I had a lot more statistics training than a lot of folks in the business sector are required to take. I've published papers in peer reviewed journals and taught college and all of that. So, yes, this is actually something I understand pretty well. (By contrast, programming is not something in which I am prepared to converse. I know the little bit of C++ that I've picked up from a long time in the industry, but I'm no programmer, nor do I pretend to be, nor do I need to be to do this job. But I do understand stats.)

One of the things I understand is that it's complicated stuff. Being able to treat data fairly and support it with conclusions is not trivial, and honestly probably not the kind of thing you can realistically expect a lot of players without prior experience to be able to do. Very few people can do it period. And there is nothing wrong with that. Nobody is expecting a degree in statistics to be able to talk about class design or even class data. But that doesn't mean a number can be whatever you want it to be either. There is no simple measure of "Arena awesomeness" just like there is no measure of "maximum encounter dps" or "tankiness" or "healiness."

If your contention is that there aren't many kinds of comps in which a DK can be competitive, I think there are data to support that conclusion. The data that have been presented do not support "DKs suck." That is why I am constantly trying to advocate just not going there. If you feel DKs are weak, then argue that point. But you likely need more than simply linking to Arena representation as your proof.

But really, I am just restating what we said above, which was:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17368007306&sid=1

Q u o t e:
People have a bad habit of looking at arena stats and trying to draw final conclusions based on them. "DKs are x% below the average representation overall, therefore buff them in some simple obvious way, and keep buffing until representation goes up".

What he's saying is, it's not that simple. If they buff DKs, what happens to those DKs already in those 3's comps that are doing well? What happens to the other classes that already are doing well when combined with a DK - their representation would naturally go up since their DK partners are all of a sudden great in that comp, and they become the next "overpowered" classes (or the whole comp becomes the next RMP).


So maybe the numbers don't say that DKs are underpowered by their own merits or that SS is too weak or that the last nerf was directly responsible for their downfall. Maybe it's just that DKs don't mesh well with enough different comps. So perhaps rather than looking at ways to improve DPS or undo previous buffs, you'd be better off trying to look at DK utility and figuring out why you need one specific comp to work well as a DK right now, and how that could be expanded to other possible scenarios to make DKs more attractive in other comps.

DKs aren't "fine" in PvP right now, and I don't think anybody is saying otherwise. It's just a question of how they're not fine, and that answer isn't as obvious as some people suggest.

Strawberry gets it. As usual. :)

Q u o t e:
Threads far larger than this have been devoted to ideas full of how to buff dks in pvp without buffing their pve dps and even without reverting the 3.3 scourge strike in ways that would make the class balanced but not overpowered. They seem to have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

Earlier today I posted this in a similar thread:

Once you bust out the "deaf ears" response, your hopes of avoiding QQ are pretty much shot. :(

This isn't a contest to try to get your ideas into the game. Very, very few player suggestions are ever going to see the light of day. If you find that prospect too frustrating, then spend more effort describing problems rather than offering solutions, or just read along instead of posting.

We also don't measure issues based on the volume of posting but on the insight of individual posts. History is resplendent with bad ideas that a lot of people managed to rally behind. Within our little corner of the world, we'd rather make good choices for the game rather than popular ones (insofar as you can interpret the point of view of a relatively few forum posters as representing the opinions of millions of WoW players.)

Q u o t e:
The 3.3 Scourge Strike changes were made for PVE reasons. The 3.3 version has subsequently accomplished pretty much everything it was intended to accomplish. The strike was not scaling well in PVE, so everybody was opting to use Obliterate over Unholy's signature ability. Blizzard came up with a solution that allowed them to buff the Strike's damage, make it scale extremely well with ArP and PVE gear, and get Unholy Dks to use it in PVE without crossing the line in PVP. You are not going to get Blizzard to revert a change that has solved many more problems than it has caused, no matter how bulletproof you may think your logic is.

Asking Scourge Strike to be reverted to one of its previous iterations for solely PVP reasons when it was changed almost entirely for PVE reasons is far more myopic and short-sighted than GC could ever be. One of the main reasons DK complaints are so "ignored" is their tendency to offer nothing for Blizzard to work with. They're mostly just "Give us disease protection!" and "Revert the Scourge Strike changes!" Neither of those are particularly helpful.

Couple that with the fact that there's no reason to think that buffing Scourge Strike would somehow end all of our problems. DK PVP difficulties may be a symptom of more abstract problems like class synergy, which require a lot of discussion and iteration to properly address. But instead of doing this patiently, DKs on these forums and elsewhere are content to oversimplify the problems and accuse GC of being evil instead of actually doing something productive with the platform they've been given.

If you want to improve DK performance in PVP, put the pitchforks and protest signs down. Stop quoting meaningless slogans like "Give us our 3.1 SS back!" And for the love of all that is holy, stop linking the SK-100 and representation statistics. This isn't some tea-party protest outside of the White House. You have no power to pressure Blizzard to do one thing or another. They will only listen to you if they think your ideas are worth listening to.

Toss ideas around. Discuss things in a calm, rational manner. Sit back and be patient. More importantly, play the game and enjoy it. Blizzard does this all the time in their meetings. They brainstorm, they debate, they go back and forth, they iterate, they reiterate, they test, test, and test. Most of the time, things don't work out. Most of your suggestions simply won't survive the scrutiny of reality. Most of the time, you'll get silence. GC and the developers have a job to do. They can't spend all their time on these forums.

But I can say that trying to think up ways to fix things is way, way more fun than whining about how GC hates us and getting inevitably ignored as a result.

All of this takes time, and it can be pretty frustrating to be on the receiving end, but I've yet to read a police report about Blizzard developers coming to blows over in Anaheim. Many of the comments here, however, would get you punched in the face or arrested if you tried to say them to a person's face.

The forums are a pipeline to Blizzard. Do with it what you will, but don't be surprised if garbage comes out when you put garbage into it.

Amazing post. Thank you, Noïn.

Q u o t e:
Are the devs planning any class specific pvp balancing changes between now and cataclysm? or should we accept the current state of the game until the next expansion ships?

Yes, we will make PvP (and PvE) changes before Cataclysm ships. We have made several already even since 3.3.2 (let alone 3.3).

Q u o t e:

This is exactly why I stopped playing this game.

You make hind sighted changes to attempt to correct a part of the game that was fine (Unholy Death Knights were not at the bottom of the damage meters) and disregard the effects it has on other parts of the game.

I've yet to believe that you or any of the other developers even care about WoW PvP.

This is a common problem on these boards though. You're essentially saying "My view point was the correct one. You should listen to me. Those other players thought they were arguing about something important, but they were wrong." I read all those DK posts. It was pretty important to them at the time. It's cool if you don't agree with them, but there is no easy way for me to know whether you're the smart one or they're the dumb one short of the strength of your argument, and the "obviously you don't care" argument aint it.

Q u o t e:
I find it discouraging that we have so many blue posts in this thread that are on the topic of statistics and credentials, etc., but none that help move our discussion towards how we can improve DKs in PvP appropriately and in alignment with Blizzard design philosophy.

You shouldn't have that response though (or more accurately, if you have that response, you're going to be disappointed a lot). If we wanted to talk DK design, then we'd just talk DK design. If we were ready to announce changes, guess what, we'd announce the changes. I saw yet another post where players were working themselves up because they thought they had succinctly and convincingly proved their thesis (that DKs suck in PvP) and were getting frustrated that we hadn't addressed it yet. I was trying to point out why that approach was always going to end up frustrating and maybe get players to not make so many posts like that in the first place.

If you need me to post the standard response for why we don't reply to every thread, or even every good thread, the reasons are:

-- We're busy.
-- We haven't made up our minds yet.
-- We have a plan, but it's not fully implemented yet.
-- It's a good discussion and we don't want to derail it with a blue post. (Witness how much this one has picked up with occasionally unrelated responses.)

Q u o t e:
Blizzard is part of the new generation of devs that don't need to be on a personal level with their player-base. Those kind of devs died out in the late 90's/early 00's when gaming become more about money.

Okay. Yet here I am, still reading your posts and (occasionally) responding. The ball's kind of in your court to use that for what you will. If you want to spend your time telling us how bad we are, I guess that's your prerogative, but that's not what would I do in your shoes.

Q u o t e:
GC your contradictions amaze me sometimes. You your self has posted many times one of the objects of the forums is to have discussions about class/specs and to on occasion to give you and the devs feed back and suggestions. And you have gone as far as opening threads asking for as much

Now your recent comment suggest we are just wasting our time and should stop doing so

No, no, that's not what I'm trying to say. We love threads like that. Really. I'm just trying to caution those players who respond "We made hundreds of suggestions and none of them were taken," that they have unrealistic expectations. We do listen to you guys. We don't turn over design of the game to you. There's a difference.

Q u o t e:
He didn't say to stop making suggestions or that they are a waste of time. He said that people can't expect all their suggestions, or even any particular suggestion, to make it into the game just because they say it a bunch of times or a bunch of people type /agree or /sign. There is no "magic phrase" that someone can use that will make the designers say, "okay, now we'll make scourge strike hit has hard as lava burst."

He always has said that the most valuable thing they get is the back and forth between players, and the understanding of what issues are coming up. If you're a designer, the interesting part isn't trying to pick which of the "boost my dps" suggestions to implement, because they may all be bad, or at least inconsistent with the game direction they want. The interesting part (for them) is the discussion that reveals what difficulties people are having.

Yep, I agree with all of that.

Here's just one example. We were surprised at how many DKs would willingly give up their PvP utility for more damage. We designed a class with a lot of unique abilities and a lot of offensive and defensive responses for different situations. But for at least a vocal component of the PvP community, they don't want that. They want to hit harder. I'm not passing judgment on whether that's a valid or invalid way to feel. But it was something we learned from forum posts.

Q u o t e:

Read GC's first post in this thread.


Indrectly saying: DKs are fine in their own way and L2play

If we had something to say, we would say it. We have no problem of telling players we think they're fine when we think they're fine or even tell them when we think they're overpowered. I know we're all gamers here and it can be a fun game to try to guess intent from word choice or whatever, but really we haven't addressed the issue at all. If you read my post above, you can conclude that it's probably because we're still assessing the situation, debating it, gathering data, trying to decide if any changes are warranted, and / or what those changes would be and how we would implement them.

Q u o t e:
And what have you told us? Basically nothing. All you are doing is just revealing your presence. I'm not expecting you to give an in-depth blueprint on upcoming changes, but just saying "Wait until Cata" is no different than saying nothing at all.

But then again I wouldn't be surprised if the "Wait until Cata" line was a marketing ploy. By waiting until Cata to fix things it guarantees more sales.

I'm not really hear to answer questions though, as I have pointed out numerous times. I'll answer some occasionally, and sometimes I'll participate in the discussion, but mostly I'm here to read opinions. I have plenty of platforms for getting information out to players. I mostly benefit here from being on the receiving end.

The "Wait until Cataclysm" thing is something players post when they're feeling snarky. That's not our line. Initially, we were trying to give more of a sneak peek into some of our plans. However there have been enough negative responses like this that it suggests we're too premature and we need to wait until Cataclysm is closer so that players don't mistake our excitement at sharing new ideas for our throwing up our hands about current problems.