#0 - April 22, 2010, 12:24 a.m.
EDIT: this post was tailored with the expectation that pvp gear will have mastery, which may be used as a tweak. not sure why people assumed otherwise.
Most people would (deep down, maybe, in the forums' case) acknowledge that you make a better balanced product than most companies would think humanly possible. You also are taking steps to further improve the accuracy and speed of your 'balancing act'.
The primary approach for Cataclysm will be, from what I understand, the Mastery system. If some spec is doing too well or too poorly, you can tweak the numbers by small amounts and try to approach a fix. It is also, I imagine, intended to stop community mass migrations away from classes (that you fear and thus are constrained by in your design - complaints that are still seen with regards to arena representation).
There is a problem with your plan. If class+spec X is doing too little damage in pve, but is, due to other class mechanics such as CC, mobility, survivability, etc. over-performing in pvp, I have a hard time of seeing how you will make effective (not to mention agile) changes via the mastery system.
Certainly you can change pvp mechanics specifically. However, your history of doing such changes in a timely and well thought out manner has been fraught with peril. Especially in pvp.
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Take, for example, the death knight fiasco of seasons 5 and 6. Although you may attribute *some* (very tiny portion) of it to the dominance of 2v2 as the arena focus, the official Blizzard answer has been the inability to quickly tweak the DK class to tone it down. Moreover, at the same time DKs were a dominant pve dps AND tank spec. Yet there was no fix to be made.
In such a case, certainly you could turn down all of their masteries to a managable level. But I predict you will not have fast and precise solutions for the very common case of a spec that performs well in one, but poorly in another facet of gameplay.
Namely, if it's difficult for your very qualified team of developers to balance DKs with the technology available in 2009, and you're finally developing the tech to do that now - how the heck do you plan to balance the harder cases - specs or classes that perform too well in pvp, and too poorly in pve, or vice versa?
Here are some current examples:
Frost Mage (pvp+,pve-)
Elemental (pvp+, pve-)
Combat (pve+, pvp-) *possibly balanced to avert high burst*
Arms (pvp+, pve-)
Prot Paladin (pvp+, pve+) *lol fail*
Beastmastery (pvp+, pve-) *understandable, as it's a single comp spec, needs overhaul*
Fury (pvp-,pve+)
Holy Priest (pvp-, pve+) *maybe pve not +, just balanced*
edit2:Prot Pally Healer (pvp+,pve??) *until it got nerfed to extreme unpopularity months later*
To be fair, we can't expect every spec to be viable for both pve and pvp. It's a good goal but difficult to achieve. And certainly the mastery system will help speed up solving the 'easy' balance problems - which you already could solve albeit it would take many weeks instead of a few. However, I'm surprised an approach that addresses the DIFFICULT balance issues isn't being developed instead.
Instead, the mastery system could even serve to segregate these specs further - you will be able to better tune spec X for pvp, and then leave spec Y for pve. As a result X will move away from being balanced (read: effective) in pve and Y will become worse for pvp.
What do the rest of the players think about balancing pve vs pvp across specs and classes? Will mastery work? What's a better alternative?
TL;DR - mastery will not help balance the hardest balance issues. Also read the bolded text.
also, for pvp credentials check my alt, Svetskoanase. nothing amazing but : /
