Double Dipping is intended?

#0 - May 5, 2010, 5:06 p.m.

I want to start this out by making this clear, I am not seeking a 'buff' for fire mages, nor am I seeking a 'nerf' to anyone that may be benefitting from this type of situation. What I am seeking is clarification as to whether this type of intent is going to be a long term situation or if it is a Kentucky-Windage style stopgap until Cataclysm happens.

What is double dipping? Why does it matter?

Double dipping is when the overall output of a spell is influenced more than once by a given effect, be it beneficial or degradational. Historically spells that have come under a situation where they are double dipping a given effect have been 'fixed' to no longer be in that state. Easily referenced examples include the fire mage talent ignite double dipping resilience and partial resists on bosses, and in the olden days of vanilla, things like curse of elements and the like.

The reason that it matters is not exactly a math reason, but more of a qualitative reason. Here is a graph representing the relative output of three casters all subject to a 5% mitigation, the blue line represents a caster with a normal 50% crit modifier (that is, 150% crits). The green line represents a caster with that same 50% crit modifier, but where the crit damage is subject to the same mitigation as the base (simulating a double dipped ignite), and the red-brown circles represent a caster with a 47.5% crit modifier. X axis is crit rate, Y axis is the average modifier applied to the spells output for crits.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r120/nkthrasher/graphs/critmod.jpg

Let's pretend for a moment that the double dipping is intended, for whatever reason. a 5% mitigation on the base spell and the crit damage is exactly the same as just reducing the crit damage bonus by 5% (0.5 * 0.95 = 0.475).

The math comes out exactly the same. If the intent of the devs is to reduce crit scaling for this caster by 5%, the double dipped mitigation certainly does result in that. The problem is it *feels* like being cheated, and *feels* like a bug.

So what's the problem?

Recently there was a confirmation over on the WoW Europe forums ( http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13200610427&pageNo=1&sid=1#7 ) that ignite being subject to partial resists on bosses was an intended mechanic, with a quote from GhostCrawler to that effect.

With Cataclysm coming I was assuming the lack of feedback on ignite was a case of "Meh, the numbers are around where we want them to be, we don't want to spend the development time to fix this. Ignite is getting overhauled in Cata anyway so we'll worry about it there", which is 100% acceptable and fine, I can completely understand why they would do it that way and if that is the case, primo, no more complaints.

The problem is, that GC implied that the double dipping itself was intended, which is my concern. Until this confirmation and a confirmation on some DK disease situations (anyone with links to the posts on that I would appreciate having them to reference), any time something was double dipped, it was a bug, it got reported, and fixed within a patch or three. Now, the question becomes... Well, which double dips are intended, which aren't?

I hope that the model in Cataclysm of tweaking the mastery bonuses to achieve balance will carry over into situations like this, where instead of allowing double dipping to guide balance, the modifiers themselves will be changed.

Sum it up for me, this is way too long and I'm just skimming for the TL:DR summary

1) Are the current examples of Double Dipping stop gap solutions until Cataclysm, or are the longer term design intents?

2) If they are longer term... Why? It feels like being double penalized, why can't we just change the base numbers themselves instead of double dipping?

#1 - May 5, 2010, 5:24 p.m.

Q u o t e:
The problem is, that GC implied that the double dipping itself was intended, which is my concern. Until this confirmation and a confirmation on some DK disease situations (anyone with links to the posts on that I would appreciate having them to reference), any time something was double dipped, it was a bug, it got reported, and fixed within a patch or three. Now, the question becomes... Well, which double dips are intended, which aren't?

There's a continuum here that runs something like:

1) We didn't realize X was happening and it's never acceptable when it does.
2) We didn't realize X was happening, but will fix it when we get around to it.
3) We realized X was happening, aren't crazy about it, but can live with it for now.
4) We realized X was happening and it's exactly what we want to happen.

The Ignite situation referenced in the EU forum is something like #3. We don't consider double dipping as a cockroach that must be stamped out whenever it shows up. Sometimes we can balance around issues that aren't ideal but technically hard to change for some reason or another. It's not a bug. It's just a consequence of the way creature levels work. We spend a lot of our effort balancing around actual numbers, not theoretical ones, so we can balance Fire (or anyone's) dps knowing that this is going to happen. In this case we plan on changing the system for Cataclysm and we don't think it's a game-breaking issue that needs to be addressed sooner.