Ages ago, before I got sidetracked by the whole Lying Lying Liar thing, I read an interesting post over at Shadow Word Blog about how Shadow Priest DPS isn’t going to get any better any time soon. One of the arguments which was floating around there was that there seems to be a perception that Shadow Priest DPS needs to be lower than the DPS of the “pure” classes because Shadow Priests bring a lot of Raid Utility through Vampiric Thingumy and that thing that boosts Hit (hey, my shadow priest is level 22, what do you want from me?).
The first problem with this is that it’s horseshit – nearly every DPS class brings something to the table, Boomkin have their sweet aura. Destro locks bring Replenishment. Retadins bring replenishment *and* Judgments *and* Hands when they can be arsed to use them *and* auras *and* Blessings. Death Knights bring … okay there the example falls down (we have an interrupt!).
But let’s pretend, for the moment, that Shadowpriest Raid utility really is all that and a sack of chips. The problem is that balancing the personal DPS of an individual character against buffs to raid DPS is actually a really, really bad idea.
Game Theory: Why Things Suck So Bad
Game Theory is a quite complicated area of mathematics with extremely profound implications for pretty much everything. To be honest I know jack shit about it, but I’ve sort of heard of the basic principles, and I like to talk like I understand more than I do.
The basic deal with Game Theory (or my flawed understanding of it) is that you assume that rational people will take the decisions which give them the biggest payoff for the lowest risk. This frequently leads to situations where everybody is massively worse off than they would be if people made less rational decisions because the world kinda sucks. The classic example is the prisoner’s dilemma – you always wind up with the second-worst option because you can’t risk the worst option.
So how does this apply to WoW class balancing?
The thing about a DPS class is that your personal success, your value to the raid, and the respect you gain from your run, is based entirely on your personal DPS. Nobody whips out recount and says “hey, your Aura increased our overall raid DPS by 0.7k good job!” What this means is that anything which boosts your *personal* damage output is massively more valuable to you than anything which boosts the damage output of the raid. When you fail to beat a DPS check, everybody looks at the guys at the bottom of the table and tells them to lern2play, nobody looks at the guy at the top of the table and tells him to start cursing Elements or to stop casting Hysteria on themselves.
Now okay, this isn’t true of the top raiding guilds, where you can be damned sure that they’ll bring a Shaman for Bloodlust come hell or high water, but down towards the more casual end of the spectrum (and even moreso in PuGs) your personal DPS is, as a DPSer, your bread and butter.
The Frenzied Berserker: Why You Can’t Balance Personal vs Party
In D&D 3.X there was a “prestige class” called the Frenzied Berserker. The Frenzied Berserker was basically Barbarian-plus. You got everything a normal Barbarian got, but better, and got the ability to be *literally unkillable* for short peroids of time. It was, well, kinda sick.
The “balancing” aspect of this was that periodically a “frenzied berserker” would … well … go into a berserk frenzy and attack their own party. The problem with this kind of “game balance” is that it harmed everybody *except* the guy who played the berserker. Nobody feels entirely comfortable killing the berserk character during what is after all a game-mechanically mandated frenzy, but the berserker is entirely capable of cutting your character down without a second thought.
You just can’t do that kind of thing in a team game. Not only can you not do it with penalties, you can’t do it with buffs either.
Suppose that there existed a class in the game which had no attacks or healing abilties whatsoever (leave aside the question of “but how would they level” for now) but instead did nothing *but* raid utility. Suppose they had – say – a perma-bloodlust or reduced all damage to the raid by 50% or whatever. The problem is that every raid would want one and *exactly* one of these guys, and playing them would be the most miserable experience ever (particularly if they really did just do their job through passive auras). Even if there was an effort made to give the guys some kind of “rotation” (a series of short duration buffs that needed to be juggled, for example) playing them would still be an utterly thankless task.
Put simply, you cannot expect people to play a class the primary purpose of which is to help other people do their jobs better. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some raid utility, but unless the game is thoroughly restructured in such a way that “utility classes” become actively distinct from “dps classes” you can’t ask people to trade the one for the other. Nobody expects them to nerf Resto Shaman healing to compensate for Bloodlust.
Of course if they do make “utility” a fourth axis in group composition, you can expect a lot of shouts going around Trade along the lines of “DPS LF tank, healer, utility for daily HC”.
I love me some Game Theory!
I know even less about it, but hey, let’s engage in some Mutually Assured Destruction and go home!
Blizzard has certainly more overtly dealt with this issue in the form of hybrids. They’ve admitted that they used to view hybrids as, ‘well, they can do more than one thing, so we won’t let them do any of it particularly well.’ Now, they’re trying to get hybrids ‘within a few percent’ on dps and essentially just as good at healing and/or tanking, for at least some of the reasons you’ve listed above.
Spriests do occupy one of the lower rungs on the dps totem, but I don’t think they’re as far down as many qqers claim. I think they might be a little harder to play well than many classes, but I’ve been in raids with spriest that were consistently in the top 5 dps, so I know it’s possible. On the other hand, wowmeteronline and other places offer fairly accessible ‘proof’ that spriests aren’t doing well in general.
So, Blizz has two options in meeting their goal. One, make it easier to play so that more spriests will perform better, or Two, buff spriest’s current skills so that there will be a few spriests way up there, but the average one will be on par with most other raiders.
Not sure which I’d prefer.
It really depends on the raid or part of the raid you’re recording damage/dps on Recount. Shadow Priests have, in my opinion, the best AoE spell in the game so if you include damage done to trash or the boss has a lot of AoE (currently Onyxia is the best example) a Spriest will come out pretty high. The biggest complaint right now is Spriest single target damage, not so much AoE.
Difficult isn’t it. Maybe it’s because I’m a DK fan but I always favour the “really easy to be good-mediocre, with the option to be awesome if you know what you’re doing” as the best option for DPS class balancing.
warning – wall of text, about to crush you
destro locks only bring replenishment when there’s no shadow priest, ret pally or heck, even survival hunter (at least hunters get 3% agility boost via their replenishment talent – destro locks waste 5 talent points to get iffy replenishment, highly dependent on crit that doesn’t boost their damage in any way)
Boomkins bring something that all casters, but especially warlocks love them for – a debuff that increases magical damage taken by 13%. unlike curse of elements – boomkin debuff happens through general ability use, which frees up a curse spot and a global CD for a lock = moar dps (although, and maybe its just my crazy warlock, who gets more damage with seed of corruption as a destro then with rain of fire, but I actually have higher dps when I use curse of elements, then when I use agony, unless there’s a crit chicken nearby). plus- boomkins have improved faery fire, a skill identical to misery.
Blood deathknickets bring Hysteria AND 10% ap boost to all physical dps (which doesn’t stack with trueshot aura, but not every hunter is MM anyways, or takes that skill, when they raid with DK)
that said, I agree that Utility is NOT an excuse for the reduced damage (for cripes sakes, just look at dps DKs and druids in general). I don’t think its fair to have shadow priests (or elemental shamans) do less damage then other classes, just becasue there’s a certain Utility they bring to the table. since pretty much every buff can now be provided by several different classes, so you really don’t HAVE to have that specific class/spec with a very rare exception (like instructor Rasuvios on 25 man) – making few classes perform not as well as others only serves to convince people to reroll (btw – they are fixing it soon, so that other classes can bring blood lust like buff to the raid :/ )
Using the 5 points for Soul Leech + Improved Soul Leech isn’t exactly a waste, even if you have someone else in the raid providing replenishment. The mana returned from the proc causes us to Life Tap a lot less often leaving up more GCD’s for nuking.
I raid as both Destruction and Meta/Ruin and I can honestly say that I Life Tap half as much as Destruction, sometimes even finding myself Life Tapping rank 1 just to keep the buff up.
I can’t say much about ‘locks, but I am in fact aware that DKs bring some raid utility. I just can’t resist a cheap DK joke.
Awesome topic!
Of course, there are even more issues with utility classes. For example, when is utility necessary? Very clearly, tanking and healing are necessary for any non-trivial encounters. Likewise DPS, since Bliz has a lot of enrage timers in their boss encounters. But utility? Meh.
Take, for example, Bloodlust, which most agree is the epitome of current Wow utility (some say it competes with pally blessings, which may be true given Kings is insanely OP). How many encounters are unbeatable without a BL? Given a certain gear level and a certain desire for speed kill, certain things are hard. Hodir hard mode, for example, would have likely been impossible for the first round of kills without a BL. But even now, those guilds can get the kill without BL, and the DPS contributions of each given member have not gone up staggeringly.
In other words, in order to make utility the 4th piece to the triumvirate, you need the utility to be so good that any non-trivial encounter is impossible without it. Passive Aura Boy literally needs to be necessary on every group kill from normal UK to ToGC. And I don’t think any current MMO has utility like that.
TL;DR – Utility will never be a 4th tier in contemporary MMO raiding.
The necessity of utility is a really difficult one – I understand that there were some pulls in the old MagT that you couldn’t get past without heavy CC for example.
It’s kind of a catch 22. If you make it necessary it’s a pain in the arse for everybody, if you make it unnecessary it’s, well, unnecessary.
A couple of things:
First, Death Knights have utility, Unholy provides a similar spell damage buff to Earth and Moon (Percentage increase in spell damage) while Blood provides Abominations Might (An Attack Power increase similar to Unleashed Rage) while not unique, they are still there which is great for planning 10 man synergies (Or even 25 with a less than optimal raid roster).
Secondly, even with guilds clearing content, you often have to “remind” people to keep certain debuffs up there (In particular ones that don’t refresh themselves or are short duration). Also, I notice a lot of times that people try and “delegate” certain things down so that the “more important” people in that class don’t have to “waste” their time casting things like Curse of Elements…
Third, for utility, or “support” roles, in previous MMOs (FFXI, Everquest, etc) this was a stable of a lot of groups (In EQ there were Enchanters and Bards; in FFXI there were Red Mages and Bards, etc). Now, one huge difference in those games is they forced grouping. Solo content was almost non existent past about level 20-30ish. Group dynamics didn’t change terribly much because they were six person groups (Tank, Support, Healer, 3 DPS). These “support” were the only ones who had really effective Crowd Control, and high quality buffs. Having a good player in that support role was like having permanent Mana Tide or Bloodlust compared to a group that didn’t; while also providing a group more efficiency by being able to CC extra mobs (Multi mob tanking was pretty much unheard of).
WoW simply removed that support role and gave it to various DPS (In those games DPS classes almost never provided anything EXCEPT their own DPS) which has been a fairly logical break down. The thing was, those support roles were in extreme demand by everyone from experience grinding groups to the highest level of raid content. The burn out on these classes were also extremely high, so if you played one you could essentially write your own ticket, because they would fall over themselves to keep you.
WoW essentially removed that “Fourth” corner of the party square and integrated the various buffs and crowd controls from the Support class into the DPS roles to eliminate the role. I don’t think they’ll go back to that formula, the problem is within the player more so than the engine. Blizzard gave support to almost every class in some way or another either in buffs, debuffs or some form of utility; however most players don’t even bother to use it or even realize it’s there.
As I say, I do actually know DKs bring utility (although less than some classes – they don’t have an armour reducer, which is unusual for a physical DPS class) I just never get tired of making DK jokes (I kid because I love!)
It might also be something to do with the fact that I see a depressing number of DKs who don’t *bother* speccing into utility (I’ve seen Unholy *tanks* who don’t take AMF, and a depressing number who don’t bother with Ebon Plaguebringer).
The fact that people tend to try to palm off the raid-buffing jobs to other people is part of the same problem – it doesn’t matter *who* provides the raid buff, but the guy that provides it is going to do less DPS than the guy who just coasts. The rogue who just spammed his rotation is going to do more damage than the rogue who Exposed Armour.
Plus, people just sometimes need reminding of things. I know my DK lets Horn of Winter slip all the darned time.
I love me some Game Theory!
I know even less about it, but hey, let's engage in some Mutually Assured Destruction and go home!
Blizzard has certainly more overtly dealt with this issue in the form of hybrids. They've admitted that they used to view hybrids as, 'well, they can do more than one thing, so we won't let them do any of it particularly well.' Now, they're trying to get hybrids 'within a few percent' on dps and essentially just as good at healing and/or tanking, for at least some of the reasons you've listed above.
Spriests do occupy one of the lower rungs on the dps totem, but I don't think they're as far down as many qqers claim. I think they might be a little harder to play well than many classes, but I've been in raids with spriest that were consistently in the top 5 dps, so I know it's possible. On the other hand, wowmeteronline and other places offer fairly accessible 'proof' that spriests aren't doing well in general.
So, Blizz has two options in meeting their goal. One, make it easier to play so that more spriests will perform better, or Two, buff spriest's current skills so that there will be a few spriests way up there, but the average one will be on par with most other raiders.
Not sure which I'd prefer.
warning – wall of text, about to crush you
destro locks only bring replenishment when there's no shadow priest, ret pally or heck, even survival hunter (at least hunters get 3% agility boost via their replenishment talent – destro locks waste 5 talent points to get iffy replenishment, highly dependent on crit that doesn't boost their damage in any way)
Boomkins bring something that all casters, but especially warlocks love them for – a debuff that increases magical damage taken by 13%. unlike curse of elements – boomkin debuff happens through general ability use, which frees up a curse spot and a global CD for a lock = moar dps (although, and maybe its just my crazy warlock, who gets more damage with seed of corruption as a destro then with rain of fire, but I actually have higher dps when I use curse of elements, then when I use agony, unless there's a crit chicken nearby). plus- boomkins have improved faery fire, a skill identical to misery.
Blood deathknickets bring Hysteria AND 10% ap boost to all physical dps (which doesn't stack with trueshot aura, but not every hunter is MM anyways, or takes that skill, when they raid with DK)
that said, I agree that Utility is NOT an excuse for the reduced damage (for cripes sakes, just look at dps DKs and druids in general). I don't think its fair to have shadow priests (or elemental shamans) do less damage then other classes, just becasue there's a certain Utility they bring to the table. since pretty much every buff can now be provided by several different classes, so you really don't HAVE to have that specific class/spec with a very rare exception (like instructor Rasuvios on 25 man) – making few classes perform not as well as others only serves to convince people to reroll (btw – they are fixing it soon, so that other classes can bring blood lust like buff to the raid :/ )
Awesome topic!
Of course, there are even more issues with utility classes. For example, when is utility necessary? Very clearly, tanking and healing are necessary for any non-trivial encounters. Likewise DPS, since Bliz has a lot of enrage timers in their boss encounters. But utility? Meh.
Take, for example, Bloodlust, which most agree is the epitome of current Wow utility (some say it competes with pally blessings, which may be true given Kings is insanely OP). How many encounters are unbeatable without a BL? Given a certain gear level and a certain desire for speed kill, certain things are hard. Hodir hard mode, for example, would have likely been impossible for the first round of kills without a BL. But even now, those guilds can get the kill without BL, and the DPS contributions of each given member have not gone up staggeringly.
In other words, in order to make utility the 4th piece to the triumvirate, you need the utility to be so good that any non-trivial encounter is impossible without it. Passive Aura Boy literally needs to be necessary on every group kill from normal UK to ToGC. And I don't think any current MMO has utility like that.
TL;DR – Utility will never be a 4th tier in contemporary MMO raiding.
A couple of things:
First, Death Knights have utility, Unholy provides a similar spell damage buff to Earth and Moon (Percentage increase in spell damage) while Blood provides Abominations Might (An Attack Power increase similar to Unleashed Rage) while not unique, they are still there which is great for planning 10 man synergies (Or even 25 with a less than optimal raid roster).
Secondly, even with guilds clearing content, you often have to “remind” people to keep certain debuffs up there (In particular ones that don’t refresh themselves or are short duration). Also, I notice a lot of times that people try and “delegate” certain things down so that the “more important” people in that class don’t have to “waste” their time casting things like Curse of Elements…
Third, for utility, or “support” roles, in previous MMOs (FFXI, Everquest, etc) this was a stable of a lot of groups (In EQ there were Enchanters and Bards; in FFXI there were Red Mages and Bards, etc). Now, one huge difference in those games is they forced grouping. Solo content was almost non existent past about level 20-30ish. Group dynamics didn’t change terribly much because they were six person groups (Tank, Support, Healer, 3 DPS). These “support” were the only ones who had really effective Crowd Control, and high quality buffs. Having a good player in that support role was like having permanent Mana Tide or Bloodlust compared to a group that didn’t; while also providing a group more efficiency by being able to CC extra mobs (Multi mob tanking was pretty much unheard of).
WoW simply removed that support role and gave it to various DPS (In those games DPS classes almost never provided anything EXCEPT their own DPS) which has been a fairly logical break down. The thing was, those support roles were in extreme demand by everyone from experience grinding groups to the highest level of raid content. The burn out on these classes were also extremely high, so if you played one you could essentially write your own ticket, because they would fall over themselves to keep you.
WoW essentially removed that “Fourth” corner of the party square and integrated the various buffs and crowd controls from the Support class into the DPS roles to eliminate the role. I don’t think they’ll go back to that formula, the problem is within the player more so than the engine. Blizzard gave support to almost every class in some way or another either in buffs, debuffs or some form of utility; however most players don’t even bother to use it or even realize it’s there.
I touched on this a while back, when I argued that a 5% dps tax simply wasn’t working. I think by and large, the critical thinkers of WoW are starting to agree – just give the DPS the darned tools to do their jobs. They want to play the game too, and not be just buffbots. It wasn’t fun in BC for Spriests and Paladins, and it isnt fun now, when it feels like we already have boxes stacked up against us.
There are arguments, of course, that if we normalize dps across the board, what are pure dps classes going to do?
Well, almost everyone brings something to a raid these days anyway. Even if its not the massive utility that a paladin has (good god, you should see my bars – a button for every situation), it is SOMETHING. Secondly, every group knows that you are never in good shape when you bring only one or two types of classes. The best raids are balanced, and have a mix of everything.
I think the DPS tax concept has run its course, and I think that come Cataclysm, we will see that hit the patch notes early on in the patch cycle.
Now, if I could only get them to normalize gear 10vs25 mans, then I would be happy…..
If nothing else, there really aren’t any “pure” DPS classes out there. Rogues have a variety of debuffs and interrupts, mages have dispells and CC, and so on.
The whole notion of a “hybrid” is pretty much obsolete these days, but for some reason Shadowpriests get stuck with it. I think it’s because people still think of Priest as a “healing class”.
It really depends on the raid or part of the raid you're recording damage/dps on Recount. Shadow Priests have, in my opinion, the best AoE spell in the game so if you include damage done to trash or the boss has a lot of AoE (currently Onyxia is the best example) a Spriest will come out pretty high. The biggest complaint right now is Spriest single target damage, not so much AoE.
Using the 5 points for Soul Leech + Improved Soul Leech isn't exactly a waste, even if you have someone else in the raid providing replenishment. The mana returned from the proc causes us to Life Tap a lot less often leaving up more GCD's for nuking.
I raid as both Destruction and Meta/Ruin and I can honestly say that I Life Tap half as much as Destruction, sometimes even finding myself Life Tapping rank 1 just to keep the buff up.
I talked about this a bit, but kept away from all the actual facts and whatnot because I didn’t want to research
The two classes affected the most by the “oh utility” button are shadow priests and elemental shamans — they just don’t scale like they should.
However, since they’ve become available they have improved DRAMATICALLY — I think the issue isn’t a lack of awareness — I think Blizzard truly intends to destroy the “buff classes” as they have increasingly begun to stack buffs/debuffs to allow for greater customization in group makeup.
Scaling issues take time to resolve — paladins, for example, were basically remade from BC to Wrath, and I expect to see similar changes from Wrath to Cataclysm. It sucks if that’s your favorite character of all time — but I don’t think people are abadoning toons they love because they’re slightly ineffective (by the dps numbers), and I don’t think responsible guilds are either.
I’d really like to see Shadow Priests get a full overhaul to make them feel a bit less like a healer on his day off. Something to make you say “oh yeah, I WORSHIP DARKNESS biyatch” instead of “I shall wee on you”.
I know this is going to seem callous, but here goes: Maybe shadow priests are wrong. I read a lot about shadow priests saying that their DPS is low, and theorizing about why that is. Maybe it’s their raid buffs, maybe the hybrid tax, gear scaling, whatever. But Ghostcrawler (hate or love him) has posted more than once that Blizzard (currently) feels that shadow priest DPS is fine.
And at the end of the day, maybe that’s all that there is too it. Shadow priests think that their DPS is low compared to some number that they have arrived at, how I do not know, but Blizzard just simply disagrees. Maybe there is no problem here except in the opinions of shadow priests who feel that their DPS should be higher.
You might be right, but the thing about DPS is that it’s fairly clearly measurable and all we’ve had from Blizzard is “we disagree” and if there’s one thing that annoys me it’s people claiming they “disagree” with a measurable, factual claim.
I touched on this a while back, when I argued that a 5% dps tax simply wasn't working. I think by and large, the critical thinkers of WoW are starting to agree – just give the DPS the darned tools to do their jobs. They want to play the game too, and not be just buffbots. It wasn't fun in BC for Spriests and Paladins, and it isnt fun now, when it feels like we already have boxes stacked up against us.
There are arguments, of course, that if we normalize dps across the board, what are pure dps classes going to do?
Well, almost everyone brings something to a raid these days anyway. Even if its not the massive utility that a paladin has (good god, you should see my bars – a button for every situation), it is SOMETHING. Secondly, every group knows that you are never in good shape when you bring only one or two types of classes. The best raids are balanced, and have a mix of everything.
I think the DPS tax concept has run its course, and I think that come Cataclysm, we will see that hit the patch notes early on in the patch cycle.
Now, if I could only get them to normalize gear 10vs25 mans, then I would be happy…..
I don’t play a spriest, so I can’t comment directly on their DPS – however what I can comment on is the 1:1 scaling ratio issue we seem to be having.
Since buff homogenization (a good thing IMO), there has been more and more of the “X class has Y ability, so I want it too” and “X does Z DPS – nerf them buff me” mentality.
I’ll use tanks as an example – though this may become my next blog post.
Paladins have blessings, judgements, shields, and the insanely OP Ardent Defender (oh how I love thee, and oh how I will cry when you are nerfed to the ground). We also have bubbles, and more utility than you can shake a stick at.
Warriors have gap closers, more stuns than a rogue (ok maybe not really, but they have a lot), spell reflect, last stand, and shield wall.
Druids have buffs, high HP and armor, etc.
DK’s have….I dunno – they change all the time, but they have good DPS, AoE tanking, cooldowns, and awesome voices (yeah – I count that as a buff – SO WHAT?)
My point here is that player skill will out pace any of the perceived “benefits” of one of these tanks. Kungen (MT of Ensidia) didn’t re-roll DK or whatever the tank of the month was back in BC – because he’s that good. His guild also isn’t married to him though, and they will use the right person for a job if that’s what’s needed.
Same is true for a DPS. Maybe on a flat scale spriest DPS is much lower than any other DPS spec or build. Maybe it just requires perfect gameplay, no movement (ha – like those fights exist), or latency < 25ms with no less than 60 fps. I really don't know.
What I do know is that good players are good – and bad players are bad – regardless of what the flavor of the month is. Yes – bad players can faceroll to greatness with some classes – but in the top end raid situations, they'll fall right on their face.
I talked about this a bit, but kept away from all the actual facts and whatnot because I didn't want to research
The two classes affected the most by the "oh utility" button are shadow priests and elemental shamans — they just don't scale like they should.
However, since they've become available they have improved DRAMATICALLY — I think the issue isn't a lack of awareness — I think Blizzard truly intends to destroy the "buff classes" as they have increasingly begun to stack buffs/debuffs to allow for greater customization in group makeup.
Scaling issues take time to resolve — paladins, for example, were basically remade from BC to Wrath, and I expect to see similar changes from Wrath to Cataclysm. It sucks if that's your favorite character of all time — but I don't think people are abadoning toons they love because they're slightly ineffective (by the dps numbers), and I don't think responsible guilds are either.
I know this is going to seem callous, but here goes: Maybe shadow priests are wrong. I read a lot about shadow priests saying that their DPS is low, and theorizing about why that is. Maybe it's their raid buffs, maybe the hybrid tax, gear scaling, whatever. But Ghostcrawler (hate or love him) has posted more than once that Blizzard (currently) feels that shadow priest DPS is fine.
And at the end of the day, maybe that's all that there is too it. Shadow priests think that their DPS is low compared to some number that they have arrived at, how I do not know, but Blizzard just simply disagrees. Maybe there is no problem here except in the opinions of shadow priests who feel that their DPS should be higher.
I don't play a spriest, so I can't comment directly on their DPS – however what I can comment on is the 1:1 scaling ratio issue we seem to be having.
Since buff homogenization (a good thing IMO), there has been more and more of the "X class has Y ability, so I want it too" and "X does Z DPS – nerf them buff me" mentality.
I'll use tanks as an example – though this may become my next blog post.
Paladins have blessings, judgements, shields, and the insanely OP Ardent Defender (oh how I love thee, and oh how I will cry when you are nerfed to the ground). We also have bubbles, and more utility than you can shake a stick at.
Warriors have gap closers, more stuns than a rogue (ok maybe not really, but they have a lot), spell reflect, last stand, and shield wall.
Druids have buffs, high HP and armor, etc.
DK's have….I dunno – they change all the time, but they have good DPS, AoE tanking, cooldowns, and awesome voices (yeah – I count that as a buff – SO WHAT?)
My point here is that player skill will out pace any of the perceived "benefits" of one of these tanks. Kungen (MT of Ensidia) didn't re-roll DK or whatever the tank of the month was back in BC – because he's that good. His guild also isn't married to him though, and they will use the right person for a job if that's what's needed.
Same is true for a DPS. Maybe on a flat scale spriest DPS is much lower than any other DPS spec or build. Maybe it just requires perfect gameplay, no movement (ha – like those fights exist), or latency < 25ms with no less than 60 fps. I really don't know.
What I do know is that good players are good – and bad players are bad – regardless of what the flavor of the month is. Yes – bad players can faceroll to greatness with some classes – but in the top end raid situations, they'll fall right on their face.
On one side, it seems like Blizz is saying that the hybrids should bring a bit less DPS, but more utility, and the other way around with the “pure” classes. If this actually was the case, I would’ve been fine with it. It would mean that you would benefit from both, and generally pick one over the other, unless you were really hardcore and trying to min/max as best as you could.
But at the moment it’s not like this at all. Feral druids are very, very good DPS and have some nice utility, while shadow priests are on the other end of the spectrum, having poor DPS and average raid utility. I think it might be a case of Blizz not actually either know how to deal with it, or they are unable to deal with it and try to make excuses.
@ Ercles
Couldn’t have said it better.
You could’ve said it without the typos.
Silly wordpress which doesn’t let me edit comments…
To be fair, I don’t think Blizzard has said that they think Hybrids should do less DPS, they’ve just said that they think shadow priest DPS “is okay” which could mean pretty much anything (it might, for example, mean that they think shadow priests should stop QQing and heal like they’re damned well supposed to).
On one side, it seems like Blizz is saying that the hybrids should bring a bit less DPS, but more utility, and the other way around with the "pure" classes. If this actually was the case, I would've been fine with it. It would mean that you would benefit from both, and generally pick one over the other, unless you were really hardcore and trying to min/max as best as you could.
But at the moment it's not like this at all. Feral druids are very, very good DPS and have some nice utility, while shadow priests are on the other end of the spectrum, having poor DPS and average raid utility. I think it might be a case of Blizz not actually either know how to deal with it, or they are unable to deal with it and try to make excuses.
I recommend this book:
http://tinyurl.com/ydbdbxv
It’s an easy read with lot’s of cool puzzles.
One of the important parts of game theory is entirely about how you should (rationally) play even when you don’t know what the other person is using to measure utility.
It can also show when you can benefit by unilaterally declaring what you are going to do and making the other side deal with it.
The most important thing in this context seems to be figuring out you own utility (what do you want? a spot? l00tz? something to do on Friday nights?)
At the risk of getting really confusing by talking abut game-theoretical utility in the same sentence as CRPG utility, I think the issue is that for DPS classes pretty much any way you define (game theoretical) utility relies at some point on generating the Big DPS Values.
Most simply, some DPS just want to top meters. That’s a no brainer.
More subtly, if you want loot, or a spot in a raid, or something to do on a friday night, then you have to persuade people that you’re worth bringing along and for a lot of people (particularly PuGs and low-end guilds) DPS is pretty much the be all and end all. When my DK PuGs I sometimes get asked “what’s your DPS”. I seldom get asked “Did you spec into Abomination’s Might and do you remember to keep Horn of Winter active”.
Basically it’s a real problem in the middle. Very casual guilds don’t care about anything, and very hardcore guilds care about more than just numbers. it’s the middle ground where most of what you want out of the game is much easier to get if you can say “I do 4k DPS”
I’ll totally check that book out.
I recommend this book:
http://tinyurl.com/ydbdbxv It's an easy read with lot's of cool puzzles.
One of the important parts of game theory is entirely about how you should (rationally) play even when you don't know what the other person is using to measure utility.
It can also show when you can benefit by unilaterally declaring what you are going to do and making the other side deal with it.
The most important thing in this context seems to be figuring out you own utility (what do you want? a spot? l00tz? something to do on Friday nights?)
@ Ercles
Couldn't have said it better.
All DKs bring Horn of Winter, giving +155 Str and Agi (not cumulative with Strength of Earth totem). Blood also has Mark of Blood (place on boss, whenever boss hits someone that someone also heals 4%) and Abomination’s Might (+10% AP within 45 yards, doesn’t stack with Unleashed Rage or Trueshot Aura). Frost has Improved Icy Talons (20% melee haste for raid). Unholy has Anti-Magic Zone (reduce magic damage nearby by 75% for 10 sec or a total of 10k+AP*2) and Ebon Plaguebringer (target takes +13% magic damage).
So we do bring some stuff other than our own imba dps.
I know, I just can’t resist a DK joke.
All DKs bring Horn of Winter, giving +155 Str and Agi (not cumulative with Strength of Earth totem). Blood also has Mark of Blood (place on boss, whenever boss hits someone that someone also heals 4%) and Abomination's Might (+10% AP within 45 yards, doesn't stack with Unleashed Rage or Trueshot Aura). Frost has Improved Icy Talons (20% melee haste for raid). Unholy has Anti-Magic Zone (reduce magic damage nearby by 75% for 10 sec or a total of 10k+AP*2) and Ebon Plaguebringer (target takes +13% magic damage).
So we do bring some stuff other than our own imba dps.
Difficult isn't it. Maybe it's because I'm a DK fan but I always favour the "really easy to be good-mediocre, with the option to be awesome if you know what you're doing" as the best option for DPS class balancing.
As it has been pointed out, every class nowadays bring some utility to the raid, which is a good thing because being just a mana battery (ar spriests were) with some dps and minimal healing around wasn’t fun to play. And the key is in the word fun. I think the problem lies in the people who only looks at the dps/heal numbers. This may be ok in hardcore guilds or progression runs, but for casual raiders like me I don’t care about being ‘top-dps-lol, I’m imba!’, I prefer to have a good time with some friends instead. As raidleader I only ask for a minimum dps so bosses can be downed before enrage time or those without don’t take an eternity.
I see your point, and think most people think of it this way. But when it becomes so bad that you start feeling like a burden on the group, something is wrong.
True, you need a minimum to get the raid going (I once had a Naxx run plagued with low-geared alts where Anub’Rekhan took about 15 minutes to die!), that’s understandable, but getting picky because some char is only doing X dps instead of Y is not a good attitude for casual raiding guilds (unless that X is really low). Even in that crazy run with alts I got more funny than “oh-shit-we’re-doomed” moments, even if we only managed to down spider wing and Noth. And that’s what counts more than loot for me.
I don’t think it’s a hardcore casual thing, I think it’s a problem that primarily exists in the middle of the guild spectrum and in PuGs.
A sensible, casual guild will not care as long as you do your job and show up. A sensible hardcore guild will not care as long as you do your job *as well as humanly possible* and show up with reagents and consumables. It’s the middle-level guilds I tend to deride as “wannabe hardcore” that have the trouble. They’re the guilds who think that how good a player you are depends on how high your DPS is (irrespective of your gear, naturally) and who will bitch people out for not doing enough damage when somebody else is forgetting to provide vital raid buffs.
As it has been pointed out, every class nowadays bring some utility to the raid, which is a good thing because being just a mana battery (ar spriests were) with some dps and minimal healing around wasn't fun to play. And the key is in the word fun. I think the problem lies in the people who only looks at the dps/heal numbers. This may be ok in hardcore guilds or progression runs, but for casual raiders like me I don't care about being 'top-dps-lol, I'm imba!', I prefer to have a good time with some friends instead. As raidleader I only ask for a minimum dps so bosses can be downed before enrage time or those without don't take an eternity.
You could've said it without the typos.
Silly wordpress which doesn't let me edit comments…
I see your point, and think most people think of it this way. But when it becomes so bad that you start feeling like a burden on the group, something is wrong.
I feel like I am playing a pure-utility class on my Disc priest. I dont show up much on the meters but ive heard complaints from the tanks when I dont show up for raids. It is actually rather fun to be mostly utility, reducing so much raid damage while adding a buffer to the tanks mitigation is rewarding when people notice the bonuses. If everyone looked at the meters then I would be a sad panda. Pugs and low end guilds need to do their research but usually wont… With everyone havig some utility the shadow damage could use a little more oomph.
I feel like I am playing a pure-utility class on my Disc priest. I dont show up much on the meters but ive heard complaints from the tanks when I dont show up for raids. It is actually rather fun to be mostly utility, reducing so much raid damage while adding a buffer to the tanks mitigation is rewarding when people notice the bonuses. If everyone looked at the meters then I would be a sad panda. Pugs and low end guilds need to do their research but usually wont… With everyone havig some utility the shadow damage could use a little more oomph.
True, you need a minimum to get the raid going (I once had a Naxx run plagued with low-geared alts where Anub'Rekhan took about 15 minutes to die!), that's understandable, but getting picky because some char is only doing X dps instead of Y is not a good attitude for casual raiding guilds (unless that X is really low). Even in that crazy run with alts I got more funny than "oh-shit-we're-doomed" moments, even if we only managed to down spider wing and Noth. And that's what counts more than loot for me.
I can't say much about 'locks, but I am in fact aware that DKs bring some raid utility. I just can't resist a cheap DK joke.
The necessity of utility is a really difficult one – I understand that there were some pulls in the old MagT that you couldn't get past without heavy CC for example.
It's kind of a catch 22. If you make it necessary it's a pain in the arse for everybody, if you make it unnecessary it's, well, unnecessary.
As I say, I do actually know DKs bring utility (although less than some classes – they don't have an armour reducer, which is unusual for a physical DPS class) I just never get tired of making DK jokes (I kid because I love!)
It might also be something to do with the fact that I see a depressing number of DKs who don't *bother* speccing into utility (I've seen Unholy *tanks* who don't take AMF, and a depressing number who don't bother with Ebon Plaguebringer).
The fact that people tend to try to palm off the raid-buffing jobs to other people is part of the same problem – it doesn't matter *who* provides the raid buff, but the guy that provides it is going to do less DPS than the guy who just coasts. The rogue who just spammed his rotation is going to do more damage than the rogue who Exposed Armour.
Plus, people just sometimes need reminding of things. I know my DK lets Horn of Winter slip all the darned time.
If nothing else, there really aren't any "pure" DPS classes out there. Rogues have a variety of debuffs and interrupts, mages have dispells and CC, and so on.
The whole notion of a "hybrid" is pretty much obsolete these days, but for some reason Shadowpriests get stuck with it. I think it's because people still think of Priest as a "healing class".
I'd really like to see Shadow Priests get a full overhaul to make them feel a bit less like a healer on his day off. Something to make you say "oh yeah, I WORSHIP DARKNESS biyatch" instead of "I shall wee on you".
You might be right, but the thing about DPS is that it's fairly clearly measurable and all we've had from Blizzard is "we disagree" and if there's one thing that annoys me it's people claiming they "disagree" with a measurable, factual claim.
To be fair, I don't think Blizzard has said that they think Hybrids should do less DPS, they've just said that they think shadow priest DPS "is okay" which could mean pretty much anything (it might, for example, mean that they think shadow priests should stop QQing and heal like they're damned well supposed to).
At the risk of getting really confusing by talking abut game-theoretical utility in the same sentence as CRPG utility, I think the issue is that for DPS classes pretty much any way you define (game theoretical) utility relies at some point on generating the Big DPS Values.
Most simply, some DPS just want to top meters. That's a no brainer.
More subtly, if you want loot, or a spot in a raid, or something to do on a friday night, then you have to persuade people that you're worth bringing along and for a lot of people (particularly PuGs and low-end guilds) DPS is pretty much the be all and end all. When my DK PuGs I sometimes get asked "what's your DPS". I seldom get asked "Did you spec into Abomination's Might and do you remember to keep Horn of Winter active".
Basically it's a real problem in the middle. Very casual guilds don't care about anything, and very hardcore guilds care about more than just numbers. it's the middle ground where most of what you want out of the game is much easier to get if you can say "I do 4k DPS"
I'll totally check that book out.
I know, I just can't resist a DK joke.
I don't think it's a hardcore casual thing, I think it's a problem that primarily exists in the middle of the guild spectrum and in PuGs.
A sensible, casual guild will not care as long as you do your job and show up. A sensible hardcore guild will not care as long as you do your job *as well as humanly possible* and show up with reagents and consumables. It's the middle-level guilds I tend to deride as "wannabe hardcore" that have the trouble. They're the guilds who think that how good a player you are depends on how high your DPS is (irrespective of your gear, naturally) and who will bitch people out for not doing enough damage when somebody else is forgetting to provide vital raid buffs.
I don't think it's a hardcore casual thing, I think it's a problem that primarily exists in the middle of the guild spectrum and in PuGs.
A sensible, casual guild will not care as long as you do your job and show up. A sensible hardcore guild will not care as long as you do your job *as well as humanly possible* and show up with reagents and consumables. It's the middle-level guilds I tend to deride as "wannabe hardcore" that have the trouble. They're the guilds who think that how good a player you are depends on how high your DPS is (irrespective of your gear, naturally) and who will bitch people out for not doing enough damage when somebody else is forgetting to provide vital raid buffs.
I don't think it's a hardcore casual thing, I think it's a problem that primarily exists in the middle of the guild spectrum and in PuGs.
A sensible, casual guild will not care as long as you do your job and show up. A sensible hardcore guild will not care as long as you do your job *as well as humanly possible* and show up with reagents and consumables. It's the middle-level guilds I tend to deride as "wannabe hardcore" that have the trouble. They're the guilds who think that how good a player you are depends on how high your DPS is (irrespective of your gear, naturally) and who will bitch people out for not doing enough damage when somebody else is forgetting to provide vital raid buffs.
I don't think it's a hardcore casual thing, I think it's a problem that primarily exists in the middle of the guild spectrum and in PuGs.
A sensible, casual guild will not care as long as you do your job and show up. A sensible hardcore guild will not care as long as you do your job *as well as humanly possible* and show up with reagents and consumables. It's the middle-level guilds I tend to deride as "wannabe hardcore" that have the trouble. They're the guilds who think that how good a player you are depends on how high your DPS is (irrespective of your gear, naturally) and who will bitch people out for not doing enough damage when somebody else is forgetting to provide vital raid buffs.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Bard
and to a lesser extent http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Corsair
it’s been done. i actually kinda enjoyed playing bard. the balance factor was that the buffs are nuts like 20% haste, so people love them in groups, and they can pull or offheal. of course FFXI has much less hybridity, so support classes are more of a necessity. i know this attitude has transferred to my wow playing- catch me raiding without an ele shaman, moonkin and disc priest in my pocket at the very least.
I’m going to take the opposite approach and defend the DPS tax, if only to voice some of the issues that I haven’t seen addressed thus far. Everyone here has been talking about raid utility like its just a buff or a CC spell (like anybody CCs anymore, despite the fact that everybody has some sort of it) and that’s all it is.
The biggest boon of utility classes in a raid is their ability to switch up roles, even in mid-fight to do an adequate (but not good or great) job at somebody else’s role. A shadow priest’s biggest contribution to utility isn’t his passive Vampiric Embrace healing or his stamina buff or even his Misery (which is a very nice debuff). It’s the fact that if the healer buys it, he can drop out of shadow and heal. Certainly not as well as a Holy or Disc priest, and yes, he will quickly run OOM. However, maybe, just maybe that will be enough to prevent the wipe. (A ret paladin spamming FoL is in a similar boat.) I’ve seen it a lot of times, I’ve even been the lucky hero that pulled it off a time or two.
What I have never ever seen is a Mage ‘dropping out of Arcane’ and laying down heals or a Warlock ‘changing to Frost Presence’ to pick up the boss for a last-ditch attempt when the tank goes down. Yes, it was a close call when it worked, and no, it would never have been feasible for an extended time, because eventually the crit % will catch up to you no matter how great your healers are. But neither of those scenarios would even be possible with pure DPS classes.
I think that yes, we *should* pay some sort of price for that sort of flexibility, and I don’t think 3-5% (the so-called DPS tax) is really that big of a trade-off for that sort of utility. In fact, I would gladly trade 5% of my mage’s DPS for a single healing spell, let alone the entire arsenal at the shadow priest’s disposal. Because when things go south and a healer goes down there is exactly jack-all I can do about it if I’m on my mage or warlock or hunter. Neither my priest nor my paladin have that problem.
The only problem I’ve seen with Shadow damage is that it doesn’t scale terribly well at the highest gear levels, but this has nothing to do with being a hybrid. In fact, I’ve found that my shadow priest’s dps has been higher as I gear up than either my mage or warlock’s was at the same relative gear levels. The fact that it won’t climb quite as high when I finally scratch and claw my way to tier 10 doesn’t bother me so much.
P.S. For those wondering and/or counting the alts in the post, I have 6 80s at the moment (destro/Demo warlock, fire/frost mage, ret/holy paladin, BM/MM hunter, Frost/Blood DK, and shadow/holy priest). Yes, I know I play way too much.
[...] We've all heard of "bring the player, not the class" and are getting used to the fact that virtually every class and spec in WoW brings some kind of buff to the raid. Not all MMOs handle raid utility this way and in fact WoW didn't always either. I distinctly remember the time where you absolutely wanted a shadow priest or two in the raid for their mana regeneration, even though their DPS was sub-par. Survival hunters were only taken for their debuff and shamans switched groups mid-fight do chain Heroism on a DPS group. I rarely agree1 with what Chastity and Tamarind have to say over at Righteous Orbs, but Chastity makes some very good points on the topic of utility classes in his recent post. The thing about a DPS class is that your personal success, your value to the raid, and the respect you gain from your run, is based entirely on your personal DPS. Nobody whips out recount and says “hey, your Aura increased our overall raid DPS by 0.7k good job!” What this means is that anything which boosts your *personal* damage output is massively more valuable to you than anything which boosts the damage output of the raid. – Chastity of Righteous Orbs [...]