The Perceptions and Realities of Faction Balance

June 4th to June 10th was a window of time in which significant changes were made to World of Warcraft.  There were no major patches.  There were no content additions.  Nothing special happened, aside from a week of half price Character Services – faction change, race change, name change, server transfer, appearance change.  During this time, a large number of raiding guilds made the switch from Alliance to Horde for the “minor” advantage that certain Horde races provide.  This was a not insignificant number – dozens of guilds in US and EU regions for both 10 and 25 player settings jumped from the sinking Alliance ship.

But how minor are they? Are these advantages really just minor, unnoticeable increases in player power, or are they game changers that have a significant impact on a progression race?  Here’s a great thread on the US official forums providing the viewpoints of many of the players in the guilds I’ve listed below, and the reasons and circumstances for many of them switching factions, as well as many examples not listed below.

List of the top 30 US 25 player guilds in Throne of Thunder as of the weekly reset on June 11 2013 (if there are any errors here, let me know, WoWprogress appears confused from numerous faction changes):

1 Blood Legion – Horde
2 Midwinter – Alliance
3 Exodus – Horde
4 Duality – Horde
5 Vigil – Horde
6 WHATEVER WERE AWESOME – Horde
7 Promethean – Horde
8 Unhuman – Horde
9 Reckoning – Alliance
10 Pie Chart – Horde
11 Defenestrate – Horde
12 Supermassive – Alliance
13 Refined – Horde
14 Dread – Horde (were Alliance)
15 TF – Horde
16 DONG SQUAD – Horde (Were Incarnate on Alliance)
17 Ascension – Horde
18 Overture – Horde
19 Temerity – Alliance
20 Nurfed – Horde
21 Intent – Horde (were Alliance on Kel’thuzad)
22 Raiding Rainbows – Horde
23 Midnight Sanctuary – Alliance
24 Demise – Alliance
25 Suit Up – Alliance
26 Huge in Japan – Horde (were Alliance)
27 Static – Horde
28 Pure – Alliance
29 OBSCURE REFERENCE – Horde
30 Angry – Horde

Keep in mind that this is just in the US region, and those listed as guilds that were Alliance were simply Alliance previous to this past week.  There have been more transfers from Alliance to Horde since it became possible to do so, and many, many more with 10 mans and the EU region included.  The most hardcore switched for the most obvious reasons, and the rest have followed suit for reasons of their own.  Eight of the top thirty US 25 player guilds are Alliance, or 27%.  Four of the top twenty, or 20%.

While they were far from the first guild to do it, Method was one of the first truly notable faction changes which took place in April of 2012, and they were followed by vodka shortly before Mists of Pandaria launched.  The reason was simple – Horde racials are better for PvE than Alliance racials, taken straight from a public post from the best 25 player guilds in the world.  While Pandaren aren’t the preferred Horde race as Method predicted they would be, it only meant that Horde were more dominant than they expected.  There are numerous other factors for the mass exodus from Alliance this past week, but it all stems from that one single point.  So what exactly is the problem?

PvP in 6.0

This is the second of my WoW game design posts, a series about my take on World of Warcraft’s overall gameplay and visual design in many areas with an eventual focus on Shaman and Enhancement specifically.  Mists of Pandaria, like each expansion so far, has introduced new things and done some things right, but there are always improvements to be made.

As anyone who’s read my previous post on the PvP game would know, I don’t particularly enjoy the current PvP combat model compared to that of WoW’s earlier days.  To me, every class and spec in WoW currently suffers from “too much stuff”.  There are really no exceptions to that, every class in WoW has far more tools than are necessary for a compelling PvP game.

Class design in Classic

Here, we have a basic, boring old hamburger.  Many players may look at Classic through rose-tinted glasses, but to actually go back and play the original WoW now is to see a game that is barely recognizeable compared to the current game.  It was very basic, most of the game’s depth on an individual play experience level did not exist yet, most classes only had a few buttons to press, and countless features have been added and improved on since then; and yet, this boring little hamburger was the foundation for something great.

Class design in Burning Crusade

Here, some toppings were added to the hamburger, the first truly significant iterations on class design were made – classes had many of their most glaring flaws and shortcomings addressed, and a lot of new mechanics and ideas were added to various classes and specs to further differentiate them from each other while simultaneously giving numerous specializations that were nothing more than afterthoughts in Vanilla an actual place in the game.  While the game as a whole has improved dramatically since this era, class design and the flow of combat was at its peak in the Black Temple era.  Each spec played differently, each spec worked differently, each spec brought unique things to the table, and while improvements could certainly be made and features could be added to make it more casual-friendly, the in-combat gameplay experience was delicious.

Present class design

Over eight and a half years after the original release, class design has … evolved … into a hideous monstrosity.  Reading nothing but the passive abilities in your spell book is like reading a novel.  Add in the active ones, and the sheer volume of “stuff” will overwhelm nearly any newer or returning player, regardless of gaming background.  It’s like asking the entire playerbase what they want on their hamburger and giving in to all of it.  Feral Druids needed an off-the-GCD interrupt.  Elemental needed damage on the move.  Retribution needed a snare.  Priests needed dispel protection because Warlocks had it.  Restoration Shamans needed magic removal.  Holy Paladins needed area heals.  Hunters needed an immunity effect.  After three expansions of players asking for – and receiving – many of the things that used to make specs unique, we now have 34 specializations that can all do a bit of everything, and have twice as many buttons as necessary and 10 times as many passive novels to read than they need, and just simply too many convenient, high-efficiency control, utility, healing and damage abilities flying around in combat in all areas.  Where a player – once upon a time – would rely on their allies to provide the things they needed to be effective in PvP (Ferals and Rets would need someone else to snare their target as an example), that same player now relies on their allies to help them escape from the overwhelming volume of control effects flying in their direction.  If a Feral in Burning Crusade didn’t have an ally to snare their target, at least that Feral could keep control of his character and defend himself.  Even if he was helpless, he didn’t feel it nearly to the same degree.  He may have been just as helpless back then without those allies to support him, but now his helplessness is shoved down his throat because he can’t do that while stunned… silenced… frozen… feared…

I can only speak for myself, but a hamburger like this is difficult to digest.

The PvE Healing Game of 6.0

Over the next month or so, I’ll be making a series of posts about my take on World of Warcraft’s overall gameplay and visual design in many areas, then jumping into where I see the Shaman class as a whole and what I’d do to improve the overall and Shaman gameplay experience and address some of our weaknesses and the game’s weaknesses in 6.0.  While Mists of Pandaria has done a lot of things right, there have also been a few missteps and a few problems that weren’t solved, and there are certainly improvements to make going forward.

What’s wrong with the live healing game?

Over the years, the healing game has made a handful of transformations.  In Classic, healing was a constant battle with your mana bar right through to the end of the expansion, where players eventually learned to use lower spell ranks for higher mana efficiency, and mana potions were chugged on their 2-minute cooldown with no limit to how many could be used in combat.  Wrath of the Lich King featured an extreme in HPS maximization with little regard to mana, and Cataclysm featured the introduction of raid cooldown choreography, where very few raid-wide healing abilities had existed previously.

My take on healing in Mists of Pandaria is that small group content generally feels pretty good.  The normalization of mana pools has succeeded in making healing more bearable early on and toning it down a bit in great gear.  The volume of healing cooldowns available to healers and non healers alike, however, has created a less-than-stellar 25 player raiding experience for healers, where spell selection is very exclusive, and tank damage is pretty trivial as long as the they don’t die in a global cooldown.  So what exactly are the problems, and how do we fix them?

Smart Heals: In Classic World of Warcraft, there was a grand total of one spell referred to as a Smart Heal, and it belonged to Shamans.  Chain Heal had a 10-yard jump range and each jump reduced its healing by 50%.  The current version has a 30% reduction per jump and has a 12.5-yard jump range.  Aside from a Shaman set bonus that affected Healing Wave, we did not see another Smart Heal added until Burning Crusade, with Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending.  Now, every healing class and numerous DPS classes have smart heals, such as Daybreak, Nature’s Vigil, Wild Growth and so on.  I feel these kinds of heals – and a few others types of heals – are problematic in many areas and could use some adjustments and even some removals in a few cases.

Smart Player Heals: Another type of healing I’ll refer to as “Smart Player Healing” are the kinds of heals that happen automatically, happen when you deal damage, refresh easily, or are so efficient that you’re smart to cast them pretty much on cooldown or keep them refreshed.  These kinds of heals include Beacon of Light, Earth Shield, Ancestral Awakening, Lifebloom, Eminence and Atonement.

Non-Healer Healing: More problematic heals are those that can be provided by tanks or damage dealers for little to no cost, or at great effectiveness.  These include Nature’s Vigil, Divine Star, Halo, Healing Rain with Healing Storm glyph, Blood Parasite, and every raid-wide damage reduction or mass healing cooldown provided by damage dealers.

Absorbs: The last kind of heals that I feel are currently problematic in 5.2 and recent history are absorbs, but this may have already been addressed.  Paladin and Discipline Priest mastery have long been overly powerful, providing the kind of damage prevention that allows groups to tackle content at a far lower gear level than it’s designed for, and hence, you’ve seen the vast majority of high-end progression raids with a healthy number of both since the launch of Cataclysm.  The best kind of healing is healing you don’t have to do.  It’s very easy to “snipe” heals with absorbs, and in today’s encounter design (which seems to be a direct result of class design) with frequent bursts of raid-wide damage, it’s rare for an absorb effect to expire unused.  With recent changes to Discipline and the 5.3 changes to Paladin mastery, this issue is becoming less prevalent, so further changes may be unnecessary.

5.2 Enhance trinkets.

Update#2 – ToT and MoP in general has kept me extremely busy.

Update (March 12) – Many trinkets using the RealPPM system have received buffs, causing them to have a higher chance to proc at the start of an encounter and receive increasing chances to proc over time, resetting when they do.  They’ve also received a 10% increased chance to proc for Strength and Agility classes, so Bad Juju, Rune of Re-Origination, Renataki’s Soul Charm and Talisman of Bloodlust have all been buffed significantly since I did these simulations.  I’ll provide updated numbers when possible.

Here are some of the new trinket values I simmed quickly for any who are wondering what our best options are.  I’ll try to keep that up-to-date and add trinket values for a T15H level when I’m able.

Simmed each trinket individually with none others equipped with the T14H sample profile.  10,000 iterations (I’ll do more when I find some time).

Enhancement Trinkets in 5.2

*Trinkets with hit and expertise had their values split evenly between crit, haste and mastery to maintain caps and give an idea of their maximum value.  These trinkets will become less valuable if they force you over hit and expertise caps.

**SimC doesn’t seem to be modeling this version of this trinket properly, specifically the proc.

***Due to the profile using Engineering, on-use trinket value is reduced.  They are still pretty bad trinkets, but not quite as bad as listed here.

Patch 5.2 Shaman changes, January 30 update.

Four new Shaman changes have hit the PTR.  None of them are game-changing, but three of them are small but nice buffs.

Nature’s Guardian will now preserve your health percentage when it expires.
Currently, Nature’s Guardian will add 25% of your total health to your current health when it activates, and remove all of the health it granted when it expires, dropping your health back down.  This is a significant buff that causes Nature’s Guardian to act as a heal instead of temporary health increase.  It was already a pretty good talent, this will make it even better.

Stone Bulwark Totem now has 10% of the Shaman’s health.
Pretty inconsequential in PvE, this may make the talent a viable option in PvP.  10% health is enough to cause the totem to require some effort to knock over, nearly as much as it would absorb if left up.  You can now rely on this as a solid defensive ability against other players by absorbing damage or redirecting their attention.

Totemic Restoration will now always act as if 1 second of the totem’s duration had expired.
This is obviously meant to prevent players from picking their own totems up immediately after dropping and benefiting from the reduced cooldown to a larger degree than intended.  It shouldn’t have any impact on those of us who didn’t use a macro to kill totems after dropping them.

Mental Quickness now reduces the mana cost of Shock spells by 90%.
Mana is not intended as a limiting factor for Enhancement when it comes to dealing damage, and yet it was on occasion in PvP.  The issue wasn’t major, but this change should be enough to keep mana as a limiter for our hard-casted heals without causing us to occasionally struggle to maintain enough to deal damage in a PvP environment.

The rest of the changes in patch 5.2 are listed below:

• Flame Shock duration increased to 30 seconds.
• Glyph of Flame Shock no longer affects the damage of the spell, and instead heals the Shaman for 50% of damage dealt.
• Stormlash Totem area of effect increased to 40 yards.  This is already live.
• Ancestral Swiftness melee attack speed increased to 10%.  Spell haste remains at 5%.
• Elemental Blast now has a chance to provide Agility.
• Elemental Mastery cooldown reduced to 90 seconds.
• Stone Bulwark Totem absorb increased by 25%.
• Unleashed Fury Lightning Bolt bonus reduced to 20% while now providing a 10% increase to Lava Burst damage.
• Shamanistic Rage is now available to Elemental.
• Glyph of Purge now causes a 6-second cooldown.
• Primal Elementals now deal 20% more damage.

Our Item Level Overlord

What are item levels?

Just to be thorough, item levels determine how high the stats and other attributes of an item can be.  A higher item level means more stats.  Nearly everyone who’s played World of Warcraft at max level at some point over the past two years knows what item levels are.  Item levels have been a part of the game since it was released in 2004, and became visible to players in game shortly before the release of Cataclysm in response to the dungeon finder requiring certain gear levels for certain dungeons.  Halls of Reflection required better gear to enter through the dungeon finder than Utgarde Pinnacle, but the gear level required wasn’t transparent at first.  In today’s PvE game, you can’t do anything without being given an item level requirement to enter.

Why are item level requirements necessary?

Heroic dungeons and Raid Finder require specific item levels to be able to enter.  Some of us would be capable of taking on these challenges at much lower gear levels than the dungeon and raid finders ask for, but there are many players who don’t have months or years of max-level experience to draw on and these challenges are appropriate for them at the gear levels required.  Item level requirements are also a form of speed bump – skipping ahead through the game too quickly tends to eventually leave a lot of players with nothing to do, which is what happened through much of Cataclysm.  Skipping most of the journey doesn’t leave much room for a satisfying or rewarding destination, and the fact that many players never got to see tier 11 or Firelands raids because the Hour of Twilight patch made them obsolete and easily skipped is pretty sad.

5.2 PTR Enhancement Feedback

Gave some thoughts and opinions on Enhancement talents, glyphs and some baseline abilities I’d like to see changes or improvements on in 5.2 or beyond.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7592909703

Let me know (there or here) what you think.