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Q u o t e:
We changed the way we itemized PvP gear between seasons 4 and 5. The largest change is that resilience uses up much more of an item's budget, where previously it was almost bonus. We also stopped adding bonus armor (extra armor beyond what a cloth, leather, mail or plate would have at a certain item level) because it was causing some weird issues for certain characters, like Feral druids. The next few seasons should follow this new design, though of course we might decide to change that design for some pressing reason. Since we figured very few players would keep their level 70 gear over level 80 gear, we figured it was a fine time to change things across the board.

We do think it is odd that armor penetration in general is more valuable against characters with the least armor, and that is something we might change in the future.

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How do you plan to make up the lost survivability?

Un-nerfing Natural Perfection and Focused Will would be a start.

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Q u o t e:


How do you plan to make up the lost survivability?

Un-nerfing Natural Perfection and Focused Will would be a start.

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A really good start. Honestly I can't possibly even begin to imagine what they were thinking with this.

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Q u o t e:
I'm actually really curious when GC started doing what's now doing with Blizzard. I wouldn't be quite as hard on him if I knew he were new. Probably. ;)

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February 2008

Going to wowwiki and typing his name directs to:

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/644/b35

I don't think the issues should be blamed on him in particular. He probably is right about the developers all tending to agree on all their major decisions, so this matter goes far deeper than a single individual. He's just the only one who spends some of his free time posting on the forums (aside from CMs, who aren't devs), which is nice of him.

Like I say, I bet something is going on like a "realism" view where cloth classes temporarily tanking melee is seen as unrealistic. But balance is more important than realism anyway in a magic-filled game where knives >= guns, and class balance is what should be the priority.

The devs had to know that nerfing bonus armor on PvP gear wasn't required to end PvE tanking issues, with them doing that anyway by making it no longer subject to bear form and frost presence multipliers.

Im pretty sure i read somewhere (cant find quote cause im lazy) of a blue saying changing a games mechanics to fix one problem is too much of a hassle. Well isnt that what they just did essentially. Cloth was getting too much armor so the reduced the armor value, however now that the armor value is lower the armor pen coefficient is lower too. And this is all this dmg mitigation is suppose to be made up for via resilience? Blizz seriously things may sound great on paper on but in actuality are just bad ideas (look at Mirrors Edge). Even though I'm not much of a PvP'er resilience just sounds like a broken concept that blizz is hastily trying to put back together even though the pieces never fit quite right in the first place.

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Q u o t e:


Your comments always give me a good laugh.

Character has 500 armor. 500 Armor reduces "x" number of incoming damage.

Person stacks armor penetration to 500, then hits character who is now naked for stupid damage.

Game pvp is broken.

We call this situation a problem where I come from.

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They already fixed the situation with the Armor Penetration that is found on gear since they converted that all to rating values so now it works on a percentage basis and is equally effective against all types.

If you have 154 Armor Penetration rating that will remove 10% of your target's armor. If you are hitting cloth with 2500 armor that is 250 armor penetration and if you are hitting a bear or a plate class with 25000 armor that is 2500 armor that is being penetrated. Which is perfectly balanced.

The issue is really the static armor penetrations like Expose Armor and Sunder which would seem to be what GC is referencing in his post. Simple solution would be to just convert those to straight percentages as well and then the issue will also be resolved and balanced. So what percentage of armor should those abilities remove? Easiest thing would be just to balance them around how much armor they remove from a raid boss.

Sunder armor is 785 armor reduced per application stacking 5 times for a total of 3925 armor reduced. Bosses have 13080 armor (as established from testing) so that is 6% of their armor per application and 30% when fully stacked. So just change Sunder Armor to that and then work the same calculations for all the other armor penetration abilities and they all become balanced for PvP at the same time since then they would be equally effective against all classes whether they are wearing plate or merely cloth.

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Q u o t e:
I don't think the issues should be blamed on him in particular.

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You can blame any WotLK issue you want on him, as his job was and is, WotLK design.

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Q u o t e:

The next few seasons should follow this new design, though of course we might decide to change that design for some pressing reason.

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So GC, if i roll right on arch25 save and grind and work and die over and over in bgs till i get enough honor so that i can get some resilience about 1000+ish and get maybe to the 1700s ratings, where as a rogue/retpal with 0 resil can easily push past 2k hmmm... seems like a pressing reason to me.

Do some tests with a priest at 1200 resil vs a rogue with full 25man epics - it makes no difference at all the priest dies in 10-20 seconds, and the dps can evade death with cloak of skill or evasion no matter what your partner is. Resil doesnt mean crap against high dps cc and the ability to stop 99% of incoming dmg without resilience.

You dole out cc to new classes and specs and you don't even see that all it takes is two ccs chained together to kill a priest whos hp bar moves like an spasmodic heart monitor V\/\___________.

Wish my t7.5 did that for me.

Yeh im not gonna bash GC because I appreciate how much gc communicates with us and Im not going to reply directly to the OP

I just wanted to say my view on PvP seems that the dev's know they cant balance it properly so they would rather the melee dominate the pvp scene then cloth wearers or casters. They seem very very reluctant to buff escape and survival of casters even tho we are in horrible shape

Either that or their seems to be some kind of attitude that melee have a right to dominate cloth wearers because , HEY GUISE HE R A SQUISHY HE SHOOD DIE FAST WHEN I HIT HIM WIT AN AXE AMIRITE?
which is a completely retarded way to look at it imo

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Q u o t e:



They already fixed the situation with the Armor Penetration that is found on gear since they converted that all to rating values so now it works on a percentage basis and is equally effective against all types.

If you have 154 Armor Penetration rating that will remove 10% of your target's armor. If you are hitting cloth with 2500 armor that is 250 armor penetration and if you are hitting a bear or a plate class with 25000 armor that is 2500 armor that is being penetrated. Which is perfectly balanced.

The issue is really the static armor penetrations like Expose Armor and Sunder which would seem to be what GC is referencing in his post. Simple solution would be to just convert those to straight percentages as well and then the issue will also be resolved and balanced. So what percentage of armor should those abilities remove? Easiest thing would be just to balance them around how much armor they remove from a raid boss.

Sunder armor is 785 armor reduced per application stacking 5 times for a total of 3925 armor reduced. Bosses have 13080 armor (as established from testing) so that is 6% of their armor per application and 30% when fully stacked. So just change Sunder Armor to that and then work the same calculations for all the other armor penetration abilities and they all become balanced for PvP at the same time since then they would be equally effective against all classes whether they are wearing plate or merely cloth.

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The change to armor pen does not compensate by the bonus armor nerfs on cloth.

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Q u o t e:



They already fixed the situation with the Armor Penetration that is found on gear since they converted that all to rating values so now it works on a percentage basis and is equally effective against all types.

If you have 154 Armor Penetration rating that will remove 10% of your target's armor. If you are hitting cloth with 2500 armor that is 250 armor penetration and if you are hitting a bear or a plate class with 25000 armor that is 2500 armor that is being penetrated. Which is perfectly balanced.

The issue is really the static armor penetrations like Expose Armor and Sunder which would seem to be what GC is referencing in his post. Simple solution would be to just convert those to straight percentages as well and then the issue will also be resolved and balanced. So what percentage of armor should those abilities remove? Easiest thing would be just to balance them around how much armor they remove from a raid boss.

Sunder armor is 785 armor reduced per application stacking 5 times for a total of 3925 armor reduced. Bosses have 13080 armor (as established from testing) so that is 6% of their armor per application and 30% when fully stacked. So just change Sunder Armor to that and then work the same calculations for all the other armor penetration abilities and they all become balanced for PvP at the same time since then they would be equally effective against all classes whether they are wearing plate or merely cloth.

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I'm sorry your post makes too much sense.

Blizzard must try(and fail) at fixing these abilities a minimum of two times over the course of 8 months before implementing your idea.

Have to keep up with tradition and all.

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Q u o t e:


The change to armor pen does not compensate by the bonus armor nerfs on cloth.

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The reason for the bonus armor was because melee was running around with a lot of Armor Penetration gear on making it very easy for them to reduce Cloth classes to 0 armor (I played a mage through most of TBC so I remember this pain distinctly). Since Armor Penetration was changed to a rating that issue no longer applies to the Armor Penetration on the gear since it is now, for all practical purposes, impossible to get a cloth class to 0 armor by stacking armor penetration rating (~1540 rating) and if someone could stack that much Armor Penetration it would be just as detrimental to someone wearing plate+shield as it would to someone wearing all cloth.

So that means that the change to Armor Penetration definitely compensated for the loss of bonus armor on PvP cloth (although compensated is really not the correct word for this sentiment since there really was no compensation involved, it was more of a balancing change to a current game mechanic to equalize it's effectiveness among all possible target types).

The only remaining issue regarding Armor Penetration is the static Armor Penetration that exists in certain class abilities, like Sunder and Faire Fire and Expose Armor. Since those abilities are static amounts of armor reduction they are more detrimental to a class wearing cloth then they are to a class in plate. Which is why I suggested merely converting them to percentages as well (which is probably exactly what GC was implying the developers are discussing with his comment) since then they would have the same effect on everyone no matter what armor type they are wearing.

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Q u o t e:
The reason for the bonus armor was because melee was running around with a lot of Armor Penetration gear

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Actually, season 2 cloth gladiator gear had bonus armor, first, before the melee gear got armor penetration added later (armor penetration appearing on season 3 gear). Admittedly, some had some armor penetration a bit before season 3 with tier 6 gear, but it wasn't as much as the bonus armor.

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Q u o t e:
So that means that the change to Armor Penetration definitely compensated for the loss of bonus armor on PvP cloth

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No, it didn't.

First of all, clothies are short at least a couple thousand points of armor now compared to if it had been scaled up from 70 to 80 and kept at the same % mitigation levels. There was never nearly quite that much armor penetration rating on gear. You can't make non-quantitative incorrect assumptions about equal magnitudes for the effect of each change.

Let me quote developer Kalgan from back in September 2007:

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Q u o t e:
There's more +armor on the pvp gear than there is +armor penetration on the melee pvp gear.

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http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2040217627&postId=19962266871&sid=1#6

Bonus armor was of still more benefit to casters than armor penetration rating on gear was to melee.

Secondly, more importantly, the S5 gear no longer having armor penetration meant that the item budget was reallocated to give melee more of other stats. In the case of melee plate DPS gladiator gear, it now has 30% more stamina than that for clothies, in contrast to how there were nearly equal levels of stamina on all gladiator gear in season 4. While rogues don't get as much extra stamina, agility helps mitigation (and hence effective health) as well as DPS.

Already, 61% of players at the top are paladins, death knights, and rogues, for those at 2000+ rating in 2v2 (realmhistory.net). There are still 11% mages at that rating, the one caster class close to the 10% ideal representation for one of the ten classes. But there are 1% warlocks, very few shadow priests, either zero or close to zero elemental shamans, and even only 1-2% moonkins.

With the sole but only exception of mages (probably temporary), the new expansion is starting with a level of melee dominance that took until later seasons of TBC to obtain.

As many people know, melee naturally scale better with gear upgrades.

An example is how agility on rogue gear simultaneously helps dodge mitigation, armor mitigation, attack power, and crit chance. Such increases DPS and mitigation simultaneously. That's in contrast to how intellect, spirit, or spellpower on caster gear provides no increase to mitigation, less benefit per point of the item budget consumed.

Though due to different factors, a similar net result occurs with the effect of weapon upgrades, influencing melee DPS more.

When it is like this already, what will it be like next season?

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Q u o t e:


Yes, well put. It would take a lot of rebalancing to convert Sunder and Expose over to a percentage, but it would solve some problems too.

At a higher level, I don't think the answer to letting clothies survive longer is to make cloth more like mail. Either clothies are fragile or they're not. If they're fragile, then they need tools to be able to survive when the bad man with the axe or daggers comes a calling. If tons of armor is just something all players need, then we're spending a lot of extra dev time to itemize four tiers of armor (cloth, leather, mail and plate). I exaggerate, but I think you get the point.

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This is so truly the problem.

It often feels like we're forced into cloth with nothing to make up for it, because other classes with much higher armor tend to have much better ways of dealing with incoming damage than clothies have, anyways.

It's probably the hardest thing to accept (in terms of comparing cross-class), because [we] know we're designed with cloth in mind, but it almost feels at times like we're designed with [how well we heal plate wearers] in mind, not with healing cloth -- which results in us feeling inferior because we lack the abilities of others AND armor value.

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Q u o t e:
At a higher level, I don't think the answer to letting clothies survive longer is to make cloth more like mail. Either clothies are fragile or they're not. If they're fragile, then they need tools to be able to survive when the bad man with the axe or daggers comes a calling. If tons of armor is just something all players need, then we're spending a lot of extra dev time to itemize four tiers of armor (cloth, leather, mail and plate). I exaggerate, but I think you get the point.

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Making cloth like mail would indeed be going too far.

Everything's relative, though. Some would be happy with just having 44% as much cloth as mail armor values as occurred in season 3 thanks to bonus armor, instead of the current 24% as much.

Although this is not necessarily a valid assumption, I'll pretend you agree that survivability against melee attackers is too low.

In that case, you might be theoretically planning to give future compensation eventually, but, if the idea is to adjust melee kitability or the like, changing a whole bunch of spells and abilities would seem to take far longer than adjusting armor values.

While you know better than us, I would guess major buffs to warlocks are at least months away, for the total time before going live, definitely not the current PTR patch 3.08.

Fixing the reflective shield bug or changes to a spell like Divine Hymn would be additional months. Still more far-future (if occurring) big overall changes to how much clothies are tanking melee? A year away? Next expansion?

Armor (or stamina) numbers would seem to be one of the few things that might be more easily adjusted to have an effect perhaps even going live in time for season 6 in several months... if Blizzard were to agree with the goal.

It's perhaps fundamentally a matter of different perspectives. You guys may think in the long term and feel pretty relaxed about adjusting other things later if you feel such is needed, while many players are more impatient where every additional few months feels like a long time to us.