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Q u o t e:
As a few players have pointed out, for them -- for a lot of people -- balance is fun. It's certainly not the only aspect of fun. But games in which players feel like they won or lost the game at the moment of character creation, because some abilities are just overpowered or underpowered, tend to not have the kind of legs WoW has had.

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I'm not sure I understand, are you trivializing balance?

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Q u o t e:

Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive.

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But isn't that exact what you've done with pvp - trivialize it by almost entirely taking skill out of the equation for success? And you're justifying this by stating that people like "overcoming challenges"? There's a reason druids went from being one of the least played classes overall to the most played in late bc: people apparently don't like overcoming challenges.

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Q u o t e:

Fun is also subjective. It's easy to say "Circle of Healing is fun for me and Renew isn't," but that may have a lot to do with the relative balance of those two abilities or your personal preference. Some players think stabbing things is fun and others think tanking is fun. We can continue to come up with cool new toys for each individual spec or role. However it also may be that nothing we are willing to do will make tanking fun for *you* specifically.

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Getting 3-shotted isn't fun. I'm pretty sure casuals will feel this way too.

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Q u o t e:

Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive.

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Totally agree with this. However, could you then explain Naxxramas to me? This content is definitely trivial, and it feels like we've been playing it with cheat modes on. I really hope when you say Uldaur will be harder you mean it.

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Q u o t e:
Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive

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this is very true. i have a resto druid and recently spec'd my prot pally to holy as a rl friend said it was really fun. i found the same, and it was a lot more engaging overall compared to the fewer buttons/more predictable cycle i was pressing on my druid. i *love* holy shock now

tbh the only problems i really find on my holy pally are finding room to stick in cleanse/sacred shields in between my global cooldowns. if anything should be aoe those should. it would be unique for a pally too- not the aoe healer but good aoe utility

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Q u o t e:
Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive.

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CoH was/is a way fun spell. PvE its cool, but I feel AoE in general has hurt PvE.

But Battlegrounds WOW! I felt like the Afghan Mujahadeen after the CIA gave them stinger missiles to shoot down the Russians! Without it I was a sitting duck, but with CoH man I for the first time felt like I could turn a battle around as a healer.


There in lies the problem. CoH WAS the holy priest bandaid.

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Q u o t e:
I don't want to derail this thread, but you do need to get it out of your heads that shaman or paladin QQ caused us to nerf CoH and WG. Those spells were too good. CoH was too good at the end of BC.

As a few players have pointed out, for them -- for a lot of people -- balance is fun. It's certainly not the only aspect of fun. But games in which players feel like they won or lost the game at the moment of character creation, because some abilities are just overpowered or underpowered, tend to not have the kind of legs WoW has had.

Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive.

Fun is also subjective. It's easy to say "Circle of Healing is fun for me and Renew isn't," but that may have a lot to do with the relative balance of those two abilities or your personal preference. Some players think stabbing things is fun and others think tanking is fun. We can continue to come up with cool new toys for each individual spec or role. However it also may be that nothing we are willing to do will make tanking fun for *you* specifically.

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Wakey Wakey Mr GC, Here have a nice hot cup of coffee because I want you to be awake for this.

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Q u o t e:
Those spells were too good. CoH was too good at the end of BC.

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Are you awake? Good because yes they were over powered after your team gave us acess to our 51 point talants and buffed healing and NERFED the BC content.

Please finish your coffee.

Need more?

Because I think your asleep still, I know winter blahhs I get sleepy all the time too.

Ready for a little secret? Okay BC is over and dead now, we aren't overpowered 70's playing in a nerfed sandbox. Welcome to Wrath of the Lich King. If you don't know it is this new expansion where tanking was made brainless, dps was shot through the roof and AOE damage is unreal in ALL the dungeons.

So here we sit with groups taking damage left and right in unreal amounts because some dev thought "HEHE lets see them deal with this!" Then here comes another Dev points and laughs at the first, "Oh look they healed through your new trick! You PHAIL!"

So dev # one pouts for a bit and then comes up with a new strategy, "Hey you know what these two classes are trivializing MY content. Here lets get rid of their aoe healing and if the third class dares to trivialize my dungeon design I'll kill it too!"

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Q u o t e:

If Chain Heal ends up being the only spell that gets used to heal, or the spell that pushes Holy priests and Resto druids out of a raid, then we'll nerf it. We don't think those cases are likely, but we always try to leave the possibility open.

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We don't buy into the whole theory of " bring the player not the class ".
We don't buy into the whole promise of "If we break it we will fix it"
We don't believe you anymore because all you have shown all FOUR healing classes is the bottom of your shoe as you stomped on us.

Druids need corrected gear.
Priests need more utility or slightly better healing.
Shamans need a slight heal buff.
Paladins need a true aoe heal and to have their holy talents in their holy tree, not in the ret tree.

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Q u o t e:


Fun is the most important concern. Trivializing content (whether PvE or PvP) may seem fun in the short term, but like playing any game with a cheat mode on, the novelty quickly wears off. Overcoming challenges is a big part of what makes games like WoW attractive.

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Dazed and confused.

Again I post:

http://i34.tinypic.com/2m7t5ow.gif

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Q u o t e:
Paladins need a true aoe heal and to have their holy talents in their holy tree, not in the ret tree.

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No, we dont.

Paladins have enough AE healing (Beacon) to heal any heroic.
Paladins Healing is interactive and fun, more so than at any other time. Their may be some small issues with a couple of minor Holy tree talents. (sacred cleansing for example). Certainly not anything earth shattering.

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Q u o t e:
Players tend to think of things in terms of whether their class got buffs or nerfs. We tend to think of the overall balance of the game.

The metaphor that gets (over) used a lot is the wobbly chair -- you can cut one leg off or try and extend the other three. We would always prefer to buff rather than nerf, because frankly it's more fun. It generates goodwill and makes players excited about playing. But buffing isn't always the answer. Often a nerf involves far fewer changes the game as a whole. Because testing time is usually our limiting factor for releasing changes, we prefer to change as little as possible.

It's impossible to measure things, especially healing, in terms this simply, but imagine your class can heal 5000 health per second and the other specs can heal 4000 health per sec. Sure we can buff the other three because that's more fun than nerfing you, right? But it might also mean that PvE fights are too easy and PvP damage is too trivial (yes I realize that is an amusing thing to say right now while so many people are concerned about burst damage). Just buffing your spells affects spell balance too -- when you don't care about efficiency because even your light healing spells heal for a lot, then suddenly your toolbox looks pretty shallow, and that Spirit and mp5 on your gear starts to look like a wasted stat.

TLDR version: we prefer to buff when we can, but nerfing is typically far less risky in terms of the amount of data changed.

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Fine, if you like nerfing so much then nerf the dps, not the healing. Pve would also suffer difficulties with terrible damage (assuming you want them to suffer in dungeon boss fights) because most bosses trigger special skills/events during the fight that turns the rules around anyways.

Yes, burst damage is a concern right now and adding more CC won't do anything to fix it. Let's look at the priest class in arena for a moment. If we are shadow then he have silence, dispersion, and fear. The mana recovery from dispersion is a bonus, and it takes us out of stun, but the we are not immune to further cc and dps after activation. When paladins bubble, at least that gives them a moment to heal, but we can't cast in dispersion. Our fear shouldn't even count as a cc considering every undead player, warrior, and people with pvp trinkets can break it whenever we need it in a pinch.

Thus, the reason I had to reroll to disc. But now that even disc doesn't seem to remotely compare to the survivability as a paladin, I don't know what spec to go.

"Scary"? They're being logical. I hope logic isn't scary to too many people.

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Q u o t e:


No, we dont.

Paladins have enough AE healing (Beacon) to heal any heroic.
Paladins Healing is interactive and fun, more so than at any other time. Their may be some small issues with a couple of minor Holy tree talents. (sacred cleansing for example). Certainly not anything earth shattering.

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Says the prot spec paladin with...0 heroic raid achievements. Play the game a bit before you espouse your opinions on the overall class balance.

Devs, I plead and beg for you to consider the source when you read these type of comments. All the time I see you say 'its hard for us to believe that there are serious issues with XX class, because while 5 players say they cant do something, 2 say they can and its just fine'. If anything, show heroic raid achievements under the players name on all posts, and make those achievements difficult instead of just 'alternate' ways to do things.

Holy paladins on live are currently the least desirable healers at any gear level, for all content, do I know how you solve this, no, but I can say nerfing holy/resto is certainly a start. The 20 yard bonus of hl glyph helps, give us the wisdom glyph you teased on beta, and finish the holy tree, then give us ulduar, but dont send us in that dungeon and onto tier8 with the lowest loot priority of any class/spec in a raiding guild.


Thanks.

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Q u o t e:
Players tend to think of things in terms of whether their class got buffs or nerfs. We tend to think of the overall balance of the game.

The metaphor that gets (over) used a lot is the wobbly chair -- you can cut one leg off or try and extend the other three. We would always prefer to buff rather than nerf, because frankly it's more fun. It generates goodwill and makes players excited about playing. But buffing isn't always the answer. Often a nerf involves far fewer changes the game as a whole. Because testing time is usually our limiting factor for releasing changes, we prefer to change as little as possible.

It's impossible to measure things, especially healing, in terms this simply, but imagine your class can heal 5000 health per second and the other specs can heal 4000 health per sec. Sure we can buff the other three because that's more fun than nerfing you, right? But it might also mean that PvE fights are too easy and PvP damage is too trivial (yes I realize that is an amusing thing to say right now while so many people are concerned about burst damage). Just buffing your spells affects spell balance too -- when you don't care about efficiency because even your light healing spells heal for a lot, then suddenly your toolbox looks pretty shallow, and that Spirit and mp5 on your gear starts to look like a wasted stat.

TLDR version: we prefer to buff when we can, but nerfing is typically far less risky in terms of the amount of data changed.

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Well you should forgive us for thinking that healing might get the same treatment as tanking or damage dealing, since you severely buffed all the tanks, and you buffed all the dps so rogues aren't even near the top anymore.

If you have three wobbly chairs and the means to extend the legs on two of them, then certainly you can do the same for the third.

You may think of the overall balance of the game, but you don't have a clear vision for the future of healing in terms of balance and fun. We're here to help.

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Q u o t e:
You may think of the overall balance of the game, but you don't have a clear vision for the future of healing in terms of balance and fun. We're here on our crappy alts to pretend to help while all we do is cry instead.

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Anyway...

I really don't understand all the whining paladins are doing. No, paladins don't have a one button heal everybody and their mother skill like some classes, but they are also perfectly equipped to handle AE damage -- and you know what, it's a lot more interactive than spamming one key without even watching health bars.

This forum is the same as the tank forum (and I assume the DPS forum). Everybody @#@*@es that everyone but them are overpowered. Warriors cry that paladins are just too good. Druids cry that they're a useless mana sponge. Paladins still cry about interrupts. I am surprised Blizzard can glean any amount of useful information from these #!*%ty threads.

In my opinion Blizzard should just go back to ignoring the playerbase and doing what they want instead, because you guys aren't even happy with the mile you've been given -- stop playing the game, please, save the rest of us the headache of dealing with you.

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Q u o t e:


Anyway...

I really don't understand all the whining paladins are doing. No, paladins don't have a one button heal everybody and their mother skill like some classes, but they are also perfectly equipped to handle AE damage -- and you know what, it's a lot more interactive than spamming one key without even watching health bars.

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Just a couple of notes about his quote here:

You may want to take a quick look at the definition of "perfect".
You may want to take a quick look at the definition of "interactive".
Why in God's name are you happy that you have to stare at health bars?
Whatever the heck you're looking at, you're probably still spamming one button to handle AoE healing.

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Q u o t e:
Players tend to think of things in terms of whether their class got buffs or nerfs. We tend to think of the overall balance of the game.

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This kind of thing really bothers me, and I feel like I see it a lot (at least a lot more than I'd like) from developers around here. When it comes down to it, it's not much more than a nice way of saying, "While you may think you're right, you're an idiot and I'm right". Also, it's pretty condescending to claim that players aren't willing to even attempt to think about balance as a holistic issue. Any opinion, be it from player or developer, is obviously biased by that person's personal preferences and experiences. That isn't to say a developer who happens to play a Warlock is going to try to nerf Rogues unmercifully, or that they are going to be entirely unsympathetic to a healer's point of view. They will do their best to assume neutrality, as many players do. Players and developers alike can be unsuccessful, but it doesn't mean no one is trying.

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Q u o t e:
I don't want to derail this thread, but you do need to get it out of your heads that shaman or paladin QQ caused us to nerf CoH and WG. Those spells were too good. CoH was too good at the end of BC.

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For me at least, it isn’t so much that CH may be nerfed in the future or that Ret talents got moved/nerfed. The ultimate decision of whether or not any given aspect is overpowered is obviously in the hands of the development staff. The problem I have is with the reasoning provided.

Back in beta, the fact that so many Holy Paladins were speccing so far into Ret seemed to, as far as the development staff was concerned, be proof positive that the Ret talents were overpowered. However, it is entirely possible, and in fact was widely suggested, that the attractiveness of specific Ret talents may have had something to do with lackluster talents late in the Holy tree. In the discussion of Chain Heal’s future, we’re seeing a lot of similar reasoning. Comments to the effect of “X percent of a Shaman’s healing is Chain Heal. All Shaman are doing is using Chain Heal”. Again, this seems to be leading to a decision of “nerf Chain Heal” rather than “well, is there a good reason the other abilities aren’t getting used? Do they just not stack up?” These situations can go both ways. I suspect in a lot of them, however, there isn’t one simple answer. It’s likely a bit of both sides. Chain Heal is effective, and maybe too effective, but are the remaining abilities effective enough?

You say that while buffing may be more “fun”, nerfing is often easier. I’d contend that it often isn’t the right answer by itself. These situations don’t occur for one simple and isolated reason. Look at Death Knights. They have too much survivability in PvP situations because of various cooldown abilities, but suffer from spiky damage while tanking because of their reliance on these abilities. The solution was to nerf Bone Shield and IBF and buff the baseline mitigation offered by Frost Presence. If, however, you had just looked at the situation and said, “Death Knights have too much survivability in PvP. We’re nerfing IBF and Bone Shield” and called it a day, I have a funny feeling Death Knight tanks would be having a heck of a time.

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Q u o t e:
Just a couple of notes about his quote here:

You may want to take a quick look at the definition of "perfect".
You may want to take a quick look at the definition of "interactive".
Why in God's name are you happy that you have to stare at health bars?
Whatever the heck you're looking at, you're probably still spamming one button to handle AoE healing.

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Hey, I know, let's get a MONKEY to play your toon for you. YEAH! Then let's make every class and encounter so easy your new farming buddy can do all the work for you. HELL YEAH! In fact, why are we even playing the game at all? I don't want to watch health bars. I don't want to press keys. I don't want to know encounters. I don't want to understand mechanics. I just want to sit in this chair, gain weight, and work on my monitor tan. !%#@ YEAH!!!!!!!!!1111one