We all know items have a "budget", and out of that item budget they assign stats, DPS, resiliance, activated abilities, procs, etc.

I'm just wondering, do the classes have any such "budget" to help design them? I know classes are more free flowing than an item could ever be, but it seems to me as though a certain ammount of HPS/DPS/mana efficiency would be worth X points. A wildly usefull Y duration would be worth Z points, etc... Stuns might be worth Apts for every second they last...

Just wondering how these classes were designed and balanced, and what if any toold blizzard uses.

rogue and mage have some xtra point budget they could share with shaman i believe

I doubt it. Not in the way you mean.

Items are fixed and can be controlled. But classes cannot be controlled like items because of us---players.

Besides, what would be the budget? Would you base the budget off of the top players who use special keyboards, computers, and download special addons? What about the sub-par players? Or most likely the average/mean group in the middle?

It's hard to control how people play because each individual has her own play style. Blizzard might have an overall design idea, but I doubt it is specifically "budgeted" like items are (Just a guess, there).



Edit: See Ghostcrawler's post down below!

I've gathered from GC's posts that they do, but the budget has changed. He's talked about classes not having as much DPS in BC because they brought utility to raids (moonkin druids have innervate/battle rez, shadow priests act as the mana battery). However, they've tried to balance it out so that most classes are equal in terms of whatever output they have (healing, tanking, DPS).

They've gotten rid of tanking niches, hybrid classes can DPS as well as non-hybrid, and healers do the same healing/mitigating output. The only difference with healers is that there are, indeed, still niches.

I'd suggest going to mmo-champion.com and walking through the blue tracker to see some of the blue posts over the course of WOTLK beta. That will give you a better picture of what I'm talking about.

Edit: Posted this before reading the post above me. I would agree that there's no X=10 points and Y=12 points kind of thing like items. But in a more "free flowing" way, I am still sticking to "yes." Just last week, GC described modeling things off ideal conditions in spreadsheets and bumping up shaman (I believe?) dps by a certain percent. Bad players won't see as large of an increase as the good players, but yes, they do go for certain goals to balance things out.

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Q u o t e:
I doubt it. Not in the way you mean.

Items are fixed and can be controlled. But classes cannot be controlled like items because of us---players.

Besides, what would be the budget? Would you base the budget off of the top players who use special keyboards, computers, and download special addons? What about the sub-par players? Or most likely the average/mean group in the middle?

It's hard to control how people play because each individual has her own play style. Blizzard might have an overall design idea, but I doubt it is specifically "budgeted" like items are (Just a guess, there).

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I know you'd need some wiggle room, for this very reason, but then again, it seems to me that since WoW is all math, you could very easily run a simulation. And, no, I do not feel at all that blizzard should balance for subpar players. They should balance and if you are tits at the class then you should get to be good. If you suck, then that is too bad. However, wth a budget you could still design a theoretical cieling, then tweak as needed.

Yeah, it could very well be that classes have more of that "free flowing" budget, as Aamaretto said.

Priests definitely have a deficit.

I think that back in vanilla there pretty much was as for every class that was extremely strong in one area they had some pretty harsh weaknesses as well (warrs: best physical mitigation & threat, strong melee damage, easily kited, 0 healing ability, weak ranged damage for example).

The problem started creeping in late, late vanilla and BC when the hybrids started screaming about not being as good in their chosen role as the specialists in that role. This may have been fueled by min/max guilds wanting more of the buffs the hybrids bring without sacrificing the abilities of the pures. Or it may have been people not understanding the concept of jack-of-all-trades, master of none (or no longer finding it desireable to be lol #3 on dps every 5 man). Whatever the underlying reasons, Blizz chose to accept the argument that they shouldn't be gimped in their chosen area just because they have the option to do other things. Here is where I feel the biggest mistakes were made: in addressing the "underpowered" issue Blizz chose to buff the applicable talent tree to the extent that the hybrid became a pure but did not correspondingly nerf the other abilities of the hybrid and the result is the current mess where hybrids are better than pure classes in most areas of the game.

Another example: (assumes the classes are well-balanced; not something we have necessarily seen) in the vanilla model warrior vs paladin would be an even fight as the warrior would do more damage and mitigate more damage but the paladin can heal the damage/bubble/LoH while now paladin vs warrior is pretty much a sure paladin win because the paladin can do relatively equal damage, mitigate equally, but still has the advantage of being able to heal & bubble.

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Priests definitely have a deficit.

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Yeah I was kinda wondering how many points mind soothe chews up, and if we could just get rid of it to free up some points for a new ability, or hymns that work.

Some believe that M-theory can describe the universe in one generic equation.

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To be metaphysical for a minute, you can't define the universe with one gigantic equation. There are just too many variables. You can use simpler equations to attempt to describe small parts of things as long as you understand their limitations.

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Superstring Theory says we can...nerf physics.

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We have budgets for the power of individual spells and talents. We do not budget based on the total number of abilities available -- some classes just have more than others.

I would also call the budgets a guideline. You have to know when to change the numbers on something even if the budget suggests that will be overpowered or underpowered.

To be metaphysical for a minute, you can't define the universe with one gigantic equation. There are just too many variables. You can use simpler equations to attempt to describe small parts of things as long as you understand their limitations. A great deal of your success in WoW, perhaps even more in PvP than PvE, is your skill in using your abilities and that is a hard thing to model.

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Does the dev team have an internal rank of skill required to make X class effective or balanced, and if so how much of a factor is this in your design.

Also if you do have a skill ranking of the classes is there anyway we could be privy to it, I have seen many times how the players would rank them so I am just curious how far it's off from what the dev's see.

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To be metaphysical for a minute, you can't define the universe with one gigantic equation. There are just too many variables

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WOW i think u just directly contradicted einstein's theory there GC lol, because the universe can all be summed up in 1 equation that was his life work :)

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Q u o t e:
We have budgets for the power of individual spells and talents. We do not budget based on the total number of abilities available -- some classes just have more than others.

I would also call the budgets a guideline. You have to know when to change the numbers on something even if the budget suggests that will be overpowered or underpowered.

To be metaphysical for a minute, you can't define the universe with one gigantic equation. There are just too many variables. You can use simpler equations to attempt to describe small parts of things as long as you understand their limitations. A great deal of your success in WoW, perhaps even more in PvP than PvE, is your skill in using your abilities and that is a hard thing to model.

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Very interesting. Thank you!

So.. how many points IS mind soothe worth? ~_^

I'm especially intrigued by not having some "global cap" on the number of points a character at a certain level can have on their abilities. Was this a conscious decision? It seems to me balance may be somewhat easier to find if there were... Was there a particular scenario that led to the cap being lifted, or has it always been a part of the design philosophy?

In any case, I certainly except the near impossibility of modeling player behavior, and am well aware that any "ability budget" would have to be fairly liquid, to the point of having to be ignored from time to time.

also:

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Superstring Theory says we can...nerf physics.

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lol

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WOW i think u just directly contradicted einstein's theory there GC lol, because the universe can all be summed up in 1 equation that was his life work :)

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Perhaps you should learn some physics before you attempt to look like an intellectual snob and fail so miserably. Does "Unified Field Theory" mean anything to you?

I'm fascinated by how difficult some of the stuff in WoW seems to be to model. It must be pretty interesting to sift through all the test realm data.

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To be metaphysical for a minute, you can't define the universe with one gigantic equation.

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Stephen Wolfram would disagree with you.

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Perhaps you should learn some physics before you attempt to look like an intellectual snob and fail so miserably. Does "Unified Field Theory" mean anything to you?

.

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if u trust in that that guess work of thing like evolution of organism in to other organisms, or ur string theory. than YOU have to learn some REAL physics. and except that the laws of physics have been changed in the past, the fall of man brought upon the second law of thermodynamics.

Perhaps you should learn some History before you attempt to look like an intellectual snob and fail

the futile thoughts and theory from generation to generation mean nothing, we cannot explain anything only guess, and then years later find out our guess was wrong, there is one truth and that is, there has to be something bigger than what our pathetic human brains can understand.

that said, time is only the biological observation of the second law of thermodynamics.

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if u trust in that that guess work of thing like evolution of organism in to other organisms, or ur string theory. than YOU have to learn some REAL physics. and except that the laws of physics have been changed in the past, the fall of man brought upon the second law of thermodynamics.

Perhaps you should learn some History before you attempt to look like an intellectual snob and fail

the futile thoughts and theory from generation to generation mean nothing, we cannot explain anything only guess, and then years later find out our guess was wrong, there is one truth and that is, there has to be something bigger than what our pathetic human brains can understand.

that said, time is only the biological observation of the second law of thermodynamics.

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Good post but my lord after seeing your avatar, the priest nerfs pale in comparision.