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Q u o t e:


We do have a great community team and they are involved in a lot of different projects, many of which you never see on the forums. I was actually referring to the developers though. The conversation was about the folks empowered to make decisions. The fact that lead designers post in these forums (and I'm not the only one) is pretty unusual for a game, particularly one of our size, or really any kind of business. That is why I posited the conclusion that it's not lack of communication that frustrates some players -- it's that their specific question or issue was not personally addressed. That is a somewhat unrealistic expectation. Sorry. :(

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I can't resist point out that this sentence was placed in a thread you correctly identify as dime-a-dozen, generic QQ topic that appears every few weeks and always gets the same, highly obvious answer which most players assumed already.

Kudos to GC for spelling it out multiple times to these angry people frothing at the mouth.

Maybe it's the fact I work as a software developer that I never find myself making angry posts at the devs, but the amount QQ on these forums aimed at blizzard is pretty ridiculous.

I think the "Dev's can't possibly play a shaman" idea comes more from the confusing mis-statements than from anybody believing that no one at blizzard has strong feelings for shaman, or bias toward other classes

The statement "In the wrong place? Just Die" is nonsense. It ignores the way the spell works, period. Yet that is offered as reasoning behind a change. This confused people.

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Q u o t e:
Kudos to GC for spelling it out multiple times to these angry people frothing at the mouth.

Maybe it's the fact I work as a software developer that I never find myself making angry posts at the devs, but the amount QQ on these forums aimed at blizzard is pretty ridiculous.

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I'm not sure he should be congratulated for posting on something he knew right off the bat was an illogical QQfest that anyone with a brain could see was empty from the start and is the most generic whine after "A SLAP IN THE FACE" or "REDD HEDDERED SETPCHILDE." There's a bunch of jittery people out there spooked by new things on the test realm that they're not sure are thought out properly or not, or given misinformation, or just asking for logic behind changes, and you're posting multiple times in here?

EDIT:

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Q u o t e:
I think the "Dev's can't possibly play a shaman" idea comes more from the confusing mis-statements than from anybody believing that no one at blizzard has strong feelings for shaman, or bias toward other classes

The statement "In the wrong place? Just Die" is nonsense. It ignores the way the spell works, period. Yet that is offered as reasoning behind a change. This confused people.

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Yes, this. This particular thread came into being after you gave your bizarre opinion on why reincarnation is somehow more than three times more powerful than a soul stone and five times more than rebirth, which is why it deserves a proportional cooldown. The thread would've been better off titled "Do you people even read the spell descriptions?" but then you wouldn't have been able to answer it because it wouldn't have been such an easily-ID'd empty QQpile.

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Q u o t e:
I think the "Dev's can't possibly play a shaman" idea comes more from the confusing mis-statements than from anybody believing that no one at blizzard has strong feelings for shaman, or bias toward other classes

The statement "In the wrong place? Just Die" is nonsense. It ignores the way the spell works, period. Yet that is offered as reasoning behind a change. This confused people.

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Couldn't have said it better myself.

The fact is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself period. The level of immaturity of anyone whose brains even think up these ridiculous conspiracy theories cannot be measured. keep up the good work dev team.

edit: @ all the shamans complaining about the specific situation, GC trying to give some rough measurement of what could happen with a low CD reinc, does not mean he lacks any sort of knowledge. Sound-byting anyone for any means is ridiculous.

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Q u o t e:
The fact is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself period. The level of immaturity of anyone whose brains even think up these ridiculous conspiracy theories cannot be measured. keep up the good work dev team.

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Of course they don't "have to" but if the community wants it and they are willing, where is the harm?

People just don't understand that this is their game. Every gamer has at one point or another wanted to design their own game or implement their own functionality into a game, it's part of being a game player. But they are the ones who are responsible for making the game playable, complete, balanced. They don't have to listen to our feedback, they don't have to do anything at all if they didn't want to. We should feel so privelaged that they even bother to read half of the nonsense the forums puts out on a daily basis.

That's not to say the devs are "Gods" either. They have made their series of mistakes and we have let them know about. It's quite possible that certain decisions may affect your game play in particular, but know that every change to the game affects everyone who plays it, not just you. Sometimes people can lose sight of the fact that over 10 million people play this game, so it's not as simple as "Hey, we're doing bad, buff me."

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Q u o t e:
The fact is that you shouldn't have to explain yourself period. The level of immaturity of anyone whose brains even think up these ridiculous conspiracy theories cannot be measured. keep up the good work dev team.

edit: @ all the shamans complaining about the specific situation, GC trying to give some rough measurement of what could happen with a low CD reinc, does not mean he lacks any sort of knowledge. Sound-byting anyone for any means is ridiculous.

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I agree with the first part to a degree (it's like the white house giving a massive public Q&A period on why they didn't fake the apollo moon landings), and strongly disagree with the second. He was either discussing some version 2.0 of reincarnation they haven't implemented it or was confusing it with three other spells. His "rough measurement" was as accurate as my complaining about fireball allowing the mage to get 1k autoattack crits while using it would be. Not even remotely the same ability as the one under discussion.

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Q u o t e:


We have plenty of communication with "subordinates" (though Blizzard hierarchy is pretty flat overall). You are talking about the degree to which a few dozen people can carry on an open conversation with a few million people. That's hard. I would rank our attempts at communication pretty high overall though. No, you don't get answers to all your questions from a high-ranking person on our side of the fence, but you pretty much don't ever get that in life. You do get some, and that's the best we can do. I would be surprised if you got a similar level of conversation with say the people that made your computer or your car or who manage your bank account or roast your coffee beans. That's not to say we can't do better. But I think many of you confuse "poor communication" with "didn't answer *my* question."

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Yes, GC, yes! But what happens when "*my* question," is the same as shaman #2 and shaman #58 and shaman #239 and all the ones in between? I get that people like to cry and moan on these forums, and you're probably sick of seeing it, but how can you remain blind to something that is so widely accepted? How can you ignore the many voices of discontent?

Further still, why waste your very precious and limited communication time posting on this thread rather than posting something constructive on one of the shamans' much more constructive threads (such as the Fire Nova discussions?). You seem really quick to jump on threads that insult the developers, which I respect since you are showing that you care about your team and want to protect them. The downside is that you also seem to miss the really intelligent posts in the process. I think the major thing that is wanted here is a little hair tussle from the devs saying, "Alright kiddos, you make sense and we're willing to consider this." Or, "That's impossible and here's why."

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Q u o t e:


Some of you still have this misperception that we have "the shaman guy" who buffs or nerfs solely depending on his or her experience online the night before. That would be a pretty amateur way to do class design and I don't think it would account for WoW's longevity.

We have a class team and we work very closely together to make sure the changes are right for the game. Not a single change is made that doesn't weather some debate first. "Well, I play this class so I know and you don't" wouldn't fly around here. "Shaman are having problems here and here," is more typical and appropriate.

The whole point of my original post was to point out that there is a massive difference between someone who plays a given class and therefore has strong opinions on that class, and someone who is a professional game designer. Many of you seemed to have missed that part.

We play the game because we think it's important to get "real world" validation for our design, and frankly because we all still love the game. But there are many great players who are terrible at game design and people with fantastic ideas who play the game pretty casually. Designer != great player.

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Can we address what shamans are complaining about most recently, then?

Elemental Mastery: I don't see the problem with the T10 bonus being a flaw of the bonus itself, so much as being a flaw in the ability. First, it tries to be a pvp cd and a pve cooldown in one, and while the pvp portion might be vital (as I've admitted, I'm not a pvper) the PvE portion is a little lackluster for a spec that has 15% crit available before armor is even factored in, 15% more crit when only about 70% of the damage isn't a guaranteed crit isn't exactly thrilling. And it doesn't scale; 15% is 15%, no matter what your gear is like. I see this as one of the few places where elem can be improved without any impact on enhance.

If I could put in a little sales pitch, I would like to see EM revised to work like Illustration of Dragon Soul; every cast for the next 20-30s grants X spell power, or better yet, something that's not a flat buff, something like 1-2% damage dealt. It goes with the same fundamentals already, it's a cd best used while we can turret so less than optimal for pvp (you're already in trouble if you're letting the shaman turret). What I'd like most, tho, is for the instant cast aspect to be seperated into a new ability, possibly accomplished by putting Nature's Swiftness in the first tier of resto to make it easily accessible for all.


Ranged AoE: I think alot of us ele shamans would stop complaining about this if you simply removed the cd from Chain Lightning completely. It scales better now that it was included in shamanism, to the point where even I, who actually kind of hate the spell, can enjoy casting it situationally. Since it's more of a cleave than an aoe, I don't see it being overpowered. And since it still deals lower damage than LB, it won't be a spell to be frequently used on single targets. Or, even if it is, it'll be a high burn rotation so it would have to somehow be significantly better damage.

Scaling: With our rotation locked down by an 8 second cd, after a certain amount of haste that stat becomes less than optimal. Likewise for crit, since we spec for so much in the first place. It's no surprise that spell power becomes the end-all be-all for the elem shaman. I'm not sure how to fix this, you guys probably aren't either. Haste could affect the LvB cd, but you'd probably have to lengthen it for that to even be considered. Last thing anyone wants is a pve shaman in pvp launching a LvB every 4 seconds >.>

The other aspect of scaling is all the flat buffs provided by the spec. Including ToW. Now, I think the numbers will show that DP would outperform ToW even if both were 10%; demon locks scale better with raid buffs and stats. And I'm ok with that, I consider it one less reason to keep ToW as a flat buff. DP will still be superior in most cases.

Flametongue Weapon: Another flat buff that could use some polish. But, unlike ToW, I don't know how to mess with this one without affecting Enhance.

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Q u o t e:

I agree with the first part to a degree (it's like the white house giving a massive public Q&A period on why they didn't fake the apollo moon landings), and strongly disagree with the second. He was either discussing some version 2.0 of reincarnation they haven't implemented it or was confusing it with three other spells. His "rough measurement" was as accurate as my complaining about fireball allowing the mage to get 1k autoattack crits while using it would be. Not even remotely the same ability as the one under discussion.

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Everyone makes mistakes certainly. However his statement was the reasoning behind the design, and when a game is designed by reasoning that is wrong.....draw your own conclusions.

And of course, that misstatement wasn't the only thing wrong with his reasoning. For example, warlocks can SS themselves to the same effect.

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Q u o t e:
The statement "In the wrong place? Just Die" is nonsense. It ignores the way the spell works, period. Yet that is offered as reasoning behind a change. This confused people.

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Sorry, I disagree. You overanalyze what GC must have meant ("You end up in the same place!!! How can Reincarnation fix the wrong place?!") and miss the point.

Perhaps GC was referring to fights where half the room becomes fatal for a period. (eg, Mim's laser barrage). Where a normal character needs to GTFO immediately, lowering the cooldown means that shamans get to take far greater risks than most characters do.

"#@*@ it. Even if I die, I'll just wait until where I am is safe again and self-rez."

Now, I don't think this is as big an issue - Pallies get to be immune to EVERYTHING every 5 minutes. What's the harm in allowing a self-rez every 10 - but I respect the devs for trying to think through all the possible repercussions.

TL;DR: Stop overanalyzing GC and focus on the problems.

Great conversation on the design team and the structure appears well and the results are largely well thought through (but require some tweaking - which is understandable).

Is there any point where we'll get to know some more details on what's on the table for Shaman changes. I know I'd personnly like to know more about the future of totems. They took a huge hit from homogenization and the creation of Dks and are fairly benign in 25 man raiding. What's on the table at least?

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Q u o t e:

Everyone makes mistakes certainly. However his statement was the reasoning behind the design, and when a game is designed by reasoning that is wrong.....draw your own conclusions.

And of course, that misstatement wasn't the only thing wrong with his reasoning. For example, warlocks can SS themselves to the same effect.

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The entirety of your second paragraph is the most mind-boggling thing about the entire reincarnation problem. Soulstone is reincarnation that can be cast on anyone in your group more than three times more often and has a no-cost reagent that can be created while in the instance by fighting.

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Q u o t e:


Sorry, I disagree. You overanalyze what GC must have meant ("You end up in the same place!!! How can Reincarnation fix the wrong place?!") and miss the point.

Perhaps GC was referring to fights where half the room becomes fatal for a period. (eg, Mim's laser barrage). Where a normal character needs to GTFO immediately, lowering the cooldown means that shamans get to take far greater risks than most characters do.

"#@*@ it. Even if I die, I'll just wait until where I am is safe again and self-rez."

Now, I don't think this is as big an issue - Pallies get to be immune to EVERYTHING every 5 minutes. What's the harm in allowing a self-rez every 10 - but I respect the devs for trying to think through all the possible repercussions.

TL;DR: Stop overanalyzing GC and focus on the problems.

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The problem with this is that the mentality already has existed with regards to rebirth and soulstone use in fights, both are more flexible, and both are being buffed to be much more frequent-use. GC's post made issues out of either complete fabrications as to how reincarnation works or claimed it had issues that actually were far more pertinently applied to the two other spells that were being buffed with shorter cooldowns.

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Q u o t e:
Yes, GC, yes! But what happens when "*my* question," is the same as shaman #2 and shaman #58 and shaman #239 and all the ones in between? I get that people like to cry and moan on these forums, and you're probably sick of seeing it, but how can you remain blind to something that is so widely accepted? How can you ignore the many voices of discontent?

Further still, why waste your very precious and limited communication time posting on this thread rather than posting something constructive on one of the shamans' much more constructive threads (such as the Fire Nova discussions?). You seem really quick to jump on threads that insult the developers, which I respect since you are showing that you care about your team and want to protect them. The downside is that you also seem to miss the really intelligent posts in the process. I think the major thing that is wanted here is a little hair tussle from the devs saying, "Alright kiddos, you make sense and we're willing to consider this." Or, "That's impossible and here's why."

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See, here are two of the most popular issues people bring up about GC posting:

1. Getting people on the forums to agree with you no where near means your issue is widely accept. If anything, less than 0.01% (<10,000) of the people that play this game probably post on their respective forums. The "many" voices just doesn't exist.

2. You're not allowed to comment on the threads that GC is commenting on. He's said it before, I'm sure it's in the rules for this forums somewhere. If anything, it's almost MORE profitable if GC DOESN'T post in threads that already have a good discussion going. What happens when he does? People come in to whine about other stuff the thread isn't about, other classes want to present their issues because they think GC is only reading that particular thread, and the thread derails into flamefests and GC has to lock it anyways.

I'm not trying to deter you from posting or call you out specifically, Monarchan, but that's just the trend I'm seeing from the forums. I don't want to discourage GC from posting either. Coming in and correcting our assumptions (a la the threads for SS in the 3.3 PTR) is great interaction with the community. People just need to not be so selfish when GC posts in threads and flood them with stuff that is irrelevant and ruining the discussion.

I've learned that no matter how hard you try, you can't please someone who wants to be disgruntled. It's not worth the time and effort, so don't even bother.

This thread is old, and tired. Let it rest.

I do get what your getting at here GC, but i know alot of players would sleep well at night knowing that they did have representation on he board, rather then just observations and spreadsheets. I mean its really easy to look at data or spreadsheets or pvp representation and say oh they are fine, but when you don't have someone actually sitting down and playing the class it makes people worry.