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» 3.0.8 Patch Tuesday |
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Jan 04, 2009 - 7:01 PM - by Proto
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Survavibility and fun in Arenas
I would say we are definitely worried that players are dying too fast, particularly to a handful of specs that combine high damage with high survivability. We know resilience will make a difference, but they jury is still out on whether it will make enough of a difference. Regardless, it's clear a lot of players aren't having fun, so it is something we are talking about. (Source)
[...] All I have ever said was that damage will be lower when everyone is at full resilience. Will damage be low enough then? I have never answered that because I think the jury is out. I understand many players think damage will still be too high. We certainly take their opinions (and numbers) into account when we discuss it. (Source)
1v1 PvP
We do not balance 1v1 PvP. We make virtually no attempt to insure that all specs are viable at dueling. It's a fun distraction at best, perhaps a way to test our your abilities against a specific class. (Source)
Damage / Healing / Crowd Control in Arenas
Yes, I said that. If you are disagreeing with that remark, then you are essentially saying "It shouldn't be a viable tactic to kill a healer."
If you aren't saying that, then all we're really quibbling over is a matter of degree.
I didn't say it should be trivial to kill a healer. I purposefully didn't specify how many people it should take to kill a healer. I didn't say that we were happy with how easy it is to currently kill a healer. But if you are anticipating a point where you just laugh at warriors or shamans or other classes without brutal CC and drains, then you might be disappointed. (Source)
[...] I made an unclear post that ended up setting a lot of people off. I did not mean dps classes should be able to faceroll healers. I did not mean that one dps should be a match for one healer. I did not mean that CC should have no role in Arenas. I did not mean that healing should have no role in Arenas. I did not mean that we think healers are finally getting their just deserts in season 5.
The best way I can think to say it is: Burst damage should not dominate Arenas. Crowd control should not dominate Arenas. Healing should not dominate Arenas.
I don't think this is really news to people who have been doing Arenas very long. (Source)
[...] My point was that we don't give every spec the ability to stunlock, sheep or silence. And we're not going to. But those specs still need to feel like they can contribute in an Arena. Understanding the concerns now, I should have said something more like "It should still be possible for warriors and shamans to take on and sometimes defeat healers (even if it takes 2v1 or 3v1 or whatever)." Crowd control should not be the dominant factor in Arenas. Neither should burst damage. (Source)
[...] I will just leave it at this: When you put a healer on your team, you need to feel that the dps you lose from not having another dps class is more than offset by the survivability brought by the healing. I'm cool with all damage teams existing, so long as there aren't too many of them and they take big risks from neglecting healing. (Source)
Heirloom items and LVL 1-79 balance
We do take them into consideration. For example, we do put some thought into the structure of the talent trees based on when classes get new abilities. Part of the whole design of hierloom items was to give players who have reached max level a reason to go try another (for some of us, yet another) class.
We don't spend much effort balancing PvP or PvE for levels below the max level, since nearly all player balance concerns are about max level. (Source)
No Deadly/Hateful Band of Salvation available
I'll look into the healer ring issue. (Source)
ETA on Healing mechanics changes
I have given an ETA and I will give another one. It will be a long time. Do not look for it in the next patch or so. We want to take a comprehensive look at healing the way we did at tanking, and that took a long time. Healing may even be trickier to change. I also always add when I comment on this topic that you should not assume that all or even most healers hate healing or even find it clunky at best. Many players love healing and we have to be careful not to break the game for them. (Source)
51 Points talents
That is not our design. If the 51-point talent defines the tree then you are closing the door on a hybrid spec of some kind ever being viable. The rest of a talent tree should not be filler to reach the 51 pointer. That is why we budget them exactly the same as the first tier talents. Now there are specs for which the 51 feels more mandatory and those for which it feels less mandatory. We’re okay with that too. Talent trees should be diverse and what works for one class might not work for another. (Source)
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6 Replies | 765 Views
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» Hunters Get the Axe |
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Dec 10, 2008 - 7:33 AM - by Proto
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Since no one other than Hunters matter, this is front-page stuff people:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/
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Hunters of all specs, and particularly Beastmaster, are doing too much damage in PvE.
We tested this a lot internally in beta and knew hunters were high but we hoped other classes would be able to catch up in a way they have as yet been unable to do. We want to be careful not to hurt hunter dps too much in PvP, so we’re taking most of the damage out of Steady Shot and Volley. Beastmaster hunters are in addition losing some of their pet dps. We still want BMs to have the best pets, but pet dps numbers are a little high at the moment. We are also still concerned about hunter survivability in PvP and taking the opportunity to jazz up Deterrence into something that looks and plays a little more interesting.
These are not all of the changes we are working on for hunters, but those changes we feel are ready for testing. We hope to get these changes up on the PTR so players will have a chance to test them out and respond before they go live.
- Steady Shot – now only gains 10% of attack power as damage (down from 20%).
- Volley – reduced the damage by about 30% for all ranks. Note that AE damage from many classes is very high right now and we are looking at all of them. Volley in particular had reached the point where some hunters were using it to the exclusion of most other attacks.
- Readiness – no longer affects the cooldown of Bestial Wrath.
- Deterrence – has been completely overhauled. It now allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage (this is a limitation we are trying and might end up removing). 60 sec cooldown.
- Kill Shot – cooldown reduced to 15 sec (from 35 sec).
- Kindrid Spirits – now only grants 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
- Serpent’s Swiftness – now only grants 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack speed to pet.
- All hunter pet abilities with a cooldown longer than 30 sec have been moved off the global cooldown.
- Growl— threat generation increased by 20%
- Call of the Wild – now benefits only the hunter and his or her pet.
- Rake and Scorpid Poison – slightly nerfed to bring them into line with other pet abilities.
- Spirit Strike – reduced the period on the dot so it will work better with Longevity.
- Improved Tracking – now benefits damage to all included creature types as long as you are tracking one of them. You don’t have to swap around what you are tracking as much.
- Aspect of the Wild – now raid-wide.
EDIT: The "only" on Serpent's Swiftness meant 10% pet attack speed instead of 20%. The hunter bonus is unchanged.
[...]
I did say these are not all the hunter changes we're working on. Some we haven't quite worked out yet and others (one exciting one in particular concerning ammo) won't be ready until Ulduar or so.
We think MM was too high and BM was way too high. Survival is probably a little low. We are looking at buffing Survival, possibly through Explosive Shot, but we haven't finalized that yet.
The Deterrence change is defintely something we'll need to see in action on the PTR.
I don't want to do a disservice to all the good PvP feedback by attempting to boil it down too much. However, in general a lot of hunters were concerned about being able to do damage as much as they were concerned about being able to survive damage. We don't expect the Deterrence change to solve the former problem obviously. We're still working on that one, but we wanted to go ahead and announce what changes we have now so that you guys can be chewing on them.
Nerfing classes is never fun. It means that our initial tests and estimates didn't play out in the real world, which is a failing on our part, not anything the players did wrong. While buffing is a lot more fun, we think we'd get to crazy land too quickly by trying to make current BM dps the new benchmark. That would mean touching virtually every other class and spec as well as many encounters. While it might produce more positive PR in the short-term, it's a ton more work in the long-term that we would rather spend on new content or other problem areas.
Also, the sky is not falling. We're posting here so we can get feedback. Threats of rerolling or that sort of melodrama aren't really giving us any information we need. I can understand while you might want to vent a little bit, but posts with nothing but QQ aren't helpful.
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4 Replies | 699 Views
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» WotLK 5-Man Dungeons - Bigger, Better, and Incomplete! |
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Nov 10, 2008 - 9:52 AM - by Proto
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So, while I love 25 mans, I can't help but admit that I also love the 5 man instances as well especially while leveling up. MMO-Champion has a great breakdown of not only the bosses but itemized lists of gear that drops in these new WoTLK 5 mans. See it all here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=25614.0
Quote:
WotLK 5-Man Dungeons - Bigger, better, and incomplete
As promised, here is another batch of WotLK updates (and almost on time !). All the pages for 5-man dungeons had their summary greatly improved :
- Loot tables have been added. Screenshots for each items are available as well as links to the major item databases. Tooltips on mouseover have been added. Items are now sorted by type and spec.
- Quests have been added
- Achievements have been added
The individual pages for each boss aren't done yet and will most likely be ready for tomorrow, along with ... What you're all waiting for. (Yes, raid instances, but listing 150 items in a same instance take slightly more time than 5-man dungeons)
Also, you can contribute to the next update by :
- Pointing out errors, dead links, or anything useful.
- Posting missing strategies in comments, it's not like 5-man bosses are very hard and that's probably easy to explain
- Post decent videos for each encounter if you have them ... Just make sure the quality isn't too bad
- You can also mail me your screenshots if they're very nice. (1440x900 min resolution, very high details settings, no interface)
The last one is just here for polishing but I guess it doesn't hurt to ask. And now ... the updated pages !
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0 Replies | 850 Views
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» Darkhand is Moving to World of Warcraft |
Oct 26, 2008 - 9:36 AM - by Proto
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DDH is officially moving to World of Warcraft, effective immediately, on the Blackrock server - Horde faction. This was not a fly-by-night decision. Many of us didn't take this switch lightly and people have already invested money into character transfers and new accounts with the surprising full support of all core DDH members.
In just the past year we've seen a lot of changes that have taken place in the games played by DDH. We quit EQ2 after a couple of very successful years playing the Raid and PVP aspect of that game. We were very much burned out on it, and were looking for anything to come out to replace it. AoC launched...we dominated, yet it was a complete and utter failure. Some of us had such high hopes for that game, and it was total FAIL.
Warhammer was promised to be a ressurection of the glory days of Mythic's DAoC style gameplay to provide us with a truly wonderful PVP experience in RVR. While the game isn't "mature" we looked at what the end game would be like and had to wonder... Is this even a game that we want to play when they DO fix it? Massive zerg festivals? Faction imbalances, repeated keep raids, zero solid PVE content to back up the PVP? There's something missing from Warhammer, and we don't mean just content. It seems that nothing you complete or accomplish in that game matters and we're not sure a patch is going to fix that.
Having said that, DDH will keep an active crew in Warhammer for those that wish to stay. The guild will still be dictated by Cifu but a steady leadership role will be chosen soon to oversee all aspects of the WAR sect.
World of Warcraft: The one thing that is certain about WoW is that the game IS polished, it DOES work, we know exactly what we are going to be getting and there's a ton of experienced players in Darkhand to put towards this game and all it now has to offer, (nearly 4 years after we officially left it).
To sum it up, the past 8 months of jumping from game to game "hoping" the next great MMO was going to give DDH what we wanted is getting old, fast. We're not prepared to log into another 1/2 finished MMO for some 2-3 months until developers figure out the secret recipe for RVR, Raiding, or otherwise. We will no longer WAIT for a game to be working, when right now we can simply play a game that we know is ready, proven, highly-populated, cross-server competitive, and finished.
It's great timing. The level cap will be raised, there is new content, a new expansion, a more-equal playing field, and new aspects to the game overall that we haven't experienced since Feb, 2005.
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0 Replies | 894 Views
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» Aion Armory |
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