f13.net

Who's next?

Front runners appear to be:

PVP:  Locks and Hunters
PVE:  Pallies and druids

My bet:  Paladins.

The whine will be fucking deafening, when the largest lobby group in this game - alliance - confronts paladins in pvp for the first time.  This will take a few months though before the horde wave of paladins hit.

* Rubs his Hands *

I think Hunters. Seems to me the majority of nerfs happen because if PVP. In PVP hunters are gods right now. Also, Locks seem a very popular choice for forum whining.

Warlocks first, followed by hunters. Paladins when a significant number of them hit 60+ on horde.

Throw warrior in there somewhere since we always get a good nerf here and there.

The Hunter nerf starts Tuesday. Hunter's are only PvP gods for two reasons -- ultra-fast pets (nerfed last patch) and high crits on multishot. PvP gear shifts to high-stamina + resiliance starting with TBC.

Gear alone will nerf hunters, as none of the TBC gear really improves Hunters past where they are now in terms of DPS.

1.) Locks

2.) Hunters

3.) Paladins, but with the same caveat that fab mentioned.  They are under the radar right now, but when they get a higher profile, *snipe*

Warlocks just took a nerf to their dots changing the coefficients and druids had the way their threat nerfed didn't they?  Dunno how the game is atm but that's what I heard dunno if both are still overpowered.

Rogues.


I win.


Rogues always get nerfed.  When Bhodi downloaded the latest patch and it wouldn't tell you what it did, I told him that it 'Nerfed Rogues somehow'.  It's always a safe bet.

Druids. I am doing utterly insane damage in cat and bear and have over 10k armor points in bear when buffed. In tier 1 gear.

I have great hatred for Locks and their resist-you-spells now I'll fear+dot=you're dead ezmode pvp bullshit, but honestly in a week it'll be levelling time so I won't give a fuck about them for several months as they won't be in my face constantly.

So I just have to bite my tongue and continue to suck it down for a 2 more days till I can get my mage's pants, and hopefully save enough BG tokens to get my mage and rogue the Dranei pvp mount come next week, and it'll be done.

Shame I can't get any more gear for my rogue. Shoulders and Boots would have been nice, but I guess I'll go with the much-vaunted MC-beating world-drop greens..

I am seriously looking forward to the...entertainment when BE pallies & draenei shaman start hitting the BGs in any sorts of numbers.

A: ZOMG shaman suck! Paladins are overpowered!
H: No shit, Sherlock.  :roll:

It wont be locks. Felguard has been nerfed and unnerfed a bit in beta, I think what they have no they're happy with. DoTs were nerfed for PvE and PvP reasons, though I expect mostly PvE.

Actually, I'm looking forward to that as well. Playing alliance, I don't often really notice pallies, but the thousands of fucking totems all over the floor (that ignore my AE) shit me no end. I'm looking forward to Horde getting fucked off by a forest of totems on the ground...

no! your grass is greener!

Dual wielding shaman will get the bat soon.

I don't quite agree.  Shammies are good 1 vs. 1 - but for whatever reason - in my impression the complaints about them died off a long time ago.  I never see shamans as key in pvp - for whatever reason - they just don't seem to matter that much anymore.  I noticed this too when I played an alliance 60 warrior - shamans were not a concern.

In terms of impact on the game, Paladins >> shamans.  In PVE and PVP.  I do not expect to see any real rants from horde about shamans.  However, I expect to see much CRYING from alliance about horde paladins.

MUHAHAHA

Warlocks beat our rogues on patchwerk now.

Not a "grass is greener comment". More a shamans and their totems shit me post. Especially when I'm nuking them and my target auto-switches to their stupid little sticks that I can't AE. Pallies I'll just nuke into oblivion when they're low or otherwise follow Ironwood's advice.

Paladin damage was already nerfed with the last patch.
I never had any problems with paladins in pvp, ever [in arenas, the only place I can fight them that's not a meaningless duel], whether I'm on my warlock or warrior (not 1v1 as my warrior of course, but warrior+druid vs paladin+paladin for example). And no, I'm not fighting valordins with a TUF, in fact, they almost always outgeared me and my partner. They have plenty of weaknesses.

Anyway, in the same "zomg your side is more ezmode" tone that this thread has taken off in... what I'm looking forward to are horde priest and warlock complaints when they end up fighting all-undead groups in arenas. WOTF for all! :)
The same goes for shamans vs. priests in group pvp, and the realization how badly a buff-oriented class fares vs a buff-remover melee unit.

(and yeah, locks are not going to get nerfed. I can see them maybe readjusting DOT coefficients once a lot of people hit level 70, that's about it.)


-- Z.

Yep.. if anything Hunter crit % are going down at the baseline, then you add-in the Resiliance factor and it's going to plummet.  However, the question is will that be realized before or after Blizz caves to the whining.

  Considering there's going to be tons of bugs, server crashes and other 'fun' stuff like forced server splits for them to deal with immedeatly following Tuesday, I'm in favor of the "before".

Locks already got nerfed, and with all the addt'l +stam on the gear, I don't think they're going to get hit again soon.  Once people get a few BC items they're going to realize how very hurt Locks have gotten. 

Pallies, same deal.  All that additional Stamina and HPs are just going to turn them into the nuisance they were before, not the gods they are now.


Yes, you do.  THe next "nerf" patch will happen in a month or so.  When that happens many, many rogues will have "Cloak of I-Win" and be using it in PvP like there's no tomorrow.  1min cooldown and no energy cost to strip all afflictions make you 90% resistant to all spells?  The crying from Hunters, Mages, and Locks will get them pounded into the ground.


Good shaman, like good pallies are hard to find.  The excellent shaman I've been up against are such a nuisance that it's infuriating.   3 Shaman on flag defense in WSG, all cross-healing and dropping Earthbind totems as they get nuked?  Yeah, nobodys going anywhere until your team gets there to wipe up the offensive group. 

They're not the offensive gods that some folks think they are, but they play defense in small groups very very well.   I'm sure the same can be said of Pallies, but their weakness is that bubble is the gimmick so many rely on.  It's not as powerful as you think, it's just damn frustrating.

But that is the delicious beauty of this topic.  What * I  think * about paladins is about to be tested:  How strong is the alliance whine about paladins going to be compared to any complaints by Horde regarding Dreani shaman? 

This is like a controlled experiment - in sociology no doubt (That has to be a first hehe).

Three classes of anything can be highly effective though - keep that in mind.  Can you imagine 3 frost mages on defense? :)

I won't whine about pallies. I have a 60 that I shelved [and tried out briefly again.. still shelved] and I know their weak points (and there are quite a few of them). The only thing that would've made them overpowering (the ability to burst someone down in one stun) was removed this patch, so I don't think there'll be anything to complain about.

... and do you honestly think whine posts on the b.net forums are any sort of 'sociological representation' of the alliance players, much less the gaming population? :P


-- Z.

True - the forums are the entertainment  :-D  But really, I think the forums are a decent surrogate for Blizzard's actions (the squeeky wheel...) - but there is no need for me to defend this point:

The "outcome" is whether paladins get nerfed, while shamans remain largely untouched.  The true test here is Blizzard's action.


Interesting.  The patch this past week - mind if I ask what exactly the change was?  They can no longer stun lock?  I did not quite follow the complaints guys were having about pally stuns lately.

Crusader Strike is now on a 10sec cooldown [from 6], activates the GCD, and Vengeance [the main paladin damage increaser talent, triggered after a crit] was nerfed to 10% from 15%. This also means that a ret paladin won't be able to kill an equally-geared character with an autoattack+stun+judge+strike+autoattack+repentance+seal+wait+judge+strike combo anymore.

But then, I haven't fought any pallies since then, this is just what I've heard from guildies and friends. :p


-- Z.

Interestingly, dispite all the whining about how overpowered hunters are at the moment the only change they've made is to lower the mana cost on multi shot back to it's pre-nerf level. I think the biggest problem with hunters is that all the dps they lost from the nerf to aimed show got put into an instant shot, making them even more effective in pvp than previously.

Actually, from being on the receiving and giving ends -- it's that properly geared MM Hunters can get a good solid 25% crit rate across the board, and push it into the 40s for multishot. So an auto-shot, arcane shot, multi-shot, auto-shot crit combo happens a lot. And it's a quick string of crits. So you're talking 5k of damage in a few seconds, and arcane shot is utterly untouched by armor. A lot of front-loaded damage, especially against a clothy -- but noticeable even to the plate wearers because Arcane shot isn't mitigated.

However, as I've said -- that's the best it's ever going to be. It's only going downhill from there. The gear in TBC doesn't pump up Hunter crit rates any higher than they are now, but everyone else is getting more stamina and crit resistance -- so our effective PvP damage is simply going to drop. The introduction of steady-shot (another fast shot in the rotation) will pump us back up some at 66, but at best we're taking a huge effective damage nerf over the next 10 levels. How much of one depends entirely on the Burning Crusade gear. We might end up just right, or even underpowered. All depends on how much resiliance and stamina the PvP-gear has at 70.

Ya at 70 my hunter was down to 19% crit and that was with a few 25-28 crit rating items. That level up balance thing really hurts, along with the reduction on agi on items.

Yeah, I think a LOT of people have simply not grasped or brushed-off the appearance of an anti-crit stat.  I keep seeing people saying things like, "Oh, I've got 30% crit now, I'm sure I'll have 50% at 70..."  Um, no.  Because everyone and their brother is going to be piling on anti-crit gear as fast as they can get it, where they couldn't before.  Not being critically hit is a very, very good thing, especially now that they've removed the 'Activates when you get critted' wording on talents that used to have it.  At best, I predict a level 70 will maintain the crit percentage they had at 60 if they pile on lots of equipment and talents to boost it against the resistances that others will be getting.  For most, I expect that level 70s will be critting less often than we're seeing the 60s doing today.

Yep, and I'm sure it's Blizzard's intention so PVP isn't nearly as much of an insta-kill fest for people in hot-shit gear.

This is me as a mage with a few epics and all level 57-60 blues (nearly all with some +damage and hit/crit) in AV/AB.

"bolt...bolt...bolt...okay, that's one rogue down, and wait there's a hun~"

Then I proceed to take about 3000 damage in 2-3 seconds from that hunter and die before I can blink to his deadzone or out of range/LOS. That hunter suddenly has a lot more trouble if I have over twice as much HP and 5-15% less chance to take a crit. Before that though, I'm an afterthought, free honor.

My post wasn't directed at you specifically.  I was just chuckling about each sides propensity to think that the other side is playing on easy mode.  Both the shaman and the paladin are solid classes with benefits and drawbacks.  Both the paladin and shaman can be applied to specific scenarios that improve or greater improve chances of success in a specific scenario.  PvP isn't a "scenario".

I look forward to more bitching about racial abilities in the future... and map imbalance in the BGs.  Clearly these topics haven't been picked apart in nearly enough detail.  (again, I'm not picking on you here, I'm just sayin)

Nod. Now let's talk about how much we hate Warlocks and Shadow Priests.

And hunters as well, I guess.

My vote is feral druid.  Friend that has nice epics and when buffed has over 1100 armor.  The damage of the cat is enough to nearly have a lvl 52 druid slice my 60 rogue up.  I looked at her items and they were all green.  I won, but she was bringing my life down very very quickly.  Nasty.

She resisted my stuns too  :-(

The ongoing debate / concern / discussion I have with my bud in any of these games are the hybrid classes.  We go through cycles in ALL of these games where hybrids overshadow pure classes (rogues, mages, warrior, clerics) for awhile until corrected...I was going to list examples in Coh, EQ and WOW - but that's asking for a derail :P

Priests are an interesting case in the nerf game.  Pure healers are rare.  So the battle developers have is to make this class more popular, or strengthen the same function in hybrid classes diminishing the need for a master healer.  My bet is that priests for the most part will not be touched - even if overpowered.  Not enough folks play them - and there is a constant demand for priests.  The current hybrid healers can substitute for priests now - but not for heroic encounters - which will be all the rage and bring us full circle all over again in the demand for master healers (imo).

I really would hate to see feral druid nerfed since I do have one, but it is seriously overpowered over the 5 other alts I play regularly.  My perspective is all PvE mind you.

Druids have something from every class and that "something" is quite good for each. 

Priest: Healers (quite good healers with AE, Direct, and HOT, cure poison and curse)
Warrior: Bearform (medium tanking ability since last patch, heavy armor, quite good dps, but even better they have a healing skill without even leaving form.)
Rogue: Catform (good dps, stealth, stun-from-stealth, bleeding attacks, etc.)
Paladin: Several of the best buffs in the game including getting any mana back from anyone in the party including themselves.
Mage: Several different direct damage spells , also has a AE spell that slows and damages at the same time!
Warlock:  No pet, but have a very nice DD+DOT spell

I love playing my druid.  I have something in my pocket for almost any situation.  I make a huge impact on group play.  However, this is more-so in all areas and in the most dramatic way than any other class I've played.

The class sucks as a newb, but at 40+ and especially at 60, the class is hard to beat from any direction.

*Edit: added Warlock comparison.

I just don't see enough people playing druids for this to happen.   Horde, you're lucky to see one or two per AV.  I remember back when I was still raiding you'd see one or two per raid and none would be feral.  That started to change somewhat with bear tanking becoming somewhat useful in AQ (although rage generation always seemed rather slow to me, maybe I suck  :| ).

Still, feral is great and yah, you can be effective in very poor gear.  My catform has more AP at 49 than my level 60 enhance shaman and nearly as high of a crit percentage in really poor greens with no enchants.

I don't ever see druids being a FOTW class due to the perception of slow leveling and the sub 20 experience not being all that great (no cat, no bear before 10).  Usually the unpopular classes can float under the radar for quite a while.   Until they start one shotting people consistantly.  I'm still kind of miffed that the 40 point talent isn't a new form with a new dance (only reason I ever considered moonkin), but I'll have enough fun with mangle.

Locks and druids will be nerfed when there are too many people playing them. Hunters, paladins, warriors and rogues will get nerfs. Nothing for mages, warlocks and shaman. Buffs for priests and druids. Its about active populations, not power or whining.

As for Horde paladins and Alliance shamans? Its interesting to see that a level 70 method of countering the paladin bubble was introduced. I guess invinci-bubble would have been OP in Horde hands. Loving resto shaman though... the first rule of earth shield... you get the idea.

I'm looking forward to hordies having to level a paladin and killing themselves IRL en masse at the suck.

I never really understand why people bring something like this up in an arguement.  Sure, if you are a brand new WoW player, sub 20 gameplay might turn you off of a class, but anyone with at least 1 60 under their belt knows that you spend a grand total of maybe 1 day of play time (and thats stretching it) in the Sub 20 levels.  Hell, the first 20-25 levels can fly by so fast they barely even register (I have leveled enough alts to 35 for crafting purposes to know)

While that may have been true back in the day, everything I have heard about the current state of Paladins seems to indicate that this will be a much lesser factor.  Hell, im personally considering leveling a paladin in my offtime just as something to do.

True enough. I just like to count on people having fickle tastes and most people I knew leveling alts either made something that's extremely easy/fast to level up or something that has a well defined place in the end game (ie all of the rogue, warrior, hunter, priest alts).  I've seen enough people stall out on leveling druids, and if they don't buckle early the 45-48 part hits you hard.

I just don't see them becoming prevalent enough.  There's a number of factors you could look at, even if I didn't pick a particularly good one to focus on.  In my old 75 person guild, there wasn't a single druid alt past 19.

It's funny how 24 hours worth of play time is considered nothing to a MMO player. 

Can you expand on this?  How is the bubble being dealt with?

Priests' uber-dispell can strip Pally bubbles.   "Bubble"> dispell> aieeee.

I used to think you were Smart Righ :(

Most of the nerfs in this game happen from PvE balance I would wager, not PvP and the power of the whinge.

I mean, people have been whining about 3min mages, Warlock DC, stunlocks, etc for god knows how long. And they have not been nerfed or were nerfed very slowly after a long period of time. The Devs realised that PvP had some big problems and couldn't really figure ways to balanace the classes around this and they didn't want to screw up PvE because of it, thus they have inflated in Stamina in TBC to try and change things a bit more fundamentaly.

Yet we've seen AOE nerfs, DoT nerfs, Feral tanking nerfs, etc with regularity. There are FAR more nerfs in this game for PvE reasons than PvP.

Also, Warlock's have been adjusted again. DoTs are now subject to the same resitance checks as all other spells. This was not previously the case.

Why? Same reason DoTs were adjusted orignaly I would guess: They were doing waaay too much damage in PvE raids.

I expect the next real PvP nerf (not just minor game balancing, bug fixes) to be about Rogue CloS. In about 3 years...

Awesome!!

Warriors need nerfs? As far as pvp I'm not sure we're good at much anymore unless ridiculously geared up and specced directly towards fury forsaking all other pursuits. As far as pve, I would hope we'd continue to be the best tanks out there with more love to protection.

It's rare that my hunter kills a warrior.  Can't normally-geared warriors pretty much chew through normally-geared mages, warlocks, rogues and hunters?

No. I normally destroy warriors. Stoneform helps, though, and IIRC you're a nelf. As best I can tell (I don't play one anymore), warriors are very gear dependent -- gear scaling and warrior scaling was getting a bit out of hand. Well-geared warriors were as good as well-geared Class X -- but warriors with the best gear were just destroying the upper end. It was just insane what a top-end warrior could do.

I think the goal (I'm nut sure if that was the effect) was to flatten out the curve. Try not to let high-end warriors get so overpowering, without nerfing the middle. Like with everything else, though, it was done with an eye towards gear not in the game yet. So warriors aren't quite as good as they used to be -- and they're facing at least two classes that suddenly really out do them.

So warriors are crying because they don't destroy everyone anymore?

I'd like to say that, but they've been pretty badly hurt PvE and PvP. They're getting whupped by virtually everyone, and their tanking abilities were -- at least briefly -- surpassed by druids and pets. That's got to sting a bit.

It really hurts if you were on the bleeding edge -- no more two swing kills. On the other hand, there's the perception problem. Warriors are right there in your face -- they're always target number one. With a pocket priest, they can stay up a long time. Otherwise, they're naked on the front lines, with all the ranged people ganging up on him.

Yeah... on my fairly well geared warrior (5.4k hp, GM polearm, random blue and purple PVP pieces), I can take hunters and rogues most of the time if it's a 1v1 situation and they don't have any place to kite / aren't preparation specced. I can kill warlocks most of the time (my main is a lock, I know what makes them tick :p), then die to their dots (or just die to them if they have a succubus and are undead.. most of them are). In a group though (if I'm not receiving heals and dispels, and that doesn't happen in a random alliance pug) I'm just sheeped/snared while the ranged characters pew pew me down with ease, usually saving me for last.

I'm definitely not destroying mages.. a frost mage has about a zillion ways to root me, a fire mage can near-1-shot me if he gets the poly off (and that's not too hard at all). If my escape artist and trinket are both up, I can 2-shot mages that don't pay attention, don't have iceblock, and blink after they nova, that's about it.

And of course shadow priests just melt warriors like nothing, it has to be one of the worst matchups in the game, probably above mage-warlock and rogue-warrior.


-- Z.

So what do I win?

I guess it's not a wave, but I saw a 61 blood elf pally on Tichondrius last night.

If I was marksman specced, I'd probably care. :) Wait until more hunters have steady shot.

Yeah, thats Saabik. He has been on, being powerleveled byb his guild 24/7 since release. He got to 25 really quick, then had a 60 power him through SM over and over till he was 45, then moved to Zul'Farak till about 55, then DM. I think last night was the first time he has been outside an instance since he was level 25.

Didn't the first 70 get banned for this shit (dwarf priest, forget his name)?  I guess this guy is lower-profile and thus safely under the radar.

Why would that be bannable?

If it was done in the manner im thinking, its a tap exploit.  Always got bugged by guildmates to help powerlevel their stupid alts in DM west or whatever.

Works thus:  People enter instance.  Person leaves group, taps mobs, rest of group kills mobs, re-invites tapper (the guy being powerleveled) before the 60-second autohearth is activated.  Results in all exp going to the tapper.  Not sure if it could be done with raid calibur mobs, but now that i think about it thats probably how that first guy hit 70 in a couple days, apparently his entire guild helped him and i guess thats how (speculation here, i dont know the exact methodology the priest used, just that he got banned for it).

Sounds to me like they're in their own personal hell.

Best leave em there.

Good call.

Lol, if that was Saabik, I dont think he was exploiting the Tap Drop 'n Tank for full exp bug.  He's in my guild.  I can tell you that him and a bunch of buddies were grinding nearly non stop from day one of patch.  Hell, its kind of sad, but he will probably beat my main to 70.

I do know he had a lot of twink type gear banked and already enchanted waiting for his Paladin when expantion hit, to help wih the leveling.

Surf, are you in the Core?

As far as I know, it was NOT done like this. The lower level just follows the higher level around, and still gets decent exp. I did it a bit with my 62 Rogue and my lowbie Pally who are on different accounts. A normal mob kill with the Pally was around 120 exp. Grouped with my Rogue in SM I was getting around 60 exp, but it was coming much much faster. Also, adding more lobies to the group actually makes the exp go up due to the group bonus, with 2 other same level pallies in the party, we where all getting around 78 exp per kill. My rogue can clear out any of the wings except cathedral in about 13 minutes. Cathedral takes around 25 minutes.

Yep.
My main is Kaimei, mage, just dinged 65.

I am one of the Co-GMs of PaganSpiral, Morv is my rogues name. Im about to hit 63, but I have been taking it slow, and working on an alt so my rogue is constantly in rested.

I have been taking it moderately slow.  My main is 65 (half way to 66 now) and i have been tooling aroudn on my other 2 60 alts trying to level them up in Alchemy / Tailoring to use as Transmute / Mooncloth bots.

still so much to see and do either way :P

< deleted >

Necro and deleted. The plot thickens.

Bah I will confess - I heard a rumor in game that the pally bubble had / was going to be nerfed - to 75% damage reduction.  I posted here - THEN checked to boards on blizz - to find out it was a hoax.

* Shows off his stupidity *

Well, last i heard, the pally bubble HAD been nerfed, in that priest Mass Dispell will strip it off.  No idea if that actually works tho.

Yes and no. It will strip off one effect, randomly determined. So the more buffs and whatnot you have up, the lower the chances that it will hit the bubble. There's also a Prot talent called Stoicism that gives you an extra 30% chance to resist dispells. So it's far from a sure thing.

Frankly, people have made way to big a deal about the bubble. It's nowhere near as powerful as the "special feature" ability of every other class in the game. In fact, it's the only way to survive more than 5 seconds against most of them.

Invulnarability - much like stealth + ranged damage - will always be crying points in competetive games. It doesn't matter how useful they are, their mere exsistence will cause wailing and gnashing of teeth.