World of Warcraft®

Q: Why can't we have a pure, straight up, unadulterated Death Match style Battleground?

I think this is an excellent idea, with some tweaks. I recently just finished reading, The Hunger Games, where this idea is taken to the extremes. Imagine this:

• 12-24 players. 12 single players or 12 pairs (24 total).
• Large arena (as big as AV).
• Random map and terrain.
• Add random mobs and/or deadly obstacles.
• Players start at middle of map, in clear view of other players, but with some distance.
• Matches could take a long time to finish. Last person/team alive wins.
• Survivability, cunning, deadliness is what determines who wins.

Good targets to tunnel, that's what.

Hand of freedom + acts of sacrifice must be nice, as apparently is living in a bubble.

My DK partner in 3's has better uptime on Frost Mages than I do even without our healer spamming dispels on him. I don't think you realize how Ret plays in arena right now.

Also, lol @ the Divine Shield comment. Because I'm totally going to use a 5-minute CD for 8 seconds of half-damage on-target time. As for Freedom, I'm lucky to have active for even half its duration.

03/22/2011 11:47 AMPosted by Bogoran

Can anyone give me a reason why balance druid's starsurge "NEEDED to be nerfed" besides the fact that it can blow people up in BGs?

Wait, what? How many reasons must a nerf or buff be based on?

In this situation PvE needs to be considered, given that starsurge is a huge part of Moonkin PvE DPS. The 20% Nerf to SS will largely affect Moonkin DPS in PvE. Moonkins are a strong DPS class right now in terms of PvE but they aren't strong enough to warrant this significant nerf - at least from what I've seen.
This is where I say maybe I am just not informed and would like somebody who thinks this nerf is somehow warranted in PvE to elaborate. (As I explained/asked in the last bit of my original post)

03/22/2011 11:02 AMPosted by Bashiok

With the exception of a few (kind of silly) dual Blood comps in the 2v2 bracket, we see most of the Blood DK complaints when they are Battleground flag carriers. Tanks are hard to kill – that’s their thing. When tanks do obnoxious amounts of damage in PvP in addition to high survivability, as happened in some of the Lich King seasons, that feels broken. In Cataclysm, their damage is a lot lower in PvP, but their survivability is high, which feels more appropriate. We did nerf the Glyph of Dark Succor to keep it from being abusive. We’d rather the role of tanks in PvP be as flag carriers and defenders rather than the dude chasing you around trying to kill you.

My level 85 DK does at max 26k Death Strike crits, and I think maybe no without GoDS.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

03/22/2011 1:06 PMPosted by Raïne

Wait, what? How many reasons must a nerf or buff be based on?

In this situation PvE needs to be considered, given that starsurge is a huge part of Moonkin PvE DPS. The 20% Nerf to SS will largely affect Moonkin DPS in PvE. Moonkins are a strong DPS class right now in terms of PvE but they aren't strong enough to warrant this significant nerf - at least from what I've seen.
This is where I say maybe I am just not informed and would like somebody who thinks this nerf is somehow warranted in PvE to elaborate. (As I explained/asked in the last bit of my original post)

It's a PvP concern. Starsurge hits for too much in PvP. The highest I've seen on myself is 43k, and that's with 3640 resilience (which is 38.25% damage reduction). I'm not sure if that's rare because the stars have to align with procs or something, but I can guarantee it's still too high for PvP.

It's fine if they nerf Starsurge down a bit, but only if they compensate you appropriately, which is what you should be pushing for.

My blasting low level PvP was an ad hominem towards you specifically. It was not at all the basis for my initial claim, either.

So, yes, you missed the point. The only point I care about making is that people are going to whine about anything no matter the outcome of the PvP Ask the Devs Q&A.

Also, saying I have no care for sub-level cap PvP is irrelevant to my initial point. It doesn't at all affect the strength of my argument.

Here is the thing though. It was relevant to my point which in turn you responded to which in turn bought all of this. Whining is a strong word and you would expect from valid, well constructive posts.

Wording is extremely important when having conversations. Was one of the reasons why I responded to yours. Which in turn made you deviated.

Of course people are going to complain but they have a right to especially done constructively which most of the people here did. Refusal to see that is quite silly.

You have to understand that my generalization is just that: a generalization. It's not aimed towards the people who are doing a good job of voicing their concerns, but to garbage like this:

lol @ official comment that frost mages are fine...you guys clearly don t pvp against mages do you? CCed from 100% to 0 I am sure is balanced...right? Mages have way too many ccs against casters and still last three patches have buffed mages even more.

And you wonder why some playersr are infuriated and frustrated.

That's whining. There's a lot of it in this thread and that is what my generalization is aimed at. Hell, there's a lot of it on the DD forum.

I'm sticking by what I said when I said people are going to incessantly whine about things no matter what the outcome of this Q&A was.

Really disappointed they don't plan to allow single rBG queues. There has to be a way to rank and match people of similar skill/ilvl based on participation compared to the rest of group.

Queues suck. Planning out and waiting for specific time and waiting for w/e amount of people to log on to queue sucks more!

I would love it if there was a way to play battlegrounds that existed between the current non-rated BGs that just throws a group of random people together and the rated-BGs that require getting 10 people together.

Please give me an MMR when I play in non-rated BGs and use that MMR to keep me safe from being teamed up with bots, AFKers, and mouth-breathers. It would be great if I could get into a battleground where I knew my allies and enemies are at about the same level of skill and dedication that I am WITHOUT having to organize a group for it.

If the rewards shouldn't be as powerful for playing in such a system, so be it.

Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions that the community posed. I agree with nearly all of your responses and am honestly very glad to know that you don't see Mages as being imbalanced (among other things) at the high end of arena. This lets me know that you indeed see beyond the non-stop whining of the 'lesser skilled PvP players' and actually understand higher level arena which means a lot (at least to me).

The only thing that I would ask you to consider after reading through all of your responses is trying to cut back on interrupts (mostly melee) without touching CC first. See how this works out and what kind of effect this has on comps before messing with the duration of CC. It may just happen that with CC being much easier to get out for both teams, it will "self balance" and also push for more 'balanced' (not in the power sense, but in the type makeup sense) melee/caster/healer comps.

The final thing is just a side note: Balance Druids don't really need to cast anything in Arena (2400+ experience). They do a ton of damage just casting instants and running around with Treants and Starfall.

That said, thank you again and 4.1 is shaping up to be what looks like an awesome patch.