19 July, 2006

Shamans Win

As Anonymous mentioned in the post below, the Shaman community has won the battle over the Windfury Totem nerf (remember the last time they won?). Nice to see that the developers don't mind letting something they considered just to be gamebreaking be in the game to score political points with the community and players. Not that I'm against the Shamans victory here; I'm all for as a balanced playstyle between Alliance and Horde as possible. But the intention by them sends signals, that in my interpretation, they are willing to sacrifice things in what they consider to be good, in effort to please a whining community.

My question is...why haven't us Paladins had that happen to us? I thought we were considered the largest whiners!

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shamans are like Jedi's with special jedi mind trick powers
greetz feedback

11:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you remember Mastgrr, at some point around 1.4 or .5 the SoC proc was going to be patched to work of spell crit rates and only crit for 150% (IIRC it happened on the first PTR Patch iteration). With the SotC nerf still fresh in their minds the Paladin community threw up such a shit-storm that Blizz patched it back pretty damn quick.

I still want to see the justification that the Devs had for nerfing Windfury Totem. I guess that rage generation was the big issue, but I hate the fact that we are left guessing as to the reasoning behind the nerfs that occur in all classes every patch.

Now then, the next Burning question is what will be after this patch: 1.13, or the Expansion. 'Cos if its the expansion, that's a long time to go without a content patch of any kind.

5:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you remember Mastgrr, at some point around 1.4 or .5 the SoC proc was going to be patched to work of spell crit rates and only crit for 150% (IIRC it happened on the first PTR Patch iteration). With the SotC nerf still fresh in their minds the Paladin community threw up such a shit-storm that Blizz patched it back pretty damn quick.


Yeah, and Caydiem said 'the developers are still not happy with the way seal of command works'. Nerfing it to magic crits would have upped the DPS but lowered burst damage of crits. So what happened?

In 1.9 they nerfed seal of command to 70% of it's original damage. Not just the crits. Paladins claimed this was a buff since they could judge seal of command for 180 damage now, and it was 7ppm rather than 5 Which just goes to show how clueless the paladin community is. A few of them understand that burst damage is what makes or breaks pvp.

If you want to talk about judging crusader, sanctity aura, and +spell damage items, I'll tell you about the Mana and oppurtunity cost of those things.

The funny part is, taking the magic based seal of command way back when would have been a better exchange. They still would have made the judgement do damage in 1.9, and we'd have 1 stat to chase (+ spell crit) rather than the insanity of what a retribution paladin chases now.

I still want to see the justification that the Devs had for nerfing Windfury Totem. I guess that rage generation was the big issue, but I hate the fact that we are left guessing as to the reasoning behind the nerfs that occur in all classes every patch.

The fact that it gives warriors and rogues insane burst damage? Want to think about what either of those classes can do with sword spec and that thing?


Windfury Totem (Rank 3)
250 Mana
Instant cast
Tools: Air Totem
Summons a Windfury Totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster. The totem enchants all party members main-hand weapons with wind, if they are within 20 yards. Each hit has a 20% chance of granting the attacker 1 extra attack with 315 extra melee attack power. Lasts 2 min.


Do you *REALLY* think that isn't overpowered? The horde likes to whine lately about what paladins have and shamans don't, please show me the group buff we have that comes close to being as godly as that for melee classes.

10:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous...

For the first part, I'm not going to debate the changes to SoC since 1.9. Given the itemisation at the time it was a nerf, pure and simple. Now the water is a lot muddier when debating the viability of SoC/Stunned JoC for burst damage. That's all I have to say apart from to mention that Caydiem seemed to have no idea what the Devs were saying one week to the next.

Changing SoC in 1.4 to be magic crit dependant and 150% damage for a crit (rather than 200%) in isolation (as was proposed, no other changes were included and SoC still recieved no benefit from +damage/healing) would also have been a nerf, a huge one in fact. For a Ret Paladin Melee crit was, and still is in fact, the premium stat, even more so for Recking Bombers /w vengence. Not only would it be a burst damage nerf, but also since Melee Crit was generally much higher than Spell Crit a straight nerf to DPS. The 1.9 changes are irrelevant to that fact given that they were implemented 8 months later and with SoC being melee based in mind.


As for the nerf to Windfury Totem, whether I think that is unbalanced or not is beside the point. What we need is the Devs opinion, especially now that they have reversed their decision and 'un-nerfed' Windfury Totem. Knowing their rational for nerfs allow us to not only put our opinion forward for whether they are correct in that rational, but also allows us to recognise other spells/skills/talents which are also likely to become overpowered or recognised as such at a later date. This is very important from a community relations standpoint if nothing else.

As for what is as powerful as WT it depends on in what field. Raid setting BoM provides approx. as much DPS increase (and BoK+BoM is as powerful as any two totems you may care to mention) and WT may pull aggro due to its burst nature. In PvP it is immensely powerful, but nerfing it nerfs Horde raid ability, which they seem to be disadvantaged with already, and is easily dispelled given the Totem-Target mods around. Argueably, Alliances raid ability and thus higher equipment quality has a greater impact in PvP.

So, like I say, Devs reasoning would be nice, ours doesn't matter a jot.

1:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In PvP it is immensely powerful, but nerfing it nerfs Horde raid ability, which they seem to be disadvantaged with already, and is easily dispelled given the Totem-Target mods around.

LOL. Seriously, they nerfed Divine Shield and Blessing of Protection in 1.9 to have forbearance because it made a pve encounter trival, yet they never thought what it did to us in pvp.

Here is your reasoning, the Shaman cried, and enough CM's play Shaman/Horde so they represented the complaints of the class better then they ever represented the paladin communities complains. But hey, keep enjoying your broken offense. At least the heals, blessings and the shield are good.

4:48 PM  

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