Großes Statement zum Warrior

Krieger sind im Nahkampf unübertroffen und vielseitig. Sie können viel einstecken aber auch viel austeilen. Im Schlachtfeld kämpfen sie an vorderster Front und agieren Sie als Tanks (Panzer) um den Schaden für die anderen Spieler zu absorbieren.
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Asgir
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Großes Statement zum Warrior

Beitrag von Asgir »

Als Reaktion auf eine lange und intensiv geführte Diskussion in den offiziellen US-Boards zum Krieger und den anschließend durchgeführten Kriege-Streik auf einigen US-Servern kam gestern von einem Developer von Blizzard ein auführliches Statement zu den Problemen, die viele Spieler in den Fähigkeiten des Kriegers sehen.

Soweit ich es bisher mitbekommen habe, ist es die ausführlichste Antwort überhaupt, die Blizzard bislang zu den konkreten Beschwerden der Community formuliert hat und lässt hoffen, dass der Warrior mit den in den Aussagen enthaltenen Bug-Fix-Ankündigungen im Bezug auf die Spielbarkeit und Utility wieder etwas an Boden gutmachen wird.
Kalgan hat geschrieben:
Very contructive post, deserves a read from the CMs/Devs.


First, I’d like to thank you for the constructive post. Although we practically never miss reading a post like this, we unfortunately don’t typically have time to respond in detail to posts of this depth. However, since warriors have been a very hot topic lately, I’d like to give some insight into our thoughts on both warrior issues in general and the points raised below…
Long Term Issues - Rage Build -
Because of often slow rage build, the Warrior class is often uninvolved and requires little interaction, making it a less entertaining option than other classes. The amount of time it takes to generate enough rage to use abilities is too long in relation to other classes (namely rogue, for easy comparison).


While I don't disagree that warriors could use some more effective rage generation (I'll get into that in more detail in just a bit), I'd like to point out our general philosophical approach with regard to the warrior.

Warriors in WoW are absolutely intended to be more interactive then warriors in other similar games (and possibly more interactive then characters of any class in other similar games). However, they are definitely intended to be less "twitchy/frenetic" to play then WoW rogues are. We feel as though it fits the kit of the rogue class best to have the most spastic gameplay of any class, which I believe we've accomplished pretty well.

As such, I don't necessarily think it's legitimate to directly compare the twitch value of the warrior versus that of the rogue with the expectation that they will be the same. So, although we really do want warriors to have a substantial amount of button-pushing (which is already arguably very significant for some warrior builds that stance-twist a lot), rogues are intended to press noticeably more buttons in a given period of time then other classes. Therefore, I don't want to foster an expectation that warriors will be equivalent to rogues in this regard, even after the rage issues have been satisfactorily resolved.

Please remember, this is not intended to imply in any way that warriors should be "slow or boring" to play, only that they aren't intended to be as frenetic as a rogue to play.

1h+Shield: This build has the biggest rage issues; usually 3-5 per hit, which generally means around 6-12 seconds of regular melee to use a basic attack skill (HS). Compare this to the rogue, which regenerate 20end/2seconds. Over the same length of time as a Warrior, a rogue may regenerate 60-120end, enough for multiple special attacks. This large gap further increases as rogues regenerate end constantly, while warriors only generate [notable] rage from successful regular attacks.
While I don't disagree that 1h+Shield is the lowest rage-generating equipment choice, it is intended to be so, primarily for the following reason.

The more enemies you have hitting you at once, the less your rage generation from dealing damage means to your total rage generation (compared to the rage you generate from being hit). This means that as you take on more mobs, the 1h+shield approach becomes the stronger strategy since you gain an extremely significant amount of damage reduction, while drastically narrowing the rage generation gap caused by dealing less damage than 2h or DW (dual wield) equipment choices.

Obviously, there is a chicken-and-egg scenario where warriors need some rage to get the mobs on them in order to get more rage so they can keep the mobs on them. However, it is intended that this be manageable through bloodrage, taunting, and potentially starting a fight in another stance to build some agro (and also rage if you have Tactical Mastery), then switching to defensive, and finally through rage potions if other methods still aren’t enough for that particular encounter.

In addition, I noticed that you compare warrior rage generation to the energy regeneration of a rogue. This simply isn't a meaningful comparison for several reasons.

First, warrior abilities don't generally cost as much rage as rogue abilities cost energy (ie: 15 rage for heroic strike, 40 energy for sinister strike). So, while rogues do indeed still press more buttons then warriors due to power generation rates (as intended per the general philosophical comments earlier), trying to draw 1-to-1 comparisons between rage and energy generation aren’t entirely valid.

Second, rage does not translate into damage in the same way that energy does. For example, Mortal Strike costs 30 rage (compared to 40 energy for Sinister Strike), yet it is a free attack with usually a 2h weapon (whereas rogues can only use 1h weapons, which means Mortal Strike’s free attack is more potent then Sinister Strike’s), the additional damage bonus of Mortal Strike is considerably higher then the damage bonus of Sinister Strike, and Mortal Strike has a secondary effect of reducing the targets ability to heal to go along with it all. Simply put, 1 point of rage generally translates into a greater effect than 1 point of energy.

Third, if rage and energy were generated at equivalent rates, it wouldn't have been particularly meaningful for them to be different mechanics. If we intended for them to be the same, we probably would have chosen to make warriors use energy just like rogues do, yet all this would have done is water down the core differences between the character classes. So yes, we’re quite aware that rogues and warriors generate their power very differently. Thanks for pointing that out. ;]

Finally, if when it was all said and done warriors dealt as much damage as rogues (due to similar rage-energy translation into damage and similar power generation rates), warriors would be flat-out better characters then rogues (better armor, more hit points, same damage), so again, it simply isn't reasonable to draw direct comparisons between the two.

All of that having been said, we agree that there are some issues with rage generation in general, and we plan to address these so that warriors dish out some more damage and push slightly more buttons than they do today (more on this still to come).


2h Weapons: This build performs moderately for rage requirements. Average rage build per hit is 5-10, depending on damage; which means slower weapons, more damage, more rage/hit. Skills such as Mortal Strike (favoured by most 2h users) require large amounts of rage (30), a simple skill such as HS requires 2-3 regular hits to use, about 6-8 seconds on average. Once again this faces the same issues VS. Rogue end gain, where one HS attack would be the same as several rogue attacks.
Ok, yes, 2h rage generation is better then 1h+shield in a 1v1, with that gap narrowing the more targets you have on you at once (or generally speaking even just the more damage over a normal 1v1 amount you're taking in a given time frame). As noted above, this is known/intended. Also as noted previously, one Mortal Strike does not equal one Sinister Strike, so the frequency of performing said abilities, especially when coupled with other core differences between the classes, should not be expected to be equivalent.

Dual Wield: This build performs best overall for rage gain/use. Because these are 1h weapons, they recieve the same rage gain per hit as 1h+Shield. Because of the increased miss rate for Dual Wield, the extra weapon results in roughly 50-75% faster rage build than the 1h+shield build. The major issues with this build are the Miss Rate increase, which lowers overall DPS and rage gain, and the lack of abilities to use with the extra rage produced. Talent builds do not support Dual Wield spec, while the large miss rate reduces the effectiveness of abilities due to drastically lowered chance to hit. This build is the most comparable to Rogue ability, as it should be due to weapon similarities.
It is intended that DW produce slightly more rage over time then 2h. This is partially due to the fact that in our opinion, warrior abilities and general game mechanics overall slightly favor 2h weapons over DW, so it helps offset that. Again, there's nothing really "wrong" with that in particular as far as we're concerned (other then the overall rage generation issues that I have yet to cover, which are indeed a problem).

With regard to dual wielding, I'd like to clarify how it works and its intent. First, we do obviously realize that DW has a significantly higher miss rate, and that the offhand weapon does not deal its full damage. This is done to keep DW in direct DPS balance with using 2h weapons, and to ensure that both 2h and DW are well balanced in total effect against 1h+shield.

For a little background on the DW balance process, I need to first give a little background on how 2h weapon use is balanced against 1h+shield.

In order to make both 2h and 1h+s viable strategies for general purpose gameplay, we want approximately the same overall effectiveness in terms of total sustained killing ability over time between 2h weapon and 1h+s. This means that if you were to kill 100 creatures (for example) of your level, it should take close to the same total time including downtime when using 2h or 1h+s, perhaps favoring 2h choices somewhat (although it should be noted that there are intangibles that make measuring downtime a reasonable estimate rather than a perfect science).

While you will kill more quickly using 2h, you are expected to end the fight with a lower remaining health compared to the same fight using 1h+s. In the 1h+s case you will be killing more slowly, but have more health at the end of the fight, and therefore less downtime over the long haul (and yes, it is balanced to account for the fact that killing more quickly implies taking less hits from the enemy).

After it was all calculated to exhaustion (factoring in other objectives such as the desired damage reduction contribution of your shield relative to the rest of your armor), we determined that to achieve our goals of relative balance between 2h vs 1h+s, 2h weapons needed to produce approximately 20% more DPS then 1h+s. What this meant was that in order for DW to be an interesting (but not overpowered) choice, DW needed to also produce a total increase of 20% DPS over 1h+s (just like 2h does).

As you might realize at this point, if you got the full DPS from your second weapon while dual wielding (by having the offhand weapon attack at full speed, with full hit chance, and full damage), your DPS would go up by 100% rather than by 20% (assuming an equally good weapon in the offhand). Unfortunately, 100% amounts to a *lot* more then 20%, and would make DW the best choice by such a wide margin that it would have been pointless to have 2h or 1h+s in the game at all.

Given that, we needed to find a way to modify some combination of damage, hit chance, attack speed, or other basic combat factors in order to achieve 20% rather than 100%. Since we didn't want to reduce any one of these by too much, we opted to reduce the hit rate for both the main and offhand (since at least swinging a lot more helps correct streaky behavior caused by the increased miss rate).

In addition, since increasing the even-level miss chance to 24% or so for both weapons while using DW still wasn't enough to get us down to 20% increased DPS (and for "feel" reasons I'm sure you can understand, we didn't want to push the miss rate higher than that), we opted to reduce the damage of the offhand weapon, figuring that doing less damage from your offhand seems like it makes sense to players and would feel acceptable.

The combination of the increased miss rate for DW and lowering the offhand damage got us down to the 20% overall DPS increase from DW that we needed to ensure that DW was well balanced against 2h weapons.

So, while it can be always be said that some other combination of trade-offs for DW would have proven to "feel" better, we do have a DW system that is balanced and arguably feels more like you're actually using two weapons than DW systems in other RPGs that are also intended to be balanced.

As such, in response to the myriad of posts that offer the shocking revelation that DW has a higher miss chance than 2h or 1h+s, I’d like to say that it really isn't necessary to inform us of this. We know this, that's how we made it, thanks again for the reminder. ;] Also, it seems these revelations often imply that since DW has a higher miss chance, that the DPS isn’t as good as 2h, which (as explained above) simply isn’t factual.
Fortsetzung im nächsten Post .....

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Zuletzt geändert von Asgir am 31.01.2005, 02:58, insgesamt 2-mal geändert.
Asgir
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Registriert: 13.07.2004, 14:36
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Beitrag von Asgir »

Kalgan hat geschrieben:
Miss Rate: The Miss Rate on Warrior melee attacks is generally considered far too high. Fighting creatures 4-5 Levels below me, with maxed weaponskill, I have a 9% pure Miss Rate. Now 9% alone is not critical for regular PvE, however there are factore that make it much worse. First, Missed attacks generate no rage, therefore substantially decreasing rage build. 9% Miss Rate (NOT including parry/dodge/block) on mobs 4-5 Levels below is simply absurd for a purely Melee class (how could anyone argue that?). When combined with Parry, Dodge, Block, the 9% Miss because substantially higher, easily 25%+ on mobs +3 or higher. The frustration with this is due to two factors: Failure to build rage, and Miss streaks. Failure to buid rage means that the player may as well be AFK with auto-attack on, as there is little to no rage to use on abilities for interaction. Miss streaks are the worst enemy of 2h users, and I am well aquainted with them. It is not uncommon to have 4+ misses in a row as a Warrior, even on lower level mobs. This can be REALLY frustrating when a mob needs one hit to kill, and you take an extra 500 damage waiting for your 3.8 speed weapon to hit ONCE.


First, a few minor notes. Yes, slow weapons will be streakier then fast weapons, causing you to notice it more when you fail to hit the opponent. This isn't something that is likely to change, it's just a basic property of the psychology involved with having fewer random events in a given time versus more. It’s probably worth reminding everyone that you're also going to get a more substantial effect on a single fight from streaks of hits, which, after decimating the enemy in a few swift blows, you aren't likely to come to these forums to express discontent about. ;]

So, there are a variety of positives and negatives with regard to streaky results from slow weapons, and each player makes the decision for themselves in the end as to what they think "feels" better or more fun.

Also, we make no claims that a given "miss" event is fun, and as such we do like to have as little "missing" as we can get away with while keeping things balanced entertaining in the overall experience. At the same time, the reason it exists at all is because we feel that some reasonable amount of unpredictability adds to the overall fun of the game, since it lowers the chances that a given encounter will end in exactly the same way other similar encounters ended.

Now, regarding improving the warrior’s overall rage generation. We've found that there are indeed a few issues with rage generation as a result of bugs. Warriors (and druids in bear form) are intended to gain some rage on block,dodge,parry events, but apparently this isn't working correctly. This needs to be fixed asap in order for warriors to meet their total expected rage generation.

In addition, while our tests have indicated that players are getting the intended 5% miss rate while using a single max-skill weapon against even level enemies (yes, we've tested this exhaustively, and cannot reproduce the 9% miss rate you're reporting for normal swings), we have found the bug causing abilities (ie: heroic strike, sunder armor, etc) to miss around 9-10% of the time under the above conditions instead of the intended 5%. This does mean that warriors are getting the "miss" even about twice as often as they should. Obviously, this needs to be rectified asap, since it directly impacts the warriors DPS and rage use (since missing wastes 20% of the rage cost of the ability).

That being said, I do encourage more testing of the normal (non-ability) swings (believe me once again that we've tested this to no end), as they appear in our tests to be missing only 5% of the time. It might be that the "9% pure miss rate" you quote was from testing special abilities, but if not please do ensure those tests were accurate and let us know the exact details of your tests.

Also, we were definitely not able to get close to a 9% “miss” rate on normal attacks against creatures 4-5 levels below our characters (using 2h or 1h+s). Please give us more specific information as to the conditions and results of your tests on this front (and yes, the servers we've tested this on are the same as the servers we all play on). As far as we can tell, the 9% miss rate for normal attacks versus mobs of 4-5 levels below you just isn’t true.

Rage Potions: These have been discussed many times in previous threads. The primary issue with Rage Potions is that they are on the same timer as Health Potions. When Inner Rage was removed, it left the Warrior with essentially no alternative for initial rage build for PvP. Simply put, these should not be on the same timer has Health Potions, as it makes them quite useless. The extra health gained from a potion would allow the extra time needed to gain the same amount of rage anyway (in many cases).


We understand that Rage potions being on the same timer as other combat-timer potions means they don't amount to "free" rage. If rage potions were on a separate timer, we'd actually have to balance the game around the assumption that rage potions are used in a significant number of fights, which would affect the rage cost of warrior abilities (also, rage potions probably wouldn’t generate anywhere near as much rage as they currently do). As it stands, since we know that using a rage potion comes at the cost of not using another potion such as a health potion, we can balance without the assumption that warriors have a ton of extra rage from potions.

Therefore, rage potions aren't intended or expected to be what provides a baseline amount of rage for a fight. On the other hand, as is the case with the Charge ability, Bloodrage is also intended as a way to reduce the time before you're pressing your first ability button. I think it is definitely worth mentioning that we’ve listened to the feedback we’ve been getting from warriors, and agree that Bloodrage is too punishing right now. We plan to improve Bloodrage so warriors don't feel as hesitant to use it.

- Talent Trees -
Many of the skills in the Warrior talent trees are either completely useless, or out of place relative to the structuring of other classes. This usually limits feasible Warrior talent builds to 2-3.
"Completely useless" seems to me like an overstatement in order to emphasize the opinion (which does hold some truth) that certain warrior talent trees are not as powerful as others. While I don't feel the overstatement is really necessary (despite it being a long and proud tradition on forums like these), I agree with the assessment that several talents can use some improvement in order to bring them in line with other popular warrior talents.
Improved Thunder Clap: This is the most obvious of the Warrior talents that provides no true benefit. With 3 Talent points into the ability, it provides a minor 25% increase to Thunder Clap Damage. This might be acceptable if Thunder Clap itself did a respectable amount, however at Level 60 with Rank6 Thunder Clap, 3 Talent points provides only +16 Damage to the ability, boosting it frmo 62 to 78 Damage. As I'm sure most people are aware, 16 damage isn't significant at Level 15, let alone Level 60.
Agreed, this talent needs some love.
Flurry: There are no issues with this talent itself. What I don't understand however is why a Warrior, the "ultimate toe-to-toe fighter", requires 25 talent points in the Fury tree to aquire this skill, while a Shaman, the "secondary healing class with a fun assortment of spells and options", requires only 15 previous talent points.


Again while cross-class comparisons are popular methods to prop up flawed arguments in order to get a bunch of "/signed" responses from other members of that class, they typically don't end up being valid comparisons. The core reasons the comparison between the Warrior and Shaman's flurry talent isn't meaningful are as follows...

1. The percentage of a Shaman's total DPS that they get from melee attacks is less then that of a Warrior's (a result of attack power differences, lack of Shaman melee special abilities, etc). As such, increasing melee attack speed by a given percentage for a Shaman isn't as impactful as increasing the percentage by the same amount for a Warrior.

2. Shamans don't have a large number of melee-oriented talents that compound each other. Warriors do. As such, each warrior talent that increases a warrior's melee abilities becomes worth more for each other melee-oriented talent that a warrior can combine with it. This also means that a point of flurry becomes worth more for a warrior then for a shaman when you look at the total combination of talents.

These key differences mean the aggregate value of a point of flurry is not equal between the two classes. So, yes, they're in different locations of their respective trees, and although that makes it a convenient target for players to prop up a claim of imbalance, the claim simply isn’t valid.

Improved Cleave: This talent is similar to Improved Thunder Clap in that the damage increase is not nearly substantial enough to warrent the use of talent points. With the Level 3 talent combined with Rank5 Cleave, it provides a +60% damage stack on the bonus Cleave damage; this provides +30 to Cleave damage. Once again this provides no effective increase for a Level 60 character.
It's probably worth doing a more extensive evaluation of how much damage a point of Improved Cleave adds up to relative to another point you could have spent it on. Obviously, a huge factor in that particular comparison will be how often you use Cleave versus how often you get use out of the talent you're comparing it against, but the total lifetime damage per talent point may not be as off as it appears.
Improved Execute: Reduces Rage cost of Execute by 2, 5. Honestly? What is the point of a Reduced Rage cost on Execute when using the ability consumes ALL of your Rage? (Even on a Miss!)
First, it's worth noting that the full consumption of rage upon missing is a bug that will be fixed. However, it might be worth doing some more research on the value of Improved Execute, as once again there is more to it then meets the eye. For example, the reduced rage cost on the base ability has three immediate implications.

First, it means there are times you'll be able to use the ability when you couldn't otherwise have done it at all due to not having enough rage.

Second, if you did have more than the minimum amount of rage to use the ability, that extra rage you have due to the ability being cheaper gets converted into more damage then you otherwise would have gotten.

Third, the reduced rage cost means that against key "boss" monsters, you will be able to use the ability as many as 3 times instead of 2 times. This can make a very significant difference in terms of how difficult it is to finish of a very difficult boss encounter.

I assure you that there are accomplished players that value this talent. You're entitled to dislike it, but dismissing the talent as pointless leads me to believe you might not be as much of an expert on your class’ talents as you make it sound. ;]

Improved Shield Block, Levels 2+3: This talent is only useful for the first level, the subsequent 2 ranks provide absolutely no benefits.


While I don't disagree that the value of the first point is greater then that of those after it, "absolutely no benefits" isn't really accurate since the increased duration can allow you to actually get the second block before the ability wears out (in which case being able to block a second attack wasn't terribly helpful). All it takes is for a mob to miss you in order to not get the second block before the ability expires (and mobs generally get more miss/block/dodge/parry than you do… and certainly many of you feel you get quite a lot of them).
Bloodthirst: The damage change on Bloodthirst after the Indalamar video was crippling to the skill, as it does less damage than Mortal Strike, and is FAR more restricted in it's usage. The short window after combat to use Bloodthirst does not even leave time for Bandaging after the patch, which makes it difficult to used when adding in the increased mob HP/AC.


I agree that this talent can use some improvement. It turns out the current design leaves it vulnerable to always being either too narrow or too powerful, without much in-between. While this problem is ok in some situations based on the overall placement and role of the talent in its tree (such as with the rogue’s “remorseless attacks” talent), the problem isn’t ok for the final talent of a tree. As such, this talent is a likely candidate for change.
Fortsetzung im nächsten Post

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Zuletzt geändert von Asgir am 31.01.2005, 02:58, insgesamt 2-mal geändert.
Asgir
Welterforscher
Beiträge: 400
Registriert: 13.07.2004, 14:36
Wohnort: München

Beitrag von Asgir »

Kalgan hat geschrieben:
- Other -
Other various outstanding Warrior issues.

Hamstring: The slow on Hamstring (to 60%) is too low to actually allow a Warrior to retain Melee range in PvP, especially coupled with the various abilities other classes have to escape.
I don't necessarily agree with this statement. While it doesn't work flawlessly, I've found hamstring to still work very well at 60% in the majority of cases. While this probably isn't a very popular thing to say to warriors, I don't necessarily believe hamstring should flawlessly keep the target within melee range under any circumstance (we found this to be very detrimental to balance during beta). The 60% number was zero'ed in on after trying a variety of different values during beta, and currently appears to us to be the most well-balanced we've tried for hamstring.
Taunt: The largest issue with Taunt is the ability to draw and hold aggro. Although it is effective against very near level mobs, it loses effectiveness at about +4 levels. At this point Taunt is VERY often resists, while when it is not it does not HOLD aggro. It will often pull aggro for one hit from the mob, which will then turn back to whoever had previously had aggro.
Ok, but how many abilities/spells don't lose most of their effectiveness against mobs +4 levels above? Does this mean a group is entertaining greater risk when relying on an under-leveled tank? Yes… but shouldn't it be?

We understand that this has some different implications in raids due to the way raid mob levels work, which we'll continue to evaluate, but I don't necessarily think it's valid to assert that taunt is broken in the general case because of the +4 level statement.

Hit Points: It is essentially unheard of for Warriors to have equal or lower HP than other classes, yet it is so in WoW. This HP scale leaves warriors essentially crippled against spellcasters which negate Plate Armor. This issue is tied to the fact that Stamina Gain increase on level up does not tally into your HP, Stated 'Working as Intended' :(
First, the way Health gain on level-up works is balanced between classes to get all classes to our target expected base Health values. The mere fact that it is "working as intended" for all classes means it's meaningless to imply that the system is unfair to warriors, yet somehow not to other classes. Of course we could change the methodology for how Health gain is calculated on level-up, but in the end warriors (and all the other classes) would still have the same amount of Health.

So, while it’s fair to state your opinion that warriors should have more health, I don’t see any valid connection between that opinion and your jab at the methodology for arriving at the health numbers. Using that approach again smacks much more of an attempt to get “/signed” responses for a change you would personally like to see than it does of presenting constructive feedback.

Second, as far as I’m aware, naked warriors do have more health then naked characters of other classes (they’re certainly intended to). To imply that WoW has some kind of wacky design where Warriors have less health than other classes strikes me yet again as another attempt to mislead other players into thinking that there is a design flaw when there isn’t necessarily one.

That being said, you’re claiming an imbalance exists is because a warrior that focuses on getting gear with stats other than stamina gear can end up having a lower total health then another character that focuses on stamina equipment, I still don’t see the argument as entirely valid. That scenario seems more like a conscious choice on the part of the players involved, and evidence that WoW has interesting and meaningful equipment choices.

With respect to the implication that warriors should have more base health, our combat durations, damage values, ability/spell statistics, etc are all balanced around a warriors having their current health values. Changing those health values yet retaining similar combat times, downtime, etc for the game as a whole would require a huge number of changes across the game, impacting the balance of the game in general.

Regarding spellcasters, it's important to understand that the game was balanced around the assumption that players and monsters would generally have little to no resistance values to the different schools of magic, and that they would only have resistances when it comes at a significant trade-off in some other respect. As a result, spells deal less damage then they otherwise would if a warrior’s armor was expected to protect them against spells.

We could have balanced the game around the assumption of some meaningful incidental resistance value from armor, but understand that base spell damage would have been proportionally higher to compensate. For example, all physical damage values are calculated with the assumption that the target has a substantial armor value. Therefore, a warrior's base melee attacks are deliberately "overpowered" with the expectation that the targets will have some amount of physical damage reduction due to armor.

In the end, what matters is whether the general balance of melee damage versus magic damage feels good in solo and group PvE and PvP cases. I think that in this regard we've done pretty well, especially in avoiding the pitfalls of having normal monsters with substantially higher health values then players, thus causing problems with damage values in PvE versus PvP. While we do agree warriors need some improvements (both in the form of key bug fixes and other such tweaks), I don’t feel like it has anything to do with your revelation that armor doesn’t help a warrior against magical attacks. Again, we knew this and designed the entire magic damage system around that assumption, it isn’t some kind of massive design oversight like you imply.


Survivability: As a tank Warriors have a low survivability. Paladins have equal AC, as well as self heals and invulnerability to help themselves. This arguement has been heard many times, but it is valid and worth mentioning.


Agreed, this argument has been heard many times. However, it’s also worth mentioning that not only are there some balance issues being resolved with Paladins (ie: the fix to seal of the crusader which gives paladins both superior survivability and superior damage output), but there are some things I should clarify about the design intent of warriors and paladins.

While paladins are indeed intended to be the most survivable of any class in the game (players sometimes assume warriors are, which is not the case), paladins aren’t intended to make the best “tanks” in the game, or to have superior offensive abilities then warriors. What this means is that survivability alone does not a tank make.

The other key concept to tanking is the ability to hold agro on mobs (especially simultaneously on multiple mobs). This is the key difference between warriors and paladins in PvE. Simply put, warriors are intended to be the best at holding agro against multiple mobs (which will also be a more clear distinction once the Seal of the Crusader bug is fixed). So, assuming a group scenario that includes healers, a warrior’s survivability rivals that of a paladin’s, with the warrior having very significant advantages in terms of holding agro.

Uniqueness: Warriors do not have any specific traits or abilities which set them apart from other classes. The idea of Auto-Attack-And-AFK presides for the class, as there is generally little interaction required for combat. There are no perks to playing a Warrior.


No specific traits or abilities? You mean like stances? Rage? Disciplines like retaliation and recklessness?

Auto-attack-and AFK? Um… yeah, I do really well when I don’t push buttons as a warrior. :/ I really can’t find it in myself to remotely agree with this statement… it strikes me as pure drama. If playing a warrior involves little interaction for combat, why is it that group success is often made or broken by the skill of the player playing the warrior. I would wager to say that even today, the success of a group is determined as much, and possibly more, by the skill of a tanking warrior then that of any other class.

No perks? You mean aside from being an indispensable part of most instance runs? The ability to use ranged weapons (unlike a paladin)? The ability to both close distance on a target and slow the target once you get to them? Carrying out an opponent’s death sentence once they reach 20% health?

Really now, you’re going to have a very hard time convincing me that warriors suffer from a “uniqueness” problem.

Recent Issues (Post 1.2.1):

- Bugs -

Intercept: Intercept had be changed to have reduced damage, while reducing the Rage cost to 10. The damage has been reduced while the Rage cost remains the same.
The rage cost is 10 on the server (meaning it currently only costs your character 10 rage when you use it). The client-side problem that requires your character to have 15 rage to activate the ability (which certainly is a valid problem) will be addressed very soon (as described in the upcoming patch notes). Since the key elements of the intercept ability are the ability to close the distance to the target and stun them (the damage is a secondary benefit), the damage was lowered to keep the same damage:rage ratio as it had when it had a cost of 15 rage. This way, we were able to increase the likelihood that warriors can use the ability when it is critical to do so, without dramatically increasing its power.
Sweeping Strikes + Cleave: Graphical display bugs, appropriate damage is not displayed.

Sweeping Strikes + Retaliation: Same issue as above? (I did not completely test this)
In truth, it was never really the intent that sweeping strikes would work on multi-target abilities (it is intended to turn single-target abilities into dual-target abilities). However, in the interest of not weakening warriors right now, we’re inclined to allow the combination to work as long as it doesn’t become highly abusive and create balance problems.
Fortsetzung im nächsten Post ....

Quelle
Zuletzt geändert von Asgir am 31.01.2005, 08:38, insgesamt 3-mal geändert.
Asgir
Welterforscher
Beiträge: 400
Registriert: 13.07.2004, 14:36
Wohnort: München

Beitrag von Asgir »

Kalgan hat geschrieben:
- New Issues -
A few new issues that have risin for the Warrior class due to the last patch.

Solo Exp: The increase in HP and AC of mobs level 20+ has drastically reduced the Warrior exp rates. It's no joke; since the patch I lose 900 (about 1/3) HP fighting a Bear 5 level below me. Spellcasting Humanoids have had their HP increased, mobs up to 4 levels lower of this type can on occasion do 50% damage to me, as Shield Bash/Pummel is not ALWAYS up.
I fail to see how this is a “warrior issue”. Other classes have been affected equally by the mob health increase.
Downtime(solo): Issue similar to that above. Because PvE fights are now longer, more HP are lost requiring either more downtime, or more Food/Bandage consumption. Downtime has substantially increased since the patch, even on mobs -5 levels.


Again, I don’t see how this is specific to warriors.
First Aid: This "Fix" is in my opinion, the most damaging change to Warriors over the patch. The ability to move while First Aid worked was substantial. The Bandages are now WORSE than Cooking/Food, with a higher material cost. I no longer use bandages as eating is faster, cheaper and often provides +sta/spr bonuses. Before the patch I would often use a Bandage running from one mob to the other, it did not even heal 50% HP, but it was worth it because it did not require downtime; this is no longer possible.
“Bandages are now WORSE than Cooking/Food…” Exactly in what way are they worse? Bandages heal considerably more quickly then food, and countless players (myself included) still consider bandages to be absolutely indispensable. Yes, all classes that use bandages have been impacted by this change (which although this may surprise you, even includes a classes that can heal, like shamans and paladins) I find the “WORSE” comment very difficult to take seriously.
Pummel: In regards to PvE, Pummel is a nearly useless skill. Because of the increase in Spellcaster HP, spending an entire fight in Berserker stance results in much more damage taken, simply increasing downtime more. Because of this, it is STILL more effective to use Shield-Swap+ShieldBash in Battle Stance.
I agree that it’s reasonably valid to argue that shieldswap+shieldbash is more effective than pummel. However, it’s also fair to point out that instantly swapping to a shield to bash with then swapping back is clearly not how shield bash is intended to work. So, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a problem with Pummel, rather a problem with the ability to “cheese” shield bash.

In addition, I think it’s worth pointing out that most players underestimate the value of Berserker Stance. In general, any time your ability to deal damage is increased, the amount of damage you take in a fight is decreased proportionally (ie: if you deal 20% more damage, you kill an opponent 20% faster and thus also take 20% less damage than you would have otherwise suffered). Many players don’t make the connection that more damage dealt = less damage suffered. As such, if Berserker stance were to increase your damage output by 10% (for example), while also increasing the damage you take by 10%, it would be unquestionably the “best” stance, since it would actually result in the warrior killing faster with the same downtime (which as stated would be flat-out better then any other stance).

Also, since each percentage increase in the chance to get a critical strike increases most warrior’s total damage by more then one percent (due to talents like deep wounds, impale, flurry, etc), the crit chance increase in berserker stance translates into a total DPS increase higher than that percentage. So, while it is intended that you will kill faster in berserker stance and take more damage, the amount of damage you take over the course of the fight is considerably less than the 10% it appears you will take.

Blood Rage: Though the change to Blood Rage is an improvement, it is in no way a solution to the Rage Build issues Warriors face. The Cooldown along with the HP cost make it nearly useless, I only use it in order to prepare with Battle Shout prior to a difficult fight; I always wait for my health to regen afterwards. This was previously the only use I had for the skill, and it remains the same for me. The amount of HP lost to use the skill is more than I would lose building the same amount of rage in combat, which makes it pretty redundant.
As mentioned earlier, we agree that Bloodrage can use some additional improvement. However, it’s important to understand that the cooldown is critical, since if the cooldown were too short (causing the cooldown to finish before all rage from bloodrage had decayed), players would be incentivized to use lame tactics like spending 5 minutes (for example) before a boss fight to bloodrage, wait for it to cool down, then repeat until they eventually reach 100 rage, and then start the fight. We don’t want to have to balance key boss fights around the assumption that players are doing that kind of lame stuff. :/
Mortal Strike v.1.2.1: The new Mortal Strike changes once again favour lighter faster weapons as opposed to slow heavy 2h. This change does not align well with the theme of the Arms tree, which focuses on many 2h beneficial talents.
Your statement is misleading. The current version of mortal strike still heavily favors slow 2h weapons, which still fits the theme of the arms tree nicely. It simply doesn’t favor the slow weapons as overwhelmingly as it did.

When the speed of the weapon is too important a factor (as it was in previous versions), it means there are many cases where you may have a slower, lower-level blue item, then find a higher-level 2h purple item that is slightly faster, yet turns out to be the worse weapon choice for your character entirely due to Mortal Strike so heavily favoring the slowest possible weapon. We don’t want this, and we suspect the players that finally experience the euphoria of getting that awesome purple weapon don’t want to suddenly find that joy sucked from them as they realize using their new epic weapon of practically the same weapon type would be a downgrade. =[

- Possible Solutions -
I by no means claim to have the answer to all of the problems Warriors face. These are some of the possible solutions I can think of, along with some of what I consider the better ideas I've seen posted on the boards. If one of these was yours, good thinking =)

Rage Build: Either allowing rage generationg for Miss/Parry/Dodge/Block, or providing a minor amount of constant rage build while in fights (say 2/sec) would provide SUBSTANTIAL growth towards a more playable class. One of my favorite ideas which was suggested on the boards was to give Warriors a set amount of rage (say 40/100) which would regenerate in and out of combat in a similar manner to that of a Rogue's endurace. This would provide initial Rage for Warriors in PvP, as well as a rage build boost for PvE.

Rage Potions: Very simply, if there are not going to be constructive changes to the ways Warriors generate rage, at the very least place Rage Potions on a seperate timer to Health Potions.


Generate rage on parry/dodge/block? Consider it done! ;]
[Improved] Thunder Clap: This ability requires a large adjustment, either to Damage or %slow. Every Warrior agrees that the skill is useless in it's current state.

Improved Cleave: A damage increase would make this talent more useful and desireable, 100% at level 3 as opposed to 60% would provide an extra 20damage for a Level 60 Warrior, a notable improvement.

Flurry: Reducing the pre-requisites for this talent would be nice, but may be considered overpowering for possible Talent Specs. If it is not reduced for Warrior, it would at least be fair to increase it for Shamans.

Improved Execute: Considering Execute causes 100% rage to be lost if it is Missed/Parried etc. I feel it would be an excellent change if this Talent allowed partial rage to be retained under such a circumstance; say 20% rage for 1 talent point, 40% rage for 2 talent points (something like that anyway).

Hit Points: Most suggestions I have seen propose a 20% increase to Warrior Base HP, I feel that either this or a change to Stamina Gained on Level would be a suitable solution.

Downtime: I would ideally like to see First Aid changed back to its previous "bugged" state. I do not feel this is overpowered, nor have I seen any complaints by players that it is so. If it is not reverted, either a cast time decrease or effect increase would be appropriate to counteract the fact that Food is currently more effective.

Pummel: It is the sentiments of most Warriors that Pummel should be usable in Battle Stance; in it's current form it is nearly unusable for PvE, as Shield-Swapping requires the same amount of changing from Battle Stance.

Hamstring: Slow should be changed to a base of 50%, with talents boosting it to 40%. This would make a substantial different in a Warriors ability to maintain melee range.

Improved Shield Block: Each rank should increase the duration by 2 seconds, as well as ranks 1 and 3 offering to block an additional attack. Total +6 second duration with +2 attacks blocked.

Bloodthirst: Change the damage bonus to mirror that of Mortal Strike, providing an equal benefit for faster 1h Weapons, as well as a general improvement to the currently weak Bloodthirst talent.

Well there is my essential summary of current Warrior issues, as well as a few possible solutions. I would love if Warriors would recieve a little more attention from Blizzard, though I do understand some of the reasons that they do not (namely Bandwagon nerf/buff cries). Indeed I WAS outraged with the 1.2.1 patch, as I had hoped for alot more balance/bug fixes, willing to settle for less christmas trees and lights in IF. I hope to see some positive changes for the Warrior class in the future, as I do not currently see much potential in Post-60 gameplay for this class.


In conclusion, while I don’t agree with many of the assertions you’ve made regarding warriors, I do agree that warriors should be improved. Not only will the bugs that are making the warriors less potent than we expected get fixed, but we do plan on improve some of the warrior’s abilities (“awesome changes”, I swear!). ;]

Well-played warriors are both a playable and viable class in PvE and PvP, and will likely become more so. I want to extend everyone who has contributed valuable, objective feedback our thanks, and assure you that we not only pay attention to that feedback, buy also analyze it carefully. We realize that when players become frustrated, there are invariably claims of hidden personal agendas to hold back that player’s class, but I want to assure you that there isn’t any class in the game that isn’t played by at least a few highly-opinionated blizzard employees that are very interested in preserving the balance of that class and the game in general. If we didn’t actually like a class or its core concepts, we never would have made it. ;]

Quelle
Asgir
Welterforscher
Beiträge: 400
Registriert: 13.07.2004, 14:36
Wohnort: München

Beitrag von Asgir »

Ich übersetze mal eben die Zusammenfassung (ohne Gewähr) ;) :
Letztendlich, auch wenn ich mit vielen Dingen, die du bezgl. des Kriegers angesprochen hast nicht übereinstimme, danke ich auch, dass der Krieger verbessert werden sollte. Es werden nicht nur die Bugs gefixed werden, die den Krieger weniger stark machen, als wir erwartet haben, sondern wir planen auch, manche der Krieger-Fähigkeiten zu verbessern ("awsome changes", versprochen!) ;]
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