Quote Originally Posted by 'Havelcek',index.php?page=Thread&postID=112845#pos t112845
I didn't say anything about the population benefitting. I said that Blizzard continues to change the game in reaction to arena and high-end raiding. If Blizzard didn't want TOW to stack all this time they could have changed it in any one of 30 patches since TBC came out, but they haven't.
I wasn't necessarily using the population as the reason for blizzard's tweaks, just as an extreme example of why class stacking is negatively impacting the raiding community.

As a sunwell raider, it's HARD to find decent (i.e. smart) people who know how to play their class. It's made harder by the fact that you sometimes HAVE to choose the "ideal" group composition for a certain fights.

As an example, stacking shaman in certain fights means you'll take a less skilled shaman over a more skilled warlock or mage -- despite the fact that shamans are harder to come by due to population size -- because the mechanics of the fight tell you that "you need more AoE heals" or "you need 8 healers, but also keep up with the dps". Shaman were ideal because not only were they great healers, but when put in a dps group they also uberbuffed dps through heroism (not to mention totems).

You're right -- if Blizz didn't want 3% hit and 3% crit to stack up to 5 times in a 5 elemental shaman party, they would have changed it ages ago.

They're changing it now -- but it's no longer 3% hit and 3% crit. It's no longer limited to just 5 elemental shaman in a party, max. It's now raid-wide, and it's now +damage and +crit. They're essentially rewriting the talent. It's a nerf to certain aspects of the game that were rarely used (yes, we multiboxers are rare, and even as rare multiboxers not all of us use ToW).

I already did the math in another thread. It's a +hit nerf and a +damage increase. It balances out no matter what way you slice it.