Getting very frustrated with Bliz (rant warning)

[kadaan]

We beat our heads on it for 2 weeks, tried the warlock pet strat and got it on our second attempt. It trivializes the encouter. I have 55k hp fully buffed on my Druid and would still get 1-shot by the breath after the 3rd drakes acolyte came up if I didn't have cooldowns on me. The nerf to VW health is just the bonus health from your stam, it doesn't hit normal warlocks very much at all, only the ones who stacked full +stamina gear at the expense of all else (read: sarth tanks)

I'm all for ranting about nerfs, but at least research WHY they were nerfed.

[Duese]

Voidwalker got nerfed because it can tank the hardest encounter currently in the game which is something arguably 2/4 tanking classes can't do.

So the problem is the voidwalker? Again, this confused me to know end.

I have 55k hp fully buffed on my Druid and would still get 1-shot by the breath after the 3rd drakes acolyte came up if I didn't have cooldowns on me.

Again, so the problem is the voidwalker? It does not make sense.

Sitting out a tank on 3-drake sarth because "we have a warlock with a voidwalker who's can tank it better than you" is retarded. How do you think that having a warlock pet being the best tank class in the game is balanced and doesn't need a nerf?

If thought that a warlock pet was the best tank in the game I would have quit long ago. And if you think that it is the best tank because it can tank ONE encounter in the game that other tanks have extreme trouble with, then your vision of the game is very skewed.

I'm sorry if you have to sit out, but that's not my problem and has nothing to do with warlock pets.

[kadaan]

And if you think that it is the best tank because it can tank ONE encounter in the game that other tanks have extreme trouble with, then your vision of the game is very skewed.

I'm sorry if you have to sit out, but that's not my problem and has nothing to do with warlock pets.

So you think that the hardest encounter in the game should be made trivial with a warlock pet? Apparently my vision of the game isn't _that_ screwed, if Blizzard thinks it's a problem and is fixing it.

[Clone]

Part of playing an MMO is that things change. If you dont like that then dont play anymore. Nobody likes having their class nerfed but it is very obvious why classes get nerfed/buffed. The game would get boring very fast if Blizzard purposely balanced all classes. Pvp will probably never be perfectly balanced but if you think it would be hard for blizz to balance PVE damage then you are very wrong. Im fairly sure they make classes OP on purpose then after a while nerf them and buff some other class. It keeps things interesting. I can think of times where every class has been overpowered, so just sit and wait and eventually it will be your turn again.

[Tombs]

Duese:

The way Sarth 3D works is when each drake comes into play they summon an acolyte that brings a new effect into play. One of them makes Sarth's breath attacks hit for ~60k. That'll kill any tank no matter the gear. The only way not to die is use cooldowns, to boost your health or cut the damage. If you don't kill the drake/acolyte before you run out of cooldowns you lose. A voidwalker with 90k health doesn't have to do anything but take it and your raid no longer has to go all out to kill the adds extra fast thus breaking the "Do or Die" theme of the fight, it trivializes the encounter.

So yes, I am going to say that this is a problem with the voidwalker. It should not ever need to have 90k health, it was an oversight that if left uncorrected would become the only way shit gets tanked.

[Bigfish]

We beat our heads on it for 2 weeks, tried the warlock pet strat and got it on our second attempt. It trivializes the encouter. I have 55k hp fully buffed on my Druid and would still get 1-shot by the breath after the 3rd drakes acolyte came up if I didn't have cooldowns on me. The nerf to VW health is just the bonus health from your stam, it doesn't hit normal warlocks very much at all, only the ones who stacked full +stamina gear at the expense of all else (read: sarth tanks)

I'm all for ranting about nerfs, but at least research WHY they were nerfed.

None of which changes the fact that someone got clever, and instead of adjusting the encounter or design philosophy of future content, they drop the nerf bat. Maybe its because I like to innovate new ways of doing things, but it bugs the hell out of me that players can come up with something completely unexpected and creative and then get punished for it.

[puppychow]

and for those who say "its just PTR! chill!" thats been classically a bad attitude towards PTRs. Basically around this time (2-3 weeks before patch release) the features are fairly locked down and not much is gonna change except boss tweaking and bug fixes. Blizzard also tends to go to extremes on buffs/nerfs and not reverse them for months.

For example prot pallys were good tanks in SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT but Sunwell pretty much destroyed them (except for Felmyst) due to block mechanics and HP differences (prot pallys were significantly below other tanks). Mages and ele shamans scaled poorly into Sunwell and you didn't want to bring too many (of course bloodlust/chain heal was king so you wanted as many healers as possible to be shamans). There are dozens and dozens more examples of this where the encounters became easier and easier if you simply left out some classes and stacked others.

So every time a class sees a nerf to them, there is the kneejerk fear of their class dropping to the bottom of the pack and not getting any fixes for months. So far in WOTLK its been fairly decent, as they have quickly tried to balance PVE dps (not done so well in PVP). Hopefully that continues in 3.1, especially since Ulduar will be more challenging than Naxx.

[Malekyth]

Blizzard's "testing" team needs a wake-up call. That's the problem.

The goal is not to "check functionality" - its to BREAK THE SOFTWARE you're testing. That's how to find bugs.

I don't think we're talking about bugs -- these are balance issues, where the game's function isn't impaired but still doesn't feel quite right. Blizzard's testers can find some of that, and WoW is a weirdly un-buggy game for its amount of content, but it takes a ton of clever min-maxing hardcore freaks to really start exposing how the game works. I'm not surprised nobody caught the voidwalker tanking strat before it went live, though I bet the in-house guys put more emphasis on testing pets at tanks from now on.

[kadaan]

None of which changes the fact that someone got clever, and instead of adjusting the encounter or design philosophy of future content, they drop the nerf bat. Maybe its because I like to innovate new ways of doing things, but it bugs the hell out of me that players can come up with something completely unexpected and creative and then get punished for it.

Why should they adjust the encounter and design philosophy of future content to accommodate for something they don't believe should be allowed?

Back in early classic WoW you could make a macro to use backstab and swap in a sword at the same time, letting you backstab with a 2.8 speed sword. You're saying because someone got creative they should have allowed anyone who figured that out to backstab with swords? No, that's stupid. If the "clever" strategy is something that breaks their intended design, they fix it, not work it into future content.

[Bigfish]

Why should they adjust the encounter and design philosophy of future content to accommodate for something they don't believe should be allowed?

Back in early classic WoW you could make a macro to use backstab and swap in a sword at the same time, letting you backstab with a 2.8 speed sword. You're saying because someone got creative they should have allowed anyone who figured that out to backstab with swords? No, that's stupid. If the "clever" strategy is something that breaks their intended design, they fix it, not work it into future content.

There's a difference between a code bug (namely using a dagger only skill with a sword via creative macros) and no one giving a flying crap about a 90k HP VW until someone does something interesting with it.