The offical word on buffs and debuffs

Thank you to suicidal zebra for alerting me to the massive shake-up announced yesterday to raid buffs and debuffs (link here via mmo champion).

And guess what? I must be psychic, or else someone at Blizzard is paying attention, because the mana regeneration of vampiric touch will be uncoupled from damage done and return a percentage of base mana instead.

There are other big changes for shadow priests in that post, some of which even my razor-like mind failed to anticipate, and once again the dwarf priest has a great run-down of them.

I'll bring you my thoughts when I've had time to digest. Right now though, I'm thinking of rolling a boomkin.

Why a VT nerf is not the answer

If you've read any of the community feedback on shadow priests, you'll know one of the biggest issues for the class is the poor scaling of mind flay — that is, as your spell damage bonus grows, mind flay benefits from a smaller percentage of it than other spells.

There are two likely culprits for this situation. One is the snare component of the spell. Other spells with snare components are similarly penalised. However, never by as much as mind flay. And that's not accounting for the spell's reduced range which is, in itself, probably due to the snare.

So while this might be a factor, I think the second candidate is more likely to be the main cause of the spell's poor scaling.

And that's the mana returned by vampiric touch. If shadow priests were allowed to scale as efficiently as other dps, the mana returned would be silly. Even as it stands now, it's considered too generous. That's the whole reason it's getting nerfed. So I suspect shadow priests have been hamstrung by the need to cap the effective amount of mana they have provided to their parties.

In retrospect, this was always going to be an issue. Mana pools don't grow significantly as a player's gear improves, so as spell damage and performance grew the mana returned was always going to be disproportionately significant.

Even with the nerf, this will remain an issue in Northrend, even if its effects will be less pronounced and targeted more at the under-geared player.

Blizzard clearly knows this, as evidenced by the two new mana batteries in Wrath, survival hunters and frost mages. Both will return a percentage of a player's base mana, not a percentage of the caster's damage. What this means is that the mana regeneration is predictable and controllable at all levels of the player's progression. It also severs the link between damage and utility that holds shadow priests back.

The surprise is that Blizzard hasn't carried the lessons from this into its design for shadow priests in Wrath. They have nerfed the shit out of vampiric touch and claim we are still returning similar amounts of mana.

If that concern is holding Blizzard back from making some meaningful improvements to shadow priest dps, there's a very simple solution: tie vampiric touch to base mana, not damage done.

Fame won’t change me vows blogger priest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WORLD’S END TAVERN, SHATTRATH The latest WoW blogger to be outed by WoW Insider has declared: “I’m still the same old face-melter”.

Speaking from one of Shattrath’s more salubrious watering holes, the self-styled ‘Misery’ — or Merlot to his friends — recalled how he came to join the ranks of struggling WoW bloggers.

“I was just another honest, hard working shadow priest looking for a gig at 70. I knew I was ready to take on Illidan but the guild masters around these parts had other ideas. They wanted ‘experience’; they wanted ‘better gear’. I mean, wtf, everything I wear looks the same man.”

So he started a blog as a way to let off steam and set himself apart from the ranks of other adventurers drawn to Outland by the promise of gold and glory. This sometimes witty, sometimes tragic, always heartfelt account of his true-to-life experiences is what first captured the attention of blogging titans WoW Insider.

Close friends tell of the two distinct sides to his personality; the ruthless ambition that drove him to the dark side, and the frivolous, playfulness that leads him now to drop shadowform and let us see him in all his colourful glory, if only for a moment.

“It isn’t always like this,” he said, gesturing to the bar wenches hanging off each arm. “I can be serious too, you know? I have ideas. And I’m not done with Illidan yet, either.

“But at heart, I’m still the same, honest, grafting mana battery my loyal fans have come to know and love. I won’t let this one link change me. I’ll still move in flame wreath, I’ll still dot up the sheep, and I’ll still do my best to top the death meters.”

What next for this plucky purple priesty now that fame has come knocking?

“Uh, I dunno man. I’ve been a little short on the spondoolicks, you know? I need to get back to Quel’Danas and grind some gold for one of those sweet epic flyers. And I hear there are a couple of grons in Blade’s Edge Mountain that need putting in their place. I might head there when I’ve finished here.”

He ostentatiously orders another round for the entire taven, putting it on his tab. The bar manager looks confused but starts pouring.

Suddenly, he jumps to his feet, summons the shadows, and bursts into dance. As he swings his arms and gyrates his hips, the wenches giggle and clap and dance along. One or two gruff warrior types roll their eyes and look away, disgusted.

He winks at me. “You should check out my blog man, it’s imba.”

I leave the tavern wondering just how much danger those ogres are really in.

I spoke too soon

How's this for timing? We get a blue post on the issue of raid composition on the same day I kick up a fuss about exactly that.

Ghostcrawler listed the reasons why Blizzard is examining raid buffs — and to put words in her mouth, I think raid utility as a whole. Not surprisingly, number one on this list was the fact that with a new class, and more 10-man content, raid stacking will becoming increasingly difficult in Northrend.

She also made this statement on raid-wide buffs:

"We are moving almost every buff to affect the entire raid. There are only a few exceptions, and these tend to be short-term, bursty abilities."

You can't call vampiric touch short-term or bursty. Does that seal it then? Will we become raid-wide mana batteries?

But this reason, to me, is the most interesting:

"Stacking a raid in order to get the right buffs has started to feel a little like a crutch, much like stacking consumables felt not so long ago. Because some of the buffs scale so well and have so much synergy with other classes, you may sometimes feel that you should pass over a really skilled player in order to pick up a buff that will bring more to you group. We'd rather get back to bringing good players or, gasp, even your friends."

On the one hand, that's exactly the right approach to take. It shouldn't matter what classes you have, you should be able to take on any encounter and succeed. But there's a sting in the tail depending on how you read this. Does it mean they will be balancing the damage output of hybrid dps, so they can compete, or does it mean you will no longer need to bring hybrid dps for their utility?

That's one frightening conclusion to this business. With raid-wide buffing and less dependency on group buffs, it's the support classes that stand to loose the most.

She goes on to give some examples of the changes we can expect to see:

• The ability to easily get all major buffs and debuffs in a group while still having slots to spare
• More parity in which classes can raid — that's right, they promise a degree of equality for all 'classes' when it comes to raid slots (note: not 'specs'); whether that means only one viable spec for each class (holy priests, for example) remains to be seen
• More overlap in buffs and debuffs and very few unique abilities — multiple classes are going to be to deliver the same utility, like we've already seen with mana regeneration
• No two classes should have the same set of buffs and debuffs, so there's always something unique they can bring to the group

I personally think these last two points are contradictory, but we'll have to wait and see how they deliver it.

Ghostcrawler gives a few examples, trotting out mana batteries as a prime — shadow priests, ret palandins and survival hunters will all be viable in that role. She forgets to mention frost mages and shaman too, of course.

"The goal is to get more people into raids and to let you bring the people you want. Ultimately, that should benefit everyone."

Well, I can't argue with that. But I'll reserve judgement until I see the execution, I think.

Utility v damage = flawed argument

If you are sick of reading increasingly hysterical posts about the state of shadow priests in Wrath, this blog is not for you. The trend is set to continue.

But today you get a reprieve. Well, of sorts. The dwarf priest has put out a call to arms for shadow priests everywhere, and I really can't improve on her eloquent words. I urge you to read the post, pick up your pitch forks and start marching.

Today, instead, I want to get something off my chest.

There is an accepted wisdom in raiding theory that dps classes should be balanced around two things: damage and utility. Some classes provide pure, raw damage, but don't really add much to the raid, while others — primarily the hybrids — bring buffs and debuffs to enhance the performance of their party and raid while delivering a lower personal damage output. Think of the synergy between a rogue and an enhancement shaman, for example.

This trade-off is practically set in stone. It's as if the value of a class's utility is inversely proportional to their dps potential.

So you end up with a two-tier structure where some classes are designed to top the dps charts while others are held back in support roles.

Ret paladins have just felt the nerf bat on the beta forums for this very reason — they were deemed to be doing too much damage. They're just a support class after all, let's knock them back in their place before they get ideas above their station.

Poor ret paladins. But there's a very good reason for the nerf according to the accepted logic. If utility classes could provide top notch damage as well as utility, then raids would stack them at the expense of their pure-damage cousins.

This is a bad argument by any standard, but in Wrath it only looks worse.
For a start, the distinction between utility and damage is conspicuously fuzzy. Take locks as an example, who currently vie for the honour of top dog dps. What is banish, if not utility? Or enslave? Or curse of elements, or shadow embrace? Or, for that matter, what about seed of corruption, a spell that makes aoe situations trivial. Not to mention that hybrid classes have only situational crowd control.

The fact is, the 'pure' dps classes do bring utility (admittedly, to varying degrees); it's just more situational.

But the fundamental flaw in the concept of balance is the assumption that there is a perfect raid makeup, some kind of paradigm of classes and specs. In 25-man raids, it's easy to find a spot for almost everyone, and that's how it should be — every class and spec should have the potential to fit and perform in a raid. But that doesn't mean guilds should be forced to roster specifically for it, nor that an imbalanced guild shouldn't be able to take on a specific encounter.

Three things in the expansion will throw this flawed design into further relief.

More 10-man raids
Small, casual guilds will flourish in Wrath, being able to make steady, rewarding progress through the array of 10-man raids without having to make the difficult transition to 25-man raiding. These guilds aren't the type to recruit specific dps classes, or try to find the perfect raid makeup, and in 10-man raids that's a futile activity anyway. You simply can't have balanced representation of the classes when their are so many permutations of roles and specs. You are forced to make sacrifices — casters get an elemental shaman but the melee loose out on a kitty, and so on. Similarly, some utility will be wasted in the wrong makeup — what use is shadow weaving if there's no lock in the group? In Wrath, every class needs the potential to function at its best, because there won't always be locks and rogues around to make up the slack.

Greater class utility
While I haven't studied every class in the beta, there does seem to be a conscious effort to improve class utility — and it's not confined to the classes usually considered 'utility'. Frost mages, for example, who right now probably fall in the pure-dps camp, could become the new shadow priests in Wrath, thanks to the mana regenerating potential of the water elemental. And hunters are getting some buffs to their group abilities as well, on top of some shiny new ones. Their dps is unlikely to suffer as a result.

This is not to be confused with the time-honoured argument of who does the most damage. I'm not concerned with balance between mages and locks, for example. Quite frankly, I don't care who tops the charts.

Similarly, I don't mind that other classes are getting extra utility. I think it's a positive thing. But if you're going to keep support classes in their place, you'd damn well better have a good argument for why.

Raid-wide buffs
This is something Blizzard is looking at across the board. Some buffs have already gone raid wide (like the water elemental's mana regen), while others are still being considered.

It's a curious dilemma. On the one hand, moving a party buff raid wide makes the buff more powerful — and therefore, more desirable. But at the same time, it makes that class more expendable. Why bring two or three shadow priests to a raid when you only need one?

In an environment where raids could be tempted to stack multiple utility classes for their buffs, it makes sense to temper their damage and balance that temptation. That's the reason why many buffs don't stack.

But if a single buff can reach the whole raid, suddenly you are in a situation where utility classes are at a distinct disadvantage.

If utility buffs do end up raid wide, the only way to level the playing field for those classes is to raise their damage potential.

The argument for balancing utility with damage is looking thinner every day as Blizzard shakes up the skills and talents available to the dps classes and re-examines its raid philosophy. It's no longer acceptable to have a two-tier system of damage classes. Utility is something that classes should bring to encounters on top of their damage output, not instead of it.

Now maybe there should still be compromises — but these should be by choice, not by design. There are so many factors that affect dps, it doesn't have to mean the end of variety, synergy and co-operation within a group. Perhaps you would have to spec for utility (like survival hunters) or gear for it, or maybe providing your utility simply compromises your actual damage output.

As shadow priests push for a level playing field in Wrath, I really hope we don't settle for handouts like a glyph to fix our troubles, or minor utility tweaks. We deserve so much more, as do all the utility classes.