Ancora sul nerf dei palaretri

Come prevedibile il nerf ai paladini retribution sta infiammando i forum Blizzard, e continuano la precisazione e gli interventi dei Blues, che riporto qua sotto per rendere noto il clima generale.

GHOSTCRAWLER:
We are going to hotfix the nerfs to Judgement of the Wise (from 33% to 15%) and Seal and Judgement of Command (down 20% damage) to live. We need to start getting more testing on these changes right away to see what they do to Retribution in PvE and PvP. We still intend to lower the damage of other Seals and Judgements (except one - see below), but to hotfix those requires touching a lot more data so we think that change can wait for the 3.0.3 patch on live.

We are also hotfixing the beta to return Seal and Judgement of Blood and the Martyr back up to 95% of where the used to be. Live will just never get the nerf to these abilities at all. Hopefully this will compensate PvE Retadins for relying less on more expensive AE abilities that risk putting them out of mana.

To summarize:

Live (3.0.2 build) -- Judgement of Wise change, Seal and Judgement of Command change.
Beta (3.0.3 build) -- All nerfs already active, but Blood and Martyr un-nerfed.
Next Live patch (to 3.0.3 build) -- Catches Live up to Beta. I can't give you an estimate for 3.0.3 on Live yet, but it will be before Lich King goes live on Nov 13.

Il nerf ai paladini retri è sentito necessario al punto che è stato applicato un hotfix immediato a tutti i server. Un hotfix ricordiamo è una modifica "al volo" ai server mentre stanno girando, il che comporta poco più di un riavvio, ben diverso da una patch vera e propria di client e server. I nerf applicati in hotfix sono quello al JotW e la riduzione danno dei Seal+Judgement. In Beta sono stati rimossi i nerf al Seal of Blood/Martyr per non penalizzare il PvE (in PvP non è molto prudente usarli), cosa che avremo in Live solo con la 3.0.3 (data di uscita prevista prima di Wotlk, 13 novembre).

As soon as we're comfortable that we haven't over-nerfed Ret, and a couple of other things, we're going to look at healer dps again to make sure you can solo or throw the occasional damage spell in a group.

I nerf ai Seal e Judgement toccano anche il DPS dei pala holy, che come sappiamo era già ampiamente ai minimi termini. Secondo GC, appena saranno sicuri di aver sistemato correttamente i palaretri, torneranno ad occuparsi del dps degli holy (altrimenti potrebbero non riuscire a livellare prima della prossima espansione).

Qua GhostCrawler risponde a domande sparse:

I thought we were supposed to be bursty?
Yes, that's the design. It's also a tough design to nail because if you're too bursty the opponent doesn't even get to respond.

La Blizzard vuole che i palaretri facciano danno di picco elevato, ma questo contrasta con il PvP, dove il danno di picco ha un innegabile vantaggio: l'avversario può non essere in grado di rispondere, anche per motivi tecnici come la lag. Io vedo due soluzioni: cambiare un po' la visione del paladino retri o rimuoverlo dal PvP.

Why did I describe our initial attempts to nerf Ret as surgical?
Because that's what we tried to do. In retrospect, we were so worried about nerfing Ret too much that we ended up not fixing the problem. We should have done more sweeping changes initially.

Why did we say Ret was fine for so long?
Because we didn't want to have to nerf the spec. Ret players were having fun. We thought and hoped that some well publicized bugs were to blame for the excess damage. As I've said, if I wait to post until we're absolutely 100% certain, you're just not going to get as many posts. Many posters have said they appreciate getting occasional developer communication and insight. But that is going to come with some risk that things are going to change. As I said, I'll caveat it more in the future.

GC ci dice che hanno atteso l'ultimo momento per i nerf pesanti, cercando prima soluzioni leggerissime, perchè i palaretri erano soddisfatti e non volevano dare grosse delusioni, ma così facendo hanno semplicemente posticipato il problema e creato false attese.

The damage was too high in PvE and PvP. It was too high for some time in beta. We found (or more accurately the players found) a couple of bugs that we hoped were causing the inflation. When we fixed the bugs, unfortunately, Ret damage was still too high. We made the infamous "surgical" attempt to fix Ret's damage, but that ended up not doing as much as we hoped. We then made a second round of larger nerfs that just went on to the beta build.

Since then, what we're finding is that Ret's dps seems okay on PvE but only if they use a lot of expensive AE spells like Consecration and Holy Wrath even against single targets in long fights (e.g. raid bosses), which in turn causes them to run out of mana too quickly. Players suspect that if they don't use those spells that their dps won't be competitive. That is what we are looking at right now. Buffing Martyr / Blood might be an option since those are more often used in PvE and riskier to use in PvP.

You're nerfing paladins because of PvP.
Read my initial post again. Ret PvE dps was also too high.

E' opinione comune che il nerf sia dovuto essenzialmente al danno di picco in PvP, mentre GC dice che anche in PvE era comunque superiore al normale. E' abbastanza curioso vedere come da un giorno all'altro gli stessi numeri (i test interni Blizzard) dicano cose diverse. Sul forum US-beta del paladini è però accaduta una cosa curiosa, un palaretri ha fatto un raid-25 a Naxxramas dopo il nerf, ed ha postato il report WWS della run. I numeri erano sotto gli occhi di tutti ed anche GC ha detto che avrebbe analizzato meglio il problema, da qui l'affermazione nelle righe soprastanti riguardo la carenza di mana.

That you're somehow paying to beta test the game.
First, I don't really think we'll ever get game balance to a state where 90% of you would say "Yes, it's perfect! Don't touch a thing!" Second, it's an MMO. Things change. The game evolves. We are always going to be changing things on our end as well. Players would be just as happy as not enough changes as some of you are with too many changes.

You may also have noticed that we nerfed level 70 raiding and that the level 80 raids are pretty easy compared to our past instances. We wanted to make sure we weren't shining too harsh a light on balance differences until everyone had plenty of time to get used to the changes -- more time than even our large beta can offer. Nobody should get parked at the curb in Naxx, and by the time Ulduar and later instances come on line, I predict we will have made many balance changes.

Nuovamente dichiara che niente di quanto viene fatto adesso è definitivo, ma soprattutto che non ha nessun velleità di bilanciare le classi. La Blizzard ci vuole dare i nuovi spell, abilità e talenti in una forma decentemente usabile, e affronterà il bilanciamento quando il livello 80 sarà stato metabolizzato. Non a caso i primi raid livello 80 sono sensibilmente più semplici di come furono a suo tempo i primi raid di TBC (Karazhan).