/ponder
BRK has been grumbling about hunter mana issues for a while, and this has got me thinking…
He gripes about how his combat decisions, and even spec, are up to the whim of another class (namely, their presence – or not).
This isn’t just true for hunters, and hasn’t been ever since Vampiric Touch was introduced into the game. As a mage, I’m very reliant on Replenishment and at least the 13% bonus spell damage debuff from somebody. A shaman in the group, the 5% crit boost from somewhere else…
All of those things add up extremely quickly. With them, the damage flies fast and hard, with truly massive crits lighting up the damage meters.
Without them… and even a casual observer can tell I’m crippled.
I ran with a Naxx-10 pug where I was the only offensive caster. The only support I had was resto shaman in my group. No replenishment. No extra crit, no percentiles to be seen anywhere.
Just a Flametongue totem and Mana Spring.
It’s a somewhat alarming thought. I do alright without those buffs, DPS isn’t low enough to cause wipes without them, it’s the mana part that gets… concerning.
Consider. With more mana regeneration thrown around in the raid, the more you can safely throw around your mana dump abilities. Arcane mages can sit in ABlast mode for longer, fire mages can spam Pyros and LB’s all day, and frost mages… uhh… nevermind.
With mana regeneration poorer, this constraints the DPS a mage can do. With less mana to draw from, this forces the mage to conserve it, in order to last longer. This results in less room to mana dump, and the whole premise might even be scrapped entirely if the situation is dire enough.
Essentially, if there is a lot of mana regeneration being thrown around, then specs/rotations with high mana consumption (and thus, higher damage) are favoured.
If there is little to no mana regen, then specs/rotations with high longevity are favoured.
Picking some numbers from the invisible calculator here, let’s say we have two specs of the same class. Let’s call this class “Not-Mage”.
Now, one Not-Mage is specced into Not-Arcane, a spec which excels at taking advantage of high amounts of mana to produce a lot of damage. This type of mage thrives in a mana rich environment, but performs poorly when there is little.
The other Not-Mage is specced into Not-Frost-I-Swear, a spec which could really couldn’t care less about any of this mana regeneration crap. As it can’t take advantage of mana regeneration, it’s presence is irrelevant. Due to the specs inherent mana longevity, it performs extremely well in low mana environments.
The one that performs better in a given raid is entirely up to the presence of Ret Paladins, Shamans, Priests, etc.
This can actually be taken a step further…
Because mages dependant on these classes existence, this means we are nerfed and buffed as these classes are nerfed and buffed.
If Shadow Priests are nerfed, mages are nerfed a little too. There’ll be less Shadow Priests around, therefore less Replenishment buffers.
Some priests will be ditched for poor DPS, some will reroll to a different class, others will respec to something that isn’t nerfed.
If there’s a raiding guild that only has a S.Priest for Replenishment, and he gets fed up with his shoddy DPS and quits, that means every mage in his guild was just nerfed, and every mage he had the potential to do any raiding or instances with in the future.
Same for Ret Pallies and Survival Hunters. Let’s say Survival Hunters are buffed. More hunters spec that way, people who had left their hunter behind start to play it again…
Net result, more Survival Hunters than before, more Replenishments being tossed around, mages get buffed.
The same applies to all the other buffs and debuffs mages benefit from out there. Moonkins get nerfed, less Moonkins are around, thus less +13% spell damage modifiers around… mages are nerfed.
Elemental Shamans get buffed, therefore there will be more of them running around in raids and instances. That means more Totems of Wrath, more Elemental Oath procs… mages are buffed.
Why, then, would anyone call for nerfs to these classes and specs when they know full well when their own performance depends on them?
Either they don’t know, haven’t thought about it that way, are spiteful jerks, or just blithering idiots.
By contrast, all these spellcasters depend on us, too.
If mages get nerfed, there’ll be less of them around. Maybe they reroll a different class, go play an alt, or they’re simply not brought to raids anymore (see Sunwell).
This means less refreshment tables, less portals, and less 10% spell crit debuffs being stacked.
Net result, everyone else gets nerfed.
This has to make sense to more people than me and my invisible friend Bernardo.
I’m with you on this one. <3 anyone who brings me mana!
<3 tanks, <3 healers.
/love to all
Yeah, I understand your point perfectly. But, a lot of people’s idea of ‘class balance’ is ‘my class is head and shoulders above every other class, no question’
Equality is not on their mind at all. As for me, my chosen caster class/spec is only mildly dependent on replenishment, but, it’s nice to have around. I’m one of them that other casters love to have around. Wrath totems, Oath, Bloodlust, and Mana Spring. (yes, my Horde main is an elemental shaman)
I don’t ask for other classes to be nerfed because I want to be better than them. I just point out how much better they did on this week’s raid because I was there, than they did last week when I wasn’t. Point made. And now I’m getting a small damage buff, too. I also don’t really have to worry about losing a raid spot because of my class’s DPS issues. I’m one of the Good Players your other post recently talked about. I may not have the twitch skills of a CS vet, but I’ve tanked everything I could since 2005. After tanking, dps and healing are (to me) relatively easier things to do well.
I couldn’t agree more. I always find myself feeling somewhat floundering when I suddenly find myself in a group with something like a tree, rogue, warrior and DK. I have no mana regen coming to me at all, and suddenly realise just how much mana 0.25%/s is. Answer: a lot. With it, I can Blast spam bosses. Without, I’m running on fumes by the end of longer fights, using the normal Blast-Barrage alternation. That rogue and warrior/DK are likely to do much better damage than me in general, whereas in a caster group our positions would be reversed.
Perhaps more distressing to many mages than this reliance on other classes for damage is the corollary that, in this age of homogenised equipment, you almost always want to hurt yourself somehow. Want a better chance at good gear? Do less damage. Want to max out your potential damage? Sure, but be willing to get outrolled on that you’ve been grinding when it drops.
I wonder to what extend depencies dictate the percieved hatred between classes.
Do mages hate warlocks because there are no synergies? Do warlocks love spriests because there are(were) so many synergies?
That’d be a fascinating thing to map… I might just borrow this train of thought for a blogpost of my own at some point if you don’t mind.
I honestly think people call for nerfs because of PVP more than because they see a particular class ahead of them in the damage meters or mana regen. Any hate I’ve ever seen comes most particularly from people who play the 2v2 bracket where class imbalances are most pronounced. Getting ambush critted for 75% of your health or dieing to a ret paladin in a 10 second bubble tends to get the blood pressure up and the venom flowing. People just want a fair and balanced game more than they want EZ mode or being gimp.
I believe that what you were describing in the article applies to tanks as well. Lately, it seems as though it is becoming increasingly difficult to find tanks for heroics/raids since Blizzard has made Ret Pallies/Fury Warriors/DPS DKs so good that many would be tanks are speccing for DPS. By doing this, it not only limits the number of groups at any given time, but it also “Nerfs” pure DPS classes. What I mean by this is that if these possible tanks are DPSing, they thereby take a Mage (or other DPS) spot.
In conclusion, Blizzard please nerf fury warriors, Ret Pallies, and DPSing DKs so that their are more tanks. K thnx bye
@ Captain: Actually, warlocks can offer some synergy with mages – Demonology locks have Demonic Pact (maybe this isn’t a raiding build, but it certainly comes up in 5-mans) and Curse of Elements. This particular mage is less-than-fond of Warlocks because soloing a warlock is like soloing a mage without any of the risk, and because fear plus substantial self-healing capacity and large health pools make Warlocks a very tough match for mages in PVP.
On the original topic, I’m very surprised at how much of my DPS comes from external sources. I’ve seen my personal DPS on Archavon spike from 1.5K to 2K with little to no change in my personal behavior when all the proper group buffs are available.
That is terribly, ponderously insightful and it’s something that I hadn’t even considered in that light.
There are so many classes that depend on synergies and I’m sure they don’t even realize it. Sunders and strength totems and faerie fire and…I need to sit down.
Cheers!
Hurray for being a ret pally. You know you all love me.
There have been several times in 5 mans when the healer wipes and I pick up healing duties for that last burst. Just keep telling the devs to pump up ret. And don’t worry about ret taking the place of prot pallies. Its not like there were any prot pallies before ret was good. Its not like there were any pallies really.
I agree with the premise of this post. In fact, I think that this is what MMOs are about at their core… the sum is greater than the parts.
I disagree with Dwaede about Paladins, though.
90% of Paladins were something OTHER THAN Retribution up until 3.0 made us viable. Personally I spent over a year as Holy and another 6-8 months as Prot. Even when I was leveling I spec’d out of Retribution at level 30(-ish).
These days, though, Retribution is all the rage. If for no other reason than because Retribution has been such a weak spec until now.
Wonderful ponderings. Unfortunately I think too many people that call for nerfs/buffs aren’t looking at the whole picture, as you just laid out.
As it is, we try to keep in mind that certain people’s DPS numbers will be affected by paying attention to utility roles (having to trap/sheep/banish, for example). And we should be mindful of how those are affected by the external factors brought about by others in the raid. Although Blizzard is trying to move away from stacking x number of y class, it is still good to know which classes synergize (:P) well together and can use this knowledge when deciding the composition of the group.
I have been screaming you points for some time to everyone I know…my non-WoWing family.
After the Hunter BM nerf in the next patch I may change my spec. If so there will be one less Ferocious Inspiration mob defuff for the raid. It may not be much, but a 3% boost to damage raid wide is something.
Ho hum…take changes as they come and adapt, I suppose.
“Why, then, would anyone call for nerfs to these classes and specs when they know full well when their own performance depends on them?
Either they don’t know, haven’t thought about it that way, are spiteful jerks, or just blithering idiots.”
Bravo. Very well said.