I'm not anywhere near putting everything into this thread yet. Theres still a lot I'm going to add, so just bear that in mind. Thanks
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Notes to Self:
- Format
- Notes section
- Find stuff I wrote
- Finish various sections
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Most of you are probably familiar with my previous thread http://www.twinkinfo.com/forums/15-19-bracket/18287-how-balance-19s-final.html and I feel that was a successful endeavour, however it is now (nearly) 3 patches old and I have changed my mind on certain points. I feel that it was also a little vague in its explanations and justifications. Besides this, balancing is an ittirative process so that previous thread was a good start, but anything can, and should, be improved on, so that is what this thread is for.
In this thread I hope to build upon what was discussed and decided last time and to provide more explanations with concrete reasoning and calculations.
My Design Goals
Low levels are not the same as endgame and should not be treated as such. Ideally it would be brilliant to balance level 19s around the same, or better, parameters as endgame, that being 3v3 is balanced and each spec is viable. This however may not be entirely possible.
I will certainly try to balance as finely as possible to the best of my ability, hopefully with your help, but the goal I will be setting will be to make every role of each class useful in each battleground. By roles I mean healing, melee, ranged and flag carrying. If a class has a healing, tanking and dps spec for instance I will endeavour to make each of those specs viable. For classes that have multiple specs that share roles such as a warrior with 2 melee specs I will try my best to make both equally viable, however I will not risk making one spec over powered in order to make both viable.
I do accept that these threads do have limitations. As I said earlier, balancing is an ittirative process and unfortunately we do not have the tools to test any suggestions we provide. As such these solutions will at best be very well informed estimations, but if we can make things work out on paper I feel sure that the low level pvp scene will be a damn sight better than it currently is. Leagues better.
In This Thread
As in the previous thread this thread will be split roughly into three sections: Problems, Solutions and Justifications. The format will change slightly, problems will remain in one large group but solutions and justifications will be grouped together by their subsections, for the moment at least.
There will also be a section in the opening post where I pose questions and discussion topics that I feel are important at the moment. Of course I actively encourage you to discuss all sections of low level imbalance, but be sure to check the first post occasionally to see if there is anything I feel deserves greater attention. I will also make a carbon copy post of each topic from this section in the thread so that it doesn't get lost when I remove it to pose a new discussion.
I would ideally like to keep all related discussion to this thread, so there is no need to go and necro the discussion groups created for the previous thread. I will also be more liberal than usual with handing out infractions to irrelevant, unhelpful or trolling posts, but as long as you are contributing in a constructive manner I'll be fair.
Important Discussion Topics
There is just one topic I feel deserves special attention at the moment (don't worry, there will be more later).
What levels of damage are desirable?
As anyone who plays low level battlegrounds will tell you, damage is too high. It is therefore in our best interests to decide on what we feel is an acceptable level of damage, dps, burst, survivability and healing
One of the main design ideas of cataclysm endgame pvp was to reduce the burstiness that was prevalent during wrath and to slow down the pace of pvp. I feel that this is a particularly good course to take for low level pvp since high burst is obviously not working at all, a slower environment is desirable in order to battleground leveling players to learn their class and we lack survivability options that higher level players have and therefore rely heavily on team synergy and peels which have longer reaction times than being more self sustained.
DPS in PvP is often largely unimportant since burst and control wins the day, but it is important to consider, since healer mana should ultimately matter. Therefore it should be carefully considered what sustainable dps we feel is approptiate for players to be taking after things like resilience, talents, abilities and miltagation are accounted for (leave aside for the moment potential effects on PvE).
As I said before, burst and control is what makes and breaks combat in PvP. This is intimately linked to survivability and healing however. We need to consider the circumstances we expect players to be in, from an FC with 2 healers up against 5 dps to a midfield brawl to an arena battle. The key questions we need to be asking are "How quickly should we be able to down an EFC?", "What are the extremes of acceptability in each situation for survival and burst?" and "What is the maximum acceptable amount of burst a single character should be able to produce in an X second window?"
Regarding the "extremes of acceptability", try and consider as many different scenarios as possible and provide each extreme as well as what you consider the ideal level.
/discuss!
Effects On PvE
Yeah, I wrote this down somewhere. Take it from me for now that this is accounted for and its all hunky dory.
---------------------------------------------
Notes to Self:
- Format
- Notes section
- Find stuff I wrote
- Finish various sections
---------------------------------------------
Most of you are probably familiar with my previous thread http://www.twinkinfo.com/forums/15-19-bracket/18287-how-balance-19s-final.html and I feel that was a successful endeavour, however it is now (nearly) 3 patches old and I have changed my mind on certain points. I feel that it was also a little vague in its explanations and justifications. Besides this, balancing is an ittirative process so that previous thread was a good start, but anything can, and should, be improved on, so that is what this thread is for.
In this thread I hope to build upon what was discussed and decided last time and to provide more explanations with concrete reasoning and calculations.
My Design Goals
Low levels are not the same as endgame and should not be treated as such. Ideally it would be brilliant to balance level 19s around the same, or better, parameters as endgame, that being 3v3 is balanced and each spec is viable. This however may not be entirely possible.
I will certainly try to balance as finely as possible to the best of my ability, hopefully with your help, but the goal I will be setting will be to make every role of each class useful in each battleground. By roles I mean healing, melee, ranged and flag carrying. If a class has a healing, tanking and dps spec for instance I will endeavour to make each of those specs viable. For classes that have multiple specs that share roles such as a warrior with 2 melee specs I will try my best to make both equally viable, however I will not risk making one spec over powered in order to make both viable.
I do accept that these threads do have limitations. As I said earlier, balancing is an ittirative process and unfortunately we do not have the tools to test any suggestions we provide. As such these solutions will at best be very well informed estimations, but if we can make things work out on paper I feel sure that the low level pvp scene will be a damn sight better than it currently is. Leagues better.
In This Thread
As in the previous thread this thread will be split roughly into three sections: Problems, Solutions and Justifications. The format will change slightly, problems will remain in one large group but solutions and justifications will be grouped together by their subsections, for the moment at least.
There will also be a section in the opening post where I pose questions and discussion topics that I feel are important at the moment. Of course I actively encourage you to discuss all sections of low level imbalance, but be sure to check the first post occasionally to see if there is anything I feel deserves greater attention. I will also make a carbon copy post of each topic from this section in the thread so that it doesn't get lost when I remove it to pose a new discussion.
I would ideally like to keep all related discussion to this thread, so there is no need to go and necro the discussion groups created for the previous thread. I will also be more liberal than usual with handing out infractions to irrelevant, unhelpful or trolling posts, but as long as you are contributing in a constructive manner I'll be fair.
Important Discussion Topics
There is just one topic I feel deserves special attention at the moment (don't worry, there will be more later).
What levels of damage are desirable?
As anyone who plays low level battlegrounds will tell you, damage is too high. It is therefore in our best interests to decide on what we feel is an acceptable level of damage, dps, burst, survivability and healing
One of the main design ideas of cataclysm endgame pvp was to reduce the burstiness that was prevalent during wrath and to slow down the pace of pvp. I feel that this is a particularly good course to take for low level pvp since high burst is obviously not working at all, a slower environment is desirable in order to battleground leveling players to learn their class and we lack survivability options that higher level players have and therefore rely heavily on team synergy and peels which have longer reaction times than being more self sustained.
DPS in PvP is often largely unimportant since burst and control wins the day, but it is important to consider, since healer mana should ultimately matter. Therefore it should be carefully considered what sustainable dps we feel is approptiate for players to be taking after things like resilience, talents, abilities and miltagation are accounted for (leave aside for the moment potential effects on PvE).
As I said before, burst and control is what makes and breaks combat in PvP. This is intimately linked to survivability and healing however. We need to consider the circumstances we expect players to be in, from an FC with 2 healers up against 5 dps to a midfield brawl to an arena battle. The key questions we need to be asking are "How quickly should we be able to down an EFC?", "What are the extremes of acceptability in each situation for survival and burst?" and "What is the maximum acceptable amount of burst a single character should be able to produce in an X second window?"
Regarding the "extremes of acceptability", try and consider as many different scenarios as possible and provide each extreme as well as what you consider the ideal level.
/discuss!
Effects On PvE
Yeah, I wrote this down somewhere. Take it from me for now that this is accounted for and its all hunky dory.