Taste for blood?

Hello Cohax,

No one likes to see nerfs being done to their class, unfortunately it’s one of those things that a game like WoW is always subject to, and there are just too many variables, limited resources and schedules to keep.
So sometimes we have to hotfix stuff, the problem is that players will always get used to the “overpowered” abilities, and when the nerf comes the disappointment is inevitable.

As you can imagine this is definitely not in our interest, we want our players to have fun; this is a game after all.
The problem is that when someone is “having fun” due to having an overpowered ability or class/spec, that usually comes at the cost of someone else feeling miserable when they realize that there’s nothing that they can do to counter such class/spec/ability.
So ideally we would like to have a perfectly balanced game without having to hotfix anything at all, this way no one would have to miss being overpowered and then feel mad after being nerfed, there would also be no need for anyone to ever feel underpowered as well. Sadly this is too idealistic, but it’s a noble goal that we always like to have in the back of our minds when we design our games.

Let’s get to the point, Taste for Blood wasn’t overpowered in itself, yes it hit very hard, but like you said, Chaos Bolt hits very hard as well, so why the nerf? Well TfB is tied to Heroic Strike and that makes it particularly dangerous because it’s out of the CGD.
If you’re casting a Chaos Bolt you can be interrupted, you have to stand still, you can lose LoS and it has a somewhat long casting time.

Now if you’re a warrior and the stars align, you can have 5 stacks of TfB, Mortal Strike + Heroic Strike + Auto Attack + mastery proc all in the very same instant, that can literally be a 1-shot and that is something that we don’t want to see happening in PvP, it’s just not acceptable.
Taking out 50% of HP from someone can be ok as long as you can’t take 50% of HP followed by an equivalent powerful attack from the same source, the enemy needs to have enough time to land a heal or recover is some other way before you take the rest of his HP, this is where skill comes in, if you’re able to stop that player from recovering during that time, then well played!

I’m not saying that PvP is perfectly tuned right now, I’m sure that we will have more hotfixes coming in the near future, devs are constantly analysing data and listening to your feedback and they will keep trying to bring the game closer to a state of perfect balance as best and as fast as they possibly can.

If Taste for Blood capping at 1 stack proves to be an excessively strong nerf, you can be sure that devs will catch it when they analyse fresh new data, if that happens they can always change TfB again directly or make up for the nerf in some other way, like buffing some other ability or indirectly by bringing the other classes that might be too powerful to the same level as the warrior. In the end the goal is simply balance, and there is an infinite number of ways to get there.

18/12/2012 13:20Posted by Anarchy

I guess my question is, why do developers say they're content with something and defend their decision not to change it, then suddenly find it 'unacceptable' and change it?

There’s a saying in my country that says “only fools never change their minds”.

Developers are not machines, they do their very best at trying to design the game as balanced as possible, it’s true that some opinions can be very strong sometimes, but the values that are initially attributed to constants and variables in the formulas for most abilities are not simply made up on the spot, there’s extensive math involved there and sometimes it’s only natural that one can trust the math a bit too strongly, the problem is that sometimes math doesn’t directly translate to a live gaming environment, so an ability/spell can look absolutely perfect on paper and in a simulation but still end up being horribly tuned for certain PvP situations because simulating 11 classes, 34 specs, talents, glyphs, and human behaviour all at the same time is never easy.

This game is incredibly vast and we need a lot of resources, proper data, and a good amount of samples to be able to really check out all the facts, constant data analysis and listening to reliable feedback can have a tremendous effect in catalysing and accelerating changes being applied to the game because it can point devs in the right direction, thus saving our most precious asset, time.

If you look at the rate of constant hotfixes and patches that we release, you can’t really say that devs are stubborn, if anything, WoW must be one of the most iterated games of all time, it’s in a permanent state of change, constantly adapting to the needs and requirements of the present time, that means that devs are quite open minded and are always ready to listen to facts and the opinions of others, also remember that most of them are also players so they have the same experience that you do, they want to make this game the best that it can possibly be, both as players and as developers, and that’s a tough combination to beat if you ask me.
Almost no one can have a grasp over everything in WoW, it’s simply that vast. This game is a beast ;)

If we ever appear to be locked into some fixed idea it’s because there must be a very strong reason for it, and also because applying changes always takes time, quality control is particularly important, we want to avoid applying changes and then going back and forth regretting about them later on, so time for proper testing is extremely important for assuring reliability.