Monday, May 4, 2009

GC says: No more changes

Well it looks like big blue got a little fed up with all the patching and decided to call an overall freeze on the more significant talent changes. Behold the post of the mighty ghostcrawler on the oboards that was made sometime last saturday:

"When players feel weak, they tend to ask how often until the next hotfix or patch comes around.
When players feel strong, they wonder why we have to change things so often.

That said, I don't think you will continue to see as much class change for the rest of Lich King. Many of the changes in 3.1 were to address problems introduced when we made big changes in 3.0. You can look at the classes that have had the most iteration, and in most cases those are the classes who were restructured a little bit in Lich King: warlocks, hunters, priests, paladins and the new class.

We will continue to tweak numbers up and down as needed, but I would not anticipate as many talent or mechanic changes for the next several patches (though there will be some)."

This is certainly a bit of a doozy since it has widespread implications on the current game. To take GC's words rather bluntly it basically says that if you're not happy with your class now your chances of it being fixed beyond some number tweaking are pretty much nil. That is until patch 4.0 or so which for all intents and purposes could be years away (or 'soon' as blizzard likes to call it).

So without too much drama or QQ about how those miserable bastards basically kicked my warlock to the curb, shot my hunter through the head and elevated my puny level 61 DK to godhood status lets take a quick look at wow census.

Why? because it's reasonable to assume that the most popular classes now, will be more or less the most popular classes all the way through wrath:




Allright, I'd say that pretty much speaks for itself... the bottom end is still clearly shared by rogues, warlocks and shamans and the top end is still looking at a lot of love for pallies and dk's.

Cross this data with the arena representation for the freshly bred season 6 here


And voila, it's safe to say: If you're on the bottom half of both curves and you're not happy with your talents as they are you might as well re-roll, well wait a few weeks and then re-roll since season 6 is fresh off the plate.

That's right... re-roll... don't roll with the punches, don't try to adapt your miserable talent spec that doesn't make you happy through adjusting a playstyle that doesn't make you happy in the hopes that a future patch will make you happy.

It won't, because there will be no patch to fix you until blizzard decides to get sick of whomever holds on to their decrepid class and maintains a steady stream of whines on the oboards for the next months.

So the waters will indeed become stagnant and start to stink over the next few months as blizzard's developers either find some time to put into diablo and starcraft or find themselves out on the street wondering what the hell happened to their cosy jobs messing up our talent trees.

At least I am not alone in this life raft of misery *waves at the hunter sitting behind him*... now if you will excuse me I have to will myself into liking my Deathknight.

*unghhhhh*

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My 74 DK is putting out DPS that is almost as good as my 80 lock. The lock is a mix of blues and purples.