Realms Request for Reconsideration of Recent Change to Balance Druids

[Jengoftw]

Yes, I meant Druids.

So let me get this straight... in all these years, with all the people playing Druids, lots of them having played on retail too, plenty with a lot of experience with the class and specialization, not a single one ever realized something that wasn't meant to happen was happening? Yet, the moment it's changed, everyone knows exactly what was fixed and isn't happening anymore? Sorry, not buying that.

Not buying what exactly?

As I said, not even people from nowadays noticed it, you expect people to remember how something worked 17 years ago?
If I ask you or anyone else something random (but close to this topic) like how many Clearcastings were Mages getting per fight or per minute on Retail, who is going to be able to answer this accurately? Absolutely no one.
But of course if something was taken away from you today, you would notice the difference compared to yesterday.
And again, why would people want to report something that had positive impact on the game?

The moment a "bug" makes the game objectively better, it turns into a feature and there are hundreds of examples of games where they were then kept on purpose

This is a very good take I haven't thought of, but I can think of many many examples like that from other games as well. You can google it to see how common of a thing is this. I know it's not related to us and we are in our own bubble, but lets look at things in a wider picture, rather than just following an old rulebook.

[Bloodreina9]

I fully agree with author of this post and his pov at current change about boomie.

First I would say I play boomie only short time (around half year), never had any xp before with this class and got aware of this issue with 2set only recently. I was waiting with comment there to play boomie myself in full content raid to feel the difference at my own skin. I got to conclusion that this change makes me feel more as burden for raid than gain.

Few points what this change bring for the future of not only boomies:
1st Boomie take big amount of replenishment from all other people who will need it as mages, hunters and healers (everyone is complaining in raid they oom )
2nd Racing bottom spots in dmg with demolock, ele shaman is depressing (In the end u feel like battle ress, innervate and crit buff guy who just got boosted)
3rd (completely personal reason) If you are bis there is no point to continue. Expecting to get sts hc for os before your new hunters, rogues and warriors is naïve and there is always gonna be someone new for it. Personally i never understood people who never show again for raid after getting last item, but now I partly might understand them.

It was bugged and your "working perfectly" was based on exploiting that bug.

After some research, I agree it was bugged for long time (something around 10 years), but I think you cannot just throw every person who used 2set to pile with name "Bug exploiters". Every player who played boomie at this server is now bug exploiting? Idk but I never noticed there might be something wrong about proc of OoC, because in time I started playing boomie I checked other boomies and compared my procs with theirs. It seemed completely fine. People who started playing boomie before this 3rd party website mentioned in post never even had way to compare themselves to boomies who plays in diff guilds at same server and probably they never looked for way how to compare themselves with people who played 15years ago. This all might rly easily lead to live in feeling that everything works properly. This way I would like to apologize for apparently be bug abuser by equipping 4set and passively proc 2set bonus in raids.
Despite understanding it was bug fix, I still stand at side that this bug made game overall better.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

We have respect for Warmane and what is happening on Warmane, if we wanted the original game and it's integrity, we wouldn't be here. The class was simply not in a healthy state in the state it was left in 2010 and that's a fact. Always on every expansion and patch some classes suffer from this and they are left out, Balance Druid was that spec and now is again with this fix implemented. It was simply way more enjoyable to play, period. It's like from living in a mansion, going back to living in your basement from 15 years ago.

I am yet to see anyone actually come up with a negative outcome from this.

You don't respect it or even understand what has happened. Private servers started out as extremely fragmented and broken versions of the retail game. The quality version of the game you have here today is the result of over a decades worth of work and contributions. Classes and specs have been broken in more ways than you can imagine giving players advantages or disadvantages in all those years. The endgame has evolved into various different iterations.

That endeavor of emulating the original game doesn't play favorites. The negative outcome happens when developers abandon that goal and start fulfilling wish lists and give in to children beating their fists on the table. I've played balance druids more than most players in this thread and I know exactly what this is about, but I'm not so naive to say it's some game breaking fix. I respect maintaining the vision of honoring the game more than a little dps on a boomkin.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

that argument couldnt be made because:

First: that bug is so old that I didnt even know it existed
Second: since the existence of logs for warmane, ret did more dmg than boomie, despite not double dipping and boomie having high OoC proccs.
Retri as a class offer much more utility than boomie, but still did more damage. Why should boomie do even less damage now if it already did less than another specc which offers more support?

Third: mages are still the top damage class, a change that made them from being #1 by far to #1 but less dominantly, is good for the game balance.

so both the fixes you named were good for the game balance

The points being made here are extremely relevant. How is "this change is objectively not good for the future of the game" by any means not a good point?

You showed your hand for your motive behind your whataboutism post in general discussion. Makes sense now. There really isn't a good argument for keeping broken content in the game. You guys are flailing at whatever you can and exaggerating the effect of this so hard. It probably has to do with parse chasing as that small group of players often selfishly cry about anything that lowers their dps even if it's at the expense of others they don't care.

[Allylilith]

You showed your hand for your motive behind your whataboutism post in general discussion. Makes sense now. There really isn't a good argument for keeping broken content in the game. You guys are flailing at whatever you can and exaggerating the effect of this so hard. It probably has to do with parse chasing as that small group of players often selfishly cry about anything that lowers their dps even if it's at the expense of others they don't care.

I do not even play boomie, and if anything this change hurts others too, as boomies now take replenishment off speccs that actually need it.
and I have no idea what you mean with your first setence.
My motive is making the game better for everyone.

So far I have still heard 0 actual arguments how the game has been made better with this change, while there a dozen good arguments to revert the change

[Jengoftw]

You don't respect it or even understand what has happened. Private servers started out as extremely fragmented and broken versions of the retail game. The quality version of the game you have here today is the result of over a decades worth of work and contributions. Classes and specs have been broken in more ways than you can imagine giving players advantages or disadvantages in all those years. The endgame has evolved into various different iterations.

That endeavor of emulating the original game doesn't play favorites. The negative outcome happens when developers abandon that goal and start fulfilling wish lists and give in to children beating their fists on the table. I've played balance druids more than most players in this thread and I know exactly what this is about, but I'm not so naive to say it's some game breaking fix. I respect maintaining the vision of honoring the game more than a little dps on a boomkin.

Looks like we're comparing credentials now.

I was reporting bugs and contributing during the days of Mangos and early TrinityCore, back when private servers were far rougher than anything players experience today. But go ahead and lecture me.

Part of the success of private servers has always been the willingness to introduce thoughtful custom changes, not just copying everything 1:1 without question.

And trust me, I know Balance Druid inside and out, far better than you. The way you downplay it only shows how little you actually understand about it. And no one said it's a game breaking fix, everyone said it's ruining the fun.

Players who raided after the changes and experienced the new state of things have already started giving feedback. I can also factually confirm what's been said by looking at the logs.
A quick example: a BIS geared Balance Druid on LoD recently restored around 20k mana through Replenishment (stolen from other classes), whereas just a week earlier, it restored 0 mana. A massive difference, which people won't even understand where it's coming from.


I'll leave it here because I am just seeing opinions but not real arguments from you, would like to hear more from others.

[en1gmaa]

If the bug made Boomies overpowered, then yes, fixing it is a no-brainer.
If the bug just made Boomies viable without hurting balance - and now fixing it makes the class miserable - it's understandable players would want it kept.
Fixes should happen early - not after 10+ years when a meta has evolved around them. If the fix trashes a spec's viability without compensation, it's bad for the server's health.

[Arbiterone]

Fixes should happen early - not after 10+ years when a meta has evolved around them.

Should all development cease?

[jmsvanbuskirk]

I do not even play boomie, and if anything this change hurts others too, as boomies now take replenishment off speccs that actually need it.
and I have no idea what you mean with your first setence.
My motive is making the game better for everyone.

So far I have still heard 0 actual arguments how the game has been made better with this change, while there a dozen good arguments to revert the change

It's not a change. It's a bug that was fixed. A very important distinction. Arguing at all for it is implying making a custom modification to the game and that's a steel wall to get through in this place. You can come up with a hundred arguments and I just don't think it matters. I've seen this play out so many times.

[Allylilith]

It's not a change. It's a bug that was fixed. A very important distinction. Arguing at all for it is implying making a custom modification to the game and that's a steel wall to get through in this place. You can come up with a hundred arguments and I just don't think it matters. I've seen this play out so many times.

If something works one specific way for 10 years, and then it gets *changed* to conform to an inferior version of the game, where it worked that way for 1 year, I'll go ahead and call that a change, feel free to call it whatever you want though, as the name of it is supremely irrelevant, the discussion in this threat is solely about what it actually does and means for the game. When discussing how something affects the game, the distinction between change and bug fix is completely irrelevant, it's the result that matters. There are many custom modifications in this game, and most of them werent already in the game for a full decade and then taken out a week ago.
all I read from your comment is "no, I do not have an actual argument in favor of this change"

[Allylilith]

Should all development cease?

For sure not, most of the things in the changelogs are still nice to see improved, but the other other part of it also exists. To give some recent examples:

From the most recent changelog
most of the things there are great, but then there is for example
" Fixed weaker version of Rip overwriting an already applied stronger version report #128363 " which seems like a bad change, for feral it doesnt hurt that much, but for example corruption of warlock suffered the same change like 2 years ago of hitting "a more powerful spell is already active" error when trying to refresh corruption. This doesnt do anything except reducing the player's choice in an extremely frustrating way, which prevents you from playing an optimal rotation. It feels like something blizzard introduced to help noobs, without considering the problems it brings, as there are cases where you absolutely do want to refresh a more powerful buff to a weaker one. blizz-like or not, who wants this?
from the same changelog "Fixed Volatile Ooze target behavior": I do not understand how this is a fix. I am not sure if you are aware of the details, but as it stands right now, even on 25man hc 0% buff, the ooze doesnt explode a single time and the mechanic gets completely skipped. the first time I saw it in a raid, everyone thought it was a new bug. any raid group I am in still refers to it as "hop green target to Bug the ooze". The behavior feels absolutely wrong. green sometimes moves in the opposite direction of its target or just stands there afk. playing around it 100% feels like bug abusing. it 100% feels like blizzard failed to implement proper ooze behavior and warmane copied it for some reason. Some people in this thread will call having boomie 2set equipped the past 10yrs bug abusing, but then say it's completely legit to iceblock 1sec before the green ooze explodes on you, making it just stand there, wondering what its purpose in life is. This kind of thinking is objectively stupid and a result on being hyper focussed on names and replicating 1 to 1 whatever blizzard threw together to get the raid to a releaseable state. green ooze behaving this way is simply nonsense, either make it work as before or as orange.
in february came "Fixed poison attack power coefficients being very slightly off report #125758" which from what I heard ended up costing rogues about 3% damage. it doesnt really change anything balance wise, but it ruins the competitive nature of pve for every single rogue. again, who wants this?

those changes just feel like changes being made for the sake of changing something, without them having a positive impact on the game, rather the opposite.

it is great to see the server still actively being developed, but it would be better if it only made changes which can be justified as an improvement from the previous state.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

Looks like we're comparing credentials now.

I was reporting bugs and contributing during the days of Mangos and early TrinityCore, back when private servers were far rougher than anything players experience today. But go ahead and lecture me.

Part of the success of private servers has always been the willingness to introduce thoughtful custom changes, not just copying everything 1:1 without question.

And trust me, I know Balance Druid inside and out, far better than you. The way you downplay it only shows how little you actually understand about it. And no one said it's a game breaking fix, everyone said it's ruining the fun.

Players who raided after the changes and experienced the new state of things have already started giving feedback. I can also factually confirm what's been said by looking at the logs.
A quick example: a BIS geared Balance Druid on LoD recently restored around 20k mana through Replenishment (stolen from other classes), whereas just a week earlier, it restored 0 mana. A massive difference, which people won't even understand where it's coming from.


I'll leave it here because I am just seeing opinions but not real arguments from you, would like to hear more from others.

This is Warmane. It is not a custom content server. Yet it's successful. They have made changes around quality of life, but they don't alter core gameplay mechanics. This is a bug that was fixed. Undoing the bug would be adding a custom change that would alter core gameplay mechanics. I've never seen them do that here. That's the only concept you need to understand because if that's true then this thread was dead out of the gate like most the suggestions in this forum.

[Allylilith]

This is Warmane. It is not a custom content server. Yet it's successful. They have made changes around quality of life, but they don't alter core gameplay mechanics. This is a bug that was fixed. Undoing the bug would be adding a custom change that would alter core gameplay mechanics. I've never seen them do that here. That's the only concept you need to understand because if that's true then this thread was dead out of the gate like most the suggestions in this forum.

except going against original 3.3.5 changing how deep wounds work literally 2 days ago, for example

[jmsvanbuskirk]

If something works one specific way for 10 years, and then it gets *changed* to conform to an inferior version of the game, where it worked that way for 1 year, I'll go ahead and call that a change, feel free to call it whatever you want though, as the name of it is supremely irrelevant, the discussion in this threat is solely about what it actually does and means for the game. When discussing how something affects the game, the distinction between change and bug fix is completely irrelevant, it's the result that matters. There are many custom modifications in this game, and most of them werent already in the game for a full decade and then taken out a week ago.
all I read from your comment is "no, I do not have an actual argument in favor of this change"

oof. Calling the original WotLK an inferior version of the game just destroys any credibility you have. You're in the wrong place.

[jmsvanbuskirk]

except going against original 3.3.5 changing how deep wounds work literally 2 days ago, for example

Right. Like I said Whataboutism. The bug was fixed. I'm sorry. You'll be ok. Move through the stages of grief and accept it.