The Heroic Class dilemma, Part II

In my previous post, I discussed what I believe WoW's heroic classes should be, and how the Death Knight measured up. Today, I'd like to share my ideas about how the classes can be designed to meet these criteria, and changes to the DK that can bring the class into line with what it should be.

Lore and Play mechanics

The first two points are not difficult to succeed, and the second point has little effect on game play. Blizzard has done an excellent job introducing new mechanics to the game and revamping old ones to keep the game fresh and interesting to play, and the DK's runic power and runes were no different. However, the sheer number of cooldowns the DK can spam in a few seconds, especially with the help of a macro may be a bit OP. In addition, Blizzard has an EXCELLENT creative/lore team, and their games have always FELT as if lore is their primary focus. The back stories are deep and rich, their characters are well developed and typically act as would be expected.

You gotta "pay" to play

There needs to be an in game cost to play a Death Knight or other heroic class. I'm sorry, but there REALLY needs to be a better way to gate the number of hero classes being played. Blizzard needs to reverse their policy of being granted a heroic class of equivalent level as the level required to unlock the class. This means you would have to be some level greater than 55 to get a level 55 DK. Personally, i believe it should be AT LEAST a 10-15 level cost, e.g. you are required to have a level 65-70 to earn a level 55 (really 58) DK. Under this system, the the number of heroic classes per account across all servers should be limited by the number of characters that have reached or surpassed the "unlock" level. The purpose of these gates are obvious: If there is no cost to play the classes, everyone will create them, flooding the realms with heroic toons, and defeating the purpose of the heroic toons

Power Balance

A heroic class' power, while solo (this is important as you'll see below) should be balanced to be equivalent to a vanilla class of equivalent level, or equivalent level + 1. If the equivalent level +1 is used, it should only persist until max level, at which point the class should be as powerful as a max level vanilla class, e.g. If a level 75 DK is as be balanced to equivalent level of a 76 vanilla class (e.g. warlock), then at max level a DK should have equivalent an equivalent power level to a max level warlock, or hunter, whatever.

If instituted, this would mean an overall nerf to the DK class since they currently out power other classes (except, potentially, the Paladin) of equivalent level by a level or two. They will, however, recieve a different kind of buff, discussed below.

Powering up as part of a group

Leadership bonuses are my idea for a new mechanic for making a heroic class feel heroic, and feel like leaders again, instead of just OP Mary-sue solo classes.

Heroic classes will have the ability to gain bonuses when they are the leader of a group, and grant bonuses to the other group members. This system goes directly back to how the hero units in WCIII worked: they were leaders that led groups of regular units. Here, the hero classes will lead groups of play controlled units. They will finally feel like leaders.

There are a variety of ways to implement this plan: There could just be a toggle (DK's a group leader, so they get a static bonus to some attribute), or the bonus could scale with party size (the DK group leader gets a 1% bonus in a group of 2, 2% bonus in a group of 3, etc). The hero class bonus could be different based on the characters build (Blood DK's get a regen, Frost DK's get an armor bonus, unholy DK's get a damage bonus). Not only would the hero class gain bonuses from being in a group, the group would also gain a small static bonus for having the hero class as a group leader (e.g. a small increase in dodge, damage, armor, threat reduction, etc). ALL classes should derive some benefit from these bonuses, e.g. a bonus to block would be a poor choice since the bonus would be useless to any non-shield using classes.

NOW look at how you feel about that guy playing hero class. When you get him or her in your party, hey, we get a boon. We WANT you in our party, and we WANT the hero class to be the leader, cause EVERYONE gets something. If the frost DK is the party leader, and the tank, the bonuses to the DK should help him tank better. Forcing the DK to group to get his hero bonuses would hopefully help encourage more responsible game play by the hero classes, because if they act like asshats in a group, the other party members will not want to group with the DK/other hero class anymore, and if they don't get to group, they don't get the bonuses, and then you're just another class.

However, this system should NOT be taken to an extreme. It should of minor benefit to the group and more pronounced benefit to the Hero class; Something that's nice to have, but not necessary. A situation should not develop in which a raid boss can't be beaten w/o a certain hero-class at the helm.

Blizzard is making a lot of changes to the system, including giving rewards to group leaders. Granting bonuses to group based on who your leader is shouldn't be much of a jump and I think will help (and I have more ideas on expanding this system to other classes, and RACES, and will blog more on that in the future). This system would solve the issue of hero classes being woefully unbalanced in solo play, but still let them stand out in the leader role that we would expect them to play. Adding the cost to their play (requiring the repeat of several levels) will hopefully discourage power-gamers from taking these classes and encourage REAL leaders to take the classes and bring the benefit to everyone else.

The Heroic Class dilemma, Part I

So when I said the announcement of a hero class was omitted in one of my previous posts, it got me thinking about what I expect from a hero class. The concept of the hero class in WoW comes directly from the hero units in WCIII, e.g. Human Paladin, Night Elf Priestess of the Moon, and the Undead Lich. Hero classes were very powerful units which were limited in quantity, expensive, leveled up with experience and "led" other groups of less powerful/valuable units into combat. The heroes also often granted bonuses to the units under their command. Since the first announcements about WoW (this is hear-say now, i wasn't interested in WoW at this point), the concept of the hero class was planned for the game, but wasn't included in launch. The concept of what they would be remained nebulous until the second expansion.

One of the most anticipated features of the Wrath expansion was addition of the WoW's first hero class, the Death Knight (DK). In my mind, there have been several versions of Death Knights in lore, but our PC class DK is based on the most recent version: the corrupted hero. Our prototypical hero here is Arthas, after his fall from the light in Northrend (If you're curious, the other prototype would be Teron Gorefiend, the soul of a shadow council orc warlock in a decaying human knight's body). A whole spectrum of feelings about DK's as a class exist, so saying "Everyone either loves them or hates them" is an oversimplification. But despite my feelings on them, I feel that Blizzard straight up FAILED when they released these DK's as a hero class.

Oh, if anyone was wondering what MY feelings on the DK are, then I'll state this for transparency: I hate them. I. Fucking. Hate. Death. Knights. But that's not to say I don't think that the class can't be salvaged and that's not what this post is about.

After some thought about what I would expect a hero class to be in WoW, I came up with the following list:

1. Most importantly, their play style and abilities should be unique and they should bring new mechanics to the game.
2. They should be appealing to the players and add new chapters and concepts to lore and improve game immersion.
3. They should be powerful, however the power differential should NOT unbalance the game play for OTHER players who choose not to play hero classes.
4. As with all power, there should be a COST to playing a heroic class. In WCIII, the units were expensive, but you got your first one free.
5. Hero classes should feel like group leaders, or bring buffs and/or abilities to their group, much in the same way the WCIII hero classes did, and THIS should be primary reason they are sought after in a group, instead of raw power.

Meeting all these criteria is a difficult chore. Points 1 and 2 aren't that difficult to accomplish, and not surprising, a good job was done here for the DKs. The rune/runic power system was brand new to the game, and the story line concerning the Ebon Hold is fairly well done (I don't think its Blizz's best story line, but it seems to be popular in the community as a whole).

However, the OTHER 3 points are where Blizzard failed the DK.

Addressing point #3: This is possibly the most difficult point to balance. The WCIII Heroic Units were MUCH more powerful than the non-heroic counterparts they led. This system works very well in an RTS, when one player controls all of these minions, but becomes VERY problematic in an MMO, when every unit is controlled by a player. In WoW, and EVERY MMO for that matter, everyone is playing to feel heroic. Should the original 9 classes now feel NON-heroic, because they're not playing DK's? No, of course not. But I feel this is exactly what happened with the DK: they're so powerful, the question becomes not "Do I want to play this?" but "Why would I want to play anything else?". However, a heroic class SHOULD feel more potent than a base class, because players need to feel that the cost they pay (see addressing point 4 Below) should be worth it. I believe that the solution to this shortcoming is found it point #5.

Addressing point #4: There is virtually no cost or sacrifice required to play a DK, or other heroic class. Currently You must have a toon of one of the base classes to level 55 to unlock the DK, at which point you can create as many DK's as you like on other servers, with a limit of 1 DK per server. This was changed from launch when you could only have a DK on THE SAME SERVER as your 55+ toon. In addition to having as many DK's as you like amongst the servers, you start the DK at level 55, and then are almost GRANTED the next 3 levels to get to Outland, where you level VERY quickly.

Addressing point #5: I think this is where Blizzard really dropped the ball. Based on the hero unit paradigm, the hero classes should be leaders. They should be strong buffing classes and even derive bonuses from being a member of a group or leading a group. Currently, the DK doesn't feel like a leader in the group, nor does it feel like the DK brings substantial buffs to the group (Horn of the North is too short lived, and Path of Frost is a gimmick). Instead, the DK just feels like an overpowered melee Tank/DPS class with a bunch of other tools that it doesn't need.

In my next post, I'll discuss some ideas I have for fixing the DK to make it a truly heroic class, and maybe pave the way for future heroic classes.

Dealing with the Plate-wearing Elephants in the room

For starters, I'm NOT talking about you warriors out there. You guys are fine the way you are.

And EVERYONE who's played WoW, especially players on the PvP servers, should know what I'm talking about.

Since the release of the 3.0.2, 2 classes have ABSOLUTELY DOMINATED the servers: DK's and Ret Pallys. Look at the server censes (Censuses? Censii?) and you should see an OBVIOUS trend, ~30-40% of players are DK's or Paladins (Numbers supported by various census sites). Anecdotally, I don't think i've been in a 5-man dungeon that hasn't had at least one paladin and one DK in it. I even ran ramparts once with my mage, a priest and 3 DK's. The VAST majority of these Paladins are Retribution build. I think its also the reason we see so very very many Horde players popping out BE's these days. I haven't started a Horde toon in over a year, but I'm betting a stroll around Org would show a LOT of BE's. On the plus side, the players who are sitting behind the screens on these toons are good role-players: The BE's in lore have a strong proclivity for douche-baggery, and these players are no different.

The Paladin problem showed up when they "Fixed" the retribution tree in 3.0.2. I don't know why they did this, I've never played a Paladin past level 15, so I have no idea what the talents there were like. I suppose they wanted to make a leveling build, maybe? Whatever the reason for the "Fix", this is half the reason that the PvP AND PvE environment has been such a pain in the ass. Ret Pallies are so powerful, no one wants to play anything else.

The Death Knight problem I think is a little more complex. Again, my experience PLAYING the class is very limited: I have one DK, she's level 58, and barely leaves SW and IF. To me, shes a mule and a blacksmith. That's it, and I'm okay with it. I personally HATE The way the class plays, but lots of people love it. The way the class plays is not what this post is about, the sheer NUMBER of DK's is.

The DK is a hero class. My next post has a set of guidelines about what that should mean. I won't enumerate them here, but The DK succeeds on counts 1, 2, and the first half of three, and fails on the later points. See more about my ideas for the heroic classes in the next post.

Like I'll mention, I think its okay for these characters to be marginally more powerful at levels except level 80. I can understand that, it makes the Hero class FEEL heroic at those levels. Also, I can even understand making them MUCH more powerful for a set time (e.g. a few weeks or months), at ALL levels, THEN giving them a planned nerf. This would get players to roll DK's initially, then rope things in later and let the classes normalize themselves again. If this was the plan, it hasn't happened. They remain OP'd almost 9 months following the release of the patch.

The problems DK's and Ret Pallys cause is that it has become very difficult to put a group together. DK's can tank, and Pally's can tank and heal. There are HORRID shortages of players playing these roles. If these DPS build weren't so popular due to being so damned OP, some of these players may play tanking builds, or maybe even healing builds. Hey, i know its a longshot, but every little bit helps. The players behind these screens may not give a shit about healing well, but they may make at least passable meat-shields to park in front of my DPS.

Essentially, this post is doing what the community of Non-plate wearers has been clamoring for months: NERF RET PALLYS. DO IT NOW! They're the single biggest problem here. I don't care how, just fucking DO IT.

As for DK's, I have a set of possible solutions, but they should be balanced to the rest of the classes, maybe a level above, but thats ALL!!

The developers know about these problems, the developers joked about these problems at Blizzcon. I just pray they get to it soon.

More to come soon.

-FrozenVoodoo