Versatility or ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’
I don’t often rant here – in fact, I shy away from it like some sort of plague. I do this as I know my rants tend to be very different to my usual writing form and, often, get slowly angrier as they progress. However, I ask your forgiveness in this matter as, in reality, it is only my wish to put my point across vehemently which makes my wording so extreme or my writing a little more emphatic than usual.
So, what is this issue that has me irked, annoyed and agitated? Well, at the moment quite a few things concerning the beta and people scrambling to denounce specs and classes as OP / UP before they’ve even had a chance to mature or even be completed. Most of these I will not defend overly as I also do not know what will happen and arguments where both sides are based on speculation are generally somewhat… pointless?
One particular argument is one which is mostly based around personal feelings and beliefs (of which I have plenty experience *ahem*) is that of ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’, or, “omg all the classes are losing their uniqeness /crai”.
My view on this? Mostly complete and utter nonsense. Gaining a similar buff to a class or an ability which overlaps a now available buff does not make one class more or less unique than another.
The reason I’ve seen cited for these changes, by blue posters, is to make it so that you do not have to rely overly on stacking one class or deny a friend and good player a place on your raid team simply because they do not enjoy or have the gear for a ‘good’ raid spec (boomkins, retridins, MM hunters, frost mages for example). Now I know you may wail and cry that there are examples of these specs already raiding and doing well but I have not yet heard of a guild who stacks boomkins – feral or resto are more useful for the ‘class benefits’ – in this case, battle res, innervate etc. – and the benefit of bringing two along is negligible – improved faerie fire cannot stack and the aura competes with the better buffs an elemental shaman could bring in their place, for example (alongside self res, a full set of totems, heroism…).
So, allowing a lot of classes to share buffs or simply making it so that similar buffs don’t stack no matter what the class is means that you only need “some dps, one with an AP booster, some tanks, one with an armor / AP reducer or slower, and some healers capable of… healing” rather than “we need at least two shamans, two priests, one warrior, one paladin tank, one survival hunter, two rogues, three warlocks and two mages minimum”. The direction they are going in will allow for more freedom of choice for the player and for the raid as a whole.
You should be able to play with your friends and you should be able to play in a spec you like competitively. Burning Crusade was a step towards that (Wow, druids, shamans and paladins don’t have to be healers all the time?) and I’m hoping Wrath will continue the trend. In fact, in my opinion, this allows for a far greater degree of individualism than if classes were restricted to one or two ‘amazing’ raid specs with the other being left in the dirt.
Crossover does not equal cross out, for example:
On my Shaman I rely heavily on +healing and mp5, holy Paladins in my guild also rely partially on these. We both heal, use shields and choose similar ‘extras’ (rings, trinkets, food etc.). Does that mean we lack flavour compared to each other? I don’t think so. We’re very different classes. If I gain a good, fast single target heal worth casting it still doesn’t make me a Paladin and a Paladin gaining some multi-target healing does not make them a Shaman. Big mechanics – like totems and blessings, magical shields versus elemental shields, mitigation versus off-spec dps will always make these two healing specs feel very different.
However, if need be I could single-target heal or they could raid heal without gimping the raid. If we only have 8 paladins available for one evening why should that stop us from just saying ‘lets go!’? Having similar skills across multiple classes simply means that a big glaring gap in their toolset (using the above example) as a healer has been reduced a little, allowing them to fill a healer spot rather than just a ‘paladin’ or ’shaman’ spot.
More specifically, having only certain classes able to ‘cleanse’ certain debuffs means having to build a raid around those classes for specific encounters. Having these sorts of abilities as available from certain talents (without adding them as general class skills) means being able to have each specialist-spec have a tool-set wide enough to not be a burden simply by playing a class and spec they enjoy.
This is why I am supportive of the efforts to spread the love around, talents wise. This is why I am glad they are doing so and why, I hope, others might begin to see all of this in a more positive light.
After half writing this post I noticed that Rohan at Blessing of Kings touched on another aspect of what I was trying to say in his post on the new buff system:
I think that, on the whole, this will be a good change for the game. There are some posters at EJ however, who feel that this will lead to a new form of raid stacking. Essentially, you figure out the minimum number of characters to cover all the buffs and debuffs, and then stack the rest of the raid with the flavour-of-the-month DPS class.
This is a possibility. However, in my view, there are essentially two types of raiding guilds: guilds which have access to multiple characters of every class and spec; and guilds which don’t. Maybe the first type of guild will stack, but they would have stacked anyways. But this change will make life a lot easier for the second type of guild, allowing much more leeway in recruitment and raid make-up.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment – hardcore raids who must have optimal setups will find a way to ‘exploit’ the new system. Other guilds, who are more based around friendships or friendly, more paced raiding, will be able to raid more comfortably with an un-balanced number of one class or other. I refuse to believe, at the moment, that granting buffs and abilities to multiple different classes will mean a loss of uniqueness for that class. I believe, in fact, it does almost the opposite – allowing any one person to play their class in the spec they enjoy with the knowledge that they are a positive force for their raid group and friends.
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I love it when you’re angry ;)
/tar Hulan
/agree
A tad off topic, my guild was raiding MH and got a Naj in BT down… all using 1 mage most of the time.
Maybe two warlocks.
And two resto shammies.
We got to glimpse Archie too!
But yea, just because the experts say “Thou shalt have X of Y and Z or be Pwn’d by teh Bosses” really isn’t all that necessary even now. That they’re making it easier to let me raid with my friends?
Awesomesauce.
^.^
Now if only I can get my title before Wrath patch hits >.>
Hi! This is my first time visiting this blog, but already I’m highly impressed with the content. This post has crystalized all my fears and worries and smashed them up. I feel so much better! Be sure to be back for more “restorative” doses! :D
Hulan and Softi! You want me to be enraged at the world (of warcraft) more often!? Am I not allowed to stay happy most of the time? /sob ;)
Cay: Aye, doing things with unusual setups usually comes from having a guild with a nicer attitude and them making it easier is awesome.
Soujourner: Thanks for the lovely comment! I’m glad I could make y’feel a wee bit less worried!
/hug
While I do agree with you to a point, there is definitely reason to worry about this new system. I think people are actually less worried about the homogenization of classes and more worried about buffs going raid wide and no longer stacking. This I see as a legitimate concern as it decreases buff classes’ role in raids.
Seeing as you have a shaman, I’m wondering if you’ve ever tried to land a decent raid spot as DPS. This isn’t a shot against you as I am genuinely wondering if you ever approached a raid asking to be taken as DPS. Now, this isn’t simply “I know I’m your resto shaman mostly, but I’d like to try being elemental this run,” but instead “I’m an elemental shaman and I’d like to join you for t5/6 content.”
You may think that the two are pretty similar. After all, we both bring the same buffs and elemental brings the lovely Totem of Wrath to soft cap people. In part, you’re right. There is definitely a place for both in the raid, but I can tell you from experience that this is true mostly because of totems being group buffs only.
When I raided on my shaman as elemental, I was included partially because I was a skilled player, but mostly because I was lucky enough to find a group desperate for shamans that ran caster heavy. I understand that I was lucky. Now that totems are raid buffs, however, I feel more like a gimmick than I ever did before. Sure, Totem of Wrath is at least decent (I don’t especially like the new non-scaling version) and Elemental Oath is good assuming you don’t have a boomkin, but elemental shaman DPS is simply not high enough to justify more than one to get those buffs. Hell, if you already have the currently superior Boomkin in your raid, I’d argue that the 3% crit probably isn’t worth the raid slot.
This affects not just elemental, as per my example, but resto as well. The shaman class is heavily balanced towards the fact that it buffs the group (or raid in this case). Sure, if you have multiple paladins on, you don’t have to skip raiding tonight as paladins can now handle at least some group healing. The same may not be true when dealing with shamans. Due to their buffs now going raid wide, I’d actually guess that it will only exacerbate the problem.
Now, none of this was meant to be a QQ reply, but instead just something to think about. There IS a real problem with swapping to a raid buff system. There IS a problem with making it so a lot of buffs no longer stack. Will Blizzard figure a way around it? Most probably yes, but I can still remember them saying that any spec should be viable back when TBC came out and wondering exactly what they were smoking when I ended up in Nagrand against a whole slew of nature immune mobs. Just something to think about.
You do have some good points, Callate, but I should point out that I actually do know what it is like to be brought only on ’sufferance’. i.e. not to have any raid buffs that I can give at all or any benefits except dps… Until around two or three months ago I used to raid with my main as a rogue – one of the least desired, possibly, of all melee-dps classes in TBC besides the overly maligned retridin.
As for totems only being good because the work on your party and thusly being useless if you have a raid? I actually had a conversation about this in-guild the other evening – a few people were expressing your opinion but as others amongst us pointed out at the time (including our own elemental shaman) was that in a lot of our current raids there is actually little overlap of totems.
In that particular raid we had 4 shamans (an unusual occurence for us – we usually only have one, max two after a long time of having none..) and not a single totem from one shaman would have overlapped range-wise given how far we had to spread out.
Of course, Mount Hyjal involves a lot more ’space’ than most instances but, still. Anywhere that people need to spread out will require more than one set of totems, shouts, auras, etc.
I really don’t think everyone is looking at the system fairly. I think that Blizzard has gone a long way towards making more specs viable and I think they may go further yet.
All I see in your conjecture is that you’re basing your fears on the current raiding situation. You think that because your particular spec feels like it’s not loved enough or that another spec (resto) is ‘op’ then the problem will only get worse but this is not necessarily the case.
Both elemental and resto shamans are changed greatly in the beta – resto is not a one trick pony and elemental dps is being upped. If your guild currently takes you because you’re a skilled player and cool person that’s awesome and, of course, they still will in Wrath. This will mean guilds don’t have to take 5 shamans minimum to every encounter (for healing, heroism or whatever) and that you can mix and match as, hey, the buffs won’t stack anyways so once you have 5/6 people with them the rest can be any class. Of course some hardcore guilds will stack the ‘flavour of the month’ class after that but, to be honest, they’re going to find a way to do that anyway. For other guilds who have a mixed bunch they’ll do as they always did and work best with that they have.
There are *some* problems with switching to a raid-wide buff setup but, here’s something for you to think about: fights should not be about stacking buffs they should be about player cooperation and objective completion. This is something I see Blizzard working towards and given their progress in TBC, it’s something I have great hope they’ll get closer to achieving.
/hug