Patch 3.2: Blizzard’s “Fun Factor”
Ghostcrawler posted a long response today to a very good post by a player named Tyrani regarding Holy Paladin’s concerns with Patch 3.2. Click the link to read the entire post. The part I want to highlight is below:
“But really the more important point is you’re saying “The content will be too hard.” The content (assuming you’re talking about hard modes) is supposed to be hard. Tanks not dying makes the content too easy. Spamming HL to keep the tank alive with a very large if not infinite mana pool to back it up isn’t fun, and it’s not fun for the tank either because we then have to resort to enormous hits to ever have a chance of killing the tank, because we’re certainly not going to run the healers out of mana. “
Ghostcrawler is saying two things here:
- Holy Paladins were too good. Hard modes are supposed to be harder than what they are and Holy Light spam with nearly infinite mana makes them too easy.
- Without Holy Light spam, they can change encounters so that the tanks are not hit so hard and the encounter is more “fun”. In other words, if the encounter is too hard after the 3.2 change, they may nerf it.
Its sounds like what Ghostcrawler is saying is that they were planning a Holy Paladin nerf all along so that they could modify the encounters to be more “fun”. They added the Beacon buffs so that we still have viability in raids without Holy Light spam. Our job in a raid is now more dynamic, we push more buttons, we make meaningful decisions while we’re actually playing (instead of just while we’re choosing gear), and we are arguably more fun to play.
To me, this shows that Blizzard puts a lot more stock into what is “fun” when balancing content and classes. They don’t want people to only have fun the seconds before they down a boss or when they’re putting on their shiny new gear. They want people to have fun all the time - even during the insanely hard encounters - even when wiping. This shows how Blizzard’s primary goal isn’t to create as challenging content as possible. Their goal is to create as fun content as possible. I think a lot of people, especially doing hard modes, forget that they are playing a game and that they are there to have fun the entire time they’re playing, not just while getting loot. WOW isn’t a job where you just do your work and then get your reward at the end of your shift. Most people agree that spamming Holy Light non-stop on one person does not require any meaningful decision-making and is arguably not fun.
The “fun factor” has always been my biggest motivator when choosing to raid heal as a Holy Paladin. If the game isn’t fun for me, then why play? That’s the main reason I’ve been in support of the changes in Patch 3.2. We can argue all we want that the changes are a nerf or that the content will be too difficult now. But its difficult to argue that playing a Holy Paladin in Patch 3.2 won’t be more involved, require more decision-making (which targets to heal and what heal to use)… and yes… be more fun.
Keep in mind when you hear something you don’t understand that Blizzard doesn’t always make changes to balance classes or to make content easier or harder. Sometimes (often?) they make changes just to make the game more fun.
Related Links
- Holy Paladin Changes Patch 3.2 - Beacon, Flash, SS, Illumination
- Holy Paladin Healing in Patch 3.2
- Beacon of Light and Emblem Changes in Patch 3.2
I have to agree 100% on this one.
Especially “I think a lot of people, especially doing hard modes, forget that they are playing a game and that they are there to have fun the entire time they’re playing, not just while getting loot”
If now someone says other healers are more OP or so. Ok…
Then there will be more satisfaction for you when having success imho because then you are truly imba
I have to reluctantly agree about this, Hard modes are supposed to be hard, and you would want to have maybe like a Shaman and a Druid on the tank and then have a paladin and two others healing the raid, depending on the fight, of course. We should have to have more than one healer on the tank, making sure that it doesn’t fall down too hard. And NEVER say anyones heals are OP, because I’m just fine being OP in PvE, and having every other healer be OP in PvE, because it makes my job a LOT easier.
I like the changes this makes to play style, as this was already the kind of play style I was swinging towards as a more enjoyable way to holy, but I cant help but think the mana nerf is going to hit far to hard. They say we will be fine due to divine plea but I am not sure on this, as we will most likly want to stack Spell Power now instead of masses of int, so we get less mana from a slightly nerfed replenish less from a smaller int pool, divine plea returns less and less from crit’s while mp5 still doesn’t look very attractive and the decent mp5 gear is Ulduar…….compounded by the new set bonus’s which seem to contradict the new relic. Ahh well I guess we will see but overall I like the changes just a little worried about mana ^_^
At last GC admitted what I’m trying to say since a few weeks:
1. This a nerf to holy paladin single-target healing
2. At present hardmodes are designed on a HL-spam (or anything equivalent in terms of HPS) on MT
Now, if they explicitly remove the MT-healer niche, paladins will have to compete in raid-healing with shaman/priest/dudu.
If hard modes are designed around HL spam, then why are the preferred hard mode healers Druids and Priests. This situation is just getting more contorted the further it goes. We’re getting fed a mountain of bs. The Dev’s are salesppl at their core, keeping the players in the game. THEY ARE GOING TO SAY WHAT THEY FEEL WILL KEEP US LOGGING IN, WHICH ISN’T NECESSARILY THE TRUTH OF THE SITUATION. I’m sorry, but the drivel coming out makes no logical sense.
I’ve done some calcs in Rawr, and conservatively the proposed changes to holy and with replenishment changes result in a 25% reduction to every heal cast.
Preferred hard mode tank healers aren’t druid and priests in most guilds. The drivel seems to make sense to me.
Are you saying that we’ll be doing 25% less Effective Healing per second for the entire fight? I’d be curious to see these calculations.
MadKat, does Rawr take into calculation
- that overheals actually heal people via the glyph and
- that overheals actually heal beaconed people?
I see my numbers reduced much as well but would think that the theory crafting in Rawr is really hard to do with an unknown amount of targets for, say, the glyph bounces.