I know this is completely anecdotal, but a friend of mine (who plays a sorc) is almost always at the top of the damage charts (screen shots to follow!)
Screen 1
That’s my friend at the top (Wtfpwn.) He’s got ~65% more damage than the next guy (an equal lvl BW) with ~twice the killing blows.
Screen 2
Here we have ~85% more damage (and 50% more killing blows) than the next guy (who happens to be a BW two levels higher.)
Here’s some more.
Sure, not every sc goes this way, but he says that he’s on the top of the damage charts 90%+ of the time (regardless of BW presence.) I know this isn’t conclusive but it might provide a little perspective.
No, we’re taking the you’re the only one here who thinks this is a serious problem and we’re having fun so maybe you should change method. Or the we really don’t have enough statistical data yet to say that the sides are unbalanced so let’s not jump to conclusions while the sides are balanced enough that coordination and overall party composition (# of tanks, # of healers, # of DPS) are much more important than individual class effectiveness method.
Pure damage is pretty meaningless, though. If you want to top the damage meter, spam AOE and/or Dots. I’m not convinced that a sorc doing that is helping the team more than someone constantly dropping AOE roots, focus firing down healers, picking up the flag when all the noobs on your team are completely ignoring it, etc. But I do agree that I haven’t seen a noticeable domination by BWs on the damage charts.
I guess the hope is that at the cap, where XP doesn’t matter anymore, players will want to RvR for the city sieges.
One of the big questions about Warhammer while in development was how instanced scenarios would affect world PvP. In WoW we saw players abandon world PvP for battlegrounds because the rewards were better and the fights were better balanced. Unless things are different in the endgame, I don’t see Warhammer really solving that problem yet.
I agree completely! (although he’s also topping the charts for killing blows, which you could probably take as helping the team) However, the focus of most of the griping has been on the (perceived) numerical superiority of the BW so I thought I’d provide a counter example.
idrisz
1986
actually the focus has and always been major skills difference between BW and Sorc, not team balance just plain class balance.
They both have 3 specs, Dot/AoE/DD. you can look at the skills on warhammeralliance or any of the earlier links, you can easily see that when comparing the skills, BW skills tends to be instant cast and does more damage.
The only thing that seems to stand out to me is that the Sorc has more/better long range, high dps AoE’s and the BW has better DoT’s and, when comparing damage charts, the Sorc has no problem beating the crap out of everyone else.
idrisz
1988
which ones, my ears are open for the more/better long range high dps aoe comparisons.
I see now why WoW went with the very simple “every side gets the exact same classes” mechanic, even to the extent of robbing the two sides of their one unique class eventually. That way, no one can say that their Mage is better than our Mage, because they’re exactly the same! (Well, minor racial bonuses aside).
I much prefer the Mythic way of creating relatively comparable careers within a similar archetype. It was neat in DAOC to have each realm have distinct classes, and I think the basic “feel” is nicely done in WAR as well. Part of the fun is figuring out how to overcome the enemy’s advantages in one area with your advantages in other areas, matching strength against weakness and all that. Sure, it’s not yet really fully apparent how that might play out in the long run, and there are plenty of weirdnesses mostly from the obscene prevalence of scenarios, but I think the overall plan is cool.
And though the horse has been flogged repeatedly, having played both Sorcs and BWs a lot in beta at least, and played with or against them constantly since launch, I can’t see how anyone would not love playing one of Malekith’s hags (or Mr. Hags, I guess, for the testiclularly endowed versions).
mok
1990
Scenarios are just too attractive. RvR needs to be more so.
In RvR, it seems there is little xp gain and little rp gain for the time put into it comparatively. Scenarios represent the pitch moments of those battles. RvR represents the dullness of manuevering to enter those pitched battles.
Scenarios are easy because I push a button as I go about my mindless questing business, and then (usually) very quickly I am called into a scenario. The game takes me directly to the point of conflict immediately. The action is fast and furious. The rewards in xp and rp are great, even if I lose sometimes. If I die, I am back in the action in 60 seconds or so.
In RvR I have to travel to where the action is…there no way to effectively muster. There should be some sort of “call to arms” mechanism. when a CTA is made, players that join should be recieving rp and xp bonuses, while part of the warband and in the area…maybe based on the ratios and size of the conflict. Spawn points need to be close to the RvR action somehow.
I’d like to see some CTA method as well. I wonder if maybe also giving spawn abilities to, say, guild standards of a certain rank would help, and really give increased guild exp for having members participate in open RvR too.
And a pony. I want a pony.
JM1
1992
Call To Arms is an excellent idea.
z22
1993
They released Phase 2 of their RVR encouragement system, quoted below. Source
They also just introduced a “regional chat system”. Quote below. Source
You guys know you’re arguing with idrisz, right?
As for the balance… I love the classes in that even though they are mirrors of each other, they aren’t the same. That’s a good thing.
JM1
1995
I have never been so impressed with the patching in an MMO, let alone right from release. Serious congratulations to Mythic.
idrisz
1996
so it’s a good thing that classes is unbalanced even though they suppose to play alike?
What’s wrong with arguing wth me, I’m stilling waiting for someone to bring some skills numbers on the table with the better high dps aoe that Sorc have that’s on par with BW.
All I got so far is “oh, but sorcs kill me enough time”, “still the highest dps on destruction”, “I enjoy playing a gimped class because it’s fun”. Telling me to move to order isn’t a solution just avoiding the problem that classes still are unbalanced.
MikeJ
1997
So Sorcs have an ability that grants everyone on their team a buff such that on 25% of their attacks, they do extra damage. I think BW have a parallel for this. However, Sorcs can get a tactic that gives everyone a defensive energy shield for a few hundred points damage every time the extra damage procs. I don’t know if BW have a parallel for that, but it sounds pretty awesome.
idrisz
1998
Tapping of the Dark
it’s awesome except it’s 7 points in one of the worst spec tree sorc have, the Direct Damage one. also it was great to pair it up with umbral fury until a recent stealth nerf to sorc made it so 75% proc rate on frozen touch doesn’t work on anyone else other than sorc themself.
[URL=“http://www.wardb.com/spell.aspx?id=9511”]
Inferno Gift
20% buff to team mate 25% of time every time a damaging spell hit someone. it’s work great for everyone except Sorc, since it’s exclude the Sorc from the buff.
Khoram
1999
I don’t get the part about only giving certain levels experience for participating in keep sieges. What is the rationale behind this? Are they afraid that lower levels will get too much experience? Then scale the experience based on level. Are they saying that lower levels don’t really contribute at all and are just riding coat-tails? Then they need more tiers. How come players can contribute in scenarios at all levels (in fact they just lowered the levels that can participate in the next set of tiers…). My initial reaction is they just gave a certain percentage of each tier’s level range less incentive to participate in open RvR. Aren’t they trying to encourage more participation?
Well, one thing to consider is that they must be logging every SCs scoreboard. It would be too tasty to not datamine. I would imagine they are running scripts against that data to ensure they are seeing outcomes they wanted from their classes.
I haven’t played a BW or a Sorc so I dunno about all this class balance stuff. But I have played a few different classes now and I do know that individual “scoreboard” results and even a handful of complainers does not yield evidence (one way or the other). Your performance is far, far, far too dependent on your team, their team and your skill / paying attention / etc. With a healer I can do amazing things on my tanks - without I lead the deaths score! If the other team has more ‘top of the tier’ classes I find almost no level of co-operation can overcome that hurdle. A handful of dumb PUG players can be enough to loose you a match and kill your scoreboard. etc etc. The variables involved are staggering.
These factors might be able to be mitigated via large scale datamining but I haven’t seen a mod to help achieve that in the community.
