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Down Ranking Change Discussion
August 14, 2008 by Zuggy
Okay, so those of you that have been meticulously following the changes related to WotLK beta have probably already heard about this one, but there has been a massive change in the way down ranked spells are handled. Just check out this recent blue post from blue poster, Zarhym. (source)
This is not a bug.
In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells. All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.
This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it’s a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.
So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.
We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.
If anything else, this is a very interesting change. It’s something blizzard has tried to institute before, though their feeble attempts do make lower ranked spells less potent was gawked at by most casters. Personally, I’ve always felt that downranking spells, especially for certain classes, is part of that classes unique strategy.
You take a healer for example, in many ways your overall effectiveness as a healer is determined by your ability to continual provide effective healing (total healing minus over healing) to the raid. Down ranking was a great way to go out doing this, as it allows you to minimize overheal but still attain your desired effect.
Take a look at shamans, I think it’s bad ass when a shaman player has the state of mind to rank 1 lightning bolt an opposing shaman’s totems from half way across the map. But these type of strategies aren’t even possible with this change.
Overall this just feels like another Blizzard attempt to further simplify the game, and their reasoning is obvious. Blizzard wants the game to be one that virtually anyone can come into, play and immediately feel some sense of accomplishment. Changes like this foster that type of marketing strategy and enable WoW to appeal to a much wider “casual” audience.
These are just my humble opinions though. What do you think about the down ranking change? Good? Bad? Doesn’t matter? Start the discussion below!
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these changes seem pretty lame; again blizzard is making the game “easier.” for example, druids will be penalized by this, having to spend more base mana to protect their innervate spell with lifebloom in arena (as of now you can just throw on rank 1 lb to shield it from a felhunter’s dispell).
while I do agree with you that these games are lame I think using druids as a means to justify it is a pretty poor example…I mean honestly, can you really say druids are anything but stupid overpowered considering they make up 56% of top 2v2 and 82% of top 3v3 teams arena teams?
http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/2/all/all/all/all/ (source)
http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/3/all/all/all/all/all/all (source)
Druids should consider themselves lucky to have the ability to protect their innervate. Consider shamans which have absolutely nothing to prevent a dispeler from removing earth shield and any hope of surviving a serious burst attack.
oh it was just one example that occurred to me when i read this. i honestly couldn’t care less if druids get nerfed bro. don’t bite my head off lulz
heh..sorry, didn’t mean to sound like an attack, but it’s just hard to not get angry when the druid topic is brought up. =D
Poor example indeed, but how about PVE contents, it’s not about skill anymore if you’re good at saving your mana by downranking?
That’s another thing that might ruin the game, there’s no point in this ;<
so what is your definition of “skill” from a pve healing aspect? Generally speaking if the healers keep the raid alive I consider them doing their job. But, I think what you’re getting at is the greater issue that blizzard continues to dumb down the game.
This down ranking spell change is just the most recent example.
I have two comments:
This change shows Blizzard’s continued blindness to the PVE minded players. The way they have tuned so many of their end game boss fights is such that without downranking heals, you will have all of your healers OOM in a few minutes. It was known that in a PVE environment, downranking is necessary for success, and they tuned their fights around the ability of good healers to conserve their mana. On a fight like the Illidari council where damage is spread all over the place and the fight can last 10 minutes easily, if this went live now I would not be surprised if half of the guilds who have cleared BT have significant problems killing them.
It makes me quite angry that blizzard claims that downranking spells was never intended. Look at the levelling process for melee classes vs spellcasters. When a rogue learns sinister strike rank 2, rank 1 is removed from the spellbook. True, it would be retarded for a rogue to use rank 1 instead of rank 2, but the option is removed. When a mage learns frostbolt rank 2, look! he can still cast rank 1 if he doesn’t want to put rank 2 on his bars. The fact that they treated the way that classes gain new levels of their ablilites differently proves to me that downranking was an intended strategy, and blizzard is just claiming it was not intended to cover their asses for how overpowered druids have become in arenas.
You make a good point, Erk, and I really don’t know how blizzard is going to balance this for the upcoming expansion.
I’m hard pressed to think of a scenario where you could get away with spamming your max rank heals all fight and still. Even playing my shaman as restoration during Gloryhog’s brief raiding stint I was down ranking heals.
I certainly didn’t have the gear to spam a rank 5 CH all fight long. Even with popping potions constantly and down ranking I was typically out of mana by the fights end.
What did this prove? Well..most people I raided with were horrific. Of the 6-8 healers we brought to the raids I would say 3-4 generally did 70-75% of the healing.
So if anything I’d say this change will have a dramatic effect on the difficulty of these raid encounters, as the raids collective healing mana must be spent in a much wiser manner. As every healer is now more of a factor.
It seems that Blizzard has decided that casters should no longer be allowed to play strategically, but rather just blast every target within range with max ranks. While I’m not a roleplayer that seems considerably unfair to anyone who likes to play their character to the high fantasy ideals of a caster. A mage is supposed to be a cagey, thinking man’s fighter and not bet the outcome of a battle on sheer BOOM. Just an opinion though.
Fuck this..in everything I have seen so far about the changes or lack there of to the priest class, they are going to be even more of a frustrating bullshit class compared to shamans and droods and now even pallies with their aoe hot and this tops it off for casters in general. This really takes out a key strategic advantage to the game imo and is going to do more harm than good for both pvp and pve..reroll time :( melee ftw..
This will prevent random holy nova spamming knocking rogues outta stealth same with low rank volley/blizzard and other aoe abilities that used to be able to be spammed with no consequences.
I am however that, as with the huge alchemy nerf to only allowing one potion to be used, that they will tune the bosses in WOTLK to not require down ranking in order to survive, or reduce mana costs as a % of ur base overall pool of mana so that it wont be needed.
I really don’t think holy nova / blizzard knocking rouges out of stealth was what blizzard had in my when they put this in. And even if it was, wouldn’t it be easier to just adjust those few spells and leave the rest of the casts alone?
obviously not what they had in mind, but still a welcome change for rogues =)
Yeah, it’s definitely nice…now I wish we could get some help with the fact a warrior can shout in our general direction and knock you out of stealth.
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