My letter to Kalgan on the upcoming defense item nerf

Joonibal · Post by **Joonibal** » April 11th, 2005, 11:05 am

Dear Kalgan,

This post addresses the following post you made about plans to nerf defense items:

"Hi everyone, I just wanted to post an FYI regarding the test server. Here are a few of the top issues we'll be looking into while patch 1.4 is in testing.

[...]

2. +Defense items. These items are on our watch list as they may be proving to be too strong now that some related bugs have been fixed in patch 1.4."

Aside from your pronounced, visceral dislike for the warrior class, could you explain why you are even looking to nerf defense items?

The answer I am hearing from the community is that because hunters have a difficult time hitting warriors with high defense rates.

If this is indeed the reason, it demonstrates very flawed logic (as is characteristic of your typical posts on warrior-related matters) for one fundamental reason: Most warriors do not and will not overload on defense gear for PvP. Further, because gear cannot be changed in-combat, we will not be able to switch into defense gear when we are attacked by hunters.

The reason is simple: Because we know that damage--esp. burst damage--is king in PvP, most warriors will spec either in Arms or Fury (most likely the cookie cutter 31/20 Arms/Fury) and gear themselves for damage (overloading in crit items) for PvP. Indeed, the few good protection spec warriors I know have already re-specced in preparation for PvP.

And even if there are some warriors who will go into PvP thinking defense, why do you assume that we will gear ourselves toward fighting hunters? Hunters are not the bane of good warriors. If I were thinking "defense" gear, I would think of overloading on fire, frost, or shadow resistance gear, as mages and shadow priests give us far more grief than hunters.

So the result of your theorycraft nerf will be this: The nerf to defense items will not affect PvP at all because we weren't going to use them in PvP anyways, but it will be devastating to high-end PvE raids because that's the only time most warriors use them.

Of course, thinking through things is not characteristic of Blizzard when it comes to the warrior class, and I shouldn't expect much more.

Sebboh · Post by **Sebboh** » April 11th, 2005, 11:09 am

suggestion: Try not to bash them in their faces. Point out their flawed logic; but the best posts, I've found, are the ones that are constructive as possible while well thought out.

Joonibal · Post by **Joonibal** » April 11th, 2005, 11:14 am

Sebboh wrote:suggestion: Try not to bash them in their faces. Point out their flawed logic; but the best posts, I've found, are the ones that are constructive as possible while well thought out.

Someone made the same point on the Blizzard forum. But honestly, if you've read some of the things Kalgan has said on the warrior forum (most infamously, warriors who swap weapon in-combat are "cheesy"), you'd think my scorn for him is well-deserved.

Sebboh · Post by **Sebboh** » April 11th, 2005, 11:20 am

yeah I read that thing, and for some of it my reaction was just "what??? why?? what are you people thinking?!? Gawd.." But still constructive is good ^_-

Joonibal · Post by **Joonibal** » April 11th, 2005, 11:32 am

One poster agrees with me on the tone:

"Given Kalgan's previous tone in communications, the original poster was pretty mild. Given Blizzard's history with balancing the warrior through a series of "awesome changes" (no, Blizzard, you will not be able to live this down), it is most certainly worth bringing up before a decision is made.

I don't have much faith in our developer's communicative skills or the way warriors get handled. We didn't have a CM in our forum for some absurd length of time. Someone put up a post all in caps directly asking a CM to lock the thread for over a month. That post can no longer be found. Should warriors have much faith? No, it wouldn't be based in reality.

That said, I repeat my point. It is because of this mismanagement that points like this absolutely should be discussed before a decision is made. That last part was mostly directed at you, Ordinn."

There are now 2 official responses. Here's the thread link:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... ost2519825

Joonibal · Post by **Joonibal** » April 11th, 2005, 11:53 am

ROFL, Ordinn eventually locked the thread and created a warrior issues stickie thread. At least I accomplished something

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... &tmp=1#new