Wednesday, November 8, 2006

A more varied World of Warcraft

In recent discussions here we heard a lot of opinions on how class X owns class Y in PvP, up to the point where people had a hard time to believe that I'd lose to a rogue in PvP, or that my warrior isn't very good in PvP. Do I just suck in PvP with whatever I play? That is perfectly possible (hey, I'm an old man), but I have another explanation. The thing is that not every character of the same class is the same. Every class has three talent trees, and there is usually one among these trees that is very good in PvP, and others that are better for PvE. And with the Burning Crusade adding more talents to each tree, people can specialize even more in either PvE or PvP. And it isn't only the talents, but also the gear.

Now take the statement "class X owns class Y in PvP". What if the character of class X is specialized in PvE, put all his talent points in PvE-specific talents, and is wearing PvE gear? And the guy playing class Y is specialized in PvP, took all the best PvP talents, and took all the best PvP gear? Wanna bet that in that particular duel the guy from class Y wins, although he should be "owned" by class X?

It isn't "priests" or "warriors" that are bad in PvP. Its "holy priests" and "tank warriors" that are bad, while "shadow priests" and "dps warriors" do quite well. And the same is true for most other classes, you can PvP-gimp your character, or make him really good in PvP.

Even if you respec'd to something more suited for PvP, you'd still need to gather a different set of gear. Most tier 1 raid gear gives great bonuses for raid PvE, but these bonuses usually aren't all that great for PvP. For example PvE cloth wearers usually have much lower stamina and therefore hitpoints than PvP cloth wearers in specific PvP gear. Group PvE works by having a tank taunt the monsters away from the casters, so they don't really need to have a lot of hitpoints. In PvP there is no such thing as taunt.

That there is perfect gear for different purposes is probably inevitable. But why do players have to chose between PvE and PvP talents? Ideally you'd chose to do PvP this night, and spec accordingly, while next night there is a raid planned and you go back to a PvE talent build. But Blizzard made that impossible by making changing your talents increasingly expensive, the more often you do it. The cost goes down again after a month, but having a different talent build every day is certainly not viable right now.

Because you have to chose a talent build, you get stuck in one style of play. If you are PvP spec'd, you'll be less useful in groups and raids, and might even have problems getting invited, being passed over in favor of somebody with a PvE talent build. And by being PvP spec'd you end up getting PvP rewards, and end up in a set of gear which is only good in PvP. And the same thing is true the other way round, if you specialize in PvE you will have problems doing well in PvP, and by getting mainly PvE raid rewards, your gear will also favor PvE over PvP.

I think Blizzard could make World of Warcraft a lot more varied, and PvP a lot more popular, by allowing cheaper or even free talent respecs. So on the one evening where there is no raid planned, you could go doing PvP instead, and not be totally gimped. With socketed items from the Burning Crusade you even have some freedom to "respec" your gear. Even the tier 4 raid gear isn't automatically PvE any more, instead the raid boss mobs drop tokens which you can exchange for different types of items with different sets of stats. So if somebody raided enough, he might well acquire a PvP set of gear from playing PvE.

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