Comments on: Secret Design of WoW PvE: Solo Difficulty vs Group Difficulty

By: gowwriter

gowwriter — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:35:29 +0000

@GA:

Yes, I’m discussing leveling speed as ease. I have a previous endgame paladin, I know that it’s easy, but it’s very slow. Luckily I chose pally first and didn’t start with, say, a mage.

I didn’t say that Blizzard made some classes bad at groups or are out to get some classes. I said that some classes are harder to be good at grouping. All classes, when played well, can find a role in the endgame. Some classes have a harder time building the skills to get that role than others.

And we’re in agreement that this is just one piece and not the whole balance pie.

By: Green Armadillo

Green Armadillo — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:29:53 +0000

There are various quibbles to be had over the class rankings. For example, I’m leveling a Fury warrior now and, through level 45 anyway, it seems to burn through mobs as quickly as the “pure” dps classes I’ve played. I’d also note that you’re describing leveling speed; one might argue that the Paladin is “easy” to level due to the uncomplicated playstyle (push seal, turn on auto-attach, watch TV) and extreme ability to survive mishaps/solo tough quests.

That said, I strongly disagree that Blizzard intentionally made classes bad at groups in order to balance their solo-ability. They’ve invested far too much time in each class for it to make sense for them to deliberately sabotage one or more of them in (raid) groups in order to punish them for being easy to level.

In my view, the specialization issue you discuss in part 4 is actually what accounts for what you’re observing here. When soloing, you need to be able to both deal and receive/avoid/heal damage, cause there’s no one else to do it for you. Sure enough, your top four classes have good DPS AND some means of survival (hunters/locks let their pets tank, while mages/rogues burst things down from range/stealth before they take much damage). In a group, players only need to do one or the other, so it’s fine that your tanks and healers aren’t putting out damage but a problem that your hunter’s pet can’t meaningfully tank anything. Still, that’s a quirk of raid design, rather than the devs being out to get certain classes.

By: Kikidas

Kikidas — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:57:02 +0000

I’m arguably biased, but I’d say that warlocks are as easy (if not more) to solo as a hunter.

You can heal yourself, while using the same spell to kill the mob. You can heal your pet. If you’re low on mana, you can use your pet to get more mana (spec dependent), otherwise, you can suck your own life away to get mana, then take life from the mob with the mana you just gained. If things get too tough you can fear-kite a mob to death (except undead. And certain immune to fear mobs. Blizzard obviously hates warlocks.). Your pet can become an invulnerable shield. You can make your own health potions that are on a different timer than other health potions. You can resurrect yourself.

<3 Warlock.