Nerf babies in World of Warcraft

PvP zealots demand easy street for themselves..

Published on December 26, 2004 By Draginol In PC Gaming

Gad I get tired of seeing calls for nerfing based on the experience of PvP players.

I play as a Paladin and I can see where in a straight up dual that a Paladin would be tough to kill. But most of those Paladin powers are usable only once in a long while (lay on hands is good once per hour for instance).

Just annoys me to think that the PvP players might be able to get their "nerf" requests taken seriously based on something as artificial as a pre-arranged duel. Most of the time I'm running around half my Paladin powers are re-charging and unavailable. And at that point, I've got relatively low DPS compared to a warrior.

There are far more "unbalanced" things in WoW than Paladins and I don't think most of those need to be fixed either.

Typical conversation with a PvP:

PvP: "Yea, those Paladins are totally out of control man, it's totally unfair."

PvP2: "Dude you are so right. They get a gazillion lives and advantages others don't get."

PvP: "Damn straight. BTW, here's that enchanted Battle Axe of Glory +30 strength that Harvey from the Guild found last night by using Thotbot to keep killing that elite Drake over and over last night since he doesn't have a life. Normally you have to be a level 55 guy to even get into that area alive and you're only a level 20 but the axe only requires level 20 to use. So here you go. Go bash that damn Paladin, he's only got a regular Stone hammer. Them the breaks for not belonging to a l33t guild like ours.."

In other words, before complaining about "nerfing" the Paladin because he can heal himself or something let's keep some perspective. In terms of player imbalance, guilds and such are far more unbalancing on a day to day basis than any healing power.

Comments

Kobrano

on Dec 26, 2004

The problem is, World of Warcraft is incredibly unbalanced in terms of PvP. Thats one of the reasons I already quit playing.

Having fought over 160 PvP fights in WoW (On PvP servers, not duels) I can tell you that Paladins are the absolute highest on the PvP food chain, they are nearly impossible to kill 1v1 in PvP, and usually require 2-3 along with you to kill one ..I remember my guild posting screenshops of 4 of them at level 40-47, taking about 10 minutes to kill a level 45 paladin, and losing 2 of their people.

With that being said, are you talking about "PvPers" or people on "Carebear" servers that are dueling?? MAJOR difference here... I've never seen whining on the PvP servers, but i've heard my friends on the carebear servers complain nonstop about the carebears whining after duels. So i'm confused which you are talking about? Usually its the inexperianced PvP players that decide they want to "Try PvP", and get killed, then go to the boards and cry that XXX class is unbalanced.. You SELDOM will find true PvP'ers crying like this. The real problem I think it, are the carebears on the non-PvP servers crying, its usually not the PvP'ers crying, we just "Roll with the punches" and go along with business. Its the carebear nature to cry and complain I think - at least this is what I found in MMOs since I started playing them in 1994 with Meridian59. Which again, is why I stick to PvP servers, where the crybabies are weeded out of the food chain fairly quickly.

MMO's have all but lost their luster to me, i'm waiting for someone to do one right like the old ones. Exponential leveling curves are rediculous, segregated level based content is short sighted. Worse, rigid class based cookie cutter systems are a joke.. If they can't think of anything more compelling than a fabricated bash mob - get some experiance type of system, then they aren't getting my cash.. Its ironic really, the way to "Do one right" is simple, just look at the original UO and Meridian59, and the systems they had in place, then do an updated one. They need to break out of their "Everquest" mentality of cash-cow mmos with rediculously contrived gameplay mechanics.

Only then will they get my time and money.

chiprj

on Dec 27, 2004

I haven't been on the general boards on the WOW Community site, only the Uther ones, so I haven't really seen much of the complaining. I have noticed, though, that while many might complain about paladins' powers in PvP mode, most are more than happy to have one (or two) group with them on quests/raids. I was in a group of five a couple days back and they wanted me to be group healer. They carried me through most of the fights in the quest without me doing much other than maintaining everyone else's health bars. Funny thing was that I was so busy paying attention to their bars, that I missed mine, and tried to heal myself too late, twice. Somehow I still drew aggro without actually doing much bashing. Everyone got a pretty good laugh out of that one.

It will be a sad thing if they nerf the paladin, though. MIght give me the extra push I need to start playing my other character again. Or even make a new one on the horde side...

Draginol

on Dec 27, 2004

I find it frustrating because the PvP people are such a minority of the overall player population. The man-children living in their mom's basements playing WoW have a lot more time to bitch than those who have to work, raise children, etc.

The Paladin isn't a wonderful class. It's just hard to kill - IF he has all his defenses on-line. Which is not normally the case in real action. But in the artificial confines of a dual or PvP where he may have all his healing and invulnerability spells ready, then yea, he's tough. But that's to make up for the fact that, as a class, they have fewer HP and they do far less damage.

The warrior class does need a boost in their DPS. But the Paladin doesn't need to be "nerfed".

Frightlever

on Dec 28, 2004

"I find it frustrating because the PvP people are such a minority of the overall player population. The man-children living in their mom's basements playing WoW have a lot more time to bitch than those who have to work, raise children, etc. "

And yet ironically you're bitching about them. A lot of kids play WOW, it's true. That doesn't make them bad people.

I'm playing a Tauren Warrior in the Euro Beta (on hold due to boredom and wanting to wait until the real thing is ready) so I'm just as biased as you are, except my side doesn't get a Paladin. There was a movie out there in which an unarmed Paladin beats a warrior wielding a dreadforge, both at level 60. The paladin kills the warrior and still has a half bar of health.

IF you give the Warrior more DPS then Rogues will complain (and there is a kickass movie out there showing a lvl 29 Rogue one hit killing lvl 26 ogres and basically mowing down ogre after ogre up to his own level, virtually without a break. I assume that was fixed during beta but who knows.) The problem is that balancing is always going to be difficult. It happened during Anarchy Online at the start that everytime somebody complained they were weak they got made a little more powerful. So somebody else would start shouting for some lovin and so it went on.

I guess my point is, yeah, paladins are over-powered in PvP so if people complain they have every right to. But ask those same people if they want to play one PvE, you know where you actually get XP, and it's a different matter. When the Battlegrounds come out this opinion could well change.

And finally, there's something wrong when a combat class (supposedly) is being used as a primary healer. Maybe, or maybe priests should be caling for a Paladin nerf.

(Really finally: healing draws aggro, just like damage dealing does. If you're the healer and you're not keeping yourself alive then you're not really doing your job. OTOH if your tanks aren't pulling aggro off you then they're not doing their job either so dying on them shows them just how little you think of their work. Sadly a lot of my group experiences in the WOW beta have been of disorganised players acting as if they were fighting solo, together. It works up to level 15 or so but after that it's a disaster.)

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