As the title suggests, Blizzard I ask you to address the situation regarding the buff and debut cap limits.
With the acknowledgement of ‘Black Lotus’ and how much of the player base is wanting to run raids with full buff cap, it is really starting to affect the enjoyment and viability of whole classes. With such a focus on logs and min maxing, the player base has decided on how the game ’Should’ be played and not as it was intended to be played.
We know the buff/debuff cap in vanilla was due to technical limitations and not by game design. With the limitations no longer an issue I see little purpose in keeping the caps especially when its at the expense of overall player experience.
I understand that keeping as true to vanilla is a big part of classic, but when there is already such a difference in players skill, knowledge and resources, the vanilla experience is not what it once was. To give one example, I am quite sure that 16 years ago the developers never intended for the Alliance to use some clever mechanics in order to get WCB. An extra unintended buff like this has to take up a slot from something else and it has been decided by the player base that player spells such as HoT’s are what has to be dropped. This buff limit is a real problem for classes such as an already hindered Druid.
With upcoming raids such as AQ and Naxx I feel this approach of min maxing and buff capping is only going to get worse, I refer once again to the acknowledgement ’Black Lotus’ and changes you have made to accommodate those players. Players have already changed the games experience from how it was all those years ago, please make the adjustments needed to keep the flavour of vanilla alive and as close to the original intention of the way classes were designed to be played.
buff and debuff limit are good for the game, not only do they make players play better but they also affect the game balance in pve.
hots are also worse than direct healing unless that person is guaranteed to take damage during its duration, but it generally wont prevent someone from dying like topping someone with a big/fast heals would.
buff capping is not that different with naxx/aq40, u get some different trinkets, sand, scourge invasion buff for like 1 raid and some protection pots to save a slot for
if they remove buff limits we will basically be playing a light’s hope clone
I bet the next thread after they removed buff and debuff limits will be “conteeeennt soooo eaaaaazzzyyy! Why we can do Naxx in 30min with 50 buffs and 50 debuffs on everything?”
While initially those limits were implemented due to technical limitations, they also became an important part of the balancing for the last two raids. They already increased the buff cap quite a bit, so I doubt it will be a good idea to increase it even more.
It is a choice to be buff capped, only the player base is forcing the issue, the game does not require it.
If players complain about clearing too fast, the answer is: Make it a challenge for yourself and play with no world buffs and have class reperesentation. That would really show the great players from the average.
Perhaps if logs started ranking this style of play, more hardcore guilds would be trying to top those rankings instead of speed, execution and highest numbers.
I play a lot druid and Between other reasons i stopped playing healer because the buffcap, i cant use hots on tanks or meeles because it.
And maybe u can think “Hey why u write here, only for heal logs…”
that is not all cause when u are healing 2 hours in raid only using HT (healing touch) u only do overhealing and thats make u feel useless or make u heal scared if u missclick a hot or thorns.
And the overhealing happens the other class heal faster than druids
Atm im playing boomkin in raid and heal in pvp.
we all want classic to be like it was but maybe do a slot for hots or shorts buffs like priest shield, im sure that cant make pve broke, I doubt that will change the game experience worse.
sorry if my english isnt the best i ve done the best i could
Buff capping does not make players better, adding stats to a character only enhances the numbers, it does not add to a person’s skill at the game. I am not sure what you mean by balance in pve, what about vanilla was ever balanced? Personally I don’t think clearing entire raids in under 30 mins due to the min max approach is balanced.
I think you do not understand what hots are for or how a druid is designed. Considering that Regrowth has a high initial output with a high hps and the druids fastest viable heal, a druid can top someone off as you suggest with the added advantage of keeping a player balanced while the druids next slower but more mana efficient spells are being cast (the hot itself is not designed to save some one from spike dmg but allow a druid time to cast those slower followup heals). Resto druids are a proactive class not a reactive class and when played right they can shine.
The difference is with harder content more players will be buff capping to clear the content faster and with less wipes. I am seeing more and more semi hardcore/casual guilds preparing in this manner and encouraging players to get all buffs they can, some even drop players on loot pro should they not be world buffed at raids.
buff cap makes you have to play with another mechanic in mind, hots can certainly be used a lot more than people use them as melee aren’t always going to be buff capped. the debuff cap however makes people have to use their spells properly, raids that play with the debuff cap in mind will perform better than those that do not.
all healers are proactive, especially in classic.
of course you would prio gear to someone that gets world buffs. why would u make loot less valuable for your guild by giving it to someone that scales worse with it due to not having world buffs?
The initial debuff cap of 8 was indeed due to a technical limitation, but as soon as they dealt with that, the following cap of 16 was a design choice, they coild have gone to 40 of TBC or virtually unlimited back then but thought that a limit adds an interesting gameplay element and chose to go with 16. Therefore, I find it extremely unlikely that the debuff (as well as buff) cap will be changed, as it was a deliberate choice by Vanila devs and this information is publically available.
Debuff limit was changed in Vanila from 8 to 16 at patch 1.7. The dev who made the change said in a pre-Classic podcast that they could have gone with more than 16, but chose not to as a design element.
Edit: now this is of course my conjecture, but I assume if they could change debuff limit to more than 16 if they so wished, they could have also changed buff cap to more than 32 but chose not to.
They could have removed the buff and debuff limit entirely with Classic if they wanted, but it wouldn’t feel like the same game.
We got a debuff limit of 40 in TBC, so I think it’s a safe guess to assume ClassicTBC will replicate this. I’m not sure what the buff limit becomes; however, TBC has far less consumables and no world buffs so I can’t see the buff limit being a problem for anyone.
Thank you for acknowledging and reaffirming my point that caps ‘make’ a player have to play a certain way. If by example there were no limits, people would still be free to play in the manner that your are suggesting has the ‘best performance’, they have access to all the same spells and resources to learn this.
I do not class spamming heals on full hp players as proactive. The very nature of a spell like ‘Flash of Light’ is reactive, it can only heal damage taken before the spell has been cast. Buffs such as ‘Rejuve’, ‘Regrowth’, ‘Abolish Poison’ and even some priest spells like ‘PW Shield’ are not limited to this as these affects last a period of time and can be used before a debuff or damage is taken.
I think you have just answered your own initial question and my response about why buff capping would be any different with harder content.
Intentional limitations and punishments are some of the most common ways of creating what’s called “meaningful choices” in gameplay design. Another way is to do it via the narrative, for example.
An easy to understand example is in 2D platformers. They don’t have to make you start over from the start of the level when you die, or at a save point. You don’t even need to die at all. But removing these punishments affects the motivation to play better, and ends up making the gameplay feel more shallow like there’s no depth to it.
It’s the same with designed limitations, like for example a limited amount of charges on abilities. By using 2D platformers as an example again, what if you had a limited number of jumps you could do, or a limited number of attacks? It’d create more meaning in choosing when to use those charges.
Cooldowns are the same, which the widely known “big CDs” of warriors are a good example of. The fact that they have a 30 minute CD, and share CD, automatically creates meaning in choosing not just WHEN you pop one of them, but also WHICH ONE you pop.
You can google Meaningful gameplay design and check it out yourself. There’s nothing worse than gameplay without meaning. There’s an art to balancing it out so it becomes enjoyable for the players though, which I’d argue the success of Vanilla, and to some extent Classic as well, did quite well objectively speaking.
