What we learned from death knights
With the final content patch of this expansion on our doorstep and Cataclysm following close behind, we’ll be taking the next several weeks to look back on Wrath of the Lich King and everything that made it what it is, for better or for worse, in Wrath Retrospective.
Wrath of the Lich King is coming to an end, and with it one of the largest experiments that Blizzard has ever done in the history of WoW. At the onset of this expansion, we were all introduced to a new class; the death knight. The addition of a new class has major complications on the game as a whole: how they fit into PvE, how they work in PvP, what buffs and debuffs they bring, what roles they fill, what unique utility that they provide. All of these things have changed the face of the game as we know it. though fairly new arrivals, death knights have been integrated into the game almost seamlessly; the craters that they made when they first arrived, however, are still highly visible to those that know where to look.
There were a lot of misconceptions about death knights when they were first released. Once they were announced, Blizzard classified them as being a hero class, not to be confused with your ordinary, run-of-the-mill class. To many people, this caused worry that death knights would be grossly overpowered and far superior to all of the others. Blizzard was quick to point out that this was not the case, but it did little to assuage many of the fears that players had. Still, death knights have had their ups and their downs all throughout this expansion, and if that is not a case for removing then from hero status then I don’t know what is.
What can we learn from death knights? What has all of the work done with the significant re-balancing changes and the major talent changes taught us about WoW in general? How can we apply that knowledge to all of the other classes in the game? That is what I wish to explore to day, and I hope that you will join me.
The PvE death knight
Death knights were a total experiment right from the beginning. One of the major promises that Blizzard set out to fulfill was that each tree would be able to both tank or DPS depending on the player’s preference. That was an excessively tall order, and it really does not come as a surprise that it has since been rescinded. Attempting to balance out a single talent tree for both DPS and tanking, as has been done with feral druids, is difficult enough, but to do it with three trees within a single class? That takes an enormous amount of investment; something which Blizzard rather quickly learned that they simply were not able to keep up with.
Death knight tanking
This major philosophy shift on tanking that has come about with death knights has shown us all a great deal about the limitations of game balance. When it was first announced that death knights would be able to tank with any tree, there were many players that voiced concern over this. First, there’s the utility concern of having a tree with a dual purpose. Hybrid classes, those which can fulfill two distinct roles depending upon spec and gear, are a controversial topic when it comes to how versatile they actually are. How hybrid should hybrid classes be? How powerful should classes that can perform multiple roles be at each of those individual roles? Whatever your feelings may be on the topic, one thing is fairly clear: having a class which is capable of performing multiple roles within the same spec will cause balancing issues.
When allowing a single talent tree to have the capacity to fulfill two separate roles, the talent point investment for each role has to be distinctly different from one another. As a feral example, a druid focusing on DPS should not be able to have enough free points to pick up talents such as Protector of the Pack nor Thick Hide, while a tanking spec shouldn’t have access to key DPS talents.When you lose this distinction, you create an issue where a single spec is able to perform two roles within any given raid — that’s problematic given that no other talent tree has this ability. When it came to death knights, the approach that Blizzard took simply didn’t end up working out in the end. Their original theory was to have a few of the core tanking talents at the top end of each tree so that every death knight would have access to them; these talents being Blade Barrier, Toughness, and Anticipation. The problems came about after that point, where there simply wasn’t enough of a distinction between tanking and DPS talents.
Frost, as an example, really only has three pure tanking talents after Toughness — Frigid Dreadplate, Improved Frost Presence, and Acclimation (which is a poor talent choice anyway). Unholy really only has two, Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone; while it is Blood that is laden with talents that are more geared towards tanking, or at least survivability in some manner. The reality is that, barring the 5/5/5 base that every death knight tank has, there generally isn’t that much of a difference between a tanking spec and a DPS spec. Now, I am not saying that a death knight specced to tank is going to be able to keep up with a DPS specced to DPS; quite the contrary. What I am pointing out is that, aside from the initial 15 talents points, there is usually isn’t much of a difference between the talents that most tanking and DPS tanks take. Generally speaking, the difference beyond that point is usually in the tune of 4 or 5 additional points. The caveat to this is that there are other minute differences — for example, DPS unholy goes for the Ghoul talents while tanking unholy does not — yet these other differences are generally about differences in threat generation, not survivability.
This is not to intended to seem unfair towards death knights either: feral druids usually only have an approximate 20 or so point difference between specs as well. The crux, however, is how much those talent points contribute towards survivability. Comparatively, Blade Barrier is far less mitigation than Protector of the Pack, Natural Reaction is worth more than Anticipation and Infected Wounds is far more valuable than Improved Icy Touch. Death knights were simply designed with a vast majority of their tanking prowess baked into the class, which makes blurring the line between tanking and DPS that much easier.
It is also those baked-in abilities which have caused another issue that has shown us all a great deal about tank balance. Tanking cooldowns are always excessively difficult to balance. There isn’t a perfect way to create tanking tools which are different yet also afford the same equitable level of mitigation or survivability. It is for this reason that many tanking cooldowns have been progressively homogenized throughout Wrath of the Lich King, for difference breeds situational instances which allow a single tanking cooldown to outshine all of the others. Death knights were at the center of this, though they are not alone; paladins have had quite a lot of upheaval over Ardent Defender. Still, Sartharion taught us a great lesson when it came to tanking cooldowns — as did General Vezax.
Death knights, and WotLK in general, have shown us a good deal about tank balance. In TBC, many boss encounters were specifically constructed around certain tanking mechanics, particularly warrior skills. This was done to assert that warriors remained as the main tanks throughout this period, yet also to ensure that tanking itself didn’t become a bland repeat of running face first at every boss and sit there going through the same standard threat rotation until it dies. Boss mechanics need to be interesting for tanks as well, yet there simply aren’t many methods in which Blizzard can accomplish this. Generally it is done through various abilities, such as Illidan’s Shear or Kael’thas’ Fireball, that hit so hard they need a particular tanking ability to avoid. For this reason, tanking abilities do need to be homogenized, yet it is also through homogenization that each individual tank loses their flavor. How then shall Blizzard progress? Only time will tell I suppose.
Death knight DPS
Tanking is not the only aspect of PvE that death knights have held a significant impact on shaping: there is also the wide changes that death knights have brought on the DPS scene. WotLK has been an amazing change of philosophy for WoW with the bring the player not the class (BtPntC) design, yet it has also caused many of the issues that we have seen today. BtPntC hinges upon two distinct principles of equality: damage equality and utility equality.
To many players, damage equality is of the utmost importance. I think we can all agree that damage is one of the key driving forces of virtually every combat based game out there; healing is nice, soaking damage is all well and good, but it is the raw power of a character, it is their ability to blast things to bits, that is really exciting. Death knights have shown us many a problems that can exist within damage equality, particularly in regards with melee attacks.
Unholy has been one of the prime DPS specs of choice throughout much of the death knight community. Blood and frost are to be respected, and they’ve demonstrated many things in their own right (in fact, frost is my personal favorite); however, it’s been unholy that has demonstrated a key facet of damage the most. I am, of course, referring to mixed damage attacks — those attacks which are based both physical and magical. Scourge Strike more than anything else has been the best indication of how difficult it is to properly balance out these effects. Magical damage is based around the principle of how it ignores armor; which is an excessively powerful mechanic that often goes ignored by many players. Allowing a melee class to wield magical abilities isn’t a strange or new concept, but it is a difficult concept to balance effectively.
At its most basic premise, original RPGs operated in a sort of rock-paper-scissors method; magi beat warriors, warriors beat rogues, rogues beat magi. In the beginning of WoW, that was actually the basic premise of how PvP operated – more on this later – however WoW has evolved beyond such a basic form since then; melee classes overall are rarely restricted to physical attacks. Aside from warriors, nearly every melee class in the game deals some form of magical damage. Death knights moved further beyond what any other melee class has before; they are the perfect combination of physical and magical. Only blood differed from this in any way, which is why it isn’t surprising that blood is becoming a tanking tree in the next expansion. By focusing solely on the duality of the death knight class, Blizzard has shown they can make this duality work, but it takes time, it takes work. This is often frustrating for players, understandably so, but in this case we must have patience.
Beyond damage equality, there is also balancing the utility that classes bring. This is the second principle of BtPntC; spreading out utility, homogenizing utility, in an effort to allow for leeway in class choice when it comes to filling out a raid group. That being said, we have quickly learned that not all utility is created equal. It isn’t merely enough that various classes are able to provide a specific buff within whatever capacity it is that they can; the method in which that utility is brought must also be done equally in order for the philosophy to be successful. Although death knights might not be the perfect example of this, elemental shaman with Totem of Wrath and demonology warlocks with Demonic Pact might be better, the lack of power in the death knight’s unbalanced utility is predominately caused by the lack of encounter design to support it. Ebon Plague is, at the core, perfectly balanced in respects to Earth and Moon, although both are far superior to Curse of the Elements, but Ebon Plague has one mechanic which neither of the others do — the capacity to be spread to multiple targets with only a single press of a button.
Pestilence and the way it interacts with Ebon Plague is a huge breach in the equality of class utility. If there had been any examples of boss encounters with a significant number of clustered adds where this imbalance had made a difference. I do not feel that I can stress the capacity for this mechanic to have been such a stringent requirement enough; had a more creative workaround not been developed, unholy death knights would have certainly been required for dealing with Vile Spirits on heroic Lich King. Even though it never really became a major issue, Blizzard learned quickly of this issue, sadly, though, they haven’t addressed the core of it. They are, slowly, with Cataclysm, and that is a good change.
The PvP death knight
As much as I postulate on the PvE aspect of the game, that is but a fraction of everything that encompasses WoW. Although I am not a PvP expert in the sense that I don’t carry around a gladiator rank, nor do I have a top rated team, I do follow the balancing mechanics of PvP very closely. The most interesting thing about PvP balance is how everything hinges upon such a thin thread; even minor little changes to a certain class can have a widespread impact on what teams, classes, and specs are considered to be viable. For everything that the death knight class has taught us about PvE balance, we have learned so much more about PvP balance from them.
Death knights were created virtually as a direct counter class. During the last days of TBC PvP, restoration druids were the king of kings when it came to healing. Their strength now is debatable, but back then no one could deny the awesome power that druids held. Blizzard made a very big slip when they originally developed death knights — they were clearly made to overthrow the druid overlords of the time.
The flaw of counter classes
Designing a class to directly counter another class is a terrible design plan. This may not seem obvious, or perhaps it does to you, but within a PvP system as complex as WoW’s counter classes simply cannot exist. To some extent, it may seem sensible; however, it could quickly turn into an arms race of how many classes a specific spec can counter, and then there’s the class representation imbalance as well. There’s a very good reason why PvP cannot be balanced around the high end. Beyond the basic flaws such as skill or other human reasons, there is the most basic human reason of all; that certain players of certain classes are simply more likely to engage in PvP than others. Just to throw out an example, say rogues are more likely to play in PvP; this would mean that any class or spec specifically designed to counter rogues would be at an advantage in terms of creating a stronger team, which would lead to a population imbalance against rogues and their direct counter classes. Eventually this would lead to a higher number of players switching to the class that counters the class which counters rogues, and so on and so on would the cycle repeat itself.
Each class needs to be designed to have certain flaws, certain weakness, and also certain strengths that they can capitalize upon. These weaknesses and these strengths can make them better suited at handling certain classes but never should it allow them to so dominate another class that they will always win no matter the variable of skill. Death knights have taught us this excessively. They were designed to counter restoration druids, and it showed. The representation of restoration druids didn’t just drop significantly, it cratered, they completely fell off the face of the earth, or Azeroth if you like. This is why death knights were changed, for better or worse: because Blizzard realized that designing classes to specifically counter others is not a wise choice.
The dispel problem
Dispels are a huge PvP issue; they have been for a very long time. Ever since the on set of arenas, dispels have been under attack for the power that they hold. Blizzard realized this at the time; they thought about change, yet nothing was really implemented for WotLK. Perhaps, at the time, they figured that merely increasing the number of armaments within the race would actually lead to an equalizing effect; sadly it did not. Death knights were actually rather integral in showing this as they were perhaps the weakest class when it came to being vulnerable to dispels.