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Kalgan: Druids 176% Overrepresented in 2v2
Published on March 5, 2008 by Phaelia 
Blue, PvP 
18 Comments
According to Lead Developer Kalgan, Blizzard determines the necessity of PvP-based nerfs based on class representation in Arenas and their overall population relative to that of other classes:
One of the things we look at is class representation in arenas (although normalized for class popularity). In this particular chart, a value of 100% means the class is represented as we’d expect, a value over 100% means the class is represented that much more often than we’d expect, a value below 100% means they’re represented less than we’d want (obviously this chart doesn’t include a spec breakdown in any way).
2v2 3v3 5v5 Druid 276.0% 184.0% 80.5% Hunter 43.0% 50.2% 43.0% Mage 8.7% 96.0% 96.0% Paladin 19.7% 29.5% 147.4% Priest 113.3% 164.8% 185.4% Shaman 37.8% 50.4% 138.6% Rogue 144.2% 175.1% 61.8% Warlock 149.2% 93.2% 111.9% Warrior 130.4% 90.7% 79.3% Edit: one other detail regarding the chart, this one is set at 2200+ rating.
He later responds to a request for the chart relevant to the 1850 rating with the following:
2v2 3v3 5v5 Druid 184.0% 138.0% 92.0% Hunter 50.2% 50.2% 50.2% Mage 61.1% 87.3% 87.3% Paladin 68.8% 88.4% 137.6% Priest 133.9% 133.9% 154.5% Shaman 75.6% 88.2% 138.6% Rogue 154.5% 154.5% 82.4% Warlock 121.2% 102.5% 102.5% Warrior 90.7% 85.0% 85.0%
What this essentially means is that the high number of highly-ranked Druids in 2v2 and 3v3 brackets relative to the low number of players who have play Druids (ostensibly at level 70) has lead Blizzard to conclude that they needed to balance us in the other direction. At the same time, our low overall population makes our second-to-last place in 5v5 — purportedly the most competitive of brackets — seem less egregious in their eyes. Shouldn’t the fact that our class is so low in overall population have lead them to one or more conclusions about our overall viability — in both PvE and PvP? And honestly, shouldn’t the fact that we can play four different, mostly distinct roles (healer, melee DPS, magical DPS, tanking) lead one to expect a higher than average class population? And really, by this "logic" when all the Druids ranked 2199 or lower reroll because they are unhappy with their class and its recent nerfs, we’ll continue to get nerfed.
In defense of outcries at the low "OPness" ratings for Warriors relative to player perception, Kalgan explains:
There are lots of warriors. Considering how many there are, fewer of them than one might expect are super-successful in 5v5.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we’d buff them for 5v5. We aren’t slaves to the charts, they just help inform our decisions. =]
And finally, two more quotes from Kalgan related to Druids:
Synergy definitely plays into the results. In addition, there are also all kinds of class relationships that come into play. For example, in most cases we’d expect that the over-representation of Druids in 2v2 accounts somewhat for the underrepresentation of Paladins, and probably also contributes to the Mage 2v2 effect.
…
We certainly do take [PvP specs] into account. For example, we aren’t bamboozled by the numbers into thinking Shadow Priests or Feral Druids (for example) are where they need to be. That being said, players can change specs more easily than they can change classes, so we do view class balance as being more important than spec balance (not that spec balance isn’t important too).
Overall, very bad news for Druids. Blizzard obviously sees no reason to redress issues with our class in 5v5 brackets, despite the general propensity of top PvP players to create, level, and gear the characters that work the best rather than play the first character they created and took through Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, etc. out of a sense of attachment. By balancing classes based upon relative population — especially in the highest brackets — they are completely discounting a core property that makes these players tick.
This is the first time Blizzard has given any indication this is how they strive for class "balance." Most of us assumed that they were trying to balance class representations overall. One has to wonder if our lower class population hasn’t lead them to be comfortable with the relative — and increasing — undesirability of Druids in endgame 25-man raids.
Finally, I’d like to leave you with an interesting bit of analysis from Akala of Arygos (US). He did the work; I’m just pleased to bring it to your attention:
165 Druids with 2200+ ranking in the 2v2 bracket = 276% In other words you expect 60 Druids at that ranking.
192 Warriors with 2200+ ranking in the 2v2 bracket = 130% In other words you expect 148 Warriors at that ranking.
That’s a 3-to-1 ratio. Based on Wow Census numbers for every level 70 Druid there are 1.4 level 70 warriors. Seems a little screwed up to me.
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
So what this statistic tells us: Blizzard did something right once upon a time. They made Resto Druids fun to play in the smaller brackets. A big proportion of druids do choose to play in the smaller Arenas. That should make them happy shouldn’t it? “Hey look players enjoy the gameplay we created!” Now it seems like they are trying to correct that
I love playing Resto in PvP (battlegrounds mostly).
I really do not get why they nerf the HoT portion of the spell which is used far more often in PvE and then tell us it is a PvP nerf :/ I don’t think I keep Lifebloom stacks rolling in PvP. Looking at the PvP Lifebloom Idol (Gladiator something of Tenacity) and the PvE Lifebloom Idol (Emerald Queen) one can see that the HoT Portion _was_ originally thought of as the PvE part of the spell and the Bloom as the PvP portion. Why are they now trying to tell us that it is the other way round?
I wonder if Blizzard realizes that 99.9% of all druids ranked 2200+ and above are resto. By Kalgan’s reasoning, we should be seeing massive buffs to all feral and balance druids that apparently seem to have been eaten by the great Web monster.
Anyway, back to the main article.
There is a saying “Good medicine is always bitter.” Yes, these changes are painful to swallow. I may never be able to kite a warrior in moonkin form ever again, or enjoy 200 a tick lifeblooms with 900 spell damage. But perhaps what we are seeing are the nerfs before the buffs (coming soon in WotLK).
My main was a warlock that I’ve played ever since retail, and I still remember the days when their only CC fear was nerfed (with diminishing returns). The circumstances were different, but the situation the same. Then Blizzard introduced a 2 second fear component to deathcoil and reduced its cooldown to 2 minutes. This small change singlehandedly changed the warlock class forever and made it into a viable PvP class, and it has remained this way till this day.
If Blizzard feels that these changes are here to stay despite dozens of posts explaining the reasons why it should be reverted, us druids can only hope that one day Blizzard gets it right and gives us a buff that changes the class forever. In my opinion, Blizzard might be saving the real tidbits for WotLK where they address all the major issues that, if combined with current Lifebloom healing potential as well as 15% speed bonus will really make the druid class overpowered. Wishful thinking? We do not possess all the facts that the Blizzard developers do (though the removed bonus to Healing Touch on the Gladiator’s gear makes me question the competency of the developers).
I do apologise if I am mistaken but I just dont understand how class numbers affect what combination people play (I’m baseing this in 5’s). The way I see people in the 2200+ bracket aren’t there by chance, obviously they’re skilled and have good teamwork etc. but if they say want a rogue teammate they’re going to grab a rogue regardless if there are 3 more warrior 70’s to every rogue 70. They’re not going to think, “rogue are a better option for us because they have what we require in our team, but oh look theres alot of warriors lets grab one of them even if its not beneficial”.
Now again correct me if I’m wrong (I’m sleepy and brain activity tends to slack off after a while) but by blizzard logic should the most popular classes be more powerful compared to other least popular classes because they need more of them in Arenas. That somehow doesn’t appear to be my definition of class balance.
Ok, so it took them about a month to come up with this argument? I feel they could do much better. And once again, the “we don’t balance for 2v2 or 3v3″ is now out the window. Well, I haven’t had my new gear all THAT long so maybe it’ll feel like the upgraded armor was just a dream when I get the same (or less) on my LB after the patch.
And coming to think that most of druids with high ratings are just PvP ALTS made by people jumping on the 2v2 bandwagon… /sigh
So basicly they want to change the amount of druids above 2200~ by changing the class, if they manage to bring the 176% extra off of druids, where do they think itll go?
Directly onto priests, now youve got priests at 270+%, this is a terrible way to decide where they should “Balance” classes. Not to mention if we see the loss of high ranked druids, warriors numbers will dwindle accordingly and rogues will increase. This actually hurts me both ways since I play rogue/rdruid 2s.
I’m sorry Phae. You don’t Solo Illidan, so I can’t take you seriously. Please get back to me when your in-game experience has anything to do with your intelligence level and/or ability to form a coherent thought.
P.S. This comment parody brought to you by the warped sense of humor of the Druid community.
But in all seriousness, As someone who has never set foot in an arena, this nerf truly pisses me off.
The entire argument that the # of players in a given bracket of 2v2 or 3v3 or 5v5 should mirror the population is nonsensical.
This is the same ridiculous “diversity” argument that keeps asian kids from being able to transfer to magnet schools, because there’s 4% in the school they’re transferring to, or only 1% in the school they’re coming from. So the minority gets punished because someone thinks “fair” means the ratios have to be exactly equal to the population.
The idea that people do things that are fun apparently is beyond them. Not even being considered in their argument, for example, is that pvp appeal is not only due to whether they are good at pvp, but also if a class is accepted in pve. There are only so many raiding spots which vary by class, and even then it’s only specific specs that are desired. Players who don’t meet the critera or don’t wish to have nothing to do but pvp. This might include druids who don’t want to be trees but enjoy healing, as well as locks, hunters, etc.
So I’d like to play the devil’s advocate here a bit with a few points:
1. We don’t know what Blizzard bases their balancing decisions off of.
2. Reducing the imbalance of a few classes creates less overall turbulence in the game than boosting many classes.
3. Virusboy is right in that Blizzard will not constantly underpower us without throwing us a bone in some other manner (even if we don’t like the bone).
4. It is my understanding that Druids are the Jack of all trades and NOT intended to be the master of any. In general, I cannot hope to exceed Prot Warriors or Holy Pallies performance in all regards (though I CAN in some).
5. The recent nerfs (which btw, are not finalized) do not ‘break’ the class.
Personally, I feel that after voicing our opinions, we should turn our attention to how to best adapt to the new changes. I was devastated when I heard about the Lifetap changes (I roll a druid and warlock). For all the nitpicking I could do about the change, in the end I’d just need to learn and adapt (yes it was rolled back, but I’m waiting on how they’ll next reduce ‘Lock OP).
Furthermore, balance adjustments are simply another aspect of the metagame. Should the changes Blizzard makes ‘fix’ the druid ‘problem’, players will move on and find some other combination of classes/specs to dominate arenas. I happen to think that this is very healthy for the game, and keeps us on our toes (the same concept worked very well for PvP in Guild Wars).
…still sucks that I got nerfed though.
P.S.
Virusboy, I will have to disagree that the developers are incompetent. Balancing is a hard and thankless job. I think the proof of their competency is shown by the still growing number of subscribers…even in the face of millions of them screaming at them and their nerfs.
Hi there,
Thanks for highlighting this info. It’s interesting to see some of what informs the developers’ decision making process.
Regarding what Kalgan said, I’m curious what “a value of 100% means the class is represented as we’d expect” actually means. The numbers from Akala seem to suggest that Blizzard’s expectations aren’t necessarily a 1:1 relationship between class population and class Arena representation. I’m sure there’s more to it.
Unfortunately, smaller sample sizes usually make for less reliable statistics. So in that sense, 165 Arena Druids is a pretty small number, compared to the total level-70 population. And in this case, that 165 isn’t even really representative of the larger group it’s being compared to. Top Arena players have their own unique, dodgy motivations.
I wouldn’t consider them a subset of the larger population. I think that these percentages are measuring the wrong thing – to me, it’s more player data than class data. It’s a reflection of how players experience the Arena game system. So many psychological factors feed into the numbers they’re getting, that it seems like a poor point of reference for tweaking the nuts n’ bolts of the classes.
Then again, I confess… that I have no better ideas for them at this time!
And of course, as Kalgan mentioned himself (more than once): these charts only represent one source of information to aid their balancing efforts. I’m sure they understand the limitations of it…
… we hope!
-Tone
Firstly, I would like to say that it bugs me no end that PvE affecting changes are implemented for PvP reasons. For any class.
Now that that is said… Looking at those normalised statistics, I find it perfectly reasonable to expect the Blizzard team to want to implement changes to try and lower the popularity of 2v2/3v3 Druids (and a slightly below desired 5v5 representation), whilst raising those of classes such as Paladin/Shaman.
The issue of overall class popularity is completely seperate, and perhaps dilutes from the direct issue Blizzard is commenting on. For many people, a class isn’t chosen because it’s ‘OP’ – it’s chosen for what they want to play. There will always be flavor-of-the-month class creators, but in the general scheme of things these would be a small percentage. Additionally, Druids having racial restrictions will obviously lead to less druids than more racial free classes.
Nobody likes being nurfed, but quite simply no one class should have such a massive representation (276%!) in successful teams. I just wish they’d implement more spells/abilities which are different/resticted to Arena or outside of Arena – so these PvP changes don’t impact on PvE balance.
“It is my understanding that Druids are the Jack of all trades and NOT intended to be the master of any. In general, I cannot hope to exceed Prot Warriors or Holy Pallies performance in all regards (though I CAN in some).”
That’s rubbish. Seriously. That argument is pure propaganda of non-druids. We are just as “hybrid” as warriors or priests are. And while we DO have the ability to take on more roles than a warrior can it does not mean that we have to be sub par in what we do just because we are “hybrid”. Raids don’t care if you have the ability to tank when you’re a Moonkin. They don’t care if you can heal when you’re Feral. You have to be able to keep up with the other DPS or you are a wasted raidspot. You have to be able to tank well or you’re a liablity to the raid. Same with all other roles any hybrid can fill in. You choose one spec, gear for it and fulfill it’s role.
We are different. That does not mean we have to be worse “just because!”.
What the hell does “100% means the class is represented as we want it to” mean?
And why a questionable PVP ratio about arena teams would indicate a need for a nerf in a mainly PVE ability (as in HoT part of Lifebloom)?
The increased ratio might be just a result of many PVP alts after druids were made a “fashion” for casual playing lately.
Why not take into account a more “Role” relevant ratio. Such like Druid representation as a healer or tank in raids.
Wanna know the representation of druids in our raids?
Healer is 0-4% (as in max 1).
Wanna know the ratio of Paladins?
Healers are ~20% (as in 4-5 each time)
Does that seem right? And it is a pure unbiased percentage that applies to almost every raiding guild I have been/seen/heard/read of, not some “cooked” and “misty” number that is obviously used erroneously.
And frankly I don t care about WoTLK and any changes that would come with it… I might never buy it considering the treatment of my class.
I am playing TBC now and it is quite difficult to fit in the game as a druid as it is… In any case I am leveling a mage now… It s a shame cause I really love my druid… Maybe I ll role a warrior next. Tanks are never out of demand in raids/instances.
At the risk of going off topic, I’d like to respond to Kuhbi.
Assuming similar gear levels, druids will not be the ‘top’ of some roles. Though I don’t mean to insinuate that they can’t strongly contribute to a raid.
However, a bear-form tank cannot out-threat a protection warrior (over time), we just don’t have the tools. Feral cats will not beat Rogues and Moonkins will not top a Mage (or possibly a Warlock). Doesn’t mean we’re not just as viable in those roles though. My guild prefers bear tanks and tree healers (lucky for me) because of the DPS versatility and battle rez, and Innervate is always appreciated. Versatility is one of our main strengths.
My original point was that the developers designed us to be _almost_ as good as the other classes, all in one character. Can we really complain when some mechanic of our class is balanced to maintain that goal?
Kellenn, the issue is that a bear can and will out-threat a warrior at T4 level of gear. Maybe not by much, but it’s quite possible. However once we progress into higher level dungeons warriors scale right past us. At T4 and early T5 level Druids have several niches, for expample beeing a high-threat offtank. When we were doing Gruul or VoidReaver we used a feral as offtank because they were better at it than warriors. Today we only use warriors for VoidReaver simply because their TPS is pretty good even as offtanks. The issue here is mostly related to gear, look at all the amazing warrior tanking gear there is. I have yet to see a decent feral tanking item with +expertise or +hit on them (3/5 hyal right now). There is non. Our Tier-Sets are worse for tanking than PvP-Gear simply because we need resilience to stay crit-immune.
The same can be said for cats. In T4 I could easily stay with our rogues in terms of damage. And that was fine, noone complained. Why would that have to change with T5 and T6? Why do they have to scale so, so much better than druids?
Now to get back to topic. The issue with 2vs2 Arena is simply that in this kind of environment druids do scale for a change. When I started 2vs2 Arena with a warlock friend I couldn’t keep him alive with my HoTs (early T4 level of gear, little to no resilience). Now with more than 350 resilience, more HP and +heal on my part it’s become much, much easier. This is due to the fact that our burst healing sucks and all our means of catching up with burst damage are either on cooldowns (15s/3min) or cost way too much mana (regrowth). Resilience counters burst damage and with increasing levels of +heal our HoTs actually have a chance at keeping people alive.
The issue here is not with druids. In fact I’m glad to see that at least one of our skill trees still scales well enough. The issue lies solely with the environment of 2vs2 (or even 3vs3) arena. There is little incoming damaged simply because there are only 1 or 2 DPS classes hacking away at your teammate so that our HoTs can keep up with the incoming damage. And our ability to succeed in this environment depends greatly on the enemy team. There is no balance possible with so many different classes and specs, 2vs2 arena shows that all to well.
Many players have seen that because of the way druids scale in this kind of environment and chose to roll a druid. Just like after the start of BC when everybody though feral druids were “overpowered”. This has indeed caused a rise in druid population and a vast decline in player quality.
Yet I do not believe that, even though there are more druids now than ever before, there are as many druids in high ranking arena teams as Blizzard’s statistics try to make you believe. The basis of these statistics are questionable at best. But if Blizzard chose to base their design choices on such statistics it would be very bad indeed (but at the same time it’d explain quite a lot of past changes
)
Sorry for the wall of text
Kuhbi
Hey, good news, they heard you. . . well, not really. . .
Newest PTR push reduced the mana cost of regrowth by 20% (Because mana regen was the concern this whole time, right? Yeeeeeah. . . ), and the coefficient on lifebloom’s bloom was reduced 20% (Well, at least they ACTUALLY nerfed the PvPers with that one, but the nerf to the ticks still stands)
Buck Flizzard!
Er, ignore that last comment. Apparently the list I was reading was the TOTAL changes for 2.4, not the changes from the last push.