Source:Okay, since there were several replies who think the original question is really intresting and legitimate, I'll answer it. For the record, I don't think many players are interested in the answer (though some are). I suspect the real issue is that most locks agree Conflag was overpowered (though again we see a few who feel differently), but since being nerfed isn't fun, they want to have something to vent about, and venting about other classes not being nerfed is an attractive candidate.
Why did we nerf Destro fast and Unholy / Holy slow?
1) We did make several nerfs to DKs and paladins since LK shipped. None of them ended up having enough of an effect.
2) Part of the reason DKs and paladins were dominant is because burst damage was high and they could survive it with their cooldowns. Burst damage isn't as high now and people have more resilience.
3) Yet nerfing their cooldowns was risky. Nerf a DK's cooldowns too much and he can't tank. Nerf a paladin's cooldowns too much and you risk him not being able to tank (though it's less of an issue) but you could very well kill him in PvP. Bubbles are huge for paladins in PvP. Similarly, there wasn't another paladin healing tree, so nerfing Holy too much might just mean paladins can't heal (or Rets can't do damage -- and there are plenty of Rets who still think they were caught up in Holy nerfs).
4) On the other hand, nerfing Conflag doesn't hurt locks in PvE. Why not? Because they have other specs they can do that do great dps. If the DK tank's spec gets nerfed, he's done as a tank. That player has to reroll for dps, or just stop PvE. (Yes, I understand you might love Destro and hate Demo and Affliction. That's still not quite the same as someone who is there to tank or heal and not to dps at all.)
5) Nerfing say Icy Touch in a vacuum would have hurt DK PvE dps. (Though in retrospect, we probably should have done it anyway and just lived with the PvE consequences). The problem really wasn't Icy Touch itself, but all of the talents that the PvP DK build could cherry pick to improve Icy Touch. Moving those talents around is not the kind of thing we can hotfix. Again, even if Destro was totally dead for PvE (which I think is an exaggeration), the lock has other options.
6) Other DK fixes would also have involved moving or removing talents (Shadow of Death), glyphs (Blood Boil), or enchants (Razorice). Again, those are hard to do without a major patch. The pet ghoul of Unholy is an enormous dps increase. Why? Because pets gain group buffs, but guardians (the standard ghoul) don't. That is hard to hotfix because there is nothing in between 0% of buffs and 100% of buffs. Moving that talent deeper (or removing it) were the only possible fixes.
7) Let me elaborate a little more on that last point, because it's actually a difficult problem with the DK class. DKs don't have a resource system like mana. They generally aren't limited by cooldowns because of the rune mechanic. Unlike most other classes, they don't have a whole slew of "makes X cheaper" or "lowers the cooldown of X" talents. Their talents tend to be complicated, adding extra effects or procs. Those are hard to hotfix. The three trees share some abilities, but their talents push them off in very different ways. If you nerf Blood Strike's base damage, you might make it useless for another tree. It's hard to tweak DK numbers the same way you can every other class.
DKs were a new class and paladins were redesigned. We didn't have the extensive history upon which to draw on them. With rogues or mages, the design space is better understood. Constantly when we discuss those classes a designer will say "No, that would put them in the situation they were in before, which had these problems. Let's not go there again." With DKs especially, it wasn't always clear what the long-term ramifications of changes were going to be. Remember, Unholy became so powerful in part because we buffed the crap out of it coming out of Beta, because all the DKs were Blood and Frost and found Unholy gimmicky and disjointed. We test the changes, but that is no substitute for what happens when millions of players start playing dozens of hours a week with the changes. Stuff is going to come up the way it keeps coming up for the five-year old classes, just more often.
I hope that explains it a little better. I don't expect you guys to give us the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. I wouldn't if I were in your shoes. But it should at least occur to you that when you see an apparent inconsistency, the reason for that inconsistency is unlikely to be "Oh that didn't occur to us" or "We just feel arbitrary." It's fine to ask if you're legitimately curious, and hopefully we can answer some of those questions. I would not immediately make the leap from legitimatey curious to conspiracy theories about class-ism.
This was a long response and it will no doubt spawn lots of questions and assumption challenging (and more conspiracy theories). I've spent a ton of effort on this issue today, neglecting other classes in the process, so I might not have the bandwidth to handle much further exploration of the wall of text above. Apologies in advance.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1641833 ... pally.html
