1st Dec. balance patch top or flop

[Terrorhuz.4695]

@Ohimi.4107 said:

@Terrorhuz.4695 said:I absolutely support this whole patch. Thief got a honestly overdue shave, engi got some shaves to grenades without overdoing it (unlike what usually happens); they are still very strong and could use some further reduction, but they didn't get destroyed. Some more revenant shaves would have been cool but honestly they are far from a priority.

Disagree with you on the further nerfs

Ok but explain about what and why, don't leave me hanging like this.

[Caitir.6947]

@Anomaly.7612 said:

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@Khalisto.5780 said:Forums dude

I feel like unless they land a flawless patch and you ask here what ppl think about it the answer is always be negative

I mean after they released an utterly

disastrous

february patch and, instead of reverting it like good developers would, tripled down on it, yeah, I think theyd have to land a flawless patch, because otherwise its just a reminder that were still playing a much worse game than at the start of the year.

Or they could you know... Have a public test realm for their patches and get data and feedback from players before a patch lands so they'll have an idea of how it'll affect their game and make tweaks accordingly?

No. Too much work.

If I've learned anything from various PvP games in my past, it's that public test realms are absolutely terrible for testing actual balance anyway. They don't get enough people to simulate something even close to reasonable matchmaking so skill gaps can be enormous in those games unless you bring 10 people of your skill level there just to test the changes in multiple different comps (spoiler: almost nobody does that in any game with a PTR). PTR is best left to bug testing, if anything. Multiple games have tried to use PTRs as a balance place, but they invariably end up discontinuing that idea unless something is just THAT egregious.

As an example: Riot, devs of League of Legends, have tried using PTR for balance a couple times but the general feedback that they receive, and subsequently tried to implement, tended to make balance nightmares more often than not because it's going to feature bronze players up against diamond+. So obviously the bronze player is going to feel like the champion is weaker because they simply can't do anything to the diamonds unless the champion is ridiculous, and for diamonds everything is going to seem broken in their hands against people much lower rank, but against people at their own rank the champion may struggle to compete in its current state but they wouldn't know that because there weren't enough people their own rank on the PTR to test that against without organizing it.

[Tao.5096]

@Caitir.6947 said:If I've learned anything from various PvP games in my past, it's that public test realms are absolutely terrible for testing actual balance anyway. They don't get enough people to simulate something even close to reasonable matchmaking so skill gaps can be enormous in those games unless you bring 10 people of your skill level there just to test the changes in multiple different comps (spoiler: almost nobody does that in any game with a PTR). PTR is best left to bug testing, if anything. Multiple games have tried to use PTRs as a balance place, but they invariably end up discontinuing that idea unless something is just THAT egregious.

As an example: Riot, devs of League of Legends, have tried using PTR for balance a couple times but the general feedback that they receive, and subsequently tried to implement, tended to make balance nightmares more often than not because it's going to feature bronze players up against diamond+. So obviously the bronze player is going to feel like the champion is weaker because they simply can't do anything to the diamonds unless the champion is ridiculous, and for diamonds everything is going to seem broken in their hands against people much lower rank, but against people at their own rank the champion may struggle to compete in its current state but they wouldn't know that because there weren't enough people their own rank on the PTR to test that against without organizing it.

LoL is a bad example here.

They have over a hundred of champions to balance where most can be played in different roles e.g. Line or Support (some for more than one line and/or jungle too).Plus, the biggest issue for them to balance is the champion scaling during their level ups + items - that's why some champs are great for quick games, because at beginning they scale really nicely, but after lvl like 15, it goes meh, or vice versa.

In GW2 you pretty much have static builds which are either based on amulet or gear (wvw).Of course, you have a great amount of possibilities to build up your stats, but they scale the same anyway, because everyone are at lvl 80 in the end.And also the game is static from beginning till the end, as your build doesn't change and your stats are as they are.

Obviously you can't balance them out where every build counters every other build or has moderate survival against all other builds.But that's defined by build and class - e.g. Power Thief is squishy and can be outed by anyone in fair amount of time except by bunkers.

[Raiden The Beast.3016]

For sure the forum do not represent the pvp community but this poll gives an indication what the people think about the balance approach from anet.

This poll and the poll for the Feb. balance patch shows a split in ~ 50/50 from people who like/dislike the balance appraoch.

For anet it seems like impossible to find a way to make the bigger part from the community happy with the way of balance, like 70/30 or even 80/20 ratio, which would provide for sure a more healthier gamemode.

As far as I understand cmc has his discussions with "top" pvp players about balance. A lot of the changes are based on their input. The top players are ~ 5% of the playerbase in pvp? So my question is, is this the right way to balance pvp? I mean esl is dead, the other 95% playing causual, for fun.

Take teef as example. I fully understand that teef frustrades the high tier play, p3, leg, mat and in other tournaments since it is mandotory to have teef in the game to win. However teef is more split ur stuff on node and everything is dead. Teef needs propper teamrotation since he cant 1vs1, teamfight isnt gud as well. But propper rota. starts when?, in p2... and in yolo q even in p2 u often not able to carry by +1, decaps.

This means with the bala. u may bring teef in line for 5% of the community whereas u destroid it for 95%... maybe not destroid but u know what I mean.

The remaining 95% r fighting vs burnguards, immortal necs and other meme and are still not happy with their ingame expierence.

Im not saying the bala. approach is wrong, but a 50/50 split feels not healthy.

[Armen.1483]

Half of the players are pissed because half of the pvp playerbase this season were either thieves or engies. Easy mode on pvp got a lil harder, so I am happy.

[Raiden The Beast.3016]

@Armen.1483 said:Half of the players are pissed because half of the pvp playerbase this season were either thieves or engies. Easy mode on pvp got a lil harder, so I am happy.

If u look into other polls for example the one from feb. U will see the same result.

[Armen.1483]

@Raiden The Beast.3016 said:

@Armen.1483 said:Half of the players are pissed because half of the pvp playerbase this season were either thieves or engies. Easy mode on pvp got a lil harder, so I am happy.

If u look into other polls for example the one from feb. U will see the same result.

I agree. It makes sense though. Many people get into the meta, learn it, then meta changes (for obvious reasons) and then they get pissed. Small tip to everyone: play different classes !!!

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

@Raiden The Beast.3016 said:For sure the forum do not represent the pvp community but this poll gives an indication what the people think about the balance approach from anet.

This poll and the poll for the Feb. balance patch shows a split in ~ 50/50 from people who like/dislike the balance appraoch.

For anet it seems like impossible to find a way to make the bigger part from the community happy with the way of balance, like 70/30 or even 80/20 ratio, which would provide for sure a more healthier gamemode.

Im not saying the bala. approach is wrong, but a 50/50 split feels not healthy.

Soooo true. This always seems to happen for major game-changing updates where the yea/nay ratio is like 51:50 and it still passes, much like with DuoQ back around s13.

I know these polls are usually user-created and don't really affect decision making, but if you compare it to a game like Oldschool Runescape; which balances and updates the game almost exclusively through community polls, for even a minor change to take effect the yea votes have to outnumber the nay votes at least 4:1.

Totally different ball game though, since Gw2 balances around professions and OSRS balances around gear stats. Not saying that every little tweak for every profession needs to be polled, but if you were going to say... Nerf everything at once, remove amulets & sigils, dramatically change the pacing & structure of PvP matches; that might be big enough to leave to a vote.

Silly to risk half the players not liking whatever big change goes through especially on such close polls, and considering people with alts can also vote multiple times.

[lare.5129]

how say some people: it good patch, only one small mistake: all changes should be apply to rangersok, and how I see that balance for me:on engi I don't us grenades at all, so idcwarriors lose elite - strange way to kill idea of dispel, for me ok, but looks strangeguard I don't worry about power coficients - so idcthief - sb 5 nerf - strange way to start kill conception of thief ? looks strange and looks as mistake ..necro - already to much nerfed - I don't play necro year+

celestial amulet removed: it was used only on my thief. Looks strange that amulet removed, so I switch to Paladin Amulet in first day. But feel not enough heal power .. On nearest week will test on thief also Avatar, Mender, Sage Amulets. Ways to remove amulets looks also strange. Celestial was already not in meta, and remove it to slap biuld variations more looks not good. Final target 1 amulet?

[Styros.8931]

3 voteFART

[Manny.1084]

@Terrorhuz.4695 said:

@Ohimi.4107 said:

@Terrorhuz.4695 said:I absolutely support this whole patch. Thief got a honestly overdue shave, engi got some shaves to grenades without overdoing it (unlike what usually happens); they are still very strong and could use some further reduction, but they didn't get destroyed. Some more revenant shaves would have been cool but honestly they are far from a priority.

Disagree with you on the further nerfs

Ok but explain about what and why, don't leave me hanging like this.

The build is still good but not oppresive , it does enough dmg to be good but was nerfed enough to not be OP, if you called for a nerf to flashbang on the other hand...

[Leonidrex.5649]

I dont play much of gw2 these days but I think that holo is no longer super duper OP while still remaining good, and their place will be taken by power revs again.It might be time to start buffing shit abilities/traits now

[otto.5684]

Well... I dunno the changes are good or bad. They are too small to be consequential. And spvp is currently so bad, and needs massive changes.

[OutOfOrder.3719]

Best hot fix patch in years for PvP and WvW. No further questions.

[Terrorhuz.4695]

@Ohimi.4107 said:

@Terrorhuz.4695 said:

@Ohimi.4107 said:

@Terrorhuz.4695 said:I absolutely support this whole patch. Thief got a honestly overdue shave, engi got some shaves to grenades without overdoing it (unlike what usually happens); they are still very strong and could use some further reduction, but they didn't get destroyed. Some more revenant shaves would have been cool but honestly they are far from a priority.

Disagree with you on the further nerfs

Ok but explain about what and why, don't leave me hanging like this.

The build is still good but not oppresive , it does enough dmg to be good but was nerfed enough to not be OP, if you called for a nerf to flashbang on the other hand...

Explosive entrance needs to have the blindless removed, as for everything else I think the damage on holo should be fine right now. It could even use some slight buffs to holo utilities (the ones everybody drops in favor of the core ones)

[Cynz.9437]

For me it was a flop (but which patch isn't really) simple because they heavily nerfed some core builds despite elite specs being the culprit.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@Raiden The Beast.3016 said:Are we going into the right direction with this balance approach?

I didn't like some of the changes and found them to be arbitrary, but the core premise of the patch was sound, targeted, and addressed both current and potential future build issues. This is a good standard to shoot for in the future. If the patches are this targeted and farsighted consistently, we might be able to work with this. Just be careful with gutting core for elites or even edging into that territory.