Should we constantly request for classes to get nerfed?

[greedywholesome.9081]

I don't think it's ideal, More so now than ever because at most, the pvp balance team probably has 2 employees. Remember, once they take things away from us, we will never get them back. What we need is a re-balance, slight buffs but not constant requests for nerfs. 

There are classes (3) that I vehemently dislike yet I don't ask them to be nerfed. Instead, I play the classes, learn the weaknesses and exploit them back. I know  2-3 are completely overtuned right now yet in most cases, they have at least 1 counter. Unlike say the most viable build for this one heavy armored class has 4 hard counters. If a build has 4 hard counters, it obviously needs a buff on sustain. 

 

Entry level hero classes are needed right now to attract newer players to pvp. 

 

If a newer player does well with an entry level class, you as a veteran, should be able to play that same class at a superior capacity. 

 

It's ingrained in our psychology to feel the pain of loss more than the relief of gains. A good example is investing; losing 10% triggers a stronger emotion from the loss vs the emotion from gaining 10%. 

 

 

[Crab Fear.1624]

No, we don't need entry level classes.

There is a reason we have divisions.

[Morwath.9817]

Indeed, we shouldn't ask for constant nerfs. We should look for the best balanced class (compared to itself, where all trait lines are viable etc) and expect Anet to buff other classes to its level, so they all have multiple viable choices.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Nerfs are boring and its basically all we've had since the feb 2020 patch

 

The team in charge of skills/traits across all gamemodes had been experimenting with tradeoffs for a while, which is a much easier pill to swallow because it usually changes the functionality of skills and it comes with buffs.

 

Meanwhile the 1 unpaid intern in charge of PvP be nerfing everything, and removing or giving a 300s CD to everything they aren't able to 'fix.'

And I put fix in little quotes because that definition of fixed means making the majority of skills, weapons, and classes underwhelming to use

[greedywholesome.9081]

Sorry if I created confusion. 

 

In the past, PvP had a dedicated team including folks like Evan Lesh, Justin O'Dell, Ben P and couple others I can't remember at the moment. This was pre CmC or at least he was under the quality assurance dept. 

 

The PvP team is significantly smaller now along with the current player base. I feel everything trickles down to how well classes perform in PvE. 

 

If we ask for nerfs, it may lead to certain builds maybe even classes be obsolete in PvP. I multi-class and my intentions are absent of any bias or favoritism. It's healthy to at least have one viable build from each class in PvP. 

 

One last thing, I wished mapchat wellness, happiness and more prosperity earlier and received gold and presents. Lol, that took me by surprise. Thanks

[Stand The Wall.6987]

absolutely, yes. embrace human nature, nerf your enemy.

[Axl.8924]

1 hour ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

Sorry if I created confusion. 

 

In the past, PvP had a dedicated team including folks like Evan Lesh, Justin O'Dell, Ben P and couple others I can't remember at the moment. This was pre CmC or at least he was under the quality assurance dept. 

 

The PvP team is significantly smaller now along with the current player base. I feel everything trickles down to how well classes perform in PvE. 

 

If we ask for nerfs, it may lead to certain builds maybe even classes be obsolete in PvP. I multi-class and my intentions are absent of any bias or favoritism. It's healthy to at least have one viable build from each class in PvP. 

 

One last thing, I wished mapchat wellness, happiness and more prosperity earlier and received gold and presents. Lol, that took me by surprise. Thanks

Agreed which is why i think it could be easier to just buff warr for instance and have warr outplay. Sometimes peeps get too used to a class being ez free kills and when they actually have to have a brain to fight peeps cry.

 

Peeps also cry about the dumbest things like for instance LB2  on ranger which can be avoided by simply hiding behind a pillar and waiting for the pew pew to be over.

[Genesis.5169]

No we shouldn't people should focus focus on keeping as many class good and viable as possible this way the pvp can be more inclusive atleast in that respect because pvp is difficult losing isnt fun and spending half the match on the floor even in a win still isn't fun. The least we can have are classes that are fun and usable so that people can at least enjoy the journey to get better instead of having to play something thats meta and work backwards to play fun off meta builds.

We nerfed most mesmers out of pvp maybe out of the game..(i don't pve much but when i did i didn't see many mesmers in fotm/raids) they've all rolled up guardian for the most part regardless of "fun" and being able to role play a class you want viability matters in the end.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Genesis.5169

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

8 hours ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

I don't think it's ideal, More so now than ever because at most, the pvp balance team probably has 2 employees. Remember, once they take things away from us, we will never get them back. What we need is a re-balance, slight buffs but not constant requests for nerfs. 

There are classes (3) that I vehemently dislike yet I don't ask them to be nerfed. Instead, I play the classes, learn the weaknesses and exploit them back. I know  2-3 are completely overtuned right now yet in most cases, they have at least 1 counter. Unlike say the most viable build for this one heavy armored class has 4 hard counters. If a build has 4 hard counters, it obviously needs a buff on sustain. 

 

Entry level hero classes are needed right now to attract newer players to pvp. 

 

If a newer player does well with an entry level class, you as a veteran, should be able to play that same class at a superior capacity. 

 

It's ingrained in our psychology to feel the pain of loss more than the relief of gains. A good example is investing; losing 10% triggers a stronger emotion from the loss vs the emotion from gaining 10%. 

 

 

The answer to your question is: Yes, if it's something that is clearly broken in any way, it needs to get nerfed.
Nerfing something can also mean buffing others without touching them.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

You're asking the same question i did about 4 or 5 years ago. It's the right question to ask.

 

If you dig a lot deeper into trying to answer that question, you'll eventually lead to this conclusion: nerfs and buffs are meaningless and there is only one thing that truly matters : The complexity of mechanics and whether that complexity creates diversity.

 

The issue people have with that conclusion is that "complexity" sounds like a scary word... And truth is you can't blame them...it's a complicated thing to understand. Once you get how it works you realize just how elegant this thing is and why it's the critical and really the only component for whether you will have balance and diversity in the game.

I don't know if you've ever play John Conway's Game of Life. But I think everyone should...to understand how this game here is able to help understand the issue with balance philosophies in gw2...and what complexity is in a very simple way.

 

Take two 5 cell configurations: Configuration 1 and Configuration 2. Before even letting them run... try and make a prediction: Which configuration is gonna live longer...and for how much longer?

The answer will surprise you. You can and should do the experiment yourself...but if you didn't:

Spoiler

Configuration 1 stops after about 4 steps...whereas the other configuration 2 continues for 1200 steps.

 

Ask yourself now this question...what is really so different between configuration 1 and configuration 2? Why do they give you such vastly different results when they are almost exactly the same?

What keeps happening to configuration 2, is that every step in it's evolution, is another more equally complex arrangement of cells, that yield the same complex behavior as config 2...This keeps going and going and going because each time step is able to meaningfully interact with the previous time step...where as for Configuration 1, it's configuration doesn't lead to any meaningful interactions, and subsequently hits a fast stable state.

If you were to extrapolate what is happening here in Game of Life into Gw2...imagine skills as being these 5 cell automatons...some skills simply do not interact with other things and so they end up like Configuration 1...where as other skills interact with everything and they end up like Configuration 2.

Now okay...that's a big pill to swallow...but go back to asking this right: What is really so different about configuration 1 and configuration 2? If you were a "game of life balance dev" how would you balance the behavior of these two already highly similiar configurations? You find out very fast through just simple experimentation...that there is no clearly understandable way to do this. The most naïve solution is to just make the two configurations the same configuration...but you realize what you did here is annihilate diversity to achieve that perfect balance.

 

In essence, the thing that we think can be done "balancing"...is not possible to do with any naïve procedure like numerical buffs and numerical nerfs without destroying diversity... on top of that, what ends up being the case is that Diversity is what GIVES us balance, and this is also the same mechanism for how nature self-balances: by providing tons of diversity through the complex phenomena above.

Balance is something much more complicated and a lot deeper then people give it credit for...part of it has to do with the language we use as well...like "overtuned" and "undertuned" do not have any value in talking about the relative strength of things, because of the above phenomenon.

Anyway I hope that maybe I'm getting to someone here to understand that the way we talk about this problem is like grasping at darkness in a cave...it requires a much deeper probe then just "X and Y is OP please nerf it will make game perf balance hurr."

Edited December 26, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

21 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The complexity of mechanics and whether that complexity creates diversity.

This. A game can be complex and stagnant, or simple and perpetually shifting. What matters more than whether certain mechanics are obnoxious in a certain meta is if there are other mechanics that can be run that punish people for running those obnoxious mechanics. 

The effects of this balancing direction are immediately apparent. people are already going "but what about thief shortbow, but what about mantras, if x can/can't do it then so I should get x"

It's wasting time and asking for a whole lot of developer intervention that touches pve for no reason. if your class as a whole can't deal with class X aiming behind it while running away because they return before you're ready to push them again, even after you take the rational step of not chasing them and eating the nades/shells/shortbow without mitigation, then it would be easier to adjust your mitigation kit instead. 

The punchline is a lot of that salt is likely from people who should know better but still eat the nades/shells/clusters anyway, and just want to throw a wrench into core mechanics because they don't know when to quit chase and take a breath. 

But whatever, you all do you~

Edited December 26, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Kuma.1503]

I would really love if pvp forums were like fighting game forums, or MOBA subreddits. 

A place to ask for help. Share builds. Learn how to deal with obnoxious things instead of nerfing them. 

It's like people here feel entitled to win, and if they dont it's the game's fault. It needs to change, not them. 

Even trying to level, see things from the perspective of the other person so you can have genuine convetsation instead of talking at each other doesn't work. 

The only class I'd consider nerfing is Necro, and frankly the best way to do that is re-introduce builds that do well against it. 

And Stop nerfing damage!

 

For everything else, what we need is an expansion level gameplay update. 

Core Warrior, core engi, core ele, and core mesmer would all benefit from this. 

Anet went down the right track when they updated Explosives and Corruption. They made these traitlines like elite specs in themselves. I'd like to see more of that. 

No more removing things or ripping out mechanics, ESPECIALLY from weak core classes. It doesn't fix things, it just kills off more builds and makes it harder to deal with new broken stuff. 

Nerfs sound good on an intuitive level, but we've seen it demonstrated time and time again. 

They're just making things worse.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Kuma.1503

[greedywholesome.9081]

43 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

What is really so different about configuration 1 and configuration 2? If you were a "game of life balance dev" how would you balance the behavior of these two already highly similiar configurations? You find out very fast through just simple experimentation...that there is no clearly understandable way to do this. The most naïve solution is to just make the two configurations the same configuration...but you realize what you did here is annihilate diversity to achieve that perfect balance.

 

Considering the thousands of nuances the devs must consider, perfect balance is not viable nor enjoyable.

 

44 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

If you were to extrapolate what is happening here in Game of Life into Gw2...imagine skills as being these 5 cell automatons...some skills simply do not interact with other things and so they end up like Configuration 1...where as other skills interact with everything and they end up like Configuration 2.

To convert the configuration relevant to gw2, lets say config 1 is hammer catalyst traits = inferior, ,mis-aligned synergy

Config 2 on the other hand = necro synergy with traits and weapons. 

 

Hypothetically, if we left necromancer as is and buffed warrior sustain, I believe this will lead to diversity. 1. fewer ppl will play necro, ranger and maybe ele 2. more will play classes that will counter warriors, i.e. deadeye, mirage, holo, herald. 

 

That's the result of just buffing the sustain of 1 class. So yes, balancing is tedious and analytical. Without a proper balancing team like we used to have, I guess we will just take what will be given to us. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

34 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

This. A game can be complex and stagnant, or simple and perpetually shifting. What matters more than whether certain mechanics are obnoxious in a certain meta is if there are other mechanics that can be run that punish people for running those obnoxious mechanics. 

The effects of this balancing direction are immediately apparent. people are already going "but what about thief shortbow, but what about mantras, if x can/can't do it then so I should get x"

It's wasting time and asking for a whole lot of developer intervention that touches pve for no reason. if your class as a whole can't deal with class X aiming behind it while running away because they return before you're ready to push them again, even after you take the rational step of not chasing them and eating the nades/shells/shortbow without mitigation, then it would be easier to adjust your mitigation kit instead. 

The punchline is a lot of that salt is likely from people who should know better but still eat the nades/shells/clusters anyway, and just want to throw a wrench into core mechanics because they don't know when to quit chase and take a breath. 

But whatever, you all do you~

 

Ya, Totally agree. Especially about the waste of time part...it feels like CMC was robbed of 2 years of his life, by being given a task that's impossible to do, and then takes all the blame for not being able to do it. Likewise, we've all been robbed of builds, time, enjoyment and so on...and like you said, the punchline: It feels like a strange...absurd form of collective stupidity that lead us here to this point.

 

Idk thinking about it too much just makes me depressed and pretty sad...like there's no hope or something so I'm just gonna stop thinking about it. Just pray people eventually catch on.

[Morwath.9817]

3 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

Ya, Totally agree. Especially about the waste of time part...it feels like CMC was robbed of 2 years of his life, by being given a task that's impossible to do, and then takes all the blame for not being able to do it. Likewise, we've all been robbed of builds, time, enjoyment and so on...and like you said, the punchline: It feels like a strange...absurd form of collective stupidity that lead us here to this point.

 

Idk thinking about it too much just makes me depressed and pretty sad...like there's no hope or something so I'm just gonna stop thinking about it. Just pray people eventually catch on.

Idk, balance isn't that bad. Certainly it's better than after PoF release. There always will be people who are unhappy, and only unhappy people are loud. Happy people just play and enjoy.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Morwath.9817

[Arheundel.6451]

10 hours ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

I don't think it's ideal, More so now than ever because at most, the pvp balance team probably has 2 employees. Remember, once they take things away from us, we will never get them back. What we need is a re-balance, slight buffs but not constant requests for nerfs. 

There are classes (3) that I vehemently dislike yet I don't ask them to be nerfed. Instead, I play the classes, learn the weaknesses and exploit them back. I know  2-3 are completely overtuned right now yet in most cases, they have at least 1 counter. Unlike say the most viable build for this one heavy armored class has 4 hard counters. If a build has 4 hard counters, it obviously needs a buff on sustain. 

 

Entry level hero classes are needed right now to attract newer players to pvp. 

 

If a newer player does well with an entry level class, you as a veteran, should be able to play that same class at a superior capacity. 

 

It's ingrained in our psychology to feel the pain of loss more than the relief of gains. A good example is investing; losing 10% triggers a stronger emotion from the loss vs the emotion from gaining 10%. 

 

 

You're not understanding the main reason why this community asks for nerfs constantly : nerfs when executed do not apply to all professions fairly or in any shape and form balanced .

When you gut some professions for one reason and then leave others completely untouched..you create the horrific scenario you see now, when they nerf ele...we talk about a 50% or so increase in CD or decrease in dmg...when they nerf a class like revenant or engineer or guardian or necro , the nerfs are delivered with a needle ...like 5% increase in CD...an extra 2-3s on complained skill.

When they nerf some professions they take out the huge hammer...with other professions they use a tea spoon.....if ele outperform...it's hammer time...if engi or rev does the same...well it will be like 2-3 years begging anet to apply any nerf...only for them to add a 3s cd or so..

 

[Kuma.1503]

31 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

Idk, balance isn't that bad. Certainly it's better than after PoF release. There always will be people who are unhappy, and only unhappy people are loud. Happy people just play and enjoy.

If only that were true. Unfortunately, Unhappy people are often the quietest because they're the ones who will silently leave and never return. 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

The only things that should get nerfed are hand rezzing, necro, and degenerate builds that have no counterplay. Everything else that is under-performing just needs some buffs so they can compete with necro, rev, thief, engi.

[greedywholesome.9081]

50 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

nerfs when executed do not apply to all professions fairly or in any shape and form balanced .

When you gut some professions for one reason and then leave others completely untouched..you create the horrific scenario you see now, when they nerf ele...we talk about a 50% or so increase in CD or decrease in dmg...when they nerf a class like revenant or engineer or guardian or necro , the nerfs are delivered with a needle ...like 5% increase in CD...an extra 2-3s on complained skill.

 

Im quite aware of the incongruence of class treatment. One of my most beloved builds had its barrier reduced, burn stacks on signet reduced, damage reduced, increased CD to 75sec on one utility and yet just recently there were comments on how "OP" that spec is. On another thread, we had people complain about the engie supply crate. 

 

You see, most of the time, the request for nerfs fall under:

lack of understanding 

too lazy to put any effort to understand counters

self-serving instant gratification purposes without consideration to the long term effect (the class counters their main)

Rarely, we do get unbiased requests for overpowered specs to be adjusted. Those threads usually include very long walls of text explaining weapon skills, utilities and traits in great detail.

 

Im afraid the lack of manpower will result in heavy, rushed nerfs. That's why I prefer slight buffs. Will the nerfs to ele be reverted? I highly doubt it and it's sad. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by greedywholesome.9081

[Shao.7236]

I have my own list of nerfs and buffs for Revenant, it gets undeniably hardly any attention, rather instead most often than not, hated. Whether things make sense objectively or not, Anet needs to play test their game more.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

58 minutes ago, Morwath.9817 said:

Idk, balance isn't that bad. Certainly it's better than after PoF release. There always will be people who are unhappy, and only unhappy people are loud. Happy people just play and enjoy.

I half agree with this. The balance isn't as bad as it used to be, but it still has a ways to go before it is good. There will always be people that are unhappy, but the cause of their unhappiness needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. You should also not always equate people being quiet with them being satisfied. Sometimes that is a sign of resignation/them giving up on expecting anything from you.  

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

..it feels like CMC was robbed of 2 years of his life, by being given a task that's impossible to do, and then takes all the blame for not being able to do it. 

I don't completely agree with this either. The task is possible, it just requires more finesse than taking a sledgehammer to the game. As Morwath stated above, some issues have been diligently addressed/the balance is better, but there are still some issues that are glaring, that should be tapped more frequently than once a year. It's not that the task was impossible, it's that it was approached with a diligence that left some very noticeable issues running for a long time.

That really isn't CmCs fault because [EoD ship NOW] was dropped on everyone rather quickly and he is the only visible influence on pvp balancing at this time while also doing other things. I put that on Arenanet mostly. There are any number of things from email surveys to threads here that they should be using to communicate that there is interest on continuing where things left off, balance wise. If PvP balance was respected it would have at least a couple of people looking at it at once and playtesting the changes they propose, but that doesn't seem the case and PvP appears to be largely an afterthought that PvE people occasionally are encouraged to do for extra shinies, then get back to PvEing

 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Bazsi.2734]

Should we constantly drink water? Literally non-stop chugging until you pass out? Is it a good idea?
Here is a fun fact: not drinking anything ever prevents you from dying to water intoxication.

Whats the point of this thread?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

 

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

part of it has to do with the language we use as well...like "overtuned" and "undertuned" do not have any value in talking about the relative strength of things, because of the above phenomenon.

Nobody is going to pay attention to this outside of this thread, but I feel like if the forums made balancing suggestions where they quantify why they want a buff or a nerf, and people didn't take the suggestions that failed to do that seriously, we'd probably see more developer interaction because more often than not we try to balance on feelings here. 

[I play class X and am having trouble fighting class Y, because my kit lacks tool Z and I think adjusting cooldowns a b and c would fix it] would be much better for the state of the game over time than [Class Y is overpowered because it can do this and Class X cannot do this]. 

All of that is just idealistic fancy though. 

 

2 minutes ago, Bazsi.2734 said:

Should we constantly drink water? Literally non-stop chugging until you pass out? Is it a good idea?
Here is a fun fact: not drinking anything ever prevents you from dying to water intoxication.

Whats the point of this thread?

Point's obvious if you noticed people wanna blanket nerf ground targeting skills right now. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

41 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I half agree with this. The balance isn't as bad as it used to be, but it still has a ways to go before it is good.

 

I suppose it's debatable on whether we could say balance is better or not. I would argue that it's not.

 

Then again there's no definition of what balanced even looks like right. Really talking about balance is completely subjective unless we look at one parameter: The diversity of the game: How many builds are being represented, and in what relation to how many that can exist?

 

Here's my deal. Given the number of possible configurations of skills/traits and stats in the game one could make, how many builds are there? Probably close to a million or something right. Then, how many of those builds are functionally different rather then incidental differences?...Another unknown but probably a significant fraction of them like 150 or something...then out of those, how many of those builds are selected for by players because they can achieve goals that we care about...again significant fraction...probably close to 30 or 40...and out of those 30 or 40, which ones are considered meta? About 5.

 

The issue I see here...is that you have about a million or so configurations and yet only 5 of them are represented as meta...30 or 40 or so builds that people would consider as functional (but probably not viable), and 150 or so that are differentiable (where the other million or so are incidental copies of these 150 builds). I see this as not a good thing, when the ratio could, and should be higher given how many possible configurations there are....Ironically, Game of Life probably has better balance and diversity then gw2, where one is more likely to find a configuration that will lead to an interesting and complex game, then configurations that do not.

 

To me, this just seems like a direct tie to a single correlation: That gw2 does not have good mechanical design...it's as if gw2 designed all their spells to be like Config 1's instead of Config 2s. 

 

Anyway... Like mentioned about the language used..."overtuned," "undertuned," and even the word "balance" itself are not well defined and they have no real value. Our vocabulary for even talking about this stuff is not even in the zone...there are ball parks and we aren't in them. We can't even compare which parts of the game "had better balance" only what we can subjectively perceive as better balance. The only thing we got to objectively talk about is diversity and well...nobody understands it so how are we gonna get anywhere in balance discussions unless people confront these concepts. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Morwath.9817]

For me personaly, balance Anet should pursue, would be, where each class is viable in top levels of play and those classes can have builds viable in multiple roles. Like in GW1, you could really bring various setups and hillarious thing is, there was more guilds competing in GvG ladder back then, when GW1 had probably less than 1/10 of GW2 population than during e-sportz GW2 times.