Why were these nerfs targeted at Classes and not Weapons / Runes?

[Stx.4857]

I’m kind of shocked at most of these nerfs.  
 

To me, the CLEAR issue with balance currently is the addition of weaponmaster training which gives access to all specs weapons which were clearly designed and balanced around one spec using them..  then add onto that the rune rework which brought us runes like Trapper which are clearly a little too good compared to the rest.  
 

None of these things were even touched?  Looked at?  Instead you nerf classes directly which will have negative effects which impact builds that were NOT overperforming.  Not to mention things like nerfing engineer pistol in order to nerf condi holosmith which also nerfs condi mechanist and CORE Engi which is lunacy.  
 

What am I missing here?  Take Scourge for one example, now go play it using no pistol or trapper runes or Akeem relic.  Is it still deserving of nerfs?  
 

Also I’m just confused by the nerfs in general.  You’re nerfing a spec like Condi Holosmith which is a pure selfish dps spec and needs to use all of its utility slots on kits to deal its damage, but you aren’t touching a spec like Druid which is a healer support spec by design and only recently had a condition damage aspect added to it, and Druid was doing just as much damage as Holo…. 
 

The nature of power creep in dps with the launch of Soto should have been a big clue that the adjustments that needed to be made were not targeted adjustments to class abilities, but to broad spectrum systems like runes, relics, and weapons.   
 

Edit:  I don’t play Rev so I didn’t see that they did target the overperforming weapon in Greatsword, so at least they had the logical approach to one class.  Hopefully this doesn’t kill power vindicator. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Stx.4857

[DylanLucas.6058]

Yes A-nerf is doing their very best in making everyone less powerful, which is so much more fun yeeeeeey

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

It doesn't matter what they would have nerfed, it would always effect some other build somewhere else. That is in fact the inherent problem in this game regarding numerical nerfs and numerical buffs : The games complexity is in such a place, where changing one element, changes many other elements...and this leads to changes that can't adequately be measured to determine the diversity (and therefor balance) of the game. Balancing is inherently flawed in this regard : It is a pointless exercise,  each balance operation means nothing because you don't really know what is gonna actually come out on the other end. Nerf one thing? You inadvertenly buffed 20 things. nerf 20 thing? You inadvertently nerfed 400 things...and so on.

The problem is rooted strictly in the fact that the skills are based in numbers, and that people can compare them. Until people get that, you will forever be in a rat race chasing nerfs or chasing buffs...between powercreep, and powerdip.

Edited September 26, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Manpag.6421]

31 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It doesn't matter what they would have nerfed, it would always effect some other build somewhere else.

I agree with what you're saying in general, but this does seem exceptionally clumsy to me. I'm rarely vocal when it comes to balance patches, but since they clearly have the ability to do more targeted nerfs, e.g:

Quote

Dhuumfire: Reduced burning duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds when the scourge elite specialization is equipped in PvE only.

Why did they not just do that for the weapon skills that were overperforming on particular elite specs thanks to weapon master training, rather than nerfing whole weapons across the board? Affecting other builds unintentionally might be unavoidable with numerical nerfs, but it's the lack of effort to at least minimise this that gets me.

[Serephen.3420]

58 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

I’m kind of shocked at most of these nerfs.  
 

To me, the CLEAR issue with balance currently is the addition of weaponmaster training which gives access to all specs weapons which were clearly designed and balanced around one spec using them..  then add onto that the rune rework which brought us runes like Trapper which are clearly a little too good compared to the rest.  
 

None of these things were even touched?  Looked at?  Instead you nerf classes directly which will have negative effects which impact builds that were NOT overperforming.  Not to mention things like nerfing engineer pistol in order to nerf condi holosmith which also nerfs condi mechanist and CORE Engi which is lunacy.  
 

What am I missing here?  Take Scourge for one example, now go play it using no pistol or trapper runes or Akeem relic.  Is it still deserving of nerfs?  
 

Also I’m just confused by the nerfs in general.  You’re nerfing a spec like Condi Holosmith which is a pure selfish dps spec and needs to use all of its utility slots on kits to deal its damage, but you aren’t touching a spec like Druid which is a healer support spec by design and only recently had a condition damage aspect added to it, and Druid was doing just as much damage as Holo…. 
 

The nature of power creep in dps with the launch of Soto should have been a big clue that the adjustments that needed to be made were not targeted adjustments to class abilities, but to broad spectrum systems like runes, relics, and weapons.   
 

Edit:  I don’t play Rev so I didn’t see that they did target the overperforming weapon in Greatsword, so at least they had the logical approach to one class.  Hopefully this doesn’t kill power vindicator. 

This times 100 as an ele player we got screwed over too...

[Dreams.3128]

6 minutes ago, Serephen.3420 said:

This times 100 as an ele player we got screwed over too...

Ele is never supposed to be strong don't you know? Weaver is supposed to just be shafted because of the bs of its other specs. This is another day being an Ele main. Either our rota is too hard where the highest dps is not feasible unless you minmax out the wazoo or we are dog. There is no in between for these extremes. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Manpag.6421 said:

I agree with what you're saying in general, but this does seem exceptionally clumsy to me. I'm rarely vocal when it comes to balance patches, but since they clearly have the ability to do more targeted nerfs, e.g:

Why did they not just do that for the weapon skills that were overperforming on particular elite specs thanks to weapon master training, rather than nerfing whole weapons across the board? Affecting other builds unintentionally might be unavoidable with numerical nerfs, but it's the lack of effort to at least minimise this that gets me.

That’s the thing…there is no real minimization. For every meta build that is “a problem” there are exponentially more builds that use the weapon or skill, that isnt a problem and when the “problem” build is nerfed so are those other builds… More off-meta builds are nerfed as a result of a single build being “problematic” and this leads to overall less builds being useful, usefulness being a necessary constraint for diversity.

the problem is in essence; the design of mosts skills (and traits) in the game,  being nothing more than numbers to be crunched on a spreadsheet. Any deviation from anything else “is a problem” until all builds do the same things…and this is the essence of what homogenization actually is: it’s caused by this effect of being able to compare things trivially and numerically. In fact the less deviations there are, the more trivial it is to compare options and the paradox surfaces ever more. 
 

it’s a problem I’ve studied for more than 4 years. It’s not obvious that the problem is inherent to the act of balancing itself…but that is the simple truth of it. When one asks to balance things in such a way (through numeric changes) one is also inadvertently asking for homogenization.
 

You can think of it more abstractly: that if you take it to its logical conclusion: the only state in which the game will ever be balanced perfectly is when all skills do the exact same thing: 1s duration 1 damage…and conversely in the other direction; infinite damage infinite duration…no matter what set of numbers one wants to choose there’s no “baseline” where these options will be balanced without also stripping the game of its identity as any other state is just a meaningless shifting of numbers that make them “not equal.” This relationship is fundamentally embedded in the nature of numbers, and the only solution is to decouple the game from this ability to optimize  options susceptible to trivial comparison.

Lastly, and this is one of the large issues with numeric balancing…is that the buck never stops. I alluded to this already but you nerf one build, the next build takes its place…nerf that and the next one takes its place…and in a self prophetic loop the game will numerically balance itself into sameness and uselessness so long as numerical changes exist.

You could ask a very obvious question: That if a perfectly balanced and highly diverse game exists and if numeric changes was the way to get that to happen then why hasn’t that happened yet? surely there must be a clear procedure to do that…add something here subtract something over there; that should be calculable and there should be no such thing as a balance problem due to the existence of such a procedure, and we should have a balanced game by now. But in that exploration to answer that question you find that such a procedure can not exist because those two aspects (numeric balance and diverse options) are incompatible…directly contradictory, dual, opposing statements about the state of a thing (like a skill)…and that makes sense: two things that are the same can’t also be different. So there-in lies the irony. There’s no state of perfect balance and so what would a balanced game even look like. It requires asking much deeper questions and way less obvious answers to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.

To address your response more directly: numeric balancing is not how these kinds problems truly get solved. It’s a bandaid solution that does more harm in the long run…like treating a patient with chemotherapy…you might kill some of the bad cells but many of the good cells die too… unlike the analogy, more innocent builds die than the problem builds…and they go out in silence because they aren’t “what’s popular” so people don’t see the problem until it’s far too late.

Edited September 26, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Stx.4857]

10 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

That’s the thing…there is no real minimization. For every meta build that is “a problem” there are exponentially more builds that use the weapon or skill, that isnt a problem and when the “problem” build is nerfed so are those other builds… More off-meta builds are nerfed as a result of a single build being “problematic” and this leads to overall less builds being useful, usefulness being a necessary constraint for diversity.

the problem is in essence; the design of mosts skills (and traits) in the game,  being nothing more than numbers to be crunched on a spreadsheet. Any deviation from anything else “is a problem” until all builds do the same things…and this is the essence of what homogenization actually is: it’s caused by this effect of being able to compare things trivially and numerically. In fact the less deviations there are, the more trivial it is to compare options and the paradox surfaces ever more. 
 

it’s a problem I’ve studied for more than 4 years. It’s not obvious that the problem is inherent to the act of balancing itself…but that is the simple truth of it. When one asks to balance things in such a way (through numeric changes) one is also inadvertently asking for homogenization.
 

You can think of it more abstractly: that if you take it to its logical conclusion: the only state in which the game will ever be balanced perfectly is when all skills do the exact same thing: 1s duration 1 damage…and conversely in the other direction; infinite damage infinite duration…no matter what set of numbers one wants to choose there’s no “baseline” where these options will be balanced without also stripping the game of its identity as any other state is just a meaningless shifting of numbers that make them “not equal.” This relationship is fundamentally embedded in the nature of numbers, and the only solution is to decouple the game from this ability to optimize  options susceptible to trivial comparison.

Lastly, and this is one of the large issues with numeric balancing…is that the buck never stops. I alluded to this already but you nerf one build, the next build takes its place…nerf that and the next one takes its place…and in a self prophetic loop the game will numerically balance itself into sameness and uselessness so long as numerical changes exist.

You could ask a very obvious question: That if a perfectly balanced and highly diverse game exists and if numeric changes was the way to get that to happen then why hasn’t that happened yet? surely there must be a clear procedure to do that…add something here subtract something over there; that should be calculable and there should be no such thing as a balance problem due to the existence of such a procedure, and we should have a balanced game by now. But in that exploration to answer that question you find that such a procedure can not exist because those two aspects (numeric balance and diverse options) are incompatible…directly contradictory, dual, opposing statements about the state of a thing (like a skill)…and that makes sense: two things that are the same can’t also be different. So there-in lies the irony. There’s no state of perfect balance and so what would a balanced game even look like. It requires asking much deeper questions and way less obvious answers to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.

I understand what you’re saying but the problem presented isn’t unsolvable, it’s just complicated.  
 

Extreme homogenization isn’t the goal but some can be beneficial for balancing.  For example, let’s say for any given class you aim at making each weapon deal the same dps (other than support use weapons like guardian staff).  Then you take all elite specs of that class and aim at equalizing the dps there.  This way no matter what weapon you choose to use on any given build, your dps should be within a similar range.  
 

Now you may say well that’s going to make all classes and builds feel the same.  But I would say that’s not the case because each weapon skill set has a different style and feel, same with elite spec mechanics and utility they offer.  
 

Perfect balance will never happen but there can be effort that goes into it and fine tuning numerical values in a logical way seems to be the best solution.  
 

For example let’s take Warrior.  Let’s say somehow you were able to fine tune all weapons and specs to deal exactly 40k dps.  Maybe that’s too homogenous and they would feel the same?  I don’t think so.  Spellbreaker has the benefit of inherit defense and CC for breakbar.   Berserker has a hack and slash style revolving around refreshing your berserk timer.  Bladesworn focuses on dealing a ton of damage with one big hit.  

[anbujackson.9564]

46k condi holo, no matter how selfish it is, was still too much. Thats a fact.

Anet decreasing overall damage is actually a good thing for once.

The only problem is that the meta wont change at all. Builds function the same, just with less dps. So you just basically still play the same stuff (not sure about scourge, i wait for benchmark people for that).

[Stx.4857]

9 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

46k condi holo, no matter how selfish it is, was still too much. Thats a fact.

Anet decreasing overall damage is actually a good thing for once.

The only problem is that the meta wont change at all. Builds function the same, just with less dps. So you just basically still play the same stuff (not sure about scourge, i wait for benchmark people for that).

46k is also what Druid is doing, but it wasn’t touched, why?  I’m struggling to understand the overall goals of this patch.  If they wanted to reduce damage across the board then why target certain specs?  The obvious problem is weaponmaster training and new runes / relics. 

[anbujackson.9564]

13 minutes ago, Stx.4857 said:

46k is also what Druid is doing, but it wasn’t touched, why?  I’m struggling to understand the overall goals of this patch.  If they wanted to reduce damage across the board then why target certain specs?  The obvious problem is weaponmaster training and new runes / relics. 

I guess they nerfed untamed instead of druid by accident. Cough >.>

Edited September 26, 2023 by anbujackson.9564

[Matoro.9708]

4 hours ago, Manpag.6421 said:

I agree with what you're saying in general, but this does seem exceptionally clumsy to me. I'm rarely vocal when it comes to balance patches, but since they clearly have the ability to do more targeted nerfs, e.g:

Why did they not just do that for the weapon skills that were overperforming on particular elite specs thanks to weapon master training, rather than nerfing whole weapons across the board? Affecting other builds unintentionally might be unavoidable with numerical nerfs, but it's the lack of effort to at least minimise this that gets me.

Somewhere at Anet HQ they have a pinata of core engi that they have to beat with the nerf stick every day to get their wages

[Kuma.1503]

Anet never learns form the mistakes. 

Either they release content patches half baked (We'll release the other half of the relics AND the new weapons soon don't you worry). 

Or they try to take an individual approach to large scale problems. If  the new runes/relics are breaking builds like condi holo and condi druid... Target that first. Instead they chose to nerf the classes directly, which inevitably results in some like Condi druid slipping through the cracks. 

Anyway, who wants to guess whether we'll actually get those new relics or not. Engis have been waiting on that placeholder mortar kit model to be replaced for... 8 years now? 

I'm sure they'll get around to it.  ( Still not buying Soto until they do). 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Kuma.1503

[draxynnic.3719]

4 hours ago, Stx.4857 said:

I understand what you’re saying but the problem presented isn’t unsolvable, it’s just complicated.  
 

Extreme homogenization isn’t the goal but some can be beneficial for balancing.  For example, let’s say for any given class you aim at making each weapon deal the same dps (other than support use weapons like guardian staff).  Then you take all elite specs of that class and aim at equalizing the dps there.  This way no matter what weapon you choose to use on any given build, your dps should be within a similar range.  
 

Now you may say well that’s going to make all classes and builds feel the same.  But I would say that’s not the case because each weapon skill set has a different style and feel, same with elite spec mechanics and utility they offer.  
 

Perfect balance will never happen but there can be effort that goes into it and fine tuning numerical values in a logical way seems to be the best solution.  
 

For example let’s take Warrior.  Let’s say somehow you were able to fine tune all weapons and specs to deal exactly 40k dps.  Maybe that’s too homogenous and they would feel the same?  I don’t think so.  Spellbreaker has the benefit of inherit defense and CC for breakbar.   Berserker has a hack and slash style revolving around refreshing your berserk timer.  Bladesworn focuses on dealing a ton of damage with one big hit.  

Another consideration is that when it comes to pure DPS builds... there's no escaping the fact that it's all about that number. You can trade out a bit of DPS for survival, support, and other utility, but then it's not pure DPS. The only non-numerical balance factors for pure DPS builds are ease of use, ability to continue doing DPS despite disruptions, area versus single-target, ranged versus melee, and burst capability versus sustained DPS. While these all matter, and tend to be the reason you see builds not being used despite high numbers, ultimately damage builds are always going to be defined by how much damage they do.

I think one thing Justice misses is that balance doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be close enough that discriminating against people playing the 'weaker' builds isn't worthwhile. Nobody outside of speedrunners is going to care about a 1k difference, but if you have a 10k difference that's a completely different thing.

Nice to see an acknowledgement that there's a tradeoff between ease of balance and diversity, though. Currently, the balance state is paying for the increase in on-paper diversity brought by SotO.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

4 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think one thing Justice misses is that balance doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be close enough that discriminating against people playing the 'weaker' builds isn't worthwhile.

Ironically that is what the DPS numbers were like : you had about 40 builds, that were doing between 40k and 48k DPS, on average doing 44k. The reason these nerfs probably even happened was to purposefully lower builds like scourge, which have utility, to "un-balance" them so that they do lower DPS, because of said utility. It's the first clue that just making stuff equal (as Styx stated) doesn't actually mean balance. 

I'm sure that many of the off-meta builds, gain some usage from being able to use a weapon that works, and being able to choose stats that make them not awful.  I hear that argument (balance doesn't have to be perfect) all the time as an excuse to continue doing pointless number changes.

[itspomf.9523]

12 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Nobody outside of speedrunners is going to care about a 1k difference, but if you have a 10k difference that's a completely different thing.

Nice to see an acknowledgement that there's a tradeoff between ease of balance and diversity, though. Currently, the balance state is paying for the increase in on-paper diversity brought by SotO.

Definitely agreed, and it's still nuts to me that there should ever be the potential for a 10k (or of late, 20k or 30k) delta between players.  Within a role / profession / whatever, you'd think most similar loadouts would be on a similar level of performance, yet I feel that hasn't been the case in many years.

And yeah, the new expansion didn't really create diversity, so much as it just made it easier to glom onto a few high-performing options with little (to no) tradeoff.

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Ironically that is what the DPS numbers were like : you had about 40 builds, that were doing between 40k and 48k DPS, on average doing 44k. The reason these nerfs probably even happened was to purposefully lower builds like scourge, which have utility, to "un-balance" them so that they do lower DPS, because of said utility. It's the first clue that just making stuff equal (as Styx stated) doesn't actually mean balance. 

I'm sure that many of the off-meta builds, gain some usage from being able to use a weapon that works, and being able to choose stats that make them not awful.  I hear that argument (balance doesn't have to be perfect) all the time as an excuse to continue doing pointless number changes.

You do realise that 'between 40k and 48k' is closer to a 10k difference than a 1k difference, right? (And there were still some builds that didn't benefit much from SotO that remained around 38k, so there's a full 10k spread.) Not to mention that scourge was the build at the very top, so it combined utility, ease of play, full ranged, and top DPS all in one package. There's no way 49k scourge could be justified short of powercreeping everything to that level - it's not just a high number, but the non-numerical factors were also mostly in its favour.

There's need for non-numbers tweaking as well, but at the bottom line, like it or not, damage output IS a number.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

57 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

You do realise that 'between 40k and 48k' is closer to a 10k difference than a 1k difference, right?

You are splitting hairs. Most of the 40 or so builds that were at least listed on snow-crows, sat at around 44k DPS, and those on the lower end (30k- 35k) were alacrity and quickness boon supports. 

Quote

(And there were still some builds that didn't benefit much from SotO that remained around 38k, so there's a full 10k spread.)

Most of the builds that "didn't benefit from soto" probably did benefit from soto...some of these off meta builds now have weapons, relics and proper stats that make them work. Nerfing say, weapons relics or stats, puts those off-meta builds back in the dumpsters. So does nerfing traits or skills, Hence the statement I said earlier : it doesn't really matter what they were gonna nerf, the off-meta builds are always going to suffer more, no matter what so long as only numeric balance changes are being made to address their problems.

Quote

Not to mention that scourge was the build at the very top, so it combined utility, ease of play, full ranged, and top DPS all in one package. There's no way 49k scourge could be justified short of powercreeping everything to that level - it's not just a high number, but the non-numerical factors were also mostly in its favour.

There's need for non-numbers tweaking as well, but at the bottom line, like it or not, damage output IS a number.

i'm not saying numbers aren't a thing you can tweak...it's just that the act of tweaking numbers is a meaningless procedure if balance (and diversity by proxy) is the thing you actually want out of the game. Like you just stated : Things that are not related to numbers like "ease of play," "range," and other things that I've used in examples before (like radius, and other abstract mechanics) can't be meaningfully mapped (1 to 1) with "a number" of another abstract mechanic which is why having a 45k DPS scourge, and a 45k DPS (insert whatever build here) are not actually "balanced" despite having the same DPS output...rather it might be more apt to say, that there is no objective agreement that two things are balanced just because their DPS outputs are the same on a golem.

The irony is that even in a state of the game where the DPS numbers have never been so close to one another, changes will be made to "unbalance" it because of those properties, and there will then be complaints about why classes don't all do the same dps.

The reason for this constant back and forth, is because there exists no objective way to parametrize numerically, abstract things like as numbers to be balanced. Not to mention these properties differ based on who the enemy is, what game mode you are playing, and the human's purposes. "ease of play" may be something that somebody doesn't cares about...for instance, not everyone wants to play the piano class even though it does 50k DPS...some people wanna run meta builds, some people wanna create them. Some people wanna play PVE, some wanna play PVP. 

Optimization, is a problem of ones own making, and the elements the game offers you. I've already said enough examples before, and if you didn't understand them then, you won't understand them now...but if all your problems look like nails, then your gonna think the hammer is the most broken invention in history. If all you see is "DPS OUTPUT" then you've already decided what the best builds are, forever, by simply looking at snow crows, and judging everything else as not worthy unless they have this arbitrary "1kdps difference" despite just showing yourself that utility matters in how much DPS something is supposed to output. That's a self-contradictory stance on the topic.

Edited September 27, 2023 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Nykoli.8560]

The release of SOTO caused the overall dps ceiling of all classes to jump up about 8k. This patch reduced the dps ceiling of (almost) all classes back down to their general target ceiling of around 40k +/-.  This patch was almost entirely a numbers tweak with little to no class mechanics effected.  A handful of specs were missed, a few were nerfed a little too much, but as they stated in the notes we should expect further fine tuning in the next month and then a big quarterly balance patch to address a wider range including pvp.

This across the board nerf was both expected and generally considered to be needed by anyone paying attention (the whole meta suddenly jumped up 8k a month ago).  Nerfs to a class you play are never pleasant, but all classes being tuned to a similar dps ceiling at the same time...well that's about as fair a balance patch as you can get. 

The way OP meta was fun for a bit, but every single raid since SOTO it's been a chorus of "lol omg this class is sooo OP now!" These nerfs were needed, justified, expected, and fair.  

[GeraldBC.4927]

They WERE targeted at the weapons. At least in the case of rev GS, thief scepter and probably more. 

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

17 minutes ago, GeraldBC.4927 said:

They WERE targeted at the weapons. At least in the case of rev GS, thief scepter and probably more. 

And Anet nerfed it by nerfing everything that remotely synergies these weapons, Affecting other weapons that didn't need nerfing at all.

As a result, we have a situation where you made underperforming weapon even worse to use for the sake of nerfing the actual overperforming weapons.

We have even less option than before lmao.

[Dadnir.5038]

Nobody should be surprised by what happened, the devs have always balanced like this. When a newly introduced variable create a balance hazard they always start by tweaking around the newly introduce variable without touching it directly. I do think it's already pretty impressive that part of the newly introduced variables were tweaked in this patch.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

I can see what they are attempting, and in the case of revenant, it was at least partially successful. In the past they could balance especs on the weapons and traits as one package. Now that they share their weapons with the other specs, all especs need to be balanced against each other without their weapons. Which is what they started here. They are clearly not finished.

Balancing just the weapons would not be enough, because then players might only pick the best espec per profession, instead of picking their favorite espec and then selecting which weapon they want to use. I'm interested how the next few balance patches will settle, and I don't expect that to happen in the next balance patch since they will add new weapons for each profession into the mix. I do hope for more consistent balance in the following months, now that they can focus on just prof mechanics and traits for each espec without the third moving part (weapon) being strictly tied to it. Maybe some underused weapons will get some love too, now that especs won't be pushing only certain weapons to perform over others.