Ideas for the next "Balance Patch"

[Westenev.5289]

Due to smell complaints, Stinkbeasts have been ordered to take a bath. Their noxious whiff has been removed.

... I can dream. :s

[Ashen.2907]

@Menzo.2185 said:What does the community want for the next balance patch?

50% damage buff for ranger longbow AA.

[Strikerjolt.9418]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@"Jski.6180" said:STOP nerfing i think anet is addictive to nerfing at this point. The game is in a worst places because of the last update.

Yep. They should just let power creep spiral out of control by only buffing things. /s

First of all that's not the definition of power creep. Power creep defined as "Power creep is a process that sometimes occurs in games where new content (in this case cards) slowly outstrip the power of previous alternatives"

Buffing abilities and traits =/= power creep.

Nerfing too much will literally ruin games. If classes aren't fun and if all fun builds get nerfed - there's no point in playing. Our classes are the way we interact with the game world.

Sometimes buffing more can be the answer. Sometimes nerfing more can be the wrong answer.

If x class is above all other classes. You don't need to nerf x class. but look at other ways to buff other classes to the same level.

I play Dungeons and Dragons and one the worst things in earlier editions and still true in 5e is that spell casters are way more fun to play than martial classes. This is why 4e was most balanced Dungeons and Dragons editions because how they built the combat system. All classes get powers.

So martial classes get lost in the wind while the Wizards and Clerics are pulling out Meteor Showers and Stars to the ground.

How do I solve this? I buff martial classes by designing new weapons with unique powers that puts them on the same levels as spells.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Sometimes buffing more can be the answer. Sometimes nerfing more can be the wrong answer.

If x class is above all other classes. You don't need to nerf x class. but look at other ways to buff other classes to the same level.

But this misses the point that sometimes its not healthy for the game no matter how much "fun" people are having. It also doesn't help when no matter how much you buff the alternatives they still won't ever be chosen above the thing you are trying to match them to. It also limits design space for whatever the role was that is being discusses. Chrono is a case in point. No matter what you did to the alternatives there was no reason to EVER pick them over it. It literally crowded out anything and everything they would have wanted to design into that type of role.

Regardless of how people feel there are times when nerfing stuff is the 100% correct thing to do. You can NEVER only buff things in a game.

[Strikerjolt.9418]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Sometimes buffing more can be the answer. Sometimes nerfing more can be the wrong answer.

If x class is above all other classes. You don't need to nerf x class. but look at other ways to buff other classes to the same level.

But this misses the point that sometimes its not healthy for the game no matter how much "fun" people are having. It also doesn't help when no matter how much you buff the alternatives they still won't ever be chosen above the thing you are trying to match them to. It also limits design space for whatever the role was that is being discusses. Chrono is a case in point. No matter what you did to the alternatives there was no reason to EVER pick them over it. It literally crowded out anything and everything they would have wanted to design into that type of role.

Regardless of how people feel there are times when nerfing stuff is the 100% correct thing to do. You can NEVER only buff things in a game.

This just factually incorrect and I wish I knew the classes in Guild Wars 2 well enough to argue your baseless, bullkitten claim that nerfing stuff 100% correct thing to do. But I am fully in-depth with 3rd edition, 3.5 edition, 4th edition, and 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons - a system much more complicated to balance and I've been constantly praised for my homebrew classes, races, whatever by large parts of different communities. In fact people have asked for classes complicated like the Witcher from the Witcher series and he was surprised on how I cranked that out underneath a week and had it relatively balanced.

I'm just glad you're not in charge of class design or video games cause your games would just suck. You know also isn't healthy for a game? NERFING EVERYTHING.

Are there going to be outliners like Chronos? Yeah of kittening course. But that doesn't mean you nerf Chronos. Just like how Wizards and Clerics have always been the outliners in the Dungeons and Dragons games. But I didn't nerf them at all. I just made the other classes more fun by giving them new abilities.

Nerfing. is. hardly. the. correct. answer. And unless you actually have some experience in the field. (Which you clearly don't by what you say.) Infact - by people hacking certain games and overbuffing every character we got fighting games they way they are now and they're 10000000% more fun to play and they changed the genre forever.

Watch this before responding. Thanks.

[Dahkeus.8243]

My wish list:

Nerf Daggerstorm and Stealth on Dodge Deadeye. Put stealth on skill 4 (non-kneeling) Deadeye and increase the ini cost to offset the removal of stealth. This will reduce the ini available to Deadeyes for burst and not make their stealth so spammable and cheesy. Daggerstorm with a full evade just makes for a bad, cheesy "I win" button. At best, reduce the cooldown and drastically reduce the active duration.

Buff P/D on thief (good discussion on this @ thief subforum).

PvP-focused nerfs for Soulbeast and small buffs for Soulbeast.

Gradually buff Ele from a PvP perspective to bring it back into the meta.

Buff DH longbow damage, especially in PvE.

No more buffs/nerfs to Chrono in PvE. Just work on getting other classes (such as rev/FB) buffed as needed to make sure that they are viable alternatives. From the sounds of things, this may not be needed, at least in Fractals, but I don't follow that stuff as closely nowadays.

More than anything overall, take balance gradually and frequently. Also, insight as to balance direction, such as with the last patch, are very much appreciated!

[perilisk.1874]

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Sometimes buffing more can be the answer. Sometimes nerfing more can be the wrong answer.

Sometimes. Sometimes not. Professions aren't just balanced against each other, they're balanced against the content, which I suspect is much harder to change than profession abilities. If a certain profession has a certain set of abilities that make content much less challenging than intended, bringing other professions up to that level just trivializes the content entirely, and the appropriate response is a nerf to the one profession.

In PvP, maybe it doesn't matter which direction you go (though "power" is mostly in terms of DPS or active defense, rather than passive defense and HP, so power-creep leads inexorably toward an annoying OHK scenario which a lot of people dislike), but in PvE, content difficulty forms a common baseline against which professions can be measured as over- or under-powered.

[Strikerjolt.9418]

@perilisk.1874 said:

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Sometimes buffing more can be the answer. Sometimes nerfing more can be the wrong answer.

Sometimes. Sometimes not. Professions aren't just balanced against each other, they're balanced against the content, which I suspect is much harder to change than profession abilities. If a certain profession has a certain set of abilities that make content much less challenging than intended, bringing other professions up to that level just trivializes the content entirely, and the appropriate response is a nerf to the one profession.

In PvP, maybe it doesn't matter which direction you go (though "power" is mostly in terms of DPS or active defense, rather than passive defense and HP, so power-creep leads inexorably toward an annoying OHK scenario which a lot of people dislike), but in PvE, content difficulty forms a common baseline against which professions can be measured as over- or under-powered.

Bollocks. Straight bollocks. In my vast experiences it's much easier to balance against PVE content than it is PVP. Although, I find MOBA balancing fairly easy. Classes vs classes is much harder because you basically don't want to create a class that's just better than the already created class and you don't want to create a class that steps on the toes on other classes.

Which I have experience in since I've created over dozens of class in each of the editions.

Also your input.. I didn't really need it. No shit that they're balanced against content. Thanks for letting me know that. I thought this was a PVP only game. :astonished:

Edit: Also that buffing things is NOT THE DEFINITION OF POWER CREEP.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@Strikerjolt.9418 said:-snip-Making everything too strong can be just as unfun as having everything too weak.Having something so strong is un-fun to play against is just as bad as having something so weak that it is un-fun to play.Having one thing so dominant that nothing else matters can be just as bad as having everything being good at everything.

Loss aversion or not. Objective balance or not. Subjective balance or not. When it comes to buffs and nerfs both need to happen and suggesting you only need one without the other, either way, would just lead to a poorer game over all.

Pat yourself on the back with your parallels as much as you want and put me down in your post as much as you want but if you didn't see me advocating for both and not one or the other you have clearly missed my point. There are times when nerfing something is 100% the correct course of action just as much as there are times when buffing something is 100% the correct course of action.

[TheOrlyFactor.8341]

Next balance patch should completely remove PvP. :^)

[perilisk.1874]

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Edit: Also that buffing things is NOT THE DEFINITION OF POWER CREEP.

Not in and of itself, no, since a buff is a single small balance change in isolation. However, if your response to an overperforming ability is usually to buff everything else up to its level, and you avoid nerfs, then the average level of power will continually increase over time as you make balance changes.

Now, am I saying that it's always "power creep" just because the average level of power for player characters continually creeps upward? Yes, yes I am, because that's literally what those two words together mean in this context.

[Strikerjolt.9418]

@perilisk.1874 said:

@"Strikerjolt.9418" said:Edit: Also that buffing things is NOT THE DEFINITION OF POWER CREEP.

Not in and of itself, no, since a buff is a single small balance change in isolation. However, if your response to an overperforming ability is usually to buff everything else up to its level, and you avoid nerfs, then the average level of power will continually increase over time as you make balance changes.

Now, am I saying that it's

always

"power creep" just because the average level of power for player characters continually creeps upward? Yes, yes I am, because that's literally what those two words together mean in this context.

For PVE it doesn't even matter. Guild Wars 2 and WoW has had a long history of nerfing and nerfing and nerfing and now the classes are broken and no longer fun to play. It's huge a criticism of both games. Classes is our ways with interacting with the world and the content and if the classes are unfun the entire game is unfun.

Fun MUST take place over everything else within reason. And nerfing outliners like Chrono into the ground because it's one of those classes that is pretty much always going to be good is just silly. Let it be powerful, let it be fun, let it be what it is and stop focusing so much on balancing it. There will always be one or two outliners that stand out from the rest. It's going to happen. There's a big difference between something being overpowered and being good and for people who have zero experience in balancing and actually creating content themselves. They don't understand the difference and just cry overpowered about everything.

Having every class and build nerfed into mediocrity because they don't even understand how to balance and never made content for a game is literally ridiculous. It's like going to a feet doctor for your eye problem. Classes need to be fun. Classes need to be strong. It's PVE - it doesn't matter. They can tune so many things to have the classes strong and have the monsters be difficult.

And I've seen some reasons why the developers have nerfed things and no disrespect to the developers personally. But bollocks. The reasons for some of your nerfs are unbelievably stupid and makes no sense.

[rabenpriester.7129]

I love you. Thanks for speaking up, and speaking the truth.

[Menzo.2185]

I will appreciate if there was not a Balance Patch every 2 months.

[Menzo.2185]

I will appreciate if all ranged weapons in the game (all professions) wouldn't deal more dmg than all melee weapons in the game.Being hit by an invisible person from 1,500 range, with unlockable ability and playing with 180 ping or higher is kind of nonsense and undodgeable.

*sorry google translate english

[Menzo.2185]

I will appreciate if the entire Anet developers team, responsible for all professions, would do a brainstorm followed by a complete rework / rebalance of all classes in the game (Core, HoT and PoF). Rework all weapons skills, utility skills, elite ability and traits, everything. Yes, you can launch this in parts, but you can't launch and rework the same thing later and rework again and again. Make no sense to me.

[Menzo.2185]

I'll give some minor examples:

You said the herald needed to be changed. So you changed the skill "Facet of Nature" in August and in October you adjusted the same skill again saying "We also noticed that heralds have been underperforming in some game modes since their rework, so we've bumped up the numbers on their F2 skills, and we've reduced the recharge time for a few of the consume skills in PvE."

In November of 2017 you reduced the duration of the Berserker Stance Skill saying that it was very strong, ok? ok!But shortly after you created the ammo skills and changed "Shake if Off" twice. The skill removes 3 conditions from me and 5 allies, is a break stun, has 2 counts and recharge after 25s. Is this stronger or weaker than Berserker Stance?

I can continue through almost all of the game's skills.

[Etterwyn.5263]

Every class gets access to a skill that reveals. That would be a good start. F stealth.

[Menzo.2185]

BannersAll the warriors banners should be reworked.Maybe "walking" with him, not be planted somewhere. More like a back item.Increase the range of the banners to 900. Make them more like the FB F's skills, with a smaller duration, maybe 20s.Change the Banner bundle skills too.

[Menzo.2185]

Combo Fields and Combo Finishers need rework urgently.

Make no sense to me have more swiftness duration from spam FB skill 1 (Tome 3) than from lightning fields + Blast finishers. Is this some sort of "overpowering" one single profession?

[LucianDK.8615]

If anything, Anet went contrary on heralds and nerfed their damage even more! Pretty sad. I hope they realize they flubbed up.

[InvaGir.9158]

Make Scrapper great again!

[Balsa.3951]

nerf dmg (PVP)get rid of any passives characters havepromote active game play

One shot burst are no fun for people who enjoy skilled game play a 10% dmg nerf could be enough for the start

Also next xpact may come next year dont do the power creep again to push ppll to buy x pact this strategy was the reason i refused to buy the x pact for 1 year

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

In retrospective the majority of changes besides content update were super annoying this year same goes for the next update at the 8 January.Let me try to list it :

1.)The mount skin loot box outcry2.)New randomization of the fractal instabilities3.)Great Elementist nerf and all those wired changes like on meteorshower.4.)The sigils we need for the achievement in the last map and the never decreasing cost for it (4g per unit max for me)5.)Change of the sigil and rune system which thought be great then I realized its like ANET trying to lick with the tip of the tong on p2w and it increased the cost of all runes sigils.6.) Chrono nerf especially the change on SoI is effectively a shadow nerf for all classes in pve and wvw and over probational for berserker/arcane elementists. Its really thrown many(including us) guilds out of the loop which only had started to run raids. Fractals were also unplayable for 2 weeks until chrono adapted.(but still everyone underperforme in contrast to before)

Coming:7.)New fractal instabilities from me personal experience this will take 1-2 weeks to adapt for me if they don't work out of proportions but the rest will take 6 weeks or more to adapt to. Same goes for the new stats/builds 6 weeks minimum until everything is set in place.

Annoying players instead of adding new content isn't the way to go you will sooner or later push them out of the game if you keep adding artificially blocks to your endcontent

[Strikerjolt.9418]

@Etterwyn.5263 said:Every class gets access to a skill that reveals. That would be a good start. F stealth.

So that sealth is completely useless?

Nice job. You can personally hate stealth all you want. That wouldn't objectively make for a fun game.