Guild Wars 2

Wondering what is meant by buff and nerf ? Is a buff increasing or making a skill or trait better ? and is nerf doing that opposite ?

I know I should know this but I don’t. Thanks to whoever takes the time to respond.

Yep you got it!

In a nutshell, yes that’s pretty much it
buff = increased effectiveness
nerf = decreased effectiveness

A buff is a benefit that increases the stats of an item or that of a player. For example someone can get a speed buff to increase their movement speed or magic find buff to increase the odds of finding better items from loot.

A nerf is usually when game developers decrease the stats or effectiveness of a certain skill or trait. This is also applied to areas that are popular for farming when developers have hit it with worse drops or diminishing returns.

For example with the rumors of the next update you will probably see the term nerf many many time.

Hope that helps.

JustTrogdor.7892:

A buff is a benefit that increases the stats of an item or that of a player. For example someone can get a speed buff to increase their movement speed or magic find buff to increase the odds of finding better items from loot.

A nerf is usually when game developers decrease the stats or effectiveness of a certain skill or trait. This is also applied to areas that are popular for farming when developers have hit it with worse drops or diminishing returns.

For example with the rumors of the next update you will probably see the term nerf many many time.

Hope that helps.

Yep, helped a great deal.

Appreciate the replies.

Not entirely, a buff isn’t necessarily an improvement. it’s simply an increase.

I.E a buff to a cooldown means an increase in cooldown, nerfing a cooldown is making it shorter.

Buffing damage is the other way around, buff would increase damage nerf decreases it.

Fun bit of trivia – nerf originally referred to weapons specifically and was a short hand way of saying a weapon is now so weak it’s like using a Nerf gun. (The ones that shoot foam darts.)

More practically it’s often worth bearing in mind that whether a change is a buff, nerf or has no real effect on the overall usefulness of a skill/item/profession is often a matter of opinion (and therefore debate).

buff is when they make a class overpowerful in comparison to the others.
nerf is when they take away an unfair advantage.

Kichwas.7152:

buff is when they make a class overpowerful in comparison to the others.
nerf is when they take away an unfair advantage.

This made me literally Roll On Floor Laughing.

Buffs and nerfs are how you fix bad balance design in games.

When something is underpowered the developers buff it to make it stronger, when it’s overpowered they nerf it to make it less powerful, of course there are serious exceptions to this rule.

I wonder why this got moved to the suggestion forum? o_O