Guild Wars 2

…how does it work? Is it the devs themselves that plays around in pvp matches and find out that this needs to buffed/nerfed?

Or do they read the complaints here on the forums? Observe matches? Collect data in some other way? Or do they talk to some special individual top tier players about it? Are all classes equally represented, without bias?

Anyone in the know here about this?

ping @Josh Davis, for example.

I wish i knew….

Maybe they have their personal gw2 account…disguse as a normal player and play pvp with us

We know that they are playing at NA.

OGDeadHead.8326:

…how does it work? Is it the devs themselves that plays around in pvp matches and find out that this needs to buffed/nerfed?

Or do they read the complaints here on the forums? Observe matches? Collect data in some other way? Or do they talk to some special individual top tier players about it? Are all classes equally represented, without bias?

Anyone in the know here about this?

ping @Josh Davis, for example.

It’s a bit of everything.

In order of highest priority listings to least priority.

1. Tournaments
Believe it or not, Devs look at tournaments as a strong foundation of where certain classes stand in TPvP. Mainly due to player synchronization – you just can’t consistently get these results in your average pug match. The skill cap is definitely higher here.

2. Forums
From bugs to repetitive posts saying to nerf something, Forum feedback is the best tool they have to research an potential issue. If a 20 page thread gets created by players asking for a change, addition, or a nerf to something, odds are, it’s going to happen. A prime example is RoF nerf, Turret Engi and Ele Might stacking and even GvG back when that thread became popular. All these came to light.

3. Obvious Power Creep
Ranger’s 10k pet damages and mitigation, Test of Faith’s 4procs in half a second when you cross the field, Engi passive sustains from a single trait. If it’s obvious for us, it’s obvious for the Devs too. That said, not everything is obvious, there’s a lot of l2p issues in soloq compared to Tournament play. This goes back to itemizing the two seperate gamemodes because what’s OP in soloQ pvp play may not be that big of a deal in tournament play. EU and NA both.

4. Their own data collaboration
I imagine they collect certain surveys in regards to X classes winning X Amount of games. I’d be surprised if they actually had a data pot that kept track of certain class specific traits and skills.

5. Casual Dev Team Players
Last but not least, the casual gamers within the company itself. There’s a constant collaboration of sorts within the small Anet community that are also wondering what’s OP and what isn’t. The above items are a bit more prioritized than the chit chat rumors that goes on during lunch hour.

The above is my experience of almost 2 years of watching Anet’s responses to the power creep. Sometimes they would buff or nerf something completely random like .5 seconds icd of a skill. It’s usually because they were literally observing a fight and the class would have performed better if it it lasted half a second longer.

It’s beyond amazing by how fast they’re currently responding where before, it was literally every 6 months before you saw any type of change – if that. Thankfully the game is successful enough where more money is put in the Tournament pot while at the same time, bugs and balance is of high priority. Expect a patch every two weeks or 2 ESL tournament matches for the sake of the meta shift and settle.

Saiyan.1704:

OGDeadHead.8326:

…how does it work? Is it the devs themselves that plays around in pvp matches and find out that this needs to buffed/nerfed?

Or do they read the complaints here on the forums? Observe matches? Collect data in some other way? Or do they talk to some special individual top tier players about it? Are all classes equally represented, without bias?

Anyone in the know here about this?

ping @Josh Davis, for example.

It’s a bit of everything.

In order of highest priority listings to least priority.

1. Tournaments
Believe it or not, Devs look at tournaments as a strong foundation of where certain classes stand in TPvP. Mainly due to player synchronization – you just can’t consistently get these results in your average pug match. The skill cap is definitely higher here.

2. Forums
From bugs to repetitive posts saying to nerf something, Forum feedback is the best tool they have to research an potential issue. If a 20 page thread gets created by players asking for a change, addition, or a nerf to something, odds are, it’s going to happen. A prime example is RoF nerf, Turret Engi and Ele Might stacking and even GvG back when that thread became popular. All these came to light.

3. Obvious Power Creep
Ranger’s 10k pet damages and mitigation, Test of Faith’s 4procs in half a second when you cross the field, Engi passive sustains from a single trait. If it’s obvious for us, it’s obvious for the Devs too. That said, not everything is obvious, there’s a lot of l2p issues in soloq compared to Tournament play. This goes back to itemizing the two seperate gamemodes because what’s OP in soloQ pvp play may not be that big of a deal in tournament play. EU and NA both.

4. Their own data collaboration
I imagine they collect certain surveys in regards to X classes winning X Amount of games. I’d be surprised if they actually had a data pot that kept track of certain class specific traits and skills.

5. Casual Dev Team Players
Last but not least, the casual gamers within the company itself. There’s a constant collaboration of sorts within the small Anet community that are also wondering what’s OP and what isn’t. The above items are a bit more prioritized than the chit chat rumors that goes on during lunch hour.

The above is my experience of almost 2 years of watching Anet’s responses to the power creep. Sometimes they would buff or nerf something completely random like .5 seconds icd of a skill. It’s usually because they were literally observing a fight and the class would have performed better if it it lasted half a second longer.

It’s beyond amazing by how fast they’re currently responding where before, it was literally every 6 months before you saw any type of change – if that. Thankfully the game is successful enough where more money is put in the Tournament pot while at the same time, bugs and balance is of high priority. Expect a patch every two weeks or 2 ESL tournament matches for the sake of the meta shift and settle.

If it is as you have stated, buffs/nerfs are based solely on PvP potential. Balancing the entire game around PvP leads to some serious issues in PvE and WvW. If the game cannot be balanced fairly in all three game modes with the same buffs/nerfs, then the skills really need to be separated by game mode (as in GW1). It doesn’t matter how frequently the balance patches come if they are balanced only around one game mode, since they will not benefit non-PvP players. For non-PvP players, this is nothing to be thankful for, and I hope ArenaNet will make adjustments to their balance to account for all three game modes.

Saiyan.1704:

OGDeadHead.8326:

…how does it work? Is it the devs themselves that plays around in pvp matches and find out that this needs to buffed/nerfed?

Or do they read the complaints here on the forums? Observe matches? Collect data in some other way? Or do they talk to some special individual top tier players about it? Are all classes equally represented, without bias?

Anyone in the know here about this?

ping @Josh Davis, for example.

It’s a bit of everything.

In order of highest priority listings to least priority.

1. Tournaments
Believe it or not, Devs look at tournaments as a strong foundation of where certain classes stand in TPvP. Mainly due to player synchronization – you just can’t consistently get these results in your average pug match. The skill cap is definitely higher here.

2. Forums
From bugs to repetitive posts saying to nerf something, Forum feedback is the best tool they have to research an potential issue. If a 20 page thread gets created by players asking for a change, addition, or a nerf to something, odds are, it’s going to happen. A prime example is RoF nerf, Turret Engi and Ele Might stacking and even GvG back when that thread became popular. All these came to light.

3. Obvious Power Creep
Ranger’s 10k pet damages and mitigation, Test of Faith’s 4procs in half a second when you cross the field, Engi passive sustains from a single trait. If it’s obvious for us, it’s obvious for the Devs too. That said, not everything is obvious, there’s a lot of l2p issues in soloq compared to Tournament play. This goes back to itemizing the two seperate gamemodes because what’s OP in soloQ pvp play may not be that big of a deal in tournament play. EU and NA both.

4. Their own data collaboration
I imagine they collect certain surveys in regards to X classes winning X Amount of games. I’d be surprised if they actually had a data pot that kept track of certain class specific traits and skills.

5. Casual Dev Team Players
Last but not least, the casual gamers within the company itself. There’s a constant collaboration of sorts within the small Anet community that are also wondering what’s OP and what isn’t. The above items are a bit more prioritized than the chit chat rumors that goes on during lunch hour.

The above is my experience of almost 2 years of watching Anet’s responses to the power creep. Sometimes they would buff or nerf something completely random like .5 seconds icd of a skill. It’s usually because they were literally observing a fight and the class would have performed better if it it lasted half a second longer.

It’s beyond amazing by how fast they’re currently responding where before, it was literally every 6 months before you saw any type of change – if that. Thankfully the game is successful enough where more money is put in the Tournament pot while at the same time, bugs and balance is of high priority. Expect a patch every two weeks or 2 ESL tournament matches for the sake of the meta shift and settle.

Untrue.
I cant believe they watched any tournament with all these dd cele eles and nerfed em so little…