How do devs determine class balance?
It’s a genuine question that I’d love to hear the thoughts of developers and designers on.
I suspect that devs use meters and metrics to collect and analyse data. For instance, no doubt they can set up controlled gaming environment and parse DPS charts until their hearts are content and thus determine if a class has “suitable” DPS or not.
Obviously this is a flawed system, that doesn’t take into account real life factors like skill or teamwork, every permutation of item, weapon and Talent, Alternatives and Advancement ability.
Another method that a lot of MMO use is listen to player feedback via the forums and even appoint a community representative to help collect and compile issues and wish lists. This seems like it can be very effective at helping to balance classes but unfortunately it relies on having a willing community and sensible feedback.
Anet seems incapable of collecting sensible feedback, this leads always to overnerfs and overbuffs on professions..now you may ask yourself why this has never changed for 4+ years and the answer is quite simple.
The ideal way to ensure a sense of balance and fairness is to give everyone else someone to oppress and that “someone” is always the changing subject of nerf threads every season.
We all know that nerf thread are typically emotionally charged and lack any factual data for most part, the issue in there ( if there is any to start with ) is normally amplified and simplified, the skill level of the parties involved is never taken into consideration despite being the biggest factor when talking about balance.
With all this said and done…we do have real balance issues and very rarely are these mentioned in a thread. The HoT topic atm is dragonhunter and druid balance..but they normally generalize too much, people ask for earth shattering nerfs on the entirety of these “classes”.
But taking into consideration the skill level of the parties involved what really should be nerfed at this time, to guarantee a fun and challenging environment for the whole community?
1) Druid : “Staff” for me is the real and only issue, too much utility, too much mobility, too much sustain all packed in a single weapon set. The specialization itself is not that broken even with CA and CS. The druid can be challenging and that should go for every profession, the idea that people believe some professions should be free kill…it’s simply mind blowing. A druid without staff is nothing to talk about really, very strong if played well..but nothing to write a book about
2) DragonHunter : “Symbolic build”, too much sustain for the utility and mediocre dmg they bring. The insane amount of CC ( daze on trap, knockback on shield, F1 pull, KD on elite trap ) and dmg ( test of faith – scepter/sword symbol ) paired with the old traitline Honour makes the symbolic dh too easy to play while being overly effective
-A clear example of emotionally charged balance with no real testing and thought behind it, they simply wanted to please the community by overnerfing the “evil” ele and overbuffing the “poor” guardian class…
3) Berseker : “Adrenaline health”…It’s immensely Broken:
This is a perma +495 HP/s assuming you have 0 Healing Power.
Its so easy to maintain 3 stacks Adrenal Health all time. much easier than sitting on full adrenaline bar as used with old Adrenal Health.
With healing signet +381 HP/s
thats 876 hp/s = 26,280 hp every 30s.
It’s way too much passive sustain that requires zero healing power investment; another overbuff by Anet, an emotionally charged balance decision.
Right now warrior has huge mobility ( GS+sword/shield ), condi/dmg immunity, passive +25% movement speed, highest base HP and highest dmg coefficients on skills.
A below average warrior right now can beat an above average player on some other profession , simply because their passive sustain will keep resetting their position despite the never ending mistakes
This would be all for now, I still have mesmer-rev to talk about
(edited by Supreme.3164)
