Blizzard doesn't care enough about PvP Balance.

[nyc81991]

They balance for the sake of fun without realizing they give things out based on ladders.
They want to have both - but everybody who isn't FotM isn't getting any cake because of it.

They're not really thinking things through here.

If they actually started doing weekly hotfixes for PvP things could be a hell of a lot better but it's just so...random when they do mid-season changes. Actually actively updating things would help a lot.

That's exactly what I'm saying. The game could be drastically more balanced if they made changes more often. I wonder if they are just going to leave things the way they are until WoD comes out.

[corebit]

No MMO that has "classes" will ever be balanced. Deal with it.

If you want perfect balance, then this means every class must become the same, has the same abilities. In other words 100% homogenization. There you go, perfect balance, since every class is now 100% the same. Then class becomes entirely meaningless, choosing a class becomes same as choosing a color.

Would you want to play that kind of MMO?

[Itisamuh]

It's always been this way. Sure, I'd argue it's worse now than it ever has been in certain ways, and better in others. But still, it's never been balanced and never will be. I suspect that's why they don't put all that much effort into it. They have to know a class based game like this won't ever be balanced, no matter how hard they try. To update it every single time something's too strong or too weak would be a full time job in itself, without even factoring in doing other content. That's why I try to approach games like this from a not so serious perspective, and just have fun. It'll simply never have competitive merit.

[Luxeley]

Warriors, Hunters and Warlocks came out of the gate in MOP insanely OP. Blizzard took out the nerf bats and started swinging like a blindfolded Mexican kid whacking in the vicinity of a pinata. Shaman had a brief moment in the sun in patch 5.3. And now, Warriors reign supreme. If ever there is a class in the game born on 3rd base and convinced they smacked a triple, it's the warrior class in 5.4. Blizzard's so called "balance" moves make zero sense. They take away Hunter pet CC immunity and still permit CC immunity with bladestorm. They strip down stampede to mere auto-attacks and they buff bladestorm. The bottom line is, the two biggest You Tubers indirectly promoting WOW play warriors, coincidence? I think not. Blizzard wants it this way, it indirectly promotes their game for free.

If Blizzard actually gave a "Fuck" about PVP, they would create gear that possesses one set of stats in PVP and a different set of stats in PVE. The player would default what stats they wanted in the world and they can't change it if they are in combat. And, the gear would take on PVP stats in PVP instances and PVE stats in PVE instances. It may not solve the problem, but it would close the balance gap tremendously and tweaking the classes wouldn't be so much of an issue.

[Illdian]

sad story that they will never balance classes as long they are tied to pve

[Mirishka]

I mean the developers don't even play the game and yet they think they know what's going on.

Yes clearly they don't play the game they develop.

Gotta love hyperbolic, ignorant comments like this. So much stupid, in just one sentence!

[Bluesftw]

c;mon this is very nice and balanced season...for warriors ;>

[Mirishka]

No MMO that has "classes" will ever be balanced. Deal with it.

If you want perfect balance, then this means every class must become the same, has the same abilities. In other words 100% homogenization. There you go, perfect balance, since every class is now 100% the same. Then class becomes entirely meaningless, choosing a class becomes same as choosing a color.

Would you want to play that kind of MMO?

Exactly this. Its like people want 30 completely different kinds of food, each made with completely different ingredients, to taste exactly the same. Unrealistic to say the least.

All you armchair designers who think its so easy, that you could balance the game perfectly, stop whining on forums and go apply for a job at Blizzard. Put your money where your mouths are.

[ipoststuff]

Exactly this. Its like people want 30 completely different kinds of food, each made with completely different ingredients, to taste exactly the same. Unrealistic to say the least.

All you armchair designers who think its so easy, that you could balance the game perfectly, stop whining on forums and go apply for a job at Blizzard. Put your money where your mouths are.

You're making it sound like current balance is very good and we are asking for perfection. Yes we know perfect balance is imposible. But current state of pvp is not even ok. Give me a month and i can make this game more balanced by myself.

[Baracuda]

Of course there's always variation in every season, but what about the same old elite classes? Mages, warriors, warlocks are just examples of a solid class that you can always use confident that you're in a good spot. I'd like to see more rets, monks, holy priests (the whole expac for a change), demo warlocks, dks, etc etc.

You mean like how viable warriors were last patch? You mean like how warrior has only ever had one viable spec for pvp?

[worstpvperus]

They balance for the sake of fun without realizing they give things out based on ladders.
They want to have both - but everybody who isn't FotM isn't getting any cake because of it.

They're not really thinking things through here.

If they actually started doing weekly hotfixes for PvP things could be a hell of a lot better but it's just so...random when they do mid-season changes. Actually actively updating things would help a lot.

They can't hotfix everything because certain changes mess with pve. The reason elemental shamans almost kept their rng burst is because of pve. They need to split the two.

[Deleted]

Exactly this. Its like people want 30 completely different kinds of food, each made with completely different ingredients, to taste exactly the same. Unrealistic to say the least.

All you armchair designers who think its so easy, that you could balance the game perfectly, stop whining on forums and go apply for a job at Blizzard. Put your money where your mouths are.

That is not what we are saying at all. While just about everyone agrees that perfect balance will be impossible they can come a whole lot closer than the clusterfuck they normally make of it if they just made minor adjustments every other week or so instead of letting issues fester for the entirety or half of a big patch. We don't want 30 dishes who are composed differently to taste exactly the same, we want 30 dishes who's overall quality is more or less the same, not a few dishes which taste divine and others who taste like they spend a week or two in a garbage can.
While I understand they are quite different games and while I haven't followed it's pro scene in a while, Starcraft tends to be well balanced even though all 3 races play very differently from one another. That is what we want in Wow pvp too, all the while understanding that balancing 33 specs is a bit harder than just 3 races. I agree with the OP that more regular tweaks have the possibility of greatly increasing the health and balance of the pvp in this game on say, a regular 2 week basis, or whatever is sensible/possible/needed.

[Sithalos]

PRETTY BALANCED?

my god ! i play since vanilla


i got multi glad with 3 different classes and for me, it's the WORSE SEASON EVER, and the WORSE XPAC when talking about balance ... it's HORRIBLE

i use to be able to top ladder without having to wear the best gear of the game, now, you just can't, gear >>>>>>>>> skill... and classes are just brocken, aoe everywhere, 984894189 sec dot's, instant cast, 48949494 cc for every class .... no man, you can't say that, sorry

the probleme is not damage ... no offense here but, honestly, have you ever play this game competitively ?

every xpac is worse and worse and worse

sry bad english

Glad someone said it.

[iyamwhatiyam]

I feel like it is one of the main things that are wrong with WoW at the moment. I am not saying they don't try to balance things at all, However they obviously don't make it a main priority.

Most Balance changes happen in major patches. Outside of that there are very minor tweaks and bug fixes. If they really cared about making a balanced game they would make serious changes all of the time. They could even be using the PTR for balance testing to get some feedback on whether a change is overkill or not enough.

For example, Most people agree that Warriors are too strong at the moment. Even the other day Holinka acknowledged that Warriors and Frost Mages are Fotm. Where are the changes bringing them in line with other classes / specs? Or why aren't they bringing the classes at the bottom up so they can more easily compete? My under geared Warrior's slams hit harder than my geared Paladins Templar's Verdicts. How does that make sense?

There is really no excuse for them not to be making more of an effort to balance PvP. Especially when there are no new content patches coming out this expansion and WoD is still quite a while away.

Not only do they really not care enough about pvp balance, but their idea of balance is vastly different from the players. (the ones that actually know how to play anyway)

It has been that way since the beginning. You can save yourself a lot of headache by just accepting it. It's still frustrating, but yeah....if balance hasn't come in 10 years it never will.

[Deleted]

The original post has a point, blizzard does not do enough balancing after a patch. Therefore players are left frustrated when they are playing a whole patch (sometimes 6+ months!), with either an overpowered or underpowered spec. Why should players pay blizzard every month to play a gimped spec? We'll players are not, they are quitting wow, in recent years wow has lost millions of players.

[Talen]

I feel like it is one of the main things that are wrong with WoW at the moment. I am not saying they don't try to balance things at all, However they obviously don't make it a main priority.

You'll find plenty of people who disagree.

Personally, my opinion is that Blizzard does care. That it does do its best to balance the PvP game. And that it is often more successful than many give it credit for.

The trouble - IMO - is that Blizzard is operating within certain limits of its own making.

CC is too powerful. Healing is arguably too effective in certain situations. Burst PvP, as it always has been, is problematic. World PvP too often is limited to ganking lowbies. There are issues with PvE and PvP gear, accessibility and barriers to entry. And so on.

All of these are issues. All of these can actually be solved - at least, IMO.

The problem is that solving them would require Blizzard to essentially change its own policies on what PvP is and its place in the game, and would likely annoy many of those it would be trying to help. Look at how the resilience changes have gone over with a ceratin group of palyers for example.

As it is, for all the complaining about balance and other aspects, it needs to be recognised that if Blizzard did fix these issues, we'd also have player complaining about the "good old days". And many of those would leave the game because for them, PvP is a very important aspect. Essentially, players don't like change.

I've made my own stance on PvP clear in the past. I think Blizzard should separate out PvP from PvE entirely. I think the gear race is the wrong reward structure to have for PvP because while players don't mind being defeated due to skill or their own mistakes they do mind, to a much greater degree, being defeated simply because the other player is better geared, with skill and experience playing a secondary role. I think Blizzard should rework PvP into a more mainstream activity rather than have most of it instanced off where it can be reasonably balanced. And so on.

But there are other - many others - who will find those ideas anathema because they like the current system, flaws and all.

EJL

[Shink]

i'd say differently, i bet 99% of class changes that were ever made, were PvP focused

[Therealmagoo]

PVP is just a side show game i can see why blizz wouldnt care about it, they should remove pvp completely.

[Theodoxus]

The problem I just said lies in the same set of spells and abilities for both PVP and PVE...
They tweak PVP and it messes with PVE impact.. of course the other way around too..

Yup - unless and until Blizzard actually does the leg work to make PvP and PvE abilities separate, there will always be imba in classes. And I'm not even talking CC - hell, remove CC from PvP (please!) and I'll be happier - but when you have abilities that are meant to do massive damage to mobs that have multiple 10s of millions of hitpoints, and the same ability is used on a dude with less than 1 million hitpoints, it creates balance issues.

I'd rather PvP be about gamemanship and tactics rather than who can burst more or strategize the perfect CD scenario

[Senathor]

No MMO that has "classes" will ever be balanced. Deal with it.

If you want perfect balance, then this means every class must become the same, has the same abilities. In other words 100% homogenization. There you go, perfect balance, since every class is now 100% the same. Then class becomes entirely meaningless, choosing a class becomes same as choosing a color.

Would you want to play that kind of MMO?

Nobody is asking for balance to be literally perfect, however the current state of the game regarding PvP could be significantly improved. Unfortunately the developers are incompetent. You don't need to be a professional to identify at least 20 issues that are evidently unbalanced.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes clearly they don't play the game they develop.

Gotta love hyperbolic, ignorant comments like this. So much stupid, in just one sentence!

Developing a game and playing a game is very different. They don't comprehend PvP to an adiquate extent and changes applied to the game are purely theoretical assumptions. They don't really know more about PvP than your average 1,8k player. It's a PvE game after all so they don't really need very good PvP developers after all.

- - - Updated - - -

You're making it sound like current balance is very good and we are asking for perfection. Yes we know perfect balance is imposible. But current state of pvp is not even ok. Give me a month and i can make this game more balanced by myself.

He is just ignorant.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course pvp isn't their main priority. WoW is a pve game with pvp tacked on. It's balanced for pve with some changed to abilities in pvp where needed.

Yes but PvE is like 80% about damage, 5 button to spam. They could do much more for PvP.