Why can't Blizzard balance?

[Deleted]

All they ever seem to do is focus on nerfing an overpowered class to the bottom. Why can they never balance? Why do they focus on the weirdest thing and end up making things worse? Just do loads of tiny little updates. Just do it, for crying out loud. Take Fury spells and up the damage by 10%. Not enough? Too much? Change it. Same with sub. Point things near the bottom to the middle. Point things near the top to the middle. Keep an eye on it. I know I'm going to get responses like, 'if you think it's so easy then you do it.' I probably could. Everyone could. I know how to increase or decrease a number in small increments. The balancing in WoW is shocking.

On balance going back to homogenization:
So it's good that a spec is never used because it's not good at anything? Classes can still be different if they all do around the same damage. It's about how they do that damage, utility and the flavor of the class fantasy. Even if that wasn't the case I'd rather have homogenization than my main spec be useless.

People hated the homogenization of utilities and flavor, not of dps.

Unbalanced utility meant you still had reasons to bring X over Y. If dps is unbalanced, then you don't have a reason to bring X anymore. Frost is always worse than fire, fury does less damage and takes more damage than arms. There is no reason to take these classes.

What's wrong with Team Fortress 2? Sure it's way easier to balance but it's a good example of classes being good at their own different things but all still being useful.

[Luko]

All they ever seem to do is focus on nerfing an overpowered class to the bottom. Why can they never balance? Why do they focus on the weirdest thing and end up making things worse? Just do loads of tiny little updates. Just do it, for crying out loud. Take Fury spells and up the damage by 10%. Not enough? Too much? Change it. Same with sub. Point things near the bottom to the middle. Point things need the top to the middle. Keep an eye on it. The balancing in WoW is shocking.

Compared to which other game?

[PenguinChan]

They can balance, it's really not a question if they are capable of doing that -- they clearly are. Blizzard just loves the "Perfect Imbalance" way of design, making some classes way better than others in a certain area. Sometimes even better in ALL areas, which is even worse. We shall see if Blizzard actually keeps through with that in the balance pass.

[Hexxidecimal]

All they ever seem to do is focus on nerfing an overpowered class to the bottom. Why can they never balance? Why do they focus on the weirdest thing and end up making things worse? Just do loads of tiny little updates. Just do it, for crying out loud. Take Fury spells and up the damage by 10%. Not enough? Too much? Change it. Same with sub. Point things near the bottom to the middle. Point things near the top to the middle. Keep an eye on it. The balancing in WoW is shocking.

This post is shocking. Sounds angry and half thought out. "HOW CAN BLIZZARD SLAP!?"

This is where I say things about balancing stuff being harder than you think etc etc. Just not sure if I totally believe it myself though.

[Dug]

Some classes are always going to be better than others, best Blizzard can do is try and keep them as close together as possible but it's impossible to keep them all in line with one another. You would need to completely gut what makes classes unique and just have baseline damage dealer, healer, tank classes.

[Novakhoro]

Because it doesn't work like that. An above post brought up the imperfect balance - a philosophy that works extremely well as there are very few strict ST or add fights. To work in a raid environment you need a mix of sustain ST, burst ST (evil tree, spine), burst AoE, sustain cleave, and even sometimes sustain AoE. If you take away those specializations in DPS then you start going back towards MOP days where everyone was exactly the same. Then people bitch that they want their class to feel special and different which leads to the exact thing that they bitch about right now. I am Boomy/DH so I've seen both sides of the supposed damage imbalance.
Aside from a few special cases the specs are fine. You can't just look at overall damage meters and start QQ'ing to blizz that shit is broken. Use your brain for half a second and think that maybe those niche DPS specs are extremely effective in different parts of the fight that allow you to meet certain breakpoints.
There are specs that need higher tuning, but theres ramifications to going around slapping buffs and nerfs onto everything. People will bitch even harder when things scaled absurdly and warlocks are one-shotting people again or paladins are killing bosses in 16 seconds. I know im coming to MMO-C so i should expect kneejerky crying, but some of it is ridiculous.

[Syld]

They can't balance because they insist in the dumb premise of every spec having a "niche" and being better in some areas. This completely fails because there are some specs that excel in every area of the game, while having others with abysmal toolkits that only are mediocre in one.

If they truly cared about balance they'll give every spec tools for every scenario, there is really no excuse for not having every spec within 10% of each other.

[Novakhoro]

If they truly cared about balance they'll give every spec tools for every scenario, there is really no excuse for not having every spec within 10% of each other.

Then people will start crying about homogenization again, I swear you people wipe your memory every 6 months.

[Mad_Murdock]

I'll agree that they should have at the least monthly tweaks. Anything more than that is a little harder to get good data on.

With that said, folks need to decide what they really want. Do they want all classes\specs being exactly the same. If so, what bother having different specs if all the difference between Fury and arms is where I swing 1 weapon or 2. Is it wrong or completely undesirable for Unholy to be great at single target, but Frost be great at AoE? Or instead of either being great, they are both tweaked to where they are exactly the same?

I think it's a lofty, but unachievable goal to say we're going to have 36 specs, all with different\Unique play styles and yet they all produce exactly the same dps on Single target and AoE fights, on stand still fights and high mobility fights. At what point do we just delete all classes, but druid and balance around them?

If they truly cared about balance they'll give every spec tools for every scenario,.

And people complained and complained about class homogenization. Who is the bigger group that should be catered too? The group that wants all classes to be completely indentical or the ones that want unique classes?

Then people will start crying about homogenization again, I swear you people wipe your memory every 6 months.

You understand they are two different groups right? Just like the Pro and Anti Flying. The Pro and Anti PvP. No one is changing stances every 6 months. Just different groups get excited when what they desire gets changed\removed.

[Deleted]

Then people will start crying about homogenization again, I swear you people wipe your memory every 6 months.

So it's good that a spec is never used because it's not good at anything? Classes can still be different if they all do around the same damage. It's about how they do that damage. Even if that wasn't the case I'd rather have homogenization than my main spec be useless.

Edit: People hated the homogenization of utilities and flavor, not of dps.

Edit: Unbalanced utility meant you still had reasons to bring X over Y. If dps is unbalanced, then you don't have a reason to bring X anymore. Frost is always worse than fire, fury does less damage and takes more damage than arms. There is no reason to take these classes.

[Sim]

Name a MMO with perfect balance. I'll wait.

[Syld]

With that said, folks need to decide what they really want. Do they want all classes\specs being exactly the same. If so, what bother having different specs if all the difference between Fury and arms is where I swing 1 weapon or 2. Is it wrong or completely undesirable for Unholy to be great at single target, but Frost be great at AoE? Or instead of either being great, they are both tweaked to where they are exactly the same?

The difference should be the playstyle and the flavor of each spec, 2 specs can play completely different and still have complete toolkits for every situation.

[Novakhoro]

That's a very expensive and time consuming approach to balancing. Of course everyone can just change numbers in small increments but it sounds you'd basically be guessing rather than having a clue what you're doing. Interactions between spells and abilities can become so complex that changing just one ability's damage by 10% could cause another ability to change damage as well, resulting in a bigger than 10% increase/decrease.

I guarantee that you couldn't do it without breaking the game a few times first.

You also have that fact that not every class is OP for every encounter. Some are stronger than others depending on the mechanics of the fight.

Get out of here with your "logic" and "reason" quit thinking about stuff and just get angry! /s (just in case)

[bergmann620]

1) Rotations, and the damage/healing/etc that arise from them, are the result of many different variables to come into play.

Adjusting one, even a little bit, causes ripples across the rest of the system, even across characters. A given ability, in isolation, might be balanced perfectly. Add in the extra damage off of 'Proc X', a damage multiplier from Player 'Y', and suddenly the ability is overpowered.

So, when you adjust that ability down by 1%, it might seem balanced in that very precise scenario. But what happens when you don't have that proc available and the player buff is gone? Now the ability is underpowered!


2) The above is looking at a specific situation. Now, pull back, and see that the game has NPC enemy encounters designed for 1-25+ players, PVP, questing, etc. There is no possible way to guarantee that an ability will be perfectly balanced in all possible settings.

3) When looking at simcraft and the like, people often use the phrase "all things being equal". Alas, things are never equal. Skill, knowledge, experience, group comp, gear, encounter type, etc all factor in, probably in ways we're not even aware of.

4) There is only ever need for relative balance. I'd much rather there be unbalanced classes that all have defining characteristics that can't necessarily be balanced.

[Mad_Murdock]

The difference should be the playstyle and the flavor of each spec, 2 specs can play completely different and still have complete toolkits for every situation.

But the question becomes what's the point? If warriors, Rogues, Druids, Death Knights demons hunters all do the exact same thing and can do anything that the other class can do. Other than just cosmetics, what's really the point of offering the class?

I'm not completely arguing against it. Giving warriors all the tools that DKs, DHs, and Rogues have and vice versus, it would greatly get rid of the need to roll alts.
I'm not sure how different the playstyles can be, if as warrior, I can Death grip enemies,I can heroic leap, I can charge, I can pop die by sword and then pop anti magic shell and then do massive burst ST, and also do massive burst AOE and still do a bleeds and still do sustained AoE, and sustained cleave.

I really like the thought of being able to do everything every other class does on one toon. I'm just not sure that's is healthy for the game.

[AiramiDrk]

I completely agree with the OP. Currently frost mage is worse than fire mage(and every other spec in the game) on literally every encounter in Emerald Nightmare. Please tell me how buffing frost mage damage by 50%(would still not match fire) suddenly "homogenizes" the specs. Fire and Frost do not play the same way, they do not have the same flavor, they do not use the same spell effects. I play frost for the flavor and playstyle, NOT the dps(if dps was all that matters I'd obviously be playing fire). There is zero reason for the dps spread to be this large. Outlaw rogue, arms warrior, MM hunter, havoc DH, fire mage and feral druid. These are probably the 6 strongest specs right now in terms of dps yet no one is yelling "homogenization" when these specs are all doing similar dps across all fights. So why do people suddenly jump to that conclusion when the shitty specs ask for a buff?

[Deleted]

I completely agree with the OP. Currently frost mage is worse than fire mage(and every other spec in the game) on literally every encounter in Emerald Nightmare. Please tell me how buffing frost mage damage by 50%(would still not match fire) suddenly "homogenizes" the specs. Fire and Frost do not play the same way, they do not have the same flavor, they do not use the same spell effects. I play frost for the flavor and playstyle, NOT the dps(if dps was all that matters I'd obviously be playing fire). There is zero reason for the dps spread to be this large. Outlaw rogue, arms warrior, MM hunter, havoc DH, fire mage and feral druid. These are probably the 6 strongest specs right now in terms of dps yet no one is yelling "homogenization" when these specs are all doing similar dps across all fights. So why do people suddenly jump to that conclusion when the shitty specs ask for a buff?

That is such a good point.

[Syld]

But the question becomes what's the point? If warriors, Rogues, Druids, Death Knights demons hunters all do the exact same thing and can do anything that the other class can do. Other than just cosmetics, what's really the point of offering the class?

I'm not completely arguing against it. Giving warriors all the tools that DKs, DHs, and Rogues have and vice versus, it would greatly get rid of the need to roll alts.
I'm not sure how different the playstyles can be, if as warrior, I can Death grip enemies,I can heroic leap, I can charge, I can pop die by sword and then pop anti magic shell and then do massive burst ST, and also do massive burst AOE and still do a bleeds and still do sustained AoE, and sustained cleave.

I really like the thought of being able to do everything every other class does on one toon. I'm just not sure that's is healthy for the game.

The difference should be utility, every spec should bring something unique to the groups, damage has nothing to do with it.

[xhisors]

One name. Celetalon

I'm surpised that guy hasn't been fired.

Can we add holinka to that list?

From 2014: "mage blink is considered a heal" - ironically it is now somewhat.
http://www.wowhead.com/news=245071/w...cember-11th-ho

[unbound]

That's a very expensive and time consuming approach to balancing. Of course everyone can just change numbers in small increments but it sounds like you'd basically be guessing rather than having a clue what you're doing. Interactions between spells and abilities can become so complex that changing just one ability's damage by 10% could cause another ability to change damage as well, resulting in a bigger than 10% increase/decrease.

It isn't nearly that expensive at all. It just takes focus and a modest budget. People should be upset at the job Blizz is doing because they are making so much money on the game, they could easily afford expending the effort (it would hardly affect their profit margins for the game).

I guarantee that you couldn't do it without breaking the game a few times first.

How? I'm pointing out laziness on Blizz's part. Are you staying they are utterly incompetent? Because I see no other method how they would break the game.

You also have that fact that not every class is OP for every encounter. Some are stronger than others depending on the mechanics of the fight.

Absolutely agree here. It needs to be part of the discussion. Sadly, it seems some classes / specs don't have a sweet spot where they excel...and, to the one of the OP's point, with the lack of class / spec distinctiveness, what else are people to look for?