Blizzard is absolutely terrible at balancing: point of a PTR?

[DarthMonk79]

It was fucking awesome to raid as a paladin. Buff everyone every couple of minutes. Then stand at the back and try not to get in combat or die. Maybe spam Flash of Light on yourself if you were about to die. That's about it.

Anyway. I'd rather see constant change and fast tuning than the old system. I think they should make number adjustments every week

I agree with that somewhat... but what I meant was there was a uniqueness to every class back then, now its just people trying to get the highest dps or best healer/tank classes for the raid. Doesn't matter if its a hunter, mage, lock, etc... just who's numbers were bigger. At least back then you wanted to have those support classes along with the high end dps classes... that was fun. now its just look at those numbers flash on the screen and zerg-zerg.

[Eon Drache]

This expansion had the worst balancing of them all. So many classes/specs went up and down so fast its sad.

Blizzard logic:
Ptr comes online.
We just throw stuff in it. Every idea of a developper makes it in.
Drink coffee for 2 months and fool around.
Patch comes live.
Oh wow, such strong/weak specs. Must nerf/buff!
Insert 40% coefficients....

Repeat in next ptr or beta.

Better than certain specs being completely unusable in a raiding environment like the past.

[Kallisto]

Nighthold testing has been going on since beta and it was supposed to be a release raid - mentioning it now as an excuse is just sad.

I certainly agree. In that light I also find it just hilarious what kind of kits some specs are left with.

Nighthold was never going to be a release raid, all the way back at blizzcon 2015 they said that Nighthold was going to be released further back than BRF was from highmaul stating 4-5 month gap. With Emerald Nightmare being mid/late September release and Nighthold mid Jan they're pretty much keeping to their comments.

I really don't get people who keep saying Nighthold was supposed to be a release raid do they not watch Blizzcon or at least read the notes that this own site follows up with

[Trapped]

Blizzard has already explained repeatedly that the kind of class balance data they are looking for isn't available in large enough quantities on the PTR which is why it is necessary to see how they play out on live.

I agree with that, but even pre-patch number crunchers were pretty damn accurate in their predictions. If they put a class/spec into a simulator, and its WELL below all the others, shouldn't that be a clue that tuning is off? (Yes I know Patchwerk sims are to be taken with a grain of salt)

[Deleted]

Ask a simple question.
If that is what we get with the PTR, what would we have without it.
Something worse.

There are too many scenarios and too many classes and specs now.
True balance I would say is impossible in a class based game.
And you get further away from that the more options you have.

36 specs across 12 classes.
2,187 talent combinations, assuming just traditional talents and not including PvP talents.
Different encounter formats, Single target, AoE, Spread Multi-target, etc.
Multiple Secondary Stats.

And that is just some of the considerations.

Actually look at what people are expecting blizzard to balance.

There is never going to be balance.
All blizzard can do at this point is to try and deal with the outliers, by some arbitrary definition of what is or isn't too far ahead or behind.
Which will be a never-ending task.
And players will often have their own definition of what is or isn't too much, a different one from blizzard.

Yeah, so sad no way to simulate those combinations.....ohh wait...

[Woadnson]

The few times I've tried PTR, it has lookd roughly like the following:

- 50% of the players do nothing but duel, duel, duel and duel non-stop
- 40% of the players "try out new classes" of which they have absolutely no clue of
- 10% of the players are trying to do things properly, but all serious raid attempts get fucked by the rest 90%

And this is the "info" Blizzard works with.

Almost sounds like Blizzard should show some discretion with testers rather than treat it as a promo party.

[stigz]

You're a fool for thinking they want to balance the game.

So why are we playing an MMO who's developers don't care about balance?

Like, this is just laughable

[Deleted]

I agree with that somewhat... but what I meant was there was a uniqueness to every class back then, now its just people trying to get the highest dps or best healer/tank classes for the raid. Doesn't matter if its a hunter, mage, lock, etc... just who's numbers were bigger. At least back then you wanted to have those support classes along with the high end dps classes... that was fun. now its just look at those numbers flash on the screen and zerg-zerg.

I agree - though I think the game engine limits them a bit.
In the early days the uniqueness was accomplished by exclusiveness - one class would have some gimmick and that's why you'd bring them. They'd do their party trick and then stood doing nothing, while everyone else DPS-zerged.

Obviously that wasn't very engaging, so they decided that everyone should be (to some extent) be able to participate in the "core" mechanic of the game, which is sadly, doing DPS. And that's where we are now - even though most of the expacs land their tuning in 10-15% variance, there's still huge amount of jostling going on for that "FOTM-best-class". I think faster tuning pace would be good - in order to catch outliers and to alleviate that fotm-rerolling somewhat.

I think they should definitely try to add "uniqueness" to the classes again, but without removing that "core" mechanics from them. I'd be all for adding the "holy trinity" mechanics to all classes (so everyone can tank/heal/dps), and separate them with unique utility features. But then the problem is of course coming up with 36 different, fun and relevant utility functions..and keeping them in balance... and that's not entirely trivial I think.

So I think we're a bit stuck in the "DPS is the only core gameplay function" paradigm.

[stigz]

If you look at it from an economic standpoint, it makes sense. They don't want the game to be (fully) balanced. The FotM rerollers keep the game populated, and they'll get bored if the meta becomes stale - thus, constant rollercoaster in the top tier DPS.

The point of the PTR also makes sense if you look at it the same way. It's not there to ensure balance, it's there to ensure hype for the upcoming patch.

Yes. That's what it has morphed into. And it isn't okay. This is the only thing I complain about with WoW because it effects the future of it immensely. They've made their record breaking sales, it's time to reward their decade old loyal player base with an actually decently balanced and logical game.

[Ahovv]

So why are we playing an MMO who's developers don't care about balance?

Like, this is just laughable

It's honestly true though. A mathematically-inclined team of developers could balance the classes within a few percentage points (technically even better than that, but I'm accounting for things like class nuance on different encounters, some fights may favor better etc.)

It is extremely clear that Blizzard either A) doesn't have an interest in balancing the classes (and all specializations within) to a respectable degree, or B) they are trying, but somehow incompetent enough to bring us to the current state.

Looking back at how horribly WoD was balanced, and then seeing how absurdly far ahead Shadow Priest was this expansion compared to an Elemental Shaman...yeah, it's either intentional or they are incredibly incompetent and deserve to be fired. Too bad we'll never know for sure.

[thilicen]

Blizzard are always overdoing shit. If something needs a nerf they will throw it to the ground, if something should be buffed they will elevate it to a new high. There is no in-between with these guys, they are alarmingly incapable of finding a sweet spot for anything.

[Deleted]

Looking back at how horribly WoD was balanced, and then seeing how absurdly far ahead Shadow Priest was this expansion compared to an Elemental Shaman...yeah, it's either intentional or they are incredibly incompetent and deserve to be fired. Too bad we'll never know for sure.

Blizzard has traditionally been bad at dealing with outliers. I wish they'd fix those rapidly, they skews the community perception of "balance" really badly. Their normal "180-swing"-design is probably due to inability to be agile with tuning. If they released a number tuning patch every week things might be different. Wish they would.

But other than outliers, they seem to end up somewhere around 15% variance quite regularly. That is of course a bit off their 10% variance goals, but it's not as bad as some people in this thread seem to indicate.

[TheVaryag]

Look at the announced nerfs and buffs.

We are talking about +40 or -40% buff/nerf to several classes. That is so severe i can not see how this was not tested on THE PTR WHO WAS ONLINE FOR MORE THAN 2 MONTHS??? What is the point of a ptr? Basicly nothing.

Patch is live for 4 days and now this. It makes me /facepalm and laugh at the same time this incompetance of Blizzard.
It was the same at launch of Legion. Some specs so low they got buffed by 20-30%. A year in beta had no use it seems....

They need to stop hiding behind "at launch we have more data" Take blooddrinker nerf of dk. Even a monkey could see that a skill that can crit for 2,5mil was ALOT for a tank. But noooo, let it launch and then shit on the dk's by nerfing it hard instead of actually testing it on ptr

Can't disagree either, they're trying to have classes roughly the same powerlevel, but what Legion gave us Indicates they've went bonkers with their utility removal, ability changes and buffs and by that I mean:

Tanks tend to do more DPS than a damage dealer for one thing, how's that possible? Never before have I seen so many tanks do more damage than a damage dealer In any expansion, assuming they're on roughly the same Ilevel ofcourse, ofcourse If the tank's 30 ilevels above the damage dealer, naturally he'll do a bit more damage so that's Irrelevant and that'd happen a lot, as we all run heroics sometimes, and even mythic raiders still run that for the Artifact Power grinds. And due to their tryharding they'll call out DPS for being "Below 300k dps lol lol nub" whilst heroics are 810+ In ilevel and their damage Is fine... you cant enter In the first place If your damage wasnt' good enough already.

Not to mention how we're missing essential utility abiliters that got taken away from us for NO justifieable reason, and If that reason Is "Class fantasy" then they've failed miserably on that front.

Where are hunter traps for all hunters? A hunter without traps, are you daft?
Where's Lichborne for DKs? Could be using that a lot In Maw of Souls for example, or you know... anywhere else. Even a warrior DPS has berserker rage, but DKs seem to be missing their Lichborne, especially tanks could use that to not loose control.
Do priests have their pull back ally from danger ability... didn't check...
Mages seem to be too specialized In each spec, you get only fire as fire, only frost as frost, with a few non-specific abilities... before you had so many spells to utilize together, why cant I have a frostbolt as an arcane mage to slow down an enemy sometimes? Like you did before... you're a mage. And at this point, an Archmage... what does an archmage do? He has the ability to use all 3 of those specs, whilst mastering only 1 or 2 to perfection. That doesn't mean that If you become a fire mage, you suddenly loose the ability to shoot arcane missiles or a frost bolt...

And many more silly utility removals, we're given less and less rotations, whilst being given much easier mobs to kill them with our silly rotations, It's bizzare. We're not being challanged, we're not being opposed properly, even rarities on mobs have become obsolete. That silver rare you just found you think Is super rare? Oh he respawns every 5 minutes now. That golden portraited mob over there? You could pull 5 of them and kill them all In 20 seconds, no biggie.. they're not tough at all anymore.

[stigz]

Do you really think make classes this unstable, and making wholesale changes to classes *after* important spending decisions have been made in their shiny new Artifact system is a good business model? And, doing it while a tier is ongoing?

A common complaint of ex-players is having to relearn and regear ever expansion, now you're looking at relearning/gearing mid-tier. You think that makes economic sense?

I'm not baiting or mocking you, I honestly cannot see how you can come to this conclusion.

There are private servers with better balance than live. It can't be THAT difficult for a professional team to balance, if they cared. None of this makes any sense!

Maybe it's like there's 3 developers working on the balance team that get reports from upstairs: "Overrall Mage play time is looking a little low, incorporate buffs. BM Hunter play numbers getting too bloated, womp 'em with Ol' Nerfy." So they change the numbers because it's what they're getting paid to do then turn around and just play Overwatch all day in their office.

Maybe that's why developers were jumping ship they past couple of years, they didn't like being a part of a game that was bound to nothing but profits with no say in designing much of the flow of the game at all.

Maybe UFO's are a human time travelers from the future.

[Recom]

At this point the PTR is only there to test the mechanics and they balance once it hits live. This sucks major ass.

[chase_the_mofo]

cant balance broken game m8

[Deleted]

Of course, balancing would probably be made easier if Blizzard didn't insist on re-inventing the wheel and redesigning every spec every xpack.

This. This so much.

It's like they smash everything to shambles with every expansion and then let an inebriated chimpanzee construct something completely random out of the remains using its poop as glue.

[stigz]

This. This so much.

It's like they smash everything to shambles with every expansion and then let an inebriated chimpanzee construct something completely random out of the remains using its poop as glue.

I'm literally dead

[ls-]

PTR is good for finding bugs, PTR isn't as good for balancing.

Many people who are on PTR treat it like a free version of WoW, and they do older, often nerfed content, so their numbers (hps, dps, etc) can't be used for tuning. They're just noise. People who actively test new specs, rotations, abilities, etc are a minority, hence their numbers are either used for approximate tuning, or ignored Fine-tuning happens on live cuz that's where Blizz can get enough data to see what's going on.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

So why are we playing an MMO who's developers don't care about balance?

Like, this is just laughable

Then why is the game not balanced? WoW only has 12 classes, you seriously think they aren't capable of balancing them? Use common sense...