Impossible to balance arena...

[Gazren]

Druids arnt the only teams in the top, im sick of hearing that. Ive done just fine each season as mage/rogue. Pretty much only people that cant/wont get 1850/2000 complain. I hope every match i get as mage rogue is war/druid, that comp is easy as hell.

well said

[DressdtoKill]

Pillars does show who knows how to play their class.

No obstacles = huge advantage for classes such as hunters.

You have extremely flawed logic.

Who knows how to play their class?! Arena has become nothing but chasing ppl around poles...are you fuckin kidding me, and with obstacles you give a huge advantage to the other classes....and have me a lock, with no faster run moves, no escape moves, no nothing desperateing trying to catch a healer around a pole while trying to use mana drain in a boring as shit SL/SL spec I'm forced to use because arena is so balanced that all melee weapons reck me without it. Meanwhile the rogue/warr who is right behind me is at a 90 degree angle from me on the pole and continues to hit me while I am LoSed by the healer to the point where I can't even cast an instant DoT.

If their were no poles, they'd be forced to out range ppl instead...while remaining in sight and having their partner keep you off of them, instead of taking advantage of LoS bullshit tricks that fucks over all ranged/caster classes.

I'm sorry, arena is fuckin gay, 10 min matches of running around a pole mana draining a healer...yeah who ever's bright idea it was to fashion arena like that needs to be beaten senseless...

[frosty]

Yes it is truly impossible for certain classes/specs to ever gain any true foothold in arena, i.e.(shadow priest, fire mage, enhance/elemental shaman, ret pally, feral/balance druids, all tanking specs seeing as they are for raiding purposes, and non beast master hunters).

shadow priests??

[Red]

shadow priests??

Don't forget Ret Pally/Warrior/Resto Shaman 3v3.

[Infogiver]

Yes it is truly impossible for certain classes/specs to ever gain any true foothold in arena, i.e.(shadow priest, fire mage, enhance/elemental shaman, ret pally, feral/balance druids, all tanking specs seeing as they are for raiding purposes, and non beast master hunters).

shadow priests work well in 4 dps 5's
fire mages ~ eh you may have something there
elemental shamans are gods in 5's
ret pally/ms warrior/ shaman 3's is amazing
feral druid dps and balance druid are actually commonly used in 5s
and for 2's as a hunter you can get by with a druid if you go marks or survival

[Dsswoosh]

From reading and just being apart of the arena system since season 1, there has allwayse been an imbalanced team. The most noticed is a druid/warrior. 260% of the 2v2... now that is rediculous. I think their will never be a balanced arena.

Thoughts?

Its actually incredibly easy to balance arena. All you need to do is take away the imbalances. Heres how -

1) Make arena compulsory to be 9v9 consisting of one of every class - now you have a balanced mirror match every fight
2) Force a standard set of gear - now everyone has the same statistics
3) Force a standard spec for each class - now everyone is equal in terms of talents
4) Get rid of the resist, miss, partial resist and crit mechanics - therefore eliminating the "luck" factor

Would this make arena fun? - maybe, but then again maybe not
Would people bother playing if gear wasnt there as a reward? - maybe, maybe not
Is this is the tradition of an MMO? - maybe, maybe not.

So yeah, to make arena balanced you simply take awya the imbalances. Very simple to be perfectly honest.

Maybe you should have titled this thread

Impossible to balance classes.... which is what i think you really meant to say.

Think of arena as a chessboard -

With all the chess pieces, white versus black is an exact mirror match.
What would happen if chess suddenly became 3 pieces versus 3 pieces, where one side can have a queen, a knight and a bishop, and the other side could have 3 pawns. Not hard to see whos going to win is it? Arena is not very different to this example.

Blizzard are trying to balance pawns with queens to achieve balance if you use the chessboard as an example.

Simply put - Never going to happen. And i dont know why they try. All its doing is affecting PvE.

[frosty]

Don't forget Ret Pally/Warrior/Resto Shaman 3v3.

i still remember beating that combo as mage rogue shadow priest at around 2k - 2.1k

[sbarro77]

Yes it is truly impossible for certain classes/specs to ever gain any true foothold in arena, i.e.(shadow priest, fire mage, enhance/elemental shaman, ret pally, feral/balance druids, all tanking specs seeing as they are for raiding purposes, and non beast master hunters).

LOL dude.. your just dumb. Ret pallys own burst in any 3v3 burst team. some of the best teams are ret pally/war/druid. and ele shammys own in 5v5. sure u need a disc/war/pally for 5v5 but ele sham is my next pick. and non BM hunters..lllloooooolllllll no imp stings on a hunter is fail

[injury]

I think more balance could be achieved in arena ratings but it would require something like a handicap system for points based on spec/gear.

Say two new teams both at 1500 but the makeup should be taken into account as well if they want to go ahead and balance things out. Team A is running prot warrior X 4 and a holy priest, and team B is some well balanced makeup. Should the prot war composed team manage to win it should be classified with a difficulty rating based on spec or some such. If they lose it is to be expected based on what they came up against, so should they lose as many points as say third well balanced team would lose facing team B.

Same could be said for gear. Team B now has reformed to make a new name but they were at the summitt and have their S3 weapons and shoulders. They face a newly formed team in all the new rep pvp blues. It's no surprise that Team B should win so why should they get full points for doing what they were destined to do in the first place as well as why should the rep blue guys take full loss when they are expected to lose. I figured the personal ratings changes that get announced every so often would keep this matchup from happening in the first place, but it doesn't. I face reroll teams in full s3 every damn week and it's the same thing, you are clawing along couple wins here and there good matches overall making progress, then all of a sudden some yahoo's in full regailia do everything but instagib your team for a 20 point loss...that should never be allowed to happen imho. instagib I get but losing 20 points by a team you obviously are outmatched due to gear alone, not to mention spec should not be 20 points for them and a 20 loss to you just because of some holes in the rating system.

[ResiduaL]

shadow priests can rip face!

Check the armory for an arena team called DBZ Force.
It's a shadow priest and rogue from my old server Stormreaver.

They were 75-0 at one point in 2v2.
I think they're like 95-6 now?

[infiskik]

i still remember beating that combo as mage rogue shadow priest at around 2k - 2.1k

I just formed that team (RsPM), and our first match was vs that same combo that was a reroll(like us) with shoulders/weapons and we stomped them.

Though my normal team of Rogue/War/Pally has fought this team and while they werent 2k players we beat them profoundly.

[Balthôr]

It will never be balanced, but all classes and/or combination of classes have another class/combination they hate

As a paladin/warr team I hate mage/rogue teams, but I absolutely love fighting druid/warr combo since we win these 9/10 times easilly. So even the druid/warr combo that is supposed to be superior still gets beaten by some other combo's.

So there is sort of a balance, you fight teams you have problems with but also combo's that have problems with YOU!

[Kwatao]

Who knows how to play their class?! Arena has become nothing but chasing ppl around poles...are you fuckin kidding me, and with obstacles you give a huge advantage to the other classes....and have me a lock, with no faster run moves, no escape moves, no nothing desperateing trying to catch a healer around a pole while trying to use mana drain in a boring as shit SL/SL spec I'm forced to use because arena is so balanced that all melee weapons reck me without it. Meanwhile the rogue/warr who is right behind me is at a 90 degree angle from me on the pole and continues to hit me while I am LoSed by the healer to the point where I can't even cast an instant DoT.

If their were no poles, they'd be forced to out range ppl instead...while remaining in sight and having their partner keep you off of them, instead of taking advantage of LoS bullshit tricks that fucks over all ranged/caster classes.

I'm sorry, arena is fuckin gay, 10 min matches of running around a pole mana draining a healer...yeah who ever's bright idea it was to fashion arena like that needs to be beaten senseless...

LOL there is hardly any LOS in arenas and it is uncontrollably laughable for you a lock to QQ.... omgggggggg

[frosty]

shadow priests can rip face!

Check the armory for an arena team called DBZ Force.
It's a shadow priest and rogue from my old server Stormreaver.

They were 75-0 at one point in 2v2.
I think they're like 95-6 now?

i have a spriest friend at 2.2k aswell, i dont know why alot of people regard spriests as being a weak class because they're not! ???

[infiskik]

i have a spriest friend at 2.2k aswell, i dont know why alot of people regard spriests as being a weak class because they're not! ???

Because they dont assist.

If you leave 2 melee on 1 sPriest he will die, but if someone can take one of them off he will do just fine and deal good dmg.

[Ulti]

Someone mentioned something interesting... if balance was perfect... everyone would have exactly the same abilities. Obviously this isnt what wow arena is about, thankfully.

Make arena a more balanced place... just keep on nerfing what works best (insert personal qq about druids, ms and rogues here)... and add more map diversity (insert personal qq about map size, pilars, blabla).

That's not impossible. And, yes, it's ok, enh shaman ret pallies shadowpriests and other 'fun' spec are just that... fun specs. They can work, but no, they shouldnt be at the top consistently.

[Xbuk]

1v1 Balance below. Could be applied to 2v2 and 5v5.

What? No its simple really. For every druid rouge match you adjust the base hit points and or base mana points of one or the other until the win loss is 50% on average for every match played. For every warrior rogue match you do the same. for every mage shamy you do the same for every "class match up" . So in essence your base hit points and or mana points would be adjusted every match you play based up on keeping the average wins across all servers 50/50. Its really easy. If the average win loss ratio of every match played was 50% this would be pure statistical balance. This is not to say that you personally would win or loose 50% of the time to a certain class. It just assumes the overall ability of the entire player pool should be 50/50.

No one could argue balance then if the stats stated the truth.





****Here is a discussion from the wow forums.

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Q u o t e:
Also, the balance will change based on gear. Same matchup is different at s1 gear then at s3 gear, even if both have the same gear level.
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***Xbuk's Reply
You could still generate a win loss ratio of 50% for every game played across all servers. And if blizzard wanted to refine it more they could base it on all players with the current seasons armor. either way would be acceptable and much better than what we have now.



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Q u o t e:
Even if you were to balance based on statistics, it would not generate an even playing field.
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***Xbuk's Reply
If the average win loss for every pally mage match up was real dam close to 9005900 / 9005900 for that week how could anyone argue that this was not balanced? Do this with all "class match ups" and you have statistical balance. How is the playing field not even?

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***Xbuk's Reply
And to further brain storm on the idea these buff / debuffs could be granted to a static item placed in the shirt slot up on entry to the arena and then removed after the match.

The beauty of this system is that you could balance PVE how ever you wanted and it would have no effect on PVP and vise versa.

[Ryoten]

Player vs. Pillar is what arenas are founded on.

Hunters/Mages/Locks would just nuke people endlessly. Leaving no hope for some classes.

What i think should happen is all pillars be made either completely 4 sided so they can only break LOS at the corners, or 32/64 sided so its closer to a real circle and less LOS breaks.

There was a blue posts months ago about them knowing 2v2 is unbalanced and admitting they cant/wont fix it.

MMOs are founded on ROCK/PAPER/SCISSOR mechanics, if you havent learned that by now im sorry.

Really the best way to balance arenas esp 2v2 is to improve the net code. I cant count the number of times ive been fear/cycloned/sheeped/rooted/CC'd by trying to break LOS and i end up on CC'd around a corner or what not. By the same token ive been on the up side of that situation too.

Correction. World of Warcraft is one of the first MMO's based on ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS mechanics. Have you ever played other MMO's? If you played UO you would know your statement is not true.

WoW is Rock/Paper/Scissors because the game was designed to be a PvE heavy raiding game, with PvP as a mini-game/afterthought. PvP had very little reward when WoW first came out, and do to popular demand has grown. The problem is the characters didnt change with it. Ofcorse this game is going to feel like R/P/S because look at how it plays? Not only do you need the right arena team make-up for it to work, but you also need gear...GEAR.

First time i played this game, i was blown away that you actually needed GEAR in order to be good at this game. UO you could friggen buy a vendor pole arm and kick someone's @ss.

[fobenja]

of course it is impossible to balance arenas... that's why it's so fun...
and that's why there are 4 players on one team... as long as you know how to choose your teammates...
druid/warrior - i don't think of this as an overpowering team... but only as the most balanced team as it can take on most of the arena 2.2 setups... however... against
mage/rogue, pal/warrior, and such teams, druid/warrior can easily be taken out...
once you reach the 2000 mark... you will find that 1/2 the time, you'll find yourself fighting the same teams over and over... knowing how to counter a specific team setup also gets you wins...

[Smith]

Correction. World of Warcraft is based on ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS mechanics. Have you ever played other MMO's? If you played UO you would know thats not true.

Thank god. Someone who knows an MMO that was the best thing for PvP ever. In this game you were a "mage". Physical dps was pretty dumb so everyone was some form of a mage (healer mage, archer mage, hally mage /drool). Because everyone was a mage with the same basic skilsl, the only thing that separated you from the other man was skill. UO (Pre UO:R) was the pinnacle of MMO PvP achievement. I wish more WoW folks would have seen what it was like in that game. True killing glory...Looting...reputation based not on points from capping flags/rep grinds or gear but on who actually knew who was good...

To the person who said it was impossible to balance an MMO, you need to look at UO before 2001. It was done. It was possible. What you have to ask is: is it possible to have a great PvE game (which WoW certainly is) with variety aplenty and still have a PvP system based solely on skill. I'm not sure... and I dont presume to know.