Whats the reason for class imbalance in pvp?

[Deadvolcanoes]

Blizzard used to tell us that they didn't want to make changes in pvp that would negatively effect pve. But this excuse no longer works. Sap lasts 1 min (i think) in pve, and 8 sconds in pvp. Colossus Smash removes 100 percent armor in pve, and only 50 percent in pvp. These are not the only examples. Blizzard has the ability to make spells do one thing in pve, and another in pvp. So why does class imbalance, which is arguably at its worst, continue to persist? Is it laziness? Apathy?

[DiscoGhost]

pve comes first. i've gotten over it because it still has better pvp than any other mmo.

[Flaks]

I feel like they fix things and break others on purpose just to make sure they have something to put in future patch notes.

[Deleted]

Blizzard are abit random at times, remove warrior mace stun...add hunter TNT stun

[sweetdancer985]

I'd say laziness, the game is more focused on PvE than PvP and always has been. I've accepted that but I still PvP regardless, its fun with friends (mostly) which is the point.

[Abandon]

Because it is difficult to balance 31 talent specs perfectly in both PVP and PVE?

[Stanton Biston]

I'm going to have to find a computer so I can nip this crap in the bud. Short answer to OP: classes have never been as equally represented in PVP as they are now. that's not to say that there's symmetrical balance, just that it's always been worse than it was last season. It's a gamble, but I bet there's an R1 of every CLASS.

[Deleted]

Blizzard used to tell us that they didn't want to make changes in pvp that would negatively effect pve. But this excuse no longer works. Sap lasts 1 min (i think) in pve, and 8 sconds in pvp. Colossus Smash removes 100 percent armor in pve, and only 50 percent in pvp. These are not the only examples. Blizzard has the ability to make spells do one thing in pve, and another in pvp. So why does class imbalance, which is arguably at its worst, continue to persist? Is it laziness? Apathy?

I think they just don't have a scooby as for what actually needs to be changed, when it comes to complete revamps, spells being different in PvE and PvP (no idea how they even managed to make Colossal Smash as balanced as it is, must've fluked it), changing abilities etc they seem to just shrug like lol wat do and then just figure "oh if we nerf damage of that and buff damage of this everything will be fine lol! and then we can nerf healing from that and buff it for that". They only do mana cost/damage/healing changes, they're never apt enough to fix gigantic problems like instant hex from enha shaman, instant clones, druid NS healing for next to nothing, paladins inability to prevent/get out of CC, mage lance damage making casting frostball a complete waste as certain comps, ret paladins having shit damage outside of (purgeable) wings, locks having infinite pets, et caetera. And this is just a couple of examples of things that are in the game right now, there have been even more retarded things in for a very long time before (like 4.1 frost DKs, TnT stun, mace stun in TBC, SL/SL locks, shadowmourne warriors, HARP glaive rogues in S4...).

TLDR: Blizzard are afraid of completely changing certain spells because they know they will fuck up, so they just stand there are do nothing because they're lazy.

---------- Post added 2011-07-02 at 08:14 PM ----------

I'm going to have to find a computer so I can nip this crap in the bud. Short answer to OP: classes have never been as equally represented in PVP as they are now. that's not to say that there's symmetrical balance, just that it's always been worse than it was last season. It's a gamble, but I bet there's an R1 of every CLASS.

Not counting 5v5 because it's a completely different game from 3v3 there is ONE hunter world-wide getting rank 1 on some random US battlegroup (Zetox, he got carried by Valrath and Chan anyway so doesn't really count, plus it's a bad BG and they camped as KFC for ages), as far as I'm concerned. There's about 3 paladins getting it world-wide, too, one playing DK/DK/paladin meaning paladin balance as nothing to do with the reason they performed that well which is obvious I guess and 2 other ones playing mage/DK/paladin and TSG. Same for druids, think there's about 2 getting rank one and one of them was replaced for a shaman (Dakkroth's MLD/MLS) when they pushed the last 100 rating.

I'm not saying class representation isn't pretty even, I believe it is, but that hardly means there's any form of class balance. For example, paladins are only represented because of DKs, seeing as DK/ret/healer is the only viable comp post 4.1 for the aforementioned paladin spec and TSG/double DK paladin are about the only 2 holy viable comps as well (apart from the odd dispellcleave - mine - and Geru's WMP and WLP). Druids also only get high because feral/warrior or DK/healer is fairly faceroll, same for TreeSG and rogue/DK/druid.

There were classes that were "viable" and represented solely due to others being able to carry them. And class representation isn't much to go by, either, I mean taking paladin as an example because that's what I mainly play, we had ridiculous representation in S7 and S8 but the only two rank 1 viable comps we could run were TSG, dispell cleave and *maybe* ele/lock/paladin - and even then, me and my team were the only dispellcleave to get it in Europe and there was only one French ele/lock/paladin that got it on some terrible BG, same for TSG, don't think there were more than 2 occupying R1 spots world-wide. Problem is there were tons of average Joes playing at 2200-2500 boosting the representation by a fuckton and for me, class balance has to mean every class (and possibly spec, excluding idiotic stuff like fire mages, blood DKs, fury warriors etc) gets an approximately equal chance at rank 1.

[Feranor]

There's no need for Blizz to do good balance, even assuming they are capable enough, for a number of reasons:

1. Most players don't have the necessary mental faculties to comprehend or appreciate balance.

2. Most players don't want balance, they want something to brag about / boost their ego, be it high ratings, shiny epics or the scoreboard at the end of a BG/Arena.

3. Most players are PvE players.

4. Most other MMOs have far worse PvP than WoW.

[asb]

pve comes first. i've gotten over it because it still has better pvp than any other mmo.

I don't feel that's an acceptable reason for PvP imbalances. I mean, it probably is the reason, but it's not a very solid argument on Blizzard's part. They should tune throughput appropriately for PvE--and in all fairness, that's what they seem to be going for. Beyond that, CC, mobility, defensive abilities, and general utility should be used to balance PvP. For example, if charge no longer stunned its target, it would have absolutely no effect in PvE, while significantly hurting warriors' effectiveness in PvP.

I see what they're going for with the objection to dual-function abilities. It's not a very clean-feeling effect. Short CC durations have always been that way out of absolute necessity, but there's no need to start applying it to everything. They never claimed that they couldn't redesign special PvP rules for every ability, they just don't want to. They're clinging on to one of their few remaining original design ideas, and I can't say that I blame them for it.

TLDR: Blizzard are afraid of completely changing certain spells because they know they will fuck up, so they just stand there are do nothing because they're lazy.

I think you're half right there. I entirely agree that they have no idea how to actually balance their PvP. It seems to me that they just look at arena ladders and forum posts to get an idea on what classes are broken, and from there run with the first idea that one of them comes up with. Actually, now that I think about it, that's pretty much how they do PvE balance too. It's all just based on guesswork rather than testing or simulation. Or maybe they try to actually test it, but aren't very good at it. Either way, I don't think laziness is really a factor, but I'm quite sure that they're slow to actually notice problems and are afraid of making things worse once they do.

Not counting 5v5 because it's a completely different game from 3v3 there is ONE hunter world-wide getting rank 1 on some random US battlegroup (Zetox, he got carried by Valrath and Chan anyway so doesn't really count, plus it's a bad BG and they camped as KFC for ages), as far as I'm concerned.

Hunters are really just boned in arena though. They actually seem to be a pretty respectable class from a damage and cc perspective, but the combination of their minimum range and abundance of los objects in arena makes them bad in that area. I'm no expert on hunters, but I'm pretty sure that we would see quite a large influx of hunters in high-end arena without that minimum distance.

[loki504]

guys plss

pvp = not only arena.

arena is part of the pvp.
but there is also bg rbg and wpvp(yes on my rppvp server its still alive and kicking)

[Deleted]

If arena is balanced everything else is balanced for obvious reasons, that's why I never even bother to mention (R)BGs on my posts.

[Stanton Biston]

Thanks Obie for backing up my guess with facts. I agree that overall balance could be improved, I just wanted to make sure someone counteracted the irrational statements about how pvp is worse than ever with some rationality. Furthermore, I can't think of a season that had more huge pvp changes mid season. Not that I like our endorse the idea, just that with all the changes I can't see people calling blizzard lazy with out being silly.

[Deleted]

Hunters are really just boned in arena though. They actually seem to be a pretty respectable class from a damage and cc perspective, but the combination of their minimum range and abundance of los objects in arena makes them bad in that area. I'm no expert on hunters, but I'm pretty sure that we would see quite a large influx of hunters in high-end arena without that minimum distance.

That's the thing, yes. The minimum range thing not so much but the fact that they are so easily LoS'd makes them quite useless against most (decent) teams. The damage output they have is quite high, yeah, on any kind of target regardless of armour etc, same goes for CC even though scatter-trap's not the most reliable forms of CC out there it's still quite amazing if it comes from a decent hunter. Another problem they have is that they're long-term survivability is pretty dire, they have a couple of deterrances, disengage and undispellable pet freedom but if you kill off their pet (which most people do on longer matches) and force the deterrances quite early on they'll be left with nothing but a disengage. Not to mention they have to overextend a lot in order to be able to put out respectable pressure on a team that pillar-humps thus putting them in a horribly open position themselves.

All in all, people can't expect hunters to become a good arena class again unless Blizzard manages to change how the class works without, well, turning them into something that isn't a hunter. Either that or they bring TBC-like arena back, with longer matches where ooming a healer would mean a match was literally just about to end which combined with Viper Sting and scorpion pets was what made hunters so viable in several comps. That and the fact 2's was "the" bracket. People may think hunters are in a bad position now but asides a couple of new issues here and there, they were already like this in WotLK (bar S5 due to TnT) - vulnerable to damage, high damage output (mostly on clothies), above-average CC and crappy mobility, the thing was that they had viable comps to play such as ret/hunter/druid or priest, ATC, PHD, Hunter/lock/druid, mage/hunter/priest, etc and now they're stuck with KFC because no DK would want to play PHD when they can play TSG, no lock would want to play HLD when they can do RLS/MLD/shadowcleave, no warrior wants to do ATC because TSG/WMP are way better, etc.

[rtjason]

@ Obe- it's not that mages don't have incentive to cast frostbolt, it does almost twice the damage with a cast time similar to the global. It's the opportunity doesn't exist very often due to current dispel mechanics, so they have to give stupid damage to an instant cast. The same with rets. It's not that mages are stupidly OP cuz they shit on pallys - it's that an offensive dispeller can make a pally completely worthless, holy or ret. This is a pally design flaw, not a mage. Blizz just doesn't look at the whole picture.

For example, on my mage this season I'm thinking I can get somewhere around 650 more spellpower, stay around 3300 resilience, gem up for about 7.5% more frozen damage via mastery as well as pick up a trinket that grants 350 int passively with 1700 on use mastery. If I could somehow get ahold of a H theralion's mirror I could honestly trinket for around 60% more frozen damage and gaining 361 int and 350 int passively. I would lose 400 resilience (mitigated by the better stats on this season's gear) and a combined 2500 or so in intellect procs from trinkets. I haven't figured the math out yet but if I can get this set up, frostfire bolt should hit a geared target for around 50k in a deep. Blizz just doesn't look at the meta.

[insmek]

But this excuse no longer works. Sap lasts 1 min (i think) in pve, and 8 sconds in pvp. Colossus Smash removes 100 percent armor in pve, and only 50 percent in pvp.

This, I think, is the most telling part of what you have to say. Blizzard said for ages that they didn't want abilities to do one thing in PVE and another in PVP, but they've slowly been giving in to the urge to use that as a tool to balance abilities in one area without negatively affecting another. It's mostly been non-damage dealing abilities so far, but it's only a matter of time before we'll see the vast majority of abilities changed in this manner.

Is it the right answer? That's not really for me to say. I think, for all of its shortcomings, that WoW's PVP is still head-and-tails better than most MMOs. But I do see, 100%, where players can get upset because changes to a part of the game they don't participate in nerfs them in the part they do.

[Kiso94]

Healers. Cause of them we dont have a system that goes about avoiding damage,and dealing damage effectivly instead of patching up people.

[Kiva]

just that with all the changes I can't see people calling blizzard lazy with out being silly.

That's the theme of the WoW playerbase where have you been?

PvE = "BLIZZARD IS LAZY AND CANT MAKE ANY REAL CONTENT THIS GAME SUX"

PvP -= "WHY CANT BLIZZARD EVER BALANCE EVERY SINGLE SPEC AND TALENT PERFECTLY WITHOUT FUCKING IT UP?! GOD!?!!"