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

[Pufster]

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

[Deleted]

cant disagree really

[Deleted]

Maybe the goal is not 100% balance?

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

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

[Segus1992]

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.

[Synadrasa]

Just look at the shaman's spell Icefury. It's coefficient was buffed from 180% to 900% that a buff of 5 times. Now are you telling me it took them 5 months to figure out it needed its damage buffed by 5? I can understand buffing abilities by 10-20%, but when spells are being buffed so drastically it tells me they weren't even in the ballpark to begin with.

[Pufster]

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.

[Lochton]

You can't really achieve full balance with so many classes and combinations.

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

Eeeeh, no. I've seen worse..

[Deleted]

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

I thought this was what we wanted? Rapid changes and adapting to our playstyle and feedback?
And now we should go back to not having any changes until 8.0?

Can we make up our minds?

[Pufster]

I thought this was what we wanted? Rapid changes and adapting to our playstyle and feedback?
And now we should go back to not having any changes until 8.0?

Can we make up our minds?

There is a very big difference between faster changes and not waiting till the next expansion, and actually testing the ptr. You know, the whole point of it.

Now they can just delete ptr/beta as obviously it's not needed at all for balancing.

If this is their definition of faster changes... by just throwing +50% around.... thats just weak damage control

[Deleted]

You can't really achieve full balance with so many classes and combinations.

And I don't think that's even a goal - they want the classes to have different strengths and weaknesses. Or well, we do - because that's been our feedback to the devs. We don't want everything to feel the same and be "dumbed down". So they don't.

I believe they probably have some sort of %-variation in mind when they balance numbers (maybe 15%?) but I'd be very surprised if they were gunning for 0% variation. Can't see how that would be fun either.

[cFortyfive]

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.

Well despite what the usual suspects and diehard fanatics will say - balancing in wow is retarded. Even in this very hotfix I can make out another round of entirely absurd decisions.

Eeeeh, no. I've seen worse.

I am not actually sure if there was something worse damage wise than shadowpriests in somewhat recent times. Sure warlocks in mop probably were the worst offense overall but in terms of pure damage during a progression phase I am really not sure.

[Deleted]

There is a very big difference between faster changes and not waiting till the next expansion, and actually testing the ptr. You know, the whole point of it.

Now they can just delete ptr/beta as obviously it's not needed at all for balancing.

Maybe it's for testing other things? Like raids? And quests? And builds? Why should they delete it and leave those things untested?

[Pufster]

Maybe it's for testing other things? Like raids? And quests? And builds? Why should they delete it and leave those things untested?

Ofcourse i know they still use it for those other things. But look at the ptr of 7.1.5. It wasnt really for a new raid or other major stuff. It was a balancing patch more or less they said.

And did they? If you look at todays news post all i can think of is "what the hell did they do last 2 months then?? They launched a new build every week and now this? They should have used todays numbers in the ptr and then test it. All the new builds are useless if at launch they come up with +50 or -50

[Deleted]

And I don't think that's even a goal - they want the classes to have different strengths and weaknesses. Or well, we do - because that's been our feedback to the devs. We don't want everything to feel the same and be "dumbed down". So they don't.

Except that reasoning would stand if and only if classes brought something else to groups other than raw tanking/healing/DPS output, as it was the case in vanilla/TBC. In legion classes are defined by their raw output, in this design you only make classes clunky or overpowered if you don't balance things by providing relevant utility.

Once again blizzard only understood 50 % of the feedback the players provided.

[Deleted]

Ofcourse i know they still use it for those other things. But look at the ptr of 7.1.5. It wasnt really for a new raid or other major stuff. It was a balancing patch more or less they said

And did they? If you look at todays news point you can't really think they did a good job the last 2 months. All the new builds are useless if at launch they come up with +50 or -50

Brawler's Guild? They also did Nighthold Testing on the PTR, and I think public testing of any patch, no matter the content is pretty major stuff.
Regarding the balancing - I'd rather they do number hotfixing every fucking week than every 6 months. I'd rather they be agile and fast with the changes than wait until big patch days. It should really be a continuous process.

Survival Hunters and Shadow Priests were the two outliers during EN/ToV - they should have stepped in much earlier to fix those. Keeping everyone in ~15%-ish variance would be extremely nice. I don't care about the numbers, they don't really matter. The variance - and especially silly outliers are what skews the public perception of "balance" (which in itself is a really stupid term) - they should address that rapidly.

[cFortyfive]

Nighthold Testing

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.

Except that reasoning would stand if and only if classes brought something else to groups other than raw tanking/healing/DPS output, as it was the case in vanilla/TBC. In legion classes are defined by their raw output, in this design you only make classes clunky or overpowered if you don't balance things by providing relevant utility.

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

[Eazy]

I wanted to make the same thread. What the fuck were they doing with hunters. They had a few weeks/months to balance the classes. Second day of the new patch -> uhm, we're changing our minds, we're buffing hunters now.

[Deleted]

by providing relevant utility.

I think they've tried, interrupts, external tank CD's, longer heal CDs etc etc.
But that "relevant utilty" thing isn't entirely trivial to implement.

In vanilla Paladins were there to buff everyone, every 5 minutes and then stand at the back of the room trying to stay out of combat.
Not entirely engaging gameplay, though certainly a lot of "relevant utility".

The game mechanics are archaic and I don't think they have many choices (as shown by tank gameplay - they're just another "bad dps"-class) to work around that.

Sure - creating more "fun and relevant" utility skills would be awesome. But I don't think they can rid of the fact that everyone is there to do DPS.

[Woop Woop]

You can't really achieve full balance with so many classes and combinations.

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Eeeeh, no. I've seen worse..

You can. Why don't they just do 2-5% tweaks often until everything is balanced?