Are Blizzard bad at balancing?

[Spacewalrus2010]

I quoted you because you were droning on about some bullshit of Blizzard "creating a FotM" class on purpose. This is a very dull take.

And you needn't look further than the trends of every fucking major game developer in the industry to understand why the engagement data is quite literally the only thing ever mentioned in their Quarterly Reports. Engagement in a product is indicative of the brand's strength in marketing. Strong marketing of an IP means that consumers are more likely to continue consuming that product. This is what is driving the modern video game industry.

And I admittedly said it's a hunch. Not like I'm writing a book on it or something. I don't plan to die on this hill, it was just a passing thought. And never said or suggested it was a "fuck you" to the player.

What do you mean when you call it bullshit btw? You seem to agree that it's on purpose...but are coming at me like your arguing with me or something.

Also, did any of this have to do with the last question I asked? I suspect not, but just wanted to make sure.

[Sluvs]

I agree that the balance could be better. I'll go even a step further or two and say it should and has to be better

Oh, yeah. I agree 100% with you on that.

[Sunslayer]

Tbh they tend to err on the side of not making changes often, especially nerfs, because a lot of people don’t like changes impacting their progression.

People REALLY don’t like having to progress on a farm boss because their dps got nerfed.

That doesnt excuse the lack of buffs. Unless I'm mistaken SV Feral Frost DK and WW were not only at the bottom (Raiding) they were in a coffin 40 feet deep...and stayed there all of BfA. That's something that makes no sense.

[SirBeef]

I'm not saying it was balanced before that either. I think we also need to think about what kind of balance we want, because ultimately, it's probably not possible. Maybe in MoP it was closest? I can't remember, but that was peak class homogenisation, and there are pros and cons to that approach too

I think there was a point in MoP where sims had a relatively small gap between top and bottom performing DPS specs and people were still complaining about imbalance of specs within 2-3% of each other.

[Argorwal]

That doesnt excuse the lack of buffs. Unless I'm mistaken SV Feral Frost DK and WW were not only at the bottom (Raiding) they were in a coffin 40 feet deep...and stayed there all of BfA. That's something that makes no sense.

Only WW is “bad” in terms of numbers for raiding.

the rest are doing fine with numbers (frost is actually really good) but it’s a tough life fighting as a melee spot and it’s tempting to respec ranged if your SV or feral.

And WW is decent in mythic+ and very good in PvP.

[Malix Farwin]

Balance will never be perfect however Blizzard sometimes tend to put themselves in impossible situations sometimes with Class design and borrowed power.

[Swnem]

I would say they are bad, yes. They are the ones that design the systems. If the work is too difficult it's their own fault.

If a game with a much smaller team like SWTOR manages to balance their game better having multiple set bonuses, gear parts, talent system, augments and one of several skill modifiers, the WoW devs are not trying hard enough and have no excuse.

That is why when Preach told it to Ion's face, everyone thought it was savage, but fair. Cause they ARE bad at it.

[Monkiy]

That doesnt excuse the lack of buffs. Unless I'm mistaken SV Feral Frost DK and WW were not only at the bottom (Raiding) they were in a coffin 40 feet deep...and stayed there all of BfA. That's something that makes no sense.

While I don't know much about Survival or Windwalker, I can contest on Frost. In spite of low single target numbers at BfA launch (due to numerous unaddressed issues that players had pointed out since beta), Frost ended up being one of the most desired specs for Uldir due to the sheer amount of cleave potential and Reorigination Array buffing that cleave further. It didn't do so hot in the following tier BfD, because fight design no longer propped it up, but it did have a place on a few bosses. It was in largely the same position for EP, but saw significant improvement in Ny'alotha. So while it wasn't top tier for the duration of the expansion, it certainly wasn't "40 feet deep" for it's length either.

[Dastreus]

Yes. Next!

[Jastall]

What annoys me is that blizzard are letting obviously bad specs stay bad for several patches, sometimes whole expansions.

That's the part I like the least as well. For example Balance and Survival have been bottom tier close to all xpack long; toss a 5-10% buff their way or something, it's definitely not going to make them great but at least makes them less bad.

Then again there could be unintended consequences. Arms was terrible in 8.1, but through Haste scaling, synergy with Essences and corruptions they are now kickass with almost no direct balancing changes whatsoever. But outliers can be brought back down as well if they start overperforming.

[Relapses]

It is rich of you to assume that I pay for the game
No, I don't, I haven't been playing since 8.3
Don't act so mighty little man

I didn't assume anything. I told you what you should do. Why don't you resub just so you can make sure you still hate it? I mean, after all, you're still taking time out of your busy day to whine about the game on fan forums even though you've already quit.

[Hinastorm]

That doesnt excuse the lack of buffs. Unless I'm mistaken SV Feral Frost DK and WW were not only at the bottom (Raiding) they were in a coffin 40 feet deep...and stayed there all of BfA. That's something that makes no sense.

I'm pretty sure they realized they didn't have the resources/time to fix everything, and just had to let a few specs die and hope players caught on and switched.

It's either that or insane levels of incompetence. I tend towards what I said being more likely.

[Radaney]

Some classes have been consistently good in all of WoWs history whilst some have been consistently bad.

They also have to remake entire specs every expansion.

So yes Blizzard are atrocious at balancing.

[Sunslayer]

Some classes have been consistently good in all of WoWs history whilst some have been consistently bad.

They also have to remake entire specs every expansion.

So yes Blizzard are atrocious at balancing.

I agree. WoW, feels like a caste system. Elite/Worker/Slave and its always the same.

[Kaver]

I have no idea what evidence you could possibly use to support this hypothesis; do you want to link it to the class?

I’m not getting your question?

[Raugnaut]

Blizzard has only ever managed to balance a single game - Starcraft, and that was over 20 years ago. Even Starcraft 2 is a complete mess.

So, it really, honestly, 100% is that Blizzard is just terrible at balancing things.

[AlmightyGerkin]

Are Blizzard bad at balancing? Probably not. The WoW devs are most likely very competent. However what they do suck at is keeping things simple (which is probably not the devs fault). Look at what they needed to balance in most of BFA:

- specs (abilities, stats etc.)
- talents (and pvp talents)
- azerite traits
- essences

This is already an insane task to balance especially considering they have to balance it all for 3 different pieces of content. Raiding, PVP and M+. However, on top of this they decide to add the Corruption gear to the mix which just makes balancing 10 times harder than it already was. At this point I start to think that Blizzard are into some hardcore S&M. They definitely enjoy pain.

In Shadowlands it seems to get even worse. Blizzard will have to balance:

- specs (abilities, stats etc.)
- talents (and pvp talents)
- covenant abilities
- soul binds
- conduits
- legendaries

This seems completely insane to me. And they probably will add some type of gear system along the way. Nobody is going to be able to balance all these systems on top of each other. Especially not considering that much of the new stuff is class locked so they need to make it work for multiple specs simultaneously. Good luck Blizzard. I hope you don’t get stressed out.

Question: Do we, the players, even need all these systems? Considering how much dev time goes into them and how many problems they create in the game.

*Looks at BFA* YUP

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

I wouldn’t say ‘bad’, just extremely slow

[Delekii]

I’m not getting your question?

What evidence are you basing your assumption that Blizzard are "probably pretty good at balancing" on? It's not evidence that is publicly available, clearly.

I wouldn’t say ‘bad’, just extremely slow

I think one defines the other, in this case. That would be like saying "I don't think Ferrari is bad at racing cars, just slow".

If the classes aren't balanced when the content is current, the balance is bad. If they fix it halfway through, it doesn't undo that badness. When the content is current is the point of measuring.

There is no realistic reason they can't do significantly faster iterative balancing on a pure numbers position with the global per-spec auras that they use in the background. They don't because they are worried people will be confused or pissed off that their class is suddenly not number one, but if the classes were actually balanced they would be close enough that it doesn't matter.

A significantly harder aspect to balance is utility, which is much more context-specific and much less simple to change. But, they still don't change it, even at times they have the capacity to, like now.

[MrLachyG]

WoW is impossible to balance when it comes to specs; there will always be a top dps spec and a bottom dps spec; which not only varies by raid boss, where some fights favour melee and some favour range but now also varies by M+ dungeon, varies by what affixes there are that week etc. same with heals; certain bosses/dungeon affixes require certain healer strengths which you won't find in the same healing class.

first trick is to make the classes unique enough that every class is sought after; whether it is for cc, stuns, aoe healing, aoe dps, st healing, st dps etc

second trick is to not balance the classes/specs but to balance the content around having a multitude of classes and specs.