Why does it take Blizzard so long to nerf blatantly OP classes?

[Glurp]

Because changing things too much mid-season is stupid. Exceptions are sometimes made in the case of 350k Heroic Strikes but yeh, usually things that aren't considered "broken" won't be changed until new season starts. Also PvE has a part in it.

[Senathor]

just nerf mage palys and druids and everything will be ok

Without sounding to offensive, this is what I was talking about earlier. Mages aren't OP at all right now. But the casual player does not understand that and as Blizzard relies on community feedback this is the perfect example of why things then take time as they have to separate, certain groups of players.

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Because changing things too much mid-season is stupid. Exceptions are sometimes made in the case of 350k Heroic Strikes but yeh, usually things that aren't considered "broken" won't be changed until new season starts. Also PvE has a part in it.

Letting entire seasons be ruined by Hunters in MoP, Rogues in Cata, etc is stupid as well, in my opinion...

[Deleted]

I think there's various reasons that could be responsible:

1) They are incompetent at balancing PvP and do not have a proper understanding of how PvP works at high levels of play themselves

2) They have poor internal PvP testers

3) They do not take on board the feedback of good PvP players (no excuse for this now as twitch streams of top players tell you everything you need to know about the state of PvP either via player commentary or actual gameplay footage)

4) They don't care about whether PvP is imbalanced or not

5) They are balancing for average players not for the top end of the pyramid

6) They do not like making players have to constantly readjust to new values for abilities every week - stability is better than instability

7) They give PvE balance precedence over PvP balance since way more people play and care about PvE than PvP, so if an ability is hitting fine in PvE but too hard in PvP it won't get nerfed

8) They are purposely leaving at least one or more classes in a more powerful state than the others between patches and constantly rotate which one this class will be to encourage players to reroll and thus get more mileage out of their game

To be honest though I feel WoW is too long in the tooth for any radical changes to happen and address this issue and there may be some engine limitations as well, idk. Of course the perfect solution would be to separate the way abilities work in PvE and PvP or at the very least to change how much damage or healing they do. However, even if this were implemented, I think it would ruin the "feeling" of an mmo the purpose of which is to give you a fantasy world to participate in rather than just another video game with lobbies.

I do wonder though, since PvP is constantly imbalanced whether this means that PvE is always balanced? I'd like to hear from some PvErs if possible. What constitutes balance between classes in PvE? Is it just a case of every class being able to produce the same dps or damage done at the end of a fight if played properly? Or are some classes better because they have ways of surviving/avoiding damage and therefore conserving the raid healers' mana better?

Having said all this I think with 5.4 they are doing a pretty good job of nerfing and buffing in the right areas. Just based on personal experience I think the game is going to be in the most balanced state all expansion if the changes on PTR go live and maybe even one of the most balanced patches ever. From playing PTR it feels like:

mage - balanced now with frost mage mastery nerf

rogue - some buffs making it balanced

dk - balanced

warrior - buffs making it balanced

lock - nerf to lock gateway charges down to 1 min therefore balanced

hunter - readiness nerf makes them a lot more balanced along with no silencing shot for bm, although may still be a little too good - mm damage is a bit high

ret - survivability buffed which is good but so is damage via inquisition buff which i'm not sure is a good idea but altogether strong though not op I feel

enhance - buffed survivability so strong but not op

ele - still op and got more survivability buffs without addressing random lava burst proccing lava burst proccing lava burst

spriest - balanced

boomkin - balanced

feral - balanced now with cyclone nerf

ww - balanced

All I hope for now is they learn from WoW and not make the same mistakes in Titan.

[bendak]

7) They give PvE balance precedence over PvP balance since way more people play and care about PvE than PvP, so if an ability is hitting fine in PvE but too hard in PvP it won't get nerfed

This is not the case at all, and Hunters are proof of that. They've been nerfed to obscurity in PVE because of PVP problems. With the same gear level and skill, the other pure classes can put out 10-15% more DPS than hunters. That is very significant.

They really need to make abilities different in PVE and instanced PVP, at least the ones that are problematic.

[Tecnice]

This is not the case at all, and Hunters are proof of that. They've been nerfed to obscurity in PVE because of PVP problems. With the same gear level and skill, the other pure classes can put out 10-15% more DPS than hunters. That is very significant.

They really need to make abilities different in PVE and instanced PVP, at least the ones that are problematic.

^ This. It shouldn't be that big of an overhaul considering they don't care how world PvP goes. And yes, PvE always suffers due to PvP "imbalances."

[Deleted]

This is not the case at all, and Hunters are proof of that. They've been nerfed to obscurity in PVE because of PVP problems.

I believe that this is the exception that proves the rule. I think this is the first time that everyone, even hunters themselves, are in agreement that one single spec of a class was responsible for completely ruining the entire experience of PvP and Blizzard's hand was forced to do something since the problem was so severe.

Other than this I can't think of any other times PvErs suffered dps wise because of PvP. I'm probably wrong but can you think of any other instances that classes suffered in PvE because of PvP? I'm sure it's much, much more frequent the other way round.

I think the separating PvE/PvP abilities problem is actually very difficult to solve. If you just make everything behave differently in the two environments, how to you retain the "seamless" feel of an MMO? I know that being teleported to an instanced location already undermines that but I just think that separating abilities would be a step too far even though it is the perfect solution to this problem.

[Tecnice]

I believe that this is the exception that proves the rule. I think this is the first time that everyone, even hunters themselves, are in agreement that one single spec of a class was responsible for completely ruining the entire experience of PvP and Blizzard's hand was forced to do something since the problem was so severe.

Other than this I can't think of any other times PvErs suffered dps wise because of PvP. I'm probably wrong but can you think of any other instances that classes suffered in PvE because of PvP? I'm sure it's much, much more frequent the other way round.

I think the separating PvE/PvP abilities problem is actually very difficult to solve. If you just make everything behave differently in the two environments, how to you retain the "seamless" feel of an MMO? I know that being teleported to an instanced location already undermines that but I just think that separating abilities would be a step too far even though it is the perfect solution to this problem.

I was thinking more about the coding aspect of fitting it in rather than the semantics.

[DiscoGhost]

their first priority is pve. theyll only make pvp changes if it passes with the pve balance team most likely. hence the reason it takes so long, has to go thru two dev teams instead of one.

[Lilly32]

isnt it blatantly obvious they dont care about pvp?

[valliant13]

I believe that this is the exception that proves the rule. I think this is the first time that everyone, even hunters themselves, are in agreement that one single spec of a class was responsible for completely ruining the entire experience of PvP and Blizzard's hand was forced to do something since the problem was so severe.

Other than this I can't think of any other times PvErs suffered dps wise because of PvP. I'm probably wrong but can you think of any other instances that classes suffered in PvE because of PvP? I'm sure it's much, much more frequent the other way round.

I think the separating PvE/PvP abilities problem is actually very difficult to solve. If you just make everything behave differently in the two environments, how to you retain the "seamless" feel of an MMO? I know that being teleported to an instanced location already undermines that but I just think that separating abilities would be a step too far even though it is the perfect solution to this problem.

In 4.1 they buffed obliterates damage for frost death knights as one of the things to compensate and make it viable for pve. Frost was one of the worst performing pve specs in 4.0. It went to upper middle of the pack after the buff but obliterate did too much damage in pvp for their liking so they nerfed base weapon damage by 10% and frost went to lower middle of the pack...

[AnEvilForce]

People just need to understand that PvP is never gonna be perfectly balanced and there will always be superior classes and specs which are called Flavor of the Month.
Blizzard do not like to nerf good performing classes straight to the ground when they turn out to be strong and powerful, they are giving them their time to shine...
At least thats how I perceive the problem. But its certainly much less of an issue now, when the classes are getting tuned down in next major patch. I had my fun with shadow priest at the start of MoP, rogues were the best PvP class the whole vanilla.

This so much. The game has had FOTM classessince forever. Hell, anyone who played high rated arenas in TBC probably doesn't remember meeting any comps other than RMP. As long as it's not the same class dominating for several Xpacks, they don't mind something being a bit OP (just remembered pve mages being le terrible in TBC endgame, now top). Balancing this game is hard, it WOULD be easier if we went back to the TBC days where each class only had one viable PVP spec, but I doubt anyone would want that.

Changing one ability can bring an avalanche of collateral damage, not just to that specific class, but it might suddenly make another class "OP". Keep in mind they're not just trying to keep a little community of 1000 happy, they're dealing with MILLIONS of customers.

In 4.1 they buffed obliterates damage for frost death knights as one of the things to compensate and make it viable for pve. Frost was one of the worst performing pve specs in 4.0. It went to upper middle of the pack after the buff but obliterate did too much damage in pvp for their liking so they nerfed base weapon damage by 10% and frost went to lower middle of the pack...

In wotlk, during Ulduar, I played frost dk pvp (95% above 2k rating played UH), frost was so ridiculously bursty, you could kill anything in 3 GCDs with frost strikes. Needless to say, they nerfed it after that season

[Senathor]

their first priority is pve. theyll only make pvp changes if it passes with the pve balance team most likely. hence the reason it takes so long, has to go thru two dev teams instead of one.

Well PvE is essentially all about damage. 5 buttons to balance. So that's not an excuse for most changes.

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^ This. It shouldn't be that big of an overhaul considering they don't care how world PvP goes. And yes, PvE always suffers due to PvP "imbalances."

And the other way around. Prime example being DK's right now. Most defensives are terrible due to battle fatigue. Lichborne heals for 40k, AMZ absorbs about 130k and soon AMZ will be useless. They could make it so that abilities behave differently in PvE and PvE. It's easy to code for a professional developer, but they probably don't really care too much at this point.

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isnt it blatantly obvious they dont care about pvp?

To a certain extent perhaps. But that's not a way to look at it, especially not when we can occasionally convince them to change certain things. But I know what you're getting at.

[apepi]

One of the problems is that they do not want to make any big changes until a new big patch comes out. They only usually change the modifiers to things they want.

[Deleted]

What I still don't understand is why they don't just make some moves behave differently in PvP and differently in PvE. All problems solved.

[Mefistophelis]

I think Warlocks at the moment are pretty much balanced and whoever tries to say otherwise hasn't played a warlock lately .
As others said before me they are trying to juggle buffs/nerfs for both pvp and pve without hurting both for a certain class/spec.

[Lilly32]

Also how do you determine "blatantly" OP? There have only been a few times that this has happened. Im talking 3.0.2 Ret and season 5 DKs. Even all the Hunter QQ this season is no where even close to those.

[Wow]

Because Stampede wasn't the only thing that made Hunters OP. The amount of instant CC they have at the moment is stupid. Now, BM gets the pet stun and MM gets Silencing Shot.

No Bm gets to pick 1 cc talent and mm gets silencing and a 1 cc talent. All thats happening is mm is gaining more cc while bm is being killed. Its not going to really fix anything but that hunters will finally be playing a spec thats cc'able.

Also how do you determine "blatantly" OP? There have only been a few times that this has happened. Im talking 3.0.2 Ret and season 5 DKs. Even all the Hunter QQ this season is no where even close to those.

I dunno about that since hunters have stayed op all of mop so far and those other classes only had 1 patch before being cut down. 5.0 Best comp? kfc, 5.1 kfc, 5.2 thug cleave, 5.3...... You get the point

[Deleted]

Actually, thinking about it now it sounds incredibly difficult if not impossible to properly balance PvE and PvP if abilities behave the same in both environments. They must have a good reason for keeping it like this. God knows what it is though :S

[Flawed]

They could if they bothered to, the would just put in a gear cap (like we have now) keep that forever, and then split pve/pvp abilitys (which they dont because some retards are to dumb to remember the differences) spend some serious time in fixing balancing issues and then do weakly/monthly small changes if anything shows to be to godd/bad. They have to do balancing over and over again due to pve changes and due to higher ilvls in new seasons, new abilitys and so on which leads them to fucking up and once they started fixing everything the next round is around and it all starts anew.

They could if they bothered to? It is points like these and a lot of other points found here that are completely misinformed. You're telling us that they could easily fix these problems, yet you're incapable of writing a few sentences without mistyping, misspelling or of forming a coherent thought. You're also stating that it would be easy to change a game that has so many variables, engines and possibilities without causing problems, yet you state that when they do change the game there are problems. I don't get it. People like new gear too, that isn't a solution nor a good response. Perhaps, you're not quite qualified to be making statements like this when a simple paragraph is too complicated for you. I apologize for being rude, however, it is upsetting to see gamers not thinking before they type their ridiculous rant and hit the post button.

It is as most people have said and as Blizzard has said. They do NOT balance the game around PvP, they balance it around PvE. They try to make adjustments for the PvP game without trying to botch the PvE game. Aside from this, anyone who plays or who has played competitive gaming knows that there is a drastic difference between players at different skill levels; by this I mean that it isn't just the skill level of the players involved, it is also what occurs at the various brackets. What is ridiculous for some at the lower levels, is simple for those at the higher levels; and this is a drastic oversimplification of what is going on, but I assume it is easy to understand where I am going with that thought. So, not only do you have to keep a balance between the PvP game and the PvE game, you must balance DOZENS of compositions at various and different skill levels.

I think a bunch of you are not quite understanding the complexity of the problem. Nothing is as simple as "change this a bit" or "take that out". If you seriously believe that, then you have not thought about the multitude of issues of balancing a game as massive as WoW is and I would implore you all to think about this more before you type.

[valliant13]

In wotlk, during Ulduar, I played frost dk pvp (95% above 2k rating played UH), frost was so ridiculously bursty, you could kill anything in 3 GCDs with frost strikes. Needless to say, they nerfed it after that season

In the defense of dks they were only in their Second season of arena. And at the point they had only been out for about 6 to 8 months. Short sample of data is the case for that.