They've always been bad at balancing.
The oddest thing about their balancing is that nothing really changes. Look at SV Hunter in PvE the spec was terrible for the entire expansion.
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I agree and disagree. I believe they added so many systems in BfA that made it literally impossible to even know where to start balancing.
I have never seen so few balance patches in 13 years of playing as they did in BfA. There was almost no balance patches.
Arena went over a year without any balance changes and class balance was at an all time low.
I don't think they're bad at balancing, I think they've humanized themselves to the point that players have "met their heroes" in the manner of the social media era and thus the players keep the less informed high expectations of their (meaning the players') more naive years.
I also think Blizz don't want, expect or build for the degree of overthinking that the modern "time efficiency" and competitively minded gamer will put into something that the players have dumped years and countless dollars into.
I also think, as I've said many times, that there's a disconnect about specifically M+ and its intention in the game. It's not intended to be a PUG mode. The community disagrees. That's not Blizz's problem.
Through a lens of "good enough is good enough," WoW is balanced "well enough," and as someone looking at the game through that lens, I am satisfied. That said, I realize that's a lens not represented well on these forums.
Last edited by Omedon; 2020-09-07 at 10:14 PM.
yes. while having everything perfectly balanced (as all things should be) makes for a good competitive environment, i don't think blizzard being able to balance perfectly is a bad thing. it gives room to change the meta of the game. that said, blizz could get rather close to perfect balance if they just changed their methods.
What annoys me is that blizzard are letting obviously bad specs stay bad for several patches, sometimes whole expansions.
The answer is objectively yes. There's not even an argument here.
Weather you PvE, or PvP. It's yes. They go entire expansions without touching specs, which is actually insane.
I'm not saying they have to be like league of legends and run a balance pass every two weeks, but once a month or so isn't out of the question.
It's one of the many reason this game has been bad since activision purchased blizzard.
Quoted for truth. I was most happy during mop, where my class felt fun. Grinding power for a lesser design doesn't make me happy, only sad for what i've lost just so blizz can "add" borrowed power that was originally already there.
Pruning of some sort was ok, but an infinitely smaller amount then what was done. Back in mop you gained new abilities/strong meaningful passives EVERY 2 LEVELS. out of 90. New players, read this and imagine how the full classes felt at endgame, and you will understand why people who played those expacs are mad now.
Balance was never perfect, but even playing a weaker specc back then felt so much funner, because the actual design, rotation or decisions were funner.
Last edited by Amariw; 2020-09-07 at 10:15 PM.
You asked for MMO's that I think are better balanced than WoW and I have given you them.
(btw. You didn't say MMORPG's specifically)
And I disagree with few of your points
TESO with being able to respec into a better spec is a balance in a way that you can respec from stam mage into mana mage, but you can't fix retri paladin or windwalker monk, you would have to change whole class
I wouldn't say FFIX is that underbalanced though I might be biased here.
Albion is balanced around weapons, skills and equipment - and it's a balance in itself since that's how the game works
And Blizz is the biggest company of them all and can't get mm hunter to work, bugs out arms warrior, prot warrior has contradictory talents, ww monk is really unplayable due to bugs (for example xuen pulling half of the map), retri paladin is walking simulator, fury warrior is bland and has condemn bug, bm hunter hits like a wet nooddle and rotation is straight up shit, mage class is a joke as a whole maybe other than fire but I wouldn't give my hand for this, holy priest didn't get any relevant changes for the last 3 expansions, havoc dh is a shitfest and has half of the talent tree as dead talents, guardian druid hasn't seen any relevant changes for the last 3 expansions (only pruning), frost dk is bugged with animations and still under/overtuned with dead talents, unholy dk has seen some of the positive changes that created some new negative ones, rogues are in a really weird spot and the sub/assa specs have been straight up rollercoaster while outlaw has been top pick for all of bfa, restoration shaman has almost no changes, enhancement shaman is reworked every expansion, they don't even know what to do with elemental shaman - and that's just from the top off my head
Did I miss anything?
Have you actually played beta yourself?
And you say "it's cool to hate blizzard"? I didn't say I "hate" blizzard, I think I would just expect more from a giant that the blizzard acti is.
You say "wow is incredibly balanced compared to the other MMO's" - I don't care about that. If other mmo's have bad balance it doesn't make it okay for Blizz to just do a little better than other worse players on the market
And like "every class is viable" is an achievement when you actually have a balancing class team that takes money for tweaking the numbers for their living.
Please don't kid your self and don't white knight them.
The balancing team sucks big. That's just facts. There is no making excuses for them
I think arguing that balance is never "perfect" is a complete waste of breath as I don't know anyone that ever expected that tbh. When we say "balance" we are mostly talking about some specs being god awful for entire expansions such as SV or Feral in raids. Perfect isn't on anyones mind. But, it can certainly be far better than it has been.
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.
Path is not a MMO, you have given me 3 MMOs. All of which have enormous balance problems.
ESO: Changing from one spec into another is not a fix for balance, is a symptom for the lack of balance, if it was balanced you would not need to change.
FFXIV balance is not even close to WoW because they have another vision of how the game should work, but the red mage example is emblematic, it underperforms on purpose. Because of the Ver Raise and the insta cast mechanic. Not to mention that any addons are "forbidden", so a huge chunk of the playerbase cannot even see their numbers. Also, the hardcore playerbase is very small, so they just don't push the game to it's absolute limits like WoW.
Albion: Has constant problem of overpowered weapons, the latest culprit was daggers, and it was pretty famous for shutting down other playstyles.
You are literally complaining about bugs in Beta. They are not even done with numbers tuning, hell, ESO has game breaking bug till this very day that eclipses the ones that wow has in BETA, let that sink in for a bit.
I did not play the beta but I keep a relatively close tabs on it. Sure, some things seems to be off, and dont get me wrong, complaining and whining during beta is necessary, but comparing WoW to other MMOs is almost a joke due to their competitors lack of polish and balance.
I love GW2, that game is amazing IMO, but the balance is all over the place and you can feel the lack of polish is some areas. FFXIV is great, but the interface is a mess, there is always a bug, and some boneheaded decisions are incredibly counterintuitive.
Whether we like it or not, WoW is one of, if not the, most balanced MMOs, any1 who says otherwise has not drove around the block and see the others.
I'm not whiteknighting them at all, I have only stated that, balance-wise, WoW is better.
The balancing could be better? Ofc it can, and as I said, they are making it hard on themselves. But if they truly sucked, there would be fewer classes viable. And all of them are.
I don't want solutions. I want to be mad. - PoorlyDrawnlines
I'd say a talented Baker's got a better shot at making edible bread out of sawdust and mayonnaise than Blizzard does at balancing anything.
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
Is not best yes. Are not agree?