Are Blizzard bad at balancing?

[Kuja]

Yes. And they are totally clueless about some specs and what to do with them. Proof is the "No X spec questions" rule in some Blizzcon Q&As. Mainly retribution pala comes to mind.

[Depakote]

Just as bad as you are at sentence structure.
But ya, they're pretty bad.

[tmamass]

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:

yes they are just look at Rextroy (https://www.youtube.com/user/Rextroy3/videos).

[iinverse]

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.

Eden's Verse Savage, sorting by dps amount:
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

Difference between best and worst: 2k (something like 10%)
Also: RDMs not so bad as you trying to say.

Ny'alotha Mythic, sorting by dps amount:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount

Difference between best and worst: 50k (something like 30%)

WoW definitely has worse balance.

[Delano]

It's not a balancing problem, it's an ignoring player feedback problem.

[Sunslayer]

Going to need a source on that 5% claim because Wrath sure as fuck wasn’t tightly balanced like that.

Actually I'm wrong. Im mixed up. 5 percent was the hybrid tax.

[Moromiro]

Well it has gotten better from the Rock, paper, scissors & mushroom days, but maybe alittle bit more boring coz every class is too similar.

[exochaft]

Eden's Verse Savage, sorting by dps amount:
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statisti...gregate=amount

Difference between best and worst: 2k (something like 10%)
Also: RDMs not so bad as you trying to say.

Ny'alotha Mythic, sorting by dps amount:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...gregate=amount

Difference between best and worst: 50k (something like 30%)

WoW definitely has worse balance.

If you look at the standard deviation and math out the CV across both sets, you get about 9% for WoW and 3% for FF14. However, using these same sets, Blizz has to balance 24 specs versus 10, which is likely much harder to balance. If you assume there are outlying specs on either end and just compare the middle of the pack for WoW with the FF14 set, the CV for both WoW and FF14 are both 3%. A better argument is that the more specs/classes/etc you add to the game, the exponentially harder it is to balance them all.

Of course, this is assuming that raw damage/DPS output is all that matters when it comes to balancing. It's not, not by a long shot.

[Harbour]

They made 50% nerf of the Twilight Devastation, OP. What do you think? Of course they are bad at balancing.

[iinverse]

However, using these same sets, Blizz has to balance 24 specs versus 10, which is likely much harder to balance. If you assume there are outlying specs on either end and just compare the middle of the pack for WoW with the FF14 set, the CV for both WoW and FF14 are both 3%. A better argument is that the more specs/classes/etc you add to the game, the exponentially harder it is to balance them all.

Poor excuse about number of specs. If you can't balance it, why add it?
Also, its not quite right to take middle of the packs, take top ones. They are used most in raids - just compare parses.
Mythic Ny'alotha: 89k BM parses + 62k Fire Mages parses + 46k Destro locks parses - its more than all middle+low packs.

Of course, this is assuming that raw damage/DPS output is all that matters when it comes to balancing. It's not, not by a long shot.

In the end, raw dps is all what's matter both for raids and m+, its better to drastically shorten encounters (or even skip some nasty phases) than use utilities in longer fights. There are exceptions, of course, but pretty little.

[Wuusah]

Are you guys actually comparing FF14 with WoW balance? You know that FF14 is extremely formulaic in its boss fights? 90% of pretty much every boss fight is you attacking a single boss and dodge at a scripted moment in the fight by going to a scripted safe space. FF14 classes don't have to be balanced for different kinds of fights where different niches can shine. In WoW you have sometimes one enemy, sometimes two, sometimes three and sometimes hordes of adds. You have sometimes barely any movement and sometimes you're constantly moving around.

It makes absolutely no sense to compare these two games because they are completely different types of games. Raiding in WoW is something completely different than raiding in FF14.

[PaladinBash]

Nope, it's never going to be balanced. They can't even keep it all fun. It's crazy.

[iinverse]

Are you guys actually comparing FF14 with WoW balance? You know that FF14 is extremely formulaic in its boss fights? 90% of pretty much every boss fight is you attacking a single boss and dodge at a scripted moment in the fight by going to a scripted safe space. FF14 classes don't have to be balanced for different kinds of fights where different niches can shine. In WoW you have sometimes one enemy, sometimes two, sometimes three and sometimes hordes of adds. You have sometimes barely any movement and sometimes you're constantly moving around.

It makes absolutely no sense to compare these two games because they are completely different types of games. Raiding in WoW is something completely different than raiding in FF14.

Wow struggle at balance even for patchwerk fight.
And firemages will be miles ahead here too.

[Wuusah]

Wow struggle at balance even for patchwerk fight.
And firemages will be miles ahead here too.

Because WoW doesn't try to make all classes do exactly the same damage in a patchwerk fight. Is it so hard to understand this? WoW is all about niches. Different bosses allow for different niches. Some specs are better at fighting two bosses, others are better at fighting while moving and so on.

That's my whole point why it makes no sense to compare those two games.

[iinverse]

Because WoW doesn't try to make all classes do exactly the same damage in a patchwerk fight. Is it so hard to understand this? WoW is all about niches. Different bosses allow for different niches. Some specs are better at fighting two bosses, others are better at fighting while moving and so on.

Ok, so. Firemages better at ST fights, better at AoE fights, better at moving, better at staying still... same for BM ad Arms. Yep, pretty niche.

[Mumba]

Whether they are good or bad at balancing the game is less important than the issue that they won't release small balance patches between content patches. Having the same top tier and bottom tier specs for several months indicates a lack of dedication to the players and it also discourage people from picking the "bad" specs/classes, even if the gameplay could be great.

[Deferionus]

Yes, Blizzard has been bad at balancing WoW. Other games will have regular balance patches and have teams dedicated to balancing their game. Riot Games updates League of Legends for balance reasons it seems every week. With WoW if something is not balanced you will generally not see it addressed for months. As players adjust to patches they will find what is best and Blizzard does not react fast as players react, so you will always see the imbalance here. This is why WoW PvP has failed despite having fun game play and there are dead specs in raiding tiers.

[Bigcountry11782]

There is no such thing called balance in the blizzard vocabulary lol

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

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 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.

Well, as Ion has stated in interviews, quicker balancing changes is something they are going to try in Shadowlands. Reason why they've avoided doing it in the past is because they don't want to "punish" people who put a lot of effort into one specific build or spec half-way through a raid tier because it might change the "min/max meta" and that wouldn't be a good solution to the problem. Obviously you could argue that this reasoning is really bad and flawed (which I'd agree with you) but you could understand Blizzards dilemma, then there's the issue of if every spec becomes viable then people will just swap from X to Y to Z depending on encounter which then puts pure classes on a significant advantage compared to the traditional "hybrid" classes.

I still think Blizzard needs to come up with challenges in mythic raiding which isn't solvable with damage or healing numbers, just pure execution. For example have a forced number of phases instead of percentage based, and instead of "kill A before X seconds" make more mechanics "player 6, 14 and 23 has to click an object after each other, in order of the symbol on their screen." If they fail then all three players die and pass the mechanic on to 3 new players who has to deal with the mechanic with 33% less time (of original timer), if they fail then it passes on again and the three new players have to deal with the mechanic with 66% less time (of original timer), if they fail then the raid wipes.

Let's be honest, class rotation and min/max dps isn't hard. What makes raiding hard, or should make it hard, is doing your min/max dps whilst also doing mechanics. You don't make bosses harder with giving them more numbers, you just force a more extreme min/max attitude which has led to a seriously toxic community that requires you to min/max absolutely everything and if you're not up to date on it or don't have the time and/or resources to do said min/maxing then you're just regarded as a "filthy casual" or a "noob". Is it really healthy for a game that the only accepted way to play it is to go through all of that? Forced 40hrs+ per week playing, spending real money to get BoE items from other realms auction houses? Gold selling is, or was, extremely common even in BfA ...hell even Method and other world first guilds did it to supply their raiders with items for min/maxing...

[Cerus]

Yes BLIZZARD IS bad at balancing.