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Incorporating party class balancing considerations into design of new instances and bosses
Hi All,
I have not been onto the preview shard as I prefer to be surprised by new content however I applaud people that do as they help test and iron out obvious bugs to the benefit of everybody. I just want to make a request to developers regarding boss and mob abilities in new instances. The request is to design the challenges in instances to make them solvable by a party with as diverse a mixture of any classes as possible. In the tomb of annhilation control wizards have a particularly hard time getting invited to parties imho because the preferred composition to survive and get through the instance in the shortest time was Pally, GF, 2xCleric and one other dps, so competition was high for that last spot for the other dps or support classes. One way of thinking about this is that instances should be challenging (we all like that) but there should be none where it is a neccessity or significant advantage to have 2 of any particular class to defeat mobs or a particular boss. The challenge should come from providing a mixture of balanced boss abilities that require strategy to overcome using abilities of NW classes in a combined and balanced way. I know this approach is much harder to support through design than simply upping the HP of mobs and bosses but please give it some thought.
I have not been onto the preview shard as I prefer to be surprised by new content however I applaud people that do as they help test and iron out obvious bugs to the benefit of everybody. I just want to make a request to developers regarding boss and mob abilities in new instances. The request is to design the challenges in instances to make them solvable by a party with as diverse a mixture of any classes as possible. In the tomb of annhilation control wizards have a particularly hard time getting invited to parties imho because the preferred composition to survive and get through the instance in the shortest time was Pally, GF, 2xCleric and one other dps, so competition was high for that last spot for the other dps or support classes. One way of thinking about this is that instances should be challenging (we all like that) but there should be none where it is a neccessity or significant advantage to have 2 of any particular class to defeat mobs or a particular boss. The challenge should come from providing a mixture of balanced boss abilities that require strategy to overcome using abilities of NW classes in a combined and balanced way. I know this approach is much harder to support through design than simply upping the HP of mobs and bosses but please give it some thought.
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Comments
The state of class balance has been a very long-running frustration for me, and this last module has been particularly awful. My class is not wanted in TONG, and I don't push the issue with friends or guildies to take me there. I don't/won't play this game as a charity case, and I've now dropped behind with having the latest gear, to bide my time with boring T2 runs until the next module.
I check the TONG party compositions very frequently, and what's persisted for an entire module is plain and simply very wrong.
If this massive class bias continues for another module, and I drop even further behind with nothing but more boring T2 runs, I'm finally done with the game. This used to be a great game, is still a great game for about half the classes, but is very frustrating for us "single class players" where our class is neglected.
I used to sometimes buy zen I didn't need with real money, just to support the game, but it's been a long time now since I can bring myself to put any real money into the game.
I can only hope that the DEVs produce reports of successful TONG party compositions, and become aware of how bad this game has become for single class players that have been out of favor.
You simply can't let these class imbalances persist for another entire module, and expect the affected players to hang around. This next module *needs* to make seals of the brave accessible to players in a fair and equitable manner - irrespective of their class.
Mod 12 was bad, and the gap widened even further for mod 13.
Go run HEs in Omu with ACT, and be amazed at how GFs, HRs and particularly GWFs embarrass you.
Worse yet, until now the DPS CW was struggling as a class virtually untouched by DEVs for over 2 years. Now, they nerfed our entity procs, gave back SpellStorm crits that they took away years ago because of the now defunct Lostmauth set, but then decided to nerf that by 30%.
They had us in the ditch, and made darn sure we stayed there, as they boosted GWFs.
It's deliberate - not just a case of never getting around to touch up the CW.
We're still at levels of CWs being 5% of players in TONG, and they're generally support MoF rather than DPS SpellStorm.
I can't make sense of what they're doing, or find any reason to think that the situation will get any better.
However, realistically speaking, I can't see this happening due to the constraints on the dev team.
Also to be real fair, developer should stop asking player to solve their problem in class balancing because most of the time it isnt really honest. Instead, Developer should ask themself everytime they try to fix class balance, How does it feel like to play X class on X paragon or X tree path as a player. Does it contribute fairly in group content? Or does it over contributed that it spoil the fun of other class. Repeat these question on each and every class, paragon and class tree path to get the feel on which is inbalance and report back to the team to solve it. Do not let ur personal favouritsm cloud ur judgement during the test or its all for naught.
* oh btw, contribution doesn mean dps. It could mean crowd control, tanking, support etc, anything that is contributing to make the run easier.
You need to flat out those buffs, prevent them from stacking, like "If I use my Crytal, I can´t be wheeled any more" and "If I get ITF buff I can´t get PoP or anything else on top".
One active dps buff (chose ITF, HG, TI, PoP etc.) and slot other encounter if HG picks the crown in your group.
One statbuff, let´s say like Chaos magic.
Stop insignia from stacking- Shepard´s devotion.. 100k movment lol.
Stop Insignia from syngerizing with buffed power recovery 40k, thank you..
One powerbuff like AA or OP´s buff not both.
Let debuffs stack like they do.
If you would follow that road the classes and the game would get back into normality and maybe classbalance too. You would not see 100% buffruns everywhere, stacking buffer in all 5 men groups etc.
... adjust boss HP and incoming damage.
Multiplicative buffs on a high base damage. This does away the need for anything else. Sadly, if one can defeat a boss through pure brute force, why is there a need to learn mechanics? If the devs would look at the reasons for the ability to gain such brute force, then they may be on the steps to balancing it.