I would like to remind people to be respectful to one another when having discussions in threads. Attacking one another is the quickest way to get a thread closed.
The thread has gone very far off of the initial topic at this point. I am planning on making this final clarification post on both class balance and the information I provided earlier before moving on from those topics in this particular thread.
The data shown was normalized data for ToMM runs on the PC over ~1 month. Normalized means extreme outliers were discounted to give a cleaner comparison. It does not show overall game balance, nor does it show the absolute maximum potential of any given class/path. That is also not the data used to make adjustments, wider data which includes more content and far more players is used to determine where game-wide balance is at.
There are issues with dps class balance and there are plans to address them. While I realize that hasn't happened on a time frame that either you or us would have liked it to, we are working towards getting that balance in a good place. The first goal is to make sure every class that has at least one dps paragon path, has a dps paragon path within 15% of target. The longer goal would be to have every dps class less than 10% off of target. As gear, powers, progression changes over time this will be a moving target that requires ongoing adjustments. The hope is to get it close to where it should be and then keep making minor adjustments to bring things even closer as well as to adjust for shifts from other game changes.
So where do the classes stand in our view on live currently?
Arcanist is over-performing by a decent amount
Warden is over-performing by a small amount
Assassin is currently at target
Blademaster is under-performing by a small amount
Hellbringer and Arbiter are under-performing by a decent amount
Dreadnought, Thaumaturge, Whisperknife, and Hunter are all under-performing by a significant amount
As was said before, Arcanist has some adjustments coming with M18 that will be available for testing out on preview when that happens.
Dreadnought and Hellbringer are slated for work in M19. We do have Arbiter, followed by the remaining paths as a stretch goal for the module and while hopefully we can get to them, we also want to set realistic expectations instead of calling out all of the things we'd like to get to and then following up by saying all of the things we weren't able to do.
You forgot that paladin, needs to have their damage buffed up(not saying they should be better than top dps, but 10% lower than top dps would be acceptable), so that they aren't so weak that they can't kill things in epic dungeons when the rest of the group runs ahead. Smite is the only power pallys have that does any real damage(ST), and once out of divinity it is wicked tough to maintain aggro when all other toons in the group have 30-50% more power than pallys do. I also would like to fell that other than being a punching bag, like I am actually contributing to the overall fight. Remember paladins are holy warriors, that mean kicking HAMSTER, tanking, and healing all at once. Just maybe not as effectively as a straight up healer, or straight up fighter/barbarian, but still able to hold their own.
I can tell you with no statistics, just talking to people in Alliance , zone chat, party chat- the warlocks and fighters do better than us.
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Have you tried Sharpedge's Wizard Mechanics Guide? It's a long read; however, the guide is very detailed on how you can get the most of your wizard's potential. I am not end-game by any means but this guide has pointed me in the right direction on what works and what does not for this class. Good luck and enjoy.
The reason why this thread has gone so far off topic is because people don't care about scaling / don't want it.
They do however care that their class is underperforming and or being excluded from current end game content.
I completely agree the statistics being used to gauge the gaps in DPS seem way off.
The Warlock has just recently had a rework and everybody who responded to that post said the changes did not go far enough to bridge the DPS gap. So here we sit 1 year on from mod 16 release still at the bottom of the chart, being told that a fix is another year away, with some very spurious data being thrown at us that isn't filling anybody with confidence.
You can see how important this issue is to the community by the response to this thread but I'm sure it will be addressed with the usual "we know better" and "in our own time" attitude.
I played a warlock since the game hit PS and it would still be my class of choice given the chance - I now play a rogue until such time the warlock is fixed. If the damage variance between warlock and rogue is indeed just 1.6% then trust me when I say that I would not have switched.
Do us all a favour and reduce encounter cool downs a bit for all classes this waiting for 10 to 20 seconds with at wills lark is Hamster boring.
Do us all a favour and reduce encounter cool downs a bit for all classes this waiting for 10 to 20 seconds with at wills lark is Hamster boring.
Right. This is the main issue with Hunter Rangers as well. It's almost impossible to keep up a good rotation. Wardens have large static buffs and Blade Hurricane helps filling the gaps, but Hunter buffs are more difficult to keep up and there are large rotation gaps where only unbuffed at-wills are available. Fun enough, the recovery time of encounters for Wardens is better than for Hunters (as storm's recovery is way more efficient than forestbond) even if Hunters are modeled after the old Trapper who had a basically seamless encounter rotation (same as older rangers with the Royal Guard set).
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Is the 3 NERF to wizard single target going to be compensated with increasing AoE? You destroyed the other path of the wizard giving up to the request for cw nerf. So ? Is the game better? Is anyone happy? Are you happy that you destroyed 1 paragon of a class and keep on nerfing us? 95% of the wizards ARE NOT end game by definition. Do you care to know how we do in all content but ToMM? Do you care to know how cw s do in Hell Pit comparing with the classes you considered underpowered? I can tell you with no statistics, just talking to people in Alliance , zone chat, party chat- the warlocks and fighters do better than us. M 18 comes, why do you nerf us , Mod 18 is not ToMM. DO YOU COMPENSATE US IN AOE?! God, are you people happy? .
I'm perfectly okay with buffing (or not buffing) the AoE CW, because mobs don't matter. They just don't. Not because tomm just does not have them, but in general, no content got harder by the random stacks of minion spawning around the place. Stealing damage from your teammate by the quick bursts is not actual DPS, because you wouldn't be able to maintain it if the packs would be alive more than 5 sec.
Should CW be balanced? Yes, probably not that of a big nerf as people would like it here, but Arcane Empowerment is stupid (you basically rotate through your encounters 3 times as their CD drops to like 2 sec, proccing the hell out of everything) and using it to pass Phase 2 and 4 is kind of trivialising (and a horrible balance distribution of your overall damage).
I blame AE for disruption in the statistics shown by @noworries#8859 because for a CW, it allows you with less overall damage than other classes to get better results, as you can spike it up in those crucial phases, where it actually matters.
The data shown was normalized data for ToMM runs on the PC over ~1 month. Normalized means extreme outliers were discounted to give a cleaner comparison. It does not show overall game balance, nor does it show the absolute maximum potential of any given class/path. That is also not the data used to make adjustments, wider data which includes more content and far more players is used to determine where game-wide balance is at.
So where do the classes stand in our view on live currently?
Arcanist is over-performing by a decent amount
Warden is over-performing by a small amount
Assassin is currently at target
Blademaster is under-performing by a small amount
Hellbringer and Arbiter are under-performing by a decent amount
Dreadnought, Thaumaturge, Whisperknife, and Hunter are all under-performing by a significant amount
Here is the problem with your methodology. If you were to increase across the boards the dps powers of Warden, Assassin, Blademaster etc. by 6% and then reran your parse over a month, you would end up with the exact same results as before. (i.e. Arcanist would be 3% higher than Warden, etc. etc.) Whatever our normalization method is, it's not doing what you think it is.
As others have said, you need throw out ALL failed runs.
Altering the Arcanist is probably not the correct fix either. I would leave them alone and instead improve single target damage on all the other dps classes so that they are on par with the Arcanist. TOMM has dps checks, no class needs to be lowered, rather the other classes need to be raised.
Or, from an other side: If your damage is not enough for tomm, because your class is underperforming, nerfs won't help you, but only make your potential team weaker. There won't be more classes making into the end, just less groups having success overall. So for an underperforming class, mod18 still means they won't going for tomm for the next 4 month and mod19 is pretty likely time for a new trial, so...
I don't think this can be stated strongly enough. If your not getting into TOMM now due to your class not putting out enough DPS, nerfing the Arcanist is still not going to get those classes in. If anything, it will require even more Arcanists and no carries.
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
1
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
They can't rotate 6 encounters every 3-5 seconds as far as I can see.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
They can't rotate 6 encounters every 3-5 seconds as far as I can see.
Rangers can rotate their encounters fast only if they try very hard not to do any damage.
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
They can't rotate 6 encounters every 3-5 seconds as far as I can see.
When combining ranged and melee stances yes, but maybe around 6 secs focusing in 1 stance
The story was that Mod.16 was to make it easier to balance all classes going forward.So having TOMM as the example that was given and Assassin being at the target you are wanting. Then you should be able to adjust all the other classes to match that standard. And this should be something that can be done in a much shorter time frame. Being that was what Mod. 16 was all about. Telling people it will be Mod.19 before they can expect any adjustments is sad at best. The biggest issue I have seem over the years is the lack of long term content. None of the dungeons, skirmish or the like should be put into this game without multi tiers of difficulty. This way everyone gets something new each Mod. The focus should be on going back and making everything like that in this game , just that way. Then it want matter the persons skill level they can play the ones that best suits them. So to be clear we would need two more versions of TOMM look at it like High School , College , Professional. Most will understand the difference in those skill levels. Scaling was a nice try to expand the players options but lets face it, it killed progression and has for the most part been a giant failure. Just press the K button on the key board and you will find all you need to expand on keeping this player base and you busy. You have all the data about time you start using it.
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
I think you misunderstand the point. The problem is not that a lot of encounters being spammed (okay, maybe a tiny bit), but the unhealthy nature of doing mediocre for a minute to then just burst out in the 10 second Phases.
If a class like Ranger can rotate fast in 6 seconds consistently, that's okay if the cycle is reasonable damagewise. If you have a class like Wizard, where you have 1 rotation per 10-15 sec CD's and a daily where you just throw 3 rotation in 6 seconds, that's a problem, because in burst Phases (like mobkills and ToMM Phase 2 and 4) you essentially get more credit for less work, just by the content being tailored for your style.
I don't want Arcane Empowerment to be nerfed or changed because I think wizards should be nerfed, I want it to change because it's too much too fast and if the data noworries shown is accurate, it pretty much shows that even that wizards perform better, they are even more likely to succeed as you need less potential damage to get through Phase 2 and 4 and those wizards average out the others distorting the difference in DPS downwards.
I think people have it wrong by thinking that a nerf to wizards would not open paths for other dps classes in TOMM. Think of it as a survival of the fittest. It is not that a cleric or barb are not able to complete TOMM. It is the fact that there is always a much much better alternative available aka Arcanist. Therefore, in reality, eventhough that one barb can carry its own weight in TOMM, the fact that the arcanist is doing 30% more dps than that barb would automatically mean that he is getting carried.
From that barb's perspective, why do wizards get to accuse him of being carried when he is actually playing a much more difficult class and still holding his own ground? This is where i think this game in its current state throws skill out of the window.
By all means, compensate the wizards with AOE or anything else but if wizards get a nerf, then that sure as hell will open more paths for other dps classes to participate in TOMM. Though the symptom of that would be that TOMM would just get that much harder.
So in reality, buffing other classes is a wiser choice but knowing cryptic, they wouldn't want to adjust critter health by buffing other classes so the easiest path is to nerf a wizard. But i am astonished how others don't think that this would open more paths for other dps classes to dps in TOMM.
If you thought that a barb or cleric for example didn't have the dps at BiS to complete phase 2 and 4, then you are very misinformed. But the barb and cleric would have to be astounding players . As of right now, sadly even these astounding players are not needed in TOMM because you can make a wiz alt and master the class in a week. It couldn't get more funnier than this @noworries#8859
Since there was no more interaction of Dev with the topic and the preview of the new module was postponed, will we have some changes in classes coming already in this mod?
@sobi#1980 you do understand that all the people that can finish tomm, can just... make a tomm group and do it, right? Nothing gates you away from trying.
The survival of the fittest is based on the scarcity of food/resources, but no one takes "your" spot, they just take a spot and so can you. Even heals and tanks are abundant, because there's nothing to do in this hollow shell of a mod until the end of january.
Or, from an other side: If your damage is not enough for tomm, because your class is underperforming, nerfs won't help you, but only make your potential team weaker. There won't be more classes making into the end, just less groups having success overall. So for an underperforming class, mod18 still means they won't going for tomm for the next 4 month and mod19 is pretty likely time for a new trial, so...
I don't think this can be stated strongly enough. If your not getting into TOMM now due to your class not putting out enough DPS, nerfing the Arcanist is still not going to get those classes in. If anything, it will require even more Arcanists and no carries.
Nobody is calling for Wizards to be nerfed (no doubt it will happen though because that how everything ends up getting balanced by the Devs) and I don't particularly want to be carried through Tomm by a Wizard thanks. We want our classes to be just as viable as a wizard and to be self sufficient by completing content on our own Merit.
Don't feel hard done by, you've had a good year. ;-) Try being a cleric who has been hit with nerfs for the past 6 to 7 Mods or classes here who haven't got to play Tomm because they are not wizards.
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darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,261Arc User
edited December 2019
And the universe will explode if you raise the magnitudes of some powers (single target for example) of classes that are underperforming while you adjust and balance things for mod19?
Just asking because I though when Mod16 came and the system was changed, that making minor adjustments was going to be easy, so I spected minor class balance changes each month? @noworries#8859
Yeah, something HAS TO change before Mod19 will go live!!! It is unsuitable now. Some classes have huge disadvantages and no real chance to pass ToMM without being carried. That's really frustrating. I think most people won't have a problem with a delay of Mod18 by one week, if this week is used for a big class balance...
@sobi#1980 you do understand that all the people that can finish tomm, can just... make a tomm group and do it, right? Nothing gates you away from trying.
The survival of the fittest is based on the scarcity of food/resources, but no one takes "your" spot, they just take a spot and so can you. Even heals and tanks are abundant, because there's nothing to do in this hollow shell of a mod until the end of january.
You're telling this to a dps cleric main that often plays TOMM. My guild is more or less an elitist guild and I have been on multiple occasions told that I dps really well as a DC. Alas, they still prefer a "close to skill ceiling wizard" over me. Do note, the wizad has to be good to replace me. The sole reason why i would be swapped out for another dps wizard is because that class downright out dps's me in TOMM, it is by no means that i am a bad dps cleric. That there is a issue, why then turn a blind eye over it?
They could perhaps target wizards burst and compensate with sustained dps. That brain dead daily has to be the target if so. At this point, a macro is probably the best way to play a wizard, surely you cannot out spam it.
Your argument of making your own group is downright outdated. Even amongst my guild, elitist players have swapped over to wizards to lead the raid because why would others want to be lead by a person that they can out dps? The only reason i could think off is that they are good at calling on discord but that would mean that they must first be experienced in TOMM and that is completely contradictory if your class is discriminated at the outset.
Post edited by sobi#1980 on
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
Warden Rangers can rotate 3 encounters in that time frame in a sustainable way (that's pretty much what you get from the 3 high-mag encounters with low cooldowns and storm's recovery). Hunters can do a single 6 encounters round in a few seconds (doing less damage than the Warden anyway) and then will have to wait a long time with unbuffed at-wills only
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Comments
https://guides.jannenw.info/2019/07/13/wizard-mechanics-guide-module-17/
- in umbra igitur pugnabimus!
They do however care that their class is underperforming and or being excluded from current end game content.
I completely agree the statistics being used to gauge the gaps in DPS seem way off.
The Warlock has just recently had a rework and everybody who responded to that post said the changes did not go far enough to bridge the DPS gap. So here we sit 1 year on from mod 16 release still at the bottom of the chart, being told that a fix is another year away, with some very spurious data being thrown at us that isn't filling anybody with confidence.
You can see how important this issue is to the community by the response to this thread but I'm sure it will be addressed with the usual "we know better" and "in our own time" attitude.
I played a warlock since the game hit PS and it would still be my class of choice given the chance - I now play a rogue until such time the warlock is fixed. If the damage variance between warlock and rogue is indeed just 1.6% then trust me when I say that I would not have switched.
Do us all a favour and reduce encounter cool downs a bit for all classes this waiting for 10 to 20 seconds with at wills lark is Hamster boring.
They have said Lionheart from ToMM will be the BIS for all classes for the near term which I read 2-3 Mods
Wardens have large static buffs and Blade Hurricane helps filling the gaps, but Hunter buffs are more difficult to keep up and there are large rotation gaps where only unbuffed at-wills are available. Fun enough, the recovery time of encounters for Wardens is better than for Hunters (as storm's recovery is way more efficient than forestbond) even if Hunters are modeled after the old Trapper who had a basically seamless encounter rotation (same as older rangers with the Royal Guard set).
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Should CW be balanced? Yes, probably not that of a big nerf as people would like it here, but Arcane Empowerment is stupid (you basically rotate through your encounters 3 times as their CD drops to like 2 sec, proccing the hell out of everything) and using it to pass Phase 2 and 4 is kind of trivialising (and a horrible balance distribution of your overall damage).
I blame AE for disruption in the statistics shown by @noworries#8859 because for a CW, it allows you with less overall damage than other classes to get better results, as you can spike it up in those crucial phases, where it actually matters.
As others have said, you need throw out ALL failed runs.
Altering the Arcanist is probably not the correct fix either. I would leave them alone and instead improve single target damage on all the other dps classes so that they are on par with the Arcanist. TOMM has dps checks, no class needs to be lowered, rather the other classes need to be raised.
...But ..Rangers can rotate their 6 encounters every 3-5secs with their cooldown-reduction feats. This is way worse than a daily that can happen every 2-3 mins and doesn't let u generate ap when active. And rangers' aoes are very consistent with high magnitudes. So this daily isn't the problem in my opinion.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
If a class like Ranger can rotate fast in 6 seconds consistently, that's okay if the cycle is reasonable damagewise. If you have a class like Wizard, where you have 1 rotation per 10-15 sec CD's and a daily where you just throw 3 rotation in 6 seconds, that's a problem, because in burst Phases (like mobkills and ToMM Phase 2 and 4) you essentially get more credit for less work, just by the content being tailored for your style.
I don't want Arcane Empowerment to be nerfed or changed because I think wizards should be nerfed, I want it to change because it's too much too fast and if the data noworries shown is accurate, it pretty much shows that even that wizards perform better, they are even more likely to succeed as you need less potential damage to get through Phase 2 and 4 and those wizards average out the others distorting the difference in DPS downwards.
From that barb's perspective, why do wizards get to accuse him of being carried when he is actually playing a much more difficult class and still holding his own ground? This is where i think this game in its current state throws skill out of the window.
By all means, compensate the wizards with AOE or anything else but if wizards get a nerf, then that sure as hell will open more paths for other dps classes to participate in TOMM. Though the symptom of that would be that TOMM would just get that much harder.
So in reality, buffing other classes is a wiser choice but knowing cryptic, they wouldn't want to adjust critter health by buffing other classes so the easiest path is to nerf a wizard. But i am astonished how others don't think that this would open more paths for other dps classes to dps in TOMM.
If you thought that a barb or cleric for example didn't have the dps at BiS to complete phase 2 and 4, then you are very misinformed. But the barb and cleric would have to be astounding players . As of right now, sadly even these astounding players are not needed in TOMM because you can make a wiz alt and master the class in a week. It couldn't get more funnier than this @noworries#8859
The survival of the fittest is based on the scarcity of food/resources, but no one takes "your" spot, they just take a spot and so can you. Even heals and tanks are abundant, because there's nothing to do in this hollow shell of a mod until the end of january.
Don't feel hard done by, you've had a good year. ;-) Try being a cleric who has been hit with nerfs for the past 6 to 7 Mods or classes here who haven't got to play Tomm because they are not wizards.
Just asking because I though when Mod16 came and the system was changed, that making minor adjustments was going to be easy, so I spected minor class balance changes each month? @noworries#8859
Naive me.
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They could perhaps target wizards burst and compensate with sustained dps. That brain dead daily has to be the target if so. At this point, a macro is probably the best way to play a wizard, surely you cannot out spam it.
Your argument of making your own group is downright outdated. Even amongst my guild, elitist players have swapped over to wizards to lead the raid because why would others want to be lead by a person that they can out dps? The only reason i could think off is that they are good at calling on discord but that would mean that they must first be experienced in TOMM and that is completely contradictory if your class is discriminated at the outset.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80