Any solution to the current group meta?

grimah · February 2018

I've been away from the current mod only to come back to read some of these new but baffling changes. Buffs and nerfs to CWs? Buffs to SW? Why?

I along with many others are sick of the current meta right now where 5 classes fight for a single space in a group. Sure you don't HAVE to use these setups but the large majority of players run in pugs, or run in the most optimal/safest setup. And right now I see no changes to this, and honestly it is just killing the game right now. As a GF I have no issues personally, but it just horrible to alienate a large part of the playerbase. I just hate to think what a HR/TR must run dungeons consistently.

Honestly the only way I can see the balance come back is through some nerfs. One thing is for players to pick either OP or GF as their tanks, this would only work if OPs got their buffs reduced. Buffing GFs survivability would not help at all and would just make DPS GFs even better than before. So if OP buffs got reduced, you'd want to pick either an OP for a more reliable tank vs a GF (in a pug/average player scenario). Making it more effective to take a tank + dps buffer, than both OP + GF.

But then you have an issue of all GFs going full DPS with ITF and be valued higher than other dps/buffers. A simple nerf would be to knights challenge from 100% to 70% or so, and nerf ITF a bit (-10% bonus) and put that 10% loss back into the tactician feat.

Then we would need to look at DCs but I am not expert on DCs so I can't make sound suggestions. But I feel like they need nerfs on their offensive buffs/debuffs across the board and let certain DPS classes take more of that role. Whilst a DC buff/debuffs may end up weaker, there will always be 1 party slot available to a DC (and or devo OP if that was ever buffed up)

Unfortunately I don't see much other way, buffing the DPS classes would just make things even more trivial as they are right now.

spidey · February 2018

So nerfs are the solution in your opinion?

muminekm · February 2018

Another nerf thread, yay.

>I just hate to think what a HR/TR must run dungeons consistently
I run with HR and TR more often than GWF. They're fine here. Of course there are problems that need to be addressed (look in seperate pls buff x class thread) but it's not like they cannot enter.. . Actually HR is very requested recently for 2nd dps or 1st dps and good TR are also popular

DPS GF is very strong..and very rare. It require gear, skill and best supports. People take GFs because they're copy cats. They don't even know the difference between good or bad GF. It's more like mentality issue here. But I agree that KC or 3xtheir IBS(forgot the name) is making them overpowered. But I still believe that with best gear, skill, supports pretty much every dps class can one or two phase Orcus for example.

Mod 13 nerf DC buff. If you nerf it even further..what we will be left with? It's not like we're valued as dps or healers.

BTW. I run 2xDC+OP mostly because I'm aware of my shortcomings and in different setup it's way harder(lack of survability buffs like AA, shepherds hurts if you cannot dodge in time. If i had for example dc, gf, tr,sw,cw class I would be dying all over place :P). And avg beat time for average meta team is about 25-30 min (average. Yes it's also easy to <20min but pugs rarely achieve it). If you only introduce nerfs..you want to have 40-50 min dungeon for average group?

gankdalf · February 2018

If a class can kill a boss in a few seconds, dont you think a nerf is in place? Or do you suggest to bring everyone else up so that everyone can kill the boss that fast?

Nerf or fix broken stuff with GF
Rework DC even more than on PTR, they will still be stacking two DCs.
Buff CW

I can believe they nerfed CWs Storm Spell by 30% and didn't even touch GF at all. I wonder if Mimicking encrypted the GF files since he plays that class himself?

spidey · February 2018

ejziponken said:
If a class can kill a boss in a few seconds, dont you think a nerf is in place?

No. You gave the right answer what they should do:

ejziponken said:
fix broken stuff

Bc its not the class itself. And its not the 2 DC thing alone. Its a synergie about lot of things ( like abort artefacts for example).
There are so many vids where devs can see whats goin on and therer are so many players in the community knowing whats wrong. But our devs wont listen to theese players and they wont watch any vid.
As long as the devs got no players playing this game seriously, as long they dont have any clue about all the "fancy" stuff whats going on.

nninjannoob · February 2018

"Then we would need to look at DCs but I am not expert on DCs so I can't make sound suggestions. But I feel like they need nerfs on their offensive buffs/debuffs across the board and let certain DPS classes take more of that role. Whilst a DC buff/debuffs may end up weaker, there will always be 1 party slot available to a DC (and or devo OP if that was ever buffed up)"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Am I really reading this?

spidey · February 2018

izaah1 said:
"Then we would need to look at DCs but I am not expert on DCs so I can't make sound suggestions. But I feel like they need nerfs on their offensive buffs/debuffs across the board and let certain DPS classes take more of that role. Whilst a DC buff/debuffs may end up weaker, there will always be 1 party slot available to a DC (and or devo OP if that was ever buffed up)"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Am I really reading this?

Unfortunatily...yes

spidey · February 2018

Edith...doublepost

grimah · February 2018

I'd rather not have any nerfs, but I just can't think of a better solution. Buffing the other classes up but then tweak all dungeons to make them harder? Thats just too much work

pitshade · February 2018

Until there is comprehensive rework of how +%damage buffs stack, any nerf to a particular class, DC or otherwise, will simply lead to another Buff build taking that place in the group. Since these buffs stack with each new buff, the extra damage from the previous buff is counted towards the base damage of the next buff allowing for extremely large numbers, especially when paired with attacks that have high damge themselves, like Griffon's Wrath. I don't know the full rotation, but the infamous Orcus kill certainly involved stacking Longstriders, Terrifying Insight, Soul Sight Crystal, Forgemaster's Flames, Break the Spirit, Bless (I think this Devo version of Bane) Knight's Challenge and Sharp only knows what else. There were also a lot of debuffs involved and the Bloody Death curse (Buff) supposedly has a strange interaction with those.

Until the stacking is reined in, stacking support classes and support oriented builds will be with us. Ultimately, the Devs need to rework buffs, increase DPS damage or reduce mob and Boss HP and stop pushing out the new Endgame content every mod that fuels elitism.

gromovnipljesak · February 2018

grimah said:
I'd rather not have any nerfs, but I just can't think of a better solution. Buffing the other classes up but then tweak all dungeons to make them harder? Thats just too much work

The thing is, nerfing classes is dangerous. See what happened to SW? It's a much easier process to buff classes and make harder content.

pitshade · February 2018

When Cryptic tries to make harder content, they usually just make it more complex and then players get more elitist trying to brute force it.

spidey · February 2018

grimah said:
I'd rather not have any nerfs, but I just can't think of a better solution. Buffing the other classes up but then tweak all dungeons to make them harder? Thats just too much work

Why buffing other classes? All we want is that the devs take a good look at the classes, checking the synergies, checking buffs/debuffs stacking, checking bug using etc. etc...
There are so many things Devs can do beside a nerf. So try to think not a bout nerfing any classes, try to focus whats really matter:
Balancing, bug fixes, dungeons work around etc....usual work for a dev, dont you think?

santralafax · February 2018

Hahhahaha! Time to nerf DC again. What ways shall we poke and prod them this time???

Seriously, I hate the Double DC meta, but DCs do get nerfed more than any other class--at least numerically. They can never count on a power being the same from mod to mod.

kolatmaster · February 2018

A wee bit of Devil's Advocate for @grimah as I think he is acknowledging that, generally speaking, nerfs are never really desired in the overall meta of any game. When you can, buffing is definitely the way to go (for weaker class/races/abilities/etc.). However, he views the current state of the game as there are enough High/Over Powered specs across multiple classes that any buff to the weaker ones will just make any content created/run weak sauce or negligible at best...

That's just how I read his OP, that's all.

lardeson · February 2018

i dunno tbh, with these devs its not a great deal to give them ideas, nerfs are never recommended cos then something ends up broken and at the state of the game u'd actually have to nerf all the classes to bring them to a balanced state and rework all the dungeons, numbers and alot more, its more complex than u think, i hate the fact that a tank can do so much damage but nerfing 1 or 2 classes wont balance anything, what i world like to see is them doing a reform, bringing out the old and obsolette trash that no one uses and reowork those to be at level with the state of the game, right now you have so many obsolette feats, encounters, features that worked well in mod1 but not anymore, even enchants and gear, like when new mod drop u have to move to new gear, artifacts, enchants. i would actually like these old items to be salvageable and in the process recover some of the stuff u spent on them and worse issue is they are btc so they either just go in ur bank for ages or rp.

instead of doing rinse and repeat with dungeons a proper loot system would be nice, such as: giving all range of IL above level 70 a chance to loot new mats. what i mean with this e.g. ultimate enchanting stone, let this be in tong, then after a while let it be in the top dungeons such as cn, fbi, msp, etc. to prevent exploit and ppl farming the lower dungeons cos its easier, put an IL restriction. e.g. IL 13k+ cant get Ues from cn but can get normal loot, 14k+ cant get from msp or fbi, but can get normal loot, this doesn't only help lower IL players but also helps group making, this way you aint forced to carry lower IL, which i personally dont mind but sometimes the content is just such, trying to help becomes abit out of reach. This will also help the devs to take alot more time working on the classes, testing and creating new contents rather than throwing in stuff at ur face every 3 months with 90% of the game still broken, i dont mind them take half a year release new content but they can always add minor features to keep the game going while at it e.g. temporal dungeons with certain loots, could be a seasonal, like the winfestival could have a dungeon.

4 months just simply isn't enough to fix all the broken things in this game, it needs alot more time and more active staffs, changing staffs while halfway on a project is an issue aswel, a huge one

Any solution to the current group meta?

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