How did you silence the seven or so forumites that decide your class needs a nerf? Or put another way, how do we as DH’s make sure that they’re not listened to?
I’m curious to hear how you folks dealt with it.
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You need memes. You need a lot of them.
Memecreator is your friend.
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There are two options:
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They generally have a poor argument. Just keep debunking it, because they will generally have no follow up.
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Ignore them. Don’t engage them at all. “Let crazy shout into silence, and it goes away”.
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I agree, engaging the Nerf Squad is futile, although it can be fun if you are bored sometimes and you feel a little feisty, but remember they don’t listen to anything you have to say, ever, they will drop tons of usually meaningless charts and graphs on you, with players on them from around the world, doing exceptionally well with whatever Build it my be, with 15,000 Paragon Points and the best items Bots can buy.
In the end of all that, if there is a Nurf or even a Buff to be had, it don’t matter “diddly squat” because the Dev’s are going to do what the Dev’s are going to do, no matter what anybody says, that my friend, is just the way it is.
Good luck!
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Ignoring them is the only way. You can slap them with facts and truth, blizzard can tell them they are wrong, you can explain that two plus two does not equal tire seven thousand times, and they will still believe whatever they want. Don’t drop to their level it will only frustrate and piss you off.
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Yeah, I see what you folks are saying. Sounds like ignoring them would be best, since engaging them only bumps their “nerf thread”.
I’ll see if I can spread the word, just to ignore the thread entirely. Maybe when it’s only them bumping the thread and Blizzard sees that it’s only those seven or so folks talking to each other, then it won’t have any traction as far as how the devs think of our class.
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There is always the chance they follow into your other threads in either General or DH sections, but just treat them the same way there, if you find it works.
Let them shout into silence and hopefully they get bored.
Completely agree with the available choices as Phoenix has presented them.
While I personally choose #2 (silence) virtually all of the time, I thought I’d mention, too, that asking for nerfs is just incredibly pointless.
The reason is that the info that leads Blizz to deliver a nerf is incredibly obvious and accessible: it’s just the presence of a ton of “abnormally high” clears on the leaderboard. What “abnormally high” means changes from time to time (right now it seems to mean clearing 150). But it’s not something Blizz isn’t aware of or needs to have explained to them.
Getting buffs for builds is a different story.
We all know that when a build is powerful, a ton of people play it, and there’s plentiful data for Blizz to look at. And if they then decide that build is too powerful, maybe they’ll hand out a nerf. Again, this is not something they need to be convinced of. But a build that needs buffs is, by definition, weak. That weakness means that few (probably not zero, but few) people will be playing it. And that in turn means that there aren’t those reams of in-your-face (and recent) performance results for Blizz to consult.
A powerful build has plentiful data showing Blizz that it is -perhaps- too strong. But a weak build, as far as Blizz is concerned, presents virtually no data at all. So those weak builds need people who love them and understand their mechanics to advocate for them. Because how else would Blizz know what is or isn’t in demand?
Bottom line, asking Blizz to hand out nerfs is just kind of sad and pointless. It’s like going outside and yelling at a dark cloud, “make it rain!”
It’s going to rain eventually anyway… and if you’re a damn fool, I guess you can convince yourself you had something to do with it.
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I would add that a strong community like barbs have is very important. Even after weeks of people asking for nerfs of rend and succeeding. We hung in there and got the nerf reverted. This was thanks to the thousands of people speaking up for what they wanted. In the end blizzard gave us some of the nerf back and for the most part I believe rend is in a perfect spot. Average single target with tools to make area damage shine better then any other class and a top two speed GR build. It was #1 before GOD DH but you can have it.
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Yeah, definitely. And luckily, DH has a really strong crew, as well.
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The thing that enables the DH to clear 150 isn’t the “set is powerful” but that it’s interaction with the Missile Dampening affix is more than likely broken. Just as it’s interaction with the Waller is also more than likely broken but in the other direction.
In really high Grifts like 150, the folks are fishing for maps with two or more Missile Dampeners and 0 Wallers. When they get those Missile Dampeners, they drag them to a group of two or more other elites and in those instances, the affix acts like a conduit pylon in that Hungering Arrow pierces a lot more times than it would on other elites and the elites die incredibly quickly.
On the other hand Waller completely breaks Hungering Arrow because the arrows don’t pierce waller so elites and whites become Juggernauts because your damage is cut in half or more.
Point is, it’s not the set overperforming to get those clears but “abuse” of a broken interaction. Fix that interaction and it would completely eliminate those outlier clears of 150’s.
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Then, without directly dismissing the other side, work on those issues. Discuss the unwanted interactions that cause these outliners that in the eyes of many people seem op.
We also have the weird interaction for GoD with both valla’s and rocket storm, they should in theory not affect GoD, but to some degree they do. If you fix all those interactions it’s possible that GoD ends up too weak, but then it’s easier to fix with simple number adjustments.
What I want to say is that you shouldn’t shy away from these conversations that some do, claiming the other side is wrong and such, instead, look at what is causing these discrepancies and focus on that, bringing more attention to stuff like that will be healthier for the set in the long run. Just like the barbarians being plagued by the exploit/bug/weird interaction for R6 hota, scewing the numbers above what the build did on average, while it still isnt fixed yet, it still might be something within the realm of possibility (or they could just scrap the idea with R6 and make it into a full on charge build or whatever). In any case, it’s still worth bringing attention to.
What I dont want is nerfing without thought, and just bringing down a build without looking at the bugs it has. That’s why I appreciate the spirit barrage nerf since it left open more item/gem slots which in turn made the build tankier while still retaining a competative level of power.
So bear in mind that if blizzard brings down the nerf hammer, hope that it hits the parts that it should hit, leaving the rest of the build fairly intact, and not happen like vyr’s that needs the arguebly stronger and clunkier multielement build to work.
This is important to remember. They fixed an unintended interaction on chants wizards and look how that has turned out for wizards.
That’s the thing. The best way to fix the interaction is to remove the affix that’s the problem. But what most of us fear is that they’ll instead do something like limit the pierces Ninth Cirri Satchel allows which could, (we’d have to test it thoroughly) but could break the set because Hungering Arrow performs the best with GoD.
That’s what I fear and I’m thinking what a lot of other DH’s fear. Seeing as how it’s unlikely they’ll remove an affix from the game, we’re struggling to find a way to fix the interaction without breaking the set due to NCS being the best support item for the set. Take that away, and it’ll still possibly be better than our other sets but only slightly and wouldn’t put us on equal footing with other classes as we stand now.
Definitely agree with all of the aforementioned points.
Having a solid, knowledgeable and unified community is probably the biggest asset we have as a barb community, to come together and discuss balance, ideas and support in a constructive manner.
You would have seen this was demonstrated with the balance proposal and also the ‘revert rend nerf’ thread, where dozens and dozens of seemingly forum lurking Barbs/players took the time and effort, and joined the barb vets and regulars to post their support to reverting the nerf.
Like mentioned above, ignoring also works a charm.
The nerf squad seem to get off on players reactions, the more you give it, the more they thrive.
But sometimes responses are warranted/needed if their posts gain traction with more of the community.
It’s then when you need to come back at them and demonstrate to the audience solid facts/data and examples.
The barb community suffered from this a lot over the years, a few voices were successful in having the barb relegated the gutter cleaning role.
But, we were/are lucky to have players with a rich knowledge of the game mechanics and interactions, and these players presented their knowledge coherently and logically with examples, which are hard to argue against.
Some of these players have moved onto other game, some are still with us that are active right now.
It also helps when the nerf squad rely on data and examples from players that end up getting banned for cheating, which leaves then with no credibility and without a leg to stand on.
Just my two cents ( and more lol), and I consider myself more of an forum lurker.
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If it’s the interaction with dampeners that’s the problem, and it was unintended, the best way would be to fix that.
But, and the big if, is if they can do so, without completely breaking something else.
History has shown this may not be likely 
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Which is why it should not be ignored, having such interactions will mostly hurt the bottom end because those are rarely the people utilizing the “exploits”.
So if someone else calls for a nerf, bring them into that convo and discuss about those things. I doubt they will react negative to fixing those problems.
I need to apologize to you folks, though.
I’ve basically started a DH thread in the Barb Forums. It started out fine but I think I’ve turned it into a thread discussing our set with folks who have their own sets to play and work with.
I’m sorry about that. I think the DH’s have come to a solution of discussing what’s wrong with the set with the folks calling for a general nerf and narrowing that to a smaller but not insubstantial nerf of a specific interaction, and that’s outstanding progress as far as I can see.
Thank you all, for all your advice it is greatly appreciated.
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All good, most of us are in agreement with you.
Keep up the good fight.
Happy hunting
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I’ve mentioned this in another thread previously…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry
To send someone to Coventry is an English idiom meaning to deliberately ostracise someone. Typically, this is done by not talking to them, avoiding their company, and acting as if they no longer exist. Victims are treated as though they are completely invisible and inaudible.
So, just reply around their posts, i.e. treat their posts as if they didn’t exist.
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