Nerf Thread on General

[Prokahn-1764]

Logged in just for this. Lols

@Nevalistis

There’s a few points of error for your math, MicroRNA. I’ll try my best to explain, but I’m afraid I can’t give you a full step-by-step of the formula.

We started with a list of records generated, by region, for each class. These spanned a variety of criteria. I can’t speak to the specifics, as I didn’t generate the original list myself. Only select teams at Blizzard have direct access to certain data, and I’m afraid those are not my secrets to share.

From the provided data, we adjusted the estimated actual Greater Rift level performance by either subtracting or adding to it accordingly based off of either lowering their Paragon level to 5000 or raising it (in the case of Seasonal players). Finally, we averaged each final entry across all regions to get a global number.

With your math, (1) you’re taking an aggregated snapshot far later in the Era than when we took ours (our data was from roughly early December), and (2) you only have a small slice of overall player data. You’re also (3) excluding players who aren’t within your chosen range, as well as (4) from other regions, rather than accounting for them by adjusting their performance numbers to fit that range. This is important to account for many factors, including a wide variety of skill, build differentiation, and other balance considerations like augment levels.

Those levels of averaging are incredibly important, because otherwise your data is skewed to a particular type of player. Our goal is to make sure our balance changes appeal and benefit broadly, and not to any one particular camp.

Data can be very easily manipulated to prove one thing or another by changing only one or two factors. This is part of the reason that raw Leaderboard data is often very misleading and shouldn’t be taken in a vacuum. It’s easy to say one class is over-performing and supply information by excluding any number of details to prove it. Any data analyst will tell you that taking as much data as possible is the best way to get the closest absolute “truth,” and the Leaderboards really don’t provide enough on their own to give the full picture since they only ever represent the highest level of play. Imposing too many filters will always produce a biased result, and so must be used judiciously.

The table I provided in that blog isn’t the only one we looked at, or will look at. It’s meant as an illustrative example, not a representation of cold, hard truth.

Well that is what 1 millionth time that we said “I told you so”

lol

How they balance you say still. They came to their senses and decided to consider not the top pushes but pushes in the median range. Similar to what I suggested in the past. And apparently that post still applies to them.

@Prokahn-1764

Disclaimer: Contains sarcastic language for comical purposes.

Ok, all you balance and table lovers out there. I went out of my way to show something so obvious with charts and tables. Apparently nerfing for the sake of balance seems fine from the perspective of these people. So here is my proposition:

I looked at my Era 11 analysis and collated all the clears together and calculated the normal distributions and means of all the clears along with all 7000 people’s clears. Those poor souls, 60-70% of them will not even pass 120. What a shame.

Here is a table of the averages

Class	Mean Grift	Average Paragon
Barbarian	110	2574
Wizard	124	3901
Necromancer	108	3513
Monk	109	2932
Demon Hunter	120	4083
Crusader	114	3437
Witch Doctor	113	2896
7000 Players	114	3319

Now if this is not clear enough, the normal distribution of those clears. There you will see a big, thick red line. That is the distribution of the 7000 clears of all players across all classes. This graph tells you that if you want to consistently solo 120s, go with demon hunter and if you want to consistently clear +124, go with Wizard. These have the highest probability for clearing these levels. How about the other loser classes? Their probability for clearing at this GR range is close to zero. Why would you use swords while you could shoot arrows and lightning and stuff. Pffffff.

Action packed quality game experience, very nice. .

Here is the cumulative normal distribution chart:

Note: The Y axis shows the % of players clearing the designated GR levels and below on X axis. For example if you look at 120 GR level:

• About 83% of all the players playing the game is below 120.
• 99% of all the barbarian and monk clears are below 120 GR
• 88% of all the crusader clears are below 120 GR
• 50% of all the demon hunter clears are below 120 GR
• 0% of all the wizard clears are below 120 GR (none)
• On the other hand, the players clearing 125 and above are equal and less than 1% of the whole player base. And yet, why balance considering the very minority of the 1% group and their top clearing potential? This is illogical .

I guess this perspective is good enough to express the problem smirking here: either Demon Hunters and Wizards must be nerfed to oblivion or all the rest of the classes must be buffed sky high to match Wizards

Take a very good and deep look at these charts and you will see two nasty outliers, I mean not imaginary but factual outliers: Wizards and Demon Hunters. Look at those, look closely. If necessary zoom in, pinch your eyes and try to come up with some imaginary fiction. Nada. These two classes must be nerfed to oblivion for the sake of holy balance.

Now lets be the torchlight of balance and bring justice and equality to this land and Let’s balance the classes according to the red line where all the common peasants exist:

Class	Ave. Paragon	Ave. Bld. Nerf (-GR)	Ave. Bld. Buff (+GR)	Top Bld. Nerf	Top Bld. Buff	Nerfed Dmg	Buffed Dmg
Wizards	3901	-10 GR	x	x	x	-80%	x
Demon Hunters	4083	-6 GR	x	x	x	-61%	x
Crusaders	3437	0 GR	0 GR	x	x	0%	0%
Witch Doctors	2896	x	+1 GR	x	x	x	+17%
Barbarians	2574	x	+4 GR	x	x	x	+87%
Monks	2932	x	+5 GR	x	x	x	+119%
Necromancers	3513	x	+6 GR	-8 GR	x	-72%	+156%

Note that I am not suggesting definite buff nerf values here. These values are flawed as different GRs cannot be compared in this manner. For this you have to refer to my other serious analysis post that is not this one. This is pure statistics and sarcasm

Note these are average buff and nerf values. Some passive agressive classes have weird builds that magically clears very high (140s) and at the same time with a very wide normal distribution curve. This is the manifestation of a poorly designed class with their over powered long cooldown skills that has less reliability compared to the in your face kind of attacks. So higher risk with higher returns kind of a slot machine to be precise ( I mean Necromancer). So for the sake of holy balance their top builds must be nerfed to oblivions’ side walls or their mechanics need to be fixed properly to address that weird distribution.

On the other hand, look at the distribution curves of Wizards and Demon hunters, they are like Rambo’s commando blade sticking around 120s and 125s.

Now, what happens if we apply the resulting holy balance, see below.

Holy mother of Jesus, " balance ". B A L A N C E . Even Anakin Skywalker could not bring balance initially but we can bring balance at around 114 GR level in this 7 years old game. Omg such a big achievement. World is safe now.

Now I am coming to those WW Rend barb OP OMG teen wave groups:

• Even though WW barb were OP, which is not, it is not going to elevate the whole barbarian curve to wizard levels.
• As you know, barbarian players are the only cool guys in these forums so they like to play more than 1 build.
• To be precise we have many stickied main builds as you might observe on the main page of barbs. So just WW is not going to shift the whole power curve.
• You don’t have to worry for losing your top DPS spot, so calm your horses.
• No one will want WW barb as DPS because if you ever played a WW barb with Rend and AD, you would know that at 130s the moment you rend, it can cause severe lag like bending space and time and it feels like you just entered a black hole. Your PC will stop and you will have plenty of time to think of your life choices.

So end of discussion. WW Rend is where it should be. Any further discussion bears no fruit as your trolling attempts are too obvious. But who are we kidding, devs will probably be affected by your kind as they were in the past examples. So…

*Update: Yep, they nerfed the WWrend barb

“B A L A N C E”