Nerf Thread on General

[MicroRNA-1507]

@Free-1746

Folks so obsessed with “balance” (hint: that’s not what they’re actually obsessed with) that as soon as Barb is strong, they want it nerfed.

Where were they when Barbs were trailing behind all other classes? Where were they every time we collectively asked for buffs?

Oh, that’s right. It’s not really about balance. It’s about controlling how others have fun with the game and dictating how that fun is doled out. It’s about seeing a class excel when they don’t think that’s the class that should excel. It’s about getting attention when they see a community effectively mobilize.

I do not know the post histories of others in that thread in detail; however, I do know my own. First, I have a longstanding history of asking for balance, both nerfs and buffs. I already provided multiple links to prior posts to demonstrate this fact. Many of these are on the new forum. Here are a couple examples from August:

@MicroRNA-1507

You do know, if I were the developer, I would buff barbs and monks (and nerf wizards). By doing that everyone would be within 4 greater rifts rather than the current spread of 12. Sometimes it is easier to nerf an outlier than buff 6 classes.

@MicroRNA-1507

I’m in favor of nerfing wizards by 3 greater rifts in combination of buffing barbs and monks. If this happened the current 12 grift difference in solo would be ~4. This is not perfect but seems pretty reasonable.

Here is a quote about nerfing crusaders:

@MicroRNA-1507

I am surprised that you did not mention AoV crusader in your 4 points. You may want to add point #5 about nerfing this build.

In addition, I was one of the people who expressed strong reservations about bazooka after is initial discovery on the forum. Here is a post I wrote in July:

Fix the bazooka please

You are missing a key point. Blizzard explicitly stated that they would revisit this build if it killed build diversity. Simple inspection of the leaderboard proves that this is the case. Given this fact in combination with the widespread use of macros to run this build, this build should be nerfed. Killing build diversity should be a death blow in of itself that is exacerbated further by the frequency of cheaters who play this build.

I also have historically advocated for nerfs to other OP classes and buffs to weak classes. Many of these were in the old forum so I can not link them anymore.

Is there a reason that you had not noticed my posts on the old forum where I advocated for game balance. I strongly suspect that it is related to observational bias. In the old forum, I had ~2000 post, but only 2 were in the barbarian forum. In contrast, you had thousands of post but the vast majority were in the barbarian forum. Prior to the new forum, I did not have a sense of your post history as I visited primarily general discussion while your posts were in the barb forum. Since you have never commented on my posts in the old form, I assume that you do not know them in as much detail as I know them.

Given these documented posts, I think it is fair to say that I have a long-term passion for game balance that is class agnostic. In addition, I asked for barbarian buffs.

The following quote is from ~Why People Ignore Facts | Psychology Today

"Our ability to reason did not develop simply to help us find the truth. Instead, reasoning evolved to fulfill fundamentally social functions, like cooperating in large groups and communicating with others.

This is one of the arguments advanced in “The Enigma of Reason,” a book by cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. According to their theory of reasoning, reason’s primary strengths are justifying beliefs we already believe in and making arguments to convince others. While this kind of reasoning helps us cooperate in a social environment, it does not make us particularly good at truth-seeking. It also makes us fall prey to a number of cognitive biases, like confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for information that confirms what we already believe. "

We all fall victim of “motivated reasoning” and confirmation bias. In these cases with respect to a certain false belief, people ignore facts, seek additional arguments to support their false belief, respond emotional (often resorting to name-calling), and seek comfort and affirmation in like-minded individuals. “Adam Ruins Everything” is clearly illustrative of people’s misperceptions.