Chiming in to say I completely agree with Ulma in the OP. He’s not just one of the best players on the NA server, he’s a good clan mate and very knowledgeable about the game.
Also:
Yeah, at the risk of sounding corny, I think the sort of comment Pro made is meant as a lighthearted greeting, a joke. It’s also about how we try to build a community culture. The Barb community doesn’t just have long-absent experts like most class forums. Instead, we have an active roster of experts of different builds, and what’s more, we also constantly bring up new experts. We work with international posters to translate build guides and share knowledge. We archive our clears and videos, and we provide general new player resources. So, calling someone “new blood” also means that we hope to see that person stick around, learn from us, and grow into an expert that likewise contributes to the community.
I guess what I’m saying is that we do a lot for the the community, whether they’re Barbs or not. And like any community that gets a lot of the same questions, we sometimes experience a little burn out. Sure, we’ve occasionally gotten snippy, and sure, we’ve occasionally snapped at folk. I’m guilty of it as well. But we’re human, and I’m confident the good we do far, far, far outweighs nitpicking our flaws.
Maybe a better way to put it is this: In the end, I think we have fewer flaws than most game communities, and we do far more for the community than most. We don’t tolerate misinformation, and we’re quick to roast trolls. We have zero patience for people who stubbornly refuse to listen to good advice and/or learn game mechanics. We also have endless patience for new players who listen, learn, and want to grow.
I, for one, am proud to be a member of the Barb community. And I’m extra proud of all the Barbs who have stood in support of buffs.
I also have to admit, being a professor, the way I speak and write has been altered in academic environment. It can potentially sound like superiority etc. However this is due to the academic writing style and it changed how we communicate.
Positions 2 and 3 can neither be proved or disproved. Way to take a firm stance.
As for position 1:
It can be inferred that your stance is that Devs know what they are doing, are using the data appropriately, and don’t ever make mistakes.
How many game breaking bugs were identified in PTR and still made it live?
How many nerfs applied after PTR testing, with no further testing on PTR, went live and under performed?
How many overpowered builds went live after PTR testing showed them to be over performing and then had to be nerfed later? Additionally, how many builds received buffs without further testing and went live and over performed?
These are all rhetorical questions, because all of the situations have occurred in high frequency throughout the years.
Why should players accept these faults?
The biggest problem that occurs in the PTR is that the devs make changes and don’t let the players test those changes before the patch goes live which all too often results in over powered and under powered builds going live. Many of these instances could have been prevented if the players were allowed to test the changes in the course of the PTR. Isn’t that why we have a PTR???
If the Rend changes go as is from the PTR, you could potentially have 6 of the 7 classes being capable of clearing 140+, maybe even 142+ depending on Crusader and Barbarian. This would bring a lot of class balance to the game. This would mean the developers would just need to buff Monks for 2.6.8, and after that, any new content or changes to any class and to any build would have specific benchmarks for comparison.
But because all of the Barbarian haters like MicroRNA made dozens of accounts and dozens of threads saying Barbarians were too OP, we’re stuck at square 1. Instead of using actual GR potential, Barb haters made up fictitious numbers and said Barbarians would be too OP and would be an outlier.
I agree that Ulma is 100% correct is in this thread. But I don’t think I’m interpreting the original post the way everyone else is.
What I got out of the original post can be summed up in 1 line: “There’s a clear level of bias in people calling Barb to be nerfed.”
The rest of the post is information that supports this conclusion. If this is the case, then all I did in my reply was present 4 reasons why this bias might exists.
So here’s the real question: why do you think the developers nerfed Lamentation?
First Case: If you think the developers weren’t biased then no amount of threads saying Barbs were too OP would have mattered, then the developers made the nerf decision based on something else other than troll posts.
2nd Case: If you think the reason for the nerf was because the developers were listening to biased opinions, then developers would have to be biased too.
If it’s the 2nd case, then perhaps the developers were biased for the same reasons in my first reply.
Or the 3rd case which Shark presents: The developers aren’t perfect and mistakes get made. If that’s the case, the mistake happens in the conclusions they draw from their data analysis and not because of misinformation from “barb haters”
Wow a 10k barb cleared GR140.
Meanwhile 10k Bazooka Wiz is closing in on GR150:
https ://www.bilibili.com/video/av74493064 (delete the space)
Missing just seconds to kill the boss sitting on atleast !!!x5!!! the barbs damage in solo. Not even to mention the x20ish it has over barb in group play!
But sure barb needs a nerf to be back at GR133…
Who knows man. Everyone has bias to some degree or in the devs case maybe being too cautious. Doesn’t help when people spread misinformation and are out right making threads calling for nerfs. The people doing these things were coming from a place of pettiness, you would think the devs would see through it but who knows.
Whatever the case the removal of the multiplier seems to be a knee jerk reaction, given the significance of the nerf. If you are going to nuke a build by that much you would think you would release a PTR patch and let players test it. If it was merely a reduction of the multiplier, which would still upset some, additional testing would not have been necessary. I just can’t imagine the thought process that went on, it was a complete gutting of the build.
This is what leads people to believe that the devs were influenced by the nerf barb bias. The magnitude of the nerf seemed uncalled for and they didn’t give us a chance to test after such a significant change. So it seems like something alarmed them. From what I tested the WW/rend was very strong, didn’t seem OP, but if they felt there was a chance for it being an outlier…a reduction in the multiplier would have been a more appropriate course of action and a complete removal seemed unjustified.
I agree the devs have bias for being cautious. This time, it’s probably a reaction from their last minute Chantodo attack speed buff in 2.6.5. They added the buff after PTR concluded. They overbuffed Chantodos and they now have to nerf it - basically, their numbers analysis didn’t pan out the way they expected it. So now they’re just playing conservative with Rend.
The devs could have minimized the backlash if they were more transparent about which build should reach which GR level.
Don Vu posted this 2 years ago:
" We don’t just look at the Greater Rift level and time cleared. We look at paragon, legendary gems, augments, stats – just a whole slew of data from our Business Intelligence team – and do internal tests of our own. We have a target Greater Rift level with specific paragon, legendary gems, augments, stats, etc. derived from the top clears on Live and PTR and we try to hit that target by tweaking changes over the course of the PTR. Some of the reasons why you saw some specs get buffed, then nerfed, then buffed, then nerf again are because sometimes we don’t hit our target"
The Devs buffed HoTA, Slam and WW. Everyone assumed that since WW got the best buff, that WW was the build the Devs intended to be the solo push build. They nerfed it so it doesn’t seem like the Devs meant WW to be used for solo push.
So which build do the Devs want to be the push build? That’s the answer I want to hear from devs. What’s the point in buffing 3 builds and not making at least one of them competitive?
And still the toxicity. I still stand by my premise that the people like you are what makes barbs unlikeable. And all the call for nerfs are caused by people like you.
And it will happen forever. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
I wrote this in an earlier reply -
My proposition is this:
If (and that’s a monumental if) the developers were biased, then they didn’t nerf based on troll numbers, they nerfed because they like the trolls more than they like barbs.
So your own answer with your own quotes. They do look at the top clears and they do tend to balance considering the top. Therefore, if a 10000 barb clears say 140 and at that time wiz was doing what 143-145? They may nerf the barb. Now the situation is Wiz is actually about to clear 150. Add their nerf they are capable of 147 on top.
Where does the 7GR nerf to barb leaves? In the dust. ONCE again
As we claim multiple times, balancing around the top clears (1% of the playerbase), leave the average players (99% of the player base) in an extremely unbalanced state. Buff numbers must be set using average numbers instead of the top clears. Top clears tend to show erroneous behaviour, which underestimates the buff levels for average playerbase.
There’s this assumption that WW was meant to be the top barb build because it got the highest buff. You don’t know that because developers didn’t say.
Maybe the mistake wasn’t nerfing WW because that’s what they intended. Maybe they meant one of the other builds was to be the solo push build and those weren’t buffed enough.
Basically all the backlash about the nerf is based on 1 assumption: WW was meant to be the competitive build.
So much BS. You must be a Flat Earth enthusiast, right? That would explain writing so much crap in so little characters.
While you are at it, bring your tables too. Microfool will enjoy hitting his head against a wall with a friend, he has been lonely for too much time now.
Right?
I personally don’t think they are stupid. We can’t really know what really happened, can we? We can only guess. My guess is: since D3 has been deemed as some kind of “failure to fulfill the Diablo Community expecations” so to speak, due to several years avalanches of criticism of the community, I think the devs do not test the changes enough. The games has been in maintenance mode for some time now, and the few changes we get from time from time (in the last 3 years) always feel incomplete, not enough, or full of weird sh!t like wall charging + Traveller’s Pledge power build up, attack speed snapshot with pain enhancer, bug pack and all that crap.
I f you barbs don’t like the argument of a 10k para cleaning a 140, don’t use a macro wiz build almost cleaning a 150GR as an example.
Bazooka is a toxic build and chantodos is being nerfed. We wizards are sad too.
Are you disagreeing about whether certain people don’t like the Barb community or are you disagreeing to my speculation as to why? If you disagree that certain people don’t like the Barb community then there wouldn’t be people trolling Barbs.
If you agree that there are certain people who don’t like barbs, but my speculation is wrong, maybe you can enlightenment me on why you think those certain people don’t like barbs.
No we can’t. Either the developers were biased because of the trolls or they weren’t.
If they were baised, then my proposition as I’ve said earlier stands -
If the developers aren’t biased, then no amount of troll posts would have any influence on the developers decisions.
If that’s the case, then presenting counter numbers to troll numbers doesn’t seem like the most effective solution. The solution would be more threads about longer PTR and better PTR methodology and less about how the trolls are wrong.
The problem is lack transparency. We never get to know how changes and nerfs have to be so drastic. All we know is based on patterns that have been repeated over the years:
1- Devs buff certain skill or set
2- trolls and competitive cross-class fanatic players whine in the forums saying it is too much
3- nerfs come and they come hard.
That could explain the “biased devs” theory, but I like to believe it is not due to Dev not liking the barb community as a whole. This is rather absurd. It sounds more of -as I said before- lack of proper testing.
