Ignoring the outlaw bugs that put them at the top of the DPS, the changes from last week to this week is ridiculous. Does the dev team even understand how much of an impact up to 10% can do to class balancing? Seems like we are going backwards.
They need to weekly look at logs, look at sims, look at real world values that players are monitoring ourselves and micromanage the buffs and nerfs 1-2% at a time, monitor what a single percent does, add more later if you need. But dropping these 5-10% buffs and nerfs and watching the entire DPS list go lopsided and look like a new expansions release is not good.
âThis spec is 10% lower, letâs buff half their spells 10% and nerf the top specs by 10% at the same time. Oops, we flipped the DPS tables upside down!â
Adding 1-2% to chain lightning does not mean that spell is now only 1-2% stronger, it could be less, it could be more. Changing half a classes spell values by 6% does not mean overall that class is now 3% stronger because half their spells were changed, it could end up having a 10% change overall, or even just a 1% change overall.
Changing a spell here or there by a small % at a time has an exponential effect on the overall DPS of a class, and going weekly by a small % at a time and monitoring what it does when players get their hands on it is far, FAR better than dropping 10% and doing this to the overall DPS.
Think about it, no one just uses chain lightning on its own, it has interactions with other spells that make it stronger again. You have a DH buff, an AI buff from mages, you use stormkeeper to buff it even further.
You have ascendence that affects your mastery which directly affects your spells further again, you have half a dozen spells at least that all affect how much damage your lightning spells do, 1% additional chain lightning buff on itâs own may be 1%, but when you start throwing in spells procs, CDs and trinkets, itâs no longer just 1%.
Throw in all the hero talents on top of that and who knows, which is why they do small steps and monitor it constantly.
Iâm inclined to agree with OP. Iâm all for buffs/nerfs mid season but theyâve been doing an awful job for some time. Entire percent increases hardly seem like it ever truly fixes a spec.
This argument doesnât work. Mathematically flawed.
Unless your spell adds FLAT damage, a 1% buff, is a 1% to the spell.
All those amplifiers add coefficients, a 1% buff on a chain lightning that did 100 damage and 300 damage, is still going to be 404 damage.
(1%)
How do you get more or less than that? We donât have flat damage modifiers anymore.
What youâre talking about is more about pooled sources under one name, say Atonement, but then you only buff smite, thatâs not going to be 1% on atonement because atonement consists of way more than just smite.
You canât get perfect balancing. As long as all the specs are within 10-15% of one another its not that huge of a deal (unless youâre try-harding cutting edge content because my god we canât forget about you).
Mostly seem to have happened because .5 came with a couple class reworks and that it wasnât really tested/balanced enough on release.
But overall as long as the goal is to try to keep the class more balanced I donât think bigger numbers are problematic if done well.
I would like to care a bit more about fotm rerollers/top specs getting nerfed but I donât really, as long as overall performance of classes are within 10% I think itâs fine.
They should fix bugs before throwing hotfixes that arenât needed. Several classes last week took huge hits for âovertunedâ damage that occurred due to those classes not working correctly to begin with. Also, they need to actually understand why a class is over tuned before throwing random nerfs at them.
Smaller nerfs could help with that, but actually knowing what they are doing would be ideal.
Exactly. 10% buffs are rarely an issue unless they fiddle with things like talents and set bonuses or class bugs.
Most of thier changes are in the realm of a few % overall. Many of the really big changes also come with compensation nerfs/buffs. If a class is way ahead in ST they may give that part a massive nerf but then buff thier aoe a bit. Then in the end its only a small change overall
That is why current talent system will never work. Blizzard will never achieve âbalanceâ because there are too many variables in current talent trees.
Blizzard itself never knows how a percentage will affect the overall result. Blizzard trapped itself in the trash talent system.
Totally agree, even .04% or other tiny tweaks in the background for tuning sake would be fine. Do they even need to tell us what the tweaks are? Just balance.
The worst part is that some of the performance is only under optimal conditions. My BM still did decently in keys and raid ST, but the âfat numbersâ came from how hard we scaled with PI so for them to then come down with a 5% nerf hurts.
