Blizzard's balancing team are failing their customers

Community General Discussion
1

I’m aware that I’m not the first to post about this, and hopefully I won’t be the last, but I want to make clear how important this discussion is when faced with a subscription service like WoW. I want to preface this by saying that nerfs and tuning are fine. I have played this game since launch in 2004, and it is extremely important that over and underperforming specs are noticed and swiftly acted on to ensure the entire community can feel competitive and enjoy content like raiding, m+ and pvp without feeling burdened by the poor state of their class.

The context: I’m approaching this from the perspective of an Elemental Shaman. It was very recently calculated that the latest set of changes across this week and on reset will amount to a total 24% ST nerf, and 16% M+ nerf to Elemental’s performance.

The viewpoint: This is an absurd and baseless nerf that is not represented in ANY available data. It is a more extreme version of what we saw with Holy Palas a few weeks ago with the nerf that was reverted before release. Baseless, and confusing. Warriors and Fire Mages have experienced similar treatment, and it is simply not good enough.

The details: It is my position that since the release of TWW in particular, Blizzard’s approach to balancing specs has become completely absurd and lacks any forethought or roots in data. There are several examples of this in recent weeks, but the most egregious must be the current set of nerfs due to hit Elemental this week. I want to make clear that Elemental required tuning, but I challenge anyone to find me a data set that shows Elemental was 24% ahead of the rest of the field in ST damage.

The nerfs have more problems though. Here’s a list of issues that need to be recognised:

  • Elemental is plagued with unfixed bugs that are altering how the spec performs. These nerfs do not take those into account.

  • Elemental has just received a rework where our stat priorities entirely changed. Mastery, our once weakest stat, is now our top stat. Based on nerfs this coming Tues/Weds, haste will drop below crit, after being our top stat pre-rework. People have been taking loot from vaults, rolling need in their groups, and enchanting and gemming with their gold to meet the changing requirements of the spec. This is a ridiculous situation to be in where within the space of a week it has changed again.

  • Elemental is in a privileged position right now whereby we have a number of possibly viable specs in ST. Testing was/is ongoing and new builds were coming out for both SB and Farseer hero talent trees. The nerfs that come in hit all of these builds indiscriminately, whilst making changes that destabilise the balance between these various options. This is a fundamental step backwards from what we want; choice and agency.

  • Feedback had been comprehensively provided and rich, useful discussions were ongoing in the Elemental Discord with theorycrafters and sim-masters throughout the entire beta for 10.0.5. The fact we’re seeing such gargantuan shifts in balance now, after it went live, speaks to a lack of methodology behind closed doors.

The data: I want to preface this data by saying that I have narrowed the scope to after the lightning rod nerfs and bug fixes that have already gone through. I have also selected 90th percentile to eliminate most of the lower performing players who are still learning the new versions of the spec.

Class Spec DPS DPS Max Parses
Shaman Enhancement 1,421,380.68 1,694,020.00 324
Hunter Beast Mastery 1,379,265.29 1,537,069.55 464
Rogue Assassination 1,286,074.28 1,529,640.58 545
Shaman Elemental 1,277,188.58 1,472,666.08 463
Paladin Retribution 1,263,331.93 1,545,003.95 977
Mage Arcane 1,255,484.28 1,495,812.68 633
Hunter Survival 1,244,848.15 1,336,381.95 75
Hunter Marksmanship 1,241,314.94 1,471,754.98 281
Rogue Outlaw 1,239,908.34 1,318,408.71 43
Evoker Devastation 1,237,096.41 1,303,962.25 133
Mage Frost 1,225,072.91 1,540,801.83 312
Priest Shadow 1,222,936.64 1,355,852.40 234
Druid Feral 1,199,713.82 1,272,431.86 64
Warlock Demonology 1,169,533.41 1,291,906.84 255
Evoker Augmentation 1,157,010.26 1,314,239.12 260
Warlock Destruction 1,156,538.37 1,347,180.07 388
Warlock Affliction 1,150,669.09 1,253,818.36 195
Monk Windwalker 1,149,258.62 1,341,742.89 277
Rogue Subtlety 1,137,174.77 1,174,606.77 24
Druid Balance 1,124,118.05 1,294,433.62 444
Mage Fire 1,117,136.89 1,229,789.20 69
Demon Hunter Havoc 1,114,617.94 1,268,757.99 559
Death Knight Unholy 1,114,237.02 1,323,124.03 266
Death Knight Frost 1,103,992.78 1,357,048.09 727
Warrior Arms 1,090,868.07 1,197,544.04 124
Warrior Fury 1,054,560.06 1,226,039.68 618

Sikran Mythic data, filtered for past 24 hours at 90th percentile

Data for Nexus-Princess, as well as aggregate data across m+, paints a similar picture. We are strong, but we are not broken-strong, and we are not 24% ahead of anyone in any form of content. As it stands, we are about to not only be nerfed below the range of specs getting buffs this coming reset, but are likely to be bottom by a sizeable margin.

Summary: This is where I want to finish. A plea to the wider community to please make your voices heard over the unacceptable nature of the current levels of balance and the hotfixes/scheduled patches that are flying out with minimal QA. We have seen Holy Pala changes be reversed due to their absurdity, warriors receive week on week nerfs only to then get buffed, fire mages shoot from top to bottom to mid to low-end in the space of a month, and now, Elemental shaman are about to experience the same thing. This is not good enough. We are paying to a subscription based service to ensure high quality decisions are made with our characters and their identity in mind. It is inexcusable to so poorly treat customers with such little data and basis behind the decision making. Please join me and others in getting this message through to Blizzard.

TL:DR Elemental Shaman are about to receive an outrageous, baseless nerf to their damage that has no representation in any available data across multiple forms of content. The spec is plagued with bugs, like so many others, and the last few weeks of balancing have demonstrated an alarming, erratic and often absurd approach to nerfing and buffing classes. We are paying a subscription to ensure our product is of high quality. We should be demanding so accordingly.

Edit I have been asked to convey that the 16% M+ nerf that comes from objective number crunching does not account for the full state of the nerf that Elemental will face. Due to the nature of pack living times, Elemental will spend less proportional time in DRE or Asc, thus further reducing their overall damage. An exact number has not been landed on, and it’s difficult to pull out of current data, but the expectation is that in high M+ keys, the implications are more substantial than just a flat 16% nerf. It is very important to reflect on the necessity for high ST damage in high keys, and how this disproportionate response to our ST kit has significant implications for M+.

11 Likes
2

Blizzard have all the data.

Now this is a good point. In the past they just had to balance against arena and raiding. now throw M+ into the mix… and maybe delves+. It’s never going to be perfect, more so if you have to balance against multiple activities.

The only way they’ll get balancing right is if they homogenise the classes and no one wants that.

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If this was the case why have the nerfed warriors so much in such a short time? I think it’s clear they are doing random changes and hope it works. You wouldn’t have such drastic changes if they “had all the data”

4

Given that they have and have had pvp specific levers…

I feel the whiplash and I hate it. I hoped for fun and got a complicated mess that felt just as inflexible as before.

You MUST take Ascendance, you MUST take Stormbringer. They promised one thing and delivered a result with as little choice as before, and ignored the community saying the AOE was too powerful during PTR.

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5

Classes are to complicated to be fine tuned. We must accept the reality and start advocating for more simpler cleaner design.

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6

Everything you do is logged. They really do have all the data. Sound like they’re taking a careful approach to warriors.

Blizzard will have a goal of what each class should do. If their logs suggest something else then they’ll make changes.

In the end players will do what players do so could finds different ways to make up for the nerf leading to new nerfs.

Indeed each new talent point added makes things more complicated.

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8

While technically true, they have all the buttons and tweaks at hand yet they chose to do this. Worst thing is the fact that we’re in this rollescoaster of tuning makes me feel we’re being even more ignored than previously. We get a braindead S1 built that was overlooked, we’re given a “rework” that had plenty of data being overtly strong before hitting live, and then we get gutted afterwards.

I was hoping the initial LR nerf pointed to the direction where the upcoming nerfs (which we all knew were bound to happen) would be thoroughly considered, being careful not to exactly overkill complicated things. Boy was I wrong. We were made an example out of at a huge cost.

Thanks for nothing Blizzard.

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I think this is a disingenuous take. There is nothing to suggest they had the data when they were about to roll out a 5% nerf to holy paladins. In fact, the public outcry and reference to actual data collated on warcraft logs caused them to revert the change entirely, and then buff them, all before the tuning was released.

We’ve seen fire mage fly from bottom of the pack, to top, to mid, to back to bottom, all in the space of a month. This does not indicate solid data or indeed a deep understanding of where that data comes from. It lacks finesse or mastery of how these specs function and what makes them tick.

There is simply no data across thousands of logs in raid or M+ indicating that Ele shaman need a 24% ST nerf. This is easily accessible, readily available data, and it would be very strange indeed if Blizzard were sitting on other data so considerably out of line.

1 Like
11

Great post, it is absolutely crazy the way they are going about this - I agree we needed tuning down in M+ but the way they’re going about it is laughable.

Some specs/classes stay meta for months yet we went 3 days and even then were never top single target yet somehow that’s the thing they’re hitting the most. It is not acceptable and should be changed

12

You cant argue they have all the data without failing to realise they did no tuning until live and have now done tuning before several bugfixes.

With the announced tuning and bugfixes we are looking at losing 24% in raid single target - how could that ever be justified?

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I am pro: buff under-performing instead of nerfing over-performing. Nobody likes to be nerfed.

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‘Actual data’, where do you think that the data come from in the first place… Blizzard servers. Logging websites use the combat log . Blizzard have the actual fight data in it’s entirety.

As I said before it’s not possible to account for human behaviour so they might get it wrong, but that’s not due to lack of data. Name any competitive MMO and you’ll see tons of posts like these. Game devs are like football mangers, everyone else knows better.

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I think they have the data .the problem lies with the fact that either the q&a team is non existent or trimmed down to the extent that it is affecting the final decision making

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There is also one more thing. Most people use wowhead/icyveins builds made by so called theory-crafters.
But, are those builds actually the best?
What if initial class balance is made around actual best builds but players are not using those build and then tuning must to be made again, while actual optimal build is crying waiting for someone to use it?

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If you look at shadow priest got buffed so what is next? Nerfed within 2 weeks? I am so dead tired of devs because they have no idea what to do and it is teasing me! I dont understand why you still cant fix shadow aoe issue, it is just repeat like over and over and it never ends! Maybe time to delete shadow priest if you are good at it? I am sure you do!

PL buffed wont help you much, it is a BIG NO so what does it mean? Shadow needs completetly rework!

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Honestly, so far we see a lot of complaints based on assumptions. I understand that this, the up/down-scaling of specs, is very annoying for people who are in those high ranges where they do perform in the 90th percentiles or better.

But…statements like “i rather have them buff specs than nerf specs” is not flying either. If we only buff specs, they also have to slide the content-difficulty up. It results in the same.

In the end they have a certain goal. Every iteration of changes does, hopefully, move a spec closer to that goal. However, with the 1001 modifiers, different builds, gear, … properly balancing is not as simple as it may seem.

Bottom line…play what you LIKE to play. As even those parses in the OP show; performance doesn’t indicate everything.