Someone PLEASE explain me this Outlaw Rogue PvP nerfs...please

So outlaw and sub rogue needs a buff.

Outlaw definitely does, sub needs a nerf.

Thats your personal opinion. Worse players makes it bad. Buff it.

True actually yeah, buff it then. Buff damage, but reduce survivability. That’s how the spec should be played after all.

Bad players dont press their defensives correctly so they die easier than others. Buff it.

Fair, glad we agreed. Also make turtle 1 min divine shield that tops you, like Bac asked.

Everyone should have immunities that lasts for several hours at a time that you cant dispel. Otherwise its unbalanced for worse players.

The thing is, the instant you talk about “buff for worse players” you open every single possible argument for every single spec that is not at the top.
And then you have to force blizzard to make specs close to the same so they have all the same potential since some specs cannot be completely dumb broken when they learn the spec because certain bad players refuse to fully learn its potential.

I’ve talked about it in the letter I wrote over a month ago before I dropped the game for the season. The game is not e-sports-ready, viewer-appealing, nor properly balancable. Outside of that, balancing around R1 playstyle is not viable for the majority of the playerbase, because R1s are statistical outliers. On top of that, they will always form and play meta. There is absolutely zero reason to balance around R1 arena, because it doesn’t generate any more money than balancing around the top of the bell curve would, because the game is just not appealing and adhering to what e-sports are currently.

You want to cater to bad players which is fine.
I want blizz to actually make specs and balance it out of its potential so ppl have to actually learn their spec and not cry for buffs because they cannot or refuse to perform.

But theres ppl who blame “e-sport” for its current problem. Thats their own opinion.
My opinion is that they dont balance often enough and thats whats causing most of the issues.

I want to cater to players. The game is dead as never before, the progression system is incoherent, and the endgame PvP “checks” are virtually impermeable as well as unappealing to new players. If the game was a success in e-sports, sure, balance around the end of the bell curve. But it’s not. People don’t watch it, people don’t play it, people don’t care. As such, there is no reason whatsoever to balance around the top.

My opinion is that they dont balance often enough and thats whats causing most of the issues.

This week we got a first PvP tuning in what, 2 months, after one dps and one healer singlehandedly dominated all competitive PvP brackets. It’s not that they don’t balance enough, they don’t balance, period. Either they are specifically killing out the gamemode and there are no more devs left, or the devs are doing a really poor job at whatever they’re supposed to be doing, if they do want to keep pvp alive, or reinvigorate it.

And thats the biggest issue. They dont balance enough.

Id most likely quit if they balanced the game out of worse players perspective. Since that will be a complete circus and the most boring gameplay of all time.

It’s an over-exaggeration. You’d wanna balance around 2.1-2.4, depending on what the endgame of the gamemode would be, but certainly not around R1 territory. And by 2.1-2.4 I mean SL s2 levels of 2.1-2.4 territory, not current. The reason for that being is simple - return of percent-based rating cutoffs, and the fact that 3v3 endgame is Gladiator, and 2v2/rss endgame is 2.4/legend.

Which is most likely around 1600-1900 range if you look at it on this season.
So its not an over-exaggeration when you try to make things sound “better” than what you truly are going for.
You might truly believe that catering to worse players is the best option for the game, but you also dont understand potential dangers of doing so.

If you want perfect balancing you will need to make every spec roughly the same and have equal skill lvls in terms of playstyle. That will be extremely boring.

So remove rewards and only put it into small amount of % of players again. That will really make things better?
Or do you mean only glad/legend should be %?
How will that make more casual players want to actually play PvP?

Which is most likely around 1600-1900 range if you look at it on this season.

Yep, and that’s how it should be. There’s no reason for a full transmog set to be locked behind anything more difficult than Curve levels of gameplay. 1.8 should be curve, Glad should be CE, simple as that.

Oh I understand the dangers completely. The dangers are the meta will be less diverse, that’s literally the only thing, and considering the amount of players at the top currently, it’s just as undiversified anyway.

If you want perfect balancing

I’ve said this before, this is not possible, nor desirable, in an MMORPG game, that’S why there’s no reason to balance it as if that were the goal, which is what R1 balancing is doing.

So remove rewards and only put it into small amount of % of players again.

I’ll just redirect you to my letter at this point, since I don’t think you’ve gone through it (case you have, sorry.), it’s full of suggestions, and it could use a little reinvigoration anyway, case an imaginary PvP EU dev stumbles upon it. Kinda no point for me to state my opinions again if there’s a 12 page document of them flying around on this page.

Are you talking about ppl being able to buy boosts to 1800?
The Curve, if you talk about “skill lvls” of the individual is pretty much 1800 already. Difference is its easier to carry ppl for curve.

It would make top ppl play more most likely atleast.

I dont agree. As you said before, there will still be meta. You can never balance perfectly as you also already said so whether you like it or not, some specs will still be far easier to climb with than others. You just make it alot worse to climb for some. As it could be today when ppl dont play their spec to its potential.

Or do you want to remove every specs potential?

They balance the spec, atleast to my knowledge in PvE, based on the specs potential. And thats on every specs bis items etc.
Otherwise we would see quite some hard nerfs for certain specs.
And if you buff specs based on worse performers here, you would see massive difference for the 70%+ parsers or so.

Yes, there are specs that might get “hurt” from the individuals skill lvls.
But the way you argue is the same kind of argument ppl do about m+ to make it free. Since theres quite some ppl who want it balanced around their own skill lvls instead of wanting to get better themselves.

Ive read it and most likely forgotten parts of it.

The Curve, if you talk about “skill lvls” of the individual is pretty much 1800 already.

Yeah, it hit those levels at what, week 15? That’s roughly 10 weeks late. Remember how deflated the season was the first ± 13 weeks? You just can’t do that, people will stop playing, obviously. And since the achievements currently are not percentages but concrete numbers, no amount of mmr inflation matters if the players are not present to begin with. And yes, I’m talking about skill levels, obviously you can buy anything if you wish to pay for it.

There’s a difference between naturally misbalanced due to game design, and grossly and unreasonably disbalanced in all aspects ranging from difficulty of gameplay all the way to toolkit considerations. There’s a paragraph on that too in the letter, not gonna elaborate further as it’s pointless.

They balance the spec, atleast to my knowledge in PvE, based on the specs potential. And thats on every specs bis items etc.

There is PvP balancing. If there is PvP balancing, PvE balancing is irrelevant, as the specs are already being re-balanced specifically for the content, so the fact that they’re balancing PvE is not a counter-argument. If there were was no PvP balancing incorporated in the game, sure. But there is.

Keep in mind you’re not buffing it based on “bad performers” though. 2.1-2.4 is roughly top 95 percentile, and they are doing that in PvE as well anyway. No reason to skew the scale from 5 % to 0.1 % if it generates less money.

Thats design flaw. Not balanced flaw.

The game design of MMR in PvP is bad right.
Still dont know, even after reading part of what you wrote in your letter (again) on what your overall perfect situation would be for every spec in terms of “difficulty” since it feels to me you want to remove most of it.

Was it top 95% during shadowlands S2?
Id love to see those statistics.

I said potential. How they buff PvE with bis items could very well be close to same with PvP. But they are, to my knowledge, in both PvP and PvE, balanced around potential.

You want to remove that potential of the spec.

Which is easier in PvE to do compared to PvP.

As I said, I would love to see those statistics from SL S2.

Thats design flaw. Not balanced flaw.

Sure, so is talking about skill levels.

The game design of MMR in PvP is bad right.

This wasn’t about MMR, MMR is a different issue. Stuff like Rdrus passively healing 20 % off-global while doing endless drink resets and CC chains or DHs running rampant with half of their uptime being i-frames and damage reductions, paired up with mad mobility, very decent utility, and downright unhealable damage while freecasting is a balancing issue.

Still dont know, even after reading part of what you wrote in your letter (again) on what your overall perfect situation would be for every spec in terms of “difficulty” since it feels to me you want to remove most of it.

I’ve said that before, the amount of people that get Curve should correspond percentage-wise to 1.8, and CE should correspond percentage-wise to Gladiator.

I said potential. How they buff PvE with bis items could very well be close to same with PvP. But they are, to my knowledge, in both PvP and PvE, balanced around potential.

The potential is not creating that big a difference. If you compare, say, max ilvl PvP gear, including consistently craftable items, and then compare it to gearsets that would include PvE optimisations, you would barely get a 1-2 % performance edge, in any of the cases, so that changes nothing, we are at that point.

Which is easier in PvE to do compared to PvP.

So it being easier is now the standard that we’re taking as a justification for poor care over PvP? Well, we’ve sure as hell fallen off a big tree then.

e/

As I said, I would love to see those statistics from SL S2.

I don’t think I’ve kept track of that, but I do have a little bit of a clue; here’s some data for you:

BfA Elite-to-Gladiator ratio
S1: 56.5 %
S2: 57.5 %
S3: 35.7 %
S4: 52.4 %

SL Elite-to-Gladiator ratio
S1: 55 %
S2: 65 %
S3: 58 %
S4: 48.5 %

DF Elite-to Gladiator ratio
S1: 15.6 %
S2: 38 %
S3 (so far): 29 %

(Data calculated based on DataForAzeroth percentages provided. These numbers are relevant for the given season as the achievements are time-gated, and as such, take participation pools into consideration and provide reliable data.)

In theory, we could base it on Duelist-to-Gladiator ratio, so that we can compare it with Legion etc. as well.

Skill lvls can be based on balance flaws.
You gave the example yourself, DH isnt the hardest to play but also the strongest right now. Which means the balance is flawed for it.

Yes there are balance issues. And those are not just at the lower, middle or top. Its all of them.

Yea, just remove rewards entirely and just make it percentage and you wont have to bother about MMR/CR. MMR could even be removed at that point and ppl only face eachother based on CR.

Feral druids is a clear example of big difference between potential and bad players.
Could even be said about outlaw and sub rogues.
Then compare that to ret or arms.

Its easier because you dont have to take into account several factors like stun, cc, MS effect etc.
While you need to do that for PvP.

Thats not entirely what I asked though. I asked for the entire PvP playerbase that shows ppl from 2100+ are within the 95% (meaning only 5% are above 2100+) percentile out of every single one who played PvP. I tried to find that part myself which I couldnt.

Or I dont know what you are trying to explain on who you want to balance it around.

“You can’t nerf something because it’s only OP at high ratings” is a fallacy.

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