We have a few things on our radar as potential PVP balance issues we could change. We have decided if we are going to make changes, we would reserve them for after the first weekend of Swiss Tournaments. This thread is a place to post your opinions, and to have discussions on this balance. To lead off the discussion, I thought I'd tell you our general assessment of the current state of the balance. We have noticed the meta-game on the Europe Low Level ladders, and those on the US Low Level Ladders were quite different, but seem to be becoming closer. The builds dominant in Blitz seem slightly different again. We have received contradictory feedback about all common forms of build, which usually suggests things are in a pretty good place. One of the things we like to pay attention to is builds that have some dominance in mid-tier play, but are very unfun to play against. We have had several philosophical discussions in the office about whether we should only balance for the top tier, or more generally. In general we fall in favour of focussing on the competitive side. When a skill is less fun to play against, we tend to feel its more important to attack builds that start to become more dominant in the mid tiers. Puncture-Trap builds are very common on the US ladder, and are gaining popularity in the EU queues also. If we look only at the top ranked players it seems to have a reasonably fair distribution. If we look below the very top ranks, mid to high mid-tiers, it is very dominant. If this is also reflected in the Swiss tournaments, or this dominance starts to be reflected in the top tier of play then we are highly likely to make a change to this skill. For similar reasons Heavy Strike is being looked at, however it is less of an issue than the Puncture-Trap builds. High level play is much harder to assess. There are a couple of strong spell builds. We know players want spell builds to feature in PVP, but we have received comments on specific ones when they start to be very effective. It can be hard to assess where these builds sit, as part of their success is tied to gear and play. We are, however keeping a good eye on how they perform. Enjoy the Swiss tournaments! Feel free to post your predictions for the Swiss torunaments.

Balancing Mid Tier vs Top Tier



Like in most competitive (esports) games, the Top level of competitive play is key to the success of the scene as a whole. If top level balance is not fine tuned because the priority was balancing mid tier, then the top guys will stop playing and as the mid tier players reach a higher skill level, they will encounter a contradicting balance to what they were experiencing in mid tier play. Furthermore, mid level players often ask "experts" for help by asking competitive players for tips, watching videos of tournaments or even reading build threads. This means that if the top level scene is not there, the mid scene will not follow through as it has no one to look at above them, nor a goal to reach (be as good as "them"). In essence, the competitive minority fuels the excitement and determination of the mid level and therefore should be prioritized for any balance decision. I am not against decisions that help mid level without affecting top level, but realistically I don't think that is ever the case.



Bows Everywhere



This is a non-issue. Yes bow users are found everywhere in events lately, but this isn't a problem nor does it show a lack of variety. A lot of players will categorize "bows" in one build when reality we are seeing a ton of diversity within this class. Ice shot, Burning Arrow, Puncture/Tornado, Explosive Arrow, Poison Arrow; just to name a few. Puncture Trappers are actually at the best balance ever. They are very manageable and can barely keep up with a top 5 position (at least in Blitz, we'll see in Swiss). They do good damage but not over-powered damage. Their traps can be broken after 2.5 seconds and they struggle against RT/Stun/High Evasion Rating Enemy/Resistance towards Curses & EE. If players are truly complaining that bow puncture traps are everywhere, this may be because of other reasons like: They are easy to make, They were in vogue last season, There is a lack of build diversity in non-bow builds. The latter is not true although still some gems are unusable or clearly sub-par.



Balance Issues



A few notable issues include Firestorm, Elemental Equilibrium and Kinectic Blast. I am 100% in favor of builds that dominant one mode of play but are sub-par in others. However Firestorm is currently winning 1v1 Blitz, Team Blitz and No-Party Blitz quite easily. This is because adding the Stun gem to firestorm gives perma-stun to anyone without stun immunity. Usually Stunning someone rhymes with dealing a big hit but Firestorm can manage to stun a player long enough for another ball to mini stun once again, creating an infinite chain that is hard to get out of. Add to this the Temp Chains on hit effect and you are creating a wormhole that covers a fullscreen and will not allow anything to get out of it. The solution seems obvious: Wear a Chayula. Unfortunately Chayula's dont solve everything. I'd like to remind everyone that the firestorm's damage is high too and the temp chains can still be annoying. Furthermore, the cast speed achieveable combined with the large AoE of the skill allows for quickly covering large portions of the map, forcing a player to enter the storm in order to damage the caster within it. This means the attacker has reduced life and damage due to Chayula, is taking heavy damage as he travels within the storm and is forced to use a curse immunity flask at least if not also a Health flask to approach the player. These are exceptionally high costs that the Caster will gladly trade with as he can then take you down, smokemine away or run with a quicksilver. This can be and has been done in 1v1. But in 3v3, the havoc it causes it unprecendented. Speaking of 3v3 unbalance, Kinetic blast is currently able to one shot players by getting a hit off a wall (similar to EA builds). They usually only have 500 hp but their kinectic blast allows them to one shot while maintaining high attack speed too. I have personally experienced an instant kill of me and my entire team at the start of a round in a small map where kinectic can fire across the full length. I was extremely pleased to see a brand new build immerge, that was exclusively intended for 3v3s, but considering more things that 1 shot have been removed in LLD, this feels quite broken.



Elemental Equilibrium



The keystone needs to be nerfed in pvp. This can be done without affecting pve by mentioning that it's effects are 50% less effective against Players. The reason for this is because it is extremely hard to overcap certain builds for curses, let alone EE which cannot be dispelled. In High Level PVP, in order to stay at 75% resists from a Dual Curse + EE combo (with high gems and quality), you need 232% for all three resistances. Please note that applying EE and the curses can all be done offscreen using a bow for example.



Knockback



One of my goals when visiting NZ to help out with PVP was make Knockback immunity more accessible. This was because Heavy Strike was not only a hard hitting skill that can stun very well, but it also has 100% knockback and causes what is known as Knockback Lock. Knockback Lock happens when a player knocks you back, sending you in the knockback animation. But before the player can end the animation, the player gets knockedback again. Combining 100% knockback with fast enough attackspeed creates an infinite loop that locks you into this form of "stun". To avoid knockback, a player needs to craft 50% knockback avoidance on gloves or corrupt boots for 100% knockback. During my visit, I suggested making a unique, similar to Chayula, whose purpose is to allow players to swap on a Cannot Be Knockedback unique when facing a heavy striker. This is a useful tool to have until you acquire the boots and liberate the slot. Chayula uses the same purpose for stuns.



Other Issues



Stunning should be made possible through using Stun Gem + Stun belt/gear or even passives. Currently stunning is a bit too easy without much cost (only requires a gem that has no mana multiplier).

The nerf to Clever Construction to 2.5 seconds was done because of Traps. However that change affects Remote Mine in HLD which is weird because Remote Mine was already quite easy to counter whereas now with 2.5 seconds it is almost too easy.







I'll gladly update my post or make a new one after Swiss. Currently the only events we have are Blitz (which is fun but gets boring when the meta is exclusively about rushing). Swiss will help create different metas and playstyles but it only happens once a week. IGN: @GreenDude Last edited by GreenDude on Feb 19, 2015, 6:39:54 AM