Nerf class A or Buff class B- Does it matter?

My class (magician) is getting nerfed with the next patch, a nerf that is going to reduce my raid DPS by around 5% or so. It has gotten a lot of my fellow magicians in a tizzy, people are mad and angry, etc. But I was thinking about it last night as I read the cries for magicians not to be nerfed, but rather for other classes (primarily melee) to be buffed. And it got me thinking...

Why does it matter?

The goal, I think most of us can agree, is class balance. No one class should have all the cake and eat it too. No one class should be stagnated and ignored that they feel worthless and useless in game. All 16 classes should feel that they bring something to the table. And from a DPS standpoint, class balance ultimately on a raid comes down to DPS. Which is a number that can be adjusted by a nerf, or by a buff. But it seems like a nerf gets everyone riled up, whereas a buff gets everyone happy.

But why? If the ultimate goal is class balance, for equality (as much as feasibly possible), and a nerf or a buff achieved that goal... why are so many anti nerf? If (as an example) devs think a magician should be equal to a wizard, and right now the mage does 100k and the wizard does 95k then there are two choices- reduce the magician to 95k, or buff the wizard to 100k. Class balance achieved! Yet everyone loses their halfling mind if the nerf is applied.

Buffing classes w/o any changes to mobs, doesn't that make the game easier? Aren't there enough complaints already about how easy the game is, and now we want to buff players to make it even more easier?

I know I am in the minority in my class. Not that I want to be nerfed, no one does. But from a big picture zoom out, if doing this brings more class balance to the game, then so be it. I am not retiring my magician over this, and I slept pretty well last night. And I am sure in two weeks when I raid after the change (assuming it is around a 5% decrease) then I am still going to be near the top 5/10 on a parse. I just don't get why there is so much animosity over a nerf and so much love over a buff.

My 2 cents: part of the reason are the restrictions placed upon us.

• We're allowed to suggest that classes get buffed, in the name of Balance.
• We are not allowed to suggest that classes get nerfed, in the name of Balance. That's against The Rules.

This places the players in a situation where suggesting a Buff is the only thing we're allowed to say or talk about. Which doesn't feel great. But if a buff happened, -maybe- it was because of our feedback. Maybe what we said mattered to a decision-maker.

Then later, if nerfs do happen? Well, we're able to solely place the blame on DPG: because we couldn't possibly have suggested that ourselves.

The fact that most discussions between Community and Development Team are one-way doesn't help matters.

It's because:

1. Many people view themselves as their class first, and a player of the game second. So the question of whether a nerf to a class with outstanding DPS would improve the game is irrelevant, it's their class and they don't want to become weaker.
2. Many people believe that angry words on the forums has a chance to change EQ class balance. This is probably true because EQ balance is largely capricious. The latest nerf might literally be some kind of linear interpolation or curve fitting some dev did without any intent on taking down the current top DPS down a peg. The next nerf might be from a dev seeing a particularly emotional post and moving the needle some other way. Who knows!

I do agree with you though, Cicelee. I don't personally feel +/- 5% is worth getting upset about.

However...I don't treat EQ as a competitive game. But I realize many of my peers do. So it makes sense they would feel differently.

Inflating with buffs is rough because the game will never have the resources to do a squish and it's already kinda silly what the values are at

Then on the other side nerfing down just brings them closer to half the classes that shouldn't be competing with actual DPS (tanks, healers, utility classes), but are competitive or better atm anyway

I think that nerfs should be able to be called for, but it needs to be presented with some supporting documentation or evidence behind the claim.

For instance, saying "SK need nerfed because their epic is broken" is different than saying "allowing your entire group to heal themselves for 50% of every melee swing, for two out of every five minutes, has not scaled well with the current player power" and then posting heal parses.

Another example:
Mage pet damage mitigation allows for even water pets to tank with little to no healing other than from the mage, then post a video of your pet tanking 5 mobs in current content

Solo, Group, and Raid performance directly impacts player's ability to succeed or fail in the game. Nerfs should be allowed to be discussed under the same community guidelines as any other topic.

Gatekeeping class performance that previously existed upsets people.

Much the same is true for class players getting hit with the nerf bat rather than buffing others to bring them in line with the targeted class. I don't mind nerfs to my chosen class until they impact my value in a raid or group (mine cannot solo very well).

In the end this is their game, not ours. We just get the privilege of playing in it. They don't have to justify their means, but upsetting your clientele typically isn't the best way to stay in business.

Is it ever really a choice between nerfing one class and buffing another class? Using your example if the choice was nerfing mages or buffing wizards wouldn't buffing wizards also lead to needing to adjust other classes that are no longer in line with how they should compare to wizards?

Alternatively, "nerfing" mages to put them in-line with wizards (as per previous example) will lead to another disbalance - in group setting a beastlord will start surpassing a mage by a measurable value (those are about equal these days). Should beastlords also be nerfed to match proverbial wizards?
This circle will never end.
Meanwhile, as an avid mage driver I feel relived by this "nerf". Now I do not have to juggle between hotbars and macros between group spells (when number of pets is low) and raid or burn spells. I will use a universal sequence Pet-FE-Spear-OfMany-CapriciousFire and will simply not worry about pet count.
Raid dps going down a bit? Well, I think a raid will do fine without my individual 5% extra.

Beastlords take a lot more work to reach that DPS I think. Mages don't have to reposition much since pets can hold aggro over players now.

I just think if you're going to nerf a class, at least make a clear announcement that it is intentional so players aren't left wondering if it's an oversight as part of a larger change. And if you want to reduce drama, add a sentence or two on the justification behind it so players know some actual thought and discussion was put into the change.

I'm not really sure why this is a question. This is a progression-based RPG; most of the core gameplay loop is in service of making your character more powerful. Becoming less powerful is directly at odds with that gameplay/reward loop. Edit: To be clear - that does not mean a nerf is never good for the game, but it shouldn't be hard to see why players dislike them.

The premise is also flawed in that it assumes nerfs and buffs necessarily improve balance. EQ balance is materially worse than it was in CoV, and the deterioration in balance, while partially a function of "momentum" in power scaling, is also definitely a function of a number of imprudent steps taken ostensibly to improve balance (both buffs and nerfs). In other words, while some changes made sense, taken in aggregate, the set of intentional balance changes taken since CoV have had the net impact of making the game less balanced.

I actually agree with Cicelee for a change. I've never been anti-nerf and just recently got some Wizards mad for pointing out how the initial sorcerer's vengeance changes were bugged/too strong. Class balance is just as important as hard raids are to me because I like playing competitively and you can't do that if things aren't fair.

If devs are willing to give it another shot I don't see why we shouldn't support them. We can always point out when changes go too far. However, I also think players need to try harder to give better feedback that's not always so self-centered and deceptive and hopefully devs start keeping track of who gives reliable information and who doesn't.

I agree, there's really no difference.

The "real" problem, is the devs are completely clueless and out of touch with WHAT needs to be done for class balance.

Anytime you nerf a class it makes the servers where they may be soloing because there is noone to group with harder. So noone wants to be nerfed. The bigger problem I run into is trying to do old events / raids that require something and noone wants to do because it is 5 expansion old but because my class can't say unlock a door or I need to cast a spell type that I can't do so I can't solo it without creating a new toon to box with, maybe improve mercs so you can tell them to do certain things like cast a spell type that only cleric can but my main toon can't and is needed to trigger something.

I have a feeling that if you took a random dev, locked them in a room, and told them they couldn't come out until they defined class balance and the role that each class should have, none of them would ever get out.

Clerics need more dps =)

Considering numbers druids and SHM are producing these days, I agree with your statement.

I am not really convinced that the intent of the "of many" changes was even to nerf in the name of balance.

This is some speculation but It felt like:

1. It all began with swarm changes to reduce lag.
2. That resulted in a change to "of many" tiers in an effort to compensate for less pets.
3. This led into an unintended? massive nerf to the way "of many" spells worked on TLPs for the first few expansions of the "of many" line when they used to do additive damage.
4. Which led to a complete re-examination of the spell line that led to this recent change. Which, on paper does in fact look like a consistent scaling of the spells power through all expansions rather than weird power spikes and dips on the line that existed beforehand.

In theory that should be a good thing. A consistent scaling of the line makes sense. It just appeared to me when I looked at it on paper that barrage was one of those spikes (65% over shockwave) that got shaved down towards consistency (21%+/- per spell upgrade). Pure speculation.

Shock of Many Rk. III: 4926 > 15300
Jolt of Many Rk. III: 6162 > 18555
Clash of Many Rk. III: 12418 > 22504
Strike of Many Rk. III: 28218 > 27292
Salvo of Many Rk. III: 33092 > 33098
Storm of Many Rk. III: 38466 > 40139
Volley of Many Rk. III: 46650 > 48679
Shockwave of Many Rk. III: 56575 > 59035
Barrage of Many Rk. III: 93561 > 74849

Edit: it is kind of weird though because I compared the scaling of other spells for mages and other classes between the 111-115 to the 116-120 and they seems to be around +65%

It's not just the druid and shaman numbers but I think any class should out do a dps merc. I might just be really bad on my cleric though when I try to dps.