The thing you get with top players is consistency. When you're trying to balance things, consistency is key. Having people who randomly mash buttons is not a good way of gauging potential. They should definitely be taking everything into consideration, but if you balance it around the middle, it will get vastly unbalanced at the top end. Ideally you want a low barrier of entry, but a high skill cap, but unfortunately in the real world that is incredibly difficult to do.
I've grouped with a few wizzys that hit similar bad numbers consistently. If your consistent in your button mashing you'll get consistent numbers bad or good. and I wasn't suggestion balance it in the middle per say but around "above average" players instead of elite.
Why though, if you balanace around the "elite" it'll be balanced at the top end and the average or bad players will still parse average or bad relative to where they should be on the class.
I think the more data you have to go by the better off you are at seeing the big picture. What if the ratio of difference between T1 DPS class 1 elite player and above average player is far greater than T2 DPS class 1 elite/average player. You see the T2 elite player needs to have the DPS boosted. That happens. Now in 99% of cases the T2 DPS class is outdoing the T1 DPS class except in that one case because one dude has a unique godly understanding. Or lets say you have things balanced (i know a joke) and everything is fine until some dirge comes and joins your guild and figures out a way to out DPS your wizzys. Should all dirges be nerfed because one a unique case?
I'll play devil's advocate on this one. I don't really disagree with your assertion, but it isn't quite as simple. By balancing to the top end, you are balancing around players at a gear/itemization level that is not representative of the whole. Here is an example of what *could* happen by doing that. It may be true that the top sorcerers are able to get 25% cast speed and re-use speed by having access to the best contested gear in game. Now if sorcerer dps is balanced with predators based upon 25% cast/reuse speed that might never be possible for lower tier players to accomplish as the gear with these stats are not available to them, yet plenty of lower tier gear exists for pred's with the stats that are more relevant for their dps production, top tier sorcs and preds might be balanced, but would never be balanced for average players. The same being said, if you balanced around the middle, the gap at the top would be stupid high. In that scenario, you could perform a balance pass that is only relevant to the top tier player base that will never translate to other players. I've see this consistently happen in this game in the past where classes were balanced with contested/avatar gear in mind that simply never applied to all players in a meaningful way. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, but you simply can not try to balance classes without considering how itemization can play a factor and there can be a significant difference in itemization available to top tier players vs average players. The truth is, a well balanced game in both mechanics and itemization turns into a very flat game with very boring acceleration curves. The reality is, a homogeneous balanced system tends to be a boring system.
you explained what I was trying to say well... and the main point I'm getting at is balance is a myth, at some point there is going to be imbalance, So where should the balance be?
Right now, my gear is garbage and I only have like 2 pieces that not everyone can get, and I get it. I also just don't understand why people wouldn't want to work toward the cap of their character. I don't mean spending hours and hours, I just mean learnign which buttons to hit and when. It took me about 10 minutes after betraying to figure out the efficiency of my spells and when I should hit what depending on the fight and how many mobs. If you can do averages and division then you can do it. The average warlock for example... does like 900-1.3k.. thats a big difference at this level. If I'm doing lets say 1700 on a single target, and you balance around the 900... I'm going to start outparsing wizards and assassins instead of just being close to them. Then you get casual assassins who aren't very good... and it just goes around and around.. I'd say on Fallen Gate you have as close to a number of raiders who want to succeed and casuals as you'd ever get. Warlocks can already be within 50 or so of the top on single.. but so many people parse low on them where it just... you know what, as i'm typing i realized the futility of it. Nevermind
My opinion? You balance classes and mechanics very evenly, then you use itemization design to keep that pendulum swinging around between various classes by what caps and over cap bonuses you make available at any given time. To do that, you don't even look at what top or average players are doing, you can do that with just spreadsheets of data. But that requires an extremely smart and well managed itemization effort to make it work.
They tried that on live. DIdn't go very well either. As I was typing before I realized it isn't worth worrying about in this game. It won't happen.
I 100% agree, but academic never relevant discussions are my life I believe it didn't work as that itemization simply wasn't done very smartly. It is an extremely complex system to manage and if your itemization person doesn't fully understand the mechanics it runs on, the results will not be stable.
I think going by itemization with 26 different classes would be a nightmare. Maybe in a game with like 8
Balancing 26 classes will be an nightmare any way you slice it though. There is no way you can separate itemization from mechanics unless you make one of them extremely bland and remove all differentiation from the system.
We want good itemization, atm though you can tell (with similar gear that everyone has) but some classes themselves are clearly not in the right place. I mean I have some of the worst gear in the raid
Depends on the fight. My point was more that with having the worst gear in raids.. Its still close to the same gear.
I'm with ya on that though, and that is primarily due to poorly itemized caster gear. Or maybe I'm just a really bad player and do not see the benefit of running attack speed on my warlock. Actually, I'm sure the itemization is right, and I'm just a bad player.
Itemization is bad for even scouts, blanketing auto attack skills on very few pieces ruins both bard and rogue dps, predators are only doing so well because we are a combat art/auto attack class. If preds were to get all the auto attack gear and the ab mod i'm pretty sure we would destroy all mages. Season does extremely well on his warlock, I mean it is a warlock so on single target its expected for it to be a bit lower than the wizard/assassin but he still keeps up/beats everyone on occasion and dominates aoe. The mage gear at level 50 isn't terrible we just haven't seen it drop. It all has casting speed/AB mod/haste \aITEM -944261247 1649976042:Catalyst's Spellwoven Leggings of the Arcanespeaker\/a \aITEM -809364427 -383063911:Catalyst's Spellwoven Cuffs of the Arcanespeaker\/a \aITEM 1633345050 -2006751986:Catalyst's Glyphed Epaulets\/a Sure do sorcs need crit chance more than they need haste on some of these pieces? Sure, but it seems pretty even with predators/scouts as to how many pieces that they can get crit chance, as a lot of the predator pieces don't have crit chance and just have dps mod/haste/ab mod. The only time that all the classes have been honestly balanced super well was CoE, when they released the prestige trees i honestly thought that everyone was balanced with the exception of swashbucklers. This is of course post beastlord nerf/summoner fixes CoE. The balance has always been around the top and always will be, Itemization and balance go hand in hand, but thinking about the avatar gear from lets say EoF, if a group has multiple trixy canes yes they will destroy things because the gear favors mages, but then scouts get the avatar wrist, and the robe of battle. Both of the people who don't raid avatars. and don't have access to these things the balance still works even without the insane gear, obviously if the scouts had those two items and the mages didn't the scouts would win but thats just how the game works. On TLE a pattern is being shown that gear isn't the main priority its moreso play skill/setups/specs. Which is what typically brings the average down, not gear. Look at disturbance, they came into what was it TSO a month later from all the other guilds farming all the RoK gear and still dominated the next expansion? It wasn't gear, it was player skill.
