Nerfs: end of the world, or good for your game?
by David Bowers 
May 18th 2007 at 1:30PM
For most the time that I have played as a feral druid, I've felt that our strength as a class has grown a great deal. Not all that long ago, however, the 2.0.10 patch brought a damage nerf for tanking bear druids which noticeably affected my gameplay and it really brought the issue home to me more than ever before. It used to be that I could just use my Swipe ability repeatedly and keep the angry attention of multiple monsters without having to worry about any getting away from me so much. After the patch, though, monsters started leaving me for more attractive (and squishy) friends of mine! This happened so much that my hunter friend had her pet start taunting monsters too, in order to help keep them away from the healers. For the first time in my playing experience, I realized how sad it feels to have been once so powerful and now so nerfed.
But I refused to give up! I set my fingers firmly on my keyboard and began pondering ways that I might make up for my loss of snarling, grizzly monster threat.
I wondered if maybe I could use a greater variety of abilities more intelligently and return to my earlier effectiveness. I started learning how to switch targets more often and more efficiently, when to use my rage and when to let it build up, and how to use a wider range of my abilities in conjunction with each other to tank as well as possible in different situations. It's certainly more work to tank now, but it keeps me on my toes, actively engaged in what I'm doing, and changing my tactics on a fly when something goes unexpectedly.
In short, the nerf brought me deeper into the game by forcing me to start using my own brain power instead of just doing things in some easy and repetitive way. The nerf actually improved my gaming experience.
Are nerfs for your class always an unpleasant thing? Is playing the game about being as powerful as possible no matter what? Do you fear upcoming nerfs as much as the Four Horsemen? Or are you ever thankful as I was for having been forced to improve yourself rather than just rely on some strong class abilities?
[Artwork by Shan Xue Jun, The Keep of the Orc, at the Blizzard Fan Art Program]
Filed under: Druid, Patches, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Buttink May 18th 2007 1:48PM
I agree that some nerfs can do this. As a paladin, this did nothing but force gear changes. After all, all I have are 3 healing spells(im holy speced).
RogueJedi86 May 18th 2007 1:53PM
People shouldn't see them as nerfs, but as shake-ups to their play style. Make something routine, and it will become boring. The nerfs alter the way we play, and make us consider other alternatives that we might not have noticed before. Instead of focusing on the closed door, we should look at the newly opened doors, or the doors that were open, but we never considered before.
Karmakin May 18th 2007 1:55PM
I only started playing WoW after the 2.0 patch, but I thinkn it seems to me that there was never any sort of real content balancing. 2.1 looks, at least to me, to introduce a real framework for the difficulty of instance content.
Of course, that framework could suck, and probably will need to be tweaked. But at least they're thinking in those terms, and not randomly.
At least that's what it seems like to me. Once they get that framework down, I'm a big supporter of buffing and nerfing skills to force people to change tactics and keep the game interesting.
Polarity May 18th 2007 2:06PM
The druid nerf wasn't a PvE nerf. Good druids knew how to tank without mangle before. What happened was a PvE nerf. The new strategy? Don't try to kill warriors solo in less than half an hour.
Bill G May 18th 2007 2:10PM
2.1 = rogue PVE buffs
Sword spec fixed
Glancing blow penalty reduced
Imp sap talent points freed to be PVE useful
Mobs now 180 degree cleave and no sweeping strikes.
Woot!
Baluki May 18th 2007 2:21PM
Nerfs are unfortunately a necessary part of the game, and as you say they can shake things up and force you to utilize more of your skills.
That is, if your class works well in the first place.
Druid dude May 18th 2007 2:51PM
When something is taken away, it is pretty natural to react, thus much of the forums' poison.
The string of nerfs since BC came out has been particularly severe though. Its almost like Blizzard's solution to any imbalance (real or percieved) has been to just nerf nerf nerf. I get a mental picture of game developers practically tripping and stumpling over each other trying to get the next set of nerfs in.
It does seem like the philosophy of fix-by-nerf may be, well, getting nerfed! With the impending massive scale gear upgrades to offset the elixir/flask nerfs, there might actually be some more sound reasoning going in to game changes than we have mostly seen since January.
The thing that kills me though, is the knee jerk nerfs that seem to result from the forums. He who whines the loudest gets his way. The results are usually senseless nerfs that cause more problems than they solve. Of course that goes to another issue entirely, one which has been thrust in to the light recently: The vile, stinking, rotting cesspool that the WoW forums are, a place that displays front and center daily the very worst in people, and fosters such behavior.
amasen May 18th 2007 2:55PM
I'd say many nerfs are good and necessary. But when they're made without fixing existing problems, then those problems get worse.
Take for example the priests riots of 2.0.10. The priest are arguably the most squishy class, finally with Prayer of Mending they had a viable way to survive in PvP. Then the huge nerf to it, and that viable way of surviving just went out the window. Was ProM overpowered? Hell yes and it defiantly needed to be Nerfed. But did Blizzard fix priests survivability? Hell No. And by taking away their primary survivability tool, they just got screwed...
David May 18th 2007 3:13PM
Amasen, the problem is that it's so hard to agree on what the real problem is. Some would say that priests aren't supposed to have a real "viable way to survive" on their own, since they're supposed to be working as a team with someone who can protect them. If they have a team *and* a powerful ability, that could be too much.
Balance means the different classes have to work together, each with strengths and weaknesses that compliment each other and bring something unique to the group's chance of success. The counterpart of being strong in one way is being weak in another, no?
amasen May 18th 2007 3:25PM
David.
I agree with what you are saying to a degree. But generally it's not the problem that's hard to agree on, but the solution. Can anyone argue priests have low survivability in comparison to other classes? I doubt it.
But when it comes to a solution, then we have a problem. Taking holy priests again as an example. Prayer of Mending before it got nerfed was one of those "powerful ability, that could be too much". It was too much and nearly made an arena team invincible. But even with a good team, a priest basically will get burned down quicker than any class, because they simply have no way to defend themselves or properly mitigate damage (or heal it).
But when you talk about a solution, there are so many different options that it becomes difficult to fix the problem. But always Nerfing and never fixing is defiantly not a solution.
ben1778 May 18th 2007 3:30PM
Who said Blizzard's main goal was to get the game into a state of balance? The long term strategy should be instead to continue to change and adapt the game to avoid things becoming stale. It doesn't matter that the game will never be perfectly balanced, just that it is balanced enough. Holding a subscriber base requires constant changing, so as long as things don't get buffed or nerfed TOO much, that would be acceptable to Blizzard.
For the game to be perfectly balanced as to never require any more buffs or nerfs it would have to be so incredibly simple that it wouldn't be fun anymore.
Alcevious May 18th 2007 3:32PM
I don't like to see them as nerfs, I like to see them as "spell-refragmentations." Give me a break. This entire post is ignorant to the idea that nerfs hurt the game--they make it less fun for more people.
David May 18th 2007 3:40PM
So if you suggest getting rid of nerfs altogether, how would you balance things? If one spell provides too much healing for example, and you can't nerf it, should you just increase the power of all the other classes' abilities at the same time? or should one class just be allowed to dominate the others?
(I agree that the constantly shifting balance is pretty fun, though :)
Chuck May 18th 2007 4:31PM
The druid nerf was huge for me too, only at first though. It only affected my solo viability as far as leveling from 64 (when the mother of all nerfs hit)to 70. The thing about 70 is, now that i'm all geared up, and really know how to play Druid (DURIDS 4 LIEF), I have no aggro problems. I even tell people to try and take it from me.
The nerfs only affect most people who are leveling as far as i'm concerned, at least the druid one.
If you gear up, and do it right, a nerf shouldn't affect you too much. Skill is what makes a good player, not what blizz gives and takes from you.
Zach May 18th 2007 7:03PM
Coming from a variety of classes that have been nerfed, buffed, nerfed, re-buffed, and nerfed again (Warrior, Druid, Lock, and Pally), I think there is very much a valid point to what you are saying. I definitely have learned how to play each class better due to some of the nerfs. I think some nerfs are, in fact, crap (priests, for example), but I think that no matter what Blizz does, they will always piss off those select few people. I think the Pally nerf to Illumination in 2.1 is kind of bunk, but am I going to just not play my Pally anymore? No. I will adapt, and focus more on MP/5 gear than +Spell crit gear. Simple enough. To adapt Abraham Lincoln: "You can please all of the people some of the time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."
Hallick May 18th 2007 8:30PM
I always mess up that Lincoln quote too. It's actually "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."
Alexander Mu May 18th 2007 11:05PM
I really thought it was hilarious whenever ranged classes complained about any sort of rebalance or nerf they received. Hilarious enough to delete my 70 warrior and an up and coming rogue.
None of the fixes ever implemented in this game ever considered the real world implications of applying the fixes, and always were meant to target the top percentile of any given class, rather than actually going into the game mechanics themselves, rather than immediately fixing bugs that existed since Beta. As a whole, Blizzard's concept of fixes often included sweeping changes to talent trees, without ever once considering the actual impact such changes would have on the game as a whole, hence why there have been FOTM classes since launch.
The main issue I think many people who PvP in WoW have is that all of these nerfs never seem to be implemented with the feedback from the test realms taken into consideration to any degree. The PvP of WoW feels as if it were a last minute consideration added to the game at best, and has been repeatedly mishandled in almost every aspect for every class since the word go. Blizzard seemingly has no clue where they want classes to be in PvE and PvP, and seemingly cannot decide what they should look at first in any given instance, and so they proceed to come up with solutions on their own as if they fear actually taking the time to seriously analyze a given situation, and question whether or not changing a given variable will affect players of all levels or only a select few.
There is no indication to the player base that posts on the official forums, Blizzard ever considered them to be anything more than pieces of data to which bank account information was attached.
They don't have to fix outstanding issues, because most people are 'happy'. They are deliberately taking advantage of the addictive nature of MMO's by not attempting to answer any issues directly. Everything is handled as a work around, oftentimes with information coming from CM's who honestly treat the player base with a very hands off mindset. It's been made painfully aware to every single class in the game that the majority of Blizzard posters who moderate their forums, who are apparently responsible for sending the developers feedback from the forums either do not send feedback, or do not play the same version of WoW the rest of the paying population does, and the developers are rarely willing to discuss or justify any of the changes they have made to any classes.
I suppose, however, when you have so many paying customers, a literal license to print money, you don't have to show any semblance of giving a damn.
To me, the nerfs ruined the game, because I never once felt that I ever got an proper explanation as to why warrior changes were made outside of 'Well, some people just happen to poopsock their characters more than most, so those few people who hit excessively hard get the entire class nerfed.' This isn't a fair way to deal with any consumer demographic, regardless of what you've rolled.
People burn out for many reasons in MMO's, and unwarranted, unexplained changes are among those. The business model of leaving a game in a state of constant flux, with bugs galore remaining unchecked for absurd lengths of time, seems laughable at best when a company is making so much money every month.
GamerJunkie May 19th 2007 12:46PM
While nerfs are a necessary part of the game. I see the trend of the nerfs in the past year or so as a lazy way of address inherent problems.
I disagree with some folks who sees nerfs as a change of play. For example, Blizzard has nerfed some classes to the point of uselessness in PVP or in certain PVE roles, then suddenly buffing them back. Its ridiculous how Blizzard doesn't test their "adjustments" on a class and allows the nerfs/buffs to go to production. Failure at QA with their dev team.
One major issue is "Fear" while its been nerfed many times and buffed here and there. Blizzard still won't fix the real issue with "Fear" is its broken mechanics while Warlocks are taking advantage of.
Pockletock May 20th 2007 6:04AM
Thank goodness for that druid "nerf!" It was getting ridiculously difficult to find groups to tank for as a warrior!
~Pockletock!