SoFrOsTy posted the following on Reddit as a letter to PA about the severe imbalance of Succ Wiz/Witch and I think it deserves to be seen here as well. He said he has submitted it to PA through the Partner feedback channels.

I want to start this off by trying to exemplify how serious this topic is in hopes to have this issue addressed before it causes any more damage to the game. I’ll start with an important question. What is arguably the most glaring issue with Black Desert Online today? I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times and I always come up with the same answer. If I ask my stream chat what the most glaring issue in the game today? They give the same answer I’ve come up with. When I ask my friends and peers what they think needs to be changed the most. Same answer still. If I ask the BDO Reddit community what the biggest problem is, as well as other streamer’s community Discords and Twitch chats, same answer still. Players from KR, SA, SEA, and MENA servers, what do they think is the most blatantly obvious issue in the game right now? It’s the same complaint across the entire globe. Succession Wizard and Witch are just too strong. The community is growing increasingly frustrated because it seems that for the better part of the last year Pearl Abyss has completely ignored the loudest and most discussed feedback about their game. It is time for Wizard and Witch balance to be addressed. 

Before I get to what should change, I want to list the things Wizard and Witch are currently affecting in a negative way: 

- Siege (All 3 of the castles, as well as Serendia, and Balenos Siege) 

- Node Wars (T1, T2, T3, and T4) capped and uncapped. 30 man all the way up to 100 man nodes. 

- GvGs (guild versus guild). This ranges from seasonal GvG’s, mid tier or newer guild GvGs, large scale GvGs, and even Arsha server free for all style GvGs and PvP. 

- Red Battlefield. Seasonal and Normal RBF, Castle Ruins and Garmoth RBF.  Arena of Arsha PvP in group fights. 2v2, 3v3, and any group PvP done in AOA.  Open World PvP. 

- New Player's Class Choice when asking veterans for advice. 

These important parts of the game are becoming more and more unpopular and the biggest reason is succession Wizard and Witch. They completely dominate in all of these areas of the game. Players are quitting Node War guilds. Node War guilds are either dying or struggling to motivate their members to participate in Wars because of the endless struggle to recruit Wizards and Witches as well as trying to convince their members to switch to Wizard or Witch so their guild has a chance to win. Even when players in a guild do want to participate in Node Wars it has become incredibly difficult to find good fights. And probably most importantly, veteran players are beginning to feel forced to re-roll to Wizard or Witch in order to compete or feel it is time to quit the game entirely because they don't want to play Wizard or Witch. All of my

favorite players to watch PvP are rolling off of the classes they were best at because it makes more sense to just play Wizard and Witch. The problem is not just the miserable experience it provides for all of the players who have to face Wizard and Witch, but the fact that many of us are being encouraged and sometimes even forced to play Wizard and Witch just to stay in our guild or community. For many guilds it has become a requirement. Guild recruitment messages 

often read as follows: “Strong node war guild is looking for new members! If you want to join us, our minimum gear score requirement is 680 or 630 gear score if you play Witch or Wizard." Guilds are willing to take a player with gear that is months or even years behind as long as they are playing a Witch or a Wizard. This cannot be intended. So let’s discuss some of the things Wizard and Witch do that are causing frustration for most other players. 

Let’s begin with slow debuffs and ranged damage. As a player is moving through the battlefield, melee classes especially, but it applies to everyone. You are being hit by damage and slow debuffs constantly. Your HP pool is a resource and your attack/cast speed being slowed makes it difficult to manage that resource. Oftentimes your HP pool depletes before even being able to engage the enemy. If you aren’t a Wizard or a Witch, typically you are dying before ever having the chance to engage an enemy player, team, or group. As a Wizard or a Witch you can avoid it entirely with range or safely engage with teleport, dish out an immense amount of damage all around you very quickly, and then disengage safely. Most classes struggle to make it to the fight or struggle to live long enough to contribute meaningfully to the fight. Because of the slow debuffs applied by Wizard and Witch, and the ranged chip damage dealt, often times when you do finally manage to get to the fight and actually use a skill or an ability you’ve been damaged and slowed so much that you are in panic mode and have to try to escape, emergency escape (V), or just die. Players feel like they are losing control of their characters before ever participating in the battle. Because of Wizard and Witch, more and more players feel like their class is either useless or not fun to play anymore. 

The ranged damage is also way too high and way too safe for Wizards and Witches. I’ll use Succession Ranger as an example here because Ranger can also output very high damage. The difference though is they are somewhat at risk during their damage output. Rangers abilities also leave them at risk from other ranged abilities because most of their skills are unprotected. If I am a flanking class like a Ninja, Kunoichi, Hashashin, Sorc, Dark Knight, or any other class that’s good at moving into position to flank, and I see a Ranger using its abilities on my guild from range, I can do something about it. The Ranger has to be aware of its surroundings as well as be ready to react. The Ranger also has to focus their abilities on defending themselves from the attack and can no longer pressure other players. With Wizard and Witch this is rarely if ever true. When they are throwing ranged damage, most of it is protected like Meteor (Frontal Guard and Super Armor) and the lightning rotation (Frontal Guard and some Super Armor). When a melee class does finally get into range to threaten a Wizard or a Witch, they have an easy stamina free escape and skills that don't need to be targeted. Oftentimes while defending against a flanker, they are still dealing huge amounts of damage and applying CCs to other players in the area. Which brings me to Area of Effect damage.

Area of Effect (AOE) skills that have large AOE range, damage, Crowd Control (CC), speed, and protection like Prime Voltaic Pulse, Prime Frigid Fog, Prime Meteor, and Prime Earthquake are problematic and make it feel impossible to out play these classes in a large scale setting. Most if not all other classes with similar AOE’s have some sort of downside to their abilities. Some examples: Tamer’s Fearful Trembling has a small AOE, not much damage, and a fairly slow animation. Hashashin’s Descent has no CC on it and damage is split into two parts allowing players after the first part to react before being hit by the second. Berserker’s Devastation low damage, Slow animation, CC only on Core Skill. Kunoichi’s Flash Slash has a long wind up time, only moderate damage, and a very high cool-down. In order to speed up the animation you have to use Smokescreen which is another important skill with a long cool-down. These are just some examples. You can find downsides to Ninja’s Blade Spin, Katana shower, Dark Knight’s Lunacy of Vedire and Wheel of Fortune, Striker's Skull Crusher, Warrior’s Grave Digging, Archer’s Spear of Sylvia, etc etc. The list goes on. Not only is there no downside to Voltaic, Frigid, and Meteor, but Voltaic Pulse and Frigid Fog have very low cool-downs which means the player doesn’t have to make a decision on when the best time to use these skills are because the skill is available again in just a few seconds. Lastly, when skills like Meteor, Voltaic Pulse, and Frigid Fog do super high damage, have a CC, are fully protected, and have a massive AOE, it reduces the strategy and skill required to be effective in large scale. Part of being good at large scale is positioning. When most classes are engaged by enemies they have to turn their attention to a class and make a decision whether the player in front of them or behind them is the bigger threat. Then they choose to deal with one of the two threats or escape. Wizards and Witches aren’t required to do this because if flanked, Voltaic Pulse and Frigid Fog solve both threats without ever having to turn their camera. Not only is it too strong, but it is also way too easy to use. 

Lastly is Stamina. This is one of the few classes that doesn’t even have to think about their stamina bar. When another class gets to a fight they have to think about the amount of stamina they use to close the distance on a player or a group because they need stamina to survive and move within the fight then hope to have enough stamina to get back out of the fight safely. This is not the case with Wizard and Witch. Their stamina bars remain full for the entirety of an engagement. Stamina is a resource we all have to manage, Wizard and Witch should be no exception. 

I’ve asked various players from different communities and servers the following question: If you could make one single change to the Wizard and Witch classes, what would it be? I asked Wizard and Witch players as well what they think should be changed about their class to make it more fair. Here’s the list in order from most popular to least. 

- Remove slows from the kit. 

- Remove split Teleport (Exclusive to Wizard). 

- Lower the damage of Voltaic Pulse and Frigid Fog. 

- Make ranged abilities, especially ones with CC such as Prime Meteor unprotected.  Significantly lower the damage of the ranged abilities. 

- Increase the cool-downs of skills like Voltaic Pulse and Frigid Fog.

There are a lot of options and paths to take and it's tough to make a fair and balanced decision. I don’t want Wizard or Witch to become a bad or unusable class. My only goal since I became BDO partner is to have the problems Wizards and Witches create for the game to be alleviated so players can feel like they can play whatever class they want and have fun in PvP once again. You can spend time buffing every single class in the game, but the same problems will persist. Wizard and Witch make everyone else’s classes, despite how strong they are, feel weak or irrelevant entirely. 

Here is a list of changes I believe to be the most important and fair: 

- Prime Meteor - This skill needs a downside. Meteor has extremely high damage, a large AOE, far range, a CC on every hit, another CC on the last hit, and protection throughout the entire skill. Either significantly lower the damage, remove the protection, or remove the CC from this skill. 

- Frigid Fog - Significantly lower the PvP damage of Prime Frigid Fog. Combined with Voltaic this skill is extremely potent and simply does too much additional damage after the big damage Voltaic Pulse already does. 

- Prime ranged abilities - Slightly reduce the damage of the ranged lightning skills in PvP or give them split damage similar to Blizzard so that the change only really affects large scale/group fights. 

- Stamina - Add a stamina cost to all of their mobility so their movement not something they can use infinitely. Prime Earth’s Response, Prime Earthquake, Magical Evasion, and Teleport all need to cost enough stamina that the class has to at least keep track of how and when they use their abilities. 

- Slows - Remove the slow debuff that lightning abilities have. When a player is hit by any of the lightning abilities aside from Voltaic Pulse, they receive a slow debuff. These slows, among others in the game, make controlling your character difficult and a completely frustrating experience for most players. It is not imperative for Witch and Wiz to apply slows to have success. It will not affect PvE and will have a minimal effect in 1v1 if these slows are removed. 

I left removal of split Teleport out because I think split Teleport is one of the reasons Succession Wizard is fun. The goal here is not to make the class boring or bad. Split Teleport makes the class fun to play and if the class finally gets some sort of stamina management like the rest of the classes, then split Teleport might not feel as oppressive as it does now. 

I strongly believe these five things need to be looked at and addressed. The reason I chose these five changes is because while this would significantly reduce their effectiveness in group PvP, it won’t have as big of an impact on 1v1. These suggestions are for the health of the game, the health of Node Wars, and other group PvP. Players are tired of the game and strategy in PvP being dictated by these two classes alone. Even if Pearl Abyss doesn’t agree with the proposed changes to Wizard and Witch, I hope they find it important enough to at least start making changes of their own. 

For the better part of my time in BDO I have given Pearl Abyss the benefit of the doubt. I’ve supported or defended Pearl Abyss when I think people judge them too harshly. Because of this I want to believe that Pearl Abyss is not ignoring player feedback. Rather, Pearl Abyss just hasn’t heard it. But, to believe that they simply haven’t heard us is to also believe that they simply are not listening. So please, make this right Pearl Abyss and look into the long overdue imbalance of the Wizard and the Witch.

1. raise the PVP version Meteor Shower cooldown to 90s

2. remove all support abilities from witch and wizards

by doing the 2 above, can balance many other things in return without actually touching them

1. more people swap to DR since DR increases block while evasion doesn't, meaning more tanks classes will be popular to peel for damage since there will be fewer support abilities to heal other players' hp so blocks will be more relevant.

2. because of 1, this means we will see more tanks such as valkyrie, warrior, guardian, and nova.

3. this also means Shai class will actually have a role in large scale wars as Shais was made to buff and heal allies

for some reason, PA just really doesn't want to touch witch/wizards, the 2 classes were the only ones that didn't get hit with the protection removal back during the stamina/protection rework, with Shai class in the game, it really doesn't make any more sense to have witch/wizards running around as supports while still able to tank AND dps, with iframes on cast to escape any danger. 

Personally i am not a big fan of nerfs never have been, i would much prefer a over all aproach to balancing the the classes. I beleive some classes need more protections and higher damage Mystic comes to mind, The Musa needs a higher accuracy modifier, Kuno needs a stam rework and damage increase, DK needs a boost annd just about all classes need a PVE buff to bring it up to the level of the suc striker.

In the case of Suc Wiz/Witch i agree with the 1st part of his synopsis of the class and how it has affected siege,node, RBF and GvG it is Meta to play or have tagged a Witch or Wiz if your involved with Siege/Node. This has put a crimp on playability of other clases as well as the desire for the over all community to even want to engage in large scale.

That said the rest has more to do with GS than anything and now that players are getting higher and higher Gear scores, the ability to run ultra high accuracy builds with little loss in AP should also require a change in gear as well. No longer are the days of being an Evasion God acceptable but lets also really take aim at the problem.

The main issue as i see it, is what has happened across the game play and that is the increase in damage for PvP. Are Suc Wiz and Witches over tuned ? ABSOLUTLY this increase came about at a period when players over all avg gear scores were not hitting 270+AP. The 2nd problem came with the ability to Tag and copy gear<--- this is one of the most popular features within the game BUT something as simple as you are required to pick your main. This can be by force, I.E. highest GS or only allowed to pick a main once a month. These would be the only thing allowed in Node/Siege OR Tagged chars are not allowed to participate in Seige/Node wars PERIOD.

Now that players avg AP is much higher this is going to make a challange for PA to attempt to balance classes Especially Witchard BUT with some do dilligance and care by adding things like Stam consumption removing protections on specific skills as well as CCs would help.

I would prefer this method to help fix the problem:

Tie the Witch Wizards damage to there stam bar the longer they hold the skill I.e. Meteor the more damage up to 100% of stated damage listed on the skill. The faster the skills use the less the damage it does this will force a "casting time" equivilant to the damage being delt and give player enough time to react if they are not stopped the damage SHOULD BE MASSIVE. But tie it to the cast time and it would stop the TP bomb TP Bomb TP escape. The mechnics are there for this already and if applied like this it will actually make witch and wiz more competative FUN and also change the battlefield and force them to be back line range again.

Its just my thoughts i would prefer the above method over nerfing the class.

You guys make it to complicated. Those "2" classes can be balanced with single change to teleport - simple remove protection from it.

Yeah sure, instead of fixing the broken ones, make every class avalible to oneshot a group of players from range...

Well it will sure be ballanced afterwards... just even more AIDS than currently is...

Just remove protected CC. Either protection with no CC, or CC with no protection. 

yeah that would be a good start

Tbh just delete this two class and give the player reroll coupons ez

Honestly though, long range huge aoe nuke cc protected ability does not belong at all

Archer and ranger is far more fitting imo for ranged combat 

No class in this game can one shot groups of players unless you don't have gear stop being a drama queen.

At least I am trying to offer solutions, constantly nerfing classes has gotten us where exactly???

I can answer that for you, nerfs has created a perfect environment for exactly what happened to wiz/witch..

Mystic specifically was made to go after magic classes she is a brawler designed to trap, debuf and combo them. She had one of the strongest magic defence in the game and becouse she was so effective all you clowns cried like babies cuz casters had a hard time with her. So they nerfed her magic dp to the ground, nerfed her speed and removed her protected engages. Since she has lower damage output she is required to use extended combos which are unprotected to actually kill something. She can 1v1 all day but after that GvG or large scale forget it.

Over the last 2 years they spent more time nerfing classes by the time they started working on succesion they forget the damage that was done and have since tried to fix it.. adding in extra rabam, gave a core add on skill to awakening (Bon) and now added an extra skill to awakening. BUT NEVER ADDRESSED the original nerfs when they tried to rebalance everything almost 2 years ago.

Classes like mystic, tamer, kuno,ranger, dk, musa/maehwa  and archer are all but dead and unplayable or not competative they suck at both PVE and anything outside of 1v1. Most have accuracy issues, crit damage removed on skills, they destroyed grab classes with the nerf of 50% accuracy and then proceeded to remove or made CC's PVE only some of which were the only life line to the class.

By doing the above then adding casting speed and faster linking skills with succesion for witch and wizard along with the extra damage and protections while removing protections from a hard counter classes like mystic OR ARCHER that lost its S block giving the witchard unrivaled access to the battlefield. This is a perfect storm created by no nothing nincompoops like yourself that scream for nerfs without a 2nd thought of balance and outcome. You geniuses got what you deserved maybe think a little harder before you start asking for a nerf Maybe the next class they toss will be yours.

Well IDK, I see people getting cleared en masse by wizzards in RBF, and there was topics, made by others with similar result (ie: screenshots), so yeah, sure...

There was no "constant nerfing" that you talk about, and you ain't offering any solution either, just try to justify a broken class.

I wait'n for my class to be nerfed into a memeclass...

oh...

wait...