original document

original reddit thread

Simply reposting sOFrOsTyyy's open letter regarding the state of succession wizard and witch in PVP so there is a chance that PA will see how the community feels as there is a severe lack of engagement outside of the forums. 

The Elephants in the Room

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.

reserved just in case :)

Everyone knows that wizzards are broken... there are countless topics from that... but PA don't care, why do this guy feel that they will going to care for his "open letter"? Maybe if he woudl've written it in Korean, and post it to Korean social network, they might even read it...

PA cares so little they patched Protected Area due to player feedback.

Another casual piece of nextgen misinformation from you.

I see you always love to add backhanded insult to anything you slightly don't agree do you

When i read your long opening paragraph i was like the issue he is talking about is either p2w, server performance or enchantment/rng/geargap...

...But then i read the witch/wizard thing.... and was like comeone ....

First Siege, Nodewar, GvG and RBF which you seperated here so it looks "big issue" is only ONE aspect of the game. called "group pvp"... How often do people even do group PVP? On EU their ist maybe ONE RBF used thats ~40 Players... 40 players on the complete EU server are in a RBF... 40 Players.. out of how many million thousand... thats nothing

Second the GVG, Nodewar, Siegewar how many people participate in that? 100? 1000? How many people even are in the gearscore (600+) to have a chance joining those guilds? 5% 10%? 20%?

(based on PA graph) 9,5% + 1,2 % ~ 10%

How often is the "Siege" "Nodewar"? Ones a week? twice a week? How many Hours? 2 hours , 4 hours, 6 hours a week? Let say 6 hours a week...

You want to balance the game for an 6 hour a week activity that matters for 10% of the playerbase. Whats with the other 90% and the other 162 hours the week has?

Third, Yes the Witch and Wizard are "Powerfull", are they "OP"? no they are not.. guess why. They are Hard to play... If someone manage to play a Succession Wizard and Succession Witch perfectly they deserve to dominate... its the same as Ninja, Sorc, Tamer.... Those are all High APM and High Skill classes...  Stop act like everyone can play succ witch/succ wizard and have an easy time and low apm like guardia, sage, or succ striker...

I play myself the Witch class since Closed Beta 2 now (over 5 years). and Guess what.. I play awake, since succession will break my fingers, its super complex and high apm.. this isnt something for everyone...

Fourth Wizard and Witch succession has no Grab/Q Block. So they will lose almost all 1vs1 scenarios.. and 1vs1 Fights/Skirmisches are far more common then a gvg, nodewar, siegewar.

I am more afraid when i see a warrior, sorc in open world pvp then a witch/wizard.. Since i know. when i rotate SA or FG the Witch/Wizard can't do anything...

5th. Protected area already got demolished weeks ago and 200% Meteor got demolished too.. So what you want to nerf on Witch/Wizard even more.... The correct balance aprouch would be a global thing not nerf Witch/Wizard thing.

Overall most Successions perfom better then awakenings. They should adjust both awakenings, and successions for all classes to close the "gab".. Their original standpoint was "We want people to have a choice if they like to play succession or awakening" Buff Witch/Wizard awakening to be closer to witch/wizard succession. IF you want to nerf the Succession, you also have to reduce the APM/difficulty by alot!

The base "rule" should always be applied: "If a character is hard to play and a player has the skill for it, the class should be op. else people can just play easy mediocore classes and win with few buttons, aka HIGH EFFORT = HIGH DMG"

p.s. the new player should play the class that is fun for him, and not the class some veteran saying its op... Its a game, you play games for fun... You should tell the new player test the classes until you find one that you like.. Not roll "Succ Wizard"... (its like brainwashing, you tell new player Succ wizard op go play that... and he tells his friends the same... without even trying)

Well he kinda have autism, but you can't really harass him for that, just ignore him, like what most ppl do.

3 Topic on the same subject per week.


Hope you realized that after witch and wizard. Are you going to tackle the new Top 1 class that 95% of people are going to tag?
It is a useless infinite cycle which has for only one goal to make spend.
make certain happy. make others unhappy in a repeating cycle that drives commitment and fun = profit.
Its all about exploitation of cognitive bias.

There will always be a meta. The game is now infested with *gamers* with this mentality

The Game Balance does not exist, it is a myth. Its has always been Meta shifting.
Good pvp play doesn't *balance*. It keeps the same meta for 20 years. and players are playing meta and are happy to play meta ..

+1

Im sitting over here as a shai. I am waiting for them to deliver on the "We will raise all other classes up to the Wiz level" promise. 

How about giving shai some more attacks?

1. There isn't any better measurement of how balanced a class is than pve or pvp, and it can be mutally exclusive. People don't call for succession striker nerfs because he's broken in pvp. People don't call for succession wizard nerf because he excels in pve. 

2. Graph is an incorrect measurement of player base as it's bottom heavy since they count inactive accounts. 

3. as a wizard player myself there is very little skill in tp voltaic frigid fog tp out. not only that the class is simplified since u use one skill and hold right click. stop misinforming people on how hard a class really is. 

4. wizards are okay at 1v1. definitely not good, but definitely not lowest tier. you make it sound like they have no choice when the reality of it is that they are succession made their 1v1 chances much better. 

5. it isn't enough. wizards and witches ranged aoes with slows are oppressive no matter where you are.