What is this cheap argument that 1v1 or that the game cannot be balanced?

Perfectly balanced surely not. But reasonably balanced, yes. The way Pearl Abyss has been going or trying to go is to establish winning condition when they can. Otherwise, they have been increasing the damage overall with the only goal as to avoid the core balance problem of BDO of how classes play out after surviving a combo.

You guys certainly noticed that whenever they face a big balance problem, they tend to increase the global damage of all the classes to varying degrees. They certainly do that to enforce the 1 to 2 combo-to-kill environment. Whenever the global damage is too low, the imbalance creeps up by elevating tanky or iframe classes and heavy damage combo class. If a Sorceress can stand up from a combo having lost half of her hp only, she's guaranteed to reset smoothly; If a Tamer stands up from a combo it suddenly becomes a entirely different matchup; A Warrior standing up is damn dangerous; Striker and Mystic standing up from a combo when they play evasion is really common and was surely identified as a problem.

Good indicators to know when the game needs its occasional global damage increase is when a Musa or Maewha, Dark Knight, Witch, Guardian, Mystic, Tamer (However, Tamer is however disproportionally under-represented when it comes to buffing her: devs are scared of Tamer for sure) can't 1 combo the target. These days, they started to introduce Accuracy Accessories instead of the usual global damage increase, new awakening skills of varying usefulness.  All of that effort is to avoid the biggest balance problem of BDO unofficially called "after surviving a combo gameplay". Some classes are extremely good at it and some are very bad at it. On top, it goes both ways from the combo receiver perspective and the combo doer perspective.

Another tactic Pearl Abyss they like to use instead of global damage and defense changes are to establish winning conditions. The most observable ones were to introduce strong 100% rage skills or E buff (such as Tamer 100%) to give them a winning condition in large scale. However, we all know it has been reverted nowadays. Awakening Valkyrie 100% is still solid and is part of that concept. Berserkers with their E buff are just like that as well, but Zerker players don't particularly like the play patterns. Its definitively a cheap crutch, but for the effort done, it's effective for sure in relation to the efforts done for balancing.

Winning conditions and small scale PvP balance

However, in 1v1/ small scale, establishing winning conditions is probably the best way to at least balance some aspects. It does not mean that the class is balanced at the end. It simply means that the class can do something, has a way out of a situation and can win if they follow the plan that they executed. This is how BDO is seemingly being balanced. Questions such as: 

How can the class catch an opponent? 

Kite and poke? Wear and tear? Attrition? Ranged CC? Mobility grab? Speed? Trickery?

How does it defend itself? Before, during, or after a combo.

But BDO is more about the before with a few exceptional "during combo" situations. The "after a combo" is one of the big BDO balance problem and resistances accentuate the issue (all that global damage boosting is to avoid this at all cost because this part is not balanced at all and probably never will currently)

Can it kill the enemy with a combo? 

Quality of follow-up Crowd Control skills, Downsmash, Raw damage, precision damage, accuracy modifiers.


Per example... Awakening Wizard was a bit of a odd jack of all trade with an identity crisis. The low mobility class that used to have a strong poke back in the awakening days and a strong melee burst.  However, Witch's burst was better, and her poke lesser in terms of damage. The Awa Wizard damage was corrected at a later date and is known to have a very strong and consistant melee damage after teleport. They decided to solidify this identity by giving them another Super Armored, easily packed out, AoE damage skill. The point of that is to give the Awakening Wizard a situation to shine with the strongest in-your-face damage of all iterations of the Witch Wizard classes. Sometimes, you'll see the classic Wizard players swapping around with Awakening Wizard for that reason. It's not because the class is better than Succession, it's just that it got this high-impact moment.

Example 2. As for the Awakening Witch, they have noticed that her unlike Wizard, she's completely harmless against block classes with grapples in melee. They also noticed how they had to pull out the staff to poke the target and with all its flaws (low damage, no accuracy mods, long cast, varied range radius, ?outdated?), so they introduced a dedicated poke skill offering only raw damage and what seems to be a higher damage ratio against block meters. Such a poke is opening a few opportunity windows for the Witch in small scale where she can commit to a more dedicated ranged threat in terms of damage instead of just the CC potential. 

Sorry if I might have missunderstood but it just appears to me you are making it look like that a grab is 100 % reliable which is not the case.

You can build up a resistance against it though it is debatable how good of a game design that is to have RNG decide if it works or not.

But fact is and stays is that a grab is never 100 % reliable.

Because no one cares about 1v1s..... 1v1 is something you do for fun with guildies to learn classes and just to spar. You hardly ever come across 1v1 duels  anymore in the open world

Awk Wiz/Witch:

Low mobility- decently tanky     Ok

the biggest AOE area skills in the game all around them OK

The biggest AOE in the game  that have CC on them-?????????

Full super armor protection on cast- longer cast times OK

Biggest areas of AOE slows -????????? ( slows are. a problem doesn't only apply to mages) but there's no trade off for the  range AOE for it.

Strongest heal in the game-?????????? (I guess team utility but the heal is so good this honestly should be on shai or a future healing class not casters)

Meteor( High CC high AF damage)-.?????????????( given how often you can do this the damage is probably justified in some ways but given it can break someone's entire block and then continue to possibly almost kill them even at higher DP is just busted. A damage nerf is needed and the CC is simply broken on this skill  given its range and size remove it!)

The issue with awakening isn't nessarily all it's trade offs there's  a few questionable ones the biggest issue is  the AOE size and that it's all around the casters because when you have multiple casters the AOE size just keeps growing and growing and when these skills also have CC on them it breaks the large scale balance  because everyone is getting CCed by what is basically garenteed CC

( this is why I have said in the past and I will say it again witchards need to lose a lot of thier CC in pvp only)

ill speak for awk wizard:

u might not be aware of this, but theres exactly ONE SA protected awakening 360 degree spell awk casters have and even idiots by now have learned its "THE ONE" that you'd better avoid or block as it also CCs.  for people that are unfamiliar or have brain damage, its the one where wizard slams both hands in the ground. not even that fast, tbh. Cataclysm is the name.

lets analyze the rest of the awakened kit ull meet in group fights, shall we? 

Hellfire - moves wizzy forward, frontal guard, stun cc. area of effect - in front of caster. this one is super easy to punish for any mobile class. hell if u have protected grab, and see wiz doing this, just press the button and lol. after this move, you can chain (execute faster) Magma bomb (fast damage spell, Super armor) or Flame knot (slow unprotected grab, a bit faster (still gonna lose to most ccs/grabs)after Hellfire)

Aqua Jail - slow SA protected water  damage spell, perfect opportunity to WALK (I shit u not) to the wizard and press even slowest unprotected grab. I swear its called JAIL because it jails the caster, not the target. Area of effect - "circle" in front of caster.
Bolide of Destruction - slow SA protected fire damage spell, basically handle same way as Aqua Jail. Area of effect - "circle?some area" in front of caster.
Chilling Wave - unprotected slow damage spell that knockbacks(lol, too slow to followup, so dont worry). msot Awk wizards will have this as a BON choice. it gets FG that doesnt last for the full duration of the spell. Super easy to punish via mobility. FG bar goes down insanely fast (paper). CAN be animation canceled via awakened flow: magical evasion (wont help much vs grabs most of the time) or teleport. (basically u know wizard if engaged in combat with people around is gonna be forced to cancel it and burn either teleport (if u follow-up upon that, its most likely dead wizard) or awk magical evasion (lol, wont even move him if hes under fire, because reasons). Area of effect - in front of caster, quite narrow actually.
Water sphere - unprotected, shared damage ranged attack that can KD. easy to punish by ranged people and teleporting and mobility people. can be animation canceled by awakened flow: magical evasion. has flow that has to be manually triggered (only after Water spehre) which can downsmash.

Flame knot - unprotected slow grab. if u get grabbed by this expect to be ridiculed by wizard at least in his head. unless u play awk witch.

Lava field - unprotected cast magic debuff (-magical dp) "zone" which also ticks for low damage on people that don't wear paper for armor.

Ritardando - ranged, unprotected, very strong ALL slow that has to be aimed. can be blocked. if it hits target it can affect people that are basically KISSING the person affected. 

Flow: Magical evasion - super armor "dodge roll" on 5 sec CD. totally unprotected if used in the next 5 secs. distance is not good. speed isnt so great either. gets st0pped by other skills hitting it and if u grab where wizard started this shit, u r most likely grabbing him as he will get rubberbanded back.

preawakened kit i suppose we all know, but u most likely wont be seeing awakend casters being comfy in Absolute: Frigid fog or Absolute: Earthquake, which do CC, but first hit take a while to land (very avoidable), and caster taking damage in these spells simply MELTS via anything. used as last resort before teleporting out most of the time or often if surrounded by enemies, in frigid fogs case, a sign awakened caster is maybe gonna cast protected area as its protected swap to preawa from awa via hkeybar. these spells (fog/eq) might be used in your blob if theres that one pesky rat class in there, to attempt to cc while u are failry certain he wont kill u while u cast it. note that these spells do have 360 degree cc, do very low damage, burst is nonexistent. if u see caster starting Earthquake, block first hit, proceed to grab. every third hit has stiffen chance. u have plenty of time. or u know, just burst them down in it. most(not all) of preawakened kit CAN be animation canceled via (Absolute:)Earth response (unprotected sideways move float), first two rabams and teleport. dagger stab also.

Absolute: Meteor - not even remotely close to damage or speed succession version has. most classes can block it without using up their full block bar with ease. fairly reconginzable animation easy to spot even across half the rbf map.

During cast bar its frontal guard, afterwards is super armor. both have its ways to be punished if we r gonna be honest.

and then theres Teleport. and Ultimate: Teleport. in awakening spec, ultimate can be used only chained to normal Teleport. meaning, once evil awakened caster uses teleport in any given situation, it usually means for the next seven seconds he is basically rooted to the ground with very limited if any mobility options and animation cancels. avoid/take care of catalysm, dismantle via whatever honestly afterwards.

There are reasons barely anyone uses awakening lately. lack of mobility and options is huge number one. even guardian (thats called grab magnet)compared to awakend casters is a super mobile class. then theres classes that can basically walk through its damage without any issue, so obviously, class is EXTREMLY dependant on its team positionng around it. why bother? so many classes do its job better and take less babysitting.

as for "tanky" - the second we r outside of awakened kit SA skills we are paper tissue and then some. 

-Probably the most devestating dive bomb in the game if left unchecked probably even more so than succ wiz.

this if pulled out correctly, and assuming enemy is totaly blindsided and fails to react in the time few awaken skills play out, is kinda correct. altho today virtually any class if left unchecked and gets an unexpected opener and few followups - will wreck havoc. problem with awa caster is that it dont have a way out like most other classes. tp in is often all or nothing gamble. for 7 seconds at least. :)

problem is, like always with awakend casters, that unskilled opponents will suffer from it greatly, while skilled ones will punish it and stop it almost always.

ill speak for awk wizard:

u might not be aware of this, but theres exactly ONE SA protected awakening 360 degree spell awk casters have and even idiots by now have learned its "THE ONE" that you'd better avoid or block as it also CCs.  for people that are unfamiliar or have brain damage, its the one where wizard slams both hands in the ground. not even that fast, tbh. Cataclysm is the name.

lets analyze the rest of the awakened kit ull meet in group fights, shall we? 

Hellfire - moves wizzy forward, frontal guard, stun cc. area of effect - in front of caster. this one is super easy to punish for any mobile class. hell if u have protected grab, and see wiz doing this, just press the button and lol. after this move, you can chain (execute faster) Magma bomb (fast damage spell, Super armor) or Flame knot (slow unprotected grab, a bit faster (still gonna lose to most ccs/grabs)after Hellfire)

Aqua Jail - slow SA protected water  damage spell, perfect opportunity to WALK (I shit u not) to the wizard and press even slowest unprotected grab. I swear its called JAIL because it jails the caster, not the target. Area of effect - "circle" in front of caster.
Bolide of Destruction - slow SA protected fire damage spell, basically handle same way as Aqua Jail. Area of effect - "circle?some area" in front of caster.
Chilling Wave - unprotected slow damage spell that knockbacks(lol, too slow to followup, so dont worry). msot Awk wizards will have this as a BON choice. it gets FG that doesnt last for the full duration of the spell. Super easy to punish via mobility. FG bar goes down insanely fast (paper). CAN be animation canceled via awakened flow: magical evasion (wont help much vs grabs most of the time) or teleport. (basically u know wizard if engaged in combat with people around is gonna be forced to cancel it and burn either teleport (if u follow-up upon that, its most likely dead wizard) or awk magical evasion (lol, wont even move him if hes under fire, because reasons). Area of effect - in front of caster, quite narrow actually.
Water sphere - unprotected, shared damage ranged attack that can KD. easy to punish by ranged people and teleporting and mobility people. can be animation canceled by awakened flow: magical evasion. has flow that has to be manually triggered (only after Water spehre) which can downsmash.

Flame knot - unprotected slow grab. if u get grabbed by this expect to be ridiculed by wizard at least in his head. unless u play awk witch.

Lava field - unprotected cast magic debuff (-magical dp) "zone" which also ticks for low damage on people that don't wear paper for armor.

Ritardando - ranged, unprotected, very strong ALL slow that has to be aimed. can be blocked. if it hits target it can affect people that are basically KISSING the person affected. 

Flow: Magical evasion - super armor "dodge roll" on 5 sec CD. totally unprotected if used in the next 5 secs. distance is not good. speed isnt so great either. gets st0pped by other skills hitting it and if u grab where wizard started this shit, u r most likely grabbing him as he will get rubberbanded back.

preawakened kit i suppose we all know, but u most likely wont be seeing awakend casters being comfy in Absolute: Frigid fog or Absolute: Earthquake, which do CC, but first hit take a while to land (very avoidable), and caster taking damage in these spells simply MELTS via anything. used as last resort before teleporting out most of the time or often if surrounded by enemies, in frigid fogs case, a sign awakened caster is maybe gonna cast protected area as its protected swap to preawa from awa via hkeybar. these spells (fog/eq) might be used in your blob if theres that one pesky rat class in there, to attempt to cc while u are failry certain he wont kill u while u cast it. note that these spells do have 360 degree cc, do very low damage, burst is nonexistent. if u see caster starting Earthquake, block first hit, proceed to grab. every third hit has stiffen chance. u have plenty of time. or u know, just burst them down in it. most(not all) of preawakened kit CAN be animation canceled via (Absolute:)Earth response (unprotected sideways move float), first two rabams and teleport. dagger stab also.

Absolute: Meteor - not even remotely close to damage or speed succession version has. most classes can block it without using up their full block bar with ease. fairly reconginzable animation easy to spot even across half the rbf map.

During cast bar its frontal guard, afterwards is super armor. both have its ways to be punished if we r gonna be honest.

and then theres Teleport. and Ultimate: Teleport. in awakening spec, ultimate can be used only chained to normal Teleport. meaning, once evil awakened caster uses teleport in any given situation, it usually means for the next seven seconds he is basically rooted to the ground with very limited if any mobility options and animation cancels. avoid/take care of catalysm, dismantle via whatever honestly afterwards.

There are reasons barely anyone uses awakening lately. lack of mobility and options is huge number one. even guardian (thats called grab magnet)compared to awakend casters is a super mobile class. then theres classes that can basically walk through its damage without any issue, so obviously, class is EXTREMLY dependant on its team positionng around it. why bother? so many classes do its job better and take less babysitting.

as for "tanky" - the second we r outside of awakened kit SA skills we are paper tissue and then some. 

The reason why so many of these things are completely busted is probably related to the topic.  Aqua Jail used to attempt CC's on every hit thus making it very difficult to counter with things like walk up grab.  Essentially all skills used to be a spam of CC so even skills that grounded you in place where not as "free".  You are no longer spamming CC through these skills thus, it's easy to literally walk up and grab because it's all just a light show now.

The consquences of reducing in some cases probably 90% of the CC effects where never really addressed.  Instead most people just moved on to classes that are designed differently in which they don't deal with the issue.  Then in their ignorance and not knowing any of these things just spout of nonense about how they can't figure out how broken grab is vs these situations.