Hi guys! Most of you know me as Angel_xz from Twitch or SavaG in Ranger Discord.

For those who have no idea, I’m the definition of a gear carried player, being a hard capped awakening ranger, having both Evasion and DR gear sets maxed out, triple PEN Debo, Splendid alchemy stones etc. While I’m not the best PvPer in the world by any stretch of the word, I’m definitely above average and I’m an extremely experienced BDO player. Back in the day I used to nodewar for Devour but then realised I don’t really enjoy large scale and much prefer 1v1 and small scale. Nowadays I'm a GM of the EU guild Tangra, and I get my daily portion of PvP by living on EU_Arsha often actively looking for trouble.

Having this kind of gear and all the possible swaps in terms of accessories, armors, offhands, artefacts, crystals etc and fighting some of the best EU players has given me a unique opportunity to experiment with different stats and I have a very good idea of what is necessary to kill / survive against other hard capped players / classes.

Anyway, here’s my perspective on things. Please comment and discuss.

Class to class damage modifiers

Class to class modifiers are in itself a great tool for balancing small-scale and especially 1v1, but in their current form class to class mods cannot be used effectively. Since they are always applied to a class and not to a spec, it makes them largely useless. For example Awakening Ranger is vastly different from Succession Ranger. Awa is a melee class while Succ is a ranged glass cannon class. Balancing those 2 specs against other classes would require vastly different values for class to class mods but that's currently impossible.

Free class stats (Accuracy, Evasion, DR, AP, HP)

Gear tradeoffs at hard-cap are relatively well balanced in BDO. You can switch your build around a lot and do various tradeoffs between the 5 main stats.

This flies right out the window though as soon as you realise that CERTAIN CLASSES ARE BLESSED BY HAVING EXTRA BASE STATS OR/AND PASSIVES WITHOUT HAVING TO SACRIFICE ANYTHING IN EXCHANGE. Those classes naturally feel extremely strong and oppressive in endgame PvP.

On the side of DR classes like Succ Warrior, Awa Valk and Succ Zerkers come to mind first. They can reasonably push over 700 DR and be practically unkillable while still having good enough damage to one-combo any class that doesn't get free DR/EVA stats. The disparity between those classes and regular classes is so extreme that the difference is bigger than having additional 4 PEN Cadry rings equipped on top of your regular gear in some cases.

For evasion classes, the same is true for classes like Succ Mystic, Awa Striker, Hash and partially even Succ Maegu and Succ Sage.

Succ sage also gets insane accuracy for free, to the point where they never have to build any accuracy and can focus purely on other stats like AP/DP. To complete the list, Drakania has the ability to stack 80 ap from self buffs and E buff.

Unsurprisingly the classes listed above are some of the strongest classes in small scale PvP.

Now I'm all for class diversity and having tanky classes, what I don't understand is why those tanky classes are not penalised anywhere else? Like having less damage, accuracy, stamina, movement, heals, protections, ccs or class mods? Or maybe if they have more DR, they should have less EVA and the other way around?

Movement and speed of engagement

The movement of certain classes is completely out of control and the speed of engagement is too high. Some classes can engage you out of render distance in a couple of frames and instantly CC you without any chance of counter play (hello awa novas). Since those engages are so quick, even if you anticipated it and managed to execute an evasive manoeuvre (FG/SA/IFRAME), you will get cc'd 9/10 times because of desync. The truth is 0.1s Engages just don't work in a world where the physical server is thousands of kilometres away from your location.

In recent years this has transformed PvP from reacting to your opponent into mindless chaining of protected skills and protected CC's. Naturally this makes classes with a lot of protected CC's and SA's infinitely better than classes without and classes with gaps, hence why people keep crying for adding SA to every skill they can think of.

If the speed of engagement and gap closing of some classes isn't reduced significantly, the upcoming changes where classes are supposed to lose SA to gain FG instead, might turn out to be a disaster.

Stamina

Stamina is a stat that is supposed to limit class movement and to make fights more strategic. In 2024 however, we find ourselves in a world where stamina is the main limitation of some classes, while others don't even know this stat exists. In small scale this gives immense advantage to classes with infinite stamina as they can pressure the rest of the classes constantly and just wear them down. Yes, we want diversity and maybe some classes should be able to move more and pressure more than others, but everyone should eventually run out and have to chill for a bit to give a window of opportunity for their opponent.

Grabs, Shield Classes, SA Trading

Since there’s been a lot of talk about giving every class a grab. This will not bring anything in terms of balance and here’s why. Many classes in BDO rely on CC'ing and doing a long combo onto a target to get a kill, let's call them "Combo classes". Others rely on doing high amounts of damage in large AOE with protected skills, killing their targets w/o necessarily having to land a CC or do a combo, or "SA trading classes".

 - Combo classes - Generally, those classes can't fight "SA Trading classes" by dumping damage into them as they will always get out traded. Their most reliable counter play is having a grab skill. Those classes shouldn't have the ability to kill people who are not CC'd by just throwing damage into them. (e.g. Awa Drakania --> Grab + insane damage).

- SA Trading classes - As long as they have the upper hand in SA abilities, SA CC's, and SA damaging abilities, they should NOT additionally get a grab. And if they get a grab, they have to lose the ability to kill people standing up.

- Shield Classes - Those classes are generally very durable and have strong SA FG block. This makes them a hard target for SA trading classes. This is much easier to fix than many think. If we go back to class to class mods and those are changed to be based on spec rather than class, they can easily be adjusted upwards for the SA trading classes and downwards for the shield classes, to create a balance of powers between them.

- Grabs - While grabs are necessary, in many cases they are extremely unbalanced. The biggest issues that come to mind immediately are the 30% ignore grab resist and ranged grabs. In many cases the ignore resist passive alone can make a grab twice more/less potent compared to another. Grabs should either never have 30% ignore and a very short fail animation, or all have 30% ignore resist and have a longer fail animation that the opponent can capitalise on and punish. Grabs shouldn’t easily flow into a protected skill but rather have a distinct fail/success animation.

Heals & Heal Potions

Healing is an essential part of PvP in BDO. Unfortunately healing has never been more imbalanced than it is currently. Just a couple of years ago we used to run around with 2500 HP and 275 HP regen per HP pot was quite good. You could easily get to full HP in a matter of 20-30 sec.

Currently many people are running around with 10000 HP, often higher depending on buffs and class. Classes that don't have access to healing skills, this means that every time they take damage in a fight, they have to sit on the side for up to 2 minutes to get their HP back to full. Meanwhile a small amount of blessed classes only need 10 sec to be healed up to full and back in the fight.

Having to sit on the side healing up for 2 min straight is extremely unfun and triggering, especially when you see classes with heals going in and out all the time essentially fighting several times more often than you are.

It would be best if everyone had some healing, so we don't have to stand on the side for 2 min, but nobody should be able to top themselves up in 10 seconds. Something in the middle would be the sweet spot, where you are penalized for taking damage, but not too severely.

Overloaded kits & No nerf approach

Some classes just have kits that are completely overloaded. There's classes that literally have everything that exists in the game (guess the class in comments) - Infinite Stamina, Extra HP, Extra DR, Quick Movement, Good Class mods, Multiple Grabs (with ignore resist), Full SA protection, Damage, Heals, Slows and arguably some of the best 100% and 200% skills. And no that's not the only class, there's a couple that come to mind and they are unsurprisingly some of the best in PvP in NA/EU.

PA needs to immediately cancel their "no nerf" approach to classes and start bringing down the classes that are blatantly OP and have been dominating PvP for a while now.

Again, as I said before every benefit should come with a trade off. You can't have the best offence, the best defence, the best movement, the best heals, and the best party buffs packed into a single class (not that this is the case right now, but some classes are coming close to that level).

Small vs Large scale balancing

This is a difficult topic and I believe there isn't a one size fits all solution. Ideally I would like to see PA making the 2 specs of each class play completely differently and balance one around 1v1/small scale and the other around Large Scale (similar to Awa Ranger vs Succ Ranger). This is however potentially very controversial and most likely a lot of work.

Edit: IDK how this fits in a post of this kind, but yes, awakening ranger is a top tier 1v1 class. Hopefully the trolls in the comments are happy now lol.

Good summary!

Great to see you're biased toward your own class just like everyone else who makes these posts

I really wanted the developer to see this feedback and take steps to correct the obvious problems of the game that have existed for YEARS, along with the release of new tasteless classes and useless, disgusting-looking territories.

I will also add that there are classes which have several useless skills in their kits. I can give examples, if interested.

Oh and Здравей. Как си? :)

This is a very good post, and that means PA is gonna ignore it 

Nice post, at least you tried to cover any parameter which could be considered as a strength and show the absurdity of adding too many of them on a single class.

Differences between stances is nice too (awak/succ) and you're right, it makes no sense to treat both of them equally when they already behave differently. And yeah, having one stance for small scale and one stance for larger fights would be better. Ideally, grind spots should also reflect such an idea.

As some said on reddit, maybe you should have mentioned range as one of these strengths, but I don't think you deserve the irony I saw there.

Thanks for this analysis! 

TLDR

Damage too high.

Mobility too  high.

Healing too low.

Protections too high.

Great to see you made a preconcieved bias on someone without actually taking the time to read what was posted properly like everyone else who writes useless unhelpful comments.

Finally yes I do hope this is read by PA one way or another

So many classes are just int right now and some are just broken, not to mention my main succ nova tht just get 30% less drop than any other class in pve

Thank you for posting here, reddit mod somehow just bans people so ppl can't post reply