Now that the leader boards are up we can analyze the balance of the classes much better.

I took a snapshot of the top 300 players at 11:00AM 11/27/2013

Here is what the current snapshot looks like:

18 Guardian/Juggernaut

68 Sentinel/Marauder

36 Shadow/Assassin

35 Sage/Sorcerer

77 Vanguard/Powertech

7 Commando/Mercenary

14 Gunslinger/Sniper

45 Scoundrel/Operative

 

300 Total

37.5 Each Expected

 

It looks like the Vanguard/Powertech and Sentinel/Marauder are completely overpowered... I don't think this surprises anyone.

 

I think the Devs are on the right path, but certainly some tweaking is still needed.

... I don't think this surprises anyone.

 

Then what's the point of posting it?

 

Besides, in order to be able to make a meaningful statement, you'd have to compare these figures to the overall class distribution in the game, i.e. how many people play which class, game wide and content wide. Imagine that the overall distribution is similar to that of the top 300, then the latter would simply confirm the first. No statement as to class balance could be derived from that.

Edited November 27, 2013 by Cretinus

Arena is any game is about high dps and high survivability. Only certain classes shine until the developer homogenizes all classes.

 

Arena is the end of class diversity. It ruins all mmos. It only makes sense that fotm classes appear at first ... then the rest of the game is shaped around arena balance. It will soon happen here unless Bioware realizes their 4v4 experiment failed.

 

They aren't that smart though.

 

Many of those players have several 55s and simply choose the most powerful for the situation. Specialized classes by definition will not fit a very narrowly focuses arena setting. The entire game up until now was balanced around objective based 8v8 warzones. It was balanced for it during development when Mythic assisted with pvp creation. To throw out arena completely undermines all that previous work from prerelease to date.

 

Tldr: Bioware forced 4v4 deathmatch on us in an 8v8 objective based game. Of course it is broken.

Edited November 27, 2013 by Tamanous

This is what happens when you have a class balance that is based on 8v8 PvP objective and PvE then you force a TDM arenas. Of course half the specs are not viable. Leader boards, on consistent basis are marauders as dps, PT AP/tank and some dps and ops healers, then some variability of other classes. The best solution is to go back to 8v8 ranked WZ systems. Large portion of players did not like arenas to begin with. And beside forcing classes to be too similar, arenas will never be balanced.

The mechanic for scoring need to be discussed before you can draw conclusions based on the leaser board. for starters. I play a sage and sages snipers ans commandos are always the first class targeted and those classes are usualy in the back what does that mean in terms of the rank? it means we will not get fist blow medal less likely to survive a round so we wont get that medal and if those medals are contributing to your rank well we will fall behind in overall rank that does not mean we did not contribute equally and our classs is under powered. The most overpowering class in the game is operative healers but they are not the highes ranked because thay are focused more often the melee dps are the last players targeted and should have the best stastics.

That sais the tactics tree needs some fixes they should not be able to charges to pulse canon with a spamable attack out of combat so lets start with the simple, smash spec is a hard counter to sage which is ok as a sage if they nerf smash sages could get op real quick. But no aoe burst spec should be match the single target damage of the the single target dps classes and if the cmplaint is they have no role in pve than pve need and adjustment to have phases where aoe is critical to the group us over whelming number of *** the hit hard just keep comeing and people will bring the aoe classes along.

Now that the leader boards are up we can analyze the balance of the classes much better.

I took a snapshot of the top 300 players at 11:00AM 11/27/2013

Here is what the current snapshot looks like:

18 Guardian/Juggernaut

68 Sentinel/Marauder

36 Shadow/Assassin

35 Sage/Sorcerer

77 Vanguard/Powertech

7 Commando/Mercenary

14 Gunslinger/Sniper

45 Scoundrel/Operative

 

300 Total

37.5 Each Expected

 

It looks like the Vanguard/Powertech and Sentinel/Marauder are completely overpowered... I don't think this surprises anyone.

 

I think the Devs are on the right path, but certainly some tweaking is still needed.

 

You missed a key issue here, and that is the number of classes actually in the population.

IE, there are a lot less snipers playing than sorcs. Stuff like that. You need the percentages.

 

EDIT: Cretinus already said this

Edited November 28, 2013 by JP_Legatus

I do not feel focus/rage is balanced, been playing sentinel since release day and always have been watchmen. after many weeks of masochism I got good enough where I get top place or second place unless guard duty but when I played smash using about 5 buttons I got the exact same result. I also do not care for operative healers because I have seen countless people do insane **** with them, other then that I think everything else is okay.

PVP never will be set auto balance on status when you enter the PVP Warzone or PVP all areas but if it does than PVP is no fun. You need get use to it with players enter the PVP show up high level or low level status difference. No rules but normal game play. No game player government not needed. Edited November 28, 2013 by Wagerbane

Well those are certainly interesting points, especially coming from you vanguard/powertech and sentinal/marauder players. lol

 

Tamanous and Ryder are, of course, correct. The classes all have differing roles/trees, I hope we can see some new powers, one day.

 

Bringinig back 8v8 ranked would be great... if I could find an eight player gang to join.

 

I meant only to display the current snapshot of the top tier players. If there are 300,000 pvp players, this would represent a snapshot of the top 0.1% of the "subscribers." I found it interesting, but I did not find the results surprising.

 

Oh, and Snipers that can only shoot 35m are retarded

well there are quite a few OP classes.....

The problem with the stats is that you're assuming equal sized pools of players. Out of 30000 ppl, if 3750 people play each class, then you can look at the top 300 and say "this class is overperforming compared to the others". But, if the class distribution is more like 7000 play mara/sent, 4000 play sage, 3000 play guardian, 2000 play p-tech, etc. then your numbers are less meaningful (in this case, they would point to p-tech being op'd and sent/mara being fine, etc). Although your numbers aren't useless, we don't have the other numbers to interpret them correctly.

 

And remember that solo q isn't a good place to judge healer or tank worth. I would say that scoundrel healers compared to the other healers are a bigger problem than any other class dominance issue right now but your numbers don't really show that (because not as many players play healers in arenas).

Arena is any game is about high dps and high survivability. Only certain classes shine until the developer homogenizes all classes.

 

Arena is the end of class diversity. It ruins all mmos. It only makes sense that fotm classes appear at first ... then the rest of the game is shaped around arena balance.

Pretty much. One of the reasons I highly dislike the decision to make Arenas the sole measurement of player rank. Arena's criteria for a class to be strong in this environment are very, very specific.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Helig

Then what's the point of posting it?

 

Besides, in order to be able to make a meaningful statement, you'd have to compare these figures to the overall class distribution in the game, i.e. how many people play which class, game wide and content wide. Imagine that the overall distribution is similar to that of the top 300, then the latter would simply confirm the first. No statement as to class balance could be derived from that.

 

I learn from the numbers which classes are favoured by ranked players - by whatever reason.

 

The most likely reason is that they are favoured by players ranked because

 

a) they are FOTM

b) because they are the top performing classes (be it damage, healing, protection)

c) because of certain setups used.

 

Now I'm waiting for unranked leaderboards ... THEY should be MUCH MORE interesting regarding analysis of both class balance & what people like to play ...

Edited November 29, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

Now that the leader boards are up we can analyze the balance of the classes much better.

I took a snapshot of the top 300 players at 11:00AM 11/27/2013

Here is what the current snapshot looks like:

18 Guardian/Juggernaut

68 Sentinel/Marauder

36 Shadow/Assassin

35 Sage/Sorcerer

77 Vanguard/Powertech

7 Commando/Mercenary

14 Gunslinger/Sniper

45 Scoundrel/Operative

 

300 Total

37.5 Each Expected

 

One could deduce a few setups by using these numbers :

 

Sentinel / Marauder + Vanguard / Powertech + one of those : Scoundrel / Operative OR Shadow / Assassin OR Sage / Sorceror ...

 

Guardian / Juggernaught , Gunslingers / Snipers and Commandos / Mercenaries are least used, meaning that they are not likely to appear in favourite setups.

Edited November 29, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

It's an MMO folks - each class is setup to work as part of a team. Playing solo is an anomaly that can't ever be accounted for because it's not part of the overall best laid plans for groups. It's why you can't solo the best stuff.

 

Solo PVP can only ever be made "fair" if one class is allowed to PVP only against an opponent of the same class, wearing the exact same stuff, configured exactly the same way - and even then it fails to take into account the differences in hardware speed, "lag" or other differences based on things no one can ever figure in, not to mention individual skill level.

 

If the Dev's monkey around with "balance" so that every character is exactly like another - then why even bother having classes at all? Everyone can be an Ewok named Sam and wear a brown robe and be assured that no one is any better or worse they they are.

 

PVP in an MMO where 95% of the player base PVE's has never worked, and every time a developer tries to "balance" classes, it all ends up like vanilla pudding and players start looking around for the next great thing.