It’s a better system then their previous method of making huge sweeping changes to too many things and breaking the game. Leaving everyone complaining about 10 different reasons the game is broken because nobody really knows what causes it because too many things changed.
Increase time it takes to charge bow and fire staff heavy attacks. (Doesn’t help that the animation cancel for bow heavies are still a thing) Flat damage nerf to bow. Flat damage nerf to fire staff (not as much as the bow needs) Increase mana cost for fire staff abilities, with a time delay between attack and ability usage.
Increase damage mitigation to medium and heavy, beyond what they did this last mini patch.
Remove bow haste.
They need to find a way to make it more attractive to use melee, so something like OPR, will actually have a front line. Instead of just everyone chucking arrows and fire balls, and the side that does have a front line, ultimately steam rolls the other side…and it’s just boring AF.
Hate suggesting them balancing the game around OPR, but the fact is that it’s the primary way that most players will ever PvP…and it’s in a HORRIBLE state right now. Didn’t think it could get worse after the Brimstone update, but it did.
These small tiny changes do nothing. I get it, they don’t want to do heavy handed changes. HOWEVER, the rework of fortify, and the fire staff buffs, have made the game absolutely miserable for anyone that doesn’t want to run bow or fire staff. Heavier changes are needed…quickly…not small changes once a month.
I can sit and run fire staff no issues, and get into the top 5 overall EVERY single OPR with very little effort. Insanely boring to do this though. The thought of contributing to the absolute BS state of the game, just ultimately puts me off of trying to play. If you try to run melee without a dedicated healer, you wont get anywhere.
Solo queing healer is also miserable. You’re legit just trying to keep bows and fire staffs alive, so you can get your points. Funnily enough, still able to get into the top 5 as a healer…and it’s funny AF.
Game is bad, and AGS is tired of hearing about how bad the game is. Thus, closing the forums.
AGS knows it’s bad, yet players like you are still trying to cope and convince yourself otherwise, when AGS knows different.
Ya but they literally are targeting those weapons and armour you mentioned. Like they clearly agree with you. I agree it’s probably not enough for the mitigation side, and bow in a skilled players hands will still probably be very strong, but they clearly see that too.
Next month they’ll do another bump, and then another change the following month. This is good, or would you prefer we wait 3 months for massive changes that undoubtably make one weapon OP for the next 3 months?
Your opinions about the game and balanced seemed to have changed a lot.
I think we had a similar evolution of opinions. I mained the musket, like you, for a long time and I was oblivious to the balancing issues until I started playing melee.
Different builds are drastically better than others and I’m surprised more people don’t see the obvious issues.
I do think small balance changes are better than big sweeping changes.
Dont feed the trolls they get bigger.
When someone is so quick to dish comments like this its just useless to engage.
They dont want improvements, if ags does something good we should give credit.
Is it better for them to release more balance patches then they did in the past? Yes.
Is it perfect? No, but nobody said it was.
OP point is clear, they did reevaluate the balance patch frequency and that IS win. No need to argue against facts.
But once again, we are no there yet. But somehow this attitude helps nothing so go on OP keep giving credit when credit is due and forget pessimists that just want to flame.
Yea, that it has.
When you main a musket, you’re truly playing a different game compared to everyone else. You don’t really see that, when you have 4kish hours as a musket user 
When they stuck the bloom in the PTR, that’s when I started experimenting with other stuff more, and truly saw the differences in play styles.
Hence why you don’t really see me being a heavy advocate for musket to return to what it used to be. Musket does need changed, and I don’t see it happening until they do the full rework, probably in the fall.
Small small changes (like they did with this months changel aren’t enough for the current state of things. It simply isn’t…
They SERIOUSLY need to get their crap together, before the release of a couple MMOs that are coming this year.
I just don’t see the game being around for much longer. I’d say RIP NW 2024.
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Dude you should find anotehr game to play. If at this point you don’t get its not game for you, you have some serious issues. Uninstall and go play wow or somthing you like.
Well aint that a perfect representation of the tea pot calling the kettle black.
Sounds like it’s really getting to your mental, def best to go play other games.
NW has been a mess for a long time, not saying it’s in a great place, but I like the change in approach to balance.
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Play other builds besides bow or mage for a week. See if your opinion stays the same. Don’t switch once you get farmed. Keep playing. See how much longer you want to play the game after that.
Why do i need a week? I never swap builds for more than 1-2h lols. I like mage and there is no reason to play other builds for me.
But sure i will play some medium mele tommorow for few hours.
Honestly been having a lot of fun as a skitzo this patch in OPR. Having a group makes a lot of builds fun in OPR rn, but sure as a solo I can imagine it’s not as fun
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Melee can be good. I think light melee is a lot of fun. In fact, range is way too boring to play after getting playing melee for awhile.
However, there are many games where you cannot do anything because of the build you are playing. It’s really only a melee and kind of a healer issue. Range can always play the game, which is probably at least partially why it’s so popular. They might not win or get as many kills as normal, but they can at least always play every time they log on. I think this is an issue if they want to retain or grow their player base.
I do think with a few more small balance patches it will be fine. I also think they made the easiest weapons to use the strongest, which was a weird design choice.
So did play few hours yesterday and few today. Medium ss/spear on arena. And its good build. Im not felling it. But in general you are so tanky compared to light that its night and day. Also amount of cc is crazy. If you get to any light - mele, bow, healer - you can make their live hell.
But bad side is you have limited amount of what you can do in 1 vs x. I think good mele players can perform in that scenario to, but im not one of them.
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trust me, he end’s up calling this a lucky round. no video proof is fake aswell 
Lol what? Yea this was a good game. Had many, way worse games ofc. But my experience after few hours as medium mele on arena is as above. Has strong sides, has weaker sides. Matter of what player preffers imho. And build is very oppresive vs light armor users on arena.
And if you want compare that build to light range difference is simple. Range can do something with bad teammates, where mele can’t do as much. Sure you can take more punches and have way more cc to protect youself. But lack of mobility vs light builds shows. And even if you play well and use cc to get out - main issue is you are not range. You can do dmg in 1 vs 3 situaion where you just burn lot of cds to get out 
So we talk about 2 different playstyles. One is less team depended while other very much team depended.
I just wish the balance team would separate the pvp changes from pve. There is a good portion of the pve that is becoming train content only, that has been abandoned by the solo people I used to see on occasion.
There is no real grouping to speak of outside mutations, and they are a toxic hell scape. I had to step away from expeditions, or give into telling people just how trash they are at the game. 
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And that is easy to do:
- add pve heartunes instead of stupid wards/banes - and they multiple dmg of weapons for pve only
- add 1 passive to each weapon that does multiple dmg vs npc
So you are limited with ballancing but you can adjust pvp and pve with ofc some limitations. And it would be easy to do for them i think.
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I’ve been talking about OPR this whole time. It would funny if you were talking about arenas the whole time.
Medium and even heavy melee is probably fine in arenas. It’s been that way since the brimstone update.
I haven’t played the most recent update. Some people think it’s good.
This patch buffed fortify and now heavy/medium bruisers are seen way more. People have less of an issue with bow hitting them across the map and killing them, and flare got toned down. I do think FS is still a little overturned, but that’s mainly due to Pillar.
Overall it’s on the right track regarding ranged vs. melee balance. They have a long way to go though because too many skills in weapon trees are outdated and flat out bad. Musket is also dead and needs a rework asap.