I know that the goal of NW is to give players greater freedom in choosing builds, without locking them into classes, and that’s very good, I like the game because of that. However, there is a balance issue here, which is very difficult to get right and the tendency is to get worse, as the players’ abilities and skills are increasing, so they will use whatever artifice the game offers to benefit and get stronger.
When we say about balance, one thing is basic, there can’t be anything that weighs the balance much more on the beneficial side than weaknesses, and a game with a very wide range of possibilities for builds and combinations, it’s strange to realize that we always have that meta build, in which some cases I’ve seen about 70% of the players of that content (see OPR and war) with exactly the same combination of weapons/set/skills, either because of bug exploits or simply because the game allows an extremely broken build.
The worrying thing is that, it wasn’t just a case, this has been happening since the game’s launch, we already had the full heavy axe/hammer meta, heavy healers, hatchet with hatchet, bow/musket with rapier, anything with immaterial gauntlet, and now the current one is ax with ice gauntlet.
It’s ok to have some weapons/combinations a little stronger in certain periods, I understand that true balance in games like this doesn’t exist, it’s just not possible to do, *the problem here is that these “metas” seen in the NW are extremely broken *, are far above any other build, despite often being due to bug exploits, but I won’t go into that merit now.
I believe that balancing your own weapons is something very difficult, even more so when, to use a weapon in any build, you just need to equip it, level up to 20, make the “meta” combination and use it, but what about the attributes? Well, the attributes don’t influence anything in certain builds, let’s exemplify with the current “meta” ax + ice gauntlet, just use a standard score (300 STR and 200 CON), equip the weapons and that’s it.
There is currently no limiter, something that makes players have to keep changing scores, trying to find a balance, because with a base score, an OP build is already done.
Suggestion:
The suggestion in this case would be a restriction on the use of certain skills based on the score distributed by the player, causing him to be forced to think about a real build, balancing damage, resistance, health , skill combination , etc.
Still in the current “meta”, being able to use a vortex, ice wall and ice storm in the same builds, without giving up damage and resistance, is something bad for the health of the game.
There could be a skill limiter, so I need a certain score to activate it, examples:
Can only use ax vortex at 250 STR, ice wall at 200 INT, defiant shield stance at 250 CON, immaterial gauntlet’s petrifying scream at 150 INT, hatchet berserker at 250 DEX
This limiter would be a way of trying to balance the builds, so that it doesn’t let a player have only “broken” skills, without having to give up something else. I could still use Vortex+Icewall+Ice Storm in a build, but I would have to give up some ax damage and a considerable amount of resistance/life for that, which I believe would bring more balance to the game and would help his health .
This obviously wouldn’t apply to players below Lv60, as they still don’t have enough score to assemble a full build.