The weapon balance in the game has gone down hill after they released the 3v3 arena and stopped playing pvp.
Here are the three main problems with AGS balancing.
1. Scapegoat balancing
The devs do not nerf their favorite thing or the new thing they added, so they start changing other things to make it work instead of the main issue. This causes a domino effect nerfing the wrong things throwing the game balance into a worse position. For example, they added shirking energy, and infinite stamina became an issue. So, instead of nerfing shirking energy, they increased the delay stam starts to regen after a dodge. Light dex was still a problem due to cheaper dodges and haste buffs with no down times, so then they nerf shirking energy, which was actually a dex buff vs other light players due to cheaper dodges and more range, and add 20% dodge reduction after melee hits when dex would never get hit in the first place vs everyone else’s shorter range. All of those change were because “dex/light is unkillable”, and light dodges still proc shirking fortification, lmao.
2. BIS perks being protected
I know this is an RPG and gearing up should be rewarding, but new world has a fun combat system that should not be held down to this degree by gear. The BIS perks are so strong they are breaking the game. A geared player is probably around 3x-5x stronger instead of 30%-50%. Because I am pretty much fully geared, I just dumpster new players without even trying. Freedom stacking makes mistakes trivial no matter how bad. Resilient is a requirement, and shirking fort kills light/med/heavy balance. These three perks are far and away the best perks for all weights and specs, and the only build variety is through gems or having worse perks.
BIS perks are warping balance for the entire game. Shirking energy caused a stam rework. Resilient kills fire staff’s high crit rate design. Mortal empower is buffing low risk builds with 30% extra damage while encouraging targeting/harassment of new/easy to kill players. Every time, new players come out worse, and every sacred cow perk makes balancing the game even more of a nightmare.
3. Dumbing down gameplay
Lets take the recent riposte nerf for an example. The ability has two parts. The first is the skill based triggering/blocking damage, and the second was the reward of damage immunity, a stun, rend if the stun hit, and 3 second “grit”. The problem with riposte was it had zero risk with massive rewards as the player still regened stam during the entire skill even after being “outplayed” all while being an instant cast ability. So, pre-nerf the “counter play” was to bait out/predict the skill and not trigger the stun so they don’t get the grit.
What did AGS do to “fix” riposte? Did they add some kind of risk like removing instant cast, making the animations clear so players can tell when the damage immunity ends, add some exhaustion mechanic if never triggered, or even remove the stam regen? No, they removed the grit/skilled based reward as if AGS only seen those “outplay” videos vs pve players in opr instead of playing the game. I cannot even believe that they made the counter play to riposte just unga bunga trigger as fast as possible because stam regen, then dodge/block stun.
This same dumbing down has happened constantly. Grav well is now a joke and used to be the the only thing causing me to use blocks. Flamethrower is still getting buffs while being one of the worse play experiences in the game, and mage meta is flamethrower + ice pylon which they also buffed. Stam nerfs so dodging arrows is worse than just hiding in cover and waiting the bow player out. All those tracking buffs to “fix” bad abilities and weapons to eventually cause issues later down the line. SnS basic attack spam is meta and oppressive after dodge reduction change and multiple slow buffs, and the addition of shockwave being canceled by blocks when its the easiest skill in the game to dodge. It just doesn’t end.
I genuinely had more fun playing New World than Elden Ring this year, but my enjoyment of the combat has collapsed after these last few patches. I did not need a reward for arenas or even oprs as other games put time/resource gates around the fun parts like AGS did with dungeon orbs and gear durability, but the combat has gone from fun to a grind/chore. If AGS isn’t going to add pvp content, they should at least balance the what is in the game in some interesting/fun way.