Best Of

1) I'm not at liberty to divulge who wrote what report - but I would think you would think this person is knowledgeable about monks. Maybe I'm wrong, but given your comments, I don't think I am.

2) You say 'bipartisan comment' - I'm saying 'bipartisan comments'. There were multiple comments from your own side saying it was strong and agreeing with some of the solutions (not all of them). There were comments that did not agree, but there were multiple that did.

3) I know that you think holyfire is strong - but we've reviewed your logs and made adjustments that we think are appropriate. We've reserved the right to make further adjustments. I've been pretty vocal that I prefer incremental changes rather than sweeping ones and I believe I've been consistent overall when it comes to making incremental change decisions on reports. Maybe it's not enough at this time, but we'll make further changes, we just need to see more than 'holyfire is still crazy!' comments to act on.

4) I understand that it's a nerf and where you're coming from, but again - based on the comments and the report, we felt this was a change that was good for the game. Not to mention the fact that you had a chance to give input on this report and -nobody- did. I'm not sure it's really fair for you to complain about the outcome when you didn't take advantage of speaking up before we made a decision.

5) I get that being on the receiving end can be bad and negative attitudes can be draining. Trust me, I bear quite a bit of the brunt of people's negative behaviors and complaints. It can be hard to keep motivated to make changes when no matter what you do, someone is going to shit on you for it. 

I apologize for the delay in responding but I haven't had a chance to until now.

I'm not quite sure what is meant by 'sneaky changes in changelogs.' By definition, that isn't sneaky - announcing that we're making changes. That's why we post them in discord too, in their own unique channel, to ensure people see the changes. It isn't our intention 'sneak' in changes or nerf classes because we want to stomp on people. I just had someone complain to me on discord the other day that I didn't take their opinion from discord the other day and instantly make changes based on their comments. They complained that saying 'feel free to report it the next cycle' was not enough and they shouldn't have to wait that long for changes. We don't just make changes to please people and quell complaints. We make them because we believe they're the right changes to make. They're also usually made by a group or a few people. As far as combat goes, I have an ultimate say, but I've made changes that I personally didn't think were needed or should be made because I was outvoted. Some of those changes turned out to be good changes (the concentrated warrior style is one that comes to mind). We do this because I realize that I'm not perfect and it does work out. Any changes made though, whether they pan out or not, are made because they are viewed as overall best for the game as a whole. Not to nerf someone or give in to public outcry. I mean, Pits are still a thing for goodness sake.

Maybe I'm pretty off base here but I'm assuming that this (at least the monk complaint) is being driven by the Ninjakari Constrict report (Report 458/484) as that report was the only monk report that nerfed a specific monk class, particularly one that Mirae would use, as the only other monk reports are improving stancing odds (Report 451) (which does affect all monks) or the improvement of Shofangi Gore from slickness to asthma (Report 455). If I am off-base, then ignore the following.

First off, it's a bit disingenuous to make a statement that any writer of a report is not 'someone who has ANY relevant knowledge of how a class functions.' You don't know who wrote it, and you don't know who commented on it. For all you know, someone you just listed as being knowledgeable actually wrote it. People are also able to comment on reports and give their opinion on things, and some of those players are incredibly knowledgeable about monks. We always take all comments into consideration. Sure, some get dismissed if they obviously don't know what they're talking about, but quite a few of them do. The ninjakari report, in general, had bipartisan agreement that the blackout was too strong, some stating that only when people were moving between surge and killer stances, some saying the effects were too strong on monks in general etc. Given that players from all orgs (both players that fight with it AND against it) were saying it was too strong an effect but the given solutions were not great, we went the route we did. It should be noted - that despite having the chance to comment on the follow-up report, only one player did. Not sure why more players didn't take the opportunity to voice their opinion there.

I don't believe that removing blackout is going to significantly hurt Ninjakari - especially given that other side of the comments were along the lines of 'just use AC GUESS/Diagnose' etc. If it was so easy to counter, then removing it shouldn't be that big of a nerf. If it is strong, then it should be changed. I could be wrong though, it's not unheard of.

Anyway - we are also making other changes to all monks with the stancing report. 

I know there are some negative things associated with discord, but I also believe there's been a lot of positive things that have resulted from discord as well, and I do think the positive has generally outweighed the negative. I think it's definitely been overall positive change. We could definitely improve some things though and clarify some rules.