Suspect Discussions: Info and Purpose

As part of our commitment to better involving the community with potential character changes, we want to create threads that will give a heads up to the designers considerations for what characters we think are being over-polarizing within the PVP meta.

From time to time, one of the designers will create a new thread focused on a particular character, going into the following categories:

• What It was Designed For (what the purpose of the character is)
• What We Got (how the character excels [and potentially over-excels] in the game)
• Why This is a Problem (the problems this causes for valuing other characters or having players make interesting decisions in features)
• What We Could Consider Changing (our initial thoughts about what we could do to help change “What We Got” to be closer to “What It was Designed For”)

The key here is nothing is set in stone, we may do some or none of the proposed changes (never “all”, though; we’re spitballing to bring things into balance, not trying to nerf things into the ground). We also want feedback from the community, both in terms of if they agree changes are warranted and also for proposals of what they think might be better changes to make characters better align with what they were designed for.

Alternatively, if it’s demonstrated that what we think is a problem is indeed not a problem (such as by pointing out viable alternatives or counters with the existing character base), we will take no action and leave the character as is. A suspect discussion thread is not a red mark which ensures a nerf is coming.