You will never be able to nerf enough to please the crying babies
Now they are crying about Warlock and Falconer, and if you nerf those, they will cry about Runemaster, or HH Sentinel, or Wraith Necromancer
They will never stop, it will never be enough
Meanwhile, you will be pissing off the people that invested a lot of time into their characters only to that time be wasted because of other people’s jealousy
It would be a mistake to go that route
You should only nerf mid-cycle if you are also willing to buff. For every ridiculously overpowered skill, there’s at least one that is all but useless.
You could commit to a one-for-one balance of buffs and nerfs. If a skill is being overused to the point of an “emergency” nerf, I’d bet you can find a way to tweak a skill that’s being used by like 1% of 1% of players.
No, it won’t. It will tell what the vocal people that browse the forums/reddit regularly want. The rest of the playerbase is having fun playing the game and no clue that this is even going on. But when their build suddenly gets nerfed they are going to notice, some will come here to complain (and then likely quit the game) and the rest will… likely just quit the game.
There’s a good reason why the other major ARPGs hold the same stance that EHG currently holds.
You guys sound like only the feelings of the people whose builds got nerfed are valid, but the feelings of those who would like to see a bit more fairness and less cheating in the gaming world should be ignored.
PvE game, what other people are playing has little to no impact on you. Only if you’re playing MG does it have any effect, and it’s a POSITIVE effect as it is adding more to the supply side of MG.
No one is talking about cheating, they are using the skills are they are currently implemented and under the policy EHG currently has in place. Hell, most likely don’t even realize it’s a bug, because they are playing the game and not sitting on the forums all day reading about people whining that some other build is doing better than theirs.
Why nerf everything in a PvE game?
I’m fine with fixing bugs of classes that make them overpowered.
Warlock with his infinite shield = Fix, that’s a bug
Let’s be honest, everyone wants to get so far in the monoliths until their class reaches the limit.
Many players would certainly not welcome it if everything was nerfed so much that they could no longer create 400 monoliths.
Pls fix Your Server first befor starting with balancing 
the only thing about the leaderboard, I would save the current one and have a full reset,
have dated leaderboard, from to, and so on
in my humble opinion
exactly!
The bugged classes balance is so bad that when i calculate my position in arena i just count every class thats not warlock and falconeer. Bugs are not real gameplay. I hit 429 arena wave on void knight legit with no bugs and that puts me at position number 12 if you dont count bugged classes. The best person is currently a druid at over 800 waves. Truly impressive for a non bugged class.
How nice it would be if the leaderboard wasnt full of bug abusers. The devs policy should be strict against bugs…not only should they fix them mid cycle but they should remove every single warlock and falconeer from the leaderboard and force them to reclimb with legit gameplay.
Dont know why EHG is having a knee jerk reaction from comments. Stick your guns and do what youve always done, wait til the next content drop to fix. Its maybe concerning to ladders, but only 1% maybe even do it competitively. Otherwise, you will be just like Wolcen and D4 who fixed/ nerfed builds that a lot of people put a lot of time and effort in and people will rage even harder than if u stuck with what youve always done.
ALL Bugs should be fixed regardless of whether or not they have an impact on server stability. What shouldn’t happen is changing items like you did with Advent of the Erased boots on Day 3 of the cycle causing people to re-roll because the change heavily impacted their build. Flurry Marksmen used those boots to get a measly 1k-2k extra Ward to assist with mitigation of one-shots. Now they can’t even pull down 100 ward during a fight with those boots when you’ve got Sentinels running around with 20k+ Ward due to a bug.
Why complicate an issue to this extent? If you release a skill that is doing something unintended & the top of the leader boards are filled with that build - correct it. Why create a situation where anyone that wants to compete is forced to use a bugged build?
The goal should be to dissuade people from using bugged skills to gain an advantage.
I saw a video from PerrythePig and I think he had a perfect take on this. Essentially if it’s an actual bug (unintended interaction) that is creating significant power it should be fixed immediately. If it’s just some interaction working as intended (but maybe overtuned or an interaction not intended) just leave it alone unless it’s causing server instability or other actual problems. However, I would say that if it’s WAY out of line from other builds to the point that it breaks the leaderboard that should probably be fixed ASAP as well. In either case the leaderboard should be reset (either partial or full depending on your discretion or maybe how widespread).
All that said I don’t compete on the leaderboard so what do I know.
Please don’t fix bugs! It makes the game more fun. I love having the opportunity to explore broken builds as I play. This’ll just incentivize people to hide broken bugs, etc. I’d rather you focus on buffing underpowered builds! I’m thinking about the longevity of the game. Resetting the leaderboards, etc, taking off broken bugs from the leaderboards is tedious, more work. People seem too competitive. The devs can’t keep patching, balancing, again and again, over and over again throughout a cycle. And watch over every leaderboard entry. Bugs are ALWAYS going to happen. People will discover new ones, etc. Why would you remove their entries from the leaderboards? If the leaderboards for arena matters that much to these players, then they should use the “broken” builds then. And every cycle reset brings in new opportunity to seek new builds as bugs are fixed. It’s equal in my opinion, anyone can create any character. Most people create multiple characters. I would focus on screens-shotting the builds of all leaderboard entries, so they can’t “hide” it and buffing underpowered builds throughout the season. Circle of Fortune also definitely needs a buff to incentivize people to not rely on Merchants Guild. The point is, even next cycle, we’ll see 1-3 classes still dominating the leaderboards. Even with patches, balancing, etc. It’s really not going to be different. There will always be an optimal class to push high corruption that’s relying on a game-breaking mechanic. If it’s not causing any server issues, why not let people have fun. Massive nerfs just ruins the game, it’ll make players redo their whole build MID-CYCLE, makes it too competitive for casual players. Then we’ll be on a loop of fixing bugs, people (with time on their hands) using new bugs, fixing them again, etc. Now casual players will always be horridly behind because they can’t adapt. Nothing’s stopping competitive people from having an edge-up. You think they’ll stop finding new broken mechanics after one is fixed? Nope.
Anyways, I play Wraithlord Necromancer. Not the best build. I’m also Merchant’s Guild. I’m seriously not having a problem with broken builds. If I wanted to play it, I would’ve. Nothing’s stopping me from creating new characters to play them anyways!
If you’re incapable of reading the survey prompts then that’s on you.
This is just backwards logic.
Casual players fall horribly behind if they’re not playing the broken builds. Fixing bugs that cause over-performance just balances the playing field so more build variety can hit the top ladder rankings.
Sure, nothing will stop competitive no-life dudes from playing for 18 hours a day, but now they don’t have the inherent advantage of half a million ward, letting them slingshot in ladders and jump to multiple thousands of corruption, introducing more gold and unique LP items into rotation.
This isn’t an all or nothing solution. You fix bugs and unintended interactions as they come out. Fix this one and so even if a new bug is discovered later, at least we’re still down one bug.
Personally I think you acknowledging publicly as soon as possible about builds you think are using a bugged interaction and letting us know if they are on the chopping block is far more important on if it should be changed or not. If we wait a few days of content starting to get made and you let us know hey this is looking like a problem then fixing it is great. If we go like a week or more and no warning is given than people will start to reroll into that build and now it is a problem. If that happens you should fix the bug if it is cause problems but if it isn’t then you need to fix the bug in away that allows it to get power roughly in line of where it was or where it is compared to other builds.
Example the ghost flame bug it should likely stay the best build of the league but not 100x the best build.
No one should feel like they wasted their time making a character in your game because it could get it’s legs swept out from under it seemingly randomly. Now if someone knows it is a problem but gets FOM for not trying it that is on them since they got warned.
If there is a plan to have a mid cycle balance patch every time then its possible to just reset leaderboards mid cycle every time, sort of a soft reset within a cycle.
I found the poll on Reddit and came over to share my two cents worth. My concern around mid cycle nerfs comes from mixed experiences in other games. Players always fall on a distribution. An OP skill may shift the best players up, sometimes to ridiculous damage, but the middle quartiles where over half the players fall may be no different from other builds.
I’ve seen good fixes, where one multiplier was removed but a different skill buffed, leaving average players in about the same place. If it’s done well, no changes in gear are needed. Unfortunately more often I see indiscriminate nerfs where the whole distribution falls and the bottom 50% of players are screwed. They are unfun, especially for CoF players like me. I will have already done my crafting and what am I supposed to do? You think I will enjoy dropping way back in end game or re-grinding gear and blessings on an un-nerfed build just to get back to where I was?
I agree with other folks suggesting that if something big has to be fixed, you announce and do it within the first week. There are enough streamers and competitive players rushing to leaderboard that you should have a signal if something is seriously broken.
Ignore the small stuff. That’s half the fun of a seasonal ARPG, picking up a build that used to be mediocre and a bug or change has made it jump out as good. Obviously fix all bugs that cause technical problems like lag.
As far as leaderbords I’m decidedly average and playing CoF. I couldn’t care less. I try to beat my own best.
You mean like the patch D4 did that was full of nerfs to bring the powerlevel of players more in line with the difficulty of the game? Yeah I remember how well that went and where D4 is now ^^.
There are merits and flaws to either approach but intentionaly keeping a game in a buged state is something new to me and something disheartening.
Thanks for taking the time to post a survey. 
I can only speak for myself, but if changes were done to a build I was invested in and played a lot mid-Cycle I would simply quit and maybe come back next Cycle instead.