State of the Game: Izzy and Ensign chat

A discussion between Izzy and Ensign, recorded for posterity by Billiard.

It appears to be prior to the latest skill balance.

State of the Game—November 12, 2007
Talking Skill Balance with Izzy and Ensign

By Billiard

Special note: Each State of the Game presents the opinions and insights of one game observer. These observations are personal in nature and do not reflect the opinions of ArenaNet. While ArenaNet does review each State of the Game article to assure that it offers content that is respectful of all players, we intend to allow our reporters the freedom to inject some personal opinion into descriptions of the current atmosphere of competitive play in Guild Wars, and to express views based on their experience and observation.



The October Skill Balance Update generated considerable discussion both before and after it came out. As with many discussions on Guild Wars fansites, the community's point of view was amply represented, but not much was known about where ArenaNet stood on the topic. Looking at the current metagame, many players didn't like what they were seeing in terms of balance, and many questioned if ArenaNet wanted or knew how to handle the situation. To shed some light on the subject, I sat down with a couple of knowledgeable folks to discuss skill balance in more detail and see what the issues look like from both ArenaNet's and the community's perspectives.

Ensign, representing the Guild Wars community, was one of the founders and a core member of the Idiot Savants [iQ] championship teams that won the North American Championship of the Guild Wars World Championship (GWWC) and the Open Event at the Guild Wars Factions Championship (GWFC). They then placed third at the GWWC in Taipei and second at the GWFC in Leipzig. Ensign is also a senior moderator and part of the original staff at the popular GuildWarsGuru fansite, and engages in high level PvP as a member of Dark Alley [dR].

Izzy, representing ArenaNet, is the main Skill balancer for Guild Wars and plays in The Fianna [Fi] PvP guild. He originally started in the gaming industry years ago with Asheron's Call, and was involved in the development of Asheron's Call 2 and Mythica before joining ArenaNet.

Below is a synopsis of the discussion on skill balance with Izzy and Ensign.



Current Balance

Ensign: Currently, things are indeed balanced in the sense that everyone runs the same basic three or four builds with slight midline variations: two Warriors, two Monks, Ranger, Mesmer, Blinding Surge Elementalist, and a flag runner. Many matches thus end up being boring mirror matches, where the teams are pretty even, but not very interesting.

Izzy: The top level of PvP is stagnant, especially as compared to the past. This is a result of fixing past issues, in particular the power creep caused by Nightfall's release. Nightfall introduced many skills that added more physical damage, as well as improving the damage of all professions. This greatly increased the damage output of 8v8 team builds, which in turn led teams to look for ways to mitigate this higher level of damage. Now, teams basically try to bring enough defense to hold out until Victory or Death (VoD) where they will then be able to score some kills. Thus, teams attempt to make good tactical decisions on the way to VoD, and many interesting tactics are then employed at VoD.

Skills in the Spotlight
By Izzy


Shield of Regeneration
Shield of Regeneration [Elite]
Monk - Protection Prayers - Enchantment Spell
Energy: 15
Activation: 0.25
Duration: 5..13
Recharge: 8
Enchantment Spell. For 5..13 seconds, target ally gains +3..10 Health regeneration and 40 armor.
Interestingly, just putting up a skill change calls attention to the existence of a skill, and possibly encourages people to run it. But this is an example of perception. It isn't actually balance. People seem to be shifting around their skill usage because certain skills are just spotlighted at the moment. Shield of Regeneration is an example: it was not the most optimal to start with, and after the nerf people found alternatives. Ensign: A lot of teams run 8v8 GvG builds because Monks were considerably changed with Nightfall as well. Now teams need another Monk or defensive character for support. This leads to some interesting responses when an opposing team splits with three attackers. Responding to such splits can greatly weaken a dedicated 8v8 team build.

Izzy: Monks were weakened on purpose in order to break the stalemate caused by players not dying. The game is unbalanced if nobody dies, and fighting for 20 minutes without a death is boring. Death is a critical event in a GvG, so players bring many layers of defense in order to prevent deaths. With the resulting webs of defense, full of interdependent layers, one mistake and the team crumbles. The weakening of Monks made passive defenses such as Aegis and Wards (skills that are "fire and forget") much more important and powerful. [Referring to a forum post by Ensign] Ensign would like to increase healing capability for Monks, rather than buffing damage reduction, to make Monks more flexible and therefore propagate diversity among Monk builds. As it is now, the advent of Light of Deliverance has really cut down on build diversity, yet it does not synergize well with other skills because it requires less than 80% Health for activation.

Ensign: Light of Deliverance is the only real way to keep up with all of the damage that teams bring into matches, making it a single point of failure. Shutting down a team's Light of Deliverance Monk usually leads to defeat for that team.

Izzy: A Heal Party type of skill is integral to the backline of Guild Wars teams, and has been almost from the start. Because it's even more efficient than Heal Party, Light of Deliverance is harder to deal with. Using Light of Deliverance also pressures teams' ability to split because Monks' Skill Bars are now more tuned for 8v8 fighting. I would like to deal with the Light of Deliverance issue, but I want to continue examining passive defenses. It's dangerous making changes to Monks without extensive consideration. A small change to Monks can have far-reaching consequences for overall balance. Monks play a pivotal role throughout the game.

Ensign: Ward of Melee is still a problem after the recent skill changes. In the past it was not a major concern, but Light of Deliverance allows players to basically camp in the Ward and shrug off area-of-effect damage that previously had been used to force them out.

Izzy: I will look at Monks, but I want to avoid catastrophic failure and be very careful about messing with them. Even so, I still want to focus on passive defenses. They're scary because once people learn how to effectively use passive defenses, they basically stop taking damage. The power creep of Nightfall that led to this huge increase in passive defense by teams also led teams to bring fewer dedicated offensive characters. While in the past teams might have brought five purely offensive characters, the norm now is three. Paragons have contributed greatly to this situation because they are really good at combining both a lot of offense and a lot of defense on one character. To change things up, I plan to focus on passive defenses and Light of Deliverance.



Ideal Balance

Izzy: Balance should make the game enjoyable to play, with large variety in terms of the builds you can play and in-game tactics you can employ. Right now I see balance as being off because there are a limited number of strong skills you basically need to bring if you want to win. Also, in the game itself, 8v8 is much more viable than a split strategy, thereby making 8v8 the dominant choice by most teams. One reason for this is that many guilds around are no longer trying new things.

Ensign: Agreed with Izzy. The Guild Wars Factions Championship was the pinnacle of balance because you never knew what people would bring. Back then you could try bringing different things, and you weren't ever sure what your opponents would have on their Skill Bars. But now you can almost know for sure what the opponents will have.

Izzy: We recognized that as more skills were added, the more balance would be affected. New skills are introduced to fill gaps in what is already available and keep things interesting and varied, though this does tend to push out some old skills. This problem is inherent to adding new skills. If there are 15 ways to achieve Blind, there will likely be one optimal method. In addition, good utility skills such as Enraging Charge start to push away the variation in the game. Enraging Charge fills a niche role because it is flexible as either a speed boost for splits or an adrenaline builder. This is one of the reasons ArenaNet didn't introduce as many new skills in Eye of the North.


Balance Updates

Izzy: The method for balancing skills with the release of Factions and Nightfall were different, and thus required different sorts of balance updates. With Factions, we introduced a lot of weaker skills and then slowly worked to make them stronger after seeing how players used and responded to them. When Nightfall was implemented, we instead introduced skills that were very strong and then sought to scale them back later as needed. Thus Nightfall had a much more immediate impact on the metagame than Factions did. This also made it take much longer to balance after the release of Nightfall than it did after the release of Factions.

Izzy: It takes a lot of time to analyze skills and make certain what their effects are on the metagame. I aim to make a balance update every other month if things seem relatively balanced, or once a month if the metagame appears unbalanced. While this may seem like a long time, the longer time period allows for the meta to settle and for us to identify what changes are needed.

Ensign: There really is no problem with the schedule for updates. The problem is more that the depth of the changes is minor. It seems that there are only a few significant changes with each update.

Izzy: We don't like to change too much at once because wide, sweeping changes are harder to track, while smaller changes make it easier to see the effects. Too many changes at once don't provide adequate feedback. It is hard to pin down which changes had the most impact if all of them were huge shakeups. The effects of some changes are immediately apparent though, such as the effect that Keystone Signet had with Signet of Humility.



Balance Input

Izzy: Contemplated changes are often posted on my Wiki page so that people can comment on them. I read posts on various fansites as well as on my Wiki page concerning balance issues. Also, I talk to people in-game about contemplated changes, using a group of 30 or so experienced players as a sounding board. Ensign is usually privy to these changes ahead of time because he and I speak on a regular basis about the state of the game and balance. Ensign's feedback has helped find large issues with changes before they go live. I really like Ensign's critiques because they provide a more radical viewpoint, and it is useful to see those kinds of responses to balance attempts. The "testing weeks" recently employed are a more progressive approach, as opposed to closed door Alpha testing, and they provide a wider response and more feedback. ArenaNet is trying to streamline communication and get the message out to players better, but this still needs work. The volume of skills is high right now, so overall balance takes longer.

Shake it Up

Izzy: Players currently use mostly Core skills, followed by Nightfall skills and then skills from the original Guild Wars campaign (Prophecies). The metagame is quite stale at the moment and needs some shaking up. One example is changing how Light of Deliverance works in relation to other skills in the backline. The risk of this approach, though, is a chain reaction and a crumbling of the metagame.

Ensign: Things have been bad for a couple of months. Shake it up!

interesting read

Wasn't that great....I wanted to see a fight.

I wanted it to be all

Izzy: I know what im doing
Ensign: Im sure you have a good idea, but your also **** it up
Izzy: thats it
Ensign: ya it is!
Izzy: Bring your character! My Guild hall.... noon.

You know it be awesome.

Anyways, didn't they just rehash what the Gladiators board has been yelling at me over and over again?

"Izzy: A Heal Party type of skill is integral to the backline of Guild Wars teams, and has been almost from the start. Because it's even more efficient than Heal Party, Light of Deliverance is harder to deal with. Using Light of Deliverance also pressures teams' ability to split because Monks' Skill Bars are now more tuned for 8v8 fighting. I would like to deal with the Light of Deliverance issue, but I want to continue examining passive defenses. It's dangerous making changes to Monks without extensive consideration. A small change to Monks can have far-reaching consequences for overall balance. Monks play a pivotal role throughout the game."
that was interesting

THAT would be too classic!

I really don't think that prot monks need a nerf. It's not like now everyone uses the same gvg build just use more mesmers to deal with the monks, either that or just outlast them till they get bored and rage quit.

Mesmers barely use alot of hexes and are more domination now.

Why? Izzy has given monks so much HEX HATE, that the only class that can really take hex's are mesmers, and even there going why the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO bother? So I can waste my energy?

Mesmers would be doing there role so much better if monks didn't pwn hexes better than they make red bars go up *Exaggeration*

Very boring. Mostly saying crap that everyone already knows. The only people who don't already know that, probably wouldn't be reading the SotG article anyway, 90% of it was about LoD. Yay.

Funny how they linked to the GuildWiki update notes rather than GW Wiki's...lol.

I would have liked to see a simple five word disclaimer:

Izzy gets paid, Ensign doesn't.

The entire conversation in a nutshell.

I am missing some things in the article. Obvious things get mentioned, but I would prefer insights on these things


1. Balancing vs Nerfing

Too often a skill is recognized as a problem and then gets ruthlessly destroyed. I really appreciate the way they do it lately, rework skills than tune them down into oblivion. The game got more and more skills. But they recognize themselves that less and less of them see play, the worst thing was probably the massive powercreep over the years.

Still, the focus is too often on fixing/breaking existing and used skills than offering more alternatives, which for sure is harder.



2. Focus on PvP

Izzy (and probably Ensign, too) is so totally on balancing PvP that he simply lacks the time to think about PvE. And maybe the love, too. PvE is easy anyways, right? Why make it better, it is only what the majority of our players is actually playing *cough*.

Some of the better PvE skills (Factions, Sunspears) show some more love and caring, while the whole EOTN PvE skills are either crap or totally imbalanced, see Ursan Blessing.

They need to wake up, the PvP community is not the GW community, and while Izzy once rightfully said it is "very hard and near impossible to break PvE", the one-skillset-for-two totally-different-games, with balancing being 99% based on one, PvP, while on the other hand 99% of the new content gets offered for PvE, is doing GW no good.


GW2 would have been the chance to offer
GW2 - PvE focus, optional super-casual PvP
+
GW: Tournament - Solely PvP focused PvP game, maybe less professions, less skills, but more balance and much more pvp content, i.e. game modes, arenas etc.

I guess they fear or know that the latter would be a PvP'ers wet dream, but also that not enough would pay for and play this pure pvp game.

Ensign knows PvE is messed up too, for different reasons concerning different skills. I talked with him today about that very thing.

Always has been focussed on PvP. Very few skill balances have been because of PvE, and those were done so they didn't affect PvP very much at all.

I don't understand why they just don't go to a sealed deck type of system for GvG. Everymonth the select xxxx number of skills from each line that can be used in GvG. Teams must use skills from that pool. Boom now you never now exactly what skills are going to be on other teams skill bars...well until the end of the month and the best templates are posted on the wiki that is.

Also I am not a high end GvGer but i think the problem here is really about how STALE GvG has become not about skill in playing the game. They need someway to revitalize GvG and nerfing skills into submission is not the way to go about doing it.

Spot on. I couldn't agree more

This is one of the most worrying articles that I've ever read on the official Guild Wars website.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they are basically saying:

"We know players have been wondering for a while if we still have any idea how to balance this game and, well, we don't."



I realise it's not quite as easy as it would seem from a player perspective (nerf this, buff that, tada!), but I think the best approach now is to keep an illusion of balance going and focus on making Guild Wars 2 the game we've all been wanting to come home to.

As many have stated before, splitting PvE and casual PvP from tournament PvP in GW2 would seem like an ideal solution.

The downside is, of course, that it will be even harder for casual players to get involved in tournament PvP. But as Guild Wars has proven over the years, most people are simply not interested in tournament PvP to begin with. So why force it upon them?

I suggested on another forum that maybe, just maybe they can consider adding new GvG NPC types.
Like a mesmer or necromancer with Gaze.

Basically, nothing new was said, and nothing new will happen.

GG

The danger to the slide of balance and the game is the fact it mars Anet's reputation which will translate to a decrease in sales of Gw2. Reputation is important to game sales; just look at companies such as Blizzard and Rockstar.

Anet needs to seriously consider this problem and make a concerted effort to address the slide of Gw1 and their reputation as a game developer before it negatively influences future sales. (If the company sees this as a possible danger that is. I have been hearing both in game and in real life about people not thinking about gw2 with the state of the current game being a hint of the future. The future is the future however.)

Items to address would include but wouldn't be limited to:

1. (Obviously) PvP balance. Perhaps even a sealed deck system, as been mentioned to help with this balance.

2. Complete mechanic overhauls that lead to exploitation such as an overhaul of the entire ritualist class, passive skill systems, soul reaping, and other much talked about aspects for both pvp and pve.

3. PvE balance - rework some overpowered aspects to HM that discourages build/class diversity. rework skills as well that do the same.

The list continues with all the other major issues both communities have already touched on in the past.

This was a great article that brought many issues to the spotlight.

First and foremost, Guild Wars has become the lab rat of the scientist Izzy (I don't mean to say that as a bad thing).

Izzy goes into discussion of how he goes about balancing skills. He takes the careful and conservative approach and balances on a controlled basis, allowing each balance to settle into the metagame to see what skills affect it in a certain way. Think back to that 5th grade science class; controlled environment, control group, mutually exclusive variables (scientific method).

This also showed the thought process that went on with skill introductions in Factions, Nightfall, and EoTN. Factions saw a great addition of weak skills that still diversified the PvP stage with the dynamic Assasin. Nightfall saw the dawn of the "Pound You into the Ground" skills crippling the split teams into coming together for the sake of healing and survival. These were both done intentionally to see how the game would change. Many agree that Nightfall doomed PvP and ArenaNet knows that. There isn't much they can do about it beside restricting gameplay to a sort of closed tournament deck build that they have occasionally used at live GW events. This forces creativity, ignores the meta game, and spawns the interest of observers. I talked with one of my friends that did a deck tournament and the builds they came up with that actually worked would have made it a very interesting match to watch.

Izzy has shown in this article that he knows that many of the skill balances are putting a band-aid over a flesh wound. The good news is, I think Izzy and the other devs know what they are doing from all their experimentation in Guild Wars. This can only make Guild Wars 2 a better game as a result.

And on a side note, the marketing team is doing the same sort of experimentation with their Special Editions, packaged deals, the Bonus Mission Pack, and now the holiday discount. They're seeing what works and what doesn't work. While they may hurt their fanbase a bit, they are improving their company. Every online gaming company will be following the Blizzard or ANet business model in the near future. The key to this is to give them feedback! Let them know how pissed you are that you can't get the BMP without a credit card.

Bad science then maybe. I don't see any control group here. The changes made effect the whole community. As far as controlled environment, the main focus seems obviously to be on PvP; Not at all representative for the GW community as a whole.

I may not always agree with skill changes and the balance that is trying to be achieved, BUT I am not playing at the level many of these people do. I truly appreciate Anet/Izzy explaining why they change things the way they do.

Too late.

At least for us.

While a year ago we were dedicated GW fans and players, no one in this household of five plays any more. And there is *no* chance *any* of us will be buying or recommending GW2, based on ANet's current attitude toward PvE.

The SotG article notes that the PvP game was most interesting BEFORE the release of Nightfall -- and the same holds true for the PvE game.

In games, "balance" is often a synonym for "boring" and "homogenized."

Maybe, if things have gotten WORSE since the Factions Championship, it would be WISE to backtrack and revert many of the changes made that have undermined the game. While we can't get rid of Nightfall and EotN, many things could be done to increase diversity and fun.

Sadly, all Izzy cares about is his precious PvP "balance." Things like PvE "fun" don't enter into his thinking.

The quite scientific approach to balancing is a good thing. It is also a very good thing that Izzy is co-working with Ensign, he is the unpaid GW expert of Anet.
But I do not think bad balance is the key why things got "stale" or whatever in the competitive game.

People need new content of all kinds, balancing skills up and and down might shake up the way things are done, the famous "Meta", but they do not really make the game more interesting for veterans or accessible for newcomers.


It is not up to the skill balancer to rejuvenate GvG, this is a task of the whole design team. Fresh new arenas and types of gameplay, new maps and so on.

Even if the "Costume Brawl Hero maps in RA and TA" experiment was largely unfavored in the feedback thread on Guru, it is definitely a step in the right direction to try more stuff like that, good things might come out of it.



EDIT: My criticism sounds so negative. But the fact that I am still playing GW with only one break since release is speaking volumes about the quality of GW and how much I like it.

I don't mean to be elitist ... but this thread is the perfect example of what anet has to deal with when balancing:

a. the vast majority of PvP-ers appreciate when a skill is overpowered and want it balanced

b. a large majority of PvE-ers NEVER want an overpowered skill balanced (I don't know if they don't appreciate the imbalance or just don't care).

I know that SOME PvE-ers want balance .. so don't yell at me .. but go read the Ursan Blessing thread ... most don't. They just scream about 'PvP nerfs effecting PvE'!

You know, if it's overpowered in PvP, it is almost certainly overpowered in PvE (see soul reaping, splinter weapon, ad nauseum). If anet screws up and makes a skill overpowered .. are they not supposed to correct it because now you feel 'entitled'?

That happens to be his job.

I don't get the PvE complaints... this is obviously a discussion about high-end PvP play...

I DO agree Anet could stop skill updates effecting PvE and I doubt anyone would care. Those that play high-end PvP would make it their business to know the differences...

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Has anyone looked at it lately? The talkpage is a total shitstorm from the lunatic fringe.

I think Izzy's scared of his own talk page now - hell, I know I am!

Having alternatives is fine and all, but having an alternative to a broken skill does not make that skill balanced. It simply means that now you have an overpowered alternative to use instead of the origional overpowered skill. Then we have to have an overpowered counter to the overpowered counter.... see the point. It is a lot easier to take a skill and tweak it either up or down, to make it more appropriate with the rest of the skilline. A skill can be overpowered for many reasons, but if we turn it into counter vs counter game, youre basically playing buildwars, which is dumb.
This is what happens when you have a game thats balanced and focused around the Player vs Player aspect of the game, and not the traditional Player vs Environment aspect. In any online game that has any form of competitive PvP, the skill balancing will always be centered on the fact of the PvP orientation of the game where the balance and skill adjustments are needed. The problem of PvP skill balance effecting PvE is due to the fact that ANET decided to make every friggin thing have packs of 10+ and all be 5-10 levels higher than you and hit for 3x as much damage than you could ever do. Creating a situation like this forces there to be imbalances in PvE that rely on taking advantage of situations or overpowered skills to give the common player a chance to expierence the full game he paid for. While this can help greatly, see Ursan Blessing for PvE, it can also hurt your game in that the skill will have to be adjusted so that it isnt a "must have" skill on your skillbar. LoD, origional Grenth dervs and searing flames for a skil lthat can be used in PvP as well as PvE, was such a skill.

Isiah Cartwright isn't paid to think of ways to find new and exciting farming builds, or to find a way for your ranger to get into a group looking for nukers and tanks. His job is to balance the game around the PvP aspect of the game. It has been this way since the games conception, and sorry to break your heart, but it isnt very likely to change.

They aren't aware the skill is overpowered. At some point, they just get bored.

Unchallenging games have appeal to some, but not to most. PvP-ers just tend to be both, more articulate and more vocal about unbalanced things. PvE-ers just dismiss the game as boring or dumbed down.

There is truly a lot of motivation to keep things balanced in both, PvE and PvP.

Consider increasing ecto drop rate by 5 times. Immediate reaction would be joy. Two weeks later, everyone would be going "well, got myself 5 sets of FoW, not the game is boring".


The main reason GW PvE went downhill since Factions was the Titles, Grind and PvE skills. Things got "dumbed down", time>skill, and made accessible.

Abandoning the skill>time concept, not to mention introducing abominable grind (many titles are just absurd) broke the PvE.

Izzy: "The metagame is quite stale at the moment and needs some shaking up. One example is changing how Light of Deliverance works in relation to other skills in the backline. The risk of this approach, though, is a chain reaction and a crumbling of the metagame."

Whoops. Even more of a risk than he realized it would appear.

QFT

gw is just an experiment for gw2 really. i dont think theres any real way they can fix this game at this point in time unless they revamped everything from the ground up.

You know... the recent balance updates were very well thought out, and well executed. The problem isn't the game balance, it is peoples' laziness in creating new, and interesting builds. Maybe if people sat down on team builder for a while and actually bothered to create a new build, things might go over better. Our guild invented Metallica Spike for TA, the build was copied, and altered slightly. Ancestors Rage was added into the spike by several teams, and as a result, ancestors rage was changed. Minor build changes are fine and dandy, but what happened to creating your OWN builds? Lazy lazy people....

Exactly.

ANet has a person who controls skill balance whose sole concern is PvP. Any negative effects on PvE don't matter.

Hence this being a corporate/management. philosophy problme, and thus my lack of interest in GW2. No matter how good it will sound on paper, I doubt ANet has the corporate culture and will necessary to produce an excellent PvE game.

Anet's current approach to PvE is to create lots of grindy make-work with vanity rewards, using ridiculous PvE skills that make the game excessively boring.

Do I have to use PvE-only skills? No.

But if I play with other humans, THEY want to use the damned cheat codes (consummables) and Ursan Blessing builds. To have fun with challenging and interesting builds, I need to go solo -- and that means working with four henchmen in my party who stink because ANet wants to force me to play with people! Since neither form of game is fun, I don;t play anymore, and have no intention of buying GW2 unless ANet can show me that they understand what folk like me want.

Why should I spend money on a game form a company like ANet that has sucked the fun out of what was a damned fun passtime?

Because this was never the intent of the skill balancing to begin with.

You make it seem like PvE is actually 10x harder than it actually is.

QFT. problem is Anet has been catering to these same people since day one.

constant "skill balancing" is what killed meta. If They had just let it BE and people had adapted instead of the skills adapting to them them GW would not be in this situation.

Of course the trial would have been to see if players would stick it though and come up with counters on their own at the time, I personally think they would have since players have to do that anyways but in reverse now but it may have been a concern at the time, or maybe its just your typical Frankenstein syndrome.

What you said and what he said are 2 different things....
Wrong again. The problem was they left imbalanced and overpowered skills alone TOO long in the meta and had nothing but fun seasons to justify the lack of skillbalance to deal with these problems. Only when it because a free for all with those overpowered skills was the issue addressed.
...what?

I don't think you fully understand the impact of skill balancing in PvP and PvE.

Firstly, PvP and PvE are *not* equal when it comes to skill balance. Izzy balances for PvP not because he "doesn't care for PvE," but because skill balances literally make or break PvP. In PvE? Not so much. You can run just about any build and get through the game fine.

For the rest of your post, I don't think it has any relevance to this thread. It's not Izzy's fault that pugs suck, or that the AI is bad, or that PvE is not fun for you.

So, how exactly has skill balancing ruined your game? Or has other factors that are not related to skill balancing ruined it for you?

I find it very hard to believe you cannot find a single other person who feels like you do...

(for the record, I don't use Ursan Blessing anymore, but then again, I'm probably not leet enough for you anyway)