This latest developer post gives a hint on where RIFT is going with PVP and PVE balance. If you notice in the Pyromancer notes below, they are making separate coefficients for players and NPCs. This is fantastic news for PVE and PVP fans alike, since now balance hopefully won’t affect either side of the coin when the nerf hammer lands.

This is only a logical move on the Dev Team’s part as there are many EQ2 developers on the RIFT team and EQ2 did the same thing.

Keep reading for the Mage changes and PVP balance issues.

Originally posted by Sweet (Source)

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I just wanted to jump in and answer a few questions and concerns we’ve been seeing come up over past couple of days.

Saboteurs
Firstly we’re going to roll-back the changes to Charge range; they’ll be back to the same levels as they are on Live at the moment. Regarding damage, put simply some Saboteurs specs are doing far too much damage in both PVP and PVE across multiple level ranges including 50. In part this was due to an armor penetration bug however a significant portion of it is also due to Charge Booster. We’re still not entirely happy with Charge Booster as is it exists on the Test shard and we’ll be updating it further to reward players who invest deeper into the Saboteur tree. We’re not trying to force people to have to spend 51 points in Saboteur we’re just trying to make it a more attractive option than what it currently is.

Were the average player to base their opinion of Rift on a cursory reading of the official forums, they would be forgiven for the belief that the game suffers from serious balance issues. Clerics ‘heal too much’, Warriors do ‘too much damage’, Mages have ‘too much crowd control’ and Rogues have a lower GCD than everyone else, which is ‘inherently unfair’. Conversely, Clerics get ‘mana drained and crowd controlled too much’, Warriors are ‘too easy to kite’, Mages ‘don’t do enough damage’ and neither do Rogues. Somewhere between all this conjecture may lie some kind of truth, but the thing to really take away is that all of Rift’s callings can excel in one way or another.

Open World PvP

The other major aspect of PvP in Rift aside from Warfronts, is arguably the most important in the long-term. Instanced arenas for a set amount of people to meet head on and fight is one thing, but it is more of a diversion for most players than a reason to play the game. For a large amount of players what they really want to keep the excitement and enjoyment of the game going is open world, unpredictable, ebbing and flowing PvP.

We all know that the racial bonuses as they stand are anywhere near balanced. We know that the Kelari critical strike chance and damage bonus makes them, by far, the best race to play.

Why shouldn’t we have to worry? Scott Hartsman had this to say over at FOH:

I’ve posted this on our forums too – But, agree. What the racials are now isn’t going to be the place they end up.

They’re up for revision by either B5 or B6 (most likely B6).

So keep an eye out for updates in the next few weeks. Don’t get settled with your racial choice for release just yet. We’ll keep you updated.