In the recently closed The First Descendant AMA session on Discord, Nexon revealed that they plan to buff skill-based Descendants to Freyna’s or Ines’ level. This left the community a bit baffled. Didn’t they just nerf Ines? Can they make up their minds?
At the beginning of April, Nexon implemented the first stage of the infamous character rebalance. It mostly dealt with numbers as the changes to the character mechanics require a bit more work, but it also applied the dreaded nerf to Ines, who was outperforming everyone in the game at the time (except maybe the newly released Serena). This made some waves, but the devs’ reasoning is that they want to tone down overpowered characters and buff up underperforming characters, using Viessa’s power level as a “goal”. But, it looks like Viessa is not enough.
“The Baseline for Skill-Based Descendants Needs to Be Raised.” The First Descendant Devs Will Buff Skill-Based Characters to Freyna’s and Ines’ Level
The devs realized that Viessa’s power level is not what they are aiming for, as far as skill-based Descendants are concerned. So, in the recent AMA session on Discord, they revealed that they will raise the bar.
“When I mentioned that during the Dev Live, I was referring to Viessa as the Descendant who most accurately reflected our intended baseline performance at the time.
However, as I stated at the beginning of this AMA, we’ve decided to narrow the gap between firearm-focused and skill-focused Descendants. With that in mind, we now believe the baseline for skill-based Descendants needs to be raised.
Moving forward, we’re considering setting higher-performing characters — such as Freyna or Ines — as the new balance reference points for skill dealers.”
Players a Bit Confused
It has been less than a month since we got the rebalance, and now it seems they are changing their policies once more. Naturally, the players are wondering what is going on, and are a little miffed that Nexon can’t make up their minds. “Damn they really can’t make up their minds” said n00bien00bie, and “Forgive me, but it seems like they are tossing coins in the air,” added STB_LuisEnriq.
Some try to give explanations, like avidday, who thinks it is due to the Ines nerf controversy. “The change is due to the huge negative reaction to the Ines nerf. If they set Viessa as the standard for skill-based descendants, then they have to both nerf Freyna and nerf Ines a second time, plus they’ll have to take a serious look at Ultimate Blair. They don’t want the possibly 3x negative reaction from having to nerf those three.“
Others would rather have them decide on a path and stick to it. “They flip flop too much. I wish they just stand on a stance and see it through before changing their stance. But i guess they don’t have that luxury currently,” said Geraldinho–.
On the other hand, some would even say that the power-level itself is not that important as is the fact that everyone is on the roughly same level. When you think about it, that way, they can plan new content and balance stuff out more easily, regardless of whether it is Viessa or Freyna as a baseline. The most important thing is to choose one Descendant (or two, in this case) and stick with it.
In any case, we don’t know when to expect the next rebalancing patch. It may take a while, so it is still early to panic. We can only theorize at this point, but still, we are sure Nexon knows what they are doing.
