The Blizzard Brawl Balance Thread!

AHHHHHHHHHH I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS ALL YEAR AND NOW IT'S NOVEMBER!!!
I CAN'T REMEMBER IF I'VE MADE A BALANCE THREAD BEFORE BUT WHO CARES!!!
PUT ALL YOUR BLIZZARD BRAWL THOUGHTS RIGHT HERE, #MAKEBLIZZARDBRAWLBETTERTHANHYPIXEL
(Little note: I'm begging you to put your thoughts on here if you've played BB. I want this to be a well of feedback for the team, to both show them they should care about it, and give them ways to do so)

Spoiler: Basic Info

When I say Tank, Support and DPS, I'm referring to the way the classes are categorized.
Hailey (the Healer), and Gawrick (the Disruptor), are Supports.
Dr. Legendary, (the Tank), and Theorick (The cooler Tank), are, well, Tanks.
Tom (the Sniper), Rickeo (the Tank) and Irlok (the Demoknight), are DPSes.
(Note: Blizzard Brawl is more of a Hero Shooter than anything, but I won't correct my grammar)

Blizzard Brawl's main gameplay has the Red and Blue teams attempting to capture 5 points (think TF2), with each team starting with two points on their side, and a central point that's unowned. Teams must either successfully capture 4 points in total, or capture all the other 3 points available to them. Only one point can be captured at a time.

Spoiler: Point Capturing (Gawrick is laughing)

I've traced back a few problems with BB to the Point Capturing System. To put it simply, the current system (most players on point captures, more players = faster cap speed) makes DPS classes blatantly worse than support and tank classes, because surviving is most important. If you can tank and heal better than the enemy, you win.

SUGGESTION:
Let's say you put in a few things: A team cannot capture if any player from the enemy team is on the point, and slightly shift some numbers to, at the least, make all players killable, so teams can have time on the point. There's five schmillion holes in this, but I'm just throwing all this out there.

Spoiler: DPS (AHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAA)

DPS classes, despite being worse than the others (see Point Capturing), manage to be the most oppressive things in the entirety of Blizzard Brawl. Now, I will say, it did feel good to kill Toms and Rickeos, but I'd much rather feel better dying to them than feel good killing them.
I believe there's much more potential in making the DPS classes correlate to the different class types, instead of just… Ranges? Are you kidding?

TOM:
Wynncraft Team, I'm gonna be real gentle bout this, but you just made a sniper. There are an infinite amount of examples of Snipers being BAD GAME DESIGN DECISIONS!
To give a few examples, TF2, a (mostly) wonderfully balanced game, has a sniper. The YouTuber Shounic tested what would happen if Sniper was removed, and found that, according to the players, the game just felt better to play.
I'm sorry to say, but Tom needs a complete rework. I think he could fit as the pure DPS.

RICKEO:
Also needs a complete rework. Just, absolutely horrible to play against. Has many steep upsides for a… Complete lack of a downside.
I think Rickeo could work as the Support DPS, maybe a buffs Support deal centered around keeping close to your teammates.

IRLOK:
Irlok my beloved. He was, without a doubt, the least powerful DPS class on release patch. Now he's unplayable.
The only reason he got hit so hard by balance changes is because he's EASY, which is a GOOD THING TO HAVE. Think Soldier from TF2! Low skill floor, high skill ceiling.
BRING BACK THE OLD IRLOK! He'd do great as the Tank DPS!

Spoiler: TANK (Tommy hates Theorick! Ladeedadeeda!)

The Tank Classes were an interesting situation. One was the most balance class in the game, Theorick, and the other was horrible.

Theorick was pretty sweet. I found him fun to play and fight, because of his Shield, though some thought the Shield was overpowered.
Dr. Legendary was annoying to play and fight. He feels scattered in his design. Definitely needs a complete rework.

SUGGESTION FOR LEGENDARY:
I think he could work as the DPS Tank.
Imagine Legendary as a 'Push Class.' Weaker in normal engagements, but a beast in a team push.
My idea was to remove the slowness and most of the damage from his rockets, and instead make them knock people back, (maybe a more controllable knock back, so effected players can easily maneuver away from the edge, while still being effected) as while as making his mech form much less available, maybe even making it his Ult.
Once again, I'm imagining a complete rework.

Spoiler: Support (ARE YOU SURE DIS WILL WORK?)

The Support Classes are, in my opinion, the best ones. Both are really, really fun, and, if Gawrick still had meaningful self healing, I'd probably main him instead of Theorick and Hailey.

Gawrick is already basically a DPS Support, but I think a better name for his purpose in game is a "Disruptor."
I just want my healing back, then I'll be happy. Literally just make the Gleamsphere healing change depending on how charged your balls are.

HAILEY!!
I love Hailey. If anything, she needs changes to be reverted. Stop making her Ult more useless. Revert it back a few steps in the balance cesspool, and make it so she only gains Ult from, y'know, actually healing people.

EDIT: Okay, that's basic stuff put down, I think I'll survive.

 

lord i havent thought about BB in ages.
but honestly, i dont think it needs MORE attention than anything else! it literally was made last year and is by far the most modern one. BtB is the second most content-full one by far, and gets patches all the time during spirits. However, CTH and BtfB have never been touched to my knowledge. It is a real shame, because bonfire is my FAVORITE FESTIVAL design and lore wise, but it IS SO MUCH WORSE. It literally has the bare minimum for a festival. 1 incredibly easy searcher, and one samey capture the flag minigame. No extras like Wynnter fair, Carnival, or Drawing. And NOT EVEN A MYSTERY!

 

I particularly want Blizzard Brawl to get attention, because it's the one I connected with the most, but I think the team should really put more time into all four games. Hypixel has made me so hungry for good MC minigames. (Happy for Simon for getting Hytale back, but Hypixel is seriously horrible)
Like, I hope that the Wynncraft Team starts a minigames server once Wynncraft is complete enough, man. GIMME WYNNCRAFT BEDWARS!!!

 

hard disagree . They tried a wynncraft minigames and it was Wizard Fortress nobody played it. What would be the point of Wynncraft bedwars as opposed to normal hypixel bedwars. Either people wouldnt play it and it would be a waste of dev time, or they WOULD and then it would sap from the actual game

 

Sorry, I meant Wynncraft Bedwars as in made by the Wynncraft team. Hypixel's Bedwars is pretty terrible, and I think Wynncraft would do a much better job of it. Maybe it's just cause they listen to their community, but they seem a lot more responsible with their games.

 

There was a mini game made ages ago called Breadwars that was staff only, and all the weapons were bread, and all the floating platforms were bagels and baguettes.

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And no, before you ask, it's not something we could release. It didn't have any proper code behind it, and was just running on a few command blocks in the build world.

 

I love hearing about what the CT does when not CTing because it's always just the most absurd stuff possible.

 

that's really interesting because all of my best games are as Dr. Legendary

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i do agree Tom sucks

 

I added the stupid stock explosion used in Deltarune as a custom particle to the game

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Anyways on topic, I agree that Tom is really annoying to play against. The reason it's unfun to play against but fun to play is how responsive the bullets are. They're effectively hitscan, which means that a player with good aim can perform excellently, but it also means that you have very little agency as an opponent when it comes to not getting hit, given whether you get hit or not is up to the skill of the Tom player

 

Here are some compliments, as a continuation of my original post.

Spoiler: The Map Design

The playable Map was always a highlight of my BB gameplay. I don't care what the builders say, y'all definitely did it on purpose, and you have my thanks.
Every aspect of every part of the Map built a varied, multidimensional experience.
For example, Mid. The amount of different 'sections' I could split it into is crazy, with each Hero interacting with each one very differently, such as Gawrick with the outer ring, or Theorick with the Mosh Pit.
Amazing gameplay was perfectly mixed with beautiful builds.
Builders stay winning.

Spoiler: Round Progression

Not much to say for this one. It was absolute perfection. The anti-stalemate, the cap speeds, everything came together to create a perfectly fast paced experience.

Spoiler: THE MUSIC!!!

This is a lil more personal, but the Blizzard Brawl Medley is, in my opinion, one of the best songs in Wynncraft. Every time I heard the character selection thing, I swear, I could feel myself locking in. It somehow managed to be sincerely serious as a fight theme, while also perfectly playful for all the times I threw people off the edge of Hailey.
(Oh, it also made me get into Piano, and that's been one of the greatest experiences ever.)

Spoiler: Other lil Things

I dunno where to put this exactly, but, because of the Heroes being balanced enough, I found it fun to lose games. I found it fun to die, because every time, it felt like I could really learn something. That's part of what made Tom and Rickeo so bad (they're 90% of the issues), when I died to them, it didn't feel like I did anything wrong, except PLAYING THE GAME. (Why does Rickeo have a lasso? he's already too good!)

 

i dont remember what this is
im very confused rn

 

The very center of Mid, where the strongest classes (and the black holes) like to be.

 

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive feedback! I'm the lead dev on Blizzard Brawl, so I'm gonna go through some of your feedback and talk about why things are the way they are.

The point capturing formula got tweaked a lot in playtesting. Originally, it worked how you wanted it to (any enemy players on point prevented capture), but this led to massively drawn out games and stalemates, so it was changed. I might look into adding a new gamemode, but definitely not this year given the timeframe I have to work with.

Tom is very oppressive at range, it's true. He won't be getting a full rework (I think he's in a good spot feel-wise), but I do have some plans to shut him down at range slightly more than he currently is. I'll be monitoring it during this season.

Irlok definitely wasn't balanced at the beginning of the event, I have the data on this and he was extremely oppressive at all skill ranges, the nerfs won't be getting (fully, at least) reverted. He's still good, but maybe not as good as he was at release.

Dr. Legendary, again, is not going to get a full rework (it's just me scripting this minigame and implementing entirely new classes takes a very long time). I know there were some complaints that his mech ult felt underwhelming, so I might see if I can squeeze something in there ;)

Thank you for the feedback overall, though! I'm excited to release Blizzard Brawl 2025. The best place to provide feedback is the Official Blizzard Brawl feedback thread on the Discord, I am much more active there. I hope you will enjoy the game this year too!

 

what is Mid?

 

Mid, the middle point in the Blizzard Brawl map.

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Also yippee!

 

It's quite possible to make a well-designed sniper in a hero shooter game. The best example I can think of is Paladins, which has two snipers that are relatively balanced; neither one is based around landing headshots. Kinessa is more based around doing general high burst damage rather than headshots and Strix has two weapons, with his sniper being a bolt action that he has to un-ADS and rechamber to fire again.
They're not perfect, mind you, but compared to the absolute abominations that are Widowmaker and Sniper, they're very well made and fit reasonably within the game's balance.