Upcoming PvP Balance Changes on PTS

Rarnok has posted on the PTS forums a note about the upcoming PvP balance changes.

Source: http://forums.defiance.com/showthread.php?221872-Upcoming-PvP-Balance-Changes-on-PTS 

I would like to provide a few details to help mitigate everyone’s concerns about the upcoming PvP changes. First and foremost, these changes will only be on PTS for quite some time. They will go through rounds of testing and tweaks before going to live. We will be scheduling testing times as we move forward so we can get a good number of players participating in PvP on PTS. The more participation and feedback we get on PTS the more data we will have to hone in on the best solution. In addition, this set of changes will ONLY affect PvP; none of these changes will apply outside of PvP. 

The goals we have for this update:

• Give players a chance to react once they are under fire
• Expose the weaknesses of high burst weapons and increase the value of sustained damage weapons
• Increase the value of the underutilized nano types
• Increase the number of viable loadout options

How we will be accomplishing these goals:

• Increasing overall time to kill
• Tweaking the mitigation value of individual armor plates
• Tweaking damage multipliers to shields and health
• Tweaking the maximum amount of damage mitigation a player can reach at a given time

When will these changes go live?

The short answer: When it’s ready. The nature of these changes will require a lot of iteration and testing. We do not currently have any plans to include this in our future updates to live, once we get these balance changes to a place we feel it’s where we want it to be we will schedule it in with another update. 

Will these changes limit the available options for loadouts players currently have?

The hope is these changes will provide more viable options rather than limit the current ones. We are not going to take away or limit any perks, powers, rigs, chips, weapons, or consumables from being used in PvP. Defiance is a game of choice and you have spent your time honing your specific playstyle and loadouts to fit that style. 

Will these changes include nerfs to individual weapons specifically for PvP balance?

This set of changes will not be targeted at individual weapons. Rashere can speak to his plans with the list of currently underwhelming weapons we gathered, but I can say the goal with those will be to bring them up to speed with other weapons rather than nerf the currently powerful ones. These types of changes will be made periodically when time permits, but are not considered part of this update.