History GameBreaker / MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineGames

* Most second job change classes from ''VideoGame/FlyFF'' have at least one skill that can be a game breaker if used correctly.

* ''Videogame/PlanetSide'' The main cause of the downfall of the original ''Planetside'' was the introduction of the infamous [[HumongousMecha BattleFrame Robotics]] in the ''Aftershock'' update. These things worked like big, stompy robots with the durability and the weapons of a heavy vehicle, but only requiring a single person manning it to get the most of it, whereas other vehicles required one person driving and other people manning the big guns. As a result, a single soldier piloting one of these could mow down lots of enemy soldiers and vehicles. This encouraged solo play and killed the entire point of the game. Players gradually abandoned ship after the introduction of these things. They were eventually nerfed to be less ridiculous, but the damage was done.

* ''VideoGame/GranadoEspada'' has the expert stance Shadow Sting, exclusive to Calyce. It hits twice per attack cycle (technically hits twice as fast than once-per-attack-cycle attacks), as hard as the omnipresent Flintlock (the stance of choice for DPS), as far as it as well. Then the skills, Eagle Eye can be used with Cat's Eye, to make your Penetration stat shoot up to 100+ on top of the stance's 10% Ignore DEF stat (2 Block/Evasion and 1% of DEF cut from target per %, including on random monsters), which kills 100+ of your Target's DEF, and practically makes both Block and Evasion useless (1 Penetration kills 1 Block and 1 Evasion, and since both Block and Evasion has a ceiling and Penetration/Ignore DEF don't). Heart Breaker inflicts Drain, which drains your HP very fast. Back Step Inferno ignores 40 more DEF, hits multiple targets, and inflicts Burn (making him unable to attack). Bolt Sequence is Back Step Inferno, minus the Burn but hurts a lot more. And then there's Shadow Dawn, the tank killer, has a 175% multiplier on anyone that's wearing Metal armor, and when coupled with the veteran stance Sagitta skill Silent Move, it's damage will be boosted up to double. But then again, a bare Shadow Dawn will be enough to kill any target that has below 50k HP. And the worse part about this stance? All skills are fast cast, and can be used in tandem with Silent Move, which means you'll never know when and where Calyce will hit you (and also keeps her safe in [=PvE=]).

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'', stealth classes are basically synonymous with DungeonBypass. Solo, a stealth character can avoid nearly any fight, avoiding the need to slog through a horde of enemies just to reach a mission objective. In the off chance they wind on the losing end of a fight, they have an ability to enter stealth from combat, which immediately ends the fight and lets the character escape (or it can be abused to take advantage of certain attacks that get a boost if used from stealth). In a party, stealth characters can disable enemies, allowing non-stealthed party members to sneak by them as well. There are some flashpoints where having two stealthers in the party means skipping all but the boss fights, making them ripe for farming. A later update added "tactical" equipment, some of which take these already-broken classes UpToEleven by granting multiple uses of these abilities.

* Gravity have recognised and dealt with Gamebreakers in the past, too. The most notable of them was the Dancer+Bard in [[VideoGame/RagnarokOnline]] combination skill, Ragnarok, which currently languishes fully implemented, but disabled, as Gravity still can't work out how to stop it being broken without making it pointless. Basically the performance skill requires one bard, and one dancer, both built around very specific skill trees in order to attain the Ragnarok skill itself. Once activated, Ragnarok initiates one randomly selected type 1 (highest category) spell, from any type 1 spell in the game, every 2 seconds over the course of one minute, be it a healing spell or offensive spell. The performers are paralysed for the duration of the spell, but it will not end if they are killed, and it hits both enemies and allies alike.

** Gravity have recognised and dealt with Gamebreakers in the past, too. The most notable of them was the Dancer+Bard combination skill, Ragnarok, which currently languishes fully implemented, but disabled, as Gravity still can't work out how to stop it being broken without making it pointless. Basically the performance skill requires one bard, and one dancer, both built around very specific skill trees in order to attain the Ragnarok skill itself. Once activated, Ragnarok initiates one randomly selected type 1 (highest category) spell, from any type 1 spell in the game, every 2 seconds over the course of one minute, be it a healing spell or offensive spell. The performers are paralysed for the duration of the spell, but it will not end if they are killed, and it hits both enemies and allies alike.

** Commandos are easily the most broken profession in the game. It is possible, with [[InfinityPlusOneSword endgame rewards]] to stack Block Chance over 60% and Block Value to ''over 1300'', giving Commandos the highest passive chance to block an attack (and also the highest amount of damage to passively block) in the game. Add to this an ability that can reduce incoming damage by 60% (75% if you spend more points in that expertise line) and you have the preferred tank (which is what a Light Side template Jedi is ''supposed'' to be). This would all be fine and dandy if Commandos werent' also the [[SuperpowerLottery ''hardest hitting [=AoE/DoT=] sustained damage dealers in the game'']]. Short of ganking a Commando (who is usually overbuffed for maximum WTF factor) in a group of at least FOUR OTHER PLAYERS, a Commando can completely wipe a player with next to no skill involved.

** Fucking. Ice. Barrage. It's Aoe, Can be rapidly cast from offscreen, does 300 damage or more, and the absoloute worst part: It immobilises people for ''20 seconds''. Some [=PvP=] games can actually be successfully locked out by three [[FanNickname Ancientspammers]] camping the respawn point.

** This is to say nothing of the Bard's Fascinate (Requires a nigh-unattainable Will save to avoid being held if the bard has good Perform and lasts for nearly five minutes) and Irresistible Dance (No save, 24-60 seconds of helplessness) combo, combined with their typical inability to actually kill the people they lock up, which often makes the sound of a Fascinate being played enough to make everyone in a brawling pit immediately hunt down and kill the bard.

** Heavy Fortification, an item property that grants immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks, is something every character is expected to have by level 12. This makes sneak-based rogues completely useless in [=PvP=], as every competent player is immune to sneak attacks and hiding doesn't work in combat areas. It is not unknown for them to lose a straight melee with a SquishyWizard because of this.
*** Truth in MMO'ing: Not so much L12 neccessarily, thanks to [=DMs=] each having their own style of treasure distribution, but, in the double digits any precision based class (Rogues being the most prominent example) in the tabletop version of D&D become useless as almost every major monster/PC/NPC is either naturally immune or easily makes themselves immune to their primary form of damage.
* Entirely possible in ''VideoGame/{{Latale}}'' thanks to super puzzles. Here's how it works-you can use puzzles to [[SocketedEquipment add additional stats to your equipment,]] and cubes to reduce those stats. Puzzles reduce your equipment's durability, while cubes increase it, though by not nearly the same amount, if you're looking for some extra durability on a piece of equipment you just found. But super puzzles can have the potential to boost the stat by 50% more than a normal puzzle and have a lower cap durability that they can remove, just 10 compared to a normal puzzle's 15. So you can just keep using super puzzles...and then once you can't use any more, cube the item, which will only reduce the stat by the amount of a normal puzzle, and then ''enchant it again.'' Before super puzzles came out, it was rare to see an enchantment reach 40. After super puzzles, high end players focus on getting enchantments over 100. Of course the only real way to do this is to shell out real money for a mask and a TON of Ely for a Title to increase you enchanting level to 100%

*** The Smith's Tome, which is essentially a more-accessible version of the same mechanic that makes the imaginary hamster so powerful, but you can equip the gear from turn 1. And it does other stuff too, just to make sure. It's so powerful, many players credit it as the main reason for the "type69" ScrappyMechanic that prevents older limited-time content from being used in the current challenge path.

''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' [[GameBreaker/WorldOfWarcraft has its own page.]]

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** The Vanu Sovereignty's PPA AntiInfantry vehicle-mounted gun. Its stats were never changed, but its use began to explode over the course of a week when VS players realized how ridiculous the weapon was; while TR and NC AntiInfantry guns were [[GrenadeLauncher short ranged with small magazines]] and [[ScrappyWeapon terrible]], respectively, the PPA had a huge magazine, no bullet drop or spread, large splash, was mounted on a HoverTank that could get almost ''anywhere'', and an ''extremely'' [[MostAnnoyingSound obnoxious noise]] leading every fight against the VS to be a deafening cacophony of ''PEW PEW PEW'' from four dozen [=PPA=] tanks sitting on mountains with the fire button taped down. Later nerfed to be wildly inaccurate with sustained fire.

** Players who use weapon-switching builds in PvP. A typical warrior weapon-switching build includes multiple hammer knockdowns in quick succession mixed with sword interrupts, axe interrupts, ranger bow interrupts, and back to hammer knockdowns again. Breaks the game because there's very little anyone can do to stop the constant spam of knockdowns and interrupts. Against someone using this exploit, you're typically unable to cast spells, run away, move, attack, or ''do anything at all'' except die. Repeatedly. Another variation would be mixing assassin interrupts/knockdowns with warrior interrupts/knockdowns. The actual skills themselves usually do very little damage. However, since you're permanently paralyzed and unable to defend yourself, it basically amounts to CherryTapping an enemy to death.

*** A standard Jester uses Yo-yos to fight. One of their skills, Hit of Penya, increases damage dealt by consuming Penya (the game's currency). Consuming enough Penya will cause it to deal massive amounts of damage in a single shot, often leading to one-hit kills in PvP.

** Billposters are the most common class seen in ''[=FlyFF=]'', both because they excel in self-sufficiency, and because they have the Asalraalaikum skill at Level 80. The skill consumes 100 FP and ''all'' of the user's MP to deal a single, massively powerful punch, with the power being relative to the amount of MP used. Many PvP Billposters equip low-level armor with high MP and INT awakenings to increase their MP pool as much as possible, allowing them to 1-hit nearly any player in their way, save for high-level full STA characters.

* In the early days of ''VideoGame/DarkAgeOfCamelot'', the [[Myth/NorseMythology Midgard]] realm's [[TheMedic Healer]] class had a line of crowd control spells that included a 'stun' spells which rendered a target or group of targets completely helpless for a short duration. At the time, the game rules allowed a player character to be stunned and stunned again while melee classes slaughtered them. This quickly lead to Midgard's complete dominance in [[PvP RvR]] combat until a subsequent patch added a timer to how soon a stunned character could be stunned again, and lead to this era in DAOC history being known as 'Stungard'.

** Fucking. Ice. Barrage. It's Aoe, Can be rapidly cast from offscreen, does 300 damage or more, and the absoloute worst part: It immobilises people for ''20 seconds''. Some pvp games can actually be successfully locked out by three [[FanNickname Ancientspammers]] camping the respawn point.

* ''VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragonsOnline'' has so many of these that the PvP system is sometimes considered balanced by its imbalances. Favorites include:

** Heavy Fortification, an item property that grants immunity to critical hits and sneak attacks, is something every character is expected to have by level 12. This makes sneak-based rogues completely useless in PvP, as every competent player is immune to sneak attacks and hiding doesn't work in combat areas. It is not unknown for them to lose a straight melee with a SquishyWizard because of this.

* ''VideoGame/RagnarokOnline'' had the silver shotels, swords with 50% critical rates, when an assassin can wield them, they can practically hit anything but their aspd will be shot to hell. Not a true gamebreaker but very problematic.

*** Unfortunately, [[http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20100225 Shadow Form got a massive nerf]]. While it still protects you from spells, it not longer protects you from physical attacks. Meaning you are now vulnerable to interrupts, conditions, and knockdowns from foes. Not only it ends massive tanking, but it also made Raptor farming and boss farming in Hard Mode impossible. Cue [[{{Hatedom}} massive hate on ArenaNet]].

** There are numerous team or solo builds in ''GuildWars'' that break the game. Examples are 55 Monks, Perma-Shadow Assassins, the classic Domain of Anguish team, and the Paragon class.

** Again in ''[=EverQuest=]'' were the introduction of certain overpowered items that seemed balanced on paper, but ended up being far more powerful than anticipated.

* In ''[=EverQuest=] II'', one of the level 70 top raid mobs dropped a fighter item. A leather pair of boots with a proc on them that had a chance to make the wearer immune to damage for one hit. On their own they were good but not overpowered, but then came along AA's which boosted proc chance and procs that also boosted proc chance and they became the best boots in the game to raid tank on, selling for hundreds of dollars. Then came the nerfbat, changing the proc to only be once every 10 seconds, stopping infinite stoneskins.

** In 2012, EVE introduced a new "ancillary" shield booster, powered by cap-booster batteries. It quickly proved immensely popular because a) it doesn't use a ship's capacitor energy, leaving that available for things like weapons, afterburners, tackle modules, etc.; and b) it's insanely overpowered for its price (as in: a medium ancillary booster runs one or two million ISK, and to find a standard booster of equivalent power, you have to look for faction or deadspace modules which each cost as much as a ''battleship''). The only drawback is that when it runs out of battery charges, it takes a full minute to reload ... which is why enterprising frigate pilots mount ''two'' of them.

** Going clear back to Pre-CU! Of the three Damageable stats, only Mind could not be buffed by doctors. The relevant entertainer buffs were a small fraction of what the doc buffs were doing for the other six stats, and even with food and drinks thrown in you could only get sorta kinda close, and for a shorter duration. To top it off, mind was the only stat that couldn't be healed by the otherwise overpowered (like the doc buffs!) standard stimpacks. Now throw in the fact that each combat class could deliberately focus their attacks on a specific one of the three pools. The classes able to target mind generally ended up overpowered in [=PvP=]. Similarly for weapons with mind-affecting Damage over Time bonuses, particularly fire. For round two, throw in that the most common type of armor in the game could be, and was, readily made to have protection against all types of damage EXCEPT stun, which most profs couldn't use. Eventually Composite armor with protection against both kinetic and stun did emerge, but the stun protection was always the weakest and it tended to lose some on the other protections to boot... Now, wrap it up by having only ONE combination of profs that can use a stun weapon (Geonosian Sonic Pistol) with a mind-pool attack (Eye Shot). Care to guess how common Bounty Hunter/Pistoleers were? (The fact that people were pushing the crafting system as far as it would go to get ANY stun protection is a hint)

** Buff, debuff, and status effects in ''City of Heroes'' are much stronger than is typical for an MMO, and most buffs don't affect the caster. A single support character on his own is typically fairly weak; a team consisting of eight of them and nothing else is stupidly overpowered. People unfamiliar with the game often suggest "ultimate teams" of seven support characters and a tank, the standard response to which is to inquire as to why the support types should carry around the dead weight.

* ''VideoGame/GuildWars: Eye of the North'' introduced a set of skills available only to the [=PvE=] game (thankfully) that are so game-breaky that they make even the most difficult encounters from the previous chapters trivial. While Ursan Blessing has been given a lot of attention for this, the people who think it's the most overpowered skill simply haven't spent any time using Pain Inverter to make endgame bosses blow themselves up in less than ten seconds.

** At release, air-to-ground weapons were ludicrously overpowered, with a single empire-specific fighter with rocket pods capable of mowing down an entire platoon of infantry, before switching to a high-explosive nosegun to mow down another full squad. Fighter [=A2G=] received a nerf, right around the same time the Liberator Gunship received a huge load of buffs, allowing them to solo ''multiple'' AntiAir tanks and survive, suppress entire bases with their belly cannon, nuke main battle tanks from a kilometer up, and to add insult to injury, it was only 60% the price of a main battle tank. The Liberator was later nerfed to be slightly worse than it was before the buffs.
** The Vanu Sovereignty's "Zealot Ovedrive Engine" ability on their PoweredArmor gave it a significantly faster movement speed (equal to infantry), ridiculous strafing speed allowing them to break the netcode to effectively TeleportSpam , and increased the damage they did, all for the pathetic cost of slightly reduced damage resistance -- but since the ability could be turned on and off at will, it was a joke of a weakness. VS MAX use skyrocketed and effectively killed every factions willingness to fight the VS; even to this day, the New Conglomerate and Terran Republic prefer to fight each other rather than the VS. What's worse, the devs underwent a feature freeze during the time to optimize the game's ObviousBeta [[TechDemoGame state of optimization]], causing the overpowered MAX insanity to last several months. It was finally nerfed into absolute uselessness once the optimizations were done. CreatorBacklash went into full effect against VS players, with a retired level designer calling the single most damaging thing to ever happen to the game, and the game's creative director claimed VS only use clearly overpowered gear, which was later backed up by...

** The Vanu Sovereignty's "Zealot Ovedrive Engine" ability on their PoweredArmor gave it a significantly faster movement speed (equal to infantry), ridiculous strafing speed allowing them to break the netcode to effectively TeleportSpam , and increased the damage they did, all for the pathetic cost of slightly reduced damage resistance, but since the ability could be turned on and off at will, it was a joke of a weakness. VS MAX use skyrocketed and effectively killed every factions willingness to fight the VS; even to this day, the New Conglomerate and Terran Republic prefer to fight each other rather than the VS. What's worse, the devs went a feature freeze during the time to optimize the game's ObviousBeta [[TechDemoGame state of optimization]], causing the overpowered MAX insanity to last several months. It was finally nerfed into absolute uselessness once the optimizations were done. CreatorBacklash went into full effect against VS players, with the game's director claiming VS only use clearly overpowered gear, which was later backed up by...
** The Vanu Sovereignty's PPA AntiInfantry vehicle-mounted gun. Its stats were never changed, but its use began to explode over the course of a week when VS players realized how ridiculous the weapon was; while TR and NC AntiInfantry guns were [[GrenadeLauncher short ranged with small magazines]] and [[ScrappyWeapon terrible]], respectively, the PPA had a huge magazine, no bullet drop or spread, large splash, was mounted on a HoverTank that could get almost ''anywhere'', and an ''extremely'' [[MostAnnoyingSound obnoxious noise]] leading every fight against the VS to be a deafening cacophony of ''PEW PEW PEW'' from four dozen [=PPAa=] tanks sitting on mountains with the fire button taped down. Later nerfed to be wildly inaccurate with sustained fire.

* In the early days of ''VideoGame/DarkAgeOfCamelot'', the [[NorseMythology Midgard]] realm's [[TheMedic Healer]] class had a line of crowd control spells that included a 'stun' spells which rendered a target or group of targets completely helpless for a short duration. At the time, the game rules allowed a player character to be stunned and stunned again while melee classes slaughtered them. This quickly lead to Midgard's complete dominance in [[PvP RvR]] combat until a subsequent patch added a timer to how soon a stunned character could be stunned again, and lead to this era in DAOC history being known as 'Stungard'.

** Another Game Breaker in terms of giving one class an unfair advantage: In the game's early years, the summoned minions of magicians and necromancers would use the delay attribute of equipped weapons, but would still inflict their normal damage, which was based on level. Furthermore, necromancers gained access to a spell called "Feign Death" which would effectively render them permanently untargetable by enemy NPCs. Cue necromancers equipping their minions with two high-speed daggers, then feigning death in a populated dungeon while patrolling enemies attack (and get obliterated by) the summoned minion due to its insane damage/delay ratio. It was not unheard of for players to regularly leave their characters logged in overnight and come back to see their characters several levels higher than when they went to bed.

* In EverQuest, the Mana Burn ability given to wizards meant that you could take down any boss in the game simply by assembling enough wizards who had gained that ability, and all they had to do was be coordinated enough to all cast at roughly the same time. This was particularly game-breaking with respect to bosses whose difficulty was regeneration- or threat-based. Teams of Mana Burn wizards used to prowl for fun and profit, even working for hire. Point and shoot, effective one-hit-kill boss fights. It didn't take very long at all before the nerf bat struck, and all designated raid bosses in the game, no matter what level, were given a 1 minute invulnerability to both Manaburn and the shadowknight's Harm Touch (both of which completely ignored all forms of damage mitigation and resistance, save for Divine Intervention.)
** Another gamebreaker in terms of giving one class an unfair advantage: In the game's early years, the summoned minions of magicians and necromancers would use the delay attribute of equipped weapons, but would still inflict their normal damage, which was based on level. Furthermore, necromancers gained access to a spell called "Feign Death" which would effectively render them permanently untargetable by enemy NPCs. Cue necromancers equipping their minions with two high-speed daggers, then feigning death in a populated dungeon while patrolling enemies attack (and get obliterated by) the summoned minion due to its insane damage/delay ratio. It was not unheard of for players to regularly leave their characters logged in overnight and come back to see their characters several levels higher than when they went to bed.
** Again in EverQuest were the introduction of certain overpowered items that seemed balanced on paper, but ended up being far more powerful than anticipated.

*** The Moss-Covered Twig was another oversight. It had a damage of 3 with a delay of 11, making it swing very quickly but with little base damage. Again, comparing its damage/delay ratio to other weapons, it didn't seem particularly threatening. However, EverQuest's damage calculations for a melee character's main hand adds a flat amount of damage to each blow rather than a percentage-based increase, resulting in a very high minimum damage. This meant that at high levels, the twig's '''actual''' damage output dwarfed weapons obtained from much more powerful enemies since every rapid-fire swing was guaranteed to hit for the same minimum damage as any other melee weapon. It was eventually nerfed by making it off-hand only (as the left hand doesn't get the same minimum damage bonus) and was replaced with a 6/22 weapon, which is far less effective despite having the same ratio.
* In EverQuest 2, one of the level 70 top raid mobs dropped a fighter item. A leather pair of boots with a proc on them that had a chance to make the wearer immune to damage for one hit. On their own they were good but not overpowered, but then came along AA's which boosted proc chance and procs that also boosted proc chance and they became the best boots in the game to raid tank on, selling for hundreds of dollars. Then came the nerfbat, changing the proc to only be once every 10 seconds, stopping infinite stoneskins.
* When first introduced ''EveOnline'''s Doomsday Devices (a massively damaging [=AoE=] attack[[note]]dealing enough damage to instantly destroy any ship smaller than a Battleship, and even Battleships will fall if not specifically tanked against them[[/note]]) could be fired remotely, and imposed no penalties on the ship which fired them. This often resulted in battles being decided simply by which faction activated theirs first. One ObviousRulePatch later the ability to fire remotely was removed, and they now disabled the ships jump-drive for 10 minutes when fired, turning them into more balanced last-resort weapons.

* ''RagnarokOnline'' had the silver shotels, swords with 50% critical rates, when an assassin can wield them, they can practically hit anything but their aspd will be shot to hell. Not a true gamebreaker but very problematic.

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsGalaxies'' there have been SEVERAL instances of [[GameBreaker Game Breaking]], both alleged and confirmed in the current iteration and versions past:

* Early on in ''CityOfHeroes'', there was no limit to the amount of spawns a player could herd, or a limit on how many could be affected by an area of effect attack. It was possible for a single player with enough defense and/or regeneration to herd every enemy on an entire map to one location, and either use an [=AoE=] attack themselves (or have a teammate do it) to wipe them all out in one shot, getting massive experience points with practically no risk to anyone else on the team. And if the mission required something other than merely taking out enemies to finish it, they could quit and restart the mission and farm it all over again. This was later changed by stopping mobs from mindlessly following the herder (if they got too far away, they'd stop chasing), limiting how many critters could be angry at a given player (No more than the largest amount of critters in one spawn--others would break off and attack other targets, or just disengage), and putting a limit on how many critters could be affected by a single attack.

* The Legendary Weapon system in ''AceOnline'' boosts every weapon's performance significantly, but special mention must be made of the [[MoreDakka A-gear's bigsmashes]]. Compared to other high-performance weapons, the Legend Bigsmash gets ''far more'' overall enhancement than the other high-performance weapons: massive range and accuracy upgrades paired with its awesome damage make it outclass every other A-gear Legendary weapon, while weapons like the Arrows, Edrills, Bawoos, Blasts, and Sprints for the other airframes don't get that much of a significant performance boost when made Legendary. This is why Legend-friendly Bigsmash [=VVs=] sell for millions upon millions of SPI ingame.

* In ''PhantasyStar Universe'', Photon Art Axe Skill Anga Jabroga can hit up to 5 hit boxes twice in one attack at a high amount of damage and ignores attack accuracy. This however is balanced by its slow start up time (which leaves the player open to an attack), high PP use, and requires 99 Photon Fragments to obtain (only acquired by earning a grade of S on S-S2 missions), but to many players it seems more of a FakeDifficulty (Especially for the Fighmaster class, which increases overall attack speed with striking weapons).
* In GaiaOnline MMORPG ''[=zOMG!=]'', the gimmick is that all your attacks come from rings. Everything. So originally, one could simply scrape up about 50,000 gold, ''buy'' eight Level 10 rings off the Marketplace, and sweep the game until you had the desired item (usually the coveted Sinister Scarf recipe the FinalBoss dropped, along with the components to create the Scarf)... then ''sell off the rings to get your gold back''. Upon learning precisely how broken this was, the developers put a stop to it by making rings "soulbound" and unsellable, nuking their original gimmick and forcing the players to ''work'' for their Sinister Scarves.

* ''Guild Wars: Eye of the North'' introduced a set of skills available only to the [=PvE=] game (thankfully) that are so game-breaky that they make even the most difficult encounters from the previous chapters trivial. While Ursan Blessing has been given a lot of attention for this, the people who think it's the most overpowered skill simply haven't spent any time using Pain Inverter to make endgame bosses blow themselves up in less than ten seconds.

* ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline'' has a Burglar's Trick:Dust in the Eyes, this debuff lowers a targets chance to hit and movement speed by 20%. While this is fairly balanced in PVE (where the effects don't stack and have attacks that ignore accuracy), in PvMP no such failsafes are in place. This means that as little as two Burglars can make make a target miss 80% of the time, with 3 or more making even PC controlled Troll's completely and utterly defenseless.

* Most second job change classes from {{Flyff}} have at least one skill that can be a game breaker if used correctly.

** Billposters are the most common class seen in Flyff, both because they excel in self-sufficiency, and because they have the Asalraalaikum skill at Level 80. The skill consumes 100 FP and ''all'' of the user's MP to deal a single, massively powerful punch, with the power being relative to the amount of MP used. Many PvP Billposters equip low-level armor with high MP and INT awakenings to increase their MP pool as much as possible, allowing them to 1-hit nearly any player in their way, save for high-level full STA characters.

* In Dofus, the Prespic Set is one of the few things in the game that provide a bonus to damage reflection. When the set was first introduced, reflection on equipment not only reflected damage back at the attacker but prevented damage to the wearer. This alone wasn't much of a gamebreaker, since the amount reflected was still fairly small. However, there was a medium-level monster called the Scurvion who attacked by stacking multiple weak DOTs (of infinite duration) on your character from long range. Normally, a character would quickly succumb to the massive amounts of damage generated by the ever-increasing amount of DOTs if he didn't kill the Scurvion in time. But with a Prespic Set, all of that damage went straight back to the Scurvion instead. You could start a fight with large groups of Scurvions, run off and make a sandwich, and come back to a victory screen with an undamaged character and oodles of experience. As icing on the cake, the Prespic Set also came with a Wisdom bonus, which meant EVEN MORE EXPERIENCE (1 wisdom = 1% more exp).

* ''{{Runescape}}'' has protection prayers which can render many monsters to be unable to damage you. Most of the stronger monsters use multiple attack styles though, and you can only protect against one style at a time.

* Entirely possible in ''{{Latale}}'' thanks to super puzzles. Here's how it works-you can use puzzles to [[SocketedEquipment add additional stats to your equipment,]] and cubes to reduce those stats. Puzzles reduce your equipment's durability, while cubes increase it, though by not nearly the same amount, if you're looking for some extra durability on a piece of equipment you just found. But super puzzles can have the potential to boost the stat by 50% more than a normal puzzle and have a lower cap durability that they can remove, just 10 compared to a normal puzzle's 15. So you can just keep using super puzzles...and then once you can't use any more, cube the item, which will only reduce the stat by the amount of a normal puzzle, and then ''enchant it again.'' Before super puzzles came out, it was rare to see an enchantment reach 40. After super puzzles, high end players focus on getting enchantments over 100. Of course the only real way to do this is to shell out real money for a mask and a TON of Ely for a Title to increase you enchanting level to 100%

* In ''VideoGame/ToontownOnline'', the Sound gag track has become a borderline example. If all four people in a battle have access to it, they have the ability to destroy a whole team of the most powerful enemies instantly because of the bonus damage that comes from more than one player using the same track, as well as the high accuracy of the track. The gags are extremely weak compared to other gag tracks' gags of the same level, so this strategy only works if all four have it. It can be done almost as well with only three, but there are lots of impatient players that only want to do anything if they can blast their way through it as fast as possible. This game-breaking tactic is actually more popular than playing with any kind of strategy, so people who don't like to play this way (or who can't play this way due to either not having the Sound track or not having the three most powerful gags in it) will actually have to let everyone else know and worry about being rejected because of it.
* VideoGame/GranadoEspada has the expert stance Shadow Sting, exclusive to Calyce. It hits twice per attack cycle (technically hits twice as fast than once-per-attack-cycle attacks), as hard as the omnipresent Flintlock (the stance of choice for DPS), as far as it as well. Then the skills, Eagle Eye can be used with Cat's Eye, to make your Penetration stat shoot up to 100+ on top of the stance's 10% Ignore DEF stat (2 Block/Evasion and 1% of DEF cut from target per %, including on random monsters), which kills 100+ of your Target's DEF, and practically makes both Block and Evasion useless (1 Penetration kills 1 Block and 1 Evasion, and since both Block and Evasion has a ceiling and Penetration/Ignore DEF don't). Heart Breaker inflicts Drain, which drains your HP very fast. Back Step Inferno ignores 40 more DEF, hits multiple targets, and inflicts Burn (making him unable to attack). Bolt Sequence is Back Step Inferno, minus the Burn but hurts a lot more. And then there's Shadow Dawn, the tank killer, has a 175% multiplier on anyone that's wearing Metal armor, and when coupled with the veteran stance Sagitta skill Silent Move, it's damage will be boosted up to double. But then again, a bare Shadow Dawn will be enough to kill any target that has below 50k HP. And the worse part about this stance? All skills are fast cast, and can be used in tandem with Silent Move, which means you'll never know when and where Calyce will hit you (and also keeps her safe in {{PvE}}).
* In ''VideoGame/{{AdventureQuest Worlds}}'', there used to be a bug regarding the mage class. It had an ability called infusion, which regened some mana for each hit on the target monster. But the mage also had an ability called explosion, where the damage doubled for each cast of infusion on the monster. Therefore, you would see groups of ~10 low-leveled mages +1 high-level mage INSTANTLY destroying a powerful boss mob, as seen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7-uoyiIpKw here.]] Sadly, this got nerfed.

* In ''KingdomOfLoathing'':

* ''Videogame/PlanetSide 2'':

* VideoGame/GranadoEspada has the expert stance Shadow Sting, exclusive to Calyce. It hits twice per attack cycle (technically hits twice as fast than once-per-attack-cycle attacks), as hard as the omnipresent Flintlock (the stance of choice for DPS), as far as it as well. Then the skills, Eagle Eye can be used with Cat's Eye, to make your Penetration stat shoot up to 100+, which kills 100+ of your Target's DEF, and practically makes both Block and Evasion useless (1 Penetration kills 1 Block and 1 Evasion, and since both Block and Evasion has a ceiling and Penetration doesn't). Heart Breaker inflicts Drain, which drains your HP very fast. Back Step Inferno ignores 40 more DEF, hits multiple targets, and inflicts Burn (making him unable to attack). Bolt Sequence is Back Step Inferno, minus the Burn but hurts a lot more. And then there's Shadow Dawn, the tank killer, has a 175% multiplier on anyone that's wearing Metal armor, and when coupled with the veteran stance Sagitta skill Silent Move, it's damage will be boosted up to double. But then again, a bare Shadow Dawn will be enough to kill any target that has below 50k HP. And the worse part about this stance? All skills are fast cast, and can be used in tandem with Silent Move, which means you'll never know when and where Calyce will hit you.

** Prime EXP Potions in the US version of the game increases the exp you gain from monsters by 500%. as long as you know what to grind on, at the least you'll gain about 5-20 levels in an HOUR. and this is possible all the way up to Lv. 193
** YMMV, but combinations of Function Sets(fashion with stats) are this to an extent.
* In ToontownOnline, the Sound gag track has become a borderline example. If all four people in a battle have access to it, they have the ability to destroy a whole team of the most powerful enemies instantly because of the bonus damage that comes from more than one player using the same track, as well as the high accuracy of the track. The gags are extremely weak compared to other gag tracks' gags of the same level, so this strategy only works if all four have it. It can be done almost as well with only three, but there are lots of impatient players that only want to do anything if they can blast their way through it as fast as possible. This game-breaking tactic is actually more popular than playing with any kind of strategy, so people who don't like to play this way (or who can't play this way due to either not having the Sound track or not having the three most powerful gags in it) will actually have to let everyone else know and worry about being rejected because of it.

* The main cause of the downfall of the original ''{{Planetside}}'' was the introduction of the infamous [[HumongousMecha BattleFrame Robotics]] in the ''Aftershock'' update. These things worked like big, stompy robots with the durability and the weapons of a heavy vehicle, but only requiring a single person manning it to get the most of it, whereas other vehicles required one person driving and other people manning the big guns. As a result, a single soldier piloting one of these could mow down lots of enemy soldiers and vehicles. This encouraged solo play and killed the entire point of the game. Players gradually abandoned ship after the introduction of these things.