Guild Wars 2

I thought this would be fun instead of randomly complaining about classes and such.

I have broken the game down into what I think are the 3 parts of the game and for WvW I split those into 2 separate parts.

The goal of this survey is to collect responses from people who play the game and how they see class balance on EVERY class, not just the ones they play.

I think it will help show how we as a community feel about the game from a statistical standpoint.

Here is the link https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3RL6QG8
IF YOU VOTED, YOU CAN NOW SEE THE RESULTS BY CLICKING THE LINK!!!

EDIT: 1 is the best, 8 is the worst for voting and results.

I WILL DO DATA ANALYSIS LATER THIS WEEK

I don’t think you can rank classes in PvP that simple. There are several roles to be fullfilled, with different classes for each role excelling. A similar thread was posted some time ago in the PvP section, and Grouch/Powerr pretty much explained why these black/white rankings aren’t really representative/useful.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Best-PVP-Class-1-January-2014/first

I’m just suggesting that maybe you should be a bit more specific in your survey.

My goal is to combine all the data from the surveys in different parts of the game to come to a class rankings overall conclusion.

For example if one class is extremly bad in 3 areas and above average in a 4th, that class should be receiving buffs.

For sPvP, although several roles are fulfilled, balance should be looked at how desirable you want that class on your team to help fill a role. That is how you get a high level view on overall class balance which is my aim, instead of arguing on a granular level which becomes so complex, that is becomes difficult to make sense of the statistical results.

Your survey won’t matter. All balance seems to be based on only sPvP.

florence.1674:

Your survey won’t matter. All balance seems to be based on only sPvP.

While sPvP balance is important, I have a slightly more optimistic view that Devs care about game balance as a whole, not just sPvP

sPvP may be the focus of balance, if a class was average in it but so deficient in other parts of the game in comparison to its peers, that would be good statistical information to share and I would have to believe Devs would take them into consideration when making decisions on balance.

While fewer and far between, I have seen balance changes directed to PvE and WvW so I know they care.

I wont continue to argue this point so that it does not melt this thread into nothing, but to give a concrete example, setting a limit to the number of people who could use portal was a WvW design. Party prioritization was a PvE and WvW design.

Then why are you splitting WvW up into 2 parts, giving WvW more weight in the overall statistics? No matter if you’re roaming or zerging, you’re working for the same goal – just like in PvP.

All I’m saying is that the “best PvP class” vote will be useless, because there are roles that are equally important, but with different classes as the best choice(s).
It’s like saying “vote the best sportsman” without dividing in different sports. You kinda did that for WvW, that’s why I’m posting.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Then why are you splitting WvW up into 2 parts, giving WvW more weight in the overall statistics? No matter if you’re roaming or zerging, you’re working for the same goal – just like in PvP.

All I’m saying is that the “best PvP class” vote will be useless, because there are roles that are equally important, but with different classes as the best choice(s).
It’s like saying “vote the best sportsman” without dividing in different sports. You kinda did that for WvW, that’s why I’m posting.

All I would have to do to remedy this is prior to averaging the results add the 2 WvW together and divide by 2 to compensate.

I did this because I believe that WvW has 2 completely different meta’s, zerging and that if I did not separate them, the results would be skewed towards T1 Zerging for WvW. Some people play on low tier servers and don’t even have a choice to Zerg so an option needed to be created for them.

I believe that the PvE and sPvP Meta’s do have variations but typically the most effective teams run similar roles to slot the Meta’s needs.

If I were to break out sPvP I would have broken it out into hot join and tPvP. But I guess I am hoping the sPvP voters don’t even think about hot join when voting, the serious sPvP voters would vote on tPvP Meta. If I wanted I could create a thread for every class in every roll of tPvP but that would be to much of a granular level. Keeping the poll shortened and simplified was a priority for me!!!

I would not consider breaking down PvE.

Sorry if my choices didn’t meet your satisfaction needs, you are free to dive into and discuss the results when I post them and debate the validity of them.

Remember that my goal is a higher level view than just sPvP. Any WvW polls or sPvP polls will likely be able to better dive into that specific game mode than what I am targeting. I will consolidate the 3 games into one overall ranking. Hopefully this provided insight as to how I view the game.

I really feel this is a bit tilted toward WvW in the way the results are split up.

What is good for champ farming and open world exploring may not be as good for Dungeon Speedclearing.

I really feel that Dungeons ought to have their own category. They really are an entire game mode into themselves seperate from the rest of PvE, especially when factoring efficiency and speed. My condi necro probably tags everything in champ trains fine but the DPS might be lacking for it to be a great class for speedclears.

I will post full results when I get at least 50-100 votes. (depends on how quickly I get there. If I get 50 by tomorrow I may hold it couple of days.)

But to have some fun, after 12 votes some Trends

Ranger has been voted last in 3 out of 4 categories and second to last in the 4th.
Guardian and Warrior have been ranked 1 and 2 in 3 out of 4 categories, Both lacking in WvW roaming.

Surprising / Expected??? Discuss.

florence.1674:

Your survey won’t matter. All balance seems to be based on only sPvP.

His survey won’t matter because he’s asking the general populace rather than limiting the poll to good players. When fighting games put together tier lists, they don’t put a poll on the internet going DO YOU THINK KEN IS BETTER THAN RYU, they go to top players and ask them what they think about matchups. The vast majority of the general public doesn’t know enough about the intricacies of the game to be able to accurately guess about relative strengths, especially not when it comes to ranking every single character/class/whatever in order.

rpfohr.7048:

But to have some fun, after 12 votes some Trends

Ranger has been voted last in 3 out of 4 categories and second to last in the 4th.
Guardian and Warrior have been ranked 1 and 2 in 3 out of 4 categories, Both lacking in WvW roaming.

Surprising / Expected??? Discuss.

extremely unsurprising

was the one category Ranger wasn’t last sPvP?

@ Guang:

You are correct sir this is not taking a look at the highest level of play and the survery is open to everybody intentionally on purpose,

Anet cares A LOT about casuals and their opinions.

reikken.4961:

extremely unsurprising

was the one category Ranger wasn’t last sPvP?[/quote]

No it was last in sPvP but now Ele has moved into that spot.

For average rankings it reverses it when it sums it up so low rankings is bad and high rankings is good.

In stats they teach you 30 is a good ball park minimum to build a model off of for stable standard deviations so I feel comfortable posting a screen shot to show you an example of what I see on my side.

Also I’m LMAO right now because with 29 votes, Warrior is now in top 2 in every category….

Also it took 29 votes but finally every class as at least 1 vote for 1st and 1 vote for last in at least 1 game mode, Mesmer held out the longest having no last place votes in any game mode until just now with 1 last place vote for PvE

just make the results link public so we can see for ourselves pls.

rpfohr.7048:

@ Guang:

You are correct sir this is not taking a look at the highest level of play and the survery is open to everybody intentionally on purpose,

Anet cares A LOT about casuals and their opinions.

reikken.4961:

extremely unsurprising

was the one category Ranger wasn’t last sPvP?

No it was last in sPvP but now Ele has moved into that spot.

For average rankings it reverses it when it sums it up so low rankings is bad and high rankings is good.

In stats they teach you 30 is a good ball park minimum to build a model off of for stable standard deviations so I feel comfortable posting a screen shot to show you an example of what I see on my side.

Also I’m LMAO right now because with 29 votes, Warrior is now in top 2 in every category….

Also it took 29 votes but finally every class as at least 1 vote for 1st and 1 vote for last in at least 1 game mode, Mesmer held out the longest having no last place votes in any game mode until just now with 1 last place vote for PvE

You are correct that Anet doesn’t want to create unreasonably high skill curves for classes because MMOs tend to be more casual by default. This is different from fighting games mostly because people tend to invest a great deal of time into one character and also because most fighting gamers tend to be more elitist than the average MMO player. I think that’s fine but you need to differentiate between balancing for accessibility and balancing for actual strength. For example, warriors right now are very weak in PvE but most pugs think they’re super strong, which is pretty much the exact opposite of the truth. If Anet were to nerf warrior DPS to alleviate these complaints then they’d probably fall to last place instantly.

Fortunately I don’t think Anet really listens to uneducated complaints either. Other than mesmers and engineers being unreasonably good in their current states and necromancers being too weak, the PvE meta at least is fairly balanced.

I agree with Guanglai. I had a hard time to figure out which profession i put on which place in the pve part. Except for Necro. I play one myself and enjoy it, but the professions just lags a bit of support utility.

Holy crap.

Rangers are being rated as 7th place by the general populace in sPvP?

My gosh, the general playerbase really is out of touch with the sPvP meta. No wonder the devs ignore everything players say.

@ Guang, point is to gather how the community as a whole feels and convey them to Devs with statistical numbers.

Too many threads about individual class complaints led the to the conclusion that this needed to be done in order to properly portray how the wide player base feels instead of it being so cluttered.

My target audience is the general public, the people who play the game, not the 1%. If I wanted to throw out accessibility and target the game at its highest level this would NOT be a public survey.

scerevisiae.1972:

just make the results link public so we can see for ourselves pls.

I’ve made the results public, if you voted, you can see the results by clicking the original link.

(Sorry I’m not a premium member so I cant save a view for you.)

I will do data analysis later in the week! And Update the OP

tetrodoxin.2134:

I don’t think you can rank classes in PvP that simple. There are several roles to be fullfilled, with different classes for each role excelling. A similar thread was posted some time ago in the PvP section, and Grouch/Powerr pretty much explained why these black/white rankings aren’t really representative/useful.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Best-PVP-Class-1-January-2014/first

I’m just suggesting that maybe you should be a bit more specific in your survey.

To quote myself from that particular thread…

Arganthium.5638:

I’m basing my list on the strategic value of various builds in team comps overall as well as their value compared to other builds that attempt to complete the same role they do. I’m also basing this off the average skill level of players.

That’s how I evaluate different classes and their individual builds, and while it isn’t a perfect standard or anything, it does show how you can compare classes.

Neko.9021:

Holy crap.

Rangers are being rated as 7th place by the general populace in sPvP?

My gosh, the general playerbase really is out of touch with the sPvP meta. No wonder the devs ignore everything players say.

IMO that rating is actually half true (and btw, the majority of votes currently rate ranger as the worst class for sPvP, though the margin is not even close to that of eles- it’s 24.0% versus 44.0%).

On the one hand, Spirit Rangers are a completely brain-dead spec that I would say are even less challenging than any warrior build you’ll find out there (though if you put in just a slight amount of extra effort into a warrior build, you’ll get significantly better results overall). On the other hand, literally every other Ranger build is absolutely godawful. I don’t remember the last time I lost a fight against a non-Spirit Ranger. It annoys the heck out of me, but… What can you do? So the rating is at least partially correct. Heck, if it weren’t for Spirit builds, I might even rate Rangers lower than eles.