Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand how this word is used on these forums. It seems like OP means it’s good when OP is suppose to be overpowered, broken, game breaking, mode breaking, unbeatable.

Example on this very forum.

Sasajoe.1509:

warrior / thief … for wvw they r just too op

I’m not calling this specific person out just using this as an example, but this is a general use of the term “OP” I see on gw2 forums a lot. When I read this I see him saying Warrior/Thief are to overpowered compared to something else that is also overpowered. It also implies to me that their is an acceptable level of overpowered.

So what does OP mean now?

OP means "i cant beat him/her with my build, Nerf them so I can beat them with my current build"

OP on the forums basically means “X beat me cause I suck kitten at this game. Nerf X so I can feel better about myself without learning how to play.”

You can continue to nerf “OP” things, but that doesn’t do a thing for stupid entitled players.

Brando.1374:

OP means “i cant beat him/her with my build, Nerf them so I can beat them with my current build”

Also players tend to forget that game is balanced towards groups of 5 and not 1vs1 class.
At the state of the game how it is now (i dont play for like a month) in theory there is much less press buton to win wich difined the suposed OP buids belong to the past.

OP for me its when a certain spec beats 90% of the builds in 1v1. An entire class can’t be OP, it really is the build.

a t s e.9614:

OP for me its when a certain spec beats 90% of the builds in 1v1. An entire class can’t be OP, it really is the build.

well there is a flip side to this.
my necro runs 0/6/4/4/0 when the meta used to be 6/4/0/0/4 (pre nerf dumbfire)
I won well over 90% of my 1v1’s but my build was never considered “OP” by anyone’s standards.

Brando.1374:

a t s e.9614:

OP for me its when a certain spec beats 90% of the builds in 1v1. An entire class can’t be OP, it really is the build.

well there is a flip side to this.
my necro runs 0/6/4/4/0 when the meta used to be 6/4/0/0/4 (pre nerf dumbfire)
I won well over 90% of my 1v1’s but my build was never considered “OP” by anyone’s standards.

What’s the rest of your build? Was it condis? If so, I’d argue condi Necro is considered OP by many standards.

But that’s mostly because condis in general seem to be considered OP.

And high direct damage seems to be OP.

And high tankability seems to be OP.

Here’s what I would consider “overpowered”: a mechanic that can have a severe impact on a fight that can be used nearly mindlessly and requires a lot of focus or something extremely specific to really try to deal with.

Take 40% duration food. If you have -40% duration food, I basically need +40% duration food for my control condis to have an impact on a fight. If I have +40% duration food, not having -40% duration food means my condis have far too much impact on a fight (in my opinion). Yeah cleanses and teamwork and “no one cares about small-scale WvW” blah blah blah, but I really think this food is “OP” because it’s food that requires specifically building around. If someone has +10% direct damage on food, that’s mostly whatever. If someone’s confusion/weakness/chill lasts 40% longer, you need to address it, or you’re probably screwed. Especially in Confusion’s case, you can’t just avoid attacking and play defensively while waiting for it to run out, because it isn’t running out anytime soon.

The extra problem with 40% duration food is that in larger groups, it’s basically useless with clears. So it’s either a huge impact, or garbage. Something being garbage goes against it being “OP”, but that’s just another reason why I feel it shouldn’t exist.

As another example, take Perplexity Runes. Five stacks of confusion (which hurts every time you activate anything) for a base of 8 seconds, on a 15 second cooldown. With the run bonus to confusion duration and WvW food alone, you’re looking at about 13.5 seconds of 5 stacks of confusion. Every 15 seconds. For the entire fight. Yes, you have to land an interrupt, but considering how trivial that is for some classes, these runes are insane. I have to tiptoe through the tulips against that much confusion or I’ll suddenly be dead, but they just have to casually interrupt whenever I’m doing anything (which, most often in a fight, I’m doing something). Maybe it’s worse because as a Necro, I have a bunch of channels and longer cast times, but it just seems like no effort for enormous gain.

As another example, proccing strong conditions on being hit. Perplexity and Nightmare are culprits here. 3 stacks of confusion for attacking? Feared for attacking a target, when that Fear can and probably is traited to do 800+ damage per tick, and with condi duration probably lasts about 4 seconds? The enemy isn’t even doing anything, just reaping fairly substantial rewards.

I get it. None of these things may impact the results of any competitive situation, nor will they probably change the outcome of a WvW score. To me, that doesn’t matter.

So in effect, “OP” is when a mechanic forces a lot of effort out of the opponent and hardly any effort out of the user in a way that nontrivially diminishes the enjoyment of the experience. All in my opinion, of course.

But for the most part, “OP” is used to outline something that killed them, most often things that they know nothing about and use as a crutch to excuse their own failure.

Conditions are considered "OP" by those who dont know how to handle or refuse to adapt, but yes my wvw build is condi.

I could also win many fights without my +40% duration food.

“OP” isn’t a word, it is an acronym for two words “Over Powered.” It is also used as an acronym for the two words “Original Poster.” So my input is that this thread is invalid as there is no word OP.

I know, that is such a troll answer and for that I apologize, just couldn’t resist.

“OP” is either used on the spot or after repeated experiences with said builds. It can be used by both the victor or the loser of any encounter. It’s mostly used to infer that something appears out of balance. Mostly, it ends up being what are the current Meta Builds. Because once a build is created/derived it’ll be copied several times over.

Words of similar meaning and use to OP would be cheese and troll.

In warrior op in wvw? maybe i find my warrior easier to perform good with than all my other chars i barely even need to weapon swap i can just use hammer.
Theif is defently not OP it has never been so unforgiving i find my self struggle against pretty much everything after the ferocity change. The way theif is designed they have to finish 1 enemy fast because there is not that much sustain outside of stealth.
The longer it takes to kill 1 enemy the more susceptible they are to damage and it doesn’t matter what armor they wear. They just cant take hits like a warrior.
Warrior got a lot more damage nerfs than theif did over the past 2 years but i think the ferocity benefit warriors more than anyone else when not considering conditions builds. I seriously consider stop trying to roam with theif because i would just do so much better on my warrior or even anything else if i just changed their gear.
The easiest to kill is actually guardians because of their lack of mobility and cc.
They can only heal for so much before they eventually die.
Theif is just too unforgiving right now and it seriously need some buffs to be on par with the others. Its actually builds immune to thieves so far i encountered healing rangers and ele and engineers with so much burning and confusion i melt just by going close.
Before the patch i could on average hit 8-9k backstab now 5-6k and that dosen’t sounds like a lot right? well that is going close to full glass which means i die in 3 or 4 autoattacks. With low sustain while you’re foe got a myriads of ways to heal themselves.

RIP Roaming thieves hello bandwagon condition engineers.

I believe the general consensus is that OP never delivers.

It’s not OP if I personally play that build/profession. The burden of L2P is on you. Huehue

Serious answer.

It’s about perception.

Generally speaking players have a certain expectation when it comes to class balance. We all expect to have a reasonable chance against any other class.

When we come up against a class that falls out of this balance spectrum we call it OP.

Dee Jay.2460:

Serious answer.

It’s about perception.

Generally speaking players have a certain expectation when it comes to class balance. We all expect to have a reasonable chance against any other class.

When we come up against a class that falls out of this balance spectrum we call it OP.

The problem is that the balance spectrum mentioned is often knee-jerk with no foundation of knowledge or desire to adapt. There’s too much “I should be able to do whatever I want and be successful against everything” floating around.

But yes, in general perception is the key over actual balance. It just becomes an issue when perception gets as clouded as it likes to apparently do.

@OP <—- referring to Original Poster

To me OP means not exactly overpowered but being too effective for the amount of skill needed to pull it off.
Is MM Necro super-uber-unbeatable? – No. But it requires no skill whatsoever apart from running around and spamming skills off cds to be somewhat effective.
Is Spirit Ranger OP? – No. But all you do is run around and count on procs+evasion to outlast your foe. Compare to the amount of effort needed by e.g. a thief to beat it.
Full Dire P/D thief (WvW)? No. Lacks pressure and killing power vs decent people but it can be literally unkillable.
I would also include passive procs, regardless of the prof, that just are detrimental to the skill-factor in this game e.g. sigil of tormenting, incediary powder…
I could go on forever but I hope that Ive got my point across.

TL;DR Very strong specs and combos should require exceptional skill to use effecitvely and not be available to an average player.

OP means they beat me.

Pibriamal.8719:

“X beat me cause I suck kitten at this game. Nerf X so I can feel better about myself without learning how to play.”

Always happens online.. a term gets overused that over time it loses it meaning.

Same thing happened in WvW… when I first started playing there the term “zerg” was used to describe those huge unstoppable hoard of people. But, over the course of months people used the term to describe smaller and smaller groups till eventually the community coined a new term – Blob. Now a blob is what a zerg used to be and zerg is something smaller.

So here we are with OP not actually meaning what it should until someone finally saves us and invents a new term for us to use.

scabrous.7835:

To me OP means not exactly overpowered but being too effective for the amount of skill needed to pull it off.
Is MM Necro super-uber-unbeatable? – No. But it requires no skill whatsoever apart from running around and spamming skills off cds to be somewhat effective.
Is Spirit Ranger OP? – No. But all you do is run around and count on procs+evasion to outlast your foe. Compare to the amount of effort needed by e.g. a thief to beat it.
Full Dire P/D thief (WvW)? No. Lacks pressure and killing power vs decent people but it can be literally unkillable.
I would also include passive procs, regardless of the prof, that just are detrimental to the skill-factor in this game e.g. sigil of tormenting, incediary powder…
I could go on forever but I hope that Ive got my point across.

TL;DR Very strong specs and combos should require exceptional skill to use effecitvely and not be available to an average player.

One of the few actual on topic replies and one that I agree with.

A warrior in PvP with Soldier’s Amulet for high vitality, toughness and power who uses sigil of intelligence to crit for 8K with eviscerate while himself being next to unkillable is OP. I played it, it requires next to no skill or attention to pull it off, you can stay alive even under pressure and you can almost one-shot classes like thieves and elementalists, that have a hard time even putting a dent into you.

Honourable mention to engineers, whom thanks to no-cooldown kits have 24 skills in a free rotation, have no skill ceiling can thus become completely broken OP if the player is very, very skilled. While that same player on any other class could not be as powerful. That too is a from of something being overpowered.

Cufufalating.8479:

Always happens online.. a term gets overused that over time it loses it meaning.

Same thing happened in WvW… when I first started playing there the term “zerg” was used to describe those huge unstoppable hoard of people. But, over the course of months people used the term to describe smaller and smaller groups till eventually the community coined a new term – Blob. Now a blob is what a zerg used to be and zerg is something smaller.

So here we are with OP not actually meaning what it should until someone finally saves us and invents a new term for us to use.

This is true I never really thought about how zerg has changed. It still somewhat has it’s original meaning but if your 10+ your zerging or 8 with a MM necro.

@Dee Jay – Those are good points I agree the spectrum of balance is the persons perception.

@Cogbyrn – This is where I feel the term just gets thrown around. This makes it hard to understand how sever someone thinks a problem is. An example is when something is “So OP” or “To OP”. That just sounds like there is some level of acceptable OP. So where do balance and good and working as intended fall into the spectrum. It just confuses me sometimes trying to understand.

a t s e.9614:

OP for me its when a certain spec beats 90% of the builds in 1v1. An entire class can’t be OP, it really is the build.

GW2 is not balanced around 1 v 1.

So what? It should be balanced for 1v1. There’s no way I’m going to accept a loss in 1v1 just because the said OP 1v1 build is useless in team play.

a t s e.9614:

There’s no way I’m going to accept a loss in 1v1 just because the said OP 1v1 build is useless in team play.

Simply being better at rotating and having better map awareness does wonders when someone plays a direct counter to what you’re doing. Moreover, if they’re adamant about chasing you down, you can “force” them to be places where they shouldn’t be.

In short, zerg rush is op to those who don’t know how to effectively scout.

Things like MM necro only work in environments where there is poor communication. Don’t blame the build, blame the poor communication.

tom.7468:

Before the patch i could on average hit 8-9k backstab now 5-6k and that dosen’t sounds like a lot right?

Because you asked, that sounds incredibly too high to me. I’ve always complained about burst in PvP settings. Damage to defense ratio’s were off to begin with. Fights shoudl last longer than a few swings and a rotation.

OP in a casual environment actually just means toxic. Toxic builds/skills/classes/combos/designs aren’t healthy for a game and need to be adjusted/reworked/removed.

Just as an example: Hambow Warrior is toxic. It doesn’t make fun to play against, it’s no challenging build, there is little you can do to counter the warrior while the build itself remains incredibly effective. It has too much AoE, dmg, cc and is very tanky/sustainable. Due to that, it destroys many other build possibilities for other classes, it ruins the current meta and basically exploits the design of conquest. It has no real downsides. A non-toxic build/design always involves up- and downsides, creating real possibilities to be countered or played against, so that both parties, player and opponent, actually have to think about using their skills instead of just spamming them.

That leads to my second point: Current condition spam is toxic. Not conditions as such are toxic (well, save for poison), but the spam is. There is not enough counterplay, not enough tension when playing; you actually just have to faceroll.

Other examples for toxic designs that should never exist in pvp, because they lead to boring and dull combat situations: perma stealth, perma cc, onehitting burst, immortal bunkers, passive heal etc. pp.

On the other hand, OP in a competitive sense means really that a build allows a skilled player to own his opponents easily. In a competitive sense, thief currently is absolutly op, because most classes don’t stand a chance against a good thief.

a t s e.9614:

So what? It should be balanced for 1v1. There’s no way I’m going to accept a loss in 1v1 just because the said OP 1v1 build is useless in team play.

Then this is not the game you’re looking to play. You cannot obtain balance for both 1 v 1 and team scenarios. So what happens is one is left aside.

Since GW1 has no 1 v 1 organized pvp and no intentions of implementing it I suggest you give up on the idea of 1 v 1 being balanced. It never will be.

Overpowered simply means that a build or profession takes less skill or effort to achieve the results of builds/professions that take more skill or effort.

A good indication of when a profession/build is overpowered is when those defending it show up and say “just outplay him”.
If you need to be flat out better then your opponent to stand an even chance of winning, there is an unbalance.

There is however no magical, universally accepted treshhold at which the effort/skill to performance ratio goes from balanced to overpowered.

You could also look at statistical imbalances. For example looking at the recent Tournament of Legends. Warriors and Guardians were extremely popular, Guardians even got a more then 1 guardian-per-team average.
Warriors got close to a 1-per-team average, and the vast majority, almost all of them, played the same build, Hambow.

Under such extreme deviations from a perfect equilibrium, where all professions are evenly popular, you could also state that Guardians and Warriors are outperforming relative to the other professions.
The solution can be a buff to under-represented professions, or a nerf to the over-represented professions. Or a bit of both.

play some dark souls lol
this game is pretty balanced
people just like to over use op

op this op that everything is op :P

caveman.5840:

play some dark souls lol
this game is pretty balanced
people just like to over use op

op this op that everything is op :P

I dont see how this is remotely relevant.

We shouldnt persue a greater balance in a game that has a large part revolve around PvP, and tries to do competitive PvP, because there is a game thats basicly designed to screw the player over in every possible way?

Look at other games as a reason to improve your own, not for a lazy excuse not to. And honestly, Dark Souls 2 is a pretty poorly designed game anyway.

yep buddy it is not relevant … i am not saying to balance more or less lol … i dont care :P

all i am saying is this game is a lot more balanced than some "dark souls "
lol …. i never said anything was or is a good/balanced/ well designed game lol :P

i am just making fun how people cry OP at every turn lol :P

y do u waist words attacking such a small and meaning less post lol

Definitions of “OP”:

1. Every player, who is better than the original poster.
2. Every skill/trait, which is better than the skills of the original poster’s class.
3. Every skill/trait/class, who/which is too strong in relation to other classes.

Please ignore number three, the posts, which based on this point are very rare, so rare that you can not believe it, that they exist

“OP” is if it kills you. Period.
That’s about the only consensus on it I’ve seen so far in MMO gaming.

alot of satire posts above, but heres a serious answer.

“OP” refers to things which just work far too well.
such as hambows in spvp low risk/high reward and all of its strengths cater to the conquest game mode.

everyone has what they think is an acceptable skill to reward ratio,
some builds just do far too much with very little effort.

being able to reset a fight in your favor with little to no skill involved how ever you see fit . that is what op means .

scabrous.7835:

Is MM Necro super-uber-unbeatable? – No. But it requires no skill whatsoever apart from running around and spamming skills off cds to be somewhat effective.
Is Spirit Ranger OP? – No. But all you do is run around and count on procs+evasion to outlast your foe. Compare to the amount of effort needed by e.g. a thief to beat it.

Both of these seem quite balanced to me if you leave the – unsupported, might I add? – 1v1 blinders off.

MM Necros have less power they use if they control their char badly, true. Although don’t undersell it, any MM Necro not constantly attacking their target and firing their pet skills will still die the moment they blink. Sure. But, in turn playing really well offers less to them because the AI doesn’t get any better from that, either.
(That’s btw the balance scheme for pet classes in MMOs, well, one of two which are mutually exclusive.)

Spirit Rangers are very centred around group buffs, but just like MM Necros they got a crucial flaw (and it’s more problematic with Rangers because their spirits stay close to them): Group warfare. As in, AEs flying around.
Those spirits die if something so much as sneezes in their general direction. And while yes, in a 1v1 situation that takes valuable time, in group-vs-group or larger combat the incidental damage from AEs removes things such as Spirits, Clones, Pets etc outright unless you pay specific attention to stay out of the AEs, thereby lessening your power by not being able to link up or provide full buffs.

And since – again – 1v1 is not a form of combat in GW2 (it really isn’t, the game specifically encourages not doing it, and nothing in it remotely hints at it being a viable form of fighting), the issues you describe are really… yeah. Don’t matter.

Sure, hotjoin, trying to fight 1v1, MM Necro on a point? Good luck.
But then, just bring 2 friends and you won’t even notice there was someone standing there.

everything that kills me is op