Guild Wars 2

So I came back a few months after taking a one year break. This game has changed drastically. The most important change I feel, is that everyone has received nerfs that are stupid hard. These nerfs have been extremely detrimental to the game and I feel there is an alternate route to be taken. Why instead of nerfing peoples classes. Why don’t we keep buffing, but buff classes to an equal level. Say for an example, if one specific class like ranger in this next patch was buffed to where warrior is right now. Instead of nerfing the class, we simply buff every other class to the point where they MATCH the OPness of warrior and ranger. And so the cycle continues. People will take these buffs ALOT more positively then any nerf would be taken, because they’ll be happy that there class will be buffed. I believe that with this route, people would be more excited to play because they will always feel like they are getting stronger. Also it opens the gate for ante to add new skills to balance by buffing.
Maybe this idea has some issues, but I think the general reception would be strong.

How about no? Power creep is already sinking it’s claws into this game, if they do as you say we’ll all start one-shotting each other down the line and the only thing that will save us from the ridiculous damage being put out is even more immunities and hard counters.

Well I mean we can buff things like armor and whatnot too. It doesn’t necessarily mean we just can buff damage

It’s more complicated to fix balance by buffing instead of nerfing.

Also, the only reason there is power creep is because there is condi damage in this game. Most games don’t have condi damage, and right now condi damage is the new meta for pvp.
But anyway, this isn’t a condi rage thread

@xFireize it’s easier to envision buffs then nerfs. The equal buffing might be a challenge but it would be pretty cool when it worked.

Taking an outlier and bringing it back in line with the rest is a more efficient philosophy than taking all of the data points and massaging them into the outlier. Positive feedback loops aren’t the way to go.

It would be cool if it worked, but it would be more time consuming. I would like to see new features or gameplay instead; excluding Living Story.

>reads original post
>sees that he calls Ranger OP
>proceeds to laugh him out of the room

yodog.4208:

Also, the only reason there is power creep is because there is condi damage in this game. Most games don’t have condi damage, and right now condi damage is the new meta for pvp.
But anyway, this isn’t a condi rage thread

What weed are you smoking? EVERY MMO has debuffs. Debuffs = conditions

I never called ranger OP lol. I’m saying if it got buffed to be on par with warrior.
Edit: I see a flaw in my wording, I think every class should be buffed to equal levels off awesome (i.e. Let’s make every class as OP as warrior therefore no class is OP)

@RyuDragnier I was talking about damaging conditions such as burning and bleeding, I understand disabled and cripples exist in other games, just usually not in a DPS prevalent way.

RyuDragnier.9476:

>reads original post
>sees that he calls Ranger OP
>proceeds to laugh him out of the room

yodog.4208:

Also, the only reason there is power creep is because there is condi damage in this game. Most games don’t have condi damage, and right now condi damage is the new meta for pvp.
But anyway, this isn’t a condi rage thread

What weed are you smoking? EVERY MMO has debuffs. Debuffs = conditions

Conditions in other games are usually fixed damage and only increased by leveling up the skill that uses it

Not an actual condition damage statistic.

It isn’t doable or practical though it often seems tempting.

The trouble is the game does not just rely on balance between classes but also between other PvE elements (mobs as a classic example). As you buff classes, you reduce the balance you wanted for classes fighting environmental features.

You would have to rebalance the entire game not the classes.

So, you tend to design based on a median amount of damage, healing, buffing etc you want on a class relative to an environment (which plays the same each time) and then do a little buffing and nerfing to skills on the PvP side to balance that mode while not shifting too much from the PvE balance that is needed.

Nerfing is absolutely essential. So is buffing. Players are far happier with buffs in the short term because we tend to play a class or two.

Here is the trouble. If players constantly complain about nerfs, you avoid nerfing. Ok, but the way you do that is to be VERY slow and VERY meticulous about balance updates. So, the downside of not accepting frequent nerfs is not getting frequent balance patches. In other words, when you balance, mistakes will be made (you will overcompensate). If you can’t claw back some of that gain, you will do far less balancing.

xFireize.6318:

It would be cool if it worked, but it would be more time consuming

^Yup.

We already have to wait 3-4 months between balance patches. The balance team should work on the same or similar schedule as the LS team does, and be constantly making balance changes. BIG changes can take time but when something isn’t working properly for a year + or some new bug is introduced or other kitten litter that gets far too popular, it should be fixed up. Wack a mole would be when you smash those things to oblivion, if the new thing isn’t a huge issue just tweak it but don’t take months to address it. Balance frequency is a HUGE issue imo.

Part of what makes a skill OP is not just how powerful it is, but how easy it is to use and how hard it is to counter. There use to be a build where engineers could one shot people by going into stealth and using minefield to instagib squishes. This is OP in the damage and counterplay department, but super glassy, low utility and SUPER hard to pull off correctly. Done right, it’s unstoppable. Done wrong, you die.

This is not the kind of OP we have in the game. We have OP stuff that is easy to use and hard to counter. Doom requires a target. They will take a ton of damage if you have the trait and they become CCed. This is literally instant.

If we were to buff everything to the power level of these types of OP builds and skills, the game would get easier and easier over time because there is so little counterplay. Every mistake made by the devs would require a buff to every class until they literally couldn’t make things stronger.

That’s why this will never work. You have to cut the OP easy builds. High power should require difficulty to use and high counterplay. Simply buffing everyone else is a bad solution to the problem.

Problem: Healing Signet provides too much healing.
Buffing solution: Improve the healing numbers on every other ability in the game to a corresponding level.
Nerfing solution: Reduce Healing Signet.

100 changes or 1 change?

yodog.4208:

Well I mean we can buff things like armor and whatnot too. It doesn’t necessarily mean we just can buff damage

how about no?

How about no mass buffs until they upgrade the PvE part of the game to be ten times harder then high level fractals is today?

I’m really confused. The power creep in this game is real. The professions, in general, are far stronger than they were at launch.

Warrior – Healing Signet got doubled, massively increasing their survivability. Cleansing Ire lets them now remove conditions (once their ‘weakness’), and Berserker’s Stance is changed to give them Condi Immunity.
Ranger – Increase in survivability to Spirits makes it a dominant AI-clutter class
Elementalist – Fresh Air, a new trait, massively increases the Elementalist’s DPS
Necromancer – Dhuumfire, a new trait, massively buffs Condi Necro
Engineer – Healing Turret buff hugely increases their survivability
Thief – Buff to Initiative regen effectively increases the power of Spam (Pistol Whip builds, for example, in the current meta)
Mesmer – Prismatic Understanding buffed to give boons, and then later to give them more frequently.

Combined with the stat gains by Ascended Trinkets which give huge stat bonuses over Exotic Trinkets, and then Ascended Weapons which effectively increase Power damage by 5% thanks to the base Weapon Damage increase…

This game has had massive power creep and it’s about time they started toning classes down, both in survivability as well as damage.

Neko.9021:

Necromancer – Dhuumfire, a new trait, massively buffs Condi Necro

So, the funny thing about this change is that since it happened, sPvP Necro has seen constant bleed reductions on other abilities that I think almost completely account for the Burning damage that Dhuumfire brings to the table now. Note this is sPvP only, but I wanted to share that information neutrally before someone from the Necro boards came to this thread and went ham.

yodog.4208:

MATCH the OPness of warrior and ranger.

Stopped reading right there.
The game is heading into a good direction, but food still is in dire need of rebalancing.

The biggest power creep introduced into the game was done by the devs when they introduced ascended gear.

Nobody asked for ascended gear or ascended stats. This power creep shouldn’t have existed because this wasn’t a game a vertical progression.

Ascended gear was not in the beta and I will not for a second believe that any form of balance testing was done with any ascended gear. If balance was not achieved via exotics in the first place, ascended gear simply completed the mess that preceded it.

To the OP, power creep is a serious issue. Beyond power output, sources of condition damage and the amplitude of condition damage has increased too. Which we neither have additional clears or condition armor/toughness to cope with. What we require is a global toning down in damage vs defense. Hence more nerfing is required, not boosting.