Guild Wars 2

How to know when you have achieved profession balance:

When, according to the forums, every class needs to be nerfed.

You have done exceptionally well if those nerf cries largely center around the core mechanics of each class.

Thus, ArenaNet can check Warriors, Guardians, Thieves, Mesmers, and Engineers off the list. They are pretty close to Elementalists being complete.

It appears that Necros and Rangers need some help, though.

a t s e.9614:

would make this game balanced.

and removal of this anoying amount of stealth and teleports from thieves in addition to the amount of invulnerability from warriors (and guardians) would make it more fun

(and I could finally try to play GC ele once in a while …)

to be honest, instead of the usual “plz nerf warriors to teh ground”, i’d say that bringing all of the professions to their level would be more interesting and ultimately make for more entertaining gameplay. and i’m not just talking about this balance wise, but design wise – warriors do have their problems and imbalances but as a whole they seem to be one of the more well designed professions this game has to offer.

nah .. I usually don’t go with the general opinion but thieves … you simply can’t fight an enemy you can’t see. Even more annoying are thieves that keep porting up and down a wall what makes it impossible to deal with them. It’s like the old DD-ele that just RTLs away heals up and engages the fight again.
I didn’t say that it’s broken, but it’s annyoing since there isn’t really a counter to it. A PvP-game needs interaction between players and thieves (as well as skyhammer ^^) bypass that interaction. Thief attacks out of stealth, vanishes again or blinks away and I can only guess where he left to and this can be repeted endlessly without any constraint. Of course a thief needs stealth for its survival but there should be more ways to deal with it.

but I’m drifting into OT here …
I didn’t want to critisize your post (in fact I agree that compared to the dhumfire-patch the game is way more balanced now). I simply wanted to state that balance doesn’t always means fun.
It’s the same with diamond skin for example: it may be needed for balance but (though I personally think it’s crap) this trait is ridiculously boring/annyoing and lazy design.

Inter class isn’t too bad, it’s intra-class balance where they’ve really dropped the ball.

Eg I’m still using the same basic traits and utilities on my Ele as at release, because the alternatives suck in comparison.

Lack of serious balance effort is what’s making this game stale and boring.

right now the main offenders to balance in pvp are passives procs and AI crutches.

All the classes you mentioned as being able to be checked off is something I agree and disagree with. When it comes to PvP, build diversity is a pretty big issue. That being said, most of that is because of how we only have 1 main PvP mode and the mechanics/design of that one mode. Certain strategies are always going to be present when you make tiny circles where 1 tanky player can deny the cap of multiple others. There’s also the issue of certain builds (and in the case of Ele, classes) that are way stronger than they should be due to gear. The Might duration runes in addition to traits/sigils that stack Might let you use tanky amulets but still have high damage.

Of course there are also many cases of certain weapons just not being good, traits that should be in the same line or the same trait, and bugged or useless traits (Brawler’s Recovery -_-). While other classes do need more attention than others, you can’t just ignore the classes that are currently “good.” As a Warrior I am really sick of having to find viable alternatives to Hambow because I’ll be kitten ed if I’m going to play the same build for like a year straight. I’m tired of being HAMstringed into using a longBOW if I don’t want to be eaten alive by conditions. I’d also like to see the skill ceiling heightened. After going back to my Engi it’s easy to see that there’s much greater room for self-improvement. It’s not that much harder to play, but playing it well offers much greater rewards.

I’ve recently started playing Thief. Sadly with my terrible internet it’s way harder than it should be (certain skills just cause me to rubber band like crazy), but most builds feel like you focus on using just a few skills and your other set is just there for the occasional swap (SB 3 is useless to me because every leap makes me rubber band back half the distance I travel). There’s some though needed in regards to positioning and picking the right target but as someone who played a lot of Assassin in GW1 it feels terrible in comparison. Sin was based around dealing high damage through a whole combo, not the repeated use of a couple (although there was 1 build like that but if you messed up you were punished more).

a t s e.9614:

I usually QQ about alot of stuff but I think its pretty close to being balanced.

Gving more mobility ( swiftness not blinks) and stability to necro , slightly buffing condi removal of engineer/mesmer and making power ranger viable would make this game balanced.

^
Adjusting some aspects of stealth so that certain aspects of using it on some skills causes both parties to lose target. Considering no animation in a animation based game creates risk reward. Where multiple targets are in range, the mesmer/thief/engi/ranger can use stealth as their defense and/or set up, but like their target they also have to wade through untargetting binding roots, turrets, other clones. This forces them to also have to make use of animations when they vanished leaving none. Stealth is just too large of advantage for it not to have a large downside to it as well.

Gorni.1764:

a t s e.9614:

would make this game balanced.

and removal of this anoying amount of stealth and teleports from thieves in addition to the amount of invulnerability from warriors (and guardians) would make it more fun

(and I could finally try to play GC ele once in a while …)

guardians have 2 seconds(lesser than a warrior if i recall) but u can aplly conditions to thetarget.

(edit)
peak this link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability

Aeolus.3615:

Gorni.1764:

a t s e.9614:

would make this game balanced.

and removal of this anoying amount of stealth and teleports from thieves in addition to the amount of invulnerability from warriors (and guardians) would make it more fun

(and I could finally try to play GC ele once in a while …)

guardians have 2 seconds(lesser than a warrior if i recall) but u can aplly conditions to thetarget.

(edit)
peak this link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability

I also took blocks, blinds, projectile deflection, etc. into account … fighting a defensive guard is one of the most boring things in the game.

I am particularly amused by all the complaints about stealth — the core Thief defensive mechanic (and secondary Mesmer one). It is a mechanic that allows Thieves to operate in the way you would expect a Thief to operate, but because it is difficult to counterplay against if you do not understand both the Thief class and the class that you are playing, it generates a lot of frustration.

That’s an example of good design, in my opinion. People who don’t understand the mechanic are frustrated by it, while people that do understand it simply recognize it as the critical element of the Thief class that you have to deal with.

someone posted this in another thread and I think it hits the nail right on the head:

McWolfy.5924:

The problems with stealth:
- its an offensive ability
- its a defensive ability
- its an escape ability
- its an engage ability
- spammable, not just a one trick pony
- you can trait it for extras

However, my personal opinion is that stealth in addition to the basically unlimited amount of teleports (like infiltrators strike) are annoying. Either of those two should be nerfed in some way. Stealth is perfectly fine on mesmers … but on thief, it’s just too much and too spammable.

It’s for sure not a l2p issue alone. I know the spells, I know their durations and how they work. Yet what do you want to do against a stealthed enemy, or an enemy that keeps blinking away at 600 range or even up and down a cliff?