Guild Wars 2

i don’t wanna start a troll or flame war. but what do you guys think about nerfing skills or classes is it just a lazy way to balance games or are there anthor ways to balance classes and skills?

you cant buff skills over and over again, and hope that they will be balanced anytime in the future.

A game isnt balanced around the strongest class, its balanced around a point, where you can say, damage/defense is ok. If some skill is over this point, it needs to be shaved, if its below, it needs to get buffed a bit (without making it too strong).

Even if they are balancing around a fictional mean, we will continue to see changes (nerfs or buffs) just for the sack of changing the spvp meta once it become too stale, a profession isn’t being used as much as the developers would like, or change the perception of the options on a skill/weapon/trait.

Nerfing overpowered skills.
Buffing underpowered skills.
Changing useless skills.

We could discuss wether this is lazy balancing. But I think a lot of things have to be taken into account. When you buff Backstab to do more damage for example:

• Low armor classes survivability die for a bit
• Low health classes die for a bit
• Build diversity changes toward Backstab oriented builds
• Some amulets and Runes/Insignia’s become less usefull
• Amount of ways to enter stealth may become OP

The amount of depth thats put into this game is making balancing way harder. Anet has the forums for feedback, and has a system to record skill usage (I read that somewere before gw2 launch). But this game will always be a bit of rock paper scissors depending on what game mode you are playing.

If I were a developer, I would first balance out all professions in a 1v1 situation. Because in the long run if you want 10 Thiefs to be equally effective at anything than 10 Necro’s, the basic damage of 1 Thief should be balanced with the health of 1 Necromancer for example. Then I would look at 2v2 situations comparing what combo’s can be made.

The only thing that should sepperate professions apart should be the style. A guardian should be able to resist and regenerate as much damage as a Thief could evade/heal up.
The spike damage a Warrior could inflict should be equal to the sustained damage of a Ranger. And the other way around.

This post turns out a little long to explain my way of thinking.

In short:
Damage x Time > Healing x Time
( 10 dmg per 10 seconds should kill someone regaining 5 health within 20 seconds ) ( kill someone regaining 2 health within 50 seconds)
So healing shouldn’t be more powerfull than damage otherwise players would never die. But the player should have enough utilities to compensate his healing. So if a player regaining 5 health dies within 10 seconds, he either needs a more powerfull heal. Or some way to mitigate damage to reach close to 20 seconds.

I might be totally wrong but this is how I feel they should balance GW2

vinniekliennie.8619:

but what do you guys think about nerfing skills or classes is it just a lazy way to balance games or are there anthor ways to balance classes and skills?

Not at all- nerfing is an essential part of adjusting balance. The key is in making modest nerfs to gameplay mechanics that actually need it.

Without nerfing games just spiral out of control with power creep, and in 1-2 years time everyone with be critting 4k on AA.

It might be the Anet goes a little too far with nerfing and not enough buffing, but they are trying to do it right at least.

Nerfing the lazy way to balance things?

Yes it is.

How do non-MMO games achieve balance?

They have meterics on which skills are most popular.

Those they leave alone.

Little used skills they give tiny buffs too over a period of time and then watch the meterics.

When those skills start attracting players, they stop and leave them alone.

There’s no power creep at all!

They just bring up all other skills so they are around the same level. So you have maxium diversity. At this point the game is completely polished and they leave alone.

Played loads of games that do that, no nerfing at all and end up with a very diverse, polished game.

If you buff a skill but at the end of that buff its not more powerful than the current meta, then there is no power creep.

I guess you could say its lazy but that’s what most of the player base asks for.

People said d/d ele was to strong asked for nerfs and got it.
Necro to strong slowly receiving nerfs the last few patches
Evade thief to strong nerf plox
Warrior to strong nerf plox

There is more but I would be surprised if there are more buff please thread then nerf threads.

If rangers and mesmers are getting rolled by necro’s ranger’s and mesmers are more likely to ask for nerfs to necro’s because they might not know exactly why they are getting rolled but they know they are getting rolled.

Another example is I don’t play a ranger do you think I will go to the ranger forums and ask for a buff to rangers? Probably not.

I think anets buff/nerf pace now is better then when they rolled the elementalist back in the day because other professions where to weak.

Well, nerfing is anything but the laziest way to handle a situation. Take away any child’s toy and you will more actively have to defend why than just buying a similar toy for their sibling.

Generally, the right way to balance is to QUICKLY get a class that is getting to uselessness (e.g. Warrior pre-buff, ranger etc) buffed THEN shave it to the right size.
Much like you start with a big block of clay to sculpt.

Human nature gets in the way. You got the far overpowered buffs and remember a time you were underpowered. How likely are you to want to give them back to achieve more balance? Mind you, compared to where you started, you will be fine. . . but once a toy has been unwrapped. . . . .

If anything, the approach of buff fast and nerf down is the least lazy way to manage class balance and has the shortest timeline.

There is also the problem of it is taking the Developer’s almost two years to get to the shaving phase, as they have been in the past prone to “knee-jerk” reaction to balance, so in this shift we are seeing quite a bit of whack-a-dredge.

“Lazy” is balancing the entire game with only PvP in view, which ultimately results in a big “screw you” to the PvE metas struggling to make something horribly broken work.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Nerfing overpowered skills.
Buffing underpowered skills.
Changing useless skills.

We could discuss wether this is lazy balancing. But I think a lot of things have to be taken into account. When you buff Backstab to do more damage for example:

• Low armor classes survivability die for a bit
• Low health classes die for a bit
• Build diversity changes toward Backstab oriented builds
• Some amulets and Runes/Insignia’s become less usefull
• Amount of ways to enter stealth may become OP

The amount of depth thats put into this game is making balancing way harder. Anet has the forums for feedback, and has a system to record skill usage (I read that somewere before gw2 launch). But this game will always be a bit of rock paper scissors depending on what game mode you are playing.

If I were a developer, I would first balance out all professions in a 1v1 situation. Because in the long run if you want 10 Thiefs to be equally effective at anything than 10 Necro’s, the basic damage of 1 Thief should be balanced with the health of 1 Necromancer for example. Then I would look at 2v2 situations comparing what combo’s can be made.

The only thing that should sepperate professions apart should be the style. A guardian should be able to resist and regenerate as much damage as a Thief could evade/heal up.
The spike damage a Warrior could inflict should be equal to the sustained damage of a Ranger. And the other way around.

This post turns out a little long to explain my way of thinking.

In short:
Damage x Time > Healing x Time
( 10 dmg per 10 seconds should kill someone regaining 5 health within 20 seconds ) ( kill someone regaining 2 health within 50 seconds)
So healing shouldn’t be more powerfull than damage otherwise players would never die. But the player should have enough utilities to compensate his healing. So if a player regaining 5 health dies within 10 seconds, he either needs a more powerfull heal. Or some way to mitigate damage to reach close to 20 seconds.

I might be totally wrong but this is how I feel they should balance GW2

You said it right! no need to be un-certain. Unfortunately, the game-class/s, is totally opposite of everything you mention.

Why do you see un-balance everywhere?

Why do you see 84%-91% of threads and posts are ‘up in arms’ concerning un-balances?

Obviously ….

Phenn.5167:

“Lazy” is balancing the entire game with only PvP in view, which ultimately results in a big “screw you” to the PvE metas struggling to make something horribly broken work.

I remind you that the unique feature of this game was indeed PvP and it was always billed as such (the core or heart of the game). It is a GW game after all.
Just like an ESO games will default to having a clean UI with an immersive feel.
A DAOC game will likely focus on WvW.

Yes, the PvE is quite good here, but that was not the “shtick” of the game.

Bombsaway.7198:

Phenn.5167:

“Lazy” is balancing the entire game with only PvP in view, which ultimately results in a big “screw you” to the PvE metas struggling to make something horribly broken work.

I remind you that the unique feature of this game was indeed PvP and it was always billed as such (the core or heart of the game). It is a GW game after all.
Just like an ESO games will default to having a clean UI with an immersive feel.
A DAOC game will likely focus on WvW.

Yes, the PvE is quite good here, but that was not the “shtick” of the game.

While that may be true, PvE is where the majority of their customers are. Whether it was the intended focus or not, they would do well to remember this reality when balancing the game. There are a lot of abandoned MMOs that did not acknowledge this.

Nerfing isn’t lazy. In fact, I would say it’s a necessity for when something is so out of control that almost all counterplay for it is ineffective.

A good example is the Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy. Before it was nerfed, for about two seconds, mesmers were invulnerable while doing good damage and it had a short cooldown. There was no counterplay to that other than getting out of the way because it couldn’t be interrupted. It could even avoid environmental hazards like the steam jets in the Southsun jumping puzzle. The skill was godly. Even as a mesmer main, I agreed that it needed to be nerfed.

The problem Arenanet has, however, is that they are so afraid of powercreep that they more often than not overnerf things. Making Blurred Frenzy vulnerable to retaliation, confusion and other on-hit procs was a great change as it made mesmers more cautious about using it. Then they nerfed the cooldown as well, which I can’t see promoting anything positive for or against mesmers. Thankfully it was a small cooldown nerf but its impact is felt vastly. Since I can’t use it to avoid many environmental hazards anymore, I don’t even try. Against guardians, whom would have benefited the most from me proccing retaliation with it, it’s too big a risk. I just use other skills.

Maybe it’s just my mentality or the stigmata that comes with nerfs but, in the end, they didn’t get me to use caution when using the skill. They got me to stop using it altogether except in pve and even then, it’s against enemies that I know can’t counter it.

Bombsaway.7198:

Phenn.5167:

“Lazy” is balancing the entire game with only PvP in view, which ultimately results in a big “screw you” to the PvE metas struggling to make something horribly broken work.

I remind you that the unique feature of this game was indeed PvP and it was always billed as such (the core or heart of the game). It is a GW game after all.
Just like an ESO games will default to having a clean UI with an immersive feel.
A DAOC game will likely focus on WvW.

Yes, the PvE is quite good here, but that was not the “shtick” of the game.

It’s an MMORPG. The way I see it, if Arenanet wanted to focus exclusively on PvP and Esports, they should have just made a MOBA and not even bothered with PvE and WvW to begin with. The way they’re currently handling things is just a slap in the face to the majority of their player base.

Bombsaway.7198:

Phenn.5167:

“Lazy” is balancing the entire game with only PvP in view, which ultimately results in a big “screw you” to the PvE metas struggling to make something horribly broken work.

I remind you that the unique feature of this game was indeed PvP and it was always billed as such (the core or heart of the game). It is a GW game after all.
Just like an ESO games will default to having a clean UI with an immersive feel.
A DAOC game will likely focus on WvW.

Yes, the PvE is quite good here, but that was not the “shtick” of the game.

PvP isnt really unique to GW2, obviously. Also its not even a good focus. Looking back at GW1 there were more gamemodes, more interesting gamemodes. GW2 is Conquest, Conquest, and… you guessed it.. MORE Conquest!

If PvP was suppose to be the focus they sure did a really bad job. Even LoL has acknowledges multiple gametypes are a good idea to keep things interesting and give people something else to do. Even if the default 3-lane 5v5 is the main gamemode.

On a side-note, did you play ESO? Because, wow. Clean UI? Immersive? Nope, just… couldnt be further from the truth.

Anyway, GW2 is build on PvE. Thats what the community plays above all. Even WvW beats PvP in popularity.
So this constant balancing around a very gimmicky gamemode (small teams standing in small circles) is provoking severely negative balance descisions in other gamemodes. Either through what arenanet does, or because of what they dont do.

And they keep their stuborn idea of not wanting to seperate gamebalance based on gamemode.
And this leads to truely aweful design descisions. Profession balance is so poorly done. Its Blizzard with World of Warcraft all over again, there is a reason i got sick of WoW and i see arenanet make the same, the exact same, choices when it comes to balancing their game.
Down to having the same golden boy, the Warrior.

vinniekliennie.8619:

i don’t wanna start a troll or flame war. but what do you guys think about nerfing skills or classes is it just a lazy way to balance games or are there anthor ways to balance classes and skills?

Nerfing is nessecary, overnerfing is where it becomes lazy.

i do aggree that a nerf is nessecary sometime’s but sometime’s i think why not make the other skills a but more power full and more appealing. Then just nerf the skill that everbody uses, ofc this is a lot harder to do.
But they are overnerfing most of the classes and skills now and we get some very lachluster buffs in return, atleast thats the way i feel right now.