[PvX] Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing

[PvX] Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing

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Posted by: Seras.5702

Seras.5702

It’s not just balance that we need, but something for our classes to grow. Each balance patch opens or closes the door to various builds due to strengthening or weakening an existing skill/trait, but rarely does anything fundamentally change. After over a year and a half, we need more skills, and broader traiting.

We’re working with a new class-specific heal and a new universal heal, neither having much impact on gameplay. We need more than just new content with which to play our characters, but a way to see our characters grow, some of which are fast approaching their 2nd birthdays. We’re on our 2nd dragon…I think a few new weapons in our kitten nal are due.

Flixx Gatebuster, Orwynn Lightgrave, Seras Snapdragon
[TTBH] [HATE], Yak’s Bend(NA)

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Posted by: Yoh.8469

Yoh.8469

@Yoh: The fact that GW2’s design philosophy fundamentally differs from GW1 has been beaten to absolute death. However, I’m going to entertain it for a second and ask a question:

What kept you interested in GW1 that had you playing for years?

Was it the more frequent release of new abilities? Was it new content in the form of new lands to explore? New classes? A certain PvP mode? Lore-based quests? Hero configuration/flexibility?

In short, differences in kind. Variation, the feeling that I could always take the pool of skills that I had available and come up with new builds, even entirely unique builds.
And have those individual builds feel and function very differently.
For that you have to have a certain amount of stuff to work with.

I don’t quite get that feeling here, almost, but not quite.
Between the over empathize on DPS and relatively small pool of skills, builds across professions tend to largely do the same small set of things, and feel very samey.

For example, a condition build on my Necro feels a lot like a condi build on my Engineer. Even with different conditions, they both function very similarly. AOE spam.
And the same can be said, within reason for many zerker builds. Thou a lot of combat in general tends to be very spammy.

Where as two hex builds in GW, even within the same profession could function and feel completely differently, and have very different goals to victory.
Thou part of that is because GW had more depth and nuance in it’s mechanics then GW2, but it does make up for this in other areas, such as movement.

But overall, there is only a handful of viable builds per profession in most modes of play, and many of thous overlap with each other and fill very similar roles with minor modifications. And there is only so long that can continue to entertain without new content to change things up.
Polish and tweaking can only go so far.

-

We know they can produce a ton of content, if they wanted to, based on their history.
But for whatever reason, they have elected not to.

Yet after all this time, we’ve have an absolutely poultry amount of content, you could count it on two hands.
Given how important additional content is to the game, it is fair to ask, after a year and a half, where is the content?

It’s very troubling. I for one don’t care anymore what they add, they have to add something.

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Posted by: Grimreaper.5370

Grimreaper.5370

Great post. This deserves more attention by the devs than the other rage/nerf/lulz topic in this forum section. And I’ll keep bumping it untill an official reply from devs.

It’s a shame that most of the forum is just “My class is too weak” / “That class which killed me is too strong” / “I was hit for X by Y” whining, yeah. I think the main reason this forum was created was to contain the rage, so to say. Keeps the rest a bit more sane.

Every game is like this. The dev’s have to balance based off their numbers and not our complaints. As far as I can tell, neither really seem to happen. Buffs seem extremely random when they do come and things that people cry to get nerfed just get ignored while they nerf around the issue is causing more issues.

+1 on thread, hope the dev’s read this.

Even though prioritizing class balance over game content would be less of a workload on Anet? … According to server infrastructure. Maybe I’m delusional but I feel like the amount of people wanting class balance outweighs the demand for new PvE content. I’m hoping that I’m wrong and Anet actually is following some statistic to cater to the masses. I’d hate to think they just do things their way or the highway, regardless of demand.

(edited by Grimreaper.5370)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

After over a year and a half, we need more skills, and broader traiting.

I just hope it won’t be as extreme as in GW1. The raw amount of skills really brought that game down,because the classes were never designed to have that many options, and each classes’ identity was completely washed out.

I’m not even sure we need more skills/traits, tbh. Why?
Each class has ~50%+ skills/traits which are never taken. Balancing those would be a much much greater influx of diversity and gameplay variety than any new skills could ever be.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

After over a year and a half, we need more skills, and broader traiting.

I just hope it won’t be as extreme as in GW1. The raw amount of skills really brought that game down,because the classes were never designed to have that many options, and each classes’ identity was completely washed out.

I’m not even sure we need more skills/traits, tbh. Why?
Each class has ~50%+ skills/traits which are never taken. Balancing those would be a much much greater influx of diversity and gameplay variety than any new skills could ever be.

Absolutely. I mentioned in my OP as to how balance has largely concentrated upon the “meta” few skills and traits that crop up, whilst it seems as though other skills and traits are ignored – until they become a problem. Most prominently for the Engineer has been the Grenadier/Incendiary Powder traits, for Elementalist, it has been the entire Water Magic trait line. The list goes on, and all the while, build diversity has been restricted more and more.

One can attribute this to 2 reasons:

  • The playerbase has gotten to “know” the game better. That is to say, more and more of the game is becoming a known quantity, and players would gravitate towards the stronger specs.
  • Despite a multitude of changes, Arenanet has not brought up build diversity in any significant degree across all classes. In fact, the only class that seems to have been brought broad base, strong build variety is Warrior – yet their strongest builds concentrate 20+ points into Defense. One wonders whether Defense has become the new “Water Magic” for Warriors as it did for Elementalist – and certainly, the cleansing capability would appear to mirror that.

What it means for the game is that players cannot truly “play how they want” as espoused in their Manifesto video given the established superiority of “meta” specs. Sadly, it seems that the pattern has been for Arenanet to only alter “off meta” traits and skills in their “overhaul” patches – and this pattern has problems of its own.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: Akilles.4320

Akilles.4320

You’ve done a good work MonMalthias.4763, you expressed what many players think, that for one reason or another don’t write it here at the forum and for that I salute you.

I play mmo’s for over a decade, there’s not such think as a perfect game or a perfect manage from the game companies, but the ones that listen to their player base prevail.
I hope Anet act before their magnificent game falls in a limbo.

Norn Reaper | Human Druid | Charr Berserker | Sylvari Chronomancer | Asura Scrapper |
Norn DH | Charr DD | Human Herald | Sylvari Tempest
[Seafarer’s Rest, EU]

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

What it means for the game is that players cannot truly “play how they want” as espoused in their Manifesto video given the established superiority of “meta” specs. Sadly, it seems that the pattern has been for Arenanet to only alter “off meta” traits and skills in their “overhaul” patches – and this pattern has problems of its own.

When I mention that a community never forgets and will always link old comments, this is what I mean. I think you have great ideas, MonMalthias, but I’ve listened to the Manifesto video 3+ times now, and I don’t hear them ever even say you can “play how you want”.

And even if they did, do you really think they meant “play how you want competitively” or “play how you want and the community will accept it”?

So let’s assume they said: “Guild Wars 2 is a game where the player can truly play how they want.” What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean you can build however you want and be successful in your chosen game mode? Does it mean you can adapt any style you want on any class you want to play?

Or does it maybe mean you can almost immediately jump into whatever you want to do, whether it’s top-level sPvP, PvE, or WvW? Or does it maybe mean that in PvE, you can play each heart how you want because their are options, whether that’s gathering, or killing or what have you?

The phrase “play how you want” can be interpreted a thousand different ways, and if they said it (which I still don’t even think they did), is it truly ANet’s fault when the players all interpret it their own way without trying to better understand what ANet actually meant?

And if they meant that you can build however you want and you’ll be competitively successful, would you really believe such a bold-faced lie? Name a game that works like that, in PvE or PvP. Name a game with a competitive scene where you don’t have a group of players who can tell you exactly what you “should” be doing. Your talent/gear/glyph choice in WoW, your team comp/item build in DOTA 2, your set of builds in a game like Starcraft 2, all of these things become established and branching is either a stroke of meta-changing genius (.001% of the time for most players), or frowned upon.

I agree that ANet could adopt a more frequent iterative balance paradigm, and I would enjoy it. But why does a 4 year old video have to be brought up and (seemingly) misrepresented? Let’s work with what is current, not old marketing hype.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: Chrispy.5641

Chrispy.5641

It’s not just balance that we need, but something for our classes to grow. Each balance patch opens or closes the door to various builds due to strengthening or weakening an existing skill/trait, but rarely does anything fundamentally change. After over a year and a half, we need more skills, and broader traiting.

We’re working with a new class-specific heal and a new universal heal, neither having much impact on gameplay. We need more than just new content with which to play our characters, but a way to see our characters grow, some of which are fast approaching their 2nd birthdays. We’re on our 2nd dragon…I think a few new weapons in our kitten nal are due.

that word was censored? What are we? 5? (and British apparently?)

Also, I agree.

(edited by Chrispy.5641)

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Posted by: Terrahero.9358

Terrahero.9358

Sounds like they listened to this thread. And now they are going ahead and massively turning everything on its head, new grandmaster traits across the board!

I imagine at this point that class balance in GW2 is like throwing a fistfull of dirt into a shallow pool of water and then waiting a long time till everything settles, and then doing it again.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I think one problem is that I doubt the devs truly know where they want to go with overall-balance. I mean, we players keep asking for fully 3-way-split balance, but in the end I can understand why that’s not a good idea (tons of added complexity).

Plus they’d need some smart way to convey the information to players.

I think one way it could be done – and should be done for the skills which already work different – is to have “text blocks” inside the tooltip. I mean it’s all HTML, add a tiny shaded div to them with a PvP/PvE/WvW icon for the part which only happens in that area.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

snip

When I mention that a community never forgets and will always link old comments, this is what I mean. I think you have great ideas, MonMalthias, but I’ve listened to the Manifesto video 3+ times now, and I don’t hear them ever even say you can “play how you want”.

And even if they did, do you really think they meant “play how you want competitively” or “play how you want and the community will accept it”?

So let’s assume they said: “Guild Wars 2 is a game where the player can truly play how they want.” What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean you can build however you want and be successful in your chosen game mode? Does it mean you can adapt any style you want on any class you want to play?

Or does it maybe mean you can almost immediately jump into whatever you want to do, whether it’s top-level sPvP, PvE, or WvW? Or does it maybe mean that in PvE, you can play each heart how you want because their are options, whether that’s gathering, or killing or what have you?

The phrase “play how you want” can be interpreted a thousand different ways, and if they said it (which I still don’t even think they did), is it truly ANet’s fault when the players all interpret it their own way without trying to better understand what ANet actually meant?

And if they meant that you can build however you want and you’ll be competitively successful, would you really believe such a bold-faced lie? Name a game that works like that, in PvE or PvP. Name a game with a competitive scene where you don’t have a group of players who can tell you exactly what you “should” be doing. Your talent/gear/glyph choice in WoW, your team comp/item build in DOTA 2, your set of builds in a game like Starcraft 2, all of these things become established and branching is either a stroke of meta-changing genius (.001% of the time for most players), or frowned upon.

I agree that ANet could adopt a more frequent iterative balance paradigm, and I would enjoy it. But why does a 4 year old video have to be brought up and (seemingly) misrepresented? Let’s work with what is current, not old marketing hype.

Touche, Cogbyrn, touche. My post was out of line, for sure. Thank you for your perspective. I will have to stand by my point however, that build variety has been curtailed by lack of attention to aspects of each profession that remain under-leveraged. For Engineer, it is a plethora of RNG procs or percentage HP procs and a startling lack of procs or utility upon Toolbelt use – part of the reason why Kits are so essential. For Elementalist, the staid 30-60 points in Arcana and Water has remained staple despite repeated nerfs. I’m sure that as a Necro you could also list some examples also.

For me, personally, a meta that strongly features play, counterplay and counter-counterplay with enough room for player-driven innovation is the idealised, utopian state for GW2 balance – ideally without widespread splits of skills, for both player and developer sanity’s sake.

Right now the apex predators that have been created in the wake of the Dhuumfire patch are the antithesis of this ideal. AI-Centric specs like Spirit Ranger and MM Necro require little mechanical execution for much player reward. Engineer is a cloud of crit-procs or an obnoxious CC bunker with untelegraphed pushes. Thief has the upper hand in any glass vs glass fight and in part has driven players to build more tanky. Warriors are carried by Healing Signet. Elementalist has become another Stealthless Thief – having to build as glassy as possible to contribute enough damage due to being extremely time-starved in this condition-heavy meta; and what’s worse, Elementalist burst is similarly untelegraphed and unpredictable thanks to Fresh Air/Air 15.

When players run such setups, the question has to be asked – are they being “competitive” – which is to say, playing to win – or simply working with what they have because any other build would contribute too little to be significant? Even more stultifying and presenting a chilling effect on player innovation is the perception that these apex predator specs provide even average players the opportunity to perform at top level.

In such an environment, there is little incentive to improve as why play excellently to just contribute in an average fashion when one can play at an average level to contribute at an excellent fashion? Arenanet’s dream of a player driven meta seems distant when it was their changes that drove this meta.

That being said, hopefully Arenanet with their April 15th feature patch can drive the meta towards something that isn’t cheese vs cheese, in Leman’s words

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

What it means for the game is that players cannot truly “play how they want” as espoused in their Manifesto video given the established superiority of “meta” specs. Sadly, it seems that the pattern has been for Arenanet to only alter “off meta” traits and skills in their “overhaul” patches – and this pattern has problems of its own.

The funniest part about this video is the “non-grindy” demand at 1:28.
So GW2 is not grindy at all huh? But I wont elucidate that, it would derail too quickly.

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

What it means for the game is that players cannot truly “play how they want” as espoused in their Manifesto video given the established superiority of “meta” specs. Sadly, it seems that the pattern has been for Arenanet to only alter “off meta” traits and skills in their “overhaul” patches – and this pattern has problems of its own.

When I mention that a community never forgets and will always link old comments, this is what I mean. I think you have great ideas, MonMalthias, but I’ve listened to the Manifesto video 3+ times now, and I don’t hear them ever even say you can “play how you want”.

And even if they did, do you really think they meant “play how you want competitively” or “play how you want and the community will accept it”?

I think the statement means that you can play how you want and still serve a purpose with it. If you play banner warrior, you want deal high damage, but you have great grouppsupport. Yet there are too many things which are simply bad and serve no function or not good enough (like ranger pets).

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I think the statement means that you can play how you want and still serve a purpose with it.

Crucial part underlined.
The whole point was that if you do something like that Manifesto, the community will keep annoying you with turning every single word on it’s head. For years.

Do you really think the devs will ever do something like that again? Every MMO dev team learns at some point to simply not engage with the community, they’re way too toxic and way too abrasive. The whole idea of this balance-forum seems to be to serve as /b/ for the forums, making the rest of it a little bit nicer.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

I think the statement means that you can play how you want and still serve a purpose with it.

Crucial part underlined.
The whole point was that if you do something like that Manifesto, the community will keep annoying you with turning every single word on it’s head. For years.

Do you really think the devs will ever do something like that again? Every MMO dev team learns at some point to simply not engage with the community, they’re way too toxic and way too abrasive. The whole idea of this balance-forum seems to be to serve as /b/ for the forums, making the rest of it a little bit nicer.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’m god you know. I’m supposed to know everything.

So let’s assume they said: “Guild Wars 2 is a game where the player can truly play how they want.” What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean you can build however you want and be successful in your chosen game mode? Does it mean you can adapt any style you want on any class you want to play?

If they meant this the way you understand the statement, the statement becomes simply worthless. You can play everything anytime you want. You can play Riven on full AP (If you know LoL), you can do it, but it’s worthless.
Same with this statement. If it’s worthless, it’s just an empty phrase.
And I hope you are wrong because this would mean that they promoted their game with flawed facts.

(edited by HHR LostProphet.4801)

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

snip

double snip

Touche, Cogbyrn, touche. My post was out of line, for sure. Thank you for your perspective. I will have to stand by my point however, that build variety has been curtailed by lack of attention to aspects of each profession that remain under-leveraged. For Engineer, it is a plethora of RNG procs or percentage HP procs and a startling lack of procs or utility upon Toolbelt use – part of the reason why Kits are so essential. For Elementalist, the staid 30-60 points in Arcana and Water has remained staple despite repeated nerfs. I’m sure that as a Necro you could also list some examples also.

For me, personally, a meta that strongly features play, counterplay and counter-counterplay with enough room for player-driven innovation is the idealised, utopian state for GW2 balance – ideally without widespread splits of skills, for both player and developer sanity’s sake.

Right now the apex predators that have been created in the wake of the Dhuumfire patch are the antithesis of this ideal. AI-Centric specs like Spirit Ranger and MM Necro require little mechanical execution for much player reward. Engineer is a cloud of crit-procs or an obnoxious CC bunker with untelegraphed pushes. Thief has the upper hand in any glass vs glass fight and in part has driven players to build more tanky. Warriors are carried by Healing Signet. Elementalist has become another Stealthless Thief – having to build as glassy as possible to contribute enough damage due to being extremely time-starved in this condition-heavy meta; and what’s worse, Elementalist burst is similarly untelegraphed and unpredictable thanks to Fresh Air/Air 15.

When players run such setups, the question has to be asked – are they being “competitive” – which is to say, playing to win – or simply working with what they have because any other build would contribute too little to be significant? Even more stultifying and presenting a chilling effect on player innovation is the perception that these apex predator specs provide even average players the opportunity to perform at top level.

In such an environment, there is little incentive to improve as why play excellently to just contribute in an average fashion when one can play at an average level to contribute at an excellent fashion? Arenanet’s dream of a player driven meta seems distant when it was their changes that drove this meta.

That being said, hopefully Arenanet with their April 15th feature patch can drive the meta towards something that isn’t cheese vs cheese, in Leman’s words

I totally agree, actually. I wanted to add more substance to this post, but I simply agree.

However, I’m not sure that you can universally remove “average play resulting in excellent contribution” from a game and have it be widely popular. I think there’s merit to limiting the effectiveness of “simple” combos of abilities and trying to emphasize positioning/reading your opponent, but I think it’s part of the game mode’s responsibility in a game to also de-emphasize simple class execution and enforce to minimize the impact of average play on an “excellent” build.

But I digress. I still agree with your original point, and with basically all of your recent point.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

You can play everything anytime you want. You can play Riven on full AP (If you know LoL), you can do it, but it’s worthless.
Same with this statement. If it’s worthless, it’s just an empty phrase.
And I hope you are wrong because this would mean that they promoted their game with flawed facts.

The whole idea of GW2 was to support “any way to play” to a significant degree, more so than other games. Hence:

  • Bite-sized content, all-around. Chainable, too. So you can play 10 minutes, or 1 hour, or 5 hours.
  • No dedicated healer or tank classes which are unable to play solo because they’re designed to be always grouped. Used to be a staple of any MMO’s design, earlier games had nearly all their DPS unable to solo, too. Something WoW wanted to do away with and later had to add dual-specs to even properly enable it. And even that was a pretty bad bandaid considering the Resto Shaman was still useless outside of a party, just that he became someone else.
  • Gear which is within 3%-4% of maximum possible performance can be acquired for free instantly from guildies for tiny amounts of crafting mats, the moment you hit 80. So gear is never a reason you can’t do something.
  • All game modes instantly unlocked (well…. china :P ). Unless we count dungeons, one of the parts where I think they could improve by adding a lvl10 or so dungeon aimed at newcomers. I guess the Personal Story instances are meant to do this, though.
  • Living Story content requires no attendance, you won’t fall behind by not having been there. It’s not raid tier gear you miss out on. WoW had to later bandaid this by doing the weird kind of item-tier rolling their do. But again, doesn’t properly work because the game wasn’t designed with it in mind.
  • No monthly fee. No internal struggle between maximum engagement vs dropping your monthly payments.

Really, the paradigm shows everywhere. Just that you have to give up trying to understand it in one specific tiny way. Ofc I can find specific elements in the game which do not perfectly fit one specific constructed meaning.

But in turn, think about how many things in GW2 fit many many definitions of “play however you want”.

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

You can play everything anytime you want. You can play Riven on full AP (If you know LoL), you can do it, but it’s worthless.
Same with this statement. If it’s worthless, it’s just an empty phrase.
And I hope you are wrong because this would mean that they promoted their game with flawed facts.

But in turn, think about how many things in GW2 fit many many definitions of “play however you want”.

Yes, their slogan gets reflected in many aspects of the game. Yet the classbalance does not reflect that. The zerker-meta is too dominant. And while this meta got established by players, it’s ANet’s job to enable other builds to be as desireable as the zerker build in PvE or the tanky builds in PvP.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

Oh yeah, definitely. The zerker-thing isn’t surprising – after all, in any raid-based MMO you squeeze as many healers and tanks out of the raid as humanly possible – but it still needs work on.

I don’t think you can truly make it so that pure direct damage isn’t the best option for PvE, but the margin should be rather small. Though right now the bigger issue is “condition stacking in general”, in regards to limited slots and confusion not working properly and chill’s lacking effect on CDs and all those things. After those are fixed, can take a look at the real balance.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Sutek.3189

Sutek.3189

I have to say Elementalist is too soft compared to other profisions and too much aimed to support class.

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

Oh yeah, definitely. The zerker-thing isn’t surprising – after all, in any raid-based MMO you squeeze as many healers and tanks out of the raid as humanly possible – but it still needs work on.

I don’t think you can truly make it so that pure direct damage isn’t the best option for PvE, but the margin should be rather small. Though right now the bigger issue is “condition stacking in general”, in regards to limited slots and confusion not working properly and chill’s lacking effect on CDs and all those things. After those are fixed, can take a look at the real balance.

Well, you could start with implementing very strong, unique buffs to the game, so you probably want to pick a support who is capable of providing those other than bringing a second dps-class. You could also make bosses hard-hitting and kiteable, so you could choose specs who provide superior control abilities.

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Posted by: HHR LostProphet.4801

HHR LostProphet.4801

I have to say Elementalist is too soft compared to other profisions and too much aimed to support class.

The ele is soft, yes, but also hart hitting. I can reach 8k crits with LH without any buffs from others.

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Posted by: Acaro.4067

Acaro.4067

Dude you´re so right, exactly that is why I stopped playing GW2 half a year ago. It´s so sad, because I believe that GW2 has the potential to be the best MMORPG out there, but at the moment all that potential get´s wasted by poor decision making. Only temporary content, ignoring of community-feedback, empty promises, balancing changes take over half a year to happen etc.

I just hope Anet doesn´t just ignore this. And, I hope, Anet posts in this thread another time, admitting their mistakes and promising changes. SOON.

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Posted by: dace.8019

dace.8019

An excellent thread and I wholeheartedly agree with almost everything in the OP. I sincerely hope ANet take the time to absorb everything MonMalthias has written on these important topics here and actually respond by changing. And like MonMalthias stresses, timeliness is key.

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Posted by: Phadde.7362

Phadde.7362

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, MonMalthias.4763! This post is exactly what we talk about when we mention formatting and concise feedback. Even though it’s a lot to take in, you do a great job of separating the ideas and making it easy to navigate.

I will be passing this on to the team to think about!

Amazing! This is really good to hear.

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Posted by: Empathetic Fighter.2065

Empathetic Fighter.2065

+1
Even though it won’t Change anything. I feel sorry for the time you spent.

Read It Backwards [BooN]

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

snip

double snip

snip snip snip

I totally agree, actually. I wanted to add more substance to this post, but I simply agree.

However, I’m not sure that you can universally remove “average play resulting in excellent contribution” from a game and have it be widely popular. I think there’s merit to limiting the effectiveness of “simple” combos of abilities and trying to emphasize positioning/reading your opponent, but I think it’s part of the game mode’s responsibility in a game to also de-emphasize simple class execution and enforce to minimize the impact of average play on an “excellent” build.

But I digress. I still agree with your original point, and with basically all of your recent point.

To expand on my point of “average play resulting in excellent contribution” – it is not to say that I would advocate its complete removal. All games – and especially those with a player vs player component – require some kind of “entry level” spec to become successful. I use and abuse Extra Credits a lot, but their video on Balancing for Skill is a perfect springboard. Simply put, for a game with a competitive component to achieve success, there should be room within the scope of the system to allow for players to enter at all levels of skill and have a chance (note I did not say an even chance) of winning. Having “low skill” mechanics in a game is not in itself bad, provided that they are not just as easily applicable to the highest levels of play.

To elaborate, strategies for success at lower levels of skill, for example, should have a lesser chance at higher levels of skill. Probably the most concise examples I could bring up is 6pool “cheese” in Starcraft before the balance changes, or closer to Guild Wars 2, the IWAY team comp in Guild Wars 1. In the context of shooters, people might be most familiar with the “noob tube” of Call of Duty infamy. Having these powerful tools accessible to the lowest common denominator allows a game to grow its population. When these tools become a dominant force, however, the skill ceiling is diminished and this is exactly what is happening right now.

A game with a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling has the best of both worlds, providing entry level players a way to get into the game, whilst stratifying “skilled” players from newer players. Having room to grow as a player demands learning and demands investment of time to be competitive and this is what distinguishes “playmaking” from simple execution of a build – using a build’s unique capabilities to do something a player just picking up the build for the first time cannot do. It is unfortunate then, that the majority of the meta builds today do not have this requirement. The skill ceiling differentiating a new Hambow Player from a top level Hambow player is not great, nor is it that great for a decap engineer, or MM necro, or Pistol whip Thief, or S/x Fresh Air burst ele, or Spirit Ranger, or Clone death Mesmer. That these builds have little room to play badly or misplay is just as toxic to the game as any other hard counter or RNG proc mechanic.

The burden of counterplay rests on the player defending against these builds and this is why Arenanet needs to sit down one day and consider whether the mechanics that they have introduced like condition immunities or immobilise stacking or stunlock combos are actually fun to play against. But this is an entirely different topic, so I’ll stop now. I heard CMC was compiling a list of things with little counterplay, so I’ll wait for his thread before starting my own. Nevertheless, Arenanet’s balance direction treads a dangerous path when mechanics are introduced that diminish counterplay. I only hope that the decap Engineer debacle can begin to open their eyes as to why hard counters are extremely exploitable.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

(edited by MonMalthias.4763)

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

+1
Even though it won’t Change anything. I feel sorry for the time you spent.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. To say nothing is tacit support of impropriety and Arenanet has much to lose if they fail to heed the lessons of their own past.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

Yeah, I get what you mean, and my perspective is admittedly limited because I mostly just run around WvW in sandbox PvP mode. Decap Engis and Hambow Warriors just aren’t really things in my world. On the contrary, Backstab Thieves are very much in my world (took a cool 14k damage from the Steal/CnD/Backstab combo today, but that was also after I dropped some Thief in 4-5 seconds and wrecked a few other Thieves. #powercreep).

That being said, I’m very curious to see this list of things that have little counterplay. I think it’s a very valuable discussion to have, and I also just enjoy discussing mechanics in general. Your comment below sums up precisely how I feel about a few different scenarios, but I think a clarification might be needed for interpretation purposes:

The burden of counterplay rests on the player defending against these builds and this is why Arenanet needs to sit down one day and consider whether the mechanics that they have introduced like condition immunities or immobilise stacking or stunlock combos are actually fun to play against. But this is an entirely different topic, so I’ll stop now.

When you say “the burden of counterplay”, I think you mean that “the person who is attempting to defeat the ‘ez’ build/strategy has to go well above and beyond normal standards to win” instead of that the defender is responsible for simply appropriately playing against the cheese build.

I actually really love the Extra Credit videos on balance and counterplay (thanks for the link, was a good watch), but I’d be really curious to hear some ideas on tactics/builds that could be considered approriately high power for low skill without seriously impacting the top tier of competitive play. To be honest, I think Frenzy + Bull’s Charge + Hundred Blades was a pretty prime candidate, but even then, it seemed like Frenzy + Hundred Blades cleave was still populate in the “competitive” scene, and I don’t think other classes had a similar translation of “easy” build that made players feel as strong. That’s where I get hung up: how do you make a build like that for every class that doesn’t creep its way in to being impactful in the competitive scene?

I’m sure it can be done, but I haven’t thought of a good way in an MMO scenario quite yet. Perhaps those ideas aren’t for this thread, but I’d love to hear them.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: Jabberwock.9014

Jabberwock.9014

Please listen to this man. Why do you insist on packaging every balance fix in with a thousand other changes so that you have absolutely no way of knowing what did what, and what is broken? The essence of experimentation and testing is to test ONE variable at a time to see what breaks. Now maybe one change at time is not viable, but at the very least you shouldn’t do literally everything in one ridiculous behemoth of a patch. The goal should be change as little as possible at a time, not as much as possible. The other problem with your current approach is that balance problems which are ruining the meta like healing signet are not hotfixed to stop the bleeding, but left to grow like a tumor for indefinite periods of time.

Additionally, op has completely nailed it on the pride point. Why is it that over a year later, the completely unjustified and massive nerf to ride the lightning has not even been acknowledged, much less reverted. That’s right, I must have seen dozens of threads over the past year with the community begging for the devs to revert the change, yet in not ONE have I seen a red post addressing the grievance. Maybe you are very slowly starting to swallow your pride, since you are finally reverting the cleansing water nerf, but calling that “too little, too late” would be understatement of the year. Reverting one nerf over a year later while ignoring the numerous other unjustified nerfs that were packaged with it is not exactly reassuring.

Get stoned whenever you want:
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Posted by: furryangel.4623

furryangel.4623

Watch closely as the intelligent points are skirted around and the problems specifically mentioned here are made worse. So far I haven’t seen a single fix that didn’t feel like a teenagers response to criticism. It doesn’t get better, it gets awkward. Then they just storm out of the room to program whatever they feel like instead of balancing like they were supposed to.

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

Watch closely as the intelligent points are skirted around and the problems specifically mentioned here are made worse. So far I haven’t seen a single fix that didn’t feel like a teenagers response to criticism. It doesn’t get better, it gets awkward. Then they just storm out of the room to program whatever they feel like instead of balancing like they were supposed to.

The tone of your post makes you sound like the teenager’s friend who didn’t get his/her way, stormed home, and unfriended your friend on Facebook in a fit of rage.

Not a single fix that “didn’t feel like a teenager’s response to criticism”? Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

Watch closely as the intelligent points are skirted around and the problems specifically mentioned here are made worse. So far I haven’t seen a single fix that didn’t feel like a teenagers response to criticism. It doesn’t get better, it gets awkward. Then they just storm out of the room to program whatever they feel like instead of balancing like they were supposed to.

The tone of your post makes you sound like the teenager’s friend who didn’t get his/her way, stormed home, and unfriended your friend on Facebook in a fit of rage.

Not a single fix that “didn’t feel like a teenager’s response to criticism”? Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

I do think that Cogbyrn has the right of it in this case. Overall the game is more bugfixed and more polished than it has been since launch. If the April 15th feature patch preview is any indication there are more bugfixes incoming – although many class issues will remain untouched despite 5 incoming new Grandmaster tier traits for all classes.

That being said, Arenanet has a worrying trend for sticking to their guns despite player feedback that it is a bad design decision. They did so for Diamond Skin and Elementalist active condi clear through Traits, they did so for Dhuumfire and condition application outside of Burning for Necromancer and only now are they beginning to relent on issues like Warrior Healing Signet.

Now, what will be instructive is not, in fact, what comes out of the April 15th patch and whether the meta across all 3 arenas – PVP, WVW, PVE – is shifted in a positive fashion. It will be the followup patches that will be important to gauge Arenanet’s response to emergent issues when such power-creeping potential is introduced with the lifting of Sigil proc GCDs and overall reworks to Rune sets. It is almost inevitable that some player, somewhere, stumbles upon a setup that will be utterly ridiculous. What comes next, and Arenanet’s response, will allow us as a community to gauge whether Arenanet has learned.

Personally, given Allie Murdock’s response and escalation of these concerns, I hope Arenanet does learn, for their sake. The last of their veterans hinge upon a better response time towards identified bugs and balance issues and if indeed, it’ll be yet another 6 months before the OP setups generated in the wake of April 15th are addressed, Arenanet may as well hand their community over to rival MMOs on a silver platter.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

Yeah, I get what you mean, and my perspective is admittedly limited because I mostly just run around WvW in sandbox PvP mode. Decap Engis and Hambow Warriors just aren’t really things in my world. On the contrary, Backstab Thieves are very much in my world (took a cool 14k damage from the Steal/CnD/Backstab combo today, but that was also after I dropped some Thief in 4-5 seconds and wrecked a few other Thieves. #powercreep).

That being said, I’m very curious to see this list of things that have little counterplay. I think it’s a very valuable discussion to have, and I also just enjoy discussing mechanics in general. Your comment below sums up precisely how I feel about a few different scenarios, but I think a clarification might be needed for interpretation purposes:

snip

When you say “the burden of counterplay”, I think you mean that “the person who is attempting to defeat the ‘ez’ build/strategy has to go well above and beyond normal standards to win” instead of that the defender is responsible for simply appropriately playing against the cheese build.

snip.
That’s where I get hung up: how do you make a build like that for every class that doesn’t creep its way in to being impactful in the competitive scene?

I’m sure it can be done, but I haven’t thought of a good way in an MMO scenario quite yet. Perhaps those ideas aren’t for this thread, but I’d love to hear them.

As you said, these ideas probably aren’t for this thread, but I’ll elaborate for the sake of fleshing out the phrase “burden of counterplay”.

Your inferred definition that the “person attempting to defeat the ‘ez’ build/strategy has to go well above and beyond normal standards to win” is apt. Some matchups at present are simply unpleasant for all the wrong reasons due to lack of counterplay.

The easiest example is Healing Signet. In a game where most outcomes of player vs player combat largely hinge upon the interruption or Poisoning of the healing skill, Healing Signet removes this entirely from the equation and allows the player utilising it to focus entirely upon offense and active defense without regard for hitting the 6 key and risk being interrupted. Combined with Cleansing Ire, even maintaining 100% Poison uptime to counteract the regeneration is difficult due to the potential for 3 cleanses per 10 seconds. The burden of counterplay is therefore upon the player defending against Healing Signet/Cleansing Ire to supply high enough sustained DPS to counteract the passive regeneration, or monstrous burst damage against one of the highest EHP classes in the game – damage unseen since the days of the Quickness meta – as damage has been toned down overall since those days.

An alternate example would be Pistolwhip Thieves, or Stealth-based Thieves in WvW. In a game-mode where there is ample space to run, extreme mobility combined with the capability to drop targeting and disengage beyond the range of many gap closers – or vanish entirely and remove a player’s ability to read the Thief’s animations – makes classes with low EHP extremely unpleasant and extremely short.

One of the reasons why Thief has supplanted in PVP the Mesmer or Elementalist in the role of roaming DPS is due to the fact that a Thief can force long utility cooldowns with weapon skills alone. For Elementalists, this means CDs on the order of 40-75 seconds to simply withstand the opening strike – and the Thief hasn’t even burned its own Heal or Utilities yet. This puts the Elementalist or Mesmer at a constant cooldown disadvantage, if not a health disadvantage. The burden of counterplay is on the Mesmer or Elementalist to burst out the Thief in the opening salvo. Any less would mean a cooldown disadvantage from then onwards.

Again, these are things for discussion in another thread entirely. An important discussion, to be sure, but these are balance issues that should not even be so problematic if only Arenanet combines “shaving” with constant, frequent balance updates with a view towards root-cause analysis of problem matchups.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

So I’ve been reading various forum threads and stumbled upon this gem from infantrydiv in which he touches upon one of the reasons why balancing as Arenanet has done – identifying problem “meta” specs and adjusting those – will not lead to greater build diversity. I feel as it is important as it also touches on Yoh’s points about differences in kind, if not differences in playstyle.

@Yoh: The fact that GW2’s design philosophy fundamentally differs from GW1 has been beaten to absolute death. However, I’m going to entertain it for a second and ask a question:

What kept you interested in GW1 that had you playing for years?

Was it the more frequent release of new abilities? Was it new content in the form of new lands to explore? New classes? A certain PvP mode? Lore-based quests? Hero configuration/flexibility?

In short, differences in kind. Variation, the feeling that I could always take the pool of skills that I had available and come up with new builds, even entirely unique builds.
And have those individual builds feel and function very differently.
For that you have to have a certain amount of stuff to work with.

I don’t quite get that feeling here, almost, but not quite.
Between the over empathize on DPS and relatively small pool of skills, builds across professions tend to largely do the same small set of things, and feel very samey.

For example, a condition build on my Necro feels a lot like a condi build on my Engineer. Even with different conditions, they both function very similarly. AOE spam.
And the same can be said, within reason for many zerker builds. Thou a lot of combat in general tends to be very spammy.

Where as two hex builds in GW, even within the same profession could function and feel completely differently, and have very different goals to victory.
Thou part of that is because GW had more depth and nuance in it’s mechanics then GW2, but it does make up for this in other areas, such as movement.

But overall, there is only a handful of viable builds per profession in most modes of play, and many of thous overlap with each other and fill very similar roles with minor modifications. And there is only so long that can continue to entertain without new content to change things up.
Polish and tweaking can only go so far. snip

Yoh brings up an important point in that many builds, even those across professions, can feel very “samey”. Condition builds overload cleansing, for example. Some of Arenanet’s design decisions of mirroring proc mechanics across professions like condition application upon critical hit, or percentage health triggers, or percentage damage increases when wielding a weapon has resulted in similarities in kind without a diversity in play.

Similar examples exist across all classes, not just Warrior or Ranger. Elementalists are balanced around, and rely upon, Elemental Attunement/Arcane Fury. Without points in Water Magic, there is no other reliable access to condition cleanse. Engineers would do themselves a dis-service without taking Grenadier, or 10 Alchemy, 10 Tools for Speedy Kits/Invigorating Speed. Guardians give up a lot when skipping across 5 Honour, 5 Virtues; and Absolute Resolution is extremely difficult to pass up. Mesmers without Deceptive Evasion don’t do so well. Necromancers without Near to Death are missing out a lot of their access to their offensive and defensive mechanic. Thieves without 30 in Critical Strikes…aren’t. And of course, Rangers without Empathic Bond put themselves in a bad position.

Arenanet’s policy of concentrating certain mechanics, like condition cleansing, or access to Boons, or mobility or CC mitigation or CDR or DPS into certain lines has in a way, restricted build variety more than any nerfs have provided. I feel that this is yet another long term goal for Arenanet to strive to correct, and provide players with the ability to play differently in kind and still perform at an acceptable level.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

Back onto infantrydiv’s post though:

The ideal ‘meta game’ for Guild Wars 2 would be one in which every class was not forced into particular traits or weaponsets in order to be viable but instead could create a kit designed for a specific purpose and do well with it.
This thread intends to serve as a discussion of balance of a class within the class itself. This is not a topic I often hear discussed when balance is on the table. “Individual Class Balance” explores the idea that a Ranger requiring Empathic Bond, or a Warrior requiring Cleansing Ire is bad design.


I’m going to start with Warrior as an example:
Warriors are intended to be the strongest melee class with a weakness to conditions and being kited. Their high base health and armor is supposed to in part, make up for this.
Back in the first half of 2013, warriors were not considered viable and received a number of extremely large buffs which turned their weaknesses into strengths overnight.

Currently, any ‘meta’ warrior spec has four (or five) things in common:

1. Healing Signet
2. Longbow (Primarily, Combustive Shot and Pin Down)
3. Cleansing Ire
4. (Burst Mastery)
5. Berserker’s Stance

These five aspects of the warrior represent a tiny part of the class as a whole, but for the past 6 months they have been allowed to pidgeonhole both warrior build diversity and other class diversity as well. In fact, each class has a choice of 75 traits, dozens of weapon skills, and over 25 slot skills.

Now, if I was balancing for Arenanet, I would try and conduct my balance endeavors in the following way:
1. Single out the biggest problems making a class too powerful as I have done above
2. Give those things substantial nerfs.
3. Look for the weakest parts of the class
4. Give those parts substantial buffs

For example, “On My Mark” applies 10 stacks of vulnerability to a single target on a 30 second cooldown. This utility is terrible by any sense of the word. I would look for a way to improve the worthless skills in a class kitten nal like “On My Mark” until finally, someone says, "Wait a minute, “On My Mark” is good for this situation or this build!"
By balancing classes like this, instead of doing extremely minor nerfs to the meta builds, we would see classes because more balanced within themselves. We would also see a much slower power creep, if any, if this was done correctly.


A different example of the same type of internal class imbalance could be Ranger. Rangers are completely reliant upon 30 points into Wilderness Survival which increases Toughness and Condition Damage for survival. This line contains the Grandmaster trait Empathic Bond which is their only good condition removal. In addition, the only build that allows a ranger to have a substantial effect upon a team fight is through the use of spirits, and the Elite Spirit of Nature is by far the best Elite skill they can take.

So, Rangers are pidgeonholed similarly to Warrior:

1. Empathic Bond (parallel = Cleansing Ire)
2. Spirit of Nature

Just to acquire these two things causes Rangers to use up 50-60 trait points. Pidgeonholed? I think so.
If for example, Empathic Bond and Spirit of Nature were removed entirely, Ranger would be on a completely different power level than what it currently resides at. It would also actually be better balanced as well because these two things are just so much stronger than any other options. I’m not saying that these two abilities should be removed entirely, just that they should be brought down while other Ranger abilities are brought up.


To me, when I hear Arenanet talk about balance, it always feels like they are looking at overall class balance. In other words, they look at it like this: Warrior? Ok it has a role in the meta, good! Ranger? It has a role in the meta, nice! Elementalists? Hmm, it doesn’t have a role in the meta, better give them some crazy buffs!

This style of balancing will never lead to an interesting game. Guild Wars 2 only has 8 classes. We need these classes to be diverse in what they can bring to the table. We need them to be balanced within themselves, so that you aren’t forced to take 1 or 2 major abilities that completely define your gameplay experience.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

Just to elaborate on some of the initial examples I gave I’m cross-posting some key posts from infantrydiv’s thread:

I heartily agree. I play a guard and I often look at some of my utility abilities and wish there was a build in which they would be useful. Spirit weapons are cool, but really, they’re not viable at all.

I agree that balance means any skill can be useful in any build. The fact that most people probably don’t even know Healing Surge, Mending and Defiant Stance means that Healing Signet is just that powerful.

Mesmer – Deceptive Evasion, you have no idea how many builds would open up if this came as a default for the class. It’s not that the trait is op, it’s just that the trait is a necessity to be viable in any way.

Countless

Yep, this is a perfect example I had in mind while making this thread.

Technically, mesmers only have 50 trait points they can spend while remaining viable due to the sheer necessity of this trait.

Have you considered that perhaps the reason why certain classes have trending builds is due to the meta itself? In your example, many warriors use healing signet, cleansing ire, longbow, but is it because these are overpowered or imbalanced, or is it a direct answer to the meta of extreme AoE condition pressure from tanky builds?

What if the meta shifted back to high burst glass cannons, where encounters are decided in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Warriors would not be able to keep up with the fast tempo using sluggish heals from healing signet or low direct damage weapons like longbow. Therefore, the rise of greatsword will take place due to its high burst, high mobility, and versatility. Etc.

Don’t single out a few traits and abilities and say that just because everyone uses them, that they are perhaps imbalanced. A class should have access to all the tools necessary to adapt to a meta shift, and perhaps these are the tools that are being utilized to adapt to this meta. You can’t blame players for finding a way to survive and thrive in a meta. Warriors are, in your terms, “pigeon-holed”, not primarily because of the shortcomings of the warrior class itself; they’re pigeon-holed due to the overall meta forcing them to build a certain way to survive the meta.

This is simply not true. Warriors are probably the best against bursty builds like ele and mesmer. Healing signet is not weak to burst when in the hands of the class with the highest health, armor and on-demand personal stability and immunities. The fact is that Healing signet + automatic cleansing Ire + stances makes warriors good against everything.

Also, if you think that Pin Down + Arcing Arrow + a point blank Fan of Fire is low direct damage, I dunno what to tell you.

Compare an untraited Healing Turret to a fully traited Elixir H.

How is it that Healing Turret stands so superior? Even if I were to go full on HGH, with every exilir trait, I’d still be reluctant to forgo the turret.

This sheer disparity is suprising given the engineer had only 3 healing skills for so long.

Staples (like Deceptive Evasion) would be alright if our “deck” were larger. If we could slot more skills or had more trait points to spend, then 20 required would be forgivable. As it stands it’s too great an investment. Not to say that’s a viable solution for GW2, but staples are so crippling with the current build size and gated trait structure.

I have to bring a pair of Energy Sigils (say on Guardian), but I only have 3 to start.

It’s always a pain abandoning Invigorating Speed and Speedy Kits in favor of alternate traits. 20 points that provide such all purpose functionality are hard to forgo.

Just to expand on SZSSZS.3784’s point about Invigorating Speed / Speedy Kits, because this is an easy example within the class, the only other traits providing equivalent functionality require 50 (!!!) points of investment:

  • Adrenal Implant
  • Power Shoes .
    These sorts of vast inequities of differences in kind have a chilling effect on player innovation. The phrase “pigeonholed” will be bandied about until Arenanet finds a way to equalise these factors within and between classes such that true diversity can prevail.
Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
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Posted by: insanemaniac.2456

insanemaniac.2456

Just to expand on SZSSZS.3784’s point about Invigorating Speed / Speedy Kits, because this is an easy example within the class, the only other traits providing equivalent functionality require 50 (!!!) points of investment:

  • Adrenal Implant
  • Power Shoes .
    These sorts of vast inequities of differences in kind have a chilling effect on player innovation. The phrase “pigeonholed” will be bandied about until Arenanet finds a way to equalise these factors within and between classes such that true diversity can prevail.

bleah, i think this is a poor example. the thing is, there is equivalent functionality. we have 4 options for perma swiftness on engi. we have 4 options for more dodges on engi. none of which require extreme dedication on their own. sure, speedy kits + invigorating swiftness requires the lowest investment of trait points for full functionality, but saying that we need 50 points for the next best option is just plain misleading. we can use 20 points + rune or sigil slot, we can use 30 points, we can use 20 points to have both in combat, we can use runes and sigil, or we can use 50 points as you stated.

thats a great example of build diversity, because engi will almost always incorporate swiftness + vigor in any build, but theres no telling which its gonna be. speedy kits + invigorating swiftness is most likely because its very obvious and probably the closest to optimal.

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Posted by: Jedge.3619

Jedge.3619

MonMalthias.4763 – Deserves a medal.

Listening to the community is the essential first step in gathering information about the current state of the game. Unfortunately, the game is not receiving justice through balance patches that are several months apart. Instituting small balance changes to the game every couple of weeks will surely help game balance. For example, mesmer’s iLeap (sword 3) has not been addressed since launch. There have been countless threads and suggestions on how it should be fixed. It is quickly dismissed as a pathing issue with no hopes of any concrete solution. Perplexity runes would be another example of a poor decision that took several months to implement a minor change. I primarily WvW and it is curious as to why these runes haven’t been added to spvp, yet it runs rampant in other areas such as WvW.

Balance shouldn’t been something that the community is waiting for every several months. I believe if you started to slowly resolve some of the bug fixes every month and worked toward that, you would receive more positivity throughout the forums and the game. Unfortunately, adding such a large patch will come with even more bug fixes/other issues that may need to be addressed – history will repeat itself and it won’t be pretty in the least.

What a Churlundalo

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Posted by: Aden Celeste.3650

Aden Celeste.3650

Excellent post. hopefully this can change the way Anet handles the whole balancing process for all classes, as at the moment is quite disconnected, as if they did not know their own game…

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

Just to expand on SZSSZS.3784’s point about Invigorating Speed / Speedy Kits, because this is an easy example within the class, the only other traits providing equivalent functionality require 50 (!!!) points of investment:

  • Adrenal Implant
  • Power Shoes .
    These sorts of vast inequities of differences in kind have a chilling effect on player innovation. The phrase “pigeonholed” will be bandied about until Arenanet finds a way to equalise these factors within and between classes such that true diversity can prevail.

bleah, i think this is a poor example. the thing is, there is equivalent functionality. we have 4 options for perma swiftness on engi. we have 4 options for more dodges on engi. none of which require extreme dedication on their own. sure, speedy kits + invigorating swiftness requires the lowest investment of trait points for full functionality, but saying that we need 50 points for the next best option is just plain misleading. we can use 20 points + rune or sigil slot, we can use 30 points, we can use 20 points to have both in combat, we can use runes and sigil, or we can use 50 points as you stated.

thats a great example of build diversity, because engi will almost always incorporate swiftness + vigor in any build, but theres no telling which its gonna be. speedy kits + invigorating swiftness is most likely because its very obvious and probably the closest to optimal.

I think we’re agreeing in different ways in this case. Bolded the “probably closest to optimal” for emphasis. Yes, absolutely, Engineer has multiple methods for attaining permaswiftness including Infused Precision, IMS Runes (Travellers, Speed) and also multiple ways for extending evade frames (Sigil of Energy, Adventurer Runes, Infused Precision/Invigorating Speed). Each of these ways involves more sacrifice than 10 Alchemy/10 Tools. But yes, I do agree that it was a poor example.

MonMalthias.4763 – Deserves a medal.

Listening to the community is the essential first step in gathering information about the current state of the game. Unfortunately, the game is not receiving justice through balance patches that are several months apart. Instituting small balance changes to the game every couple of weeks will surely help game balance. For example, mesmer’s iLeap (sword 3) has not been addressed since launch. There have been countless threads and suggestions on how it should be fixed. It is quickly dismissed as a pathing issue with no hopes of any concrete solution. Perplexity runes would be another example of a poor decision that took several months to implement a minor change. I primarily WvW and it is curious as to why these runes haven’t been added to spvp, yet it runs rampant in other areas such as WvW.

Balance shouldn’t been something that the community is waiting for every several months. I believe if you started to slowly resolve some of the bug fixes every month and worked toward that, you would receive more positivity throughout the forums and the game. Unfortunately, adding such a large patch will come with even more bug fixes/other issues that may need to be addressed – history will repeat itself and it won’t be pretty in the least.

I’ve covered this very thing earlier in the thread in subsequent posts after my OP. I found this feature patch to simply be business as usual with Arenanet – bundling bugfixes with Feature patches, delaying eminent balance issues to bundle “shaves” with the Feature patch, and just a general push to put absolutely everything into this huge feature “pack”. Again, this is a negative trend that goes against the good policy of failing faster.

As I mentioned in a previous post, what will be interesting is not the feature patch, but the followup patches that fix emergent bugs and balance issues. With such power-creep potential such as the lifting of Sigil proc GCDs and rune reworks (notice how the main stat of a 6 set is higher now? It’s a small but significant boost in power level) it is almost inevitable that someone, somewhere finds a spec that is absolutely ridiculous.

The question up in the air is – will Arenanet pick up on it and fix the issues that crop up within weeks? Or will it be months before new apex predators and new bugs are re-addressed?

The former demonstrates adaptation and learning. The latter means business as usual, and the relinquishing of the last vestiges of community goodwill they hold.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

[PvX] Balance, Iteration, Wrongdoing

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Posted by: Phenn.5167

Phenn.5167

I’ve covered this very thing earlier in the thread in subsequent posts after my OP. I found this feature patch to simply be business as usual with Arenanet – bundling bugfixes with Feature patches, delaying eminent balance issues to bundle “shaves” with the Feature patch, and just a general push to put absolutely everything into this huge feature “pack”. Again, this is a negative trend that goes against the good policy of failing faster.

As I mentioned in a previous post, what will be interesting is not the feature patch, but the followup patches that fix emergent bugs and balance issues. With such power-creep potential such as the lifting of Sigil proc GCDs and rune reworks (notice how the main stat of a 6 set is higher now? It’s a small but significant boost in power level) it is almost inevitable that someone, somewhere finds a spec that is absolutely ridiculous.

The question up in the air is – will Arenanet pick up on it and fix the issues that crop up within weeks? Or will it be months before new apex predators and new bugs are re-addressed?

The former demonstrates adaptation and learning. The latter means business as usual, and the relinquishing of the last vestiges of community goodwill they hold.

My thoughts exactly. And this post needs to remain up top to encourage the Devs to consider carefully the way they balance following the Feature Patch.

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Posted by: Berk.8561

Berk.8561

Ranger? It has a role in the meta, nice!

Unfortunately, the meta that Rangers have is not the one that many players want, which is promised in the class description. “Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows.” I’m not sure which MMO that class description is stalking about, but it’s not GW2.

Kerzic [CoI] – Ranger – Eredon Terrace

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I’m glad this post is gaining traction, because my own post (made in April 2013) raising almost the exact same concerns died in a whimper.

I’m guessing after a whole year, the consequences of the lack of agility when it comes to balancing has finally started to sink in…

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems plaguing sPvP in this game is the feeling of stagnation caused by month-long delays between balance passes combined with ANet’s balancing philosophy of making small, incremental changes each pass.

Most successful eSport games have balance passes that are for the most part small, but always frequent. GW2 only has half of the equation for their balancing process, because for some reason, ANet has decided to tie the timing of balances passes to the timing of their major feature/content releases. And this, I believe, is the root cause of most of the frustration in the sPvP playerbase.

The first step to addressing this would be to completely disassociate balance timing and feature/content delivery timing. Features and content require rigorous internal testing to iron out potential game breaking bugs, which makes them time consuming by nature. Balance, however, (at least the subtle approach to balance that ANet is striving for) is heavily dependent on agility, the rate at which your team can repeat the cycle of evaluating customer feedback and the current balance state, introducing meaningful changes, polishing away issues, and reiterating into the next release.

It would be risky to jump into a new process right away for with a still relatively inexperienced team. So I recommend setting up public test servers to experiment with a more agile balancing process (weekly/bi-weekly maximum), that would allow players to try out changes in the pipeline, give early input, and discover issues that simply cannot be detected in controlled QA environments. This should be a similar infrastructure to what ANet’s internal QA team operates on, but on a much larger scale.

Having these servers could vastly improve the quality of the balance changes in the monthly releases (until you make the full transition), eliminate much of the stagnation problem for players who choose to partake in these servers (which I imagine will be a fairly significant portion of the sPvP player base), and provide a chance for ANet to improve transparency when it comes to making balance decisions.

Eventually, as ANet becomes more used to the weekly balance passes, they should transition into a more agile balance process for the main servers as well. The experience gained from the test servers should help ease the transition.

Any thoughts?

Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…

We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.

This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.

Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.

Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I really feel like they should push balance changes – even if it’s only 1-3 of them every time – with the weeks between LS patches.

Yes, this will create imbalance, because not all classes get changed at a time. However, the rapid cycle of deployment → feedback → improvement would benefit the balance effort overall.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: MonMalthias.4763

MonMalthias.4763

I’m glad this post is gaining traction, because my own post (made in April 2013) raising almost the exact same concerns died in a whimper.

I’m guessing after a whole year, the consequences of the lack of agility when it comes to balancing has finally started to sink in…

snip

Bumping this post I made 6 months ago because sadly it’s even more relevant now than when I posted it…

We need more agile balance passes to quickly bring the meta into a playable baseline state. This last balance pass changed practically nothing. And from the looks of it you’ll be waiting another month at minimum before making any further balance changes.

This combination of small incremental changes and long waits in between balance passes is what’s killing player enthusiasm for sPvP right now.

Instead of pushing a handful of small changes and then doing absolutely nothing for months waiting for the meta to develop, learn to be more adaptive and reactive in your development process. Consistently observe player feedback and continuously push small incremental changes to improve lackluster builds and playstyles, and always be ready to do SOMETHING (again, small incremental changes) to shave down builds that becomes out of line within a short timeframe of its dominance. Be sure to always prioritize the latter to avoid power creep, i.e. stop waiting for other overpowered builds to emerge to match the previously overpowered builds and using these types of builds as your standard measure for viability.

Do this in a public test server if you’re not confident with rolling things out at a faster pace in the main servers. I’m sure plenty of sPvPers such as myself will be happy to be your guinea pigs when given the choice.

I’m glad that I’m not alone in thinking that the current stance of putting everything into Feature patches is a bad trend. I’m sorry to say that I hadn’t seen your post up until now. In terms of what pushed me to make this thread, it was really the meta “freeze” up until the point of the PAX tourney post Dhuumfire patch and then desultory changes that did not, in any way, affect the placement of apex predator builds that coalesced my concerns. I suppose that it was probably a matter of timing for you, Kaon, as April 2013 was still during a time of (relatively) frequent changes and indeed, the April changes were impactful and did bring about changes in people’s builds.

I know that for me personally, it made me stop using invulnerability skills for Elementalist and Engineer and in particular it made me switch from Dagger mainhand over to Scepter due to the RTL nerf making it significantly riskier for me to stay in the fight due to the Block/Aegis bug. Which still exists today, and it’s a little sad that we’re coming up on a year since the change and things like this are still a thing.

I really feel like they should push balance changes – even if it’s only 1-3 of them every time – with the weeks between LS patches.

Yes, this will create imbalance, because not all classes get changed at a time. However, the rapid cycle of deployment -> feedback -> improvement would benefit the balance effort overall.

To be honest, it wouldn’t even matter what Arenanet changed as long as they changed something about the professions to make them better every patch. Every single profession has problems right now – some since launch – that is affecting build diversity. Bugs and tooltips, especially. Fixing bugs in content that not every single player may run into – and this is especially egregious with Living Story whilst leaving the ways players interact with the content – their professions – buggy is baffling to me. I’m hoping that the feature patch does indeed, have “too many bugs fixed to be listed” as they boasted on their Ready Up Livestream because player expectations after such a lengthy period of stultification can only rise. I know I’ll be logging in to test if things really have been bugfixed for the better.

But yes, rapidly pushing out small fixes with every single patch is pretty much the way to go.

Iva Malthias – 80 Engineer
Marellune Malthias – 80 Elementalist
Devil’s Dominion [DD] – Yak’s Bend

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Posted by: Abe Kleine.3568

Abe Kleine.3568

Bumping this so it stays on the front page, this thread should be stickied FOREVER, what the OP said is everything we want. Also, functioning spirit weapons would be nice, instead of leaving those utilities to rot in a pit

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Posted by: constantLogic.3486

constantLogic.3486

I think I’ve made a total of possibly three posts since launch, but I feel I just have to throw in my two cents on this one.

First off, I am decidedly NOT a pvper. I have no interest in 1v1, and limited interest in WvW. So any of you that have issues with near-strict pvers can quit reading here. The ability to throw myself into fights alongside others against huge world bosses, or just work together on complete hearts and exploring maps, is what initially drew me to this game. It was beautiful in pretty much every way, and exactly what I wanted out of an MMO until, well, I’m here agreeing with all of you aren’t I? At least mostly.

I know it’s been said before, actually I’ve said it before, but I really think to have any kind of proper balance there does need to be a separation of pve and pvp. Necromancer (if you’ll let me beat a dead horse) is a great example of this. There are undoubtedly many separate ways to go with this class, but it’s been bugged and nerfed until it’s all but completely unplayable in pve – which led to my quitting for almost eight months, as it was of course the class I absolutely had to love. I’ve missed a lot of living story while I was away (sadly), but what I haven’t is that no one wants my ex-main in dungeons or practically any other pve content, and who can blame them? There was so much potential, not just in necro but in a lot of other classes that fell by the wayside, but because of the refusal to address pve as a separate entity, everything but the few top dps clases are useless. Which makes sense in a way, that’s just how pve is – praise the DPS and the heals. Which is why pve and pvp separation is so important, every class needs a strong DPS build to tackle pve (which can happen in a lot of different ways, look at staff ele for a quick example of ‘not a war’). Either that, or Anet needs to go back to the holy trinity style.

Whatever the case, this really needs to be addressed, because like I said, I quit about eight months ago due to this exact problem, and from what I’ve read I’m not the only one that frustrated. I love the game, I’d love to throw money at the game, I loved the jumping puzzles and all the other pve content, but honestly with these problems it feels like no matter how much LS content they could possibly throw at us, or other problems they could address, at the end of the day they don’t even care enough to take the time to fix their broken classes, much less provide the diversity in builds they claimed they wanted to create. In fact, they seem to be doing a fine job of pigeon-holing.

(I just gave this another read-over, and it’s as rushed as I felt making it, so apologies.)

(edited by constantLogic.3486)

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Posted by: Phenn.5167

Phenn.5167

I think I’ve made a total of possibly three posts since launch, but I feel I just have to throw in my two cents on this one.

First off, I am decidedly NOT a pvper. I have no interest in 1v1, and limited interest in WvW. So any of you that have issues with near-strict pvers can quit reading here. The ability to throw myself into fights alongside others against huge world bosses, or just work together on complete hearts and exploring maps, is what initially drew me to this game. It was beautiful in pretty much every way, and exactly what I wanted out of an MMO until, well, I’m here agreeing with all of you aren’t I? At least mostly.

I know it’s been said before, actually I’ve said it before, but I really think to have any kind of proper balance there does need to be a separation of pve and pvp. Necromancer (if you’ll let me beat a dead horse) is a great example of this. There are undoubtedly many separate ways to go with this class, but it’s been bugged and nerfed until it’s all but completely unplayable in pve – which led to my quitting for almost eight months, as it was of course the class I absolutely had to love. I’ve missed a lot of living story while I was away (sadly), but what I haven’t is that no one wants my ex-main in dungeons or practically any other pve content, and who can blame them? There was so much potential, not just in necro but in a lot of other classes that fell by the wayside, but because of the refusal to address pve as a separate entity, everything but the few top dps clases are useless. Which makes sense in a way, that’s just how pve is – praise the DPS and the heals. Which is why pve and pvp separation is so important, every class needs a strong DPS build to tackle pve (which can happen in a lot of different ways, look at staff ele for a quick example of ‘not a war’). Either that, or Anet needs to go back to the holy trinity style.

Whatever the case, this really needs to be addressed, because like I said, I quit about eight months ago due to this exact problem, and from what I’ve read I’m not the only one that frustrated. I love the game, I’d love to throw money at the game, I loved the jumping puzzles and all the other pve content, but honestly with these problems it feels like no matter how much LS content they could possibly throw at us, or other problems they could address, at the end of the day they don’t even care enough to take the time to fix their broken classes, much less provide the diversity in builds they claimed they wanted to create. In fact, they seem to be doing a fine job of pigeon-holing.

(I just gave this another read-over, and it’s as rushed as I felt making it, so apologies.)

I heart this post. Not just because it highlights the ridiculous discrepancy between Necos in PvP and PvE, but because it further reinforces the point of the OP.

Just as the PvP meta tends to stagnate due to months passing between botched balance attempts, so too does the PvE meta limp along due to grossly PvP-centric changes.

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Posted by: Elixir.2169

Elixir.2169

The main problem is balance patches are few and far between. Also they seem to be ignoring build diversity in weapon sets. Hopefully one day all classes can have as many builds as warriors do. I can personally say my sick of my d/d thief because there are no good second sets of weapons. Yah short bow is decent and d/p is just too unfair I feel. I would love some p/p love that would be sweet. Hoping they will just focus on balancing class and weapons for a couple patches because I am pretty sure people feel the same about their own class and its crazy frustrating.

[vT] Loyaless – Thief
D/D S/D SB

(edited by Elixir.2169)