Guild Wars 2

Nice one That’s actually a thought provoking topic, I look forward to!

Drinking game: Every time they say, “Guardians are in a good place”.

For Necro, I would say the weaknesses are a lack of burst ability and a lack of escapes. Situations that force them to “play defensively” should not be kind to them. Strengths should be very potent active sustain (it is the designated “attrition class”) and constant, sustained pressure while being very resilient to the same.

This comes from Necro’s lore position as practitioners of Aggression magic. If you don’t stop a nero from being aggressive, he should be the biggest pain you have ever faced.

Right now, what’s really missing is the “active sustain.” It’s on the weak side, primarily because only life force can be replenished with any sort of ease. Real health also needs to be easily restored when built for it.

Different questions that are closely related:

• How frequent will balancing patches be?
• Should shaving/ meta adjusting patches by decoupled from patches that offer bigger and less frequent changes (skill buffs/ reworks/ additions)?

I’m Longbow Ranger and my Kryptonite is every other class that knows how to play. My strength should be deadly long range attacks. My weakness should be my extremely low defense and limited ways to chase my enemies; hence, i’m just a defensive sentry that can protect objectives. Make it so that Ranger would be a necessary part of tower defense in WvW. Please, do something because the long bow build for Ranger right now is not good.

You would need to have all the classes on an even keel in most categories, and that is not the case. Until you achieve that, there is no sense in the discussion. My Necro will never compete with a warrior because their main stat, condition, is utterly useless.

Question 1: How are you going to balance the game in deathmatch/annihilation mode?

Question 2: How are you going to balance the insanely OP conditions builds in WvW?

No single profession should be the best at everything? Do warriors know that?

Warriors need drawbacks several strengths almost no weaknesses. -
Suggestions-Make them weaker to conditions.

• Make cleansing Ire and burst mastery work against each other. If you don’t cleanse all three bars of adrenaline thanks to burst mastery you don’t lose three conditions.
• Move cleansing ire up to GM.

Thieves-S/D acro+trickery

• Deals way to much damage and is way to survivable. This is mainly due to strength runes. Properly nerf those and maybe S/d acro+trickery won’t be so bad.
• Yes thieves should be able to jump in and out of combat. If you want surviability I’m all for that. If you want stupid damage, I’m all for that two but not two at once.

Eles-

• I actually think they are in a decent spot.

Engis-

• Turret engis are annoying and not fun to fight against bordering on OP.
• Engis aren’t very susceptible to CC and only mildly susceptible to conditions… I think if turrets get adjusted a little bit more then maybe engis will be okay.

Necromancers

• The strength of the necromancer should be the ability to mess with opponents boons and be the gods of conditions. They are not. SOS+terror is a one trick pony.
  *Weaknesses- This class should be weak to CC however it is currently so weak to CC that it is almost impossible for it to win against a ham bow. Reduce the CD on their stunbreaks and give them better stunbreaks.
• MM-look at it.

Mesmer-
* I think there is a 300+ post thread on the bug forums that has received minimal attention from the powers that be about the several game breaking bugs that this class has. Before we talk about balancing the mesmer class lets actually make it worth using and fix the kitten bugs.

Ranger
* Can’t comment because I don’t play often however it needs lots of help. Maybe up the damage coeffecient on some of its weapons?

Guardian
* They WOULD be in a good spot if not for a specific other class that dishes out tons of damage and is stronger against conditions than guardians. Also can we speed up the auto attack on hammer? Pretty please? With cherries on top

It’s been almost two years since the release of GW2, and yet the only new depth that professions have received are some trait updates and one new healing skill.

How much longer do we have to wait to get new weapon sets, utility skills, elites, etc. added for each profession, or is this simply never going to happen?

Elementalist weaknesses are:

- extremely long cooldowns which often seem arbitrary.
- lowest toughness and health with no innate defenses.
- poor trait options (locked into Arcane and Water most of the time).
- CHILL kills attunement swapping.
- no viable condition build.

Strengths are:

- great DPS in areas you can afford to go glass.
- versatile in spvp thanks to overpowered Celestial amult and Strength runes.

As a guardian player I feel the strengths of the class is:

1. The ability to spread boons to surrounding allies.
2. Provide allies with sustain via heals
3. Excellent group utility
4. Highest burning damage in the game

The weaknesses of the class are:

1. Low health
2. Mediocre mobility
3. No escape options
4. Lack of reliable cripple or chill
5. Very extreme, do a lot of damage and become glassy. Or become a bunker and do no damage. Guardian really doesn’t have a great middle ground.

Keeping this brief as requested, but please don’t sacrifice any details of the devs vision of any of the classes for the purposes of time or etc.
Knowing the balance philosophy is definitely an endlessly fascinating topic, but a lot of the profession subforums would really be appreciative of any insight that can be given by the developers on what the ultimate goal or purpose of the classes gameplay is, and will help to reignite constructive discussion amongst those communities.

Guards need soft cc

A WvW perspective on how things currently are, as opposed on how they should be (do the devs even factor in WvW when balancing?)

Warrior – Strengths: Running Away, Weakness: A perfectly timed Signet of Spite (to keep them from running)

Guardian – Strengths: Pressing #1 on staff in zergs, Weakness: not being in zerg

Engineer – Strengths: Spamming interrupts with perplexity runes and proccing IP, Weakness – Getting out-condied by a Necro

Ranger – Strengths: What strengths? Weakness: Their pet dies in zergs and gets them killed by being CnD bait for Thieves

Ele – Strengths: Strength Runes! (and something about staff in zergs) Weakness: RtL being on a 40s CD most of the time.

Necro – Strengths: Signet of Spite, Zerg Welling, Weakness: Getting hammered by a warrior and/or zerg

Thief – Strengths: Stealth trolling, Weakness: Nerf Bait

Mesmer – Strengths: PU, Weakness: Enemies realizing the best way to beat PU is to walk away

I think Engineer’s greatest strength is a surprising amount of flexibility in what they are capable of, especially with their kits and toolbelt skills (also, many, many forms of knockback). It can give them the ability to respond to multiple kinds of challenges in a single fight, or go hyperfocused for a single role that can compete with other professions (like the new turret bunker meta, which amusingly enough, most Engineer would never consider using turrets outside of spvp) though usually with harsh drawbacks (most turret build running around have only Self-Regulating Defenses as their stun break, and Healing turret overcharge with the minor Alchemy Master trait for condi removal).

The weakness is… the flexibility. Unless you know what you are doing, it is very easy to fall into a “Jack of all Trades, Master of None.” mediocrity, even if you are just shoring up the weaknesses that a focused power or bunker build might have. It’s very often a choice of doing one thing very well to the exclusion of anything else (including, in some cases, stun breaks or condi removers), or covering a lot of things, but rarely doing any one thing well enough to compare favorably with another profession.

EDIT: Speaking if kits; Hobosacks! Is there any chance at all for making them optional?

Necromancers should be the kings of long fights, through sustained DPS and debuffing via constant aggression. A Necromancer should want to be constantly fighting and have the tools to thrive in a fight where they are able to stay on their targets, while being weak when fights are over quickly, or when large amounts of mobility are involved. To compensate they shouldn’t have very high mobility (only offensive mobility to stay on a target) and should be generally weak to burst.

Low overall burst, somewhat high “ramp up” time, very aggressive focused playstyle, naturally bulky, lots of debuffing mechanics, buffing and defensive mechanics should be tied to offense, but weak to people who can end fights quickly.

At the moment there isn’t enough access to reactive defensive mechanics, making us even weaker to focus fire and CC than we should be, and with no stability we’re basically triple screwed since all our defense relies on attacking, which we can’t do while stunned, which we can’t really avoid. There are some passive procs, like Chill of Death, that should be looked at to have more clarity so you don’t just get Lich auto + CoD + double sigil crit proc. Also minions need their traits (training of the master and necromantic corruption especially) reworked to be more active, and we NEED that AI looked at, so that the MM needs to be more active in their control of the minions to succeed, but should be better when they do that.

There is a balance team? I thought those guys got replaced by the skill fact team.

:P

Ok, let’s stay constructive here.

Mesmer
Weaknesses: Conditions. I’m cool with that, makes certain encounters more challenging. One big weakness I don’t like: They get more and more useless the bigger the fight is. There is no reliable AoE – every class should have access to that, in one way or another. The glamour nerf back then hit the class without compensation.
Strengths: Small encounters, single target burst, boon ripping, defensive stealth, interrupts/CC. I’m fine with most of these (fits the class), except the stealth may be a bit too powerful if combined with PU. The amount of boon ripping skills/traits feels about right, and the burst doesn’t feel overpowered compared to what other classes can pull off. Concerning interrupts/CC – I don’t know if you want this class to be a viable choice for that, but as long as there’s hambow, you’re gonna have a bad time as CC Mesmer.
Kryptonite: Hard countered by thieves. And bugs. Lots o’ bugs. I wouldn’t even bother balancing anything on this class before many of the bugs reported in the bug forums got fixed.

Additional questions:
- Will you somehow address the ongoing powercreep (Runes of Strength says hello)?
- Why is the balancing/class bugfixing so incredibly slow? It’s more than disappointing to see the first “balance” changelog after months with skill fact changes for the most part.

Since we are talking about balance design philosophy, I hope you talk about stealth mechanics in this game and why it is the way it is right now.

I am intrigued about it because until sic em was changed, gw2 is the only game I knew that did not have a hard counter to stealth, and even now it is very limited. How do you expect players to counter stealth in your game and doesn’t the team feel swinging a sword wildly in the air hoping you are hitting something is a little clumsy for “e-sports”? Or if a class is so heavily balanced on stealth that any non stealth based build suffers because of it?

From a mesmer point of view, we definitely need a speed boost outside of Traveler’s Runes or having to use the bugged offhand Focus weapon that isn’t a random proc.

A passive utility skill in the form of a signet or perhaps a passive in a trait line would be very nice. We have zero swiftness otherwise.

Also PLEASE do not need rune of strength without buffing ele. Right now strength runes are the only things carrying ele ATM.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey everybody,

This Friday on “Ready Up” I’ll be joined by Game Designer Karl McLain and Game Design Lead Jonathan “Chaplan” Sharp for a discussion on balance design philosophy. “What’s that, and why should I care?” you ask? Great question!

We won’t be going over future changes we’re making, but rather discussing the ideas and philosophy that drive balance changes. We’ll also be discussing our vision of what purpose/role each profession serves in relation to another.

To get started, we’d like to ask a few open-ended questions to all of you. In your opinion, what should the strengths and weaknesses of each profession be? What’s your profession’s kryptonite? And remember, no single profession should be the best at everything!

We’ll be reading through your thoughts over the next few days, and we’ll try to address as much as we can on Friday. Feel free to post your thoughts below, but try to keep your replies relatively short (I’d aim for under 300 words).

As a note, the previously announced “State of the Game” episode has been postponed, but rest assured – it will happen!

Thanks all! Let’s keep this constructive.

with all due respect, i (and i’m sure a whole bunch of other peeps) would prefer less talk and more action. you all built a decent foundation for professions and combat, but you have a carp ton more work to do. earn some player good will back by getting your hands dirty on a regular and consistent basis.

also, read this post…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing/page/6#post4009012

thanks

edit- to answer those questions…

“In your opinion, what should the strengths and weaknesses of each profession be? What’s your profession’s kryptonite?”

create a highly customizable and deep profession, skill, weapon and combat system that is similar to what city of heroes offered so players can create their own strengths and weaknesses based on the type of profession and build they chose to make.

follow the link then download and mess around with the old city of heroes build designer for inspiration… http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,4812.0.html?PHPSESSID=bjlca1abb8sphilfl3svfin4b6

Necros have no cleave. No team buffs. They can’t help others in any way. On the upside MM necro can roll face on keyboard melting people and/or chain fear.
Engi has a lot of condition spamming. Downside: horrible looking kit backpacks. Also kinda weak to conditions themselves but mainly the hobosacks really.

Oh, they are asking what strengths and weaknesses SHOULD BE…

Elementalist strengths:

- ability to easily apply and remove chill and burning without traits.
- ability to do high ranged and AoE damage if traited.
- ability to tank if traited earth and geared for it.
- high mobility when using melee weapons
- viable condition build around burning, chill and bleeds.

Weaknesses:

- direct damage melee attacks (thieves take this WAY too far…)
- immobilise.
- poison.
- difficulty of use.

Tyops.5894:

How about you respect the contributions of the thousands of players who have spent thousands of hours posting to the class forums, do your home work, and read your own forums. Everything you want is there ten times over.

This approach (along with the CDI) may appear inclusive but in fact it disregards all the information that has been shared with you by players who have quit or temporarily left the game. One might think that their insights would be valuable.

Or, it’s compiling it all into one, easy-to-read spot for reference before and during the stream. It’s not like these guys don’t have a lot to do besides reading the forums and trying to separate the whining from the well backed complaints.

I know this is long, but if you are reading this please, please read it all the way through. I’ve been on elementalist for thousands of hours, and the design philosophy behind it is something that I’ve always felt needed talking about, way more than the superficial power of it at any point in time.

Strong Point: Flexibility

Both in combat and at a metagame level, elementalists should always have options. Note that this should also include the option to give up some of that tactical flexibility and specialize instead. I feel that this is strong on a metagame level right now. Elementalists can be great dps, great burst, great bunkers, and anywhere in between. However, this is weak on a skill/utility level for many weapon sets. D/D is semi-passable, but only for reasons that I will outline below. This is even weaker on sets like staff, where alot of skills do one thing without much interaction. See air/water 2, and most of its skills to be honest.

Note that skills don’t have to have alot of of crazy utility tie ons to be flexible. Updraft does, and its cool, but compare to electric field. It can be also be an escape, a travel tool, a damage setup, and can even provide those things to allies at range. And its premise was just stuns in a circle. This is good game design. Contrast with things like ice spike, which are just straight up lazy design. (What can you actually use ice spike to do?)

Weakness: Low Baseline Power This is something that is a is integral to a class with having a lot of tactical options as its identifying trait. If you fail to use those options, you will not be effective. However, this weakness was implemented as a flat statistical deficit (base vitality and armor). This is the laziest and poorest way to do it. Compare Anet’s system to League of Legends or DotA, arguably the most successful esports currently out there, and it becomes immediately apparent what the problem is.

In well designed games, baseline power deficit is mostly not a result of base stats. Instead, high skill cap options demand high skill to use by being conditionally good. Lee Sin and Invoker are trash when played poorly, but that’s not because they start the game with half the health and armor of other characters. Lee sin actually has stat advantage over most of the cast of LoL. They are skill dependent because of the way their abilities work, and the elementalist really has nothing close to that. Beyond Fire Grab nothing is actually dependent on player skill for its efficacy. This means that the only things the ele player can improve on are landing abilities at the right time/countering dodges etc. Essentially things that every profession has to deal with.

Because of this, Elementalist has a bar of very strong skills balanced by a set of very weak base stats and cooldowns. Neither of these things are interactive with the player.

This is why you see so much water/arcane. It isn’t because of the traits in particular, but because of the fact that the elementalist’s deficit in survivability, which is just a numbers game, is alot easier to make up for than it’s offensive power is to raise. Getting your elementalist to be better offensively requires nailing all the universal mechanics that other professions have to nail anyway. It’s easier right now just to take our tactical defensive options and use the base strength of our offensive skill bars, which outside of a very few skills, all have damage that doesn’t really rely on skill to apply.

Essentially, the elementalist was intended to have many options, demanding strong offensive and strong defensive power. Because the devs didn’t make these options skill dependant enough, the elementalist just has strong offensive and strong defensive power, held back by cooldown management and low base defensive stats. None of these factors are enjoyable or interactive with the player. Due to the fact that the defensive stats are the only ones that Arenanet changed, it is now much more effective to take defensive options than offensive ones. Why? Without stat deficit the only thing balancing elementalist offense is inflated cooldowns demanding cooldown management. Cooldowns are pretty much impossible to lower outside of exclusive traits, and even taking those traits will not raise your power level in a single encounter. The fact that offensive specialization actively attempts to minimize the number of cooldown cycles that one needs to go through makes specializing offense actually counterproductive.

What needs to be addressed Not the power level. Eles are fine right now from a matchup balance standpoint. What needs to change is how they feel, to build and play. Make elementalist offense more conditional, harder to apply, but make it a LOT more rewarding when applied well. Then bring up our built in defense baseline, or get rid of cooldowns as balancing entirely, as neither will then be necessary. If you pull off the number tweaking, this results in an elementalist that is just as effective (power output over player skill input) as it is currently, has a higher skill cap, and doesn’t have a lopsided preference for defense as a result of lazy design.

Final Summary: Make the elementalist offense more skill based and more difficult to apply, so the elementalist can get a stronger baseline defense (more built in evade/blinds/blocks). Nerf the whole kit floor down to match it’s defense baseline, then build up both offense and defense with more skill dependent, active options on both sides. This should let us build where we want to be strong, instead of just patching up where we are weak.

At, and prior to, launch, three “core” roles were identified – damage, control and support.

Unfortunately (in PVE, at least), the only role that really matters – in the current game – on every fight, is damage. Every other role has become secondary – falling WAY behind the need to just pour dps (and, due to the stacking mechanic, primarily direct burst dps, not conditions) into an enemy.

It’s nice that an ele in Magi armor can drop a water field, but that water field contributes far less to the success of the fight than, for instance, the zerker warrior using hundred blades and simply timing dodges. A well timed interrupt may help, but not as much as, again, simply doing more damage (especially considering the clunkiness of the defiant mechanic).

So, before we can really delve into roles, strengths, weaknesses and kryptonite, we need to know if future game/encounter design will recognize the need for roles other than pure damage.

Without first having that discussion, professions where the strength is “direct” or “burst” damage will have a HUGE advantage over those who’s strength is healing or ccs (or even condition damage).

So, the discussion really needs to be – What can be done to bring the roles of control and support back into the game in a meaningful – and fun – way? In terms of balance, I think that is the single most important question we need to see answered.

(to add – I am not advocating role specialization like that found in trinity games. I like that everyone can fill every role to a degree – and that some are better than others. However, I think the scales are currently skewed way to far toward the damage role and need to be adjusted in some way)

Please stop trying to make burning/condition Guardians a thing. Nobody is asking for it, and we keep getting it in place of abilities which compliment the Guardian’s role. This is part of the overarching problem with everything being far too homogenized. It’s perfectly okay to say “If you like conditions, don’t play Guardian.” That shows that classes have strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to let everyone do everything and ending up with a game where half the traits are meaningless because they try and cover too many bases, and half the utilities don’t see use.

I’m actually curious to hear how you define each class, because every class is so samey due to lost mechanics from Guild Wars 1 that it’s often hard to describe classes in a manner other than something extremely general. When “they do damage and apply conditions at range” can refer to every single class in the game, something is wrong. If you took the previous phrase and applied it to GW1, you’d get answers of Ele, Ranger and maybe Paragon. 7 other classes, at least, do totally different things. “do damage and apply conditions at range” in GW2 could refer to Hambow, Shortbow ranger, Staff Necro, Shatter Mesmer, Staff Ele, Shortbow Thief, Rifle Engineer, it goes on and on. There’s just not enough diversity. A whole lot of homogenization, very little specialization. It doesn’t matter if the methods and style of the classes are different, if the end result is the same. Different inputs need different outputs, and classes need to be able to do things that no other class can do.

Consider: Imagine Elementalists got an elite called Chaotic Elements – in a nearby area for several seconds foes are set on fire, the earth grasps them to immobilize them, water heals allies, and lightning strikes foes. That sounds absolutely like something Elementalists would do. But it’s already in the game – as Supply Drop on Engineers. That’s the problem. So many skills and balance philosophies seem based around making things that look different, but don’t have different effects. GW2 needs more Binding Blades – skills and effects that one class has which no other class can tread on. That’s engaging and fun diversity.

Edit: I later remembered Power Block, and what a great example of specialization it was – at least until it got nerfed. While it was a PvE-centered change, mostly, it represented something GW2 lacks. A build focused on something no other class can do, which heavily defines the Mesmer. It got nerfed, and Mesmers simply fell back into the same Zerk spank meta as every other class because something role-defining was considered too strong. This does play into PvP balance too – if interrupts were too strong, players would shift toward builds which are hard to, or can’t be interrupted. The game is self balancing in that manner. But because there’s no specialization, there’s no specific classes or playstyles that accommodate anti-interrupt play. That’s something GW1 had with its wide skill array and high specialization – it was self-balancing, and the only things which were ever nerfed were builds that consistently dominated or had no counter. Everything which had a counter never became OP, because metas would shift to accommodate without balance intervention.

OK that summary wasn’t so final. You may note that the proscribed course of action will raise the skill cap on elementalist offense, resulting in a possible larger elementalist burst. It will.

Bigger potential offensive capabilities are the only way you will see offensive/defensive build option parity given the atrocious but at this point irreversible decision to give elementalists the single lowest base defense in the game

To get around making the elementalist so dependent on choices that allow it to stay alive, you’re going to have to make it banging amazing when it chooses to forgo those options and be offensive. This is proven to be balance-able already. 94k is the potential 1 second ele burst, but nobody complains about that rotation being too big, because it’s hard to do. So just push that further, give us more stuff like that.

isolatedchimp.2510:

Balance philosophy: “Shave” once every 6 months.

Correction: “Shave once every 6 months, but do not touch the OP specs”.

Seriously though, you guys need to balance things more frequently. Saying “we want to see how the meta plays out” is a lame (and lazy) excuse. It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly what is OP and UP after a patch.

Warriors should feel like Rambo
Elementalists should feel like Avatar the Last Airbender
Guardians should feel like Thor
Thieves should feel like Jackie Chan
Necros should feel like Hades from Disney’s Hercules
Engineers should feel like Inspector Gadget
Rangers should feel like Pokemon Masters
Mesmers should feel like Trooooolllololol

Axialbloom.8109:

No single profession should be the best at everything? Do warriors know that?

^Would like to see a change to Guild Warriors 2.

Why it takes so long for a balance patch?

Why do we have a 14 days pve/ls story patch and a balance patch every 6 months?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Tyops.5894:

How about you respect the contributions of the thousands of players who have spent thousands of hours posting to the class forums, do your home work, and read your own forums. Everything you want is there ten times over.

This approach (along with the CDI) may appear inclusive but in fact it disregards all the information that has been shared with you by players who have quit or temporarily left the game. One might think that their insights would be valuable.

Or, it’s compiling it all into one, easy-to-read spot for reference before and during the stream. It’s not like these guys don’t have a lot to do besides reading the forums and trying to separate the whining from the well backed complaints.

lol….minor balance tweaks every 6+ months is inexcusable. bugs to skills/traits 12+ months old are inexcusable.

the sigil/rune rework is no excuse for not balancing again before the end of the year. it’s an excuse to not rework/replace garbage traits or fix broken specs.

less tooltip fixes……more kitten that matters.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Why it takes so long for a balance patch?

Why do we have a 14 days pve/ls story patch and a balance patch every 6 months?

it’s absurd.

we shouldn’t even talk about balance philosophy of classes until we discuss balance philosophy in general……and that means frequency vs. severity.

Axialbloom.8109:

No single profession should be the best at everything? Do warriors know that?

LOL, Genius! and clever.

Mesmers are in a fairly average place right now, although bug fixes would be great.

As far as what the profession needs, they have almost no access to aoe. The ONE build mesmers have for AoE is glamour confusion which was kind of nerfed to the ground. Now there are a few options, but if I want AoE for pve/spvp, I’ll bring a necro or an ele. If I want tags in WvW, I’ll bring an ele or a necro. If I want single target dps, I’ll bring a thief. Mesmer isn’t the best at either of these. It has some nice CC, but when it comes to AoE, I’ll be able to get one person dead in the time any other caster could get a small group of things dead. It’s all about the AoE for larger team fights, and mesmer just can’t hold up. Even thieves have shortbow for the tags. Mesmer has what? Feedback? That requires projectiles. Condi proc? That requires them to use skills. Phantasms? They die too quickly in large fights.

I’d be totally fine if mesmers had a nice way to consistently tag people without doing massive amounts of damage. Just a way to contribute dps wise before the others have killed everything dead.

Ultimately I’d like all the major aspects of combat to be clearly represented in classes. Right now we have some cases of a single class double-dipping (Warrior), classes without a clear aspect at all (Ranger), or aspects without a clear representative (Control Movement).

As far as I can figure combat breaks down into;

• Support Allies Defensively
• Support Allies Offensively
• Control Enemy Movement
• Control Enemy Agency to Act
• Damage Burst
• Damage Over Time
• Mobility
  I’ve also put Variety in there, because having a single jack of all trades class is good…just so long as it’s a sincere representation of the concept and not a catch-all category for any class whose purpose isn’t clear.

Class:
What I’d want it Strong at doing > What I’d want it Weak at doing
[When enemy uses it, it would be this class’s Kryptonite]

Warrior:
Damage Burst > Support Defensively
[Mobility]

Thief:
Mobility > Variety
[Control Movement]

Necromancer:
Damage Over Time > Support Offensively
[Damage Burst]

Guardian:
Support Defensively > Damage Burst
[Damage Over Time]

Ranger:
Control Movement > Damage Over Time
[Variety]

Mesmer:
Control Agency > Control Movement
[Support Defensively]

Elementalist:
Support Offensively > Control Agency
[Control Agency]

Engineer:
Variety > Mobility
[Support Offensively]

Some of that is self-explanatory, some of that is harder to parse logically and would need some blue sky. (Like, Kryptonite of Variety for Ranger could mean things like making empathic bond/survival of the fittest only take a full stack of one thing. A Strength in Offensive Support for Ele could involve making a lighting field + blast finisher = group Quickness and putting that on more air attuned skills.)

Ranger pets need the nerfs to the buff patch rollback; everyone got so used to the pets being virtually worthless so when the ranger class finally got the buffs they needed then a lot of people cried for nerfs. Since they felt the pets were OP, of course it would seem OP since they were and still are useless to ranger class. There needs to be more careful consideration when listen to players calling for nerfs as clearly a portion of the players have their own agenda to nerf things they don’t like which make this game into something that it’s not.

Ranger needs:
– Dogged March (Adept Trait)
– Fast Hands
– Traits merged (Traps, Pet Traits, Longbow, etc. etc.)
– Higher damage coefficients
– More blast finishers
– More burst (Maul)
– “Backwards” leaps to create distance
– Change Piercing Arrows to Glass Arrows: Arrows can break up to 3 times on hit. One arrow breaks into two, those two can break into four, those four can break into eight. Each time they break, each individual arrow deals 15% less damage than the last arrow.

Warrior feels like a class that is supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none class. Classes like this are like stealth classes where no matter what you do to them people will always hate them. Outside of control (and these days Engis might be on par) Warriors can do a lot of things but not as well as other classes. They can build for sustain but they won’t be as good as a Guardian. They can run Conditions but a Necro or Engi has much better AoE application. They can gear for damage but a Thief can generally do it easier/more consistently.

The best Warrior builds rarely focus on one thing. Hambow has Control and AoE with a bit of condi. Celestial Axebow does consistent power damage with Condi pressure. Skullcracker has control with a damage spike and mobility. The only fairly purist build that’s any good would be S/S LB Condi which is pretty solid 1v1 but meet a DS Ele or a team with decent condi removal and you’re not nearly as useful as a Necro/Engi. I am so sick of people saying ignorant crap like “Warriors do everything best” because it’s just flat out wrong. There is no good Warrior build that has mobility, control, damage, condi clear, and condi damage. All of those builds listed above lack several of those things completely or don’t do others as well as other classes.

I like the concept and would like to see it continue but what worries me is the balance team taking players who will NEVER, EVER be happy with Warrior until it’s worse than launch seriously. We already had nerfs made to Combustive Shot that didn’t make sense, if I recall correctly it had the number of pulses reduced because a dev said something about it refilling its own adrenaline bar due to multiple hits when it never did that. That was put forth by someone who didn’t play Warrior and didn’t know what they were talking about but their feedback got implemented.

Many of the “problems” people have with Warrior come from things like Runes of Strength and other things that everyone have but just happen to benefit Warrior more than some other classes. The class feels way more “complete” than most of the others do but if they continue to get nerfed then it’s just going to become yet another terrible class that no one wants to plat (which as stated earlier is the goal of some on these forums).

I’d much rather see under-preforming classes buffed right now than having this continued stream of nerfs. This includes non-Warrior classes as well.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Warrior already had nerfs made to Combustive Shot that didn’t make sense, if I recall correctly it had the number of pulses reduced because a dev said something about it refilling its own adrenaline bar due to multiple hits when it never did that. That was put forth by someone who didn’t play Warrior and didn’t know what they were talking about but their feedback got implemented.

i just hope that warriors will not be further unjustly nerfed.

warriors still die to a well time signet of spite, provided if the warrior did not have berserker stance equipped or the skill is currently on cool down.

Without first having that discussion, professions where the strength is “direct” or “burst” damage will have a HUGE advantage over those who’s strength is healing or ccs (or even condition damage).

So, the discussion really needs to be – What can be done to bring the roles of control and support back into the game in a meaningful – and fun – way? In terms of balance, I think that is the single most important question we need to see answered.

Condition damage:

(have a faster time I haven’t uploaded, 2:48, pushing harder for quicker)

Control:

Support:

(aegis, stability, projectile reflection, might, fury, swiftness)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Or, it’s compiling it all into one, easy-to-read spot for reference before and during the stream. It’s not like these guys don’t have a lot to do besides reading the forums and trying to separate the whining from the well backed complaints.

No.

Either they are professional developers with a strong vision and a keen design sense, in which case they don’t need this, or they really need to source ideas from the community in which case they need to roll up their sleeves, do their homework, and read their kitten ed forums. Not only that but they need to go all the way with communication which clearly they are not willing to do.

This middle ground approach confuses much and achieves little.

Thank you for this topic and discussion first off.

I also would like to start higher level in the discussion than what profession strengths and weaknesses should be, as I feel there’s a couple high level things to address.

Thanks again for the topic but secondly, single target damage should be significant enough that cleave/AoE isn’t clearly superior in most situations. This issue is making it difficult for glass builds to be viable. Hambow, grenade kit, D/D ele, S/X thieves, etc all have AoE that is just as or more viable than single target weapon sets. Why should anyone run something that is more single target oriented with that being the case?

Thirdly, there should be a better balance between passive play/damage and active play/damage. And builds shouldn’t be able to stack so much might that they are awesome at both passive and active damage (condi and dd) . Passive is very forgiving compared to active in the game at the moment. Passive damage ’s strength forces players to take as much condi management as they can fit into their build/comp, because of how frequently is can be applied and how long it lasts.

Finally, this is completely my opinion, but no one likes a hard counter. In what other game do you literally not stand a chance in hell, because of the player build you’re matched up against? In any fps you are never hard countered vs a player for the whole match, in a moba you can at least somewhat adjust your build as you play to accommodate a match up disparity, in an rts players can’t hard countering each other for a match. It’s not fun, I want a chance to win fights vs similar skill level players when I outplay them and I’m glass and they’re not. Also as a thief I think the S/D vs Shatter Mesmer matchups are just plain wrong. I shouldn’t be able to counter someone that hard.

Ultimately what I’m getting at is your open ended questions don’t make sense to me because I don’t want hard counters. I don’t mind having a slight edges or slight handicaps, I want soft counters where player mechanics, skill, and reaction time are the main drivers for determining a fight. No profession should have a kryptonite. Each profession should have at least 1 all around build that is always viable, and from there you can make trade-offs for things you tend not use in order to make things you tend to use stronger.

I’ve got no clue how to do all that while still keeping professions balanced and using all their current mechanics, but that’s just my opinion on all this.

I think most of you misread his question.

Tyops.5894:

How about you respect the contributions of the thousands of players who have spent thousands of hours posting to the class forums, do your home work, and read your own forums. Everything you want is there ten times over.

This approach (along with the CDI) may appear inclusive but in fact it disregards all the information that has been shared with you by players who have quit or temporarily left the game. One might think that their insights would be valuable.

Quoting for absolute truth. You want to know the state of play for each profession? It’s right there. Over and over. The player community have picked apart, analyzed, and crunched numbers over tens of thousands of man hours of gameplay and given feedback. It’s a view from the trenches, coming from people that have spent massive amounts of time actually playing what you created. Listen to them.

Josh Davis.6015:

In your opinion, what should the strengths and weaknesses of each profession be? What’s your profession’s kryptonite?

Consciously implemented hard counters are the foundation of lazy class/balance design. You shouldn’t walk the awful MMO game balance path blazed by a bunch of poopsockers from Everquest. Stop developing an expensive, online version of rock-paper-scissors with a lot of pretty colors.

A profession’s strengths and weaknesses should come from its operator and his/her ability to mindgame opponents by capitalizing on a game’s fundamental physics with the abilities provided by that profession. GW2 provides no player with any real opportunity to manipulate or capitalize on its physics engine via player abilities outside of a few gimmick situations which ultimately have no bearing on combat.

These sort of ability-based physics manipulations typically manifest themselves in player movement (rocket-jumping, wavedashing, aiming/timing projectiles and close-range/directional melee attacks, etc.) which leads to certain players consistently capitalizing on other players by achieving better positioning. GW2 has effectively none of this. Aside from leap skills, there is not a single skill in GW2 that can be utilized in a manner outside of what its description details. Outside of blinks, mid-combat maneuvers in GW2 are slow and clunky. Moreover, achieving “superior” positioning on an opponent is often instantly negated by ranged, sticky targeted abilities and/or direct-to-target teleports. If positioning doesn’t mean anything, the game is effectively equivalent to Runescape. Everyone just equips their skills and gear, walks up to someone, selects a target, and presses a lot of attack buttons. The only difference with GW2 is that, in this game, the player can strafe while pressing attack buttons.

Your game is crippled. GW2 will never be good. You could try again with GW3, but it would be irresponsible to waste that many more millions USD knowing full well that the fundamental roadblocks to player-driven, skill-based combat that plague this game wouldn’t be fixed in the transition.