Guild Wars 2

Ok, so we’re supposed to list strengths & weaknesses, right?

I can do that for my Mesmer, I think.

Strengths:

• Good variety on a defensive level. Stealth, Blink, various forms of reflection, Clones to sometimes fool inexperienced players, boon ripping, I never feel quite defenceless, either PvE or WvW.
• Solid group support, bunched into a few clearly defined abilities. Feedback, Null Field, Portal, Veil, these are staples of WvW play, and Ethereal fields are powerful combo fields.
• I like the variety, though I think some would count this as a weakness. Our specs are clearly defined, easy to identify and feel very different. Interrupt builds, Phantasm Zerker, Phantasm ranged-control, Shatter, Condishatter, Blackwater, these all feel like sub-classes and allow for a lot of unpredictability until the enemy sees your skill-usage.
• Lots of cool style. This might seem odd as a strength, but even a losing battle can be fun if you fight with style, and hell do I have a lot of that. Pink butterflies, glass shards, pink fire, teleports, cool sound effects, I love how it feels in combat.

Weaknesses:

• AEs. As Clones and Phantasms just cease to work around AE, we’re basically useless in the thick of it.
• We’re quite 1-dimensional in each build. We suffer from a common issue in GW2 in that a handful of skills and traits are really powerful and “carry” the rest of them, which feel too weak. As a result, once you identify these care abilities you can relatively easily predict what a Mesmer will be doing, while we feel like 1-trick ponies in PvE. Lots of builds, but low complexity per build.
• Mobility. This is probably intended, but we’re one of only two classes lacking proper runspeed. Which is ok with me, if it weren’t six other classes having it. I never quite understood why everyone and their mother needed good access to Swiftness or a Signet for it in the first place. :S Leads to us being weak at chasing people down or escaping from a fight.
• Low gear variety. Our healing ability is highly limited, coming from one trait and the indirect phantasm auras. As a result ,we don’t value healing, at all.

I started to write a detailed and analytical post outlining contrasting factors and elements that make up the current state of the game then I realized; why bother? We have made threads with hundreds of pages of details outlining what you have asked for. We have tested over and over again. We have provided detailed reproducible bug reports.

And what does it announce to? Nothing.

If you want to actually have a constructive and positive discussion with your community about balance or game factors, start by showing your willingness to actually do something instead of just making another ‘lets divert attention by talking about it’ thread every few months.

As for pretending our input will change something:

PVE: Warriors far too dominant due to how many mistakes you can get away with yet out survive and out perform other classes. Somewhat relevant to other game modes.

Small scale WVW: Stealth far too dominant. Theives/lesser degree mesmers gain far too much for such a forgiving mechanic. Revealed should be 4s.

Large scale WVW: Would be nice if something other than warriors/guardians had a reason to exist outside of tech.

My main class Mesmer: pointless to even discuss balance with so many bugs. I love being perma-immobilized constantly due to bugged skills (phase retreat, blink).

Malcastus.6240:

I think most of you misread his question.

We read what we wanted to and responded to the question we made up for ourselves. It makes us happy that way.

Of course people go crazy and try to rebalance the entire game instead of listing their main professions strengths and weakness should be and your current kryptonite. All of a sudden nobody has a main and balances suggests for every class?

It would make a good discussion if more actually cover what they think their main professions strength and weakness should be and what your kryptonite is. Listing another class and what you want it to be weak and strong against so you can kill it easier is not what he is asking for.

He also isn’t asking people to write a thesis on how to balance all of gw2 or even 1 game mode of gw2.

Some people you Give a inch….

strengths & weaknesses for engineer (sPvP)

Strengths:

• Good condition damage with grenades/Bombs and IP
• Good substain with toolkit or static shield + 20 points in Alchemy
• Good CC with FT or turrets and Rifle
• Reflect shield on turrets

Weaknesses:

• No chance against condition classes. Elixirs are the only option. But Elixir C is not a stun breaker and has a 40 sec cool down. Elixir R is nerfed hard and Elixir S is useless for removing contions
• Very bad stun breaker. Rocket boots for example should be a stun breaker again. Elixir U is a bad joke for a stun breaker.
• Direct damage. We create so much red circles that even a blind person is able to get out of it.
• Pistol #1 and #5 are very weak skills. Both are more or less the weakest skills in the game on 1 single weapon.

Kryptonyte

• Condition necros/ Condition warriors because the condtion removal is so bad.
• Ele if you spec for condtion damage is more or less unkillable
• Being focused in a team fight. Because of the bad condition removal you die. You can not remove poision and cripple/chill and even if you block + evade all damage you die because of the condis. You can also not escape the paintrain.

ELE

I would like to have a ,let’s say, main build having new grandmaster(s) in it .
Even though they are subpar, some of them,sometimes, are okaysh .

But we can’t . belive us , we tried ..

because :

30 in water + cantrips → if we want to remove conditions reliable and survive
30 in arcana → so we can play this class.

Those above are our KRYPTONYTE . please undo this spell.

The necromancer’s only hope at balance, is for conditions in PVE to finally be looked at. We need that condition cap solved. Also, if our class is so focused on conditions, the PVE game should not be against conditions. There are dozens of immunities and resistances all over PVE, and especially among bosses. Our control skills are rendered useless, but that’s what we do! Meanwhile, nothing in PVE is anti-DPS. This causes a huge divide between the classes in PVE. You can’t have one mechanic be super effective, and other mechanics that other classes rely on be super weak.

Also, ranger pets and minions need to be looked at. That AI is doing us in.

ELE:

Currently ele strong point are traits
Ele weak points are skills and utilities

Do the opposite TY
We need better skills and CD and to rely less on passive traits.

Also Ele needs mobility on Dagger offhand
The range+cloth and low HP are already downsides (pvp mechanics somehow makes this issue smaller, but in WWW is huge).

Strengths ele – Great 1v1 when you can play well and has a decent skill cap.

Weakness – When it becomes more than 1v1 . Meaning if it’s 5v5, and they focus the ele, the ele is so susceptible to immobilise/chill/snares (which are in abundance in this game), coupled with low hp+low armour+poor escapes it goes down so quickly.

In group fights the fight becomes more about trying to run away all the time from literally everyone who will target you first as you have no invis, no illusions, no blocks etc, instead of being offensive.

Arcana should never be an option, utility swaps should be fixed at 9 seconds and not susceptible to chill effects.

In my opinion, there is no single kryptonite for any profession. It varies from build to build. Bunker builds are toppled by condi builds, condi builds are toppled by burst builds, burst builds are toppled by bunker/hybrid builds. And even in those builds there are specific weaknesses in the way they are set-up.

So if we were really going to ask this question, we’d have to analyze every build for every class and ask what weaknesses they should have and why.

Also..WvW.

Hammer trains. Just, no. Why wouldn’t you though, on a class with high armour and high health and high damage being able to do an aoe leap 2 sec knockdown every 7 seconds. That’s nuts in a game with zero post cc-immunity timers.

This is why WvW is 80 percent warriors/guardians, 20 percent everything else (mostly thieves/condi engis and condi necros).

I would like that the iconic weapons for the professions be the most powerful, or at least viable. It’s really weird to see Longbow Warriors fighting Greatsword Rangers, and Staff Guardians. When I think of an Elementalist I think of a ranged caster with Staff not a melee fighter with Dagger/Dagger or Fiery Greatsword. So please rebalance the weapon sets to make the iconic ones more viable.

What I consider iconic weapons sets for professions:
Elementalist: Staff
Engineer: Pistol, Rifle
Thief: Dagger
Warror: Greatsword, Axe
Ranger: Shortbow, Longbow
Necromancer: Dagger
Mesmer: Sword?
Guardian: Mace, Shield, Hammer

You can also check what weapon the profession holds in its hand in the concept art:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/

Dirame.8521:

So if we were really going to ask this question, we’d have to analyze every build for every class and ask what weaknesses they should have and why.

Very much this. Although I would argue that professions overall have certain built-in strengths and weaknesses to differentiate each other, there should also be the ability to make up for those weaknesses a little bit. Unfortunately sometimes professions are so good at their strengths that they have no meaningful weakness, or were simply given ways to ignore their weakness entirely.

Are there any plans to change Deathshroud or bloodmagic in such a way that they dont hinder themselves?

Ranger.

Strengths:

• longest range attack in the game (Longbow+Eagle Eye)
• a lot of evades on melee weapons

Weaknesses:

• everything requires a heavy amount of traiting to work (longbow, traps, signets, condition removal, spirits, shouts, etc). Often Grandmaster trait investments.
• close to no AoE, especially at range.
• pet can be a handicap rather than a strength in too many situations

Kryptonite:

• Someone getting in melee range when using a longbow. The longbow stops being able to land any hits at all. It’s especially bad because the stealth and the knockback require you to hit your target.
• conditions
• dead pets (24 out of 80 traits also become worthless).

Suggested improvements:

• improve the un-traited behaviour of longbow, traps, signets(actives affecting ranger), condition removal(Signet of Renewal), spirits, shouts(Guard).
• give longbow AoE-on-hit through traits (something with a radius)
• allow pet to remain stowed
• a dead pet should not increase the swap cooldown from 20s to 60s. That’s an increase of 300%.

Engineer main.

Strengths:

• diversity and adaptability. Able to change roles on the fly with kits.
• ->unpredictability thanks to the zero cooldown of kits.
• good balance of hybrid direct/condition damage.
• a number of Crowd Control skills.
• Blast finishers.
• balanced base survivability, medium health, medium armor.

Weaknesses:

• Overdependency on kits: Kits are way too good compared to other utility skills. Diversity in roles demands you to stick to kits. Most other points are a result or the reason to this.
• Base weapon skills and traits lacking compared to kits. Firearms traitline requires a reviewing. Some trait merges advised in the line, freeing up space for some new trait ideas. New traits should not be kit-dependent.
• Weak condition cleansing. Other than a few weak traits in Alchemy line and elixir C and Overcharge Healing Turret, there are no condition cleanse choices, and neither of these are strong panic button cleanses. More traits or in-built skill mechanics that cleanse or reduce condition durations on gadgets and turrets or specific actions should be implemented.

Annoyance

• Hobo-sacks. Kit backpacks with no reason to exist other than to ruin our looks. Review the thread on the Engineer sub-forum for more information and reasonable alternatives for any of the reasons they might exist for. (You can find it easily. Its on the first page of the Engi subforum. For more than a year now. Without a sticky.)
• Class mechanic is absent in the trait tree. It is supposed to be the tool-belt, yet it doesnt have enough traits to boost it in any significant way like other professions have their own mechanics.

(EDIT: class mechanic on the annoyance part)

Necro (attrition)
Strengths:

• Full Contact Fights (range: 0-600).
• The ability to bring others to our level (poison, weakness, boons removal skills). It would be nice to have stability on top of the priority list.
• Movement disabling abilities. We need something to counter the “gap closer”skills (better version of dark path, tainted shackles, spectral grasp), chill/cripple is good but more as defense ability.

Weaknesses:

• Long Range Fights. The line between perma regen and “nothing” is very thin when it comes to necro and thats not the only “defense” that we lose in long range fights.
• Lack of escapes and burst ability.
• Not the best defense against high burst builds.
• Offensive and defensive ability in one basket (conditions). Thats why Diamond Skin is so OP against “condi” necromancer.

For RANGER (wich is my main) I Think this was discussed in 70 pages in the CDI thread…

For the Ranger, who’s class mechanic, is a pet. That pet should be a usefull, and by others (party members) wanted, ally. For enemies it should be feared. That is not Always the case today. Tweaks have been made to make it more resopnsive wich is really good and a notch in the right direction (for me who’s good at micro managing mine it has become noticably easier)! The pet should be that extra thing that ranger can offer. To the Group it should be THE extra ally that can offer a usefull skill that can help dmg the enemies or support allies without having to sacrifice a party member directly (the owner of the pet standing far away). I’d love to see some more pets added in the future.
For those not liking the pet, make it permanently stowable and add some extra buff so that thay get better use of spirits or traps.

In dungeons and fractals ranger’s not very popular (the same goes for some other classes)… I guess it’s my relativley hight AP that makes ppl let me come along at all in many cases. I have been kicked on sight because of my class. Its also hard for me to start a parties in LFG search being a ranger (Guardiand and warriors doing the same often end up getting Groups much faster)

Longbow should be the rangers most feared weapon. Some of the things we have traited today should not have to be it. It could be the long range/extra dmg or the velocity. After all the ranger should be the utmost expert with the longbow. We also lack the oppurtunity to create burst dmg. This could actually be done with a pet’s mauling/frenzied attack or something.

The kryptonite for ragner should be the low dmg u do with a longbow on short range. The closer the enemy gets the lower dmg. A ranger should not prefer being in Close combat.

Josh Davis.6015:

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

Yes, every profession should have strength and weaknesses, but non of them should hard counter one another. In my opinion, if a profession has a kryptionite, there need to be adjustments.

Hard counter / kryptonite: You’ll loose, even if you play better.
This does NOT mean, that you’ll lose every of those matchups.

Current examples for hard counter:
Average S/D or D/P Thief > Good Shatter Mesmer (but still Good Shatter Mesmer > Bad Thief)
Necro (due to Condition Transfer) > other Condition Professions.

First, a quote on class roles and balance philosophies:

We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance.

1. Mesmers – our kryptonite is our broken skills – mesmers are presented with “tricks” to compensate for “low armour”, and then their tricks are rendered useless by long-lasting bugs, thus leaving them with just “low armour”.

• Broken iLeap, non-attacking non-reflecting iWarden, broken Blink, stuck in place or in object after Phase Retreat or Blink, Illusionary Elasticity, illusions not attacking gates and so on. I just can’t stress it enough as how frustrating it is to regularly die or fail because of a broken skill.
• Non-stacking swiftness on Temporal Curtain, often fatal downed skill 2, Portal missing range indicator, being unable to hit siege in WvW are examples of skills which still need work because many skills feel very “broken” in general gameplay.
• Stealth feels broken as well. Stealth should be a timed defensive “trick”, yet there is nothing defensive in being tracked and knocked by a skill while in stealth. Stealth should break channels and make projectiles miss. Otherwise, again, it’s a trick designed to compensate for low defense which defies its purpose. I’ve never used a torch in PvE for anything other then a light source, and trying it for “Blobs, Schmobs” achi reminded me how useless it was again.
• Please stop advertising bug fixes as buffs and class balancing/polishing. Tooltips are also not class balancing. These things are independent of each other, and seeing them presented as the same is – sorry – infuriating.

2. Please stop balancing mesmers solely around PvP.

• We may be good for annoying newbies with PU and clones, but…
• We are veilbots in zergs in WvW (thus 1-2 mesmers is enough), even though we want to tag for bags.
• Our illusions die before they can tag anything in facerolling and AoE-spam PvE – we lack AoE damage. We also cannot cast illusions fast enough on “Invulnerable!” mobs before they melt.
• We are generally locked into Traveler’s runes because we lack speed signet/OoC trait and our blink/focus swiftness are broken, even though you say that “They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.”
• Traits are made lackluster on purpose or rapidly nerfed not to allow even a slightest advantage (which, incidentally, is a purpose of a trait!) in PvP. Grandmaster traits such as Power Block are useless in PvE/WvW – as well as most grandmaster traits anyway, including new ones. The notorious glamour nerf. “Vigor on crit” nerfed because of PvP (“too much clone spam, cheesy mesmers, no more dodge for you!”), leaving PvE/WvW mesmers with even less defence tricks. Power Block “bugs” which made them at least viable against thieves and bosses in dungeons got hotfixed nerfed. Triumphants distortion got ninja-nerfed with an internal cooldown, even though advertised as without one.

3. Pure-DPS classes vs. “utility” classes.

And remember, no single profession should be the best at everything!

• If we want “to get all classes on the same playing field”, we need to balance classes across conditions and usable utilities as well as DPS. Otherwise, we have “zerk warriors only!” in LFG and warriors melting down graveling burrows and mobs before any mesmer can even build up their phantasms or stack conditions.
• That also means that combining high mobility, high sustain and high DPS in a single class might be a class balance mistake. Example: Healing Signet, Warrior’s Sprint and multiple immunities without any extra requirements compared to Signet of Ether (needs illusions), Compounding Celerity (needs illusions) and requirements to build (and keep) up phantasms to do decent damage.

4. Balance updates should be made more often and in small steps.

HUGH increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct.

• Instead, we see looong stages of people investing a lot into ascended Celestial just to have its crit nerfed,
• or investing a lot in overpriced Runes of Strength before those get nerfed as well, and so on.

TL;DR: “no single profession should be the best at everything” is not “one profession should be best at one thing and skritt at everything else while another one can be good at everything” – that’s my view of the balancing problems at hand.

My questions for the balance team are about their philosophy on build variety in the form of hybrid builds and utility skills. Currently, many professions have builds that are defined by the types of utilities and traits they have selected, with those builds usually opting to go all in for a particular utility type, minus a stun breaker. For example, we have trap rangers, spirit rangers, banner warriors, venom share thieves, shout guardians, etc. who spend their three utility slots on the same type of utility. Some of the utility skills in those builds are effective without trait investment, while others practically require full trait investment in order to make their skills viable/optimal.

The professions that I feel that offer a good variety of hybrid builds via their utilities are mesmers, guardians, and warriors, since many of their utilities don’t require trait investment and can be simply swapped in and out to achieve the desired effect / basic purpose. Contrast that with for example the ranger builds I mentioned earlier. They are not as flexible in utilities and require heavy trait investment before their usage; (almost) no one uses spirits or traps without all of the related traits. My preference is that this is by accident and not by design, and that all utility skills are meant to be viable immediately as soon as they are slotted without having to adjust traits, thus opening the way for more hybrid builds.

Thus, my questions are:

Are (no/some/most/all) utility skills expected to require some level of trait investment before they are used? Or does it depend on the profession and utility type, since traits may be used as a balancing factor and thus some utilities are meant to require more investment before they reach the max possible efficiency?

Are some utilities meant to be staple utilities that nearly every build brings while others are more niche? To provide an extreme example, are you fine with support guardian’s almost always bringing “Stand Your Ground” over “Hallowed Ground” (in PvP at least), or would you prefer Hallowed Ground see more use?

Are you designing with the expectation that, on average, hybrid builds are more, less, or equally as effective/efficient/last-longer in a variety of situations as builds that focus on a particular skill type (at least in sPvP), or are there meant to be diminishing returns on single utility type builds? For example, obviously spirit rangers are likely to be better in large team fights than a hybrid build, but what about 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 1v2, etc.? Are they meant to perform as well as hybrids as long as they don’t meet their counter builds?

Ranger:
Strength should be:
movement and dodge, remove stealth, range weapons, support by spirits or pet, crowd control

Weakness should be:
weak damage, low toughness/vitality (more dodge), positioning for effective Attacks

The ranger should be a fast character with many options to trick or to degrade the enemy. Therefor he has weak defence and offense (like right now). His main defence should be dodges and crowd control. It should be possible to support by spirits and his pet (a passive pet-mode), instead of using crowd control.

And the ranger should have a acceptable longbow Especially for WvW sieges.

Thanks for reading.

Currently: The ranger has acceptable dodges and crowd control is ok too. But the AI of the pet and his missing attacks are not acceptable. In many parts of the game a pet is a hindrance. We need a powerful passive pet (buffs perhaps). The spirits are not

Vox Hollow.2736:

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]
(a list of suggestions)

And the suggestion list is where all of this breaks down.
Unfortunately, with current combat paradigm (which is unlikely to change in any foreseeable future), every class needs to be equally good at two things – damage (either sustained or burst, likely both), and some kind of support (either defensive, offensive, or what you dubbed as Control Enemy Agency to Act). Any class that is weaker in one of those points than other classes will drop out of PvE meta (and while there are differences for pvp and wvw, pve does remain the most played aspect of this game).

The devs vision for the class balance needs to account for that

1. Nerf conditions
2. Nerf Warrior’s Healing Signet (It’s still OP as hell)
3. Nerf Runes of Strength
4. Fix AI bugs
5. Do more frequent balance changes
6. ??
7. Fixed

Mesmer

Strength:
→ Good group support – I would like to see more buffing and debuffing options to offer more flexible support in addition to the projectile reflection.
→ Illusions – They can offer decent dps, distraction of opponents and a various other nice things once they are up. Some more options for different illusions and less weapon-specific illusions would be realy nice. A interesting idea would be temporary phantasms that don’t count towards the illusion cap or something like a phantasm comparable to the flesh golem of the necromancer.

Weakness:
→ Illusions – Summoning 3 of them takes some effort, keeping them alive can be a real challenge and mesmers should depend on having active illusions.
→ Lower damage – Mesmer without illusion should have lower damge than other classes. In addition i would like to see another sacrifice of damge for useful support. In a way that the mesmer on its own does less damge but offers enough buffs(as unique as possible) for the group to easily compensate.
→ Lack of mobility – Mesmers are more about tricking and deceiving and less about running around.

Weaknesses and strengths shouldn’t just be balanced around classes, but around builds and weapons. This means, that all classes should have more or less the same starting position, but having different ways to build into similar things. Actually ArenaNet promised once, years ago, that every profession can do everything.

Every class should for example be able to build either around dmg (burst/dps/conditions), support (healing/boons/protection), utility (cc/mobility/versatility) or some sort of tank (protection/high sustain/bunker).

Being tanky means to sacrifice dmg. Being very mobile results in sacrificing sustain. Having a lot of cc results in either sacrificing dmg or tankyness or mobility.

ArenaNet needs to balance around builds, not just professions. They need to design like 4-5 different builds specifically for every profession and balance the game around these, adding more and more builds through new traits and weapons later. Players should have a high incentive to use those builds because they have a strong inherent synergy with up- and downsides.

Just to clarify what I mean with a very simple example:

An elementalist that focusses his traits, weapons etc. mainly around the element earth isn’t mobile, but tanky and deals mediocre dps with conditions. Depending on the usage of his other points he can either focus more into being supportive (water) or being a threat (fire). Building into air doesn’t synergize well with earth.

An elementalist that concentrates mainly on fire has high burst dmg, but low sustain and is very squishy. Depending on the usage of his other points, he can either build into high mobility and more dmg (air) or into more cc and tankyness (earth). He doesn’t synergize well with water.

Those examples are ofc extremly simplified and shall only serve to clarify what I want to say with balancing around builds that have inherent up- and downsides.

Hello,
I just picked out a small aspect of alot of different classes i guess.

Strength:
Reflections and any class that has access to them.
Mostly in Dungeons and Fractals. ( Probably in all other areas too.)

Kryptonite:
Completly removing the purpose of those reflects by making them NOT WORK at all.
Not mentioning it anywhere in the Game.
How are new players supposed to be figuring this out on their own?

“Oh there are projectiles. Let’s get them back to the enemy! OH! It didn’ work… all dead!”

Sollution: In my opinion so simple. Just give each projectile reflected a damage cap OR cap the maximum damage being reflected but still let it work as intended!
So there are no more monsters/bosses who kill themselves by being reflected and new players still can rely on using what they think is right. And yes of course there can be exceptions like giant shooting lasers. But not this random picking of attacks just cause something is getting too easy.

There should be a better way to do this! Thanks for your time. :-)

From my perspective, this is what I feel the strengths and weaknesses are:

Strengths

Easy access to high damage output
High health and armour pool
Good mobility
Decent CC
Decent offensive support (might, fury, banners, etc.)
Good personal sustain
Decent ability to go hybrid
Great burst

Weaknesses
Limited offensive un-traited conditions (1 torment, several bleeds & 2 burning) – I’m not exactly an authority on this as my condition play on warrior has been the least I’ve played
Extremely low defensive support. – No Aegis, very few condi clears in comparison to other classes unless runes are used, heals and regen are garbage.
Soft CC (chill, cripple)
Limited counter against ranged characters (i.e. P/P thief, longbow ranger etc.)
Extremely limited access to retaliation
Very low boon-hate/boon counterplay such as boon-stripping/converting. DotE is good though
Heavily balanced towards burst over sustain damage
An entire line of (mostly) useless utilities. Physical skills are garbage for everything but 1v1s.

Kryptonite
High weakness to poison (maintaining poison on a healing signet warrior or putting it on a warrior about to use healing surge is their death sentence)
Immobilize
Condition burst

I’d honestly say warrior is best at melee offense. I think that’s where it’s role is, going on the offensive. It really lacks support, but I think that’s okay. I’d honestly say that maybe it’s sustain could go down a bit though. Healing Signet really needs to drop as it’s way too easy to maintain that heal. Also our mobility seriously needs to drop. I think the problem here lies with Rush. Make this around 600 range, give it an AoE like the guardian and it’s sweet.

Arenanet balance philosophy is a mix of nihilism and minimalism.

Ele (PvP):

Strenghts:

• high constant healing and condi-cleanse with the right spec (therefore the only viable spec)
• good support with the right traits and weaponset
• best CC in the game (with frost-bow when used right)
• good AoE-damage potential

Weaknesses:

• prone to condition-burst
• slow animations and high CDs
• low sustained damage
• unreliable burst damage
• low base-defense
• no weapon-switch -> no possibility to switch from melee- to ranged combat
• very reliant on boons for both offense and defense
• dies very quickly in team-fights when focused

Basically our kryptonite is the need for a defensive spec while playing a class that seems to have been designed as a GC. It prevents build-diversity and forces eles to play lame bunkers that deal near to zero damage (I could’ve chosen guardian if I wanted this playstyle). The whole class is balanced around this build – and sadly still the only thing that makes eles viable atm is celestial amulet and strength-runes. Initially eles were told to be the jack of all trades but what really defined the ele from the very beginning are the arcana and water-traitline: we’re boon-stacking, passive-healing cannon fodder/killing machines depending on the patch.
On the contrary though usually THE glasscannons in MMOs (this is how I think they should be) GC-eles aren’t viable at all (too clumsy and unreliable spells to be effective and in general has to trait defensively to survive more than a few seconds due to lack of active defense-mechanisms and/or kiting-options) this is what disappointed me the most when I started playing PvP.

And also what Linnael said. Not much to add here. Don’t just change numbers for balancing. This is boring and lazy. There are so many great ideas out there. Especially for ele there is an unlimited potential for interesting traits and interactions. Be creative and make the game a bit more complex by designing spells that can be individually used (new Fire GM-trait for blinds on burn was a good idea for example, however the internal CD and the randomness killed it). I won’t post ideas here because it’s the wrong thread, but maybe think about it.

Hello,

Josh Davis.6015:

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!

If we consider the following aspects, then we can try and position each class in some matrix-like table:

• Solidity (Sd): defense and regeneration,
• Strength (St): ability to inflict sustainable damage (one could further separate this into direct/condition damage),
• Burst (Bt): ability to inflict high damage, but not repeatedly,
• Confusion (Cn): ability to confuse the opponent, i.e. teleporting, stealthing, and one could even consider adding new effects (like hallucinating!),
• Mobility (Mb): ability to move fast and evade / dodge regularly,
• Chaining (Ch): ability to chain skills fast,
• Controlling (Co): ability to inflict control effects,
• Supporting (Su): provide buffs to friends,
• Weakening (We): debuff foes, inflict non-damage conditions.

Here’s my input on what the classes and their nemesis should be (0 = none, 1 = low, 2 = medium, 3 = high, 4 = top, only presenting classes I play regularly):

• Warriors: Sd3, St3, Bt3, Cn0, Mb2, Ch2, Co3, Su2, We1. Nemesis = confusing classes (mesmers). Consider making condition management a bit more dynamic (Cleansing Ire is a good trait, but somehow makes the life of the warrior too easy), and adding a second burst skill (for offhand weapons), to vary the game play.
• Mesmers: Sd2, St2, Bt3, Cn4, Mb1, Ch2, Co1, Su2, We3. Nemesis = bursting classes (thieves, and BTW I like the fact that stealthing on clones can be damaging). Some bugs to fix, for illusions. The choice of not giving the mesmer mobility is very interesting in a balance perspective, but maybe too harsh – consider giving the class access to a 25% speed trait, which would come with its own restrictions (such as clones dying inflicting damage or conditions on the mesmer?). Not easy to articulate with Compounding Celerity.
• Thieves: Sd1, St3, Bt4, Cn3, Mb4, Ch3, Co1, Su0, We1. Nemesis = controlling classes (warriors). I like the thief as he is, although I believe that some work could be done on the blind effect, for all classes, on how it is applied and countered.
• Rangers: Sd2, St3, Bt2, Cn1, Mb3, Ch2, Co3, Su2, We2. Nemesis = melee classes, especially with teleports (guardians). It’s not easy to maintain a balance between ranging options and control. I feel like something is missing to the ranger – maybe debuffing?

HTH.

My number one question is – what has your Warrior philosophy moved on to? Your previous philosophy was that they should be strong with AoE damage and control, but vulnerable to conditions. Now we have Cleansing Ire and Berserker’s Stance. What happened there?

Auesis.7301:

My number one question is – what has your Warrior philosophy moved on to? Your previous philosophy was that they should be strong with AoE damage and control, but vulnerable to conditions. Now we have Cleansing Ire and Berserker’s Stance. What happened there?

the original philosophy is still there.

cleansing ire does not help against signet of spite condition spam.

berserker stance have 8 seconds duration while 60 seconds recharge, the warrior will still go down fast to massive condition spam.

sure, with cleansing ire, they may be able to deal with individual conditions (1 – 3) without much problems but when all 10 conditions come together when berserker stance is on cool down, or if the warrior did not equip berserker stance, they will still melt away easily and steadily.

do you even play warrior?

As a ranger, first of all I’d like to know if something’s being made with all the ideas and opinions given by the Comunity in the Ranger CDI.

Then, regarding your questions…
Rangers, as a “Nature-atuned class”, should be great at Control, Mobility, Support and Pet management. But all these aspects are not effective right now:
- Control is not usefull when nearly all clases have easy access to stability, teleports, blocks…
- Mobility doesn’t work because we lack habilities to escape/pursue, have to use skills that root us (barrage, whirling defense) or have clunky mechanics (sword).
- Support should be provided with spirits, but they don’t work in many scenarios, even if fully traited.
- Pets still have lots problems with pathing and surviability (plus vey long cooldowns).

At the same time, Rangers still have to deal with erratic trait placement, very low damage coeficients and lots of bow bugs (missed, missed, obstructed, missed, out of range…).

Latest patches helped a lot with pets responsiveness and condition cleaning, but there are still many problems to address.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Auesis.7301:

My number one question is – what has your Warrior philosophy moved on to? Your previous philosophy was that they should be strong with AoE damage and control, but vulnerable to conditions. Now we have Cleansing Ire and Berserker’s Stance. What happened there?

the original philosophy is still there.

cleansing ire does not help against signet of spite condition spam.

berserker stance have 8 seconds duration while 60 seconds recharge, the warrior will still go down fast to massive condition spam.

sure, with cleansing ire, they may be able to deal with individual conditions (1 – 3) without much problems but when all 10 conditions come together when berserker stance is on cool down, or if the warrior did not equip berserker stance, they will still melt away easily and steadily.

do you even play warrior?

Do you play Warrior? It’s my 2nd most played class and I have zero problems with conditions in almost all situations in tourney play.

I’m not saying Warriors are completely invincible to conditions, but they are not weak in any sense against them anymore. They are EXTREMELY good at dealing with them, far beyond around half of the available professions at the moment. The rate of condition removals per minute rivals PoV + AR Guardians.

I find it funny how you have to resort to “OH WELL SIGNET OF SPITE.” News flash, SoS hurts EVERYONE. SoS is insanely strong. Even when I get hit by SoS (which is rare since it’s quite easy to dodge when you know the tell), I can still recover pretty easily. In fact, if I see a Necro on the enemy team I have Signet of Stamina prepared just for them. End result is that I either can almost ignore the Necro or he turns out to be a Lich Form spiker so the condition worries are irrelevant.

Here’s a question:
How many years will it take for you, Arena Net, to make Spirit Weapons on Guard actually usable in WvW and sPvP?

I guess you want to have some serious answers:

Profession talk?
Here. Have a whole subforum dedicatet to that.

My kryptonite?
Cleric’s bunker eles (ToL NA finals show you what i mean), PU mesmers, bunkers, decap / turret engis, perplexity runes, bunkers, 3 min necros, condition thieves (they just needed the talent for 5 stacks confusion on steal), read the forums for more.
Ready Up’s with the so called balance team (the whole 2 of them) and grouch resulting in giggling, random laughing, "we think it’s cool, and no one knowing the names of skills (see the ready up on the new healing skills for how not to do it).

And just to repeat what has been allready said: Can we balance more often than every 6 months with some shaving?

/tipshat

P.S.: btw grouch, what happened to that WvW tournament CDI announced on ready up episode 14, 2 weeks ago? You know the one that should appear on the forums last week according to you?
Episode 14 At 17:24-17:45.

ehhh, so we all know whats next balance patch will bring

make more warrior builds viable, take out all viable ranger builds even the ones only with potential, probably nerf ranger GS and S/D so melee ranger will be “balanced” on par with bow ranger just like how they “balance” ranger shortbow to make longbow “viable”

other classes
guardian will get minor changes that basically will not hurt the class metas at all just like all the other patches
ele will get some buffs here and there but goes same with guardian
necro MM build will get nerfed a bit same with the Turret engi, and cant promise to have other builds buffed
PU mesmer probably will get nerfed too, but other builds will get stronger imo
Thief…well…I do not really care about balance of a fundamentally bad designed class.

THIEF
Strength
Frequent burst, mobility and active defence (lifesteal, blocks, heals etc

Weakness
Bad Passive defense (Armor, health, PASSIVE healing), hard to play,

Thief is to reliant at shadow arts to survive

We need more underwater combat maps and little bit more tweaks for underwater combat to make more enjoyable.

BlusterWolf.2103:

…take out all viable ranger builds even the ones only with potential, probably nerf ranger GS and S/D so melee ranger will be “balanced” on par with bow ranger just like how they “balance” ranger shortbow to make longbow “viable”

I would laugh, but the past has taught me that it’s highly likely we’ll get more nerfs lol

At least the patch notes will tell us F2 is now more responsive, again…

Don’t worry guys. All your balances will be released in GW3. Then this will be marketed as ‘what GW2 should have been but is not, thanks for being our paid beta tester. Trolllololol’

Engineer I think the class should be about challenging you to think fast, come prepared for what you’re doing and do everything you can. Every class can do that, but engineers should be punished the most if they don’t, given the amount of options they have and how much they can do at one time.

Strength Ability do just about everything and provide great support on the fly, with strange ways of bending the rules and avoiding certain rune/sigil/dungeon or environmental mechanics through manipulating certain skill’s functions. Ability to be effective at any range all at once.

Weakness Low amount of instant ‘oh-crap’ buttons, meaning anticipation and planning are the only way to survive, leaving no room for mistakes that every other class has. Also, not excelling any role in paticular, never being highest damage/healing/stealth OR having to do x3 as much work to be some-what on par with other classes in that same way while still boasting ability to help allies do more dps and/or heal them. There is also a lot of skills that can be difficult to land under certain circumstances that other classes can simply press the button for a similar effect, meaning the engineer has to account for that as well and may complicate a lot of things. (like having to stare at the boss in a ranged fight while kiting mobs, so you can hit with grenades while your party can watch the kited mobs on them since they don’t actually aim their ranged weapons) That’s not a bad thing by the way, it hinders the engi in the right way.

My main class is in a great spot, I’d say. All I can really ask for is more build variety, but that’s another topic entirely, as well as aesthetic stuff.

EDIT – added way more than the 300 words you wanted lol

My opinion on what the strengths/weaknesses should be:

• Warrior:
  Strengths: high power damage (especially at melee), good survivability.
  Weaknesses: Low mobility.
• Guardian:
  Strengths: Great survivability, good support.
  Weaknesses: Only moderate damage without allies.
• Ranger:
  Strengths: Best ranged power damage, decent mobility.
  Weaknesses: Not so great when in melee range, only moderate armor/health.
• Engineer:
  Strengths: Versatility.
  Weaknesses: Not being great at anything.
• Thief:
  Strengths: Great melee burst damage.
  Weaknesses: Very low survivability (which would mean very little, if any, stealth or a rework of stealth (maybe only let it work out of combat)).
• Elementalist:
  Strengths: Great damage.
  Weaknesses: Very low survivability.
• Necromancer:
  Strengths: Great condition damage.
  Weaknesses: Barely any burst capability.
• Mesmer:
  Strengths: Clones, decent support.
  Weaknesses: Low survivability once the real mesmer gets attacked.

In terms of matchups, the “kryptonite” I’m most familiar with is engg vs. condi necro (i.e. terrormancer). The match is extremely difficult for the engineer, due to the lack of stability to prevent instantly cast fearing (using a stun breaker can often result in another fear being applied), and general lack of ability to prevent the condition pressure. Other high condi pressure builds (i.e. p/d thief or perplexity engg) can have similar results.

The particular necro build I’m thinking of looks something like: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYWjc0Ucb5N+1wfbCchCy3MAiMDmAqbjx4LA-TVyCABA8gAwR9Hq2fIF9NYpMQijQQWK9GTJ40nSBSBAz0I-w

I also feel there’s various “self-kryptonites” that might need some addressing. That is, ways in which professions limit or hinder themselves which in turn makes certain matchups difficult, or simply limits viable varieties. These are some of the ones I feel I’m knowledgeable about, but there could easily be more:

Elementalist:

- General dependency on water magic and arcana trait lines to be competitive. Most build generally have at least 4 trait points in each tree, leaving 6 points left to make something with.

Engineer:

- Extreme dependency on kits. Builds will generally have at least one kit, competitive builds will usually have two or three. Not taking a kit limits your mobility, damage, and defensive options, as well as prohibiting you from accessing “on-swap” abilities, further limiting build potential (i.e. no sigil of battle to synergize with runes of strength).

Thief:

- Generally dependent on a subset of utilities for proper competitive play (i.e. shadowstep, shadow refuge, signet of agility, &c.). Other utilities like traps generally have niche uses that are underwhelming.
- p/p is a very poor weapon set that can cause unwitting players to unintentionally handicap themselves. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it’s so bad that one would be better off if unload shot oneself so that they could die and respawn as fast as possible. It’s so bad that people will sometimes just ignore you out of pity. It’s so bad that it makes me feel that jamming a fork in my eye and jiggling it around would be a more pleasurable experience.

Warrior:

- Not taking healing signet is generally a weak choice overall. The other healing skills do not bring comparable value to the table outside of situational contexts (i.e. zerg diving with defiant stance).
- It is difficult to be competitive without cleansing ire since it is a primary form of condition clearing (in conjunction with longbow at least) as well as adrenaline building. Even primarily offensive builds will frequently spec heavily into the defensively-oriented trait trees to pick up things like cleansing ire. Opting out of it can put you at a severe disadvantage.

Thieves and their stealth are so OP that parties of 4 or 5 basically give up on fighting them 5 on 1 in WvW, because it’s so annoying.

Ranger

As a ranger I feel I should be able to use my bow in dungeons and fractals. That is typically not the case due to balance. I should be able to viably use my bow anywhere.

As I ranger I feel I should be a able to kite (somewhat) with my bow. Yet the melee options offer better kiting.

As a ranger my core positioning and sense of “safety” is completely undermined by a frenzy of distance closers. I expect better mobility while wielding bow. Even if this includes normal speed side and back peddling.

As a ranger it would be nice to have a ranged spike. The “get in, DPS then get out” is not an option with bows unfortunately.

As a GW2 ranger with a strong pet focus. I would expect that pet to be viable for all content and not left out of aoe/dungeons/fractals/zergs.

Strengths

Strong mobility and damage at range. (stronger and more mobile that current state)

Weaknesses

Generally less armor and health.

Someone please wake me up when they get to the part about what Thief kryptonite is supposed to be.
Hint: If it’s something that sometimes causes them to disengage and/or reset the fight a few times, it’s not kryptonite.

Josh Davis.6015:

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

You are doing it wrong ?!

Anet has declared many times that the profession you pick should not force to a specific role rather then the exact opposite – they want you to be able to play in any style you like (i.e the profession) with every role you like.
And we can see this approach in many update like trying to make cond guard viable or non-condi necro.
And this is great. If I want A DPS role I am not force to choose class A or B I can just choose any class and build it to fit the role.
I think classes in this game are already very distinct from one another. much more then in many other MMO.
Example – many mmo have one ‘thief’ class and that is the only class that can stealth. In GW2 4 classes currently have some access to stealth, while mez and thief have the most and their play style is till completely different. this is great.

So the main balance goal should be this:
tl;dr make it so that every class has at least one viable build for every role and that no one class is the best for the rule.
(Buker thief, team fight mez, condi ele…)

P.S
This bring us again to “only one game mode” problem. There might be some not bad “bunker” thief build with evade and stealth but because you have to stay on point those build are auto dismissed. Or DPS gaurd is very strong but lack of mobility makes him bad for points rotation.

Suggestions on Mesmer Role, and Potential Improvements:

Firstly lets go over Mesmer Ideology, and where I see it from a PvE perspective, focusing on dungeons. I have little experience with PvP and WvW and therefore I don’t want to comment on the role there.

With respect to dungeon groups, a Mesmer should provide the group with great utility, and the best projectile mitigation in the game through reflects.

As far as utility goes, with our great boon stripping, party wide stealth and good crowd control, I feel the Mesmer does this well.
However the current issue with Mesmers is with our reflects. Our reflecting capabilities seem to be constantly getting worse due to changes to boss mechanics, making many projectiles un-reflectable. It is near impossible to work out which bosses have reflectabe projectiles anymore, let alone remember which ones do. At best this results in a loss in potential DPS, at worst, it wipes the party because they relied on the reflect working.
On top of this, the April 15th Feature Patch included an unlisted change that moved one of our best Grandmaster traits, ‘Empowering Mantra’s’ from Dueling, to Domination. This change meant maintaining good Critical Chance while being able to take Wardens Feedback (4 into Inspiration) was now near impossible. These changes In my opinion have only reduced the Mesmers potential. It would be nice to see a clarification on why this change was made.

In addition, there are several pretty serious bugs with Mesmers that haven’t been addressed. There is a very long post on the bug fixing forums detailing all the bugs that exits for Mesmer, most of these have yet to be acknowledged, let alone fixed.

Link to Forum Post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Mesmer-s-Bugged-Skills-Still-Piling-Up/first

I appreciate that Mesmer is one of the least played professions and therefore receives less attention than other professions, however something needs to be done, even if it is just fixing some of the bugs.

I appreciate this post is a little longer than 300 words so if you made it to the end, thanks for reading!