Guild Wars 2

As for Necro’s lack of “team buffs”. I think that’s not really true. Necro, as a class, is not a Guardian. They are supposed to be the debuffers, and that means weakening the enemy as opposed to strengthening the ally. Weakness on a group of enemies is similar to Protection boon on a group of allies. Cripple on a group of enemies is similar to Swiftness to a group of allies.

The problem is, their debuffer role is like almost exclusively PvP-centric. You can apply weakness with other classes in PvE, chill is irrelevant, vulnerability can done by literally every other class too – and poison is a non-issue. Their support utilities need to have a pvp/pve split in order to make necros worth taking.

I hope this isn’t a srsly try to show an implementation of crowdcontrol

Why not? You lock down bosses from doing major mechanics with either immobilise or shaving off defiant and then interrupting a key skill.

i’m speaking in wider “game as a whole” terms, not in organized teams/guild dungeon runs terms.

Well there’s no point balancing it open world because people are just smashing CC everywhere, but in instances, defiant functions just fine – it prevents CC spam but rewards you for timing it right.

i’m not going to argue the issues with defiant with you in this thread, thats not what we’re here for.

It would be a much better mechanic if it were only active during certain attacks and not persistent on top of a -duration that is also persistent. ie then CC would require skillful play to remove x stacks and interrupt the attack rather than remove stacks and then wait.

but let’s get back on topic.

Warrior:

Strength: High burst, good sustain, good mobility.
Weakness: Can’t specialize as well as other classes, highly telegraphed skills ( we have these already).
K: Has to spec into certain trait lines to be viable ( we have this already -20 in defense).

::Ranger::

Role: It would appear the role you have determined you want the Ranger to fill is the sustained damage role devoid of all burst or AE in exchange for high damage uptime that is both consistent and above average. I’ll say right now: you’ve failed at that and if this isn’t the role you’ve envisioned for the class then I’m completely lost as there’s simply no other vision for the class youv’e even hinted at.

What I feel the Ranger’s role should be is that of a hunter (not a WoW Hunter…). They should be the fastest class in the game (out of combat), able to cover long distances with ease, track enemy movements, and set up ambushes. Their approach to damage should be ‘death by a thousand cuts’. This doesn’t mean you leave them with nothing to do but auto attack while strafing in circles or give them near 0 access to AE or burst. It just means their primary damage should b weaker attacks in quick succession with enough burst and utility thrown in so the gameplay isn’t stagnant and boring (which it very much is right now).

The strengths of the Ranger:
It is a very strong dueling class. You’ve certainly given it enough condis, regen, and evades to make it probably the strongest dueling class in the game. When you add the pet’s damage on top of the condi coverage it just seals the deal. That’s where the strengths end. As the opponent numbers go up (and not just in a lopsided fashion, but just 2v2, 3v3, Xvx, etc) the value of the class goes down exponentially.

The weaknesses of the Ranger:
The pet is easily the largest weakness of the class. You’ve placed so much of the class’ utility in the pet and the pet remains 100% useless in anything but duels in WvW. Worse still is the limited utility the pet does provide isn’t even that great in comparison to what other classes have on offer.

Power damage has never been functional for the class. You’ve designed a game where the only damage that matters in PvP/WvW is burst, AE, or condi. You’ve given the Ranger no burst or AE and thus no way a power build will function.

Lack of raid worth. While the Ranger can certainly build itself to front line ‘zerg surf’, it does absolutely nothing but provide another body to the zerg to soak one of the 5 targets for AE while doing it. Entangle is on too long a cooldown and can’t be used while surfing because you need stability. Can’t run frost spam because you need the condi cleanse and survival skills. It has no real ‘support’ weapon like staffs and hammers of other classes.

The Ranger’s ‘kryptonite’:
Foolishly specing into a power build? It’s own pet? Thinking you’d ever pull your own weight in WvW? Or do we want to talk about which classes counter the Ranger? Mesmer comes to mind as my single toughest fight. With the lack of AE I simply can’t get a handle on the clones. With the lack of burst I can’t apply enough pressure to them to use their defensive cooldowns on my terms instead of theirs.

What is my main target:
Thief is probably the easiest fight as a Ranger. Not because the class has legitimate tools to beat them, but rather you’ve continued to allow rapid fire to track targets in stealth and Thieves almost always run full glass.

My Questions:
I very much look forward to hearing what role ANet has envisioned for this class. I very much want to hear how they feel the class has lived up to their expectations. I don’t remember who asked this prior, but it was a very good question: What is the one class you feel is best balanced in this game and why? And the least, and why?

I’d also love for ANet to answer the one thing the entire WvW community hasn’t been able to answer in 2 years… as a WvW commander, what functional role have you ever had the Ranger fill? Has anyone ever heard in teamspeak: rangers cast X like we do with things like Guardians and Empower, Warriors and Hammer stun, Mesmers and veil, Necros and wells, Eles and meteor or water (lol, I bet this is the Ranger answer…), etc etc.

Sorry about the whole ‘dripping with disdain’ vibe. I play an Ele now and actually do quite enjoy the game.

maha.7902:

As for Necro’s lack of “team buffs”. I think that’s not really true. Necro, as a class, is not a Guardian. They are supposed to be the debuffers, and that means weakening the enemy as opposed to strengthening the ally. Weakness on a group of enemies is similar to Protection boon on a group of allies. Cripple on a group of enemies is similar to Swiftness to a group of allies.

The problem is, their debuffer role is like almost exclusively PvP-centric. You can apply weakness with other classes in PvE, chill is irrelevant, vulnerability can done by literally every other class too – and poison is a non-issue. Their support utilities need to have a pvp/pve split in order to make necros worth taking.

Well… PvE is sort of a different realm. In my opinion, player skill and class mechanics and all that jazz work really…. differently there. I feel like a lot more builds are viable, but at the same time only few builds and professions are preferred for speed runs or whatever, cuz it’s allowed and the environment isn’t as complex/dynamic as PvP. Not complex/dynamic as in limited build variety (people mainly like DPS), little counter plays, less having-to-know-your-opponent, team compositions, and less crucial clutch moments – game changing stuff.
- PvP is actual players with minds, and conditions are far stronger there because CC condis like Fear, Cripple, Chill actually count. In PvE, Necro’s debuffing condis fall right off (or the enemy is just ranged so slows don’t matter) and in many cases Fear – which is one of the core conditions of a condi Necro – doesn’t even affect enemies.

With that said, I play Necro in dungeons and meta events with my guildies here and there, and I have no issues.

I will list for PVP ONLY , and for the 3x classes i have at least 100 hours on and comfortable to tourny with anytime. In order:

Necromancer
S) ATTRITON and AREA DENIAL
Condi should be aoe but not as strong dmg as engie, but it should have 1v1 and team TRANSFERS. Power necro should be more 1v1 centered with debufs/SIPHONS/LEECH/life force enemy to death. maybe buff siphons and cap them at 1x target?
W) NO BURST and MOBILITY
K) BURST by others

Thief
S) BURST and MOBILITY.
W) BURST when caught off cooldowns
K) SUSTAINED LONGER fights

Warior
S) MELEE DAMAGE and CC , “MAN MODE” aka Stances
W) man mode over , ranged pressure
K) CONDITIONS

Almost everything was said about necromancers, that I wanted to add, but I would emphasize two things. For me great balance is about:

- making each class the best of something, what others can’t compete with
- make this thing needed, helpful and viable in every single part of the game

Currently it bugs me so much that “zerkers only” is the basic mentality inside PvE, and I would like to see high end stuff, where the condition classes have an upperhand. And no, it shouldn’t be solved by some bosses like husks at wurm, ideally I would consider it balanced, if condi damage could at least come close to power damage in PvE. It makes me sad, when I read all the arguments about how PvE doesn’t need support and condi classes, because it should be more versatile in my opinion. Let us – condition fans – feel important and special too for once.

I would suggest to think about the balances with PvE-minds too, like:
“Okay, now after this update, why would I take a necro into a level 45 Fractals, instead of a Warrior/Guardian.”
- If you do not have an answer for that, then it’s probably not balanced.

CyClotroniC.4957:

Almost everything was said about necromancers, that I wanted to add, but I would emphasize two things. For me great balance is about:

- making each class the best of something, what others can’t compete with
- make this thing needed, helpful and viable in every single part of the game

Currently it bugs me so much that “zerkers only” is the basic mentality inside PvE, and I would like to see high end stuff, where the condition classes have an upperhand. And no, it shouldn’t be solved by some bosses like husks at wurm, ideally I would consider it balanced, if condi damage could at least come close to power damage in PvE. It makes me said, when I read all the arguments about, how PvE doesn’t need support and condi classes, because it should be more versatile in my opinion. Let us – condition fans – feel important and special too for once.

I have a 2:48 recorded which I haven’t uploaded too. IIRC it’s the second fastest time recorded.

Linnael.1069:

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. -snip-

This. Exactly this. This entire post is exactly how feel.

Lishtenbird.2814:

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

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.

very much agree with this. i mained a mesmer pretty much since headstart and now after all nerfs and bugs, im done as i play gw2 only for wvw atm.we need aoe non ai aoe skills, we need less 1v1 stuff, we need rework of traits and useless skills, we need more non ai attacks as this class has turned into a thief/ranger mix without enouh dps sustain. gw1 mes had it right, now gw2 mes need a little more of such skills like gw1 mes had. not clones not moer clone traits no phantasm iilusions or any of that, we need non ai aoe punishing skills like the confusion glam used to be.
and yes ples stop balancing around our spvp mes. spvp is not the whole game, there are other gamemodes that are very popular and therfor our class needs to be viable in that. veilbot is not a role at all!

Mesmer

Notes
Thanks for making this thread and doing this episode. I look forward to watching tomorrow. After 1.5 years of playing and 1500 hours, GW2 is by far my favorite game ever. In that time, I moved from nearly a purely PVE player to nearly a purely WvW player. I log in every day and have fun every time. Thanks for all your hard work.

Strengths

• It’s fun to play. Have unique skills. Can keep learning. So much fun in combat.
• Can fight any class 1v1 and feel like you could win (phantasm build)
• Can uniquely aid others with portal, veil, mass invisibility

Weaknesses

• Seems hard to make a viable condi build except PU-condi (tried shatter condi for a bit)
• All of the other limitations seem like fair trade-offs to me (e.g. out of combat speed, fairly minimal AoE)

Kyrptonite
*Main role in a large (zerg) scenario seems to be veil and portal. While interesting and cool abilities, my guess is that it’s just not that fun. I pretty much only do roaming/havoc, so it doesn’t bother me. But for people who want to play with their friends in large-scale wvw, I think there needs to be other build choices. (Maybe a GM trait that gives phantasms invulnerability for a few seconds)

Thx again and have fun!

And there is nothing wrong with that – if you force certain roles you end up having unpopular ones which nobody wants to do….

It’s only natural that people have preferences like enjoying certain roles and not enjoying others.

…But that same logic applies to the Berserker role itself.
So you either have a gamemode that involves roles you may not like, or a gamemode with only one role you darned well better like.

You have certain classes brought for passive buffs, you have offensive buff-stacking pre and during fight and you’ll normally have a “defensive” buff class like guardian or mesmer for aegis, projectile reflection, stability and condition cleansing. Then you have engi and thief that can stealth which is unique to them and is a whole separate role entirely from the usual combat ones.

Let me try to illustrate my thoughts on the differences between boons/conditions and roles using different language.

Let’s say a trinity Warrior is striking mobs with melee attacks. Along comes a Paladin, and he also starts striking the mob with melee attacks. Although this looks the same on the screen, inside the player’s minds they do it with different intentions. A Paladin is using melee strikes to get the mob’s attention; a Warrior is using melee strikes to do damage while avoiding it.

Along comes a Mage. He has all sorts of nifty spells; fireballs everywhere, burning things one minute, disorienting enemies the next. While this seems really different on not only a superficial visual level, but also on a sincere mechanical one…inside the player’s mind he shares the Warrior’s intent.

If you asked any of them what their Goal in combat was, they wouldn’t say; punching things and burning them. Punches and Burns are just Tools, their Goals involve the specific uses of the aggro system. Tools are related but ultimately divorced from Goals; as illustrated above the same Tool can be used to accomplish a different Goal, and different Tools can be used to accomplish the same Goal.

there are the few thing I would the designers you guys to talk about:

• Giving all classes access to stealth probably through Runes; modifying the full set effect of the rune of infiltration (stealth when hps get bellow 10%) toward a more controlled one like 3 secs of stealth after using a healing skill (35 sec CD).
• Giving all classes access to stealth counter, again through a rune set preferably with defensive stats the fulls set effect would be reveal all enemies in a 260 AOE for 5 secs.
• Redesigning most of the of the +X% damage (except for the stat conversion trait) to more controlled and less inflatable values; instead of giving +10% damage to a warrior using slashing power give him +X power while wielding a greatsword.

I hope this is an open/honest discussion on balance design philosophy from Anet, but I’m not sure that it will be and that’s mostly due to how the fans would react to an honest conversation.

If you play GW2, you need to come to terms with the fact that this game will always be balanced around PvP first and foremost so long as skills/traits function the same between game modes. Secondly, you need to realize that balance is made much more complex as team composition and coordination are a major factor in the balance equation in this game. imo Anet is likely using team fights of 3ish vs 3ish of skilled and coordinated players in PvP (i.e. tPvP) as their balance baseline. It’d be great for them to come out and say something along these lines and talk through how the balance process works, from brainstorming/conceptualizing to testing through implementation of changes, but I really don’t think the GW2 community would be receptive to that kind of discussion.

My guess as to the current approach to profession balance is that PvE is considered primarily for exploiting and WvW is considered only for massive scaling considerations. With so many players working to ‘solve this game’ the PvE and WvW meta has been largely settled for quiet some time now and I think this has players frustrated; more so if they play a single class that happens to be out of favor (because its missing some tools or are over shadowed by another profession).

Thief:
We are really good at shutting boon based classes thanks to steal boon skills.
We can be high stealth based or have high evade.

Thieves get screwed so hard by condi overload my poor stealth can only cleanse so much lol

We also get owned by lots and lots of Hard CC because our stun breaks are on a fairly high CD

Also most classes but Mesmer and Ranger can counter thief

Last question for me :::

Is there any relation between a profession’s base health/armor weight and their DPS potential?

If there isn’t and every profession has the same dps potential…. I just think it would be rather strange for an 18000 health, heavy armor Warrior to have the same dps potential as a 10000 health, light armor Elementalist, because this means that the Warrior will almost always win, solely because they have higher armor/health. And in a balance philosophy like this, skill doesn’t really matter at this point, just whoever has higher base armor and base health.

From a PvP perspective for the profession I play often:

General

• Rune of Strength is too good. You effectively have a permanent 7% damage boost and the best might durations in the game.
• Some sigils are too good now that they don’t share cooldowns. Energy, Battle, Air+Fire are the big offenders. Energy in particular because not only does it allow for increased survival, it triggers on-dodge effects more often (extra healing, extra clone, extra damage, extra boons, etc).
• Lack of stat customization on PvP amulets weakens many potential builds too much to warrant play. For power damage, it’s either almost full glass or not enough damage.
• There’s an arms race between condition damage and removal. The condition damage builds can apply more conditions and certain abilities which remove or counter conditions are buffed. It forces players to take the few powerful condition removal abilities that can be re-used often and that limits builds.

Guardian (my main)

• Full support role is in a good spot. Has a trade-off between more stability and condition removal or personal healing. “Stand Your Ground!” is a little too good.
• Offensive guardian play is a little one-dimensional, which limits the skill cap. However, a selfish guardian doesn’t seem right, so I’m okay with that.
• I would like to see a hybrid support/damage guardian be more viable. This suffers largely from being unable to get a nice balance of power, precision, toughness, vitality, and healing.
• My main issues in a support or support/damage role are skills which are unblockable, which really screw with timing defenses, and condition damage engineers where the cleansing quickly falls behind.

Engineer

• Overall, I like the CC heavy engineer role with lots of combo potential. The general feel is in a good spot.
• Incendiary Powder is too strong and in conjunction with the variety of conditions that are applied, seems to hold back more well-rounded improvements.
• Stun breaks are distributed seemingly at random and often have longer cooldowns. Stability is lacking and awkward to use. This makes engineer extremely susceptible to stun-lock and quick death.
• Condition removal and other condition counters are scattered all over. Outside of Healing Turret, none of them are strong against condition damage builds that can quickly re-stack conditions.
• You’re essentially forced to use at least one kit. I would be okay with this, but kits tend to lack extreme power in a narrow role or are generalized and lackluster Many kits have a mix of abilities that only excel in power builds or only in condition builds or just aren’t good. Grenades almost require the Grenadier trait and aren’t very good in power builds (ironic because that trait is in the power line). Bomb kit’s #1 sucks for condition builds but #2 and #3 are amazing for condis. Bomb Kit is pretty powerful in a condition build for area denial though; it excels at a narrow role. Flamethrower lacks a clear purpose or role, same with Elixir Gun. Tool Kit is decent overall, but the #1 doesn’t really have a point when used for damage.
• Gadgets and Elixirs are weak overall. The two abilities in each (normal and tool belt) need to compete with 6 from a kit and often fall short.

Warrior

• Cleansing Ire is too good. Warriors can laugh off all but the heaviest condition spam and its power, in addition to Adrenal Health makes it mandatory and limits builds.
• Fast Hands seems mandatory for warriors in PvP. For offensive rolls, warriors need the mobility and access to different roles of different weapon sets more readily than other professions. This limits build variety.
• I would expect warriors to be weak to kiting, but Dogged March and Cleansing Ire nullify that. In WvW, food that reduces condition duration makes them impossible to soft CC.
• Heals besides Healing Signet feel too weak or you have to work too much to get a decent benefit from them. Healing Surge max heal isn’t bad, but it punishes you for using the class mechanic. Defiant Stance tends to hit either the low or high extreme and never in the middle.

well as a wvw player my observations are:

war:used to be sorta vulnerable vs condis, now almost immune. cc is wayyyyyyyy tooo dominant in wvw, u get stunlocked for 5-8 seconds and that means death in a zerg. war is too tough for the dmg they are putting out . so maybe there should be 3 builds:bunker, less dmg, dps, less condi cleanse less toughness, less hp, and the cc war, which shouldnt deal such dmg…mobility is way too high for a heavy armor class imo. so there should be some downsides as a war too not just faceroll your keyboard and win.

mes: has only 2 functions atm: veil and portal, otherwise u are forced to be a roamer. lacks aoe, lacks out of combat speed, has no real wvw or group builds, has no clear role, is more and more pushed into an ai class ony, has no dmg sustain, has bad condi cleanse, has little to no stability….
now what i would like to see:
mes has an option to spec for wvw raids and has a stronger punishing role in form of aoe like gw1 mes had. mes can slow and manipulate mindless zerglings for example. less clones, less ai based traits, give us non ai stuff as u guys stated before u dont see mes as a pet class, but atm it is, cause there arent any other options. like the necro can spec for minions but doesnt have to the mess should be able to spec for aoe that is non ai based. ai in wvw is terrible.

ranger:still has no clear role in wvw. they maybe snipe a few people and have a few aoe options, but omg the longbow war outshines the ranger by far. shouldnt be the case though. ranger should be the master of bow skills!

thief:best ganker and has actually a role in a zerg. too many evades though and stealth is still a little too much, but at least they are beatable!

ele: i understand the ele in spvp needed a buff, the wvw ele doesnt. they are meta, staffeles are very very very important. i dont think they are op in wvw but their meteorshowers are extreeemly powerful and their healing is great too, so please no wvw ele buffs or u will create a monster like the warrior.

maha.7902:

The problem is, their debuffer role is like almost exclusively PvP-centric. You can apply weakness with other classes in PvE, chill is irrelevant, vulnerability can done by literally every other class too – and poison is a non-issue. Their support utilities need to have a pvp/pve split in order to make necros worth taking.

Debuffing does not have any purpose right now in PVE, that is true. Enemies hardly use boons, and when they do their effect is often so mediocre, that few notice any difference once you remove them. But worse is that enemies often instantly reapply the boons, which means about 1 second of boon down time. Not enough to make any noticeable difference. Other times the boons have such a short duration, that you might as well wait a second so they wear off naturally.

This needs to be fixed too if the designers want debuffing to have any role in PVE what so ever. I’d like to see more debuffing in PVE. It might give players a reason to bring along a necromancer.

Mobs that reapply their boons should be cc’d so they can’t do it immediately after stripping. I constantly hear how cc is useless though.

These are what I feel like they should be:

Elementalist = Strength: Boon application and versatility, team survival. Weakness: personal survival.

Engineer = Strength: Direct damage and utility with turrets, best at long ranges. Weakness = poor close range strength.

Guardian = Strength: Damage Mitigation and Burst heals with virtues. Weakness: condition damage application, poor long-range effectiveness.

Mesmer = Strength; burst damage and group confusion (misdirection and evasion). Weakness: Close-range survivability and condition cleansing.

Necromancer= Strength: AoE Condition application and spread, with Life leeching. Weakness: Direct and burst damage.

Ranger = Strength: Effective at both close and distant range, pet utility. Weakness: burst healing.

Thief = Strength: stealth and burst damage. Weakness: condition cleansing and poor direct-damage survivability.

Warrior = Strength: Burst damage at Close range and utility through shouts and banners. Weakness: condition cleansing and ranged combat.

The ones I think currently do their job the best are Elementalist (though they can be surprisingly tough to kill in the right scenarios), Guardian, Mesmer (too tough to kill in WvW), Thief (WAY too tough to kill in many scenarios, regardless of build), and Warrior.

Ranger and Necromancer really need to have their trait-trees reorganized and a skill revamp. I recommend looking at the Squig Herder and Magus from WAR, Warhammer: Age of Reckonning, for good ways to theme/skill those classes.

I just want to say:
Rise of the underwater weapons to the surface! Make it happen!

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!

Hi, great thread!

I"ll bite…

Warriors:
Strengths:
-Masters of High DPS,
-Buffs for damage (might, fury, banners, etc…)
Weaknesses:
- Countered by tactics and critical thinking. For example: Conditions like Chill and Crowd Control.

Guardian:
Strengths:
- A master of support. Protection, Reflects, and useful CC options which prevent foes from crossing.
- Currently in a good spot regarding balance.
Weaknesses:
- Boon Removal
- poison,

Ranger:
Strengths:
- Rangers should be the glass cannons of the game. They should be able to deal incredibly high consistent DPS which makes them worthy of speedclears, however this is balanced becausse our pets can die so easily.
- They should also have unique buffs galore (expand on spirits!),
- Quickness more available than any other class.
- Interrupting foes through defiance!
Weaknesses:
- Keeping the pet alive!

This:
Strengths:
- High burst damage
- Stealth spam
- Permablind
- Currently in a good place with balance, no matter what QQers say.
Weaknesses:
- Fragile as heck!
- Bad range

Engineer:
Strengths:
- Versatility
- Conditions
- Blast finishers
- Combo fields
- Kiting (bomb kit)
- Medium range consistent damage (Flamethrower is NOT a projectile…)
- Turrets
Weaknesses:
- Retaliation+Flamethrower=kitten
- A jack of all trades

Mesmer:
Strengths:
- Utility (Time warp, portal, etc…)
- Projectile reflection
- Confusing foes with clones (WvW/PvP)
Weaknesses:
- medium health, medium damage…

Elementalist:
Strengths:
- Very short but HIGH bursts (FGS Rush)
- Conjure weapons (Lightning Hammer)
- Fire Fields
Weaknesses:
- More fragile than a thief

Necromancer:
Strengths:
- Masters of control (making certain areas dangerous to stand on with marks/wells, controlling movement with fear, etc…)
- Boon removal
- Condition cleanse
- Mantaining Weakness+Chill even on bosses
- Bulkiest class in the game
Weaknesses:
- mostly Single-target damage

Swagg.9236:

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.

Very harsh but its kinda of true. Why should I play a game when my class is guaranteed to lose to something? I might as well not bother to get better at that point. If I have no reason to get better, I have no reason to continue playing.

LFG-Tool says:

Dungeons:
3/5 Only War, Guard
4/5 War needed
3/5 pls Ele (Asc)
3/5 pls no Nec, Ranger, Ingi
1/5 Mes, War, Guard
4/5 Guard pls
and so on…

Fractals:
3/5 only zerkers (War, Ele, Mes)
2/5 no Ranger, Necro, Ingis
2/5 everybody welcome <—- since 5min
4/5 War needed, ogogog

You see?
No one needs Inigs, Necros, Ranger,… Where is the strengh of them?
In pvp/wvw?
Ah ok, so every Necro hast to play Berserk in pve?

Not every Profession hast to be a DD, but DD is the only thing that counts in pve…

Well what I have in mind about mesmer is mostly covered by the posts above. So I’ll talk about something different in PvE. Please consider revert power block’s effect on PvE bosses, allowing us to effectively increase interrupted boss skill cooldowns to 10s.

We need something to make mesmer unique in PvE, and power block is a revolutionary start. PvE champions already has defiance to prevent frequent interruption, in addition the chance of successful interruption comes with coordination and experience. If a group of players can coordinate themselves to let mesmer interrupt bosses, then they should be rewarded with 10s cooldown. To be honest 10s cooldown is a bit low, because the amount of defiance stacks scale with player number, making it incredibly hard to interrupt world boss/meta boss for instance. Why do you nerf this potential, when you created this trait to define mesmer?

I play a mesmer.

Strengths – It is very versatile, can burst really nicely as well as do sustained damage, good for both power and condition damage. Amazing team utility.

Weaknesses – A ton of bugs, all the new traits are pretty much useless. If you try to make a condition shatter build, it will work, but that is a much less effective PU condi build. Torment needs to be shorter but a much higher intensity.
It should stack in intensity per clone..
almost 0 AOE capabilities
Very little access to swiftness and no perma swiftness like what pretty much all classes have..

Hello,
if i can i want to give my 50cent to the discussion.
In my opinion each class should have 1 “strength” and 1 “weakness” but no “cryptonite”. At the actual moment the most interesting thing of the game, for me, is that if you want you can contrast everything if you gear up in the right way… but losing something else… of course.

The problem at the moment isn’t that class “X” is better than class “Y” but that class “X” can do what class “Y” do but without lose anything else.

Now, this is becoming a stereotype, why are warriors so “powerfull”?
Let’s match warrior with… guardian?

1) Damage output
warrior = high damage simply using weapon skills
guardian = mid-high damage using the right weapon + traits + right gear

warrior > guardian

2) Hp and healing
warrior = high hp pool (7k more than guardian…), very high health regen simply using 1 healing (signet) + 1 trait (3 points)
guardian = low hp pool + good health regen using traits (0/0/6/6/0 = 12 traits for a good regen with boons or 0/0/6/0/4 = 10 traits for a good regen with meditations)

warrior > guardian

3) counter ability and mobility
warrior = very high access to stun/immobilize/knockdown-back + very good access to mobility, leaps and swiftness (perma)
guardian = low access to stun and immobilize (1 and 1 respectively) + low access to leap (1) and quite good access to swiftness (perma in pve but almost nothing in pvp)

warrior > guardian

4) defense and block/immunity
warrior = no access to protection but 3 sec block (shield) + 4 sec no damage (or 5 with 2 trait points) + high access to toughness boosts (signet + banner = 300 extra toughness)
guardian = good access to protection and aegis (aegis = 1block, for a total of a max spam of 3 aegis) + 2 sec invulnerability (or 3 sec with 4 trait points)

warrior >= guardian

So, the problem is that some classes have easy access to everything while others have to specialize and waste their potential in another field. The only reason guardians are still in a good place is for their ability to reflect projectiles… only good in dungeons.

So, in my opinion if you want to balance the game focus on a single aspect for each class and make sure they will lose that aspect if go for something else.

Ranger
Strength: Diversity
Weakness: It lacks the tools for it, utilities should give weapons the ability to be used in different builds. Similar to how preparations worked in Guild Wars 1.

As it stands now:
Axe:
- Borderline useless in power builds as a MH, bc extra low damage on its 2nd and 3rd skills and they arent even useful, esp the cone, since you have to get in melee range for it to work, but you’re better off w sword if you do that.
- useless in condi builds bc low coefficient, and the lack of damaging conditions [only 1] (also the need to shotgun w it)
Axe should be the most versatile weapon in the ranger’s kitten nal, damage-wise. in almost every build, be it conditions or direct damage. Should be lacking in utility.

Longbow:
- lacks spiking ability (or is a one trick pony with q.zephyr)
- lacks proper AOE and utility (could be rectified with preparations). Barrage damage should be condensed for it to be viable in pvp, and it needs reduced cooldown, or, consider swapping barrage with AA, give longbow AoE AA, and give it a more powerful long range shot.

Longbow should be the LR AoE of the ranger, with much more versatility than warrior LB, since the latter has the higher damage output. As it currently stands, LB warrior does firefields for utility, cripple, insane damage and proper aoe, meanwhile ranger LB does single target dps (lower than warrior) 3 sec stealth on 12s CD (useless because its not long enough for you to reposition yourself) a one time knockback/fight (15s CD is very long), and an AoE that ticks maybe twice on the enemy until they can get out of it, or is easily facetanked by bunkers

Shortbow:
- lacks the mobility it should provide
- Quickshot forces you to backpedal, which makes the already lackluster 3s swiftness basically useless, since the enemy will catch up to you no matter what. If you don’t backpedal, you can’t attack.
- Concussion shot is also very weak compared to other classes CC mechanics, (warriors please)
Shortbow wielders should be low direct damage, high-mobility skirmishers second only to thieves but with additional control.

Provide Counter play- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRBcjsOt0_g
(This video explains it much better than I ever could)

Fix Leap abilities- A few skills which cause your character to leap forward don’t end up making you leap in the intended direction.

Fix pet pathing – Pretty self explanatory imo.

Revamp kitten minor traits – All minor traits should become valuable, many are lacking any good reason to choose them.

Provide trait diversity- Too many traits directly compete with each other, leaving many Adept/Master/Grandmaster traits out of the question. In my opinion this is how you can accomplish trait diversity…

When designing Adept/Master/Grandmaster traits, design only one of the following in each trait tier:
-Offensive trait(Damage)
-Defensive trait(Defense)
-Support trait(Group aid/heals)
-Utility trait(Additional effects bestowed upon current abilities)
-debuff trait(Boon removal, snares, chill, etc.)
-hybrid trait(A combination of two of the above options)

As I mainly play with an elementalist and guardian, these will be the 2 classes I will discuss. I play mainly PvE and WvW, with both. As I already saw some main things passing through, I mainly focus on things I haven’t seen yet, but still find quite important. Therefore I will first focus on elementalist. In another message I fill focus on some parts of the guardian.

Elementalist:

Swap

The should be strength of the class should be the attunement swapping. And this is something I certainly don’t experience in PvE dungeons. In dungeons, I can just mainly stay in one attunement (in my case water), grab my lightning hammer and start doing damage (certainly because of the +20% extra damage trait from water). Now in my opinion, this is caused by the current elementalist system.

First of all, we have a certain amount of traits who give you extra damage while you are attuned to a certain type. I believe this is something that should change into traits that work over all attunements. Examples of this are already in the game for an elementalist, like for example the +5% extra damage against bleeding opponents.

But one of the major reasons why I don’t feel like swapping in dungeons, is because I hardly get an advantage. Certainly some swapping runes are useful (like the +3 stacks of might for example) and give a nice advantage, but if you don’t use them swapping attunements gives you nothing. Unless of course you put 1 or 4 trait points in arcana, giving you 2 seconds of fury and the ability to select Elemental Attunement. The only traits that give you some advantages for swapping attunements. I certainly would keep this trait, but I would propose an extra system that gives us benefit from swapping attunements.

Conjures

Another thing that, in my opinion, could be a should be strength of the class, are conjure weapons. So we have 5 conjure weapons: an axe, hammer, shield, bow and 2-H sword. I use 3 of them. Hammer and 2_h sword mainly in PvE, bow mainly in WvW. And this indicates one of the problems with the weapons. Axe and shield have no use. They are both just conjures that I never use, and I mainly don’t see when I could use them as they make me loose too much dps. I believe axe and shield need a serious rework.

Another problem I experience sometimes is when I’m making and choosing my conjures for my build. In my case this is for example in PvE, where my dps mainly depends on my lightning hammer. Cause even though I take the Conjurer trait, using the hammer first skills means I also loose all charges quite fast. And when they are all used, I can’t take my second hammer, as somebody else already took it. And this is in my opinion something that needs to be reworked.

Because even though I get the idea that you as an elementalist help others with giving them conjures, it’s not always desirable. First of all because you depends on the conjure weapon and secondly because there is no other basic conjure weapon that you can use as they are less good. Therefore I was wondering if you were considering a trait that allows elementalists to not spawn another conjure weapon, but to just use the weapon for the entire duration. This would have the advantage described above, but would also have the downside that when you get downed, there is also no spawned conjure you can take.

My final remark (for now :p) on conjures, is that they don’t really work well together with the attunement swapping. Therefore my main question is,* how are you going to make this a useful feature? And are you considering the conjures as skills you can take, instead of being a main part of the elementalist?* With this last I mean for example a necro like system, where an elementalist has a pool like the necromancer, but instead of having the 5 main skills these are the skills of the conjures , depening on each attunement (bow with water, hammer with air, etc).

So far away…

This is something others will experience as well, but I do write it here as I experience it quite often these days. So as an elementalist I can use a staff. For me, it is my main weapon in WvW and I since a while in PvE as well as I created my first legendary: The Bifrost. I’m quite proud on myself for doing this, so as you can imagine I keep on using the staff, certainly as all my other weapons are still exotic ones. But this is where I experience a downside of attacking at a distance: getting buffs. With this, I don’t mean getting buffs from shouts for example, but from my own blast finisher skills. To get boons from my own blast finishers, like for example the Arcane Wave skill, I actually need to put a field at my spot, and blast at my place, which as you can imagine, not only looks quite stupid, but gives nothing in return to party members. Therefore my question is: are you considering a system where the person that uses a blast skill from a distance, but is not standing in the field, get’s the boons as well?

I will post my response about various classes strengths and weaknesses in the form of near-impossible theoretical discussions.

1.) Discuss the advantages of a Ranger in high-end Fractals (Assuming Spotter is not used) or WvW Zerging (Any trait setup) over a Guardian, Mesmer, Elementalist, or Warrior (Your choice)

2.) Discuss what situation a “Givers” item (Condition Damage + Crit Chance) would be useful in any aspect of the game on any class.

3.) Discuss the advantage “Sentinel” (Vitality, Power, Toughness) equipped players have in any late-game PvE content, and why this advantage is beneficial over an equivalent piece of Berserker equipped gear.

4.) Discuss the advantage a condition-based player brings to any World Boss (Keeping in mind that you can now prevent the Husks from spawning during the Three-Headed Wurm)

5.) Discuss the advantages of implementing “Projectile Reflect” mobs (Keeping in mind their near-random location, and being unable to modify gear during combat)

6.) Discuss the advantage a Juvenile Pig has as a viable Ranger pet in any non cosmetic-based situation.

7.) You are in WvWvW. You have 5 Full-Berserker Rifle-Based Warriors who plan on using the Kill-Shot skill on you 1.5 seconds apart. What do you do?

8.) Discuss the advantage of “Clerics” gear in dungeons over “Berserker” gear.

Guardian:

One of the strengths of the guardian, are its multifunctionality. Not only can you be a dps with a guardian, but you can also be a support guardian with heals and/or boons. However, I believe that not all of these roles are as good as they could be.

Burn baby, Burn

A guardian dps class should be a class with normal damage and burning. That’s at least the impression I get from all recent updates, which focus on giving extra burning traits to the guardian. However, I still miss some things that really bring us to this direction.

On of these things is the Zeal trait line, which gives condition duration. However, if I look at all locked traits (in case we would put 5+ trait points here) I only see symbol buffing or spawning. And this is odd for two reasons. First of all, symbols don’t give burning by themselves, so no idea what they are doing as locked traits in a trait line for condition duration. And secondly because if I look at the 2 weapons that can get a specific buff by a trait (greatsword and scepter) there is only one skill that benefits from these traits, being the 4th skill of greatsword. In fact, if I would be interested in using scepter, I’m actually wasting trait points as scepter has no advantage from symbols upgrades. Therefore my question to you is, are you considering swapping these locked symbol upgrades by useful burning traits? And by swapping I mean, put the current locked symbol traits as traits of choice for users, so that hammer guardians can still take symbol upgrades if they want.

Another thing guardians will complain about, are there off hand weapons. And they are right from my point of view. A focus is the most useful off hand weapon, shield can be useful in some occasions, but torch certainly needs some love. And I’m actually a bit surprised as well by the current torch skills. When I think of a torch, I think about something that burns. However, I don’t see this in the skills. In fact, torch hardly gives burning. Therefore my question to you: are you considering reworking the torch weapon to a real burning weapon, with possible fire field?.

One hand

Another thing I miss from main hand weapons, are the combo finishers. In fact, scepter, sword and mace have none. So my question to you is: is this something that will be added later on?.

Boons, Boons, Boons

One of the things where guardians need support from other classes, is for getting Fury. In fact, we only have one skill that can give us Fury. But there is another for guardians to get Fury: meditations. And more precise: _Focused Mind-. The only problem I see here, is the fact that it only gives fury for 4 seconds. Therefore my question to you is: are you considering buffing this duration a bit?

My final question concerning guardians, is about the supportive rule they play, and to be more precise the fact that we give boons to other players. I certainly like the shouts, but I still miss a rune set that allows me to give buffs to other layers as well. However, their are already runes who can give multiple buffs, like for example _ Superior Rune of Altruism_. But I’m still doubting about the usefulness of the rune, as it mainly depends on my healing skill. And with healing skills of about 30 seconds, I’m still doubting about it’s usefulness in for example WvW. However, I also have an elementalist, and elementalists have a healing skill with a cooldown of 15 seconds. In fact, warriors can bring their healing signet to a cooldown of 16 seconds. Therefore my question to you is: are you considering adding a healing skill for guardian with a lower cooldown, so that rune sets which give boons by using your healing skill become a valuable set for support playing guardians?.

I know it’s a bit longer than you asked :p
But I believed that a bit of “story” would be more better to explain some questions. Also I believe that some problems are better to discuss with some context.

May I remind everyone that the idea was to give your idea for strengths, weaknesses and kryptonite?

I mean I’m not entirely sure what the devs need that specifically for, but we’re going mighty off-topic here.

i think all professions should be able to spec to either be a bunker, a zerker or a hybrid that is less effective but can do bits of both.

currently there are classes like warrior and engineer that have tons of survival and the damage of a glass cannon.

it should be a decision between the 2, playing with these god specs just isn’t fun.

Guardians : Add speed to hammer auto attack. Allow guardians to spec into hammer (only 1 specific trait for hammer…). Add base vitality.

Hi, i have play all but thief in pve, and i’m speaking about pve in this discussion, and i want to point out a big problem related to “one profession cant’ be the best at everything”:

using LFG u can see that there are some profession that are always accepted, and are warrior, elementalist and guardians; other professions also ok, mesmer and engineer, than thief. the last are necro and ranger. so i think that u have to answer the question: why player do that?

the answer imo is that the first 3 is better because they can run a dungeon with a group with only this 3 professions is easy and fast. and it’s all about that…. fast = more gold and loot.

why these professions? they have rough damage and the high one, they can all spam might; war have also great health and defense, and 2 of them can give the party perma fury; ele can cast weapon for other party members and shot downs a boss in something like 30 sec, they can heal and also buff all the party; guardian can heal, reflect projectile, spam retaliation and stability. and they can do that being berserk… and most of the people say that the only good way to play pve is berserk.

if you don’t change this, it’s not important that every profession can’t be the best at everything, because the only important thing is doing damage! if a profession is not good as another doing damage and buff and skill related to damage, it will be worse than another one, also if it has more survivability. and for the same reason skilled players want berserk members in party.

Bluewizard.2694:

As I mainly play with an elementalist and guardian, these will be the 2 classes I will discuss. I play mainly PvE and WvW, with both. As I already saw some main things passing through, I mainly focus on things I haven’t seen yet, but still find quite important. Therefore I will first focus on elementalist. In another message I fill focus on some parts of the guardian.

Elementalist:

Swap

The should be strength of the class should be the attunement swapping. And this is something I certainly don’t experience in PvE dungeons. In dungeons, I can just mainly stay in one attunement (in my case water), grab my lightning hammer and start doing damage (certainly because of the +20% extra damage trait from water). Now in my opinion, this is caused by the current elementalist system.

First of all, we have a certain amount of traits who give you extra damage while you are attuned to a certain type. I believe this is something that should change into traits that work over all attunements. Examples of this are already in the game for an elementalist, like for example the +5% extra damage against bleeding opponents.

But one of the major reasons why I don’t feel like swapping in dungeons, is because I hardly get an advantage. Certainly some swapping runes are useful (like the +3 stacks of might for example) and give a nice advantage, but if you don’t use them swapping attunements gives you nothing. Unless of course you put 1 or 4 trait points in arcana, giving you 2 seconds of fury and the ability to select Elemental Attunement. The only traits that give you some advantages for swapping attunements. I certainly would keep this trait, but I would propose an extra system that gives us benefit from swapping attunements.

Conjures

Another thing that, in my opinion, could be a should be strength of the class, are conjure weapons. So we have 5 conjure weapons: an axe, hammer, shield, bow and 2-H sword. I use 3 of them. Hammer and 2_h sword mainly in PvE, bow mainly in WvW. And this indicates one of the problems with the weapons. Axe and shield have no use. They are both just conjures that I never use, and I mainly don’t see when I could use them as they make me loose too much dps. I believe axe and shield need a serious rework.

Another problem I experience sometimes is when I’m making and choosing my conjures for my build. In my case this is for example in PvE, where my dps mainly depends on my lightning hammer. Cause even though I take the Conjurer trait, using the hammer first skills means I also loose all charges quite fast. And when they are all used, I can’t take my second hammer, as somebody else already took it. And this is in my opinion something that needs to be reworked.

Because even though I get the idea that you as an elementalist help others with giving them conjures, it’s not always desirable. First of all because you depends on the conjure weapon and secondly because there is no other basic conjure weapon that you can use as they are less good. Therefore I was wondering if you were considering a trait that allows elementalists to not spawn another conjure weapon, but to just use the weapon for the entire duration. This would have the advantage described above, but would also have the downside that when you get downed, there is also no spawned conjure you can take.

My final remark (for now :p) on conjures, is that they don’t really work well together with the attunement swapping. Therefore my main question is,* how are you going to make this a useful feature? And are you considering the conjures as skills you can take, instead of being a main part of the elementalist?* With this last I mean for example a necro like system, where an elementalist has a pool like the necromancer, but instead of having the 5 main skills these are the skills of the conjures , depening on each attunement (bow with water, hammer with air, etc).

mmm i want to add that in every dungeon, using the icebow is a must… so it’s the most used in pve run, (think to AC run… best party is with 2 or 3 eles only because they can spam icebow, the same for SE and also cof and TA)

haviz.1340:

Mobs that reapply their boons should be cc’d so they can’t do it immediately after stripping. I constantly hear how cc is useless though.

Can you CC the boons from Battle Standard (how Aetherblades get their boons)? What about HotW p1 boss? No, you can’t. Dredge spam it from multiples at once, so CC is also ineffective.

No other enemy in the game uses boons, really.

IMO if class A’s kryptonite is Class B, then class A should have a possible way of countering class B’s kryptonite.

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

Thief (sPvP)

Strengths

• High Mobility

• Huge team fight presence(threatening)

• High Spike/Sustain Damage

Weaknesses

• Easy to catch (player skill would come into play)

• CD dependent

Kryptonite

• High sustaining Classes

• Mirrors

• Too much condition damage

we could always start by making other classes have a kryptonite as in don’t give them so many ways around it that it may as well not be there

anyway….. (necro)
strengths
boon removal
constant albeit slow application of condis
good soft cc
would be good hard cc if it were not countered by so many easily obtainable things>.<
good aoe assistance/damage

weakness
no non traited build killing stability making all the above pointless because we cant get any of it off or do anything at all to defend ourselves

no reachable healing in death shroud… even just letting vampiric work would help a little its not like the attacks hit very fast or often….

ds not scaling well the more people there are, a couple of hits from a thief while being smashed by a team mate and its gone…

terrible mobility no on the spot teleports nothing…………….

no fast /usefull long range weapons that cant just be sidestepped..

kryptonite
no stability to the point necro is useless….

Hi,
For mesmer
Strengths
- It is very versatile.
- Lot of illusion, so can brain ennemy.
- Good Burst with shatter, good DPS with fantasme.

Weaknesses
- Few anti-condi.
- Shater skills are pretty useless if you play with fantasme.
- Blocks (sword and scepter) have low DPS and short range.
- No DPS without fantasme, in other builds than shatter, whome never stay alive.

Kryptonite
- AoE damage which clean all illusions in 5s

Josh Davis.6015:

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

Thanks all! Let’s keep this constructive.

ENGINEER is my main class that i played for 2700+ hours, I love this class but i played it so much so i found out some unbalanced issues =)
I played all game modes (lieing, i play 70% of time wvw last 1 year) so i will try to cover as much as i can.

strengths
- mobility (pretty good – rocket boots, perma swiftness, jump shot, acid bomb, leg mod trait!)

- versatility in smallscale pvp/wvw (u can do good with condi/power adn even some bunker builds)

-support (do not nerf me it’s not OP, i’ts just good! Fumigate, super elixir, healing turret, healing bombs – wvwlarge scale or/and any other instance where this type of skills neded)

-strong against theifs. Really, i found that alot of engi skills, traits etc are working good against thiefs. Good or bad doesn’t matter. But i think It goes more as thief’s kryptonite then engis good side. Can’t be more detalized, just telling from my roaming wvw/pvp expirience.

weaknesses

- self condi cleansing (specially confusion, it mostly goes about wvw and pvp(y, esports) large/small scale), we got some good condicleansing skills but if we could see some changes to AR or/exliri C it would be awesome, cause atm they not making they role as they supposed to(to counter high condi enemie builds).

- stability/stunbreaker lack. It’s ok for PVE, it’s bad for pvp, it’s bad for wvw large/smale scale. The amount of AOE/single CC skills that other classes AND oppopnent engis can have is ridicoulously big and u ussually can’t just put this together. Yes i can go stun bunker as i do, but only problem is i’m not defended on 100% but i’m a dummy that get’s low dmg -53% in pvp (via trait) -73% in pve and wvw (via traits and food), but i’m still vurnurable to condis!! For this part i see as suggestion to rework some of the elixirs and traits for them for example Exliri B -(40% duration of all boons included, ussually it’s very hard to use it during fight cause of cast time, while other classes got AOE boons with lower CD OOOOO) Toss Elixir B (40% boon duration. Stability without stun breaker and with that big cast time must have bigger uptime or it’s mostly a joke, thank your for adding it but overall itgave not that much to a class for it’s CC immunesse).

-elixirs. It’s not that much weaknesses but it could see some slight buffs that could make them more viable Elixir S – is ok for example, Elixir U is pretty bad for pvp and wvw, elixir C could be much better.

-power builds. Coeficient of the most of our skills not givving us that much options for power based builds in pve/wvw or pvp. Buff in any way (traits, runes, skills) of 15-20% for power builds would be slight and decent buff. Most of the traits not giving engi that much for power.

-healing (power) scaling. This. Is important moment as i see it. Because alot of other classes can make profit out of this STAT with some skills that scale in decent ammount with it. For engi u need to go deep into healing stat to achive good lvl of healing but after that you loose tones of other usefull engi stats and abilities. My suggestion is to bumb up scaling with Healing stat for next skills/traits:
- Backpack regenerator (Alchemy IX) atm it’s 117+5%healing. Increase up to 25-30% (max). And it will be decent (and not OP!, do not nerf me please)
-_ Elixir infused bombs_ (Inventions XI) atm it’s 145+15%healing. Compared to other classes passive AOE healing that is possible this one is just a joke, yes u buffed it a little, but i’m sure you could watch into it to buff it up to 35-40% (yes, double the scaling). It’s not possible to make it OP by this but it will open some more versatilitity in engi builds for pvp/wvw and even pve.
-Super Elixir (Elixir Gun skill 5) would be nice to see some improvments aswell.

-slow skills. We got alot of skills that got too long cast time: elixirs, bombs, tool kit #1. Little buff forthat would be great.

-turrets in wvw and pve. Healing turret is good, trumpet aswell.

-ELITE. engis definetly need some other elites. Supplay crate – good for smallscale sucks in lage scale and mostly bad in pve. Mortar – AWESOME IDEA, but damage is so low….u standing on 1 place with wheel above your head like u got some huge siege but only u can do is damage below lvl 20 elemelntalist.

-retaliation damage. Against big groups with FT and NADES.

kryptonite

-CC.
-massive condi spam.
-confusion.

I could continue on strong and weak sides but at least i wrote down those that where first in my head that are from my expirience most important to get big hairy balance hand on it =)

Cheers, Handa!)

Rangers should be: deadly ranged attacks with high physical dmg aoe if traited, deffensive melee gameplay with conditions. Nature themed aoe cc spam and offensive team buffs.
Weakness: low deffensive buff output, and lack of fields and finishers. Low ranged condi dmg, low melee physical dmg.

What the strengths/weaknesses/kryptonite should be, rather than are?

I don’t believe any profession should be pigeonholed into exact strengths/weaknesses, and none of them should have a “kryptonite” – there should be no hard counters (ie S/x thief vs shatter mesmer).

Every profession should be able to be built in a variety of ways and it should be up to the player to decide what strengths/weaknesses he or she wants in the specific build, whether that is:
- good/bad burst or sustained direct or condition damage
- good/bad aoe abilities or single target focused abilities
- good/bad condition removal, passive or active defence through stats or abilities
- good/bad crowd control and support mechanics
- and so on…

All of that should be possible for every profession, and it should be up to the player to decide what compromise to make.

Professions should mostly be adding flavour through their unique mechanics – do you want to feel like captain planet or inspector gadget. However the effect of these mechanics should not be restricted to a profession but the choice given to the players instead.

Question… The devs have already discussed and established “balance” design philosophy and profession roles so what is the real purpose to this ready up?

Should blind make you miss EVERY time? I would think that blindly swinging a weapon nearby an enemy should land a hit at least a couple times…

Mesmer (PvE)

Weaknesses: DPS depends too much on Illusions, Illusions die too often and takes a long time to get your Illusions up again, too less options to provide Might & Vulnerability to your Party (bad Damage Support),

For most People the only reason to bring a Mesmer in Dungeon and Fractalruns atm ist their Portal. Everything else (except of Reflections, which get nerfed more & more and arent really reliable cause they’re mostly done Illusions, which can die & bug very often) can be done better by other professions.

Swagger.1459:

Question… The devs have already discussed and established “balance” design philosophy and profession roles so what is the real purpose to this ready up?

One could infer that they want to get an idea what the vocal community has in regards to balance ideals, so that they can:

1. During the livestream, mention why their thoughts differ from the ones provided.
2. Mention where they won’t change.
3. Mention where they’re willing to change their philosophies.