Guild Wars 2

I agree. The more armor you have, the less damage you should be able to do.

Great post +100 char.
Agree with everything you said. This would make the game far more transparent and far more easier to balance the passive aspect of the game.
Also
Why does this post have so few replies???

Chaos.3579:

Why does this post have so few replies???

The problem here is, he is 100% right, in every aspect if you ask me, when people have barely anything to add to it… it’s hard to comment on it :P It already has the details and I myself agree 100% on the points he’s made.

I would just love to see these changes in the game, not only will it improve the balancing between classes but like he said, it will make implementing new skills A LOT easier, without them being useless OR so OP that you’d scream everytime you see it.

+1 on your topic snow, I hope that Arenanet will consider what you said here, would sure make me come back permanently if they even considered half of what you said ;P

I agree with this too. It would make balancing skills way easier if there wasn’t such a difference between some classes.

It may also make balancing PVE bosses easier since currently some classes can be easily instantly killed while others aren’t due to base stat differences.

Move everyone to the middle currently occupied by engie/ranger/Mesmer.
+100 Agree.

Snow.2048:

How to fix this? Give everyone the same base HP (armor becomes the difference), or bring it to levels more like armor (see below). If someone could enlighten to me as to why they should be so vastly different in the first place, that’d be great. I understand trying to make weak defense, strong attack as a class for variation, but do elementalists outdamage theives? Do rangers equal/out dps guardians? Do mesmers outdamage warriors?

Interesting post, yet I think it is not as black and white as you make it out to be.

What about kiting? How can you justify giving nothing more to say a melee class against a kiting class? Don’t even start about gap closers, as that will not overcome chill/cripple/immobilize spamming, or stealth/teleports. Utilities? The class that’s kiting also has utilities and does not need them to kite. So what’s left? The melee class has to take up a ranged weapon? What if they have no viable options?

I agree something could be done to base stats in order to achieve better balance, but more thaught is needed.

This would be a very difficult change to make, because it would have to accompany a lot of other changes. Classes with very low base HP tend to have something significant to make up for it. Yes this is balancing some active with passive, but to make any meaningful changes to base passive stats would need to accompany widespread changes within every class affected. Its a huge amount of work to make a change that wouldn’t really make things that much better.

I believe bonus stats are neccessairy to allow different playstyles.
Let’s take an example to the thief :
The thief now has easily acces to stealth, if they had the same stats, thiefs would be horrible overpowered. So in order to balance this out they would have to
gut out stealth the stealth of the thief. So the thief lost his identity.

Thank you all for posting!

@Bombs, I personally lean more towards War/necro health to lengthen fights, but this a very personal thing I think. Thanks =)

@Chaos, I hoped more people would poke holes in my thoughts, it can’t grow without that. I’m not sure if the lack of response is due to me being unclear/post being too long. I might just sound too ignorant to be worthy a post to some people. Hopefully, the former is not the case =)

@Tsubasa, Thanks for the vote of confidence XD I was getting worried that I just completely missed the margin. I do hope that if the lack of posts is due to your idea, that people will realize that an agree comment helps as well in building the idea, especially if they note what parts in particular they support!

@Thighum, I haven’t even thought about the pve consquences yet, but I bet you’re right! Thanks for your insight. Indeed, a simplification of something as critical as how fast you get killed under baseline circumstances could help in far more balancing then my “Let’s just look at passives” approach.

@Cygnus, Thank you for expressing your concerns. The point I was trying to make is exactly the black and whiteness you pointed out. Currently, everything needs to be balanced with everything. If we were to take this part, base stats, and equalize them to a black and white situation that is numerically balanced, it is one less parameter that needs to be accounted for in the complex process of balancing.

The problem is, melee is not a class, its a weapon set. And ranged weapons already come with lower weapon damage if I’m not mistaken, which is where the balance you seek should be. Melee simply does more damage. If the problem really was that say warriors (or in my case melee only ranger as I always bring ranged on warrior) couldn’t connect because of kiting, why are they a top tier class ? The hp and toughness difference arn’t what save them, their active/traited abilities are. If they had ranger base stats but kept everything else, they’d still be a solid character class.

I didn’t stress this in my post but actives should balance actives. I guess my use of “passives” really confounded the post because when I say passives, I’m talking about base stats. This is completely my fault and I probably will fix it soon™. But I do want to be clear that I agree with you that this doesn’t magically solve everything, it is a step to creating a truly balanced environment. All the things you mentioned (I can name even more!) need to be balanced, but why balance around an unequal base when that costs more time and effort, and has a higher fail rate?

@ Bhawb, Thanks for the reply =)
The problem is not the idea behind balancing passives with actives, which is solid theoretically, the problem is it cost so much effort to bring into practice! Let’s be honest here, if you return to something you built/wrote after a year or two, you have trouble remembering what everything was for exactly. The bigger the project, the more likely you won’t remember some reasoning. If the project has a transparent layer build, a later date tweaking would have less effect (and be more predictable) on the whole than a complex network system.

The thing is, they don’t need the stat difference of 50ish % of max addable vitality to differentiate classes. Guild Wars 2 said once upon a time to be breaking conventions, so why not here. You can balance around abilities and player choices, without flat stat differences. The effects that are unique to the class become the focus of balancing.

In this sense, its a “fix” that focuses on enabling changes in the future and creating a clearer system for a large project. I definitely can see that the time cost may be too high in many people’s eyes, which was one of my worries when thinking this up. But this whack a mole band-aid/surgery could use a streamliner to focus it

@Tim, this is a view that I certainly can sympathize with. It isn’t wrong to see stats as a way of differentiating classes, however why not let the player choices and profession unique abilities be the shining light instead of just a flat stat raise.

I agree completely that the current state would be devastating if only this statistic change were to pass, but I’d like to pose you a question. Where would thief be right now without stealth/permabblinds/evasion? Like you stated, dead. But looking from the other way around, if the actives were gone but thieves had warrior stats, they’d still be dead. What’s that got to do with anything? Well doesn’t that just mean that base stats are an unnecessary complication?

A thief’s stealth was meant to be short from the beginning, it is too long now. And all the healing, etc in stealth would definitely be worth looking at, but this is true for all classes. However, reducing the parameters reduces complexity of the network, making it simpler to balance.

@ No one in particular, I’d like to touch on my short thing about that skill modifier function thingy. This streamlines balancing attack skills. Now let’s consider making another for utilities. Unfortunately, this is complex because of synergy, but ignoring that until after an equalizing wave, then applying it on a case to case basis on exceptional skills that become wtf good would probably be easier to manage then treating every skill as an outlier and attempting to balance it with every other skill.

Please note I am responding for the sake of developing the idea, please don’t feel like it is a personal attack or that I am dismissing your input. On the contrary, I consider the flaws you guys find in my reasoning and try expand my reasoning to see if the flaws are still there. I can’t do this alone, so any and all input is very welcome

do not make health equal among all classes, that completely ruined WoW in all pvp respects when you end up with mages able to tank more damage than a fully armour plated warrior due to their enegy shields, ranged preference and much easier kiting ability…

this would simply end up with elementalists able to throw a freight train of damage while also being to just stand there and face tank a warrior/engineer or whatever else they feel like which would make far less sense than the health values being different.

guardians may seem strange to be on the low health band but they have a low health value simply because they gain alot of spare health out of superior toughness and healing properties (which says nothing for why necromancers are on high health).

I completely agree with you, I have been making this same argument for a while now. There are a couple of other items to consider.

1) Currently there is no penalty or tradeoff for wearing heavy armor (not that the classes have a choice) but in Guild Wars 1 the different armor classes meant a lot, but in this game heavy armor is just plain better. (I am not saying they should move slower, but I agree with you that a power boost equal to the toughness deficit is a great idea).

2) I do not know if they should normalize health (they did in GW1 and I think it balanced things nicely, but many games do not). I do not think most people want it balanced (however they need to do something, because you are right if they gave thieves 500-800 more power, or Guardians 500-800 more toughness how many people would consider that OP, and that is exactly what they did with Warriors and Necromancers).

2a) I play an Elementalist and in general I play a lot of squishy characters in other games. I actually enjoy being a glass cannon, I just think in the Elementalist case they kept the glass, but removed my cannon (fragile, but many other classes have >= DPS with more durability). The key to being a glass cannon is having DPS that is way above and beyond what a tank can dish out, but being fragile if anyone actually focuses on you.

2b) What they should balance is something like this: the time and skill it takes 1 class to kill another should be equal for most loadouts. What that would translate to would be if 1 class has 2 times the health of another in PVT armor, then the class with 1/2 the health would do 2 times the damage (in a very simple example). There should also be more of an advantage for skills that are hard to land (i.e. if a target eats a full Lava font it should feel much like eating a full 100 blades (right now lava font is 60% the damage with a lower skill coefficient and requires the target to stay still .5 more seconds.)

3) PvE needs some tweaks as well. One reason there is a huge DPS and Health deficit is champion monsters are walls of Hitpoints and hit like a truck, but have very slow attack animations that are easily dodgable (many times without vigor), but WvW / PVP is very different. Just think about some skills/builds that are awesome in PvE that you wouldn’t use in WvW or PvP.

4) The deficit between Ranged and Melee weapons damage is also a huge problem. When melee weapons DPS can be 2-3 times ranged weapons, it is very hard to balance the classes. I understand that there is risk in landing melee attacks (kiting, counter attacks, etc.), but there are a lot of ranged attacks that are very hard to land on opponents that are not rewarded for their risk (dragons tooth, ice spike, shatterstone, on the Elementalist to begin with I am sure Rangers can help me out as well). In the current game with access to many gap closers and immobilization, melee attacks hit with more regularity than some ranged attacks (any Necromancers care to comment on how some of their slow projectiles can be dodged without dodge, I can comment that Gust is very hard to land).

Also before someone brings out the kiting argument consider that all of typical melee classes (guardian, warrior, thief) all have ranged weapons they can switch out to (if they take only melee, that is their choice). Only the D/D or D/F Elementalist is stuck in melee distance because they cannot switch weapons.

Snow.2048:

@Tim, this is a view that I certainly can sympathize with. It isn’t wrong to see stats as a way of differentiating classes, however why not let the player choices and profession unique abilities be the shining light instead of just a flat stat raise.

I agree completely that the current state would be devastating if only this statistic change were to pass, but I’d like to pose you a question. Where would thief be right now without stealth/permabblinds/evasion? Like you stated, dead. But looking from the other way around, if the actives were gone but thieves had warrior stats, they’d still be dead. What’s that got to do with anything? Well doesn’t that just mean that base stats are an unnecessary complication?

A thief’s stealth was meant to be short from the beginning, it is too long now. And all the healing, etc in stealth would definitely be worth looking at, but this is true for all classes. However, reducing the parameters reduces complexity of the network, making it simpler to balance.

from a balance point of view your absolutely right : balancing is easier with less variables, from a diversity point your not. Less variables means less options means less diversity. Removing a variable from the game means flattening of other variables as well and this is what I tried to say with my example . I did not meant “stats are a way to diffirentiate proffesions” (I do aggree with this though, a thief wouldn’t be a thief without a high risk/ high reward playstyle) but as a counter-weight to allow our different play styles . If we were to remove said weight and rebalance the scales then yes we would have easier balance issues but our classes would be blander.

@ Stalima, I could still kill mages with my paladin a year or two ago =P But there is so much whack-a-mole in WoW, I do not doubt that you are correct. The problem you illustrate shows that a statistic change like this must be paired with skill changes.

However, looking at your example specifically, I haven’t felt that an ele has hit like train in a while, and mana sheild just isn’t present. Mana sheild in itself was pretty imbalanced, if you played warcraft 3 custom maps, level cap changes made that evident.

Your other example, Guardian, has low health. But it is not toughness that makes up for it (300 toughness =/= 700 vitality), but like you said its other special abilities. Why bother with the difference at all when the abilities are what (should) define the class in a game with a diverse skill set per class? A latter post answered this question (Tim), so I think you might also be on to something here when looking at both arguments.

Before going onto the next post, I’d like to point out that there also seems to be a demand for the same DPS, when certain classes should obviously have higher currently. This could be because warrior is out of whack in the scheme. But if one class does amazing dps, the current system also makes it so that class is more prominent. The game would need to be balanced to fix that, however the thread that basically said “Fix the AI before balancing pve” (albeit in a very beat around the bush manner) has faded as well.
In short current PvE would require a more level playing field in dps in order to make classes equal, which people see. What they forget is that the damage is supposed to be balanced against other things that just happen to not matter as much when all you have to do is dodge telegraphs.

Thanks for your post btw =)

@Shadowfall or Tim if they get back before I do, I have run out of time but you both bring up excellent points and I will respond tonight. You both have got me thinking, and make me want to review my idea tonight as well. So, after responding to you guys, the OP might get changed if I have time. Particularly my poor usage of passive and what my then seemed logical skill function will be targets of a change, but also any new conclusions drawn from the discussion thus far will be added. Hopefully I can format the OP better as well.

Thank you all once again

This idea would work for pve balance, but in pvp you would have to change a ton of abilities for every profession, and it would take a lot of time and resources.

I think that just like every class can wear any stat type of armor.
every class should be able to wear any type “type” of armor,

but the difference in armors will come in skill cooldowns and endurance regeneration versus toughness and vitality.

light armor will give no toughness and vitality at all, but will give +15% skill cooldowns speed (weapon, utilities and elite etc…) and + 15% energy regeneration/

medium armor will give some minimal vitality and toughness score ~500 each , but give basic skill/utility durations and endurance regeneration.

heavy armor will give big amount of toughness/vitality ~1500 each but will reduce all skills cooldowns and endurance regeneration by 15%.

you will be able to chose which armor to wear, swashbuckler warrior will use light armor but use more skills and have more dodges. ( while being literally one-shotted… if a hit lands)

while a heavy armored necromancer ( Sauron anybody? ) will be very tanky but with slow attack recharge and endurance regen etc…

the actual number can be tweaked, but the general idea is the same.
the amount of builds that each class could have will be tripled….

I agree with the attack boost, but I’d do it slightly different:

• Higher base Toughness <—> Higher base endurance regeneration.
• Higher base Vitality <—> Higher base endurance pool.

The first is quite understandable. The stronger your armour, the more it weights you down, the less you can quickly jump out of harms way. This is one thing I thought the pen&paper RPG Earthdawn always had over other systems, heavier armour imposes penalties to Physical Defence (your ability to dodge) in return for giving you Physical Armour. It also makes sense because both options reduce the damage you take, just in different ways.

The second is more tricky. I was tempted to go with an attack bonus, but this would cause issues with Guardians IMO – who are among the more heavy classes, and also more inherently support-y, on a lore-level. Having them have a greater inherent attack power than Warriors would feel… weird.

Rather, what if we are talking about Vitality vs Endurance as a body feature. Some people are more beefy and rather hardy. Hit them, they keep getting back up. Higher base Vitality. Other people are far more fragile, but in turn honed their endurance, and can keep going after a very lengthy amount of exertion. Higher base endurance pool.

In this system, Elementalists would have larger endurance pools and regeneration compared to Warrior who had higher Toughness and Vitality. IMO it balances out, the “lighter” your class is the better it can dodge, but it’s also more and more dependent on it.

Bhawb.7408:

This would be a very difficult change to make, because it would have to accompany a lot of other changes. Classes with very low base HP tend to have something significant to make up for it.

ironcally warriors have healing signet and top health

I would love for all classes to possess the same base health. However, this would require reducing the effectiveness of class-specific mechanics, which a lot of people will likely be against – for example, thieves would have to be less slippery, unless they sacrificed offense for more evasion (which I’m totally fine with, but that’s me).

Also, I would be equally pleased if every class could wear every armor type. Balance light vs. heavy with longer cooldowns, reduction in base offense, I don’t really care, I just want to wear heavy armor as an elementalist.

Snow.2048:

[… stuff]

@Shadowfall or Tim if they get back before I do, I have run out of time but you both bring up excellent points and I will respond tonight. You both have got me thinking, and make me want to review my idea tonight as well. So, after responding to you guys, the OP might get changed if I have time. Particularly my poor usage of passive and what my then seemed logical skill function will be targets of a change, but also any new conclusions drawn from the discussion thus far will be added. Hopefully I can format the OP better as well.

Thank you all once again

@snow, no problem.

I am looking forwards to when they put class balance as a CDI topic. With any hope we can work on some idea’s before then.

Hey guys, thanks for posting =)
I’ll try to reply to everyone, I hope I have enough time ^^
First I’ll start by catching up though.

@Shadowfall, Guild Wars is a definitely a good example of armor being the sole determining factor. I personally think it would work in the sequel as well, but that’s just speculation.

I do admit, I’ve always been a tank/bunker personality myself, so it is good to hear the glass cannon side of things. Class variety is definitely a touchy subject, but I think its important to think how much a role the base stats really play. They might be more important than I first thought, seeing as there is strong arguments against changing it. But, I think with the available choices you can make a glass cannon out of any class without forcing a class that to either waste stats to be normal, or in other words forcing some classes to be glassy.

If your stats were a bit equalized, with just the armor difference giving a slight (300ish stats 20ish %) push towards being glassy, you can still choose to go full zerker (etc), and take offensive traits and utilities. You’ll get your cannon, and earth elementalists who like to pretend they are mountains can be bunker by taking other stats. There would be choice.

Changes like making certain attacks more powerful, particularly on weaker classes base stat wise have been the sign of hope I have been waiting for, but it isn’t happening and by all signs it isn’t going to happen. If they want to balance so everyone comes similar damage wise, an understandable concept based on the current state of pve, then this system is a relic that needs to be addressed. If they don’t want to do that, then why don’t they just balance so classes have to make choices between offense and defensive abilities, without forcing some classes to take more defense! (inherent defense might work, but some classes defenses are simply better than others. If they had a level field, then maybe they could balance it out..)

Ranged vs melee is its own beast in itself. I think, if you don’t mind, that I’m going to leave it right now for what it is. I already have gotten two posts about it now, so it is an important aspect. Maybe, if we get our thoughts together into an agreeable base stat setup, we can look at the skills a bit and see how balancing might work with certain examples including range/melee aspects.

Thanks for your patience, and I look forward to your future insights.

@Tim, First off, thanks for clearing up what you meant. I think I get it now, and it is an excellent point. These stats can certainly act as a ballast to allow for enabling certain skills. While my first thought when I read this was “Why not remove the ballast and simply strengthen and weaken the different sides of the equation until it is balanced?” But you pointed out exactly why its not so simple. Too much weakening and it becomes pointless or worthless. Too much strengthening and there will be a power creep threatening to consume the world. Or something.

But after weighing it a bit, I don’t think it will be so drastic. If the stealth is over performing, lessen the stealth heal relationship (currently stealth can heal and can be activated at a heal) or lessen the stealth damage relationship. Same thing is already done in some invulnerability scenario’s (stealth =/= invulnerability), their ability to attack is removed, thus the damage invulnerability relationship is altered. These are of course not all balanced that way, but thats an active balance issue, so I’ll leave it for now.

If a thief choses the stealth route, it could cost him either his sustain or his damage. Which should be his choice, in the form of utilities and traits. Not saying you have stealth, so we’re taking a large chunk of your sustain, even if you weren’t planning on building around it. (evasion rears its ugly head here as well, but I’d rather see it standardized and allowing for traiting/choosing for extras [eg sword dagger get evasions + stealth, should have lower dps kind of idea (combo moves make this balancing harder than by other classes)

@ All the new posts, thank you for posting, I hope I can get back in time tonight to respond to you guys and change the OP.
And to everyone, if it seems like I’m defending my point stubbornly, I am doing this for the sake of furthering the discussion, not to be difficult. My point of view is probably very clear by now, but posts with suggestions, disagreements and agreements all help to formulate an idea, which after I change the OP I won’t be able to call solely my own anymore =). Thank you, and I look forward to answering/discussing everyone’s thoughts!

I really like the idea of having each set of armor have different advantages and disadvantages (faster cooldowns for light etc) but would not think that allowing all classes to use any armor would work at this point.

Snow.2048:

@Tim, First off, thanks for clearing up what you meant. I think I get it now, and it is an excellent point. These stats can certainly act as a ballast to allow for enabling certain skills. While my first thought when I read this was “Why not remove the ballast and simply strengthen and weaken the different sides of the equation until it is balanced?” But you pointed out exactly why its not so simple. Too much weakening and it becomes pointless or worthless. Too much strengthening and there will be a power creep threatening to consume the world. Or something.

Yes this what I meant with my post.

But after weighing it a bit, I don’t think it will be so drastic. If the stealth is over performing, lessen the stealth heal relationship (currently stealth can heal and can be activated at a heal) or lessen the stealth damage relationship. Same thing is already done in some invulnerability scenario’s (stealth =/= invulnerability), their ability to attack is removed, thus the damage invulnerability relationship is altered. These are of course not all balanced that way, but thats an active balance issue, so I’ll leave it for now.

Again from a balance point of view you are right, this will be balanced. But from a diversity point of view your treading into dangerous waters: you are moving the classes closer towards each other. By lessening the stealth heal relationship you would move stealth closer towards death shroud (death shroud does not allow healing at the moment) or by lessening stealth damage relationship you are moving closer towards invulnerability. You could say that is not a problem because stealth is really different from death shroud or invulnerability, but we have more subtle differences as well.

Let’s take as an example stances vs elixer s vs distortion . Stances are long duration, one specific type of attacks (direct, condi or cc) and allows attacking. Elixer s is medium duration, all types of damage but doesn’t allow attacking. Distortion is short-medium (depending on how much you sacrifice) duration, all types of damage and allows attacking. You can see that by modifying in the way you suggested you will move those three closer to each other and you lose diversity between classes.

Also keep in mind that I now only took simple, small scale examples, but in large scales those diversity issues will make this even more complex.

Snow.2048:

If a thief choses the stealth route, it could cost him either his sustain or his damage. Which should be his choice, in the form of utilities and traits. Not saying you have stealth, so we’re taking a large chunk of your sustain, even if you weren’t planning on building around it. (evasion rears its ugly head here as well, but I’d rather see it standardized and allowing for traiting/choosing for extras [eg sword dagger get evasions + stealth, should have lower dps kind of idea (combo moves make this balancing harder than by other classes)

I don’t get what you try to say with this one. Isn’t that why we have only 70 trait points, only one healing skill slot, three utilities skill slot and on elite skill slot ?

Agreed. The base health variation is the biggest obstacle to balance.

Balance to the middle.

Bombsaway.7198:

I agree. The more armor you have, the less damage you should be able to do.

That is a pretty gross oversimplification. Armor is only a portion of what is "survivability" and arguably isn’t even the most important stat or mechanic for surviving.

Remember, the warrior when it came out had more damage then it does now and had the most armor (still has the most armor alongside Guardian) and they were still nowhere to be seen in the meta.

Which means it isn’t as black and white as you and other people paint it. If people demand that every class have equal health/armor then I wish to have equal amounts of evades and stealth as thieves/mesmers.

killahmayne.9518:

Bombsaway.7198:

I agree. The more armor you have, the less damage you should be able to do.

That is a pretty gross oversimplification. Armor is only a portion of what is “survivability” and arguably isn’t even the most important stat or mechanic for surviving.

Remember, the warrior when it came out had more damage then it does now and had the most armor (still has the most armor alongside Guardian) and they were still nowhere to be seen in the meta.

Which means it isn’t as black and white as you and other people paint it. If people demand that every class have equal health/armor then I wish to have equal amounts of evades and stealth as thieves/mesmers.

What the OP wants is that Passive abilities should be balanced by other passive abilities while actives balance out other actives.

Translation:

1) the warrior should not have 500 – 1100 more stat points than other characters, he can have 500 more vitatity that’s ok, but other classes get 500 somewhere else.

2) The warriors actives on the other hand should be as powerful (but different) than stealth/ clones/ etc.

We are working on the passives first as they are much easier to balance and are very readily not balanced. Balancing actives will take a little more time as they are trickier, but the current system has the warrior with 900 more stat points balancing out stealth. That is not a really good system (i.e. what did the elementalist trade for 1100 stat points).

Shadowfall.6543:

[….]
That is not a really good system (i.e. what did the elementalist trade for 1100 stat points).

Nice animations

Signed : a handicap-mentalist

Very interesting and i’ve been saying such for a while.

The big mistake in the game came with the lack of holy trinity. They said we’re not going to have tanks/healers/dps etc….but we are going to have heavy armour and higher hps for some classes.

At that exact point they created the trinity. They made the tank class and they gave the tank class dps.

Theoretically they should have given the light armour/low hps class highest ranged dps (the elementalist), but it never occured. Now eles post nerfs are left having low hps, low armour and nothing to really compensate them for it. They can’t spec very glassy as other ‘glass’ classes (warriors) with twice the hps and armour yet having the same damage, will tear through them. With skills like dogged march and near condition immunity, kiting isn’t an option.

Almost every class has gap closers so unless the ele specs defensively (and by doing so ends up with low damage), he’s not going to last very long.

There’s a good reason everyone goes for eles first in combat, and it’s not because they’re worried about what sort of damage they can put out.

Also don’t bring up staff +whirlwind combo, it’s completely situational and in a 5v5 would do nothing.

in a proper balanced setting, high armor / high HP classes are effective only on melee range.
low armor low HP classes are effective on longer range.

AOE damage should be lower that cleaves and cleaves should be lower than single target attacks.

in our current profession balance, hight HP high armor classes not only can use ranged weapons , but also easily overcome the gap between melee range and long range and deliver very high damage.

the most high hitting attacks are the ones who hit several targets or the ones that cleave. most of the single target attacks are lame and used as fillers until the high damage AOE comes of CD again.

Lalangamena:

In many games what you say is true. In GW2, you have dodging which effectively is a gap closer (you miss my spike ranged damage) and there are way too many gap closers to effectively keep melee away from ranged damage. A warrior doesn’t enter a fight with a ranger at half health for example.

Likewise, the game lacks enough crowd control for what you are suggesting (as many characters rather than seeing it as essential for ranged v melee damage see CC as frustrating and taking control from them). Classic melee v ranged argument.

So, the normal reasons for stat imbalances just don’t play out well here. Ranged in general is UP to melee in this game which is a bad thing.

There is an unsolvable problem by balancing passives by active abilities, in the fact that active abilities depend on player skill whereas passives do not. Due to that fact the class with actives is either OP when played by good players and good for normal players, or good in the hands of great players and UP for average players. That is an unsolvable problem seen isn classes like ele and thief.

Ele good healing made it playable by everyone but scaled to unkillable bunkers in the hand of good players. Then we had the same problem with ele mobility before RTL nerf. The mobility was imba in the hands of great players while being vital for normal players. After both got nerfed we have a playable class for great players which is UP in the hand of normal players.

We see the same problem with stealth/evades abou thieves. Too much in the hands of good players or useless for everyone else. Guardians also can carry a team in PvP or PvE in the hands of a great player while being nice to play for everyone else.

Theese 3 classes will stay unbalanceable as long as the base health gap stays so big in my opinion.

I am unable to edit the OP. Is there a timer for this?
Oh well, good thing I always keep a copy before I post something, maybe I can change things in a bit.

A lot of people have posted since I last checked, and I’m just falling more behind. So I want to start with the customary, and well-deserved “Thank You!” for all the input. I will continue to attempt to respond to everyone.

@Stx, I think it would cost the same amounts of time and resources in pve. In fact, it might cost that time and resources for both pve and pvp each, as they need completely different balances. It would probably be best to do the one at the time, leaving one for a later date. If we assume, however, that they plan to increase the challenge of pve by adding more pressure (and perhaps a bit less spike) the difference would be a lot less dangerous then I see it now.

I would personally think that doing the change in pvp first, where the stat differences are more significant would be a good way to go, and then adjust the pvp model for pve at a later date after balancing, it would be a lot less to chew. But to be fair, the other way would work just as well I’m sure. I think you are right in that only one should be the target of the change, but I believe the other should follow (and use this chance to fully seperate the two forms please!) in time. Which goes when is something I think is more an opinion, with good arguments on both sides.

@Lalangamena Energy is hard to balance, particularly with stats. It is very active. Of course, that is why you mention the free choice. It sounds good in theory, but unless they give ridiculously low bonuses on light armor, I think it will be lopsided. Everyone would migrate toward light, because if you can dodge and use defensive skills more often, why bother bringing boring stats to do the work inefficiently for you.

I think this is a cool concept, and it could very well work if they focused the balancing on the armor so it ended up perfect, but it would still require a skill/trait balance on top of the armor balancing itself and thus cost even more effort.

@Carighan, I play D&D 3.5, where heavy armor maxes your ability to “dodge” by capping your dex bonus to defense, which sounds comparable. But I don’t think it will work in Guild Wars 2. It worked in P&P because that was all math, if one of your players could do a push up once every few turns (based on how much dex bonus to defense they have[in your case, how much P.def they have]) and get an automatic win on their defensive roll (on multiple targets potentially), then light armor has an advantage that heavy wouldn’t (unless you couldn’t do a push up [= less skilled])
For those who don’t get the metaphor, Dodge is an extremely powerful active whose potential is a variable based on twitch skill, enemy attacks and knowledge of the game, thus cannot be put against stats.

@ Jihm, Yes, and this is a good example of the things that happen due to the difficulty tracking the balance in the overly complex system.

@ All, time to run again, but this time I know I’ll be back. I’ll be back at it soon

@Chaosky, The balancing, or rather the choice between being evasion or damaging is a good example of what I would hope to achieve as an end product. These are both active effects and the choices and the balancing should be based there, not off of stats that cost build variety. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself XD

I think that armor choices would be a cool idea too, I remember playing a rogue-like and learning how to use heavy armor for s&gs on a dwarven mage fondly. I think that the armor type does play a role in the recognizing the class though, in a game that is very dependent on visual tells. To be honest, it isn’t a very necessary one imo, but it is something to think about. In a power/toughness situation under the current pve set up would mean everyone wears light. In wvw zergs everyone would wear heavy, and in small scale pvp condition builds would definitely use heavy, while power builds are forced to choose.

Based off the c.damage/power type issues with having armors that have only power/toughness choice, I would have to disagree with this approach. This is what the stats on armor are for. Maybe it would be better to simply baseline health and armor then. Particularly in pve where damage is king.

@Bombs, On the topic of armor choices, that is my thought exactly. =)

@Tim, I’m gunna start with the short and easy to answer last part first if you don’t mind. Indeed that’s why we have those limits to slots/traits to make the choice, I just want to move the focus even further towards them in balance, especially since they are the only things that get targeted for changes.

Which brings me to the difficult part, one I didn’t address properly last time, so I’m going to try again. Your examples definitely clarify the issue even further, so thank you for taking the time to present them.

The issue is basically, if skills are balanced against each other solely, it would cost class variety. My idea for the skill modifier would be a good example of what we should not do if we take this problem into account. My method of solving the balance issue would probably lead down the road of making even(er) layers of effects and the like. This could very well have the result you predict. A problem indeed, but I’m not sure if we should look at base stat differences as the solution.

Each class has many skills, can do different conditions ,gain different boons, have unique f skills, can gain different things with traits and have different ranges, effect areas. Why can’t we balance unique with unique, and don’t give certain effects too much bonus so that everyone has to make trade offs. Guardians get more boons, but less conditions, necromancers the opposite. Their base stats are the opposite. Removing the base stats would not take away that variety in this case.

The balance doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly get access to everything, or even that anyone should get new access to something. The values simply change. Maybe some skills will be brought more into line with other skills, and some will become much more similar between two or three classes in certain specific cases. But these skills are often skills that are the target of complaints right now.

I think that the sheer amount of things that have to be balanced for right now can miss one or two static stat differences. List all the conditions, then all the boons, then look at the availability to each class on what cooldowns on what durations, then add all the skills that are unique to the class, including weapon skills, heals, utilities etc (you can probably leave out most signets for exmple). List all the traits that are unique to one or two classes with a note of what stats come with it. List all the heals and their sources, their cool downs. List all the tells, the casting times, the chance of it being interrupted. List all the interrupts, what time, how long, is it blockable, can you cast it when knocked down? Pay attention to the range and cool downs. Hell include the range to everything I mentioned, and include the aoe form. Then add combo feilds and finishers.
I probably missed a bunch, but the point remains. Base stats are a small part of a whole, uniqueness and balance can probably be found together without them. If it is easier to find the balance while retaining the uniqueness without two factors in the large list of factors, why not do it? (besides the fact its a large undertaking).

The skill modifier should be a way of trying to incorporate all these crazy variables (many are yes/no luckily), but could easily be over simplified and result in your worries, so I now have doubts about it myself.

I hope I came closer to the real issue this time. Thanks for your patience and persistence!

@Axialbloom, Thanks for posting =) It indeed seems to be that way to me and several others, and hopefully we can bring the issue into a full light scrutiny.

@Bombs Thanks for helping keep my thread alive Bombs =) If you don’t mind, could you elaborate on why you think the middle is the best option?

@Killahmayne, It is definitely a simplification, perhaps it would be better to say the less defense you have, the more offense you should have. Armor is in my mind not the most important factor, actives are. But armor does complicate things, so I would hope to balance the passives in order to better tackle the actives. Warriors were screwed, then got a buff because armor doesn’t make the difference in a fight in several aspects of the game. Now they have too much. The static stats should not be balanced with actives, but with each other to avoid this kind of problem.

[When I say actives I usually also mean things like traits, etc even if they arn’t technically active. Stats versus no stats might be more accurate]

@ Shadowfall, I should probably quote you as the thread’s tl,dr XD You explain it easier and simplier than I do ^^

@Tactu, Who knows, the awesome effects might have been considered part of the balance at some point =P

@All I’m starting to catch up! ^^ I’m gonna actually play the game for a bit XD I’ll be back in a bit to try to finish responding. Thanks for all your input, and I hope the discussion continues so I have more good stuff to read (I am always caught up with reading the thread before posting btw)

@Phaeris, That is a very good point and could very well explain why it was implemented in the first place. Without the holy trinity, you can say that there is less point in base stat differences. I think that the holy trinity is a logical growth from stat differentiation, that originally served to allow for ranged attacks to exist, particularly magic attacks that created class diversity in many games. In Guild Wars 2 this is a relic from an old model that lead to the very system they were trying to leave.

Down with the trinity, down with the base stat differences

@Lalangamena, What you say is true, and you can see it working in many games. But the problem is that in this game every class has melee/range options, and everyone has active defenses. Bombs made a good point with the amount of gap closers vs escapes and the presence of dodges. Realizing this, I think we should move away from that method of doing things, towards a new method based on player choice and character specific abilities (I’m starting to sound like a broken record here I think, sorry) that is no longer hindered by stat differences.

@Bombs Excellent points that match what I was thinking ^^ I highlighted your name in my response because of this, you definitely deserve the credit for the answer.

@Terminatorkobold You win the thread, for now… (twitchy eyes). Bravo! Player skill creates too much variability which forces the game designers to choose whether they want the game/class to be hard core entry or casual friendly. If these are balanced, they can draw the line wherever they want, but the last thing they should do is include a static something like base stats. Again, bravo!

@All.. Hahahaha I caught up!! My conclusion at this point is that we definitely are on the right track looking at Base Stats, but we must be wary of the pitfalls mentioned! We don’t want to kill class variety, nor can we ignore what we are looking at here. I can say at this point, I still feel that stats should be balanced with stats and actives with actives. I further am convinced that pursuing this line of balance and thought will lead to a much brighter future for the game as a whole. However, I also believe that the fix for armor could use some review, as my power solution (and other solutions that increase damage) will not be balanced in pve until they correct the way bosses fight. If we assume that they will correct this for the healthiness of the game, then I have much less problems with these solutions. Thank you all, and I look forward to any and all replies in the future.

EDIT: I managed to change the OP by adding small parts at a time. I ran out of room though. Hopefully the new style brings a better overview to the topic

Those stat difference have been taking in account. (IE) A thieve is low HP and AR gets stealth, better spike damage and great mobility / escapes. While a Elementalist with low HP and AR gets snubbed.

This has been an amazing thread to read and I found myself not skipping a word. I love a lot of what’s been said and I can’t agree more. Base stats are too spread out while the system the base stats were designed for (high hp/less damage and low hp/high damage) has lost its place.

I thought it was just me, but I was in shock and awe when anet stated ele’s damage felt like it was in a good place. As a full zerker s/d ele, the damage just doesn’t seem to meet the bar and factoring my survival, well, zerker ele says it all. I can’t bring myself to play defensive because it simply lacks just to meet the same standard most classes are accustom to with no defensive investment in traits or armor.

I really hope anet replies on the thoughts in this thread. I will continue to follow.

+1

Easy fix: Make toughness actually matter as a stat more than the base armor does and remove defensive options the higher you go with base hp, thus warriors wouldnt have en mass blocks/invuls, i dont think that necros would get changed because there is nothing to remove… , guards, eles and thieves stay the same with their blocks, invuls and evades, and engie, ranger and mesmer maybe get a tad touched in their passive defense.

BTW ele and thief, are the top pve burst and dps respectively, while guards have the highest survivablity… so on that point it is kinda balanced

I fully agree to the OP. I never understood the necessity of different tiers of HP-pools and the difference in Armor.

Just use the type of armor for the different look and bring the base hp of all professions to the middle tier of the hp pools.

+1

edit: forgot the +1

I don’t know if I agree with this because I don’t feel like it’s that simple. This came up in the Elementalist forums before and I put together a example of what I think it would look like. This just a copy of my post from that discussion.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5n.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.0.0.0.0.0.0|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.d1d.2t.0.2v.d13|p68.f1.k68.0.a2|6f.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Take this build but give the elementalist Warrior base stats and you end up with the following:

Power 2313 (no might stacks) 2663(easy 10 stacks of might)
35% chance to crit (no fury) 55% crit chance with fury (via zephyr’s boon)
83 critical damage
Warrior modified Armor = 3066 (3186 while attuned to earth)
Warrior modified Health = 19182

I am almost certain that if Ele’s HP was raised the condition management option we have now would be nerfed hard.

The ele can do alot of damage raising the hp would allow ele’s to make more mistakes therefore be more effective because we can afford to face tank damage to apply our own damage we wouldn’t need to be as careful. That is fits warriors theme of heavy armor high vit/necromancer’s attrition style play/guardian is surviving through magic but still front line heavy armor.

HP increase I think would see healing nerfed, condition removal nerfed, vigor nerfed.

I obviously would slot ether renewal, cleansing flame, probably arcane shield, and lightning flash. I still have heal on dagger 2 and 5 for sustain. The values of some heals would have to be brought up to compensate for the higher health pool. Or do you remove Eles sustain on it’s weapons skills and replace it with other skills since it now has higher health and armor? This starts to make the Ele more into a Warrior just a little different.

This would be fun to play like that but I would probably kill just about everything out there when I think of the damage I could do with that and no fear of conditions because I could handle conditions well but do a ton of damage.

TL&DR: I think it is much more complicated given the different ways the classes play now. It isn’t just that simple as making the bases stats the same. End result could be alot of very similar classes once balancing was done.

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Bombsaway.7198:

I agree. The more armor you have, the less damage you should be able to do.

This. The sad thing is, the class with the HIGHEST armor and HIGHEST Health (Warrior) also has the BEST Passive Regen, the BEST mobility and plenty of skills and traits that can be defensive enough that he needs not fear about the need of getting defensive armor – can go full Zerker and still have plenty of defence.

THIS is the biggest issue of the game. Certain classes them being Mesmer, Thief, Warrior and Engineer to an extent don’t need to worry about defence. They have SO much built into the class be it Stealth, Invul, Immunities, Leaps, teleports, Blocks and other skills/traits that they CAN go full Zerker gear wise and STILL be very tanky thanks to that

THIS is what needs to be fixed, well that and the crappy Condition Meta that we are STILL in…

Look at Ele, we are FORCED to go defensive in BOTH traits AND armor due to the fact we are the ONLY class with the lowest health and lowest armor and what else do we have? terrible utilities that aren’t as good as defensive options of other classes and yet somehow are given longer cool downs.

Because of this REQUIREMENT to build defensive to counter the already inbuilt disadvantage we are at having the lowest health and lowest armor. We don’t even get any buff to Power or anything to counter the fact we are the only class with Low health and low armor…

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

oZii.2864:

I don’t know if I agree with this because I don’t feel like it’s that simple. This came up in the Elementalist forums before and I put together a example of what I think it would look like. This just a copy of my post from that discussion.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|8.5n.h2.8.5n.0.d13.0.d14|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1g.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.1n.71m.1g.71m.0.0.0.0.0.0|2t.d1d.2v.d14.3v.d17.2v.d1d.2t.0.2v.d13|p68.f1.k68.0.a2|6f.1|1n.1u.1v.1s.28|e

Take this build but give the elementalist Warrior base stats and you end up with the following:

Power 2313 (no might stacks) 2663(easy 10 stacks of might)
35% chance to crit (no fury) 55% crit chance with fury (via zephyr’s boon)
83 critical damage
Warrior modified Armor = 3066 (3186 while attuned to earth)
Warrior modified Health = 19182

I am almost certain that if Ele’s HP was raised the condition management option we have now would be nerfed hard.

The ele can do alot of damage raising the hp would allow ele’s to make more mistakes therefore be more effective because we can afford to face tank damage to apply our own damage we wouldn’t need to be as careful. That is fits warriors theme of heavy armor high vit/necromancer’s attrition style play/guardian is surviving through magic but still front line heavy armor.

HP increase I think would see healing nerfed, condition removal nerfed, vigor nerfed.

I obviously would slot ether renewal, cleansing flame, probably arcane shield, and lightning flash. I still have heal on dagger 2 and 5 for sustain. The values of some heals would have to be brought up to compensate for the higher health pool. Or do you remove Eles sustain on it’s weapons skills and replace it with other skills since it now has higher health and armor? This starts to make the Ele more into a Warrior just a little different.

This would be fun to play like that but I would probably kill just about everything out there when I think of the damage I could do with that and no fear of conditions because I could handle conditions well but do a ton of damage.

TL&DR: I think it is much more complicated given the different ways the classes play now. It isn’t just that simple as making the bases stats the same. End result could be alot of very similar classes once balancing was done.

I have a couple of counter points.

1) I still think most people on this thread do not necessarily support setting all HP and Armor =, we just do not want to see classes getting 500-1100 extra stat points. And consider that once passives are normalized actives will need to be examined as well.

2) If we did, do you really think that build with that armor and HP would be all that broken. You talk about the condition cleanse of a elementalist is overpower… have you played a warrior they have many condition removals, better access to stability, and essentially immunity to immobilization, with only 5 seconds of swapping between weapons (that means they can swap as often as an elementalist…)

3) you really think that extra HP and Armor will allow an elementalist to face tank? I agree that it will allow elementalist a little more room for error, but right now most builds have 0 room for error (which is why so many have to use vitality armor and a lot of water).

4) If you have an elementalist and a warrior I really challenge you to play a zerker in both and compare (expecially in WvW or PvP). I think you will find both kill at roughly the same rate, but the warrior lives much longer. Also compare the relative difference in skill and coordination required for the same effect.

Andele.1306:

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

I was just testing a concept on warrior, in about than 5 seconds they can burst for over 20k + (this is in PvP too, on a quick build) (Bolo, rush, 100b, switch to rifle and f1).

if the target does not have an ability to remove immobization they eat the entire combo (which can be facerolled as rush has a long range). not to mention this burst is on a 20 second cool down, ele’s burst is on a higher one.

The elementalist DPS is just never going to be leaps and bounds beyond other classes. And consider if those builds went up against each other what would happen, the elementalist would die (most do not have 20k+ HP, this warrior build had almost 20k).

Shadowfall.6543:

snip

Lets remove my example of Elementalist then. Lets apply this to thief, necromancer, mesmer. Is it that easy to just give everyone higher base vitality and armor? Nothing else needs to be balanced just bump everyone up to the same?

Lets look at the other side of the spectrum and ask would a necromancer, guardian, warrior be able balanced with 10,805 base hp and 1836 base armor with no additional balancing needed? It isn’t as simple and bumping hp and armor up or down.

Also for the elementalist condition removal you must look at it raw no stats, no food, no traits. The elementalist has very very good condition management before you even invest into traits.

I have a necromancer also and I can’t imagine it at 10k hp base stats it would be terrible because it’s survivability is so tied to deathshroud which is a 60% of your HP no Soul reaping investment.

My point was just that there would be alot of balancing that would have to happen if hp and armor values where normalized across the board it would be as simple as sliding the scale. Once the balancing would be all said and done I don’t think you end up with a better game you just end up with classes that play almost identical with a few differences.

Shadowfall.6543:

Andele.1306:

Nutshel.7264:

@oZii.2864
you talk about warrior and ele alot, now it looks kinda like this:
warrior in zerker gear got 20k hp ele in pvt/knights got about 17k. Warrior hits ele for 7.5k eviscerates and 5k triple chops. Said ele can combo warrior(when stability is finaly down) for about 8k and that puts most of skills on cd. That might not seem so bad(it is). But if ele geared like said warrior that 7.5k hit would probably be closer to 10k which is what would be hp of that ele in zerker gear.

Other example: Warriors and eles got similar mobility one little better then other but lets say its marginal for sake of argument.
Imagine warrior being jumped by 2 other players he tanks the few hits, pops 2 cooldowns and maybe gets away with 3k hp.
In same situation ele would not even get to pop his cds(zerker) because of ultra high burst that is currently present in this game, the ele could go bunker gear but then his damage output would be minimal and survivability only barely better then that of zerker warrior(if at all).

The point is, with current game design of high damage, classes with with low health pool are at major disadvantage unless they can “diappear” if need be(thief, mesmer) – though if caught off guard same holds true. Balancing low health with in combat sustain simply doesn’t work if you can die in one or 2 hits.

Except the fact that eles have 16k burst rotations with 5/8 skills/traits used being auto targeted that can be done in less time than a full triple chop to evisce combo… not that warrior damage and invuls (or cc and regen) doesnt need to be nerfed (it does, or be given to the necro), its just you really got the tools to make up for the effective hp deficit.

I was just testing a concept on warrior, in about than 5 seconds they can burst for over 20k + (this is in PvP too, on a quick build) (Bolo, rush, 100b, switch to rifle and f1).

if the target does not have an ability to remove immobization they eat the entire combo (which can be facerolled as rush has a long range). not to mention this burst is on a 20 second cool down, ele’s burst is on a higher one.

The elementalist DPS is just never going to be leaps and bounds beyond other classes. And consider if those builds went up against each other what would happen, the elementalist would die (most do not have 20k+ HP, this warrior build had almost 20k).

What? That’s spreadsheet PvP. That requires no condition removal and no available block, blind, endurance, invuln, Stun/Daze, weakness, evade. Who doesn’t take condition removal and who doesn’t have any of those things available to them?

Have you seen what a S/D Ele can do in 5 seconds? Sure it’s gimmicky but so is what you described.

Any PvE guru will point out that a Warrior doesn’t out damage a Elementalist in theoretical damage the Warrior is just easier to perform but the Warrior is the pick up and play class of Guild Wars 2. You don’t see Lightning Hammer D/F or S/x Ele’s in PvP and you don’t see GS+Bola+Rifle Warriors either.

oZii.2864:

Shadowfall.6543:

snip

Lets look at the other side of the spectrum and ask would a necromancer, guardian, warrior be able balanced with 10,805 base hp and 1836 base armor with no additional balancing needed? It isn’t as simple and bumping hp and armor up or down.

As a guardian player I would approve of this if only to take warriors down 50 million pegs. Either that or improve my regen virtue!