Guild Wars 2

TL;DR – just what the title says, I’m not abridging my carefully thought-out reasons. You’re on a forum, so read.

Is it just me, or does ArenaNet seem to like taking the opposite approach to an ideal solution? Every time there’s something imbalanced or abused, ArenaNet prefers to treat it as a loop hole to close rather than a free ride to make more challenging.

Let’s take dungeons, for example. Path A of a given dungeon is run frequently by people because they have developed a strategy to overcome a boss’ strength, thereby making the run easier. Path B is too long and nobody wants to do it because all of the bosses have hit point pools that border on preposterous. Path C involves a boss who flagrantly abuses crowd controls to the point people have to fight him in a small corner so people aren’t wiping left, right, and center.

Now, people are making a choice regarding what path to run based on one factor: player skill. Path A offers the most rewarding experience for what they’ve spent the last hundred hours or so levelling to learn. Path B, on the other hand, is tedious because you watch your damage barely scratching the surface of the boss’ health fight after fight. Finally, Path C is merely an exercise in stacking with the rest of the carefully thought-out (or not so much) dungeon being ignored.

In this fictitious example, there are two solutions that are available for ArenaNet to choose from.
1. Reduce the health on the bosses in Path B (like they did in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons for solo monsters upon realizing that the fights go on to the point that all the players have spent all of their encounters and dailies and are, essentially, trying to melt a glacier by kitten on it) and make the path quicker; and for Path C re-do the crowd-control so that it allows players to use their abilities to avoid or outlast it. OR
2. Destroy the only redeeming feature of the dungeon, Path A. Spawn tons more adds, buff a bunch of boss abilities, add frustrating unavoidable crowd-control.

The most aggravating thing as a player is for all of my strengths to be negated. Going back to Dungeons & Dragons… it is the hallmark of a bad DM to make a challenge that intentionally neutralizes all of the party’s strength rather than giving them the opportunity to exercise what it is they’ve built their characters to do. It’s much the same with dungeons in Guild Wars… we’re punished for being creative.

I’m not saying that dungeons and fights should simply be a matter of hitting the boss until it breaks. But when we have to resort to stacking in a corner or otherwise subverting the dev’s attempts to subvert our abilities… the entire exercise loses its meaning.

This also applies to character builds. In Guild Wars 1 I saw so many abilities get nerfed into uselessness because people had learned to base viable strategies around them. Again, ArenaNet could have, instead, improved other abilities within the class — or in other classes to more effectively counter a build. No, the solution they went for, and they continue to go for in Guild Wars 2, is to simply chop off any effective strategy at the knees.

I’m going to use an actual example this time… d/d elementalists. I am afraid for what will happen to the class when ArenaNet decides to “improve online play”. Here you have a class that has been broken by the AoE cap, and they’ve had to find some other way to be useful. The d/d bunker ele build is strong and should remain that way… it’s the only thing elementalists have left in pvp/wvw. Take it out and I am retiring my elementalist from wvw because it would be an exercise in futility to take him in expecting victory. Elementalists are outclassed in armour, health, and DPS. It takes an entire build based around survivability to make them able to hold their weight in a fight.

What can you do instead of nerfing them? How about improving other classes to make a natural counter to d/d eles? How about giving elementalists another viable strategy (i.e. by removing that stupid AoE cap and fixing the various other obstacles in place for elementalists)? Please develop a solution to the cause of the problem, not the symptom. That goes for all other “imbalanced” builds, too.

Agreed. I wouldn’t mind my Necro/Warrior being raised onto a level playing field of Mesmers and Ele tanks.

It’s not about nerfs, its about adjustments. I agree, without d/d or s/d or w/e the ele is very weak in terms of staying alive and dealing great damage and/or support. Its no one’s fault that d/x or s/x is strong, but thats not to say it is fair to other professions.

Take into account how well a d/x s/x can burst people (and yes, s/x is extremely predictable and you have to be brain dead to get hit by dt). It is comparable to a thief in full power/crit damage gear yet they can spec through traits to outlive a necro if they master that build. Buffing everyone to have 1 build comparable to a d/x or s/x ele would just lead to non sense exploding fights like d3 and that isn’t exciting or entertaining to those who want a challenge or variety.

At this point, a mix of nerfs + buffs is what is needed imo. There needs to be adjustments to the “over used” builds as well as adjustments to the “useless” builds and skills. Biggest problem is, they occur once a month. Why? Probably because there is a lot on the table for ArenaNet to work on and expecting weekly patches isn’t a good use of their resources (a dev once said, when a patch is released it affects the whole team. Hotfixes are only made when an issue needs to be addressed immediatly like a exploit or serious bug). Truthfully, I think it’d be nice to see bi-weekly pvp balance patches but then pve and wvw users will be upset that they don’t get that kind of attention (not calling them whiners, its just how things work) and anet is getting their limbs yanked in various directions that even a spider can’t work with.

As it stands, through guild missions and wxp there is plenty to do but some others may want more so pvp will never get the full attention it deserves unfortuantly (which is the core of profession balance imo). Can only wait patiently by their side.