Guild Wars 2

So i wrote this post for Guru’s thread regarding the difficulty on dungeons (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/67240-dungeons-are-too-hard-i-know-i-know-thousandth-thread-on-this), but i don’t think the dungeons are overly difficult at all – but they’re the only way to see the discrepancies between professions at the moment.
I took a while to think about it and got even more englithened during the whole writing of the comparison, and i think i nailed the main reason why we see so many heavy armor users out there in PvE.

Again, please keep in mind that all the below is from a PvE perspective, and shows only during dungeons, and harder fights at that.

I think the main problem with thieves and warriors is that they actually can go full dps, nearly ignoring speccing into survival or support, because of their profession ‘mechanic’ – thieves got loads of stealth, evasion and other survival stuff built-in (LDB spam, anyone?), and warrior have the highest hp/armor mix in the game, that solely making them more durable than anyone else, with a similar overall build.
Then there are medium hp and medium armor rangers who fight at 1200 range most of the time, and both bows are capable of dishing out insane dps. Pets can be used to only boost that dps or provide some fractial support or survival needed for the fight; they can also tank for a while, take damage on them from the ranger providing a while of invincibility, clear conditions…
Necros have high health and while they still are quite squishy and lack any superb survival utilities per se, Death Shroud is the only panic button they need in PvE, allowing them to survive anything and kite away until their healing skill is recharged or they get to a better position. They too can go full dps build, ignoring survival because of having it built-in in their profession mechanic to some degree – much greater than others. Sure, their dps potential is probably lower than that of an elementalist, but an elementalist can’t go full out on dmg ignoring their own survivability – and that’s the point here.

Guardians are somewhere in the middle of that road, as they have low health and high armor, but they’ve also got LOADS of defensive/survival traits, weapon skill and utilities, with the most supportive elite skill in the game, even not traited or statted at all. More so, they can build their damage around retaliation, so even when specced into pow/tough/vit they still can dish out high constant damage, via both high power and by just keeping retaliation nearly 100% time up, eating damage. Yes, i know they can’t stand there and let a boss hit them for long, they’re not invincible tanks, but they can get a few more hits on them, they have support and survival mechanics built-in as well (each or nearly each weapon skill-set has some utility stuff), while still being able to dish out decent constant damage, as 1) they don’t have to spec stats into survival thanks to minor traits and weapon skills, which they have whether they like it or not (no need to waste utilities unless it makes sense), and 2) even when specced into survival they can do reliable damage via retaliation, while still stacking might on crits and so.

I can’t say anything about high-level mesmers as i haven’t played one, but from getting my mesmer to lv30 it seems that Distortion is the main panic button you need, along with defensive illusions which still deal damage in the meantime (Phantasmal Defender ftw). Still, their support is dps-oriented, with Time Warp being a we-win-quickly elite at most boss fights in dungeons, as it boosts the others’ dps potential A LOT. From what i’ve seen, though, proper dodging and Distortion are enough to stay alive even after being hit, knocked down etc; they also still have some survival skills on weapons – primarily stealth which is an i-win button in most survival PvE situations.

I’m only starting an engineer now and haven’t played a high-level one yet at all, but it seems that engineers are at a loss when compared to everyone above. Still, medium armor and medium health combo is a bit useful, and the turrets are the GW2’s rit spirits all again – even if not so powerful, they draw aggro, provide dmg/support and can be blown up for bursts.
The damaging potential of an engineer is there, but significantly lower than of anything else, and the primary problem is their lack of, let’s say, involuntarily defense – and by that i mean defense or survival mechanic that is there, with no speccing needed (Death Shroud, Distortion, high hp/armor, LDB evasion, stealth/evasion/block on WEAPON skills). Sure, they can go pistol/shield, but then they lose out A LOT on damage and are kept away from using their kits. Their minor traits are not providing any survival either, so even traits require speccing into for some defense.
They can also build as a very nice party support, while still maintaining a constant dps output, even if not that high. They can also maintain poison on targets.

Now, there are eles. Low health, low armor – the only class like that. Pretty much no defensive minor traits and barely any defensive major traits.
Staff, the only weapon with 1200 range, has decent AoE damage output, but is more of a support way in PvE – most skills are control-based or very slow – not to mention that Meteor Shower hits quite randomly and it might happen that a long-cast immobile spell hits a group of mobile trash just once. D/D is not the way at all unless you slot all utilities with cantrips, aka using up all your utility skill slots for pure survival, potentially wasting the dps you could have slotted there (and you do as another profession). S/D is the only way, especially for single-target, long boss fights, but it’s mediocre at it’s best, except for stacking might on the whole team and providing really good blind cycling. The problem with S/D is that while you get enough control from the weapon skills to get through general PvE (launch, 2x blind, knockdown – along with Arcane Shield, you don’t need more for anything but explorable dungeons), the control skills are kitten poor against champion bosses, not to mention legendary bosses met in explorables.
As an ele, you can’t go FULL dps, because you will die in one hit, being a burden for your party rather than aid. Even in glass cannon builds, you have to slot all utilities for PURE survival (can’t compare Armor of Earth to the mentioned PD of mesmer’s, as the armor deals no damage in the meantime, etc), as you don’t get ANY from weapon skills or profession mechanic. Mind it, i’m not saying that warriors with their high armor/hp can just stand there and soak in damage, ignoring what’s going on – but it’s already MUCH more than what eles have (and still warriors can dish out more dps!).
The sad part is not only that you have to forego dps potential as ele because you lack any survival elsewhere, but that a glass cannon specced ele has less armor, less health AND deals less damage than a glass cannon specced warrior. Again, not saying that a glass cannon warrior is invincible and easy to faceroll, but the numbers are on their side, simple as that.
And i’m not even going to mention that to be somewhat mediocre as an ele, you have to cycle attunements properly

You NEED some sort of personal survival way, be it inherent mechanic (as nearly every other class has, be it in Distortion, DS or high hp/armor pool) or weapon skills which ARE THERE along your normal damaging weapon skills, if you want to spec for dps, unless you want to waste utilities (aka sacrifice real dps potential) for it. Neither ele nor engi has anything like that, even a 2s invincibility panic button or more armor to stand longer. Especially in fights like the CoF1 effigy, where you WILL eat some AoE hits and knockdowns, even with lightning reflexes on dodging.
And while the whole above comparison is aimed at showing how eles suck in PvE atm because of wrong profession balance, pretty much like mesmers in GW1 before their update (or even as eles in HM, except that eles in GW1 could go e/mo for bonding or go warding, could spec beneficial party support, and it’s not an option here, as you need dps), it also shows the inherent profession discrepancies. As the game is pretty much about numbers – keeping yours up and taking enemies’ down – you need to contribute your numbers to the overall equation, and keep them as high as possible.

I’m actually pretty fine with how ele plays out in a dungeon team, as long as there’s only one ele – they can boost the dps substantially and keep others safe from conditions, slow mobs down, immobilise them and so on, letting others dish their full glass cannon damage out. It gets problematic with more elementalists present, though, as they lack the personal survival AND the dps needed to mow through content well enough. Same goes probably for having too many engineers in the team, but teams with 3 warriors are the cookie-cutter matchups right now.
Introducing a dps meter would only hurt the ones already subpar, balance-wise, and beef those classes which are superior because of their inherent mechanic (like N/Rt healers back in GW1 – you get the idea), especially that there are professions and builds which allow others to get their dps even higher, or at least to keep their dps stable and uninterrupted by silly mobs killing you.

And keeping all the above in mind, dungeons shouldn’t be based solely on dishing out the most dps while maintaining the least possible survivability, just enough to survive and dish out that damage, because professions with passive, inherent survivability are simply superior right now. That’s how CoF1 works, with poison or not.
I don’t think this might be changed, though. I mean – sure, you can tone down CoF1, but in the end the game is and will be about keeping your numbers up and taking enemy numbers down, no matter what you do, what interesting mechanics you introduce and what puzzles you add to dungeons. That’s how games work – you have some failure condition and some win conditions, and it’s always down to numbers – for some games it’s about timing and collecting stuff, for some it’s about your health and damage vs your target’s health and damage.

What does have to change, or get toned a bit, is the relative balance of the classes WITH keeping their inherent class mechanics and WEAPON skills in mind, as well as MINOR traits – because those are the things that you get, whether you want them or not, involuntarily and can’t leave them behind when speccing up. A better spread of survival/dps minor traits, weapon skills and inherent mechanics is required; not only within a specific profession, but also all across the game.

An example would be the ele’s arcana minor trait granting you 20% crit chance on attunement swap. It’s ridiculously short. If you’re building for crit hits, you will have high crit chance from gear already – you won’t base on the minor trait to get crits, right? It’s redundant, and getting protection or even another copy of Elemental Attunement major trait would be much better. I’d make Elemental Attunement a minor trait in place of Arcane Fury, and then add a new major trait altogether. It’s just an example, and since i’m not a designer i haven’t given it much thought in regard to overall balance after such a change, and so on – but you get the idea.

Give eles and engis A BIT more survivability and support on weapon skills, minor traits and in the general profession mechanic, so that we can focus on active support and dealing damage. Balance the passive survivability and support potential across all classes, and balance the ‘numbers total’ across professions – i totally understand that warriors and guardians are and should be more durable than eles, but not while dishing out more damage and having enough support/control altogether; if you want eles to be squishier, boost their dps output, or make party-wide support more viable (no idea how to do it, though, without revamping the whole game).
Make all profession-based mechanics actually worthwhile – buff attunement-cycling eles, because right now you HAVE TO cycle attunements all the time only to stay somewhat on par, and still deal less damage while having less survivability than a gs warrior. Same goes for engineers – they have to juggle with their kits, kit skills, potions and everything they have just to stay in the loop while other professions have it much easier AND still more effective at the same time, by using their profession mechanic (or passive high hp/armor pool) and going full damage.

That’s the essence of balancing – between personal survivability while going out on damage and throwing in a control or support skill when needed. Problem is, right now there are professions clearly better at it and it’s showing in the dungeons.

Well, that’s quite a wall of text, and while it’s not the enlightened word of God everyone should agree with and follow without question, i think i’ve managed to present the main problems of profession balance for PvE right now and the route to take to keep that balance more or less proper. PvP is a whole different story…

One more thing – the better way might be to actually LIMIT the passive survival of warriors and everyone else, and then tone DOWN the dungeons so that it actually is based on player skill but doesn’t take 10 min to kill a boss (because everyone would have to spec some survival, so less dps).

While i agree with most of this analysis, and i haven’t played all professions upto a high level (yet). I do have some notes…

The first would be about the Elementalist, they have 2 elementals that function both as a meatshield and DPS source? I don’t see you mentioning them as part of elemental gameplay, while they perform the same feature as a pet does for the ranger…

The other is about the general idea about this analysis, why should all classes be equal? In this sense i am mostly looking at the engineer, i have been playing one and yes it is a fairly hard profession to play, esp. to solo with. Still though, i rather like the challenge it brings with it, see my main is a ranger and while it has it’s annoyances (mainly with pets) it’s a great profession for both solo and group play, it also seems fairly well equiped to fight in all ranges. I would go as far as calling it a ‘bread & butter’-profession… Sometimes though i feel the need to throw a bit more at myself, work a lil harder and be a bit more on my toes.

The engineer gives me this challenge, so in all i am not annoyed by it, in fact the experiences with the engineer increase my skills for other professions as well. So while i understand and agree with your conclusion, i do not agree with this analysis having to lead to making every profession a ‘bread & butter’-profession. Some professions are just harder to play than others, and why is that wrong?

You can’t keep the elementals up 100% time. They die quite fast, both because of short lifespan and low health (bar the earth one). Make at least the elite elemental more or less maintainable, with like 20s downtime total, and it might be compared to engi’s turrets or ranger’s pet.
Only fire elemental’s dps is somewhat nice, especially that it’s AoE, but it’s pretty much paper – it has evading attacks, but it’s quite random and once it eats a hit in a dungeon, it’s down. Welcome to the skill recharge!
They could be a bit more durable. Or with less downtime. Or at least make the proper skill recharge start once you have summoned them, and not once they have died.
I’ve been running double elemental build since the beginning but it feels lackluster except for solo play; both for dungeons and event running, arcanes are probably much more useful.

I’m not saying that all classes should be equal; especially not in their playstyle, not their feel. ANet once said that all classes will be equally viable, though, and you should pick the style you want, the general profession feel, not the way it deals damage or handles survival. Pick what you feel you like the most and go with it to be on par with everyone else.

I think it’s still attainable. It would require a lot of changes and a change in the basic approach, but this potential is still there.

First off, accept what the game is about – numbers. It’s about keeping your numbers as high as possible while reducing your targets’ numbers. In the least time – again numbers.
There are three things you can do – dish out damage, keep yourself alive or keep your teammates alive. There are lots of ways to do it, and stacking might on your warriors contributes to the first thing as well, and keeping mobs disabled contributes to the third thing. There are lots of mechanics, direct and indirect, but essentially it’s down to those three things.
The case of GW2 is the shift of keeping others alive and buffing them to keeping yourself alive and buffing yourself. The 6th skill is, usually, all the heal you need. I’m not ignoring the usefulness of Healing Rain, don’t get me wrong. But your traditional MMO with healers have specific people who heal OTHERS, keep OTHERS alive and beef them with boons, buffs, whatever. GW2 handles it differently, making YOU primarily responsible for your own survival, and doesn’t matter what profession are you.
Party-wide support is mostly available via combos, and while proper and FULL utilising combo fields is really awesome, it’s also not only hard to coordinate, but also takes you away from doing something else. Example: one blast finisher in a water field is cool, but it’s 4~6 blast finishers that will substantially heal your whole party in a quick burst. As a staff ele providing the water field, you may throw two blast finishers at most, and you need your teammates to keep their finishers for that particular field, aka refrain from using some skills until they are allowed because of the combo field. As a staff ele in dungeons, i also ran into the issue of field overwriting – i throw in my water fields and try to hit my both blasts in them to provide some k health to everyone only to see that my teammate mesmer has thrown his Chaos Storm at the very same spot. So even when voice coordinated, you purposely refrain your teammates from using their fields or finishers, waiting for you to pull that one field off. Of course proper coordination will come over time and it will boost the party-wide support viability, but it will never surpass the personal survival – you will always be responsible for your own kitten even if you’ll be able to support others better once we have learnt it.

I agree on everything you said. My main is a lvl 80 ranger, and it’s so fun and easy to play, (not that it doesn’t require any skill) but they just got the tools. On my ranger I can solo 5 veterans without barely getting hit. The damage output is really high without doing much effort, and you can totally focus about kiting cc rather then doing dmg, since your autoattack mostly does greater dmg then your skills.

I also have a lvl 71 elementalist now. And I really like the class, they are great in teams but indeed, once you have more then one ele in the group the party tends to get rolled, just because ele’s get 1-hit. Even with full survivability you are still very squishy. And when you go full survival you basicly lose all your dps.

In dungeons I try to take it easy, and the dmg is pretty good. But if it comes to solo ele’s just suck. While I kite around 5 veterans on my ranger it’s impossible to do that on your ele. Mostly because they rely on AOE-groundplaced targeting instead of a strong autoattack. But even if you are great in doing all that and you try to kite mobs into your aoe the dmg is very little and everything goes superslow.

They should re-think the concept of elementalists because they are so squishy and the dmg is so low compared to other classes. It would be nice that the dmg would atleast match the other classes dmg if you spec DPS. And yeah, more survival in traits would be nice too.

Currently, there is no reason to play a non-heavy class. 5 warriors, properly equipped & traited, will consume any content in the game faster & better than any other combination of classes.

There are no enrage timers. Until there is, the above will be true.

Please note: I hate enrage timers. But this current situation is the cost of poor design, poor planning, and attempting to remove “role” from “role playing game”.

Then it’s about figuring out a variety of playstyles based on the professions’ feeling, within the game mechanics, and keeping the above in mind. So give everyone a way to deal damage, give everyone a way to keep themselves alive and give everyone a way to support the party. Various mechanics fall into each of this category, and most mechanics are a bit of everything. Control keeps mobs from hitting you and your allies, while usually still dealing some damage. And so on.

I’m not a game designer, so i won’t provide details on those playstyles now. This is more or less covered, but the current way is out of touch with the primary issue. First off, game mechanics should be balanced, so that condition builds are equally viable, in the long run and keeping everything in mind, as pure direct damage builds; they might deal less overall damage, but benefit the party with more control (blinding, poisoning, chilling), providing constant damage over time rather than bursts; direct damage might provide quick bursts but be able to do so only once in a while (rather than nearly spam 100b in front of a champion in dungeons). Balance out combo fields so that they’re not spammed out; let us spam finishers instead (the worst thing here: guardian’s gs2 skill – at least make that symbol last shorter, because that symbol alone makes it impossible to use any other combo field near a guardian gs-ing a boss – unless we want a teammember to refrain from using one of their skills…).

The differences should be about playstyle and the feeling, not as much about profession capabilities. Sure, some niches are fine, but granting warriors high armor, high health pool AND high burst dps with nice party support via shouts and banners is going over the top, especially when compared to low armor, low health, mediocre damage elementalists. If you want to make warriors more durable than everyone else, make them lose out on something and be weaker in another field than everyone else – that’s balance with discrepancies.

Still, as the game actually works, with its current mechanics, it’s about having just enough survival to, well, survive, and putting everything into dps. By survival i mean personal heal/buffs, party support and control, and possibly other things (dodging, utilising terrain, etc).
In general, the more survival you bring with yourself, the less you need others to fill it for you. The better player you are, the better at dodging you are, the better you are at keeping proper range, the less support you need from your party members. That’s obvious. We all are required to bring some survival in our 6th skill slot, and this is the basic, most useful and most important active survival skill.
Active survival – that’s important, too. If you have a lot of health and armor, if you have MINOR traits speccing you for survival, if you have some WEAPON skills for survival – you have passive survival. Why are minor traits and weapon skills passive? Because you don’t choose them. I mean – yeah, you do choose your weapons and trait build, but you focus on getting the major traits or the stat boosts, not minors; minors are also, well, minor boosts, so they come ‘by the way’. If you get anything useful ‘by the way’, especially for passive survival, you’re better off than half the professions and 90% builds out there. Same goes for weapon – even if you choose a fully defensive weapon, you still are required to bring damaging weapon skills.

Having passive survival lets you ignore utility defensive skills and slot only offensive ones, contributing to taking the enemy numbers down – because you have your own numbers already secured by the game’s mechanics (and, to a degree, your own player skills), and not your choice of build.

What has to be balanced out, in the long run, across the professions, is the total capabilities AND requirements when it comes to passive survival (health, armor, minor traits, weapon skills, ‘side effects’ of skills, dodging, etc), active survival (healing skill, utility skills, building up your equipment for toughness and vitality) and damage output (everything else). The variety of mechanics should be taken into account, too, keeping the control/support/direct damage/condition damage differences in mind.
For example, if you already have high armor and high health, why on earth should you get passive health regen from your healing skill? Sure, Healing Signet is not the optimal 6th skill now (because of the usage of adrenaline – or actually not using it, but keeping it constantly up, as flat % more damage from a major trait is better than hitting a mob for a bit more from time to time), but it’s there. We shouldn’t have tanks, just as we shouldn’t have healers, so don’t let a player build to be nigh invincible in the open-world PvE – both warriors and guardians can, still dishing out insane damage (mainly because you still get +power on your gear even when going tough/vit).

Specific nerf requests will simply be perceived as class envy. True class envy or not, that is the reality.

ArenaNet is not going to recant. They want the R in RPG to vanish, and until that fundamental design philosophy changes, it is extremely unlikely you’ll see the changes you suggest.

Also, if they were to start down the path you suggest, it would require retuning every single ability in the entire game, along with adjusting all the stats on all the equipment in the entire game, retroactively.

I’m sure you can imagine the impact that would have on the game, now, or at any point in the future.
This has already been done several times in several other MMO’s, and in the case of AC2 and SWG, it actually killed both games (sure, it took a few years for SWG to die, but only a few months for AC2). Every time EQ2 did this (massive sweeping balance/combat changes) it netted them exactly one consistent result: Fewer customers.

How to tackle it then?

I believe each profession should be balanced out, keeping the above things in mind, with others, not just within itself, or we’ll get GW1 HM eles being only warders/tanks/healers again, not to mention the pre-buff mesmers in PvE. That’s a start – don’t just balance a profession to be ‘fun’, but to be somewhat equally viable with other professions.

Then i’d think about introducing two ‘thresholds’ of playstyles. Whether we like it or not – and i hate it – there will be ‘best builds’ for any given profession out there, simply because the game is about numbers; you will have builds having enough survival numbers and dishing out the most damage numbers. Whether we like it or not, and whether other builds are more or less fun, effective-wise we will have best builds.

So make them hard to play. On every class, not just engineer and elementalist. It’s outrageous that those two have to juggle everything they have, utilise every single skill, think long about every trait point they spend just to be on par while heavy users can just bash and smash, maintaining a minimum of active survival, and still dealing more dps.
Identify the cookie-cutter builds of professions, tone them down a little and make them require some serious player skill. One wrong dodge with the cookie-cutter warrior and you’re down. I’m afraid that is not possible with how the game works now, but you get the idea, and surely it can be expanded that way. Bottom line is – make the most powerful and useful builds hard to play, rather than making a profession hard to play at all just to be mediocre.

That’s the upper threshold. But introduce also the lower threshold, with its own builds, with its own ‘good’ and ‘bad’ builds, but easier to actually play. THEN balance the game’s content so that open-world PvE and story mode dungeons are manageable with somewhat decent lower threshold builds, while explorable dungeons require more and more upper threshold builds, aka the player skill involvement is getting higher.
Scale your player input with the numbers you have or are dishing out.

Right now we have professions which are easier to play than others, both on lower levels and on lv80; both to just ‘have fun’ in PvE and to squeeze the most you can from your character.
It’s fine, really. But, first of all, make those differences a bit smaller. If not, we’ll have GW1 sins all over again, as one profession will dominate the whole PvE scene – and while i’ve never ran SF sins in GW1 for over three years of playing, i did feel like losing out in the game on something, not being accepted into pugs, not making coin as those who decided to run the cookie-cutter, most dev-loved profession.
Second, turn those differences around. The easier professions to master should have a little bit lower numbers, in the end, than those which are harder to master. Think that warriors are hard because of melee range and being immobile during 100b? Try playing an elementalist, properly cycling attunements and trying to stay alive with low armor/hp, while also trying – just trying, unfortunately – to deal damage or support your party.

Playing an engineer or an elementalist, and playing them correctly, should be more rewarding not only because of fun, but also because of numbers – simply because they’re much harder to drive, even when not going after the top-notch build.

Then again, eles have their own problems, inherent to their profession mechanic (constant attunement dancing defies the passive bonuses of attunements, for example), but that’s for a whole new rant…

It actually doesn’t require that drastic changes, imho.

Revamp elementalists – mostly because their profession mechanic, attunements, are not a boost to you, an additional thing you can use, but it’s something required to stay in the loop and be useful at all.
DS is a panic button. Adrenaline is more % of damage or a burst hit from time to time. Steal can be traited to be useful, but can be totally ignored. Pets are useful even when completely ignored, aka not traited and you’re not using pet-specific utilities – of course they’re less useful, but imagine a ranger without a pet altogether – still viable. Attunement swapping is there as a requirement, and the whole elementalist is balanced around having access to 20 weapon skills – that’s why most of them are so kitten poor, why they have long recharges, why even the autoattacks have INSANELY LONG casting times.
And if you want to spec into some passive survival, aka trait earth, you’re also getting condition damage, which would be quite nice if you had more options to apply maintainable conditions than burning from 1-2 skills and bleed from 1 (one!) skill.

So, eles call for a revamp and a serious one, and ANet has already done so with mesmers in GW1, no one raged because of that. If done relatively quickly (next 6 months), i’m sure people won’t rage about changing a class, especially if it’s buffed and not nerfed.

Now, about nerfs – you really only need to hit several things.
Take some health and armor off the heavy users; make the class differences a bit smaller.
Take some passive survival options away, but also the ele’s regen-when-in-water could be nerfed a little – because why not? If we’re toning down a whole mechanic, tone it down even on eles.
Tone down damage output on some specific skills. Tone down 100b – make it so you enter frenzy (take double damage) when you use it, even if only in PvE, so that you lose out on passive survival and HAVE TO slot more active survival utilities if you want to run it. Nerf other i-win skills a bit, either by toning them down or by introducing a special condition to them – requirement or cost.
Balance out some boons, conditions and effects. Make burning more worthwhile (shorter duration, more damage – more burst like). Tone down poison a bit – both because it’s usually the only thing that kills players in dungeons (‘omg! we need to make this dungeon more difficult! let’s throw more poison in!‘), but also because it’s the cookie-cutter way of dealing with some bosses. Tone down quickness. Make control conditions and effects generally more useful – blind should land at least 20% on bosses, and not 10%, etc, so that support is actually viable rather than going all damage.
Nerfbat some specific builds. For example, nerf LDB thief’s spam – it provides insane AoE damage, insane bleeding and makes the thief invincible for the duration of the spam, with only short windows when you can be hit. How to nerf it? Apply an additional cost on it; make the evasion effect last shorter, not for entire duration; make it more expensive on initiative; make it a chain skill with 2 identical skills, but add a higher cost to the second one… and so on. Or do something with the way thieves regenerate initiative, so it’s not THAT spammable. There are more specific builds like that – identify them, single out one part of it that would make the LEAST impact on other builds, and nerf that element.

If you make what you describe as “best builds” difficult to play, you will lose customers. Players want to feel powerful.

The point of my previous post was that the problem is not one we can solve. Until ArenaNet changes their position on this, publicly, there is no solution except to “join ’em”.

Trust me, I wish- it was different, but as you say, this game is all about numbers. It’s the same problem in Rift. It’s the same problem in any game that allows “everyone to do everything”.

You’re seeing the result of a hybrid game design. One in which there are levels, and all that brings, as well as equipment, as well as no defined roles.
ArenaNet did not choose to make a game good at one thing, they chose to try to do it all, and the cracks are showing through the varnish, I’m afraid.

There is no reason to play an elementalist vs. a warrior, strictly by the numbers. You can certainly do it if you feel that being less effective and dying more often is fun. But to most players, that is not the case. However, in ignorance, many players will try elementalists. And even play them, and even think they’re being effective, and even having fun. Until they try a warrior.

The “challenge” of the various mechanics, to any MMO vet, are simply an impediment to being effective. Press 1 button to get the job done on a Warrior/Guardian, press 2,4 or 6 buttons to get the job done on an Elementalist/Engineer. The path to effectiveness is obvious.

Tuning the abilities as they currently are, or tuning the “profession defining” mechanics will be seen as nothing but nerfs and negative. All the adjustments should have been done during development/testing/beta, but they were not. Now, every adjustment will be treated with skepticism.

No-one I know that has played MMO’s since 2005 is surprised by the consequences of this incredibly flawed design decision. We’re all happy to ride the wave as long as it lasts, and fully expect it will crash soon.

You cannot have the highest damage dealers (or even the average damage dealers) with the highest survivability and expect balance. It’s impossible.

Warrior = good at one or a few things, ele = versatile and powerful.

You’re asking nerf the warrior into one single path and make the ele into the DPS warrior or the same as they are now with more DPS while ignoring that the Ele’s lack of survivability comes from heightened abilities.

I played an Ele for a while and am continuing to level one up right now – Warrior can take more to the face, ele can do more in a group (and generally a lot easier). I do not see the problem yet.

It’s also about WHY and WHAT FOR we need the changes.

Personal story is doable with no problems as long as you’re geared on your level, as long as you are the required level, and as long as you’re not trying to faceroll your way through quests. If you know just a tiny bit about your profession and don’t sit on autoattack ignoring everything, you can do personal story just fine. Kitten easy – that’s fine!

Open-world PvE is pretty much the same. As long as you are geared – and i really only mean having masterwork items of your level, not a specific build even – and as long as you’re not trying to do a heart 4 levels over yours, you’ll be fine. That’s cool!
There are some differences, though, and visible. It’s about how professions handle doing it all, and limiting AoE to 5 targets is one of the greatest things introduced in GW2. Please more things like that! So, it’s about time – time required to run somewhere (some professions can keep perma swiftness up – everyone, with proper easily-accessible traits and utilities, should be able to, but giving up on other things!), time required to fill a heart (aka – how fast can you kill). It’s also showing in general profession difficulty, but not much – i don’t mind having to dodge three times more than a warrior to survive in open-world PvE, or to use a healing skill once more during a temple event.
More so, it’s nigh impossible to balance open-world PvE keeping numbers in mind, simply because of the amounts of players present, of its unpredictability, of its general design. This is partially why open-world PvE is so easy, as long as you don’t overaggro and keep to the BASIC stuff – if it can’t be balanced to provide a manageable challenge, it’s better to make it quite easy for everyone rather than make it faceroll-easy for some while still difficult to others.

Story-mode dungeons? That’s where the fun starts. They still are easy, but they require more active play, they require more resource-planning during longer fights (learn when to dodge, when to use skills X, Y or Z, and when it’s not worth it because of something), they introduce some puzzle parts (LOVED the CoF story mode ending! even if it was way too easy, it was VERY enjoyable), and so on.
They are still manageable when you’re geared in greens of your level. They are still manageable if you run your favourite PvE build, but are somewhat proficient with it. No min-maxing needed. 5 eles can do them just fine, so to speak.
And that’s cool – first of all, they are for story, so everyone should be able to complete them with relative ease. Second, they introduce some level of difficulty because they are an introduction to explorable-mode dungeons – so they need to require some level of player skill, but they’re still doable for everyone.

So, it’s the explorable-mode dungeons.
And, guess what! – this is where the discrepancies between professions are showing. This is where 3 eles, 1 mes and 1 guardian fail where 3 warriors, 1 nec and 1 ranger pass in flying colours. And it’s not about player skills, but general profession capabilities.
And guess what, again – explorable dungeons are probably the easiest to balance out, since you can go there only with 5 people. You can not only balance professions to be equally viable in all routes of all dungeons, even if they still are inherently different, but you can also change the routes themselves to fit the acquired profession balance as well.
They are also a decent – and the only needed! – indication of how a profession fares in PvE. If you’re useful in CoF1 and CoF3, you will surely be of use during temple and dragon events, even if only on one build – well, that’s a start! Still it’s better to have one imbagon than nothing, so to speak.

GADefence – take ele and warrior to 80, get them into explorable dungeons. As those are the only circumstances where it really shows. Then we’ll talk – but then you will have felt the discrepancies yourself and will go back to the warrior.

I’m not asking to nerfbat warriors into oblivion. But it’s obvious that if they can take more to the face, they should dish out less damage than a more squishy profession. It’s only logical. Or they should be kitten poor at support, as in – banners/shouts being the warrior’s least useful utility skills.

If you build a warrior all in berserkers, trait them into full damage output etc, you will have more health, more armor AND more damage output than an elementalist built the same way. Or an engineer. Or a necromancer.
If you build a warrior in pow/tough/vit, trait them for survival and slot survival and support skills, you have not only more health and more armor than an elementalist, but you can also dish out more damage (with 100b alone!) AND provide AT LEAST as good support using shouts and/or banners.

I’m comparing eles with warriors simply because those two professions, in my – and not only… – opinion are the two verges now, warriors being the cream on the top and eles being the worst to play in high-end PvE right now. Sure, eles are better at SOME roles than SOME professions, and warriors are worse at SOME roles than SOME professions, but across the whole board, that’s the current situation.

Eles are mediocre at everything right now and require a lot of active speccing as well as player skill to keep that way, with low hp, low health and mediocre damage output.
Warriors are awesome at those things that matter in the game – keeping your numbers up and taking down the numbers of your targets…

This all comes from a 300h ele player who’s rerolling from ele right now simply because has done everything on ele, in PvE, there is to do. 100% map completion, all story dungeons, most explorable dungeons, loads of karma – on ele.
Then i have felt the power of high level other professions and just got frustrated with the discrepancies. It’s not the matter of me being bored with the ele, because i love the way it’s played, i love attunement-cycling, and it’s obviously much more fun than spamming 100b on recharge – but i’d like it to show in numbers, too. Not just to see those numbers myself, because i couldn’t care less as long as i can get stuff done (mained a mesmer in GW1 and got GWAMM on it, pre-mesmer-buff), but simply because i feel like not contributing in my dungeon team, especially not as much as others can and do. Not being accepted to pugs if they already have one ele is not helping either…

Hit the post limit again! :p
Anyway, thanks for reading my walls of text – i know i have troubles with forming my thoughts in a more compact way.

Drkn,

Although I haven’t reached the higher end of the game yet, and I’ve yet to experience a dungeon, my impression of the Elementalist seems to be very much, if not 100%, in line with your own. I can’t speak to the Warrior, but out of the five classes I’m playing (Elementalist, Engineer, Thief, Ranger, Mesmer), my Elementalist is very, very clearly the under-performer of the lot.

It’s actually gotten to the point now where I just don’t play her solo, which is sad ‘cuz she was supposed to be my explorer (and thus my default “go to” for solo play). However, I’ve found she’s only fun on teams, in the capacity of supporting others (because she gets the chance to actually do things), so now that’s the only way I’ll play her.

I initially allowed for the possibility that this was partially due to my own shortcomings as a player, that the Elementalist was just a more demanding class to play and I simply wasn’t getting it. But I’ve since discovered my Engineer to be just as mechanically complicated, and not only do I roll along fine with her, she has managed some truly astounding feats (and survived to brag about it) that my Elementalist just would not have been able to accomplish, no matter how ‘in the zone’ I might’ve been.

Which brings me to my question: do you see the Engineer as an under-performer? It seems as though you may, and I find that difficult to believe right now, ’cuz my Engineer is da bomb (see wut I did thar?). Does the class diminish in effectiveness later in the game? Does it not pull its weight in dungeons?

Again, I don’t have a Warrior, and I probably won’t have one for a while. My Engineer is my “main” right now, and I’ve assumed she’d be my “dungeoneer”. Is that going to cause me problems?

Somewhat tanky flamethrower build is quite good, with grenade kit on your bar to switch if you need more range or fight a stationary target. In the meantime, you can dish out proper support or swap to turrets if you need some extra damage soaking – even if they’re quite squishy and not traited, they still can be deployed to just eat up the initial burst from a boss or trash, or to quickly burn through some annoying dungeon mechanic.

Still, you have to be on your toes all the time, juggle kits, quite often change your major traits and utilities, and i wouldn’t recommend doing most explorable dungeons with 3+ engis in a party – it might be and possibly is fully manageable, but just not worth the time and hassle. Unless the other two party members are warriors…

Too long, will never ever read.

A wild drkn.3429 has appeared!
drkn.3429 uses wall of text.
It’s super effective!
Azaziel fainted.

Go get a Combat Healer to revive you and read it for you in a deep sexy voice!

drkn.3429:

[…] and while it’s not the enlightened word of God everyone should agree with and follow without question[…]

And this is how you catch trolls.

Please stop making joke threads to annoy other players.

While i admit i did not read the entire thing, but i should since you took the time to write the entire thing….im feeling a bit lazy right now

I do not agree with your fix to class balance. What Anet has to do, is separate PVE and PVP stats from each other. Anet is just being lazy right now and dont want to do it. I mean, they already bothered to actually separate PVP mode with the entirety of PVE…..but why dont they do it for the stats also? Just being lazy on their part.

If Elemetalist or Engi need more survivability for PVE? Buff their Vitality or toughness FOR PVE. You dont touch the PVP part of it. There really is no need to nerf classes that are pretty balanced atm just because other classes (Ele, engi) are lacking in PVE because they might be balanced in sPvP. Confusing i know….hence the need for separate stats.

Also, i have a Warrior and Engi to level 70+. The only viable spec for engi for PVE is grenades. Engi, from what i have heard, are pretty good in sPvP. So what to do??? Separate the STATS Anet!!

We all agree rangers need nerfed there burst is to high for that type of range and mobility.