Guild Wars 2

Honestly.

I tried an elementalist, and making a proper build for one is nightmare.

Unless you find some way of finding vitality, you are screwed. Either going 20-30 points in water magic, and then its still weaker than a base ranger/engineer/mesmer or by using gear with vitality.

As a warrior or necromancer, concerns about vitality are pretty secondary. Its a nice thing to have sometimes.

I play an engineer with 200 points invested in vitality, and a naked warrior has more health than me.

To me, the difference in vitality simply makes the choice of gear for some classes really narrow, and thus builds, while for others, it makes it very open.

I don’t like that one bit.

I suggest simply going down the middle, and having everyone have a base health of 15082, with the difference in armour being the flavour, rather than huge differences in health.

Sure thing OP, we’ll just have to balance elementalists in a way conducive to your request — let’s say, by subtracting some of your burn

You aren’t unfamiliar with the law of equivalent exchange are you

And while your at it reduce the warriors health by 99% because I am pretty sure they are OP because they easily 1HKO me when they get close…

Uhaen.9876:

Sure thing OP, we’ll just have to balance elementalists in a way conducive to your request — let’s say, by subtracting some of your burn

You aren’t unfamiliar with the law of equivalent exchange are you

I’m pretty sure no one complains that Ele’s do too much damage. In fact I don’t think anyone really complains about Ele’s all that much except the Ele’s themselves. That should tell you something. And while I’m on that point, Ele’s have lower base HP than both Mesmer’s and Necros who are also clothies. The only other class with comparable HP is the Guardian who has tons of defense and armor to make up for it.

Equivalent exchange doesn’t always work…
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Fullmetal_Alchemist_-_02_-_Large_21.jpg

As a guardian, i know your pain… but i would’t want to lose my defensive abilities for more HP. Still, this leaves me terribly vulnerable to condition damage if i don’t spec removals which is silly since i’m supposed to be able to mitigate a lot and it piegoenholes me into builds that have to compensate the HP.

Not an issue of warriors having too much and being overpowered, more of an issue of elementalists, guardians and thieves having too little, so their builds are skewed in favour of finding vitality, while on the other hand, warriors and necros have so much of it, that their builds have less importance on it.

Vitality ought to be an equal value stat.

Keeping in mind there is a slight “profession bias” – a quick spin around the Elementalist forum will detail the issue in a very comprehensive way. Primarily playing an Elementalist currently, I can tell you there does seem to be room for some fine tuning (translate as: ArenaNet, please help me die less).

to put it simply
eles are glass cannon without the cannon

Hey, What about us thieves with 12k health or less lol… Eh GW1 did everyone had the same with. Wasn’t much of a fan with it I suppose there are trades to make when making the health however never got into the ele so I can’t add much :/

The funny thing is youd think the Elementalist would have huge damage since they have tiny health pools and tiny armor, but thats not the case either. Eles die quick and do pretty substandard damage as well. Playing elementalist you have to put twice the effort in, and youre rewarded with half the gain. Mesmer and Necros have more health

Specced right Thieves can crit for upwards of 6000 in one hit, no elementalist can do that, and they are more squikittenoo boot

Apo I agree with everything you said except the crit part. My highest to date was 8700.

Evil.9061:

Apo I agree with everything you said except the crit part. My highest to date was 8700.

Haha ahh I stand corrected then lol

I too wish my Guardian had the same base health as a warrior.

I would become GOD.

ele’s have the damage which compensates for the lower range, they might not be as good as thieves at burst, but their constant switching in elements basically means they have almost no cooldown and they have staff which IS a ranged weapon. I see elementalists running around doing something like 1/4 of a mob bar with a single hit and I doubt they need the health at all.

Meanwhile..please give more love to necro <3

Well, Eles do have the best AoE damage out of pretty much everyone. Very useful for farming and WvW. A couple good Eles can completely lock down a section of wall and annihilate any siege there.

ele’s have the damage which compensates for the lower range, they might not be as good as thieves at burst, but their constant switching in elements basically means they have almost no cooldown and they have staff which IS a ranged weapon. I see elementalists running around doing something like 1/4 of a mob bar with a single hit and I doubt they need the health at all.

Meanwhile..please give more love to necro <3

Necromancers deals more direct damage than an elementalist that isn’t in fire attunement. And that isn’t meant as a praise to the Necromancer direct damage capabilities.

There is a reason why the only viable sPvP specs for Elementalist are complete tank/support . There is no point in getting precision+crit damage as that only scales well with fire attunement. There is no point in getting condition damage as that only scales well with earth attunement. And there is no point in getting healing power, because that only scale well with…actually, it does scale fairly well with all our AoE healing and regeneration, but since it competes with our best scaling stat (Vitality) you can only get a bit of it.

So you are left with is Power+Vitality+Toughness. Power, because you need to at least be able to do token damage, and power is the best scaling direct damage stat. Vitality and Toughness because those stats scale well when you have such low base health and armor.

Didn’t intend this to turn into a discussion of elementalists, but I do see some issues there.

My main problem is with how vitality is perceived by other classes:

Low Health Classes-
10805
Medium Health Classes-
15082
Big Health CLasses-
18372

Now, adding 100 vitality.
It makes a 9% difference on low health.
It makes a 6.6% on a medium health.
It makes a 5.4% difference on a high health.

Simply put… vitality is too important for making builds in low health classes, and not important enough for high health classes.

I hate to be the one to say it, but this isnt Warcraft (thank christ)…
We dont need everything to be exactly same, aN I hope to hell devs NEVER!! do so.
“normalization” as blizzard called it, is an insult to anyone’s intelligence. Diversity is what made the real MMO’s so popular an Anet are the first company in a LONG! time to bring back at least a small amount of it.

Strangely enough my 80 Ele didn’t use one single piece of vit gear an I leveled to 80 faster than my Necro did.

Funny that, but then I don’t feel its “unfair” for others to have something I don’t. in fact I hope to see more diversity not less.

Tassy.5891:

I hate to be the one to say it, but this isnt Warcraft (thank christ)…
We dont need everything to be exactly same, aN I hope to hell devs NEVER!! do so.
“normalization” as blizzard called it, is an insult to anyone’s intelligence. Diversity is what made the real MMO’s so popular an Anet are the first company in a LONG! time to bring back at least a small amount of it.

Strangely enough my 80 Ele didn’t use one single piece of vit gear an I leveled to 80 faster than my Necro did.

Funny that, but then I don’t feel its “unfair” for others to have something I don’t. in fact I hope to see more diversity not less.

That must be quite a feat with your elementalist. Well done.

And on the topic of normalization. I think there are cases where it is appropriate, and cases where it is not. Its a bit short sighted to say that any change is bad, and leave it at that.

As I see it, vitality should be a stat that is equally valued, across all professions, in order to give everyone the same base. I’m only looking at the base remember, not the entire build.

So, what I hope to see is that if everyone has the same base health, then diversity goes up, since lower health classes now are less pigeonholed into vitality, while higher health classes factor vitality more into their equation, as opposed to brushing it off as they usually do.

I agree to an extent. I’m sure Arena Net have a reason for it, though it definitely seems like it needs to be adjusted. As it stands, some classes can easily get away with not investing in any vitality whilst others are almost forced to do so if they wish to survive – especially in dungeons when unavoidable splash damage is a real possibility.

I know it exists for the sake of class balance, though since every class has the ability to be very formidable on the battlefield, it’s flawed logic.

Ye,it would also be nice if people could actually touch you in order to burst down that little health pool.

You have 20 base skills and 5 skills that can be cleanses, shields, invurnabilities,etc.

If you don’t use them properly, it’s learn to play issues.

point I was making mate is that you don’t “need” vit at all. it is on nearly everything an its like healing stat, useless. Specially since you don’t have to worry about it. Ele uses all 4 spec lines an keeps moving, that’s it’s main power. I don’t really see why low HP needs to be a factor at all personally.

You’re not understanding the reasons behind the health differences.

Relying health pool is the worst possible way of playing GW2.
Ask yourself why a Guardian with 14k health lasts 4 times more than a Warrior with 32k.
Ele has low health pool because he’s got the range advantage, kiting tools, pets, etc.
If we give Eles high health pool and remove his tools he’ll be much weaker.

L2P issue.

Red Falcon.8257:

You’re not understanding the reasons behind the health differences.

Relying health pool is the worst possible way of playing GW2.
Ask yourself why a Guardian with 14k health lasts 4 times more than a Warrior with 32k.
Ele has low health pool because he’s got the range advantage, kiting tools, pets, etc.
If we give Eles high health pool and remove his tools he’ll be much weaker.

L2P issue.

Range advantage? Clearly you have no clue what you are talking about.

What about a dagger elementalist? Or a scepter/dagger one? Theirs isn’t long range.

And the reason why the warrior isn’t surviving? Because he sucks. Health isn’t everything, but if you can’t make do with 32k health, then something is very wrong.

Now I value Guardians for their defensive capabilities, but they aren’t THAT amazing or OP.

The virtue of resolve heals you for a very insignificant amount. Aegis triggers extremely rarely and it has no way to know what it will block. Abilities like shelter, are balanced by them healing you for a low amount. And in terms of utilities, you don’t have a lot of self preservation.

While I do understand that the Guardian has a lot of defensive capabilities, I don’t see how they necessarily allow him to last 4 times longer than a warrior with so much health.

Sounds like you are either making things up, or the warrior you are talking about is terrible.

ErzaScarlet.2386:

to put it simply
eles are glass cannon without the cannon

Usually, but we completely wreck underwater with cyclone. We basically pull mobs around us into a vacuum of high AoE damage, like over 1000 damage per tick, and that’s not even a critical! It is on a very long CD though -_-

So yeah other than our elites we’re pretty weak.

The solution isn’t making everyone the same.

In doing that you lose diversity. Guardians are able to active tank much better because their heals are more effective since they have high amounts of armor.

Necros have very low base toughness but have a large HP pool. Unless you get them a good amount of toughness / defense you wont be able to sustain yourself as well off of heals.

Condition damage is better vs people with high toughness, other damage is better against people with high vitality.

Don’t make everyone the same, it removes depth from the game.

I think it’s time that you eles stopped using berserker gear

Sundial.9015:

The solution isn’t making everyone the same.

In doing that you lose diversity. Guardians are able to active tank much better because their heals are more effective since they have high amounts of armor.

Necros have very low base toughness but have a large HP pool. Unless you get them a good amount of toughness / defense you wont be able to sustain yourself as well off of heals.

Condition damage is better vs people with high toughness, other damage is better against people with high vitality.

Don’t make everyone the same, it removes depth from the game.

Indeedly.

Methinks we have different health pools because they want us to focus on different stats. That way, not only do you spread around diversity, but also control the economy in terms of what gear is desirable. Dismissing current class mechanics and imbalances, if everyone had the same base vitality, the stat itself would be very valuable, and therefore anything with it would be overpriced, comparatively, anything without it would not be worth much. Different stats have different importance for different classes. This is good.

Now removing the vacuum and coming back to reality, some classes are just plain underpowered and need some love. Eles are one of them.

Sundial.9015:

The solution isn’t making everyone the same.

In doing that you lose diversity. Guardians are able to active tank much better because their heals are more effective since they have high amounts of armor.

Necros have very low base toughness but have a large HP pool. Unless you get them a good amount of toughness / defense you wont be able to sustain yourself as well off of heals.

Condition damage is better vs people with high toughness, other damage is better against people with high vitality.

Don’t make everyone the same, it removes depth from the game.

Regarding Guardians, they can active tank direct damage better than a lot of other classes; if they’re not built around conditional removal and Vitality, conditions will rip through their meagre amount of health in seconds.

Regarding Necromancers, they have the same base Toughness as everybody else (916). They have lower base Defense than non-Light armor classes, but the same as Mesmers and Elementalists. If both an Elementalist and a Necro are geared and traited for the exact same stats, the Necro is still going to have a much higher health pool.

That said, I’m not opposed to classes having different base health values (although I’d rather they didn’t, like in GW1), but as it stands, the differences are much too large; some classes having almost twice the amount of base health as others is unbalanced and unfair. Having the intervals along the lines of 13k/15k/17k would be much better.

I think everything has too much HP at 80. Mobs and every profession. Even gates and walls could do with a diet.

Uhaen.9876:

Sure thing OP, we’ll just have to balance elementalists in a way conducive to your request — let’s say, by subtracting some of your burn

You aren’t unfamiliar with the law of equivalent exchange are you

That doesn’t hold water here. There is no logical reasoning behind the health they’ve given some classes. Warriors get heavy armor and high health yet also have the best burst and sustain in the game. The elementalist has medicore burst, light armor, and low health.

Unless they are truly going to give classes major advantages for their base health/armor bonuses then it needs to just be a flat rate. Give everyone the same base stats and let them use gear to make their characters unique. Allow everyone to use heavy armor but give it pros and cons. Heavy armor makes you move slower but takes more damage, light armor gives you the most mobility but mitigates very little. FAR more builds would come out then. I imagine a thief with the 25% movement signet and heavy armor!

mulch.2586:

I think everything has too much HP at 80. Mobs and every profession. Even gates and walls could do with a diet.

It’s rather the other way round: Burst damage is too high.

@OP
Well professions are different. They have different base health, different set of skills and can use different weapons. My necro has way more health than my ele, but my ele also does way more damage an has better defensive skills so that’s fine.