I am pretty concerned about the lack of action regarding class balance. GW2 has been out 9 months and while we have had a bit of new content (much of it temporary), issues about such a fundamental thing as class balance still exist.
I’m sure many of us would agree that balance is a difficult thing to achieve and has eluded other MMOs, which have been complicated by changing mechanics, introducing new classes etc. Anet have fallen into a trap by giving some really cool abilities to classes, which are not properly balanced.
When GW2 was released it was immediately apparent that class balance was severely lacking. Anet did perform some triage not long after but that has been largely it. Last patch Engineers got some well deserved corrective attention but still, a number of classes (3 maybe 4) are largely redundant or suitable for only one style of play. Some classes are held in such low regard that it can be difficult to get into groups.
I am not filled with optimism on balance when, after 9 months, Anet changes Quickness. I don’t disagree that Quickness is amazingly powerful, however this should have surely been identified earlier. The most overpowered ability is retaliation which, although nerfed, still has no place in the game in its current form. Ill be honest, I rolled a warrior at launch but quickly shelved it and have been playing a Guardian since.
Certain other boons and conditions are also very powerful and often decisive in combat. Unfortunately some classes can apply these at range while others can only apply them in melee. Pull abilities are likewise totally unnecessary and overpowered as they completely negate the advantage of defensive positions.
There is also the major disparity in downed skills with some being highly effective and literally life saving, and others being useless. I recall the trait on the warrior that gives 100% chance to rally on a kill while vengeanced, however not all mobs count, which was extremely annoying as some summoned mobs and others which grant no xp, can still have as much health as a mob and do comparable damage.
Then we have escape and evasion skills between characters, with some able to engage and withdraw at will or escape situations that would be certain death for other classes, example, I have seen Elementalists pretty much surrounded but have been able to escape and out run pursuers. Thieves, which deserve a stealth skill, are able to stack stealth and also vanish. (I have both of these classes btw I do not currently play them).
Some classes suffer more than most, but all are affected when it comes to ranged combat. The ranges of some skills and, significantly, the skill delays, is imbalanced and also makes for disappointing combat. Even without taking into account lag, it is a very common occurrence to have a target move from within range to out of range before a skill can activate or a shot actually land. Ranges in general seem pitifully short, and this is most noticable in tower/keep/castle combat. (TBH the obstruction effect of battlements in these situations is more of a hindrance to defenders)
Please Anet, get to it. Your changes to the game are far too slow.
Class balance still off? Changes too slow?
I think Anets balance team is either to small, or too cautious. I understand not wanting to play wack a mole, but what we currently have is very stagnant changes, that dont even necessarily seem to be evolutionary. They do one thing, then 2 months later they undo it. Some things need broad strokes.
Also their overall trend seems to be one of making things weaker. This is the balance trap. Bringing things down is tempting in the short run, but its bad in the long run.
They need to do more actual balance changes and less number tweaking. Say for example, one build of theif is supposed to be about debilitating and destroying enemies through various poisons. If you feel that its too powerful and you just change the numbers… you get a thief who can kind of annoy your for a couple of seconds. That will never be a viable build.
WoW is 8 years old and is only now approaching a rough 10% balance between classes.
That said, I do with ANet were more like the guys at DCUO – for all it’s failings, when that game went live we saw almost weekly balance updates and almost nobody was left out in the cold.
As anyone who has read a recent post from me will attest, a big part of my enjoyment of this game is being sapped by my desire to play a Medium armor class (oh my those sets are gorgeous) but the spec I want to level as simply being non-viable.
Well the problem is that they balance classes based solely on who whines the loudest on the PvP/WvW forums. That is why we see continual buffs to warriors and continual nerfs to thieves. The thief class is very strong 1v1 so people whine a lot in the PvP forums so they nerf thief. Warrior sucks in PvP so they whine alot to buff them which they just keep doing.
Balance is completely ignored in PvE and the actual tested and calculated changes are ignored in favor of popular whining changes.
It takes a while to read through the current whining threads and implement the changes which is why we don’t see very fast changes in the game.
yes and yes. unfortunate how the most important part of the game is given so little attention.
221 hours over 1,581 days of bank space/hot pve/lion’s arch afk and some wvw.
yes and yes. unfortunate how the most important part of the game is given so little attention.
It’s because of the resources they allocate to it. There’s 1 or 2 people working on class balance. Can’t expect much balancing when so little resources are spent on it.