Guild Wars 2

The devs keep spouting this idea that they don’t want to change skills too much between game modes (WvW, sPvP, PvE) because they want classes to play similarly across these different modes. This however is complete non-sense.

The devs could have designed the game this way, however they did not.

In PvE you have groups of 5 people taking on NPC’s that have 100,000,000,000x more health then the players, the NPC’s attack about once every 10 seconds and do 90% of a players health with each hit. They are immune to most controlling conditions, and those they are not immune to have shortened durations. They do not dodge, they do not use player skills and they do not have very difficult AI.

In sPvP you have groups of 8 players against another group of 8 players. All players have relatively the same amount of low health, they attack every 0.25 to .5 seconds and do low damage per attack. Attacks can be dodge and all conditions apply.

In WvW you have groups of 100+ players against another group of 100+ players. attacks go off every 0.00001 seconds, you die in 1 second or less when focused, AOE effects are the only effects that matter. Conditions are removed from AOE fields just as fast as they are applied. dodging is key and immobilize/cripple is the king condition because it prevents moving back into the zerg to heal.

These game modes have absolutely NOTHING in common with each other. So please, for the love of all that is good, separate the kitten game mode skills and stop nerfing the crap out of classes in one aspect of the game due to a completely unrelated part of the game. You have split skills for a very limited number of skills but you always keep the numbers and effects close to each other. You didn’t keep the game modes close to each other, so kitten that, spit the skills equally as much.

Actually I hate the idea that two skills work radically different in PvE and PvP. I don’t want to adjust my playing style when I go between the two. I don’t want to relearn my attack chains, I don’t want pay to swap around my traits because the skills those affect most are no longer as effective.

Having different rules is fine if you are going to spend the majority your time there but for a lot of players who want to play all modes, it’s a turn off.

Yep, the first two posters have identified both sides of the coin.

The problem is if you balance skills for SPvP and WvW, you frequently kill the fun people are having in PvE. And balancing the other way doesn’t make much sense, because it’s less competitive.

There really isn’t a good answer to this dilemma.

Behellagh.1468:

Actually I hate the idea that two skills work radically different in PvE and PvP. I don’t want to adjust my playing style when I go between the two. I don’t want to relearn my attack chains, I don’t want pay to swap around my traits because the skills those affect most are no longer as effective.

Having different rules is fine if you are going to spend the majority your time there but for a lot of players who want to play all modes, it’s a turn off.

What if they only separated the damage aspect of skills? Take Hundred blades for warriors. Vastly OP in PvE, pretty much useless in PvP. If they toned it down damage wise in PvE it would balance it without having to make it work differently.

As a second example, confusion. Arguably good in WvW, but worthless in PvE. A PvE buff of 200% duration and 100% damage would make it useful in PvE but lower numbers would make it equally useful in WvW.

I mean you don’t have that many skills. In most MMO’s you manage 40-50 skills on your bars, in GW2 you manage 10… Even splitting them in all 3 game modes still leaves us with less complexity then most MMO’s.