Guild Wars 2

Right now, this is the base health distribution across professions:

• High: Warrior, Necromancer (19,212 hp at 80).
• Medium: Revenant, Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer (15,922 hp at 80).
• Low: Guardian, Thief, Elementalist (11,645 hp at 80).

I think many of the classic profession problems come from this distribution.

For example, shouldn’t mesmer be glassier than elementalist? Would engineer work better in the higher tier, where there’s only two professions anyway? Shouldn’t revenant be glassier than guardian?

Of course, should this change everything would need to be adapted and balanced properly, but don’t worry too much about that now. Maybe health (and armor) shouldn’t be the only thing to be different between professions. How about adding more base damage or concentration to those who have fewer base health?

Maybe it could be interesting to change base profession stats with elite specializations. For example, make reapers tankier, and give druids extra healing power.

Opinions?

With the right build Guardian and Ele have more sustain than Rev, Mes, or Engie.

Thief unlike the other two does not out heal to full, but has access to tons of evades.

Ranger despite being medium has tons of sustained healing, and defensive cooldowns including evades.

In a broad sense HP pools, and armor classes matter only in subtle ways. In a sense Mesmer IS glassier than ele, unless both are running glass builds, even then ele still has more sustain. Engie can rotate cooldowns and out sustain a lot of things, there is no need to give it a higher HP pool

Skills, boons, coefficients, up time on evade frames, among other things are all apart of the balance.

Just because Guard, Thief, and Ele have low HP pools don’t let that fool you into believing they are squishy. When 2/3 have very long survival times when built and used properly.

The issue with base stats and sustain and such is how it allows the class to build. Ele has no baseline defenses at all, so pvp builds have to dedicate everything to survival. Meanwhile classes with tons of built in defense can build for damage, like necro and warrior.

The thing that really amuses me is how ANet likes to say warrior is a class that has problems dealing with conditions and then I compare my elementalists and warriors’ ability to shrug off conditions …

Lonami.2987:

I think many of the classic profession problems come from this distribution.

You haven’t established what problems there are, let alone which are “classic” and which of the classic come from the distribution.

Lonami.2987:

For example, shouldn’t mesmer be glassier than elementalist? Would engineer work better in the higher tier, where there’s only two professions anyway? Shouldn’t revenant be glassier than guardian?

Why should mesmer be glassier? Ele gets tons of DPS; mesmer doesn’t. Seems like a fair trade-off.

Would engineer work better in the higher tier? Please explain why. Please also explain why there should be three profs in each tier.

Why should revenant be glassier than guardian? Revenant is already limited by energy.

Lonami.2987:

Of course, should this change everything would need to be adapted and balanced properly, but don’t worry too much about that now.

That combined statement misses the point of how ANet balances — it’s not just DPS, it’s not just health, it’s not just utility — they try to make sure that the entirety of every prof is roughly balanced against that of the others. They are designed to be different, not equal, which makes balance extremely tricky.

The main point, however, is that the current balance already is linked to the existing base health. By throwing that out the window, you are asking them to rebalance almost from scratch, an enormous effort.

So of course it matters how they are going to pull that off.

Lonami.2987:

Maybe health (and armor) shouldn’t be the only thing to be different between professions. How about adding more base damage or concentration to those who have fewer base health?

How about go back to first principles and establish the issues that you want addressed. Then we can look at whether changing base health is the best place to look first.

I’m not entirely opposed to the idea. I just don’t think you’ve established a reason why ANet should even begin to look at it.

reikken.4961:

The issue with base stats and sustain and such is how it allows the class to build. Ele has no baseline defenses at all, so pvp builds have to dedicate everything to survival. Meanwhile classes with tons of built in defense can build for damage, like necro and warrior.

If both necro and ele build for defense, ele would still sustain longer on point.

A large double health pool with little to no stability will chip down eventually. A health pool that never reaches 0 with escape tools and is constantly being healed is virtually infinite.

Necro can resist being one shot better I guess lol. But that matters little when you can just doge one shot moves.

If both spec for damage, I think it’s in necros favor, at least if condi necro. But I dunno power necro vs power ele match up.

on what basis do you build your arguements on? Why would ele have more hp than mesmer, why whould guard be more healthy than rev?

There seems to be a ‘squared’ weight class.
I think Rangers would have had High hitpoints like Warrior and Necro, but got a pet instead.

The whole thing is weird and does restrict build diversity. I felt I couldn’t play PP engi before deadshot amulet, for instance; feel I can’t play power ranger without marauders and DH’s crippling health pool does very little to stop them (growing in popularity) thanks to their plethora of blocks and heals and access to easy dps.

It’s a way to balance without balancing. In a perfect world, professions would have similar if not equal health pools (maybe 2k difference between armor sets) and if one of them is underperforming/overperforming they’d get boosted/nerfed.