Guild Wars 2

For the Mesmer, Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist, and Engineer healing skills, I have seen much debate about if the skills are good or not. Many posters on both sides of the debate have been expressing their views on the quality of these skills with a pretty even split.

For these skills, I say “Good Job ArenaNet. They are probably pretty close to balanced.” They could use numbers tweaks for sure, but the skill itself is probably balanced.

Ranger heal is a little odder. Nobody seems to feel strongly one way or another on it, but the fact it’s another spirit makes some people uneasy. Again, I feel it’s probably fairly close to balance, but it’s a trickier one that will require more time to really see.

Thieves and necros, though really feel screwed. Thieves lament the fact that their skill was designed as though they were running a full Venoms build to the point where the heal isn’t likely to see any use outside of those. Necros lament the fact that the new skill just plain sucks. On these, I feel ANet needs to re-examine how they decide to balance skills and traits. While they should keep the optimal situation in mind when working on them, these should not be balanced assuming that the optimal situation is how they will always be used. There is a discrepency among how various skills and traits are balanced and it is painfully obvious. This is even made more obvious when the new Warrior heal comes into account as its potential truly is limitless. I do not want to deny Warriors their new toy. It’s a great skill with optimal situations to use it. What I would like is for ANet to look into balancing everything based on regular use instead of optimal use. It is OK if something is powerful in its ideal situation. That’s rewarding the player for recognizing that situation and taking advantage of it. It is not OK if the ideal situation is the only time something is good.