Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’ve been playing this game since start and I play both PvP, PvE and WwW.
I really enjoy theory crafting and changing builds but imo. the problem today is that normally there is 1-2 builds in each game mode that far supersedes other builds as we see often in tournaments/raids/WwW and one can easily find on sites such as metabattle etc.

So I’ve been thinking how can ArenaNet do something to alleviate the complexity of builds and how people often find a string of traits, armor, amulets, weapons and so on in 1-2 builds (per game mode) that is far superior to other builds in a certain aspect of the game.

Take PvP for instance… I play Ele as my main and Auramancer (support) is the most common build by far and no matter how much you try there are no other builds that come near it’s effectiveness. And because of Ele being so squishy and all bunker amulets are gone, a power build is not just viable as you would die if someone just looked at you in the current meta.

So I thought, why is that? Why can’t I play only with signets or glyphs and be just as vital to my team as an Auramancer?

And then it came to me. The problem is not only that HoT brought more powerful traits and shouts for the Ele to use, people would combine traits, utilities, weapons and amulets to make it as powerful/efficient as possible, which is to be expected, but the new skills are a bit too good = the old not as good.

So how do you fix this?
I thought about a class that might have the solution: The Revenant

The Revenant chooses a stance and that brings a set of predetermined skills that cant be changed. These stances with a set combination of skills can more easily be balanced against other stances since you can’t take the best utility skill from one stance and combine it with the best utility skill from another stance.

So why not either make it so, Elementalist e.g., can choose only glyphs, only signets or only cantrips and so on and balance them the same way the Revenant has been balanced?

Or at least IF one would choose to go only with Glyphs in one’s build e.g. you get a 10-20% boost of the glyphs’s base stats to make up some ground for the superiority of shouts (or whatever new utilities HoT brought to your profession).

This way it should be more easier to balance a full set of Arcane / Glyphs / Signets / Cantrips / Conjured Weapons / Shouts against each other and make them all viable builds which should with some tweaking let us have up to 6 viable builds instead of the current 1-2 builds per profession where everyone has cherry-picked skills to make an überbuild.

I hope I made some sense, if not, I’m sorry English isn’t my first language.

I hope to have a healthy discussion and input from other players/devs around this suggestion.

Thx for an awesome game!
/Mio

The one that outscores the other will becoming dominant and the other will no see play.

The same is true of The Re… Herald.

This would contribute more to the problem than the solution

You’re suggesting to force utility skills onto players as a method of balancing. As that phrase suggested, all you’re doing is “forcing” and further hindering build diversity, it by itself does nothing to address intra/interprofession imbalance issues.

Furthermore, instead of accounting for less variables, balance developers would have to consider 5 (or whatever you are suggesting). In the end, you’ll end up with the same or worse situation in context of game balance.

Imo shiro is slightly overpowered (crazy dodge possibilty, crazy leap possibility) a good heal that also serves (especially in pvp) as a crazy big dps boost, quickness etc. Every single skill in shiro is usefull and a lot so. In mallyx imo, 1-2 are good and the rest is ‘so so’. Same is true for the dwarf stance.

The problem is HoT introduced a new level in trait/skills viability of ‘being defensive’. These new skills are CRAZY efficient. TAke the shield 5 of revenant (that even can be double with a trait). not only one of longest blocks ingame, it also HEALS while doing so, coming out alive of super sticky situation was never easier. They also overtuned mesmer well of precognition (nerf now though). Any skill NOT very good in defense of offense (or utility) will not be taken. Glyphs (apart from storm and heal) have almost no utility = weak. Signets = same (apart maybe from condi build). Loads of oldscool traits/skills are simply to weak for the current pvp/raid meta.

Thx for the replies everyone!

TheBravery.9615:

This would contribute more to the problem than the solution

You’re suggesting to force utility skills onto players as a method of balancing. As that phrase suggested, all you’re doing is “forcing” and further hindering build diversity, it by itself does nothing to address intra/interprofession imbalance issues.

Furthermore, instead of accounting for less variables, balance developers would have to consider 5 (or whatever you are suggesting). In the end, you’ll end up with the same or worse situation in context of game balance.

I’m not following here.

At the moment I can e.g. chose any out of 24 utility skills to equip in my 3 utility slots on my character.
The devs has to balance and take every utility skill (+ the impact of amulets, traits, sigils and so on) in a possible combination of 24x + 23x + 22x and try to prevent cherry picking the 3 best into a crazy OP build. As one can imagine, this is quite hard and complex.

In one of my suggestions you can, IF you want, choose only e.g. sigils and if you do you get a higher boost to the base stat of sigils (can be a trait).
Since few use only sigils, only glyphs etc. because of the power of the new skills that came with HoT this can make sigils, glyphs etc. viable again. (This would add more builds, not less since you can still chose the old, but also new with a predetermined set of skills).

How is this different to the 5 stances you are “forced” to chose from on the Revenant?
The devs only need to balance the pre-determined skills on each stance against each other, which is 3 utility skills + 1 heal skill + elite skill x5 stances.
You cant combine any skill from any one stance with another. Isn’t this the same (or worse) when it comes to “forcing” the player to chose as you say?

My intention wasn’t to balance builds of profession against each other initially, but to get more viable builds that was just as good as the current “meta” for each profession to start with.

Ofc. if more builds are viable per class instead of just 1-2, then class balancing between professions will be more intricate. But, if I was a dev (which I was many many years ago), I would think that would be more “fun”, and at the same time delight the players in getting more viable choices, then e.g just going through the quite insane testing for balancing any choices out of e.g. 24x + 23x + 22x utility skills that a player can make.

(I might need to change the topic then maybe? Here come’s the problem with English not being my first language, sorry).

Please, no! While your suggestion might make balancing easier, it would also make builds utterly boring. To add to that, perfect balance is impossible to achieve anyway because you need to balance apples with oranges. As a competitive format, PvP players will go for that 2% increase of efficiency and always take the even slightly more powerful choice. At an even skill level these 2% make a difference.

In PvE, yeah, the forums would be fun if they did that…

The only reason I don’t completely dislike the way the revenant/herald works is because you at least get to choose two legends and can therefore change your skills to some degree, but I am still not the greatest fan of that system.

Tl;dr: No thank you, I like having fun.

Mioracle.2481:

Thx for the replies everyone!

TheBravery.9615:

This would contribute more to the problem than the solution

You’re suggesting to force utility skills onto players as a method of balancing. As that phrase suggested, all you’re doing is “forcing” and further hindering build diversity, it by itself does nothing to address intra/interprofession imbalance issues.

Furthermore, instead of accounting for less variables, balance developers would have to consider 5 (or whatever you are suggesting). In the end, you’ll end up with the same or worse situation in context of game balance.

I’m not following here.

At the moment I can e.g. chose any out of 24 utility skills to equip in my 3 utility slots on my character.
The devs has to balance and take every utility skill (+ the impact of amulets, traits, sigils and so on) in a possible combination of 24x + 23x + 22x and try to prevent cherry picking the 3 best into a crazy OP build. As one can imagine, this is quite hard and complex.

In one of my suggestions you can, IF you want, choose only e.g. sigils and if you do you get a higher boost to the base stat of sigils (can be a trait).
Since few use only sigils, only glyphs etc. because of the power of the new skills that came with HoT this can make sigils, glyphs etc. viable again. (This would add more builds, not less since you can still chose the old, but also new with a predetermined set of skills).

How is this different to the 5 stances you are “forced” to chose from on the Revenant?
The devs only need to balance the pre-determined skills on each stance against each other, which is 3 utility skills + 1 heal skill + elite skill x5 stances.
You cant combine any skill from any one stance with another. Isn’t this the same (or worse) when it comes to “forcing” the player to chose as you say?

My intention wasn’t to balance builds of profession against each other initially, but to get more viable builds that was just as good as the current “meta” for each profession to start with.

Ofc. if more builds are viable per class instead of just 1-2, then class balancing between professions will be more intricate. But, if I was a dev (which I was many many years ago), I would think that would be more “fun”, and at the same time delight the players in getting more viable choices, then e.g just going through the quite insane testing for balancing any choices out of e.g. 24x + 23x + 22x utility skills that a player can make.

(I might need to change the topic then maybe? Here come’s the problem with English not being my first language, sorry).

What I meant is that by forcing players to choose a set of utility, it’s an artificial form of balance that’s not really balance. It’s easy alright, but it’s not the right approach for the game.

Also not a problem. Your English is very good and I respect you for being multilingual.