Guild Wars 2

The most recent developer stream pushed me over the edge, and I really want an answer to this question:

Why are balance changes universally made with PvP in focus?

It’s endemic in the balance patches we’ve received thus far. Traits and skills that dramatically affect the gameplay of PvP are tweaked, often with little to no thought as to how they may impact gameplay of PvE. The proposed changes to the Necro, to the Thief, to the Mesmer and Guardian ultimately impact PvE for the worse: Completely wrecking builds that were already suffering (e.g. Necro MM and Thief S/D), or further taking away survivability (e.g. Necro, and now Mesmer and Guardian[?]).

Furthermore, the goal of addressing the prevalence of Crit Damage gear in (presumably) PvE/WvW also negatively impacts PvE.

Why? Because PvE is broken.

The reasons that DD gear is king in PvE come down to 1) the faceroll ease with which content can be burned, 2) the presence of TKO’s and Unshakable, and 3) the fundamental game design/hardware preclude ConDs from ever being viable in PvE.

If current DD gear is nerfed in order to drop a party’s overall DPS it will not increase the value of Heal builds, Control builds, or Support builds.

Why? Because TKOs make it impossible to out-heal boss damage in most situations, and Unshakable/Defiant makes Control/Debuff builds utterly and completely pointless. And once again, “Support” is relegated to Reflects.

I understand the initial desire to make every class able to play every role. But when DD builds can dump out all the necessary buffs, debuffs, and heals to waltz through end-game content, you will never have build diversity.

With the PvE community clamoring about the broken state of the game for nearly a year now, and the repeated exclamations every time another PvP-centric patch hits, I begin to get the feeling that either 1) the development teams are far more favorable toward PvP than PvE, or 2) the development teams simply aren’t familiar enough with PvE to understand what truly needs to be fixed. I don’t want this to be true, but patch after patch leads me toward the same conclusions…

TL;DR – Direct damage builds have been and will always be the only top-tier/viable builds in GW2 PvE, until PvE is fundamentally redesigned. Until then, any attempts to rectify the issue will simply continue to destroy build variety and playability in PvE.

Phenn.5167:

TFurthermore, the goal of addressing the prevalence of Crit Damage gear in (presumably) PvE/WvW also negatively impacts PvE.

I presume you meant, “the prevalence of Crit Damage gear in PvP/WvW also negatively impacts PvE.”? The previewed change will not affect PvP at all, only WvW/PvE. This adjustment to crit damage is aimed at PvE, and WvW — where berserker is not overly dominant — gets hit because WvW is lumped in with PvE.

I’ve been bangin this same drum for many months now: ANet doesn’t know what it wants GW2 to be.

GW1 was very specifically made to be a pvp game, with pve designed to roughly mirror pvp encounters (enemy use player skills, act as groups supporting each other, all instanced content with fixed party size, skill balance updates very very often specifically about gvg and ha modes of competitive pvp, etc). pve was meant as a learning experience for pvp, where it taught you about your skills and some game modes. The focus was always pvp (later in its years the pvp focus waned a bit).

GW2 represents a mishmash of pvp and pve, where neither is implemented to its fullest potential because it would affect the other. Pve is very, very different from pvp and this magnifies the differences in skill balance. Not only that, but their obsession with removing any need for particular roles in groups makes casual pve much easier to get into, but makes pvp turn into an fps. Pvp is largely dead in the water because of the heavy prevalence of aoe and ai that are more suited to pve.

Try the class balance forum.

Phenn.5167:

Why are balance changes universally made with PvP in focus?

As a PvE player who has zero use for Hunter’s Shot and Unsteady Ground, I often ask myself this very question.

Wanze.8410:

Try the class balance forum.

If the balance philosophy was limited to issues with class balance, then, sure. But the fact of the matter is the “balance” has far-reaching implications beyond just how or, rather, why classes are balanced.

Because espohts.

But in all seriousness, it’s nice that they’re occasionally breaking balance up into pvp/pve, and sometimes even splitting wvw even some more. It’s inevitable that there will need to be work as a 3 sided balance, whether anyone likes it or not.