Guild Wars 2

I get that the classes shouldn’t all be the same. However, there is an elephant in the room with regard to class balance that has been persistent since launch – the variation between the professions’ defense/attrition is significantly greater than the variation between either their offense or their utility/healing access. This leads to dramatic differences in the skill floor from class to class and makes some frustratingly difficult to play while others are comparatively faceroll-able.

One of the primary issues leading to this from what I can see is that the gap between three tiers of health is too large. At level 80 it’s 20k, 15k, or 10k. It really should be more like 20k, 17k, 14k, or at least 20k, 16k, 12k. That would help some of the squishier professions feel a little less difficult to play while leveling relative to, say, warriors.

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Honestly, having 2k more health would be much worse than the obvious nerfs they would need to their other utilities.

Ahlen.7591:

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Uh, yes, I get that. It doesn’t change anything. The difference in utility does not fully compensate for the difference in defense. Due to that, warriors (and guardians because much of their defense is passively generated) have much higher skill floors than Thieves and Elementalists. The former two are dramatically easier to steamroll through content with than the latter two are because they can just stand there and tank everything.

I’m not saying that Thieves and Elementalists should be able to do it as well as they can, I’m just saying the gap should be smaller.

No. Because no.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ahlen.7591:

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Uh, yes, I get that. It doesn’t change anything. The difference in utility does not fully compensate for the difference in defense. Due to that, warriors (and guardians because much of their defense is passively generated) have much higher skill floors than Thieves and Elementalists. The former two are dramatically easier to steamroll through content with than the latter two are because they can just stand there and tank everything.

I’m not saying that Thieves and Elementalists should be able to do it as well as they can, I’m just saying the gap should be smaller.

Again, you will have to take some pretty big nerfs more than likely for any HP increases. So be careful what you wish for.

Warriors have for all intents and purposes no access to protection, little access to vigor, and 1(?) blind. Their heal skill, HP pool, and possibly adrenal, is all that keeps them alive.

Einlanzer.1627:

I get that the classes shouldn’t all be the same. However, there is an elephant in the room with regard to class balance that has been persistent since launch – the gap between the professions’ attrition is much larger than the gap in their offense or utility. This leads to dramatic differences in skill floors across professions with some being quite faceroll-y others being difficult to the point of frustrating.

One of the primary issues leading to this from what I can see is that the gap between three tiers of health is too large. At level 80 it’s 20k, 15k, or 10k. It really should be more like 20k, 17k, 14k, or at least 20k, 16k, 12k. That would help some of the squishier professions feel a little less difficult to play while leveling relative to, say, warriors.

Are you playing a different game than I do? My light armor classes have 18k, 17k and 16k hp. It depends on the build. If people would stop running glass cannon builds they would have more hp and wont get face rolled or have any difficulties playing the game. One thing I do agree on my Warrior has 31k hp which definitely is a huge gasp to the other classes and should be changed, however it’s in any other game, the moment you have a character that wears heavy armor your hp pool goes up by 10 -20k compared to medium or light armor classes. I don’t see why we need to have changes made once again lol

Ahlen.7591:

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Honestly, having 2k more health would be much worse than the obvious nerfs they would need to their other utilities.

Oh do we?
Eles have 2 protection skills built in (armor of earth and the healing glyph in earth),1 block skill (arcane shield) and 3 skills that give regen (healing rain,?undercurent? and healing glyph in water)every skill i have listed here has an insane cooldown (90,75,40) except for the glyph-so you sit there and tell me i have to have 10k hp while a warrior with a signet that heals for 400 (four hundred!) every second can have 20k in the same gear.
Yeah………..no

Ahlen.7591:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ahlen.7591:

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Uh, yes, I get that. It doesn’t change anything. The difference in utility does not fully compensate for the difference in defense. Due to that, warriors (and guardians because much of their defense is passively generated) have much higher skill floors than Thieves and Elementalists. The former two are dramatically easier to steamroll through content with than the latter two are because they can just stand there and tank everything.

I’m not saying that Thieves and Elementalists should be able to do it as well as they can, I’m just saying the gap should be smaller.

Again, you will have to take some pretty big nerfs more than likely for any HP increases. So be careful what you wish for.

Warriors have for all intents and purposes no access to protection, little access to vigor, and 1(?) blind. Their heal skill, HP pool, and possibly adrenal, is all that keeps them alive.

I disagree. Again, it’s uneven. Between the armor, health, and healing Warriors have a lot more going for them than the occasional Blind/Stealth/Teleport that Eles and Thieves have. Even then, it relies on tactical and reactive gameplay while the warrior’s defense does not, which results in the different skill floors.

Once again, it’s an issue of the gap in attrition being too large between the professions for the differences in offense and utility.

I totally agree that the gap should be smaller, Guardian are ridiculously squishy if they go zerker, if you don’t have a Aegis (which have huge cooldown) you pretty much get ohko by anything, from trash mob to boss. Also condition take us down in a matter of seconds. Same probably goes for elementalist. Guardian seems to sacrifice to much when going berserker but its really only because of their low health pool.

Sure with 2k Vitality it doesn’t seem that bad, warrior have 30k and guardian 20k, but without it, it doesn’t make any sense.

Also, everything guardian have to make up for their low health pool (aegis, reflect, protection) also applies to party… so warrior ends up with every defensive things we have, with double the health, and a 400 HP regen per seconds.

Guardians having a lower health pool makes their heals give “more bang for their buck” because they have a lot of small heals, which means they heal for a large® % of total health than if you were to have a higher health pool, like 20k. Additionally, Guardians have a lot of damage mitigation through blocks, reflects, blinds, regeneration, AoE healing, etc.

Elementalist have a lot of damage mitigation through the use of Cantrips and also a lot of mobility through the use of utility and weapon skills.

Thieves have access to blinds, stealth, projectile destruction.

This is not including the fact that all of these (and others) have access to stuns and dazes.

Sure, there’s a gap, but it isn’t a gamebreaking gap. If it didn’t exist, I’m quite sure the PvP would be a lot less intense, especially if the high health users were brought down.

Agreed. An 8k base HP gap is ridiculous.

Esplen.3940:

Guardians having a lower health pool makes their heals give “more bang for their buck” because they have a lot of small heals, which means they heal for a large® % of total health than if you were to have a higher health pool, like 20k. Additionally, Guardians have a lot of damage mitigation through blocks, reflects, blinds, regeneration, AoE healing, etc.

Elementalist have a lot of damage mitigation through the use of Cantrips and also a lot of mobility through the use of utility and weapon skills.

Thieves have access to blinds, stealth, projectile destruction.

This is not including the fact that all of these (and others) have access to stuns and dazes.

Sure, there’s a gap, but it isn’t a gamebreaking gap. If it didn’t exist, I’m quite sure the PvP would be a lot less intense, especially if the high health users were brought down.

What game are you playing? Eles have damage mitagation? PvP is intense?

So… you find PvP to be very relaxing and want it to be even moreso?

Eles have plenty of damage mitigation and self healing. Have you tried hitting your keyboard instead of mashing the 1 key?

Ahlen.7591:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ahlen.7591:

Thieves have many different forms of evasion, blind, and repositions – that’s why their health is low.

Guardians/Elementalists have access to many, many different skills with protection or block or regen – that’s why their health is low.

Uh, yes, I get that. It doesn’t change anything. The difference in utility does not fully compensate for the difference in defense. Due to that, warriors (and guardians because much of their defense is passively generated) have much higher skill floors than Thieves and Elementalists. The former two are dramatically easier to steamroll through content with than the latter two are because they can just stand there and tank everything.

I’m not saying that Thieves and Elementalists should be able to do it as well as they can, I’m just saying the gap should be smaller.

Again, you will have to take some pretty big nerfs more than likely for any HP increases. So be careful what you wish for.

Warriors have for all intents and purposes no access to protection, little access to vigor, and 1(?) blind. Their heal skill, HP pool, and possibly adrenal, is all that keeps them alive.

Yes, warriors do not have condition cleanses, heavy armour, stability, the greatest mobility, zillions of heals, and a plethora of crowd control.

Stop lying to yourself, buddy.

Yes, do it at least in PVE especially dungeons.

“What game are you playing? Eles have damage mitagation?”

Elementalist with auras traited correctly with signets have full up time on protection …amongst other benefits.

Mojo.7986:

“What game are you playing? Eles have damage mitagation?”

Elementalist with auras traited correctly with signets have full up time on protection …amongst other benefits.

They also have a completely unviable build.

If you WvW and run into an entire field of Warriors and Guardians and still don’t think those two classes could do with some adjustment … we know what class you play. It is so OP it is becoming the zerg meta in WvW to the point of being ridiculous.

Esplen.3940:

So… you find PvP to be very relaxing and want it to be even moreso?

Eles have plenty of damage mitigation and self healing. Have you tried hitting your keyboard instead of mashing the 1 key?

Rubbish is the word to describe PvP. Or imbalanced. Not intense.

‘Plenty of damage mitigation and self healing’….well, that shows you have no clue what an elementalist even is.

leprekan.7248:

If you WvW and run into an entire field of Warriors and Guardians and still don’t think those two classes could do with some adjustment … we know what class you play. It is so OP it is becoming the zerg meta in WvW to the point of being ridiculous.

That’s because bads don’t run Stability, which pretty much make Warriors king, and people play Guardian ’cause “lol staff 1 tagfest”.

The HP pools are how they are because the lower HP professions have access to more mitigation/avoidance.

Guardians for one have EASY perma vigor, aegis, and lots of protection.
Ele’s have incredible amounts of invulnerability, protection, regen, vigor and all boons across the board in general (sure Ele’s are broken, but that’s not because of the HP pool).
Thieves have ridiculous level of blind, and a huge access to skills that double as a dodge, aswell as Feline Grace trait which essentially means 100% endurance = 3 dodges.
Warriors? Oh yeah, they have … umm. Vigor on Warhorn? Darn, what else is there … Oh yes, yes! A blind on the longbow! Now where can I get protection …

See the difference?

I want to play these mystical Elementalists some people here seem to have in their games…

As for warriors, they have highest armour + health, stability, condition cleansing, mobility, crowd control and super healing.

Stop pretending, kids.