Guild Wars 2

A credo.

A credo is a belief or value set that guides all company actions. For example, Walmart follows the “3 Basic Beliefs” defined by founder Sam Walton. These beliefs are “respect for the individual,” “service to our customers,” and “striving for excellence.” The credo for Ritz-Carlton Hotels begins with the statement, “The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our guests is our highest mission.”

Every balance patch lacked direction. (ArenaNet’s idea of a fix is to play with numbers, increasing damage, reducing cooldown, etc, when there’s more to it than that). To simplify things for ArenaNet, I created an example credo that would help their balance team in future patches.

• Major traits should mostly be “situational”, which should make your build unique and advantageous only in certain situations.
• Traits should not be something the profession heavily relies on, but something that the profession could use to improve itself in specific situations.
• Every major trait class (e.g. Grandmaster, Master, Adept) must have at least one "universal trait’.
• Every minor trait needs to be universal.
• Universal traits are traits that all builds may use. (e.g. A trait that increases overall outgoing damage is considered universal, while a trait that only benefits one weapon set is considered situational.)
• All major traits must have equal consideration within each class. In other words, no trait should overshadow other traits in the same selection.
• Grandmaster traits should be stronger than master traits, and Master traits should be stronger than adept traits. A profession’s adept trait in should not be comparable to a grandmaster trait from another profession.
• All weapons and utilities and associated skills must have an identity. In other words, each weapon / utility must have a role to fulfil and a reason to choose over other weapons. No weapon / utility should overshadow other weapons / utility in similar situations.
• All design changes must be in conformance with the profession design concept. (e.g. Warriors shouldn’t change into something that has pets, elemental attunements, or virtues)
• The balancing process must consider other professions, and avoid identity conflict. Changes must be reasonable, balanced, and justified.
• All builds must have a counter-build, that is easily accessible by other professions.

This is both self-contradictory and vague. If all the minor traits are universal (which by the way the trait lines used to have this by giving +X stat for taking the line; I do not miss that system at all) then how exactly can traits be mostly “situational”? I didn’t quite make it past the fifth bullet because my brain couldn’t handle your brilliant credo.

DGraves.3720:

This is both self-contradictory and vague. If all the minor traits are universal (which by the way the trait lines used to have this by giving +X stat for taking the line; I do not miss that system at all) then how exactly can traits be mostly “situational”? I didn’t quite make it past the fifth bullet because my brain couldn’t handle your brilliant credo.

I don’t think you understand. What I mean is that there shouldn’t be a minor trait within a specialization that’s like “Increase damage on greatsword”. Players that take that specialization yet don’t use greatsword will then end up with a useless minor trait.

edit/ Sorry, I get what you mean. Would help if I differentiated major and minor traits.

Bravery – the problem here is that they want to tie certain trait lines with certain weapons together.

Anet do not like balance, quite the opposite, they seem to hate balance, except a little bit in PvP.

If they liked balance they wouldn’t have put so much kitten in WvW.

NO. What Anet needs is VISION that doesn’t come from the CEO.

I was actually just having this same discussion with a guild mate.

They need a clear design direction with minimal balancing changes. None of this “Look to drastically shift the meta”. Just a sequence of smaller changes over time. Releasing newer maps or changing some map mechanics to add value to them so people play the mode and map. A shift away from Conquest as the primary mode of balance and instead shift toward 5 man TDM-e mode. Where the balance is done strictly based on the profession and not the mode it’s used in. Splitting balance between PvP and PvE.

Until this happens every mode will be in utter chaos with every patch.

Minor disagreement with:

Grandmaster traits should be stronger than master traits, and Master traits should be stronger than adept traits. A profession’s adept trait in should not be comparable to a grandmaster trait from another profession.

In the current build system, the only time this even matters is during leveling. PvP auto-promotes to level 80 and unlocks everything. (If you’re doing WvW under 80, it’s your own fault. :P)
So I wouldn’t say that Grandmaster must be greater than Adept at this point. This is especially important when considering that trait lines support specific weapons and utilities, and placing a mediocre weapon talent (worthy of Master) on the same line and level as a decent utility trait (also worthy of Master) would deny some of the more appropriate build mixes.

The balancing process must consider other professions, and avoid identity conflict. Changes must be reasonable, balanced, and justified.

Yes and no. With only so many ‘roles’ or ‘identities’ realistically available, there will be overlap, especially as elite specs opened the design space. I’m not even sure what it is I’m feel I’m disagreeing with for this statement, except it seems to argue against blending roles that would actually bring variety to play.

Can’t agree with enough:

All major traits must have equal consideration within each class. In other words, no trait should overshadow other traits in the same selection.

There’s a lot of this. Some traits are “Why would I ever..?” while others are “movement speed, omigerdyes” or “+10% damage and absurd Might buffing, YES”.
While ANet does have to balance its incomparables in many trait lines, at the same time, any two damage-related traits on the same tier will almost always yield to one.

All weapons and utilities and associated skills must have an identity. In other words, each weapon / utility must have a role to fulfil and a reason to choose over other weapons. No weapon / utility should overshadow other weapons / utility in similar situations.

I’d have to add: Do not let the assumed identity drag the weapon into poor balance decisions. Sadly, Warrior Hammer ends up being my near-constant example. Whiffs slowly and horribly, has pathetic damage, but “because hammer is CC,” it remains in its current state with an equivalently pathetic trait.
But overall, the weapons mostly try to feel different and have solid purpose, while others seem to languish (Warrior sword/mace, Ele scepter, Ranger axe…) It’s not something a meager damage boost or stray boon is going to fix.

Yes and no. With only so many ‘roles’ or ‘identities’ realistically available, there will be overlap, especially as elite specs opened the design space. I’m not even sure what it is I’m feel I’m disagreeing with for this statement, except it seems to argue against blending roles that would actually bring variety to play.

Good point, I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

TheBravery.9615:

Yes and no. With only so many ‘roles’ or ‘identities’ realistically available, there will be overlap, especially as elite specs opened the design space. I’m not even sure what it is I’m feel I’m disagreeing with for this statement, except it seems to argue against blending roles that would actually bring variety to play.

Good point, I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

The core classes did have stronger identities, and that’s important to the feel of the game. So you weren’t wrong in that regard.

Where ANet misstepped on elite specs is they tried to cover nearly all the gaps in each core class with a single elite. It’s one of the reasons they feel so overpowered right now.

I would add for them not to produce excessively powerful player skills and abilities. While this may suit new content it trivializes old content, making it excessively easy.

OK, in most cases with Ascended and Legendary equipment, and sometimes even with just exotics, we are already very OP.

The stats in GW2 seem to work in a linear fashion, perhaps it should be more diminishing returns?

A DPS meter? Pretty pretty please? I’m not saying all classed should be equal, it’s fine to have some bring less damage in exchange for more utility, but for the bottom classes to do more than 2 times less damage is fluff.