Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing for some time now, but I’ve never managed to get my head round why classes have different base health pools?

Take for example..

On my Ele I can get the same stats and output roughly the same damage as my Necromancer. Though, my Necro has much, much more health.

Can anyone please explain why there is a difference in health pools?

I’ve mained a Warrior for a while and recently moved on to playing Mesmer and Guardian a lot. I’ve been playing a relatively tanky build on my Guardian and only recently decided to try get some DPS going. When I traited full zerk I was shocked to see that I only had around 10,000 health. My Warrior has the same stats, does better damage (and more efficiently) and still has around 20,000 health.

Why on earth?..

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

A short answer is because of the asymmetric nature of the classes.

Each class has a different level of healing, armor and hp, accessibility to boons, amount of evade/block/invulnerable skills, and accessibility to other class mechanics (stealth, clones, minions, pets). Therefore, the classes that have less hp will have greater access to damage mitigation.

I haven’t leveled a guard, but off the top of my head they have aegis, protection, regen, summons, and (I think) better healing compared to a warrior, which has none of those things.

Because different classes are different.

Look at it from the zerk point of view.

I die far, far faster on my 10k Guard than I do on my 20k Warr.

Defensive utilities/capabilities are close to useless when playing full damage, there’s no need for such a health gap in those cases.

You die much faster because you are not using your classes abilities. If you were you would have survived just as long, if not longer.

Just because you gear for full damage doesn’t mean you can ignore defense.

The truth is that warriors have the highest armor, hp and close to the best personal defensive abilities (more dodges and blocks).

Zelyhn.8069:

The truth is that warriors have the highest armor, hp and close to the best personal defensive abilities (more dodges and blocks).

no

Crovax.7854:

Zelyhn.8069:

The truth is that warriors have the highest armor, hp and close to the best personal defensive abilities (more dodges and blocks).

no

You are right, shame on me I forgot to mention two things: best group buffing and near best damage.

lordkrall.7241:

Just because you gear for full damage doesn’t mean you can ignore defense.

You can if you’re a warrior. Which is kind of the big issue here.

Zelyhn.8069:

Crovax.7854:

Zelyhn.8069:

The truth is that warriors have the highest armor, hp and close to the best personal defensive abilities (more dodges and blocks).

no

You are right, shame on me I forgot to mention two things: best group buffing and near best damage.

ahahaha. still no.

edit: to keep this constructive: What amazing group buffs do warrior have.
How does a warrior have so many dodges/evades?
What amazing defenses do wwarriors have outside of their armor and health?

Off hand sword
GS whirlwind attack
Banners, FGJ.
And soon they will get a heal designed to absorb attacks.
It is a well known fact that – projectile defense aside – warriors are the best in PvE.

Crovax.7854:

What amazing group buffs do warrior have.

Banners?

Crovax.7854:

How does a warrior have so many dodges/evades?

Blocks?

Crovax.7854:

What amazing defenses do wwarriors have outside of their armor and health?

This ridiculously overpowered thing known to the common man as a healing signet.

There really is no justifying warriors having the highest health and armor at this point. There is no class variety in PvE whatsoever thanks to warriors being so easy to play.

Crovax.7854:

Zelyhn.8069:

Crovax.7854:

Zelyhn.8069:

The truth is that warriors have the highest armor, hp and close to the best personal defensive abilities (more dodges and blocks).

no

You are right, shame on me I forgot to mention two things: best group buffing and near best damage.

ahahaha. still no.

edit: to keep this constructive: What amazing group buffs do warrior have.
How does a warrior have so many dodges/evades?
What amazing defenses do wwarriors have outside of their armor and health?

And just to clarify for Crovax:
Defenses that aren’t ~4-6 sec durations on ~40 sec – 1 minute long cds.

What warriors can’t heal??

and what are these ? → http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_Signet (best passive healing output)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Shouts (1500 base heal on the shortest cooldown utilities)

Actually I’d love if Eles and Guardians would get a small increase in HP, at least eles because they have squishiest armor

Wallace MacBix.2089:

A short answer is because of the asymmetric nature of the classes.

Each class has a different level of healing, armor and hp, accessibility to boons, amount of evade/block/invulnerable skills, and accessibility to other class mechanics (stealth, clones, minions, pets). Therefore, the classes that have less hp will have greater access to damage mitigation.

All of which have been reduced on Eles throughout the life of the game without any other compensation.

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

This isn’t true of Warrior at the moment.

Unfortunately ele hp seems to be balanced on a single trait setup where we get a lot of healing. This destroys our build diversity because if you pick glass traits like a war, you will only do the same or worse damage than a war (even though you would expect better), but die 3x as fast. Thankfully I don’t really care too much about diversity, and the build in question is good in all game modes so you don’t have to bother with always changing traits like some other classes.

My Warrior is really good in PVE, yes, but actualy my ele is 10time better.
Warrior is better for one thing, and only one : brainded meta full zerk. But after some fractal 40+ with 3ele(2staff, 1 d/d) i’m sure i can say that : its 10time better than full zerkwarior/guardian or all alternativ of that. Perma buff, perma heal, innsane aoe damage, lot of cc, lot of combo, etc… You just cant fail if you play right. And isnt slow, just not a time reccord. (And about that, isnt sure…)
Try real build and maybe you can understand why some class dont have same hp pool :/

If you give me more hp in ele, i’m ok, but in fact ele become totaly overpowered with that. Its the only way you can die : no time for full regen/dispel.
(And i play 70% zerk on my build)

(Sorry bad english)

So this thread was really a “Nerf warrior” thread in disguise

JJBigs.8456:

So this thread was really a “Nerf warrior” thread in disguise

Can you really defend the current situation in PvE? It has gotten to the point where groups will only take in heavy armor classes. That’s how bad the balance is right now.

Zach.3264:

I’ve been playing for some time now, but I’ve never managed to get my head round why classes have different base health pools?

Take for example..

On my Ele I can get the same stats and output roughly the same damage as my Necromancer. Though, my Necro has much, much more health.

Can anyone please explain why there is a difference in health pools?

I’ve mained a Warrior for a while and recently moved on to playing Mesmer and Guardian a lot. I’ve been playing a relatively tanky build on my Guardian and only recently decided to try get some DPS going. When I traited full zerk I was shocked to see that I only had around 10,000 health. My Warrior has the same stats, does better damage (and more efficiently) and still has around 20,000 health.

Why on earth?..

Because this was yet another poor profession design decision that continues to be ignored.

Fungalfoot.7213:

Can you really defend the current situation in PvE? It has gotten to the point where groups will only take in heavy armor classes. That’s how bad the balance is right now.

No, we bring along a ele for fire fields on demand and FGS (A little sarcasm when reading this)

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

Ha. Hahaha. Hah. Hmm.

I think ele’s could get slightly higher base hp would be nice. Their survivability (especially in pvp) keeps getting the nerf-bat with nothing to compensate.

Zach.3264:

I’ve been playing for some time now, but I’ve never managed to get my head round why classes have different base health pools?

Take for example..

On my Ele I can get the same stats and output roughly the same damage as my Necromancer. Though, my Necro has much, much more health.

Can anyone please explain why there is a difference in health pools?

I’ve mained a Warrior for a while and recently moved on to playing Mesmer and Guardian a lot. I’ve been playing a relatively tanky build on my Guardian and only recently decided to try get some DPS going. When I traited full zerk I was shocked to see that I only had around 10,000 health. My Warrior has the same stats, does better damage (and more efficiently) and still has around 20,000 health.

Why on earth?..

The health and armor differences are simply and purely poor design and balance. Some will try and point to mobility, defense, range, etc but the simple fact is that those are not good things to balance on. Balancing upon those requires certain trait/weapon/gear setups leaving all other builds underpowered due to having to make up for those stats.

If your answer to any question about profession differences is, “Because PvP.” you’d be right far more than you’d be wrong. I believe the health pool size is one of those cases. However, I also believe that, in sPvP, health pool size is more of an issue for offensive builds than bunkers, which depend more on their ability to sustain health rather than just having more health.

I won’t say whether the gripes about warriors are justified or not, but it wasn’t that long ago that the consensus was that warriors were a bottom-tier choice for PvP, and bunker eles/guards and even rangers were being reviled.

Zelyhn.8069:

Off hand sword
GS whirlwind attack
Banners, FGJ.
And soon they will get a heal designed to absorb attacks.
It is a well known fact that – projectile defense aside – warriors are the best in PvE.

They’ve released information on the new heals? Is there anywhere I can view this?

My 50k Juggermancer scoffs at your 20k Warrior.
Your warrior cries tears of laughter at my damage output ._.

Arius.7031:

They’ve released information on the new heals? Is there anywhere I can view this?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1s31pc/new_healing_skills_datamined/

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

Name 3 defensive/restorative skills that the Elementalist has. I have an 80 Elementalist and I sure can’t name that many.

As it is now, the health pools at level 80 (including vitality) are 10,805 at the lowest, 15,082 for the medium, and 18,372 at the highest. That’s a difference of 4,277 between the lowest and the mid, but only 3,290 between the medium and the highest…and the highest and lowest values are separated by an incredible 7,567. To me, that looks like an arbitrary setup with no discernible logic behind those values or differences.

I’d like to see the discrepancy lowered between the health pools. The common suggestion on the forums—that I agree with—is to change it to 12,000 → 15,000 →18,000. This creates symmetry, and I imagine would make it worlds easier to balance.

Galtrix.7369:

Name 3 defensive/restorative skills that the Elementalist has. I have an 80 Elementalist and I sure can’t name that many.

Every single weapon have skills in Earth that are quite good at defense. Same as water have rather good restorative skills.
Not to mention the utility skills such as Mist Form and the Earth Shield.

Galtrix.7369:

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

Name 3 defensive/restorative skills that the Elementalist has. I have an 80 Elementalist and I sure can’t name that many.

Defensive:
-Mist Form
-Armor of Earth
-Cleansing Flame
-Lightning Flash
-Arcane Shield
-Magnetic Surge
-Obsidian Flesh
-Swirling Winds
-Earth Shield: Fortify
-Static Aura
-Frost Aura
-Magnetic Aura
-Earth Attunement (when traited for AoE stability/protection on attune)

Healing:
-Water Attunement (traited for AoE regen, AoE heal, AoE condition removal)*
-Evasive Arcana (Water Attunement)*
-Any traited cantrip (vigor + regeneration)
-Cleansing Wave (dagger skill)*
-Cone of Cold
-Geyser
-Healing Rain
-Water Trident*
-Any blast finisher + water fields
*these scale 1-to-1 with healing power

This is not counting all the slows/snares/CC ele has, or its dedicated healing skills, or skills like Burning Speed, Updraft, and Ride the Lightning which can be used as escapes, or the burst heal that the summoned water elementals do. Probably a few more I’ve forgotten.

Galtrix.7369:

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

Name 3 defensive/restorative skills that the Elementalist has. I have an 80 Elementalist and I sure can’t name that many.

I’m entirely positive you’re trolling, but for the sake of helping the community here are a few Ele skills that qualify as “defensive” or “restorative”:

Staff
Geyser
Healing Rain
Gust
Static Field
Magnetic Aura
Unsteady Ground

Scepter
Water Trident
Blinding Flash
Rock Barrier
Dust Devil

Dagger
mainhand
Cone of Cold
Shocking Aura
offhand
Frost Aura
Updraft

Focus
Fire Shield
Swirling Winds
Gale
Magnetic Wave
Obsidian flesh

Utilities
Arcane Shield
Armor of Earth
Mist Form
Conjure: Earth Shield
Signet of Air
Signet of Earth
Signet of Water

lordkrall.7241:

Because both Necro and Warrior have much worse defensive/restorative capabilities than Ele and Guardian.

Ahahahahah…warrior having less than ele…comedy gold, bro.

i’m not sure if one class have more than ele actualy… Maybe guardian, but in one weapon switch… not sure i didnt know guardian much.

My warrior could use some loving! Couple insta heals…

Shasha.2548:

i’m not sure if one class have more than ele actualy… Maybe guardian, but in one weapon switch… not sure i didnt know guardian much.

Healing Signet alone equals everything an ele has.

Its exactly what i think when i switch to water on staff “kitten, i will die, where is healing Signet ?”

I guess we all won’t be happy until everyone considers warriors free kills in wvw and pvp again.

You got it ! Is just one more farm nerf by Anet after all.

Best group buffing? How can you even remotely be serious about that comment?

Best healing? Again, just a severely uninformed comment. Have you never seen a Guardian AOE BURST HEAL FOR 14K+?

They have more dodges…? How dense must you be about the classes in this game to ever begin to have this thought? Guardian, Mesmer, Elementlist all have perma vigor through critical hits! Rangers have +50% endurance regen for 5 points. The Thief has more teleports and evades on their weapons than a Warrior has access to dodges (Please notice I didn’t even have to include the Thief dodges to already outshine the Warrior. The Thief also recoupes 15 endurance on dodge if traited properly)!

Are you people so inept at this game that you honestly believe the Warrior is the strongest? They are decent, yes, but they will lose to any mildly skilled player of any other class (except for maybe a Elementlist at the moment, even then it is iffy. The Elementlist could easily one shot a stun Warrior if they do their rotation right).

People wonder why the skill level of the general populace in this game is so horrible. You have 0 clue about what class you play or fight. Yet you still call for nerfs and buffs when the vast majority of you have never even played more than one class. Pathetic.

You are spouting an uninformed opinion on a class almost none of you have played (at 80 and geared, because lets be honest, hardly any of you are actual pvpers) formed by a person who got destroyed by the class because they are not good at the game/pvp in general.

fellyn.5083:

I guess we all won’t be happy until everyone considers warriors free kills in wvw and pvp again.

Theoretically, this can be solved pretty easily: Separate PvP skills and stats from PvE. There’s no way to balance any class as long as they keep nerfing stuff in PvE for PvP reasons (and vice versa).

I say theoretically because this does take a lot of coding, but I’ve seen it being done in other games and it’s really good, they can fully control any PvP aspect of any class without breaking it in PvE/WvW.

Some of the replies to this thread are funny.

Warrior not OP… come on. I’ve played almost every class to level 80, and I can say that Warrior always felt the most rediculous cause of the amount of weapons they can use, the Healing Signet, Adrenal Health, Cleansing Ire, all of that DPS from GS and traits, the list goes on. There is nothing that a Warrior cannot do. My current build (based around Unsuspecting Foe, burst skill recharge and burst skill cost reduction), gives me 100% crit chance against stunned foes, and I can stun them very often, combined with my own survivability (Healing Signet and Cleansing Ire), its kind of lame.

This is why I set Warrior as my main and use two sets on her: Berserker for most PvE, and Celestial for other areas of the game including WvW, because I like having the healing power (Regen banners, etc. are epic) and condition damage for bow. But the truth is I could run around in full dire or something and still have about the same damage output as a full zerk-geared player of another class because of the way the traits are set up to give Warrior so many boosts to DPS. Me and my SO (who is a Guardian), ran all story dungeons, all fractals and all explorable dungeons that don’t have a 3+ person puzzle block mechanic (e.g CoF) with just the two of us mainly because of regeneration banners and burst skill spam.

And on my Necromancer, because of the base 18k HP and Death shroud mechanics, she is the only character that I run full glass 100% of the time. High base defense combined with a second HP bar and health siphoning…

There’s no reason for the differences in health in this game, none. Every class has powers that are overpowered when used in a certain way and the HP pools shift this towards the classes that have the most health. Even if all classes had the same health, I guarantee you that, for example, an Warrior could still beat an Ele if played right. The only time I could see it being a problem is with Guardian who already possibly survives too well with their low 10K of HP that they have right now.

I don’t think this concern is even on Anet’s radar. It should be. They should close the gap on highest base hp classes with lowest base hp classes, at the very least in PVE.

Warrior did not have the sustain it has now. It used to be a free kill, even though we have all these weapons that people like to point out and even though we had all this DPS and still theoretically tanky in zerker we were free kills in WvW(I say theoretically because you need to build tanky to actually be tanky because thinking you are still tankish in zerker will get you killed.) Can’t speak for sPvP.

That sustain that warrior has now is not always good for every situation and there are better skills to use in other fights. Healing signet is not very good for heavy zerg fights because there is too much damage hitting at once when you are the one diving into that other zerg and if you go in glass you will be a free kill. Healing signet is good in 1v1 because there the damage is more metered out and not in high bursts that you will see in zerg fights.

Warrior weapons can also be nice but you are foolish to say they have the best with the best DPS, I’m not talking about PvE here because in PvE, it doesn’t matter except to speed runners. Many of warrior attacks are very telegraphed and the only way you should be getting hit is if you ran out of dodges. If you are trying to run zerker, you got nothing to complain about. Zerker is a free kill in WvW. I chuckle when I see a great sword warrior because it really isn’t that good for 1v1(we all know what they will be setting up for.)

That new healing stance is not very good if it is going to work like I think it will work. I don’t believe it is going to work the way the people complaining about it will work. Even still, it is not a good general skill but more build specific. Some builds may utilize it while other builds that try to use it should just hand the other player a loot bag.

Warriors have a good variety of builds but those builds are not going to utilize all these weapons and skills at one time that people think is OP. Just like all other classes, to get a completely different set available than what is already slotted, we have to get out of combat, so that warrior using sword/horn hammer is not going to also have a great sword while running all these great skills that we have at once because like everyone else, we also have to get out of combat to change skills. We have good builds and a good variety so when you see someone say that warrior has these great skills, you should also consider the build it goes with and realize that these skills are build specific and not something to be run all the time and they will also not be running all these other great skills because just like every one else, we get 1 heal(2 if that heal stance ends up in the utility slot but still other better skills available), 3 utility, 1 elite.

If anything needs to be complained about it is that other classes do not have the wide variety of builds to make use of the skills the have available. I think that many skills that other classes have are junk because there is no synergy with builds to use them(I’m not talking about the truly junk skills that we all know are junk but the ones that can be good with the right situation but there is nothing to go along with them because any build that could utilize them are not very good so those skills are relegated to junk.)

Ignoring the “nerf warriors/pls don’t nerf warriors” bits, since it’s a round-and-round argument, the HP difference is the single biggest obstacle in the game in terms of class balance.

The different classes have essentially the same damage potential, but vastly different abilities in terms of survival. For example, glass warrior vs glass ranger or glass ele – they’re going to do roughly the same damage, but the ranger and ele are both going to be free kills.

The classes should have all had the same base HP, with the difference in survival being through armour (armour doesn’t count nearly enough in this game for damage mitigation) and endurance (heavies should have a penalty to endurance regen, mediums should have “base” regen, light armour classes should get extra. For the reasoning here, YOU try doing acrobatics in a bathrobe, then try the same thing wearing an 80lb backpack.) The fact that one single boon counts for more protection than the highest armour stacking available is an absolute fail.

Since there is zero indication that Anet is going to address this, the best we can hope for is some other form of balancing the classes. Unfortunately, the ONLY balance concern that Anet observes involves the 5v5 capture-the-node pvp mode. So long as one class can’t control two nodes, “balancing” will be non-existent.

EDIT: glass ranger will, of course, do less damage – they have the lowest DPS of any class because of a fail mechanic – the basic point still stands though.

There is no good reason to have this huge difference in HP.

It’s obviously something they decided on long ago and have never gone back to reconsider it.

It’s a poor design decision, making it impossible to balance PvE properly. It’s probably why we’ve become so accustomed to one-hit-kills in PvE.

PvP isn’t better for it either. Guardians and Eles could easily be slightly less tanky if they had 2000 more base HP. Thieves could be slightly less bursty with 2000 more HP.

I’m not saying that we need to equalize the HP entirely, but the difference between 10800 HP and 18.300 HP is too kitten large to ever achieve proper balance.

stale.9785:

Ignoring the “nerf warriors/pls don’t nerf warriors” bits, since it’s a round-and-round argument, the HP difference is the single biggest obstacle in the game in terms of class balance.

The different classes have essentially the same damage potential, but vastly different abilities in terms of survival. For example, glass warrior vs glass ranger or glass ele – they’re going to do roughly the same damage, but the ranger and ele are both going to be free kills.

The classes should have all had the same base HP, with the difference in survival being through armour (armour doesn’t count nearly enough in this game for damage mitigation) and endurance (heavies should have a penalty to endurance regen, mediums should have “base” regen, light armour classes should get extra. For the reasoning here, YOU try doing acrobatics in a bathrobe, then try the same thing wearing an 80lb backpack.) The fact that one single boon counts for more protection than the highest armour stacking available is an absolute fail.

Since there is zero indication that Anet is going to address this, the best we can hope for is some other form of balancing the classes. Unfortunately, the ONLY balance concern that Anet observes involves the 5v5 capture-the-node pvp mode. So long as one class can’t control two nodes, “balancing” will be non-existent.

EDIT: glass ranger will, of course, do less damage – they have the lowest DPS of any class because of a fail mechanic – the basic point still stands though.

The only problem with making armor the survivability measure is that condition damage bypasses it. This would just amplify the already condition heavy PvP. The options I see then are making toughness reduce condition damage(crits too), reducing the amount of condition spam, or creating a new defensive stat that resists conditions. Honestly the whole stat system needs an overhaul to make defense scale as well as power/precision/crit damage and even condition dmg/condition duration. I also think they need to make attacks/conditions scale more based on your power/condition damage to further differentiate builds and make it so conditions on a zerker build do incredibly low damage and vice versa on a condition build.

You are correct though! ArenaNet will never even approach fixing the problem. It takes them months to make even the smallest bad changes, a year to make small good changes, so it will take them decades to make large good changes. Seriously ArenaNet you need to hire some more devs for balancing or at least hold a discussion with players about what needs addressed. No more of this purely SPvP balancing either, PvE and WvW players want some balance too.

During that time ranger’s corpse keep getting beaten with a rusty stick.