Guild Wars 2

Lets say we went with my idea – make the base HP the same across the classes.

Next, we adjust armour to work as real damage mitigation. Heavy armour should be a default 33% reduction in direct damage – medium armour 20%, light armour 10%. Adjust toughness gain through stats so that the different levels would top out at:

Heavy: 33% default, 60% max

Medium: 20% default, 33% max

Light: 10% default, 25% max

This could be done through adjusting the toughness return on the different armour stats, and through traits.

Next, we address survivability. This comes in a few forms. Dodge would be the most basic – it’s 100% damage mitigation. You adjust the different weights of armour to affect endurance differently.

Heavy: Current base endurance return – minimal dodging.

Medium: Current + 100% – you can dodge twice as often as the heavy armour guy – makes sense.

Light: Current + 150% – you can dodge 2.5 times as often as the heavy armour wearer, and half again as often as the medium.

So, we have 3 sets of character – soldier, adventurer, and scholar. All 3 have the same health, same damage output, and different means to stay alive. All that’s left is what each one brings to the table.

Warriors – mostly frontliners, and offensive utility. (Might and vulnerability – Death to the opposition!)

Guardians – mostly frontliners, and defensive utility. (aegis/blind/regen – Stand strong, friends!)

Ranger – skirmisher, front and midline. defensive utility (traps, defense THROUGH offense. spirits for area boons. Disruption to the opposition!)

Thief – skirmisher – front and midline – offensive utility (area stealth, poison/blind fields. Tricky and painful is smarter than forceful!)

Ele – scholar – mid to backline. defense through offense (burning, chill, blind, condition cleanse. Mastery of the elements, Rawr!)

Necro – scholar – mid to backline. defense through deathshroud and offense through abuse – (boon stripping, torment and poison should be stock in trade. Suffer and DIE!)

Mesmer – scholar – mid to backline. defense through clones and offense through being stranger than the next guy. (Confusion to the enemy!)

With the frontline/midline/backline, bear in mind I don’t want a trinity back – every class has ranged/melee options that swap on the fly (except for eles) and that’s good. What I would love is clearer definitions of what each class brings to a party.

TL:DR – give each class the same base HP, but heavy armour should be more tanky than medium, which should be more tanky than light. Light armour folks should be able to dodge more than medium armour types, who are still more agile than heavies.

stale.9785:

TL:DR – give each class the same base HP, but heavy armour should be more tanky than medium, which should be more tanky than light. Light armour folks should be able to dodge more than medium armour types, who are still more agile than heavies.

At this point you have an entirely different game. Maybe GW3, but not even an expansion would bring that many changes.

The main problem is that they took a standard RPG set-up and tried to shoehorn it into their game which wasn’t a standard RPG. in traditional MMO’s Heavy armor wearers are always melee fighters with lots of defense and adequate offense. Medium Armor wearers come in two varieties. High damage or high burst melee fighters, or adequate ranged fighters like a ranger. Finally light armor wearers or casters are long range nukers who do very high damage but with very low survivability.

Yet Anet took this model and then for some reason said screw that, everyone will be both melee and ranged and everyone will have the same dps in melee range and everyone will have the same dps in ranged mode. Of course they left all the traditional defense capabilities in place, for no reason what-so-ever.

So now we are stuck in the awkward situation where everyone can theoretically do the same damage, but some classes still have more defense then others, leaving those classes clearly superior to the others. You can either have a trade-off system or an everyone is equal system… but right now Anet is trying to have both… which leads to heavy classes being god mode and everyone else being left behind.

why the difference in anything if at the game meta all classes are the same (zerk+130 range high atkspd weapon).

lordkrall.7241:

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

Hehe, you’re kidding right? Especially on the Warrior side

Dee Jay.2460:

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.

Allow me to disagree. It will not change a thing. It will only achieve that the ELE will still be tanky with more health and a Thief will burst more often, than usual.

Regards

Seed

PvE wise
Best dungeon class = guardian
best dps class = ele
best pug class = warrior

any question?

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

yes…
Warrior has endure pain and a block-everything shield block. Guardian has 3 blocks on focus, renewed focus. I don’t see why guardian has so much less hp.

Sirendor.1394:

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

yes…
Warrior has endure pain and a block-everything shield block. Guardian has 3 blocks on focus, renewed focus. I don’t see why guardian has so much less hp.

Yet not all builds use block everything shield or endure pain. Some can utilize them but that would be builds, not something that we have all the time.

Guardian also has access to protection.

Sirendor.1394:

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

yes…
Warrior has endure pain and a block-everything shield block. Guardian has 3 blocks on focus, renewed focus. I don’t see why guardian has so much less hp.

That’s why warrior is the best pug class because it can protect itself while dealing damage.

Guardian on the other hand is team player, a lot of access to protection too, it can block projectile for your team and aoe pull, make fights and stacking so much easier, you would always want a guardian over warrior in dungeons.

let’s not mention that, guardian can outdamage warrior in a team scenario.

stale.9785:

Lets say we went with my idea – make the base HP the same across the classes.

Next, we adjust armour to work as real damage mitigation. Heavy armour should be a default 33% reduction in direct damage – medium armour 20%, light armour 10%. Adjust toughness gain through stats so that the different levels would top out at:

Heavy: 33% default, 60% max

Medium: 20% default, 33% max

Light: 10% default, 25% max

This could be done through adjusting the toughness return on the different armour stats, and through traits.

Next, we address survivability. This comes in a few forms. Dodge would be the most basic – it’s 100% damage mitigation. You adjust the different weights of armour to affect endurance differently.

Heavy: Current base endurance return – minimal dodging.

Medium: Current + 100% – you can dodge twice as often as the heavy armour guy – makes sense.

Light: Current + 150% – you can dodge 2.5 times as often as the heavy armour wearer, and half again as often as the medium.

As the post below you said, this would be a different game, not gw2.

Actually look at your ideas implemented into gw2:

Heavy: 33% default, 60% max

Medium: 20% default, 33% max

Light: 10% default, 25% max

My war in knights/rabid gear has ~54% DR compared to a zerker scholar. Yet bosses can still 2-3 hit me, if I get sloppy on a dodge. Heck during some comedic dungeon runs with some friends I’ve had the boss aggro on me (and only me) and then just chase me in a circle while I lay down fire fields, and everyone else just focuses on hurting him. If I stood still I would die. Take Mai for example, her shadow step can still do ~1/4 of my hp in a single hit even with all of my armor/toughness.

And your suggestion is to let medium armor users get a dodge every 5 sec (every 2.5sec with vigor)? And light armor users to be able to dodge every 4 sec (2 sec with vigor). That is insane, some classes could dodge after every other auto attack. Not to mention you don’t even mention other classes ability to mitigate damage through other means than just dodging (evade skills, blocks, boons – regen, protection, vigor, stealth, conditions – blind, cripple, chill, immo, and class mechanic skills – clones, pets, death shroud, minions/summons/weapons/etc.

There is a reason why we have different health pools and different types of skills/abilities: asymmetric gameplay. The hardest to balance, but also the most fun. Are different hp pools good, in this case yes. Are they at perfect levels of balance, I can’t say. I really only play my war, but on my alts (necro, ranger, ele) I’ve noticed that my necro never had a hard time dealing with things because of death shroud and minions, my ranger almost never died because my pet was able to tank everything, and on my ele I seem way too squishy (then again he’s still using sub80 blues/greens), but I feel like I do a lot more damage.

In gw1 everyone had the same hp because that was a different kind of game. The same strategy would not work here.

Zelyhn.8069:

It is a well known fact that – projectile defense aside – warriors are the best in PvE.

Nope. Not true at all. You want 1 Warrior to run the 2 useful banners, any more is redundant and the slot filled by a better profession.

JJBigs.8456:

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

Not at all, my Warrior is my main. Why would I ask for it nerfed?
On the other hand, I do have an 80 Mesmer, Necro and Guardian. I’m happy with all of them but Guardian. I have zerk sets on all 4, Guardian is the only one I don’t use it on. If I go zerker on my Guard I have around half the health I do on other classes.

As for the “Guardian has protection”

If I’m 10k health and I eat a 5k (it’s definitely possible in most dungeons) hit that makes it 2 hits to kill me.
If I have protection up, that 5k becomes 3350. That means it would take 3 hits to kill me.
That makes me like, what.. an extra second or two?

I think i’d much prefer +100% more health opposed to an extra second or two to live.

Yes it’s situational, but no amount of defensive boons will be more valuable than an extra 100% health. In my opinion that is.

It was supposed to be because classes with lower armor and health would have greater defensive utilities and weapon skills.

The elementalist was really the only class for which this was true, and its entire suite of defensive abilities were gutted because of it.

And it’s just going to get worse down the road, coming next patch the class with the highest health and armor in the game (warrior) will officially have as much invulnerability as the class with the lowest (elementalist). And it can deal damage and heal during its invulnerabilities, while the elementalist had that functionality taken away in the same sweep of nerfs where it lost half its healing, its only gap closer, and half its stun-breakers.

At this point it has been made clear as day that Anet is incapable of balancing classes reliant on defensive abilities against those dependent on defensive stats. One will always be greater than the other. Defensive stats need to be normalized and that’s just all there is to it.