Guild Wars 2

Dear ANet Balance Team,

I am of the opinion that the current decision to do balance updates every 6 months is no longer a good policy to follow.

Perhaps at one time it was, maybe. However, now your player base has such an intimate knowledge of game mechanics that we can quickly adapt and identify things that are clearly superior to play.

NA has been aware that Celestial is superior to play for over 6 months, and this became clear to some in EU for a while, but very clear to the whole player base after the first WTS leg.

With the upcoming WTS legs regional Qualifiers and ultimately finals, players will be clearly seeing what works globally after each major balance update.

I’m not suggesting doing major balance changes more frequently. I am suggesting a higher frequency in shaving the meta though. I don’t know what the right frequency is, maybe it’s doing shaves once 3 months after a major update, maybe it’s 2 small shaves every 2 months after the major balance patch.

Ultimately I think everyone underestimated just how much impact the"big" and even “small” changes being made would impact the meta. I feel like it’s important allow yourselves more opportunities to make adjustments for the sake of players and allowing various playstyles to shine.

They could shave/balance on a rotating basis, one class every 2 weeks so it would be minor rolling changes that can more quickly react to imbalances. That way every 4 months a class would see a change to themselves but there would be (possible) changes to the meta every 2 weeks. It seems like small changes to 1 class each time would make it a lot easier to see how the player base responds rather than dumping a huge patch every 6 months.

As a disclaimer, I have no idea if that would be more or less work for the devs.

The meta would be in a constant state of flux with changes every 2 weeks, but maybe it’s better to get the playerbase used to something like that instead of shock changes every 6 months.

Idk, but it’s an interesting idea.

Yeah, I was hoping with this idea that players gear wouldn’t be obsolete immediately since they would only see changes to their main every 4 months, but watching a wave of smaller balance changes occur around them might nudge them to try new things. Along with the more focused changes, I would hope it would be less stressful on the devs because they wouldn’t have every player yelling at them after a big patch if bugs popped up or players disagreed with changes. It seems like it would be easier to put out little fires rather than a raging inferno.