Guild Wars 2

So you are the best of the best. Found a great build, weapon, rune, sigil combo that annihilates the opponent. You become the master of your build and you want to flaunt it. Personally I want to see it. So does ANET.

You post on YouTube or Twitch or what have you and thousands watch. And duplicate And own. Devs troll around and say hey… something isn’t right and they study it. Oh wait…they also have access to your build data and history and they duplicate it. And play it. And test it.

But wait there’s more. Some poor sap just got owned quickly. They look at that…and his/her build and realize either that dead player was bad or wait…that player is geared and tuned well. Hmm… sound of analyzer laser …. Dev puts into a save file and moves on. Some months later meetings upon meetings and there is a decision that yeah this insert profession here is op in some areas or this insert profession here is weak here so let’s balance.

Oh btw…thief is ignoring sword and this profession is ignoring this weapon or there is favor to this particular weapon. So let’s balance that too.

Thief goes into a raid and for some ungodly unknown reason spends an hour or more downing a boss by poof and stab and trap and poof. Let’s balance that too.

Guard has a staff called a “lootstick” for obvious reasons… let’s balance that down a little to be fair.

Cries of OP and nerf this are met with maybe, maybe not and nerf hammer comes down or in some cases the buff gods reflect down on a profession.

Many times we see “unintentional” which means certain build strategies exploit (not necessarily on purpose) the balance system and sometimes ANET acts fast (remember the annoying ghost thief?) and sometimes strategically balances at a certain time.

Balance is an ongoing process and yes, sometimes backwards. In the end there is always a way for you to somehow work around the nerfs or buffs to fine tune your playstyle.

Name a POPULAR MMO that has zero balance complaints. When a mesmer can pop three clones, destroy and pop again immediately and again destroy me to the earth in seconds on a heavy toughness/vitality/cleanse build…that appears to be an issue. BUT WAIT THERE’s MORE! I find that mesmer and sneak up burst down and make them lie in that same dirt pile. Am I now the op profession or learned how to adapt?

I challenge all of you who have been nerfed to (word of the day: ADAPT). Chances are that an over nerf will be repaired. Most cases it is the sake of fair play. Once you put your build out on meta or for those to drool and watch on some social network you risk duplication and decapitation.

Life is short go have some fun. Walk away. Relax. None of us are getting out of this life alive why have a game kill you?