Guild Wars 2

So, we all know mercenary got removed because it was an easy nerf to mesmer, without it impacting other professions’ main builds too much(except necro, poor guys) and we all know the next amulet: carrion. Why not viper or sinister? While i’m sure some will attempt that, you will generally find that you’re way too squishy. Even if they pull it off, it will be due to their active defenses.

What about warr? Well, since he has 19200 hp and 2160 armor, he can pick whichever amulet he wants. At the moment, warr has the greatest build variety of all classes – not meta(but I wouldn’t exclude him either), but viable – a variety that Anet should strive to represent on each profession.

If you look at guard, with 11600 hp, he barely has a choice(excluding the huge amount of useless utilities and traits), he is pigeonholed into marauder. That’s all the diversity guard gets. Same for ele – cleric, same for thief – marauder. What I’m trying to get at is that the discrepancies between armor and health are forcing all the classes except warr into specific amulets. That’s why you don’t see many zerker thiefs out there, or any sinister rangers.

What I’m proposing is normalizing all health in PvP to 19200. Yes, there will be a powercreep for most classes, since it will allow people to take more offensive amulets, but I feel this is the first natural step to truly diversify builds in PvP.

I’m sure some people will give necro as an example, since he already has 19200 hp – why doesn’t necro use sinister? I’m afraid this has more to do with the profession design than anything else. They have no active defenses, thy’re just a big health sponge and a form of damage mitigation is required. As I see it, it’s a balance issue.

And it would truly require a huge balancing effort from Anet, because in the current setup, some classes would be broken. After more useless traits/skills get repaired and after the next batch of elite specs is released we will have many more build options. It would be a shame to be pigeonholed into the same amulet.

Sardath.8524:

So, we all know mercenary got removed because it was an easy nerf to mesmer, without it impacting other professions’ main builds too much(except necro, poor guys) and we all know the next amulet: carrion. Why not viper or sinister? While i’m sure some will attempt that, you will generally find that you’re way too squishy. Even if they pull it off, it will be due to their active defenses.

What about warr? Well, since he has 19200 hp and 2160 armor, he can pick whichever amulet he wants. At the moment, warr has the greatest build variety of all classes – not meta(but I wouldn’t exclude him either), but viable – a variety that Anet should strive to represent on each profession.

If you look at guard, with 11600 hp, he barely has a choice(excluding the huge amount of useless utilities and traits), he is pigeonholed into marauder. That’s all the diversity guard gets. Same for ele – cleric, same for thief – marauder. What I’m trying to get at is that the discrepancies between armor and health are forcing all the classes except warr into specific amulets. That’s why you don’t see many zerker thiefs out there, or any sinister rangers.

What I’m proposing is normalizing all health in PvP to 19200. Yes, there will be a powercreep for most classes, since it will allow people to take more offensive amulets, but I feel this is the first natural step to truly diversify builds in PvP.

I’m sure some people will give necro as an example, since he already has 19200 hp – why doesn’t necro use sinister? I’m afraid this has more to do with the profession design than anything else. They have no active defenses, thy’re just a big health sponge and a form of damage mitigation is required. As I see it, it’s a balance issue.

And it would truly require a huge balancing effort from Anet, because in the current setup, some classes would be broken. After more useless traits/skills get repaired and after the next batch of elite specs is released we will have many more build options. It would be a shame to be pigeonholed into the same amulet.

If guardians gets the warriors health then warriors want the guardians access to aegis, if ele gets the warriors toughness we want their group support, and if thieves get our vitality we want their stealth…basically the extra health and toughness is what gives warrior any chance…it is our defensive ability like an extra dodge roll/stealth/aegis/2nd health bar/ or unlimited heals is for other classes

Chase.2798:

If guardians gets the warriors health then warriors want the guardians access to aegis, if ele gets the warriors toughness we want their group support, and if thieves get our vitality we want their stealth…basically the extra health and toughness is what gives warrior any chance…it is our defensive ability like an extra dodge roll/stealth/aegis/2nd health bar/ or unlimited heals is for other classes

You conveniently left out the insane amount of regen warr can have(the same as druids Troll Unguent actually), the high amount of blocks, condi imunity or lots of condi cleanse(depending on build), damage immunity on utility and trait, dead or alive and good mobility skills.

This is not a nerf/buff warr thread. Whatever balance issues you find should be fixed and are definitely not an excuse for the fact that the rest of the professions are pigeonholed into one or two amulets.

Sardath.8524:

Chase.2798:

If guardians gets the warriors health then warriors want the guardians access to aegis, if ele gets the warriors toughness we want their group support, and if thieves get our vitality we want their stealth…basically the extra health and toughness is what gives warrior any chance…it is our defensive ability like an extra dodge roll/stealth/aegis/2nd health bar/ or unlimited heals is for other classes

You conveniently left out the insane amount of regen warr can have(the same as druids Troll Unguent actually), the high amount of blocks, condi imunity or lots of condi cleanse(depending on build), damage immunity on utility and trait, dead or alive and good mobility skills.

This is not a nerf/buff warr thread. Whatever balance issues you find should be fixed and are definitely not an excuse for the fact that the rest of the professions are pigeonholed into one or two amulets.

Which is why we need either more amulets or a system that allows greater control of stats. Classes are not balanced to all have the same base health and armor, and changing that would require a ton of additional balance changes in turn. True, warriors have some nice things in their kit, but the regen is new, and all the rest of it wasn’t exactly enough to save us the past 2 seasons.

Sardath.8524:

Chase.2798:

If guardians gets the warriors health then warriors want the guardians access to aegis, if ele gets the warriors toughness we want their group support, and if thieves get our vitality we want their stealth…basically the extra health and toughness is what gives warrior any chance…it is our defensive ability like an extra dodge roll/stealth/aegis/2nd health bar/ or unlimited heals is for other classes

You conveniently left out the insane amount of regen warr can have(the same as druids Troll Unguent actually), the high amount of blocks, condi imunity or lots of condi cleanse(depending on build), damage immunity on utility and trait, dead or alive and good mobility skills.

This is not a nerf/buff warr thread. Whatever balance issues you find should be fixed and are definitely not an excuse for the fact that the rest of the professions are pigeonholed into one or two amulets.

Those builds might be pigeonholed but the progfession is pigeonholed due to a lack of balance between skills…look at guardian there is basically 2 types of usable utilities in pvp traps (only good against scrubs) and meditations (only some are good and have to be traited and still arent as good as some utilities)….and one of the biggest issues plaguing pvp is the amount of abilities some proffessions have access to compared to others…mesmer f1-f5 while war has f1 (f2 with berserker). Yes i did leave out some defenses on warrior but i also left out some on other classes, i was trying to keep things simple. I think maybe a boost of all classes to 15k health…leaving top proffessions where they are could be helpful for the ones with 11k hp and not kill warrior.

Even if we would have perfect skill balance most classes would boil down to picking something with vitality or toughness and healing power. Adding more amulets would still leave most of them unusable by most classes – you simply can’t find invent a better amulet than marauder for some classes.

There are only two classes I see that would be very problematic with this change. Ele and guardian – they would benefit immensely from this change, with ele being a huge bunker and guard dishing out too much damage in relation to his survivability. The armor remains unchanged, I don’t see the rest of the professions being way too overpowered.

Something has to be done, though.

@OP

I think you are grossly underestimating how much each class is balanced around its base hp. Changing it would require too much work, tim0,e and money for anet to actually consider it at all.

I realised that many build really require skill to play.
Yet if one will understand the build to at least decent level, it is so strong in its very concept/traits/utilites, that it seems overpowered.
Reaper for example, it needs time and skill but once mastered, it is just simply too much to handle, thus people call for nerfs.

Actually… I am all for less stat-based combat, and more skill-based combat.

Yes, thief has low health because he has access to stealth. That one actually made sense back in the day, but right now it doesn’t make sense any more. Necromancer has a giant health pool, and for no obvious reason. Sure, it lacks mobility and toughness, but during Season 2 reaper was overpowered (until they nerfed).

I think, to make GW2 combat less about random complexities like stats, and more about the player’s actual skill… it would be a big step forward if they normalised health and toughness. And maybe if they deleted toughness/vitality (maybe even healing) stats on amulets altogether, so it would make room for specific avenues of playstyle that rely on active and not passive defenses.

Does it stop there? Of course not, there will be a lot of balancing needed if they finally make a standard health/armour that is equal on all classes. In line with this, they should reduce the overall number of passive effects on traits, runes and even signets. Once they cut the passive defenses they will also be able to cut the overkill in condi/dps, so GW2 is actually playable.

“Necromancer has a giant health pool, and for no obvious reason, sure it lacks mobility and toughness…”

You are wrong that it’s for no reason. They have no skills that count as an evade or a block and they have no abilities that grant invulnerability. They have go soak all form of damage all the time hence the large healthpool.

This is the point I made that OP underestimates the work you need to do. If you change the healthpool not only do you need to rework the classes damage, survivability , traits and abilities accordingly you then need to look at how they function vs other classes and change them too. Over all its unfeasible to even consider.
It’s more realistic to work with what you have than start from the ground up again.

Sigmoid.7082:

This is the point I made that OP underestimates the work you need to do. If you change the healthpool not only do you need to rework the classes damage, survivability , traits and abilities accordingly you then need to look at how they function vs other classes and change them too. Over all its unfeasible to even consider.
It’s more realistic to work with what you have than start from the ground up again.

I said it would require a huge rework – huge doesn’t seem like an understatement – and it’s just an opinion, we don’t have any data to know the feasibility of such a task.

Either way, the current system does not promote diversity – not build wise, and certainly not amulet wise.

The whole health/armor discrepancy will continue to hinder diversity, especially when new elite specs will be made. They will have to be balanced around the shortcomings of the base class and will have to compensate with amulets, like in the current system.

Guardian can trait for health. The only classes that need a hp boost are elementalists and thief by around 5k so they don’t get one shot for using a berserk amulet.

Zelulose.8695:

Guardian can trait for health. The only classes that need a hp boost are elementalists and thief by around 5k so they don’t get one shot for using a berserk amulet.

It’s barely 3k hp, and you aren’t going to be running a solid damage guard if you run honor traitline.

As a guard, I’d actually be happy with the medium base hp (15.9k I think). If the enemy team doesn’t have more than 1 burst class, I’d be willing enough to roll zerker amulet. Anything under 15k hp is too little though.

If they brought thief/ele/guard health levels up they would likely have to lower their ability to survive elsewhere.

And while that may be the easy choice among options it wouldn’t technically be the good one.
(I say this because while ele & thief have a good amount of options for sustain & disengage guard really only has meditations which are still no competition compared to ele/engi/rev sustain, especially in PvP where they far outshine it.)

Frankly I think the better option is to revamp the traits, utility skills & weapon skills that are under par.
Doing so would be quite a bit of work however, especially on the guardian 50% of who’s utility skills, traits & a decent number of weapon skills are absolute crap for PvP.

PS:
Sadly the changes of Anet actually fixing all the broken crap on guardian is next to nothing. It may be higher-much higher on thief & ele however as they seem to have allot less problems to start with and thief has gotten numerous major trait/skill reworks.

As Anet says “guardian is in a good spot”, to which we should all reply bullkitten, if its in a good spot you would nerf ele/engi/rev/mes etc… to give it company.

Problem with guardian is that you MUST choose:

Valor – 2-2-2
Virtues 2-2-3
DH – 1-1-2

There are NO alternatives to those 3 trait lines if you want to live long enough.

Also for Marauder. There are no alternatives to it.

There are just no other builds than medi trapper that survives and do damage. Guardians are just one build class cause we are in a good spot.

Yeah, guardians are in a “good spot”. lol.