Q:
Dear Mike O’Brien, Colin Johanson, et al.
It’s well known that an overwhelming majority of those who play GW2 engage in the PvE side of the game. I’ve read that in this game the dedicated sPvP crowd constitutes less than 5% of the total game population. As the release of HoT approaches, no doubt everyone at ArenaNet is working crazy hours to get to the Oct 23 release date. My question is: How much of that proverbial death march to the release can ArenaNet afford to spend on properly balancing the Elite Specs and Revenant for sPvP?
I’m not questioning the capability of ArenaNet to eventually give sPvP the attention it needs, but I do wonder in the grand scheme of HoT release and all the existing fires that need to be dealt with in PvE if the resources are on hand to really take care of sPvP. There are some serious balance problems with the Elite Specs in sPvP you can several of those mentioned in this forum, but there are many other problems that I’ve encountered that are not mentioned here. ANet have you had sPvP developers and designers observing Hot Joint and Ranked/Unraked matches? ANet do you even have enough time in the next few weeks to address these balance problems with all the other things PvE getting propriety?
It’s understandable PvE gets priory, that’s where the majority of your customers are, but please also consider how unfair and how very bad for the sPvP side of the game it will be allowing Elite Specs you have strong evidence are grossly over powered into Ranked sPvP matches.
GW2 sPvP has grown because after years of hard work in balancing classes it’s become more of a game a skill. Your design in allowing even level 1 characters to have access to all skills and equipment is great, but its’ taken since 2012 for the balancing to take effect, great meta builds to rise and be maintained by the community. Today in Oct 2015 pre-HoT launch a new player to this game can roll a new character, find a strong meta pvp build, train on that build and then join a PUG and most of the time even in a PUG their skill will be the biggest factor for the win. That’s a combination of skill balance and availability of strong proven builds.
With HoT if all Elite Specs were better balanced then I’d say release them to sPvP for Hot Join, Unranked and Ranked but they just aren’t. Some need a lot of work, some need now work at all, but YOU KNOW THIS. You guys have the data. So how do you protect the integrity of sPvP now? If you aren’t able to give proper time to balancing known issues with these Elite Specs in sPvP then the responsible thing to do is to keep them out of Ranked matches temporary until you developers and designers have some time to address the problems. If you choose not to do this then you are creating a scenario where in Ranked sPvP matches over powered exploits grant the win and not skill.
Given how active sPvP has become in GW2 it probably won’t take long for the major over power issues to come to light. My suggestion is just to keep the Elite Specs and Revenant out of Ranked until you have a little time to give more balancing to these. Otherwise you may see a mass exit from one of the best sides of the game.
So the question is: Given all the work that must be done for the PvE side of HoT before release, do you have the resources to address the sPvP balance issues? And if not will you take some action to protect the integrity of Ranked sPvP until you do have some time to devote resources to the needed blance?
Thanks