Guild Wars 2

For those who haven’t figured it out already, balance is impossible to get in gw2. Many of the top pvp players figured this out a long time ago and quit. I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy pvp all the same but don’t expect balance and i will tell you why.
The trait system is to complex for balance to be achieved in this game. When the devs are trying to balance 1 skill they have to take into account all that traits that might affect it and then compare it to all the other classes and their skills with traits. Can you even imagine what’s that like?
Just think how weapon skills there are and then add all the utilities and then think of all the traits that can change those skills.
This game will never be balanced and it was never meant to be. GW2 pvp is about builds and counters to those builds. That’s why pvp teams are supposed to take bunkers, counter to bunkers, counters to condi spammers and so on.
If you are all expecting some sort of magical balance which allows you to kill a counter to your build with skill alone i am sad to tell you that will never happen. You can take comfort in finding builds and think of that as having skills but when it comes down to the action it’s not very much skill involved, there is some but not much.
TL;DR GW2 is about builds not skill

Unless something is built around everyone having identical class, skills, and stats it can never be fully balanced.

That said, the balance in GW2 is actually quite good all things considered.

Soul.5947:

For those who haven’t figured it out already, balance is impossible to get in gw2. Many of the top pvp players figured this out a long time ago and quit. I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy pvp all the same but don’t expect balance and i will tell you why.
The trait system is to complex for balance to be achieved in this game. When the devs are trying to balance 1 skill they have to take into account all that traits that might affect it and then compare it to all the other classes and their skills with traits. Can you even imagine what’s that like?
Just think how weapon skills there are and then add all the utilities and then think of all the traits that can change those skills.
This game will never be balanced and it was never meant to be. GW2 pvp is about builds and counters to those builds. That’s why pvp teams are supposed to take bunkers, counter to bunkers, counters to condi spammers and so on.
If you are all expecting some sort of magical balance which allows you to kill a counter to your build with skill alone i am sad to tell you that will never happen. You can take comfort in finding builds and think of that as having skills but when it comes down to the action it’s not very much skill involved, there is some but not much.
TL;DR GW2 is about builds not skill

I’d say making a good build takes some knowledge/skill, however, when everyone starts copying those builds and faceroll with them ~cough spirit ranger, hambow, etc..~ I can see your point.

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

Caedmon.6798:

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

Unless those builds are so limited it’s out of sheer luck.

Even though I’ve seen lots of hambow rerollers thinking they had to just smash buttons to win and made them bite the dust with my GS.XD

Caedmon.6798:

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

a little skill but mostly luck, who’s rune procs or who gets more crits etc.

lordkrall.7241:

Unless something is built around everyone having identical class, skills, and stats it can never be fully balanced.

That said, the balance in GW2 is actually quite good all things considered.

Soul.5947:

Caedmon.6798:

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

a little skill but mostly luck, who’s rune procs or who gets more crits etc.

That’s ridiculous. Its all about skill and there’s a little luck involved.

Cush.4063:

Soul.5947:

Caedmon.6798:

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

a little skill but mostly luck, who’s rune procs or who gets more crits etc.

That’s ridiculous. Its all about skill and there’s a little luck involved.

I was saying that it’s THEORETICALLY possible that mirror fights might not be decided by skill.

I’m starting to fall in to this “impossible to balance” crowd myself. The way things seem to be going is toward paper/rock/scissors gameplay. You either have the means to beat the opponents build, or you don’t.

Umm yeah, shortly after World Of Warcraft released (8 YEARS AGO) it became obvious that balancing complicated build systems and hundreds of class abilities is impossible.
That game still hasn’t achieved anything even remotely close to balance, despite having huge dev teams and endless budget.

GW2 is riding a similar rollercoaster.

Not sure what makes people think any MMO will have balanced PvP when trying to boast crazy customization at the same time.

Roflmao diamond skin says hi. Instead of rework the whole condition system its easier to add hardcounter. Lazy lazy lazy.

It’s possible, ANet just supposedly doesn’t have the “resources”.

What game is balanced?
You don’t need perfect balance, the ideal is to have balance close enough that human error allows for variance in results.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Roflmao diamond skin says hi. Instead of rework the whole condition system its easier to add hardcounter. Lazy lazy lazy.

Not even 5% of Ele’s bother using that trait. It’s so bad and putting 30 points in such a terrible trait-line really hurts Ele builds. It hard-counters maybe 2 carrion builds in the entire game and loses to everything else, oh and it’s useless in group fights. Almost every Ele is still sticking to old builds because the core problems with the class remain, Diamond Skin is really not worth taking.

Arganthium.5638:

It’s possible, ANet just supposedly doesn’t have the “resources”.

I would love to see a single game that have 100% balance while still having more than 1 class/weapon/skillset.

Funniest part is that players want even more skills and weapons even if they can’t even figure out how to use these skills.

lordkrall.7241:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s possible, ANet just supposedly doesn’t have the “resources”.

I would love to see a single game that have 100% balance while still having more than 1 class/weapon/skillset.

I’m not talking about “100% balance”, I have no delusions about the possibility of that sort of thing. But looking at, for example, SCII, which, while having fewer “classes”, also has many, many more variables to deal with, last time I checked, the stats showed that Zerg, Protoss, and Terran were all on relatively equal levels as far as winning goes. Of course, the data were more intricate than just that, but it gives you a good feel for the type of balance I’d like to see as opposed to what we have right now.

Cush.4063:

Soul.5947:

Caedmon.6798:

So when 2 people use the exact same build..and fight each other..There will be one winner based on what.. ? The build ? No,his skill.

a little skill but mostly luck, who’s rune procs or who gets more crits etc.

That’s ridiculous. Its all about skill and there’s a little luck involved.

spirit ranger vs spirit ranger: whoever gets more burning procs wins

A very easy FIX to condition spam is to remove all toughness/vitality from sets to put them on mirror with power/crit/precision/crit damage since now you basicly have just full condi damage or full condi damage + more duration.

Sure it will not be remotely balance but willl decrease a lot the factor skill involved and make the game a lot more enjoyable with having balance between power based vs condi spammer bunkers ratio.

The trait system is simple and we have a limited amount of slot skills. I think Anet is doing a decent job. Every game has imbalances, complainers, and extremely bad ideas for balancing. Believe it or not but this game (and any mmo) is based around team play so your build will not work against everything.

Wintel.4873:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Roflmao diamond skin says hi. Instead of rework the whole condition system its easier to add hardcounter. Lazy lazy lazy.

Not even 5% of Ele’s bother using that trait. It’s so bad and putting 30 points in such a terrible trait-line really hurts Ele builds. It hard-counters maybe 2 carrion builds in the entire game and loses to everything else, oh and it’s useless in group fights. Almost every Ele is still sticking to old builds because the core problems with the class remain, Diamond Skin is really not worth taking.

U dont getting my point, do u? Well i try to explain in the easier possible way

Condi op>add condi removal
Condi removal op>add more condi
Condi op>add even more condi removal and immunity skill/traits.

The whole condition system should be completely removed, condi dmg should never be a main source of damage, such conditions as cripple, chill, immo, poison, vul, weakness carry utility and in that way they should be used. I am pro in pressing button 12345 makes me lol everytime at this game and at ppl that balances it.

There was no reason to add such conditions as torment, confusion. They are way over the top.

Want to move? Take double damage – stand still take even more damage as enemy throwing everything at u
Want to use a skill? Oh sorry 2k 2k 2k o i died. Solution dont use skills? I cant defend myself and in many cases i cant even dodge as dodge will proc confu too.

Horrible desing. Im sure i would balance this game alone much better in 3 weeks than the current ppl which doing it. I would get rid of all the zoo petting and spamming off cd in the first place. And naturally i would add dual feature which ppl asking for..over a year.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The trait system is simple and we have a limited amount of slot skills. I think Anet is doing a decent job. Every game has imbalances, complainers, and extremely bad ideas for balancing. Believe it or not but this game (and any mmo) is based around team play so your build will not work against everything.

Yet they nerfind builds that are strong in 1v1. So the game is balanced around..what? To archieve any sort of balance it should be balanced around 1v1 not teamfight. How many times u do 5v5 in tpvp? 0? I guess so

lordkrall.7241:

Unless something is built around everyone having identical class, skills, and stats it can never be fully balanced.

That said, the balance in GW2 is actually quite good all things considered.

I used to say that before but now, I cannot. The balance isn’t quite good. Several things need to be shaved down; Beserker stance and Warrior Stability uptime being the number 1 priorities in my book.

Anet way of balance: u dont do enof condi dmg? ok here is another condi, oh u cant remove condis? ok here have more condi removal or inmunity , oh u are not doing so much dmg now? here have more conditions and so on … having that way of thinking its impossible that they reach “balance”.

I think i posted months ago that they nerf stuff that dont need to be nerfed and they change stuff that it doesnt make sense, they just throwing stuff and hoping some day to reach something even close to balance.

anyway game is fun still lol.

Soul.5947:

TL;DR GW2 is about builds not skill

Balance is impossible.
Good gameplay isn’t.

No MMO has the first, GW2 doesn’t have the second.

People like to think heavily skill based gameplay makes a game successful, it really doesn’t, it is all about engaging gameplay and that just means “feeling involved and purposeful”, but that’s another discussion for another day.

Perfect balance is always going to be impossible, but good balance? No, it’s rather easy really.

Problematic builds still need to be addressed, such as S/D thieves with their constant evade spam making them near impossible to target. Healing signet being such a strong PASSIVE heal.

Such issues as long with RNG need to go. Frankly I think the game is quite easy to save, they are just, for whatever reason, aren’t being as productive as I believe they could be.

Keg Brawl is the most balanced PvP you can and will ever find in GW2.

Actually it doesnt need to be balanced. It only needs to feel like its balanced…
No game can be balanced that gives player different skills/heros/classes or what ever.

And i think the feeling is still a little off…

The game is balanced the same way rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, is balanced.

True balance between Rock and paper will never be achieved.. However Protoss, Terran, Zerg level balance would be fine. As well as TF2.

How can this ever be achieved? Side-grades, spec buffs, and draw backs.
Eg. add a trigger when two specific traits common to the builds are used for example Phant mes = reduce stealth skills duration by 50%

PU = phantasm dmg reduced by 40% +10% condition dmg

These are just examples and possibly flawed ones but the general idea is that force balance between builds and build diversity similar to that kitten build strategies or create specialization similar to tf2

The game is possible to balance to a respectable degree. However I don’t get the impression the people who make the final choice are willing to allow through the changes that would be necessary to do that. Also can’t say I trust in the balance team’s (if there is a team?) ability either.

Get someone in there who knows what they are doing and has some decent control and I am sure things could be put into a nice spot.

i disagree with your post OP
i don’t believe the issue is the complex traits, there not really that complex, but rather the total ineptness of the balancing team

and this is mainly due to how the spvp community has had no 1v1 time with the team responsible for the skills and balance of the game, we have been communicating with the pvp team for the most part, the ones responsible for content and programming for the mists. and yes they do a bit of balance but only feed back that we give them that they occasionally shoot off to the balance team.

in my opinion I think a lot of balance issues can be solved by getting rid of all the passive damage traits, AI and screen clutter, also shaving down some ability’s that have been too strong in the current meta could go a long way to avoid power creep every patch and to simply tone down low risk high reward builds which currently dominate the meta

GW2 is:

1. Team Skill
2. Team Build
3. Individual Build
4. Individual Skill
5. Luck

in that order.

Probably a perfect balance is impossible when u add class diversity, but the main goal would be eliminate every cheese utility/traits/build in game and we said this a lot of times (and avoid to add other potential cheese stuff like war healing signet/#3 thief s/d/necro burning etc.)

And balance this game around conquest mode is very hard. Fight on/around a little node doesn’t help in balance prospective.

Balance is very possible in GW2, there are just several guide-lines that need to govern skills at all times with respect to how ranged attacks work and how gap-closers work.

Imagine this:
Shrapnel Grenade

• FUNCTIONALITY CHANGED
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Recharge: 5 seconds
• Place shrapnel grenades in your hand to throw later. The longer you charge this skill, the more grenades that you throw upon release.
• ½-second channel: 1 grenade
• Full channel: 2 grenades
• Damage per grenade: 179 (0.5)
• Bleeding per grenade: 12 seconds
• Explosion radius: 150
• Range: 1200
• Minimum range: 180
  • Equipping the Grenadier trait changes the amount of grenades thrown at the first stage channel to 2 and the second stage channel to 3.
  • While channeling this skill, the Engineer is posed with his/her arm poised, ready to throw grenades. The player can move while channeling this skill.

Now imagine that that skill was functional within GW2; that despite the potentially long charge-up cast-time, this skill was not left behind by other comparable skills, nor were its mechanics rare throughout the game. There’s your balance for powerful ranged attacks: heavy-hitter skills that take time, positioning and aim to successfully activate.

Teleports are the other skills that tend toward imbalanced play-styles. This game shouldn’t have direct-to-target teleports with cast times below 30 seconds. GW2 really shouldn’t have them at all, but the mechanic is sparse enough outside of Thief that it really isn’t necessarily a huge problem. Being able to spam or use direct-to-target teleports often and without risk doesn’t reward opponents for successfully CC’ing opponents, nor does it punish a player for being out-played by someone that uses CC or positioning properly. Another example:

Infiltrator’s Strike

• Initiative Cost: 4
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Dash at your foe to deliver an immobilizing strike.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Super speed: 1 second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior [Sprint] attack animation with a shorter total sprint distance.
  • Using this skill places a unique debuff on the Thief called Infiltrator’s Pursuit. After 3 seconds, Infiltrator’s Pursuit drains 2 initiative from the Thief. Infiltrator’s Pursuit is removed by dealing damage. Infiltrator’s Pursuit cannot be removed by condition cleanse skills. Infiltrator’s Pursuit stacks in intensity.
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill upon use: [Infiltrator’s Return]

Infiltrator’s Return

• Initiative Cost: 1
• Cast-time: 0
• Evade backwards and lose 1 condition.
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Evasion distance: 600
  • This chain skill remains active for 20 seconds.

After that, blocks and invulnerabilities need to be culled into short-duration, precise counters to one or a mere few attacks.

Then stability could be turned into a boon that stacked in intensity rather than duration to bring back some power to coordinated CC in the competitive format.

Pets and AIs ruin any chance of balance. This is something that will plague GW2, Wildstar, and has plagued WoW with Hunters and Warlocks.

When you add extra targets on the field it creates more of a need for AoE. Imagine focus fire single target coordination with AoE being used opportunistically, like if they’re running a melee comp and you know you can nail them when they focus a target.

That’s what it’s like in 4v4 Arenas in SWTOR. There are no AIs, you have to know your class inside out and hit your skills at the right time to win them. There are some strong builds that people QQ about, but they are easily countered because the game is balanced enough to be self-regulating.

They gave up on Conquest maps and focused on small scale deathmatches. It works because everything is counterable. Stealth can be detected actively and passively at cost. Ranged DPS have to know how to kite to survive, and Melee DPS have to use their anti-CC cooldowns and very short immunities if they want to not be kited. Healers have to position themselves well, and Tanks can guard high priority targets and have to adjust when someone is focused.

It’s such a well designed 4v4 system and what kills me is that’s not possible in GW2.

Too much AI, no diminishing returns on stats, too easy to make OP builds, and way too much prevalence of AoE vs. single target.

It’s sad

jmatb.6307:

Pets and AIs ruin any chance of balance. This is something that will plague GW2, Wildstar, and has plagued WoW with Hunters and Warlocks.

When you add extra targets on the field it creates more of a need for AoE. Imagine focus fire single target coordination with AoE being used opportunistically, like if they’re running a melee comp and you know you can nail them when they focus a target.

That’s what it’s like in 4v4 Arenas in SWTOR. There are no AIs, you have to know your class inside out and hit your skills at the right time to win them. There are some strong builds that people QQ about, but they are easily countered because the game is balanced enough to be self-regulating.

They gave up on Conquest maps and focused on small scale deathmatches. It works because everything is counterable. Stealth can be detected actively and passively at cost. Ranged DPS have to know how to kite to survive, and Melee DPS have to use their anti-CC cooldowns and very short immunities if they want to not be kited. Healers have to position themselves well, and Tanks can guard high priority targets and have to adjust when someone is focused.

It’s such a well designed 4v4 system and what kills me is that’s not possible in GW2.

Too much AI, no diminishing returns on stats, too easy to make OP builds, and way too much prevalence of AoE vs. single target.

It’s sad

That’s not perfectly balanced either, though. Aren’t Sorcerors still rubbish?

Perfect balance is completely unattainable, and it shouldn’t be looked at as the optimal state for the game. Fun should be the ultimate goal. Balance is a component in that, but a perfectly balanced game has every opportunity to not actually be fun.

It’s sad but true.

But this game doesn’t need perfect balance. It needs to make sure every build has a hard counter.
You’re not going to bring a knife to a sniper battle. But that knife shouldn’t be able to beat the sniper. You should have to counter the sniper with equal fire or blow him up. If that makes sense. Lol

The skill ceiling is high but at the same time it’s not. If the ceiling was too high many would get frustrated and quit. If it wasn’t high enough many would get bored and quit. Not everyone wants trib mode/liadri skill caps. Not everyone wants mindless zergs.

It’s going to stay this way and honestly needs to. Though I’m of the crowd that wishes it was more skill over my build can face roll everything.

The only class I think is fundamentally broken is thieves. No cooldowns just begs for spammage and due to that people will always complain about something being too spammed or too frequent.

Drop a diminishing returns cooldown on their butts (so for instance if a skill is used 3 times back to back with no other skills used in between it goes on 3 second cooldown.) and I think we might have a bit more serenity when fighting a thief spamming a skill with annoyingly long evade frames.

Sarrs.4831:

jmatb.6307:

Pets and AIs ruin any chance of balance. This is something that will plague GW2, Wildstar, and has plagued WoW with Hunters and Warlocks.

When you add extra targets on the field it creates more of a need for AoE. Imagine focus fire single target coordination with AoE being used opportunistically, like if they’re running a melee comp and you know you can nail them when they focus a target.

That’s what it’s like in 4v4 Arenas in SWTOR. There are no AIs, you have to know your class inside out and hit your skills at the right time to win them. There are some strong builds that people QQ about, but they are easily countered because the game is balanced enough to be self-regulating.

They gave up on Conquest maps and focused on small scale deathmatches. It works because everything is counterable. Stealth can be detected actively and passively at cost. Ranged DPS have to know how to kite to survive, and Melee DPS have to use their anti-CC cooldowns and very short immunities if they want to not be kited. Healers have to position themselves well, and Tanks can guard high priority targets and have to adjust when someone is focused.

It’s such a well designed 4v4 system and what kills me is that’s not possible in GW2.

Too much AI, no diminishing returns on stats, too easy to make OP builds, and way too much prevalence of AoE vs. single target.

It’s sad

That’s not perfectly balanced either, though. Aren’t Sorcerors still rubbish?

Perfect balance is completely unattainable, and it shouldn’t be looked at as the optimal state for the game. Fun should be the ultimate goal. Balance is a component in that, but a perfectly balanced game has every opportunity to not actually be fun.

Madness/Balance works pretty well. Most of the forum QQ on the tor forums is made by the truly ignorant and godawful, a coordinated group that knows how to peel will keep TK/Lightning and Healer Sage/Sorcs or on their feet.

I’ve noticed that after playing Gunslinger for a while, most of the opinions about balance in that game’s community really shows how terrible they are. In that sense, GW2 actually helped me because you have to be so much better to beat the cheese in this game with non-cheese builds. That carried over to TOR and I consistently rank tops in DPS and medals on a class that “is unplayable in PvP”

Difference is, I can make about 50k credits a day playing PvP only, trick out my dude to look awesome, get in faster matches with Arenas (they take about 5 min tops), and never have to fight a cheese build again.

Swagg.9236:

Infiltrator’s Strike

• Initiative Cost: 4
• Cast-time: 1 second (channel)
• Dash at your foe to deliver an immobilizing strike.
• Damage: 252 (0.75)
• Immobilize: 1 second
• Super speed: 1 second
• Range: 600
  • Uses the Warrior [Sprint] attack animation with a shorter total sprint distance.
  • Using this skill places a unique debuff on the Thief called Infiltrator’s Pursuit. After 3 seconds, Infiltrator’s Pursuit drains 2 initiative from the Thief. Infiltrator’s Pursuit is removed by dealing damage. Infiltrator’s Pursuit cannot be removed by condition cleanse skills. Infiltrator’s Pursuit stacks in intensity.
  • If you strike a foe with this skill, it chains into another skill upon use: [Infiltrator’s Return]

Infiltrator’s Return

• Initiative Cost: 1
• Cast-time: 0
• Evade backwards and lose 1 condition.
• Evasion: ¾ second
• Evasion distance: 600
  • This chain skill remains active for 20 seconds.

All of these changes look either to beat a horse that was already beaten to death ages ago, or are completely random. First of all, your changes would significantly hamper thief’s mobility with S/X; in fact, the only real reason to run S/D nowadays is because of its mobility, and that’s already difficult enough to convert into an advantage.

Also, by being forced to hit an opponent to get IR, thief will become the most condition-vulnerable class in the game. Already we only have two consistent ways to cleanse condos, SA IV for D/X and P/D builds and IR for S/X builds. Very few people take SA IV because it gets in the way of being able to take other traits that are much more valuable to D/X builds (P/D builds take the trait often, but they are already loaded with so many other problems that it really doesn’t matter). Furthermore, the more points that are put into non-DA and CS trees, the more gimmicky that stealth builds become, and the easier they are to counter. So, it’s obviously fairly undesirable to go too deep- if at all- into the SA tree. Sword is different because it actually has a single condi condi cleanser on one of its weapon skills. Even so, it requires a lot of work not to get absolutely annihilated by condis- the probability that we die increases dramatically once we have 3 or more condis on us. Nerfing the condi removal by making IR much harder to be able to be used is going to absolutely destroy what few Sword thieves are left out there. It’s already bad enough that we only have 3 usable skills, and one of those completely interferes with the fluidity that is expected out of a mobility build anyways (IR’s insanely long and queued cast time).

The “Infiltrator’s Pursuit” nerf is absolutely horrible and unjustified. I presume that it comes from some kind of deep hatred within you of sword thieves and spamming 2 (which no half-decent sword thief does, unless he or she is desperately removing condis). IS already deals negligible damage without a combo finisher, and, as usual, you fail to consider the skill in the context of the weaponset. You continue to compare the skill with Savage Leap, but you fail to realize that SL is a crippling attack in a condi weapon set that’s supposed to help set up for the next two skills much more easily. IS doesn’t give any kind of amazing benefit for being closer to your opponent- its other two skills are fairly lackluster compared to other weaponsets in the game. The skill only really helps (occasionally) with fluidity, which is already relatively close to complete with the other two skills anyways.

I don’t understand you, man… Why don’t you go play a S/D thief, make a video, then post it so that you can actually try to justify what you’re saying.

Look there is nothing wrong with calling it like it is. the game can not really be balanced. It really isn’t a compliant but after a year of meta shifts I think players are finally starting to realize that balance updates are literally meta shifts. Even if they change the condi/low risk meta some other meta will come into play. Burst→Bunker→AI→Condi→ Low Risk→?

Who really pays for this? PvE players.

Arganthium.5638:

Also, by being forced to hit an opponent to get IR, thief will become the most condition-vulnerable class in the game.

I’m pretty sure that Mesmer would still hold that title.

Arganthium.5638:

Nerfing the condi removal

I didn’t nerf condi-removal. I changed the teleport.

Arganthium.5638:

… is going to absolutely destroy what few Sword thieves are left out there.

I see nothing but sword Thieves. It isn’t a rare weapon at all to see on a Thief.

Arganthium.5638:

The “Infiltrator’s Pursuit” nerf is absolutely horrible and unjustified.

Not at all. It’s to prevent Thieves from spamming the dash to freely move everywhere at incredible speed. This could simply be prevented by a cool-down, but Thief “design” goes against that.

Arganthium.5638:

I don’t understand you, man… Why don’t you go play a S/D thief, make a video, then post it so that you can actually try to justify what you’re saying.

I’ve made plenty of points already back in my other thread about why certain mechanics currently in place in GW2 are game-breaking. I don’t need to repeat myself because nobody’s ever tried to counter my points. Also, I don’t have any recording programs, otherwise I honestly would. Last time I ran sword/pistol thief, I was kicked from a server. That was a good time.

Swagg.9236:

Arganthium.5638:

Also, by being forced to hit an opponent to get IR, thief will become the most condition-vulnerable class in the game.

I’m pretty sure that Mesmer would still hold that title.

Null Field is more condi removal than virtually every thief running D/X without SA has, and Sword 2 is, as I said, thief’s only consistent way of removing condis (other methods have a fairly long CD or are not useful for a wide variety of situations).

I didn’t nerf condi-removal. I changed the teleport.

That is, in effect, nerfing the condi removal. The more difficult it is to use IR, the more difficult it is to remove condis.

I see nothing but sword Thieves. It isn’t a rare weapon at all to see on a Thief.

So why don’t you prove it to us, then? Because I see very few sword thieves, and the ones that I do see tend to be the same ones I’ve seen before anyways.

Not at all. It’s to prevent Thieves from spamming the dash to freely move everywhere at incredible speed. This could simply be prevented by a cool-down, but Thief “design” goes against that.

Again, evidence. IS/IR doesn’t allow a thief to go “everywhere at once” while still being even remotely efficient- it costs too much initiative to just spam over and over again.

I’ve made plenty of points already back in my other thread about why certain mechanics currently in place in GW2 are game-breaking. I don’t need to repeat myself because nobody’s ever tried to counter my points. Also, I don’t have any recording programs, otherwise I honestly would. Last time I ran sword/pistol thief, I was kicked from a server. That was a good time.

Yeah, nobody’s ever tried to counter your points about D/P’s Shadow Shot damage being unblock able, or how it’s basically a free Meteor Shower… It’s not a matter of not countering your points, it’s a matter of how you compare skills to one another, in which regard you seem to be severely lacking any half-decent method of comparison.

And I’m glad you ran S/P in hot join, you must be a pro.

Because being a “famous” S/D player makes you an authority?

lol your build didn’t even put crit damage on a direct damage build through traits. No precision. I looked at that build you posted and it is so incredibly bad.

You act like you’re supposed to be important when all you’ve ever been in the GW2 PvP scene is a guy who piggybacked off of Jumper’s build, tried to convince people that your build was better, and are apparently depressed that Anet finally realized they screwed up with making S/D what it became.

Let it go.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Roflmao diamond skin says hi. Instead of rework the whole condition system its easier to add hardcounter. Lazy lazy lazy.

yeah true. they even refuse to split spvp balance and wvw balance. every buff u have in spvp, could affect wvw twice as hard. in wvw u have this http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Lemongrass_Poultry_Soup and now they added diamond skin…brilliant now condi builds are getting completely useless in wvw.

u think mes is op?lol. yeah so we get nerf after nerf and still are great duelists and people in spvp are still frustrated, but in wvw the mes has become a veils/tw bot because of all the nerfs.

GWEN trains are the meta in wvw, because of your great balance u put together based on spvp. pretty soon all we will see is GW trains because of that. have these balance patches helped spvp? not really. it shifted the metas around a little, but war is still spamming cc like nothing, eles got a little boost vs condi, but still lack in other things, ranger has been nerfed almost back to the bottom and mes are still an annoyance, but will be on the bottom again once anet nerfs that too.
all those balance patches did, was destroying class and build diversity in wvw, but not helping spvp.

Gw felt good balance wise. Maybe secondary classes will help balancing gw2.
But jokes aside. I think the balance could be much worse. I think the problem is more there exist to many bad and clunky mechenics in the game.

jmatb.6307:

Because being a “famous” S/D player makes you an authority?

lol your build didn’t even put crit damage on a direct damage build through traits. No precision. I looked at that build you posted and it is so incredibly bad.

You act like you’re supposed to be important when all you’ve ever been in the GW2 PvP scene is a guy who piggybacked off of Jumper’s build, tried to convince people that your build was better, and are apparently depressed that Anet finally realized they screwed up with making S/D what it became.

Let it go.

Somebody’s full of hate. I just watched The Purge, sounds like it would be a good way for you to let out all that anger.

I’d post the usual statistics- that 1 point of power is worth ~4.688 points of precision, and that even with 50% crit damage it still takes ~1280 power for one point of precision to equal one point of power… But that won’t convince you, it never convinces anybody. Maybe because their ignorance is bliss, and you’re just another sad little sheep standing with the crowd.

I have no doubt that many, if not most, of my cries against Jumper were immature… But to cast away my build so easily, so dismissively, does not make you any more respectable. Have you actually tried out the build, by the way? Not that I really need you to answer that question, because most of the scrubs that have criticized it haven’t. At least, not the ones that used what you used as their argument.

I could also ask you to give me objective evidence behind the build being as bad as you say it is, but that’d be in vain as well. “No 30 in CS?!?! lol noob” is the same dogma you and your circle of pals spew, which makes it even more difficult for me to find any reason to respect you.

I really couldn’t care less if people like you don’t respect me, I don’t respect you either. I’m not famous, but at least I contribute to the community and I give the most objective answers that I can. I’m certainly not the only “famous” one who’s complained about the sword nerfs, but apparently my saying it makes the idea instantaneously ridiculous. I’ve got over 1.5k posts on these forums (unfortunately), but if people like you can’t possibly bear to hear what I say, and then call me a noob, inexperienced, bad- whatever, then go ahead and whine about it. I’m sick of having to deal with others’ personal problems just so that I can maintain any sort of reputation in the face of garbage-slingers like you, and I certainly won’t miss the vast majority of this community when I’m gone.

What reputation? You’re the calculator guy that doesn’t even know the right math.

Its pretty simple if you have played any other MMO that uses crit damage multipliers. Every single measure of different ratings and their output to overall damage points to crit dmg multipliers providing the most. Linear increases are only decent unless you can guarantee crits and you crank out crit multipliers.

It’s not a dogma it’s a fundamental mathematical fact about critical hits and multipliers. We’re not talking religion here this is damage formulas and math. I’m the cynical philosophy major you’re supposed to be correcting me, not the other way around LOL

This is why no power necro in their right mind would put 30 points into Curses – they get 50% crit chance from DS (LOL) so it makes sense to just put the rest into Spite. The damage goes up more that way than the 300 precision.

This is especially true in Guild Wars 2 because it’s so easy to get a high crit chance. The damage just flies off the charts with a zerker ammy and 30 CS, just like it does on Soul Reaping for Necro, Discipline for Warrior, list goes on. Eurantien’s 30/30/10 build on Ranger does crazy damage because of this damage scaling as well, with another 300 power and 100 condition damage to boot.

When you only use Power as your entire source of damage, it is so easy to mitigate so the pressure becomes very weak. Anyone who has personal or group protection proc makes your already average damage drop down to worthless.

Your build is only going to be good 1v1 against squishies that have no armor and shouldn’t be 1v1ing you anyway. How is that going to beat a Rabid Engi or Necro build? How about a Settler’s Ranger build, BM or Spirit?

When you roll into a fight with that kind of awful damage you aren’t pressuring your opponent, so what do you bring to teamfights?

It’s just a bad build with a deep-rooted misunderstanding about how damage works

No hard feelings that’s just the truth /shrug

The game is partially hard to balance because Anet made it that way. They removed the healer class, then decided to add a healing attribute. They gave every profession the same recharge mechanic on weaponsets except for one. They made each profession’s core mechanic function so different that changing some of them to something more feasible would completely destroy whatever’s left of the competitive scene.

A lot more variables were added than were needed, but Anet’s really gotta get the ball rolling if they want this game to keep going as long as its predecessor.

jmatb.6307:

snip

Funny you say that I “don’t know the right math”, nobody’s ever bothered to try to refute it before from a mathematical standpoint. I’d like to see you try though.

It’s just a simple fact- precision is a godawful stat in comparison to power. The increase isn’t linear, either (I suppose that it at least appears logarithmic or radical), but either way, that’s besides the point. Just looking at the power formula, as well as the formula for critical chance, you see that the marginal benefit from a single point of power is much larger than that of precision. In WvW, things would be different due to the sheer volume of stats you can get, but we’re talking about sPvP here.

Being a philosophy major is different from being a math major. However, since I presume you have at least some degree of knowledge in the field- if the damage formula is (1-Critical Chance)(Power)(Skill Coefficient)(Weapon Coefficient)/(ArmorToughness), which can be simplified to [(P)(Sc)(Wc)](1+(Crit Dam-1)Crit Chance)/(Armor+Toughness) {note that I’m doing this all in my head- it’s different in my spreadsheets- though I do think that my simplified answer is correct so far}, then what is the formula for the marginal benefit of power?

Well, first, we’re going to assume that we’re talking about damage amplification solely from stats, so we can ignore Skill Coefficient by assuming it’s constant to itself in our marginal formula (which is coming in a second). We can also assume Weapon Coefficient is constant for the same reason, but we can also assume that it’s constant based on 1) it’s nonmoving average for a single weapon type and 2) that it is assumed that the Weapon Coefficient is independent of power and, for that matter, every other variable apart from a weapon and it’s range of possible weapon coefficients. Furthermore, we’ll assume that we’re using the ceteris paribus assumption, and that there’s not going to be any direct relationship between how much power you have and, for example, how much precision you have, since we’re evaluating the benefit from a 1 increase in one variable. Since power increases by values of 1, we can say that the marginal formula is [(Power1)(Other Variables)/(Defense)]/[(Power)(Other Variables)/(Defense)] = (Power+1)/Power, which is the formula that I use for my spreadsheet. It’s actually slightly more complicated than that when you consider things such as specific damage amplifiers (i.e. 5% from Force Runes, 15% from Assassin’s Signet, etc), but since those same types of amplifiers are applied to the value of critical damage and precision as well, it doesn’t really matter anyways.

EDIT: apparently the forums don’t like math too much, so some random parts are underlined, which I can’t fix without something else bugging out on me… Either way, I’m sure you’ll be able to understand it.