Guild Wars 2

From what I’ve seen, GW2 balances by nerfing that which is most used and buffing that which is least used, in order to promote diversity and reach a state of balance. Sounds good on paper, but there is a deeper issue at work.

Many of the weapons and utilities which get buffed will never be used in any serious PvP scenario because they are inherently flawed when it comes to this gamemode, no matter how many “+10% here, reduce CD by 3s there” tweaks are done to it.

Take Ranger’s SB vs LB, since that profession I know well. In LB you have range, an invisibility shot and a knockback; on SB you have one evade skill which pushes you back about half an inch. That alone is enough to make SB obsolete, for the most part, and in fact condition rangers (already a minority) are almost always trapper rangers playing with rune of the trapper, seeking to 1v1 and load a point with all their traps… because they get rekt anywhere else on the map. See my point? It’s about balance, sure, but internal balance and coherence.

Success in PvP comes down to a balance between burst and sustain, so I can’t help but feel that by nerfing everything that’s overused and buffing everything that’s underused misses the mark. Any PvP build worth its salt will have a fair bit of sustain skills, and the reason people gravitate towards a certain build or even a certain profession is because that utility, that coherence, simply isn’t there elsewhere.

Let’s nerf the things that actually make sense and buff the things that don’t. That’s my impression of this philosophy put to work.