Guild Wars 2

Especially in concern to PvP we are already starting down the path of imbalance to have different classes have varying amounts of Base HP.

Balancing would be easier if all classes were normalized with the same Base HP somewhere within the range of 15,000 to 17,000 or so.

From there adjust skills as necessary.

If you start with a balanced playing field it is easier to end with a balanced playing field.

(Starting with imbalance and then trying to justify it through other means is simply an inferior method)

Do it right from the start.

The different base HPs are a part of the balance.

OriOri.8724:

The different base HPs are a part of the balance.

This.

But why does ranger and engineer has same HP? Has this been changed in the past or what? (I’m new to GW)

I don’t think it’s good idea to give either one 19K HP, but what if buffing ranger dmg and dropping their HP to 11K and raising thieves HP to 15K? or drop engi sustain a bit (yes, little more once again) and giving them 19K health pool?

I’m just playing around with ideas now.

OriOri.8724:

The different base HPs are a part of the balance.

More accurate was part of balance.

Kireak.8023:

OriOri.8724:

The different base HPs are a part of the balance.

More accurate was part of balance.

Ah touche

It was ok until anet gave all classes the ability to one shot thief base hp. This needs to be fixed for the sake of thief build variety. They are a glass cannon class that can’t use glass canon amulets. Fancy that.

Zelulose.8695:

It was ok until anet gave all classes the ability to one shot thief base hp. This needs to be fixed for the sake of thief build variety. They are a glass cannon class that can’t use glass canon amulets. Fancy that.

Its ok though, like mesmer they probably have a super, ultra high defense uptime rotation that is totally super helpful and not useless in PvP, so clearly thiefs are in need of some defensive nerfs still. /s

For reference

Smh…

They do have excessively high up time of defenses and it will get worse if they don’t buff hp.

Actually the only real thing that keep you alive is mobility and block/immunity skills.
The necromancer have 27k hp in they’re main build but die way easier than a thief or a guardian.

The defensive stats don’t count so much in this direct damage burst meta, only block/immunuty/movement works to keep you alive.

The HP pools were functional with the old trait system. Elementalist could get the extra 3k hp from Water and even use a zerk amulet that way. Classes were balanced by the strength of their trait line that way.

When they implemented the new trait system the balance ceased to be. They buffed every stats for every class as if all the stats had the same importance for every class.

What they ended up doing was removing the purpose of light/low hp classes, as they could no longer use the same amulets as heavy class.

Zelulose.8695:

It was ok until anet gave all classes the ability to one shot thief base hp. This needs to be fixed for the sake of thief build variety. They are a glass cannon class that can’t use glass canon amulets. Fancy that.

this is a ok feature, a class what cant burts down everione 100 to 0 in 2 seconds had to die eassy if caught

I’d happily swap my high necro health pool for some invuln/block or evade skills.

Lahmia.2193:

I’d happily swap my high necro health pool for some invuln/block or evade skills.

I’d happily swap my low hp pool for some invln block or evade skills. Oh wait.. Guess what class has been stuck with defense amulets because we lost access to minor toughness, healing, and vitality gains through trait lines.

You atleast can go offensive…

Zelulose.8695:

It was ok until anet gave all classes the ability to one shot thief base hp. This needs to be fixed for the sake of thief build variety. They are a glass cannon class that can’t use glass canon amulets. Fancy that.

Thieves don’t use glass amulets because the practical offensive gain for using berserker is marginal over marauders.

Thief damage is high enough that they are going to get similar TTK regardless of whether they are using marauder or berserker. You can test this too. Go 1v1 a friend that is only using his defensives. You’ll notice that marauder will kill the target just as fast as berserker does, because berserker is total overkill.

With thieves the target either blocks/evades the thief, or the target dies, and this is true regardless of marauder or berserker.

I think the base HP difference is part of the reason why elementalist and thief are so hard to balance.

I am fine with having HP differences, the same way there is armor difference. But the armor difference is fairly small overall (about 15% between light and heavy armor), while the HP difference is huge (64% more HP for warrior compared to guardian). Balance would be much easier if this difference was reduced by half:

• Mesmer, Ranger, Engineer, Revenant: 15922
• Elementalist, Thief, Guardian: 13784 (instead of 11645)
• Necromancer, Warrior: 17567 (instead of 19212)

For the sake of consistency, you could also move engineer to the “high HP” category.

There would need some balances to make this work, but it is a healthier start imo.