Guild Wars 2

Yes another of ‘these’ threads.

Currently the PvP that was promised to us all as ‘balanced and competitive’ is fundamentally broken due to class balance.

For proof of this surely the devs only need to look at the stats for classes played in pvp. Virtually every Battle I join is either 80% mesmer and thief, or ends up that way after 3 or 4 rounds. In one group last night we had 4 mesmers evenly split amongst the teams and close fights each time. In one instance all 4 ended up on the same team (with 2 guardians as well) and they won 500-80. Anecdotal? Yes. True? Also yes. All my guildies are having the same experiences.

It’s a pretty sad indictment of modern MMO players that they flock to the fotm classes, and it’s this sort of behaviour (similar to exploiting PvE content) which genuinely ruins it for everyone else.

The trouble is that progression is tied to account, so there is no point in playing the class you truly enjoy the most if you actually enjoy winning at all costs.

Before anyone claims it’s a l2p issue, I currently main an engineer, and the only class I really have trouble with is certain necro builds, I find guardians very easy to beat, thieves too unless I get unlucky with cooldowns and mesmers I’d say it’s 50/50 (although I sometimes get annoyed when an obviously bad player beats me through the power of the class).

My point rather than balance is that the community has worked out that mesmers and thieves are the two classes which allow you to be bad but get good results. This then means that sPvP ends up being dominated by these classes, which ultimately results in boring pvp for the rest of us.

As a fix please simply bring the aforementioned classes back into line with the rest. If these changes need to be PvP only to appease the PvE crowd so be it, but right now the PvP is becoming stale and boring!
I know many people want to see buffs for everyone else, but in all honesty I believe the damage and skill level to avoid that damage is ok for most classes. If you keep buffing then you end up needing to increase morale pools, or toughness levels, diminishing returns etc. I say keep the base as it is now and bring classes down to (or up to) that overall base, to avoid complex changing of gear stats etc.

No, it hasn’t. The only people who truly whine about thieves are those who don’t know how to play against them. Thieves aren’t hard to beat. I’d suggest making a thief and playing it in sPVP; you’ll learn your own counters soon enough.

Whenever I do sPVP, the class amounts are pretty balanced. More Mesmers than most, but a lot of mesmers are bad (although Moa Transformation is an absolute joke), so it kind of evens out. Guardian is really the only class I’ve noticed has an issue in sPVP, and that’s mainly because of their lack of chasing/CC. In team fights, they do alright, though.

The real issue is that people want to build glass cannon and expect to beat every class no matter what in 1v1. If they lose, they come on here and complain. I agree that the thief build being used by a lot currently is a bit annoying (Assassin’s Signet, Basilisk Venom, and pure damage with daggers for near instant kill with Steal → Cloak and Dagger → Backstab), but they can only kill one person with it and they become a regular thief. This build is actually pretty easily countered by survivability or condition damage builds, since if you can survive their initial burst, most thieves who use that build don’t know what to do.

My engineer build is defensive, and in my OP I said that I beat thieves virtually every time unless everything I have is on cd.

My point is not that I can’t beat these people, it’s that due to some classes being more powerful than others, people flock to them. And it allows dodgy players to perform better than they should.
It also causes pvp to become stale and boring because everyone is playing the same classes. Lack of variety is exactly the opposite of why I PvP.

Oh and due to some classes being stronger than others PvP isn’t skill based, but rather ‘I am better by enough of a margin to beat this player on a more powerful class than me!’.

I rarely ever have battles where one class is used far more than others. There’s usually 2 or 3 of one class. As stated, Guardian is the class I see the least. Instead of nerfing classes seen as strong, we should be buffing classes seen as weak. I’d rather not have this game have a ridiculously low power bar. It’s more fun if the classes are all strong rather than all weak.

Krathalos.3461:

I rarely ever have battles where one class is used far more than others. There’s usually 2 or 3 of one class. As stated, Guardian is the class I see the least. Instead of nerfing classes seen as strong, we should be buffing classes seen as weak. I’d rather not have this game have a ridiculously low power bar. It’s more fun if the classes are all strong rather than all weak.

do you play tournaments or u base your experience on 8v8?
because guardian is a must have in tourney and when i face 2 in opponent team-so common these days- it is painfull.
2guardian 2 mesmer and the game is done.

I would just like to go on the record that even though I know how to deal with thieves and don’t have allot of issues with them 1v1 it is still a bit unbalanced with the gap closer + damage that the abilities have. Especially when you couple it with the current (rumored lag bug) perma-invis issues. More times then not I can get a lucky cc on them (cause they didnt move immediately) but there is that 1/4 that beat me by spamming heart seeker alone still. I do not believe they are completely OP and can one button everything like is claimed in many of these forums but it is disheartening nonetheless and I am not a glass cannon build either.

I agree with OP. The majority of games I have been in have been nothing but Thieves and Mesmer. It is a bit ridiculous when you look at the overall amount of them (even just looking at those sitting in the heart of mists you can notice the disparity). I also play an engineer and have been having a blast but between the class imbalance and the auto balancing/join quit issues I really am starting to feel the bitterness welling up inside me toward SPVP.
I would say to give ArenaNet some more time though. The game hasn’t been out for long and they are just starting to get to the meaty stuff like balancing issues. I have full faith that ArenaNet will come through as promised in due time. In the meantime I will just go do something else when SPVP or FOTM trolls pop up in large numbers.

Krathalos.3461:

I rarely ever have battles where one class is used far more than others. There’s usually 2 or 3 of one class. As stated, Guardian is the class I see the least. Instead of nerfing classes seen as strong, we should be buffing classes seen as weak. I’d rather not have this game have a ridiculously low power bar. It’s more fun if the classes are all strong rather than all weak.

Ever heard of Power Creeping? My guess is most people here havent.

You seem to have actually ‘heard’ the term only (without knowing the meaning), because it is not applicable at all to a just released game like GW2…xD

Nyota.7062:

You seem to have actually ‘heard’ the term only (without knowing the meaning), because it is not applicable at all to a just released game like GW2…xD

Buffing everything up doesnt remind you of power creeping?

kk dude.. xD

GankSinatra.2653:

Krathalos.3461:

I rarely ever have battles where one class is used far more than others. There’s usually 2 or 3 of one class. As stated, Guardian is the class I see the least. Instead of nerfing classes seen as strong, we should be buffing classes seen as weak. I’d rather not have this game have a ridiculously low power bar. It’s more fun if the classes are all strong rather than all weak.

Ever heard of Power Creeping? My guess is most people here havent.

Nyota.7062:

You seem to have actually ‘heard’ the term only (without knowing the meaning), because it is not applicable at all to a just released game like GW2…xD

Basically this… Power creeping is a gradual process, not something that can happen from a game that was just released.

Problem is not the thief , thief dies as fast as they kill , go watch guardians and mesmers overshadowing the rest of the classes , so if i was a dev i will take a close look at the design of the mesmer and guardians , retardilation anyone ?
on ur with bufffing look at necromancer

I largely agree with OP. Mesmers and thieves appear to be the most popular classes in sPVP. Must be a reason for it.

There are so many thieves right now because people enjoy being bursty and having that one-shot factor. I believe it is really that simple.

Although, I could also say that thieves require less skill to accomplish big damage and this caters to people’s lack of patience and desire to execute an actual thought-out kill, instead of spamming 2 or 3 at the closest enemy.

Some official numbers would be nice.

I admit to creating a mesmer alt. One of the big reasons is that I want to learn how to play against mesmers by learning the profession myself. I wonder how many are alting these “op” classes for the same reason?

My 1st class I played in spvp was a thief. Other classes besides mesmer don’t even compare.

Remember, spvp is about small fights and running around constantly. Thieves excel in these areas. Also, summoning pets is flat out OP for thieves. I use the trap and the elite and it’s an auto win every single time.

While mesmers are OP when compared to anything but thieves, they aren’t quite as bad imo. They do less damage and are easier to kill.

The game shouldn’t be balanced around 8v8. The maps weren’t designed for it, and it requires no coordination to do well, and it’s terribly zergy. The very nature of 8v8 attracts high burst specs, but that doesn’t mean they are OP. They just perform well there because they don’t get focused as easily thanks to zergs. It compounds the burst they can perform by making them harder to kill since you always have CDs down, and are usually fighting multiple opponents. In 5v5 these classes are significantly less of a problem than in 8v8.

That said, I’m really happy Mesmers tend to take Moa. Once it’s nerfed and they start running Time Warp the QQ will really begin. Only two classes have the ability to turn a team fight into an automatic win – Guardian and Mesmer.

Quickness should be looked at across the board. These burst specs just scale incredibly well with it, and make them far harder to counter whenever they have it up. Since the damage is coming at you twice as fast, it is significantly harder to react to. Do something about quickness and I think a lot of the “class is OP” threads will disappear.

Personally, I’d prefer they focus on fixing the bugs first. Some classes suffer horribly from buggy and unreliable traits or skills. Fixing these will increase their power, and from there real balance changes can be considered.

I must be unlucky/lucky because I haven’t been see a lot of thieves recently. I think many of them figured out you can build a burst warrior and have 15k more health to boot.

Bulls Charge —→Frenzy-—→Hundred Blades

I have to agree on the Mems though those guys are everywhere. It doesn’t help that in small spaces 2 Mems become 10 making it very hard to find Waldo.

Krathalos.3461:

No, it hasn’t. The only people who truly whine about thieves are those who don’t know how to play against them. Thieves aren’t hard to beat. I’d suggest making a thief and playing it in sPVP; you’ll learn your own counters soon enough.

Whenever I do sPVP, the class amounts are pretty balanced. More Mesmers than most, but a lot of mesmers are bad (although Moa Transformation is an absolute joke), so it kind of evens out. Guardian is really the only class I’ve noticed has an issue in sPVP, and that’s mainly because of their lack of chasing/CC. In team fights, they do alright, though.

The real issue is that people want to build glass cannon and expect to beat every class no matter what in 1v1. If they lose, they come on here and complain. I agree that the thief build being used by a lot currently is a bit annoying (Assassin’s Signet, Basilisk Venom, and pure damage with daggers for near instant kill with Steal -> Cloak and Dagger -> Backstab), but they can only kill one person with it and they become a regular thief. This build is actually pretty easily countered by survivability or condition damage builds, since if you can survive their initial burst, most thieves who use that build don’t know what to do.

Thats true. I tried the build once. Its all good and well till you find someone who survives it then heals almost back to full health. At that point your in a bit of a scramble to figure out what your next move should be.

Animosity.5231:

Quickness should be looked at across the board.

I agree and the two main characters I play are a ranger and an engineer, which are two of the professions that have on-demand quickness.

From the very first time I tried using it, it felt overpowered. In games like this it’s usually not a good idea to have a huge offensive burst cooldowns, and +100% attack speed for 4 to 5 seconds definitely fits into that category. All I have to do is activate quickness and if my opponent does not respond immediately to it they’ve probably lost the fight. If they can’t respond immediately (because they’re out of endurance and they either don’t have active defensive skills or they’re already on cooldown) then they lose. It feels dodgy.

I think quickness should be reduced to +50% attack speed (which would still be a huge boost) and the professions that have access to it rebalanced accordingly.

Elloni.2473:

I must be unlucky/lucky because I haven’t been see a lot of thieves recently. I think many of them figured out you can build a burst warrior and have 15k more health to boot.

Bulls Charge —->Frenzy——>Hundred Blades

I have to agree on the Mems though those guys are everywhere. It doesn’t help that in small spaces 2 Mems become 10 making it very hard to find Waldo.

1.) Block or dodge bulls charge.

2.) Block or dodge Hundred Blades

3.) ???

4.) Profit

That’s true of all the burst combos not just the warrior.

The problem with the whole L2P argument is that it freely suggests classes using brainless burst combo should just get free kills whenever they catch someone whose block/stun break/vigor is down.

In which case skill has been removed from the equation and its just by and large a lottery. One withkittengood odds for the burst spammer as the only way they miss is if they hit an experienced, unlagged player paying complete attention with his cool downs up and some vigor.

Considering the level of skill required to use some of the popular burst combos atm, its a total and complete disparity in effort.

Stice.5204:

Animosity.5231:

Quickness should be looked at across the board.

I agree and the two main characters I play are a ranger and an engineer, which are two of the professions that have on-demand quickness.

From the very first time I tried using it, it felt overpowered. In games like this it’s usually not a good idea to have a huge offensive burst cooldowns, and +100% attack speed for 4 to 5 seconds definitely fits into that category. All I have to do is activate quickness and if my opponent does not respond immediately to it they’ve probably lost the fight. If they can’t respond immediately (because they’re out of endurance and they either don’t have active defensive skills or they’re already on cooldown) then they lose. It feels dodgy.

I think quickness should be reduced to +50% attack speed (which would still be a huge boost) and the professions that have access to it rebalanced accordingly.

Same. First time I tried it on my Ranger I was kind of wondering why ANet would put something like that in the game. Perhaps making it only apply to 1-4 skills/actions instead of it being a duration is the answer. Would add a little more tactical decision-making to combat.

“The problem with the whole L2P argument is that it freely suggests classes using brainless burst combo should just get free kills whenever they catch someone whose block/stun break/vigor is down.”

Exactly that what Xaiden said. Also, dodging it is not that easy. Usually in some fights I crept up with my warrior behind a fight and simply did bullrush, frenzy, hundred blases and he (nearly) died because the player focused on someone else or maybe burned his stunbreakers…I know cheesy tactics but efficient.

In addition it also limits spec choices across the board. You must run a lot of stunbreakers because if one is down…bye bye.

In short: burst across the board is too high and that even without some pvp gear implemented yet.

spvp will never be balanced when this game focuses tpvp

UptheIronz.6732:

Problem is not the thief , thief dies as fast as they kill , go watch guardians and mesmers overshadowing the rest of the classes , so if i was a dev i will take a close look at the design of the mesmer and guardians , retardilation anyone ?
on ur with bufffing look at necromancer

I dont quite understand the people saying how OP Mesmers are – first i will start by saying i play a Mesmer. Overall i think the class is solid -

- Shattering needs fixing
- Nerf Phantoms and bring the damage to the Mesmer/Clones
- Even make Phantoms do 0 damage but either cure conditions, give boons or give conditions based on the Phantom used

thats about it, they are meant to have high utility, i agree that Phantoms are too strong and thats something even annoys me BUT they die VERY fast with a “recharge time” before they can attack

Moa is pretty crappy ability in my opinion might work against new players but it can be dodged, evaded, has a long cast time and such giving it the use of the characters 6-9 ability would break the ability completely – i would say decrease the time to about 5 seconds and reduce the cool down to 60seconds maybe 90seconds and then its sorted

I dont know any Mesmer that actually uses it over Time Warp though which can be VERY important when first going head to head in groups

Most of the Mesmer class is based around the clones and Phantoms kill them they die SO fast – too fast in my opinion especially the clones but they do VERY little damage once they are down the Mesmer is pretty screwed

We have VERY little in the way of Burst damage like 100Blades or something and our class Mechanic for burst(?) the Shatter system is pretty poor with SO many issues. So we have to do a bit higher damage in general to make up for the very weak burst damage we can do

U Wanna fix Mesmers ? Fine Easy To Fix Reduce Their Huge Health Point they’ve got 24,5k default , next change how decoy elite skill work , instead of stealthing the mesmer , should do something else , here mesmer are fixed , not annoying as before but still powerfull and strong for tpvp

I would also like to add that guardians are almost paper when they meat a good condition damage dealer. Today I met an engineer who blew away my full bunker guardian in a matter of seconds, I’ve never felt so helpless. The same goes with condition thieves, rangers and necromancers. They are very hard to deal with a guardian. If you are a 100% burst character complaining about guardians, please enlist a condition damage dealer to your team. You are not supposed to be better than every other profession just because you can burst.

U Wanna fix Mesmers ? Fine Easy To Fix Reduce Their Huge Health Point they’ve got 24,5k default

This is not true. A mesmer has around 15k without any added vitality.

Why does everyone look at spvp 8v8 for balance. The game actually feels incredibly balanced in 5v5 tourneys. Zergs dont speak to balance regardless of the game or the classes involved.

Noone cares really.

You don’t need any real team builds for this.

Therefore 100% of all one class is very viable, but would be called a broken team build in gw1. 8 of one proffession is pretty fail though for the most part unless there was something being abused at the time like the necro or mesmer spikes that don’t take long to get nerfed.

When you start needing to have a balanced team, and are fighting in balanced numbers this game will be playable in pvp (I’m saying when gvg and arenas are added), and may receive my care. Until then I and plenty others could careless.

My only problem with Mesmers is that it feels like too much of their damage is coming from their illusions and not enough from them. Locating the Mesmer themselves should be rewarded. Instead of continuing to be chewed up by illusions.

Well, that and Moa. Which is utterly ridiculous. Timewarp is pretty crazy too.

Mesmer and Thief are clearly classes designed for 1v1. It’s no surprise they do much better than other classes in small engagements.

It’s basically just a fundamental design flaw. GW2 clearly has some classes that are just better suited to diong what you do in sPvP than others.

But it is ruining the sPVP game. Even without looking at balance itself it ruins the fun of the game when 75% of sPVP participants are one of just three classes.