Guild Wars 2

Unfortunately there isn’t a ‘general’ pvp section, so I’m just going to put this here.

In short, I feel as though every class in the game is surprisingly well balanced, with a few exceptions here and there. I will elaborate.

Quickness is a terrible game mechanic in that it essentially reverses all of your hard work balancing classes, for short durations. You can NOT boast this game as being a skill game with an ability like this, compounded by an already extremely limited selection of abilities.

If you’re a Warrior, Ranger, Thief, or any other classes that has access to Quickness, you are really just screwing yourself over. I consider this to be an unfortunate homogenization of some classes that is just unnecessary and adds nothing of substance to gameplay.

Pistol Whip, Heartseeker, and Hundred Blades

These three abilities are the subject of most of the whining, and I’ll tell you exactly why that is.

Quickness.

Pistol Whip is relatively slow and easy to avoid if you’re not hasted. Hundred Blades has NO stun component like Pistol Whip does have, and it is also relatively slow and easy to avoid. Heartseeker spam is really only a viable way of killing people from 100% to dead when hasted. If you take Quickness out of the equation, none of these abilities pose an exceptional threat.

On to my next bit of reasoning.

Dark Age of Camelot was an amazing game, anyone who has played it knows why. The combat in that game is quite honestly visceral, even today. Exceptional players in DAoC shone very brightly, and one of the major reasons for that was because fights lasted longer.

I believe one of the biggest mistakes that modern ‘pvp centric’ MMOs make is that the fights are just too short for skill to be a determining factor in the outcome. Not to mention, 75% or more of the damage dealt is just an AOE cluster****. In DAoC, you assisted. There was no such thing as spam stacking a million GTAOEs and dominating, unless you were tower camping.

I’m getting off topic now.

TL;DR:

Quickness is detrimental to a game supposedly designed to require a high level of player skill, and I believe that better balancing of classes can be found by just simply removing this ridiculous mechanic.

Long fights make you feel more rewarded, and they generally allow for more planning, tactics, and skill, as opposed to the “hit Quickness and button mash 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5” depending on what class/build you play.