This is not a discussion (or QQ) about the current balance.
I realize by reading the forums that everyone has a fairly different idea about balance. A big part of it is that people play different game modes (PvE, PvP, WvW), different professions and at different skill level, and thus have a different perception of the balance. But there is also a difference of point of view on what is the balance goal.
So my question to Karl McLain is very simple: what is a-net’s official balance goal when you balance existing skills and create new ones (elite specs)? What state of the game do you wish to reach?
I believe that knowing the answers may help us understand the decisions and might also make our comments more useful in the future.
Before I enumerate some different possible balance goal I can think of, a few definitions I will use:
- meta: a build which is considered part of the best composition, or close enough that being slightly more proficient with the build makes up for the small build inferiority. It is also noted that the best composition may differ depending on the match up. A last note is that of course, both high-tier and low-tier environment should be balanced, the requirement being slightly different at different skill levels.
- role: a specific role in a game mode. Role definitions are not necessarily universal. I would define for example roamer, frontline and backline in WvW; roamer, DPS, support and 1v1er in PvP; to some extent DPS and support in PvE (though usually everyone is sort of DPS in high-end PvE). Roles are of course flexible, and builds can be hybrid.
So… here are some possible balance goals:
- #1 Profession balance: each profession has at least one meta build in each game mode.
This is in my opinion the most elementary balance goal. The idea is that since players typically have one (or a few) favorite profession(s) it allows all players to be competitive at any time.
- #2 Alternative: rotating meta
In order to shake a bit the meta, some professions can be purposefully made un-meta, and switching at every major balance. However, because of the argument I mention above, I think this is not a good idea (I don’t say shaking the meta is a bad idea, but I believe keeping all professions meta is necessary).
- #3 Build diversity: each skill, weapon and traits is meta in at least one game mode
This is a more ambitious goal than the previous. Not only we have 1 build viable, but actually different ones, using different traits and skills. The idea is simply that it makes little sense to have weapon, skills and traits that are not used. Each of them should have at least one thing they do which justify their existence.
However, I am not sure this point is actually strictly required. There have been many cases in the past of skills that were underused and became meta at some point, not because the skill was changed but because the meta did and this skill fit the meta well. A (probably bad) example is that I don’t recall signet of Illusion for mesmer being meta in the past but this skill have good synergy with condi chronomancer and thus became meta while it was not changed on its own. There are probably many traits and skills that are not bad per say but have simply not found their use yet. But I still think (and arena net seem to be working on this) that currently some skills and weapons simply do not offer much.
- #4 Alternative: Role balance: each profession is able to build for each role at a meta level
This one is an alternative version of the build diversity point above. Instead of focusing on making different skills used, one focuses on ensuring the class can assume all roles (which of course will then make use of different traits and skills, but it is a different focus).
This is probably more ambitious and also likely to be a much more controversial idea. This is how I interpreted the gw2 philosophy mentioned by the developers before launch. Team compositions will usually try to cover different roles, and the idea is that you can’t necessarily wait for a player playing the specific profession that is good at this role. So you need a defensive support/healer but don’t have a druid player (for example) available but a mesmer. So should be able to ask your mesmer to spec for defensive support and be essentially as efficient as a druid would. Of course, because of synergies and complementarity, not every class would be as advantageous in any team comp, but the build should be good enough that it does a good job and would potentially be meta in some specific comp.
I think the main argument against it is the risk of losing profession individuality. You see it a lot from people arguing that druid should not have been made a healer, since this is a guardian role, while DH should not have gotten a « selfish » DPS role with bow and traps since this is a ranger thing. And profession theme can also cause difficulties in designing specs, for example, a support role may seem very counterintuitive and difficult for thief (though there are ways to design elite specs to fit this role or ways to use debuffs as a form of support).
I personally think this goal is compatible with profession individuality. For example, we saw how support chronomancer and support guardian can fill a support role in completely different ways, one with time control (alacrity, quickness), one with boons like protection, stability etc… and healing. There could actually be more work on the (already existing to some extent) association between some boons and some classes, such as chronomancer and quickness/alacrity, guardian and stability/aegis, elementalist and protection, revenant and resistance etc… I also think that in principle, if balanced correctly, debuffs (boon removal, non-damaging conditions) and control are forms of support and thus definitely expand the professions that could play « support ».
A last point on this is of course that this is a more difficult goal to achieve, and that the balance team should be careful to ensure that you cannot perform all roles simultaneously but need to spec for it.
- #5 balancing core with elite specs
This is a question that many players want to ask. Is it part of your goal to balance non-elite builds (3 core specs) with elite builds (1 elite + 2 core). And also if you want to achieve this goal, do you want to do it by mostly nerfs to elite specs or buffs to core specs, or maybe even a slight design change, such as making the 5th traitline (illusion, soul reaping, arcane, etc…) an elite spec and forcing to have at most 1 elite and 2 core specs in each build.
- #6 Alternative: Balancing only future elite specs.
This is something I see often in the forum: many have accepted that core specs will never be the same level as elite specs and that future balance should solely focus on elite specs.
This may be a somewhat messy post at the end, but in simple terms, I think the community would really love to have some communication with the balance team (like we had during the HoT betas) and understand the direction they are taking. I strongly believe communication has an almost bigger role than balance itself to appease the community.
(edited by Silverkey.2078)
