Guild Wars 2

Everyone always talks about how elite specs overshadow core specs and there is one reason why. It’s not the elite specs traits, because most of them are actually lackluster which is why you see people using the same one or two traits on each build. The main reason why is the elite mechanic that comes with the spec, like giving Thieves three dodges or Guardian’s new virtues.

You cannot simply buff core specs, because people will ALWAYS use elite specs. This will just make builds more overpowered, as they will use the overpowered core specs alongside elite specs. Furthermore, Anet has set the stone for how future expansions will play out. The next expansion will hit, and the elite specs that come along with it will overshadow the elite specs of the last expansion. Maybe not for every class, but for most classes everyone will switch to the next elite spec and the cycle will repeat infinitely.

Take for example Team Fortress 2. In TF2 every class has the stock weapons they start out with, but there are also over a hundred unlockable weapons they can equip. Despite all these weapons they can use, for almost every class the base primary weapon is still the best weapon to use. Their secondary and melee weapons are usually just sidegrades that change their playstyle. Valve is in fact adamant on not having an unlockable primary strong than their stock counterpart, and will go as far as completely gutting an unlockable weapon in order to balance it against stock. Valve’s mindset is that it’s far better having an underpowered weapon that doesn’t break gameplay than an overpowered one that does.

Keyword: sidegrade, something Anet tried to sell elite specs as before HoT. But if it’s a sidegrade, that means there must be some trade-off. In TF2, an unlockable weapon may have higher damage or a different kind of projectile, but it comes with trade-offs like slower firing speed or reduced clip size. There are no trade-offs to using GW2’s elite specs and that’s why their are vastly stronger than their core specs.

The only elite spec with a tangible trade-off is Elementalist, which everyone complains is the worst elite spec. It’s not, it’s actually the best one balance wise. The trade-off of using the overload mechanic, which is the primary elite spec mechanic to the class, is that it induces a longer cooldown on the element you attuned too. No other class really has trade-offs, there is no trade off to having three dodges, or the Guardian having MUCH better virtues than the base virtues. If Anet gave each class trade-offs to their elite specs, it’d make it balanced against core builds.

For example, just some ideas on how it would work:

Guardian

Their new virtues overshadow their old ones vastly. Virtue of Courage is a joke, aegis for you and your teammates on a 45 second cooldown? Compared to Shield of Courage which blocks ALL attacks in front of you for 4 seconds, or 6 traited? The old virtues need their cooldowns significantly decreased, and the new ones need to be increased even further.

Revenant

It’s not that the elite spec overshadows the core specs, it’s because Revenant’s elite spec was created and balanced alongside the core specs, and thus Revenant as a whole was balanced entirely around Glint. Their core specs and core legends need to overhauled and buffed.

Jallis is the tanky legend yet in reality is not tanky at all and the only stunbreak is the elite skill that takes 1 1/4 seconds to cast on a 50 energy cost.

Mallyx has been gutted since beta, and the traits on Corruption and the skills on Mallyx are still remnants of the old concept of taking in conditions and empowering yourself. Mallyx needs to be overhauled completely since this concept was changed.

Shiro, being one of the useful legends alongside Glint, is constantly gutted despite being the only damage dealing legend.

Ventari is still clunky to use, drop the tablet or have it follow you around automatically.

Warrior

Warrior is unable to use the normal burst skill anymore, and requires five, or maybe four, bars of adrenaline in order to use their Rage mode. There is no trade off to using the Berserker elite spec, it gives you the ability to essentially spam burst skills for 15 seconds. The trade-off here is that you are able to spam those burst skills for 15 seconds, but you need to build up more adrenaline in order to activate Rage mode to actually utilize your bursts.

Ranger

While core Ranger is arguably at a better position against their elite spec than other classes, it still is behind. The trade-off to using Druid can be you can only have one pet at a time, instead of two that you can switch. Druid has tons of healing options that can sustain their pet, giving them two pets give them, again as mentioned before, survivability AND damage. You can only have one.

Thief

Thieves get less initiative at the trade-off of having three dodges. You cannot give both survivability and damage, this could be -2 initiative or -3 initiative. The point being you trade off the potential for more attacks for more survivability.

Engineer

Engineer is almost close to Tempest in having their elite spec not overshadow their core, but everyone uses Scrapper over core regardless. I think the main issue is that core Engineer needs to be buffed while decreasing the capabilities of the function Gyro and the Scrapper trait line.

Necromancer

Reaper shroud completely dominates over base shroud. Reaper shroud can just spam autoattack to get 25 stacks of might, and does way more damage and utility than base shroud. The trade-off should be you need full life force to enter Reaper shroud.

Mesmer

Same concept as Thief, Chronomancer already gives you many ways to get back your illusions either by traits or by Continuum Rift. The trade-off for using Chronomancer is that you can only spawn 2 illusions instead of three, to balance this ability to return your illusions.

TL;DR

Elite specs need to have trade-offs for their elite mechanics. You cannot give a brand new, vastly stronger, class mechanic to a class and have it overshadow their old mechanic. The Tempest spec, for all the problems people complain about, is the gold standard on how an elite spec should be. It doesn’t completely overshadow its core spec.

Uh… I think you list the issues well but your suggestions for balance is somewhat a joke tbh.

Ramoth.9064:

Uh… I think you list the issues well but your suggestions for balance is somewhat a joke tbh.

It was suppose to be just an idea to emphasize my point, a general direction on how to go about it. The main point is, there has to be trade-offs to picking an elite spec, rather than giving a class superior class mechanics to their old one.

Are you sure though that they are even trying to make the core classes as strong as the elite’s? The name alone suggest that they were supposed to be this upgrade and adding a certain level of “prestige” to the class.

The way they talked about e-specs when they were announced sounded like they wanted to release multiple e-specs and then let people decide which “exklusive additional mechanic” they want to add to their character. The tradeoff for a thief to have a third dodge would be that they do not have access to the other elite mechanics for example.

If that’d be a good thing if it really turns out like that is up to debate i guess. But not like it’s gonna happen anytime soon anyway.

Yeah they should have had trade-offs from the beginning to make them an alternative not a must-have. Problem is, in almost every imaginable case, elite specs offer your profession the best in offense and defense. Now people are left begging for more elite specs to balance it in some sick way…

You hit the nail on the head with what the problem is. Elite specs offer straight upgrades to class mechanics, on top of the lines already being very powerful for the most part.

Still though, I don’t think you fully flesh out why this happened. Look at chrono and mesmer. Chrono’s mechanic is F5, but lets look at the elite spec as a whole. Its designed to fix several problems with core mesmer (namely, self defeating core mesmer mechanic. Too difficult for shatters to land anymore due to the plethora of AoEs that kill the clones instantly, low personal damage combined with low team support outside of reflects and boon sharing via SoI [base mesmer has no alacrity and its quickness generation is not that good honestly]), and it does “fix” them. However it fixes them by buffing other stuff to the point of absurdity (at least it did at launch) instead of Anet actually fixing the problems at the core mesmer level.

Just for example, ANet could improve the entire illusion and shatter mechanic for mesmers. Then they could do away with both IR and chronophantasma, turn them into more unique traits that don’t just encourage shatter spam. There are just some things that need to be fixed at the core level for some classes before they will be able to compete with elite specs, because the elite specs just fix problems in the design itself of a few classes.

OriOri.8724:

You hit the nail on the head with what the problem is. Elite specs offer straight upgrades to class mechanics, on top of the lines already being very powerful for the most part.

Still though, I don’t think you fully flesh out why this happened. Look at chrono and mesmer. Chrono’s mechanic is F5, but lets look at the elite spec as a whole. Its designed to fix several problems with core mesmer (namely, self defeating core mesmer mechanic. Too difficult for shatters to land anymore due to the plethora of AoEs that kill the clones instantly, low personal damage combined with low team support outside of reflects and boon sharing via SoI [base mesmer has no alacrity and its quickness generation is not that good honestly]), and it does “fix” them. However it fixes them by buffing other stuff to the point of absurdity (at least it did at launch) instead of Anet actually fixing the problems at the core mesmer level.

Just for example, ANet could improve the entire illusion and shatter mechanic for mesmers. Then they could do away with both IR and chronophantasma, turn them into more unique traits that don’t just encourage shatter spam. There are just some things that need to be fixed at the core level for some classes before they will be able to compete with elite specs, because the elite specs just fix problems in the design itself of a few classes.

It addresses the core mesmer at a low skill level. I’m not a terrible player but I went up against someone who competed in the ESL who was using a core mesmer scholar shatter build and I was obliterated.

Shatter mesmer is a playstyle that isn’t affected by the self defeating shatter mechanic, because it relies on downing you so quickly it will only get off 1 attack by a phantasm. Which means that this issue just doesn’t affect that playstyle.

That said, it takes tremendous skill to be a good power shatter mesmer nowadays, so he was a good mesmer. I’m not trying to downplay his skill, it just doesn’t mean that this problem doesn’t exist for mesmer.

While I agree in principle, I think there is something you’re missing here:

The tradeoff for taking an elite spec is supposed to be that you’re giving up a core traitline. The special mechanics you’re talking about are part of the elite specialisation traitline, and the tradeoff is that you don’t have other traits instead.

The problem is that a lot of the core traitlines just aren’t good enough to compete. Most builds, PvP and PvE alike, typically have two core traitlines that they really need to function, and one that is… kinda optional. In those cases, typically a third core traitline just doesn’t bring enough to the table to compete with the elite specialisation. (Thief in particular had it bad, with Acrobatics being gutted so that Daredevil could steal its job.)

The trick, I think, is not to impose crippling tradeoffs for using an elite specialisation, but making it so that the opportunity cost actually presents a difficult decision. For professions which actually give something up when taking an elite specialisation, this could mean buffing the core options (core guardian virtues, Death Shroud), but the big thing would be taking some of the truly underutilised traitlines and buffing them so that, if a build does not absolutely require an elite spec to function, those alternative traitlines actually start looking tempting. This can, and probably should, be combined with trimming the elite specialisations back a little, but I don’t think big trade-offs like the ones you’re suggesting are necessary. The trade-off should be that the traits from core specialisation X look really tempting, are you sure that the elite specialisation is actually automatically better?

draxynnic.3719:

While I agree in principle, I think there is something you’re missing here:

The tradeoff for taking an elite spec is supposed to be that you’re giving up a core traitline. The special mechanics you’re talking about are part of the elite specialisation traitline, and the tradeoff is that you don’t have other traits instead.

That’s a rather strange argument, considering it could be applied to any traitline and not just elite specs. As a mesmer if I take dom/dueling and illusions then I lose out on inspirations and chaos. But none of the 3 traitlines I do take change my class mechanic.

OriOri.8724:

draxynnic.3719:

While I agree in principle, I think there is something you’re missing here:

The tradeoff for taking an elite spec is supposed to be that you’re giving up a core traitline. The special mechanics you’re talking about are part of the elite specialisation traitline, and the tradeoff is that you don’t have other traits instead.

That’s a rather strange argument, considering it could be applied to any traitline and not just elite specs. As a mesmer if I take dom/dueling and illusions then I lose out on inspirations and chaos. But none of the 3 traitlines I do take change my class mechanic.

I don’t see the contradiction. Every build is going to have tradeoffs and opportunity costs. Remove elite specialisations from the picture entirely, and the tradeoff for taking any trait (or trait line) is that you’re not taking some other traitline.

Take the mesmer, for instance. Even if we assumed chronomancer didn’t exist (although mesmer is one of the professions that comes closest to core specialisations offering real competition with the elite for the third slot in PvP), taking dom/duel/illus means you’re giving up some good stuff in inspiration and chaos. You’re missing out on healing and condition cleanses from shatters in inspiration, you’re missing out on stability practically on tap and generous boon application from chaos, and other good traits that are in both lines. If you’ve taken dom/duel/illus you’ve obviously decided that represents the best set of traitlines for what you’re planning to do. The opportunity cost for the nice stuff you have is that you’ve given up on other nice stuff you could have had instead.

You say that they don’t change your core mechanic, but if you take the appropriate traits, they do. Domination turns your core mechanic into a means of applying vulnerability and stripping boons. Duelling turns it into on-demand blind. Inspiration turns it into heals and condition cleanses. Chaos turns it into personal stability and party-wide buffs. Illusions allows you to use them more often and adds a range of additional effects. All of these change your core mechanic – they may not offer a new option like chronomancer does, but by offering additional effects when you use the options you do have, they can change the way you use them in practise.

The problem is that the elite specialisations simply offer better bang for your proverbial buck for that third traitline in nearly all builds.

The best trade IMO: longer CDs, just like elite skills. You can only use one elite skill, and it’s often a powerful, long CD ability. But elite specs often have shorter CD skills than base skills. So if you spec for an elite spec, you should have access to more powerful skills, but they should be on long CDs, with the exception of weapons maybe, which could also have the elite spec restriction removed from them.

Right now, the only tradeoff is that you can’t spec for a third base trait line. For this tradeoff, you get access to 4 new utilities, a new heal, a new elite, new weapon, and even new profession mechanics or upgraded ones. That’s hardly a tradeoff.

Elite specs definitely need nerfs, and I think the way to do that while keeping the elite feel of the specs is to significantly increase CDs. Removing, or at least weakning, passives is also something that should be done, and not just to elites, but to the game as a whole.

So you can choose between the usual, short CD skills with three base trait lines, or the extra, more powerful skills on long CDs. I’m glad you recognized that Tempest is a fairly balanced elite spec in a way. It’s still poorly designed mechanically, but the idea of the attunements going on longer CDs after using powerful CDs is a nice tradeoff. It makes you choose. Choice is something that elite specs lack because the CDs for such powerful skills can be almost be spammed. Long CDs make you choose weather you want to use it or save it. The short CD spamminess of elite specs almost doesn’t help the insane damage and sustain going around. The PvP team had to remove tanky amulets because the balance team didn’t do their job of balancing skills so that players could still run a variety of amulet types and thus increase build diversity.

I still maintain that one of the bigger problems is actually that the core-class-line can be used alongside the elite version.
From what i see that causes a lot of overperformance alongside some problems in the elite specs themselves.

If we could turn the class-lines into elite-specs as well there already would be some things taken care of, but i advertise this so long now…

Zintrothen.1056:

I’m glad you recognized that Tempest is a fairly balanced elite spec in a way. It’s still poorly designed mechanically, but the idea of the attunements going on longer CDs after using powerful CDs is a nice tradeoff. It makes you choose.

This is something I actually disagree on, in the context…

From a balancing perspective of the overload skills on their own, the effect you’re talking about certainly applies. You can use the overload, but it has a significant drawback, and this presents a choice in-game: is the overload worth potentially being locked out of an attunement? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, and that makes for interesting gameplay.

On the other hand, from a build perspective… let’s say that overloads were given for free. Having the ability to overload would then be a straight-up upgrade. It might be a skill that you never use in practice, but simply having it gives you an option that somebody else who doesn’t have it lacks.

Of course, the whole point of my previous posts in this thread is that you ARE giving up something – the core traitline you could have had instead. Most tempests you see, for instance, probably would have had the Arcane traitline if they weren’t running Tempest. However, if the other traitlines offered real competition, we’d still see core elementalists in play, especially given how many pre-HoT elementalist players absolutely hate the Tempest. That we don’t shows that core elementalist just isn’t viable in the current environment, which shows in turn that the option of taking a third core traitline just isn’t offering enough relative to taking Tempest.