We have 1 in game right now if I am correct – for stealth we have reveal applied by opponent. I think it made some sense at the time it was introduced for the first time. Against mesmers it was quite valid option to counter they gameplay without completely destroying them. This was/is different for current meta build for thief (the one that stays at least a bit competitive with other classes) when you got pretty much destroyed by this or you were forced to run.
I don’t want to argue about this, but please remember this point.
I was thinking that perhaps more things that allows “unfair” play could use hard counters or more stuff in general.
Like allow some classes to somehow ingnore invulnerable effects or immunities. Preferable given to classes who don’t have any (necro and thief iirc). Something like “If your target is invulnerable then your next attacks goes through this effect. 5s ICD”.
Or give real meaning to killing rangers pet. Disable all ranger skills if his pet dies for few seconds (like in GW1). Because right now killing the pet means that ranger will swap to other or kill you in the meantime. The best option is pretty much focus ranger everytime.
The list could go on, I bet everyone could come up with something he finds annoying and find something preferably on his class
to counter this. No matter if it is one ability, mechanic, or stuff like condition spam, burst damage,…
This lead me to this. If there is something in game that makes you to put hard counter in game for this mechanic/ability/… then this mechanic/ability/… is probably broken or terribly designed in the first place. Adding the counter won’t solve the problem it will just create new ones and makes the original one harder to fix.
I make two examples one with stealth as written above. Reveal is kind of a good counter against mesmer (or ranger and engineer with their limited stealth options) because it is his defense, but not his only defense. For D/P SA thief it is really bad counter because pretty much his whole defensive kitten nal is destroyed with one ability (I would say that engi’s lock on is worst case scenario preHoT).
Outcome is either you take abilities against stealth or you face the danger you will be obliterated from stealth without you knowing about it (yeah vamp rune is quite bad mechanic also).
Second example are conditions. They are bad in PvE, but due to the fact that they require 1-2 offensive stats they can be pretty much OP in 1v1 if you don’t build against it. (I know the game is not balanced for 1v1, or you can build against it, but please bear with me.)
They were considered weak in PvP because they were easily cleansed in group fights (in WvW easier than in sPvP). They were changed so almost every class could spam more of them, some cleanses were nerfed or “specialized” for some categories. Then we had too many conditions so more cleanses were added, and we could go like this.
The solution to this should have been looking on the core issue. Too much condition spamming requires many condition cleanses. Reduce spam, but make conditions more meaningful should have been probably the right solution.
No condtions on AA, but on skills 2-5. Buff damage per stack of condition like 5 times, but reduce amount of stacks you apply to 1-2. This way condition build won’t be just about spamming 1 and waiting for trait/sigil proc or one ability landing. You will be actually required to land several key skills like on power build to defeat your enemy.
Then 1 bleed will mean something, 5 of them will be threat, 1 burning will be threat, 3 will be “oh s***” situation. On the other hand dodging the right attacks will mitigate most of the damage (like against power build) and will decrease the need for many condition removers. You will still take some, but you don’t need 4-5 to have a chance.
Another thing are movement impairing conditions. There are skills with very short duration 1-2s cripple, chill immobilize that are pretty much destroyed by trait that almost every class have now (or will have in HoT), that reduce duration of this conditions by x%.
This could easily also solve problem with conditions in PvE. You just buff armor of mobs to reach desired state.
TLDR: My point is that hard counters (those who make one build invalid or extremely weak just because you take 1 trait or skill) are really bad design. You can mitigate problem for a while by implementing them, but you are creating bigger problem in the long run. Without them the mechanic that needed hard counter will be too OP, with them it will be completely mitigated.
PS: I wasn’t trying to solve the problem of revealed or condition stacking in this thread. All numbers are given as example to think about not as definitive number.