Guild Wars 2

pdavis.8031:

Thie question is would you rather them push out a “balance” patch right away, or take their time and do a much more complete patch?

Well since 5 years of history suggest they’re incapable of doing a “much more complete” patch, I’d rather have a bad patch now than a bad patch later.

New leak* balance patch notes.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Elementalist-rework-Patchnotes/first#post6344708

*see signature

Ensign.2189:

Unlike every popular competitive game out there, GW2 is not self balancing. People don’t have the tools to find the counters and stabilize a meta. It all has to be designed and balanced, specifically, by the team – because builds are so locked down with so few options. I don’t think there’s a balance team in the world that could pull that off – there are too many moving parts and too many specific interactions that you have to get right, and the only way to make that tractable for human beings to do is to vastly simplify the problem.

Hence one build per class, not all of which are viable. It’s not ideal, but given the systems the game was built upon, it’s the best anyone can do.

You had me until this part, but it’s this part I’m going to need to disagree with tremendously.

You talk about tools and tradeoffs, and how some builds and concepts simply just don’t have them. The existence of a build that makes so few counters and has next to no tradeoffs is horribly designed and consequently horribly-balanced. Many of these issues stem from strictly numerical systems which don’t really need to be looked at on the combinatoric level for balance, and many of the game-breaking problems that have lingered in GW2 for so long have been obviously flawed and abusive of things which clearly were not meant to be.

I would argue that MTG has a much deeper degree of mathematical complexity than GW2 combat does. Obviously there’s the subjective nature of the freedom of movement and flow of time, but arguably those properties can be largely boiled down to player skill. Compared to the computational and rules-complexity of a game like MTG where the strict number of mathematical breakdowns of rigid structures, GW2 is actually quite simplistic, since so many interactions are independent or trivial. It’s not possible to create perfect balance because of discrepancies and gameplay mechanisms which end up folding in on themselves by being both imbalanced in practice due to subjective and arbitrary measures of player-input “skill,” despite also being perfectly mathematically balanced (see: RNG).

There will always be optima, and that’s something people need to come to terms with. Some facet, be it mathematical or not, counterplay-based, or what have you, of some aspect of some gameplay element will be dominant. This is the entire principle of the metagame. A well-balanced system, however, will have small margins between options which are both non-optimal and optimal, while also constantly enabling the rotation of new things in and out of the optimal state between/independent of tier of play. It’s this readjustment that GW2 is missing; without intervention, many systems in the game are fundamentally broken on design and/or mathematical levels to a point where they will never be phased out, and one further, some are on the other end of the sprectrum that they will provably never be optimal without equally massive changes elsewhere to warrant their exclusive use deliberately shutting down all other possibilities.

The entire system of a lack of fluid kit development is even pretense to argue that the design and balance in the game itself is poor; if there were no dependencies within builds (particularly traits), the amount of available diversity and fluidity of counters in the game would skyrocket, even despite current massive problems to some kits which strictly prevent their use.

On a totally unrelated note, to those saying thief needs to maintain Lead Attacks for DPS, this isn’t true. Optimal damage output doesn’t tun Trickery since Daredevil provides more damage capability than Trickery.

REAL TALK

THE PROBLEM: Anet’s balance quarterly balance patches SUCK in quality. We wait for 4 months for very minuscule changes. I would even say the fixes they do can be done in 1-2 months tops. It takes 4 months for a patch that has barely any skill updates/reworks?

EX: It took almost 4 years for the ranger pet to save names.

Can engies have a Elite Spec that works on open world? Maybe something not PvP related for the obligatory minor traits? Maybe something useful instead of Decisive Renown? Maybe a whole new Elite Spec mechanic instead of FGyro? Maybe a buff to Rifle and Shield to allow for build variety?

DH’s should be nerfed.

Nelson.7485:

DH’s should be nerfed.

On what grounds?

A DH killed him last match.

I think Anet underestimate the need for a real balance patch.

Just think of the elementalist:
All glymphs: useless
All conjures: useless
warhorn: doesn’t do anything useful
arcane skills: seriously under-powered
many other skills: useless or too slow near impossible to land in pvp
traits: nerfed to hell
hp/armor: unfairly low

How can you create balance when 25% of the skills are WAY better than all the rest?
Just this alone would probably take them months to fix.

Xillllix.3485:

I think Anet underestimate the need for a real balance patch.

Just think of the elementalist:
All glymphs: useless
All conjures: useless
warhorn: doesn’t do anything useful
arcane skills: seriously under-powered
many other skills: useless or too slow near impossible to land in pvp
traits: nerfed to hell
hp/armor: unfairly low

How can you create balance when 25% of the skills are WAY better than all the rest?
Just this alone would probably take them months to fix.

Eles are not the only class with problems like this unfortunately.

OriOri.8724:

Xillllix.3485:

I think Anet underestimate the need for a real balance patch.

Just think of the elementalist:
All glymphs: useless
All conjures: useless
warhorn: doesn’t do anything useful
arcane skills: seriously under-powered
many other skills: useless or too slow near impossible to land in pvp
traits: nerfed to hell
hp/armor: unfairly low

How can you create balance when 25% of the skills are WAY better than all the rest?
Just this alone would probably take them months to fix.

Eles are not the only class with problems like this unfortunately.

I agree, I was just using the elementalist as my example because it is my main class.
I wished they could make all skills and traits have some equally useful functionality to promote build variety.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Balance-Changes-Upcoming/first

Gaile Gray.6029:

A message from the Skills Team:

Greetings, Tyrians!

We are here today to talk about some of the build-thematic changes that will be coming with the next balance iteration. Depending on your chosen profession and your role in combat, these changes may require some stat-swapping on your gear. We feel that giving a bit of a “heads-up” is appropriate.

One of the most notable changes being made is to the healing values of the Druid as a primary healer. Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly. The reasoning for these changes is that while we are excited about the Druid being an incredibly strong healer, we would also like to see that role as one of many choices in your attribute build.

Similarly, there will be changes in boon duration and boon application for a few professions. For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration. For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration. To help compensate for these general reductions, we’ll be increasing both damage and a few different baseline boon durations.

As this update rolls out we will continue to monitor the effectiveness of these changes, along with the remainder of the balance updates, and will make additional adjustments and tweaks as necessary. Thanks very much for your time!

-The Skills Team