Guild Wars 2

Several friends and I had perceived that certain classes were disproportionately represented in sPvP. The problem with perceptions like that is that you are more likely to remember encounters with classes or builds that you have trouble with. So, was it that we were having trouble with some builds/classes? Or were our perceptions real? I decided to test.

I joined 50 sPvP servers over the course of two days. I would join, immediately screenshot the scoreboard, play the round, then go back to the mists. Next, I would tally up the scoreboard in a spreadsheet, wait a bit, then join a different server. This took place at all times of the day with the exception of from 2am to 9am EST.

In the process, I saw just under 700 players, excluding me (as having the same class in every match would skew the results). Here is the distribution:

Engineer: 47
Necromancer: 67
Ranger: 69
Elementalist: 80
Guardian: 86
Mesmer: 88
Warrior: 102
Thief: 157

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each. Some interesting stats:

You are twice as likely to see a thief in sPvP than you are to see an elementalist. You are 3.3 times more likely to see a thief in sPvP than you are to see an engineer. Thieves represent over 22% of sPvP players in my sample. In an ideally balanced and desirable hypothetical, you should see 12.5% representation from each class. Thieves are nearly double that, and engineers are well under half of that.

Of the 50 samples, engineers were completely unrepresented in 17 samples, followed by Necromancers with 11 unrepresented samples.

See all the gory details in the spreadsheet here: http://goo.gl/3Q6WC

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

So basically what you’re saying is that engineers need some major buffs?
Im ok with this

Popularity does not equate nor correlate well with balance.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

And engies, necros and rangers don’t like getting kills and racking up points? I don’t buy that. The assassin class part I think may carry some weight though. That from an RP perspective people might be more drawn to that.

My point is that class diversity in sPvP isn’t great. 3 classes make up 50% of sPvP, one of them alone accounts for almost a quarter. That means that if you are not making a build to counter them you are in double trouble, literally, where under ideal distribution you might accept being vulnerable to that 12.5% of people.

My personal opinion is that the distribution directly reflects the effectiveness in sPvP. Not talking tPvP, talking chaotic pug filled sPvP. My opinion is that players gravitate to the builds and classes that are more powerful, hence the distribution.

I would say your data shows what has the most available “known viable builds”. Since beta builds have been readily available for both thief and warrior. Most thieves and warriors I encounter use maybe only 1-2 builds, and in the case of warriors the most common build has been from beta 1.

Still there are a lot of factors that go into popularity, from ease of play to effectiveness. This data is just a small facet of something quite complicated.

It shows that 8v8 hotjoin isn’t a real great option for many new or casual PvPers. Popularity doesn’t necessarily mean OP, but the stats are significant.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

you are seeing this many thieves in spvp because it’s easy to 1-shot noobs. this alone is the biggest problem thats turning off all the newcomers. i would like to see a 30% damage reduction to BS in the dec 14 patch.

nerva.7940:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

you are seeing this many thieves in spvp because it’s easy to 1-shot noobs. this alone is the biggest problem thats turning off all the newcomers. i would like to see a 30% damage reduction to BS in the dec 14 patch.

This will not solve any problems, it will only totally destroy the viability of high level thieves running Backstab builds in tPvP, which is not what Anet wants, they want to balance the game for newbies and veterans alike, which is hard when there are a VAST amount things you need to know how to counter in this game.

MindlessRuff.1948:

nerva.7940:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

you are seeing this many thieves in spvp because it’s easy to 1-shot noobs. this alone is the biggest problem thats turning off all the newcomers. i would like to see a 30% damage reduction to BS in the dec 14 patch.

This will not solve any problems, it will only totally destroy the viability of high level thieves running Backstab builds in tPvP, which is not what Anet wants, they want to balance the game for newbies and veterans alike, which is hard when there are a VAST amount things you need to know how to counter in this game.

high level thieves dont rely on BS. directly nerfing BS damage would exactly solve most of this game’s problems, which is new player retention. no one ever had problems with thieves in tpvp.

nerva.7940:

MindlessRuff.1948:

nerva.7940:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

you are seeing this many thieves in spvp because it’s easy to 1-shot noobs. this alone is the biggest problem thats turning off all the newcomers. i would like to see a 30% damage reduction to BS in the dec 14 patch.

This will not solve any problems, it will only totally destroy the viability of high level thieves running Backstab builds in tPvP, which is not what Anet wants, they want to balance the game for newbies and veterans alike, which is hard when there are a VAST amount things you need to know how to counter in this game.

high level thieves dont rely on BS. directly nerfing BS damage would exactly solve most of this game’s problems, which is new player retention. no one ever had problems with thieves in tpvp.

Sure they don’t rely on it, nerf it and they will never be able to use it, effectively destroying one of their viable tPvP builds, I know people can handle thieves in tPvP, so making them weaker will give them less options which is the opposite of want is desired, a high variety of viable builds across all spectrums.

There are many counters to BS which new players can easily utilize, which also counter a wide variety of other builds, slotting at least one survival utility and taking some traits which also enhance survivability go a long way.

Its the classes at the bottom that thieves tear up the most in spvp. Thieves are the reason people have stopped playing them.

I’d like to see a chart of tPvP for comparison.

That was pretty interesting to see although I had noticed myself that thiefs ware by far the most popular. I have also noticed that in high end PvP thiefs seem to be the most popular.
There are good reasons for why people use thiefs so much and I am just sick of other players and developers telling me that thiefs don’t have balance issues when they obviosly do.

Well first of all – its admirable that you have found time to do this statistical research. But I see this more of a “Correlation is not causation” kind of thing – your statistics show only one variable: the amount of thieves ingame you have encountered and everything else is an interpretation without any data to back it up. So if class is popular, it does not mean it is unbalanced in comparison to other classes, it may mean that it is just easier to start playing it and it is not the same.

Secondly “Its the classes at the bottom that thieves tear up the most in spvp. Thieves are the reason people have stopped playing them.” this is just false – I am playing a necromancer and a thief and killing a necromancer with a backstabber thief is extreamly difficult: well of darkness, death shroud, plague form, spectral armor, etc. Also an engineer with his multiple knockbacks and immobilises is also a very difficult enemy to fight. The easiest class to kill with a backstab thief is actually another backstab thief since he is also a pure glass cannon, just get an opener and he is dead.

Thirdly – you should have tested not spvp, but tpvp, then the numbers would have been a lot different.

Lukin.4061:

Thirdly – you should have tested not spvp, but tpvp, then the numbers would have been a lot different.

Of course, but these statistic were not about tPvP.

I think all game modes should be observed and you can’t say that one is more important or relevant than another. Actually, I think hot join needs to be taken very seriously because it’s an entry point to new pvp players. If it’s zerg oriented, lacking tactics and filled with players who have not really grasped their profession yet, is irrelevant. What is important is are the new players having fun.

p.s Thanks for taking the time to make these statistics DeeTooDee

Balancing around hotjoin will be a bad choice plain and simple. The thief/rogue class being the most popular is really nothing new. It by far the most liked/played archetype in every mmo, this just back that up even more.

DeeTooDee.3972:

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each.

No, you shouldn’t.
Are you expecting people to spread out evenly across all professions, simply because they’re equally balanced?
That’s the silliest assumption ever made.

Who cares if all classes were 100% balanced, if Ranger for example, is just a horribly boring profession with a boring playstyle?

I couldn’t care less about Mesmers being on top of the game in regards to what profession I’ll play. Mesmers are very (if not too) strong in spvp, but I hate the playstyle and thus I will not roll one.

“I see a lot of this profession in my pug-chaos-fest pvp battles, and I assume that players will always pick the overpowered professions, thus this must be overpowered.”

It doesn’t work that way.

Jestersmiles.4365:

Balancing around hotjoin will be a bad choice plain and simple. The thief/rogue class being the most popular is really nothing new. It by far the most liked/played archetype in every mmo, this just back that up even more.

Well, this graph shows that warrior is the most played profession. This also from my own experience with mmo’s is not suprising. I would say warrior archtype is usually the most played:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061

It also shows that thief is pretty much tied with guardians at 4th spot. Mesmer is the least played profession in the game, yet it’s 3rd most played on DeeTooDees sPvP list.

Professions that steamroll in starter/casual PvP are, imho, not good for the game, no matter how balanced they actually are in tournament/professional setting. I’m not calling for nerfs, I’m just pointing this out and trying to look things from the perspective of making PvP fun and engaging for everyone. I play mesmer as a main, so my profession of choice is not in anyway “safe” when it comes to balancing the game.

DeeTooDee.3972:

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

And engies, necros and rangers don’t like getting kills and racking up points? I don’t buy that.

He meant that if you go for some 8v8 pugs, you go and roll a thief? Why?
Cos assassin signet+bow+high crit and power+cluster bomb on stacked up people is “more effective” on racking up kills than your average engi, necro and rangers. Its not about liking or not liking, thief with its class design (initiative for high burst) just works well with glass gannon AoE damage builds.

Thats why even people, who actually play ranger or engineer as their tournament main, log onto their troll thief when they pug for some laugh. Haste+assassins signet+cluster bomb just makes you smile :P

i was hoping it was a statistic for paid…shame

Lukin.4061:

everything else is an interpretation without any data to back it up.

I know But what is not in question is that thieves are more appealing and more popular. The rest is subjective. They need to make the other classes more appealing.

Lukin.4061:

Thirdly – you should have tested not spvp, but tpvp, then the numbers would have been a lot different.

That would have taken forever. And it would have probably been different. Someone else is more than welcome, as it is it took me silly amounts of time in sPvP.

Rika.7249:

DeeTooDee.3972:

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each.

No, you shouldn’t.
Are you expecting people to spread out evenly across all professions, simply because they’re equally balanced?
That’s the silliest assumption ever made.

Who cares if all classes were 100% balanced, if Ranger for example, is just a horribly boring profession with a boring playstyle?

You are agreeing with me while trying to disagree with me. If that were the case, Rangers need to be improved to be equally effective and desirable, as I said.

You’re definitely right about balance.

Yeah, I would say you have to do one of these for tpvp. You will find in tpvp the classes you see at the bottom of the list are quite common. Necro/engi especially, every team usually has one or the other if not both. Ranger is also pretty common in tpvp.

DeeTooDee.3972:

Rika.7249:

DeeTooDee.3972:

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each.

No, you shouldn’t.
Are you expecting people to spread out evenly across all professions, simply because they’re equally balanced?
That’s the silliest assumption ever made.

Who cares if all classes were 100% balanced, if Ranger for example, is just a horribly boring profession with a boring playstyle?

You are agreeing with me while trying to disagree with me. If that were the case, Rangers need to be improved to be equally effective and desirable, as I said.

Except I don’t agree with you, because you want to improve them with no reasoning besides nobody plays them.

Rangers could be the strongest profession and yet be the least played. Those two factors: OP and Most Played are not tied together in any way, shape or form.

A Ranger should NOT be buffed because nobody plays it, if it is just as strong as any other profession. That is not a reason to buff.

Example: I entered a game today with 5 Rangers.
This must mean that they’re overpowered.
Since that is a silly assumption, I won’t make that assumption.
Since there was no mesmers present, that must mean they’re underpowered.
That is also a silly assumption that should not be made.
Does mesmers need a tweak/buff/nerf/whatnot because I don’t see Mesmers often?
No. That’s a silly idea as well.

I didn’t say buff specifically. I said make more appealing. Make Rangers and Engies more appealing to sPvP players. And yes, your assumptions are silly, until you do them 50 times and document the results, as I did, then you can make empirical statements as opposed to your subjective example. As it stands, and this is subjective, sPvThiefWarrior is not fun unless you are one of them, or have an awesome build to counter them. You do not need yo make a build to counter an Engie as you are unlikely to encounter one. There needs to be better diversity. You seem to prefer keeping sPvThiefWarrior as is.

DeeTooDee.3972:

I didn’t say buff specifically. I said make more appealing. Make Rangers and Engies more appealing to sPvP players. And yes, your assumptions are silly, until you do them 50 times and document the results, as I did, then you can make empirical statements as opposed to your subjective example. As it stands, and this is subjective, sPvThiefWarrior is not fun unless you are one of them, or have an awesome build to counter them. You do not need yo make a build to counter an Engie as you are unlikely to encounter one. There needs to be better diversity. You seem to prefer keeping sPvThiefWarrior as is.

Never stated what I preferred, so that’s a silly assumption on your half.

It is however absolutely impossible to gather statistical data about what professions are most played, and somehow create a connection with balance. And by impossible, I mean that it’s impossible to conclude anything with this said data and connection.

And no matter how many times you perform this data-gathering, be it 750 times, or enough that you have successfully faced EVERY SINGLE player, it is simply not possible to conclude anything even close to what might be the reason for this choice of profession. And certainly not anything about balance.

Also, what might sPvThiefWarrior be? I’ve heard about thieves being a trouble in WvW, but not in SPvP, and warriors? I mean, seriously? Warriors? I think you meant GuardianMesmerSpengineer if anything.

Agreed, but to ignore the disproportionate representation or not consider that balance is a factor is naive. “because thieves are cool” cannot possibly be 100% of the reason. I suspect it is that, combined with spam able kill buttons like HS, and also easy to use kill sequences like steal, C&D, backstab, HS, and warriors frenzy HB. Few other professions have sequences as well known, documented and proven to work in sPvP. All counter able by skilled players of course, but effective vs the majority in sPvP. Ranger classes in other games are fairly popular in PvP (hunter and druid in WoW), but not here. Why? I can see Engie being “different” than usual classes in a fantasy game accounting for a lot of the popularity hit. Though I would think that popularity in that sense applies more to PvE. And the Mesmer guardian Engie comment doesn’t make a lot of sense. You will run into more thieves and warriors in sPvP than those three professions combined. Read the spreadsheet I linked.

DeeTooDee.3972:

Agreed, but to ignore the disproportionate representation or not consider that balance is a factor is naive. “because thieves are cool” cannot possibly be 100% of the reason. I suspect it is that, combined with spam able kill buttons like HS, and also easy to use kill sequences like steal, C&D, backstab, HS, and warriors frenzy HB. Few other professions have sequences as well known, documented and proven to work in sPvP. All counter able by skilled players of course, but effective vs the majority in sPvP. Ranger classes in other games are fairly popular in PvP (hunter and druid in WoW), but not here. Why? I can see Engie being “different” than usual classes in a fantasy game accounting for a lot of the popularity hit. Though I would think that popularity in that sense apples more to PvE.

We can turn it around and say, why does nobody play engineer according to your statistics? They’re mighty fine in terms of balance, one of the best bunkers for TPvP, yet you haven’t encountered that many. I can come up with several ideas as to why, but none will be conclusive. The fact that they don’t have any sort of melee weapon, and are disallowed weapon swaps in favor of kits, limited “real weapons”, can be extremely confusing to some, random elements involved in many skills, so on. All could be true although I doubt that is the case. In terms of style, however, I’m not sure. I’m not digging their style, others might.

I’ve always expected Elementalist, Thief and Warrior to be the most played classes, and that’s usually because of their “style”
Mage, warrior and scout/rogue are very common RPG professions, where as Mesmers and Engineers? Not so much. That in itself has a lot to say as well. I’m willing to bet most people love the assassiny playstyle and general style, and that seems to be true in many cases.

I don’t mind that there’s some professions that are played more than others.
In fact I’m surprised that you have that many warriors in that statistic, I hardly meet any, yet I meet plenty of engineers.

The changes that would be needed to make them more popular would most likely cause them to be less popular with their current players, as the previous style could very well be what they liked about the profession. It’s a tricky one.

So I am getting sick of the “stealth classes are always popular” argument.

It is true, absolutely. But it does have limits. Take a look at max level PvP in any other MMO.

Rogues are always popular in WoW, but there is a roughly even class distribution (the exception is twinks in which Rogues and hunters made up huge percentages of each game… because they were OP).

Look at games like LoL or Dota… stealthies aren’t popular at all in LoL and while they are very popular in Dota, they aren’t popular to the point of 5 stealthies on a team.

Hell, remember back to day1 sPvP. People didn’t roll hundreds of thieves until they were found to be quite good. Now we have a ton of thieves. You saw the exact same thing with Warrior after the recent buffs. We now have an influx of warriors in pvp. Saw the same thing in BWEs with Necros (back when they were OP). Point is, as a rule in pvp, people roll the OP class… not the class they want to play.

Moreover, and this is certainly not great evidence but it is a metric, look at pre-launch class polls. Class distribution was relatively normal. Thieves weren’t actually all that popular (because they were seen as UP during the final BWE). Mesmers ran somewhere in the middle of the pack, and Rangers were actually quite popular.

There could be dozens of reasons for the shift, but at the very least it is an issue that is worth considering.

Those that argue that there is nothing wrong with thieves (as evidenced by tPvP play) are missing an important point: there is something most definitely wrong with thieves in hotjoin PvP, which is leading to the numerical imbalance shown by the OP, and it’s hurting the long term viability of the game.

For beginners, there is a growing perception that thieves are the easiest profession to kill with AND the easiest profession to get killed by. It’s only natural that players would gravitate towards this profession after playing a few matches. I don’t believe the reason for this has anything to do with stealth or with backstab – I think the problem lies with heartseeker. It does too much damage, it’s too spammable, and it is too strong of a closer.

So now we have folks gravitating towards what they perceive as the “best” class for hotjoin PvP play and the real problem presents itself – playing almost every match against 2-3 thieves – every imbalance in the profession just becomes magnified – you can’t dodge and block your way out of TWO full initiative bars.

It’s a “if you can’t beat, join em” mentality that is slowly degrading hotjoin PvP into a frustrating experience, and without a healthy stream of new players coming into the game (without getting frustrated and feeling like they have to play a certain profession a certain way), there will be no tPvP to speak of in a few months.

It’s not an easy problem, but it most definitely IS a problem.

QSpec.4298:

Moreover, and this is certainly not great evidence but it is a metric, look at pre-launch class polls. Class distribution was relatively normal. Thieves weren’t actually all that popular (because they were seen as UP during the final BWE). Mesmers ran somewhere in the middle of the pack, and Rangers were actually quite popular.

There could be dozens of reasons for the shift, but at the very least it is an issue that is worth considering.

I really wish I’d have done something similar at launch, because I think you are dead on. I don’t remember being this frustrated in sPvP then, not with thieves anyways at launch. I think at launch people played what they thought they would enjoy, and now I think they play what they know will bring them giggles.

Rika.7249:

DeeTooDee.3972:

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each.

I couldn’t care less about Mesmers being on top of the game in regards to what profession I’ll play. Mesmers are very (if not too) strong in spvp, but I hate the playstyle and thus I will not roll one.

“I see a lot of this profession in my pug-chaos-fest pvp battles, and I assume that players will always pick the overpowered professions, thus this must be overpowered.”

It doesn’t work that way.

Given its pink and an illusion classs, Mesmer is likely only popular because its op.

I crunched the numbers a bit more. Out of 51 samples, 27 of them the thief was either the most popular profession, or tied for most popular. Warrior comes in second at 15 times out of 51 samples, Mesmer third at 12, and guardian fourth. Over 50% of the games I played during this period, thief was the prominent or tied for the prominent class, 29% warrior, 24% mesmer and 16% guardian, ele 8%, ranger 8%, engie 6%, and necro but 2%. This stat may be the reason people think sPvP is filled with mostly thieves. Even though they represented 22-23% of all players encountered, they were the most prominent class 52% of the time. See the attached graph.

24% of the samples had 5 or more thieves. 5 or more…

DeeTooDee.3972:

I crunched the numbers a bit more. Out of 51 samples, 27 of them the thief was either the most popular profession, or tied for most popular. Warrior comes in second at 15 times out of 51 samples, Mesmer third at 12, and guardian fourth. Over 50% of the games I played during this period, thief was the prominent or tied for the prominent class, 29% warrior, 24% mesmer and 16% guardian, ele 8%, ranger 8%, engie 6%, and necro but 2%. This stat may be the reason people think sPvP is filled with mostly thieves. Even though they represented 22-23% of all players encountered, they were the most prominent class 52% of the time. See the attached graph.

24% of the samples had 5 or more thieves. 5 or more…

You cannot claim ANY statistics from hotjoin sPvP are actually indicative of balance, I’ll give a few reasons here:

1) Rank Diversity: If you ever look at the scoreboard after the game and take a look at the ranks, you will notice a HUGE difference. This is extremely important since ranges of ranks with their professions would likely see variations. Such as the range of 30-40 the stats of professions would probably be much different than 1-10. I would like to see these statistics broken up into level ranges.

2) Hotjoins aren’t serious: Myself and I am sure many other people jump into hotjoins to test builds and mess around. Have I ever tried warrior in hotjoin? Yes I have back in the beta when no one had any idea how to counter 100 blades (some still don’t) but I would never play warrior in tPvP, only to have some quick fun in hotjoin.

3) Most hotjoins are 8v8s: This makes them a zergy mess so it would be apparent that the more mobile classes with more burst damage could get high glory scores, this does not mean I haven’t seen bunker eles running staff in sPvP, it just means people like quick and fast action, tPvP is completely different in this regard since people don’t usually go there to get some quick fun out of it.

MindlessRuff.1948:

3) Most hotjoins are 8v8s: This makes them a zergy mess so it would be apparent that the more mobile classes with more burst damage could get high glory scores, this does not mean I haven’t seen bunker eles running staff in sPvP, it just means people like quick and fast action, tPvP is completely different in this regard since people don’t usually go there to get some quick fun out of it.

If 8vs8 is zergy
And thief dies in a single aoe
Why do we still see huge amount of Thiefs ? :P

because you don’t have the time to use an aoe before they roflstomp you.

MindlessRuff.1948:

You cannot claim ANY statistics from hotjoin sPvP are actually indicative of balance, I’ll give a few reasons here:

1) Rank Diversity: If you ever look at the scoreboard after the game and take a look at the ranks, you will notice a HUGE difference. This is extremely important since ranges of ranks with their professions would likely see variations. Such as the range of 30-40 the stats of professions would probably be much different than 1-10. I would like to see these statistics broken up into level ranges.

You mean, of the players I saw, what were their ranks, etc? I can get that…I have all the screenshots. I don’t have scores at the end of the game (took the screens at the start), but I do have rank info I could do something with, not sure I feel up to more work on this though heh. Is your theory that thieves are mostly casuals, and will have lower ranks? Rank is account based, so it wouldn’t tell you anything overly conclusive I don’t think, or would it? Like, a rank 40 ranger could normally play a thief, and be messing around with ranger, or vice versa.

MindlessRuff.1948:

2) Hotjoins aren’t serious: Myself and I am sure many other people jump into hotjoins to test builds and mess around. Have I ever tried warrior in hotjoin? Yes I have back in the beta when no one had any idea how to counter 100 blades (some still don’t) but I would never play warrior in tPvP, only to have some quick fun in hotjoin.

sPvP is all a lot of players do. tPvP requires more time than most casuals have. My stats aren’t reflective of tPvP at all.

MindlessRuff.1948:

3) Most hotjoins are 8v8s: This makes them a zergy mess so it would be apparent that the more mobile classes with more burst damage could get high glory scores, this does not mean I haven’t seen bunker eles running staff in sPvP, it just means people like quick and fast action, tPvP is completely different in this regard since people don’t usually go there to get some quick fun out of it.

Dagger/Dagger ele is slippery and can burst. Almost every class can be bursty and slippery. Why are they not as omnipresent?

None of your reasons discount the stats gathered, or any inference you might draw from them, not inferences regarding sPvP anyways.

The only reason I don’t have stats like this for WvW is because it isn’t possible for me to get them, but my perceptions were that thieves were way more common in sPvP, and my observations proved it. My perception is the same for WvW. So…can you not balance on WvW stats either then? Must everything be balanced on tPvP? What makes one part of the game more important than any other? This game is turning into Thief Wars in sPvP and WvW and anyone who complains about it, or merely points that out is blaspheming. Meanwhile the populations of both seem to be in decline.

I’m not out to see people get nerfed whether or not they should; I’m not dumb enough to think I could. I just want to see a more diverse experience in sPvP and WvW. I’m no alone in these feelings, but I’m being, erhm, “vocal” in the hopes that it might incite some sort of ideas on how it could be improved. Maybe cap a given structured hotjoin match to no more than 4 players of the same profession? That would really only impact, well, thieves from my stats. Might encourage them to play something else when they have trouble finding a server, but it wouldn’t affect tPvP. No idea how you might address WvW, but I’m not sure its as bad there as it is in sPvP anyways.

It is un-fun and borderline ridiculous, in my mind, that a quarter of any given 8v8 server is going to have 5 thieves or more…a quarter. Another full quarter will have them as the most populace class, albeit under 5. This isn’t speculation, this is observation, documented. I’m sure Anet has far better stats and is aware of it. I just hope they see it as something to work on, and eventually do something to address it, somehow heh.

Anyways, I think I’m done working on this. Hope you enjoyed the spreadsheet, if you didn’t see it the link is in the OP and has been updated constantly since the OP.

Best

The “sPvP doesn’t count argument” is ridiculous.

Could you imagine the kittentorm if ANet came out and said they were only balancing the game around dungeon running? It is similar.

sPvP makes up the majority (I would imagine the vast majority) of PvP matches. For some it is the only PvP experience they will have. To leave it unbalanced (if it in fact is unbalanced) in any way is ultimately bad for the long term health of the game.

Pros and “pros” alike should be the most ardent supporters of sPvP balance (and/or the removal of 8s at a minimum) as their chance at electronic stardom is ultimately predicated on whether the majority of people who PvP enjoy themselves.

This thread:

Thieves who don’t want to admit that their favorite profession might be over the top, even in the slightest, because it directly attacks their skill, and somehow might diminish it.

I know it was not OP’s intent to bring about a profession discussion flame war, but when you mention that the most observed profession is Thieves, and people already have a gigantic problem with Thieves, what did you expect?

The truth of the matter is, Thieves are the most observed profession, because they are the easiest to play, and subsequently, the easiest to kill people with.

Dispute it all you want, you might even get some people to agree with you, but deep down, you must understand, that the PvP community thinks that they are over the top.

Hammerheart.1426:

This thread:

Thieves who don’t want to admit that their favorite profession might be over the top, even in the slightest, because it directly attacks their skill, and somehow might diminish it.

I know it was not OP’s intent to bring about a profession discussion flame war, but when you mention that the most observed profession is Thieves, and people already have a gigantic problem with Thieves, what did you expect?

The truth of the matter is, Thieves are the most observed profession, because they are the easiest to play, and subsequently, the easiest to kill people with.

Dispute it all you want, you might even get some people to agree with you, but deep down, you must understand, that the PvP community thinks that they are over the top.

Please a Mesmer can kill some one way more easier and better than a theif. Seriously Thieves only have one viable build , I don’t see anyone crying about that?

Most of the other builds where either nerfed or never where good to begin with.

Again Look at dota 2, it rare that it balances around pugs because there no point people are just going to cry about something they don’t understand and choose not to learn a way to counter it.

Again if GW2 wants to be taken seriously , they won’t take all these QQ threads to heart ,plain and simple.

Hammerheart.1426:

This thread:

Thieves who don’t want to admit that their favorite profession might be over the top, even in the slightest, because it directly attacks their skill, and somehow might diminish it.

I know it was not OP’s intent to bring about a profession discussion flame war, but when you mention that the most observed profession is Thieves, and people already have a gigantic problem with Thieves, what did you expect?

The truth of the matter is, Thieves are the most observed profession, because they are the easiest to play, and subsequently, the easiest to kill people with.

Dispute it all you want, you might even get some people to agree with you, but deep down, you must understand, that the PvP community thinks that they are over the top.

Best bunker in the game (Ele) crying over thieves, NOW that funny.

Jestersmiles.4365:

Again Look at dota 2, it rare that it balances around pugs because there no point people are just going to cry about something they don’t understand and choose not to learn a way to counter it.

I dont know , about Dota 2 , but in LoL they allocate (nerfing most times the early states of some characters and buffing them at max lvl) most characters powers for the noobs and the pros at the sme time
Lets see how the matchmaking system will work at 14 December :P

Someone in a thread a month or so ago ran a similar type of “study” on which classes were being used. However, I think they did it in tPvP and made some distinction for rank. If I recall correctly, these were two items of note:

Rangers were common amongst low rank players, but extremely rare amongst high rank players.

Engineers were almost unheard of amongst low rank players, but were middle of the pack for higher rank.

With that in mind, yes we’re seeing a lot of thief in this rather small, non-random sample. But looking at the next most common, the warrior, this is by far the most popular class in GW2 in general (per the infographic Anet released some time ago). Any random player entering sPvP is more likely (all other things being the same) to play a warrior than any other class. That’s just a result of which characters people play game-wide without taking balance into account. Similarly, engineer is the least popular class, so it’s to be expected that their numbers will be lower than others. Thief was just about tied with Guardian for fourth, so Guardian is “right.” However, Mesmer was the second least popular profession overall. So it’s also appearing more frequently than its “fair share.”

But as for what this all means, well not a lot. A “perfectly balanced” game wouldn’t necessarily have an equal representation of all classes. Ignoring for a moment that sPvP is balanced for team 5v5 and not hotjoin 8v8, player preferences will skew things. A lot of people like having a “spell caster” type character instead of a more sneaky type. Others prefer to have a character with a pet. Some like the types that have some more healing ability. There’s no reason to assume these opinions are distributed evenly. Hand in hand with that, the aesthetics of the game certainly aren’t balanced. Even if all classes had exactly identical skills and stats, you’d still end up with an uneven distribution of classes because people might like light armor consistently better than medium, and well there’s not even the same number of heavy armor classes as the other two. Now if we go back and factor in how balance is centered around 5v5 team play and you’re looking at 8v8 individual play, there’s even more reason for imbalance.

Hotjoin representation is about new players perceptions of balance, not actual balance.

Please a Mesmer can kill some one way more easier and better than a theif. Seriously Thieves only have one viable build , I don’t see anyone crying about that?

Most of the other builds where either nerfed or never where good to begin with.

Again Look at dota 2, it rare that it balances around pugs because there no point people are just going to cry about something they don’t understand and choose not to learn a way to counter it.

Again if GW2 wants to be taken seriously , they won’t take all these QQ threads to heart ,plain and simple.

Apparently stating simple perceptions is crying, ok. I can see you are a source for civil discussion.

Best bunker in the game (Ele) crying over thieves, NOW that funny.

Can you determine how everyone plays their class based on a forum post, or is that just limited to me? Sounds like quite the skill.

I bet you play a thief.

There are more thieves as it scores more points easy as that. You travel faster and score more points, since people dont bother with defencive or counter play to bursts in Spvp, you end up killing more then other classes with less burst. That is it. Ability to score more points leads to it beeing played more.
Its balance is pretty close to perfect in Tpvp and paid toureys now, some things could be nerfed, some need a buff and some fixes, but that actualy will not change thief to beeing low burst no runaway class.

Mammoth.1975:

Hotjoin representation is about new players perceptions of balance, not actual balance.

So true—however, new players’ perception of balance = population.

The thread is called “observed profession distribution in sPvP,” not, “thieves are OP in paid tournaments.”

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class

No if things were balanced you would see more rangers its a class that get played at ton in MMOs. Rogues/assassin are not nearly as played as warrior and ranger types unless there is a major power balance issue