Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-esl-guildwars2-pro-league/

Taken from Blog: “We strongly believe that regular balance updates are one of the key pillars of building a successful competitive game. As such, prior to each season, there will be a balance update. League play will generally begin about two weeks after a balance update to ensure that the metagame has stabilized in an appropriate manner. Balance will be closely monitored throughout the season with the goal of having solid balance going into the postseason tournaments.”

First off, let me say that between this announcement and yesterday’s Halloween announcement and the return of the Mad King’s Lair, I had a couple of out loud bursts of joyous glee. Thank you for doing this. I can not wait to play in the leagues. I can not wait to dig into the Halloween Event which includes my favorite holiday activity(the aforementioned Mad King’s Lair)that you have put into either of your games.

I posted this here instead of the PvP section because it includes things that concern all formats(WvW/PvE/PvP).

How is the quote from the first paragraph going to affect PvE? WvW? The balance updates are awesome for PvP. Our community there needs it to grow(Stronghold needs better communication tools but that’s a topic for a different time). Without skill splits though, the other areas of the game are going to be affected for good and bad. I have been harping on this since the game came out and I am sure it gets old, but the other formats shouldn’t be affected adversely because PvP needs to have balance. I have always been of the mind that PvP needs balance and PvE needs to cater more to fun with balance being a really close second. Having the balance of the entire game be based around tiny capture points in a single game mode isn’t the best for the overall game.

Question: Do you have any plans to do skill splits so that all modes can be balanced around their strengths and weaknesses without adversely affecting other modes?

I figured with the new trait streamlining it would be a heck of a lot easier to do skill splits than it was with the old trait system. With traits being pared down into a few optimal choices, and with the introduction of skill balance based around PvP, I can’t think of a better time to introduce skill splits so that every mode is balanced unto itself.

I’d hate to see Fractal or Raid builds get the nerf bat due to some crazy thing a PvP player figured out with a team comp. I hope you understand where my concern lies with this. Thanks for your time. Thanks for the amazing news this week!

You may have a better chance at a Dev response over in the PvP sub-forums because that is where the Devs responsible for balancing PvP may focus their attention.

Good luck.

The only downside to the idea of ‘skill splits’ is that it can get confusing to keep track of all the profession changes across all game modes. Also I like knowing that what build I use in WvW I can use in sPvP (although a few runes are missing which I find odd) and vice versa. I agree that they will likely focus balance around one aspect (most likely sPvP) and the others will be balanced if it doesn’t ruing the sPvP balance. That is the nature of games that try to bridge multiple game modes with the same game. For example League of Legends chose to do this with their game modes and I find it frustrating. I try to play a game of 3’s and one of the items available in 5v5 is missing, or the cooldowns of my champion are different.

Each has their pro’s and cons, either the game stays uniform across all game modes, or you have to have a lot more knowledge and keep track of a lot more. WvW isn’t meant to be balanced anyhow (stated by dev’s a few times) and I don’t think PvE balance is too important (just means some classes played more than others). I think this is how they have determined their focus, but they won’t neglect other aspects of the game.

Iason Evan.3806:

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I posted this here instead of the PvP section because it includes things that concern all formats(WvW/PvE/PvP).
…..

I was about to reply to this thread when I noticed it was moved to PvP section. May I ask why? Opinions of other players does not matter at all ?

I specifically stated why I posted this in the main forum. I did it because skill balance is stated, in the blog as being done for PvP which in turn affects all formats.