Guild Wars 2

“Balance should be based around top level play/that spec is popular in ESL so its fine”, etc. We all heard these arguments before, but knowing that teamQ will be removed in the following season, do you still believe that team oriented builds seen in ESL should still be a reference for what’s balance or not?

Take necro for one of the best example, its a popular choice in ESL because teams can coordinate its survival and best utilize its team-fighting potential without excessive worry of dying. However, with everything going soloQ this may change. If you Q with necro you often are at the mercy of your teammates. And frankly not every player queue with expected obligation of keeping the strange necro alive. Same goes for more glassy classic builds that may require team assistance to survive (though most HoT builds has decent survival).

On the other hand, top builds shown in pro scenes still define the highest skill ceiling possible. So there are still merits in seeing how far a build can go or how little it goes.

So it comes down to the question I’ve been asking in the beginning, what do you guys think? Can you justify why you believe its the case?

IMO we should.

S1 we saw the 2 rev 2 mes trick and Anet/ESL decided 1 class per team because balance is broken. We then saw the same engy-mesmer-necro-rev-ranger on every successful team in S3 and S4.

In the current stat i was partied with some people and 1 is in legendary rank S4 and the other 2 were in diamond. We were doing guild missions and our menders ele left a team fight to chase the low health player off point. (WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY)

When you see the ESL players you can at least say ohh this is how a class can be successful.

Heres a problem though, Anet will not balance the game around PvP period. Anet will not fix Match Making. Anet will not put out real leader boards and heres the kicker we are getting rid of team ques!

For Anet to do this the past 2 seasons of PvP population must of been so low they said yeah lets only do solo que.

So imo yes it should be balanced from the top down because if you see 2-3-4 builds used like in WTS qualifiers for NA and EU. Someone thing is going right.

When everyone is literally run the same builds in ranked for all levels there is a problem.

Anet new saying should be " if you try build diversity and say there is no diversity, it probably means there is diversity" (not my best MO cheat phrase)

Most of us don’t play on teams or get paid to play. I don’t see esl as really relevant to day-to-day PvP. It shouldn’t be the balance leader because it lacks connection to the main body of players.

I agree with k-daddy.

Yes it’s true that even with the inclusion of pro leaguers u simply can’t know everything as even thier u will see teams improve, learn new tactics apply different strategies. But even then it should the pro leaguers that should the game be balanced around. not knowing everything doesn’t mean that they are all of a sudden unqualified to be the standard as u can actually quantify to some extend a noticable difference between a pro leaguer and an average joe between is MMR, games played, win/rate. Effectiveness of builds recieved by the community when done by a pro leaguer and an average joe making a build on metabattle. meta is what the pro leaguers run. Also aside from stats. U can just make the flat out simple compairsion and just have an pro leaguer play vs an average joe and see how it pans out.

It simply makes sense to balance a class around players who know the class inside out and use it at the highest level of play to see where a class shines and has troubles in. as variables such as astronomical differences in skill between players, co-ordinated teams vs unoncordinated teams, disconnects, salty players,afkers. I mean just look at some threads where blatant misinformation is spread, let alone disagreements, just misinformation bieng spread. when u have to debate what a skill does before u even discuss balance clearly shows the difference.

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

astronomical differences in skill

I see nothing wrong if they did so, as much as i wanted to give respect to Mother but currently Sephiroth flagship right now was the core game but Cloud won’t listen.

I don’t think so. There are few players like me that completely change the viability of a build simply because of our skill. My builds all rely on split second reflexes and dodging. If a player isn’t capable of predicting the movements and tactics of 2-3 players simultaneously, then they cannot replicate my build. TLDR: to assume that you can take a pro’s build and be just as effective is unrealistic and in some situations, outright laughable.

IMHO classes should be balanced around the average skill level of players (however the biggest caveat to this approach is that it actually requires constant balance patches, on the order of something being changed every week or two at the most). If something is then overperforming in high level play, ANet should consider changing how something scales in that build so that it is just as good as it used to be for the average player, but for top level play it was toned down some. Its a harder approach to balancing for sure, especially for tournament level play, but ultimately I think its the most fair approach.

Take DH for instance. DH traps are (were?) absolutely deadly for players on the lower end of the skill ladder which caused DH to feel massively overpowered for a while for the average player because they just weren’t good enough to know how to play against the traps. Yet at the same time, DH were pretty weak in high level play, especially if they were running the trap builds because their traps were overtuned for low level play and undertuned for high level play. In an ideal balancing, DH traps would have been toned down at the lower end of the skill spectrum, whereas their abilities in high level play were buffed some.

Not the best example but I hope it got the point across. Balance for the average skill level first, then adjust for the extremes (aka ESL skill level). No matter how balanced PvP may ever be at the ESL level, if it is unbalanced at the average skill level new players will never join the game mode.

GW2 balance should not depends on a level of play influenced by a different set of rule, ESL team enjoy the no-stacking rule while the rest of the game doesn’t, we don’t get “perfect” teams in soloq with an opportune class distribution, the system won’t care if you play with 3 thieves vs 2 dh+3 wars or similar.

To balance professions based on a perfect scenario that only 1% of the game pop can recreate…it’s illogical

Anet may think for example that DH or berseker are weak because of no ESL representation well….can anybody here tell me that these two class are anywhere weak?

What if ESL team could run a trap DH and a mender one together? or double berseker condi?…when you can successfully run double or something…then something is clearly wrong.

What OriOri is 100% correct and this was the case in GW1 where anet did not balance just based on the feedback of top 10 GvG guilds

Of course it should, it always should be. If not around top tier, then around what? another tier? it’d be “Balanced around another tier”, so it gotta be focused on any 1 tier right? And so if there’s going to be 1 tier it should be balanced around it should obviously be top tier where there is a competetive scene where balance actually matters, that can determine (prerequisite) and influence tournaments and (hopefully if ranked becomes good with s5) competetive ranked matches, which matters more than if Frank who did a random q on friday evening can survive his 2v1 for 2 more or less seconds, that really doesn’t even matter.

Top tier is also much more stable and defined. Its not as much of a subjective matter, it’s simply the best players, and the difference is not that big so balance can be tuned far better. That’s where you’ll find rather equal skill. Matchups are determined by (pretty much equal skill) top tier players dueling. It’s more equal and stable basis for balance than a kitten fest of “mid tier” that is too diverse and undefined, that it’s a kitten fest and, for example, matchups can’t be determined as well, as well as every other area.
And then QQ on the forums about something being OP to feel better about themselves being worse.

It should. Every other game uses the pro scene as an indicator of what is the strongest pick. This will clearly indentifiy the weak classes and builds which should then inspire the balance team to make adjustments to bring everything in line. But anet is kittening terrible at doing it.

Then…why does the non-stacking rule still exists in ESL? If the game should be balanced around ESL, then why use different set of rules?
If the balance at “average” level doesn’t matter as people here say…let’s remove no stacking rules and let’s see if the ESL team keep the same “balanced” composition as now.

Supreme.3164:

Then…why does the non-stacking rule still exists in ESL? If the game should be balanced around ESL, then why use different set of rules?
If the balance at “average” level doesn’t matter as people here say…let’s remove no stacking rules and let’s see if the ESL team keep the same “balanced” composition as now.

It’s about whether or not it should be, not how well it is.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

“Balance should be based around top level play/that spec is popular in ESL so its fine”, etc. We all heard these arguments before, but knowing that teamQ will be removed in the following season, do you still believe that team oriented builds seen in ESL should still be a reference for what’s balance or not?

Take necro for one of the best example, its a popular choice in ESL because teams can coordinate its survival and best utilize its team-fighting potential without excessive worry of dying. However, with everything going soloQ this may change. If you Q with necro you often are at the mercy of your teammates. And frankly not every player queue with expected obligation of keeping the strange necro alive. Same goes for more glassy classic builds that may require team assistance to survive (though most HoT builds has decent survival).

On the other hand, top builds shown in pro scenes still define the highest skill ceiling possible. So there are still merits in seeing how far a build can go or how little it goes.

So it comes down to the question I’ve been asking in the beginning, what do you guys think? Can you justify why you believe its the case?

balancing over top, medium or lower players is not the main issue
the main issue is mixed q
majority of players are not build crafters, they only take metabuilds and in some ocasions make a minor change to them for adapting a bit to theyr playstile, and meta builds are for team play not for soloq, soloq need a diferent meta , you dont get balanced comp teams, you cant expect getting support or fast decapers or pure dps or any other role for a balanced team, you get a random comp and you have to play whith it, this is the problem, builds for solo q need to be more self dependant and be able to play a little all roles, pure tank builds are useles , pure dps squishi builds are useles etc, solo q is kingdom of jacks of all trades not for high specialized builds.
and this is the cause of all kittens that happends on ranked and unranked (blowouts etc) when rmm decides to put a kitteny comp againts a balanced comp that can do their job because they had all team roles covered

No it shouldn’t. Because solo q dosent have any class distrubtion and is totally randomized, some builds are overperforming in solo Q thus people stack the same class up to 4 times and there is absolutely nothing you can do.

Emdrix.6124:

No it shouldn’t. Because solo q dosent have any class distrubtion and is totally randomized, some builds are overperforming in solo Q thus people stack the same class up to 4 times and there is absolutely nothing you can do.

Stacking 4 of one class is just bad so…

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Spartacus.3192:

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Balancing around ESL means you are balancing around the expectation that there are premade teams that know each other, how they all work together, use teamspeak, and know they can count on their teammates to do what needs to be done.

This just isn’t true in general PvP however. It just isn’t. Balancing should be done around what the majority of the games will feature, which now will be random soloQs. If you balance around a situation that 99% of games won’t experience, then you are automatically making those 99% of games unbalanced.

Necro is a good example here. It is clearly balanced around ESL level play as its an absolute beast if the team can coordinate enough to keep it alive in a team fight. Yet in every other game there isn’t that level of support and Necro becomes an easy target, making it a much less effective class. Is this good balancing in that the class can be amazing in less than 1% of games but sucks in the other 99% because there isn’t enough coordination to keep it alive? No, that is not good balancing.

Balancing needs to be done around the average level of play

OriOri.8724:

Spartacus.3192:

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Balancing around ESL means you are balancing around the expectation that there are premade teams that know each other, how they all work together, use teamspeak, and know they can count on their teammates to do what needs to be done.

This just isn’t true in general PvP however. It just isn’t. Balancing should be done around what the majority of the games will feature, which now will be random soloQs. If you balance around a situation that 99% of games won’t experience, then you are automatically making those 99% of games unbalanced.

Necro is a good example here. It is clearly balanced around ESL level play as its an absolute beast if the team can coordinate enough to keep it alive in a team fight. Yet in every other game there isn’t that level of support and Necro becomes an easy target, making it a much less effective class. Is this good balancing in that the class can be amazing in less than 1% of games but sucks in the other 99% because there isn’t enough coordination to keep it alive? No, that is not good balancing.

Balancing needs to be done around the average level of play

this is how you make necro work in soloq, 2 methods
1. get good
2. tell someone to roll ele, then tell them to stay on top of you the whole game

Balancing is already done taking into normal ranked queues to a certain degree. Otherwise guardians would never get nerfed since they are not even played in ESL level games. (Longbow and traps have had steady nerfs since HOT was released)

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

OriOri.8724:

Spartacus.3192:

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Balancing around ESL means you are balancing around the expectation that there are premade teams that know each other, how they all work together, use teamspeak, and know they can count on their teammates to do what needs to be done.

This just isn’t true in general PvP however. It just isn’t. Balancing should be done around what the majority of the games will feature, which now will be random soloQs. If you balance around a situation that 99% of games won’t experience, then you are automatically making those 99% of games unbalanced.

Necro is a good example here. It is clearly balanced around ESL level play as its an absolute beast if the team can coordinate enough to keep it alive in a team fight. Yet in every other game there isn’t that level of support and Necro becomes an easy target, making it a much less effective class. Is this good balancing in that the class can be amazing in less than 1% of games but sucks in the other 99% because there isn’t enough coordination to keep it alive? No, that is not good balancing.

Balancing needs to be done around the average level of play

this is how you make necro work in soloq, 2 methods
1. get good
2. tell someone to roll ele, then tell them to stay on top of you the whole game

Preposterous!

People play for fun…and only a very small minority enjoys playing a healing role, you can’t “force” people to play what’s more convenient for you, what about you give necro and ele, a build that doesn’t require babysitting?

They sold a game using the same line over and over again : " no holy trinity" and now after 4 years they scrap everything for their own convenience and force healer/tank role down people’s throats…..I say screw that!

I play for my own amusement and I will play what does dmg…period!
If the necro in my team keeps falling over..I tell him to reroll if he refuses ..I suggest him to stay in base so that we can wrap the game even faster.

I didn’t invest hard earned money to play a bloody monk

Bad balancing because necro class doesn’t work ideal/good at all without all time support.

It does requires players to work together as team.
In solo q most of the time you don’t get any support just die respawn run back and die some more and run back more till you finally get a team where you get 1-2 decent teamplayer soloers.
In solo q players are rare that have decent teamplay skill even if they can 1v1 but don’t have teamplay skill they worth like nothing they are just solo hero build carryed bads.

Any decent player knows at start of the match their necro will be zerged hard so need all help possible, any little bit of help is better than no help at all and lose the match or blame on necro ( which is the easiest ) why he dies in 6sec to zerg that comes at him.

Balancing needs to be done for SoloQ’s as thats what most people play till they don’t get bored of unbalance / waiting but balance is not coming. All classes should have about same chance to survive/run away/fight reset/catch players trying to run away. Guardians for an example can hit with bow hard from far + catch anyone trying to run away low health with 1 button press. People run away from me if they are low on health and survive or even restart fight and attack again with burst damage when about every defensive skill is on CD + LF sucked but i can’t run away from people if im low on health? Balance.

Rolisteel.1375:

Bad balancing because necro class doesn’t work ideal/good at all without all time support.

It does requires players to work together as team.
In solo q most of the time you don’t get any support just die respawn run back and die some more and run back more till you finally get a team where you get 1-2 decent teamplayer soloers.
In solo q players are rare that have decent teamplay skill even if they can 1v1 but don’t have teamplay skill they worth like nothing they are just solo hero build carryed bads.

Any decent player knows at start of the match their necro will be zerged hard so need all help possible, any little bit of help is better than no help at all and lose the match or blame on necro ( which is the easiest ) why he dies in 6sec to zerg that comes at him.

Balancing needs to be done for SoloQ’s as thats what most people play till they don’t get bored of unbalance / waiting but balance is not coming. All classes should have about same chance to survive/run away/fight reset/catch players trying to run away. Guardians for an example can hit with bow from far + catch anyone trying to run away with 1 button press. People run away from me if they are low on health and survive or even restart fight and attack again with burst damage when about every defensive skill is on CD + LF sucked but i can’t run away from people if im low on health? Balance.

This. get necros in your solo q= lose the match
get Dhs in your solo q= win the match

Builds that can self sustain, support and deal a lot of AoE damage are the Kings of solo Q. who freakin cares that necro is good in pro league when u have to run some specific ele build and specific comp to make necro work. necro is just garbage everywhere except in organanized teams.

I dont play necro and I hate having necros on my team because they just insta die and the game is lost from there

They shouldn’t be a definitive reference for balance because their team composition rules differ from ours, and so what is balanced with their added limitations is not balanced when those limitations are removed. I don’t think there is any arguing this, its almost self-evident. They can be an indicator for balance though.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

OriOri.8724:

Spartacus.3192:

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Balancing around ESL means you are balancing around the expectation that there are premade teams that know each other, how they all work together, use teamspeak, and know they can count on their teammates to do what needs to be done.

This just isn’t true in general PvP however. It just isn’t. Balancing should be done around what the majority of the games will feature, which now will be random soloQs. If you balance around a situation that 99% of games won’t experience, then you are automatically making those 99% of games unbalanced.

Necro is a good example here. It is clearly balanced around ESL level play as its an absolute beast if the team can coordinate enough to keep it alive in a team fight. Yet in every other game there isn’t that level of support and Necro becomes an easy target, making it a much less effective class. Is this good balancing in that the class can be amazing in less than 1% of games but sucks in the other 99% because there isn’t enough coordination to keep it alive? No, that is not good balancing.

Balancing needs to be done around the average level of play

this is how you make necro work in soloq, 2 methods
1. get good
2. tell someone to roll ele, then tell them to stay on top of you the whole game

AKA be in an ESL team….. Its convenient how you ignored the fact that most games are not teamQ, and in Season 5 teamQ will even be removed completely. You can’t force anyone on your team of soloqueues to play a certain build.

Balancing should be done around the average skill level. Which includes being soloQ and not expecting support.

OriOri.8724:

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

OriOri.8724:

Spartacus.3192:

It should be balanced around ESL BUT ranked pvp should have similar rules like no stacking. IMO the no stacking rule in ESL whereas you can stack in Ranked Q is probably the biggest cause of balance issues and QQ currently.

Balancing around ESL means you are balancing around the expectation that there are premade teams that know each other, how they all work together, use teamspeak, and know they can count on their teammates to do what needs to be done.

This just isn’t true in general PvP however. It just isn’t. Balancing should be done around what the majority of the games will feature, which now will be random soloQs. If you balance around a situation that 99% of games won’t experience, then you are automatically making those 99% of games unbalanced.

Necro is a good example here. It is clearly balanced around ESL level play as its an absolute beast if the team can coordinate enough to keep it alive in a team fight. Yet in every other game there isn’t that level of support and Necro becomes an easy target, making it a much less effective class. Is this good balancing in that the class can be amazing in less than 1% of games but sucks in the other 99% because there isn’t enough coordination to keep it alive? No, that is not good balancing.

Balancing needs to be done around the average level of play

this is how you make necro work in soloq, 2 methods
1. get good
2. tell someone to roll ele, then tell them to stay on top of you the whole game

AKA be in an ESL team….. Its convenient how you ignored the fact that most games are not teamQ, and in Season 5 teamQ will even be removed completely. You can’t force anyone on your team of soloqueues to play a certain build.

Balancing should be done around the average skill level. Which includes being soloQ and not expecting support.

If you are playing support you should know.

Even before HOT there were roles and you played accordingly. Pre HOT you could make any build you wanted but once again it filled a role. Dps warrior was hammer/great sword and support was shouts with bow. Same for guardian bunker/support was shouts and dps was medi or condi consentration.

Leagues were suppose to seperate this kind of stuff you are saying. I solo qued a heavy majority of the time and i played ele alot. I knew my job was to support the necros (except S2) and the DH players.

I recently did a unranked match where Paul from some ESL team was playing ele and i was chasing with my warrior and he literally left the mid point uncapped to heal me as we killed this guy.

Solo que, Duo que, Team que doesnt change this. If you are better in this game you understand better tactics.

Just 2 days ago we had a 3 vs 3 off point around our home node. 1 engy decided to leave the fight and uncap the home node and cap it. It was forest and we ended up outside the area exit not by the node point. I and another player where left in a 2 vs 3.

He said if they are fighting off point just go to the point not realizing that if the person they are targeting gets killed it leaves us at a disadvantage and he was running around like a mad man not to die.

Once we died the 3 killed him almost instantly and all 3 of us are on respawn time now.

This is why you cant balance around average players. They dont understand the meta as well as better players. They dont understand the classes as well as players who either focus 1 class are ESL players who can multi class. No matter what you do they will do everything worse.

Which means the game would have to be dumbed down, skills would need to be simplified to the greatest extent so they could manage to play how ever they wanted.

Just like the NBA, not letting players dunk in the 60’s didnt hurt WIlt but hurt guards who were athletic. Not having a 3 point line gave big men a bigger advantage, not having zones allowed for 1-2 styles of defense vs 4-5.

The idea is to make the game with the most possible ways of playing which means build diversity and team diversity.

Anet is already dumbing down the game for casuals with the rock/paper/scissors system. Its not making the game better.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

2. tell someone to roll ele, then tell them to stay on top of you the whole game

As a necro main I can assure you that this doesn’t work.

If you’re a necro and you ask for someone to reroll support they usually just tell you to reroll

You can’t do nothing about bad design. Reroll one of the overtuned classes that mechanic carry you a lot in solo q or keep enjoy the underdog and wait/hope once you will be viable without random soloers help ( Which already doesn’t happen most of the time or even if one of them try to help lets say in downstate as usually thats the only time when i see people try help, when already downed and gets attacked by 1 enemy your teammate stop trying just let you die and run away with full hp )

But there are also good peoples ( too bad its very rare like white raven ) that sometimes help and thats when necro can become about on the same level like other classes.

When it can focus also on offense not just defense ( which is also weak compared to other classes ) and running away from people all the time and trying to survive while doing 0 dps because we are easy to take down to zerg+ cant do any noticeable damage when focused, enemy healthpool just stay full or regen back that little slow condi damage.

About a week ago a thief noticed 3 players attack me while i try to survive hard and kite them away from mid "I was thinking if i have to die atleast kite brainless zergers off from mid and he come help me and we win the 2v3 me coming back from half dead + also take mid it was a kittenin hard match up warrior, guardian and rev

Supreme.3164:

Then…why does the non-stacking rule still exists in ESL? If the game should be balanced around ESL, then why use different set of rules?
If the balance at “average” level doesn’t matter as people here say…let’s remove no stacking rules and let’s see if the ESL team keep the same “balanced” composition as now.

Lol…are seriously asking why ?
Because anet has broken balance with hot and they are kitten kitten at fixing it.
The non stacking rule is the most lazzy and negative way to simply hide the evidence of unbalance.

This is why you are right…rules should be the same: stacking possible everywhere and team q also possible.
Then balance should be applied based on what is seing strong and weak at top level only.
All the rest is a matter of skill / good willing of players to be in a team.
If I am destroyed because I play bad…I am ok…I just have to improve.
If I am destroyed because usually against a medium or low player my prof is strong but against a good opponent I have no chance…then I am not ok.
Same for teams ..

Anet is slowly but surely taking all decisions that will destroy the pvp:
-op elite specialization for marketing
-class stacking rule in esl for low cost balance management
-team q removal because easiest way to hide the population problem

My 2 cents on the subject is that it should be a reference but not the only reference. If it was the only reference then turret engis would have been buffed during their prime due to no use in ESL. It is definitely trickey to balance how much of balance is based off of high tier vs low and mid tier play. Ideally you don’t want specs where an average player can reroll, practice for an hour or 2, and perform generally better than they could on a long term main. That is what I would try to aim for with mid tier balance.

ArthurDent.9538:

My 2 cents on the subject is that it should be a reference but not the only reference. If it was the only reference then turret engis would have been buffed during their prime due to no use in ESL. It is definitely trickey to balance how much of balance is based off of high tier vs low and mid tier play. Ideally you don’t want specs where an average player can reroll, practice for an hour or 2, and perform generally better than they could on a long term main. That is what I would try to aim for with mid tier balance.

Don’t you only have a silver dollar and not two cents?

But going off your sentiment, if they actually had the ESL and Actual live game modes conform to the same Rules they would be able to balance around ESL level game play, since it makes no sense to balance around the lowest common denominator, but with how the ESL plays by different rules currently it makes no sense to balance around them since they are essentially in a vacuum.

If they equalized the rules they would be able to better balance the game mode, the easiest way to do this is to have the Normal sPvP have the 1 class rule implemented, yes this will make people upset but it would make their balancing decisions easier, yes it will increase Queue Times but hey you can do other stuff while waiting on a queue besides sit around in HoTM.

Balancing around the ESL teams will keep our much needed skill floor difference…

What we need is better match making, it’s hard to say what is over tuned when games are constantly 500-100 or less. No amount of class balancing will fix that.

The problem with balancing for ESL is that they’re increasingly playing a different game to everyone else… and I don’t just mean that they’re better players (although they are).

The first distinction is that they have a no-stacking rule. Some of the professions that people are complaining about now are so-so when on their own, but become increasingly difficult to deal with when stacked. Dragonhunters fall into this category, and chronomancers can as well.

The second is that builds that work well in an organised party don’t always work so well in soloqueue. The meta power revenant has well-known weaknesses, but in a teambuild the revenant can have teammates that cover their weaknesses, which in turn have teammates that cover theirs, and back to the revenant providing damage that some of the supporting cast lacks. Come the next season, it won’t be possible to do that in ranked: the best you can pull off without some luck in PUGs will be two players that can cover for each other.

If balancing at the ESL level is to be considered to be relevant at more typical skill levels, then non-ESL players need to have at least the option of playing a mode with the same rules (fully premade teams if you can get the people together, no stacking).