Guild Wars 2

Hi

This discussion about the minstrel somewhat triggered a discussion about HP balance.

HP is a weird thing. It does not directly participate to the sustain of a player (toughness and healing power do) but you need a minimum amount to survive before you are able to use your sustain skills (heal/block/invuln etc…). Essentially, it is “burst” survivability.

I would argue that currently the HP variation between professions is a big obstacle to balance, in particular for low HP profs. It is clear that elementalist and to a large extent thieves have the lowest build diversity and I claim that this is in large part because of their low HP.

All low HP professions have been given mechanics to counter this disadvantage. But they do not necessarily work. Here was the status before the expansion:

• elementalist can sustain thanks to its water and earth attunements. The problem is that they have cooldown, so an elementalist in fire or air needs to survive the damage before their earth/water attunement are off-CD. Thus the need for elementalists to play an amulet giving them high “burst survivability” (meaning both vitality and toughness) to survive while in offensive attunements and then healing power to use their water attunement to reset all the damage they took while out of water. This means celestial (or the now removed minstrel)
• thief can sustain thanks to stealth and mobility. But fleeing or stealthing prevents attacking and prevents capping. Thus the role for thief of sneaky decap and bursting before the enemy can retaliate.
• guardian was very balanced. This is in part due to its mechanics: it has many blocks and heals ALWAYS available (by opposition to elementalist who has not access to them in its offensive attunement) and many are instant skills, and thus able to be used while suffering the burst. But another part is that thanks to its high armor, the guardian has the same passive burst survivability as a medium-HP low armor profession (I did the maths). Its only weakness is condi burst, but condis are usually slower.

Now after the expansion, the burst and CC has increased a lot, so HP has become even more needed (since the CC prevents you to use many of your defensive cooldown). Now D/D ele does not have time to rotate its attunements properly, the amount of reveal has reduced the ability of thieves to kite, and bunker guard, who managed to live despite its low HP now cannot to the same extent. Sure, on the bright side, tempest got new instant heal possibilities thanks to shouts and “Elemental Bastion” and daredevil have gotten acrobatics 2.0 to sustain thanks to dodges. But this didn’t increase build diversity, it just replaced the old with the new.

For the health (ahah) of the low HP profession and their build diversity, this HP distinction has to be removed or reduced. You cannot live with 12k HP when many classes can do this amount of damage in less than 3s while stunning you.

Yes, the minstrel amulet allowed some professions to be unkillable and it was boring to watch. But some professions need those HP “just to survive”. Obviously, the sustain would need to be adjusted (a bit) to remain balanced, but this is essential for build diversity and a healthy game.

Because of the significant incorporation if condition dmg, HP is just as much of an ‘armor’ variance. Normalizing HP is like asking to normalize armor defense.

DavyMcB.1603:

Because of the significant incorporation if condition dmg, HP is just as much of an ‘armor’ variance. Normalizing HP is like asking to normalize armor defense.

Vitality affects condition damage the same way as physical, if not less since toughness increases the value of vitality a bit. If I remember right it’s only like a 3-4% different between each armor classes physical damage reduction while health is 50% more between 11k and 16k almost. Vitality wasn’t an issue at launch because there was no power creep of CC and AoE spam from HoT.

I would love this change especially as a Thief. Right now, it’s basically insane for us to, say, attempt a rez with more than one person capable of cleaving around and increasing our HP would make that a bit more practical. Bunker guardians have also become very easy to kill compared to the past.

no, armor and health difference is one of the things that makes professions unique.
i very much prefer to keep it that way.

besides, the 3 lowest health professions have no problem sustaining themselves.

The problem currently is that eles and thieves have to take vitality in every single build which kills their diversity. 10k hp is pretty easy to get in one burst, so you need at least a little more than that on every profession base. I’d also argue necros need their HP reduced so they aren’t as OP against beginners because of their massive HP pool (old ele vs necro vid that shows this pretty well). Otherwise the classes are probably fine, but eles and thieves especially need more base health in pvp for diversity (regardless of any nerfs or buffs that would accompany these changes).

I don’t mind keeping some HP diversity. But just not to the level there is currently.

The armor difference between light and heavy is on the order of 15%.
The HP difference between low and high is 65%

That is insane! So for example, if low HP had 15922 (currently medium), high HP kept the current amount (19212) and medium had something in between (around 17500) then the balance would be much easier.

I’d rather just put in a 3-item stat system so lower-health and lower-armour professions can mix in enough vit or tough to survive without completely ruining their build.

This would require a complete re-work of every class’s abilities.

If you are going to normalize HP then thieves need less access to blinds and guardians need less access to aegis and blocks. This was the trade off from day 1 and lots will need to be adjusted.

Silverkey.2078:

Now after the expansion, the burst and CC has increased a lot, so HP has become even more needed (since the CC prevents you to use many of your defensive cooldown). Now D/D ele does not have time to rotate its attunements properly

Why should they be able to survive hard CC? Because someone has got quite used to that?) After all, maybe even DD eles wouldn’t get on the contested point so fearlessly

I main ele, go marauder, use scepter + focus. Never bothered about low hp anyway. Marauder is already giving enough extra hp for us to go on. If you are playing a high risk character that can do an insane burst, you have to suffer a little. So, in order to keep yourself alive, you have to use your skills, and go off-rotation. Doing something out of ordinary gives you advantage. Thief can stealth, teleport many times, disengage. Ele can disengage, heal and gain invul.

Hp’s are really fine. Ele D/D was already something to be disgusted before patch. Now it is off the god mode. There are several imbalances with other professions by the way. But meta needs to be settled first. I hate to play in a rock-paper-scissors style, where there are only few dedicated counters for some professions.