Guild Wars 2

This is something I’ve been working on today. Behold the GREAT BALANCE PYRAMID!

Enjoy

Edit: I recreated the chart to exclude class labels and be easier to understand.

The first reason I’m posting this is to provide an easy to use roadmap that shows how your gear and trait selections affect your role in a group.

The second reason I am posting this chart is because imbalances tend to happen when a specific build combination is able to perform TWO OR MORE of the role nodes depicted in my pyramid at the same time.* An example of this is the Spirit Ranger, which provides huge group support boons as a bunker, but at the same time has all of the properties of an attritionist.

Look at the Hammer Warrior in the last patch? A combination of the frontliner role, attritionist, and controller at the same time.

The chart shows what the weaknesses of roles are and what they have to give up as they move into one role from another via gear and traits.

One of the goals of this pyramid is to PREVENT imbalance by creating a visual roadmap that can be used to show when a build has become capable of too much without enough sacrifice. Granted, its not perfect but the idea is there.

Why must every profession have only one role? Having the option to change traits/gear should at least allow a few alternatives. Otherwise just force us into the ‘optimal’ build for our ‘role’ and be done with it.

Lol the good controller part is wrong wrong wrong. Warrior is a 10x better controller.

not really a pyramid
triangle =/= pyramid

Mightymealworm.8409:

Why must every profession have only one role? Having the option to change traits/gear should at least allow a few alternatives. Otherwise just force us into the ‘optimal’ build for our ‘role’ and be done with it.

I fixed the pyramid to remedy this, thanks for the input

reikken.4961:

not really a pyramid
triangle =/= pyramid

its top down
go outside more

edit: looks good, too many words

That’s not going to help the developers, sadly. It’s pretty though

I like the new triangle much better. It’s cleaner and easier to read, this is forming into something quite nice, good work. Only issue I have now is controller being long range, as a lot of cc and control skills are also melee. Would you like to see that change, and is so, why?

Necro is worst of everything in this pyramid

Nice job, I like it alot.

Nice pyramid, it’s very pretty and detailed.

Mightymealworm.8409:

I like the new triangle much better. It’s cleaner and easier to read, this is forming into something quite nice, good work. Only issue I have now is controller being long range, as a lot of cc and control skills are also melee. Would you like to see that change, and is so, why?

I made some further updates to the Pyramid to clarify some role abilities.

To answer the question Mighty, I believe the controller should be ranged that plays with keep away tactics because it is very glassy. The frontliner has some CC abilities but these are for the purposes of pressuring the enemy (such as interrupting heals or knocking them down to restrict movement and put them in jeopardy).

CC is very powerful and the controller is a total master of it. It should be very glassy and game changing, being easily killed if focused due to his low survival. The low survival required to balance a strong CC role is against the paradigm of what a melee class needs to survive on the frontline.

The Frontliner should have some CC for pressure, but it should be nowhere near the controller’s level of effectiveness. The controller should have total area control abilities and be able to dominate multiple foes if left unharassed.

Making the tanky frontline melee class a master of CC will imbalance the game by trivializing the role of the controller. Strong CC should be high risk, and having a melee class with ultra strong CC and no-risk frontline survival is against the rules of balance because they can just constantly lock someone down while still having a lot of breakers and mitigation (see hammer warriors last patch).

For an example of a controller that works, refer to the Guildwars 1 mesmer. This class was ranged, very glassy, but dominated when left alone.

Not saying melee should not have CC, but this melee CC should be more pressure oriented and limited in effectiveness in comparison to the controller.

Excalibur.9748:

Nice pyramid, it’s very pretty and detailed.

nice pyramid but my rabid amulet zerker jewel warrior feels like an attritionist but not all the things u listed there.

i guess he is a bastarkitten child then.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

nice pyramid but my rabid amulet zerker jewel warrior feels like an attritionist but not all the things u listed there.

i guess he is a bastarkitten child then.

I’m glad you mention this, the current problem with warrior is they can perform multiple nodes on the pyramid (in your case attritionist + skirmisher/frontliner) without giving up any survival power at all.

There are alot of gripes about the state of warrior on the forums at the moment because the warrior does not conform to the balance model of “give something up, gain something else.” The pyramid actually visually shows this because if you chart your build across it, you will notice that you can perform multiple nodes effectively with no downsides.

This is not a diagram of how things currently are, but a diagram of (but not a perfect solution) how balance can be achieved.

Is that the Illuminati Secret World pyramid lol

lordhelmos.7623:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

nice pyramid but my rabid amulet zerker jewel warrior feels like an attritionist but not all the things u listed there.

i guess he is a bastarkitten child then.

I’m glad you mention this, the current problem with warrior is they can perform multiple nodes on the pyramid (in your case attritionist + skirmisher/frontliner) without giving up any survival power at all.

There are alot of gripes about the state of warrior on the forums at the moment because the warrior does not conform to the balance model of “give something up, gain something else.” The pyramid actually visually shows this because if you chart your build across it, you will notice that you can perform multiple nodes effectively with no downsides.

This is not a diagram of how things currently are, but a diagram of (but not a perfect solution) how balance can be achieved.

oooo okies!
here’s my warrior build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNBMhNak0J5t5x6hJOggZohVh+gdkegGsRaA-T0AAzCnIySllLLTWyssZNqYVxJkZIvKA

where does he fits in ah?

i’m a casual player by the way.
does not play solo arena or team arena. only hotjoin.

attrionist pros?
“good 1 vs 1?”
only if they not enough condition removals

“excellent condition removal?”
yes i made him that way. i no rike conditions.

“best survival power?”
this is a rather subjective matter.
high sustained burst kills my warrior.
condition overloads kills my warrior.
players with puny damage can’t kill my warrior.

“good point holder etc”
not really sure since i play in hotjoins only.
my warrior flees the point if i am alone and i see 2 enemies approaching.

“boon removal etc”
nope. none of those. he warrior mah.

“strong single target CC etc”
my warrior only has pin down.
well fear me as well but that is 5 targets.

“chill, cripple, immobilize, poison, weakness”
only cripple, immobilize, weakness

attrionist cons?
“weak vs multiple foes”
if i am alone then yes they will kill me.
but in “team fights” i combustion shot and burn everyone up.

“cannot kill targets fast”
this is true. my warrior, he no high burst damage.
still kills them fast if victim has zero condition removal.
burn and bleed!

“low mobility”
incorrect. at least that’s what i think.
warhorn charge, signet of rage gives my warrior swiftness
long sword skill 2 leap is good escape and for closing in on enemies.

“limited stunbreaks”
somewhat true.
i only have shake it off as a stun breaker.
i enjoy the shouts that heal me and some team mates.
warhorn’s charge is good for removing immobilize though.

“boons heals no team support”
somewhat true.
only vigorous shouts heals team a bit.
some might and fury might from for grape justice!
shake it off only helps cleanse condition of nearby team mates
fire field + blast only some area might for nearby team mates
healing signet + adrenal health is personal, no help team.

soo …. where do my warrior fits in ? O_O

There should never be a jack of all trades profession, unless you wish to exclude said profession from certain things.

Overall, I like it. My only issue is that some amulets work differently for different classes. One example is Warrior, who can run Rabid and be a Melee Attrition fighter with Sword main hand.

I feel like part of the reason is because there are “apex” amulets for certain stats. If you’re running power, most people will laugh at you if you use anything other than Berserker, or maybe Knight if you’re playing WvW. If you’re running condition then it was almost always Rabid/Settler until Dire came along for PvE/WvW. Guardian support builds would run Cleric and hardly anyone else would bother putting a support build out afterward.

Assuming the players are trying all possibilities then either the amulets are fine and the professions are not, or the professions are fine and the amulets are not. You make the argument that it’s the former, but I’m bothered by the latter having an effect on things too.

Overlapping of roles does not (or, should not) immediately translate to imbalance, as long as it comes at great enough a cost/sacrifice, and doesn’t outperform dedicated builds/classes at that same role.

In GW1, it was an approach that set balanced team setups (i.e. builds which were per definition able to perform multiple roles at once and react to a wider range of opponent setups better than niche builds) apart from specialized ones, be it hexes, pressure or spikes. Normally, balanced setups would entail a careful choice of (utility) skills and a team composition which was able to function in a multitude of ways, given what the situation at hand necessitated.
Sadly, I cannot tell how much of that concept was retained in GW2, because I didn’t play enough tpvp, but I somewhat doubt there is much similarity between the two games in that regard…Regular tpvpers are welcome to fill in that part for me.

This means controls warriors should have should be more similar to their immobilizes outside of Longbow?

I mean Flurry and Bolas, which are fast, can only be used at point blank range and can allow use of skills.