Guild Wars 2

Coming from someone that has played on PvP teams near the very higgest level, I share my insight as to how ArenaNet could calm the outroar of PvP inbalance.

I believe the best way to go about balance in the PvP setting involves 4 steps as follow:

1) Forget about WvW and PvE balance for the moment. As cool as it would be, trying to find the optimal balance between three differnt gamemodes that satisfy three differnt communities is a ridiculous goal that frankly will never be accomplished. Of the three gamemodes, PvP is by far the most flismy in terms of weathering class imbalance, and as such should be the primary target for this balance undertaking. Not to say PvE and WvW do not matter, but their balance can be implemented by minor tweeks and number buffing/shaving after the individual skills have been adjusted for PvP.

2) This brings us to point number two. Shaving numbers off the elite specs is the single largest requirement for a balanced environment. Not only has this imbalance between core and elite specs caused countless complaints both on the forums and ingame, but it has also served to completely nullify any investment made into GW2 Esports. The blatant advantages gained by picking elite specs have completely obliterated build diversity, giving players only 2 traitlines to pick from as opposed to 3. Additionally the superiority of the elite specs has served to alienate free to play members, and cost you (ArenaNet) thousands of potential customers. Nerf EVERY elite specialization until they are in line with the core specs.

3) This one is pretty short and easy to understand, use the metagame from pre HoT as a gauge of power level so as to avoid powercreep. The pre HoT meta was arguably the most balance this game has ever seen, and as such developers need to use it as a guide of sorts.

4) Buff or rework any skills or traits or weapons that never see the light of day. I put this as number four because while it would add to the overall health of PvP, it is not initially a must have for a balanced environment (assuming they complete steps 1-3).

2) is impossible with the way elite specs are created especially if you want to enforce 4). The reason is that for the elite spec to be on the level it has to be the 3~4 stongest trait line (so much for being elite) and every utility/healing/weapon/elite skill of the spec has to be weakened dratstically to the point of not being used because the added vertical progression created by the horizontal progression.

TheLargeUnit.2793:

2) This brings us to point number two. Shaving numbers off the elite specs is the single largest requirement for a balanced environment. Not only has this imbalance between core and elite specs caused countless complaints both on the forums and ingam. Nerf EVERY elite specialization until they are in line with the core specs.

But if they do that then they hurt HoT sales as the broken elite specs were the main reason for allot of pvp players to get the expansion. The way things are you can expect the next expansion to bring even more op elites.

Tim.6450:

The reason is that for the elite spec to be on the level it has to be the 3~4 stongest trait line (so much for being elite) and every utility/healing/weapon/elite skill of the spec has to be weakened dratstically to the point of not being used because the added vertical progression created by the horizontal progression.

This has been said a million times now, elite specs are not suppose to be stronger than the core ones (that was said by the former game director on the HoT announcement event) but merely open up new play styles to classes. The phrase elite in this cases is to do with the fact you can only have one slotted when they put more than one per class, it has nothing to do with the power of them (or that was what we were told).

The added utility skills and weapons will have nothing to do with the strength of the elites if they are balanced accordingly (look at the scraper hammer every single skill is overloaded with utility for no reason other than more HoT sales) the main offenders are the augmented class mechanics. Problem is they are straight up upgrades to the core class (chronomancer is the most obvious in this regard) and if they actually replace the class mechanic the replacement is more powerful than the original (dragon hunter is the best example here, you may argue you give up some team support with the new virtues but you have to consider just how absurd the new ones are, just compare Shield of Courage and Virtue of Courage there is no comparison).