Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone. What do you guys think of the current balance of base health pools distributed among professions? Is there any class you’d like to see a change, by either increasing or decreasing the value? In your opinion, are they currently balanced?

For reference of the present values:

Warriors, Necromancers: High base HP
Mesmers, Rangers, Engineers: Medium base HP
Elementalists, Thieves, Guardians: Low base HP

Theoretically, what should happen is:

classes with the lowest base health should have a lot of
damage avoidance/mitigation/condition cleansing available to them, as they are squishy and rely on other mechanics to stay alive.

Since they are focusing on other mechanics to stay alive, they should have inherently high damage output, so that they “can” focusing on building themselves more for survival.

Classes with high base health can forgo “some” of the
damage avoidance/mitigation/condition cleansing and focus on ramping up damaging abilities, as they inherently have more survivability.

For the classes in the middle, they are supposed to be more diverse and can go either way, but excel in neither field.

So if a high base health/low base damage class were to push for even more survival, they would excel in survival more than anyone else.

If a low base health/high damage class were to push for more damage, they should excel in damage more so than anyone else.

Mid range classes should provide good damage and ok survival, or vice versa ok survival and good damage, but not as great as the other ends of the spectrum (more balanced/jack of all trades).

…
This is of course not how the game is at the moment, and theory always looks good on paper but may not pan out in reality well.

This isn’t quite the same issue, but I think a better way of looking at health totals right now would be by examining, and then increasing the value of the vitality stat.

First, change base vitality to 0.

Then, increase vitality scaling so that people who build for high vitality (1500+) can get a similar amount of HP as they would currently.

This makes it so that people have to choose what defensive stats they’re building around in a similar way that offensive-oriented builds have to choose between power, condition, or crit builds.

Only after that, imo, we can look fairly at base profession HP and determine if a change there needs to be made. It’s a tricky thing either way though, either the base HP totals were assigned based on relative survivability of skills and mechanics, or the other way around. Several balancing passes later, I think we all agree that they don’t necessarily match up anymore, especially considering build variants on each profession that may not have access to all the things that put them at a certain HP level.

I will say this. Professions having different base HP is the correct idea, but the numbers to me are just a bit off.

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

I’m not saying eles are in a great place right now (because if I said that, I’d get death threats again) but eles do have some defensive advantages. 10 in Arcana gets you a lot of protection and regen, just as one example.

I think ele heals should have a higher base but lower scaling, since healing power often has to be traded for vitality unless you can afford 30 in water.

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

Access to 20 weapon skills at once vs 5 for normal classes. I’m sure ele’s lack of hp is because of their versatility. Thief is because of stealth and all of their other avoidance. Guardians is a odd one and I’m not sure if they belong in the tier. It would make more sense for mesmer and guardian to switch spots imo.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not saying eles are in a great place right now (because if I said that, I’d get death threats again) but eles do have some defensive advantages. 10 in Arcana gets you a lot of protection and regen, just as one example.

The thing about defensive boons is that I need to stop doing damage and switch to Earth or Water to get them, and due to attunement cooldowns, that means I could very well not have access to a key CC, heal, or condition removal skill when I need it.
Simply swapping to Water to get Regeneration would mean burning a heal and a condition removal or two, which could easily mean death if my opponent has access to a skill that can immobilize me.

Chaosky.5276:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m not saying eles are in a great place right now (because if I said that, I’d get death threats again) but eles do have some defensive advantages. 10 in Arcana gets you a lot of protection and regen, just as one example.

The thing about defensive boons is that I need to stop doing damage and switch to Earth or Water to get them, and due to attunement cooldowns, that means I could very well not have access to a key CC, heal, or condition removal skill when I need it.
Simply swapping to Water to get Regeneration would mean burning a heal and a condition removal or two, which could easily mean death if my opponent has access to a skill that can immobilize me.

Right, it’s not like free benefits with zero downsides. I thought we wanted risk/reward gameplay?

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

It’s best to think of hp pools with respect to disengage skills, ability to heal, ability to apply boons like protection and vigor, and ability to cleanse conditions. Ele can do all of these. Until the string of nerfs to eles, they were near-unkillable death machines. They could use some love now, but until recently they were #1 in sPVP and WvW.

Kharr.5746:

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

It’s best to think of hp pools with respect to disengage skills, ability to heal, ability to apply boons like protection and vigor, and ability to cleanse conditions. Ele can do all of these. Until the string of nerfs to eles, they were near-unkillable death machines. They could use some love now, but until recently they were #1 in sPVP and WvW.

Yea true. But how valuable is protection (consider the up time and down time) vs raw hp??

Ranger has good prot uptime and regen, access to evades, but they are mid tier hp.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Chaosky.5276:

The thing about defensive boons is that I need to stop doing damage and switch to Earth or Water to get them, and due to attunement cooldowns, that means I could very well not have access to a key CC, heal, or condition removal skill when I need it.
Simply swapping to Water to get Regeneration would mean burning a heal and a condition removal or two, which could easily mean death if my opponent has access to a skill that can immobilize me.

Right, it’s not like free benefits with zero downsides. I thought we wanted risk/reward gameplay?

You don’t see a problem in taking such risks to obtain a baseline level of defense that most other classes have passively?

Kharr.5746:

It’s best to think of hp pools with respect to disengage skills, ability to heal, ability to apply boons like protection and vigor, and ability to cleanse conditions. Ele can do all of these. Until the string of nerfs to eles, they were near-unkillable death machines. They could use some love now, but until recently they were #1 in sPVP and WvW.

Indeed, the low HP made sense for the old 0/0/10/30/30 and 0/10/0/30/30 S/D or D/D triple Cantrip bunkers, but that’s ALL it made sense for.

All this ele crying aside, the classes are fairly well done in terms of HP. Guardian and thieves are there with the lowest but between the blocks blinds stealths teleports evades retaliation passive heal passive condi clear, their effective HP is much higher. Compare this to the necro who has high hp and a second HP bar which means absolutely nothing when people decide they don’t want to have 25 stacks of bleed and proceed to tear out his small intestine from his mouth.

Kharr.5746:

It’s best to think of hp pools with respect to disengage skills, ability to heal, ability to apply boons like protection and vigor, and ability to cleanse conditions. Ele can do all of these. Until the string of nerfs to eles, they were near-unkillable death machines. They could use some love now, but until recently they were #1 in sPVP and WvW.

This is exactly correct.

If every class had the Medium health they would be easier to balance. The current state of some classes being extremely low and others extrememly high makes numerically balalncing all their skills mathematically over complicated.

Relentliss.2170:

If every class had the Medium health they would be easier to balance. The current state of some classes being extremely low and others extrememly high makes numerically balalncing all their skills mathematically over complicated.

I agree very much.

Aza.2105:

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

Access to 20 weapon skills at once vs 5 for normal classes. I’m sure ele’s lack of hp is because of their versatility. Thief is because of stealth and all of their other avoidance. Guardians is a odd one and I’m not sure if they belong in the tier. It would make more sense for mesmer and guardian to switch spots imo.

Never mind that other class’s 10 weapon skills are more powerful and have lower cooldowns. Forget about those pesky F1-4 skills that don’t make any difference at all. 4 second stun on an 8 second cooldown? Pft! 4 second invuln? PFT! Double life bar with access to 5 more skills? THPFFFTT!!!!!!!!! All garbage and not worth talking about.

Aza.2105:

Kharr.5746:

Chaosky.5276:

I’d mostly like to know why eles have such low health. Like, seriously, not even whining, I just wanna know.

Lowest base health, lowest base armor, no defensive mechanism aside from healing (the class’s low base armor makes doesn’t mesh well with healing, and investment in Healing Power is required for it to be effective, as well), and unremarkable base damage (most autoattacks have absymally low damage coefficients, as well).

It’s best to think of hp pools with respect to disengage skills, ability to heal, ability to apply boons like protection and vigor, and ability to cleanse conditions. Ele can do all of these. Until the string of nerfs to eles, they were near-unkillable death machines. They could use some love now, but until recently they were #1 in sPVP and WvW.

Yea true. But how valuable is protection (consider the up time and down time) vs raw hp??

Ranger has good prot uptime and regen, access to evades, but they are mid tier hp.

And rangers still need toned down. Spirit ranger is mindless 1spamming no skill little risk high reward.

Chaosky.5276:

You don’t see a problem in taking such risks to obtain a baseline level of defense that most other classes have passively?

I never said anything like that. All I’m trying to avoid is the situation with warriors and necros, where we said “small buffs won’t cut it, we need something massive” and Anet said “OK.” Ele already has some good defense/sustain built into the profession. Maybe not enough, but there is a significant amount there. Just the level of party protection uptime is way above what any other profession can do.