Guild Wars 2

This is kind of getting on my nerves . Almost every class has innate sustain from traits and weapons/utilities .
It is sickening seeing a warrior that has not invested anything into healing power out heal a full on ranger bunker . Or a glass cannon elemental going from 10% hp to 100% simply by going to water attunement . Then there is the thief who runs into stealth and just resets the fight .

Mind you , i am not making any balance claims of OP , this is a question from a design standpoint . High damage specs should not have sustain, ever . There should be a trade off for in damage done for having the ability to stand in a fight and attrition the enemy . But quite honestly , there is none atm . This may be a bit annoying in PvP as stealth is not as good as it is in WvW , but in this PvP sillyness is spilling over to WvW hard .

The only bunker sustain spec that got a nerf in damage was the Ranger beast master , but this was the only spec that had to invest a lot into healing power .

I am utterly baffled .

This game is balanced on pve and wvw, nuff said.

milo.6942:

This game is balanced on pve and wvw, nuff said.

I actually think WvW balancing has been mostly an afterthought. Part of the problem though is that the gameplay has largely been “cemented”, so radical changes/splits would tick off too many players, and a nerf for the sake of pvp can also be a pointless pve nerf (probably why we’ve seen more buffs than nerfs).

One radical change I’d like to have seen though is shifting a lot of the traits/utilities that are anti-condition from defensive to offensive lines, to enforce a sort of condi-tank-glass paper rock scissors soft counter framework. Some builds just get too much of everything atm, and sustain just amplifies that.

milo.6942:

This game is balanced on pve and wvw, nuff said.

^ This…well wvsw and pve are the same thing so we could say it’s balanced on pve. Just take a look at cleave on every kittening skill…

Have you ever followed the sotg’s in the past? People actually discussed back then how ele used to be OP cause they could heal so much in a short amount of time. And what did the devs respond ? " They are supposed to do that " And I couldn’t agree more. We are a light armor class which means we lack about 300 toughness already compared to heavy armor classes. We have no stealth, nor decent escape abilities except for ride the lightning and lightning flash. And since they nerfed ride the lightning from 20 seconds to 40 seconds you can imagine we have it rarely up as an escape ability. Other light armor classes have other things, mesmers have blinks/stealth and necro has deathshroud.
If you nerf the healing ability on ele you might as well ask to delete the class. other then that we can barely offer anything to our team.

Archaon.6245:

milo.6942:

This game is balanced on pve and wvw, nuff said.

^ This…well wvsw and pve are the same thing so we could say it’s balanced on pve. Just take a look at cleave on every kittening skill…

Actually the vast majority of balance changes have been made solely for the sake Spvp. I do not mean some I mean most. PvE hasn’t received any sort balance save the last few condition cleanses to multiple classes and you could argue that was part of the not touching condis so buff cleansing strategy. Fact is many players got kitten ed because so many senseless nerfs and buffs hit PvE due to Spvp. Prime example warrior. Who while at the top of PvE and fine in WvW received buffs due to spvp. Making the strongest overall PvE class stronger. Generally balance revolves around Spvp. Notice the state of the game talks rarely say 2 kittens about PvE. There is no PvE panelist. So do not get it confused. The mess in balance is all due to this game mode. No more no less.

And a note. WvW is rarely if ever balanced against anything. WvW doesn’t get balance patches often as the environment is inherently unbalanced (devs have stated this multiple times). Changes you see there have revolved around AoE.

Well I agree that sustainability is too high for an enjoyable PvP game without supports. The problem here is that everyone is self sustainable. In GW1 this was the role of the monks so to win the fights you had a pretty good plan going on : shutdown one target while you kill another for example. Or fake spike a target when in reality you go on another. Your fears for the Elementalist are misguided because, if something is changed to nerf all that sustainability, obviously it WILL imply massive changes in all classes.

I’d love if the PvP in this game had more of a DotA feel. In DotA, there is very very little healing available except endgame “% damage into life steal” effects for the carry. The reason I believe is because constant healing slows down the game and makes it more boring to watch.

There’s an exact same situation in Diablo III right now. For the expansion pack, the devs are heavily nerfing all the current sustainability stats (mainly, they kind of remove the % life steal) because players reached the point where they can refill their whole health in 2-3 seconds. And so the only way they have currently of making something difficult is a mob that spikes down the 100% HP in less than that. They don’t like that spikability, but without that players would be immortal. So they went back and completely changed the sustainability itself.

As i have said , or tried to say , I have no problem when someone builds for sustain . That is a defensive build and its fine . I have a problem when someone has sustain and then hits you for a 2-3k attack on a regular basis . I play Ranger and Warrior so i will use this as my example .

Ranger bunker (condition variant ) :
-only single target conditions
-heavy investment into HP and armor leaving only 1 offensive stat with a max value of 1000 condition damage
-pets can be kited or killed
-condition transfers affect pets
-sacrificing the entire utility bar for passive sustain effects

Warrior:
-can take any amulet and still keep 550 hp/sec simply by having HSig and AdrenHeal
-condi cleanse comes from the same line as the AdrenHeal
-inbuilt toughness and mobility
-all damage is perfectly controlled and available and cannot be mitigated by running in a circle

I say this from my experience of playing these 2 classes . No doubt there are more things to say about the ele and whatnot . But the point is not balance per se . It is a design philosophy that i feel is at fault here .

What i would suggest is this : All inbuilt sustain skills should be taken down a peg but their scalability from HPower should be buffed .

So a thief going into stealth , warrior , elementalist switching to water… etc … They could heal up fast IF they went 800+ points into healing power , otherwise the stat seems pointless .

my2c

glass cannon ele healing back to full from 10%.. wat

Damage vs. survivability is a little broken, especially on some builds.

The problem is that survivability can easily reach a break-even point where it outscales damage.

So for example, an extreme glass-cannon build might be dealing 2000 DPS on average.

A Bunker build will still be dealing…say 400 DPS. However the Bunker will be able to mitigate 80% of the damage thrown at him by cycling immunities and maintaining Protection and Vigor.

That damage that does go through is then simply outhealed.

That’s how you end up with some of these nigh unkillable bunkers, especially among Engineers, Warriors, Elementalists (not so much in sPvP) and Guardians.

Defense just simply outscales offense in this game. And the kicker is that a Bunker can still deal respectable Condition damage if he/she wants to.