Guild Wars 2

This is not a “lets burn Anet down” thread The point of this is to summarize for future discussion the reasons for the class’ issues and why they likely won’t go away unless something drastic happens.

What do we know about the current game?

- Mesmer wasn’t the greatest class, weak fighter but now is what most will consider broken.
-Thief was considered the best fighter but now seen as the weakest.
- Necro was always the problem class, the black sheep, but is now seeing some very good changes
- Turret Engineer was considered broken for good reason but now not anymore
- Warrior used to be out of control because of its damage combined with the heals.

The other classes havent been debated on so much so why is that? What do these 5 have in common? Passive defense.

The problem is Anet has issues controlling classes that emphasize passive defense, defense that doesnt require the players continued input to keep active; such as stealth, invulnerability, Death shroud, heal over time and turrets. They have to constantly worry about what would happen if they combine really powerful skills with being able to negate or almost always avoid damage. Their fault sure, but I imagine they wouldn’t have realized this in the initial designs how it would turn out.

- They saw Deathshroud as this be all and end all defensive skill and necromancers will perform miracles with it because it is easily accessible and protects the class from taking damage. We all know how that turned out. Anet finally realized that mobility is everything, and combining no mobility with no stability is just bad form.

- They made mesmer a weak fighter because of clones that body block, stealth, invulns and escapability. They couldnt have all this in one class and also give them warrior like unconditional damage, seems they don’t care about that anymore

- Turrets were so strong that the Engi could just be a tank and negate damage and have Turrets do all the work. 1 Turrent engi could control the outcome of a match. Anet changed this and thankfully put more emphasis on the player’s skill.

- With thief they didnt realize players would be able to dominate with having low health, almost no condi removal and no viable tanky build options. Also underestimated what stealth does to having burst skills with no cooldown. I don’t even think they know how to get around this, without changing how the class works, probably why thieves have seen no response.

- Warrior passive heals were out of control so over the years we have been seeing nerfs to healing signet.

The problem is very simple, passives, the solution is also very simple, remove or severely limit them then focus more on the actives, like evades, blinds, blocks, boon timing.

It is obvious one or two things have been learned with the changes to necro and how Roy and his team are designing the Revenant. More emphasis on the players skill not the skill itself. Vanishing into thin air after doing 70% damage then come back to do it again is nothing but a glorified game of hide and seek, something that doesn’t really have a place in a game like this.

If there is something i have gotten wrong or missed please let me know and lets help them make a great game.

it’s much more simple than that. balance problems wont ever be fixed because this is an MMO. they don’t have the resources to dedicate to pvp balance. right now, all the devs are scrambling to make the elite specs playable for HoT. thing is, elite specs wont be viable for at least 6 months after release. everyone who knows this game knows this.

currently I don’t think there’s anyone working on balancing pvp, as we haven’t had any significant changes since the big spec revamp. despite the promises. those who want balanced pvp should play a pvp game like any of the mobas, or the upcoming Overwatch. gdub has lots to offer, but prof equality has never been one of those things. if you want balance, play a game with a dedicated pvp team.

The reason balance problems won’t end is because we have 3 very different game modes and the dev’s won’t split the way the majority of the professions work in each.

Things like the recent condi change, which is fine for PvE, should have never been added to PVP and WvW. Venom share thief is easy to deal with in PvP but it is completely broken in WvW. Necro’s and mesmers can use a dps boost in PvE but only in PvE, giving those 2 classes more damage in PvP or WvW would be insane.

They already balance ranger pets, stealth, and stats differently in each game mode. It’s time they bite the bullet and balance the rest of the professions separately as well.

The balance issues are not in the classes at all in my opinion. The fact is that there is a population of players that is significantly more skillful than most. Whatever class they decide is fashionable this week will be OP.

The way to fix balance issues would be to penalize rapid button press style play, as GW 1 does. I literally never hear complaints about balance there.

As to the complaints about Mesmer, two reactions;

First at a gut level Mesmer had been way underpowered for nearly 3 years. I remember having no hope whatever against the rampant hambows. They couldn’t even be dented on Mesmer. Thieves farmed Mesmers with very little risk. So, I’m wishing people would climb off.

Second, Mesmer suffers bad PR for the same reason Thieves do. Namely, people don’t understand the mechanic and so think that they are being cheated. Mesmer is incredibly squishy and doesn’t really have much defense against a knowledgeable opponent.

That is really a learn to play issue.

Ithilwen.1529:

The balance issues are not in the classes at all in my opinion. The fact is that there is a population of players that is significantly more skillful than most. Whatever class they decide is fashionable this week will be OP.

The way to fix balance issues would be to penalize rapid button press style play, as GW 1 does. I literally never hear complaints about balance there.

Funniest thing I have ever read…today.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Ithilwen.1529:

The balance issues are not in the classes at all in my opinion. The fact is that there is a population of players that is significantly more skillful than most. Whatever class they decide is fashionable this week will be OP.

The way to fix balance issues would be to penalize rapid button press style play, as GW 1 does. I literally never hear complaints about balance there.

Funniest thing I have ever read…today.

Ithilwen went on for months about how OP longbow rangers are…. that pretty much says everything you need to know about her doesn’kitten

I’m glad you’re amused and I stand by what I said. I’m a current GW1 player. No one whines there.

ANET devs have talked about “button speed” as a “skill.” That’s not skill. As far as I can see there’s no monitoring or penalty for the use of macros either. Again, pressing a macro isn’t skillful.

Because there is no penalty for spamming skills, that is the primary mode of play. Penalize that and you push the game toward players thinking about the next move, not just pounding buttons.

Why is everyone complaining about mesmer not being strong in the past?
Shatter mesmer has always been strong if you got the skill, not to mention mesmer pre confusion nerf.

And yes, we finally need separate balancing for pvp.

Anet balance approach is like this~
Scale legend:
1 = total crap
5 = just fine
10 = OP

Build level before balance = 8
Build level after balance = 2

And vice versa.

In the meantime, Anet adds superb features such as SoloQ and TeamQ in one Queue pool.

And guess why people give up on PvP and leave the game or do some Daily/Rank farm matches in Custom area?

I am going to say this again.
You cant balance small scale 5v5 PvP.

This is why WvW large scale fights dont suffer from class balance. They suffer from population balance.

Small Scale PvP display class imbalances much more, because you put into a 1v1 situation more often than not. Which no class is balanced around, since this is a group based game after all.

surpirsed MMO developers havnt learned this lesson from Blizzard and their view on the impact of Arena was on the game as a whole.

Before they added Arenas, the main PvP was Instanced Battlegrounds which was larger group sizes but still instanced population control unlike open world PvP.

Was far more balanced since the classes didnt need to be balanced around 1v1. When Arenas were added, 2v2, 3v3, 5v5, now Classes had to be balanced to be more equal in 1v1 situations, basically removing much of the class’ uniqueness in exchange for balance that can never be reached unless all uniqueness is removed and everybody is the same.

Knighthonor.4061:

This is why WvW large scale fights dont suffer from class balance.

You mean WvW where most serious guilds have basically not recruited engineers or rangers for most of the game’s existence, and where as a generalisation 4 classes (GWEN) have made up the vast majority and where the other four are poorly represented, at best restricted to niche roles where at times for every mesmer you have 5 or 6 guards (more if we are talking zergs rather than a guild raid) and to the extrreme where for most of the game it has been common to not even have engies or rangers in a raid at all, class balance is a total joke in WvW.

Knighthonor.4061:

Was far more balanced since the classes didnt need to be balanced around 1v1.

Classes aren’t balanced for 1v1 in GW2, look at ranger, 1v1 it has had plenty of very strong builds over the course of this game, yet it has generally been one of the weaker classes in conquest, what something does 1v1 isn’t that important by itself.

The advantage games like WoW have in balance is that firstly they have hard roles which protects a class from balance changes, so even if say the single target healer class gets over nerfed, it is still the best single target healer and so is required, and that translates through all content, in GW2 PvP thief virtually has a hard role, so even after a number of nerfs it still didn’t matter, because nothing has the mobility to compete as a roamer with a thief, but that is the only class in that poistion.

WoW type games also have trinity which translates through the different game modes and different scales better (for the most part) than what happens in GW2, where a lot of the mechanics and balancing that works for 5v5 tPvP simply break in WvW or PvE or even other PvP modes.

The problem isn’t passives, I mean most classes have auto procs, even the under rated rangers have their share of invuln, blocks and auto cast.

The problem is generally the players with narrow minded views when counters already exist and it’s their own stubbornness stopping them from using it.

Are some things a bit too strong. Sure. However outside of the clearly broken guard symbols and double engy grenade bugs there is usually always a counter. Revenant certainly looks like it can counter a lot of meta builds nicely.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m glad you’re amused and I stand by what I said. I’m a current GW1 player. No one whines there.

ANET devs have talked about “button speed” as a “skill.” That’s not skill. As far as I can see there’s no monitoring or penalty for the use of macros either. Again, pressing a macro isn’t skillful.

Because there is no penalty for spamming skills, that is the primary mode of play. Penalize that and you push the game toward players thinking about the next move, not just pounding buttons.

No one whines there because MAYBE the game is dead? Yes, a few people play the game but it isn’t an active game so whining about balance is a waste of time. There is a ZERO chance the game will ever be balanced. So why complain about. In any case, Guild wars 1 when it was active had a lot more balance issues.

Seriously reading your comments, I am sorry for making the mistake of replying to you. In the future, I will assume you know nothing.

@PlatinumMember

I’m amused by your name. As to assuming I know nothing, that’s your mistake. Among other things, I’m a coder and looking at this from that perspective.

I maintain that the basic problem of balance is that the game fails to punish button spam. Further, my POV is supported by the situation in GW1 which does punish spamming.

Because the game rewards simple high speed button pounding, it also rewards a specific type of player above others. One with a high reaction speed and strong hand to eye coordination i.e. a young male.

If you doubt that, simply have a look at the tournament teams.

Because one specific demographic of players has an advantage, when they are attracted to a class it becomes suddenly “OP.” We saw that happen in the first tournament season when Turret Engineers were the rage.

Hence, the problem is not the classes, it’s the demographics playing the classes on any given week.

Balancing GW2 as it is is like playing a pagoda game with a post for each factor in the game, or a rubik cube with one side for each factor.

You shuffle stuff around hoping to make what’s too strong weaker and what’s to weak and underused stronger, and you end up making other stuff stronger or weaker as a side-effect. So no matter what changes they make to skills, it doesn’t pass much time until people find the new gimmicky broken combinations and go with those until they get fixed.

That’s why some games have systems that balance on the fly what’s happening instead having to depend on changing numbers on individual parts, and hoping the sum ends up balanced somehow.

And that’s why one of the things GW2 needs to make balancing easier is an extra ‘layer’ of control measures that balance on the fly. Too many CC on too little time by too many people on a single character, they get a ‘juggle’ breaker like in properly balanced fighting games to prevent and endless chain of hits with no possibility of saving. Too many conditions on you? You get a cap on how much damage they give you per second (like the degen/regen pips in GW1).

Once such measures are in place, making builds is no longer about finding what can dish the most of some things in as little time as possible, maybe also keeping some survivability in the form of ways to get out of a pinch, and it becomes more about efficiency. Your teams brings way too much of a single mechanic, you’ll repeatedly hit the autobalancing measures, you’ll be wasting skills. A smart build will waste no slot with superfluous redundancies.

Not bad solutions. I like the way you’re thinking. That would go a ways to solving some issues.

Mesmer has something along that line by taking glamour mastery which grants a short immunity.

Unfortunately Warrior, Guardian and Ele all have longish immunity and very rapid cleanse already. The fact that these classes have very high cleanse and /or immunity where other classes do not is one of the balance issues.

Well in regards to your analysis about mesmer, you leave out the fact that one of the reasons that they were so weak prepatch is because of portal. Its a game changing utility that can make rotations so much better for a team in pvp, and is probably the best tactical skill in conquest in the entire game. It made sense that they were weak fighters, because their utility was so great.

Now I feel that they’re almost in a balanced spot after the nerfs. Its just that PU is slightly too strong as it makes playing mesmer even more forgiving than shadow arts thief.

the meta will always shift and thats a good thing. a game like this will never be balanced. thats a … thing. no skill/trait split for the different modes will make some classes/builds better for certain modes.

everything equaly good at all 3 modes… will never happen.

you must decide if you want to have several classes that all play the same and are so prolly balanceable or if you want several classes that play differently and therefor might be tricky to balance, especialy for 3 different modes.

nothing should be broken, but some classes are better than others in some aspects and thats fine. sometimes a build only seems broken until people get used to it and know how to counter it. (not so many pew pews around anymore, are there? ok, a few.)

after almost 8 hours nonstop ranked pvp today i must say:

so few pew pews,
so many cele ele,
everything else quite balanced.
burning still hurts alot.

seems almost balanced to me.

Anet have to do some about balance if they want the game to continue as an esport. Balance is the no. 1 priority in esports. They don’t seem to devote enough resources to it if they want it to succeed.

Right, I’ma teach you something so listen up.

In Game Design there are two main types of game balance methodologies:
Difference of Scale
and
Difference of Kind

Difference of Scale is the style of fixed roles, where one class is quantifiably best at a single job (i.e. the paladin is best at surviving continual damage of any sort), where regardless of what they are built for, their numbers in a specific field will always be the best. Guild Wars 2 wasn’t designed for this approach, but it is the quickest and easiest to apply fixes with so it has been used in many a nerf and buff in patches.

Differences in Kind is the style of balance where no two classes can be quantifiably (able to be counted numerically) compared to find the “true” best in a field. Where the two classes share so little in common they don’t have enough common ground, or the situation can’t be predicted reliably enough to where there isn’t a single best answer to any generic scenario. Guild Wars 2 was specifically designed with this in mind, another genera of games that does this is the MOBA, where comparing champions is pointless as they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, where the pinnacle of once class can’t compare to the pinnacle of another because both situations exclude each other (i.e. a warrior might facetank damage and conditions where as a thief might spam blindness to not get hit in the first place, both situations are mutually exclusive and can’t be quantitavly compared).

The strength in Differences in Kind is that: in a well built system there is always a hard counter to any single solution (i.e. condition spam or AoE spam is the hard counter to thieves perma-stealth builds) and the metagame will gravitate toward a solution before any balance patches need to be applied. If, and only if, the metagame gets stuck on a single “true” solution to generic combat scenarios that’s when numerical adjustment needs to occur(or functional adjustments if numerical adjustments don’t have the desired result).

So as an earlier post claimed, there is always going to be a metagame the moves toward favouring the best or “most broken” in the current meta, but just remember that the system is designed like that and you shouldn’t worry.

TL;DR: You can’t fix a broken system if it isn’t broken and is currently working as intended
EDIT: fixed typos

The problem is they wait too long to make balance changes.

If class X is op, they would rather wait 6 months, study all of the metrics about class X’s activity, and then at the end of the six months make sweeping broad changes that totally upset the intricacies of the class.

If class Y is U/P, they would rather wait 6 months, study all of the metrics about class y’s activity, and then make sweeping buffs and changes that create new, exploitable intricacies that place the class well above fighting spec.

Unless the class is necromancer. Apparently, the balance team is incredibly prudent about making very, very, very small changes to the class, as if it were near perfect and just needed a little balancing to get that polished gleam.

But in a situation that pretty much amounts to them very carefully inspecting one scale, adding grains of sand to it and taking grains of sand away (which, mind you, accomplishes practically nothing), the balancing they do for the other classes in the form of dropping huge freaking boulders onto the current scales of the current pvp balance and leaving us to deal with the chaos for half a year is more comical than it is comforting.

It’s not comforting at all actually.

I like your game, Arenanet, and kitten ed if I dont appreciate every second you guys work on this. But every 6 months I’m either playing my class with a half ashamed wince or a begrudging futility. How much of that you can remedy I don’t know, but it contributes to a dreadful feeling that maybe the game will never actually be balanced.

Not perfectly balanced, thats impossible I know. But even reasonably balanced. Balanced to the point that complaints on the forum are either miniscule, raving, or dredged up from inexperience, instead of 90% of them all being valid.

Just to clarify what I mean by balance. Balance is basically creating a situation where the players are constantly able to respond to other players actions. For example, a thief can die very easily so when this thief is fighting 1 or 2 people, and more show up, the thief can very quickly respond by porting away or stealthing.

Where things become unbalanced is when the stealth becomes exploited to the point that the other players cannot target 90% of the time and they cannot respond to the stealth with a reveal skill.

To go even further, if a reveal skill is activated, a thief can still respond by porting or with some clever evades. Everything that has been done in this scenario is completely based on the players reactions and decisions. Thief has to be fast enough and time the evades properly and int he right direction and the other players have to press the right buttons at the right time.

Things only get out of hand when all the thief is doing is pushing a button to stealth which has no timing consequences because of how much of it is available. Same thing goes for old warriors passive healing, so much of it that it really didnt matter how many mistakes they make because their hp would always be high and all they would need is a couple hits to kill.

If there is something i have gotten wrong or missed please let me know and lets help them make a great game.

The Holy Trinity is what you missed.

By the way: Arena net was not the first company who did not use it in their game. I do not know why some people believe Arena net "came out with this idea? Why not do research before supporting something just because?

Continue: The Holy Trinity have less chance to not balance compare with non-Holy Trinity< depend if the company center it around The Holy Trinity.

What does that mean?

Guild Wars 2 plan was to center non-Holy Trinity around Holy Trinity but something went wrong: the 2 original GW1 creators left. Yes that is correct

Why they left? ! they believed in the non-Holy Trinity centering around The Holy Trinity and had no choice but to leave because last creator no longer wanted to center it.

What does it mean non-Holy Trinity centering around Holy Trinity?

The Holy Trinity idea required hard-work, hard-effort, risk-reward, concequences for making mistakes, fun, skill-play, learning from mistakes and making sacrifice for the better. The Holy Trinity model is: tank. healer and damage dealer.

The original Non-Holy Trinity idea required the same hard-work, hard-effort, risk-reward etc…. as the Holy Trinity but instead would combine all three Holy Trinity in 1.

I do not see a problem right? Isn’t that’s what Arena net non-Holy Trinity requirements? Elelementalist, Thief, Warrior, Guardian and Memser > combination of all 3 Holy Trinity roles in 1?

Remember i said ‘original non-Holy Trinity’: which was the original plan for GW2 including all requirements?

But…?

Here is the created new non-Holy Trinity model idea requirements: No-Hard Work, No-Hard Effort, No Risk-Reward, No Consequence for making mistakes, No Fun, No Skill-Play, No Learning From Mistakes, No Making Sacrifice for the better, No anything at all, Free Access To Everything With All Of IT!

Do you understand now?

The New Non-Holy Trinity Is Anti-Balance,
The New Non-Holy Trinity Is Having Free Unlimited Access To Everything With No Requirements.

As long this New Non-Holy Trinity remain, balance will never end.

I’m done.

DarkSyze.8627:

If there is something i have gotten wrong or missed please let me know and lets help them make a great game.

The Holy Trinity is what you missed.

By the way: Arena net was not the first company who did not use it in their game. I do not know why some people believe Arena net "came out with this idea? Why not do research before supporting something just because?

Continue: The Holy Trinity have less chance to not balance compare with non-Holy Trinity< depend if the company center it around The Holy Trinity.

What does that mean?

Guild Wars 2 plan was to center non-Holy Trinity around Holy Trinity but something went wrong: the 2 original GW1 creators left. Yes that is correct

Why they left? ! they believed in the non-Holy Trinity centering around The Holy Trinity and had no choice but to leave because last creator no longer wanted to center it.

What does it mean non-Holy Trinity centering around Holy Trinity?

The Holy Trinity idea required hard-work, hard-effort, risk-reward, concequences for making mistakes, fun, skill-play, learning from mistakes and making sacrifice for the better. The Holy Trinity model is: tank. healer and damage dealer.

The original Non-Holy Trinity idea required the same hard-work, hard-effort, risk-reward etc…. as the Holy Trinity but instead would combine all three Holy Trinity in 1.

I do not see a problem right? Isn’t that’s what Arena net non-Holy Trinity requirements? Elelementalist, Thief, Warrior, Guardian and Memser > combination of all 3 Holy Trinity roles in 1?

Remember i said ‘original non-Holy Trinity’: which was the original plan for GW2 including all requirements?

But…?

Here is the created new non-Holy Trinity model idea requirements: No-Hard Work, No-Hard Effort, No Risk-Reward, No Consequence for making mistakes, No Fun, No Skill-Play, No Learning From Mistakes, No Making Sacrifice for the better, No anything at all, Free Access To Everything With All Of IT!

Do you understand now?

The New Non-Holy Trinity Is Anti-Balance,
The New Non-Holy Trinity Is Having Free Unlimited Access To Everything With No Requirements.

As long this New Non-Holy Trinity remain, balance will never end.

I’m done.

Some language problems but I think I can definitely agree on this.

There was couple question asked for the 2 original GW1 creators and 1 of the question someone asked was, “What was the main reason you left GW2”? Here is the answer: “We felt all the work we put in GW2 suddenly didn’t matter anymore, yea… (other creator), it was not suppose to end this way. We wanted GW2 to be a re-incarnation of GW2, an improvement of course having just about everything from GW1 of course… having our faithful players in mind..yes our faithful players who never gave up on us.”) Being another chapter to GW1 legacy (smile)" (i hide source)

You see.. GW2 was supposed to carry GW1 with it and make it much better.

Here is quote from a GW1 player, ““What if you had 5 players from GW1 with all the GW1 skills, attriubtes, health, armor and energy systems go up against 5 Players from GW2 with its respective skill system, no balancing as in armour or HP, just one game vs the other as is. Who would win?”

“With the sheer amount of DPS and armour youd think the GW2 players would win, they could one shot almost any char in GW1 but… GW1 has 100x times more skills, more creativity and clever ways to adapt to things, like kitten monk”.

Ok! i will stop now..

I never play GW1 but i bought the collect for a good price. I want to feel what they feel including some of you GW1 players. I want to experience the fun, challenge, skill-play, the creativity etc.. of what Guild Wars 2 was suppose to be. I want to feel the action. In the end: Action makes things happen, " words without actions are only for amusement and eventually disappears "

I am just tired of the amusement

Hope the 2 original GW1 creators come back in GW3 and make Guild Wars 2 be what is supposed to be.

Until than,

Balance is dead, Original vision of GW1 left the game long time ago. They care about Guild Wars 1 ’legacy and their faithful players. Stealth, high mobility, high damage, hight burst, 1 trait give everything,1 build give everything, immunity to everything, invulnerability to everything, instant kill, spam 1 = game over, reward without-risk/punishment for making mistakes, skill-less play, instant access to high skill at anytime, instant to low cool-down to powerful skill , having unlimited access for not doing nothing at all? ? Seriously!! These would never happen with the 2 original creators of GW1, Never

Last:

I only wanted to share this with you players because i feel GW 2 deserve the best+ but it is very too late for that.

Good Luck with GW2 “Balance”

I agree with mistsim if you want a balanced pvp game play a pvp game like mobas. I believe Smite is the closest thing to mmo pvp you can try that. GW2 made me not play mmo’s for pvp anymore, lesson learned I will never purchase a mmo for PvP. Takes 6 months for a balance patch? This is a big joke, guys don’t be blind, the league system won’t change anything if the mentality of the developers doesn’t change, the problem needs to be fixed from the root, there needs to be a cleanup, inspiration and dedication for pvp development. The solution for this is to cut this mmo into two pieces making it almost into two separate games. What I mean by this is to make spvp a free to play game just like you see in mobas and make it separate from pve giving PvP seperate spells, their own seperate balance with a dedicated balance team, make spvp like if it wasn’t a mmo. I know anet won’t do this but future mmo developers should take a note of this problem at least and think why mmo pvp sucks is not hard to figure out.

apharma.3741:

The problem isn’t passives, I mean most classes have auto procs, even the under rated rangers have their share of invuln, blocks and auto cast..

Rangers have no pure invuln, and their autoproc traits are tuned towards migating damage when they’re at high health and raise their own damage when at low. While a warrior proc Endure Pain when struck beneath the threshold, a ranger proc the active effect of Signet of the Wild instead of copy pasting and using Signet of Stone.

Anet kept these kinds of traits (and added new ones like Most Dangerous Game) knowing perfectly well that they would change Bark Skin to migate damage at high health instead of low health, removing an otherwise perfect syngery with these traits. Protective Ward is pretty much the only defensive autoproc they have.

The GS block they have can be played around due to its secondary effect. I’m not saying I’m agreeing with OP, but if anything, ranger is actually more an example of a “bottom tier” class with lack of defensive autoprocs as opposed to a “bottom tier” class despite having passive defenses.

This game will never be even close to balance because they refuse the nerf the DD ele cancer.

Everything revolves around DD Cele now, I am sick of it.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m glad you’re amused and I stand by what I said. I’m a current GW1 player. No one whines there.

ANET devs have talked about “button speed” as a “skill.” That’s not skill. As far as I can see there’s no monitoring or penalty for the use of macros either. Again, pressing a macro isn’t skillful.

Because there is no penalty for spamming skills, that is the primary mode of play. Penalize that and you push the game toward players thinking about the next move, not just pounding buttons.

People winned a bit on gw1 to, there were always gimmicks there, but those gimmicks were very dependable from team work, or i would prefer to say gw1 is a heavy game depending on good tactics and undestandings, gw2 is more of a roll face on keybord game and u still win all u need is be clever and select “best gimmick” class and play it, since 1 player in gw2 can do the spike work of a team in gw1, and that means less team work more build work.

And sorry about teh bad english.

Chokolata.1870:

This game will never be even close to balance because they refuse the nerf the DD ele cancer.

Everything revolves around DD Cele now, I am sick of it.

The problem unfortunatly D/D ele is just the build that is more noticeable in the ocean of a bad balance gameplay design, d/d cele is just a poor man victim and will continue to be like that, becouse other classes lack and dont have good mechnics as dd ele has.
Imo the balance proccess can only be done after all classes and new specializations being released, and that is 6-8 months after hot.

The test server for sure isnt even a abalanced version, it is more for a iteration of a suposed “good values” for those specs, many many changes are to come, there isnt much from complayning now since what matters is the balance after hot.

Once again sorry for my bad english, And welcome to gw2.1.0 beta.

Balance is simple. You have class representation and win rates. And you have win rates for lines,skills traits etc. If its above 50% then it nerf material.

Ele is overrepresented in all 3 modes.

Balance = Class Diversity/Counters simple. This can be done multiple ways. Soft/Hard (kind/scale) or vise versa. IDK if I said that right :P At least thats my POV of it :/

WoW will add new classes. GW will add new specializations. Same kitten different name balance wise. WoW defines the builds for the player GW requires the players to find the builds themselves. Main difference for me between WoW and GW is numbers. WoW will reward optimization by min/max GW by skill rotation. Honestly I don’t understand why people compare the two so much they really are completely different games and play styles. But rock/paper/scissors will rule every single game. Every game will always be rock/paper/scissors just done differently or Pong… LOL! Everything has been done already! Only difference is skins!!! Oh yeah and RNG!!! lawlz. Only subcategories will be different also known as skins. Or when we start fusing games together but at its core it will always be one of the 3…. I mean 4 forgot about Tetris…. woooops.

Pick your poison. Personally I don’t like feeling so restricted which is why I enjoy GW more then WoW I’m a filthy casual. Also the combat system is just way more fun for me more active less numbers. But to be fair their both active in their own ways. But in the end thats the main difference. WoW you will always be forced to min/max but in GW you’ll always be forced to act/react.

Again just my POV fun discussion though.

Edit : Wanted to make a more detailed formula for the sake of clarification I really enjoy this :P

A = Balance B = Diversity C = Counter

A=B/(C(x)) <— Most detailed formula I’m not studying game design or anything so there might be a more complex formula this is just from my basic understanding.

The balance issue won’t end because the community is trying to balance 1v1 in a team game.

I don’t see a lot of teamwork in GW2. When it does happen, the team using it tends to be almost unbeatable with a PUG.

To me, balance means that; All else being equal, any given class can beat any other class. You can’t balance around a team, because the teams are not consistent. The mix is more or less random.

Logically, you need to balance based on 1v1.

Ragion.2831:

Vanishing into thin air after doing 70% damage then come back to do it again is nothing but a glorified game of hide and seek, something that doesn’t really have a place in a game like this.

Ragion, that has a place in nearly every single MMO ever made. Don’t think that this class type doesn’t take skill either. Thieves have always been the harder class to master, it’s why most thieves QQ about their soft counters like Guardian and Eles. Now thieves can’t hard counter Mesmers and suddenly feel like their on the bottom of the food chain until you have somebody like Toker who proves the class can be a game changing asset to a team.

That’s not to say a class with a high skill cap shouldn’t receive any nerfs because it’s a harder class to use… I believe d/d cele Ele’s needs a small shave in either damage or defenses, even if the casuals are already struggling to master the class. Thieves have always excelled in the decaping and +1 category but I don’t believe that aspect needs a nerf.