Guild Wars 2

Fine OP. You can be correct in what you say. But you are missing the point utterly. We don’t moan about balance in terms of classes having a balance of power. What people hate is the “balance” as defined as the strength of lame and no skill builds. I am pretty sure it isn’t hard to just make spirits worse across the board so people can see what they are doing. This is an example. SO if you are new here then hello. But this post is nothing clever because we care about the “meta” rather than balance. The game is well balanced at this point. But it is an unfun meta which seemingly only gets worse.

If they keep adding immunities, passive and Ai. Or buffing these things then that isn’t because balancing is hard.

The real problem with GW2’s balance has always been damage multiplication. Arenanet sought to make balance more granular by inflating every stat such that a difference of, say, 1 Power or Vitality or Condition damage was hardly significant.

Then they introduced +Critical Damage and +Condition Duration.

Theorycrafters will already be familiar with the mantra that for direct damage, Power, Precision, Critical damage is needed. For condition damage, some combination of Condition Damage and Condition Duration is needed.

With regards to Direct damage, +Critical damage being multiplicative scaling means that damage output can easily double if not more when comparing bunker DPS vs zerker DPS.

This website gives the “Effective Power” calculation to be:

• Effective Power = Power × [1 + Critical Chance × (Critical Multiplier – 1)] × Damage Multiplier where Critical chance is given as a decimal, Critical Multiplier begins at 1.5 and increases by 0.01 per 1% of critical damage
• This thread is also instructive although more from a min-maxer’s point of view that demonstrates the multiplicative scaling of Power, Precision and Critical damage
• When the difference between a normal hit, and a critical hit is literally double damage at +50% Critical damage you can see where the problems begin. Balancing by adjusting weapon damage coefficients is almost futile when you consider that the difference in direct damage output between a Bunker and a DPS is almost double.
• If anything, Critical Damage is one of the reasons why a Bunker is so tanky – non-crits become almost insignificant, whilst crits are almost required to put pressure on Bunkers.
  • Consider the damage reduction formula of Damage Reduction = (Armor – Reference Armor)/Armor, where Reference armour is 1836, which is the Armour rating of Light armour (920) + base Toughness (916). In damage calculations, Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).
  • Thanks to this formula, damage reduction scales with incoming damage which is why building straight Power is often not enough – Crits and Critical damage are needed to cut through that damage reduction
  • As a side note, the power of Protection (the boon) at 33% damage reduction = an additional 2750 Armour.

This is why Zerkers are so good against other Zerkers – 2 squishy targets meeting is invariably explosive. Fights can literally end due to 1-2 skills critting. For Zerkers against Bunkers, the outcome is more grey. Critical damage has essentially made it so that it affects squishies more than bunkers. This inequality in both damage scaling and damage mitigation is why damage is so inflated in GW2, and why instant burst with lots of escapes invariably leads to that build outcompeting other squishies.

ThiBash.5634:

This is something I can support.

A while ago, we had a similar discussion about how the health difference between ele (light armor, 10k hp) and warrior (heavy armor, 20k hp) was so large that it made dungeons hard to balance. If you make a boss do 7.5k damage with an attack, it’ll be a near instant kill for the ele while the warrior doesn’t even lose half their health bar. The result is that for warriors, the boss is too easy and for eles it’s extremely hard.

This post is an extension of that concept. It’s well written and certainly something worth looking at by the devs. They’ll probably know this, and maybe they chose to make the roles extreme on purpose. However, it does make things more complex for the reasons stated in the original post.

@OP: Nice post. For what it’s worth, you have my vote.

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

It’s not the raw numbers, but rather the relative difference between them. Ultimately, which duels are the most fun? Those with evenly matched opponents, or those where 1 player is taken out instantly or 1 player is undefeatable?

Health point normalization is a must for any pvp game. It took the other large MMO a few years to realize that. Unfortunately, it’s going to take this company longer to come to terms with. The sad part is they know of the issue, but the people who we interact with aren’t the ones making the call.

Any game, which features pvp, should always balance first around pvp and then adjust pve mechanics. I would think there are far more “knobs” to turn in a pve setting than there are in pvp.

We’re gonna be 5 months (4 so far) without a balance patch, they’re not even trying to balance it. You can’t call something hard if you don’t even do it.

@ OP: Awesome constructive post that raises some good points.

Personally, I would be ok if professions were a bit more restricted in terms of what their range of strengths could be. I.e. if guardians were always very tanky, but never as high dps and if necros always had high condition damage, but never had high power, etc. However, the I don’t think many people are as open to having professions as restricted to niche roles as I am. Also, this would probably cause huge issues for PvE. =P

The ability to customize is actually one of the things I like very much in this game. It makes U’r caharcter uniqie and adaptable for U’r specific game style. U can Tank and u can support and u can do DMG with the same class… but u’ll have to trait/gear different to take on the different roles.

In GW2 u dont have to pick a specific class to be able to do a specific thing! Thats is good!! … as an Ele u can be either damage dealer or healer… u dont ahve to choose – and u can still play u’r favourite class!!!

This doe’s comes with the difficulty of balancing. Maybe Everything doesnt have to be PERFECTLY balanced…. I’m not even sure it CAN be with som many things that can vary.

As long as every class heve a unique mecanism (their special sthing that only they can do/have) all classes hould continue to be able to take on the different roles as it is today! That is qiute unique to GW2 (I Think)… And a very good reason I play this game (apart from some other factors such as beutiful Graphics etc – quite a list of tings actually)!

Another thing that comes with the trait-system and the gearing is that u’ll have to learn to play what u have traited/geared for. Sometimes that takes time and ppl get mad when their character cannot do what thay wish because thay have traited it wrong for the purpose/playstyle they have —--> wich leads to complaints over a “broken class” (that may not at all be broken but just not traited correctly) in the forums.

So plz – whatever u do, Don’t nerf the trait-ability/gear-ability!!! It’s one of them things that makes this game SO good!!! But sureif BALANCE it if needed, both skill-wise and trait wise.

I main ranger (since release-day)… It’s my absolute favourite class despite its “broken-ness” and all complaints it has got (sure some things can be improved but it’s not THAT broken). It’s a class that takes TIME to learn actually. Over time i have realised how much it can actually do and that is amazing! By nerfing the trait-ability/gear ability we would be back to GW1 where you HAD to have a specific class in order to do a specific thing. That would only lead to even more discrimination in dungeons/fractals etc… We “HAVE to have a healer class(most likely Guardian)” No thanks.

So, let everyone play any class they want. In a Group, let they continue to be able to take on the ROLE (still using thier favourite class – even if everyone in the Group are Theievs) theyt want.

I dont want to HAVE to be a MONK in order to heal….. kind of…

There is a reason i Play GW2 and not LoL or WoW!!!

Dirame.8521:

I don’t believe that numbers is what makes this game unbalanced. I believe that creativity is what makes this game unbalanced.

Changing numbers will not change Automated Response, changing numbers will not change Dhuumfire, changing numbers will not change the thieve’s ability to keep spamming the same button because he knows that he can’t be touched, changing numbers would not fix everything that is wrong with this game.

In fact I don’t believe the numbers are that inflated. At most it’s a bit of a hinderance but the main factor is in the way things function or are executed. For instance, if the thief worked on a combo system, we would have 2 spams or 3 spams, we’d have combo spams that can be seen and countered. If the Warrior Beserker stance, blocked only a few conditions it would be a skills that could seen and countered. If Automated response did something totally different, that would be a lot more skillful than what we have now.

Anyway I hope that Anet bring the rain, else this town will become a desert.

I have to agree with this. Dhuumfire/Aetherblade patch introduced a slew of changes – nearly all of which were seemingly aimed at taking counterplay out of the game. Passive regeneration, hard counter condition immunity, untelegraphed bursts, damage application whilst evading, damage application whilst invulnerable , autoattack condition application outcompeting utility slot condition removal – these leave the control of the encounter solely in the control of the person with the passive with little possibility of outplay.

It’s almost as if the design team took a look at this video , then discarded the concept of fun to play, fun to play against and threw it out the window.

Stats might be overinflated from gear, and base stats may be over/underbudgeted between the heavy and light classes, but the fact remains that stats can be designed around. Introducing mechanics that are unfun to play around on the other hand, goes above and beyond anything that stats can determine.

Dahkeus.8243:

@ OP: Awesome constructive post that raises some good points.

Personally, I would be ok if professions were a bit more restricted in terms of what their range of strengths could be. I.e. if guardians were always very tanky, but never as high dps and if necros always had high condition damage, but never had high power, etc. However, the I don’t think many people are as open to having professions as restricted to niche roles as I am. Also, this would probably cause huge issues for PvE. =P

Diversity isn’t the problem. It always comes down to the speed at which balance is assessed.

Juan Ignacio.8903:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for putting in the time to write this up! The designers spend a lot of time researching other games, so what you said is very similar to discussions one might hear internally.

I dunno if anything will come of it, but I’m going to point the guys in your direction since your post is so constructive!

more like they spend so much time “researching” other games that they forgot to “research” their own game

balance and skills team had to find something to do to justify their paycheck, since they didn’t have to do a balance update in 4 months.

Luke.4562:

ANET be careful on what you can take for good to balance this messy game!

They haven’t listened to the forums about anything notable… ever.
So no worries.

Anyways, they literally don’t have the manpower to do what people talk about in most cases. All they seem able to do is tweak balance numbers and shoot out alpha versions of features every 6~ months. Yeah, I didn’t say playtest because I think their time actually playtesting is abysmal or in the hands of a bad test team.

So…
They can’t make good patch notes.
They can’t make good features.
They can’t make good maps.
They can’t listen to the community.
So what’s left?

Hope.
That’s all they can bring to the game, and talking about concepts in the future is the best way to attempt to do it.

Sunshine.5014:

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard. I suggest we significantly reduce the stats point given by traits and gears, while significantly increase the base stats for each professions. The goal is to keep the customizable range small, and that comes with many benefits.

Let’s acknowledge it, ANet tried to balance the game. Whether they succeeded or failed, everyone has their opinion, although the consensus seems to be that they didn’t do a great job. Why? Lets take a look at other successful pvp games.

League of Legends allows a lot of customization. You have talent boards, you have gem slots. However, if you notice, they only allow the talent to change a tiny bit of the power, less than 1% of the power. In total, a full talent board traited for damage is max 10% stronger than a talent board traited for tanking, on the dps scale. That’s how they can achieve great balance, because the allowed customizable range is small, if an OP build exists, it can only be max 10% stronger than the normal build, which is still within acceptable range. It let them be able to fine tune the numbers, while still allow people to play with the traits they like.

Where did they learn it from? Hint: many of their employees are from the old Blizzard. It’s from the old Blizzard, who were so great at balancing, with great games like Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo (old), that they learned having smaller range of customization is the key to achieve balance. They follow the simple rule: if it’s customizable, don’t make the range too big, or else people will go to the extreme, and the balance will be broken. The current Blizzard failed at balancing because they let World of Warcraft grew too big, and their talent boards gives a much wider range of customizations (still not as broken as GW2).

GW2 now can’t really be balance because they let you swing too radically between bunker and zerker. An ele that go full glass can have 500% the damage of a bunker ele. With such a wide range of variable, any attempt to balance will fail:
- The damage for the bunker build is too low? Let’s buff the damage? Side effect: its zerker build can become really strong (example: scepter ele).
- The survivability for the zerker build is too low? Let’s buff the sustain? Side effect: the soldier build will become unkillable (example: warrior).
- A build is too weak in pve, even when they geared for full damage (Spirit Rangers)? Buff it, and it becomes too strong in pvp, when people play it with radically different gears.

What GW2 really need is an overhaul, closing the gap between bunker and zerker. Make the trait point give 1 stat points instead of 10 stats point, and bring both the base stats dramatically up, and the top stats down. Add more base stats, and make gears give less stats too.

Pros:

• Much easier to balance, due to the significant smaller variable range.
• Reduce gears dependence. In spvp, it means player’s skill will have more impact than the choice of gears/sigils/runes/traits. In wvw, it means that an up level player can still fight with a fully geared ascended player, albeit the winning chance is low. In pve, we will see more people playing more diverse builds, instead of just go full berserker like right now. Sacrificing 10% of my damage to play the way I like? Count me in. Sacrificing 50% of my damage to play the way I like? well, my dungeons/tpvp buddies will kick me.
• The game designers can change the game more often, with less risk, since as long as they keep the customizable zone small, OP builds have much smaller impact.
• More happy players, more gems for ANet, better paycheck for the employees!

Cons:

• Requires a reorg
• It takes time to readjust all the numbers; however, if ANet has a testing realm, I’m sure this is not a problem since many people will volunteer to test it for ANet.

TL;DR: The customizable zone is too large. Other games allow only 10-15% difference between builds, while GW2 allows a big range between bunker and zerker builds; that makes balancing very hard. I suggest we significantly reduce the stats point given by traits and gears, while significantly increase the base stats for each professions. The goal is to keep the customizable range small, and that comes with many benefits.

Well explained. This would fix the whole game and if they do this type of balance, I would be a pretty happy Ranger.

garethh.3518:

Luke.4562:

ANET be careful on what you can take for good to balance this messy game!

They haven’t listened to the forums about anything notable… ever.
So no worries.

Anyways, they literally don’t have the manpower to do what people talk about in most cases. All they seem able to do is tweak balance numbers and shoot out alpha versions of features every 6~ months. Yeah, I didn’t say playtest because I think their time actually playtesting is abysmal or in the hands of a bad test team.

So…
They can’t make good patch notes.
They can’t make good features.
They can’t make good maps.
They can’t listen to the community.
So what’s left?

Hope.
That’s all they can bring to the game, and talking about concepts in the future is the best way to attempt to do it.

Your statement is unfair and blind. If you actually read the forums you’ll know that quite a few of the actions made by Anet have been based off of player feedback. The only problem is, when things go wrong everyone blames the messenger not the guy who sent the message.

I can list a few things that I personally have discussed on these forums and have been translated into patch notes. So when I see your claims of “anet not listening to anything we say”, all I can think is; you’re just being bitter.

I’m confused why this topic is getting attention. The solutions are essentially an overhaul to the core of the game. This is completely outside the realm of financial or physical possibility. Financially, it simply doesn’t make much sense, and physically – ok, you can debate this one, but my faith in the balance team is low.

In fact, if I were to read this, and agree with the premises that:
1) GW1 was more engaging, enjoyable, and balanced, and
2) GW2 requires a near full overhaul to reach that level

then I would have to seriously consider a few options:
1) Revise GW1 graphically (unsure of actual workload for this, may also be unreasonable). Release a new expansion and refocus on a prettier version of GW1
2) Ignore both GW1 and GW2, and start on a new game entirely. Financially it seems GW2 has run its course (for pvp), so ignore spvp, and cater to the remaining playerbase in GW2 – the pvers. Ideally with a minimal investment on high-return items, gem-based vanity items/sets come to mind. ((Oh wait… this sounds familiar…, also not a criticism, it makes sense))

As devoted, and passionate as the devs are, the ultimate decisions for any business are financial (and only occasionally ethical or passion-driven).

Whit.2385:

I’m confused why this topic is getting attention. The solutions are essentially an overhaul to the core of the game. This is completely outside the realm of financial or physical possibility. Financially, it simply doesn’t make much sense, and physically – ok, you can debate this one, but my faith in the balance team is low.

Actually, all it’d take in sPvP is to remove all amulets and jewels except the Celestial ones as was already suggested quite a few times since the game release

stof.9341:

Actually, all it’d take in sPvP is to remove all amulets and jewels except the Celestial ones as was already suggested quite a few times since the game release

That’s not the solution that came to mind from reading the rest of these suggestions.

Besides, as interesting a limitation like that would be, I wonder on the overall viability. It would certainly gut particular specs, but I suppose that is the point – to encourage new ways of playing the classes. Things like this would be fun for particular custom arenas/limit based tourneys. Those 2 items, however, rely on a healthy competitive pvp population, which is currently below what I consider a desirable level.

Whit.2385:

I’m confused why this topic is getting attention. The solutions are essentially an overhaul to the core of the game.

The reason I’d assume is because a few people think an overhaul isn’t required. What is required is a tweak to the existing mechanic.

You mention GW1. Rose-tinted glasses would tell you it was the best thing since sliced bread, objective views would tell you it was pretty much the same only that balance changes came much faster.

I think the problem right now is not the balance, but how fun meta builds are.

The day they implement this is the day I’m done with GW2.

Personally what excites me about a game is finding a strong build. If you implement a style in which your build really doesn’t matter, then you lose the whole aspect of creating builds as an avenue of the competition. Theory-crafting becomes a thing of the past. Everyone essentially is playing the same thing. It isn’t about thinking at that point, it is all about in the battle who reacts faster. I think that should only be 50% of the competition. 50% should take place off the field when you make your choices about what you are going to bring with you to try to survive and thrive in the action. It is what separates RPGs as thinking games, from FPS which are action based anyone can do it with practice games.

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly. Honestly, if anything, I would love to see them encourage more customization by not making stats so tied to armor which in pve/wvw is expensive to change, and give us more utility skills to pick from.

The problem with balance in this game isn’t with the range of customization. It is with the lack of the trinity. They took out the trinity, so now support builds are useless. Everyone can support themselves. And as such DPS will always be the best build. Bring just enough support to keep yourself alive, and then just dps like crazy to kill fast. If Anet truly doesn’t want the trinity then they have to accept the fact that support builds are just not viable. If they want support builds to be viable then they have to bring back the trinity. Their problem is that they want to have their cake and eat it too.

eleshazar.6902:

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly.

GW1 had way less customization on the stats front. But a huge amount more in skill choices.

The comparison stops here.

And GW1’s balance was completely broken btw. It was ok until factions, then it got bad, and then it got even worse. Why? Because they added too many skills instead of making the old ones useful.

+ GW1 was a full scale cooperative game, everyone had a specific role, and GW2 went on a solo scale, which means that even though a good team with a lot of interactions is great to watch, just force them to split them up and if they are bad in 1v1 or 2v2, they’ll just lose.

TL;DR: don’t compare GW1 and GW2, the games are completely different, and GW1 was NOT well balanced.

Sephil.3971:

eleshazar.6902:

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly.

GW1 had way less customization on the stats front. But a huge amount more in skill choices.

The comparison stops here.

And GW1’s balance was completely broken btw. It was ok until factions, then it got bad, and then it got even worse. Why? Because they added too many skills instead of making the old ones useful.

+ GW1 was a full scale cooperative game, everyone had a specific role, and GW2 went on a solo scale, which means that even though a good team with a lot of interactions is great to watch, just force them to split them up and if they are bad in 1v1 or 2v2, they’ll just lose.

TL;DR: don’t compare GW1 and GW2, the games are completely different, and GW1 was NOT well balanced.

Guild wars 1 had a lot of copies of the same skills but weaker or broken. Out of the hundreds of skills only very few were either terrible or OP, guild wars 1 only advantage was that everything got nerfed to the ground every single month, unlike this game where apparently reducing a skill by 8% is suppose to be a nerf.

Aza.2105:

While I respect the OP’s perspective of why gw2 is hard to balance, I’m in total disagreement with his/her observations.

The original gw had more build customization than gw2 could ever have, yet it was much more balanced than gw2. Why? It comes down to the simple concept of reward vs punishment.

Punishment can come in a few different forms. One is being punished when you fail to connect with a skill, another is a were a skill itself has a form of punishment attached to it as a requirement, which offsets how powerful this skill is.

For example, lets look at gw1’s healing signet:

Healing Signet: You gain 82…154…172 Health. You have -40 armor while using this skill. Cooldown 2 seconds.

Healing signet heals for a lot of hp with a short cooldown, it also has other benefits like not using energy. In bold is the negative effect that offsets all of the positives that healing signet might have. In practical terms, what this negative effect/punishment does is cause the player to make conscious choices instead of spamming the skill. Why?

Because if they use the skill when they are being attacked then would take more damage than they are being healed for. So its necessary to set yourself up to not take damage when you use it. This could be done by using a knockdown then healing signet or a blind then using healing signet. But blind and knockdown can’t be spammed either, so the player only had small windows of opportunity to use them to setup a way to bypass the negative effects of healing signet.

Gw2 is opposite of the original gw in this respect. For most abilities there is no form of punishment associated with it: There is no punishment for failing many attacks nor is there any punishment that is associated to most skills. What this creates is the gameplay of spam until you hit something, use the skill each time its up regardless of the circumstance.

The best skills in gw2 revolve around not being penalized, the worst skills in the game have penalties associated with it. Which gives the illusion that they are bad skills.

Lets look at healing signet in gw2:

Healing Signet: Passive: Grants regeneration.
Active: Heal yourself.

Healing: 3,275 (0.5)?
Healing Signet: 392 Heal

There is no negative penalty to it. The player just equips it and thats it. The healing is done for them, no need for maintenance, no negative penalty for it being a strong heal over time that isn’t bound to cooldowns or cast times. The result? Is that mostly every warrior takes this for their heal. Why wouldn’t they? The other heals have some form of requirements associated with them. Healing signet doesn’t, so it minimizes the weakness that player may have with their build.

To sum things up for people who do not want to read:

• Gw2 imbalance comes from the lack of punishment associated with most abilities

• With no punishing elements present the result is spam and mindless playing

• Abilities that have some form of punishment associated with them are perceived as weak.

• Many combat mechanics in game have no polar opposite to counter them i.e evade, stealth. Which leaves these mechanics to go unchecked.

• Building upon how the negative element (punishment) is missing in game. One can see this pattern with little things like skills with instant to short animations but are very powerful with relatively short cds.

• Abilities with long cooldowns and casting times often are less powerful than abilities that are instant with short cooldowns. (Staff ele comes to mind)

• In order to remedy the imbalance problems gw2 has, Anet must give many abilities hard counters or negative effects to offset their strengths. For example gw2 healing signet could be: Active: Heals yourself for 3,200, Passive: Heals for 392 per second but as long as the passive is active you deal less damage.

This is right on the money, plus all my ones.

to be fair you all missing 1 important part of the original game design: active defense.

the gaps between stats arent nearly that important u might think they are if u consider active defense. if active defense would not be equal between all class and builds anet could use that to balance that gap out.

another problem is the design of the trait system with additive traits. so bunkers have the same access to certain traits like other builds. but that could be balanced relative easy without changing the complete game.

tl;dr:
changing stats will never ever happen and isnt needed. whats possible is changing the src of active defense (as example ele gets a higher energy pool), the effect on skills to need a precursor and the position of certain traits. so as suggestion stop comparing gw2 with other games. all whats needed is already there and think in this game sphare and not others.

Sephil.3971:

eleshazar.6902:

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly.

GW1 had way less customization on the stats front. But a huge amount more in skill choices.

The comparison stops here.

And GW1’s balance was completely broken btw. It was ok until factions, then it got bad, and then it got even worse. Why? Because they added too many skills instead of making the old ones useful.

+ GW1 was a full scale cooperative game, everyone had a specific role, and GW2 went on a solo scale, which means that even though a good team with a lot of interactions is great to watch, just force them to split them up and if they are bad in 1v1 or 2v2, they’ll just lose.

TL;DR: don’t compare GW1 and GW2, the games are completely different, and GW1 was NOT well balanced.

there were times it was obviously imbalanced but they would eventually nerf OP stuff. The dervish one recently took them a long time to figure out and that was pretty bad, but we’re talking about a left over dev team on life support before gw2 launch and they still managed to gradually right the ship over the course of a few months. more than I can say about gw2.

Short answer: it’s not.

silvermember.8941:

Sephil.3971:

eleshazar.6902:

I think GW1 had even more customization than GW2 and that game was balanced amazingly.

GW1 had way less customization on the stats front. But a huge amount more in skill choices.

The comparison stops here.

And GW1’s balance was completely broken btw. It was ok until factions, then it got bad, and then it got even worse. Why? Because they added too many skills instead of making the old ones useful.

+ GW1 was a full scale cooperative game, everyone had a specific role, and GW2 went on a solo scale, which means that even though a good team with a lot of interactions is great to watch, just force them to split them up and if they are bad in 1v1 or 2v2, they’ll just lose.

TL;DR: don’t compare GW1 and GW2, the games are completely different, and GW1 was NOT well balanced.

Guild wars 1 had a lot of copies of the same skills but weaker or broken. Out of the hundreds of skills only very few were either terrible or OP, guild wars 1 only advantage was that everything got nerfed to the ground every single month, unlike this game where apparently reducing a skill by 8% is suppose to be a nerf.

All I know is when the sigil changes happen, I’ll be packing Sigil of Doom to really lay the hurt on those Wars. I’m also expecting nerfs to Beserker stance. If that doesn’t come, I’ll just take my ball and go home.

Arenanet pretty much dug themselves into this problem with spvp.
The problems why guild wars 2 will probably never be balanced.

1. No trinity
2. Everyone has a heal and each of these heals are different giving certain classes better sustain over others.
3. Classes being able to use ranged+melee weapon types. Usually a player is only able to use one weapon type why? Because it can be balanced around a hell of a lot easier. Being able to have a ranged weapon then also have melee is just a little outrageous especially in a pvp environment in an mmo. Ranged classes are usually balanced by having a smaller health pool and less armor and make kiting your main survivability tool. Also you usually have your melee fighters peel for you. Not saying you can’t have melee+ranged together but it needs to be looked at very well and in this case that class(s) would have to be unique in a way that is balanced and not given the good sides of both ends.
4. Hard counters. From all my time playing mmos or pvp games in general have i never seen a game have actual counters that just plain out make that person win because he becomes full immune or has more then 4 seconds of immunity.
5. Trying to balance a mmo through 3 formats(pve,pvp,wvw). They are just crazy…
6. Regaining hp out of combat why have this feature(spvp especially)? Are we playing an fps? The problem with this is each person has a different effective health pool via higher health/armor/personal sustain. Making this feature unbalanced between classes/builds. For example making a guy that just used his elite and cooldowns to spike a guy down because other guy was just hurp durpin then amazingly enough he is able to escape your grasp and come back with full health or go else where. While you just wasted your cooldowns the other player can now go off and re-engage into battle without being punished.
7. Some skills need better animations/cast times for their potency.
8. Still debating on this one auto-attacks, sometimes i think they can be lackluster and other times i think they can just deal to much damage. I think within certain classes+weapon sets the auto attacks should be stronger/weaker if the weapon set depends mainly on just the auto attack for damage or the other four skills at its disposal.

These are just my says on why gw2 probably won’t ever become a balanced game unless big changes are made.

The in game arena ready button would be a great idea.

Dirame.8521:

Your statement is unfair and blind… everyone blames the messenger not the guy who sent the message.

…“anet not listening to anything we say”, all I can think is; you’re just being bitter.

Sure they listened… when it came to respawn timers, or thief ability queuing or dodge queuing after stuns…
That’s why I didn’t say just ‘nothing’, I said ‘nothing notable’.

The point was that when it comes to bigger things, like balance, they really don’t seem to want people interfering with how they function.
The closest people seemed to get to effecting balance is by QQ’ing for months on end about something. Eventually, possibly by hapenstance, Anet finally addresses the issue, yet when they do, they ignore any and all input about how to fix it and end up completely bungling up the fix.

That may sound bitter, but that’s only because the situation is unfortunate… it’s hard to talk about a train wreck without mentioning something harsh.

Aside from the unlocks balance is 100% as both sides can run the most effective builds.

The perception of balance is distorted from a heavy emphasis of rng procs and auto activated abilities. The most effective builds risk/reward is unbalanced against a lot of other potentially good builds.

vashio.6297:

Arenanet pretty much dug themselves into this problem with spvp.
The problems why guild wars 2 will probably never be balanced.

1. No trinity

Congratulations of all the pro trinity post, your post take the cake for the “best” attempt at justifying a brain dead system aka trinity.

The lack of trinity has nothing to do with why balance is bad.

Terrible balance exist because the developers don’t seem to know what to do with the game’s combat system or half way through the development decided to do something else.

You can see the lack of clarity in the game’s combat system when you look at the staff elementalist versus other classes in the game.

Trinity HAS and will NEVER be a reason why a game is balance or unbalance.

Why Gw2 Combat works:

It is Dynamic.

A player can maintain movement and the right skill at the right time can easily turn the tides of battle and pull out a victory or extend a fight just long enough for help to arrive. Skill of the player is important and shows.

Why Gw2 Combat doesn’t work.

Disparity.

While it is unrealistic to request that each and every class have the same access to all boons, conditions, CC related skills, etc… Gw 2 is chalk full of glaring abundances and barren wastelands between classes. Some classes have much easier access to sustain type builds while others struggle to match or even approach similar build types.

Over all i believe that a lesser limit in Health pools could do a lot to bring many classes up to snuff, specifically ele’s which i often, as a mesmer, watch go down first in every team fight.

However we could have a lengthy discussion just on Boons vs Conditions vs CC vs Support vs Dmg.. but thats a monster in its own right.

Others have, since my last post, touched on a similar sentament, where Punishment is lacking.

Punishment seems like a naughty no no type of thing to include in a game geared to induct casual gamers into the market but I cannot think of a Successful game in the past which did not contain some measure of punishment for doing various things. Mario punished you for bringing a fire flower instead of a raccoon costume in some levels for instance. The punishment was simple, you died, and lost your stuff, but it was effective. But I digress.

Disparity in base stats (both class specific and Armor attained) is something anet should address. Simply nerfing/tweaking Critical Damage does not suddenly make going full support just as viable. And this is because there is no punishment for still maintaining a glass cannon while there is currently and will continue to be punishment for attempting a full support build. This applies to all aspects of the game, not just PvP.

My suggestion, once again, Is a Subclass system. What would this system contain to aid in balance?

Focused Paths With unique traits for each.

Inherent Bonuses/Losses to specific stats.

New avenues to introduce Skills/horizontal Progression.

Ease of access to Pin Pointing Balance issues.

A sense of mystery/caution when encountering classes.

The last one is just a bonus..

Con’s

Potential for broken/OP sub classes upon introduction.

Requires a new system to be integrated into the game.

Lengthy Implementation time table.

How does it all work:

Lets take a Warrior now. Warriors currently have a multitude of traits that are scattered across their trait lines which force them into being either, tanky, bursty, supporty, etc.. if they want to bring something specific to the table AND have it be effective. While warriors maintain a shimmering star at being Reasonably good at Everything, this trait tree set up is the same for everyone. Limited options, Viability brought on by picking and choosing and then compensating or min/maxing via Armor/weapons.

This current system also lacks any real punishment beyond what the majority finds to be ‘viable" or the build you want just doesn’t stand up well against the current Meta. A player maintains a base healing stat regardless if he went conditions or pure damage, a support maintains a base level of damage and conditions even if they carry no stats to aid these.

This means, that while you arent stellar, you can still use these to some effect and remain “kind of good” at everything while focusing at being Amazing at One thing.

What the subclasses would provide:

Retake Warrior, now apply sub classes.

Warrior Subclass 1 focuses on Pure Damage, it boosts Crit Damage by a small ammount, as well as precision, but Reduces healing and health pools base stats.

Its traits consist of alterations to weapon skills, allowing some to increase range, dmg, application of AoE.. and potential, Alters the F1-4 skills as well to fit with this mold. This trait system does NOT offer benefits to healing or group support or toughness.

Subclass 2 retains a focus on being more supportive and or Tanky. It boosts healing power and toughness while reducing Damage and Crit damage. Traits supply soft CC, boons, healing etc.. to attacks and utilites. this trait tree does not offer much in the way of conditions or damage buffs.

Subclass 3 could focus on CC and Conditions..

You get the idea.

This allows players to still comfortably choose a play style that they see fit, remain effective at it, and enjoy it. while simultaneously giving Dev’s an easier time of nerfing/buffing specific styles or traits without Devastating and entire Class and builds not accounted for.

Note that this would require some rework on the way that various things work and would require that Anet bring much more focus to the trait system over Armor and Weapons as the means to create builds.

no TL:DR version available.

Sunshine.5014:

• Grey out the HP bar portion to display how much future condition damage will take.

The one thing about your post that I want to pop in and highlight. This would be a really, really great idea. It would give more clarity over how much danger you’re in so you don’t pop a bunch of cleanses or heals if you’re not actually going fall over if you don’t. It reminds me of the health pip system in GW1, lol.

Edit: Looking at the thread linked, I see that there are some ideas and variations that I don’t completely disagree with. I was picturing a system that would take all of the damage you would take from bleed+burn+poison for their combined durations and grey out that part of the health orb. Confusion gets no change, and I think Torment should be added but a decision has to be made on whether you’d have the greyed orb section dynamically change for when you’re moving or not.

I am Ok %90 of the things you mentioned but there are also kittened design choices prevent the balancing.

for ex, why a Hambow warrior has 3s second immobilize in 20s CD (traited) but an Elementalist has something near as functionity and CD in any of its weapon sets.

I can say about trait and talent variety but should every class should have access to same tools if there is going to be a balance.

To get immobilize Ele has to give away an utility slot.

I agree with the OP that the range between full damage and full defense is a bit too much right now, but I do not agree that it’s the root issue (I also do not agree that this game has a worse balance than most other MMOs but that’s a different topic).

The defensive or offensive capability of builds don’t come only through their stats, but also through their skills and abilities. A guardian has a lower base health than a warrior, but a guardian built for bunker roles has as much survivability as a warrior built for the same role. It’s because a guardian has skills that completely negate damage or control effects. If you’re doing 0 damage, it doesn’t matter what the stat variance is.
A trait like AR, negates ALL incoming condition damage, at which point it doesn’t matter if the condition attacker deals 1 damage per tick or 1k damage per tick. Like-wise, an instant fear or an instant push off the point followed by immobilize can affect a game’s outcome more than raw numbers of toughness or power. A build capable of dodging or evading in high frequencies is more survivable than a build that has too much toughness without defensive skills.
Stats matter, but not necessarily as much as skills. Lowering the damage variance or defense variance numbers might help the balance a bit, but won’t completely solve the balance issue.