Guild Wars 2

So one day I decided to start looking at the class distribution in 8 v 8 sPvP matches. Just as I was about to finish the new patch hit and so I thought I would continue and see how the class distribution changed with the Mesmer/Ranger nerfs.

So what I did……….whenever I entered into a sPvP match I would note down the class distribution not including myself. Also, I would never retake the class distribution from the same group in consecutive matches as the same people tend to remain and would bias the results. So I think I did everything I could to make the results as unbiased as possible.

Pre-patch I got a total for all classes of (N =) 1186, and post patch 1165. Here is the class distribution (in decreasing order) as a percentage of that total (rounded to one decimal place).

Pre Patch
1. Thief – 21.4
2. Mesmer – 16.8
3. Warrior – 13.3
4. Ranger – 11.6
5. Guardian – 10.5
6. Necromancer – 10.2
7. Elementalist – 8.1
8. Engineer – 7.7

Post Patch
1. Thief – 22.7
2. Mesmer – 14.6
3. Warrior – 13.9
4 Guardian – 11.7
5 Necromancer – 10.4
6. Ranger – 10.2
7. Elementalist – 8.7
8 Engineer – 7.7

So in terms of numbers the Mesmer has the biggest drop, but is still the second most popular class. Rangers also showed a fairly big drop and now are one of the least popular classes. The two main classes that seem to have picked up the numbers are the Guardian and Thief with all other classes remaining pretty consistent between pre and post patch.

Yes I have too much time on my hands.

Depends on the time of day to. I pulled an all nighter last night and I swear every match was 8 thieves vs 7 thieves with me being the lone ranger lol.

Too much? Pfft, your time is apprecaited! Seriously, thanks for putting this together.

Well psyt I actually countered that too. I wouldn’t take many samples if there were only a few battlegrounds currently active (i.e earlier in the day), and more when there were more active.

Thank you. Very interesting.

Nice work. Thanks for the input we ‘should’ be able to get from the game makers.

Zatria.5783:

Nice work. Thanks for the input we ‘should’ be able to get from the game makers.

They don’t want us to have these analytics because then we will start associating opness with most played which isn’t a valid metric although imo its pretty telling that Thief and Mesmer are the most played by a pretty wide margin and the classes people have the most trouble with.

Quite frankly surprised that guardian participation went up, considering the ‘adjustment’ to one of the more mobility-friendly weapons the class has. Frankly, the class just doesn’t perform that well in the typical sPvP scenario.

Well I’m glad we are getting some good discussion out of this it makes the effort worthwhile!

Frizz were the the guy that did the first one where you were playing the warrior and included yourself? If so thank you for making the adjustments and providing the info.

No that must have been someone else. But I remember the post. I was doing this while they posted it.

Awesome work! Thanks for the info.

psyt.9415:

Zatria.5783:

Nice work. Thanks for the input we ‘should’ be able to get from the game makers.

They don’t want us to have these analytics because then we will start associating opness with most played which isn’t a valid metric although imo its pretty telling that Thief and Mesmer are the most played by a pretty wide margin and the classes people have the most trouble with.

Of course it would be a valid metric. I mean if the results show Heartseeker 1,000,000 killed. It would be valid. Can’t argue with numbers. You can skew them to make them appear to be something different, though.

really interesting and must be taken serious because 8v8 means so much.

not.

Zatria.5783:

psyt.9415:

Zatria.5783:

Nice work. Thanks for the input we ‘should’ be able to get from the game makers.

They don’t want us to have these analytics because then we will start associating opness with most played which isn’t a valid metric although imo its pretty telling that Thief and Mesmer are the most played by a pretty wide margin and the classes people have the most trouble with.

Of course it would be a valid metric. I mean if the results show Heartseeker 1,000,000 killed. It would be valid. Can’t argue with numbers. You can skew them to make them appear to be something different, though.

The fact people play a certain class alot doesn’t neccesarily make it op. A few weeks back they had ranger being one of the most played when they released their own stats and I don’t think they have ever been op in the release version of the game. Not sure I understand what your point is though with your analogy no offense.

I already felt like thief was most OP class, your data makes it pretty much incontrovertible.

I already felt like thief was most OP class, your data makes it pretty much incontrovertible.

You are making the false assumption that the most popular class is also the most powerful. Which isn’t the case.

People would often jump to the same conclusion in WoW but Ghostcrawler came out saying that the correlation between class popularity and relative prowess wasn’t as high as many people in the community claimed. In fact, so called “fotm re-rolling” wasn’t nearly as widespread as people made it out to be.

Granted re-rolling is a lot simpler in GW2 so the correlation is probably a lot higher. But it’s not the only factor that contributes to class popularity.

Ease of use and a strong archetype are probably the biggest drivers of class popularity. That’s why Paladins remained the most popular class in WoW despite shifting performance. That’s also why Warriors in most MMOs are always one of the most popular classes, regardless of power.

That said, here’s what I think makes Thieves so popular:

1. Strong archetype (Rogue, Warrior, Mage is your base RPG-trinity)
2. Simple play-style yielding good results

The fact that they can Crit people for 10.000+ is just icing on the cake that makes good headlines. It’s not however what makes Thieves so popular.

I still think the Thief class needs to be redesigned.

Initiative needs to go, they need more diverse weapon sets and more focus on utility skills, not just damage.

Zatria.5783:

psyt.9415:

Zatria.5783:

Nice work. Thanks for the input we ‘should’ be able to get from the game makers.

They don’t want us to have these analytics because then we will start associating opness with most played which isn’t a valid metric although imo its pretty telling that Thief and Mesmer are the most played by a pretty wide margin and the classes people have the most trouble with.

Of course it would be a valid metric. I mean if the results show Heartseeker 1,000,000 killed. It would be valid. Can’t argue with numbers. You can skew them to make them appear to be something different, though.

It’s actually very easy to argue with numbers, because a large number of people would have no idea how to properly interpret them. You’d start getting a bunch of arguments around “no it means this” “no it means that”, none of it would be helpful, and the forums would be even less useful than they are now.

If Heartseeker is the killing blow on the most kills, does it mean that someone spammed Heartseeker from 100 – 0, or that it was used as it was specifically designed: as an execution-style ability? In that regard, that particular metric would show you absolutely nothing about how much damage the ability does in the 100 – 25 range, which was the problem.

So yes, even in one of the first hypotheticals, a raw number was used to illustrate a point that doesn’t even seem valid.

Data analysis isn’t exactly something everyone is good at, so I really think releasing any sort of in-game metrics that might kind of hint at class balance to the general public would be a mistake.

EDIT – See mjharrison’s response for a perfect example of why ANet should never release their data to the masses. I would be forced to never come back to these forums again.

These census should be easier to do now since the sPVP servers has shrunk in number of players on them.

Some really interesting points made, which I don’t think are mutually exclusive. I don’t doubt that the warrior/rogue/mage archetypes are more often picked, but Elementalist (which is mage) is one of the lowest in popularity, and this is certainly not the case for PVE or WvW. Thus, there is no coincidence that this also happens to be a very fragile class (although IMO I think it is very powerful when played correctly). Also, the observation that the two classes that showed the biggest drops, were also the classes with nerfs, indicates that FOTM rerolling was occurring, however the observation that Mesmer remained in second place could either be interpreted as FOTM rerolling is not as influential on stats as we thought OR Mesmer is still pretty powerful.

Thoughts?

The most played classes are usually also the ones which perform best in 1vs1 situations – simply because player also like to be independent and not babysitted by another class.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that thieves and mesmers are at the top.

I can tell you, it is such fun to fight an asura phantasm mesmer who just runs away, hides behind every small pebble and let the stuff do his job. Such a brainless class.

indicates that FOTM rerolling was occurring, however the observation that Mesmer remained in second place could either be interpreted as FOTM rerolling is not as influential on stats as we thought OR Mesmer is still pretty powerful.

Mesmer is the only class that showed a big drop, thief actually went up. And in nearly every sPVP I join more than half of each side are thief, let alone rarely I land in a full 8 vs 8 match anymore, people are getting sick of thief flooding.

I still play my 80 mesmer, the berserker nerf doesn’t affect me since I often use a staff and scepter/focus, the warden is still fantastic when used right- the 1.5s delay between attacks from the warden was easily an oversight by the devs.

Dee Jay.2460:

I already felt like thief was most OP class, your data makes it pretty much incontrovertible.

You are making the false assumption that the most popular class is also the most .

And you are making the false assumption that there is no correlation at all between most powerful class and most played. LOL at quoting Ghostcrawler about WOW balance in their forums. The guy was clueless if you actually read the forums so using him as some kind of basis for definitive statements is ridiculous. The devs rarely know what’s actually balanced or not that’s why it’s so difficult for them. The people that really know what’s up are the Pro and semi pro, objective unbiased PVP ers who dabble and play all the classes and don’t just focus on one to the point they develop bias.

There are groups of people like myself who will stick to 1-2 archetypes across all games because they really like those archetypes. There are also groups of people who will play the easiest most powerful class they can find regardless what their actual preference for style or archetype is. This type of thinking is easily recognized in the forums when you hear someone respond to complaints about a class like thief for example respond with “you chose the hard class” or “you chose the wrong class” etc etc. Some of us don’t select classes based on power we assume or at least hope they will all be balanced equally and want to play our selected class in the manner we choose.

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

I like how the thief population went up even with the PW nerf. I just started doing hot joins on my D/D thief after the PW nerf because I was too lazy/cheap to get daggers for my PvE/WvW gear.

Proeliator.8740:

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

You can run Static Discharge Engi builds without kits (well, just the med kit) that are basically as effective for beginners as D/D thief builds. Maybe beginners aren’t aware of that, though.

Lymain.6723:

Proeliator.8740:

I think the data perfectly reflects what we would expect. The noob friendly easy to use classes that make bad players look good and are solid performers are also the most played because the people in the second group will always flock to them. I think Guardian is a bit of an exception because its a little pigeon holed into “tanking” which isn’t that glorious in many people’s minds.

You can run Static Discharge Engi builds without kits (well, just the med kit) that are basically as effective for beginners as D/D thief builds. Maybe beginners aren’t aware of that, though.

No doubt. I’m sure there a lot of different builds etc that are highly effective but people tend to try what they hear about the most. All you need do is take a look at these forums to see the countless threads regarding thieves being OP. Plenty of people want in on the action. Things like 100Blades warriors will be tried for the same reason but are quickly abandoned because it’s less effective, less consistent, and more squishy. When people try something they hear about and it actually is really easy and effective they tend to stick with it until it’s nerfed.

I think Proeliator brings up some good points. I am one of those, I like warlock types, so have stuck to the Necro despite it’s flaws. I like the class. I wish we could be rewarded for sticking to a class, but there is no incentive to do so, so in this game rerolling is probably far easier than in others where you would have to relevel a class from scratch. It would be interesting to look at WvW figures as they should be more robust to such changes (yes I am collecting stats for that now).

Anyway, I think Guardian is picked due to it’s incredible survivability. People tend to go for classes that just won’t die (that is when you hear comments like “ouch that tickles” etc – makes them feel big), or classes that do massive damage. But I think the classes need to be straightforward too. The Engineer is incredibly powerful, but also is harder to learn to achieve that, AND as Pro pointed out, it is not that archetypical class people like to play in RPG games.