Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I have a question for the Devs or Players, depending on who will/can answer it.
I haven’t played in nearly a year and wanted to check in again due to the new updates in mid April. Reading some posts etc. it seems like there has not much changed in GW2 Balance.

My question:
Is there a plan to actually rebalance PvE and PvP for Groups in regard to the three possible character setups Offense, Defence and Support? As of now, this systems seems to be awfully broken.

Background:
With the new Trait upgrade, I can see that ANET is pushing the Support roles. Most of the new GM traits I remember are for defence and support builds. When I look at PvE right now, the only place where actual group teamplay is needed is fractals, dungeons and world bosses. At the beginning of playing GW2 at release I expected, that after some time support classes like Necromancer/Elementalist will begin to shine. Whereas world bosses are an exception, as there are up to 100 Players and the coordination is actually more important than the class/role Setup.
Looking at the amount of skills and traits, as well as itemization one wonders why 5 berzerker (full damage without defence or support) is possibly the best method in a dungeon/fractals Environment.
In theory, two basic roles are possible to be played, this being offense (pure power/crit and condition/crit) and Support (heal/boons or debuffing/heal or debuffing/boons). For a part I don’t really understand, CC seems to have gone the path of free for all in MMO lately, so this is not a Support role anymore but a thing everybody can do. Defensive capabilities are optional for both roles, but would make more sense for defensive supporters like the guardian.

The Problem I see here is:
1. (CC) Due to the fast gamepace in GW2, skill cd’s are very low. Being 5:1 in most PvE Boss fight’s leads to a big amount of CC that makes bosses a joke as they are continuously disabled . Therefore defiant was introduced. If I remember correctly, this was a temporary solution (well nearly 2 years later it’s still here). I guess a lot of bosses were designed with CC and interrupts in mind, as you can see with their one hit kill skills. The new mechanic actually lead to a situation where CC is not meaningful anymore, as it’s better to just ignore the Bosses skills and dodge or use invulnerability. The actual coordination needed to CC a Boss when it would be necessary is nearly impossible in PuG’s and not worth the reward.
2. (Damage) Access to Support abilities like selfheal/boons is too strong as it is independent from equipment stats or simply scales miserably and has a too big base number. (I.E. you can go full berzerker, trait for Support and equip a dps weapon together with dps Utility skills, gaining all boons from support traits while having full damage and still respectable heal). This leads to a Major misbalance in PvE and less so in PvP where you at least need counter to heavy boon classes or condition classes and CC and therefore have to trait less support and more control.
3. (Support) The most basic support abilities are healing and giving protection through boons. To a lesser degree in debuffing the enemy helps. Due to the unbelievable amount of fast damage in PvE Environments, it is difficult up to impossible to effectively heal group members meaningful. The heals are low and more of a backup, furthermore heal equip scales badly. One support character per group should be needed, for giving boons and healing, or debuffing the enemy crowd while healing. In current game meta, this function can be made by a offensive equipped character, with some support traits, effectively killing the need for a support specced character. More though, getting support traits and equip feels meaningless, as healing will not save anybody and boons do not need any equipment to be awesome. Debuffing the enemy is quite nice though and increased condition duration might help. But looking at the facts, the really difficult enemies where debuffing is needed, kill you with a one hit strike anyway.

Next is an idea or question for a solution:

Would it make sense to rip half of the stats from equipment and put these into traits (I.E. taking the support traits increases healing by 1000 instead of 300), so that the trait choices actually define a build and equipment just gives some place to tune in for more defence, offense or Support?
Another Thing are boons and CC. They are heavily misbalanced and need some love. Less CC on every character and less boon duration in general, so that somebody has to actually equip and trait for boon duration to make them meaningful. Being able to run around with nearly all boons at the same time while wearing berzerker gear makes no sense at all. Also, introduce equipment that increase boon duration and make some boons and debuffs scale to a degree, so that characters have to equip for it to make it meaningful.
Of course this would require a rebalance of classes.

PvE Dungeons also would need to be rebalanced on this terms to increase DPS of all enemies, but decrease the burst damage they are capable of. This would mean longer/more strategic fights, that require some defensive and/or Support specced characters to keep the group alive.

My Vision of a fun and balanced gameplay would be to have high damage classes that Profit from the boons/heals/debuffs of support classes and not giving them to themselves. A defensive Guardian should be able to either buff the group or heal the group or both, while a necromancer can debuff the enemies and heal (a Little) the group further. The mesmer Interrupts and deals damage while the warrior and elementalist deal heavy damage due to boons gained and debuffs on the enemies. The group members are not easy to kill as the enemies are debuffed and the group is buffed. We don’t need a tank, a guardian should not tank, but guard the group with his boons. In the meantime the necromancer blinds the enemies that are in the front and weakens also the further away enemies, while healing the Group a bit. The Mesmer Interrupts the enemy casters and gives them no room to react, while the warrior slices the elemental burnt enemy.

This Kind of gameplay should be possible, more though necessary. The current Meta on the other hand is … well, not so interesting.

I hope this makes sense. I still see GW2 as an unpolished Gem, but I begin to lose hope, that the dev team is actually trying to change it. Of course all numbers are just random and this is nothing more than a basic idea and some critic on the current mechanics and where I see the major problems.

Greetings

I don’t think that’s the trinity. IIRC, GW2’s trinity is Damage/Support/Control.

^ Correct it’s DCS, which results in a DPS centric game

I realise that DCS was the original idea, but I haven’t seen a way to actually spec for control in traits or skills. Control is more or less equally accessable by all characters in any trait.

Damage is always needed to actually get rid of the enemy permanently, therefore wouldn’t it be better to Focus on Support/Control as the baseline? For me, this would make the game more interesting.

sternenstaub.8763:

I realise that DCS was the original idea, but I haven’t seen a way to actually spec for control in traits or skills. Control is more or less equally accessable by all characters in any trait.

This depends on the class. Some classes have traits that make control skills much, much better, like Master of Terror.

From my perspective, a lot of the items which are strong (or in some peoples’ opinions, overpowered) are a combination of cheap control and cheap damage. Pistol Whip, Condimancer, Unsuspecting Foe/Merciless Hammer are good examples. This isn’t necessarily bad but it does need to be watched.