I want to start a debate about the huge gap in base health between various classes and why I consider them to be hurtful for the game as a whole.
First, let’s check the base health values for various classes:
- Low (Thief, Guardian, Elementalist) – 10.805 HP
- Medium (Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer) – 15.082 HP
- High (Warrior, Necromancer) – 18.372 HP
That’s a 4277 HP difference between low and medium health classes and a whooping 7567 HP difference between low and high health classes. It means that high health classes have 70% more HP than low health classes.
Now why is this a problem?
First and foremost, because of PvE. A boss, by logic, needs to deal a fixed amount of damage with his attacks. Assuming you want to make this encounter equally threatening to each class, how hard should such an attack hit?
If this mob hits for 10.000, this will scare the Warrior (especially after mitigation is taken into account), but hardly kill him. The glass cannon Thief on the other hand may vary well be instant-gibbed.
On the other hand if you buff the attack to 15.000 damage so that it’s threatening to the glass-cannon Warrior, then it means the attack will practically instant-kill all other classes.
Point being, there is no middle ground for the encounter designer. Base survivability between classes is so different that it’s nigh impossible to balance an encounter in a way that feels equally threatening and challenging to all involved.
This vast gab in base-survivability has also lead to a certain amount of pigeonholing. Thieves for example, the most notorious glass-cannons in this game, partially play that way because no other way feels viable. Even a full Soldier Thief won’t be as durable as a Berserker Warrior when it comes to taking hits.
But this extreme also works in other directions, as seen in Bunker builds. The low base-HP on both Bunkers and Elementalists mean that their heals heal for a very large % of their total health-pool, making it harder to burn them down.
Imagine a world where there’d be less extremes and both Bunkers and Elementalists had 20% more base-HP in return for a nerf to their overall healing output. It would make fights against them in PvP more consistent and their HP less “bouncy”. In general it would feel better for all involved. The Bunkers would be less susceptible to burst but might end up slightly less tanky over a longer fight. I for one would consider this a good change.
I also think it would help classes feel less pigeonholed into certain play-styles and thus encourage build diversity.
It would also help encounter designers find a more agreeable sweet-spot between instant-gibs and barely threatening.
Hence I propose that all low HP classes have their base-HP at level 80 bumped up by roughly 2000 HP in return for slight nerfs to their burst (Thieves), Protection up-time (Guardians) and self-healing (Elementalists).