Guild Wars 2

Anet seems to be swinging the nerf bat with impunity in order to fix supposed problems. How about boosting other stuff in order to keep the classes FUN? Nerfs are notoriously unwanted, but buffs to stats, traits, spell behaviors, maybe even adding secondary effects, etc… almost never happens. Sure, it’s more work to balance buffs in retaliation of “overpowered” AKA good players pwning baddies 95% of the time, but the game will grow and become more popular for positive changes, rather than constant negative changes; regardless if negative changes purportedly achieve a positive goal. Considering the never ending nerfs the continue even afterwards, it’s obvious the rewards for nerfing is, eventually, more nerfs.

Elementalists have a great deal of versatility, but they have to be able to utilize it in order to keep the class fun. Our damage is already a pain in the kitten to unleash in PvP, so quit making it harder and quit pigeon holing us into D/D, please. Let’s see Focus revamped or at least buffed. Scepter is decent, imo, but Dragon’s Tooth needs to have it’s delay shaved down to a more manageable time. There’s plenty of changes that need to happen, don’t make things worse by taking the lazy road of constant nerfs that goes for all classes -_-. Expansions shouldn’t be the time for class rebalancing; content patches are.

Better to buff everyone than to nerf something overpowered. It’s psychology.

Better to nerf something out of sync than to buff all other aspects of the game. It’s balance.

Pinder.5261:

Better to nerf something out of sync than to buff all other aspects of the game. It’s balance.

1 = 1
2 = 2
5 = 5
20 = 20

If aspects of your game are currently sitting around 20 and 30, how is buffing the first aspect by ten any less “balancing” than nerfing the last one?

That aside, at the moment, Elementalists are only really good at one thing: outlasting single opponents in 1v1. Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers, and Thieves are all greater in multiple roles than Elementalists are in their one role. People are just upset they can’t easily win 1v1 against an Ele, but you shouldn’t be able to easily win 1v1 against an opponent who built themselves for survival above all else.

On the other hand, Guardians can stand 1v2 or 1v3 if they have the same level of skill as our hypothetical Elementalist. Elementalists are only valued at all because Guardians are often too slow to intercept their enemies, while Elementalists are also quite speedy.

Also, literally anyone playing any class could disrupt four Elementalists for the one or two seconds their zerg would need to storm in and overwhelm them, so please don’t try to suggest they’re out of balance in WvW. (I’d even argue they would have effortlessly wiped out the entire opposing zerg if they had been Thieves instead.)

Parsee said it, people don’t feel good being nerfed, even though the net result of everyone else being buffed is a reduction in relative power, it doesn’t feel as bad as having something taken away directly.

I think it depends on the situation. Currently GW2 feels quite bland, most traits and skills have really weak or minor effects on really long cooldowns.

In this situation, ANet is better off buffing all the weak things, rather than nerfing the currently strong things. Because currently most things are “too weak”, whereas the strong stuff is probably “just about right.”