Guild Wars 2

I don’t complain that warriors > elem often because I think it is not really true in PvE, and I often say that since we often have 10 in earth we just need signet of earth to be a heavy but…

Just crunching numbers for fun:
Warrior’s base hp = 9212
Elem base hp = 1645
Difference in hp = 7567
Difference in vitality = 756 (rounding down because I am a gentleman of course)

Hm interesting number, right?
It’s almost exactly the amount of one minor stats we get from a fully ascended gear. Take berzerker gear for example, it gives you 1073 power, 70 crit damage, and 734 precision.
So basically warriors have a full set’s minor worth of stats more than elems.

Now we can talk about class balance all we want, you have to keep this in mind.

Edit: oh and if we take the armor difference (291) as well, and add it to the vitality difference we get 1047, which is almost a full set’s major worth of stats

It is a big problem to balancing the classes. Even if low HP classes we can compensate the small pool with utils or traits, high HP classes can use the same utils and traits to have some other nice stuff while keeping the stat boost coming from that pool.

Imho the classes with low HP should have the equivalent boost in base power. So some classe would have more HP while others would do more damage in compensation.

Giving a speed boost to light armor classes would also be nice to balance the lack of armor bonus stat equivalent, and it would fit nicely with the light/heavy armor fighting style (turtle vs mobility)

Of course medium HP and medium armor classes could have medium boosts.

Never gonna happen imho but we can dream :-))

Cheers

A workable consistent HP base would have been too difficult to balance.

Consider this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Desperate_Power

Warriors in heavy armor get +20% more damage just for having as much health as a full HP Ele.

(ok not exactly but really close: Warr half is 10.1k vs Ele full is 10.8k)

What I´ve learned in the past: stop comparing any class with the warrior. Warriors are the kings in this game. I dont think I have to talk about PvE(20.000 HP on full zerk, great mobility, press 2 to win etc.). I have a warrior myself and when i need to get s..t done, my warrior gets s..t done. Just watch the lfg tool: “LF4M Warriors”, “LF1M Full Zerk Warrior” etc…and btw. yesterday I saw this “LF3M”… :/

WvW is the same story. 30.000(!) HP – spam the hammer attacks,(especiallyF1) and Endure Pain = win.

I cant talk about PvP(dont interested in), but afaik the warrior also rules there.

And yeah, I dont get why ele has only 13K HP. Mesmers and Necros are both light classes and have 20K.

Ele, like Guardian, gets low hp pool because they are meant as high regen (perma regen, soothing mist, +hp on water attunement; Altruistic healing on guard, Monk’s focus) classes and defensive boon coverage (prot, aegis). Downside is that it limits on builds if you compare against the whole variety of traits. If ANet thinks it’s sooo uberly important to have that kind of classes, speccing OUT of it should lead to a more massive damage increase then we currently have, risk vs reward, or making it a baseline feature that is build-in (I prefer the first).

Swapping the current warrior heal signet on ele and removing soothing mist would be an idea, also roleplay-wise it would make more sense if a warrior leeched hp per hit, they aren’t holy knights. (( This is kinda the wrong way to handle this, warrior signet needs a nerf, but that one is already incoming ))

I think you miss the point Fasyx, it is not about ele vs warr but about low HP classes vs high HP classes. This also affect thieves who share the low HP pool with eles while having nothing in exchange, and if you go a bit on thieves forum you’ll see that it brings similar problem as to eles. How can one design classes with such a big stat imbalance? There is no tradeoff, just some class get less than others.

Empyre, if it was so how come warriors get so many block, invuln (GS skill 3 for examples gives invuln frames, not only endure pain does) and others active defense mechanism while also having big HP and Armor. I’d agree with you if they had none of it but as it stands low HP classes just get low HP and gain the same as others already have.

Someone, somewhere, sometime that i don’t remember proposed to change endurance regeneration to compensate the differences in “durability”, something like

- light armor classes: 150%
- medium: 125%
- heavy: 100%

That would require some changes to other mechanics (like vigor should get to 50% down from 100% e.g., and other traits/foods/buffs as well), but i think it’s a nice idea.

The main point is that a warr can go full glasscannon while still being able to sustain a huge amount of damage (especially conditions, where hp is the only factor), have access to a lot of stability and to insane condition removal (zerker stance + cleansing ire is O.o). Guardians, while being on the low side of hp, have access to insane amounts of protection and healings. These are the heavy armor ones and the toughest probably.
On the medium armor side we have theif, low hp but great evade capability / stealth, which allows him to cleanse himself from conditions and regenerate hp. Still, a (smaller than light classes) buff in endurance seems legit due to it’s really lack of hp. Engi can have perma vigor and some nice protection, but goes nowhere near the levels of guardians or warriors in terms of durability, unless build for a full bunker and sacrificing every bit of damage (a thing that war doesn’t, while being 30k+ hp). Rangers..well spirit are broken right now imo, but for the others..a buff would be ok imo.

Now light classes: the only concern is necromancer. While it has relatively poor access to vigor, stability or protection, he has the same basic hp of warriors and some powerful condition cleansing. Necro is on the OP side of PvP right now imo and we should be careful buffing it. As far of the others, mesmer has a quite poor mobility unless using a staff, some more endurance would fit it. And for ele, we’re forced into glasscannon builds if we want to deal some decent damage (which won’t allow us to join many parties in lfg, but still), we have no toughness and no hp. At least let us dodge..

Durability isn’t same thing as base stats. Give my warrior clones, stealth, protection and all that stuff and we can talk.

terminatorkobold.6031:

Empyre, if it was so how come warriors get so many block, invuln (GS skill 3 for examples gives invuln frames, not only endure pain does) and others active defense mechanism while also having big HP and Armor. I’d agree with you if they had none of it but as it stands low HP classes just get low HP and gain the same as others already have.

I think we can’t compare specific classes’ skills against eachother, but rather have to compare the whole picture/style of a class.
Warrior is imho meant as a tank or dps class, that is powered by raw dps (e.g. grandmaster crit and dmg traits) and raw healing (healing surge), their healing signet is just over the top for its purpose to supplement a tank build. After the changes to condition meta, fixing stun sigil (rounding of duration) and reduced regen on the signet warriors will be in a whole different light. Still good and useful , but not over the top anymore.

We should rather look at where the Ele needs to be better. That is balancing risk vs reward (dps w/o water line and tankish support style in its varieties) and bringing back old builds to their original usefulness, even if it means changing the current condition meta = changing other classes, which is already on ANet’s radar, but takes too long to come on live servers.
Always keep in mind that pve BALANCE and wvw are just byproducts of spvp balance, there’s no intention to balance especially for either of the game modes, a) pve is too easy anyway and the challenge (if there’s any) is in mass organisation rather then individual skills b) wvw = casual game mode, anything goes, just adding carrots rather then fixing broken stuff.

10 months ago…. JohnathanSharp – Game Design Lead

Class balance philosophies
We normally try to employ metered and controlled balance changes with each pass, rather than huge reductions or improvements to classes. We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance. HUGH increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct.
When designing and balancing the classes, we try to make sure that class roles and identities stay intact. So, in doing so, we make sure that there are rules and boundaries outlining the capabilities and weaknesses of each class.

Ele
We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012/first#post1061889

In wvw they need to buff the versatility aspect of elementalist. The common spec for most elemental revolve around water/arcane traits with cantrips. Few other builds give elementalist the survival needed for wvw.

Considering that eles deal approximately the equivalent of a minor stat’s worth of power more, in terms of overall DPS, than a warrior, I don’t see why this is surprising to anyone.

With the RTL nerf, Warriors now have superior mobility on top of superior CC, Damage, and survivability options over the elementalist … and we pay for those disadvantages with lower hitpoints and worse armor.

ANet has their head in the sand on this one. Being able to have AoE doesn’t mean crap when it is limited to 5 players in the face of the blobs that dominate the game. Especially since it is also penalized by being greatly telegraphed and long cast times. There is a reason that most Eles are using the freaking melee range D/D builds … because AoE in their game sucks.

@Guanglai Kangyi,
I read all your threads about ele dps compared to other classes and i modified my staff build according to them, which gives me lotsa fun. :-)
However i think you prove my point. Playing perfect, an ele deals the equivalent of a minor stat’s worth of power more damage; whereas the warrior only has to click the ‘’create new character’’ to get the equivalent of a minor stat more HP. How is that fair?
I wrote playing perfect because i experienced the ele perfect dps rotation (staff one as per your posts) to be much harder to pull off consistently than the warrior one. When i play ele i have to dodge way more often than when i play warrior against the same bosses (because low HP/Armor seldoms allow the taking of 1 boss hit in order to finish casting meteor for example) which brings a dps decrease and some bosses even have the gall to move out of my lava fonts sometimes decreasing my dps even more.

@Empyre,
If we cannot compare skills or traits between classes how can we more or less objectively write about our felling of having to play a kitten class?
Buuut i can try to approach the problem in another way: Ele and thieves have the same problem of having only the half of the base HP of some other classes and imho that difference is too big and makes thieves and eles really hard to balance.
Survivability for thooses 2 classes come mainly from active skills giving invulerability frames and mobility (dodges, evades on weapons, invuln skills and mobility skills). The problem is that this kind of defense is way beyond hard to balance. A bit too much gives you unkillable toons (like perma evade thieves or staff/d&d bunker eles for example) and nerfing it just a bit can bring the class down to be totally unsurvivable (rtl, mist form and blast finishers on dodge nerfs).
I think that the base HP difference was a bad idea based on historical reasons in the rpg genre and that is was also really badly implemented.

So either you avoid death by dodging/interrupting casts and drop to warrior levels, or warriors avoid death by facetanking while dealing their max DPS potential.

Either way neither of you are dead and are dealing the same damage. Looks balanced.

Here i don’t agree, avoiding death by dodging/interrupting casts drops me quite below warrior dps. :-(
I’ll just have to learn to play better but i still feel like having gotten the shorte end of the stick.

And Warrior also gets “terrible” DPS if they have to interrupt Hundred Blades with a dodge. Same partially applies to Axe chain.
If you have to dodge to avoid death that means Warrior will lose most of his health. So they have to then dodge the next one.

Yes but he can choose to loose half HP (and then passively heal them with signet) or to interupt skill, while ele can only interrupt. Besides more HP is more forgiving to mistakes than active defense, and you know as well as i do that downed dps is bad :-)

Anyways DPS discussions in real situations cannot be objectively solved without dps-meter, which we will never see in GW2 so the arguments about it are a bit pointless. On the other habd double HP are quite visible.

The galling point for me is to have to be really good in one class to be able to feel as usefull as a starter in another class.

Anyways the discussion was not about damage but about the free stat points arbitrarly given to some class only. I’d be happy to get them as an equivalent heal boost or whatever. I just want to have a feeling of fairness at character creation.

I’m willing to trade all my additional health for Swirling Winds.

Deal, as i mostly play staff :-D

What i’d really whish would be shorter attune swaps and one or two more blast finishers on staff

Oh and Wethospu, ty for your dungeons guides, they are kitten usefull and well done

That’s like saying Seth is crap compared to Ryu cause he has less health and has to work harder to win, even though Seth is utter bullkitten when played properly.

Dunno what you are speaking about there.
I played pen and paper D&D and there wizard is really week physically but really powerfull in its versatilty and power.
In GW2 i only get the physical weeknes feeling.

Might all be in my head but still, a carrot against the fact of having to compensate for half HP would be nice

In Icewindale I/II all my friends and I picked the super strong melee/warrior/heavy armor classes that could self heal.

Ye D&D based games could never get the wizard versatility right while keeping the crappy thaco, health and armor. Too bad it were thoose the mage archetype has ever been based on

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That’s like saying Seth is crap compared to Ryu cause he has less health and has to work harder to win, even though Seth is utter bullkitten when played properly.

And now think how the situation would´ve been if Seth played properly was only comparable to Ryu played by button smasher, and you´re step closer to situation with this game.

The entire way damage is dealt is dumb. We need to nerf damage like a big crit is only 3k and we need longer cooldown heals. The one reason no other classes really go berserker is because thieves hit way too hard

Strang.8170:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That’s like saying Seth is crap compared to Ryu cause he has less health and has to work harder to win, even though Seth is utter bullkitten when played properly.

And now think how the situation would´ve been if Seth played properly was only comparable to Ryu played by button smasher, and you´re step closer to situation with this game.

Except Seth > Ryu and Ele > Warrior, so your example makes no sense.

People who defend the current ele state are correct. It is viable the way they play it. People who hate the current ele state are correct also. Everything other than the limited vision of the ele is fluff. We’re all right. Now, do you see the point?

Elementalist is fine in PvE, ok in WvW and Terrible in PvP right now.

So please, dont ask for buffs in the PvE aspect.

As for PvP, ele need mobility, not damage.

Karazul.2934:

Elementalist is fine in PvE, ok in WvW and Terrible in PvP right now.

So please, dont ask for buffs in the PvE aspect.

As for PvP, ele need mobility, not damage.

They need both. When I am getting hit for 15k by a warrior with killshot and my long buildups only hit for 3-5k … something is wrong. Warriors have twice our hits, armor, and more mobility … higher damage is just icing on the insult cake.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were light, medium, and heavy archetypes for every class? Like, light gets you low armor and health but a ton of mobility, medium is balanced, and heavy is ultraslow tank.

Yeah, that’d make a whole lot more sense than the arbitrarily selected base stats classes have now. Too bad it could never happen.

Too bad this thread was totally derailed.

The topic was not about ele VS warrior

The topic is about the fact that in a game without holy trinity and a twitch based combact system, no class should arbitrarly have more base stats than other classes. Every clas has traits (offense and defense) skills, dodges, boons so why give some classes a boost in base stats while giving only half a boost to others and nothing to some?

I could understand it in a game where some classes have to tank or are melee only but in GW2 we have no tank role and every class can go melee or ranged.

terminatorkobold.6031:

The topic is about the fact that in a game without holy trinity and a twitch based combact system, no class should arbitrarly have more base stats than other classes. Every clas has traits (offense and defense) skills, dodges, boons so why give some classes a boost in base stats while giving only half a boost to others and nothing to some?

Because not every profession is equally skilled at the things you’ve just mentioned. Healing Power on an ele doesn’t do the same thing as Healing Power on a Mesmer for example.

Hard to say as traits and skills are so hard to compare while HP can easyly be seen. I think the main problem with such a big difference in HP is that it makes the low HP classes too hard to balance via active mechanims. A bit too much and the become op hard to kil a bit too few and they become useless. Imho that can be seen in the track of balancing about tieves and eles the past year.
Guardian is less touched because it has much passive healing and passive aegis as well as heavy armor

Fasyx.9347:

And yeah, I dont get why ele has only 13K HP. Mesmers and Necros are both light classes and have 20K.

THISSSSSSS

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Except Seth > Ryu and Ele > Warrior, so your example makes no sense.

I see there´s nothing i can say to you.
Ele is not in an ok place for pvp/some parts of wvw.

yaspire.8346:

Fasyx.9347:

And yeah, I dont get why ele has only 13K HP. Mesmers and Necros are both light classes and have 20K.

THISSSSSSS

Mesmers have 15k

Wethospu.6437:

Durability isn’t same thing as base stats. Give my warrior clones, stealth, protection and all that stuff and we can talk.

Ele doesn’t have it, neither does it have blocks. If you want to have protection and deal similar damage to warrior, well, it’s not going to happen.

Not that true Haviz: a build comprising FA and elemental attunement on D/F can achieve that easily. The damage won’t be qual to warriors but it won’t be far from it either.

Zelyhn.8069:

Not that true Haviz: a build comprising FA and elemental attunement on D/F can achieve that easily. The damage won’t be qual to warriors but it won’t be far from it either.

You far less survivable than warrior that has more damage output. You’re only saving grace are swirling winds but you’re lacking vigour and blocks.

ELES are the TOP CLASS for SUPPORTING economy by dropping heavy loot bags. That’s how “support role” should be understood. Our DPS (Drop Per Second) is the highest in WvW, and no other class has the ability to evade and dodge the fights as we do: dead people don’t take any damage.

haviz.1340:

Wethospu.6437:

Durability isn’t same thing as base stats. Give my warrior clones, stealth, protection and all that stuff and we can talk.

Ele doesn’t have it, neither does it have blocks. If you want to have protection and deal similar damage to warrior, well, it’s not going to happen.

I wasn’t specifically talking about Elementalist. Anyways, Staff-build works at 600 range.

Wethospu.6437:

I wasn’t specifically talking about Elementalist. Anyways, Staff-build works at 600 range.

Staff build works theoretically at that range. Practically, boons have limited range and even then you bring absolutely nothing except small fire field, not even projectile defense. And you’re even more squishy without a focus.

No worries, I have never brought any projectile defense… on my Warrior.

Wethospu.6437:

No worries, I have never brought any projectile defense… on my Warrior.

Exactly. Ele only saving grace in pve are swirling winds. Without it (staff build), ele is completely team dependant and doesn’t bring anything to the team except small fire field while having no survivability.

Let’s not mention pvp.

haviz.1340:

Exactly. Ele only saving grace in pve are swirling winds. Without it (staff build), ele is completely team dependant and doesn’t bring anything to the team except small fire field while having no survivability.

What about Magnetic Aura + Powerful Auras?

And then you have an Ice Field, a Stun Field. Useless? How about 2 water fields that can be used for blast finishers so others can heal on them, while one of the removes 4 conditions from your team?

Still not convinced? How about the chill/cripple/immobilize AoE removal skill? Or the perma weakness you can stack on bosses with stoning?

Where on earth do you get the idea that staff eles don’t have any form of party support?

ThiBash.5634:

What about Magnetic Aura + Powerful Auras?

Personal reflections doesn’t work on aoe projectiles and you have to spend 30 points in useless trait line.

And then you have an Ice Field, a Stun Field. Useless? How about 2 water fields that can be used for blast finishers so others can heal on them, while one of the removes 4 conditions from your team?

Static field stuns only if someone passes it through and only reason to use cc is to either interrupt boss or stacked bosses, neither of which can static field do

Still not convinced? How about the chill/cripple/immobilize AoE removal skill? Or the perma weakness you can stack on bosses with stoning?

Completely useless in pve.

Where on earth do you get the idea that staff eles don’t have any form of party support?

Did you even read or just come here from your zerg to say how staff eles are good in zvz?

Haviz is a bit angry because I just took many arrows in volcano fractal, so bear with him

But he is right: staff is really not that great in PvE

Zelyhn.8069:

But he is right: staff is really not that great in PvE

Both you and him are wrong, but apparently any argument I come up with is either ignored or dismissed as ‘untrue because I say so’ so I’ll not bother listing any more.

haviz.1340:

Did you even read or just come here from your zerg to say how staff eles are good in zvz?

If that’s supposed to be an insult then rest assured: I’m offended. Offended that you couldn’t come up with anything better than that comment.