Guild Wars 2

Problem with lich is, on any enemy that isnt your size (or max norn/charr size) it overshoots the target if its within 450 range and there are enemies behind them (test it on the dummies in LA or any small-medius sized human enemy, not evident in spvp because of hitbox generalization of players but you still cant hit stuff like a bone minion/jhorror if its infront of you in lich)

Bhawb.7408:

Talentless.5708:

I think in the above scenario, we do have an “I win” button if you run a pow/prec/tough build. It’s called Lich form. 4-6k #1, underrated #4 and situational #3 = bags-a-plenty.

If I remember correctly, doesn’t Lich 1 pierce?

yessir

ndrangles.5183:

yea, you don’t have escape skills, but you have mad survivability. in WvW, the best i can do when i want to flee an enemy zerg is to kite and tank them while inching towards the nearest friendly structure. with all the chill and fear, consume conditions being the best heal in the game + locust signet’s massive heal, it’s not uncommon to lead 5+ people on a wild goose chase all the way to a tower or keep.

Or off a cliff. Half the time I get pulled or blown away attempting to lead 5+ people because stability on necromancer isn’t cheap. Although spectral walk combined with the necromancers various slows probably annoys the hell out of most chasers.

Necromancer’s escapes aren’t good enough to make opponents give up early, and they aren’t bad enough to make escaping impossible. Goose chases for everyone.

Wow, entertaining thread!

Necro does not have straight forward I-WIN or panic buttons. So a lot of people struggle with it and say its a broken or bad class.

I have great survivabilty running a wells build. See that trait that gives 3 sec protection on wells? Use it! 3 seconds isn’t enough you say? It is when you use runes and traits that increase its duration to 4+ seconds and the 25% proc for another 4 secs (turns into 6+ secs). I use 4 wells, the utility ones and the healing one. That’s over 20 seconds of protection right there. Don’t spam all your wells at once unless you really in trouble.

Lay down well of blood, gives you a nice big heal plus 10 seconds of aoe heals for your crew, use staff 4 and throw conditions back to enemies and grants area retaliation, switch to axe/focus, more retaliation. DS trait for another 3 secs of retal and also trait to remove a condition, DS4 to heal your buddies and aoe dmg. Those pesky mdps have almost killed themselves from retal alone, focus 5 to strip 3 boons they using to save themselves, focus 4 for 12% extra damage and some regen, then axe 2 to burst them down. By now your wells are coming off CD so here we go again.

And that’s just 1 way to play a necro. Its a deep and versatile class that looks bad on paper to theorycrafters. I agree with those who say that buffing necro could make them OP.

Bas.7406:

Except you are incorrect in your assumptions. The lower skilled class can triumph over a high skilled class because there is less room for error. Because more people are able to play warriors than ele’s well you have class balance. A higher skill cap which is only attainable by a few can beat a similarly skilled warrior with all things being perfect. Because we are not perfect, the ele has a higher probability of losing the fight, and will definitely lose to a skilled warrior if he makes a single mistake.

This is the definition of balance. OP would be if the warrior was the best class to play regardless of player. The thief before they nerfed BS and HB were the definition of OP. You could press two buttons and no one could survive. That is OP.

You simply proved yoru inability to understand OP. OP is when a simple thing can wreck a complex thing regardless of skill level. In the case of the Ele versus Warrior, the Warrior will wreck the ele if the ele makes a dumb mistake. If the ele doesn’t the warrior will lose.

You said that if a Warrior is stronger at lower levels, than it’s fine that a higher levels it’ll suck balls compared to Elementalist. That’s not.

In a situation of perfect balance any profession should have the same chances to win a fight and those chances should be linked ONLY to the skill level, not the profession itself. That means that if a Warrior made a mistake and the Elementalist did not, then the Warrior should lose and vice versa. The result of a fight shouldn’t be only linked to the overall Elementalist skill level and attention. Yours is a distorced concept of balance.

Your words: “OP is when a simple thing can wreck a complex thing regardless of skill level. In the case of the Ele versus Warrior, the Warrior will wreck the ele if the ele makes a dumb mistake. If the ele doesn’t the warrior will lose.”
So, taking a medium skilled Elementalist, which still makes some mistakes and a completely low skilled Warrior, in your opinion, balance-wise, the Elementalist deserves to lose if he makes any dumb mistake while the Warrior can make any dumb mistake he wants and deserve to win? Is that balance? Seriously?

The Thief who can wreck people with 2 skills is not imbalanced, it is just broken and not working as intended. A Warrior which isn’t capable to be competitive in high competitive environments is imbalanced. A Thief which is capable to destroy people with ease at low skill levels is imbalanced. An Elementalist which has far way potential compared to other professions in high level plays is imbalanced.

Survivability, as has been mentioned by many here is quite good. You can soak up a good deal of dmg, you can keep regen on you with staff 2. You have DS, and while some may not like it, I use it both defensively and offensively since I do a good deal of crit dmg in DS.
I won’t go into anything except survivability, so in short, yes it is good, untill your CD’s are starting to go on cooldown, then you will start to see your HP drop and it is hard to recover again. If you, like me, carry a dagger it helps regain HP with the drain life, and along with staff 2 it is actually manageable.
If you are in a situation where you know you cannot survive, then yes, you are going to die, simple as that. As has been pointed out by many, you can’t run with any skill. You can try to juke with spectral run (w/e it’s called) but you prolly will be caught.
This is the exact reason why I’m carrying Norn – Become the Snow Leopard, stealth and a 3000 yd charge and restealth, it is the best and only option for me to save my hide when the kitten hits the fan, and believe me it has saved me more times than any of the other necro abilities so far. (I do switch it out for lich sometimes to do some nasty dmg )

Love all the walls of text, having spent an entertaining morning reading every word of the Trollfest thats developed here its actually easy to summarise:

1. Some think Necro balance and skills are ok, others dont (that covers 75% of this thread).
2. For survivability that the OP asked about its mostly rock paper scissors; they can survive well if Necros suit your play style and learn to play their strengths.

Aaaand I got the occasion to test out the digitizer.
This is my idea of balance (those are learning curves by the way):

http://i50.tinypic.com/bjerkn.jpg

According to bas, we are in the 1st situation and it is fine as it is. Well…

I think the graphs are self explicative, but if something isn’t clear, I can write another wall of text to help you understand.

Obviously perfect balance is an unreachable situation, but I put it there to show what the target is.

The link didn’t work.

I’ve edited the post, it was probably some skydrive privacy settings.

sorrow, thanks for the picture. It really helped me understand your point. Here’s a question for you: given a game as complicated as GW2, do you think that such balance is possible?

Its a gross oversimplification of their interaction, and has misleading ideas. It shows the relation between time invested and skill, but it leads you to believe that whoever’s line is on top wins. Also, the “perfect” curve is false. All that needs for balance is for the realistic in-game output of two classes to be similar at their highest levels. That means that even though elementalist “perfect” play will outclass warrior “perfect” play, it isn’t really possible for an elementalist to actually play perfectly, there are too many decisions going on at once, too many skills and CDs to track, too much to do that it just cannot happen. Warriors on the other hand can pretty reasonably do this nearly all the time. That means in a fight between a great warrior and a great elementalist, the warrior is doing his best to not just play perfect (because this isn’t too hard for him), but to force the elementalist to not play perfect, because that is the counterplay to the elementalist’s higher skill cap. If he cannot reach the cap, his advantage is lost, and he is stuck playing a very difficult class without the benefits of it.

OP is, in its simplest form, the lack of counterplay. At lower levels, counterplay can be skill, or playing on your opponent’s lack of skill, at higher levels, it could be using teamwork to beat a stronger opponent 2v1, or knowing their skill rotation and interrupting it, but the only time something is OP is if there are no tools available to you to defeat them.

@sorrow – It is apparent that you and I will agree to disagree. I would take the time to go over the differences between balance and equality/similarity. How niche fields bring balance, but destroy equality and the push for everyone having the same advantages which is where the confusion lies.

As for your drawings, they hold enough truth to cause an error in understanding. It’s as one person once pointed out to me. You know just enough to be wrong. You are not far off, but you took a left when a right would help you to arrive at the correct conclusion.

I would go into more details, but I am writing a column on this exact topic and it’s regard to gaming for a website that’s about to launch.

Bhawb.7408:

Its a gross oversimplification of their interaction, and has misleading ideas. It shows the relation between time invested and skill, but it leads you to believe that whoever’s line is on top wins. Also, the “perfect” curve is false. All that needs for balance is for the realistic in-game output of two classes to be similar at their highest levels. That means that even though elementalist “perfect” play will outclass warrior “perfect” play, it isn’t really possible for an elementalist to actually play perfectly, there are too many decisions going on at once, too many skills and CDs to track, too much to do that it just cannot happen. Warriors on the other hand can pretty reasonably do this nearly all the time. That means in a fight between a great warrior and a great elementalist, the warrior is doing his best to not just play perfect (because this isn’t too hard for him), but to force the elementalist to not play perfect, because that is the counterplay to the elementalist’s higher skill cap. If he cannot reach the cap, his advantage is lost, and he is stuck playing a very difficult class without the benefits of it.

OP is, in its simplest form, the lack of counterplay. At lower levels, counterplay can be skill, or playing on your opponent’s lack of skill, at higher levels, it could be using teamwork to beat a stronger opponent 2v1, or knowing their skill rotation and interrupting it, but the only time something is OP is if there are no tools available to you to defeat them.

My graph doesn’t show the relation between time invested and skill, that relation is personal an vary among all the individuals.
My graph shows the relation between skill level, which is of course related to time invested, because higher time invested means higher skill level and, most important point, it can be mesaured (doing an analysis on the mistakes someone makes) and does not vary from individuals. Obviously someone’s skill level isn’t a constant, but it vary related to many other factors. You can, for instance, one day being on a skill level and another day being on another skill level because you probably have fever, who knows.

That graph was of course a simplification, but it is only simplificated for informational purposes and does not lose its meaning.

What I want to point out is that in a situation of perfect balance, the only thing that matters is your skill level at playing your profession, not the profession you’re playing and those graphs show it nicely.

OP doesn’t absolutely mean the lack of counterplay. Lack of counterplay means broken. There are a bunch of examples back to Guild Wars of builds being nerfed not because they lack of counters, but because they were way too powerful and too easy to play. I don’t know if you played GW1 or not, but a good example of that can be SWAY or IWAY. If you didn’t, those builds were both nerfed, despite the fact that they can be easily countered by balling up and spamming AoE, since all the damage output is melee ranged.

lettucemode.3789:

sorrow, thanks for the picture. It really helped me understand your point. Here’s a question for you: given a game as complicated as GW2, do you think that such balance is possible?

Of course I don’t believe GW2 will reach the “Perfect Balance” state. But I think that if it reach the “Good Balance” state it will be more than enough to not notice any balance issues.

Bas.7406:

cut

Please, don’t confuse equality with balance. Equality means that you cut away any differences (thus balance two same amounts of the same material), balance means that you put some here, some there to make something weight as much as something else (so two different amounts of two different materials which weight overall the same).

Equality => Balance
Balance =/=> Equality

My graphs don’t imply that the performance level (weights) should be reached in the same way in every professions.

Nerfs to FOTM builds or just very strong builds in general are a completely different issue. Then we start to talk about things that are just strong enough that they overcentralize the game, although they still retain counterplay. Or something which has such a small, specific counterplay that it is unrealistic to expect people to deal with it.

Bhawb.7408:

Nerfs to FOTM builds or just very strong builds in general are a completely different issue. Then we start to talk about things that are just strong enough that they overcentralize the game, although they still retain counterplay. Or something which has such a small, specific counterplay that it is unrealistic to expect people to deal with it.

Nerf to FOTM builds or very strong builds is a balance issue. People like to win and they like more if they do it as easier as they can.
I can make you many other examples, like Hexway, Rspike, all the Assassins builds (Palm, Seeping, Shattering Assault and so on). Those builds became FOTM because they were overpowered. People like overpowered builds.

This thread has a lot of walls-o-text. It’s tearing us all apart! Tear down these walls!!!

sorrow.2364:

[

cut

Please, don’t confuse equality with balance. Equality means that you cut away any differences (thus balance two same amounts of the same material), balance means that you put some here, some there to make something weight as much as something else (so two different amounts of two different materials which weight overall the same).

Equality => Balance
Balance =/=> Equality

My graphs don’t imply that the performance level (weights) should be reached in the same way in every professions.

This was my point, you just agreed with me while stating you don’t agree with me. Either way this is a discussion I am covering in a column :P.

Bas.7406:

This was my point, you just agreed with me while stating you don’t agree with me. Either way this is a discussion I am covering in a column :P.

No, man, what we are trying to say is completely different.
What you have said is that it is fine that a certain skill level there is a discrepancy between two profession in terms of performance and it can’t be otherwise unless you have the complete equality. What I’m trying to say, on the other side, is that it isn’t and that you can get equal performance without have complete equality and this what we should aim to get balance.

sorrow.2364:

Bas.7406:

This was my point, you just agreed with me while stating you don’t agree with me. Either way this is a discussion I am covering in a column :P.

No, man, what we are trying to say is completely different.
What you have said is that it is fine that a certain skill level there is a discrepancy between two profession in terms of performance and it can’t be otherwise unless you have the complete equality. What I’m trying to say, on the other side, is that it isn’t and that you can get equal performance without have complete equality and this what we should aim to get balance.

You are really intent on drawing me out before I can finish my column on this.

Look, herein lies the difference.

Balance is arriving at the same end from two different methods. Equality is making sure you get there at the same time the same way.

Equal Performance output is not possible if you want to keep unique playstyles available.

Balance is possible with unique playstyles and professions. Equal Performance is not. If every class has the ability to burst a class down in 2.5 seconds that is equal performance and can be conceived as balance. That is the way a first person shooter works. It’s also really boring and has no unique playstyle except in terms of visual effect. This is what you want.

Balance is a fine curve that you have to play if you want to keep a unique playstyle to games. You turn it too much in one direction and you lose the effectivenss of a playstyle too much in another and it becomes overpowered. You are playing with cause and effect here, and that’s trouble when you are trying to achieve a level of balance.

A class that’s defensive orientated that has the potential of high damage can be drastically op depending on how you balance. If you want to keep in Niche styles (which is exactly what Anet and I want) than you lose the Equality in specific jobs that you seek.

Some classes will be able to survive longer than other. Some classes will deal more damage so in order to achieve balance you sacrifice some facets for others so that both can reach the same point via different means.

Equal Performance (what you want) can only equal Balance at the sacrifice of unique and niche fields (what anet and I want).

This is what I mean by you are confusing equality with Balance. Yes your way brings balance in the same way a first person shooter does. But it destroys the uniqueness of each class and gives you a homogenization of classes.

Games went so far in that direction that there was no point in playing one class or the other outside of visual effect. What’s the point in a game that does that? Balance can be achieved by roles, and each class playing their specific role well.

You say balance means I should have the same mobility and ease of use as another class. That’s not balance that’s equal performance and homogenization which is difficult to do because everyone has different tools that they pickup easily.

Balance is me being able to defeat an opponent using the tools at my disposal. it might take longer or require me to kite or knockdown or use a combination of skills but I can still kill him. He can still kill me with his rush in and blow something up. The tradeoff is he loses the ability to survive or close gaps to reach that point.

Balance says that no single class can kill every other class without me being able to kill them

TLDR: Balance is not always Equal Performance at a specific job. Balance simply means that we can both reach the same point (killing a target) through different means or skill level doesnt’ matter we both reached the same point and have the ability to get there.

sorrow, I notice that while you’ve made your point that GW2 should be more well balanced, you haven’t offered any suggestions as to how this could be achieved. I don’t bring this up to belittle you, I am bringing it up to make a point. Let’s take a look at the example already given in this thread – eles vs. warriors. Let’s say you tweak things so that a signet warrior has an equal chance vs. a D/D ele at all levels of play. But then the warrior switches to rifle and shouts. Does that balance still hold? Now you have to tweak the rifle vs. D/D balance while somehow not messing with the signet vs. D/D balance. But then the ele goes S/D. And even if you get every single build between eles and warriors balanced now you have probably screwed with all their matchups against all the other professions.

Here is the point: balance on the level you describe it is simply not possible in complicated asymmetric games like GW2.

sorrow.2364:

you can get equal performance without have complete equality and this what we should aim to get balance.

The problem with this statement is that there is no historical precedent for it. There is no asymmetric competitive game that is balanced for all levels of skill. Video game gameplay systems are often so complicated and have so many things going on that balance to the degree you want it is simply not possible. And so some strategies work better at low levels of skill than at higher ones, some strategies take less effort to pull of than others, etc. It is simply the nature of asymmetric, complicated games such as GW2. Take a look at other such games – Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW arena, CS, LoL DotA and HoN, BLC, Tribes, etc etc etc – none of them are well balanced at every skill level of play.

Since the designers can’t balance for all levels of skill, they have to focus on just one to balance for. And the only choice that makes sense is the high level of play. The differences between the lines in your graphs is representative of the game, I’m not disputing that, but it is a tradeoff the designers have to make to get the game balanced for skilled players. That’s simply the way things are.

@lettuce, that is correct. That’s why equality in gaming is impossible. Let’s say we give everyone access to every tool and each class can reach the same level of performance with the same button pushes. Now the game essentially becomes a fast twitch memory game. Who can hit the button faster, who has the better computer, this is why I am no good at thieves. I think a bit slower, but you give me an attrition class and I have a chance against players who have the ability to play one trick ponies that require quick timing to not get destroyed.

This in essence is balance. In order to keep the gameplay from being based entirely on computer performance and having those with less skills or fast twitch responses you have to have unequal skill caps. This is balance.

Two completely alternative thoughts arriving at the same point from different methods. They may not arrive at the same place at the exact same time, but they gave up less to get there.

I will not address any point of you guys because of lack of space, so I’ll sum up what I want to say as short as I can.

I’ve never said that any build should perform overall the same.
Performance mean performing good in a specific ambit they are meant to be good at. This ambit can be support, damage, defense, damage over time and so on. You can easily see that Guild Wars 2 is built to be balanced around any class being able to match any role they want, you can see that on how traitlines are designed, but any profession fit their role differently. This means that if you need a damage profession, you should never feel forced to pick a Thief. If you want to build a tanky profession, you should never be forced to pick a Guardian and so on. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about ROLES, obviusly a Thief or an Elementalist is always the best choice as a roamer and this is fine.

For instance, a Thief is capable to deal either burst and condition damage. Condition damage is dealt with high duration at short range and burst damage is fast, close range and single targeted. The Necro, on the other hand, is capable to deal conditions at range but with short duration, so they need to be maintained, while the burst damage is dealt at longer range but takes more time to be performed or at close range with Dagger being slightly faster. But, at the end of the day, the amount of damage they deal is the same, but they deal them in a different way and they are both effective and good at this role.

Every profession should be as viable as any other into every aspect and all in a different way and playstyle. This mean that as an Elementalist you are supposed to have access to a Warrior-like build (talking about learning curves) and as a Warrior you are supposed to have access to an Elementalist-like build.
This is far away to be impossible and there are so many ways to accomplish this target, expecially if we consider that Guild Wars 2 has a very limited number of skills and traits.

Actually you are incorrect. Guild wars 2 is not about being able to play any role, and this is where you are going wrong. Guild Wars 2 is about not having roles. Guild Wars2 is about being able to complete any facet of the game with any class without having to have assigned dps/tank/healer.

You mistook their we want everyone to be able to play without assigned roles as everyone can switch to whatever role they want. There is no tank, there is no dps, there is no healer. There are more bunkerish builds, there are more defensive classes, but there are no roles. If you want to do straight damage high end than that is the niche a thief or mesmer plays.

You can complete the entire game with 5 thieves in your group or 5 of anything because there is no need for tanks/dps/healers. That is the goal of GW 2. Now I see why you are confused.

Bas.7406:

Actually you are incorrect. Guild wars 2 is not about being able to play any role, and this is where you are going wrong. Guild Wars 2 is about not having roles. Guild Wars2 is about being able to complete any facet of the game with any class without having to have assigned dps/tank/healer.

You mistook their we want everyone to be able to play without assigned roles as everyone can switch to whatever role they want. There is no tank, there is no dps, there is no healer. There are more bunkerish builds, there are more defensive classes, but there are no roles. If you want to do straight damage high end than that is the niche a thief or mesmer plays.

You can complete the entire game with 5 thieves in your group or 5 of anything because there is no need for tanks/dps/healers. That is the goal of GW 2. Now I see why you are confused.

Keep in mind that I’m not talking about ROLES

Please, I’ve used the word aspect for a reason. Probably I’ve used the word role, but I’ve specified that it isn’t meant to be used as the conventional meaning the MMO community is used to.

There is a reason if Necromancer have a power traitline and Thieves a toughness traitline.

lettucemode.3789:

sorrow, I notice that while you’ve made your point that GW2 should be more well balanced, you haven’t offered any suggestions as to how this could be achieved. I don’t bring this up to belittle you, I am bringing it up to make a point. Let’s take a look at the example already given in this thread – eles vs. warriors. Let’s say you tweak things so that a signet warrior has an equal chance vs. a D/D ele at all levels of play. But then the warrior switches to rifle and shouts. Does that balance still hold? Now you have to tweak the rifle vs. D/D balance while somehow not messing with the signet vs. D/D balance. But then the ele goes S/D. And even if you get every single build between eles and warriors balanced now you have probably screwed with all their matchups against all the other professions.

Here is the point: balance on the level you describe it is simply not possible in complicated asymmetric games like GW2.

sorrow.2364:

you can get equal performance without have complete equality and this what we should aim to get balance.

The problem with this statement is that there is no historical precedent for it. There is no asymmetric competitive game that is balanced for all levels of skill. Video game gameplay systems are often so complicated and have so many things going on that balance to the degree you want it is simply not possible. And so some strategies work better at low levels of skill than at higher ones, some strategies take less effort to pull of than others, etc. It is simply the nature of asymmetric, complicated games such as GW2. Take a look at other such games – Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW arena, CS, LoL DotA and HoN, BLC, Tribes, etc etc etc – none of them are well balanced at every skill level of play.

Since the designers can’t balance for all levels of skill, they have to focus on just one to balance for. And the only choice that makes sense is the high level of play. The differences between the lines in your graphs is representative of the game, I’m not disputing that, but it is a tradeoff the designers have to make to get the game balanced for skilled players. That’s simply the way things are.

Actually, both Dota and SC2 had long time periods of perfect balance all the way from medium to high end gameplay, for Dota: mid skill level is great if both teams know the basics and work together and for high end Korea using Axe Veno -and other debuff kill focused- combo to kittenslap BKB teamfight abuse and then EU getting back with single target control gankers -bane, clockwerk, beastmaster- against both did show that it was just that the rooster was so big that not all people thought of hardcounters that exist; for SC2: Blizzs love for map shuffle and terran buffs because of popularity did kitten it up, but lost temple, xelnaga and metalopolis didnt favour any race in a special way and if the player knew how to scout you could just counterbuild. Also Tribes and Planetside got balance patches out really fast and it was mostly of knowing what the enemy has (not to run into a Doombringer as a Pathfinder and then complain why the remains of your face are all over his helmet or complain why anything with burst of armor-piercing damage can kill a Flail if you went out without a equipped team).
The example of Ele vs Warrior should be more based on their general benefits (warrior trying to get the ele to use his burst combo so that he pops stability and just spins/jumps away or stuns the ele back, while the ele wants the warrior to spend his cooldowns so that he can burst him without retaliation) and poping cooldowns, not actual builds, if a player choses to remove one of his weaknesses, he shouldnt be able to do more than normal in one of the areas he could be really good in. Random pvp should not be a judge for it, nor may WvWvW since they are based on chaos and luck, just like pugs in DotA. Balance is a state of equilibrium where both sides have the same total sum, that does not just fall under kill potential. Thus balance examples would be a Mesmer that can chain stop a hunter from getting him, but never deal enough damage to actually kill him no matter the time count, a Necromancer who while being able to tank 5 people unable to kill even 1 of them no matter how long he tries because his damage would be too low, a thief who can stack 20 stacks of bleeds in a second and half, but unable to do that again for a amount of time that would result in just as much damage delt back to him OR chose to know that it would be a waste and instead deal 5 stacks of bleeds every second over 4 seconds.
Offense/Defenses/Utility/Enemy Control/Self Control are all parts of balance so a warrior with 10/4/2/5/3 fighting a 4/6/6/6/2 would be balanced and then just dependant on player interaction and the actual skill interactions.