For those who don’t know, yesterday, I released a survey allowing users to vote for what they thought was the worst classes within the various aspects of the game (PvE, WvW, sPvP, etc.). Following my earlier thread on the matter, I promised to release the numbers after accruing what I felt was a reasonable number of votes. Now that I have 1500 votes, and the distributions are no longer changing substantially, I believe that time has come.
If you haven’t already taken the survey, here it is: http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=b6hqtkxynle08vr178091
If you don’t care for graph’s, I’ve got a written analysis too.
Results:
So, here are the results of almost 1500 votes: http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-ED95F5FCB9654F3BA3F637D7E89D011E.pdf
After 1800 votes: http://kwiksurveys.com/tmp_pdf/report-CCC1A276386A48288ED187E683949FEE.pdf
Written Analysis:
What is the worst class in open world PvE (exploration, events, etc.)?
The community was fairly split here. The largest category was that They are all
fairly balanced with ~19% of the votes. However, there were clear choices after that, with the first being Thief (15% of the vote) and Ranger (14% of the vote). Shortly following that were the Mesmer and Engineer (sharing ~11% of the vote). The rest of the classes had substantially fewer votes.
What is the worst class in instanced content (dungeons, fractals, etc)?
Far and away, the community selected the Ranger as the worst class in dungeons and other instanced content (~45% of the votes) with the Thief as a distant second (15% of the votes). I think this might have to do with the class’s rather low DPS compared to others.
What is the worst class in large scale WvW combat (Zerg vs. Zerg)?
Again, we have the Ranger leading with ~28% of the vote, and the Thief is second with ~22% of the vote. This is starting to look like a pattern.
What is the worst class in small scale WvW combat (small skirmishes and battles without commanders)?
Now we get some substantially different results. While the Ranger is still leading with ~24% of the vote, the Warrior has surged to second place with ~20% of the vote.
What is the worst class in arranged PvP environments (tournaments, other sPvP)?
Now we have come full circle. What is considered one of the strongest classes in PvE, is now considered one of the weakest classes in sPvP – the Warrior – leading with 38% of the vote. The Ranger is a distant second with ~14% of the vote.
So, there it is. According to the law of large numbers, I don’t think the results will change substantially.
I think one of the really important points to take away from this is that balance across the different elements of the game is very different and needs to be treated separately. The Ranger is widely percieved as one of the weakest classes in PvE and WvW, yet due to a very powerful build it had in sPvP, it was nerfed substantially – widening this balance gap. I think these results show that the ArenaNet team needs to put a bigger effort into ensuring that each of its game formats is balanced rather than trying to balance with a “one size fits all” mentality.
Read: Playing to Win.
Guide: How to play a Mesmer in dungeons.
(edited by TheKillerAngel.3596)