GW2 is clearly a mix and it is also not about balance. The game was made to cater to as many playertypes as possible. Balance wasn’t and will never be their biggest concern and this whole discussion will never even reach out to them (though I do enjoy joining for fun), so just don’t expect that anything to come out of this.
Whatever it has for variety and choice, wasn’t only meant to balance the game. One example here are how some of the classes are much easier to play and can still be as effective as other classes, so the game offers both: easy casual play and a challenge for more serious player.
‘Choice’ in gw2 evolves from the fact that every class is more or less capable of attending all and the same roles in a fight on the one hand, and that pvp in general and PVE in gw2 don’t require the player to pick a specific role on the other hand.
There are no tanks, healing specialists, or even extreme differences in two characters statsets wearing two completely different gears of the same level. (not like wow where a tank had like 3-4 times the hp/general def stats of dps spec’d char).
This is also the reason why we can have a melee only meta in WvW, which was absolutely impossible for a game like Warhammer online (almost exclusively ‘WvW’ but with very specialized classes, often unable to even hold themselves without being mixed up with other classes to counter their weaknesses- imbalanced type).
You can see GW2 has ambitions to be a ‘balanced’ game.
However, we have 3 different sources for damage: power, conditions, transformations (toughness -> power / condi etc). Despite the leading meta issue, in theory we would have to actively counter our enemies build in pvp. To have a chance against dire and rabid builds, we need conditions cleansing and some def stats on our own. Stunbreaker, invulnerabilities and traveling skills help us counter burstcombos with bonus crit damage. Everyone has to weight defense against offense, for that extra required hit on either party.
Additionally, while every class is capable of making such choices, there is no possibility to adapt during combat. If you meet a roaming Mesmer in WvW his build will most likely be aligned to current meta but it could just be anything in theory (and sometimes really is).
So let’s say you may already be spec’d to counter a bersi build, not expecting to meet anybody on your way to the zerg. Once he starts to hunt you down, there is no way for you to change that fact so you’re already counterplayed. There is no possibility to use your other utility spells (even untraited) because the game creates specialization out of nothing by limiting your hotbar slots.
This leads to the conclusion that we have counterplay and asymmetric during the actual encounters in a balanced game.
Imo, it wasn’t all balance reasons behind that design but let’s not talk about it. GW2 is a mix of both gametypes and therefor should be balanced as such. One thing that comes with such a mix is a much bigger variety of options to ‘balance stuff’ because if it just doesn’t work to balance 2 abilities so they’re equally strong, they can just change perspective and say it’s balanced relatively since ability #1 was made for an easier class or can be easier countered or belongs to an overall weaker set of abilities. It also covers quite a lot fundamental design flaws, which means they can run GW2 on a very very basic set of rules.
