I think the core of the PvE balance problems is...

Anet's design ideals vs the play style that's being pushed by the guilds that benchmark DPS.

I've noticed that part of the problem with this "my class isn't dealing enough DPS, buff pls" mentality is that people seems to be striving to be able to do good in a speed clear, that every class should be optimal, in a way, to be able to ignore mechanics, which is what the current meta pushes forward: Chrono Distortion, Quickness and all the utility it brings to make people ignore as many mechanics possible in order to make faster runs.

During Interviews and Lives, Anet has suggested using utility abilities like Scourge's Sand Portals to reach Gorseval Updrafts, something raiders seem to try to skip at all costs. Anet seems to think that most of Raiders still play by the mechanics (and fractal players as well) when in reality this isn't true at all. Playing by the mechanics instead of trying to pull off tricks like piano rotations and camera glitches (looking at Staff DD) is more fun, in my opinion, and makes victory more satisfying. After all, most people end up doing Power Reaper levels of damage in Fractals even with Elementalists and Guardians.

Of course, not everyone enjoys mechanics, and some of them are awfully dated, specially when talking about Fractals like Battlegrounds and Uncategorized, that come every so often with the Daily Fractals, ignoring the new and more polished ones with actually fun mechanics to play.

Having Raided in FFXV, I think people would be less concerned about overall DPS if battles forced players to stay mobile, on their toes, instead of trying to pull complex rotations to make your team not get screwed by green circles that souldn't even be allowed to be distorted.

The balance team is doing stuff with the idea you're not gonna try and clear it as fast as possible it seems, because in paper, most builds work and do a good enough job, but people still wants to dive in and be done quickly...

Raids for the most part do try to keep people mobile. The problem with your assertion is this, DPS across the board isn't remotely close to normalized, I.E the Delta between them is so absurd that unless you had a button on one of the under-performing classes to instantly remove the highest DPS in the game from existing they'd never come remotely close from both a practical standpoint and a purely numerical theory standpoint.

That's due to a few things. 1) Mechanics in fight generally punish Melee and even more so power due to it being a sustained fight. 2) Even if power damage "can" compete the nature of pulling some of those numbers requires execution on par with being a world class pianist. 3) Utility overload. Some classes just outright bring too much for almost no trade-offs.

A fair point. Maybe they should put in elements that make mechanic-skipping impossible. Like prevent phasing a boss out of doing a certain mechanic, make the mechanic go off no matter what. If they phase at a give HP point, then just make it so that the instant they hit that point, they become invulnerable, do their mechanic, and then continue from there.

@Ohoni.6057 said:A fair point. Maybe they should put in elements that make mechanic-skipping impossible. Like prevent phasing a boss out of doing a certain mechanic, make the mechanic go off no matter what. If they phase at a give HP point, then just make it so that the instant they hit that point, they become invulnerable, do their mechanic, and then continue from there.

They have to step up the encounter design. It's not bad but it just seems like it was designed for a completely different game; class mechanics advance and become better but we're still thrown at simply annoying fractal/dungeons...

FFXIV has by far less active mechanics, combat can be boring and at times, it feels dated... But Oh God the raids are both visually impressive and mechanically fun, and they are quite accessible because people ultimately they're dependant of player skill and knowledge. They say GW2 has easy raids yet they remain quite unaccesible.

Are you sure that dps is the major raid related current issue?

Hearing the raiders, the "top" dps is not needed in order to finish the raid, since there's plenty of time left after the kill.But ofc players pretend the easier and most efficient squad in order to play, which is just normal imho.

@Shirlias.8104 said:Are you sure that dps is the major raid related current issue?

Hearing the raiders, the "top" dps is not needed in order to finish the raid, since there's plenty of time left after the kill.But ofc players pretend the easier and most efficient squad in order to play, which is just normal imho.

Most of the complaints I see about PVE balance are DPS related, funny how there are less topics about how some classes get all the cool buffs with little to no trade off, as Tex points out, and more about "Necro not dealing enough damage" and the likes. People seems more interested in the numbers popping in the DPS metters than the rest of the things going on.

The majority of the players ends up pulling out Reaper numbers with Elementalists and Daredevils and Guardians, unless using conditions, and even then having a meta build alone isn't enough to succeed, being that most of the damage boost you get comes from PS buffs, quickness and food.

Everything is still speedrun-centric in the minds of the players, and I still bet it's mechanics-centric within Anet. I'm not saying players shouldn't enjoy speedrunning or that Anet is doing a good job designing encounters, but I can see why some people think this game is in a worse state than how it really is.

It's a lot simpler than that. Pve is rubbish because it uses less than a quarter of the actual game mechanics of gw2.

The core of the issue is that profession damage is balanced around 5-player PvP Conquest. Differences in damage are designed to compensate for other differences in profession design, from access to boons, sustain, even base health pools. Those damage differences are small in PvP, or in most of PvE. They are magnified in a dedicated group where players are applying as many of the scads of damage buffs the game provides. Also, the benchmarks are done on golems, where rotations can also be optimized. Finally, throw in that players who select the perceived best builds for instanced PvE don't care how large or small the differences are, just that there is a difference.

Aldath,

I play FFXIV myself and honestly there isn't much difference in attitudes with the "endgame" community. DPS is what everyone wants, and classes that offer support are only good if that support boosts the DPS of the group. While I do enjoy the raid encounters in FFXIV more than I do in GW2, I don't think the concerns are all that different regarding class balance. Paladin was weak at the end of the last expansion and was excluded from most groups. It didn't matter that they could easily clear the content, groups didn't want them. White Mages were in the same position - Astro could give heals as just as big and had a 10% group wide DPS buff they could put up. White Mages couldn't get groups.

While I agree that the encounter design is different, the game design as a whole is. FFXIV works on a trinity system. All encounters are designed because they know in advance the composition of the party. GW2 doesn't have that luxury - they can't make it so a certain type of skill is needed (which I would love to see more of) because they can't be sure that a certain class or build will be in the team. FFXIV doesn't have active dodging, so they have to be more lenient with how long casts take on big skills, or have to make them not insta kill so those of use playing on 100ms+ connections aren't penalised by death simply for not living next to the servers. GW2 frustrates me that way - 350ms ping often means it doesn't matter how fast my reflexes are even if I look like I managed to dodge something the server tells me I didn't.

The bigger difference between the games I feel is the duty finder. FFXIV offers a hassle free way to get a group, and while that means that you can get grouped with a tank in lvl15 DPS gear in a lvl35 dungeon (if I hadn't had two glasses of red already I'd have taken my 30min penalty and just quit) it also means that groups are being made to clear content with classes that aren't considered best DPS and because they clear it easily the stigma against those classes outside of the savage raiding community is limited. While everyone might say - oh this healer class is bad, or that tank is bad, people realise I cleared that without issue with that "bad" class. Here in GW2 all we have is the party finder and players will discriminate against classes based on the meta because outside of guild/friend groups their own experience of these "bad" classes is non-existant.

EDIT - as a side note I'd like to point out that FFXIV also has many players asking for nerfs to mechanic heavy content because they want to be able to outgear it so they don't have to do the mechanics. 2nd Coil Turn 4 (T9) is a great example - even month or so someone will make a post about nerfing the encounter because it can prove difficult for unsynced groups, what this means is that Lvl70 players can go into the lvl50 instant at lvl70 rather than 50 and still they fail because they don't do the mechanics. Frankly it isn't difficult I teach groups to do the encounter every weekend. Players just feel they should be able to one shot everything of a lower lvl at 70. And I've seen similar complaints here about encounters for GW2. Players are roughly the same in every MMO.

I agree with you but DPS is always going to be the major stat when it comes to balancing in PVE as long as you have to deal damage to bosses to clear content. If you make mechanics unskippable and introduce more movement based combat, then currently DPS weak classes will only be brought for the specific instances where their unique skill (like sand portal) can speed up the run, and continue to be excluded from everything else where their skill isnt needed. (not what id call balanced)

The huge problem continues to be some classes just bring too valuable utilities/boons in an abundance (mesmer) leaving most other supportive boon sharing builds unwanted. If they want to balance for mechanics over DPS they need to seriously nerf some classes utility and give other way more, so each class has a utility build thats universally desirable across all content.

Playing optimally doesn't cause pve balance issues, imbalance does.

Also, it doesn't matter what you do with mechanics, or if you prevent skipping... Any changes made to the game that would impact class performance just means everything would be reevaluated and class choices (and builds) would be redone to meet the new standard. The game is about killing mobs, and as such anything that deals the highest dps or provides the highest dps boost is going to be favored, no amount of mechanic switching, anti-skipping, etc is going to change this fact. All that can be done is properly balancing pvp and pve individually.

@Yamazuki.6073 said:Playing optimally doesn't cause pve balance issues, imbalance does.

Also, it doesn't matter what you do with mechanics, or if you prevent skipping... Any changes made to the game that would impact class performance just means everything would be reevaluated and class choices (and builds) would be redone to meet the new standard. The game is about killing mobs, and as such anything that deals the highest dps or provides the highest dps boost is going to be favored, no amount of mechanic switching, anti-skipping, etc is going to change this fact. All that can be done is properly balancing pvp and pve individually.

I disagree, even though in GW2 all classes are supposed to be able to perform all functions it's well known that each class does something slightly better than the others. Therefore, taking that into account you could design an encounter that utilizes every single aspect of the game and can only be mitigated by a particular classes "best" function, and the only way a group could clear that event would be to bring at least one of every single class/character to the event...imagine doing that to all PvE content/events, then everyone would be viable and it would probably only hurt those that want to speed clear everything.It's an opinion, we're all entitled to them and no ones opinion is right or wrong, just different.

I'm a bit confused: the opp mentions PvE but he seems to mean people who join raids. However, a lot of PvE players play solo. For them most of the mechanics don't work at all because the lack of a team to support - and to rely on. THESE players would like more options to protect one single player: themselves! While doing decent damage to kill bosses in groups of pugs.So: generally speaking, I believe Anet supports and rewards teamplay most of all. Including Raids. By creating support elite's instead of solo elite's. And yes, for PvP or WvW and Raids, you need different mechanics. Thats part of the game. As for solo players: they have reason to complain about all those useless support skills.

@Aldath.1275 said:Anet's design ideals vs the play style that's being pushed by the guilds that benchmark DPS.

During Interviews and Lives, Anet has suggested using utility abilities like Scourge's Sand Portals to reach Gorseval Updrafts, something raiders seem to try to skip at all costs. Anet seems to think that most of Raiders still play by the mechanics (and fractal players as well) when in reality this isn't true at all. Playing by the mechanics instead of trying to pull off tricks like piano rotations and camera glitches (looking at Staff DD) is more fun, in my opinion, and makes victory more satisfying. After all, most people end up doing Power Reaper levels of damage in Fractals even with Elementalists and Guardians.

Ok Anet still thinks that most people will use the Updraft variant? Most pugs use no-updraft and even a casual group I'm raiding with used No-Updraft. In fact this casual group got their first kill on Gorseval with No-Updraft. ( And with no PoF Specs aside from two Scourges which weren't that great on DPS ). What you said looks like a denial of reality from Anet.And being able to do Updraft is a design flaw due to including the intermission phases. ( Gorseval would have worked well without the intermission phases )

There a quite a few issues with balancing but I would also add the fact that we have too many unique buffs. And right now I see people asking for more unique buffs so that their class is wanted in High End content. If one unique buff is the reason that a class is taken than there is still something wrong with that class.

I think one of the biggest challenges is that the classes start with different base health. This causes certain classes to have to build certain ways for survival, or be super glass. It would be such easier to balance building without dealing with how health pools affect base damage or trait and gear selection.

It does not make sense to use portals to reach updrafts. If you are doing the updraft mechanic you pull gorseval to the wall to keep hitting him and the wall at the same time.

@Opopanax.1803 said:I think one of the biggest challenges is that the classes start with different base health. This causes certain classes to have to build certain ways for survival, or be super glass. It would be such easier to balance building without dealing with how health pools affect base damage or trait and gear selection.

Sorry but I disagree. Health is the least important stat when it comes to balancing because this game is built around avoiding damage not soaking it.

The core "PvE" balance problem is that PvP and PvE are so unalike they might as well be two different games, and yet they share all of the same mechanics, to wildly different levels of efficacy.

@Aldath.1275 said:

After all, most people end up doing Power Reaper levels of damage in Fractals even with Elementalists and Guardians.

Why does that sound so negative ? ^^You know that something is totally wrong with a class when someone uses it as comparison to another class doing mediocre damage.

@Albadaran.1283 said:I'm a bit confused: the opp mentions PvE but he seems to mean people who join raids. However, a lot of PvE players play solo. For them most of the mechanics don't work at all because the lack of a team to support - and to rely on. THESE players would like more options to protect one single player: themselves! While doing decent damage to kill bosses in groups of pugs.So: generally speaking, I believe Anet supports and rewards teamplay most of all. Including Raids. By creating support elite's instead of solo elite's. And yes, for PvP or WvW and Raids, you need different mechanics. Thats part of the game. As for solo players: they have reason to complain about all those useless support skills.

I agree on this, which is why my feedback on all PoF classes is that it's 100% ok to have support builds that are placed within an elite spec, but there should be no support specs that are inefficient for soloing. Every spec in the game that is designed to be good at team support needs to have at least two modes to it, one that is great at supporting other players, spreading out buffs and shields and other benefits to everyone around them, and a second that focuses all that potential inwards, buffing and shielding the character so that he's as strong a soloer as any other spec. You can switch between these by making different traiting and stat choices, but essentially you should be able to build a character who's 30% self-buffing and 70% buffing everyone else, or 80% self-buffing and 20% buffing anyone nearby, all within the same spec. You should either be able to make a healer that can pump out decent heals to everyone else in exchange for weak DPS, OR a build that can have solid personal DPS while pumping solid heals to yourself for soloing, all within the same spec.

It isn't just raids. I'm going through the PoF maps on 7 out of the 9 classes, and so far doing it on the Firebrand was like taking a leisurely stroll through the mall. Doing it on the Holosmith has seen me nearly kiss the dirt any time a break bar shows up. Much like how most class compositions can beat raids, most classes can beat things in the overworld. However, this does not mean that boons, buffs, bursts, DPS, CC, AoE, Self Sustain, and invulnerability skills play no part in the journey. How strong a class is also determines the kind of experience that players of that class have.

PvE is NOT raiding.Sure raiding IS a part of PvE, a small part.

Thats a by product of raids being too simplistic and having mechanics that require only a handful of ppl instead of the whole group or can even be skipped by the almighty distort. If raids were more complex and required more attention for the entirety of the squad ud see ppl care less about braindead dps and more about doing the mechanics.

@zealex.9410 said:Thats a by product of raids being too simplistic and having mechanics that require only a handful of ppl instead of the whole group or can even be skipped by the almighty distort. If raids were more complex and required more attention for the entirety of the squad ud see ppl care less about braindead dps and more about doing the mechanics.

It doesn't man that the dps would mean any less. It's just that the meta would shift towards builds offering high-dps with simpler rotations.

@Aldath.1275 said:Anet's design ideals vs the play style that's being pushed by the guilds that benchmark DPS.

I've noticed that part of the problem with this "my class isn't dealing enough DPS, buff pls" mentality is that people seems to be striving to be able to do good in a speed clear, that every class should be optimal, in a way, to be able to ignore mechanics, which is what the current meta pushes forward: Chrono Distortion, Quickness and all the utility it brings to make people ignore as many mechanics possible in order to make faster runs.

During Interviews and Lives, Anet has suggested using utility abilities like Scourge's Sand Portals to reach Gorseval Updrafts, something raiders seem to try to skip at all costs. Anet seems to think that most of Raiders still play by the mechanics (and fractal players as well) when in reality this isn't true at all. Playing by the mechanics instead of trying to pull off tricks like piano rotations and camera glitches (looking at Staff DD) is more fun, in my opinion, and makes victory more satisfying. After all, most people end up doing Power Reaper levels of damage in Fractals even with Elementalists and Guardians.

Of course, not everyone enjoys mechanics, and some of them are awfully dated, specially when talking about Fractals like Battlegrounds and Uncategorized, that come every so often with the Daily Fractals, ignoring the new and more polished ones with actually fun mechanics to play.

Having Raided in FFXV, I think people would be less concerned about overall DPS if battles forced players to stay mobile, on their toes, instead of trying to pull complex rotations to make your team not get screwed by green circles that souldn't even be allowed to be distorted.

The balance team is doing stuff with the idea you're not gonna try and clear it as fast as possible it seems, because in paper, most builds work and do a good enough job, but people still wants to dive in and be done quickly...

That's all well and true, but I don't think it's a problem.

First and foremost, this mentality exists everywhere and there's nothing you can do to change it. It's not just about being optimal, it's about minimizing the risk.

Obviously, you can never have a balance where every single class is optimal. Aside from classes being carbon copies of one another, there's no way to do that. So the dev team can do the next best thing - make sure every class is viable. Of course, it depends on the definition of "viable". Technically, you can clear everything - literally everything - with any comp, using any classes. So technically they are all viable. However, the majority of the players who play the content on a regular basis, be it daily fractals or weekly raid clears, prefer to make fast, predictable runs. Can you blame them? I've played this encounter time and again. I know how easy it can be. Why would I want to make it hard on myself and risk wasting hours in wiping when I know how to avoid it?

In its core, the conflict is between what the new players want vs what the veteran players do.