Please be careful with split balancing - it should never be the go-to method

Hello Anet,

As title says i just wanted to point out that you should be careful with split balancing. It is not to be used lightly as it fundamentally changes the feel and flow of the class in different modes - it should instead be used only as a last resort when normal means of balancing seems inadequate or it will result in reduced quality of the game.

I have just noticed you seem to be jumping aboard this train but let me just warn you - abuse and the game will suffer. It is a last resort and should always be used as such, as ultimately the noblest design goal should be consistency in class experience when playing the game.

Cheers!

On the other hand. this game will never be balanced without it. What seems fair and good in pve doesnt necessarily relate to pvp and vice versa. Should it be done as sparingly as possible? yes. Things like casting times should definitely be the last change. Healing , damage numbers and cooldown changes are a necessary evil to appease both Raid and PvP groups since both have the right as customers to enjoy the game with as fair of a balance as possible. I'm personally hoping for more skill splits so there can be more build diversity in PvE content.

I wholly disagree. A lot of GW2’s problems, past and present, would’ve been handily solved using it. It should’ve been the way they handled things from the very start.

Case in point the current uselessness of Confusion in PvE.

I disagree with you OP. Case in point Deadeye Rifle, they initially tried to balance around Deadeye rifle around WvW/sPvP to keep it fair and balanced which made it lack luster and awful for PvE. It has only started to shine since they split balance it for PvE to make it somewhat decent now which they should have done from the beginning which is what everyone suggested for them to do.Split balance is the only true way to save the balance of this game. They should have started mass split balancing a long time ago to have averted the current issues we have now with balancing. Here's hoping they split balance DH LB for PvE to make it decent like they did DE Rifle since they are on the right track now.

I disagree. All skills should be split by default so that they can be balanced based on game-mode. I'd even be OK with PvP/WvW getting their own Traitlines as well.

One size fits all never actually fits anything.

I agree with the OP.Skill splitting IS a good and fast band-aid, but it doesn't solve the origin of the problem, the basic concept that failed. If you keep constructing over that kind of fast repair, you'll eventually need to backtrack to address the original problem... and the multiple ramifications of the splitting will make everything worse, or impossible to repair.

@"Oglaf.1074" said:I wholly disagree. A lot of GW2’s problems, past and present, would’ve been handily solved using it. It should’ve been the way they handled things from the very start.

Case in point the current uselessness of Confusion in PvE.

This!Not only that but Herald went from meta to irrelevant in PvE (Raids) because of a change meant for WvW. Scourge, just recently went from almost good to useless in PvE because of PvP salt. Etc.

People with OP's opinion obviously either have short memory or haven't played enough GW2 to know what they're talking about.PvE and PvP are too distinct in every aspect: duration of fights, AI vs player control, Damage efficacy (as in mobs have tens of thousands to millions of HP, while most classes barely make it past 20k).So there is a real need for skill splitting.Sure there are issues that are mechanical, and should be addressed by changing mechanics (Scourge for example). But every skill and even a lot of traits should have a split pvp and pve component.

PvP skills should always be more front-loaded (more instant) than PvE. You only have 10 minutes per match to play in PvP, and you don't want to spend 1/10th of that killing a single player.Confusion damage should be more focused on the DoT component for PvE and more on the "per skill" component in PvP. As in PvE your enemies don't attack nearly as often as a player, so confusion needs to be more of a DoT there, while in PvP you can use it's true form - a punishment for spamming skills.Cleanses should have less CD in PvP, again because it needs to be more intensive and front-loaded.PvE damage needs to be higher than PvP, and conditions can be allowed to be more of a DoT than in PvP, while power damage needs to burst higher, but less often.Etc.

FYI they tried the regular method for over 5 years. Let them change it up.

I resoundingly disagree.

@Oglaf.1074 said:I wholly disagree. A lot of GW2’s problems, past and present, would’ve been handily solved using it. It should’ve been the way they handled things from the very start.

Case in point the current uselessness of Confusion in PvE.

This, this, this! A lot of classes and PETS have been utterly gutted because of the complaints in PVP. Those complaints then transferred to PvE where it only hurt the players. And that made a lot players leave.

And honestly? If this latest round of nonsense transferred to PvE, I'd be done too.

Splitting the two is the smartest decision ANet's ever made.

@Razor.6392 said:FYI they tried the regular method for over 5 years. Let them change it up.

I do agree with that. However, IMO the OP is right: they need to be careful.

I see zero issue with splitting the balance between the three major game modes. WvW has needed this for a long time now.

I also see how this is played. So let me add that I know I'm right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong. Now if only there was a stamp your feet and hold your breath emoji to crank up the hyperbole.

Absolutely, better late than never.

Nowhere did you see me say not to do it. All i said was, be careful it is a powerful tool and should not be used lightly.

@Crackmonster.2790 said:As i said, deal with the statements or leave it to those of us who can think.Derivatives are in part logical consequences of initial statements, making blanket statements that do not touch the topic does not qualify as discussion.

Or, people can continue on and discuss this ignoring your condescending tone because you are not as powerful and smart as you think you are.

Back to the matter at hand, split balance needs to go forward to bring sub par weapons and specs back up to good standards for PvE because of the past couple years balancing them for WvW/PvP has destroyed their general use in PvE. A-net is finally on the right path with more split balancing to save the balance of the game, and not destroy it even further by leaving builds behind. So good luck and continue doing what you are doing A-net because it is good work.

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:A lot of classes and PETS have been utterly gutted because of the complaints in PVP.Yeah, that, the smokescale and rock gazelle in particular got butchered for PVE because of salty PVPers.

@Oglaf.1074 said:I wholly disagree. A lot of GW2’s problems, past and present, would’ve been handily solved using it. It should’ve been the way they handled things from the very start.

Case in point the current uselessness of Confusion in PvE.Came here to say this. Beat me to it.

I keep thinking of what happened with City of Heroes. One of the things that murdered the game was Issue 6, where they restructured all of PVP so that all of the skills worked differently between game modes. This change just alienated the current PVP playerbase, while also creating a nigh insurmountable barrier of entry for PVErs who are looking to PVP. You practically had to learn the entire game mode from scratch.

I suspect that this is the reason that Anet went hard on keeping skills similar between modes. IF the skills aren't similar, you create dissonance between modes, which then creates massive rifts, which then causes the game to segment and die.

In my opinion, they have been far too cautious splitting skills & amounts of damage. It's been over 5 years and ANet's barely split anything in a meaningful way. Everyone with a favorite build has had it affected by a changed needed for another game mode (more often PvErs affected by a need to fix a problem in WvW & PvP, but it's happened the other way round too).

Frankly, I welcome our new split-skill/split-number overlords.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I keep thinking of what happened with City of Heroes. One of the things that murdered the game was Issue 6, where they restructured all of PVP so that all of the skills worked differently between game modes. This change just alienated the current PVP playerbase, while also creating a nigh insurmountable barrier of entry for PVErs who are looking to PVP. You practically had to learn the entire game mode from scratch.

I suspect that this is the reason that Anet went hard on keeping skills similar between modes. IF the skills aren't similar, you create dissonance between modes, which then creates massive rifts, which then causes the game to segment and die.

That is the thing though, the lack of split balancing since early on is causing some of the very issues that caused CoH to fall. Builds,Skills, and Weapons have all effectively nerfed many PvE and PvP play-styles because they tried to keep it the same which doesn't work. The only way to bring those play-styles back is to split balance it, so both sides of the coin can eat the cake.

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I keep thinking of what happened with City of Heroes. One of the things that murdered the game was Issue 6, where they restructured all of PVP so that all of the skills worked differently between game modes. This change just alienated the current PVP playerbase, while also creating a nigh insurmountable barrier of entry for PVErs who are looking to PVP. You practically had to learn the entire game mode from scratch.

I suspect that this is the reason that Anet went hard on keeping skills similar between modes. IF the skills aren't similar, you create dissonance between modes, which then creates massive rifts, which then causes the game to segment and die.

CoH didn't have PVE problems due to PVP balancing. PVE remained fixed while the PVP skills changed over.

My whole point is that split balancing isn't a magic fix. There's a cost to it, but because that cost is long term the playerbase denies it exist. We keep saying that having dual balancing is failing the system, but what exactly is this failure? Is there some PVE content that can't be completed now due to a PVP change? Or is it all about dealing with uptight elitists that only view other players as insolent tools?

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:My whole point is that split balancing isn't a magic fix.

That's certainly true. Many of those advocating for more splitting agree that it's not the only or even the most important tool.

And if you had stopped there, I would have agree with you.

There's a cost to it,Sure.

but because that cost is long term the playerbase denies it exist.

I don't think that's true. Plus, there are long term costs of not splitting skills, too. And while some anti-split advocates deny it, most also agree that there's a cost in avoiding the use of splitting.

We keep saying that having dual balancing is failing the system, but what exactly is this failure?

The fact that the modes are fundamentally different in some of the particular mechanics. Confusion is the most obvious: players use a lot more skills than NPCs, so it's nearly impossible to set it up so that's a reasonably valued condition using the same numbers in both PvE and WvW|PvP. Undertuned for PvE can be overtuned for PvP.

Is there some PVE content that can't be completed now due to a PVP change?

The question is: are there PvE builds and professions that become unviable when skills are tuned for PvP? And yes, that's happened a lot.

Or is it all about dealing with uptight elitists that only view other players as insolent tools?I don't care at all what uptight elitists (whoever they are) advocate. I care that key skills & traits of each profession are interesting and useful. I don't need every type of build to be viable in every mode, but I don't think it's healthy for something to be too powerful in any mode. It's equally unhealthy for something that works okay in PvE to be made useless because it's OP'd in PvP.

Fortunately, evidence suggests that ANet tries to balance PvE for what people typically run, not by what the speed-clearing teams use. They care less about theoretically-ideal "meta benchmarks" and more about what the actual data tells them. And splitting skills gives them more flexibility.

One thing that ANet is refusing to do is what they did in GW1: where a skill with the same name would be mechanically different in different modes. All they are doing is tweaking numbers: cooldowns and channeling times, damage|healing cofficients, durations. They aren't changing the actual mechanics across modes. They chose this to avoid creating more barriers between people trying to swap from one game mode to another.

tl;dr Splitting skills isn't intended to be a magic bullet. It's to allow ANet to sensibly retune skills so that something doesn't have to be underpowered in one mode to be not-overpowered in another.

Of course, whether this works out in practice remains to be seen. Everyone thinks they'll know good balance when they see it and most of us think we could do better than ANet (or at least that ANet would do better if they only listened to our advice). In practice, I think it's nearly impossible to achieve good balance. ANet needs to adjust things in response to how we evolve our use of the existing mechanics... and we adjust faster than they can code.

There is nothing more annoying than dealing with somebody who'd rather dice my post up into sentence fragments instead of dealing with the concepts as a whole.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I don't think that's true. Plus, there are long term costs of not splitting skills, too. And while some anti-split advocates deny it, most also agree that there's a cost in avoiding the use of splitting.

Show me them then.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The fact that the modes are fundamentally different in some of the particular mechanics.

That is not a failure.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Confusion is the most obvious: players use a lot more skills than NPCs, so it's nearly impossible to set it up so that's a reasonably valued condition using the same numbers in both PvE and WvW|PvP. Undertuned for PvE can be overtuned for PvP.

I have been arguing for years that enemies in the game should have a higher attack frequency, especially back in the day when conditions were still capped at 25 stacks. This is one of those factors where the game was designed in such a way to disregard the condition, and it isn't necessarily a problem with having the same numbers across game modes. The confusion condition itself is changed about, largely because it would be easier to just change the condition instead of changing every enemy in the game.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The question is: are there PvE builds and professions that become unviable when skills are tuned for PvP? And yes, that's happened a lot.

That's not what I asked. "Viable" is an ill defined concept that you can mold to mean whatever you want it to. I'm asking a hard question: Show me the content, then show me the build, then show me that it is impossible to complete this content due to a PVP based nerf.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I don't care at all what uptight elitists (whoever they are) advocate. I care that key skills & traits of each profession are interesting and useful. I don't need every type of build to be viable in every mode, but I don't think it's healthy for something to be too powerful in any mode. It's equally unhealthy for something that works okay in PvE to be made useless because it's OP'd in PvP.Fortunately, evidence suggests that ANet tries to balance PvE for what people typically run, not by what the speed-clearing teams use. They care less about theoretically-ideal "meta benchmarks" and more about what the actual data tells them. And splitting skills gives them more flexibility.

Show me this evidence. Because last I checked, Anets notion of balance is based on the rather general concept of "nerf what is doing too well, buff what isn't doing that well" with no ideal benchmark in mind. For evidence of this claim, I cite the recent balancing done to Sword Weaver, and how even though the DPS for all the skills were buffed the weapon still isn't on competitive levels for PVE. I'm not sure how well it does in PVP/WvW, but after the initial wave of updates all I ever heard is that sword is still terrible.

I bring up this point because I highly suspect that the reason why we care so much about PVE balance is because of the established meta for fractals and raids. Particularly, how it is enforced. We hear stories of "I was kicked for playing necro; buff necro" all the time, but it hasn't escaped my notice that the problem lies in somebody kicking, and not necessarily the class itself. While the classes might not be the best in the game, so long as they aren't impotent then the issue isn't some kind of mechanical failure. The "PVE balance" problem is really a problem of easing the minds of anal-retentive raiders.

Until human players can have 500,000 health and grayed out breakbars in PVP/WVW, skill splits will be necessary. Skill damage and utility has to be balanced around the competition you are facing.

PvP and PvE are fundamentally different game modes. Therefor, the balance requirements for each will be different. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to split changes where necessary, so that balance for one mode does not break performance in another.

The splits are good in our circumstances. The problem with them is they reflect the need to truly differentiate the modes: Make them different enough and you have 2 games instead of one (or 3, in GW2). We have this problem already, because a lot of people only play one mode. The splitting will be good for balance, no doubt, but it has a very high potential of being terrible for the community in the end.