Classes need to scale evenly with skill.

They need more than half a year after an expansion to produce a pvp metagame that allows "most" of the classes to have some viable, somewhat diverse builds. Almost all of them still hard-stuck in a single role but hey.They haven't produced a single healthy or balanced WvW meta in at least 3 years. That said, overall balance isn't even that bad at the moment. Fixing problematic skills has often taken more than half a year here too.

In PvP chrono, druid and BS play essentially the same role ever since raids were added to the game. They're also not replacable unless you sacrifice optimization for it, for chrono on all bosses.

And somehow you think they can balance this game across ALL skill levels; producing a smooth learning curve for each class? Considering the skill difference between the average player and "high end", I think they can't do it for a single class.

I agree if possible we should strive towards it. But realistically I don't think there's anything wrong with classes being great for newer players and not so great for the high end; or the other way around.

I mostly agree with what you said. Especially in guild wars 2 dev should stop buffing active defences for classes that already have them and cut them but giving them the passive ones, same thing goes for classes with passive defences that should get active ones and get the passive ones cut. This would create some sort of balance among classes, without throwing the class theme into garbage.What I think it's most important is to stop developing games with passive defences, they don't promote skillfull playstyle. Because if the only way, for you and all the other players, is to defend yourself actively your forced to learn to play in a skillfull way, thus developing a healthy competitive side at all level of play( from real noob to pro levels)

I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of defenses you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

@"NecroSummonsMors.7816" said:I mostly agree with what you said. Especially in guild wars 2 dev should stop buffing active defences for classes that already have them and cut them but giving them the passive ones, same thing goes for classes with passive defences that should get active ones and get the passive ones cut. This would create some sort of balance among classes, without throwing the class theme into garbage.What I think it's most important is to stop developing games with passive defences, they don't promote skillfull playstyle. Because if the only way, for you and all the other players, is to defend yourself actively your forced to learn to play in a skillfull way, thus developing a healthy competitive side at all level of play( from real noob to pro levels)

That happens due the amount of AOE and cleave game has.Anet will continue to increase the aoe spambility of the game every expantion they dont do armor stats progressions but deliver the damage progression towards the expantions new gimmicks, so it will require more passives to "balance" in their heads the game.

i think its too late to change gw2 cuz gw2 only move forward to the next expansion

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"NecroSummonsMors.7816" said:I mostly agree with what you said. Especially in guild wars 2 dev should stop buffing active defences for classes that already have them and cut them but giving them the passive ones, same thing goes for classes with passive defences that should get active ones and get the passive ones cut. This would create some sort of balance among classes, without throwing the class theme into garbage.What I think it's most important is to stop developing games with passive defences, they don't promote skillfull playstyle. Because if the only way, for you and all the other players, is to defend yourself actively your forced to learn to play in a skillfull way, thus developing a healthy competitive side at all level of play( from real noob to pro levels)

Where is the correlation between armor stats and aoe cleave?

And in what way did anet increase it? By introducing Scourge?

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of defenses you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

Chaith you misunderstand. I am by no means saying that necro has no scaling with skill. That is demonstrably false. I am saying that it does not scale equally with other classes. I think we can probably agree that a silver necro against silver opponents will be much more effective than a platinum necro against platinum opponents. Conversely a silver thief against silver opponents will be much less effective than a platinum thief against platinum opponents.

Tell me Chaith if the January 2016 Balance patch never occurred would you have ever considered running a necro on your tournament team? You talk about how strong Spiteful Spirit, CoD, GC, and CB are, yet you don't realize that the reason those things are so freaking strong is because that's what it takes to make necro useful at high tier. For god's sake Spiteful Spirit's tooltip is almost as long as fully traited Steal, and Spiteful Spirit is just a single trait. Half of Power Reaper's traits would make any other class godly, yet on Power Reaper they make it B-tier. Can you imagine how insanely busted Warriors would be if they had Soul Eater? Can you imagine how insanely busted Revenants would be if they had Blighter's Boon? Can you imagine how insanely busted thieves would be if they had Chill of Death? Can you imagine how insanely busted Guardian would be if one of it's weapon symbols was Nightfall?

Necromancer is only competitive in high tier because it had to be massively compensated to attempt to offset how crap the base design concept of necro for pvp. Meanwhile Thief is gimped at basically everything except mobility and dodging yet thief had been meta for most of the game's history. Why? Because the basic concept of thief is perfectly suited for PvP.

Oh and everytime the devs manage to compensate necro hard enough to make it able to compete on equal terms at high level, necro ends up completely and utterly breaking mid and low level PvP, because again the class does not scale in the same way other classes do.

Classes must scale evenly with skill, if they do not then you get the mess that is both necro and thief. Where the former is doomed to always require babysitting in platinum, yet be godly in silver. While the latter is doomed to be a free kill in silver, yet practically untouchable in platinum.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of

defenses

you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

I am not ignoring your post here but I will have to jump straight to the question that interests me;what is untouchable Thief in your mind? Do you mean as it can bail on a lost fight and run away or do you mean win the fights? Fight-wise speaking, because the "basic concept of thief suited for PvP" can be very much reduced to Shortbow, with +1s happily loosing it's relevancy due to current state of "things".

I don't misunderstand, I'm saying Necro skill scaling is every bit as high as thief. Simply put, P/P or Deadeye is not bad in silver. Plat Reaper/scourge with FB in plat is not outpaced due to poor skill scaling either. Conflating skill scaling to how active your defenses are, that's a completely wrong statement. Necro and Thief scale out of silver/gold tier off of mastering entirely different mindsets, equally rewarding and equally difficult

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of

defenses

you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

I'm referring to the ability of a non-thief to kill a thief. Generally speaking if I as a non-thief get into a fight with a thief, there are two outcomes: Either the thief kills me outright, or the fight stalemates and the thief disengages. Thieves are only truly threatened by other other thieves. That's not to say that thieves are never killed by non-thieves, but it's far less common, and when it does happen it's usually a case of a p-shatter Mesmer or some other zerk instagib class managing to surprise a thief and instagib them before they react, as once a thief becomes aware of a threat your window for killing them is over.

Also the +1 role is one of most impactful roles in conquest. You may not like being constrained to just that role, but that does not change how impactful that role is on the outcome of a match. Also being a good +1 is more than just mobility, if it was just about mobility then GS+sword ranger would be a viable +1 class, but it's not. +1 is not just about getting to a fight, but about how quickly you can kill the victim after reaching the fight.

@Chaith.8256 said:I don't misunderstand, I'm saying Necro skill scaling is every bit as high as thief. Simply put, P/P or Deadeye is not bad in silver. Plat Reaper/scourge with FB in plat is not outpaced due to poor skill scaling either. Conflating skill scaling to how active your defenses are, that's a completely wrong statement. Necro and Thief scale out of silver/gold tier off of mastering entirely different mindsets, equally rewarding and equally difficult

But would you say that skill can be put to better use with active defenses than with innate defenses? If all other things are equal, does active mechanics scale equally with innate mechanics?

Also p/p or deadeye are a perfect example of non-scaling, since both of those lose relevance as you go into a higher level of play. It also creates a problem of thieves having to completely relearn how to play their class once they get high enough that spamming 3 stops being effective. Or they don't relearn and just ragequit the game after becoming convinced that their class is the most victimized class ever.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of

defenses

you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

About the +1, of course it is impactuf... If it works out, that's what I ment that it's relevancy is being reduced due to most opponents having so many heals or blocks or sand shroud or AoE being 90% present all over the place or Invuls, If you go d/p (or any other set for that matter) and you'll +1 someone, then you can notice that in literally most cases even though you watch for Retaliation and AoEs, you will still get hit for several Ks dmg just be jumping at the target, that's how bad it is for Thief in current meta.

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of

defenses

you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

When talking about the ability of a thief to disengage wherein people suggest this gives Thief too much an ability to avoid threats, I am reminded of the old debate in the British Navy regarding Battleships and Battle Cruisers. The Battleship was heavily armored and had big guns. The Battle Cruiser had big guns abut little armor. The Admiralty in promoting the Battle Cruiser claimed it could engage and destroy any foe it met until the battleship showed where it would then just use its superior speed to get away. All well and good until it came down to a battle . If it had to flee because Mr Battleship showed up it would play no role in that battle. if it did try to fight in such a battle it would be obliberated. At the end of the day it was NOT a success. The Concept was deemed a failure.

@babazhook.6805 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:

@"Chaith.8256" said:I disagree with this guy's main point.. being that "Big burly dude with armor and big sword" is good for low skill brackets and "sneaky stabby active defense guy" are good in high skill brackets.

He goes on to say how innate defense guy has much lower skill-scaling.. active defense guy has much higher skill-scaling...

This just isn't true in GW2. The high skill-cap doesn't come from what kind of

defenses

you have. It's more tied in to how using your entire kit perfectly will allow you to obliterate your opponents.

GW2 isn't purely a 'staying alive' simulator, you also have to factor in the entire kit. Necromancer for example has a very innate defense defensive style, but does the class scale evenly with skill, despite that? Hell freaking yes it does. It scales insanely well with skill.. Necros have the highest potential to carry games offensively due to their kit, lots of FAST and deadly skills like Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death, Ghastly Claws, Corrupt Boon, instant transfers, look at the difference between top Necros who do insane pressure vs. even just slightly worse ones.

Also, every profession regardless of active or innate defenses has a relatively large skill cap in staying alive. Positioning, kiting, jumping puzzles..

Really the only message that I agree with entirely from this vid is that thief could maybe have a little more innate defense and necro maybe a little more active defense... like, just a touch??

Indeed.

@Crinn.7864 said:If all other things are equal, does active mechanics scale equally with innate mechanics?

'All other things equal' doesn't exist.. every profession that has fewer active defense mechanics has higher impact offensive mechanics where they can scale with skill there instead.

Also p/p or deadeye are a perfect example of non-scaling, since both of those lose relevance as you go into a higher level of play.

It's a perfect example of how a build with purely active defenses is at a high power level silver/gold... which 100% directly contradicts the original video's points.

Classes must scale evenly with skill, if they do not then you get the mess that is both necro and thief. Where the former is doomed to always require babysitting in platinum, yet be godly in silver. While the latter is doomed to be a free kill in silver, yet practically untouchable in platinum.

You're confusing a symbiotic relationship between Necro and Support with lack of skill scaling, completely failing to take into account that Necros scale with skill immensely when it comes to offensive combos & killing efficiently. Scourge is still the highest power level option available when played at the highest skill possible.. it provably scales with skill.

Or they (P/P Thieves) don't relearn and just ragequit the game after becoming convinced that their class is the most victimized class ever.

Similarly to how Necros wanting to be effective in Plat 2+ environments don't know or don't accept that a support is required in order to easily dominate, then become convinced their class is the most victimized class ever.

@"Crinn.7864" said:Tell me Chaith if the January 2016 Balance patch never occurred would you have ever considered running a necro on your tournament team?

What kind of hypothetical would that serve? If a patch didn't happen that massively buffed Necro, would I take a Necro? Who cares, since the reality is that Necromancer through Vanilla, HoT and PoF has always been utterly dominant in the highest echelons of play, when built around properly, if you had a Necro player worth that effort.

A lot of the scaling has to do with builds as well. You can have 1 build that just obliterates people in silver/low gold. But that same build won't work worth a crap in plat. Opposite is also true, some builds will work much better against plat level players due to sustainability, where as in lower tiers, more burst will kill your opponents quicker and you don't need the sustain just due to the fact of player skill you are against.

@Blocki.4931 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"NecroSummonsMors.7816" said:I mostly agree with what you said. Especially in guild wars 2 dev should stop buffing active defences for classes that already have them and cut them but giving them the passive ones, same thing goes for classes with passive defences that should get active ones and get the passive ones cut. This would create some sort of balance among classes, without throwing the class theme into garbage.What I think it's most important is to stop developing games with passive defences, they don't promote skillfull playstyle. Because if the only way, for you and all the other players, is to defend yourself actively your forced to learn to play in a skillfull way, thus developing a healthy competitive side at all level of play( from real noob to pro levels)

There inst needed a direct correlations between armor and the aoe cause wath will hit hard, will still hit hard with armor 1 more atack wont make much diference, since armor it is mostly there to reduce damage on the cleaves that are being "lost" on the batlefield while ur trying to kite red cricles (im surviving way more with paper revenant than "bunker" guard and doing much more damage even on frontlines), what i ment by "lost damage"is the atacks that gona hit you like u were the targeted to be hitted, while in fact was the targets/players nearby you and ur eating alot of the cleaves no matter if turn left or right(this scheme is a bit dull...this remminds when im auto'ing wiht my hammer 1 wich is 5 targets if i reccal well(so it is a aoe....), when i cleave and kill the guy or 2 at his right or left while i notice they are dyign just to cleave damage and not being targeted directly........ lold kill given by how game is ment to carry me offensivly...that's how i feel), in a team of 5 if 3 players are just being selected, damage will hit all 5 players for sure with alot of redudancy since well most autos are cleaves and theres more aoe and cleaves skills, that's making game where people dont need to know what they have to atack, still understandable since this is game for pve casuals, even that would be to much difficult for most.

Now just having some skills with cleaves and far less AOE skills would be far more interesting and balanced than have full auto atacks plus other skills that cleave all the way with more aoe skills at mixture to ease the process of hit something, the current cleave number of skills help overburden the game with the aoe spam wich makes Anet enforce more passive skills.

Actually scourge is just a simpton of Anet bad class design, same hapened with the awful DH spec, broken to win with traps powercreeping in short time targets(i never won so many matches w/o effort in a game like i did with DH traps).So it is not only scourge alone, Spambrand, and most classes autos cleaves plus more cleaves and aoe on other skills/utilities also help the overburden of aoe game has wich leads sometimes to broken and unbalances passives, also with the aoe/cleave spam gameplay players dont need to know who they will heal, just keep pressing numbers.

Gw2 skill design remminds alot of Diablo3 (im a diablo player btw, Anet if ur reading this i know what u have done in some of the mobs skills from PoF, LoL), and for some reason PvP dont exist there due how dumb it is...classes simply are not made for it, wich is the same for gw2.

Pve 1st, america 2nd, skill balance... lold.And sorry if my english sounds confuse.

@Chaith.8256 said:

@Crinn.7864 said:If all other things are equal, does active mechanics scale equally with innate mechanics?

If classes all scale equally with skill as you say, then the meta in platinum should be exactly the same as the meta in silver. But it's not, the most dominant classes in silver are not the most dominant classes in platinum.

Also p/p or deadeye are a perfect example of non-scaling, since both of those lose relevance as you go into a higher level of play.

Classes must scale evenly with skill, if they do not then you get the mess that is both necro and thief. Where the former is doomed to always require babysitting in platinum, yet be godly in silver. While the latter is doomed to be a free kill in silver, yet practically untouchable in platinum.

@Crinn.7864 said:Tell me Chaith if the

January 2016 Balance patch

never occurred would you have ever considered running a necro on your tournament team?

Let me rephrase. If necromancer did not have a exclusive monopoly on boon corrupt, would the class have any value in high tier?

Surely you have noticed that ever since the January 2016 patch, ArenaNet's method for balancing necro is to just shovel on more boon corrupt whenever the class is struggling. Actually I know you've noticed since you made comments toward such back when Scourge came out. Look at power necro. It didn't work post HoT, so Anet added a corrupt to Unholy Feast and Spiteful Spirit. It still wasn't good so Anet added corrupts to Nightfall. It still wasn't good so they added a second corrupt to Unholy Feast and Spiteful Spirit. It still wasn't nearly good so they added another 2 corrupts to Spiteful Spirit on a <50% proc, and then gave Corrupt Boon a 2nd charge for good measure.

While you make a few good points, I feel this 20 min video is a bit simplified. Your arguments about the binary differences between active and passive (innate) defenses seem outdated; in the sense that it would make perfect sense if we were still in the core meta. But we have had 2 expansions and 3 times the number of possible professions.

You take Warrior as a good indicator of the balance between active and passive defenses. I'd have to disagree. Warriors are in the upper echelon of innate defenses. They have the highest armor, highest base vitality, and have more passive defenses than most classes. That doesn't mean Warriors are the best class, but I hold the firm belief that Warriors are currently the best heavy armor class in low scale PvP.

In my opinion, I don't think comparing classes in GW2's PvP setting is appropriate, as you focus in on the defensive abilities of classes as an estimation of average balance. It's a team based game mode where the whole is greater than the parts (you, your teammates, and what builds they use). This is compounded by the fact that GW2 1v1 is a rock-paper-scissors interaction. At absolute equal skill, you will have a build that fares better vs different builds and fares worse against other builds. Teamplay is the reason why we win or lose, and we are often held as hostage to whether or not our teammates can adapt or swap to different styles of play.

Reading back, I'm not sure I've made my real point, so here it is flat out: this game has become too complicated (in both mechanics and number of professions) that the past and current (imo) iteration of the rock-paper-scissors battle makes the PvP game incredibly hard to balance and difficult to include all professions into the meta. Take Warrior (Berserker, Spellbreaker) for example. The best counter is higher sustain and sustained ranged damage. That makes me think, "Druid would be the best counter", but Druid isn't part of the meta, and that's a reason why Warriors do well in PvP. Warriors won't have to deal with the water to their fire, since most Rangers will be playing Soulbeast because that class does better versus other meta professions, enabling Warriors to do their thing without consequence. There isn't enough time during pre-match to swap traits, weapons, skills, sigils, etc. and Anet's refusal to implement build templates further exacerbates the issue.

In addition, I feel like the developers have been focusing on designing elite specializations based on thematics instead of balance. What looks good when you're immersing yourself in the PvE world doesn't translate well when you're aiming for a higher PvP rank. Active versus passive defense is only a part of, what I believe (as in my own opinion), the main issue at hand.

i dont see how warrior attacks fast.. there is no other class as telegraphed and easy to avoid. the reason warrior is still good in sPvP is because of the node forcing the opponents to stay in the area wich limits kiting options. but on just open open field 1 vs 1 a warrior is together with necro at the bottom, warrior with worst offensive options and necro with worse selfdefense.the issue with your video is that it would only be relevant if there was you know real 1 vs 1 arena as a game mode and the game balanced for that. but we have as PvP modes only group content. we also dont have a pure deathsmatch or last man standig mode, so not just the fighting potential is important.you are right that players will be able to utilize more mechanics on higher levels of play wich can render easier to learn basics rather obsolete. but that is for every class. and in group content every player affects everyone in the team your skill scales more as a team than as an individual, you have to be aware what your teammates know and can utilize aswell.for winning on higher levels of play it is also more important to predict and bait your opponent than knowledge and reaction time, because everyone has knowlege and reaction on higher levels. but predicting and baiting you can utilize on any build no matter if your offense and defense is slow or fast. you can perfectly bait your opponent to get hit by a slow attack.thief is IMO strong for 1vs1 fights not because of the speed but because it is less predictable mainly due to initative and stealth, lowering ini regen and giving 2 seperate ini bars for the weapon sets would make thieves more predictable as they would have to use both sets, they could even buff individual weapon skills ontop, thief would still be more in line with other professions then. but then again there is no 1 vs 1 mode and thieves 1 vs 1 ailities are much lower in the context of the conquest mode. for example:

@"Crinn.7864" said:Also p/p or deadeye are a perfect example of non-scaling, since both of those lose relevance as you go into a higher level of play. It also creates a problem of thieves having to completely relearn how to play their class once they get high enough that spamming 3 stops being effective. Or they don't relearn and just ragequit the game after becoming convinced that their class is the most victimized class ever.while deadeye might be not efficient in higher levels of conquest. considering the 1 vs 1 capabilities outside of a conquest context, it is still one of the strongest options in the game. but range + stealth is punished by conquest design and you also need frontloaded damage yet deadeye truely excells in building up a huge burst wich might take time. so you can utilize your skill for deadeye alot (ofc not spamming 3) just not in conquest, but for example in WvW solo roaming. if there was a last man standing mode, then a deadeye would be top tier. the meta thief builds are just better for the role in conquest.îts not the classes that dont scale with skill, its just roles or entire modes that do not favour all options in the game wich can make some builds appear to not scale with skill. with more diverse modes this could be different.

as for playing what you like and not what the game demands, well you cant expect to win then. you wont win a car race if you join with a lawnmower. but this is a major reason for a ton of complains in the forums, more so from WvW roaming than sPvP but also a little from here. a better explaination of such behaviour can be found here. and example for this are power d/d thieves. some people still like to play it because of the style, they may claim to be the best player in the game, thats no use if you dont have tools in your kit you can utilize to actually win fights against more than a targetdummy. so they do not use any skill at all as the build wont allow it, wont make their opponents worse players only cause they have a less limited build.

@Crinn.7864 said:If classes all scale equally with skill as you say, then the meta in platinum should be exactly the same as the meta in silver.

All classes have options scaling very equally with skill, not every build, man.

Does P/p work in silver because the silver thief is making strong use of his actives, or is it working because spamming 3 is easy, but countering 3 spam is (relatively) more difficult.

This is also my point, it's pointing out that it's not just all about what kind off defenses you have, as all the necro mains are trying to spin due to their perceived low skill scaling.

Surely you have noticed that ever since the January 2016 patch, ArenaNet's method for balancing necro is to just shovel on more boon corrupt whenever the class is struggling. Actually I know you've noticed since you made comments toward such back when Scourge came out. Look at power necro. It didn't work post HoT, so Anet added a corrupt to Unholy Feast and Spiteful Spirit. It still wasn't good so Anet added corrupts to Nightfall. It still wasn't good so they added a second corrupt to Unholy Feast and Spiteful Spirit. It still wasn't nearly good so they added another 2 corrupts to Spiteful Spirit on a <50% proc, and then gave Corrupt Boon a 2nd charge for good measure.

So what? Necro is designed to be strong at boon corruption, and it takes patience and timing to optimally take someone apart using corruption.

You were expecting them to buff Necro with stealth/invulns/blocks/evades/teleports instead? Why is balancing Necro at its designed purpose met with such disdainful comments like 'shoveling on' corruption?

So I started watching this video so I could understand what the hell this thread was about so I could join in on this discussion. I stopped the video at 11:20 after hearing the example of: "big bulky guy with sword is having fun in low tier with his innate defenses and then he gets to high tier and realizes his class is useless because he is being outplayed by active defenses." Its like I hear what the guy in the video is saying and it would almost seem to be true, but after that comment I was confused and had to ask myself "What game is he discussing here?" because:

• In Guild Wars 2 the big bulky guy with a sword is called a Spellbreaker and it definitely has plenty of active defenses that function maybe a bit too well considering it also has the highest values of innate defenses.
• Other big bulky guys in Guild Wars 2 -> Guardian based builds, Heralds = All of which have plenty of active defenses. Firebrands have active defenses for the entire team. Heralds have sword 3 as a frequent active defense, and their offensive pressure IS their active defense. That's how the class works.
• Rangers, Engis = Plenty of active defenses, plenty. Thieves, pleeeenty of active defenses but at higher tiers these active defenses are often not enough because the Thieves seriously lack innate defenses. The active defenses of a Thief certainly do not carry it to godhood in higher tier play. In fact, Thieve struggle in combat at higher tier play and their main role really is just to decap and + when/if it becomes advantageous. They actually lose combats to the classes with stronger innate defenses because every class has active defenses.
• Eles, a mish-mash of active & innate defenses. Slightly underpowered as a class as a whole right now, so no reason to really comment on this other than pointing out it has plenty of active defenses at its disposal.
• Mesmers <- Here is the 1st half of what I think the OP is feeling in the video. Mesmers are widely acknowledged as simply over powered. Too much damage, Too much utility, Too much mobility/disengage, Way too many active defenses for its damage/utility/mobility/disengage. At higher tiers, Mesmers win combats, and it often does feel like it is because of an enormous amount of active defenses, that other classes cannot front. We all feel this, but remember that this is the only class that is broken in this way. The theory in the video doesn't necessarily hold true vs. the rest of the intra-class dynamic.
• Necros <- Here is the 2nd half of what I think the OP is feeling in the video. Can't help to notice that the guy talking is playing a Reaper and he is concerned with the skill scaling of classes from entry level to high tiers. He is likening the difference between classes with innate defenses "which is claims are strong entry level" but how they fall prey to classes with better active defenses "which he claims outplay innate defenses at higher tiers." I kind of don't feel this is true at all in Guild Wars 2 because every class has plenty of active defenses, even Necromancers. I feel like there are only 2x things that would make the OP of the video form his opinion: 1. He is playing a Reaper, which although it does have active defenses like Flesh Wurm, Spectral Walk, Plague Signet, they aren't always convenient to run in spvp build structures. Reaper is the ONE class in the game that does sort of struggle with applicable & viable active defenses. Pretty much a Reaper's best active defenses are a very aggressive offense, well timed CC play and correct positioning. Necros have also been notoriously bad in 1v1 situations since launch, due to a lack of mobility and yes, a lack of active defenses. This is probably a lot of what he is feeling. IE: Getting trashed by Thieves because they actively disengage shroud to waste LF and come back when it is on CD. All highly mobile/high DPS classes can treat Necromancers like this. But rest assured, this is a problem exclusively for Necromancers and that is mainly because Necromancers were not designed to be 1v1 characters. Necromancers were designed to tear apart team fights with nuclear cleaving and abundant boon conversions.

So all in all, I can see why the OP of the video feels the way he does, but he should identify that the problem he is speaking of is pretty exclusive to Necromancers when we are talking about Guild Wars 2 and not other games. Furthermore, I think he is seeing this as an issue with classes scaling with skill, when really he may be feeling the effects of power creep and how it effects these innate & active defenses. This is a pretty good explanation of what happens:

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:The higher damage output gets game wide, the less important statistical numeric defenses become, such as "toughness" "vitality" or even "protection". Although an unrealistic example, as not many people actually run the spec, the best example I can use here is that of the 1-Shot Soulbeast. This build is capable of landing so much damage output with a single strike, that toughness, vitality, protection buff, passive defenses like defy pain, none of it matters because if you get hit, you die. This creates an effect where it doesn't even matter if the opponent has 10,000 health or 20,000 health, or protection, or even the presence of his heal skill doesn't matter. The only things that matter for counter-play are active defenses -> dodges, evades, blocks, active invulns, stealths, sheer mobility. This leads to the real problem with such power creep. When the damage potential gets so high, it becomes much more rewarding to run bursty classes such as Thief or Mesmer because not only are they amongst the heaviest burst classes in the game, but these type of burst classes intrinsically were originally designed with the most active defenses -> dodges, evades, stealths, sheer mobility, ect. ect. All resulting in a situation where we find ourselves in a high DPS meta where the squishies have become the classes with the better sustain and the slower classes that were meant to be tanky through statistical power "toughness" "vitality" "lots of protection buffs stability" "ect. ect." actually become the easiest targets to kill. The more power creeping we see to DPS without adequate defensive boosts to balance, the more true the above effect becomes.

Skill is a complex topic. It is not defined purely by rotation complexity as many newbies boil the topic down to.

For example, delaying the use of a finisher for the correct combo field takes skill. It may throw off the rotation but doing so could prevent a wasted skill use. It also takes skill to watch the status and tells of the opponent.

Just because the next skill in a rotation is off cool down it does not mean it should automatically be used. This is why discussions on dps, rotation complexity, and skill equality, especially against a training golem, can be tricky.