I hate the "rock paper scissors" argument. Here is why

Consistently seeing this arguement as well as desperately using it to enhance ones statement regading good or bad matchups is absurd for me at least. It is basically saying something counter your class by nature so deal with it. Which is unhealthy in any competitive manner. It promotes the idea of one class being superior to other withoit having skill taken into account which is flawed and uncompetitive idea. The idea of it basically meant to add flavor to the game and some strategy aspect is nice on paper and would definitely make sense in mode where PVP relies heavily on your equipment but not when it gets in the way of competetivety and especially not in a mode of which every player gets default base stats . Meaning every class has to be equally strong and this is when you will see skillful players strive and pull off amazing plays , having the limitation of class superiority does no more than revoke skill impact.

@Silence.3702 said:Which is unhealthy in any competitive manner.

A team is formed by 5.

Does the Reaper counters your Ele? Worry not, he prolly doesn't want to meet your teams Guardian alone either.

Killing your own class counter is also an amazing play. In fact, a play that may even decide the fate of the game.

Unless of course there are classes that counter more than any other class and have little counters themselves. Coincidentally "Rock, Paper, Scissors" only accounts for 3 , not 5.

Rock, paper, scissors argument makes a lot more sense in moba. When you have control on your team comp and despite maining particular character you can easly adapt and learn another one to avoid counter.In mmorpg this situation should not be happening due to higher cost of learning new one. Complexity of playing mmo classes is much higher than any moba character.I am not saying that everyone should have exact same chances against other, that is difficoult to achieve, but current "balance" makes almost imposible to win some of them, which makes no sense

@Silence.3702 said:It is basically saying something counter your class by nature so deal with it. Which is unhealthy in any competitive manner. It promotes the idea of one class being superior to other withoit having skill taken into account which is flawed and uncompetitive idea.Incorrect. The idea of every class, while being unique, being able to defeat every other class is impossible to maintain. The reasons counters exist is to introduce strengths and weaknesses in team compositions versus rivaling compositions. Need someone to finally kill that pesky Spellbreaker that's holding your home all game? Grab your (insert class here) to beat it quickly and efficiently. Did that (insert class here) defeat your Spellbreaker? Get your (insert countering class here) to defeat that (insert class here) to keep it in check.While it is idealistic for everyone to have a fighting chance against everyone else, it is an impossible task to complete and it is riddled with flaws. Rock, Paper, Scissors FTW!

either you don't understand the argument or you have a strong negativity bias.

there's no "best class" with "rock papper scisors"-balance or do explain why rock is OP and they need to buff scissors.

the balance in this game isn't great but that's not the fault of RPS-balance

How did you manage to be wrong without even making a point? This is art!

Nice bait! 8/8

@Poelala.2830 said:Incorrect. The idea of every class, while being unique, being able to defeat every other class is impossible to maintain. The reasons counters exist is to introduce strengths and weaknesses in team compositions versus rivaling compositions. Need someone to finally kill that pesky Spellbreaker that's holding your home all game? Grab your (insert class here) to beat it quickly and efficiently. Did that (insert class here) defeat your Spellbreaker? Get your (insert countering class here) to defeat that (insert class here) to keep it in check.While it is idealistic for everyone to have a fighting chance against everyone else, it is an impossible task to complete and it is riddled with flaws. Rock, Paper, Scissors FTW!

While it sounds great in theory, this is not how gw2 has worked for the majority of its existence. Most of the time, the classes that are meta have no hard counter while countering most if not all other classes that could fill the same role, e.g. Druid’s worst match ups were stalemates from its introduction until pof release (maybe even until further nerfs post pof release). In gw2, the best solution to deal with a problematic build usually isn’t running a counter (because there is none or it’s so bad vs everything else that it’s not really playable) but running the same class/build and playing it better.

Counter to rock has Always been a bigger faster rolling rock :) although not Always true, ranged specs often counters melee/low mobility specs.

No actually, the RPS argument is based on both players being highly skilled. Using vanilla era (for simplicity sake) a highly skilled thief could always beat a highly skilled necro because of stealth spamable blinds and evades and necro was really slow especially with that atrocious Life blast.

It wasnt that long ago that it was widely agreed on that memer countered revenant but rev could beat reaper. So if you played rev you are expected to lose to mesmers but expected to beat reaper. Its hard to say now if the RPS argument is still valid with all the recent changes.

The difference is that the necro could still win the 1v1 vs thief if you managed to get your predictions right/won a reasonable amount of mind games. You were unfavorable but you still had the tools to win. That is something is not true anymore for most match ups (talking about similar player skill).One reason is that skills (Offensive and defensive) are more spamable, so failing one of them leaves you vulnerable for a shorter period of time, thus makes it harder for your opponent to capitalize on it (compared to previously). While having to “outplay” your opponent more frequently in order to win is great for good players/strong builds as it reduces the number of “lucky” or “random” wins because of random dodges and/or mind games (and rewards consistency), it also reduces the chances of weaker/unfavored builds (and players) to actually win for the same reason (a single good action has less influence on the outcome of a match)

@Erzian.5218 said:The difference is that the necro could still win the 1v1 vs thief if you managed to get your predictions right/won a reasonable amount of mind games. You were unfavorable but you still had the tools to win. That is something is not true anymore for most match ups (talking about similar player skill).One reason is that skills (Offensive and defensive) are more spamable, so failing one of them leaves you vulnerable for a shorter period of time, thus makes it harder for your opponent to capitalize on it (compared to previously). While having to “outplay” your opponent more frequently in order to win is great for good players/strong builds as it reduces the number of “lucky” or “random” wins because of random dodges and/or mind games (and rewards consistency), it also reduces the chances of weaker/unfavored builds (and players) to actually win for the same reason (a single good action has less influence on the outcome of a match)

I think where people have a problem is how much effort it takes to be really effective. Classes where one mistake in positioning or skill use puts you on a path to guaranteed death are often the weaker classes. Running through complicated motions while maintaining awareness with no way to reset can be tasking. When people compare that to classes like warrior where you make countless errors and still get bailed out by one button negates, theres that wtf moment that happens.

Not sure what OP is suggesting in this post considering how it's basically the current state of the game -- you get all these meta classes that can do everything and have little clear counters that a lot of builds on metabattle dont even bother listing anything under the counters section anymore. Imo game was a lot more fun during the ending HoT days where you have DHs countering thieves/chronos but themselves countered by Tempest while Tempest gets countered by Reapers and Chronos countering Reaper...etc instead of the current trash we have where meta builds dont really have clear counters and just plow through everything by spamming.