Main tool used for balance in GW2

https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/ .....for those who still haven't figured it out, this is the main tool used to balance professions across the board and if you don't believe me...I'd really like to know why

It actually isn't. Devs have never mentioned a specific guild's website. They have however mentioned looking at Metabattle(which is arguably even worse, still) for balancing. As well as the infamous dev 1v1 dueling on Niflhel for PvP balance.

I is a coin actually... They flip the coin - heads => nerf, tails => buff. Coin spent => no patch

They seem to be spending those coins :)

They looks at classes overall and not just what's the meta. I think it was earlier this year they spoke about how they approach balancing.

When it comes to Elementalist balance yes, that's all they've done lately, trying to balance the dps based on Raid benchmarks, with absolutely zero thought about the rest of the game. That said, this is rather new, and I hope the trend will stop soon, meanwhile other professions, like Necromancer for example, are certainly in no way balanced based on raid benchmarks.

So yeah, I think you are mistaken that they use the raid benchmarks for balance "across the board", you are probably an Elementalist player and it does feel like it as an Elementalist, with all recent changes being aimed at reducing Elementalist dps in Raid benchmarks, while in other parts of the game (with more "intelligent" targets, or when you don't have your babysitter with you) Elementalists need all the damage buffs they can get.

I believe that balance is at least partly based on office politics. 1v1 duels between devs for balance is likely one of the worst possible methods.

I think it is naive to believe benchmarks of the top guilds are not considered.

That said, it is also naive to believe that the developers have tons of data on skills, builds, gear, classes, elite specializations used etc. and not make use of this.

One might disagree with every balance change made and certainly some game modes have been affected differently and pve raid balance seems to be of prime importance but that said: classes are more balanced than ever. The downside or unbalance people complain about in spvp and wvw is mostly the ttk which is affected by power creep more than class balance imo.

@Cyninja.2954 said:(...) classes are more balanced than ever. (...)

'cries in ele'

Also powercreep is awful and severly hurts build diversity which might have been possible with so many specialisations.

Only tool used by the balance team.https://media.giphy.com/media/efahzan109oWdMRKnH/giphy.gif

I was sure the tools anet use for balance are not brain and game knowledge xD

@Ayrilana.1396 said:They looks at classes overall and not just what's the meta. I think it was earlier this year they spoke about how they approach balancing.

They have a long story of screw ups to be honest.

"balance" is not a concept they are familiar with. To be honest this game has been very poorly balanced since launch in one way or another.