What is a fair defense? What would it look like in GW2?

Most examples of a fair defense in games often take something away from the user in exchange for the benefit of being able to mitigate incoming damage. There are many examples throughout games in general, and even limiting one's self to examples in video games, one can still fish out a tremendous volume of potential candidates:

Short-window damage negation:Whether limited by frame totals or fixed periods of times, these sorts of defenses are more like interruptions between attack opportunities; utilized primarily when a player understands that he or she is on the backfoot going into or leading out of an exchange. Examples might include things like generic blocks in fighting games, rolls in Dark Souls, or shield blocks/parries in Chivalry. The "fairness" factor here is how none of these abilities last for a very long period of time (translating into something more like "defensive attacks" associated with respective series of inputs rather than long periods of invulnerability generated from a single button press), and they do not directly translate into offensive opportunities or free damage. Even something like a successful Chivalry parry still requires a player to land an attack while a parried opponent is vulnerable. Moreover, many of these abilities are often balanced with a resource mechanic (shield breaks, stamina, etc.) so that continued blocking or passive playstyles will eventually be punished due to overuse.

Protracted, active damage negation:A good example would be the Medic übercharge from Team Fortress 2: it provides up to 8s of complete invulnerability to damage (but not control effects). However, the "fairness" factor forces the user to remain on an entirely support-centric, no-damage weapon throughout the übercharge's entire duration in order for it to be effective. Effectively, this means that the full invulnerability is only effective if there are nearby teammates in position to deal damage to enemy players. Therefore, while the übercharge effectively allows any given player to move and attack with total impunity for a set duration of time, this ability is only valuable with a certain level of coordination and timing as well as teammate field presence. Hence, despite what is effectively an 8s Defiant Stance (since the invulnerable player is still healing throughout the effect's duration), it is quite easy to deploy what ends up being a very "bad" übercharge. Moreover, an übercharge takes around 41s of charge-up time under optimal conditions rather than being a cooldown to be popped when relatively convenient.

Protracted, passive damage negation:Guild Wars 1 and many other MMORPGs to various extents do a decent job at exhibiting this from time to time. Skills such as GW1 Spirit Bond, Guardian and Protective Spirit are perhaps the most famous examples of this sort of damage negation within the game: they provide a fixed period of time during which allies take reduced damage according to certain parameters described in the skills' respective tool-tips. The "fairness factor" exists in how GW1 is inherently designed to be played within a small-team skirmish paradigm equipped with many other skills and roles which help suppress the effectiveness of a Monk's protracted, passive damage negation. Considering this fact, a team will often bring abilities which explicitly target or debilitate the skill group to which skills like Protective Spirit, Guardian, and Spirit Bond belong. Therefore, while the game does feature abilities which may be unfair in 1v1 or 2v1 situations, the variety of class roles and abilities make up for this by introducing counter abilities within the scope of 4v4 or 8v8 scenarios (which are the scales at which the game was inherently designed to be played).

MovementWhether physics-based or simple, directional footsies, movement typically remains one of the most fair and skill-based options available to players who seek to avoid incoming damage regardless of game genre. The principle reason behind movement's fairness and skill-based nature is intrinsic to whether or not general movement (basic WASD, click-to-move, movement physics gimmicks such as bunny-hopping) is a universally effective means to avoid a lot of damage regardless of whatever class, build or character that a player chooses. Movement's The "fairness" factor remains embedded in its universal access to all players. However, another important aspect of basic movement's balance is in any given player's ability to miss an attack. Without this critical facet (that is to say, if a game is too reliant on tab-target-based ranged attacks and/or enormous melee hitboxes), it's difficult, if not impossible, to bring movement to the foreground as a universal and skill-based means of avoiding damage.

How fair is defense in Guild Wars 2?Or rather, does anything above manifest in GW2? If not, what is perhaps the fairest form of defensive ability present in GW2? The former question can be answered with a decidedly emphatic "no" for a number of reasons:

• Considering how most damage negation in GW2 extends well past what has become the average "time to kill" (TTK) period, we cannot adequately consider any given example of otherwise "short-duration damage negation" (i.e. Riposte, Mirror, etc) as "short duration." As the game has aged, damage has simply been compacted and increased repeatedly and arbitrarily until we have things like a single instance of Rapid Fire dealing 10k+ damage on light-armor targets from 1500 range. That is to say, a 2s-duration defensive ability is often enough to entirely negate whole flurries of instant or near-instant damage.
• Protracted, active damage negation simply does not exist in a reasonable amount within GW2. There are examples of skills in GW2 which force the player to maintain a certain channeled ability in order to receive its effects (Shield Stance, Renewed Focus, Crystal Hibernation), but they are always on-call abilities with often no cast-time and no true charge-up mechanic. This means that they are free to use as a means to effortlessly negate opponent openers. Moreover, these types of skills are defined by a nature to which no player regularly has an answer, instead simply forcing players to wait and take no action due to an opponent having simply pressed a single button. These stall periods also feed into each other by providing uncontested downtime while a user simply waits for other, similar skills to freely recharge.
• Compared to the active style of protracted damage negation, GW2 is absolutely choked to death with the passive form. Players builds regularly trend towards traits and skills which allow they to take offensive actions while beneath the cloak of invulnerability. What makes this an issue in GW2 is that every class does this to some degree and yet there is no universal, standardized, or even role-based means to address it. Most by-passes to blocks and evade spam are taken either because they are side-effects of some other goal or because they are coincidentally packaged together with certain skills or trait lines. More often than not, in GW2, the only real "counter" to someone popping an invulnerability skill that allows one to take offensive action is either simply by popping an equally unfair effect and butting heads for 3 seconds or--if your class can do so--pressing a button for a free teleport and/or stealth escape. Given to the sluggish nature of GW2's base movement compared relatively to the oppressively long range and rapid travel speed of damage, the only universal damage negation mechanic granted to all classes--dodge--has more or less been entirely relegated to irrelevance within the holistic scope of GW2 PvP encounters (hence why Scourge is often a free kill unless paired with gratuitous support).
• Due to GW2's over-reliance on tab-target in order to automatically guide ranged attacks and teleports, movement is very, very underwhelming as a tool for avoiding damage. Moreover, the only effective sort of re-positioning tools, those being scripted movements (often equipped with evade periods) or ground-targeted teleports, constitute an arbitrary smattering across the classes rather than being normalized to any degree (i.e. necros are typically dead if fighting on an open field, but thieves can just chain 1-2 buttons repeatedly in order to escape nearly any situation). This means that any given class' effectiveness in avoiding damage via movement (more accurately described as "re-positioning") is mostly left to arbitrary changes made in balance patches. There is no universal movement means available to all classes that allows a player to use WASD or a particular skill type in order to rapidly re-position in order to avoid damage; moreover, some classes--for no real reason aside from arbitrary flavor--have far more access to easy movement than other classes.

To this end, defense in GW2 really isn't all that fair or well distributed across all classes. Despite the homogenized designs of all of the classes in terms of meta playstyles, they still range wildly and inexplicably in their ability to not only deploy what is considered the only effective means of defense against incoming damage but also in their means to quickly re-position in case of emergency or in order to attack.

What might be the fairest defensive skill in GW2 be at this point?Perhaps something along the lines of Riposte, but even this ability is rather unfair and unfun to play against. It still has a relatively long duration (compared to the average TTK) which blocks all attacks outside of melee range; and when the skill is triggered within melee range, it delivers a free, auto-target strike on the attacker. What's worse is that it rewards the user by granting adrenaline even if an opponent chooses not to attack (which is technically the only "correct" play). Even so, considering that it is only a single-target, single strike with melee range and has a means for an opponent to potentially end its block duration early, it's probably the least offensive example of the dragon's horde of otherwise unfair and fun-killing defensive skills which are consistently used in GW2.

So what might a fair defensive skill look like in GW2?

So the idea is to make defensive abilities which don't allow the user to take egregious amounts of offensive actions during their respective durations; or, if they allow a player to take action during their duration, their effect needs to by limited by something which would allow an attacker to whittle through the defensive aspect of that skill such that its usage can be rendered ineffective if employed in a bad situation. If this cannot be done (since this won't ever be done), then GW2 continues to be mostly a joke in terms of player skill progression.

That's a hell of a wall of text you got here. But I'd say that in essence a fair defence mechanism is a defence mechanism availiable to everyone. So I guess the fairest of all is the untraited core dodge linked to endurance that every character have. From this point on, all other defensive mechanism that aren't shared can be seen as "unfair".

This mean that fairness can only be found into uniformity and that anything that part from this uniformity can become unfair from one point of view or another. Class diversity, skill diversity, thematic diversity and build diversity are bound to create situations that can be seen as "unfair". And at the same time if these elements didn't exist, the game would feel bland for the player and it wouldn't necessarily succeed.

NB.: Now, some relatively recent game have some success in their blandness. For example Fortnite give everyone the same base character and everything else is up to luck and "skill".

@"Dadnir.5038" said:That's a hell of a wall of text you got here. But I'd say that in essence a fair defence mechanism is a defence mechanism availiable to everyone. So I guess the fairest of all is the untraited core dodge linked to endurance that every character have. From this point on, all other defensive mechanism that aren't shared can be seen as "unfair".

This mean that fairness can only be found into uniformity and that anything that part from this uniformity can become unfair from one point of view or another. Class diversity, skill diversity, thematic diversity and build diversity are bound to create situations that can be seen as "unfair". And at the same time if these elements didn't exist, the game would feel bland for the player and it wouldn't necessarily succeed.

NB.: Now, some relatively recent game have some success in their blandness. For example Fortnite give everyone the same base character and everything else is up to luck and "skill".

Fair or balanced does not mean equal. Fair means a mechanic that has counterplay with equal effort to use or counter a strategy.Balanced means that the mechanic is not stronger than other options (translates to better winratio).

@BeLZedaR.4790 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:That's a hell of a wall of text you got here. But I'd say that in essence a fair defence mechanism is a defence mechanism availiable to everyone. So I guess the fairest of all is the untraited core dodge linked to endurance that every character have. From this point on, all other defensive mechanism that aren't shared can be seen as "unfair".

This mean that fairness can only be found into uniformity and that anything that part from this uniformity can become unfair from one point of view or another. Class diversity, skill diversity, thematic diversity and build diversity are bound to create situations that can be seen as "unfair". And at the same time if these elements didn't exist, the game would feel bland for the player and it wouldn't necessarily succeed.

NB.: Now, some relatively recent game have some success in their blandness. For example Fortnite give everyone the same base character and everything else is up to luck and "skill".

Nope having the same thing doesn't mean that this thing is balanced, however it mean that it's fair. Fairness have nothing to do with balance. Fairness is all about everyone having the same chance at success and the only real way to achieve this is to uniformize everything that's why a naked untraited character have the only "fair" and not "balanced" way to defend himself which is the dodge.

Fairness absolutely doesn't mean uniformity. It would if you would scrap away all other different variables and characteristics of professions and builds. But since these differentiating variables exist, fairness can hardly be argued as uniformity or "giving the same things" to different professions or builds.

Granting same possibility to individuals/professions/builds that are already different from the beginning will most likely yield different results, some of which can hardly be seen as fair.

@kasoki.5180 said:Fairness absolutely doesn't mean uniformity.

This.

As long as defenses:

• have predictable trigger conditions and discernible visual effects
• scale with the damage capabilities of the class, with less defense being given to higher burst/damage dealers and more to lower damage dealers
• have significant downtime when used if they prevent all damage of a particular type during their uptime, or are passively activated/require little situational awareness or mechanical prowess to use
• follow rules that allow them to be played around if anticipated (block -> unblockable, dodge - > bait, stealth - > reveal, AoE)

then they should be fine.

Great post, I can tell you put some thought into it. Sadly I'm not sure the community (let alone ArenaNet) really care about having a more skillful combat. Or at least there is no consensus of what that actually entails. Downgrade defense;

• "Small blinds" (eg. blinding dissipation, ...) -> removed.
• Invulnerability (eg. distortion, ....) -> blind (or something comparable)
• Block (eg. shield stance, ...) -> counter (next incoming attack only)
• Teleports -> reduce range and prevalence, and/or give them cast-times.

Obviously the result would be that everyone would die way too quickly, which world in turn necessitate other good changes (reduced damage and incresed base movement speed).

@"kasoki.5180" said:Fairness absolutely doesn't mean uniformity.I absolutely agree, however, given the ways in which every single class in GW2 operates within the scope of PvP, every class is basically the same aside from the kinds of particle effects that it produces. The only class that doesn't attempt to insulate itself from all risks by attacking during periods of relative safety is Necromancer, but that class has what is effectively a second health pool (even as Scourge due to all of the barrier that is just passively baked into its baseline skills).

It would if you would scrap away all other different variables and characteristics of professions and builds. But since these differentiating variables exist, fairness can hardly be argued as uniformity or "giving the same things" to different professions or builds.

Are there really so many "different variables and characteristics" of professions and builds in GW2 when the meta so stringently revolves around protracted periods of attacking with impunity (either while babied with stability stacks and/or while taking 0 damage)? I could certainly build a full Physical-skill Warrior with Sword/Mace & Hammer, but that build would inevitably get bodied by someone who would simply ignore every single one of my attacks while dealing damage to me for free. Does that mean that my jank warrior build truly constitutes one of the "different variables and characteristics of GW2 professions and builds" since it basically has no effect on the field at all? And more importantly, what does it say about GW2 at large when the class that "kills me for free" could be any class at all since they all operate under the exact same paradigm: attacking with impunity for a brief period of time before scurrying away and playing passively until their cooldowns recharge?

That last part is the biggest issue of GW2 and how it basically lies to people about how it has so many unique classes and playstyles: every single class basically plays the same way. Every class builds toward attacking during a window of total impunity; they either get a free kill with no effort or they don't kill anything (because opposing players just activated all of their "take no damage" abilities) and then have to run away until they can do the exact same thing again. The skills themselves might be different, but they all play exactly the same. It'd be as if everyone in Team Fortress 2 had rocket jump. Naturally, everyone would just play Heavy with one Medic at that point since it has the most HP and the highest hitscan DPS. There aren't really any limiting factors in GW2 (like movement speed differences or something of that sort) which restrict (and therefore uniquely define) the unfair aspects of any given class. Therefore, everything is just busted and "top builds" emerge not based on playstyles, player skill, or "unique class design" but rather through random buffs or nerfs handed out during balance patches.

On top of all this, we have the issue of how ranged damage in GW2 is brutally overpowered due to its reliance on tab-targeting combined with its outrageous damage potential. No one has to aim, no one has to time anything and everyone moves at the same speed. At this point not even HP pool differences have that much of an effect since all of the meta builds just perfectly negate incoming damage. Zero is zero is zero, it doesn't matter if the player has 20k HP or 1k HP (especially if it is constantly regenerating somehow or can be very rapidly restored in under one second with the press of a single button).

@"Quadox.7834" said:Great post, I can tell you put some thought into it. Sadly I'm not sure the community (let alone ArenaNet) really care about having a more skillful combat. Or at least there is no consensus of what that actually entails. Downgrade defense;

• "Small blinds" (eg. blinding dissipation, ...) -> removed.
• Invulnerability (eg. distortion, ....) -> blind (or something comparable)
• Block (eg. shield stance, ...) -> counter (next incoming attack only)
• Teleports -> reduce range and prevalence, and/or give them cast-times.

Obviously the result would be that everyone would die way too quickly, which world in turn necessitate other good changes (reduced damage and incresed base movement speed).

Yeah, the main issue is that both defense and offense are overtuned. I remember when the game launched how it was far too easy to kill a lot of the classes, and how elementalist was basically king of fun since nobody could reliably kill a full cantrip d/d user who just played with enough panic buttons and escape routes on hand. People used to run tournaments when everyone still believed in GW2's (mem)esports potential, and most tourneys had a class limit of 2 per team EXPLICITLY because it would stop teams from just rolling 3-4 elementalists and 1 thief/mesmer along with maybe an extra side deck class like a spirit ranger. Warrior was probably the first class to slowly become more and more invulnerable to damage. However, as all classes hit invuln saturation, then damage started creeping up to compete. Now both are out of control, and making GW2 remotely decent at this point would entail razing both of those normalized expectations. The biggest problem, however, is how a game's playerbase is easily damaged by dumb developer decision. For instance, it would be nearly impossible to walk down autoattack damage to reasonable levels without the entire playerbase losing its mind. There was a recent nerf to thief dagger AA damage (like 7%) and the forums exploded for a bit.

Anet's balance is a joke, but unfortunately most GW2 players just aren't independent thinkers who can recognize how holistic nerfs to certain effects would really only benefit the game's competitive health (and how any nerfs to player damage could just be appropriately complemented by enemy HP reductions within instances like raids).

@Swagg.9236 said:

we have the issue of how ranged damage in GW2 is brutally overpowered due to its reliance on tab-targeting combined with its outrageous damage potential.

A 4/10 attempt at best.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

we have the issue of how ranged damage in GW2 is brutally overpowered due to its reliance on tab-targeting combined with its outrageous damage potential.

• Technically can't miss.
• Able to deal out thousands of damage very, very quickly.
• Melee (whether as an opener or a ranged follow-up) only remotely competes when it can be shielded by protracted damage negation.

I'unno, bro.

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

we have the issue of how ranged damage in GW2 is brutally overpowered due to its reliance on tab-targeting combined with its outrageous damage potential.

• Technically can't miss.
• Able to deal out thousands of damage very, very quickly.
• Melee (whether as an opener or a ranged follow-up) only remotely competes when it can be shielded by protracted damage negation.

I don't know either about all those pesky overpowered ranged spellbreakers, holosmiths, mirages, reapers, firebrands, revenants, and weavers.Like, the only ranged professions that can compete from the distance are deadeye, ranger, dragonhunter (in some setups), power shatter mesmer, and probably elementalist (staff or fresh air).

The main reason that ranged damage is typically lower than melee is that range is safer. You don't have to move as often to avoid enemy damage or CC and you often can continue to DPS while repositioning. Melee does zero damage when not in melee. Range is also less susceptible to kiting compared to melee.

It has nothing to do with aim or targeting, nor should it.

@Airdive.2613 said:I don't know either about all those pesky overpowered ranged... weavers.

Lol. All those overpowered Weavers are definitely ruining PvP. Just go back to defending Deadeye. You didn't make any sense there either, but at least we could avoid seeing your nonsense by going to other threads.

@NaturallyNick.4058 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:I don't know either about all those pesky overpowered ranged... weavers.

Do you mean fresh air builds? I certainly don't see oh-so powerful ranged elementalists often, and when they're running fresh air, they're usually dead on sight.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Swagg.9236 said:

we have the issue of how ranged damage in GW2 is brutally overpowered due to its reliance on tab-targeting combined with its outrageous damage potential.

• Technically can't miss.
• Able to deal out thousands of damage very, very quickly.
• Melee (whether as an opener or a ranged follow-up) only remotely competes when it can be shielded by protracted damage negation.

If these didn't have a veritable PvE-tier rotation of braindead defenses and passives, then they would instantly die to ranged attacks. Moreover, even if someone of them deal most damage while in melee range (such as mirage and revenant), they often have something like a teleport to instantly circumvent distance with zero effort and timing (sometimes even going through walls and terrain). In fact, the only thing that you listed there which doesn't have a free teleport, easy stealth or a constant stepping-stone rotation of total damage and effect negation is reaper. And even then, reaper still relies on ranged attacks to build free LF and deal overtuned damage with no-projectile, 900 range attacks before face-rolling with stability F1 after a teamfight has whittled away at everyone else's generic defenses and panic buttons.

Like, the only ranged professions that can compete from the distance are deadeye, ranger, dragonhunter (in some setups), power shatter mesmer, and probably elementalist (staff or fresh air).

Deadeye is virtually unkillable at the moment except by other thieves who can repeatedly teleport to targets with zero effort. Even then, however, it's not entirely guaranteed due to the amount of resetting stealth that deadeye possesses. The rest of them are either mildly mitigated or have been eliminated from viable option consideration due to the powercreep of passive defense rotations. However, it's important to consider that melee builds countering or checking ranged options is not a result of ranged attacks being worthless or underpowered, but rather the reality of how GW2 is oversaturated with "blocking" or "evading" or "invulnerable" states. Once these protracted periods of damage negation wear off, the defender will instantly be under the pressure of quite effectively thousands of DPS if on the receiving end of any ranged weapon that makes into regular meta usage. I'd to so far to say that if that the start of every single GW2 PvP encounter didn't revolve around each player teleporting, stealthing and/or negating all incoming effects for a solid 3-8 seconds, then staff elementalist might be the most powerful control and potential damage build in the game just by virtue of layering mag aura and arcane shield over a meteor shower cast.

tl;dr

• Ranged was always strong by virtue of it never being able to miss.
• Eventually, powercreep made survivability passively too strong for some ranged abilities to compete.
• Instead of looking at all options holistically, anet just continually powercrept ranged attacks and personal defenses until we have 11k longbow 2s (among plenty of other offensive ranged attacks), teleports on nearly every meta build and long-winded, unstoppable damage negation chains on those without teleports.
• If you don't bring either of the latter, you die in seconds to anyone with a ranged weapon.

That's the problem with making all of your ranged abilities rely on tab-targeting in a game that still uses manual, ground-targeting and some free-form melee skills.

@"Swagg.9236" said:

If these didn't have a veritable PvE-tier rotation of braindead defenses and passives, then they would instantly die to ranged attacks.

You almost make it sound like playing ranged takes more skill which sort of counters your own point.

Moreover, even if someone of them deal most damage while in melee range (such as mirage and revenant), they often have something like a teleport to instantly circumvent distance with zero effort and timing (sometimes even going through walls and terrain).

Breaking news: gap closing skills is what most melee characters have in pretty much any game, it's a basic balancing factor and you can't just chalk it off as "zero effort".

TL;DR There's just enough tools, including good tools, to counter ranged damage dealers. How is it unfair?

anything except mirage with their BS tons of dodge/invuln/block WHILE BEING ABLE TO ATTACK is fair.

Is this post just a really long winded mirage whine? I haven't read it, but I bet it is.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@"Swagg.9236" said:

If these didn't have a veritable PvE-tier rotation of braindead defenses and passives, then they would instantly die to ranged attacks.

It's more of a case of how ranged attacks in GW2 are so braindead that, eventually, nearly every class ended up getting a heap of braindead hard counters to it (or at least enough to negate all damage until one could scurry out of LoS).

Moreover, even if someone of them deal most damage while in melee range (such as mirage and revenant), they often have something like a teleport to instantly circumvent distance with zero effort and timing (sometimes even going through walls and terrain).

Teleports and scripted movement negate positioning with the press of a button (and sometimes instantaneously). They remove timing out of the equation of an encounter, reducing much of a 1v1 fight or a protracted team fight into twitchy reactions and guess-work rather than consistent prediction and careful, conscious re-positioning. This isn't to say that most ranged options in GW2 can't be used to their full potential by kindergartners, but it's a little silly to drastically overbuff ranged attacks in order to compete with melee which can just press a single button in order to instantly negate any ranged attacker's positioning. It's probably more like there were plenty of problems on both ends from the outset: ranged attacks don't require aim and can really put oppressive amounts of pressure if left unchecked for a very short amount of time; yet melee attackers just blink around or negate all incoming effects anyway, so ranged attacks at large are basically reduced down to "panic button poppers" than a unique game feature or playstyle option.

And, yes, since every meta melee attacker either has stealth, stability, evades, blocks and/or teleports on their build which effectively work to negate any risk of trundling into melee range in the first place, the act of engaging in melee at the outset of a GW2 PvP encounter involves zero effort.

@Kumouta.4985 said:anything except mirage with their BS tons of dodge/invuln/block WHILE BEING ABLE TO ATTACK is fair.

Mirage might be one of the most egregious offenders of attacking with total impunity, but every class features a meta build that does it. Even Reaper, which only has access to 3 stacks of stability (still an incredibly overpowered effect to be obtained instantly at the press of a baked-in profession button with a mere 20s CD), simply deals so much damage so quickly that players are often forced to just kite because it's entirely worthless to fight a Reaper unless you yourself can just negate all incoming damage and go full Runescape melee on the guy until he dies. Every class does what mirage does, just to varying degrees, and none of it is fair.