Regarding people defending classes or builds.

'Sup.

I've resigned myself to mostly lurking while I take a look at what the class balance/ rune changes do to pvp as a whole, but I just wanted to comment on a few topics I'm seeing regarding people arguing to refute allegations of (X) is unbalanced or (Y) needs to be removed. I will leave class names out of it because knee jerk reactions.

If you don't agree feel free to critique or debate me.

"X is strong, but Y has more access to (mechanic or boon that allegedly makes X unbalanced), so X is balanced.

Context matters, obviously. If a class can do something you can or has access to a trait you also have access to, but is useful in less situations than you are, your sharing a trait with that class does not certify your class as balanced. If a class can (take no damage) for a short amount of time, and you can also do that, fine. But that does not shield your class from criticism if outside of this skill your class outperforms the other in general matchups.

"X has been underpowered for years, so it deserves to be overpowered."

I'm not going to go really in depth with this one. your class isn't magically shielded from criticism just because Anet forgot about it for a few years, as sad as that is. All that does is causes all of the toxic players to migrate to your class of choice and play it until Anet banishes it again. if you play X and X was underpowered, and a change is made that makes X overpowered, you should be the first line of people running to the forums or to the devchat to decry the buff, because you're just going to get nerfbatted harder when the forum salt gets too noticeable.

"X is hard to pick up, but in the hands of a skilled player it is absolutely nightmarish. just like every other class, so it is balanced."

That's not always the case. The reasoning line this takes is a roundabout way of blocking people from asking why the kit of the alleged class overperforms by passively calling them unskilled.

Yes, good players make classes seem overpowered, that much is a given. But even so, there should be a limit as to how strong a class can be in the hands of someone skilled. Even at exceptionally high play, class kits should have weaknesses that must be addressed actively rather than passively. (For example, committing a strategy or maneuver to defense that requires you to stop attacking or channeling; or, in some cases, having the frequency of being allowed to attack while defending reduced to very small windows, so you need to exercise forethought to use those resources effectively.) No matter how skilled a player is, if their kit at high level play vastly outperforms the toolkits of other classes that are properly built, they need to be looked at. Being skilled does not entitle you to a higher mechanical class advantage, it should BE the advantage on it's own.

"X is not prevalent in high level play, therefore X is balanced."

Not true in all cases. In high level play people can devote a team comp to stalling that particular X, thereby making them less effective at high ranks unless X plays in an unconventional way (which they are less prone to do at high rank).This does not, however, make X balanced.If you bring a gun to a knife fight, and you are ganged up on because you brought a gun to a knife fight, this doesn't make your decision to bring a gun to a knife fight fair. You are still unfairly matched up against any of those people you get to fight alone. Your loss when double or triple teamed does not automatically certify your build as balanced. We've been at this same argument point year after year, and every year it gets a new coat of paint and people seem to keep buying it. Did we not just have bunker rev, turret engie, etc in the meta? "Just DT / Just stall until you get help" should never be the main argument defense for why X is balanced. Once you start contesting a point with one other person, skill and teamwork should be the deciding factor in who stays alive on that circle. Class inequality or class counter (like throwing a thief against a dragonhunter, for instance) should only be a minor factor.

If X outperforms other classes as a whole and forces people to gear their comp to "Anti X", whether or not X is able to overcome this comp or not is irrelevant. It is shaping the meta around itself. This doesn't mean that on a granular level that the class is balanced. It means merely that it is not 360-noscope-immortal-god.

Not aiming this particularly at any class, just seeing a lot of posts fall onto non-answers to avoid talking about why things are busted.

Here is another one,

Class 1 has skills A and BClass 2 only has skill ATherefore, Class 1 is OP

This is not a valid argument. For example, if class 1 has 1 sec on protection and 1 sec of vigor but class 2 has 60 sec of protection than class 2 would be more OP even though they have less skill variety.

Regarding your last argument, I am semi for it and semi against it. What are you going to use to balance classes if you don't use high level play?If one person in a group brings a gun to a knife fight and the other players gain up on the gun fighter first, shouldn't you just outfit your whole team with guns to beat the knife fighters?

I know what you mean in the last argument. However, once again, I think this a problem with 'fun' and not with balance. . . . . . kinda. Locking team variety to one viable comp is NOT fun. Its also not good for the game. However, to balance, I think you need to work your way down. First with the comp that locks down class X, and then with class X itself (That is if no other comp can beat the comp that locks down class X). Balance should also be done only though rankings, which IMO is high level play as well. However, its not necessarily team play. How do you think is the correct way to balance without arbitrary variables?

Here's another one:

If you look at the AT's comps don't run X so X/Y is balanced/underpowered/overpowered.

Though you then get into the black hole of what on earth does it mean to be balanced/imbalanced and what metrics do you use to measure it? How far can classes deviate from a hypothetical 11% representation everywhere? What about if a class has 100% representation in 1 area (AT's) but almost no presence in duo queues?

Welcome to the desert of despair.