Class representation in PvP

I remember a graphic posted a long time ago, where the most played classes were Ranger , guardian and ele and then the rest were slightly lower, but basically ranger guardian and eles were the most played. When you go to other websites that use API, you see a similar correlation. Now, I know that PvP brings another crowd and class representation from PvE doesnt necessarily means it will be similar to PvP, but funnily enough, you see a similar correlation where rangers are one of the most played and revs one of the least....... yet.... eles have nearly 0 representation from my personal and guild experience.

I see SO many eles in almost any aspect of the game; fractals, raids, open world, my guild, fashion wars, yet, nearly none in PvP matches. I dont think most people in general play whats "strong", but rather what is strong within the realm of things they play. Does it not bother Anet that eles have such discrepant difference in population between modes?! Or am I simply victim to confirmation bias? Am I simply "seeing" too many rangers/mesmers/guardians and somehow "omitting" all the eles I come across?

If I'm not, perhaps it is time to reevaluate the reasons why such discrepancy would be in the game, surely, losing a large population of potential players who would mostly play eles cant be good for the health of the PvP mode.

We don't need some perfect balance of class representation. The only real issue is from certain classes under-performing.

However, balance will never be perfect and you'll always have a large chunk of players that just jump on the flavor-of-the-month OP class/build.

That being said, yes, of course there are some obvious balance changes that need to be done to at least help eles. Rev power shiro isn't bad, but Rev has never really been a popular class.

I see 1 ele in most games. The most played classes seem to be ranger, mesmer and necro. Tons of core guardians around past few months too.

Representation is generally a good indicator of what needs balance. Believe it or not, when something becomes noticeably good, people flock to it, damned be it if they like the class or not.

Due to the way the game is designed, in pve pretty much all that matters to be viable is to have top DPS numbers, and that shows (back in the day optimal runs consisted in having multiple elementalists). However, competitive modes have more factors to take into account, specially in regards to survival against the other classes (which enables the existence of more roles for a party composition than just pure glass cannons).

Historically, elementalist was in a better position, but balance changes, which often didn't even had elementalists directly in mind, have dropped its PvP viability to where it is today. It's my belief that eventually ANet's systems team will get back on improving viability of the individual classes once they are done with the more broad changes.

It is historically true that certain classes see over/under representation depending on the game mode. For example, since I main engineer, it is extremely rare to see other engineers in WvW, and very uncommon to see anything other than YOLOsmith in PvP or PvE, due to the fundamental design of the core class and scrapper.

Class representation probably varies greatly depending on your skill bracket. It's mostly after plat 1 that you tend to see a more narrow band of builds that can be effective. It's really difficult to balance a game for all skill brackets.

@"eksn.7264" said:Class representation probably varies greatly depending on your skill bracket. It's mostly after plat 1 that you tend to see a more narrow band of builds that can be effective. It's really difficult to balance a game for all skill brackets.

Well of course brackets matter, and yes, I do agree the number of builds decreases, in P2 all I saw was on average out of 9 people (myself excluded): 2-4 mirages, 1-3 soybeasts, 1-2 reaper/scourage, ~1 spellbreakers, 1-3 holos, 1-2 core guardians, with the occasional weaver/rev, rarely anything other than this. No, I'm not being hyperbolic, I REALLY mean it that you almost exclusively see only these builds in P1-P2 where I hovered most of the season.

Thats what I mean it is wrong. Sure people gravitate to whats strong, but eventually you get tired, you want to try other builds, things you might actually enjoy playing, rather than just playing whats the strongest, however, there are some "meta" build that exponentially outclasses anything else and drives all other builds away: imo the worst offenders are by FAR mirage/soulbeast/holo. If you cant stand in a fight vs these, your build will simply get run over, specially as you go up the brackets and people actually know how to optimize their rotations and situational skill usage on those meta picks.