Can you prove something is balanced or not?

Can i see some calcs or statistics?

Don't wanna argue on a "it feels strong" or "thats op/broken pls nerf" base. I can't see it anymore, esp. cause even our top players never show a perfect match on high lvl, so we never saw the theoretically optimal game and base on that we don't have the datas to prove how strong the classes are (maybe single mechanics).

At best categorize on:Base defence:

• hp
• armor
• def buffs
• evades
• blocks
• debuffs
• cc
• movement
• stealth
• counterpressure
• heal (per sec and as burst)

Base offence:

• Dps
• burst
• debuff
• mobility
• boons

Support:

• team buffs
• heal (per sec and burst)
• rezz
• dmg
• cc
• unice options (like Portal)

All this at a timeline of 20 sec, 40 sec and 90sec (most weaponswaps allow to use all weaponskills at 20 sec, most utility skills cd used are max at 40sec and 90sec for ult uptime... I know some can be used more/less but for statistics thats a good option)

I want the uptime of buffs, evades, blocks, stealth, cc, debuff, bursts. How long they least and how many times you can burst.

Then also i need one data with the best dmg rotation, defence rotation (like for 2v1s or holding a point), support rotations and duell rotation against each class. To see the potential at each situation outside of teamsynergies (if you also calc that, you have my respect! I kneel on you, my heroe!)

Also needed: the datas of changes on the statistics at all rotations, to simulate the optimal situation on high playerskills.

If you still have the time:

• try to calc the worser actions, to get a statistic about randomness affecting the distance to the optimal rotation. Maybe we can then also show how strong some mechanics carry bad plays and witch one punish them how strong
• mapabuses
• bugabuses
• mechanical differents (like reactiontime)

Imo first we need a base knowledge, to get a fair discussion about balance, or to categories builds.

Btw. Did i miss something? Or do you think that should be enough?

Thanks for everyone helping us to collect databases and pls i hope most of you prove the arguments.

Thanks and have a great day :)

No way they will make loggingprograms as extensive as this for an MMO PvP mode. You want wellbalanced PvP an MMO is not the genre for it.

The answer is no.

@"LaGranse.8652"Thats not what I'm talking about.i wanted that someone (at best the players that say something is bad balanced) to show his calcs or statistics to prove theyr argues.

At your case can you prove that gw2 is not well balanced? And pls don't argue with, "someone says that" if that person also never prove his argue. Show on what base the game is unbalanced outside of playing bad. Cause i already know that players are unbalanced (like cause of reaction time, game knowledge, Makromanagement, mentality and more).

balancing is more an art then a science

@Derdif math says the game is unbalanced or not its a fact not art. Balance is a situation at this case nothing you can interpret (outside of players reacting on how they feel)

You can, calc the optimal situation and on that way finding out whats the best rotation. You maybe cant play every time the best rotation but you can also calc how far you stay away from that and you can calc what happens if you use your skills wrong. Means you can see why someone looses or wins and how his actions affect the different situations. (It's nothing else then calculate how randomness change the game)

If you deside to change the animation of a skill its science and art.

@xp eke xp.6724 said:@Derdif math says the game is unbalanced or not its a fact not art. Balance is a situation at this case nothing you can interpret (outside of players reacting on how they feel)

You can, calc the optimal situation and on that way finding out whats the best rotation. You maybe cant play every time the best rotation but you can also calc how far you stay away from that and you can calc what happens if you use your skills wrong. Means you can see why someone looses or wins and how his actions affect the different situations. (It's nothing else then calculate how randomness change the game)

no, that's not how you balance a game, that's how you establish a meta. and no, they're not the same

You don't balance with that players, yes.but you can find out if the game is balanced on his own on different situation:Like the classes,SynergiesOn theyr rollesOn the different teamcombs

And you etablish only a meta if the players accept this meta and cause they learned to understand the game better it ofc change the meta.

For some stuff, it's easy. For most, players don't have the raw data available to harvest.

Easy ones are traits which provide stat boosts being compared against many other traits. Righteous Instincts is a prime example of a trait which was way too powerful even on paper and was rightly nerfed.

Something which provides CC or anti-CC is far harder to apply an objective value.

@"Exedore.6320"

• You have the tooltips to see how a skill gets affected by statts... Go wiki and seach each skill, trait so on

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

• you can calc the dmg

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

• you have the duration of combo effects

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment

• how it changes on every lvl

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attribute

• how attributes affect statts

You just have the boons, condis that variate the dmg, cd and kite potential on the situation you want to produce. Blind let you miss one skill and weakness technically reduse your dmg to 50%

You can also look how long the casttime of a cc is to see how long it would dure if you have a reaction timer (btw good players have one of 0,4 sec., most have one from 0,7-0,9 sec if they played the build a long time)

After that we calced only against someone that doesn't interact with us and has no armor. Means we need the datas about how another class/build would fight us and the statts.

Open office and exel was enough for save the datas (and sry have no time to end that anymore otherwise i hade done it a long time ago and spread out)

I found out math never lies, only if you forgot something or did wrong and you can calc everything from the game, as long you also know all buggs. You don't need more then a calculator, a table and the game to do this.

You also can intigrate a timeline. That could help to see how long a battle last, or to know when a player needs to leave a point/battle to survive.

It needs a little time, but once it's done, you need only some minutes to adapt after each patch.

Too much faith on maths. :P

Calculations may not lie, but they still must be designed: what exactly is calculated, how are different parameters weighted against each other? These cannot be objectively measured against each another, so the end result will always be subjective and thus vulnerable to bias.

Objectivity is gone the moment humans get involved. Math only works on an abstract level, on their own realm, outside reality.

Anyway, there are other ways to measure balance. One simple measurement is simply spread by popularity. If every class has nearly equal representation within a PvP format, and all utilities and traitlines have pretty much "significant" representation as well, then the game is balanced enough to make diversity viable (meaning, most likely, that the build itself doesn't contributes as much to victory as the player's skill).

But that's just how I would approach balance criteria for a game. Certainly there are other methods.

Thats why you need also the practice, to see if your parameters are right, if you reached this point a video document helps out.

Btw i wanted to know if the game is also on mechanical way balanced, on user base your option is well :)

U pay for that? Not sure if it's worth of effort

This is how GW2 players decide of something is balanced or OP: DuR!!! I CaNt FiGuRE oUt hOW tO KiLL ThiS PerSon So Instead Of LeArNinG HoW ThaT cLasS woRks. AnD Instead oF blaming my SKill, Im Just GonA sAy itS OP and The plaYer CHEATED!!

You're trying to quantify stuff that just cannot be quantified.

There are lots of builds that can in theory do massive damage, and you can show this against test golems. But they just don't do so in real PvP, because it is too difficult to get this damage to connect, or you have no way of covering your burst with stab/evade/invuln etc. Whereas, there are other builds that actually do very low dps to test golems, but because they have good mechanics for connecting their damage to a moving target, they are considered top-tier damage specs.

There are lots of builds that can in theory pump out ludicrous amounts of healing, but they just don't work in PvP because they're vulnerable to spike damage, boon rips, or because its super-easy to rotate around them in the conquest format, etc etc.

How on earth do you quantify the utility of Signet of Mercy? Or Portal? Infiltrators Arrow? How do you quantify the blocking potential of Aegis vs Shield Stance?

How do you put a value on the interrupt potential of Headshot vs the interrupt potential of Bull's Rush? Do you conclude that Bull's Rush is 12 times better than Headshot, because it applies 12x the duration of CC? That's ridiculous.

Doing a raw comparison of stats is a pointless exercise for assessing balance. You'll end up concluding that Staff Ele using Marshal Amulet is the most OP build in the game, and it just isn't. Because players are not test golems, and they won't politely stand in your meteor-shower.

@Safandula.8723I will pay 500g or more (didn't play a long time, so duno exactly how much i can spend)

@ragnarThe game allready calculate the dmg or ranges and more. But we have a lot of players that doesn't understand why theyr match/ fight ended on the way the game show. So we basically try to understand that part and simulate the situations.

Its like on football: if you just play it, you can't get better. Pros train every situation instead of playing the full match, to get the muscular intelligence at the real situation to reach the closest point of the theoretically best solution.

Just that on pvp we have guys that doesn't even try to play in the meaning of pvp + alot of believes how you have to play the game to reach the goal + you have at ranked a pool of players between first try and tryhard to pros chilling outside of the high skill pvp (tournaments). So you can't prove there how balanced all classes/mechanics are at themselves, you can only prove how far away are the players to the optimal high lvl gameplay. Same on tournaments cause we have not much players that use something like the muscular memory, or train the different rotations, situations till they mastered it.

If you don't finish your calcs or forget something, then ofc you can't simulate situations correctly and so you can't prove balance at mechanics, classes, synergies and so on. But it doesn't mean you can't do it at all. It just need a high understanding of the game and a little time to collect the datas correctly.

How do you put a value on the interrupt potential of Headshot vs the interrupt potential of Bull's Rush? Do you conclude that Bull's Rush is 12 times better than Headshot, because it applies 12x the duration of CC? That's ridiculous.

Hard cc means you can do dmg and he can only use instant casts/stunbreack -> so you can calc the stability uptime, to say if he has an advantage from that or not, then you have the next step: how many stunbreacks per time he has compared to your ccs and then if the cc makes sence how his rotation changes at the point he is able to play more aggressive cause of the cc.

On the daze he can also dodge or kite means it doesn't help you to have saver hits, but it helps that you get less dmg (ofc again depends on his resources).

So you can calc how many resources all classes builds have and how they try to reduce them at a effective way.

It's like on strategy games: get fast more recourse and stop theyr recourses, if you wanna win. Just that you have more options how each resources can be used and some are stronger than others.

Eg. Thief can cc easy the heal from necro so he stops one resource with using less then him. But cc a warrior gives you nothing, cause he heals passive but you can blind him and dodge so you can do a dmg trait that you will win at the long time (not against all ofc and if the warrior know how to react on him)

Much easier would be to look at the mmr change of players who main a certain class before and weeks after a balance patch. That should give you an idea of how balance shifts from a metric perspective.

Combine that with results of high level players testing matchups and you can get a good idea of balance. Ofc no team plays a perfect game, but much of the game isn't macro focused. For example the side node matchups can be tested with 1v1s.

High level players define the games balance. If some theoretical strategy is more optimal, it is irrelevant because the balance must address the current metagame, not the theoretical game. The humans (aka paying customers) playing are the ones who suffer the meta, and telling them "there is a more optimal strategy we are balancing around" is a poor sell to the people upset at the state of the game.

Also with regards to high level players; if there is a more optimal strategy, they will adopt it once they know of it. That's the reason they're the top of the game. I would wager I could create a more effective balance system by simply nerfing the classes that won the monthly each month and maybe buffing the most underrepresented class from the monthly each month. At the very least the meta wouldn't remain so stagnant.

In most instances, balance is a relative question, not an absolute one. Case in point is the good old rock-paper-scissors. Is it balanced? Definitely. But the perspectives of rock, paper, and scissors may be that it's not. :tongue:

You could prove something is balanced or not but it requires a lot of time, effort and game knowledge to be able to compare similarities across classes and evaluate differences and how they affect what you're comparing and then you have to look at the wider context and what it allows a class to do and it's theme.

Use game mechanics? Look at how something baits dodges and defensive cds really well (BECAUSE the game is not about trading hits, it's about trading dodges and defensive cds if it's hard for people to understand how GW2 pvp works), for example, like Ranger. You have an AI pet baiting dodges with obnoxious damage and random CC, you have soulbeast damage + CC baiting dodges, and then you get evade spam from the soulbeast as well ridiculous mobility, is that balanced? All of those factors prove that soulbeast has a lot going for it.

It really CAN be simplified to dodge baits and defensive cds, literally ROM just delays a point and ganks really well with soulbeast and he probably won't play anything else because he would be at a disadvantage if he was in terms of baiting dodges and cds.

At this point, if you had common sense then you would understand that Soulbeast isn't balanced.

EDIT: replaced ranger with soulbeast, although ranger as a class has been historically low skill because automatic dodge baits from pets are obnoxious zero skill garbage. And some ranger "pro" mains who have tried different classes back in the day (who I won't name) got destroyed every time they tried a non-AI pet class.

@"apharma.3741" said:You could prove something is balanced or not but it requires a lot of time, effort and game knowledge to be able to compare similarities across classes and evaluate differences and how they affect what you're comparing and then you have to look at the wider context and what it allows a class to do and it's theme.

No, you can't.

At some point you have to start subjectively assigning importance to thing. You can't "prove" that "signet of mercy is x% more powerful than portal". Its totally subjective.You said it yourself, it requires game knowledge, it requires looking at the wider context, what it allows a class to do and it's theme. There are no numbers to compare here.

Take the example I gave above of Headshot vs Bulls Rush. Do you conclude that Bulls Rush is more powerful because it has an evade, longer duration CC, and is knockdown rather than daze? Or do you conclude that Headshot is more powerful because you can interrupt many more enemy skills with it? What if the skill it interrupts is a signet of mercy? What if the knockdown allows your team to generate a downed and then snowball when the enemy tries to rez? It's entirely a matter of opinion which of these is more useful.

As we've discussed in other threads, comparing purely numerically Infiltrators Arrow to other movement skills is silly, since the real power of it is the vertical movement. How do you put an objective value on moving vertically? If you have 2 skills, both which move you 900, but one of which has vertical component, to what extent does that affect the balance? Keep in mind that you must provide an objective assessment that can be measured against other skills, not a fluffy "I reckon it makes it more useful".

If you still disagree, I challenge you to do a single example of objective, numerical analysis which proves how strong/balanced something is, that carries no subjective assessment or internal bias, and that which fully allows for how that things sits within a build as a whole and the wider game-mode. You can't.

The best you can do from a purely objective standpoint is to look at the win-rates of specific builds. And even then, you must consider the context of the skill levels, whether its a premade team with voice-comms or just pugs, what other builds it is being paired with or against etc etc.

@"BlackTruth.6813" said:It really CAN be simplified to dodge baits and defensive cds, literally ROM just delays a point and ganks really well with soulbeast and he probably won't play anything else because he would be at a disadvantage if he was in terms of baiting dodges and cds.

At this point, if you had common sense then you would understand that Soulbeast isn't balanced.

Do you genuinely think that this constitutes an objective proof, and not just an opinion?

"ROM delays point and is really good and I like how he tastes in my mouth, and if you disagree then u stupid". Wauw.

Extreme roles are bad because it becomes a counter vs counter battle. If somebody is running full zerker damage set then you need to either be zerker too or bunker up or condition them. The damage mitigation just isn’t enough to outlast the dps in this game. This means the fights don’t last very long unless you’re in a huge zerg (wvw) but even then pro guilds will wipe pugs every time.

Also base stats like toughness and health are different across professions. Stability, condition removal, healing, crowd control and dps is unevenly spread across them too. This means that some professions are more suited to “tank” roles. While others are more suited to “condition spam”. Then there are others suited to “zerker” burst dps.

This makes the game very difficult to balance because it is unbalanced to begin with. While yes it is true every profession can be any role some are more suited to it than others. The game can not be balanced except by numbers it seems.

There is many lessons to be taken from gw1 such as all professions having the same base health. Also healing being much more effective than it currently is. Then the pvp in this game might be more than just spamming of conditions and dps. There would be a true counter rather than just damage avoidance.

I think the biggest problem is balancing for different skill levels. Because some players have better reflexes or more experience playing a profession. This means that it is not even the professions that are unbalanced but the actual players themselves.

So what I have seen Arenanet do is make very easy builds like condition bunkers that everyone can use. Then there’s zerker thieves, elementalists, bunker guards, etc, that take a bit more skill. The main problem as discussed in Sirlin’s book is balancing for skill.

This is very difficult and he said that by giving easier options that can work, but don’t work as well as something which requires more skill. That is balance and I think Arenanet know this and what we have is a game balanced for different skill levels.

That seems to be the logical way of thinking about the metas of this game in pvp and wvw. And to me it does seem balanced and if people complain they simply need to “learn to play”. But that does not mean that builds that require much more skill should faceroll everybody either.

So in conclusion Balance is very subjective but if you balance for different skill levels it becomes much easier. And that is why a game can not ever be truly balanced. Because players and people have so many different skill levels.

The way we experience competition is by winning or losing. But also I understand that by being too subjective in our opinions of balance is bad feedback. By making the pvp combat challenging but also not too hard to learn creates a diverse pvp community.

The problem is when the game is objectively balanced completely without any player feedback then it becomes very unpopular quickly. This is why Balance is subjective because players who pvp want to have fun which is highly subjective. This is just my opinions of course because I’m sure that general balance is much harder than it seems.

Let's use the conquest meta as an example. We fight each other on small circles. And we have to hold these circles to win the game.

It’s not just the power creep that is the reason these AoE classes are the best. It’s simply the fact that everything else that could counter the Conquest Meta has been nerfed by Arenanet to make way for Esports.

Instead of a power based twitch reaction time meta we have an abundance of AoE DPS and passive gameplay. We have area of effect skills ticking away on a point. We have Bunker Specs putting out enough damage to kill players.

Why is this? Because Arenanet has removed tanky amulets and replaced active damage mitigation with passive invulnerabilities. Now instead of dodging power based attacks with well timed evades we have classes running max AoE DPS.

These AoE DPS classes are dominating because other classes cannot bring enough sustain to compete with them. They are kings of DPS and AoE at the same time with the best ability to stack boons.

You want to know why this game isn’t an ESport Arenanet? Because you catered too much to casuals and made this game too simple. If we had Monks they at least could heal the other classes without sustain directly instead of them slowly dying to AOE and conditions.

I call this game Gank Wars 2 and there’s a simple reason why. Immobilise stacking, Stun/Daze chaining and CC spam is neverending and only certain classes have enough Stability or condition removals to escape.

There is a general lack of sustain and too much dps (both conditions and power). What is the counter to DPS? Nothing…but in GuildWars 1 it was a Monk and that is why this game lacks depth. Dodge rolls aren’t a replacement for healing and protection that a monk class would offer.

I find it funny when people assume GW1 was only theorycrafting builds and counters. The combat was just as if not more active than GW2. The fact is it had interrupts and hexes (based around punishing enemy for spamming). Proper protection and healing spells (able to almost full heal from a spike of dps). Along with Conditions, Melee and kiting, Aoes, block skills/spells and teleports. Also I probably need to mention you couldn’t just spam skills either. They were reliant on energy which you had a supply of and when you ran out it had to regenerate.

^ There’s an example of what is possible with monks. Also here’s a list of monk spells in gw1: “Monks…with their unparalleled gift for keeping their allies alive” http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_monk_skills

Just some ideas and my opinion about the different builds. Since the meta seems to be either extreme conditions bunker or burst spike with not much room in the middle. I’m hoping healing support can be made more viable instead of people just seeing green numbers but not getting any loot.

Bunker and support do very little damage unless they’re a hybrid to do conditions but you generally need some healing power to be a good support player.

Arenanet are buffing support healing and I am glad for it. Problem is most of the full zerker burst spike damage just cannot be outhealed. There’s not much you can do to mitigate the damage either apart from your main heal, dodges, blocks, invulns and evades.

A full zerker amulet player will die in a couple of hits yet can 1shot other players, while a full on bunker such as a guardian can tank hits from multiple players. Also the condition guys in the middle cant really be blamed either since he needs to tank and do some dps through the toughness of the bunkers.

Even Monks can die and be pressured from burst damage as seen in the video but most importantly it gives a real counter to spamming of dps (either conditions or power damage). Right now it’s just a race to see who can spam and avoid the most damage to win hence we have all these “passive” condition builds and burst spikes that rely on being invulnerable.

Boons run out and can be stripped not to mention if the player isn’t in bunker gear they won’t be enough usually unless they have a good amount of toughness. Healing and condition removal is what keeps you alive in an actual fight and it seems to only work in wvw with lots of players running support.

Evades/dodges, condition removal, block and invulnerable skills all have cooldowns meanwhile the damage just keeps coming from autoattacks and aoes. This is why I think this game would benefit from having a monk, to counter the insane burst damage.

What I want simply is a game with monks like gw1 had where fights can actually last longer than a couple of minutes. But apparently Arenanet decided that healers are boring and everyone should just kill each other with dps. Healing and Damage Mitigation needs a real buff if this game wants to have any chance at being competitive and balanced.

Fights lasting longer hones skills and teamwork with players. The best example I can use in gw2 is wvw where there is enough support and the aoe limit of 5 prevents players being bursted down instantly if they make a mistake. The stacking zerg meta is there for a reason and all zerker and condition damage does is make it even more needed.

Remember gw1 we had so many skills and different builds and they could all be used because they countered each other. But that didn’t mean that some builds weren’t better than others for certain things. There is too many players complaining that 1 build is too powerful but in my opinion its all based on skill level. Burst can 1-shot bunker or condis but they have more defense making it harder.

Do you guys want a game with no “Overpowered” skills and everything the same and boring? Half the fun of games is to have fun and in gw1 I sure had fun in pve with my shadow form tank lol. So in all honesty maybe try different classes more and try to learn all the different skills and how they can be countered. There is no reason for nerfs because you guys refuse to adapt to the meta.

I played gw1 had fun but this combat system is more dynamic being able to actively dodge and every class having their own heals. I just get bored of the whole dps wins everything while damage mitigation and healing is not even considered. I think gw2 lacks depth and with a monk it could easily have it.

Maybe I’m just the type of player that likes when I’m needed such as Shadow Form tanks in gw1. There are many other players that I think want to be able to feel like they can help the party and be useful instead of just another player. This is why I love healing and damage mitigation and tanking is so fun.

I truly believe Thief's burst meta with bunker Guardian’s tankiness and Warrior’s Healing Signet and invuln stances balance each other out. Also Engineer’s, Necromancer's and Elementalist’s Aoe damage controls conquest points. Meanwhile Ranger's pets and long distance damage can take out these targets from a distance. Mesmer’s spamming of clones also allows them to easily confuse an enemy long enough for them to burst them down. This is truly the best meta we can get and if you don’t like it experiment with builds and kill the passive no skill builds as you call them.

If some builds don’t have a counter then reroll to them since they’re obviously so overpowered and never die. Maybe try playing as a team instead of trying to 1v1 everything. Burst/zerker will die quickly that’s a fact. Would you prefer the meta to be bunkers and conditions only?

This is the state of the meta and Arenanet will not change it because it attracts the most players. Do you think that there is more skill to playing your build and everything else is cheese? This is called not playing to win and making excuses.

Everybody plays for or against a profession and thinks it is Overpowered. Well I am simply going to say that is your opinion. There is no balance when everything is “overpowered”.

Arenanet will not listen to your complaints obviously biased against certain professions. Because all you want is for them to be nerfed and your own profession buffed. I will link “Playing to win” by Sirlin now.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

@"BlackTruth.6813" said:

BECAUSE the game is not about trading hits, it's about trading dodges and defensive cds if it's hard for people to understand how GW2 pvp works

EDIT: replaced ranger with soulbeast, although ranger as a class has been historically low skill because automatic dodge baits from pets are obnoxious zero skill garbage. And some ranger "pro" mains who have tried different classes back in the day (who I won't name) got destroyed every time they tried a non-AI pet class.

I can vouch for the pet carry. Playing a lot of Druid in late HoT and early PoF propped me up to Plat. Pet random damage and knockdowns are so hilariously frequent and reliable (most of the time when a player works hard to CC me, the pet knockdown comes out of nowhere), I didn't really need to pay attention to animations most of the time. I only needed to rotate abilities and target mobility skills away from my target and I sometimes randomly won 1v1s spamming heals, swapping pets, doing jump puzzles and doing my own rotation. It didn't teach me anything about PvP at all. If anything it made me worse.

After I switched to other classes (mostly Warrior) and needed to actually dodge correctly and hit targets in melee, my rating plummeted but game enjoyment went up a lot. I have a Ranger/Druid I played 400+ games on but I find myself incredibly reluctant to even touch it. Maybe Sniper Soulbeast again if the mood is right?