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Why isn't the damage balanced around PvP?


witcher.3197

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30-35k DPS in PvE seems to be average at this point. That's be enough to kill a thief, TWICE. Each second.

Granted PvP operates with slightly lower stats and PvE builds don't work here, but it's clear that there's a crazy amount of damage in the game. Why did the balance team let this happen?

When it comes to PvE it absolutely shouldn't matter if the average DPS is 3k, 30k, or even 300k because we're fighting NPCs. The teams could just design the health of the mobs to fit whatever damage players are supposed to do. PvP is a different beast however, HP has been the same since the release of the game but the damage went way past it, and a simple HP boost for players would just create a whole lot of other problems. Powercreeping damage means nothing for PvE, but can destroy every other area of the game.

I just don't understand how can the balance team care so little for PvP, it wouldn't cost them anything to keep damage at a playable level in this gamemode. Yet they chose to neglect it completely, focusing only on PvE without considering anything else. It's like they forgot this part of the game existed.

"Big numbers are fun" seems to be the only driving force behind combat design at this point.

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so, you are comparing 30-35k dps (under perfect raid scenarios) to pvp damage?on your own, without any buff/effect from other players if you can still do 30-35k then you might have discovered a bug.

"only" power chrono is capable of getting somewhere close, because off how phantasms work now, and because they self-provide offensive boons.

you are confusing dps, with burst. a soulbeast in pvp had good "dps" for 10 seconds, that's not dps but burst

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On pve the dmg is also not balanced.

There is a part called "humanity". On pve if you miss your dmg rotation or need longer time to push the buttons, you'll get a dmg lose. On pvp you have the same issue, just that you don't only need to know how to do dmg, you also need to know how to defence yourself correctly and at least to use the teams defence also (like burst, teamrezz, bodyblock).

The goal on both modes also are little different: on pve you mostly farm, enjoy the story, explore and so on. Pvp is about a competition on a 5v5 mode at a capture the flag system (mostly). So you need a good knowledge about all mechanicals and how they act to others to reach the goal "win". So dmg is not the only mechanic that affect the way a game ends.

If you regulate the dmg on one side, you need to regulate all other options and how strong they are depending on each other .

And sry then you only balanced the theory instead of the players that still play what they want no mater how less effective they are :astonished:

But if we look back at the patches, somethings got better without notice on pvp:

  • We have at least a better tournament system
  • some defenses got more intuitional but also reactive (you don't have that much retaliation, stability and confusion duration. You have at all more effects by using skill instead of proc passives)

The last point made players more useful even if they are bad and change only the fight duration for better players so they can play more aggressive/get more impact by themselves.

(Hello burst meta! Abuse the bad reactions our community didn't need to worry about bevore you carry them by just using the passive traits/ effects)

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I played another game where there was this PVP where you had three possible superpowers: hyperspeed with reduced HP (think superspeed in GW2 but double the speed), stealth spam with increased HP, or a shield that blocks attacks and heals a small amount for allies per second with increased HP, and the shield could be broken after it was attacked a certain amount of time. All superpowers had a meter that recharged once they ran out almost immediately. The hyperspeed meter recharged instantly, the stealth spam meter recharged slower, and the shield user recharges the slowest.

Healing was disabled; instead, there were healing pads at the home base, meaning if you ran on low HP it was advised to run back to home base to refill HP. This is a strategic game mode where all your actions including restoring HP counted.

So here is my idea:

What if there were Conquest maps that were basically "mini" Conquest maps in which all the nodes were much closer together but utilities were replaced with the one of three choosable superpowers in your home base (by default all utilities are disabled so if you pick no superpower you are gimping yourself). The heal skill is replaced with the superpower mechanic that identifies the build, it does no healing whatsoever.

Boons are still enabled so Firebrands can still exist, likely under the shield superpower. The hyperspeed mechanic gives many classes the opportunity to decap. The compressed nature of the maps leads to frantic, more fast-paced rotations.

Utility and elite skills will vary per superpower, as for what they are I haven't gave it enough thought.

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You are aware that if a player don't manage to kill another player in PvP, he come here to complain about it's profession doing no damage and other professions being broken OP? Simply put, players are given tools that allow them to prevent their foes to deal critical damage (weakness), reduce incoming damage by 30+% (protection), totally nullify damage, or simply have a high HP/s. This create a need for players to have an amount of damage able to overcome those mechanisms and lead to the current situation. PvP damage are currently balanced around this idea, not around whether or not they are competitive in PvE unlike what you seem to think, this is why elementalist are always complaining that they deal no damage when they have decent PvE dps potential.

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If this was like 3-4 years ago I’d probably agree. Other than a few over performing classes (Holo and SoulBeast in particular, maybe some war), which to be fair there’s always something overtuned; balance has been relatively better and I don’t think anything really needs to change and argue if would be more difficult to.

Granted, if from the start the game was balanced solely around PvP from the ground up, you can design NPCs to die at the same rate they die now.

The upside is we get better balanced, and easier to balance PvP, and the downside is we get “???” what? PvE would feel the same just with smaller numbers. WvW would be better balanced too. Which some might argue isn’t a good thing for some reason.

Probably a little to late now though, I expressed this same argument in the early days.

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@witcher.3197 said:I just don't understand how can the balance team care so little for PvP, it wouldn't cost them anything to keep damage at a playable level in this gamemode. Yet they chose to neglect it completely, focusing only on PvE without considering anything else. It's like they forgot this part of the game existed.

Simply put (without agreeing or disagreeing with your question), this games pve player base dwarfs the pvp player base by probably around 90% or more.

Not to mention that a vast majority of the pvp player base also plays pve at this point in time.

Why should Arenanet risk balancing around a small minority game mode at potentially damaging their main target audience? Spvp and WvW have become side attractions at this point in time (unfortunate since I love WvW, but a sad fact).

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@witcher.3197 said:I just don't understand how can the balance team care so little for PvP, it wouldn't cost them anything to keep damage at a playable level in this gamemode. Yet they chose to neglect it completely, focusing only on PvE without considering anything else. It's like they forgot this part of the game existed.

Simply put (without agreeing or disagreeing with your question), this games pve player base dwarfs the pvp player base by probably around 90% or more.

Not to mention that a vast majority of the pvp player base also plays pve at this point in time.

Why should Arenanet risk balancing around a small minority game mode at potentially damaging their main target audience? Spvp and WvW have become side attractions at this point in time (unfortunate since I love WvW, but a sad fact).

Regarding the PvP population, isn't that a product of the game over 7 years? Considering when we started out people were coming off the back of GW1 PvP which people still sing the praises of, and GW2 had e-sports aspirations so high that it was a rather large chunk of the marketing.

If it was cultivated better from the early days with suggestions like the above, and we got a game type people wanted to watch; we possibly could have avoided some really stupid metas, and maybe stayed in ESL by year 5.True we can only speculate, and hindsight is always 20/20, but who's to say we wouldn't have a more prosperous population?

Though, I 100% agree that if this change was made now it would be risky, and honestly ALOT of work.

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@Daishi.6027 said:

@witcher.3197 said:I just don't understand how can the balance team care so little for PvP, it wouldn't cost them anything to keep damage at a playable level in this gamemode. Yet they chose to neglect it completely, focusing only on PvE without considering anything else. It's like they forgot this part of the game existed.

Simply put (without agreeing or disagreeing with your question), this games pve player base dwarfs the pvp player base by probably around 90% or more.

Not to mention that a vast majority of the pvp player base also plays pve at this point in time.

Why should Arenanet risk balancing around a small minority game mode at potentially damaging their main target audience? Spvp and WvW have become side attractions at this point in time (unfortunate since I love WvW, but a sad fact).

Regarding the PvP population, isn't that a product of the game over 7 years? Considering when we started out people were coming off the back of GW1 PvP which people still sing the praises of, and GW2 had e-sports aspirations so high that it was a rather large chunk of the marketing.

If it was cultivated better from the early days with suggestions like the above, and we got a game type people wanted to watch; we possibly could have avoided some really stupid metas, and maybe stayed in ESL by year 5.True we can only speculate, and hindsight is always 20/20, but who's to say we wouldn't have a more prosperous population?

Though, I 100% agree that if this change was made now it would be risky, and honestly ALOT of work.

Absolutely.

I do remember a rather big crowd of people playing and joining GW2 for the spvp initially (not only GW1 players). It just didn't click with many (I'm personally of the opinion that spvp in general does not work well for MMOs, but let's not get into that here). There is a reason why competitive e-sports is dominated by other game types.

I won't speak to balance pre HoT and if it was spvp/wvw based or pve (given how huge the pve disparities were between some classes). I do recall a huge spvp push right pre HoT which turned a lot of pve players off (might have been to late by then).

I do think the skill split was a good move, but in general the entire idea that people react to enemies actions just goes down in all the visual noise.

Personally I would love for spvp and wvw (more of a wvw person myself coming from DAoC) to see some improvement. I do believe this will only be possible alongside the pve development, which has taken the primary spot for this game at this point in time.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"witcher.3197" said:I just don't understand how can the balance team care so little for PvP, it wouldn't cost them anything to keep damage at a playable level in this gamemode. Yet they chose to neglect it completely, focusing only on PvE without considering anything else. It's like they forgot this part of the game existed.

Simply put (without agreeing or disagreeing with your question), this games pve player base dwarfs the pvp player base by probably around 90% or more.

Not to mention that a vast majority of the pvp player base also plays pve at this point in time.

Why should Arenanet risk balancing around a small minority game mode at potentially damaging their main target audience? Spvp and WvW have become side attractions at this point in time (unfortunate since I love WvW, but a sad fact).

You don't get the point. I'm not saying they should balance around PvP other than settling for lower damage output in the game, which has 0 impact on PvE.

In GW1 Anet's balance team used to have their own rules - one of them was that "no single skill should do more than ~130 damage". GW2 doesn't have anything like this.. other than maybe a PvE benchmark they design around. Currently this benchmark seems to be around 35k DPS. All I'm asking is to change this number to let's say, 20k (or less). They lower the HP of mobs accordingly and bam! PvE didn't feel a thing, but PvP is much more playable all of a sudden. From then on just stick to this lowered threshold and that's it, no extra effort required.

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@"witcher.3197" said:In GW1 Anet's balance team used to have their own rules - one of them was that "no single skill should do more than ~130 damage". GW2 doesn't have anything like this.. other than maybe a PvE benchmark they design around. Currently this benchmark seems to be around 35k DPS. All I'm asking is to change this number to let's say, 20k (or less). They lower the HP of mobs accordingly and bam! PvE didn't feel a thing, but PvP is much more playable all of a sudden. From then on just stick to this lowered threshold and that's it, no extra effort required.Killing times in PvP are long enough. Oneshots don't happen that often at higher tiers. At that skill level the average time of an encounter before one player dies (or has to give up the capture point and run away) is about 10 to 30 seconds, which is fine.

When something is unbalanced then that's mostly specific builds and not the whole game mechanic. Toning down overall damage will create a new bunker meta over night. That's a trivial fact.

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@"witcher.3197" said:You don't get the point. I'm not saying they should balance around PvP other than settling for lower damage output in the game, which has 0 impact on PvE.

In GW1 Anet's balance team used to have their own rules - one of them was that "no single skill should do more than ~130 damage". GW2 doesn't have anything like this.. other than maybe a PvE benchmark they design around. Currently this benchmark seems to be around 35k DPS. All I'm asking is to change this number to let's say, 20k (or less). They lower the HP of mobs accordingly and bam! PvE didn't feel a thing, but PvP is much more playable all of a sudden. From then on just stick to this lowered threshold and that's it, no extra effort required.

Like I said before, you are wrong in your basic hypothesis that damages in PvP are balanced around PvE.

First, PvE benchmark can't be achieved in PvP due to amulets giving less stat than a PvE full end game gear and the use of food on which this benchmark is dependant. All in all just this probably already shave 5k to the 35k dps you point out. If you add the fact that this dps is achieved with heavy boons, unique buffs and condition requirement, achieving such dps in PvP is just unlikely.

The second point is that the PvP subforum constantly ask for buff and nerf dependent of the PvP meta. The reality is that the current level of damage in PvP were wildly asked. People wanted power damage to outdo condition damage and that's what they got. At this point if ANet were to nerf the damage like you suggest, condition damage would outdo power damage again and we would enter again in a condi-cancer era which would make the PvP player base highly unsatisfied.

The last point is that the game have defensive mechanisms that affect PvP infinitely more than it affect PvE where those mechanism are mostly nullified: weakness, cripple, chill, protection... etc. These condition and boons are extremly powerful against players to the point that a player that would otherwise hit you with a 35k hit wouldn't even reach 10k if he is under the effect of weakness alone. If you add protection these 10k are even more reduced by 30% and the reductions goes on and on.

The real issue of PvP and the game in general isn't the PvE benchmark being at 35k. This number don't have the slightest bit of effect in PvP. The real issue is how easy it is for a dps build to quickly provide himself with offensive and defensive boons while being at the same time able to build vulnerability on it's foe.

Never forget that PvE factor in the fact that 10 men are required to maintain the required boons and conditions to achieve these 35k dps. It's when you don't need teamwork to achieve a balance of high damage and survivability that something is wrong. This is the case in PvP for some professions but it is not due to PvE, it's entirely due to the contant whinning in this subforum for buff and nerfs which led ANet to give away boons and non damaging conditions for cheap.

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@KrHome.1920 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:TextThe short version of your text ;) :A team of PvE build players that synergizes to 35K golem damage will be destroyed by any balanced PvP comp within 5 seconds (CC -> kill).

So much about the relevance of PvE damage.

I'll try to break it down to you one last time for you:

It doesn't matter if 35k damage is only possible in PvE. If Anet decided to bring this number to 20 it'd obviously affect damage everywhere including PvP (because it'd affect the base damage and scaling of numerous weapon skills/traits that are used everywhere). I'm suggesting to shoot for a lower PvE benchmark to create an all around healthy combat system.

Are you implying that if PvE damage was lowered to what, 5k DPS, PvP would somehow magically still do three times as much because the two are compeltely separate? Or what's your logic behind this whole thing?

Or let's approach this from the other end: are you saying that increasing damage to 300k DPS in PvE wouldn't affect PvP combat, because.. CC?

As a point of reference:

WoW operates in a similar way to current GW2, where PvP has its own lowered stat template to ensure damage is lower than that of PvE.

Average HP in WoW at the moment is ~130k.

PvE DPS is ~25-30k.

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@witcher.3197 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:TextThe short version of your text ;) :A team of PvE build players that synergizes to 35K golem damage will be destroyed by any balanced PvP comp within 5 seconds (CC -> kill).

So much about the relevance of PvE damage.

I'll try to break it down to you one last time for you:

It doesn't matter if 35k damage is only possible in PvE. If Anet decided to bring this number to 20 it'd obviously affect damage everywhere including PvP (because it'd affect the base damage and scaling of numerous weapon skills/traits that are used everywhere). I'm suggesting to shoot for a lower PvE benchmark to create an all around healthy combat system.

The main flaw in your reasoning is that PvE don't chase after the "burst" that bother you but mainly a sustain amount of damage. PvP issue is burst not the 35k sustained dps in PvE. If you nerf the 35k sustained dps in PvE it will do nothing to your issue.

However, this "burst" is also needed in PvP because players have damage mitigation tools and if the burst is to low you fall into a bunker meta that nobody like in PvP.

Are you implying that if PvE damage was lowered to what, 5k DPS, PvP would somehow magically still do three times as much because the two are compeltely separate? Or what's your logic behind this whole thing?

No I'm implying that whether you buff or nerf PvE damages, PvP players will complain about either bunker meta or condi-cancer meta or whatever. If the burst is lower PvP players will complain that they can't kill bunkers. The worst point is that they already complain about it which mean the amount of "damage" (burst) that you complain about is already a necessity in the current PvP game.

Or let's approach this from the other end: are you saying that increasing damage to 300k DPS in PvE wouldn't affect PvP combat, because.. CC?

It could technically be possible for ANet to increase PvE DPS to 300k without affecting PvP in anyway, throught food, PvE mastery and teamplay.

The issue is that you focus to much on PvE numbers that are meaningless in PvP. Nobody in it's right mind would use a PvE meta build in PvP because a meta dps build in PvE is entirely dependent on the other meta support to be effective. You just can't align the "stars" in PvP like you do in PvE.

Like I said, your issue is "solo burst" and that's what you need to address not PvE numbers on which a "solo burst" nerf would have little to no impact.

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I love how people are defending the powercreep in this thread. When I can two-shot people with Arc Divider...there's a problem. Sorry but..."just dodge" ain't going to cut it! People can cry all they want about "bunker meta", but damage needs to be nerfed into the ground all across the board. Not that I want bunker meta, but it drives the damage meta. They drive each other. If you nerf damage, you need to nerf bunker, and vice versa. We've been buffing stuff for like 4 years now, both damage and defensive skills, that's making the game really unplayable. NERF EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND.

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