You wake up one day and found out that you are part of the balance team...

You wake up one day and found out that you are part of the balance team...And you were tasked to identify 1 skill or trait or class mechanic to nerf from each class for the next balance patch.Which would it be and why?Can be for small scale or large scale fights.

This would be my list:

• Necromancer - Traited Scepter 3 - Devouring Darkness

Although it requires a Grandmaster Trait (Lingering Curse), which also competes with two other pretty strong GM traits (Parasitic Contagion and Weakening Shroud), it really does too much for a 10 second CD AOE Boon Corruption skill on top of its other effects.Increasing the traited version CD to 15 or 20 seconds would make it more balanced.

• Mesmer - Profession Mechanic - Mirage Cloak

This mechanic is too strong and grants a lot of counter-play options to the Mesmer.Access to this needs to be reduced.What I would suggest is that Mirage gets only 1 Dodge bar.Normal professions got 2, Daredevils got 3, Mirage should get only 1.

• Elementalist - Utility skill - Twist of Fate

Overall the Elementalist is rather balanced, perhaps its non FA builds need a DPS boost even.However, its sustain is rather over the top and when you add evades to that, it can get out of hand.A two ammo stun-breaker + Evade on a 5 seconds ICD is rather lavish for a high sustain class.Reduce the charges to 1 or remove the Evade.

• Thief - Rifle 4 - Death's Retreat

Thieves have always had a major problem when the elite specs were introduced imo.Their elite weapons Staff & Rifle could do everything.Damage, control, kite.Because of their initiative based design, they did not need to swap to a different weapon in a fight.Increasing initiative for mobility-based weapon skills is a good step forward to make thieves swap to a different weapon in a fight.Death's Retreat initiative cost up from 5 to 6.

• Ranger - Trait - Unstoppable Union

Soulbeast should not get access to unblockable on a stun break.Remove unblockable which will even the field more and give at least half the other classes more counterplay against them.

• Engineer - Profession Mechanic 2 - Holo Leap

This swiftness synergy with the invigorating trait is making holo overly beastly with almost perma vigor.Remove swiftness from this skill.Retain the Zephyr trait so that it needs to be traited for more mobility but as super speed.

• Guardian - Trait - Archivist of Whispers

I think Guards are the most balanced class when it comes to small scale.A moderate level of everything without being overly strong in any area.If I had to choose one though, it would be Archivist of Whispers.Adding 3 more pages is making tomes a little too strong imo.Removing the 3 pages and giving it increased 20% effectiveness or duration might be more balanced.

• Warrior - Elite Skill - Rampage

Personally I think Warriors are quite stable, but if something needs toning down, its Rampage.Too much rolled into one skill.The increased 20K HP and damage reduce 25% is over the top.They should be vulnerable too when they go rampaging.You know, all offense and no defense.Remove either HP or damage reduction so there is more counterplay.

• Revenant - Sword 5 - Deathstrike

Almost every Rev attack combo hits hard.Too hard perhaps.And their traditional weakness to condition foes have been relieved by options like cleansing sigils.Remove the 2nd strike on Deathstrike and we are good.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

Remove the 2nd strike on Deathstrike and we are good.

lol?

so a 600 range shadowstep, with 15 seconds cooldown and 10 energy cost that hits for nothing is ok?and it's sword 4 that is the hardhitter, not sword 5

glad you'll never wake up in the balance team

In that case, I would first and foremost make ABSOLUTELY sure i am 100% familiar with ALL classes. Play them for countless hours. Then i would reach out to the playerbase and ask what they think needs toning down/buffing. Then i would probably split skills, after vigorous testing. And it is completely different to nerf the same thing in small scale/large scale...

Besides what Voltekka says wich is what Anet lacks reason are enforcing lamer gimmicks, would reduce the spam towards more GW1 team gameplay.

Remove most cleaves from autos and some aoe skill to cleave or single, to force more team effort rather than find best aoe spammer gimmick, well I’m not as a lamer as Anet dev are.... this would improve every game type...

Buff some aoe to become zergbusting but still need of a spike and team effort to be effective.

DH would suffer alot of changes, to make bow usable like main weapon rather than expect go stealth and pull target to traps wich is how DH needs to be played atm.

id make an aura stab. =p

I would remind the team that hey, didn't we used to advertise this game by not having dedicated healers?

You wake up one day and found out that you are part of the balance team...And you were tasked to identify 1 skill or trait or class mechanic to nerf from each class for the next balance patch.The first thing I'd do is find out what sort of weird balance priorities the team might have if anyone was focused on individual skills.

The very term, balance, suggests looking holistically at each prof, competitively and grouped together. Buffing or nerfing specific skills is a tool used to achieve balance; it's not the goal.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

• Elementalist - Utility skill - Twist of Fate

Overall the Elementalist is rather balanced, perhaps its non FA builds need a DPS boost even.However, its sustain is rather over the top and when you add evades to that, it can get out of hand.A two ammo stun-breaker + Evade on a 5 seconds ICD is rather lavish for a high sustain class.Reduce the charges to 1 or remove the Evade.??Then how about increase CD of enduring pain twice, or make Scourge use only 1 Sand at the time, or increase Holo PF heat gain by 50%? There are some things that make elite specs viable, ToF is one of the key skills in Weaver equipment and shouldn't be touched. Except for FA this class is rather bunker-ish and defensive version, it can be easily kited so ToF is not an issue for s/d or s/f. Speaking of FA, just dodge spikes and put lots of pressure while kiting earth 5, gg wp.

• Engineer - Profession Mechanic 2 - Holo Leap

This swiftness synergy with the invigorating trait is making holo overly beastly with almost perma vigor.Remove swiftness from this skill.Retain the Zephyr trait so that it needs to be traited for more mobility but as super speed.I think holo requires much more attention than just only PF 2 nerf. Also, Scrapper not mentioned? Interesting...

• Revenant - Sword 5 - Deathstrike

Almost every Rev attack combo hits hard.Too hard perhaps.And their traditional weakness to condition foes have been relieved by options like cleansing sigils.Remove the 2nd strike on Deathstrike and we are good.Yeye, sure, same as it goes with holo. Adding Rev sPvP nerfs to WvW is a good start tho.

What would I do as part of balance team? Change WvW balance to same as it is in sPvP, tone down Holo, Scrapper, Rampage, abit Rev and SB. Dont touch rest and see what happens.

But the question begs, how many exactly are on the balance team so to speak? No, the two guinea pigs out the back keeping the servers chugging along don't count.

I wouldn't go into detail, instead I would re-adress the following points:

1. The boon and effects system (returning abilities and application to fewer boons and stacks at once; returning stability similar to its original intent)
2. The condition and effects system (returning abilities and application to fewer conditions and stacks at once; returning confusion to its original intent) letting conditions build up over time and some of them act as cover conditions for cleanses (6b). I liked the old intensity and duration split.
3. Minimizing snowball effects (such as rally, life illusions, on-kill effects or other things that makes your side scaling stronger beyond the numerical advantage itself as enemies lose ground), in fact, it would look at numerical balance overall.
4. Removing unblockables, looking over the duration and access to blocks and reflects - possibly adding some purity of purpose to blocks based on RP (eg., shields). I quite enjoy the existance of blocks but I would make it more responsive by leaning more to short uptime or aegis one-off effect.
5. Looking over direct damage and heal amounts in relation/balance to health pools and DR. I like heals/healers but their balance to health is out of whack with people losing and gaining more than 50% of their health pools at once.
6. Returning rips to its original (?) order and functionality, making focused/singular attacks rip stability early and sweeping/cleaving attacks rip it late6a. That will re-encourage the role of focus parties while larger AoE-style rips can still be an option when stacked enough to rip everything clean6b. I would consider something similar for cleanses, with different/crossing orders of cleanses depending on if it is self-cleanse or group-cleanse

Less spam of everything does not only make future rebalancing easier to do should also improve performance and decrease clutter.

I also enjoy the concept of resurrection in this game, as others have pointed out before, it is a staple of the game at large of lending your friends a hand and it does have its' built-in drawback that opposing players can synch AoE bombs on downed players to creating some snowball effect. I am however against all passive and gear-, trait-, or ability-bound snowballing such as rally, resurrection skills and on-kill health feeds etc.

Stealth? I would look at classes with high re-application and uptime of stealth but I do not consider the mechanic itself to be overly negative in GW2, experienced players can read through stealths and all the de-stealthing options that exist make for rather nice counter- and gameplay. It's more so as with blocks, I enjoy it but it shouldn't be overly complicated and layered as it is now. I would rather that it is a 1-3s effect that can be applied now and then, rather than 20s effects or constant resetting. If you go back to vanilla, possibly the pistol smokefields were a bit too easily accessible, otherwise I found stealth to work quite well with revealed. Deadeye I would probably rework as an entire specialization because it is inherently difficult to balance for WvW.

I would lay all that systems groundwork before I looked at readressing the classes and builds.

Balance team? That’s a thing?

My priorities would be stealth, boon applications and caps, one shot skills.

Mesmers lose a dodge, you just killed mirage...

balance team moi?

/delete desert BL/delete mount/delete HoT/delete PoF

voila! i did more good then any1 else could do by changes.

Using Consume Conditions makes you take 1500 damage for each condition you consume off yourself.

1 evade on mirage is too much of a nerf. All that's necessary is being unable to dodge while under CC and maybe a way to destroy their mirrors.

Stopped reading when you said ele is a high sustain class...

Reduce Mesmer clones to 3 max at any time not counting phantasms or whatevs.

Make the mount OOC swiftness speed remove a dodge reduce HP to 4k and remove stun on dismount.

Only allow waypoints in your teams towers/keeps.

Reduce DE rifle 3 from 6 ini to 4.

You can also nerf engi/necro/guard/rev in zerging and warrior/rev/engie/ranger/mesmer in roaming but w/e about that.

Anet would certainly ban me again in the forums for giving my personal opinions about the balance team.

-in other words; (i have nothing to say)

I would buff sic’em dammager multiplier to 60% and add an extra 500 yards to longbow range just to see all the extra salt!On a serious note, I would revert the change to Druid pet stat loss. I don’t see any reason why they should have a gimped pet...

@GaijinGuy.8476 said:I would buff sic’em dammager multiplier to 60% and add an extra 500 yards to longbow range just to see all the extra salt!

You'd fit right in hehe

Personally id have fun doing what they already do, I'd give small words on ideas that popped into mind and features ive thought about.. see what the community thinks of it... then tell people after a year or so they are not entitled to know current plans and it will come soon, delete thier threads and posts on the matter and in the mean time ill pump out everything else but what I said then belittle those who believed in me.

Id then look at the the hundreds of reports about hacking with video evidence, overwhelming my brain until I decide to doodle some weird looking hat which will be sold in the Gem store next week.

Jokes aside...500 healing power Weaver can out heal a 1k healing power Tempest..So id be removing a lot of Weaver sustain and moving it to Tempest so one spec was heals and support while the other was a damage spec.

Then I would add a 2nd stack of stability to overloads when traited.Raise the heal per pulse on water overload but lower the final heal.Earthen Rush would actually connect with the target like Magnetic Leap used too.Add boon removal to Earth trait line.Revert Diamond skin to what it used to be.Raise the base HP by 2k.Double the healing value from Rebound when it saves someone from death.

Spend about a day or so yelling at the raid devs to get it together and balance the game arone the existing classes and stop demanding the classes be balanced arone there content.

From there i would do massive splits between pve (boon control being pointless as well as counter def in pve so all of that will be out of the window for skills in a pve setting) and wvw/spvp. With added splits between wvw and spvp (wvw skills being balanced more arone 10 targets spvp arone 5 targets).

Why do people complain about unstoppable union? So it breaks stun .So what . Look at warrior Reckless Dodge — Damage foes at the end of a dodge roll unblock-able , Spell breaker Loss Aversion — Removing boons from a foe deals damage and gives you adrenaline unblock-able . Necromancer Soul Marks — Marks become unblock-able and generate life force when triggered.Besides that other professions still have more unblock-able skills than Soul beast does .Theirs far far to much nit picking about individual professions without even understanding how that profession functions or comparing traits and skills .Now I'm sure theirs going to be people say "Oh well what about the range ?" I'll say this . What about the Elementalist 4 weapon swap, The engineers tool kits , Theives stealth,Mesmer clone spam, Guardian Virtues ,Reverent legendary Heroes , Necromancer Life force ,and the Warriors devastating burst attacks.Every profession has it's tricks ,advantages and disadvantages. And no one build for any profession will be perfect.

Let ANET balance the game . They have the proper information without the individual bias to do the job right.

@"EremiteAngel.9765" said:You wake up one day and found out that you are part of the balance team...And you were tasked to identify 1 skill or trait or class mechanic to nerf from each class for the next balance patch.Which would it be and why?Can be for small scale or large scale fights.

This would be my list:

• Necromancer - Traited Scepter 3 - Devouring Darkness

Although it requires a Grandmaster Trait (Lingering Curse), which also competes with two other pretty strong GM traits (Parasitic Contagion and Weakening Shroud), it really does too much for a 10 second CD AOE Boon Corruption skill on top of its other effects.Increasing the traited version CD to 15 or 20 seconds would make it more balanced.

• Mesmer - Profession Mechanic - Mirage Cloak

This mechanic is too strong and grants a lot of counter-play options to the Mesmer.Access to this needs to be reduced.What I would suggest is that Mirage gets only 1 Dodge bar.Normal professions got 2, Daredevils got 3, Mirage should get only 1.

• Elementalist - Utility skill - Twist of Fate

Overall the Elementalist is rather balanced, perhaps its non FA builds need a DPS boost even.However, its sustain is rather over the top and when you add evades to that, it can get out of hand.A two ammo stun-breaker + Evade on a 5 seconds ICD is rather lavish for a high sustain class.Reduce the charges to 1 or remove the Evade.

• Thief - Rifle 4 - Death's Retreat

Thieves have always had a major problem when the elite specs were introduced imo.Their elite weapons Staff & Rifle could do everything.Damage, control, kite.Because of their initiative based design, they did not need to swap to a different weapon in a fight.Increasing initiative for mobility-based weapon skills is a good step forward to make thieves swap to a different weapon in a fight.Death's Retreat initiative cost up from 5 to 6.

• Ranger - Trait - Unstoppable Union

Soulbeast should not get access to unblockable on a stun break.Remove unblockable which will even the field more and give at least half the other classes more counterplay against them.

• Engineer - Profession Mechanic 2 - Holo Leap

This swiftness synergy with the invigorating trait is making holo overly beastly with almost perma vigor.Remove swiftness from this skill.Retain the Zephyr trait so that it needs to be traited for more mobility but as super speed.

• Guardian - Trait - Archivist of Whispers

I think Guards are the most balanced class when it comes to small scale.A moderate level of everything without being overly strong in any area.If I had to choose one though, it would be Archivist of Whispers.Adding 3 more pages is making tomes a little too strong imo.Removing the 3 pages and giving it increased 20% effectiveness or duration might be more balanced.

• Warrior - Elite Skill - Rampage

Personally I think Warriors are quite stable, but if something needs toning down, its Rampage.Too much rolled into one skill.The increased 20K HP and damage reduce 25% is over the top.They should be vulnerable too when they go rampaging.You know, all offense and no defense.Remove either HP or damage reduction so there is more counterplay.

• Revenant - Sword 5 - Deathstrike

Almost every Rev attack combo hits hard.Too hard perhaps.And their traditional weakness to condition foes have been relieved by options like cleansing sigils.Remove the 2nd strike on Deathstrike and we are good.

Read your necro "notes"..and already knew how biased you are...I read ele notes and I remember why the devs don't take the forum seriously

P.S but anyway if I would wake up one day and find myself in the balance team...first thing first I would suggest the upping of skill requirement in game meaning AoE trigger happy classes with insta activation would be put under the knife..no more noob friendly classes....yeah your necro would be first on the list of noob friendly classes to fix from Reaper shout to Scourge shades

I do nothing. Probably because I don't make any decisions because I just work here, man.

I would delete necromancer staff.

Get rid of mounts for a start...