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I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

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@Aza.2105 said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Well said

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you keep on saying streamlined but that doesn't make sense with specs having drawbacks.

The problem is not the idea of tradeoffs. It's the execution of those tradeoffs.

@Aza.2105 said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Exactly, back at the start of this game I remember the devs who went through balance patches on Twitch (Jon Peters?) would talk about why they were not keen to buff / change certain things, because classes were designed to have weaknesses not just strengths. Like engy and warrior were originally designed to be weak to condies, some classes were designed to have various limitations on their mobility and so on. That all went when they added elites.

@zinkz.7045 said:

@Aza.2105 said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Yep I remember that too. I enjoyed those videos.

Because people have been whining about powercreep for 4 years. Sometimes powercreeped and somehwat balanced is better than reducing powercreep and randomly deleting specs by it.

@"Aza.2105" said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Agree but, think the op says that "not all specs are being treated the same way". I mean, while chrono gets absolutelly destroyed, mirage is far from core and chrono specs.think same happen on other classes. If you want to have that backdraw, i kinda like the idea, it must be balanced, not for 1 spec, or 2... for all. And thats not happening.

@judgebeo.3976 said:

@"Aza.2105" said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Probably because they haven't gotten around to mirage yet. At the pace they are going, it might be years when ever elite spec has a trade off.

Trade-offs forge play-styles. Compensating for loss while also taking advantage of a hitherto non-existent mechanic makes for new dynamic interactions. Side-grades are always better than direct upgrades when it comes to prolonging a game's lifespan and play-style diversity because direct upgrades often simply smother already-existent gameplay elements rather than complementing them.

Anet should have done this for all professions at the same time. This once in a million years balance patch things the main culprit. Bring the bloody drawbacks to all professions, observe for 2 weeks and fix the problems. It is easy. Bringing drawbacks to a single profession is not clever.

@alain.1659 said:Anet should have done this for all professions at the same time. This once in a million years balance patch things the main culprit. Bring the bloody drawbacks to all professions, observe for 2 weeks and fix the problems. It is easy. Bringing drawbacks to a single profession is not clever.

The problem with reworking professions into individual parts of a team whole (complete with unique strengths and drawbacks) is that, currently, there are so many extremely powerful passives (gear stats, sigils, runes, food, traits) along with an over-saturation of instant-speed skills and damage negation slapped onto offensive attacks. This sort of combination smothers any sort of player expression or unique team composition; every build ends up being more or less the same thing. If the GW2 classes are to be anything but vague copies of each other, we would need to outright delete a massive portion of the trait system, gear options, and skill pool. At this point, far, far less would be so much more for each class. The purity of purpose meme would have to become an actual design philosophy: if it deals damage, it must only deal damage; if it moves a player, it must only move a player; if it negates incoming effects or damage, it must do no more than such and it must do so at the cost of allowing the user to perform any other action during its duration (but without the duration being protracted to the point of annoyance for opponents i.e. Shield Stance and the like).

At this point, this game is better left abandoned. Elite specs aside, adding Revenant was the true deathblow to a game that already had 5 too many classes.

I' m all for trade-off, from what i've read, Anet intended for Elite to be a different play-style of that profession but instead they make it an upgrade, a NEED, a NECESSARY for any build, so yea i disagree with removing Elite restriction.

That doesn't mean i agree with their execution of trade-off though.

@Aza.2105 said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Trade-offs do not exist if:

1) core is not viable.2) the entire elite line is not sPvP viable.

Examples: Chrono, Druid, berserker, renegade, need I keep going?

If Anet is serious about trade-offs (they are not), they had to buff core lines and nerf elites. What Anet currently doing can only be called throwing darts on to a board with blind on. It has nothing to do with balance, trade-offs, quality of life improvements or overall game improvement.

The fact that you drop a trait line for elite spec is a trade-off in itself. Adding other trade-off mechanisms just kill the spec. Druid is pretty much dead at least in PvP due to that reason.A better option would be to simplify make core trait lines powerful enough to take over elite spec. That's when elite specs will no longer be an elite and become an optional alternative playstyle.

I feel that the developers messed up the whole design with this "elite" marketing campaign.

@zinkz.7045 said:

@"Aza.2105" said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Probably the person the most responsible for ranger being outside the meta in all game modes for the longest time. The last thing I remember him doing on stream was talking about the ranger trait Most Dangerous Game - which at the time was supposed to be an adept trait - and how he thought it should probably be moved up to GM level. And so it did, being unused for two years even with a buff before they just axed it and made it into Vicious Quarry.

They may have gone more into details of "why" back then, but it wasn't better overall.

Here is a mirage fix for the tradeoff of a extra 2 minutes of dodgeing all damage when selecting mirage.

"When trait line is selected all condition damage is cut in half."

See now you get to keep all your screen trash spam and not be able to insta kill with conditions.

That video only shows how the class is OP :D

really crappy trade-off but good nerf now we just need to nerf mirage, holo, spellbreaker, firebrand, herald, scourge, deadeye and crap on weaver and soulbeast a little more - and we things will look more even

@alain.1659 said:Anet should have done this for all professions at the same time. This once in a million years balance patch things the main culprit. Bring the bloody drawbacks to all professions, observe for 2 weeks and fix the problems. It is easy. Bringing drawbacks to a single profession is not clever.

+1

I completely agree with you also you do find this in healthy competitive gaming companies games

@"Flandre.2870" said:The whole "elite specs must have a drawback" thing is only alineating even more playres from the game.

Nah. Tradeoffs are fine. They give people a reason to play core over making them feel like they're just watered down versions of elites.I approve of that design choice. It reduces mechanic stacking and makes sure that classes each have specific, built in and predictable drawbacks instead of allowing classes to be built in such a way that their elites can cover their core weaknesses.I'm absolutely sure the players that have not made a decision to buy an X-pack yet will mostly enjoy this change when it comes to competitive builds in pvp, also.

Every class should have a weakness. Thats how we build a healthy meta. Once they've finished with balancing in that way, they can look at underperforming core or elites and adjust those as needed. I hated the whiplash on DD and Zerker initially, but I've adapted.

@Aza.2105 said:I disagree, trade offs are a great change. Its how the game was designed originally. Each profession had trade offs. With the introduction of elite specs, what happened was the elite specs filled in the gaps each profession had. Effectively removing the weaknesses they were designed with. Its no coincidence that the massive power creep happened when elite specs were introduced.

Agreed with this. The direction of these changes is spot on, not only for good balance, but also to the original intent of elite specs. However, until the devs do more changes to get these trade-offs consistent across professions and builds, it's going to be a bit of a rough experience.