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PvE Balance, does it really matter?


Agrippa.1693

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There's a huge balance patch coming up, which I look very much forward to, mostly because the sheer size of it and if more smaller patches would follow up later in a more regular fashion, I'm even more excited. My opinion is that balance in this game is very important and regularly updating it would hold my interest in this game a lot longer.

But I notice the major upcoming balance update (including several that came before) is (are) very much PvP and WvW focused (>90%), and PvE seems to be a bit forgotten in this area. So I'm wondering, if this is a thing that we should see more often, is balance in PvE (far) less important? Should it be? Does it matter at all, really? Your opinions please.

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PVP gets some very important updates overall, the reason it's so much bigger than the PVE-global side is because there is effort to change the entire game, namely by reducing damage across the board, reducing damage of hard CC skills, reducing damage of skills that do a lot of things other than damage, reducing condition application. There is also the part of the patch that removes the damage rolls from the game, so each attack will now deal the same -average- damage. Those are changes that will affect the pacing of PVP, longer fights, less reliance of big one-shot kills. A balance patch of that size and scope is hardly needed in PVE

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Extreme damage is just as poisonous in PvE as it is in PvP/WvW, anyone who thinks otherwise just enjoys power trips of going into old content and defeating all enemies with a single attack so that no one else can get any credit (or have any fun, for that matter).

When you see people wearing white gear and unequipping their trinkets it tells you something, or should. There's seriously people in this game who think that Legendaries dying in 15 seconds in Orr and Silverwastes is okay.

In my opinion, the game has never been more "press 1 to win" than it is now.

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It's important that PvE is balanced, in the sense that all professions and a wide variety of builds are equally useful in all types of content. But that doesn't necessarily require regularly making large changes to how players skills, traits etc. work.

For balance PvE has two advantages over PvP and WvW: firstly the content is static unless Anet changes it, and secondly they have full control over how it changes. The enemies in PvE never change their builds or tactics on their own, whereas PvP players will be constantly updating their tactics and builds to counter each other even if Anet don't do anything. Of course PvE players are also coming up with new builds to counter the enemies, but it's still only one side of the equasion changing. Maybe more importantly though if Anet decide an area of PvE is too easy to two hard they have two options: change the players skills or change the enemies - they can't do that in PvP. So if there's a problem only with a specific area or a kind of content they're more likely to change the enemies or the timing of the events or whatever than change player skills.

Making balance changes to PvE just for the sake of showing they're doing it as frequently as in PvP and WvW would at best be pointless and at worse could actually end up making the game less balanced.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:PVP gets some very important updates overall, the reason it's so much bigger than the PVE-global side is because there is effort to change the entire game, namely by reducing damage across the board, reducing damage of hard CC skills, reducing damage of skills that do a lot of things other than damage, reducing condition application. There is also the part of the patch that removes the damage rolls from the game, so each attack will now deal the same -average- damage. Those are changes that will affect the pacing of PVP, longer fights, less reliance of big one-shot kills. A balance patch of that size and scope is hardly needed in PVE

You might be right (I'm not teh judge of that), but that's not what I really wanted to poll with you guys. You see, my poll is more about balance in general. PvE might need something completely different, say (and I could be completely wrong here): far less utility and boon application across the board?!? Which would imply a major update for PvE as well, then! My question is about if updates like that for PvE are worth it? Should it matter? Don't forget that those would slurp up quite some resources from ANet which could've been used for different purposes: say (even) more PvP and WvW balance (it's not THAT black and white, but there's some truth in it, obviously).

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@Hannelore.8153 said:Extreme damage is just as poisonous in PvE as it is in PvP/WvW, anyone who thinks otherwise just enjoys power trips of going into old content and defeating all enemies with a single attack so that no one else can get any credit (or have any fun, for that matter).

When you see people wearing white gear and unequipping their trinkets it tells you something, or should.

people where doing that when exotic was the max tier way back when. This game has always been terrible about downleveling players, they should fix that instead of just doing mass damage nerfs.

Im all for Anet doing a total re-balance of the game but thats exactly what it needs to be, an entire balance sweep not just nerfing damage across the board. All enemies, all npcs, all skills need to be looked and redone.

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Spvp/WvW balance are way more important and should be the main focus, but Anet can't just abandon PvE balance and ignore it. The power creep in PvE needs to be addressed too. We need a big patch for pve like the one we are getting for Spvp/WvW. The amount of boon, condi clear, condi source spam is ridiculous. You missed one skill? No problem, most of them refresh in a couple of seconds. Scarcity promotes skillful play. Sure, for PvE the adjustment might need to be accompanied to a few nerfs to bosses to compensate a little bit, but it is doable. Harder to implement, but not impossible.

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I may have a very skewed point of view, but I think that if they do rebalance PVE on a large scale, especially with respect to lower level areas, they also need to address the issue of population distribution across the game. It's annoying when you don't get credit for an event in a starter zone when it's daily and everyone "one hits" the objective, but it would be all the more frustrating to run into a champion which, in the name of rebalance, feels like a level appropriate version of a PoF bounty in an otherwise empty low level core map, at the end of an event chain that nobody does any more...

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@"Hannelore.8153" said:Extreme damage is just as poisonous in PvE as it is in PvP/WvW, anyone who thinks otherwise just enjoys power trips of going into old content and defeating all enemies with a single attack so that no one else can get any credit (or have any fun, for that matter).

When you see people wearing white gear and unequipping their trinkets it tells you something, or should. There's seriously people in this game who think that Legendaries dying in 15 seconds in Orr and Silverwastes is okay.

In my opinion, the game has never been more "press 1 to win" than it is now.

Yeah, the game would seem pretty faceroll if all I did was farm gold in core maps, too...

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It seems like people who answer that "pve is the forgotten Child", have been playing a different game. Raids and the powercreep they bought with them killed a big part wvw and/or pvp. Many Oneshot builds, too much damage, toughness is an absolutely irrelevant stat (in competitive modes), booncreep, etc. You really forget all pve balance updates that heavily impacted wvw first and foremost?

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@"Voltekka.2375" said:It seems like people who answer that "pve is the forgotten Child", have been playing a different game. Raids and the powercreep they bought with them killed a big part wvw and/or pvp. Many Oneshot builds, too much damage, toughness is an absolutely irrelevant stat (in competitive modes), booncreep, etc. You really forget all pve balance updates that heavily impacted wvw first and foremost?

Good thing they finally after 7 years decided to split all the skills. Something that players had recommended near launch :/

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@"MikeG.6389" said:It's annoying when you don't get credit for an event in a starter zone when it's daily and everyone "one hits" the objective...

I see you had as much fun in Wayfarer today as I did trying to tag anything so I could get credit for an event.

Anyway I said "other" simply because competitive should have its own set of traits unrelated to co-op.

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The key thing to remember is PvE balance and PvP/WvW balance are two very different beasts. As long as they are treated accordingly, they are equally important.

@Amaranthe.3578 said:As long as all classes have a role to play in a group then no, balance in PvE doesn't really matter

All classes having a role to play is class balance in PvE.

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@Voltekka.2375 said:You really forget all pve balance updates that heavily impacted wvw first and foremost?Like nerf to permainvis thief build noone (well, noone but people using it) liked in WvW anyway? Yeah, i remember. I also remember a lot of pve nerfs that were a sideeffect of a balance change meant purely for PvP modes (and had no sense in PvE context).

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Chose this option because if PvE gets a similar sort of balance patch to decrease bursts and power creeping, it would affect many modes where anet would have to redesign or put in further work to suit.

Example; gorseval in spirit vale raid requires an x amount of dmg done by x % of hp or else your group wipes. This isnt the only boss but there are end game content that requires dps check and if anet was to balance pve dmg they would need to adjust those mechanics too and probably is too much work

PvE is fine as is atm not perfect but the main focus is for pvp and wvw because they have not seen any changes for what... 2-3 years now? Same stale old meta classes definitely needed a change up.

Excited AF for the balance patch !!!!

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@DoRi Silvia.4159 said:Example; gorseval in spirit vale raid requires an x amount of dmg done by x % of hp or else your group wipes. This isnt the only boss but there are end game content that requires dps check and if anet was to balance pve dmg they would need to adjust those mechanics too and probably is too much work

DPS checks in this game are a joke. Even the sefl enforced once like no updraft Gorseval and Xera mid dont require a lot of dps. They wouldnt have to adjust anything.

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Yes, but just enough to shake the META and raise the skill cap a bit.It's also nice to have some outliers that would over-perform provided you have reached that build's skill ceiling. For the elitists, of course.For the rest of us filthy, mediocre-skilled peasants, we can do away with whatever gets the job done in a reasonable amount of time - provided we put in the effort.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@DoRi Silvia.4159 said:Example; gorseval in spirit vale raid requires an x amount of dmg done by x % of hp or else your group wipes.

If only there was a spirit wall you could destroy then glide off the platform to avoid Gorseval's wipe attack. Oh wait, there is. Bad example

Static groups yes that's easy enoughWhen you run trainings or semi exp I foresee it as a headache more than it is already.Gorseval is only one example I could think of at the time.

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