OP Classes = Janky Playstyles : Correlation?

[Svarty.8019]

Thief, Mesmer and Engineer all have janky playstyles. By that I mean they are awkward to use and require a lot of quick button combinations.

Is the idea that these weirdly overpowered experiences should be made unpopular and difficult to master by design? Do developers buff janky classes them because they are unpopular?

[edit]... and are classes that are fun in terms of visceral feedback , i.e. popular, smooth-to-play and control classes like Reaper nerfed BECAUSE they are popular? Do the devs assume that popularity derives from it being an overpowered class?

TL;DRJankiness and overpoweredness seem to go hand-in-hand.Is it because developers buff unpopular classes, and are they making a mistake in thinking classes are unpopular because they are underpowered, when the true reason is jankiness, and nothing to do with power level.

[Sobx.1758]

@"Svarty.8019" said:Thief, Mesmer and Engineer all have janky playstyles. By that I mean they are awkward to use and require a lot of quick button combinations.

How are they awkward to use? <.<

Do developers buff janky classes them because they are unpopular?

When and how did they buff things you're talking about?

[edit]... and are classes that are fun in terms of visceral feedback , i.e. popular, smooth-to-play and control classes like Reaper nerfed BECAUSE they are popular?

I think you're shooting yourself in the leg here with your clear bias, especially in the light of recent changes. And by what standard is reaper "smooth to play" that the other classes aren't?

[alain.1659]

Some professions should have more if played skillfully. İf pressing 1 button yields the same result with 4 buttons,i and 2 combo chains it would be idiotic. But it shoukd not always be the pure dmg. More also means more options, more tricks, finding solutions to problems that others cannot.

[Yasai.3549]

Not exactly.

It all comes down to how well the class can manage their resources and how frequent they can play them.

Take Thief for example.Their skill frequency is off the charts.They have the cost to pay : they can do the things.

This is why Thief is so powerful, because as long as the player can manage their resources, they always have a card to play.

Now compare this to something like mesmer.

I would like to use Condi mesmer for this because it is currently the more troublesome of the Mesmer builds.

Mesmer may have normal cooldowns, normal weapon skills, some nice profession mechanics.

What makes them "win" in the resource game is how they use their clones, and clones in general.

Say yu use yur big hitting skill by mistake on a clone.

Yu just played a card, and Mesmer has a cooldown advantage over yu just by being a Mesmer.

People might go "aim the one that is moving weirdly 4head"

Yea but it's not to say even the most skilled player won't accidentally make a mistake and be confused by a clone and hit it instead.

Now Condi Mesmer.They are notorious for their ridiculous Confusion application.Confusion does damage when yu perform an action.

This basically bleeds the opponent for even reacting to anything, once again putting Mesmer ahead in the game.

Usually this will force a cleanse, but don't worry, lots more where that Confusion came from, so now yur down a cleanse and a heal or another cooldown.

This is why fighting these classes feel oppressive.

They always have a hand advantage over yu if yur playing another sort of class.

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

@"Yasai.3549" said:Not exactly.

It all comes down to how well the class can manage their resources and how frequent they can play them.

Take Thief for example.Their skill frequency is off the charts.They have the cost to pay : they can do the things.

This is why Thief is so powerful, because as long as the player can manage their resources, they always have a card to play.

Now compare this to something like mesmer.

I would like to use Condi mesmer for this because it is currently the more troublesome of the Mesmer builds.

Mesmer may have normal cooldowns, normal weapon skills, some nice profession mechanics.

What makes them "win" in the resource game is how they use their clones, and clones in general.

Say yu use yur big hitting skill by mistake on a clone.

Yu just played a card, and Mesmer has a cooldown advantage over yu just by being a Mesmer.

People might go "aim the one that is moving weirdly 4head"

Yea but it's not to say even the most skilled player won't accidentally make a mistake and be confused by a clone and hit it instead.

Now Condi Mesmer.They are notorious for their ridiculous Confusion application.Confusion does damage when yu perform an action.

This basically bleeds the opponent for even reacting to anything, once again putting Mesmer ahead in the game.

Usually this will force a cleanse, but don't worry, lots more where that Confusion came from, so now yur down a cleanse and a heal or another cooldown.

This is why fighting these classes feel oppressive.

They always have a hand advantage over yu if yur playing another sort of class.

Im guessing you're saying thief is fair as the player has to actively manage resources. But mesmer is oppressive because their resource management is passive, and they can kill you by doing little.

[Lexi.1398]

I dunno. I can make guesses based on the conditions for good damage some builds suffer from, but not everything fits in the "hard to play / low defence = high damage" thing.

Guardian - obscene damage, easy to play.Theif - obscene damage, easy to play (power). awful damage, hard to play (condi).Reaper - awful damage, hard to play.

FYI reaper has been terrible for a long time, afaik pretty much since it got nerfed when it was OP in HoT release. Also, reaper is not smooth to play and easy to control at all ^^ not if you're using a proper build anyway, in fact, there's a lot more weapon cancels and strict rules for reaper than lots of builds. Sure, maybe someones death magic minion mancer can be seen as smooth to play, but you are not really playing reaper dps if you are doing that and will be doing terrible damage even if the specs potential dps was 50k lol. I would HOPE anet can differentiate a reaper attempting to do dps from an open world minionmancer....

(This only applies to PvE meta dps builds, so if this is a pvp thread then i don't have the knowlegde to form an opinion.)

[Yasai.3549]

@Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

Im guessing you're saying thief is fair as the player has to actively manage resources. But mesmer is oppressive because their resource management is passive, and they can kill you by doing little.

Do NOT put words into my mouth.

I'm saying that Thief is strong because they always have a move ready, as long as the player didn't burn all their resources.I'm also saying Thief is strong because their Initiative mechanic allows them to cast their skills at a higher frequency when they want to, again, as long as they didn't burn all their resources.

If Gw2 were a card game, and Cooldowns were the time between turns before yu draw a card, Thief's Initiative system is basically auto refreshing his hand before his next turn starts, already allowing him to play the cards that just popped up on his turn.

This is one of the main reasons why people are extremely unhappy with Thief and Stealth.Because of how Thief manages their cooldowns, they can perma stealth or spam stealth.

Imagine if Ranger can keep using Hunter's Shot every 2 seconds and essentially never be out of stealth.Yep, that's how Thief is right now.

On Mesmer :

I'm saying Mesmer is strong because of how they control the actions of their opponent.

Again, card game analogy.

If this were a card game, Confusion is basically bleeding yur Lifepoint/hitpoints every time yu play a card.Clones are like dummies or blockers or cards which just negate the effect of a card yu played.

This automatically gives Mesmer a move advantage over the opponent.

[Sobx.1758]

Your "card game" comparison is a major stretch and claiming that ini system is an eqivalent to "refilling hand" is also bullkitten.

Imagine if Ranger can keep using Hunter's Shot every 2 seconds and essentially never be out of stealth.

The difference here is that ranger does perfectly fine without stealth. It's almost as if different classes have different capabilities and suddenly loading one class' kit into another will always make it stronger than the particular class that was nerfed around said mechanic/s for past 7 years.

If this were a card game, Confusion is basically bleeding yur Lifepoint/hitpoints every time yu play a card.Clones are like dummies or blockers or cards which just negate the effect of a card yu played.

This automatically gives Mesmer a move advantage over the opponent.

Ye, ye, ye. They are "like blockers" except that this is not a card game, we have loads of cleave/aoe/piercing skills, we can move "around the board" and attack from another side instead of going "through the played minion/blocker cards" and so on. Overally your card game comparisons are irrelevant because you're knowingly simplifying the game in order for your examples to show what you want and literally nothing else.

---

And why do you keep writing "yu"? That's just weird to say the least.

[draxynnic.3719]

@"Sobx.1758" said:Ye, ye, ye. They are "like blockers" except that this is not a card game, we have loads of cleave/aoe/piercing skills, we can move "around the board" and attack from another side instead of going "through the played minion/blocker cards" and so on.

That... might actually be part of the point. If you attack the clone, that's generally ceding the card advantage to the mesmer, while if you can maintain target focus on the mesmer and can avoid taking too much damage from the clones, they usually either have less survival options or less damage options, since their proverbial deck is mostly built around use of the clones. Playing against them is essentially a constant shell game - pick the right target and you can gain and advantage, pick the wrong target and they gain the advantage over you.

Or you can go heavy AoE and just clear the board...

[Sobx.1758]

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"Sobx.1758" said:Ye, ye, ye. They are "like blockers" except that this is not a card game, we have loads of cleave/aoe/piercing skills, we can move "around the board" and attack from another side instead of going "through the played minion/blocker cards" and so on.

That... might actually be part of the point. If you attack the clone, that's generally ceding the card advantage to the mesmer, while if you can maintain target focus on the mesmer and can avoid taking too much damage from the clones, they usually either have less survival options or less damage options, since their proverbial deck is mostly built around use of the clones. Playing against them is essentially a constant shell game - pick the right target and you can gain and advantage, pick the wrong target and they gain the advantage over you.

Or you can go heavy AoE and just clear the board...

Or maybe you can stop pretending it's a card game, because it's not, so pretending you take turns while standing in front of each other makes little to no sense.

[Melech.4308]

@"Svarty.8019" said:Thief, Mesmer and Engineer all have janky playstyles. By that I mean they are awkward to use and require a lot of quick button combinations.

Is the idea that these weirdly overpowered experiences should be made unpopular and difficult to master by design? Do developers buff janky classes them because they are unpopular?

[edit]... and are classes that are fun in terms of visceral feedback , i.e. popular, smooth-to-play and control classes like Reaper nerfed BECAUSE they are popular? Do the devs assume that popularity derives from it being an overpowered class?

TL;DRJankiness and overpoweredness seem to go hand-in-hand.Is it because developers buff unpopular classes, and are they making a mistake in thinking classes are unpopular because they are underpowered, when the true reason is jankiness, and nothing to do with power level.

If janky playstyle means that you have to time and use your skills wisely and timing is important, then those janky playstyles do deserve to deal more power; it just means that people have optimised their play style to a certain degree.

On the subject of classes getting nerfed based on popularity, see these numbers: https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics

It's very clear (as of the time of this writing) that guardians are the most popular, yet during the last "balance" patch, they walked away almost unscathed relative to the other classes

[Sobx.1758]

@Melech.4308 said:

@"Svarty.8019" said:Thief, Mesmer and Engineer all have janky playstyles. By that I mean they are awkward to use and require a lot of quick button combinations.

Is the idea that these weirdly overpowered experiences should be made unpopular and difficult to master by design? Do developers buff janky classes them because they are unpopular?

[edit]... and are classes that are fun in terms of visceral feedback , i.e. popular, smooth-to-play and control classes like Reaper nerfed BECAUSE they are popular? Do the devs assume that popularity derives from it being an overpowered class?

TL;DRJankiness and overpoweredness seem to go hand-in-hand.Is it because developers buff unpopular classes, and are they making a mistake in thinking classes are unpopular because they are underpowered, when the true reason is jankiness, and nothing to do with power level.

If janky playstyle means that you have to time and use your skills wisely and timing is important, then those janky playstyles do deserve to deal more power; it just means that people have optimised their play style to a certain degree.

On the subject of classes getting nerfed based on popularity, see these numbers:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics

It's very clear (as of the time of this writing) that guardians are the most popular, yet during the last "balance" patch, they walked away almost unscathed relative to the other classes

See, that's just because svarty only pretends to have something to say, while in reality all he does is use a bunch of barely related buzzwords in regards to the classes he most probably never touched outside of pve (if even that). Too bad some people eat that up so easly (and I don't mean you, if that's not clear).

[Ney Matogrosso.5736]

I`m really waiting to see when Eng enter in these discution... nearly 9% of ppl plays it and I think none in the ANET team. Holo and Scrapper was good classes (OP some times), but now, they are really mediocre.

[Thornwolf.9721]

Doesn't matter what they do some classes will not be popular due to theme. For example I loathe engineers in fantasy games and think they are kind of pointless; So the theme doesn't do it for me so likewise I will likely never really play one.. Might level one up to unlock the cosmetics due to E-specs but Ill never truly mess around with one because its not a class Id desire to play.

Everyone has their preferences. And sometimes a classes theme just puts off more people than it turns on, if you get my drift. (There is also the addition of execution which for me is necromancer. I love them in fantasy, but I dislike how they've been handled and designed in this game. So I don't play one.)