Why Build diversity feels so bad

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"wevh.2903" said:Balance orbitates around those properties , you CANT give backstab 5 target cuz u cant buff "aoe" on a class wich massively highligh on other properties .

Balance is not unique to just this game. Balance is a universal concept in all games and in real world systems. "Roles in gw2 conquest" is a watered down version of the actual concepts.

Roles themselves are just delineations by players that help organize sets of information when playing their build in order to optimally play that build. If my build has a set of features, i can delineate those features to a particular role to help me take advantage of what it's good at and what it's not good at.

Roles themselves are artificially constructed by players playing builds, it's not the other way around. In a game with emphasis on player choice, why would having 300 options to build your character all focus on one specific role for you to play? That defeats the purpose of having 300 options. Why not just give us a single traitline with a single weapon and a single rune and sigil that allows us to play "the role" that the class is designed for if that was the case? I would argue that it's chasing this kind of design philosophy that leads to such low build diversity.

Another way to explain the flaw about talking about roles, is that even though you can name maybe 6 or 7 roles in your comment, there are potentially as many roles as there are number of possible choice combinations you can make in the game, and you can delineate whatever term you want if you want to organize information in that way. If i play an interupt-cleanse-decap-1vX-boonbot scrapper, than that's my "role" and that role is just a descriptor of what features the build has.

This is why runes like speed are bad for balance , necro is supposed to be slow with low chase/ kite potential but this rune literally breaks this .

So in this comment you are displaying the exact behavior i described above. You define a class to be X Y and Z, so why bother giving them any options or choices at all if they are supposed to be designed only to do X Y and Z...if X, Y and Z have choices 1-10, and 9 of those choices don't fit the role the class is designed for, then why bother having those 9 choices in the first place? This is in my opinion one reason designing for roles (which Anet has explicitly done in the past) as being detrimental to diversity.

[DeceiverX.8361]

These weapons aren't even really that bad. Off-meta in a lot of cases, but not atrocious.

The really bad weapons are probably so bad the OP doesn't even know they exist. When people talk about build diversity, they're talking about this stuff:

• OH sword on Mesmer and Warrior
• D/D and S/P on thief (worse the stronger the builds involved and the more skilled the players)
• MH dagger and MH scepter on Necro, and a bit of OH dagger, too depending on MH choices.

There's still a healthy amount of pretty-weak-but-playable weapons as well, ranging from stuff like longbow warrior to OH pistol mesmer to MH mace on guardian.

And further still there are prominent weapons that are taken mostly because the alternatives are just worse; looking mostly at staff on Necro and OH Torch on ranger.

The niche picks, hammer on Rev, are picked for specific scenarios and are often downright strong in those. Hammer Rev for example is one of the best DPS in WvW larger-scale play, and also brings a ton of utility. These weapons are strong, but badly-designed, because they can't be played in more scenarios. This is the same as shortbow on thief; it's not strong enough to be a MH choice because all of the utility of the weapon is balanced on one or two skills, and all the remaining power taken away from it to preserve said utility.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"wevh.2903" said:Balance orbitates around those properties , you CANT give backstab 5 target cuz u cant buff "aoe" on a class wich massively highligh on other properties .

Balance is not unique to just this game. Balance is a universal concept in all games and in real world systems. "Roles in gw2 conquest" is a watered down version of the actual concepts.

Roles themselves are just delineations by players that help organize sets of information when playing their build in order to optimally play that build. If my build has a set of features, i can delineate those features to a particular role to help me take advantage of what it's good at and what it's not good at.

Roles themselves are artificially constructed by players playing builds, it's not the other way around. In a game with emphasis on player choice, why would having 300 options to build your character all focus on one specific role for you to play? That defeats the purpose of having 300 options. Why not just give us a single traitline with a single weapon and a single rune and sigil that allows us to play "the role" that the class is designed for if that was the case? I would argue that it's chasing this kind of design philosophy that leads to such low build diversity.

Another way to explain the flaw about talking about roles, is that even though you can name maybe 6 or 7 roles in your comment, there are potentially as many roles as there are number of possible choice combinations you can make in the game, and you can delineate whatever term you want if you want to organize information in that way. If i play an interupt-cleanse-decap-1vX-boonbot scrapper, than that's my "role" and that role is just a descriptor of what features the build has.

This is why runes like speed are bad for balance , necro is supposed to be slow with low chase/ kite potential but this rune literally breaks this .

So in this comment you are displaying the exact behavior i described above. You define a class to be X Y and Z, so why bother giving them any options or choices at all if they are supposed to be designed only to do X Y and Z...if X, Y and Z have choices 1-10, and 9 of those choices don't fit the role the class is designed for, then why bother having those 9 choices in the first place? This is in my opinion one reason designing for roles (which Anet has explicitly done in the past) as being detrimental to diversity.

I already told you roles are SUBJETIVE and ofc self made by players , My whole argument isnt based on roles , i agree with you on what a role is and as i said roles are not static . I built my whole argument around PROPERTIES , those properties are axioms of conquest pvp , those properties are indisputable and comparable . Roles are built around classes that high light on some of those properties .

" You define a class to be X Y and Z" This is the problem , necro is defined by highlighting in some properties like self sustain and high aoe damage , how are u going to give necro movility without taking any other property on a trade off for that movility? also necro has LOT OF ROLE and mixed role choices , scourge/core can 1v1 and tank a node while scourge can support and has more utility , reaper has less sustain and its worse on 1v1 but it has way better spike damage .

IF every class highligh on every property then everything willl end like nades holo .

Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options wich adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@wevh.2903 said:Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

I understand your complaints about what you personally think is unbalancing the game. But this thread isn't even about balance...it's about diversity. Removing options and pigeonholing specializations to singular predefined roles does not increase diversity. Consequently, high diversity leads to balance, which nature also happens to prove is possible.

What you are talking about is basically how Anet has been trying to balance their game for years now and it's failing, and been failing, for the past 4ish years post HoT. Removing another rune, and another amulet, and making a whole sector of traits useless by giving them irrationally long CD's does not balance the game, nor does it increase diversity.

[Kuma.1503]

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

If I'm understanding his post correctly, he wasn't stating that Life or Speeed rune necro are the product of random combinations. He was stating that, in a system (game) in which many options exist, there will eventually come a point where players will find the most optimal option.

In the case of Necro, players decided that the class already had good enough damage, sustain, and tankiness as a baseline, but their lack of mobility was limiting their ability to apply that damage. An inability to kite was resulting in them taking more damage, resulting in lower durability than what one would assume on paper.

Players realized that speed rune allowed Necro to patch up that weakness. A result of the meta shaping itself, rather than the developers directly influencing it.

I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Kuma.1503 said:I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention. _

Ya pretty much exactly this. Just an example is if a Necromancer build with Runes of Speed appear in the meta, then if there was enough diversity, there should exist some combination of traits and skills out there on other classes or even the same class that counter this setup, pushing it back out of the meta. That process is continuous and more fulfilling the more diversity there is, and really I think is what most players actually want from the game, that gw1 was able to do to a degree of success.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"wevh.2903" said:Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

I understand your complaints about what you personally think is unbalancing the game. But this thread isn't even about balance...it's about diversity. Removing options and pigeonholing specializations to singular predefined roles does not increase diversity. Consequently, high diversity leads to balance, which nature also happens to prove is possible.

What you are talking about is basically how Anet has been trying to balance their game for years now and it's failing, and been failing, for the past 4ish years post HoT. Removing another rune, and another amulet, and making a whole sector of traits useless by giving them irrationally long CD's does not balance the game, nor does it increase diversity.

Im not complainig , im replying at what you said about thief backstab having 5 target , you are missing my whole post . What you want to do is basically give "aoe" to a high spike skill in order to make a class that highlights on high movility "good" in team fights without any kind of sense. Why would someone want a backtab build be good in team fights?

Imagine thief backstaing s for 8k , then if there is a hard resss going on youre going to hit 8k aoe with backstab on that 3/2 ppl trying to rezz plus the downed and then u just can swap to shortbow and rupt completely the rezz with shortbow 4 . What you said is basically not very intelligent , anet already nerfed thief auto attack cap to 2ppl instead of 3 so imagine a backstab up to 5 targets xD . In order to "balance" a 5 target backstab it would need to hit badically for 1k wich breaks completely the purpose of the skill .

[NotFound.7813]

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

If I'm understanding his post correctly, he wasn't stating that Life or Speeed rune necro are the product of random combinations. He was stating that, in a system (game) in which many options exist, there will eventually come a point where players will find the most optimal option.

In the case of Necro, players decided that the class already had good enough damage, sustain, and tankiness as a baseline, but their lack of mobility was limiting their ability to apply that damage. An inability to kite was resulting in them taking more damage, resulting in lower durability than what one would assume on paper.

Players realized that speed rune allowed Necro to patch up that weakness. A result of the meta shaping itself, rather than the developers directly influencing it.

I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention.

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue. More choices doenst make game more fun , a balanced game by this way doenst make a better pvp game .

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention. _

Ya pretty much exactly this. Just an example is if a Necromancer build with Runes of Speed appear in the meta, then if there was enough diversity, there should exist some combination of traits and skills out there on other classes or even the same class that counter this setup, pushing it back out of the meta. That process is continuous and more fulfilling the more diversity there is, and really I think is what most players actually want from the game, that gw1 was able to do to a degree of success.

So basically game mode wouldnt ne about skill anymore . it would be a counter wars . There is no more strategy appart from runnig a build to counter a build xD

[Kuma.1503]

@wevh.2903 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

If I'm understanding his post correctly, he wasn't stating that Life or Speeed rune necro are the product of random combinations. He was stating that, in a system (game) in which many options exist, there will eventually come a point where players will find the most optimal option.

In the case of Necro, players decided that the class already had good enough damage, sustain, and tankiness as a baseline, but their lack of mobility was limiting their ability to apply that damage. An inability to kite was resulting in them taking more damage, resulting in lower durability than what one would assume on paper.

Players realized that speed rune allowed Necro to patch up that weakness. A result of the meta shaping itself, rather than the developers directly influencing it.

I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention.

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue. More choices doenst make game more fun , a balanced game by this way doenst make a better pvp game .

You have a point. If a class is balanced around a particular flaw and you remove that flaw, the class becomes imbalanced. Why would any respectable dev willingly introduce such an obvious abuse case into their game?

We're not factoring in opportunity cost.

First, you must consider that Necro, as a baseline, has poor chase potential.Next, consider that your rune of choice comes with a significant gameplay impact. Reaper with dolyak rune is going to be significantly tankier than reaper with eagle rune.Finally, consider the opportunity cost that comes with using a rune to offset your class's intended weakness.

What you get is a more well rounded class. You've smoothed out your flaws, but you're also not building towards your strengths as much as you could be.

If you ran Eagle run instead of speed, you would deal significantly more damage due to more consistent crits and higher crit damage. If you ran rune of resistance, you would be significantly more durable against damage from both ends of the spectrum. A reaper with speed rune sacrifices both damage and tankiness.

It's a bit like a bird with hollow bones. Its hollow bones allow it to fly with ease, but it comes at a cost because a bird's bones are significantly more fragile than most flightless mammals.

A bird could evolve to patch up this "weakness" by developing solid bones, but it may not be able to fly as well.

[NotFound.7813]

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

If I'm understanding his post correctly, he wasn't stating that Life or Speeed rune necro are the product of random combinations. He was stating that, in a system (game) in which many options exist, there will eventually come a point where players will find the most optimal option.

In the case of Necro, players decided that the class already had good enough damage, sustain, and tankiness as a baseline, but their lack of mobility was limiting their ability to apply that damage. An inability to kite was resulting in them taking more damage, resulting in lower durability than what one would assume on paper.

Players realized that speed rune allowed Necro to patch up that weakness. A result of the meta shaping itself, rather than the developers directly influencing it.

I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention.

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue. More choices doenst make game more fun , a balanced game by this way doenst make a better pvp game .

You have a point. If a class is balanced around a particular flaw and you remove that flaw, the class becomes imbalanced. Why would any respectable dev willingly introduce such an obvious abuse case into their game?

We're not factoring in opportunity cost.

First, you must consider that Necro, as a baseline, has poor chase potential.Next, consider that your rune of choice comes with a significant gameplay impact. Reaper with dolyak rune is going to be significantly tankier than reaper with eagle rune.Finally, consider the opportunity cost that comes with using a rune to offset your class's intended weakness.

What you get is a more well rounded class. You've smoothed out your flaws, but you're also not building towards your strengths as much as you could be.

If you ran Eagle run instead of speed, you would deal significantly more damage due to more consistent crits and higher crit damage. If you ran rune of resistance, you would be significantly more durable against damage from both ends of the spectrum. A reaper with speed rune sacrifices both damage and tankiness.

It's a bit like a bird with hollow bones. Its hollow bones allow it to fly with ease, but it comes at a cost because a bird's bones are significantly more fragile than most flightless mammals.

A bird could evolve to patch up this "weakness" by developing solid bones, but it may not be able to fly as well.

you dont sacrify that much dmg special in reaper for a 66% movility bost ,. Literally necroand renegade literally the only two classes wich doenst lose almost anything by equipping speed runes. Necro already have wurm/ spectral walk for movility and ofc it doenst have chase potential , if necro has chase potential then recall it revenant xD . Also nec may have no chase potential but it has biggest access to chill/cripple uptime in the whole game.

Every class wich has chase potential is worse than nec in a equal fight scenario , power rev/ tempest would had a lost matchup vs a necro/tempest in a "same skill" scenario .

It is not a flow , necro shines in determined scenarios , it is the BEST team fight class cuz it has big self sustain / aoe/ utility .3v3 and 2v2 seassons showed it perfectly . Necros being able to outrun some preffesions its just disgusting .

[Kuma.1503]

@wevh.2903 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:Also about having 3000 options but only some of them viable , ofc this is like nature , options which adapts better to the specific winner condition will be always better , no matter how much options you have .

I said this earlier already but heterogenous systems will always have an optimal path to get to the most complex state. Nature is no different. But nature doesn't design for creatures to have a role to play... the creatures themselves are what go about trying to adapt to their environment and assort information to their advantage, again in an attempt to race toward the most optimal path. A game shouldn't design this FOR you, it's the other way around, where the roles are created from the variety of builds that exist. If you design for a creature to have a single role, the creature will optimize it's path for that role you created, and it reduces the number of optimal paths to just that single path.

In the case of Necromancer and the Rune of Speed, a player will by virtue of the above principle will always seek to optimize their build. If speed is what they lack, they will eventually find the choice that allows them to better adapt, and if that option happens to be Rune of Speed then they will do just that. Rune of Speed can then really be any other choice because it will not matter what you design, we will by default find the most optimal choices eventually. That's why this idea of designing around roles is silly at best and its not a surprise why we have a stale meta game now. If it's not Rune of Speed it will be some other Rune...if it's not Onslaught, it will be some other trait...and this process will continue indefinitely as you change, remove or add options.

This is why the key to understanding how to prevent stale meta games and bad diversity is by increasing the optimal computation time, and you do this via understanding how to apply complexity theory to help solve that problem. This is how nature does this as well (obviously) since there are trillions...if not an near infinite amount of possibilities for different species to exist, nature has taken over 4 billion (13.7 billion maybe) years to get to the point where we are at now...and where we are now some would argue that we aren't in the final stages of evolutionary complexity but have merely scratched the surface.

The point is that the game has basically reached it's maximum complexity. People have figured out the most optimal strategies. Designing for roles EXPIDITED this process.

Completely not true , if they fix rune of speed there is not other way for necro to win movility , necromancer is not a product of random combinations like life , Necro has wurm , spectral walk , scourge portal shroud skill 2 and rune of speed as movility bost , there is no other way necro can win movility cuz there wont be a random generated trait . There is not other rune apart from trapper rune wich gives that strong 6th stat and everyone with a lit knowledge on pvp knows this rune was a big mistake and a very bad design . If you give necro high movility without a trade off then you are UNBALANCING the game , can necro has more access to movility? ok then made a spec that allows necro to shadow step with a trade off on aoe dmg and self sustain , otherwise ur unbalacnign the game

If I'm understanding his post correctly, he wasn't stating that Life or Speeed rune necro are the product of random combinations. He was stating that, in a system (game) in which many options exist, there will eventually come a point where players will find the most optimal option.

In the case of Necro, players decided that the class already had good enough damage, sustain, and tankiness as a baseline, but their lack of mobility was limiting their ability to apply that damage. An inability to kite was resulting in them taking more damage, resulting in lower durability than what one would assume on paper.

Players realized that speed rune allowed Necro to patch up that weakness. A result of the meta shaping itself, rather than the developers directly influencing it.

I believe what he's advocating for are more options which have the potential to interact with other options, creating an exponential number of possibilities. If we were to achieve that goal, it would (theoretically) be much more difficult to determine what the optimal path would be, resulting in more instances of the meta shaping itself. In other words, players could simply adapt to whatever outlier appeared in the meta and there would be little need for constant developer intervention.

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue. More choices doenst make game more fun , a balanced game by this way doenst make a better pvp game .

You have a point. If a class is balanced around a particular flaw and you remove that flaw, the class becomes imbalanced. Why would any respectable dev willingly introduce such an obvious abuse case into their game?

We're not factoring in opportunity cost.

First, you must consider that Necro, as a baseline, has poor chase potential.Next, consider that your rune of choice comes with a significant gameplay impact. Reaper with dolyak rune is going to be significantly tankier than reaper with eagle rune.Finally, consider the opportunity cost that comes with using a rune to offset your class's intended weakness.

What you get is a more well rounded class. You've smoothed out your flaws, but you're also not building towards your strengths as much as you could be.

If you ran Eagle run instead of speed, you would deal significantly more damage due to more consistent crits and higher crit damage. If you ran rune of resistance, you would be significantly more durable against damage from both ends of the spectrum. A reaper with speed rune sacrifices both damage and tankiness.

It's a bit like a bird with hollow bones. Its hollow bones allow it to fly with ease, but it comes at a cost because a bird's bones are significantly more fragile than most flightless mammals.

A bird could evolve to patch up this "weakness" by developing solid bones, but it may not be able to fly as well.

you dont sacrify that much dmg special in reaper for a 66% movility bost ,. Literally necroand renegade literally the only two classes wich doenst lose almost anything by equipping speed runes. Necro already have wurm/ spectral walk for movility and ofc it doenst have chase potential , if necro has chase potential then recall it revenant xD . Also nec may have no chase potential but it has biggest access to chill/cripple uptime in the whole game.

Every class wich has chase potential is worse than nec in a equal fight scenario , power rev/ tempest would had a lost matchup vs a necro/tempest in a "same skill" scenario .

It is not a flow , necro shines in determined scenarios , it is the BEST team fight class cuz it has big self sustain / aoe/ utility .3v3 and 2v2 seassons showed it perfectly . Necros being able to outrun some preffesions its just disgusting .

If you don't think you're sacrificing much damage by running speed runes, you've never experienced glass reaper dps. It's a night and day difference.

[Leonidrex.5649]

@DeceiverX.8361 said:These weapons aren't even really that bad. Off-meta in a lot of cases, but not atrocious.

The really bad weapons are probably so bad the OP doesn't even know they exist. When people talk about build diversity, they're talking about this stuff:

• OH sword on Mesmer and Warrior
• D/D and S/P on thief (worse the stronger the builds involved and the more skilled the players)
• MH dagger and MH scepter on Necro, and a bit of OH dagger, too depending on MH choices.

There's still a healthy amount of pretty-weak-but-playable weapons as well, ranging from stuff like longbow warrior to OH pistol mesmer to MH mace on guardian.

And further still there are prominent weapons that are taken mostly because the alternatives are just worse; looking mostly at staff on Necro and OH Torch on ranger.

The niche picks, hammer on Rev, are picked for specific scenarios and are often downright strong in those. Hammer Rev for example is one of the best DPS in WvW larger-scale play, and also brings a ton of utility. These weapons are strong, but badly-designed, because they can't be played in more scenarios. This is the same as shortbow on thief; it's not strong enough to be a MH choice because all of the utility of the weapon is balanced on one or two skills, and all the remaining power taken away from it to preserve said utility.

whats wrong with mesmers pistol? its one of the best if not the best mesmer off hand.IMO mesmers off hands are all really good, you just get forced into shitty mainhand weapons so you dont get to use them, when you logically think about mesmers main hand and 2hand weapons then you realize that they are the ones that really suck.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"wevh.2903" said:

Im not complainig , im replying at what you said about thief backstab having 5 target , you are missing my whole post . What you want to do is basically give "aoe" to a high spike skill in order to make a class that highlights on high movility "good" in team fights without any kind of sense. Why would someone want a backtab build be good in team fights?

Imagine thief backstaing s for 8k , then if there is a hard resss going on youre going to hit 8k aoe with backstab on that 3/2 ppl trying to rezz plus the downed and then u just can swap to shortbow and rupt completely the rezz with shortbow 4 . What you said is basically not very intelligent , anet already nerfed thief auto attack cap to 2ppl instead of 3 so imagine a backstab up to 5 targets xD . In order to "balance" a 5 target backstab it would need to hit badically for 1k wich breaks completely the purpose of the skill .

I addressed this i don't know what you are talking about.

Anet manages this kind of target cap dilemma by just adjusting damage...so they will make 5 target abilities do less damage then a single target ability like backstab. Problem with that is, that if 5 target skills do not-a-lot of damage, then they also do 5x times less damage in 1v1 situation's, and you get this sort of inverse problem of the above, where skills that target 5 targets gain less value when targeting less than 5 people. The approach to this is problematic for many reasons, but you can see it most obviously in specs like deadeye..."Let's make single target skills do tons of damage so it will be useful in teamfights" and ya this kinda worked... deadeyes are useful in teamfights...because that value that would have been lost by the difference in target cap is replaced instead by damage...except it's now completely overpowered in 1v1 situations and oneshots everyone in a 1v1. This is a large part of the powercreep problem people were well aware of at POF. where the wrestling between how much damage aoe's should do and how much single target damage skills should do when the problem has always been the number of targets abilities could select.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"wevh.2903" said:

Im not complainig , im replying at what you said about thief backstab having 5 target , you are missing my whole post . What you want to do is basically give "aoe" to a high spike skill in order to make a class that highlights on high movility "good" in team fights without any kind of sense. Why would someone want a backtab build be good in team fights?

Imagine thief backstaing s for 8k , then if there is a hard resss going on youre going to hit 8k aoe with backstab on that 3/2 ppl trying to rezz plus the downed and then u just can swap to shortbow and rupt completely the rezz with shortbow 4 . What you said is basically not very intelligent , anet already nerfed thief auto attack cap to 2ppl instead of 3 so imagine a backstab up to 5 targets xD . In order to "balance" a 5 target backstab it would need to hit badically for 1k wich breaks completely the purpose of the skill .

I addressed this i don't know what you are talking about.

Anet manages this kind of target cap dilemma by just adjusting damage...so they will make 5 target abilities do less damage then a single target ability like backstab. Problem with that is, that if 5 target skills do not-a-lot of damage, then they also do 5x times less damage in 1v1 situation's, and you get this sort of inverse problem of the above, where skills that target 5 targets gain less value when targeting less than 5 people. The approach to this is problematic for many reasons, but you can see it most obviously in specs like deadeye..."Let's make single target skills do tons of damage so it will be useful in teamfights" and ya this kinda worked... deadeyes are useful in teamfights...because that value that would have been lost by the difference in target cap is replaced instead by damage...except it's now completely overpowered in 1v1 situations and oneshots everyone in a 1v1. This is a large part of the powercreep problem people were well aware of at POF. where the wrestling between how much damage aoe's should do and how much single target damage skills should do when the problem has always been the number of targets abilities could select.

Deadeye broken in 1v1. XD thats a l2p issue . No one designed deadeye for "being good in team fights" . Deadeye damage is a result of MOVILITY trade off , disengage potential , chase potential daredevil has and deadeye miss . Deadeye ended being aids and nerfed not cuz it needed to do lot of damage in order to being "good in teamfight" , it ended this way cuz anet wanted a cool range rifle spec not a spec designed for conquest , like daredevil is . Daredevil was made ir order to fullfil atributtes needed in conquest , its movility made pvp way more fluid .

What you are missing is classes are not a random product of narute , classes are disigned aroud highlighing aroud some attributes , those attribites made at the same time "roles" assigned by wich attributes a class highlight over the rest . Single target skills doing more damage than aoe skills is not a problem .Aoe skills are competent in 1v1 scenarios , all team flght classes can 1v1 at some point in conqueat if it is needed due to circustances , you can build a core necro build around the fact u maybe need to take a 1v1 vs a holo in a certain match . Necro can 1v1 holo but holo for example can high spike necro with a thief , wich means holo can take a kill faster than core nec , and a thief plusing a holo vs a core nec can result in holo disengage cuz it has aceess to more kite potential / utility than necro . Holo in trade off for highlighting in thosd attribites has less access to aoe .

Im this example necro was built around on core around the idea of a high aoe class with big self sustain , it has a second life bar wich makes it resist high damage spikes , trade off fof this high sustain/aoe damage is giving necro poor movility/disengage potential(no blocks and evade frames) poor chase potential but a high acess to cripple/chill. Reaper gives necro movility with reaper 2 and more high spike damage in trade off with sustain cuz reaper schroud has more life force lost per second. And scourge gives necro team support in trade off schoud wich makes it vulnerable to a team spike. Necro with those attributes was assigned to "team fighter" but you can play necro as a more 1v1 holder , a more orientated team support scourge , or a high damage spec as reaper. You can play necro filling not a "static role" playing with those attributes u highligh on .

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"wevh.2903" said:No one designed deadeye for "being good in team fights" . Deadeye damage is a result of MOVILITY trade off , disengage potential , chase potential daredevil has and deadeye miss . Deadeye ended being aids and nerfed not cuz it needed to do lot of damage in order to being "good in teamfight" , it ended this way cuz anet wanted a cool range rifle spec not a spec designed for conquest , like daredevil is . Daredevil was made ir order to fullfil atributtes needed in conquest , its movility made pvp way more fluid .

I mean what evidence do you even have to say this is the case? Where was it stated that daredevil is "designed" for pvp...and where does it say that deadeye is designed because "they wanted a cool rifle spec?"

Everything you are saying is a word conjecture salad that only applies to conquest if at all, and is subjective at best. Balance exists in PVE, in WvW...and it exists outside of the game and applies to numerous other subject areas in the real world... not just conquest my dude.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"wevh.2903" said:No one designed deadeye for "being good in team fights" . Deadeye damage is a result of MOVILITY trade off , disengage potential , chase potential daredevil has and deadeye miss . Deadeye ended being aids and nerfed not cuz it needed to do lot of damage in order to being "good in teamfight" , it ended this way cuz anet wanted a cool range rifle spec not a spec designed for conquest , like daredevil is . Daredevil was made ir order to fullfil atributtes needed in conquest , its movility made pvp way more fluid .

I mean what evidence do you even have to say this is the case? Where was it stated that daredevil is "designed" for pvp...and where does it say that deadeye is designed because "they wanted a cool rifle spec?"

Everything you are saying is a word conjecture salad that only applies to conquest if at all, and is subjective at best. Balance exists in PVE, in WvW...and it exists outside of the game and applies to numerous other subject areas in the real world... not just conquest my dude.

The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Givig thief a rifle with high range/ high is not a healthy

This is the pvp forum , conquest mode with three points to capture .

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@wevh.2903 said:The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Even if this were true, which i wouldn't be surprised if it is, it still is a strawman to the point about how this has nothing to do with diversity. Your argument is about balance. Your solution to solving balance is to eliminate player choice, which means no diversity.

You can balance a game with no diversity...that's what games like Chess, Minsweeper and Fortnite are designed towards...but in a game where things are not homogeneous like guild wars 2, what you are asking for is stick wars 2...or at best a Rock Paper Scissor game, where there are only 9 options rather than many options.

[ZDragon.3046]

@Kuma.1503 said:

Necro

... All of necro weapons are good. This is, perhaps, the one class with the most build diversity. You can practically randomize your build and still perform to some degree. More classes should be like this.

As a necro main i would say i dont agreeStaff is in dire need of a baseline update. I shouldnt need soul marks to get lifeforce out of using the marks.I like the staffs kit but i hate being hard gated into needing to use soul marks with it.Dagger main and off hand are kind of lack luster.Bring back the old warhorn 5 i hate the new one its basically uses-less in pvp The duration is too short to be effective for anything especially when you have to stand close to your targets to get the effect.GS is also pretty horrible the 5 skill is now to slow for the big visual till it has and the fact that it deals no damage. You won land it really without someone being on the tip of its ranger or being combo with spectral ring.GS has roughly other skills are very lack luster but i suppose the 3 skill is decent the 4 skill is like only super effective for the first initial hit imo grave digger is well.... i wont even go into that.

In terms of build diversity its up there for sure but somethings still need to be addressed.Most necros are still hard locking to blood magic even after anet shadow gutted the well trait for something entirely useless in pvp.Soul reaping is usually still a must for most people too due to all the life force generation nerfs that were handed out this year.I mainly only see 2 necro builds out there core condi and spectral blood reaper. Very rarely you see a scourge but you have to wonder if its just a meme or not.

[NotFound.7813]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Even if this were true, which i wouldn't be surprised if it is, it still is a strawman to the point about how this has nothing to do with diversity. Your argument is about balance. Your solution to solving balance is to eliminate player choice, which means no diversity.

You can balance a game with no diversity...that's what games like Chess, Minsweeper and Fortnite are designed towards...but in a game where things are not homogeneous like guild wars 2, what you are asking for is stick wars 2...or at best a Rock Paper Scissor game, where there are only 9 options rather than many options.

Deleting players choince when it comes to stupid stuff that doenst make any kind of sense ? Ofc I want frequent balance patches and reworks that are pvp oriented , buffing right things that ends on builds based on skill .

What you are asking for is counter warrs , my build counter yours so i win , then you swap build to counter my counter build so now i win . That makes cero sense , there isnt any fun or skill evolved.

[Kuma.1503]

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Even if this were true, which i wouldn't be surprised if it is, it still is a strawman to the point about how this has nothing to do with diversity. Your argument is about balance. Your solution to solving balance is to eliminate player choice, which means no diversity.

You can balance a game with no diversity...that's what games like Chess, Minsweeper and Fortnite are designed towards...but in a game where things are not homogeneous like guild wars 2, what you are asking for is stick wars 2...or at best a Rock Paper Scissor game, where there are only 9 options rather than many options.

Deleting players choince when it comes to stupid stuff that doenst make any kind of sense ? Ofc I want frequent balance patches and reworks that are pvp oriented , buffing right things that ends on builds based on skill .

What you are asking for is counter warrs , my build counter yours so i win , then you swap build to counter my counter build so now i win . That makes cero sense , there isnt any fun or skill evolved.

I can see how you'd come to that conclusion. "Just throw a broken build at the other broken build and the one who gets the counter matchup wins".

Whether or not that happens comes down to how the devs design their game. Funny enough, if we keep going down this path of nerfing things with no end, we will eventually end up in counter wars. Take enough options away, and the game will devolve into counter wars, because options are what help give nuance to the situations we find ourselves in.

To demonstrate this, imagine we go down the route you proposed earlier. You said:

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue.

You wanted rune of speed removed/nerfed because Necro is designed to be slow, have poor chase potential. It should be removed because a Necro that can mitigate or remove that weakness is imbalanced. Notice what happens if we continue to follow that logic.

Reaper designed to be weak vs kiting >> Reaper is hard countered by classes that can kite it.

Reaper runs speed rune >> Reaper no longer hard countered >> We remove/nerf speed rune >> Reaper hard countered again.

We've gotten rid of an option that could've helped bring some nuance into the game.

Lets say we keep speed rune.

Reaper with speed rune has a chance to close the gap where it couldn't before, but the main way it gets swiftness is by entering shroud. You can exploit this to your advantage, saving your defensive cooldowns for that moment. They also do less damage in shroud than they would if they were running a dps rune, so not only are they using some of that shroud to close the gap, but they take more of that precious time to kill you once they're in range. The situation is still tough for them, but the reaper is at least in a position where they can kill you if they bait out your defenses.

We've turned a hard counter into a soft counter.

In summary, options like these are what help us prevent Counter Wars 2.

[NotFound.7813]

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Even if this were true, which i wouldn't be surprised if it is, it still is a strawman to the point about how this has nothing to do with diversity. Your argument is about balance. Your solution to solving balance is to eliminate player choice, which means no diversity.

You can balance a game with no diversity...that's what games like Chess, Minsweeper and Fortnite are designed towards...but in a game where things are not homogeneous like guild wars 2, what you are asking for is stick wars 2...or at best a Rock Paper Scissor game, where there are only 9 options rather than many options.

Deleting players choince when it comes to stupid stuff that doenst make any kind of sense ? Ofc I want frequent balance patches and reworks that are pvp oriented , buffing right things that ends on builds based on skill .

What you are asking for is counter warrs , my build counter yours so i win , then you swap build to counter my counter build so now i win . That makes cero sense , there isnt any fun or skill evolved.

I can see how you'd come to that conclusion. "Just throw a broken build at the other broken build and the one who gets the counter matchup wins".

Whether or not that happens comes down to how the devs design their game. Funny enough, if we keep going down this path of nerfing things with no end, we will eventually end up in counter wars. Take enough options away, and the game will devolve into counter wars, because options are what help give nuance to the situations we find ourselves in.

To demonstrate this, imagine we go down the route you proposed earlier. You said:

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue.

You wanted rune of speed removed/nerfed because Necro is designed to be slow, have poor chase potential. It should be removed because a Necro that can mitigate or remove that weakness is imbalanced. Notice what happens if we continue to follow that logic.

Reaper designed to be weak vs kiting >> Reaper is hard countered by classes that can kite it.

Reaper runs speed rune >> Reaper no longer hard countered >> We remove/nerf speed rune >> Reaper hard countered again.

We've gotten rid of an option that could've helped bring some nuance into the game.

Lets say we keep speed rune.

Reaper with speed rune has a chance to close the gap where it couldn't before, but the main way it gets swiftness is by entering shroud. You can exploit this to your advantage, saving your defensive cooldowns for that moment. They also do less damage in shroud than they would if they were running a dps rune, so not only are they using some of that shroud to close the gap, but they take more of that precious time to kill you once they're in range. The situation is still tough for them, but the reaper is at least in a position where they can kill you if they bait out your defenses.

We've turned a hard counter into a soft counter.

In summary, options like these are what help us

prevent

Counter Wars 2.

"countered by kiting" , dude "chase potential" means you can kill after you already won a fight , you dont get countered by not having "chase potential" , kalla renegade has cero chase potential and do u see it getting countered by "kiting" XD .

I think you mean with "countered by kiting" cuz reaper cant chase someone in a 1v1 so they reengage or kill reaper from range . PvP is based on nodes , nodes are close instances where you cant abuse range and all nodes have zones where you can kite and break line of sight , If you win the node you win the fight. This is not WvW where a pew pew ranger or a death eye can just kill you from range by kiting away from you.

Reaper has its own value , it is strong af in team fight and it kills bunkers faster than any other build. You are not high movile but you are not a turtle , you have wurm and shroud 2 that you still can use to move around the map . The point is high movile classes can move around the map faster than necro and get a kill , thats the value of a high movile class over a necromancer . Youre not stronger than a necro at team fight but your value is on movility. , thats a trade off . Reaper even when it is a very stronng team fighter class can still take 1v1 , whats the point? if they kill your wurm necro cant rly escape a outnumber situation , so thats why you take sidenoders , cuz a sidenoders are bad at team fight but they can duel on a node and survive a plus easier than necro . This is a general explanation , reaper can kite outnumber situations , is not a you get outnumber you get killed . it is more like a reaper will be more likely to dye outnumber.

thats why team comp matters , when you build a team you take in mind what playstyle are u gonna play with , if you want a strong teamfight comp then you pick necro/support , you want to have both ur necro and support playing together. If you play with a more roamer comp agaisnt this comp you will want to play three nodes cuz supports are weak in mirror fights , 2v2ing can take too long , you get hard countered ? no , they will play with the idea of taking a kill around the map and snowball and you will play with the idea of making team fights , match will a matter of rotations .

What i was refering with counter wars was that the guy wants to have a game with 2000 or 20 000 or even more viable builds , this is only possible if each build HARD COUNTER another build , So your build its viable cuz it counters not cuz it has a purpose in conquest .

What you are asking its nerf all reaper builds in order balance a rune wich has cero sense . And again , the damage u lose on necro running speed runes isnt rly a trade off for a 66 speed bost .

Rune of speed is not that broken , but it is disguisting than a reaper outnuns someone using ever single kiting skil , reaper has chill/cripple to get kills on ppl who is kiting , a chill on someone who has no condi clease means almost a kill .

Take this as an example . Reaper is a high risk high reward build , but necros has no evade frames or blocks . this means without wurm a necro getting focused is dead. this means bad positioning or bad rotation ends u getitg killled . Do you wan this or you want necro to have evade frames or blocks? Good necros will use kiting spots or non port spots so classes like thief and revs can one shot them while doing tons on dmg on team fight , reaper has the tools to survive if played well . You want to reward this playstyle or just give reaper evade frames so it wont dye even if it stands on the middle of the node face tanking every aoe possible?

[Kuma.1503]

@wevh.2903 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@wevh.2903 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@wevh.2903 said:The team that made daredevil and all HoT spects where thinking forward esl pro league while PoF spects were made in order to do cool showy specializations .

Even if this were true, which i wouldn't be surprised if it is, it still is a strawman to the point about how this has nothing to do with diversity. Your argument is about balance. Your solution to solving balance is to eliminate player choice, which means no diversity.

You can balance a game with no diversity...that's what games like Chess, Minsweeper and Fortnite are designed towards...but in a game where things are not homogeneous like guild wars 2, what you are asking for is stick wars 2...or at best a Rock Paper Scissor game, where there are only 9 options rather than many options.

Deleting players choince when it comes to stupid stuff that doenst make any kind of sense ? Ofc I want frequent balance patches and reworks that are pvp oriented , buffing right things that ends on builds based on skill .

What you are asking for is counter warrs , my build counter yours so i win , then you swap build to counter my counter build so now i win . That makes cero sense , there isnt any fun or skill evolved.

I can see how you'd come to that conclusion. "Just throw a broken build at the other broken build and the one who gets the counter matchup wins".

Whether or not that happens comes down to how the devs design their game. Funny enough, if we keep going down this path of nerfing things with no end, we will eventually end up in counter wars. Take enough options away, and the game will devolve into counter wars, because options are what help give nuance to the situations we find ourselves in.

To demonstrate this, imagine we go down the route you proposed earlier. You said:

The point is that weakness is what makes the class balanced , the rune is a completely bad design issue.

You wanted rune of speed removed/nerfed because Necro is designed to be slow, have poor chase potential. It should be removed because a Necro that can mitigate or remove that weakness is imbalanced. Notice what happens if we continue to follow that logic.

Reaper designed to be weak vs kiting >> Reaper is hard countered by classes that can kite it.

Reaper runs speed rune >> Reaper no longer hard countered >> We remove/nerf speed rune >> Reaper hard countered again.

We've gotten rid of an option that could've helped bring some nuance into the game.

Lets say we keep speed rune.

Reaper with speed rune has a chance to close the gap where it couldn't before, but the main way it gets swiftness is by entering shroud. You can exploit this to your advantage, saving your defensive cooldowns for that moment. They also do less damage in shroud than they would if they were running a dps rune, so not only are they using some of that shroud to close the gap, but they take more of that precious time to kill you once they're in range. The situation is still tough for them, but the reaper is at least in a position where they can kill you if they bait out your defenses.

We've turned a hard counter into a soft counter.

In summary, options like these are what help us

prevent

Counter Wars 2.

"countered by kiting" , dude "chase potential" means you can kill after you already won a fight , you dont get countered by not having "chase potential" , kalla renegade has cero chase potential and do u see it getting countered by "kiting" XD .

I think you mean with "countered by kiting" cuz reaper cant chase someone in a 1v1 so they reengage or kill reaper from range . PvP is based on nodes , nodes are close instances where you cant abuse range and all nodes have zones where you can kite and break line of sight , If you win the node you win the fight. This is not WvW where a pew pew ranger or a death eye can just kill you from range by kiting away from you.

Reaper has its own value , it is strong af in team fight and it kills bunkers faster than any other build. You are not high movile but you are not a turtle , you have wurm and shroud 2 that you still can use to move around the map . The point is high movile classes can move around the map faster than necro and get a kill , thats the value of a high movile class over a necromancer . Youre not stronger than a necro at team fight but your value is on movility. , thats a trade off . Reaper even when it is a very stronng team fighter class can still take 1v1 , whats the point? if they kill your wurm necro cant rly escape a outnumber situation , so thats why you take sidenoders , cuz a sidenoders are bad at team fight but they can duel on a node and survive a plus easier than necro . This is a general explanation , reaper can kite outnumber situations , is not a you get outnumber you get killed . it is more like a reaper will be more likely to dye outnumber.

thats why team comp matters , when you build a team you take in mind what playstyle are u gonna play with , if you want a strong teamfight comp then you pick necro/support , you want to have both ur necro and support playing together. If you play with a more roamer comp agaisnt this comp you will want to play three nodes cuz supports are weak in mirror fights , 2v2ing can take too long , you get hard countered ? no , they will play with the idea of taking a kill around the map and snowball and you will play with the idea of making team fights , match will a matter of rotations .

What i was refering with counter wars was that the guy wants to have a game with 2000 or 20 000 or even more viable builds , this is only possible if each build HARD COUNTER another build , So your build its viable cuz it counters not cuz it has a purpose in conquest .

What you are asking its nerf all reaper builds in order balance a rune wich has cero sense . And again , the damage u lose on necro running speed runes isnt rly a trade off for a 66 speed bost .

Rune of speed is not that broken , but it is disguisting than a reaper outnuns someone using ever single kiting skil , reaper has chill/cripple to get kills on ppl who is kiting , a chill on someone who has no condi clease means almost a kill .

Take this as an example . Reaper is a high risk high reward build , but necros has no evade frames or blocks . this means without wurm a necro getting focused is dead. this means bad positioning or bad rotation ends u getitg killled . Do you wan this or you want necro to have evade frames or blocks? Good necros will use kiting spots or non port spots so classes like thief and revs can one shot them while doing tons on dmg on team fight , reaper has the tools to survive if played well . You want to reward this playstyle or just give reaper evade frames so it wont dye even if it stands on the middle of the node face tanking every aoe possible?

I kinda see where you're going, but perhaps using Kalla ren wasn't the best example. Kiting in video games typically refers to the act of staying at a distance while using ranged attacks to wear down your foe, but it can also refer to the act of simply staying out of your opponent's threat range.

Reaper gets countered by kiting because they deal the bulk of their damage in shroud. If you remain out of a reaper's threat range while they are in shroud, they lose a lot of their threat. Any class which can effectively do this will have the advantage against reaper. Any class that can do this and then immediately put on the pressure once they drop shroud (ranger) can easily kill it.

Speed rune is an option that helps the reaper "chase" the ranger while in shroud so that they do not leave the reaper's threat range. Important to accomplish because as soon as they drop shroud they're vulnerable to counter pressure.

Kalla ren does not get countered in the same way because it does the bulk of it's damage from range. It also does not need to play around a cooldown/resource-gated melee form to deal the bulk of its damage. Due to the way conquest works, it's 900(1200 on Jallis Pull) radius threat bubble is usually sufficient to keep a node held, even if enemies kite off. if they wan't to hang out in narnia, let them. You've got great resustain, and so long as you're both in combat in combat, you're generating energy.

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Addressing your other point. Viable does not necessarily have to mean meta. It simply means playable. It's definition translates to "Capable of working, feasable". Given the sheer number of ways you can mix and match your traits, runes, utilities amulets, ect It would not be in the realm of absurdity for there to be a total of 2000 "viable" builds across all 9 classes.

Changes like the 300 sec CD change, or the removal of amulets/runes, or changes which smiters boon options (or entire weapons) out of existence are what quickly start to dwindle those options creating a more stagnant meta.