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List of Tradeoffs - The Better Way to do Balance


Multicolorhipster.9751

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@"Dawdler.8521" said:

Guardian and DH, yes.FB is definitely overloaded though.

I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead.In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs.

I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced.HoT
heavily
overloaded it's specs on release (and nerfed core before).PoF
heavily
overloaded it's specs on release (and nerfed HoT before).

It's a pattern you know, lol. The only reason PoF specs are still "strong" is... you can guess it... EoD isnt released yet.

I meant more like, PoF was overloading to the extent where it pushed Core down so hard that it just couldn't compete anymore.This is just gonna get worse with EoD @.@

Tradeoffs is just a ridiculous excuse at this point to slam dunk Epsec before the next shiny powercreep.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"Jski.6180" said:They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made.

That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released.

Largely because it hasn't needed them.

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

That a lot bigger then most classes.

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@"Dadnir.5038" said:It feel like the fact that chrono lose the ability to self-shatter (pre HoT trait Illusory persona) have been forgotten in it's "tradeoff".

  • Chrono: Lose illusory persona, slightly different shatter skills. (From my point of view it's a loss)

this is incorrect and no longer the case, they gave illusionary persona back to chrono sometime this year

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@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:It feel like the fact that chrono lose the ability to self-shatter (pre HoT trait
Illusory persona
) have been forgotten in it's "tradeoff".
  • Chrono: Lose
    illusory persona
    , slightly different shatter skills. (From my point of view it's a loss)

this is incorrect and no longer the case, they gave illusionary persona back to chrono sometime this year

Oh? I missed this change, my mistake then.

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Happy holidays

@"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:Please google "Herald Traits" on the GW2 Wiki. Here. I'll do it for you:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_revenant_traits

Here, i'll put it in caps so you can read it better. DRACONIC FORTITUDE (AKA THE 10% Health trait) IS A MINOR MASTER TRAIT. IT'S NOT PART OF THE "TRADEOFF TRAIT" AKA THE MINOR ADEPT TRAIT. Draconic Fortitude is literally just a regular trait. If you take a traitline that isn't Herald, you get a different Minor Master trait instead. You don't just "get 10% health just cuz." I'll say it a 4th time, it's literally just a regular trait, not part of the "tradeoff trait."

Please stop spreading misinformation

Like @Lan Deathrider.5910 pointed out, the first trait in every traitline isn't the tradeoff trait. In most cases its actually just the trait that gives access to new weapons + the elite spec mechanic. Most existing tradeoffs were just short of shoved into that first minor trait after the fact. It doesn't mean that's how every tradeoff exists.Again; look at classes like Zerker, Scrapper. They're proof that this isn't always the case.

All i'm saying about Draconic Fortitude is that its a real missed opportunity to give a more meaningful trade to Harold. Like I said originally, it just gives you 10% health for being Harold.

You're objectively wrong because the things about Renegade that were/are an issue have literally nothing to do with F2/F3/F4 or Kalla's Fervor. It has everything to do with Kalla's Stance skills and the massive overbuffing of shortbow and then the overnerfing of everything else. The F2/F3/F4 aren't even really out of line with Ancient Echo, either, which is important when considering balance and tradeoffs. This isn't a case like Core Guardian vs. Firebrand where Firebrand has an additional 15 skills

That's a subjective philosophical point of kitten view. How strong something is speaking balance-wise and balance is entirely subjective.

I'm not out to call anything too op or too nerf. I'm just saying that tradeoffs are a pretty smart way to do balance whereas nerfing everything is pretty lame, and then I gave a list of existing tradeoffs in the game. My goal is help people figure out which tradeoffs have a reasonable impact on gameplay and which are pretty meaningless, while also trying to figure out which classes don't have tradeoffs to the detriment or betterment of that elite spec.

@Infusion.7149 said:Did the moderators move this thread?

Yes. That being said I also don't agree with that decision because I don't know anything about PvE or WvW nor how either gamemode is balanced. I posted it in PvP because I was talking about PvP, which I know like 2% more about. My fault there for not including that in the OP.

@Quadox.7834 said:you know whats even more exciting than buffs? new content.

reworking old deprecated traits (300 sec icd anyone), adding new skills/traits (in core we got new gm trait and new healskill on all classes). new classes. new especs. new usable weapons on core professions. new (non-djinn) maps. even additions to hotm.

I agree, and I hope that's the case eventually. At the moment I believe their situation is really restricted and they can't do any kind of skill rework, only balance changes. That will probably change with EoD.

@Obtena.7952 said:I don't see this as better, just different. I think 'tradeoffs' is just a bad approach to design; you won't get better balance with it no more than just the regular attempts to balance by changing skills.

That could just be my opinion. I think it takes a lot more creative effort to give a tradeoff to a class(no matter how dull) compared to just tuning down some number or increasing a CD.When applied to skills too I think a tradeoff is a lot more likely to change how a skill actually works compared to changing nothing but the damage or CD. That's how you end up with 300s CD passives and 1s cast-time skills doing 20 damage.

@Hypnowulf.7403 said:The only true balance is rock, paper, scissors. This is why Pokémon and 1v1 fighting games fare so well. Indeed, if there one has a powerful means, that powerful means has a weakness or can be nullified by something else. This is the only way that any kind of balance can be achieved because all it does, really, is place balance within the hands of the players. It's up to the players to ensure there are enough rocks, papers, and scissors present within the field. I'm sure this is why any game that isn't focused around this venerable approach is probably envious of those that are.

I agree with pretty much every else you said that I understand besides this. I don't play Pokemon, but I play a lot of 1v1 fighting games and some them die off very quickly because audiences get bored. The reason for that being will usually differ for everyone, but ime its an overemphasis on balance. A way too 'hands-on' approach that tries to appeal to patch-culture.The end result is usually a boring game where characters are way too similar, combat is slow, and there isn't many high risk/reward plays.

Tradeoffs are a way to stay committed to balance without making everyone depressed. A lot of the best changes to fighting games and competitive sports have been tradeoffs. Of course, that's just one way. You can agree/disagree.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:@"Infusion.7149"The way you're looking at "tradeoff" in term of damage output is wrong from the start (For example, I could say druid is on the losing side of the tradeoff just because it's dps is low, yet it's not a tradeoff). "Performance" isn't a trade off, there is pro and cons to all traitlines. The difference to core mechanisms is where lie the tradeoffs, and for some e-spec there is clearly a net gain of mechanism from their e-spec (for example tempest getting overload for "free", going with the excuse that "core ele just need a F5 is just denying that tempest and weaver simply got "more" out of the trade).

We'll have to disagree then. With druid you're trading off likely offensive capabilities and pet damage for a defensive aspect (Celestial Avatar and all druid has to offer).

If lightning orb wasn't as strong, the only reason you'd run tempest is for overload air and more auras to share (so most likely support tempest). What else does tempest really offer besides might generation off overload fire? Overload water isn't going to be used much of the time, overload earth typically is reserved for condi builds. If you were around here when HoT was launched , Tempest was widely ridiculed as the elite spec with no major improvement (when at the same time you had a newly introduced fully un-nerfed Herald + Chono + Druid + Berserker + Reaper + Daredevil).

The sustain of water weaver (which has since been nerfed) reminds me much of core cele ele with dagger+dagger, so ultimately it's powercreep when you account for the innate attribute bonuses. The real tradeoff is when you swap attunements you might need to swap twice actually to get the skill you need depending on if it's a mainhand skill.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:I think it is valid to consider all of the minor specs when assessing an elite, but you also need to do what a lot of people forget and remember that one of the things you give up is a core traitline. That's hard to directly analyze because you can't predict which core traitline would have otherwise been taken in its place, but for some professions it is quite significant.

That makes sense. I think so long as its a real choice and giving up a core traitline isn't just a no-brainer, then that's a pretty good sign.

If one is trying to be objective, I'd make the following adjustments:

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:List of Currently Existing Tradeoffs:

Tempest:
|
Gain:
Overloads
Loss:
Increased CD on attunement swaps for Overloads

This isn't a tradeoff - or rather, it's not a tradeoff of taking Tempest. Nothing stops you from playing a Tempest exactly how you'd play a regular Elementalist. Overloads give you an additional option, and the increased CD is a tradeoff
for using that option
, but is not a tradeoff for taking Tempest. You can always choose not to overload and therefore not to suffer the increased CD.

That's a really good point, and I actually thought about that a lot. Ultimately I decided that Overloads did seem like a proper tradeoff; at least to me, I could totally get why people wouldn't see it that way.

What I reasoned was that you'd lose a core traitline by taking Tempest, and a lot of the Tempest traits either encourage or force you to overload to gain their effect/boon. Therefore you could play Tempest like a core Ele; never overload, but looking at these traits that seems like a bit of a handicap. I think with the way Tempest traits encourage overloading, overloading in itself becomes a pretty neat tradeoff.

Firebrand:
|
Gain:
Tomes with lots of additional skills
Loss:
Tomes have increased CD's compared to core virtues.

Also lose instant activation of virtues. How important that is is subjective, but it IS something you give up.

That's objectively correct, but i'm good yo. Not going to add that. If anyone really wants to be that technical, they can sue me.

Scrapper:
|
Gain:
Barrier on damage
Loss:
-180 Vitality

Also lose having an F5 based on your elite skill in exchange for the function gyro.

Holosmith:
|
You can overheat
Just kidding, no tradeoff. (1-0)

Like Scrapper, you lose having an F5 based on your elite skill.

Like I mentioned in my follow up comment, you could include the lack of F5 skill to Scrapper/Holo if you wanted.I reasoned that with Scrapper, it's essentially just a separate tradeoff to the one that already exists.Same case with Holo, only there's no real tradeoff to forge itself. You basically lose an F5 skill, but gain the ability to enter forge. Forge itself, all the damage multipliers that come with and 5 new skills don't have any sort of tradeoff.

Harold:
|
Gain:
10% Max health for being Harold. F2 skill for 5 Legends.
Loss:
Core rev's F2 skill for 4 legends.(2-0)

Even using a simplistic points-based model, I'd call this 2-1 rather than 2-0. Any given build still only has two F2 skills available, and giving up a 25 energy boost skill is significant... although Ancient Echo is probably still a little weaker overall.

I suppose I could see that being the case, but like I told @LucianTheAngelic.7054 in trying to be objective, you can't really count a skill out based on perceived effectiveness, and even if I were to do that, you still get 10% health just from being Harold.

Renegod:
| No tradeoff. (1-0)

More that you give up one skill in order to gain three. In practice, you're giving up a skill that grants you energy that you could use for other skills, in exchange for three skills that cost energy.

You get 3 skills that cost energyYou lose 1 skill that gives energy

On paper, it's not really a balanced trade, 3 for 1. Or I guess you could add in the granting energy as a bonus effect and say 3-2In practice, i'm sure everyone will tell you that the Renegade skills are pretty garbage and that i'm objectively wrong for saying its an unbalanced tradeoff.

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@Yasai.3549 said:

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

Guardian and DH, yes.FB is definitely overloaded though.

I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead.In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs.

I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced.

Not really. What you give up when you pop a tome is that for the period you have the tome up, you don't have access to your weapon skills any more. Courage and Resolve are pretty heavily specialised - while you've got either of them up, you're not getting any damage to speak of out of the left side of your bar at all, just defensive buffs and haling respectively. You can drop the tome before using it up, of course, but then the tome is going on full recharge without having gained the full benefit from it. And, of course, that recharge starts when the tome is finished, so the effective recharge of tomes is longer than it is on paper.

Justice is a bit less specialised because damage is always useful, but if you're running a healbrand, you might need to be careful when you switch into it, because doing so at the wrong time might deprive your group of healing and buffs coming from your weaponset.

Another consideration is that while it might look like 15 skills on paper, in practice it's rare that you'll actually be able to make good use out of all three. Firebrands have pretty much been ejected from sPvP at the moment (seriously, there's not one firebrand build recommended on Metabattle last time I checked). Courage largely rewards concentration, resolve healing power and concentration, and justice rewards damage stats, particularly condition damage - in practice, you need to choose between them. Usually between damage or support. Courage probably loses the least from having the 'wrong' gearset, but it's also probably the most specialised: in competitive being able to spam stability for a few seconds is great, but in high end PvE, it's basically an emergency button that you'd prefer to never have to press because the benefits don't offset the DPS loss (when my group runs Matthias, for instance, even if there are firebrands in the group, they're usually instructed to let Mesmers put up the projectile reflect bubbles and the Firebrands should only do so in an emergency if the mesmers can't, because for the firebrands, switching to Tome of Courage to put up a reflect bubble is generally a DPS loss). In practice, it's not practical to have one build that really makes use of both Justice and Resolve. For a DPS build, puling a Tome of Resolve is basically a last-ditch Hail Mary that probably won't actually save whoever it is that's in trouble from dying because the healing is too low, and in the meantime you're not DPSing. For a healing build, pulling out ToJ when it's safe to do so usually does give a slight uptick in damage, but you're going from "not much" to "a little more but still not much".

Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated while performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. > @Jski.6180 said:

@Jski.6180 said:They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made.

That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released.

Largely because it hasn't needed them.

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

That a lot bigger then most classes.

Pretty sure most other classes have had reworks that are at least as big as reworking four utility skills (and three weapon skills, I guess, since sword and scepter were changed to have symbols and Ray of Judgement was changed).

Revenant had Devastation and Corruption reworked, recently, and Mallyx skills have been reworked a couple of times. Offhand sword has been completely redesigned, for better or worse. Oh, and they've also had Salvation reworked, for better or worse. Come to think on it, I'm not sure that any core revenant traitline has avoided a rework. Let's not forget the introduction of legend-specific Facet of Nature skills, or the core F2.

Warrior had the tactics rework, and the warhorn rework. I think there's been more, but Warrior is one of my least played professions, and I'm doing this purely off memory.

Scrapper had basically everything except the hammer reworked. Core engineer had the Inventions rework (which is a large part of the reason why heal scrapper exists) and the big Explosions rework, which is largely why engineers have been dominating sPvP lately.

Thief had traps turned into preparations, which generally resulted in stronger effects at the cost of being a bit fiddlier to use, as well as the Shadow Arts rework. Oh, and the Deadeye redesign.

Necromancer had the big rework on the Death Magic traitline not too long ago. I'm pretty sure I remember them also having big reworks to Spite and Curses back before PoF. Focus was redesigned, and I think scepter had some significant work done on it as well.

Mesmer got pretty much rebuilt from the ground up around Season 4 Episode 2. I don't think any profession has been reworked as much as mesmer (and this isn't really a good thing for the profession).

Elementalist had the Fire Magic traitline overhauled, and the summoning glyphs changed (it's possible to have multiple lesser elementals out at once now).

Ranger had sword redesigned. I have a feeling that they've had redesigns to their utility traitlines as well, but again, I'm going off memory here, and ranger is one of my less played professions.

This is also, incidentally, only considering reworks that were intended to buff underused parts of the profession, rather than cases where functionality has been stripped back or changed for the purpose of nerfing (something that has happened to guardian as well). I'm also going off memory here, so there may be a lot I'm forgetting. Guardian traitlines, by contrast, haven't had any big reworks since pre-HoT: a few individual traits have been tweaked, but no complete tree redesigns. A few skills that weren't being used were replaced and that's just about it. There are some professions there that you could argue have had about the same in the way of reworks, but revenant, engineer, thief, necromancer, and mesmer have all clearly had more. And of the three that are not in that list, it might just be because they're professions I generally play less and thus don't remember their reworks as well.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated while performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. >

While it potentially complicates trait interactions, ANet probably would have done themselves a big favour by designing FB more like DD, meaning 1 GM per Tome, resulting in FB solely having 1 Tome depending on the GM picked. This way, each trait triplet (upper, middle, lower) could focus on more defined roles (F1 = burning and debuffing/soft CC, F2 = healing and cleanse, F3 = defense and boons) with a sprinkle of Quickness through different applications/intensity on each of them. At the same time, base Guardian could have gained a buff to passive effects to distinguish itself from DH (more active) and FB (more specialised). Even though you might be right that not every build can harness their full potential and that there is a cost of opportunity for using Tomes (time, skill access), they're still way more powerful than baseline Virtues. And even though I do believe ANet thought that it would work just as you described, numbers on skills told a different story. Resulting in several nerfes which left each Tome very watered down. However, to pick up an argument for/against Tempest not having a trade-off I agree with: In most situations FB still plays just like Guardian+. To some extent I feel the same way about DH. The reason we still see baseline Guardians is mostly due to baseline traitline interactions, not due to e-spec trade-offs. In contrast to, for example, Necromancer, where you can actually see a trade-off within the class mechanic/gameplay itself.

I don't want to make another list with my opinion on wether each e-spec has or has no sufficient trade-off. Some specs certainly don't have proper trade-offs yet while other trade-offs simply don't matter numberswise or are uninspired (e.g. Druid) or simply don't or hardly matter overall (e.g. Tempest). While I'd like proper trade-offs for every spec to be implemented before EoD launches, I feel like balance and gameplaywise we got bigger fish to fry than simply looking for a trade-off like Firebrand mentioned above. Mirage is and always has been a mess mechanically/gameplaywise. Poor Engineer intra class balance overall. And even though I do like Berserker, managing Berserker mode is rocky (no exit, only Utilities to extent duration) because the rework didn't go the whole way - just like it didn't for Chronomancer. And, of course, as always, Pet AI/functionality.

That being said, just to clarify: 1 Doge on Mirage is no trade-off. It's game mode specific and simply a bandaid nerf for PvP.

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@"Xaylin.1860" said:The reason we still see baseline Guardians is mostly due to baseline traitline interactions, not due to e-spec trade-offs.

Which is one of the things I've been facepalming about with the whole 'tradeoff' thing for years now. The core traitline you could have otherwise had is the biggest tradeoff of all.

Guardian just... doesn't really have any bad traitlines. For some professions, especially before the trait reworks, it was often fairly simple to pick out two core traitlines that really helped you out and then... well, the third one might as well be an elite spec, because there isn't really anything better. For guardian... there genuinely are at least three core traitlines that would work for pretty much any build you'd want to set up. If you're actually using the stuff that the elite specialisation brings, then it's worth having, but there's always that one additional core traitline that you'd be able to get one more nice synergy if you could squeeze it in, but you can't.

That's why guardian is the one profession that hasn't had a big traitline rework. It hasn't needed them. Because they're all good. That's not favouritism. That's ArenaNet getting it right the first time, one time out of nine.

So a lot of people claim that the virtue tradeoff isn't enough of a tradeoff. And considered in isolation, maybe it isn't. But if guardians aren't giving up enough in exchange for elite specs, why has guardian been the one profession which has consistently still had core remain relevant even in the face of elite specs? Go to Metabattle, right now. There's a highly-rated core Guardian build in literally every category. How does that happen if guardian elite specs don't represent a significant tradeoff? It doesn't. Maybe the tradeoff is in the traits more than the skills, but the fact that core builds are seeing more use for Guardian than any other profession tells me that, whatever theorycrafting people might throw around on the forum, the tradeoffs that guardian already has are sufficient. Other professions have varying levels of representation of core builds, from 'used in some modes but not in others' to 'for levelling and free-to-play only and you should get an elite spec as soon as you can', but guardian has core representation everywhere. Clearly, people using those builds think that the tradeoffs are sufficiently painful to stick with core at least some of the time. Some of these builds are only minor modifications of pre-HoT builds!

"Not enough tradeoff" my foot. Look at actual ingame performance, and somehow, guardian seems to be the one profession that's got the level of tradeoff such that running an elite spec isn't automatically an upgrade.

This is part of why the common line was "guardian is in a good place". Its internal balance is such that core guardian still gets used, a lot more than core builds on most other professions even with harsh tradeoffs. It's versatile enough to fulfill the promise ArenaNet made pre-release of every profession being able to fulfill multiple roles. However, the only roles it dominates are those where it grants a highly desired boon (quickness in high-end PvE, stability in WvW zergs) - and it doesn't have a monopoly on either. People keep throwing shade on the guardian, but the guardian is more or less at the point where ArenaNet wants all professions to be. Guardian genuinely is in a good place. The problem is that most other professions aren't.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

Guardian and DH, yes.FB is definitely overloaded though.

I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead.In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs.

I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced.

Not really. What you give up when you pop a tome is that for the period you have the tome up, you don't have access to your weapon skills any more. Courage and Resolve are pretty heavily specialised - while you've got either of them up, you're not getting any damage to speak of out of the left side of your bar at all, just defensive buffs and haling respectively. You can drop the tome before using it up, of course, but then the tome is going on full recharge without having gained the full benefit from it. And, of course, that recharge starts when the tome is finished, so the effective recharge of tomes is longer than it is on paper.

Justice is a bit less specialised because damage is always useful, but if you're running a healbrand, you might need to be careful when you switch into it, because doing so at the wrong time might deprive your group of healing and buffs coming from your weaponset.

Another consideration is that while it might look like 15 skills on paper, in practice it's rare that you'll actually be able to make good use out of all three. Firebrands have pretty much been ejected from sPvP at the moment (seriously, there's not one firebrand build recommended on Metabattle last time I checked). Courage largely rewards concentration, resolve healing power and concentration, and justice rewards damage stats, particularly
condition
damage - in practice, you need to choose between them. Usually between damage or support. Courage probably loses the least from having the 'wrong' gearset, but it's also probably the most specialised: in competitive being able to spam stability for a few seconds is great, but in high end PvE, it's basically an emergency button that you'd prefer to never have to press because the benefits don't offset the DPS loss (when my group runs Matthias, for instance, even if there are firebrands in the group, they're usually instructed to let Mesmers put up the projectile reflect bubbles and the Firebrands should only do so in an emergency if the mesmers can't, because for the firebrands, switching to Tome of Courage to put up a reflect bubble is generally a DPS loss). In practice, it's not practical to have one build that really makes use of both Justice and Resolve. For a DPS build, puling a Tome of Resolve is basically a last-ditch Hail Mary that probably won't actually save whoever it is that's in trouble from dying because the healing is too low, and in the meantime you're not DPSing. For a healing build, pulling out ToJ when it's safe to do so usually does give a slight uptick in damage, but you're going from "not much" to "a little more but still not much".

Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated
while
performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. > @Jski.6180 said:

@Jski.6180 said:They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made.

That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released.

Largely because it hasn't needed them.

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

That a lot bigger then most classes.

Pretty sure most other classes have had reworks that are at
least
as big as reworking four utility skills (and three weapon skills, I guess, since sword and scepter were changed to have symbols and Ray of Judgement was changed).

Revenant had Devastation and Corruption reworked, recently, and Mallyx skills have been reworked a couple of times. Offhand sword has been completely redesigned, for better or worse. Oh, and they've also had Salvation reworked, for better or worse. Come to think on it, I'm not sure that
any
core revenant traitline has avoided a rework. Let's not forget the introduction of legend-specific Facet of Nature skills, or the core F2.

Warrior had the tactics rework, and the warhorn rework. I think there's been more, but Warrior is one of my least played professions, and I'm doing this purely off memory.

Scrapper had basically everything except the hammer reworked. Core engineer had the Inventions rework (which is a large part of the reason why heal scrapper exists) and the big Explosions rework, which is largely why engineers have been dominating sPvP lately.

Thief had traps turned into preparations, which generally resulted in stronger effects at the cost of being a bit fiddlier to use, as well as the Shadow Arts rework. Oh, and the Deadeye redesign.

Necromancer had the big rework on the Death Magic traitline not too long ago. I'm pretty sure I remember them also having big reworks to Spite and Curses back before PoF. Focus was redesigned, and I think scepter had some significant work done on it as well.

Mesmer got pretty much rebuilt from the ground up around Season 4 Episode 2. I don't think any profession has been reworked as much as mesmer (and this isn't really a good thing for the profession).

Elementalist had the Fire Magic traitline overhauled, and the summoning glyphs changed (it's possible to have multiple lesser elementals out at once now).

Ranger had sword redesigned. I have a feeling that they've had redesigns to their utility traitlines as well, but again, I'm going off memory here, and ranger is one of my less played professions.

This is also, incidentally, only considering reworks that were intended to buff underused parts of the profession, rather than cases where functionality has been stripped back or changed for the purpose of nerfing (something that has happened to guardian as well). I'm also going off memory here, so there may be a lot I'm forgetting. Guardian traitlines, by contrast, haven't had any big reworks since pre-HoT: a few individual traits have been tweaked, but no complete tree redesigns. A few skills that weren't being used were replaced and that's just about it. There are some professions there that you could argue have had about the same in the way of reworks, but revenant, engineer, thief, necromancer, and mesmer have all clearly had more. And of the three that are not in that list, it might just be because they're professions I generally play less and thus don't remember their reworks as well.

Not even close to the same of what gurad has been update and added on.

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@Jski.6180 said:

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

Guardian and DH, yes.FB is definitely overloaded though.

I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead.In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs.

I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced.

Not really. What you give up when you pop a tome is that for the period you have the tome up, you don't have access to your weapon skills any more. Courage and Resolve are pretty heavily specialised - while you've got either of them up, you're not getting any damage to speak of out of the left side of your bar at all, just defensive buffs and haling respectively. You can drop the tome before using it up, of course, but then the tome is going on full recharge without having gained the full benefit from it. And, of course, that recharge starts when the tome is finished, so the effective recharge of tomes is longer than it is on paper.

Justice is a bit less specialised because damage is always useful, but if you're running a healbrand, you might need to be careful when you switch into it, because doing so at the wrong time might deprive your group of healing and buffs coming from your weaponset.

Another consideration is that while it might look like 15 skills on paper, in practice it's rare that you'll actually be able to make good use out of all three. Firebrands have pretty much been ejected from sPvP at the moment (seriously, there's not one firebrand build recommended on Metabattle last time I checked). Courage largely rewards concentration, resolve healing power and concentration, and justice rewards damage stats, particularly
condition
damage - in practice, you need to choose between them. Usually between damage or support. Courage probably loses the least from having the 'wrong' gearset, but it's also probably the most specialised: in competitive being able to spam stability for a few seconds is great, but in high end PvE, it's basically an emergency button that you'd prefer to never have to press because the benefits don't offset the DPS loss (when my group runs Matthias, for instance, even if there are firebrands in the group, they're usually instructed to let Mesmers put up the projectile reflect bubbles and the Firebrands should only do so in an emergency if the mesmers can't, because for the firebrands, switching to Tome of Courage to put up a reflect bubble is generally a DPS loss). In practice, it's not practical to have one build that really makes use of both Justice and Resolve. For a DPS build, puling a Tome of Resolve is basically a last-ditch Hail Mary that probably won't actually save whoever it is that's in trouble from dying because the healing is too low, and in the meantime you're not DPSing. For a healing build, pulling out ToJ when it's safe to do so usually does give a slight uptick in damage, but you're going from "not much" to "a little more but still not much".

Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated
while
performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. > @Jski.6180 said:

@Jski.6180 said:They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made.

That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released.

Largely because it hasn't needed them.

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

That a lot bigger then most classes.

Pretty sure most other classes have had reworks that are at
least
as big as reworking four utility skills (and three weapon skills, I guess, since sword and scepter were changed to have symbols and Ray of Judgement was changed).

Revenant had Devastation and Corruption reworked, recently, and Mallyx skills have been reworked a couple of times. Offhand sword has been completely redesigned, for better or worse. Oh, and they've also had Salvation reworked, for better or worse. Come to think on it, I'm not sure that
any
core revenant traitline has avoided a rework. Let's not forget the introduction of legend-specific Facet of Nature skills, or the core F2.

Warrior had the tactics rework, and the warhorn rework. I think there's been more, but Warrior is one of my least played professions, and I'm doing this purely off memory.

Scrapper had basically everything except the hammer reworked. Core engineer had the Inventions rework (which is a large part of the reason why heal scrapper exists) and the big Explosions rework, which is largely why engineers have been dominating sPvP lately.

Thief had traps turned into preparations, which generally resulted in stronger effects at the cost of being a bit fiddlier to use, as well as the Shadow Arts rework. Oh, and the Deadeye redesign.

Necromancer had the big rework on the Death Magic traitline not too long ago. I'm pretty sure I remember them also having big reworks to Spite and Curses back before PoF. Focus was redesigned, and I think scepter had some significant work done on it as well.

Mesmer got pretty much rebuilt from the ground up around Season 4 Episode 2. I don't think any profession has been reworked as much as mesmer (and this isn't really a good thing for the profession).

Elementalist had the Fire Magic traitline overhauled, and the summoning glyphs changed (it's possible to have multiple lesser elementals out at once now).

Ranger had sword redesigned. I have a feeling that they've had redesigns to their utility traitlines as well, but again, I'm going off memory here, and ranger is one of my less played professions.

This is also, incidentally, only considering reworks that were intended to buff underused parts of the profession, rather than cases where functionality has been stripped back or changed for the purpose of nerfing (something that has happened to guardian as well). I'm also going off memory here, so there may be a lot I'm forgetting. Guardian traitlines, by contrast, haven't had any big reworks since pre-HoT: a few individual traits have been tweaked, but no complete tree redesigns. A few skills that weren't being used were replaced and that's just about it. There are some professions there that you could argue have had about the same in the way of reworks, but revenant, engineer, thief, necromancer, and mesmer have all clearly had more. And of the three that are not in that list, it might just be because they're professions I generally play less and thus don't remember their reworks as well.

Not even close to the same of what gurad has been update and added on.

I note a distinct lack of examples as evidence to your case there.

(I do note that I just realised that I'd forgotten the reworks to staff skills 1 and 2, but there's still everything I've just listed for the other professions, and that was just off memory. I'm pretty sure there's stuff I've forgotten there as well.)

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"Jski.6180" said:Not even close to the same of what gurad has been update and added on.

I note a distinct lack of examples as evidence to your case there.

(I do note that I just realised that I'd forgotten the reworks to staff skills 1 and 2, but there's still everything I've just listed for the other professions,
and that was just off memory.
I'm pretty sure there's stuff I've forgotten there as well.)

Rework/update on professions aren't necessarily a good thing. I mean, sure you can get a ray on judgment on your focus giving you a skill that pack some punch, but you can also get a soul grasp on your focus stripping you from both the ability to crit and to burst with focus. So fighting on the amount of rework can be, sometime, as a bit sily.

NB.: The necromancer got a lot of work done (at least more than what you seem to remember) but it's starting point, performance wise, was also a lot worse than most other professions (As for DM, they just shuffled the numbers to make it look different, the necromancer even ended up getting QoL loss out of it since they replaced flat damage reduction by toughness. I'd rather not have "rework" if it's these kind of rework, it would be like changing honor to give you a stackable vitality buff for a maximum of 300 vitality while removing force of will vitality buff).

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"Xaylin.1860" said:The reason we still see baseline Guardians is mostly due to baseline traitline interactions, not due to e-spec trade-offs.

Which is one of the things I've been facepalming about with the whole 'tradeoff' thing for years now. The core traitline you
could
have otherwise had is the biggest tradeoff of all.

Guardian just... doesn't really have any bad traitlines. For some professions, especially before the trait reworks, it was often fairly simple to pick out two core traitlines that really helped you out and then... well, the third one might as well be an elite spec, because there isn't really anything better. For guardian... there genuinely are at least three core traitlines that would work for pretty much any build you'd want to set up. If you're actually using the stuff that the elite specialisation brings, then it's worth having, but there's always that one additional core traitline that you'd be able to get one more nice synergy if you could squeeze it in, but you
can't.

That's
why
guardian is the one profession that hasn't had a big traitline rework. It hasn't
needed
them.
Because they're all good.
That's not favouritism. That's ArenaNet getting it right the first time, one time out of nine.

So a lot of people claim that the virtue tradeoff isn't enough of a tradeoff. And considered in isolation, maybe it isn't. But if guardians aren't giving up enough in exchange for elite specs, why has guardian been the one profession which has consistently still had core remain relevant even in the face of elite specs? Go to Metabattle, right now. There's a highly-rated
core
Guardian build in
literally every category
. How does that happen if guardian elite specs don't represent a significant tradeoff?
It doesn't.
Maybe the tradeoff is in the traits more than the skills, but the fact that core builds are seeing more use for Guardian than any other profession tells me that, whatever theorycrafting people might throw around on the forum, the tradeoffs that guardian already has
are sufficient.
Other professions have varying levels of representation of core builds, from 'used in some modes but not in others' to 'for levelling and free-to-play only and you should get an elite spec as soon as you can', but guardian has core representation everywhere. Clearly, people using those builds think that the tradeoffs are sufficiently painful to stick with core at least some of the time. Some of these builds are only minor modifications of pre-HoT builds!

"Not enough tradeoff" my foot. Look at actual ingame performance, and somehow, guardian seems to be the one profession that's got the level of tradeoff such that running an elite spec
isn't
automatically an upgrade.

This is part of why the common line was "guardian is in a good place". Its internal balance is such that core guardian still gets used, a lot more than core builds on most other professions even
with
harsh tradeoffs. It's versatile enough to fulfill the promise ArenaNet made pre-release of every profession being able to fulfill multiple roles. However, the only roles it dominates are those where it grants a highly desired boon (quickness in high-end PvE, stability in WvW zergs) - and it doesn't have a monopoly on either. People keep throwing shade on the guardian, but the guardian is more or less at the point where ArenaNet wants all professions to be. Guardian genuinely
is
in a good place. The problem is that most other professions
aren't.

I think its a issue of balancing tradeoffs with benefits.

Core needs a way to stay desireable on ele/nec engi etc, because if not its just elites are 2.0 of that class with superior mechanics.

It would make sense if core's tradeoff of melee dmg is for higher condi dmg or something or making tempest stronger in support and weaker in damage than core ele somehow with traits.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

Guardian and DH, yes.FB is definitely overloaded though.

I mean in exchange for losing 3 actives they get 15 actives instead.In fact, PoF in general, just overloads Especs.

I feel like all HoT specs are fairly balanced.

Not really. What you give up when you pop a tome is that for the period you have the tome up, you don't have access to your weapon skills any more. Courage and Resolve are pretty heavily specialised - while you've got either of them up, you're not getting any damage to speak of out of the left side of your bar at all, just defensive buffs and haling respectively. You can drop the tome before using it up, of course, but then the tome is going on full recharge without having gained the full benefit from it. And, of course, that recharge starts when the tome is finished, so the effective recharge of tomes is longer than it is on paper.

Justice is a bit less specialised because damage is always useful, but if you're running a healbrand, you might need to be careful when you switch into it, because doing so at the wrong time might deprive your group of healing and buffs coming from your weaponset.

Another consideration is that while it might look like 15 skills on paper, in practice it's rare that you'll actually be able to make good use out of all three. Firebrands have pretty much been ejected from sPvP at the moment (seriously, there's not one firebrand build recommended on Metabattle last time I checked). Courage largely rewards concentration, resolve healing power and concentration, and justice rewards damage stats, particularly
condition
damage - in practice, you need to choose between them. Usually between damage or support. Courage probably loses the least from having the 'wrong' gearset, but it's also probably the most specialised: in competitive being able to spam stability for a few seconds is great, but in high end PvE, it's basically an emergency button that you'd prefer to never have to press because the benefits don't offset the DPS loss (when my group runs Matthias, for instance, even if there are firebrands in the group, they're usually instructed to let Mesmers put up the projectile reflect bubbles and the Firebrands should only do so in an emergency if the mesmers can't, because for the firebrands, switching to Tome of Courage to put up a reflect bubble is generally a DPS loss). In practice, it's not practical to have one build that really makes use of both Justice and Resolve. For a DPS build, puling a Tome of Resolve is basically a last-ditch Hail Mary that probably won't actually save whoever it is that's in trouble from dying because the healing is too low, and in the meantime you're not DPSing. For a healing build, pulling out ToJ when it's safe to do so usually does give a slight uptick in damage, but you're going from "not much" to "a little more but still not much".

Saying that you're giving up 3 skills for 15 is an overly simplistic analysis because it doesn't take into account how much more of an action economy investment the tomes represent. Sure, there's more options, but there's limits on how well you can USE those options. Dragonhunter virtues are pretty fire-and-forget: you use them like you would a normal skill and then go back to your regular rotation. Core guardian virtues can be activated
while
performing other actions, which can lead to sneaky tricks like activating F1 as you deliver the killing blow on a mob to get effectively free boons, using F1 or F3 to cover a stomp mid-animation (with appropriate traits), or being able to simply faceroll the virtues before activating Renewed Focus in a pinch. A firebrand using their virtues, on the other hand, is more of a mode shift. They give you more options, to be sure, but they represent a significant interruption of what you'd be doing otherwise. > @Jski.6180 said:

@Jski.6180 said:They only partly separated and there are some massive hold overs from pve balancing that very bluntly gets in the way of spvp and wvw balancing. Anet is realty bad a favoring some classes over others gurd is the best example of this for all game types. Anet likes ppl to play gurd over all other classes this is why they gotten more reworks and buffs over all and that IS a massive balancing problem that anet and anet alone has made.

That's... really not accurate. The only significant rework Guardian has had since HoT was the spirit weapon rework. The core traitlines and mechanics are still largely doing what they did after the all-profession traitline rework pre-HoT, and the only times I can think of where there have been functionality changes to elite specialisation stuff (as opposed to numbers reworks) it's been to nerf them. There's been nothing along the lines of the full traitline reworks that revenant, warrior, and engineer have had, or the complete mechanics change that mesmer had a little after PoF released.

Largely because it hasn't needed them.

The common line "guardian is in a good place" reflects that guardian is the closest to achieving the standard that ArenaNet is aiming for
all
professions to reach. Solid mechanics, versatile, all traitlines have their uses, and in PvP it's pretty much always present but apart from firebrands for a bit (but they've now been pretty much nerfed out of sPvP altogether) it's rarely dominant.

That a lot bigger then most classes.

Pretty sure most other classes have had reworks that are at
least
as big as reworking four utility skills (and three weapon skills, I guess, since sword and scepter were changed to have symbols and Ray of Judgement was changed).

Revenant had Devastation and Corruption reworked, recently, and Mallyx skills have been reworked a couple of times. Offhand sword has been completely redesigned, for better or worse. Oh, and they've also had Salvation reworked, for better or worse. Come to think on it, I'm not sure that
any
core revenant traitline has avoided a rework. Let's not forget the introduction of legend-specific Facet of Nature skills, or the core F2.

Warrior had the tactics rework, and the warhorn rework. I think there's been more, but Warrior is one of my least played professions, and I'm doing this purely off memory.

Scrapper had basically everything except the hammer reworked. Core engineer had the Inventions rework (which is a large part of the reason why heal scrapper exists) and the big Explosions rework, which is largely why engineers have been dominating sPvP lately.

Thief had traps turned into preparations, which generally resulted in stronger effects at the cost of being a bit fiddlier to use, as well as the Shadow Arts rework. Oh, and the Deadeye redesign.

Necromancer had the big rework on the Death Magic traitline not too long ago. I'm pretty sure I remember them also having big reworks to Spite and Curses back before PoF. Focus was redesigned, and I think scepter had some significant work done on it as well.

Mesmer got pretty much rebuilt from the ground up around Season 4 Episode 2. I don't think any profession has been reworked as much as mesmer (and this isn't really a good thing for the profession).

Elementalist had the Fire Magic traitline overhauled, and the summoning glyphs changed (it's possible to have multiple lesser elementals out at once now).

Ranger had sword redesigned. I have a feeling that they've had redesigns to their utility traitlines as well, but again, I'm going off memory here, and ranger is one of my less played professions.

This is also, incidentally, only considering reworks that were intended to buff underused parts of the profession, rather than cases where functionality has been stripped back or changed for the purpose of nerfing (something that has happened to guardian as well). I'm also going off memory here, so there may be a lot I'm forgetting. Guardian traitlines, by contrast, haven't had any big reworks since pre-HoT: a few individual traits have been tweaked, but no complete tree redesigns. A few skills that weren't being used were replaced and that's just about it. There are some professions there that you could argue have had about the same in the way of reworks, but revenant, engineer, thief, necromancer, and mesmer have all clearly had more. And of the three that are not in that list, it might just be because they're professions I generally play less and thus don't remember their reworks as well.

Not even close to the same of what gurad has been update and added on.

I note a distinct lack of examples as evidence to your case there.

(I do note that I just realised that I'd forgotten the reworks to staff skills 1 and 2, but there's still everything I've just listed for the other professions,
and that was just off memory.
I'm pretty sure there's stuff I've forgotten there as well.)

Lack of evidence is evidence of lack of updates.

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@Jski.6180 said:

Lack of evidence is evidence of lack of updates.

So, you acknowledge that your lack of evidence is evidence of a lack of reworks to guardian of the level that I've presented examples for with respect to other professions?

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

NB.: The necromancer got a lot of work done (at least more than what you seem to remember) but it's starting point, performance wise, was also a lot worse than most other professions (As for DM, they just shuffled the numbers to make it look different, the necromancer even ended up getting QoL loss out of it since they replaced flat damage reduction by toughness. I'd rather not have "rework" if it's these kind of rework, it would be like changing honor to give you a stackable vitality buff for a maximum of 300 vitality while removing force of will vitality buff).

Yeah, there's a degree of that. Reworks can be a bit of a toss of the proverbial dice, and it's better to not need it in the first place, which is the situation guardian has been in since the pre-HoT specialisations rework (where ALL of the core professions had their trait structure rebuilt). Some reworks are a bit meh, others can end up making the profession overpowered for a bit until they get pared back. (And yeah, I had a feeling there was more for the necromancer than I remembered. It's why I was stressing that I was listing purely from memory. If I was to go through the history pages of the wiki I'm sure I'd find more, but I just can't be bothered. I think I've already demonstrated my point with regards to Jski's claims unless there's been a major traitline rework to guardian that I've forgotten, and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been.

@Axl.8924 said:

I think its a issue of balancing tradeoffs with benefits.

Core needs a way to stay desireable on ele/nec engi etc, because if not its just elites are 2.0 of that class with superior mechanics.

It would make sense if core's tradeoff of melee dmg is for higher condi dmg or something or making tempest stronger in support and weaker in damage than core ele somehow with traits.

Yeah, pretty much. The idea of tradeoffs is to keep the core profession balanced against the elite specs, and therefore the strongest indicator of whether a profession has sufficient tradeoffs is whether the core profession is seeing use. Cherrypicked comparisons between mechanics that ignore the opportunity cost of a third core traitline are missing the point if the core variant is doing well - and core guardian IS doing well. Or at least better than any other core profession. Maybe there's still room for improvement, but at the moment I'd consider the other professions to be a higher priority. (Noting that tradeoffs can come from buffing core as well as by nerfing the elite specialisation. After all, part of the reason core guardian is doing well, however much people might throw shade about the comparison between tomes and core virtues, is that all of the core traitlines bring something worthwhile to the table. While buffing core traitlines can also indirectly buff elite specialisations, it can also increase the likelihood that taking a third core traitline genuinely is more useful than taking an elite specialisation, especially if you're not planning to use what that elite specialisation brings.)

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

Lack of evidence is evidence of lack of updates.

So, you acknowledge that your lack of evidence is evidence of a lack of reworks to guardian of the level that I've presented examples for with respect to other professions?

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

NB.: The necromancer got a lot of work done (at least more than what you seem to remember) but it's starting point, performance wise, was also a lot worse than most other professions (As for DM, they just shuffled the numbers to make it look different, the necromancer even ended up getting QoL loss out of it since they replaced flat damage reduction by toughness. I'd rather not have "rework" if it's these kind of rework, it would be like changing honor to give you a stackable vitality buff for a maximum of 300 vitality while removing
force of will
vitality buff).

Yeah, there's a degree of that. Reworks can be a bit of a toss of the proverbial dice, and it's better to not need it in the first place, which is the situation guardian has been in since the pre-HoT specialisations rework (where ALL of the core professions had their trait structure rebuilt). Some reworks are a bit meh, others can end up making the profession overpowered for a bit until they get pared back. (And yeah, I had a feeling there was more for the necromancer than I remembered. It's why I was stressing that I was listing purely from memory. If I was to go through the history pages of the wiki I'm sure I'd find more, but I just can't be bothered. I think I've already demonstrated my point with regards to Jski's claims unless there's been a major traitline rework to guardian that I've forgotten, and
I'm pretty sure there hasn't been.

@Axl.8924 said:

I think its a issue of balancing tradeoffs with benefits.

Core needs a way to stay desireable on ele/nec engi etc, because if not its just elites are 2.0 of that class with superior mechanics.

It would make sense if core's tradeoff of melee dmg is for higher condi dmg or something or making tempest stronger in support and weaker in damage than core ele somehow with traits.

Yeah, pretty much. The idea of tradeoffs is to keep the core profession balanced against the elite specs, and therefore the strongest indicator of whether a profession has sufficient tradeoffs is
whether the core profession is seeing use.
Cherrypicked comparisons between mechanics that ignore the opportunity cost of a third core traitline are missing the point if the core variant is doing well - and core guardian IS doing well. Or at least better than any other core profession. Maybe there's still room for improvement, but at the moment I'd consider the other professions to be a higher priority. (Noting that tradeoffs can come from buffing core as well as by nerfing the elite specialisation. After all, part of the reason core guardian is doing well, however much people might throw shade about the comparison between tomes and core virtues, is that all of the core traitlines bring something worthwhile to the table. While buffing core traitlines can also indirectly buff elite specialisations, it can also increase the likelihood that taking a third core traitline genuinely is more useful than taking an elite specialisation, especially if you're not planning to use what that elite specialisation brings.)

The lack of evidence of updates to other classes IS examples of lack of reworks for them.

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@Jski.6180 said:

Lack of evidence is evidence of lack of updates.

So, you acknowledge that your lack of evidence is evidence of a lack of reworks to guardian of the level that I've presented examples for with respect to other professions?

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

NB.: The necromancer got a lot of work done (at least more than what you seem to remember) but it's starting point, performance wise, was also a lot worse than most other professions (As for DM, they just shuffled the numbers to make it look different, the necromancer even ended up getting QoL loss out of it since they replaced flat damage reduction by toughness. I'd rather not have "rework" if it's these kind of rework, it would be like changing honor to give you a stackable vitality buff for a maximum of 300 vitality while removing
force of will
vitality buff).

Yeah, there's a degree of that. Reworks can be a bit of a toss of the proverbial dice, and it's better to not need it in the first place, which is the situation guardian has been in since the pre-HoT specialisations rework (where ALL of the core professions had their trait structure rebuilt). Some reworks are a bit meh, others can end up making the profession overpowered for a bit until they get pared back. (And yeah, I had a feeling there was more for the necromancer than I remembered. It's why I was stressing that I was listing purely from memory. If I was to go through the history pages of the wiki I'm sure I'd find more, but I just can't be bothered. I think I've already demonstrated my point with regards to Jski's claims unless there's been a major traitline rework to guardian that I've forgotten, and
I'm pretty sure there hasn't been.

@Axl.8924 said:

I think its a issue of balancing tradeoffs with benefits.

Core needs a way to stay desireable on ele/nec engi etc, because if not its just elites are 2.0 of that class with superior mechanics.

It would make sense if core's tradeoff of melee dmg is for higher condi dmg or something or making tempest stronger in support and weaker in damage than core ele somehow with traits.

Yeah, pretty much. The idea of tradeoffs is to keep the core profession balanced against the elite specs, and therefore the strongest indicator of whether a profession has sufficient tradeoffs is
whether the core profession is seeing use.
Cherrypicked comparisons between mechanics that ignore the opportunity cost of a third core traitline are missing the point if the core variant is doing well - and core guardian IS doing well. Or at least better than any other core profession. Maybe there's still room for improvement, but at the moment I'd consider the other professions to be a higher priority. (Noting that tradeoffs can come from buffing core as well as by nerfing the elite specialisation. After all, part of the reason core guardian is doing well, however much people might throw shade about the comparison between tomes and core virtues, is that all of the core traitlines bring something worthwhile to the table. While buffing core traitlines can also indirectly buff elite specialisations, it can also increase the likelihood that taking a third core traitline genuinely is more useful than taking an elite specialisation, especially if you're not planning to use what that elite specialisation brings.)

The lack of evidence of updates to other classes IS examples of lack of reworks for them.

...he listed the updates/reworks for other classes earlier, I have no idea what you're trying to argue here right now tbh. If this back-and-forth suffers from lack of evidence, it looks like it's the lack of evidence on your side, not his.

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@Sobx.1758 said:

Lack of evidence is evidence of lack of updates.

So, you acknowledge that your lack of evidence is evidence of a lack of reworks to guardian of the level that I've presented examples for with respect to other professions?

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

NB.: The necromancer got a lot of work done (at least more than what you seem to remember) but it's starting point, performance wise, was also a lot worse than most other professions (As for DM, they just shuffled the numbers to make it look different, the necromancer even ended up getting QoL loss out of it since they replaced flat damage reduction by toughness. I'd rather not have "rework" if it's these kind of rework, it would be like changing honor to give you a stackable vitality buff for a maximum of 300 vitality while removing
force of will
vitality buff).

Yeah, there's a degree of that. Reworks can be a bit of a toss of the proverbial dice, and it's better to not need it in the first place, which is the situation guardian has been in since the pre-HoT specialisations rework (where ALL of the core professions had their trait structure rebuilt). Some reworks are a bit meh, others can end up making the profession overpowered for a bit until they get pared back. (And yeah, I had a feeling there was more for the necromancer than I remembered. It's why I was stressing that I was listing purely from memory. If I was to go through the history pages of the wiki I'm sure I'd find more, but I just can't be bothered. I think I've already demonstrated my point with regards to Jski's claims unless there's been a major traitline rework to guardian that I've forgotten, and
I'm pretty sure there hasn't been.

@"Axl.8924" said:

I think its a issue of balancing tradeoffs with benefits.

Core needs a way to stay desireable on ele/nec engi etc, because if not its just elites are 2.0 of that class with superior mechanics.

It would make sense if core's tradeoff of melee dmg is for higher condi dmg or something or making tempest stronger in support and weaker in damage than core ele somehow with traits.

Yeah, pretty much. The idea of tradeoffs is to keep the core profession balanced against the elite specs, and therefore the strongest indicator of whether a profession has sufficient tradeoffs is
whether the core profession is seeing use.
Cherrypicked comparisons between mechanics that ignore the opportunity cost of a third core traitline are missing the point if the core variant is doing well - and core guardian IS doing well. Or at least better than any other core profession. Maybe there's still room for improvement, but at the moment I'd consider the other professions to be a higher priority. (Noting that tradeoffs can come from buffing core as well as by nerfing the elite specialisation. After all, part of the reason core guardian is doing well, however much people might throw shade about the comparison between tomes and core virtues, is that all of the core traitlines bring something worthwhile to the table. While buffing core traitlines can also indirectly buff elite specialisations, it can also increase the likelihood that taking a third core traitline genuinely is more useful than taking an elite specialisation, especially if you're not planning to use what that elite specialisation brings.)

The lack of evidence of updates to other classes IS examples of lack of reworks for them.

...he listed the updates/reworks for other classes earlier, I have no idea what you're trying to argue here right now tbh. If this back-and-forth suffers from lack of evidence, it looks like it's the lack of evidence on your side, not his.

No i know what is going on he is trying to make it into a yes or no chose when its not every thing in the game has been "updated/reworeked" at some point but a lot of the time the skills are made worst and not better. This is not a yes or no point of view when it comes to triad offs of elite spec. and trying make it so is just wrong. Classes like FB lose some effects but what it gets back is massive so much so its better to be a FB and have books then your normal f ability.

The lack of evidence is due to the complexitly of these updates example. Glyph of Elemental Powerhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Elemental_Power

At one point this skill would give you an buff that lasted for 20 or so sec that would give you an added effect on your skill base off of the atument you where in on the first use of GoEP. This would have a cd per target so being an ele having a lot of aoe skill you would be able to effect on massive numbers of targets. This skill was updated / reworked to being a charge base skill where every hit so being an ele with lots of aoe skill you would eat though your charges in one skill most of the time and often on skills added effects like wall and fields that often did not come with high dmg effects in them self. This was not a good update or rework to the skill and made it into a very underused effect in the game. Befor it was usable in all game types now its only usable in maybe a hand full of types.

This WAS an update rework but it was not a good one and most would call it going backwards for the class over all.

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As I commented in previous posts, I tried to only count 'reworks' that were intended to improve the profession rather than nerfs. Reworks that were intended to be nerfs is something firebrand in particular has had a lot of (a lot of the adjustments to Tome of Courage in particular were aimed at making certain boons less available). However, I don't think that reworks that were intended to be nerfs can realistically be considered evidence of favouritism.

And as I also said in a previous post, even reworks that are aimed at improving the profession can sometimes be a toss of the dice - sometimes the skill team does something that they intend to be an improvement, but actually ends up losing something that the original setup had.

Either way, the evidence shows that guardian has NOT had more work done on it than other professions, as you claimed.

Is it in better shape than most other professions? Yes. But this isn't because it's had more work done on it than other professions. It's because ArenaNet got the fundamentals right back in 2015 and it never needed as much work as other professions to be in good shape.

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I like the idea of TF2-like tradeoffs instead of upgrades. I think that analysis by OP is superficial but nonetheless. I won't be able to digest the whole thread but I think I would chip in my 50c here regarding engi, mostly for PvE.

Holo is OP. It especially feels OP compared to the core which has no powerful third traitline to offer. This is well known.The biggest gain of holo is dps scaling based on heat. It is so powerful it overshines everything else. Even condi these days are holo which makes no sense for a "spiky" spec.The biggest drawback is not even F5 toolbelt skill which is always pretty situational and mostly for PvP honestly. It's that you cannot get out of the forge for 6 seconds. This might not seem like a big deal but please remember: engi is a profession with constant kit swapping with virtually no cd. So you are sacrificing your kit piano-like playing for forge. Yes, you need pay attention to the heat and so on so you need strong sense of when to heat up but it's a skill ceiling and can be learned, it's not something that's balanced when you learn it.

Like many people I really like the idea or flavor of core engi but it's so weak that it has no place anywhere across the game.

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@"charlag.6528" said:I like the idea of TF2-like tradeoffs instead of upgrades. I think that analysis by OP is superficial but nonetheless. I won't be able to digest the whole thread but I think I would chip in my 50c here regarding engi, mostly for PvE.

Holo is OP. It especially feels OP compared to the core which has no powerful third traitline to offer. This is well known.The biggest gain of holo is dps scaling based on heat. It is so powerful it overshines everything else. Even condi these days are holo which makes no sense for a "spiky" spec.The biggest drawback is not even F5 toolbelt skill which is always pretty situational and mostly for PvP honestly. It's that you cannot get out of the forge for 6 seconds. This might not seem like a big deal but please remember: engi is a profession with constant kit swapping with virtually no cd. So you are sacrificing your kit piano-like playing for forge. Yes, you need pay attention to the heat and so on so you need strong sense of when to heat up but it's a skill ceiling and can be learned, it's not something that's balanced when you learn it.

Like many people I really like the idea or flavor of core engi but it's so weak that it has no place anywhere across the game.

I think is ok for Holo to do much damage, but the trade off should be becoming more glass. The issue i see with Holo is it can take all defensive tools and still do a ton of damage + CC with holo skill set.

In my opinion it would need some special treatment like -360 vitality (3600 HP points) when the specialization is picked, as such moving closer to how thief plays. It definitely has the mobility, stealth and invulnerabilities access to make up for the low HP.

Impact Savant on the otherside it has no place in Scrapper. I would remove the penalization to Vitality and leave the barrier buff as it is. As far as my understanding goes that specialization has not bursts other than the ones available for core.

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@anduriell.6280 said:

@"charlag.6528" said:I like the idea of TF2-like tradeoffs instead of upgrades. I think that analysis by OP is superficial but nonetheless. I won't be able to digest the whole thread but I think I would chip in my 50c here regarding engi, mostly for PvE.

Holo
is OP. It especially feels OP compared to the core which has no powerful third traitline to offer. This is well known.The biggest
gain
of holo is dps scaling based on heat. It is so powerful it overshines everything else. Even condi these days are holo which makes no sense for a "spiky" spec.The biggest
drawback
is not even F5 toolbelt skill which is always pretty situational and mostly for PvP honestly. It's that you cannot get out of the forge for 6 seconds. This might not seem like a big deal but please remember: engi is a profession with constant kit swapping with virtually no cd. So you are sacrificing your kit piano-like playing for forge. Yes, you need pay attention to the heat and so on so you need strong sense of when to heat up but it's a skill ceiling and can be learned, it's not something that's balanced when you learn it.

Like many people I really like the
idea
or
flavor
of core engi but it's so weak that it has no place anywhere across the game.

I think is ok for Holo to do much damage, but the trade off should be becoming more glass. The issue i see with Holo is it can take all defensive tools and still do a ton of damage + CC with holo skill set.

In my opinion it would need some special treatment like -360 vitality (3600 HP points) when the specialization is picked, as such moving closer to how thief plays. It definitely has the mobility, stealth and invulnerabilities access to make up for the low HP.I say let Laser's Edge increase the damage they do as well as increase the damage they receive 1 for 1. So, if they are at 100 heat they take 15% more damage, physical only though. Yes I'm giving them the Berserker treatment here.
on the otherside it has no place in Scrapper. I would remove the penalization to Vitality and leave the barrier buff as it is. As far as my understanding goes that specialization has not bursts other than the ones available for core.

You can build a fair amount of barrier with Hammer attacks, core skills aren't really needed to fuel Impact Savant.

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@Axl.8924 said:having a 300 sec cd because you can't think of a alternative UGH.

It's because the balance person can't interact with the skills team on top of being just one person, which on its own sounds very overwhelming.

If those 300s are going to change fundamentally then that requires some effort from the skills team which is likely busy working on EoD. 300s CDs are here to stay for a while unfortunately.

@"charlag.6528" said:I like the idea of TF2-like tradeoffs instead of upgrades. I think that analysis by OP is superficial but nonetheless. I won't be able to digest the whole thread but I think I would chip in my 50c here regarding engi, mostly for PvE.

Holo is OP. It especially feels OP compared to the core which has no powerful third traitline to offer. This is well known.The biggest gain of holo is dps scaling based on heat. It is so powerful it overshines everything else. Even condi these days are holo which makes no sense for a "spiky" spec.

I don't really play PvE so I can't comment there. Originally this post was in the PvP section, but it was moved. Apologies.

Also, the point here isn't to call anything overpowered. Not really concerned with that. I'm actually trying to be superficial because I want to encourage discussion towards what tradeoffs already exist, and how to make them more impactful.

The biggest drawback is not even F5 toolbelt skill which is always pretty situational and mostly for PvP honestly. It's that you cannot get out of the forge for 6 seconds. This might not seem like a big deal but please remember: engi is a profession with constant kit swapping with virtually no cd. So you are sacrificing your kit piano-like playing for forge. Yes, you need pay attention to the heat and so on so you need strong sense of when to heat up but it's a skill ceiling and can be learned, it's not something that's balanced when you learn it.

Personally for PvP, I consider this to be another situational tradeoff(or not really a tradeoff at all) since it doesn't apply to anyone not using kits.Same thing applies to heat really, with overheating only existing as a consequence of player error rather than as a tradeoff to picking Holosmith.

Like many people I really like the idea or flavor of core engi but it's so weak that it has no place anywhere across the game.

That's unfortunate really, and I wish that wasn't the case. I think the point in adding a tradeoff to an elite spec should be to make core a serious option.

The nerfs(in PvP at least) to core, targeting elite specs are pretty easy to blame there. It usually just makes the entire profession weaker instead of introducing any sort of new option when playing that profession.

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@anduriell.6280 said:I think is ok for Holo to do much damage, but the trade off should be becoming more glass. The issue i see with Holo is it can take all defensive tools and still do a ton of damage + CC with holo skill set.

In my opinion it would need some special treatment like -360 vitality (3600 HP points) when the specialization is picked, as such moving closer to how thief plays. It definitely has the mobility, stealth and invulnerabilities access to make up for the low HP.I say let Laser's Edge increase the damage they do as well as increase the damage they receive 1 for 1. So, if they are at 100 heat they take 15% more damage, physical only though. Yes I'm giving them the Berserker treatment here.

I think these are both pretty good ideas too. I think at its base Holosmith isn't all that different from Zerker, so it would make sense for them to have a similar tradeoff.?

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