Thoughts on game balance in light of recent changes

[Tharsul.2654]

After playing the re-balanced rifle mechanist for a bit, and seeing how the damage output is on the dummy and in different pieces of content, I've come to a peculiar conclusion which will sound insane at first, but hear me out till the end; it feels like an acceptable amount of damage, and the game would play better overall if all the classes had their auto attacks buffed up into the same territory.

If everyone's auto attacks had a similar damage output, the resulting skill floor would allow average players to have a fighting chance in endgame content, allowing them to focus on the mechanics of the fight without compromising their ability to bring down the boss.

This plays into an overarching idea I've had with regard to endgame PvE group content, which is that the way GW2 handles endgame group content is very toxic to the average player, simply by the nature of the overall combat balance among the classes.

If you need to be playing specific classes at their peak potential while wearing the fanciest pants with the shiniest upgrades, in order to simply clear certain content at all, it is toxic to anyone who isn't playing that specific class, and doubly so to people who do but cant play at their peak for whatever reason.

For example, here's a more "friendly," way to design the engagement: if the entire group manages to stay alive the whole time, clearing all the boss mechanics and skill checks without dying at all, a group of any classes, in spec appropriate exotics, should be able to clear the fight on auto attack within the timer.

 

But it should be really tight, like, if a single person goes down for more than 10 seconds, it should compromise the fight, if that's really the level the group is playing at.

This would work best if there were scaling rewards, with almost nothing for barely scraping by within the timer, and progressively better rewards for completing the engagement faster, to encourage and reward high level gameplay.

If things were laid out in that way, the game would be encouraging everyone to participate while still rewarding people who can perform better, instead of discouraging participation by gating any rewards behind high skill gameplay.

Sure, that makes the bragging rights of being able to simply complete the content less valuable, but instead, people will be able to gloat about how much faster they could kill the boss.

This would work exceptionally well if we had public leaderboards for fractals, raids, and strikes which showed the group composition and names of players who finish the content fast enough, should they choose to provide them, especially if the leaderboard also shows the available rewards for completing the content within certain time ranges.

lol, anyhow, I'm sure there are a ton of problems with this that haven't crossed my mind, but anyway, that's the extent of the idea so far, thanks for sitting through my TED talk.