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This is how good Balancing works:(in PVE)


Blumpf.2518

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No.1

If a class is able to do the Job of a healer, either give that class

- Barrier

- OR Quickness

- OR Alacrity

But not 2 of these in addition to groupheals.

 

No.2

If a class cant do the job of a Grouphealer, let it have both, Alacrity and Quickness.

 

No.3

If a class can give Alacrity or Quickness or Barrier, look how easy other classes can give that buff.

And then give that class the same easy access to it. If a class can give perma quickness, by lets say, pressing F1, its not good if another class can only give quickness when using a complicated rotation and using gear with boonduration.

 

No. 4

Weapon Skills should not be better than utility Skills. If you make Weapon Skills Superstrong, people will not care about utility Skills anymore and equip passive utility skills that they can ignore. Best/Worst example is the Engineers Rifle. It is so strong that people dont use kits anymore because the Rifle Skills are better than the kit skills.

 

No.5

If you design a Powerclass, make sure that class can have 100% Critchance. If you Design a Condition class, make sure that class can have 100% Condition Duration.

If you have something like 97% Critchance and your best DPS Skill doesnt crit, thats meh. And for Condi, the difference between 94% or 100% Condiduration is often 2-3 Condition ticks.

 

No.6

No class should be able to do EVERYTHING at the same time. If you have something that can tank, heal, buff and meanwhile even deal decent damage it will  be so overpowered that everyone will use this class.

 

No. 7

Supporters shouldnt be able to deal almost the same damage as DPSer. Instead they should have the choice: Use support gear with boon duration and keep up their boons all the time, but lose damage because of the support gear. OR use DPS gear, but have bad boon duration. Something like a quickness Firebrand or a quickness Harbinger is bad game design, cause they do almost the same DPS as Condi-Firebrand or Condi-Harbinger.

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The other questions to ask are should power and condi be equivalent DPS? Should ranged DPS and melee DPS be equivalent?

For balance, to me, if a skill can be used from range, or has high mobility, then it should have less DPS than a melee range skill without mobility, especially if the melee skill is rooted without any defense.

How much the damage differential should be is debatable, but I think a pure selfish DPS build on melee should be at least 20% higher DPS than a ranged build, independent of game mode.

Mobility and/or utility should reduce the damage of any skill. Sacrifices on sustain like self roots, channels, or animation locks should increase damage dealt.

 

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3 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The other questions to ask are should power and condi be equivalent DPS? Should ranged DPS and melee DPS be equivalent?

For balance, to me, if a skill can be used from range, or has high mobility, then it should have less DPS than a melee range skill without mobility, especially if the melee skill is rooted without any defense.

How much the damage differential should be is debatable, but I think a pure selfish DPS build on melee should be at least 20% higher DPS than a ranged build, independent of game mode.

Mobility and/or utility should reduce the damage of any skill. Sacrifices on sustain like self roots, channels, or animation locks should increase damage dealt.

 

I think that 20% is too much, at least with how boon spread works in GW2. Some difference makes sense but if that melee is getting fury, quickness, alacrity, and 25 stacks of might for stacking in melee range then the ranged dps will lose far more than 20% by sitting at any significant range. If the range dps has to be in melee to have the massive dps benefits of a boon stack then he is essentially a melee. And, if the defensive boons and healing are all in melee range, then the range dps isnt gaining as much of a defensive boost by staying at range either.

Again, completely agree with your point, just not to the suggested percentage.

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5 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The other questions to ask are should power and condi be equivalent DPS? Should ranged DPS and melee DPS be equivalent?

For balance, to me, if a skill can be used from range, or has high mobility, then it should have less DPS than a melee range skill without mobility, especially if the melee skill is rooted without any defense.

How much the damage differential should be is debatable, but I think a pure selfish DPS build on melee should be at least 20% higher DPS than a ranged build, independent of game mode.

Mobility and/or utility should reduce the damage of any skill. Sacrifices on sustain like self roots, channels, or animation locks should increase damage dealt.

 

No, Power should be main source of damage, conditions should be support thing at most as a debuff thing.
Yes and no. Too many factors that may dictate your second question.
#1 Range class have a lot of castable skills that require time to execute and reach a target; Melee class is mobile and tanky and have mostly instant skills. In this case DPS of a range class should be higher than melee 24/7.
#2 Range class have a lot of near/instant skills that take little to no time to reach a target; Melee class is slow and tanky and takes time to get to target. In this case DPS of range class should be lower than melee 24/7.
Why class that needs more time to do something on the field should have lower DPS than melee that zooms through battlefield?
Too many variables to just write "yes" or "no" for your second question.

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  1. Not needed at all. Barriers are not some secret super-support-enabler like alac or quick.
  2. Very much opposed. Say no to buff slaves.
  3. Yes.
  4. No. Also, nerf kits, they are hilarious. Require fundamental changes.
  5. Agreed on power needing 100% crit chance. However, the difference between 97 and 100% condition duration is... 1.5%. Conditions don't pulse in whole "ticks". A bleed for 10.12s will inflict 10 whole ticks and 0.12 of a tick. This goes all the way down to three decimal durations, possibly more.
  6. I mean, obviously. 
  7. Yeah, it is kinda very feels-bad when the best pure DPS of a given flavor a class gets is outdone by a DPS boon build.
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Not sure about the first point. Example: Specter can provide decent barrier and alacrity, despite that it's not meta. Mechanist can provide both of those as well as aegis, stability and 25 might (all of those at a distance!). I do however believe that barrier should come at the cost of damage *cough cough* scourge vs harbinger.

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7 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I think that 20% is too much, at least with how boon spread works in GW2. Some difference makes sense but if that melee is getting fury, quickness, alacrity, and 25 stacks of might for stacking in melee range then the ranged dps will lose far more than 20% by sitting at any significant range. If the range dps has to be in melee to have the massive dps benefits of a boon stack then he is essentially a melee. And, if the defensive boons and healing are all in melee range, then the range dps isnt gaining as much of a defensive boost by staying at range either.

Again, completely agree with your point, just not to the suggested percentage.

What does this even mean? A ranged dps is not better because it does damage from distance all the time. If there was a minimum range to use skills then fine, but that isn't the case and ranged dps will comfortably sit with the group in melee. The difference comes in when you need to switch targets and move or when the targets move or are spread out: in these situations a ranged dps will simply have more damage uptime and the same exact boons as a melee dps.

Edited by Karagee.6830
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8 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I think that 20% is too much, at least with how boon spread works in GW2. Some difference makes sense but if that melee is getting fury, quickness, alacrity, and 25 stacks of might for stacking in melee range then the ranged dps will lose far more than 20% by sitting at any significant range. If the range dps has to be in melee to have the massive dps benefits of a boon stack then he is essentially a melee. And, if the defensive boons and healing are all in melee range, then the range dps isnt gaining as much of a defensive boost by staying at range either.

Again, completely agree with your point, just not to the suggested percentage.

Like I said, it's debatable. I'm not sure what that damage differential should even be, but melee DPS should garner more overall damage than ranged DPS.

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1 hour ago, Karagee.6830 said:

What does this even mean? A ranged dps is not better because it does damage from distance all the time. If there was a minimum range to use skills then fine, but that isn't the case and ranged dps will comfortably sit with the group in melee. The difference comes in when you need to switch targets and move or when the targets move or are spread out: in these situations a ranged dps will simply have more damage uptime and the same exact boons as a melee dps.

^ This guy gets it.

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20 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

The other questions to ask are should power and condi be equivalent DPS? Should ranged DPS and melee DPS be equivalent?

For balance, to me, if a skill can be used from range, or has high mobility, then it should have less DPS than a melee range skill without mobility, especially if the melee skill is rooted without any defense.

How much the damage differential should be is debatable, but I think a pure selfish DPS build on melee should be at least 20% higher DPS than a ranged build, independent of game mode.

Mobility and/or utility should reduce the damage of any skill. Sacrifices on sustain like self roots, channels, or animation locks should increase damage dealt.

 

In short:  thief end friends need a desperate boost, because of all those forced- and locked-movement skills in their weapon kit.

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On 8/2/2022 at 9:03 AM, Blumpf.2518 said:

No. 4

Weapon Skills should not be better than utility Skills. If you make Weapon Skills Superstrong, people will not care about utility Skills anymore and equip passive utility skills that they can ignore. Best/Worst example is the Engineers Rifle. It is so strong that people dont use kits anymore because the Rifle Skills are better than the kit skills.

 

Talks about balance but doesnt even play the class at all.  GG.

 

This point is so wrong, engineer kits are still strong. Bomb kit still deal more damage than Rifle. If anything Rifle now is now an actually good weapon that synergize with a trait instead of being a placeholder for another potential power weapon Anet will never add to core engineer. 

If there is a rule, then that rule should be to make every core class weapon strong enough that you dont feel forced to pick X or Y skill just because you would otherwise not do anything. Make core weapon strong enough that you dont pick this weapon just because it is the only choice available when playing X or Y build. Especially when that class only has access to a grand total of 3 equipable weapon (4 if you count underwater weapon). Make them synergize a way or another with some trait just like how E spec weapon works. 

 

 

 

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On 8/3/2022 at 8:25 AM, Obtena.7952 said:

I love how people think there is only one philosophy for balancing the game. 

There's two. Ele's balancing philosophy and every other classes.

  

On 8/2/2022 at 9:49 PM, Dante.1508 said:

I don't understand this modern obsession with these buffs, on everything.. I preferred when each class brought something to the table, not every class being the same thing.

FFXIV brain rot. Anet saw the FF14 $$$ and desperately wants to be the next FFXIV.

Edited by Kozumi.5816
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I think some people will disagree with me, but removing quickness and alac would make it much easier to balance CDs or attack speed of classes.
It would even make it easier to have a variety of classes in the HL content.

If some people think that this is not possible, Anet has already removed retaliation and modified resistance and torment ok it's an alteration, but it's still a change.

Edited by Angesombre.4630
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On 8/4/2022 at 11:20 PM, Kozumi.5816 said:

There's two. Ele's balancing philosophy and every other classes.

  

FFXIV brain rot. Anet saw the FF14 $$$ and desperately wants to be the next FFXIV.

Well why not copy the better aspects and not the bad ones..

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Another consideration should be for high-skill ceiling builds such as Weaver and Untamed. Guild Wars 2 is an accessible game that caters to a casual audience so the general populace should have a shot at being viable in pve endgame content without regard for their ability to handle high-apm builds.

 

For the purpose of this comparison, I'd like to define average-skill as Snowcrows skill floor 1 (power rifle mech, condi virtuoso) which is still harder than real LI builds (4 buttons, sub-20 apm).

 

First: Among pure dps builds, a high-skill build should not deal more than 20% dps over an equivalent average-skill build.

Second: Even a high-skill boon support build should never outdamage an equivalent average-skill pure dps. This is what got quick cata nerfed.

Third: Pure support builds should not require high-skill simply to be viable. This was the problem with the old-school quick/alac chronojail.

 

 

Quote

No. 7

Supporters shouldnt be able to deal almost the same damage as DPSer. Instead they should have the choice: Use support gear with boon duration and keep up their boons all the time, but lose damage because of the support gear. OR use DPS gear, but have bad boon duration. Something like a quickness Firebrand or a quickness Harbinger is bad game design, cause they do almost the same DPS as Condi-Firebrand or Condi-Harbinger.

Many support builds can support in full DPS gear but still do not do anywhere near the damage of full DPS. Examples are quick scrapper, staff mirage, and condi alac tempest all of which deal dps in the 25k range while providing 100% boon uptime in full dps gear.  It's hard to balance support around gear because you end up with cases like quick cata where people stack the full dps, partial-boon uptime version. The balance team would be better served by creating proper opportunity cost around support skills and traits so that a support build is inherently limited in its maximum dps output.

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11 hours ago, Raven.1793 said:

Another consideration should be for high-skill ceiling builds such as Weaver and Untamed. Guild Wars 2 is an accessible game that caters to a casual audience so the general populace should have a shot at being viable in pve endgame content without regard for their ability to handle high-apm builds.

 

For the purpose of this comparison, I'd like to define average-skill as Snowcrows skill floor 1 (power rifle mech, condi virtuoso) which is still harder than real LI builds (4 buttons, sub-20 apm).

 

First: Among pure dps builds, a high-skill build should not deal more than 20% dps over an equivalent average-skill build.

Second: Even a high-skill boon support build should never outdamage an equivalent average-skill pure dps. This is what got quick cata nerfed.

Third: Pure support builds should not require high-skill simply to be viable. This was the problem with the old-school quick/alac chronojail.

 

 

Many support builds can support in full DPS gear but still do not do anywhere near the damage of full DPS. Examples are quick scrapper, staff mirage, and condi alac tempest all of which deal dps in the 25k range while providing 100% boon uptime in full dps gear.  It's hard to balance support around gear because you end up with cases like quick cata where people stack the full dps, partial-boon uptime version. The balance team would be better served by creating proper opportunity cost around support skills and traits so that a support build is inherently limited in its maximum dps output.

Define average skill. Most dps builds were in the region of 38k dps before unique buffs were removed. That means that average skill builds according to you should be around or above 31k dps. LI builds should be 30-40% below high intensity builds...on benchmarks. LI builds have typically a much lower gap between golem and actual performance since there is no rotation and there are literally no mistakes that can jeopardise the dps output.

Pure support should also not be fully automated and require no trade-offs when selecting traits and what utility to bring to the table. So we have a problem. The correct way to balance this is to make specs viable at an entry level and being able to carry the party at elite level (for example because an elite player can drop some trait in order to bring extra utility and still perform at good level in other aspects when he shouldn't due to traits). Currently you have 2 specialisations able to carry as support no matter what the skill level of the player is.

And yeah, we agree about build and trait choices having to be relevant, but that is exactly the problem we currently have with Mechanist and Firebrand that are designed NOT to have trade-offs and while I can sort of understand FB (because in its case it's the core elements of the class that lead to this), I cannot understand how Mechanist was allowed to be introduced in its current form (because it's not core Engi leading to this, but only Mechanist design).

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17 hours ago, Raven.1793 said:

Another consideration should be for high-skill ceiling builds such as Weaver and Untamed. Guild Wars 2 is an accessible game that caters to a casual audience so the general populace should have a shot at being viable in pve endgame content without regard for their ability to handle high-apm builds.

 

5 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Define average skill. Most dps builds were in the region of 38k dps before unique buffs were removed. That means that average skill builds according to you should be around or above 31k dps. LI builds should be 30-40% below high intensity builds...on benchmarks. LI builds have typically a much lower gap between golem and actual performance since there is no rotation and there are literally no mistakes that can jeopardise the dps output.

Pure support should also not be fully automated and require no trade-offs when selecting traits and what utility to bring to the table. So we have a problem. The correct way to balance this is to make specs viable at an entry level and being able to carry the party at elite level (for example because an elite player can drop some trait in order to bring extra utility and still perform at good level in other aspects when he shouldn't due to traits). Currently you have 2 specialisations able to carry as support no matter what the skill level of the player is

I think it would be interesting to have Support builds provide 20% less DPS than Pure DPS builds, however allow Support builds to cater to high skill ceiling players who can make up that 20% DPS difference if they are very skilled.

This way you could have (for example) Power Chrono doing 38-40k and  Alac or Quick Chrono doing 32-40k depending on the skill level of the player. 

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30 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

 

I think it would be interesting to have Support builds provide 20% less DPS than Pure DPS builds, however allow Support builds to cater to high skill ceiling players who can make up that 20% DPS difference if they are very skilled.

This way you could have (for example) Power Chrono doing 38-40k and  Alac or Quick Chrono doing 32-40k depending on the skill level of the player. 

Correct me if I'm wrong. You want support dps builds to do 32k dps in the hands of someone who can't play and 40k in the hands of someone who can. And you think this is balanced.

Edited by Karagee.6830
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27 minutes ago, Karagee.6830 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong. You want support dps builds to do 32k dps in the hands of someone who can't play and 40k in the hands of someone who can. And you think this is balanced.

The numbers are arbitrary, but currently support do about 20% less DPS than Pure DPS.

The idea speaks to your idea of “make specs viable at entry and able to carry at elite” which is why I quoted both of you. 

By making the skill level required for good DPS and Support the same, you allow all players the ability to join in (assuming they meet that minimum skill level).  By giving Support builds the ability to stretch into ‘elite skill’ makes a lot more sense then giving some DPS builds the ability to reward high skill Pure DPS players with more DPS.   Instead, an already handicapped Support build isn’t expected to add that extra DPS only to provide boons or heals. So any additional DPS they provide would be a bonus.
 

Thusly, a design space capable of rewarding high skill high APM players and builds could be found in Support DPS.  This would work well for PvE, probably warp PvP and WvW a bit but given how skill splits are, likely not that much. 

Edited by Mungo Zen.9364
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7 hours ago, Karagee.6830 said:

that is exactly the problem we currently have with Mechanist and Firebrand that are designed NOT to have trade-offs and while I can sort of understand FB (because in its case it's the core elements of the class that lead to this), I cannot understand how Mechanist was allowed to be introduced in its current form (because it's not core Engi leading to this, but only Mechanist design).

 

I'm not really sure what you mean when you say that Mechanist does not have tradeoffs. Since you're comparing with Firebrand, I'm going to assume that you mean heal alacrity mech (HAM). First, it's important to note that HAM itself is very well-balanced against other heal support specs like healbrand and heal alac tempest. Barrier output on HAM is very good but that makes up for the poor raw healing output that mostly comes from regen and medical dispersion field. HAM relies on core engi utilities like medkit, elixir gun, and mortar kit for condi clear, burst healing, and some cc. HAM does unusually good dps for a pure support but 5k dps over the 0 dps from a heal alac tempest is not much to talk about. From this perspective, HAM is not out of line with other heal support builds.

 

If we expand the scope to include build flexibility and dps support options, then I should point out that firebrand and tempest both have an equivalent dps support build. As far as I am opposed to having pure dps and support dps based off of gear, I don't think this is a problem for heal support vs dps support. This is because some groups decide to go no-healing and it's convenient for the healer to switch to an equivalent dps support build. Nobody is going to stack healers with partial boon support.

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