Guild Wars 2 Balance Philosophy

[Alexe.3975]

People still have faith in Anet on what they say? waw...

[DanAlcedo.3281]

On 10/29/2022 at 11:28 AM, JPUlisses.8756 said:

Weaver sword needs help in blob fights, other than that ele is quite good in wvw. Not up to firebrand level but nothing is.

Lets be real. If you use Sword in WvW zerg fights, you deserve to die.

To be honest, that is the first time EVER that i heard someone has the balls to play sword on Weaver in WvW.

 

You know what.  Sure! Why not!  Why play staff when you can be the most unique player in Gw2 history.

[floppypuppy.5789]

2 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Lets be real. If you use Sword in WvW zerg fights, you deserve to die.

To be honest, that is the first time EVER that i heard someone has the balls to play sword on Weaver in WvW.

 

You know what.  Sure! Why not!  Why play staff when you can be the most unique player in Gw2 history.

Of course it has been done. You just need to camp earth with Stoneheart and have low expectations.

[Asum.4960]

On 10/29/2022 at 1:28 PM, Zok.4956 said:

I think this is a good point/example where the stated balance philosophy could already be helpful for the discussion of those questions.

My question would be: Why does/did the rule "melee dps would be stronger than ranged dps" exist?

I think that the rule "mele dps is stronger than ranged dps" came from the fact that players doing melee had to be better (better positioning and position awarenes, better movement, faster reaction and responses to attacks, better avoiding boss cleave damage, etc...) than players doing damage while standing in "safe" ranged positions.

If this is the case, then from "We want to design builds that allow players with a high level of mastery to demonstrate their prowess and be appropriately rewarded in terms of effectiveness." the conclusion would be that melee DPS should be stronger/higher than ranged DPS.

Of course, this would influence also the combat/boss design in (PvE-) encounters. Just an example: If you just stand right on top, in the boss of the desert garri in WvW you nearly don't get any damage from the boss, this melee position in the boss is a safe-spot and doing melee damage in this safe-spot should not be better rewared in terms of effectiveness.

So, the written down balance philosophy gives high-levels rules, how it SHOULD BE from now on. It does not say that the game already works how it should work or how fast the game could be changed. 

I disagree that ranged vs melee is covered under skill expression, necessarily. 

 

With how GW2 works in instanced group content especially, both melee and ranged builds primarily stack in melee - and one doesn't really need more or less skill than the other on the basis of range. 

The reason Melee needs a slight edge in DPS (speaking in a vacuum, there are other factors - such as condi generally needing more DPS due to slow ramp ups vs. massive power bursts, cleave, etc.) is because whenever the Boss teleports or uses some point blank AoE to be avoided, etc., the DPS of Melee specs drops to zero until the gap is closed or the mechanic is over. 

Ranged specs, depending on their set-up/portion of performance that is ranged, lose little to no DPS during such mechanics. 

This is called DPS-Uptime - aka the portion of the fight in which a Spec/Build can actually deliver it's target damage. 

 

Whisper of Jormag is a great example fight, as it both teleports to the arena edge on occasion, as well as having a melee hate phase with the exploding orbs sub 25%. 

 

Using 3 specs as example, we can take power (sword/greatsword) Dragonhunter, Condi Harbinger and Power Mechanist. 

 

Every time WoJ teleports to the edge or spams out Orbs, DH's damage, aside from maybe a Sword of Justice, basically drops to literally zero.

Condi Harbinger situationally loses a moderate amount of damage if it happens during the Shroud portion of it's rotation due to missing out on Approaching Doom.

Rifle Mechanist virtually loses no damage whatsoever - as long as it can close the gap to 450 range for High Caliber (which is just a 10% Crit loss due to Mech overcapping), it's just a minor loss on Rifle 2. Even when afflicted by mechanics such as hard CC, Mechanist still delivers significant DPS through it's Mech.

 

That means if these specs have roughly the same DPS numbers on a static Golem (or as we are seeing, melee dependant specs often even being lower), the average DPS over the course of a fight comes out higher for ranged builds than melee builds, regardless of skill (even if the individual mechanics just last seconds each and happen just a handful or two over the course of a fight, that's a total fight damage loss of well over a million for melee already). 

The more mechanics a fight has, the worse melee performs - not because they necessarily require more skill to avoid attacks, etc., given ranged specs are stacked right ontop with them, but simply due to experiencing phases where they can't actually deliver their damage as opposed to ranged setups (aka. have lower DPS-Uptime). 

Edited October 31, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Vordrax.5243]

12 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

20 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

Cal Cohen is not new to the balance team. So he had a lot of time to fix some of the worst things already. But that did not stop ANET from releasing EOD with broken AF mechanist. 

You speak the truth, yet look at all the confused emojis ya got! Hah! Gotta love it!

 

Really? I'm looking at the Wiki for him and it says he became Skill and Balance Team Lead in September 2022, which has not been "a lot of time to etc. etc."

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cal_Cohen

Let me know if you think I'm misreading that. Because my assumption would be that the past few weeks involved the team meeting to discuss the go-forward "balance philosophy" and now that it is prepared, they made it publicly available and suggested it would be the rubric of balance design moving forward.

[Gehenna.3625]

On 10/29/2022 at 4:57 PM, Zok.4956 said:

No, there is still no intention to change GW2 into one of those other games that use that kind of "holy trinity". And I am glad about it.

Don't say that too loudly. At the beginning they didn't plan on making raids. They did and suddenly healers became a thing and for some bosses there are actually tank builds.

In the end the holy trinity of other games has not been implemented here though, but GW2 does have their own roles like dps, alac, quick, heal, etc. So you're still ticking off a list of roles essentially. Just not the same roles. And because those roles are mostly about boons, for me it's not that interesting because boons are kept up 100% of the time, so it's a lot of effort just to create a new baseline. It's not for me but other people seem to like it and it's not like I do a lot of content where that's really relevant for me.

It's just that there is a huge difference between professions on how easy or difficult it is to fulfill thos roles and that just doesn't make sense to me.

[Saleos.8975]

Not satisfied with this philosophy explanation at all... 

You guys (Anet) just stated things, that whole community knows or at least understands to some extent.

 

What people really want to know (about PvE balancing at least) is:

1.  what you concider to be "fun" when you try to balance different professions? (you always speak about "making different professions being fun", yet you nerf/change many really fun mechanics till they become trash)

2. why do you build up your balance strategy/philosophy based on "achievements" of a small group of skilled players (speedrun guilds like SC, LN, qT)? (I mean, for example, you tried to nerf condi mirage based on those benchmarks, when the complexity of this profession is already freaking high and not many people are playing it or find it being fun)

3. when you speak about "damage dealers", what is the balance between condition and power builds?

4. you're saying about player feedback, but elementalists and necromancers are still underpayed, people are unsatisfied with their state... well, nothing changes for 10 years already, and when they finally get to shine in some aspect - you "balance" it right away.

 

And yes, there are many more questions about balancing, that you didn't even mention.

 

I may state the obvious thing, but people are unsatisfied because at the moment they find something being "fun" for them, and they finally find a way to explore the high-end content with their favourite profession or finally play PvE content in a way they like - you come up with a balance patch, that utterly ruins their expirience and all of them are forced to play "what's needed" instead of "what they want" 😑

[Xenesis.6389]

On 10/29/2022 at 7:17 AM, Killerblade.5612 said:

Sometimes i do wonder, If people even realize that this is the philosophy moving forward by a new team lead and not a retrospective view on what happened in the past. 

so many people comment on how "tgis philosophy wasn't uphold in the past" i mean yeah no kitten its the philosophy of  new balance team they cant affect the past. This post was fairly insightful and while they could have fed us more direct information as to what each point translates to (like Healers only offering "some" offensive boons in PvE?) it was certainly worth the insight and didnt have anything majourly bad in it moving forward

Sometimes I wonder if people bother looking past what is printed. You do realize that the balance team has been in place for a long time? and that these people have worked at anet for a long time? CMC isn't new, he was around for the massive balance patch in feb 2020, which included stuff like mirage one dodge, and the "purity of purpose" philosophy about skills doing too much was the reason for those nerfs especially to cc skills, yet we're still get skills overloaded with abilities just this past expansion.

Maybe they changed a few things, since they're going to reverse things like class penalties, but it's not like this team is completely new to balancing gw2, and not like much else was said is anything new, they've already tried to make viable builds for every class(they stated this on a wvw stream like 2 years ago) but honestly failing with the biased balancing, gameplay roles is concerning since they've failed to mentioned half the roles in there for wvw, and chalked it up to just basically support and dps. Still trying to balance in favor of boon blobbing doesn't look so good to me, doesn't give much confidence going forward for wvw.

[Kastagir.2146]

My problem has always been the unbalanced mob power in the expansions compared to the base game. No other mmo does its expansions like that. It's just stupid and comes from listening to the minority hardcore player base on the forums

[Asum.4960]

48 minutes ago, wmtyrance.3571 said:

My problem has always been the unbalanced mob power in the expansions compared to the base game. No other mmo does its expansions like that. It's just stupid and comes from listening to the minority hardcore player base on the forums

The majority of mobs in core die to a single button press with a decent build due to the content not having been updated since core balance, in which the majority of skills did 1/4th of the damage with half the effects and twice the cooldowns. 

The expansions simply are somewhat adjusted to the powercreep over the years to provide the originally intended experience. 

 

I do agree in the sense that the difference is jarring though and that core is unfit for purpose as learning experience, and should be adjusted to ramp up more to provide a somewhat comparably experience by the time of reaching Orr - that way expansion content actually appears less difficult due to players having acquired the required tools and knowledge through game feedback, rather than hitting a wall unprepared while being set in bad gameplay habits and builds.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Mell.4873]

This game has been plagued with lay-offs right from the start since i was not a WoW killer. I mean almost everyone who worked on both Dungeons and even Fractals has gone which is why those game modes have not been developed any further since that knowledge has been somewhat lost when that team left.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Mell.4873

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 10/28/2022 at 5:24 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Power Budget

For a given skill or trait, there is a "power budget" that can be spent on individual elements. A skill that only deals damage can deal X damage, but if that skill also applies conditions or provides other value, then it needs to deal less damage to stay within budget. In the context of a weapon, the budget is considered across the entire kit, so some skills may be weaker than average in order to allocate more power to a particular skill. Budget can also vary depending on a skill's cooldown; skills with longer cooldowns are generally more powerful.

Trait budgets are to be considered on a per-tier basis; adept traits should have less power than grandmaster traits.

Always nice to get insight. But..., there are so many expectation to it, it will become/is unusable as a Guideline. Also impossible to implement over multiple game modes. Reasoning:

Power: What even is Power? In PvP for example there are way to many moving parts to determine what even is powerful without the context of the whole profession. Depending on which, Professions, traitline or competing traits are in the same row, a simple cleanse can have various power levels. 

On the other end of the spectrum we have PvE DPS, were secondary benefits are mostly ignored anyway in Meta builds. In the context of weapons specifically with alacrity you can just skip these low Damage weapons skills to spawn the over tuned ones. Also a ton of skills Provide value that can cap in 10 man content, but not necessarily in 5 man. Will vulnerability weapon be nerfed? Will having bonus effects on ability's become a detriment.

What about thief and initiative or Rev and energy Or what even is the kit in case of ele. What about weapon swap? That seems like it will justify questionable balance decision in the future. 

You guys should know its an unusable philosophy, that why you guys ignored it/made dozens of exceptions to it while designing and balancing Eod Specs. Warrior just got group quickness on a master core trait. Will that change now? Is dodging on Double Dagger 3 thief considered value? Will death blossom be nerfed? Is damage value on weapons calculated traits less or with meta builds? 

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, Mell.4873 said:

This game has been plagued with lay-offs right from the start since i was not a WoW killer. I mean almost everyone who worked on both Dungeons and even Fractals has gone which is why those game modes have not been developed any further since that knowledge has been somewhat lost when that team left.

Dungeons were abandoned for fractals designs(where they wanted to add ascended in first), pretty much the first month the game came out. The newest shiney leaving fractals behind seems to be Strikes. Designing dungeons or fractals(which are also just dungeons), is not some super secret coding lost to time as developers leave, like the moon landing technology lost to time. Practically every mmo out there has dungeons and developers to create them, they're just abandoned for newer content designs in gw2.

[Mell.4873]

16 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Dungeons were abandoned for fractals designs(where they wanted to add ascended in first), pretty much the first month the game came out. The newest shiney leaving fractals behind seems to be Strikes. Designing dungeons or fractals(which are also just dungeons), is not some super secret coding lost to time as developers leave, like the moon landing technology lost to time. Practically every mmo out there has dungeons and developers to create them, they're just abandoned for newer content designs in gw2.

Yes the but simple fact they keep changing there mind one what the end-game content should be does show that the creative vision changes (with the new people). Who ever had the original vision for both Dungeons and Fractals is no longer at the company.

[Svarty.8019]

I'll be first to celebrate if this joke of an announcement results in anything positive.

 

But it won't. It's just populist guff to give people "hope". 

 

As we say where I'm from, they're all mouth and no trousers.

[MaLong.2079]

It is nice that they mention instant cast skills and the need to have time for opponents to see and react. This is one of the main complains against stealth during combat, so it should be added to that point too. 👍

[Viva La Fury.8134]

It's been two days but I can still give some feedback on this topic. 

On 10/28/2022 at 10:24 AM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Fundamentally, our goal is to ensure that the moment-to-moment gameplay in Guild Wars 2 is enjoyable for as many players as possible. To that end, we want to capitalize on the depth of the combat system to build a fluid and fast-paced combat experience that allows players to express their mastery of mechanics.

There are aspects here in the basis of the philosophy I want to contrast with what has come from before. At least that I've felt. The difference between slow-paced and fast-paced. What was unfamiliar that is now familiar and what was once familiar is gone. The inclusion of more skills to press and more buttons to activate certain actions. The action economy is very high because of so many actions one can take in a short amount of time, but it is not intuitive and takes hundreds of hours to become better proficient. In GW2 this means a second weapon (or other), kits/conjures, and traits. They can be accessed fast but not on demand and there's no way of knowing their availability to be used again. Alacrity provides assurance to this and is among the reasons it's a powerful boon without actually knowing if a skill is ready to be used again. For GW1, one had access to everything. The player can see their own skills and cooldowns and that of their party. He/She could see when a skill is available and activate it on a whim or to queue. These are two different games of course but it matters in the way of accessibility to activate skills and understanding in the depth of playing while already being quick in pacing.

 

Everyone sucked when GW2 first came out and seemingly around the middle of season 1 and into HoT players got better. It didn't matter when you started because the inclusion of the grave accent key, the functions, the function 5 key, and the special action key raised the player skill floor up by a lot. So much so that to truly be fast-paced one has to either re-keybind or acquire additional hardware and re-keybind. Those keys are not easy to reach and actively hinders gameplay when missing and hitting a key adjacent and doesn't do what you wanted it to do. I remember the terms of service changes where the one input needs to equate to one action yet here it seems to have regressed if one wants to be fast-paced. I myself have my special action key set to left shift+E. Two inputs for one action. Others have mapped left shift+anything easy to reach on the left side of the keyboard. I've even acquired a mouse with additional buttons to make this mapping easier. Above all of this, clicking (and dragging) is inefficient for Your vision of building a fluid and fast-paced combat experience because that is already being taken up be visional acquisition. All those people from steam more or less had to go through this and You're too deep to change. This is one of the skill ceilings and it must be considered because it is an imitation of fast-paced and not actually fast-paced.

 

I will talk of the location of boons and conditions. Yet another difference between GW1 and GW2. For GW1 these enchantments are literal skills and the visual indication is of it largely inflating and deflating to a standard size. The UI was also more robust. What GW2 has and currently implements is a less robust UI with comparably smaller icons that all look the same in periphery. This compromises Your combat depth. These boons and conditions aren't literal skills but they still matter. They matter more then the consumables and other bar icons too. Allow for increase in size of artwork of the boons and conditions only, maybe location too, and this will be more inline with what I've considered for your combat depth philosophy. The raids training arena has even sectioned them so. Offensive, defensive, utility. Maybe even a different shade of yellow for each and better popup effect then what is currently running.

 

I will talk of after-combat reports. This is currently only implemented in sPvp and event that is not wholly reliable except for immediately before death. The compromises Your "allows players to express their mastery of mechanics" as to even be able to get to mastery of mechanics one has to fail at it. Or at least imitate something else. The most obvious location is raids/strikes/fractals. Unsure of sPvp and WvW because those involve players only and aren't static. Add a device to handle single combat data collection and be able to review what one has done when successful. A list of damage done, total duration, duration of boons, duration of conditions, time idle, time dead, whatever. This report will actively reflect mastery of mechanics moreso then almost anything else in the game currently. It'll show up for others as well. 

 

My last two points will be on combat itself. On the topic of skill indicators and names. Really this an addition to the Play and Counterplay portion of Your philosophy. A huge difference between GW1 and GW2 yet again but coming from the same place. With the inclusion of quickness this becomes hard. There is very little in the way of know the attack name and indicator aside from a look at the combat log. Currently, there is an unbordered yellow brush stroke that fills up on skill activation. With quickness it's near instant. If You want to allow players an increase in opportunity in mastering combat and expression in their mastery of mechanics then perhaps You'll allow expansion of this skill bar and skill name aspect. I am wholly taking from GW1 in this aspect and since these are different game I'm unsure what would happen but if I was allowed to see the small name of my activating skill under the skill activation bar, and more importantly of my targeted opponents, it would be a significant change in pursuit of mechanics mastery. Mesmerway

 

Yet again I will harken to the difference between GW1 and GW2. The difference is staggering as they are different games. One could anything with the consideration of secondary classes. Currently for GW2, and for all of time, the skill options are vastly limited to only primary class capabilities and traits. I have seen major skills and balance changes and have also missed minor ones. It's my job but it is Yours and I will say that to me, utilities and some attack skills have become less of a utility and less of an attack skill. I wish the paradigm of this balance was different but You're too deep to change without significant overhaul. What I'd suggest if you want more options in skills and balance is to follow through with Your power budget philosophy and do the same thing for weapon skills that the game came out for with utilities. Allow the swapping of certain weapon skills with another weapon skill. A tradeoff in a limited way of course. Allocate the all damage sources to weapon skills (and conditions), and all utilities (boons) to utilities. Damage, boons, and conditions have been spread E V E R Y W H E R E. Perhaps it might not be a bad practice relocate these aspects in more appropriate areas in Your pursuit of categorizing the listing philosophy roles. Or not, it's not my job. Just a suggestion.

 

A majority of what I've discussed relates to the goals of the skills and balance philosophy and can even be argued to not be relevant as it deals with other systems but I am saying otherwise. It sucks that class weight is meaningless now and health pool size is either a benefit or simply a flaw for a class that needs to be covered for elsewhere. Anyway, I am ignorant in topics like these but that's just my current perspective. Good luck following through with Your newly stated philosophy. 

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

7 hours ago, Alexe.3975 said:

People still have faith in Anet on what they say?

well, we have a brand new ArenaNet every so often...

[Serephen.3420]

8 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Lets be real. If you use Sword in WvW zerg fights, you deserve to die.

To be honest, that is the first time EVER that i heard someone has the balls to play sword on Weaver in WvW.

 

You know what.  Sure! Why not!  Why play staff when you can be the most unique player in Gw2 history.

Early sword weaver, like classic d/d was quite capable at sticking in the front line and occasionally retreating when need be. Less so now but it's not unheard of. I know some commanders who run tanky builds on weavers to do that. If mostly staying alive on the front line is your goal.

If you're talking about glass then yeah...I don't know of many glass builds that can get away with that.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Serephen.3420

[JTGuevara.9018]

4 hours ago, Svarty.8019 said:

I'll be first to celebrate if this joke of an announcement results in anything positive.

 

But it won't. It's just populist guff to give people "hope". 

 

As we say where I'm from, they're all mouth and no trousers.

So-called "populism" is all the rage these days. I got no problem with hope, but it needs to be backed by action.

[Berking.1042]

I'm glad that this isn't filled with "We will give all profession access to all boon so you can choose what to play". Hope you guys found your own original wicked style of profession balancing ^^

I hope profession like Ele - Weaver get proper reward for being hard to play. Not like, highest DPS class there is (but with proper supports, stand still boss, and only use some set of it's skills). But, I know it's hard. Just a little wish :3

Thanks for the communication and gud luck ^^ 

[Alcatraznc.3869]

As much as I like Mechanist, I pretty much never play it because it's boring. It gets the job done but after a while it gets redundant.

 

But if you're telling me somewhere someone on the internet is getting pissed and has his fun removed because a spec exist, then I'll gladly return to my Mechanist. If there's something more fun than playing a game, it's getting hate message from a snowflakes who cannot handle insignificant thing.

[eldrevo.1746]

One extra topic I'd like the team to expand a bit on is the current state of Boons, Conditions and non-boon effects like Stealth, Revealed, Superspeed and Barrier.

What's the balance philosophy about these related both to other game mechanics and to each other? Is the team happy with the current state of Boon/Condition distribution, access and handling in the game?

We've got a bit of an insight on the more important boons like Quickness, Alacrity, Stability but what about everything else? Might / Fury provider is also an essential PVE role nobody seems to talk about, though it's one of the key factors of why Mechanists and Druids see more play than, say, Specters.  Which role in your opinion is responsible for bringing Might? Offensive support? Healer? Split it between DPS to make them less selfish (something I thought you've been teasing before June balance patch but I guess I've got you wrong)?

On a tangent to that question is also one about relation between Healer role and boon support. If Offencive Boon supports and Healers have their respective boons divided, then what if a 10-man group is used to run onle one Healer? Will it be mandatory to run 2 Healers to keep things like Protection up?

And last but not least, what's the deal with non-boon effects in this system? Why can you boonstrip Regen or Prot but can't strip Barrier? Why Superspeed makes you immune to slowing conditions (which overlaps with Resistance) and Swiftness doesn't? Why Barrier can be stacked from many different sources but Regen only stacks duration? Why there are unique effects that effectively double the functionality of boons (Power/condi damage reduction in Revenant Jalis elite or Kalla heal for example)? 

I feel like the boon system was intended to make status effects more readable and easy to deal with by making everything work by the same rules. But as of now, this system is quite messy, and the balance approach to them is unclear.

[Angesombre.4630]

When you create a class that is supposed to be a hybrid, what role do you want to give it like the vindicator? Because it is neither DPS nor buff and a second nerfed heal.

[Bunny.9834]

37 minutes ago, Angesombre.4630 said:

When you create a class that is supposed to be a hybrid, what role do you want to give it like the vindicator? Because it is neither DPS nor buff and a second nerfed heal.

RP Dragoon Copy.