This "balance" philosophy is a bunch of BS

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, Shadowpeixera.2918 said:

Not really, i can't. That's you saying it. Can you give me proof that several of the previous big patch notes were in line with a power budget/nivelate how everything plays to a manageable level? Because the way i've seen, no elite specs were created equal, and several of the buffs/nerfs around these big patches were wonky at best.

If this philosophy was there for years, then Anet sucks at executing it

That's fair. I mean, there are lots of instances where they did suck at executing it. There are instances where they didn't. I suspect there was some outliers because their process was not in control and there wasn't a 'QA' check on dev's implementations.

Whether elite specs were created equal or not isn't relevant here. Again, I don't think anyone should think that's a reasonable goal and I don't see any of that kind of language in the philosophy either. 

[felix.2386]

i always believed in CmC anyway. because i played with him.

also the direction and heavy focus on warrior since he's assignment has been good, though the result is very meh, but the effort is there

already way better then any of the warrior patches we've gotten in these 3 years + together.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

26 minutes ago, felix.2386 said:

 

already way better then any of the warrior patches we've gotten in these 3 years + together.

Well most of those had empty warrior sections so...

[Dadnir.5038]

On 10/30/2022 at 7:32 AM, JTGuevara.9018 said:

No mention of the elephant in the room: the obvious dominance of these three professions (guardian, necro, engineer) in all three game modes.

The various metas have already shifted for a few months, it's difficult to acknowledge such a statement in the current game.

The thread about GW2's balance philosophy was made by the devs in order to give food for thought to the many people that were asking for such a thread. And this thread is what it is, offering a wide perspective to people that will easily narrow their focus (fact is that people are attract to the concept of "power budget" but conveniently ignore the "hole in the role" when both walk hand in hand).

[Infusion.7149]

Hate to break it to you but the key metric is ARPU. (Average Revenue Per Paying User)
If you don't even buy EOD let alone gems they don't really care what you think. That's just the fact of the matter.

I know people that mostly play openworld PvE but buy many things in the gem store and they get the surveys with respect to the direction of the game. Balance isn't high on that list most likely.

The prior balance dev probably had severe favoritism towards "axe firebrand" and mechanist because those were their designs. As far as I am aware that dev is gone, so at least the inertia to properly balancing those is probably lowered severely. Alas if they had the same fervor in balancing cadence and parity as a certain forum user I have blocked for obvious reasons has about defending broken balance , we would not be where we are today.

As far as necro goes, it has been mainly harbinger in competitive PVP and scourge in WVW but in PVE only scourge has been really dominant. Harbinger has fell by the wayside after EoD dropped for the most part and reaper is more or less a shell of its former self even in solo scenarios. Reaper never had high uptake in instanced content by performance minded players.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Dr Meta.3158]

6 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Hate to break it to you but the key metric is ARPU. (Average Revenue Per Paying User)
If you don't even buy EOD let alone gems they don't really care what you think. That's just the fact of the matter.

I know people that mostly play openworld PvE but buy many things in the gem store and they get the surveys with respect to the direction of the game. Balance isn't high on that list most likely.

The prior balance dev probably had severe favoritism towards "axe firebrand" and mechanist because those were their designs. As far as I am aware that dev is gone, so at least the inertia to properly balancing those is probably lowered severely. Alas if they had the same fervor in balancing cadence and parity as a certain forum user I have blocked for obvious reasons has about defending broken balance , we would not be where we are today.

As far as necro goes, it has been mainly harbinger in competitive PVP and scourge in WVW but in PVE only scourge has been really dominant. Harbinger has fell by the wayside after EoD dropped for the most part and reaper is more or less a shell of its former self even in solo scenarios. Reaper never had high uptake in instanced content by performance minded players.

With that in mind, the future looks bright for elementalist players.

[JTGuevara.9018]

On 11/2/2022 at 10:21 AM, Obtena.7952 said:

No I've heard of opinions ... I also understand many of them are un-informed. Either way, it doesn't change what I said. That philosophy is what Anet is going to use (and I suspect they have been using) to make decisions about changing classes. Whether you think it's BS or not is irrelevant. Personally, I can see that many changes over the last few years are inline with the elements of this philosophy, so I suspect they have been forming it over time and testing it. I guess all that's 'BS' to you because you have a barn of axes to grind ... but to me it says this philosophy is real to Anet. 

That philosophy is much more important than the average forum lurker thinks. Ignore it at your own risk but don't be surprised if you doesn't understand why Anet makes these changes if you do.

At it's face, that philosophy is really good because it explains things to people who are open to understand it  who aren't just looking to use the balance team as an outlet for their disappointment with the game. The challenge isn't making that philosophy, it's applying it to the game. 

If you think my opinions are uninformed then challenge them out here in the open.

Also, 'CMC'? Really? You folks are putting your faith in one guy? This guy is going to improve the game? ok, he did fine on warrior but gw2 is another matter...This borderline cultish hope for one man is amusing, if not disturbing....(shakes head).

gw2 has more fundamental problems than just warrior. It has a design problem. I play other RPGs(not necessarily mmos either), they blow gw2's system out to the water. It's not even a contest.

[Potato Slayer.3107]

On 11/4/2022 at 8:51 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

The various metas have already shifted for a few months, it's difficult to acknowledge such a statement in the current game.

No its not. Go to snowcrows or metabattle or any other player by profession and specialization metrics and look at the tier list.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Potato Slayer.3107

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Potato Slayer.3107 said:

No its not. Got too snowcrows or metabattle or any other player by profession and specialization metrics and look at the tier list.

Sure, just take wingman's statistics, you'll see that necromancer have fallen to the 6th place (behind engineer, guardian, mesmer, ranger and revenant) in percentage of profession played in the current patch/meta. This already prove that I'm right in saying that the meta shifted. I'm not saying that guardian and engineer aren't dominant in the current meta but necromancer have fallen behind by a lot in popularity and can no longer be qualified as "dominant".

I mean, a profession can be high tier and not be played on snowcrow and metabattle, just like a profession can be low tier and be player a lot. I mean:

- Warrior as a banner slave wasn't a high tier spec but still had a solid 10% representation in PvE end game until they reworked banner. It was the profession with the most stable representation for 7 years straight. You could that that it totally dominated it's niche.

- Elementalist regularly stood within the top tier of the PvE benchmark but have been far from being a popular pick in raid, fractal and strike since PoF release.

So, yeah, currently necromancer dominate nothing else than the WvW zerg boon hate niche which he has always dominated and will likely dominate forever. As for sPvP both necromancer and guardian are under the radar which basically mean that they don't dominate the gamemode.

All in all, whether you're aware of it or not, the various meta have already shifted and necromancer have left the "dominant" position in at least 2 of the 3 gamemodes.

[Obtena.7952]

12 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

If you think my opinions are uninformed then challenge them out here in the open.

I'm not arguing with you about your opinion; that's just a waste of time. I'm simply telling you that whatever your opinion is, it doesn't change how Anet is going to use this philosophy to balance the game, or try to and if you aren't onboard with that, that's unfortunate ... for you.

What I will challenge is that the idea that we should 'be discussing your opinion' isn't just a ruse to draw people into jumping on the philosophy-hate bandwagon because it's probably a barrier to getting what you want. 

You think it's BS? OK ... you think that if it makes you feel better. You thinking it's BS won't affect how the game works, so I'm good with that. The fact is that making the philosophy public is a step in the right direction, even if you don't like it. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Potato Slayer.3107]

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Sure, just take wingman's statistics, you'll see that necromancer have fallen to the 6th place (behind engineer, guardian, mesmer, ranger and revenant) in percentage of profession played in the current patch/meta. This already prove that I'm right...

Harbinger is S tier is spvp right now. So looking at one source does not prove anything.

[Dadnir.5038]

50 minutes ago, Potato Slayer.3107 said:

Harbinger is S tier is spvp right now. So looking at one source does not prove anything.

But, the thread specify: "dominate in all 3 gamemodes" and this is what I argue against.

Would you really say that necromancer dominate in PvE when, as a matter of fact, statistics put him close to the lower tier in representation in the current metagame.

Harbinger S tier in sPvP? Metabattle (since you like to push people toward those sites as reference) only list 1 build for Harbinger listed as "meta" and the rating is inferior to the majority of the other "meta" builds. If Harbinger is S tier what tier are those 5 other builds? SS tier? Ex tier? Bombastic tier?

The truth is that this feeling of dominance of the necromancer in all 3 gamemodes is merely a relic of PoF era. Some people just didn't get over it when in fact things changed.

[Axelteas.7192]

On 11/4/2022 at 3:51 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

The various metas have already shifted for a few months, it's difficult to acknowledge such a statement in the current game.

The thread about GW2's balance philosophy was made by the devs in order to give food for thought to the many people that were asking for such a thread. And this thread is what it is, offering a wide perspective to people that will easily narrow their focus (fact is that people are attract to the concept of "power budget" but conveniently ignore the "hole in the role" when both walk hand in hand).

The metas have shifted for a few months... but warrior NEVER is in the Top DPS benchmarks, or is has a relevant paper in raids, or is good in PVP.  When is gonna be its turn??

There was a time in 2012 when warrior was a powerful DPS, now we just got this nolstalgic memory of what it was.

 

[Duglaive.5236]

17 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

 

Also, 'CMC'? Really? You folks are putting your faith in one guy? This guy is going to improve the game?

So much this. IIRC - and someone correct me if I'm misremembering - he was heavily involved with the February 2020 patch architecture. Faith? I don't think so. Willing to be surprised? You bet; just doubt the long term likelihood of such an event.

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, Duglaive.5236 said:

So much this. IIRC - and someone correct me if I'm misremembering - he was heavily involved with the February 2020 patch architecture. Faith? I don't think so. Willing to be surprised? You bet; just doubt the long term likelihood of such an event.

To be fair even if he was heavily involved, CMC did not have authority to change skill functionality and was only allowed number tweaks (cooldown, damage,etc).

I suspect the only reason why 300s cooldowns are finally gone now is he is in charge.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

To be fair even if he was heavily involved, CMC did not have authority to change skill functionality and was only allowed number tweaks (cooldown, damage,etc).

I suspect the only reason why 300s cooldowns are finally gone now is he is in charge.

This. We long speculated that he was prevented from doing as much as he would have liked for balance bc of his inability to change the substance of skills and traits.

 

Just look at his first patch as head of the skills team--he completely overhauled Berserker (still not good, but that's not the point) and the Defense trait line. Do you really think change of that magnitude would have happened under the old management? I sure don't.

 

It's certainly far too early to tell what CMCs tenure will bring, but the results thus far have been a breath of fresh air. I'm eagerly looking forward to their plans for the Nov patch.

[Warscythes.9307]

23 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

If you think my opinions are uninformed then challenge them out here in the open.

Also, 'CMC'? Really? You folks are putting your faith in one guy? This guy is going to improve the game? ok, he did fine on warrior but gw2 is another matter...This borderline cultish hope for one man is amusing, if not disturbing....(shakes head).

gw2 has more fundamental problems than just warrior. It has a design problem. I play other RPGs(not necessarily mmos either), they blow gw2's system out to the water. It's not even a contest.

I mean you don't seem to respond to challenges to your opinions. Seems like you just ignore them when you realize that you are wrong. Where's this mech/guard/necro PvP domination and 2 mechs per rank game? Cause I am not seeing it. 

 

I am not going to side with Obtena on anything and I agree Anet balance has traditionally been bad. But haven't you maybe thought you are just uninformed at times and making opinions based on bias?

Edited November 6, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Warscythes.9307]

9 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

The metas have shifted for a few months... but warrior NEVER is in the Top DPS benchmarks, or is has a relevant paper in raids, or is good in PVP.  When is gonna be its turn??

There was a time in 2012 when warrior was a powerful DPS, now we just got this nolstalgic memory of what it was.

 

? You do know bladesworn is a warrior elite spec? Banner Warrior has always been a stable in literally every raid until the nerf? I am not even saying Banner warrior is a good design to have, but it is one of the most relevant profession in raids since its existence. I don't play PvP often enough to comment that much about it, but there has a period of spellbreaker being extremely good in PvP. To say it has NEVER been in top dps or raids or good in pvp is just straight up false. What do you expect to post things that's obviously untrue? It only hinders your argument.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Axelteas.7192]

8 hours ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

? You do know bladesworn is a warrior elite spec? Banner Warrior has always been a stable in literally every raid until the nerf? I am not even saying Banner warrior is a good design to have, but it is one of the most relevant profession in raids since its existence. I don't play PvP often enough to comment that much about it, but there has a period of spellbreaker being extremely good in PvP. To say it has NEVER been in top dps or raids or good in pvp is just straight up false. What do you expect to post things that's obviously untrue? It only hinders your argument.

I repeat. Core warrior or berserker or spellbreaker has NEVER been in the top DPS charts. I remember the last years  and always the piano weaver, the condi renegade, chronomancer...

I dont count bladesworn because I didnt buy the last disappointing expansion. But when the community complains about the bad state of warrior is usually main warriors who play the warrior class since 2012. An most main warriors don't want to play the messy bladesworn.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Axelteas.7192

[Warscythes.9307]

2 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

I repeat. Core warrior or berserker or spellbreaker has NEVER been in the top DPS charts. I remember the last years  and always the piano weaver, the condi renegade, chronomancer...

I dont count bladesworn because I didnt buy the last disappointing expansion. But when the community complains about the bad state of warrior is usually main warriors who play the warrior class since 2012. An most main warriors don't want to play the messy bladesworn.

??? You don't like it so it doesn't count as warrior? What sort of logic is this? Is it a mesmer spec or something? Also no, have you never heard of burnzerker? It was top dps for a pretty decent amount of time at HoT release especially with the longbow fire field. Before HoT dungeons were literally 4 warriors and a mesmer with time warp. What is true is that POWER warrior has traditionally been underperforming since HoT and until EoD with bladesworn. 

 

EDIT: Oh man Obtena agreed with me, this feels incredibly wrong. You know what you are right. Bladesworn is not a warrior elite spec, it is some 4 dimension elite spec that us mortals cannot possibly conceive. You are right on everything and forever. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Warscythes.9307

[Obtena.7952]

2 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

I repeat. Core warrior or berserker or spellbreaker has NEVER been in the top DPS charts. I remember the last years  and always the piano weaver, the condi renegade, chronomancer...

I dont count bladesworn because I didnt buy the last disappointing expansion. But when the community complains about the bad state of warrior is usually main warriors who play the warrior class since 2012. An most main warriors don't want to play the messy bladesworn.

Just because you didn't buy it doesn't mean it doesn't count. Also, you don't know how many 'main' warriors don't want to play BsW. Excluding things that are true or 'don't count' to you does not make your claims any more factual. They just show that there is a lack of objectivity.

I'm not even sure it's true that no warrior specs have NEVER been top of DPS either (except the one you exclude because you don't think it counts) ... where DPS ranking has questionable significance to the discussion in the first place.  

Edited November 6, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Axelteas.7192]

11 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

??? You don't like it so it doesn't count as warrior? What sort of logic is this? Is it a mesmer spec or something? Also no, have you never heard of burnzerker? It was top dps for a pretty decent amount of time at HoT release especially with the longbow fire field. Before HoT dungeons were literally 4 warriors and a mesmer with time warp. What is true is that POWER warrior has traditionally been underperforming since HoT and until EoD with bladesworn. 

 

 

When the Hot expansion was released berserker was overpowered so people buy the expansion, the same now with bladesword, this doesnt count because everybody knows this is a temporary overtune that is going to be fixed soon. Bladesworn is gonna be a clown in the future like berserker now.

 

For some reason Anet believes that the warrior has to be a punchbag who endures pain for his natural high hp and that's it. Warrior doesnt deserve to do the dps of a deadeye who is squishier. 

[voltaicbore.8012]

On 11/1/2022 at 2:21 PM, JTGuevara.9018 said:

the devs are collectively much part of the machine as NCSoft/Anet. They get no quarter.

A very important concept. Gaming communities in general have adopted a habit of blaming the faceless 'suits' but giving the devs a pass. I'd argue that in GW2's case, the devs themselves are mostly to blame for where the game is. No corpo suit told ANet to create FB and rifle mech, or really even created an environment where such actions were encouraged. No suit told them to kitten on ele and warr for 10 years running. If anything, the NCSoft suits did all of us players a huge favor by culling all the failed side projects and putting the studio back on GW2 as the focus.

On 11/3/2022 at 6:29 PM, Shadowpeixera.2918 said:

Uh...what? Isn't CMC a new hire? How is his philosophy inline for years now?

No. He's been around for a bit. If there's anything "new" about him, it's having a more leading position in balance. Even without the formality of a title, CMC was largely the face of "balance" to the portion of the community that cares about what ANet has to say about that subject.

I think the balance philosophy makes much more sense if you just interpret everything they say as "PvE first, the other two modes are eh." I really think their philosophy of "find some way to have ppl at the skill ceiling have fun, but let the bads have their effective builds too" only makes sense in a PvE context. And more importantly, at least in PvE I think they can really pull it off. All they need to do is add some capacity for all classes to get access to an FB or rifle mech-like build that is both low effort and high performance. As far as imitating mech is concerned, we've seen that just massively buffing a passive signet playstyle + an incredible autoattack chain covers most of what you need. As for what comes from the mech itself, the output from the un-cc-able mech will be a bit harder to replicate, but from a purely numbers perspective, they can just see what the mech does and spread that wealth into whatever traits the new low-effort builds are supposed to take. Remember also that prior to the recent reworks, engi rifle was a very iffy weapon. Some core class weapons (ranger GS comes to mind) are already packed with a good balance of damage/mobility/cc, and others can be brought up to par if the goal is simply to make them more OP.

Sure, they'll talk about sPvP and WvW, but it appears those modes will always be stuck playing catch-up with PvE balance, and I've just accepted that. If I truly want a rewarding PvP experience, I'll have to get it elsewhere. GW2 PvP for me is reduced to a fast daily + reward track farming for various PvE goals.

Now what stings is that classes like warr have been perenially crapped on in PvE as well. It's always been bannerslave or mightslave. I'm hoping that they can eventually turn spellbreaker into a mechanist-like PvE spec: one that can walk solo into group content and clear it in reasonable time with minimal button presses. It's already fairly close (I've been taking my spellbreaker into dungeons, t1 fractals, and champ fights alone and it's worked out okay) but it still requires a lot more input than rifle mech. I actually need to press f2 at the proper time, reserve GS3 to cut through location/timing pressure, and don't really have a good ranged kite option that does rifle mech dps. Losing armored assault (the trait that converted toughness into power) ironically made things slower to solo on SB, but it made up for it by allowing me the excuse not to take defense on my solo cavalier builds.

Edited November 6, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[Dr Meta.3158]

30 minutes ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

When the Hot expansion was released berserker was overpowered so people buy the expansion, the same now with bladesword, this doesnt count because everybody knows this is a temporary overtune that is going to be fixed soon. Bladesworn is gonna be a clown in the future like berserker now.

 

For some reason Anet believes that the warrior has to be a punchbag who endures pain for his natural high hp and that's it. Warrior doesnt deserve to do the dps of a deadeye who is squishier. 

There are very few players who get amazing results from playing condi berserker and defense spellbreaker and specifically in the case of spellbreaker, have gotten significant results in high end matches both in side noding and team fighting positions while being nigh impossible to kill. But the overall problem is that it requires too much effort for the majority of the remaining playerbase to get any sort of average results out of warrior.  Most cases, yes, your average warrior player ends up being a punching bag, a dps check that is frustrating for the warrior player in how ineffective they are and frustrating for their opponent in how long the warrior can hold on to life even in the position of the warrior getting severely outplayed. With that level of frustration, the comparison to deadeye is spot on.

[Warscythes.9307]

3 hours ago, Axelteas.7192 said:

When the Hot expansion was released berserker was overpowered so people buy the expansion, the same now with bladesword, this doesnt count because everybody knows this is a temporary overtune that is going to be fixed soon. Bladesworn is gonna be a clown in the future like berserker now.

 

For some reason Anet believes that the warrior has to be a punchbag who endures pain for his natural high hp and that's it. Warrior doesnt deserve to do the dps of a deadeye who is squishier. 

I am sorry, please don't use the argument that they purposely made something overpowered so they will buy the expansion. This argument has been used in literally mmo expansion release and is on par with "devs hates my class". If they made berserker overpowered to sell the expansion, what's other spec like reaper suppose to be? Just for the lulz? Please stop with this sort of nonsense, it makes trying to discuss anything extremely difficult because it detracts from the original point.

 

The simple fact is that warrior has been a staple in raids with the occasion top DPS. There is really no way to say this is false. Even you agree with me on this. We can discuss on the poor comings of warriors such as power warriors are historically bad as well as the issue with banners or the poor utility skills of warriors in general. Those are very obvious topics to discuss. But to post what is essentially whining based on bias is why nobody like the class forums. Every single class forum is like a kitten cult. Everyone is convinced that the devs LITERALLY hates my class and my class needs buffs. Also apparently if I don't like something then it doesn't count. The only thing everyone agrees on is that anet is bad at balancing.

 

Also yes there is a good chance that bladesworn will be nerfed, I don't think people will be too surprised if it is, very likely with virt in PvE and untamed/catalyst in pvp. I wouldn't be too surprised if mech gets another small nerf. Not because is some expansion BS but it is overpowered. EoD specs largely is actually fairly mediocre honestly powerwise if you look at all game modes.

Also again, berserker is actually decent in PvE as condi. When you say berserker is bad, please actually state which game mode are we talking about and what build. I am not even saying berserker overall is in a good state but how do I know which part of the game you are referring to?

Edited November 6, 2022 by Warscythes.9307