No balance at all

[TonyG.5867]

Theres no balance in pvp and thats a fact. Debuffs last for ever( maybe make it that our cleanse removes them all and not 1 or 2 when we have like 10 on us?)....some classes have like immune to everything for few sec( seriously? they hit hard and got shields for everything. How is this right? If they are tanking maybe DONT do so much  dmg too?)....some classes hit like a track for no reason( and they dont die easy too so yea ok)...Some have like 1 sec cool down to invisibility ( WHY? WHY?? why the hell he hits me when hes invisible and when i turn to hit him he goes invi again. He hits tons of dmg and he turns invisible every 3 sec max. There are lots of classes and lots of skills but for a 13 years old game there should be more balance and more thought in some things. And i dont wanna start saying for matchmaking.  I hit gold 4 times and lost 10 games after that. EVERYTIME the matchmaking puts me with ppl that HAVE NO IDEA WTF TO DO. Its sad that this game has EPIC pve and trash pvp.

[thc enjoyer.4976]

If the game was still core it'd be balanced but fact of the matter is that they power crept every expansion and can't close pandoras box now. 

 

That being said I don't think the game is that bad off in terms of balance rn. There's a couple of overtuned that they can dial back, sure. The problem is the time it's going to take this company to dial them back and the crickets that chirp in the background nonstop from lack of communication. It's essentially playing a game mode they confirmed is dead by lack of communication. 

Edited May 27, 2023 by thc enjoyer.4976

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

There's some balance. Its just got a ways to go.

There are indeed a few immortal specs though.  Not a hopeless amount, but still some glaring issues.

[Sweetbread.3678]

You can't balance terrible design. Has this game ever had a meta pvp build that was meta because of how well it was designed or because it was incredibly high skill cap and also had equivalently top-end potential? I'd say no. Emphatically.

Virtually every single time something has become meta it's been because either it took some terribly designed gimmick to 1000% or the thing was just numerically busted to the point of being absolutely brain dead and impossible to mess up with unless you ran into it's rock/paper/scissors counter.

[oscuro.9720]

6 hours ago, thc enjoyer.4976 said:

If the game was still core it'd be balanced but fact of the matter is that they power crept every expansion and can't close pandoras box now. 

6 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

There's some balance. Its just got a ways to go.

There are indeed a few immortal specs though.  Not a hopeless amount, but still some glaring issues.

There is still balance, but only on the very top end. The problem is 95% of players can’t play in the realm where there is balance, so they play in a slop fest of preset rotations and perhaps a dodge here or there. 
In core, the difficulty curve was mostly linear, now it’s an extreme exponential increase as you approach the top 10% of the player base. At least imo. 
This leaves most people completely lost because most people they ever face have no idea how to move up along the curve either. You kind of need someone whose achieved some semblance of mechanical competency and a desire to actually learn. Most people lack one of the two. 
At least imo. But I’m not very good either so who knows. 

[Burnfall.9573]

1 hour ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

You can't balance terrible design. Has this game ever had a meta pvp build that was meta because of how well it was designed or because it was incredibly high skill cap and also had equivalently top-end potential? I'd say no. Emphatically.

Virtually every single time something has become meta it's been because either it took some terribly designed gimmick to 1000% or the thing was just numerically busted to the point of being absolutely brain dead and impossible to mess up with unless you ran into it's rock/paper/scissors counter.

Bad Design

Very well said

[TonyG.5867]

9 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

You can't balance terrible design. Has this game ever had a meta pvp build that was meta because of how well it was designed or because it was incredibly high skill cap and also had equivalently top-end potential? I'd say no. Emphatically.

Virtually every single time something has become meta it's been because either it took some terribly designed gimmick to 1000% or the thing was just numerically busted to the point of being absolutely brain dead and impossible to mess up with unless you ran into it's rock/paper/scissors counter.

I dont know if bad design but tbh for a game that exists for 13 years it SHOULD be more balanced at every spec of the game, PVP or PVE.  I dont know, i rly sick of this kind of pvp and its sad cause the game is rly good.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

3 hours ago, TonyG.5867 said:

I dont know if bad design but tbh for a game that exists for 13 years it SHOULD be more balanced at every spec of the game, PVP or PVE.  I dont know, i rly sick of this kind of pvp and its sad cause the game is rly good.

Years ago game was actually more balanced than what we have now, sure it wasn't perfect, but it was better. 
Then A-net decided to remove caps on conditions and it went downhill from there, still was managable at that time but then they've released powercreeped elite specializations with HoT, that was final nail in the coffin.
The funny part is, they were nerfing core classes instead of busted elite speces.

[Sweetbread.3678]

On 5/28/2023 at 7:51 AM, TonyG.5867 said:

I dont know if bad design but tbh for a game that exists for 13 years it SHOULD be more balanced at every spec of the game, PVP or PVE.  I dont know, i rly sick of this kind of pvp and its sad cause the game is rly good.

I'd say the design is theoretically sound, if a bit shallow, for PvE (and agree that the balance there is still pretty off, don't even get me started on the whole risk/reward and effort/output issues going on), but it just doesn't work for PvP at all. Like clearly the game was designed PvE first instead of the PvP first approach GW1 took (there's a reason almost every PvE mob in that game is just running the same skills/builds as a player could).

Beyond a lot GW2's mechanics being super gimmicky and clearly designed without a single second being spent considering how it would actually feel to play against (clones, traps, 100% full invisibility stealth, etc.) there's also a ton of stuff that's clearly designed for ease of use in an open world 50 man pve "action combat" situation which have to be designed around gigantic meta bosses that don't translate well into PvP, such as but not limited to:

- "Evades" and "blocks" just being spammable omni-directional iframes designed around dealing with gigantic boss aoes instead of directional defensive skill shots/positioning tools designed around smaller scale pvp combat. You end up with very little counterplay to some things and then as a result the counterplay that does appear ends up being brain-dead, impossible to F up rock/paper/scissors nonsense (non-skill shot unblockable CCs, 45 second long ranger immobs, DH abilities that contrary to virtually everything else in the game prevent dodging). There's also a game wide issue where active defenses don't scale off of any sort of stat investment, so you end up with some classes being able to spec full glass without consequence. The same could be said for the whole CC/stability dynamic, which is completely binary and should imo work more like a boss's defiance bar or even better a Sekiro style defensive poise rating (scaled to a stat) that determines one's damage resistance and cc vulnerability that can be damaged with cc skills/defiance break (which should also be scaled to a stat, noticing a theme here?).

- The entire condi/boon/cleanse/strip system that's based around dozens of players stacking the same generic effects instead of specific targeted ones. Everything in PvP just ends up with condis and boons being vomited out constantly from everywhere and defense going from intentionally targeted counterplay (specific condition/hex/enchantment removal/interrupting) to hoping to god you have enough passive cleanse or a spammable amount of active cleanses to deal with the same 3-4 condis being almost instantly reapplied as soon as you clear them. It's just brain dead spam vs spam in 90% of situations. This also feeds into a situation where investing in condi duration is almost pointless making condi "burst" specs with lots of short duration condi stacks much more viable than those reliant on fewer, but longer duration condis dealing their damage over time (which is just absurd considering the OVER TIME part is theoretically the entire thing separating the gameplay of condi builds from power builds). That issue also allows condi specs to be much tankier than power specs, because they often only have to invest in only one offensive stat compared to the 2-3 a power spec would.

And that's just two(ish) issues. Clearly I could go on, but this post would be 4 pages long. The amount of base design flaws in the game's core mechanics makes pvp balance virtually impossible and guarantees that all meta specs will just crystalize around abusing gimmicks and terribly designed mechanics with minimal counterplay or interaction. Which, in turn, ends up attracting an absolutely   t e r r i b l e   pvp community of people that can't compete in any game where they aren't being carried by a build broken to the point of not even having a skill requirement, seeking shelter in GW2's SPvP.

TLDR: Competitive small scale PvP is just completely antithetical to GW2's casual open world PvE design focus and it's basically a case study in how pvp as an afterthought just does not work.

[Burnfall.9573]

5 hours ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

I'd say the design is theoretically sound, if a bit shallow, for PvE (and agree that the balance there is still pretty off, don't even get me started on the whole risk/reward and effort/output issues going on), but it just doesn't work for PvP at all. Like clearly the game was designed PvE first instead of the PvP first approach GW1 took (there's a reason almost every PvE mob in that game is just running the same skills/builds as a player could).

Beyond a lot GW2's mechanics being super gimmicky and clearly designed without a single second being spent considering how it would actually feel to play against (clones, traps, 100% full invisibility stealth, etc.) there's also a ton of stuff that's clearly designed for ease of use in an open world 50 man pve "action combat" situation which have to be designed around gigantic meta bosses that don't translate well into PvP, such as but not limited to:

- "Evades" and "blocks" just being spammable omni-directional iframes designed around dealing with gigantic boss aoes instead of directional defensive skill shots/positioning tools designed around smaller scale pvp combat. You end up with very little counterplay to some things and then as a result the counterplay that does appear ends up being brain-dead, impossible to F up rock/paper/scissors nonsense (non-skill shot unblockable CCs, 45 second long ranger immobs, DH abilities that contrary to virtually everything else in the game prevent dodging). There's also a game wide issue where active defenses don't scale off of any sort of stat investment, so you end up with some classes being able to spec full glass without consequence. The same could be said for the whole CC/stability dynamic, which is completely binary and should imo work more like a boss's defiance bar or even better a Sekiro style defensive poise rating (scaled to a stat) that determines one's damage resistance and cc vulnerability that can be damaged with cc skills/defiance break (which should also be scaled to a stat, noticing a theme here?).

- The entire condi/boon/cleanse/strip system that's based around dozens of players stacking the same generic effects instead of specific targeted ones. Everything in PvP just ends up with condis and boons being vomited out constantly from everywhere and defense going from intentionally targeted counterplay (specific condition/hex/enchantment removal/interrupting) to hoping to god you have enough passive cleanse or a spammable amount of active cleanses to deal with the same 3-4 condis being almost instantly reapplied as soon as you clear them. It's just brain dead spam vs spam in 90% of situations. This also feeds into a situation where investing in condi duration is almost pointless making condi "burst" specs with lots of short duration condi stacks much more viable than those reliant on fewer, but longer duration condis dealing their damage over time (which is just absurd considering the OVER TIME part is theoretically the entire thing separating the gameplay of condi builds from power builds). That issue also allows condi specs to be much tankier than power specs, because they often only have to invest in only one offensive stat compared to the 2-3 a power spec would.

And that's just two(ish) issues. Clearly I could go on, but this post would be 4 pages long. The amount of base design flaws in the game's core mechanics makes pvp balance virtually impossible and guarantees that all meta specs will just crystalize around abusing gimmicks and terribly designed mechanics with minimal counterplay or interaction. Which, in turn, ends up attracting an absolutely   t e r r i b l e   pvp community of people that can't compete in any game where they aren't being carried by a build broken to the point of not even having a skill requirement, seeking shelter in GW2's SPvP.

TLDR: Competitive small scale PvP is just completely antithetical to GW2's casual open world PvE design focus and it's basically a case study in how pvp as an afterthought just does not work.

During last weekend; we had a conversation with some present and non present Guild Wars 2 players about this situation. We all finally agreed that; Guild Wars (1) Vision and Philosophy was; putting the players experience before chasing for profit.

Guild Wars (1) Cornerstone was giving the players the best experience in a healthy gaming experience and a environments while also experiencing each Profession Roles and its Identities in their own worlds. 

What The Community have been witnessing and experiencing for the past 11 years of Guild Wars 2  Vision and Philosophy is; chasing for profit before putting the players experience. First.

Everything from  Design to Balance is directed at making profit.. that's it!!

It is the only thing that matters and will only matter.

There will never be "balance" until Guild Wars 2 face the consequence of its failure of chasing profits before putting the players experience first.

"Accept Failure As Part Of The Process"

[Myror.7521]

@Burnfall.9573 the realy sad path about this is ..... this will never happen since most studios like ncsoft going for profit rather than gaming experience. Pretty Sure A-Net would go for Game experience if ncsoft wouldn't exist!

[Dadnir.5038]

On 5/27/2023 at 11:22 PM, thc enjoyer.4976 said:

If the game was still core it'd be balanced

I'll tell you a secret, even before the vanilla game official release players were already complaining that the game was imbalanced.

The pre release beta led to a feedback saying that necromancer was to strong and at the vanilla release it resulted with the necromancer being tuned down to such a point that it was a wet noodle softer than tofu.

2 weeks after release, there was already a meme video were an elementalist "main" was offering a tutorial to make an OP elementalist by deleting the ele and making a thief instead.

... etc.

The truth is that players are bound to forever be unsatisfied by the current state of balance. Every tweak that the balance team do have the potential to break the statu quo leading to a new set of "meta builds" that are bound to be called OP or imbalanced after a few days.

[Burnfall.9573]

51 minutes ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Burnfall.9573 the realy sad path about this is ..... this will never happen since most studios like ncsoft going for profit rather than gaming experience. Pretty Sure A-Net would go for Game experience if ncsoft wouldn't exist!

True

[Burnfall.9573]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'll tell you a secret, even before the vanilla game official release players were already complaining that the game was imbalanced.

The pre release beta led to a feedback saying that necromancer was to strong and at the vanilla release it resulted with the necromancer being tuned down to such a point that it was a wet noodle softer than tofu.

2 weeks after release, there was already a meme video were an elementalist "main" was offering a tutorial to make an OP elementalist by deleting the ele and making a thief instead.

... etc.

The truth is that players are bound to forever be unsatisfied by the current state of balance. Every tweak that the balance team do have the potential to break the statu quo leading to a new set of "meta builds" that are bound to be called OP or imbalanced after a few days.

I remember that video. In fact; the video is still up (not going to upload it)