Basic balance

[Eddie.9143]

1 minute ago, bethekey.8314 said:

Is it unclear that's not what this thread is about? Literally forget all class identities if it helps you.

Builds that have too high of defense for their level of offense, or vice versa, are not well balanced. There should be a back and forth with fair, vulnerable windows of opportunity. I assume everyone would agree that a permanently invulnerable class vs an infinite damage class would not be good gameplay. You shouldn't be able to evade everything and you should have to hit multiple skills for things to die. We have class designs where you can't ever hit them with a projectile if they play optimally. Hammer Vindi has 50% block uptime from one skill alone, incredible amounts of evade, and extremely high damage that must be avoided all the other times. This isn't good design.

no I get it, it's impossible to balance the game in the way you're thinking. 

[Arheundel.6451]

13 minutes ago, bethekey.8314 said:

Is it unclear that's not what this thread is about? Literally forget all class identities if it helps you.

Builds that have too high of defense for their level of offense, or vice versa, are not well balanced. There should be a back and forth with fair, vulnerable windows of opportunity. I assume everyone would agree that a permanently invulnerable class vs an infinite damage class would not be good gameplay. You shouldn't be able to evade everything and you should have to hit multiple skills for things to die. We have class designs where you can't ever hit them with a projectile if they play optimally. Hammer Vindi has 50% block uptime from one skill alone, incredible amounts of evade, and extremely high damage that must be avoided all the other times. This isn't good design.

There is a reason the class diversity in this game is dogshit....high risk builds have literally no just average reward in best case scenario when at the same time, low risk gameplay has high rewards.....the game is neither balanced or has the devs capable of balancing it

[bethekey.8314]

11 minutes ago, Eddie.9143 said:

no I get it

Ah good.

11 minutes ago, Eddie.9143 said:

it's impossible to balance the game in the way you're thinking.

It's probably impossible to do so perfectly, if that's your argument. That's just reality. You can certainly attempt to maintain good balance (defense / offense tradeoffs, etc.) better than the current state. That's 100% possible, even within the context of this game, and you can watch old gameplay videos to prove it. Count out loud the vulnerable windows / look at the damage then vs now.

The current state is a joke.

[bethekey.8314]

8 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

There is a reason the class diversity in this game is dogshit....high risk builds have literally no just average reward in best case scenario when at the same time, low risk gameplay has high rewards.....the game is neither balanced or has the devs capable of balancing it

Yeah that's true. If the extremes were taken in (on all classes), we'd see much more flexibility in what builds can be played, hard counters would be less egregious, people would have more fun etc. The devs do make a lot of questionable decisions (I'll never forget that balance discord leak). But it can't hurt to voice some discontent now and then, maybe steer their thought toward greener pastures?

Edited March 22 by bethekey.8314

[Downstate.4697]

Personally I think it’s less of a balance issue and more of a game mode issue.  Getting kills gives too much value and enables matches to snowball. Mobility creep contributes to this and so does damage creep.
 

On the other hand there are also tanky builds that can hold nodes. I think the happy medium is to look at downstate/death respawn timers in general. I personally believe the game needs to go back to holding nodes vs killing the enemy and giving your team a 4v5 for 30+ seconds. Hell they could even increase the duration it takes to cap a node to slow down the pace of the match.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

16 hours ago, bethekey.8314 said:

And @Khalisto.5780 called it. All the thieves get triggered when called out haha

Not exactly. It's like there's a perpetually moving goalpost where the finish line of "this thief earned their kill" never gets reached, and it's increasingly frustrating to lean to playstyle X only to be told there's a problem with playing playstyle X as well, despite playstyle X resulting from nearly a decade of nerfing playstyle A through W. 

It's less 'triggered' and more resignation that there probably isn't a goalpost at all, it's just wherever we aren't. Thieves went from high damage to low damage, high mobility to lower mobility, while other classes got their mobility improved. It's not uncommon for a thief to not be chosen in a matchup at all, when before comps were built around and punished for lacking them. Cooldowns got axed, initiative make sure half our skills cost half our bar, so spamming is cut down-

Nobody seems to have a balanced approach for how thief should play or what it should do when they claim thief is overperforming, it's just [that thing theyre doing is degenerate]. Some of the people in this thread can't even specify which builds/skills are giving them problems. 

But, I mean, you're welcome to take a swing at it. 

Edited March 22 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[bethekey.8314]

35 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

Not exactly.

I felt bad saying "all" after the fact because you don't deserve to be included in triggered category. Some people are capable of reason still, and your frustration with the constant threads is understandable.

35 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

It's less 'triggered' and more resignation that there probably isn't a goalpost at all, it's just wherever we aren't. Thieves went from high damage to low damage, high mobility to lower mobility, while other classes got their mobility improved. It's not uncommon for a thief to not be chosen in a matchup at all, when before comps were built around and punished for lacking them. Cooldowns got axed, initiative make sure half our skills cost half our bar, so spamming is cut down-

Nobody seems to have a balanced approach for how thief should play or what it should do when they claim thief is overperforming, it's just [that thing theyre doing is degenerate]. Some of the people in this thread can't even specify which builds/skills are giving them problems. 

That being said...

Thief has always had high mobility. The bound p/p builds are maybe the only exception that comes to mind. True "low mobility" nowadays is like...swiftness only (e.g. my core engi build). Having more mobility than your opponent lets you dictate when fights start and end. That deserves lower damage.

Exchanging mobility for permanent stealth + blind spam doesn't change that you deserve lower damage. It just trades one degenerate mechanic for another. You should not be surprised or annoyed if people are complaining back and forth if you're simply swapping between the two.

Specter was a somewhat interesting changeup, with less stealth and more presence in fights. It still can teleport half way across the map with ease. Unless that's changed, it deserves lower damage.

Here's a challenge: Show me a Thief build that doesn't dictate when/how fights start/end and can't evade half the time, and I'll tell you that build deserves high damage. The same goes for any class.

For example, on Engi I can mimic Thief mobility + stealth with Rocket Boots, Elixir S, Bomb Kit, and Sneak Gyro. Guess how effective that build is? I'm certainly not spamming ranged 6-8k bombs on people lol. If I was, that's fair grounds for complaint.

Edited March 22 by bethekey.8314

[bq pd.2148]

16 minutes ago, bethekey.8314 said:

Thief has always had high mobility. The bound p/p builds are maybe the only exception that comes to mind. True "low mobility" nowadays is like...swiftness only (e.g. my core engi build). Having more mobility than your opponent lets you dictate when fights start and end. That deserves lower damage.

Exchanging mobility for permanent stealth + blind spam doesn't change that you deserve lower damage. It just trades one degenerate mechanic for another. You should not be surprised or annoyed if people are complaining back and forth if you're simply swapping between the two.

Specter was a somewhat interesting changeup, with less stealth and more presence in fights. It still can teleport half way across the map with ease. Unless that's changed, it deserves lower damage.

Here's a challenge: Show me a Thief build that doesn't dictate when/how fights start/end and can't evade half the time, and I'll tell you that build deserves high damage. The same goes for any class.

For example, on Engi I can mimic Thief mobility + stealth with Rocket Boots, Elixir S, Bomb Kit, and Sneak Gyro. Guess how effective that build is? I'm certainly not spamming ranged 6-8k bombs on people lol. If I was, that's fair grounds for complaint.

the problem with initiative and the versatility it provides is that people argue as tho you could use it all for everything at the same time. all the mobility, all the damage and all the stealth all the time.
that is why your engi build comparison doesnt work, as you can not temporarily hinder your ability to stealth / run and use it for damage.
this versatility surely should have some price to the build, but how much? 


IMO you also dont credit 'passive' sustain enough, being able to take smaller hits. sure evade / invuln / block is better than getting hit, but if you have to avoid almost every hit to not evaporate then the resulting playstyles wont come at much of a surprise.

[bethekey.8314]

1 hour ago, bq pd.2148 said:

the problem with initiative and the versatility it provides is that people argue as tho you could use it all for everything at the same time. all the mobility, all the damage and all the stealth all the time.

This would make sense if: 1) initiative was scarce 2) abusive skills were all high cost like shortbow teleport 3) every action required initiative 4) skills didn't often combine damage+mobility/defense, and 5) you actually needed to do everything at once (despite being the one in control of the fight).

Stealing, utilities, and dodging don't require initiative, allowing Thieves to spam their abusive skill of choice and still be able to reset whenever required with a stealth dodge / teleport / stealth utility etc. Skills like Shadowshot combine mobility, high damage, and defense (blind) all in one. And if you dictate when you can engage/disengage, having to make tough choices on offense/defense only really matters if you play poorly and get caught out--assuming you can't get saved by one of your non-initiative utilities/dodges.

Further, Thief isn't alone in it's "resource" to limit skill use. Holo, Mesmer, Necro, Rev, Warrior, Firebrand etc. all have their resource mechanics that often come WITH cooldowns attached to limit abuse.

1 hour ago, bq pd.2148 said:

that is why your engi build comparison doesnt work, as you can not temporarily hinder your ability to stealth / run and use it for damage.
this versatility surely should have some price to the build, but how much? 

You misunderstand. The Engi's ability to do damage (with this build) is permanently hindered by its ability to stealth/run, unlike a Thief. Go ahead, try to make a viable damage build with this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PeAUsQ2FjjdiL4GAA-e

If those skills don't suit you, be my guest and go wild. Mimic Thief's ability to engage/disengage frequently while also being able to regularly do burst damage. Remember, superspeed isn't as good as stealth + teleports.

1 hour ago, bq pd.2148 said:

IMO you also dont credit 'passive' sustain enough, being able to take smaller hits. sure evade / invuln / block is better than getting hit, but if you have to avoid almost every hit to not evaporate then the resulting playstyles wont come at much of a surprise.

 

Sure, let's swap over to the defensive side. Sustain only matters in small, extended fights or large ones without focus (i.e. low tier play). Avoiding death is king and the best sustain in the game is a quick reset.

 

Edited March 22 by bethekey.8314

[Unknown.6851]

3 hours ago, Downstate.4697 said:

Personally I think it’s less of a balance issue and more of a game mode issue.  Getting kills gives too much value and enables matches to snowball. Mobility creep contributes to this and so does damage creep.
 

On the other hand there are also tanky builds that can hold nodes. I think the happy medium is to look at downstate/death respawn timers in general. I personally believe the game needs to go back to holding nodes vs killing the enemy and giving your team a 4v5 for 30+ seconds. Hell they could even increase the duration it takes to cap a node to slow down the pace of the match.

That's actually genius. A little bit of tinkering with the existing form would keep me interested a bit longer. I really love the idea of longer respawns, make people understand dying is why they lose while they slowly wither away, or 3 secs longer to decap would entirely throw my gameplay through a loop and might even force me to leave a decap on far contested still. Idk, but any change to this kitten is welcome from me..

[Szymon.5369]

On 3/21/2024 at 4:45 PM, shion.2084 said:

I don't know the build... but there's this theif pistol condi build that shoots you from stealth over and over and puts a trap down.  I can't figure out how much health it has cause chaining two hits on it is pretty hard when you have to guess where it is after the first hit.   Does that condi build run 11k health?   It has a stun break for sure because my thunder clap can't lock it down.....  

Thing with "condi pistol thief that stealths over and over" is that it's a Daredevil with Bound, so a) attack pattern is painfully predictable and b) it can't run Dash, so if you squeeze an immobilize you basically win. And I haven't played for a while but usually that build ran a condi amulet, so you're killed slowly by 5x bleed from stealth attack and whatever poison they get from SA traits, so the damage is low, you have time.

[bq pd.2148]

48 minutes ago, bethekey.8314 said:

-snip-

i suppose i have to take more time to avoid being misunderstood like this, but sadly i don't care for thief enough anymore to do so.

as for the thread itself besides thief, i am not sure one can as easily weight offense and defense as the specific mechanics depend too much on the match up.
for example:
soft cc like blind, weakness, immob are all very strong until your opponent has resistance, but the value of resistance itself depends on how much your opponent uses those.
ranged should be weaker than melee, but if your ranged is all projectile and there is plenty of projectile absorb/reflect or options to break LoS then the advantage of range is gone.
if the enemy doenst have enough unblockables, then blocks > invuln as soon as you defend a node, but under different circumstances the block might just get punched through without providing the needed defense.
...

[Downstate.4697]

1 hour ago, Unknown.6851 said:

That's actually genius. A little bit of tinkering with the existing form would keep me interested a bit longer. I really love the idea of longer respawns, make people understand dying is why they lose while they slowly wither away, or 3 secs longer to decap would entirely throw my gameplay through a loop and might even force me to leave a decap on far contested still. Idk, but any change to this kitten is welcome from me..

My point is there should be shorter respawns to prevent snowballing.

[bethekey.8314]

1 hour ago, bq pd.2148 said:

as for the thread itself besides thief, i am not sure one can as easily weight offense and defense as the specific mechanics depend too much on the match up.
for example:
soft cc like blind, weakness, immob are all very strong until your opponent has resistance, but the value of resistance itself depends on how much your opponent uses those.
ranged should be weaker than melee, but if your ranged is all projectile and there is plenty of projectile absorb/reflect or options to break LoS then the advantage of range is gone.
if the enemy doenst have enough unblockables, then blocks > invuln as soon as you defend a node, but under different circumstances the block might just get punched through without providing the needed defense.

Yes, there is nuance. But that nuance goes out the window when things are at excessive levels.

If you record/watch fights it becomes very apparent who has more vulnerable openings, who has more damage, and what kinds of defenses each class has.

[AIex.4105]

On 3/21/2024 at 3:08 AM, bethekey.8314 said:

Offense and defense should trade off.

- The more tanky you are, the less damage you should do. Some defenses are stronger than others. Invulnerability, stealth, and evades are stronger than blocks and blinds. If you have the same frequency of defensive cooldowns as someone else, but yours are all invulns and theirs are blocks, you should probably do less damage.

- Some damage is stronger than others. Long range, non-projectiles are great. Low range projectiles are terrible. Melee is ok. If you're hitting 6k damage left and right, you should probably be easy to kill.

As far as I can tell, this tradeoff is ignored for Vindicator, multiple Mesmer builds, Reaper, and multiple Thief builds right now. Staff warrior obviously has ridiculous defense but the burst doesn't seem over the top. 

I agree, the more vit/def u have, the less DPS you should have.

[Lighter.5631]

no, the least teleport and stealth and mobility and instant cast you have, the more damage you should have.

it's so easy to cheese free hits in with teleport/stealth/mobility and instant casts

Edited March 26 by Lighter.5631

[Sweetbread.3678]

The issue has always been that active defenses, cleansing, mobility, boon strip etc. don't scale off of stats. If you're on a class like Mesmer or Thief, there's pretty much 0 incentive into actually gearing for survivability, because you're just going to be invisible, invulnerable, or uncatchable anyway. The way conditions work leads to a similar issue with condi specs. There's almost no point in investing into condi duration, because everything being a binary, all-or-nothing, full cleanse that'll remove 30 stacks of bleed just as easy as 1 means nothing will ever really get to stack that high. So we end up in this stupid situation where the game's damage over time effects have to be tuned to do burst damage and/or be infinitely spammable to counteract instantly being wiped out by cleanses and it just turns into this dumb af spam vs spam arms race between them, but then also condi specs only need to invest in 1 stat to effectively do damage in pvp because they're tuned to not rely on expertise or duration.

The flow and feel of this game's combat is amazing, but so many of its actual mechanics and systems are so beyond terribly designed that it's literally impossible for the game to have decent pvp balance. At best it'll just be a rotation of cheesy terribly designed rock vs. cheesy terribly designed paper vs. cheesy terribly designed scissors, depending on how they want to "shake up the meta" for that particular patch cycle.

Edited March 27 by Sweetbread.3678

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Sweetbread.3678 said:

The issue has always been that active defenses, cleansing, mobility, boon strip etc. don't scale off of stats. If you're on a class like Mesmer or Thief, there's pretty much 0 incentive into actually gearing for survivability, because you're just going to be invisible, invulnerable, or uncatchable anyway. The way conditions work leads to a similar issue with condi specs. There's almost no point in investing into condi duration, because everything being a binary, all-or-nothing, full cleanse that'll remove 30 stacks of bleed just as easy as 1 means nothing will ever really get to stack that high. So we end up in this stupid situation where the game's damage over time effects have to be tuned to do burst damage and/or be infinitely spammable to counteract instantly being wiped out by cleanses and it just turns into this dumb af spam vs spam arms race between them, but then also condi specs only need to invest in 1 stat to effectively do damage in pvp because they're tuned to not rely on expertise or duration.

The flow and feel of this game's combat is amazing, but so many of its actual mechanics and systems are so beyond terribly designed that it's literally impossible for the game to have decent pvp balance. At best it'll just be a rotation of cheesy terribly designed rock vs. cheesy terribly designed paper vs. cheesy terribly designed scissors, depending on how they want to "shake up the meta" for that particular patch cycle.

Just be a really good scissors build*

jk, just wanted an excuse to post this 😁

[bethekey.8314]

On 3/26/2024 at 4:02 PM, AIex.4105 said:

I agree, the more vit/def u have, the less DPS you should have.

It almost feels silly to have to say, but here we are.

On 3/26/2024 at 5:06 PM, Sweetbread.3678 said:

The issue has always been that active defenses, cleansing, mobility, boon strip etc. don't scale off of stats. If you're on a class like Mesmer or Thief, there's pretty much 0 incentive into actually gearing for survivability, because you're just going to be invisible, invulnerable, or uncatchable anyway. The way conditions work leads to a similar issue with condi specs. There's almost no point in investing into condi duration, because everything being a binary, all-or-nothing, full cleanse that'll remove 30 stacks of bleed just as easy as 1 means nothing will ever really get to stack that high. So we end up in this stupid situation where the game's damage over time effects have to be tuned to do burst damage and/or be infinitely spammable to counteract instantly being wiped out by cleanses and it just turns into this dumb af spam vs spam arms race between them, but then also condi specs only need to invest in 1 stat to effectively do damage in pvp because they're tuned to not rely on expertise or duration.

The flow and feel of this game's combat is amazing, but so many of its actual mechanics and systems are so beyond terribly designed that it's literally impossible for the game to have decent pvp balance. At best it'll just be a rotation of cheesy terribly designed rock vs. cheesy terribly designed paper vs. cheesy terribly designed scissors, depending on how they want to "shake up the meta" for that particular patch cycle.

There is certainly an element of this here. Thanks for adding