The importance of Build Diversity and why it's more important than balance.

Swagger.1459 · November 13, 2019

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@God.2708 said:
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@God.2708 said:I'm not sure how role is cropping up into this discussion at all. Role is a descriptive term utilized by players to provide clarity to a builds purpose. It has nothing to do with balance or diversity, at least in GW2. There's no box you check that designates you as 'DPS' or 'Healer' which would factorize diversity. It occasionally gets utilized as a lens through which to view balance, but ultimately isn't a primary concern of Anets.

Roles came up earlier in this thread when a user pointed out a paradox arises if we nerf classes like FB and Scourge, that instead of increasing diversity and other classes rising up to fill the spot, more scourges will instead appear to fill the gap that scourge had left behind.

I know it’s a long thread now, but i can’t spend my time repeating things that have already been discussed in the thread. For the sake of everyone reading, try and read through every post in its continuity so that context isn’t lost.

I mean yes, I see WHERE it came into the discussion. That doesn't answer my question of how. Perhaps I should have more explicitly used why. It has no bearing on the original topic because see my comment. There's no point in repeating it or utilizing it. Utilization of it should be re-directed. It muddles discussion.

Elite specs didn't increase diversity because they added roles. They increased diversity because they flat out added more to the game. Some of those specializations are attempts to slot nicely into a role, but none of them are a button you check that requires you to be that role. Again: Role is a descriptive term to provide clarity for a builds purpose.

Whether I say Healer vs DPS or Defensive Booner vs Offensive Booner vs Soft CCer vs Hard CCer vs Power damage vs Condi damage vs Green Number generator is irrelevant. It is the same number of 'builds', just labeled differently. You can say elite specializations introduced roles into the game, but all those roles existed before, elite specializations just resulted in a large balance improvement to healers. The giant condi damage overhaul introduced more diversity into the game, and you could say it introduced roles in the form of bringing about condi DPS. That doesn't change anything though, it's still just an identifier. Could just as easily say damage was buffed (and thus needed re-balancing as well).

Yes all these things were explicitly mentioned in the comments from the beginning where Nerah brought up the paradox. I even said exactly the same thing you just said to me, to swagger.

Now roles wouldn't be a big deal if anet hadn’t explicitly designed the elite specialization with “roles” being the centerpiece. The so famously titled “Purity of Purpose” was an intentional design element when creating the specializations. Whether you liked it or not, the specs had roles built in...already predetermined things that you were fated to play. Rolling Druid? You are a support healer. Rolling Deadeye? You are a solo roamer.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Example, you can trait with the Druid line and not play a support healer, like at all. And Druid doesn’t even excel at healing, but it’s still an optional role, build and play style. As is playing ranged damage Druid, or melee damage Druid, or condition druid, or wvw roaming Druid... And you obviously missed all the qq about Druid being a tough roamer and duelist for what you think is just a “support healer”.

JusticeRetroHunter.7684 · November 13, 2019

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

This is what we assume would be the case. But the thing is that based on complexity theory, the opposite of that assumption would be true, assuming that WvW is a complex system.

Balance of builds tends toward Homogeneity (where all builds are the same, so they are balanced)while diversity tends toward heterogeneity.(Where all builds are different and are thus highly diverse)

Because highly diverse groupings are subject to competition, strong builds will almost always have another competitive build that seeks to replace it. This in itself is a form of balance. The more diversity, the more builds that compete with each other

It’s another kind of balance that comes from having diversity that just “regular” balance in homogenous groups simply can’t create. This is why nature and every complex system we see in nature feature heterogeneous/diverse groupings. This thread and my original post are based off of this premise.

I highly suggest watching the first two videos i linked in the original post and the 2nd comment. These will give you a basic understanding of complexity theory. Then read through the thread and it will give you a reference for the back and forth going on about the issue. Almost everyone here has provided something valuable to the discussion.

So yes, reworking traitlines to be more useful would actually help toward achieving more diversity which in turn lead to better balance.

LadyKitty.6120 · November 13, 2019

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

JusticeRetroHunter.7684 · November 13, 2019

@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

DKRathalos.9625 · November 13, 2019

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:
So why are people complaining about balance if we are almost at a 0 point for build diversity and near max for balance? It's because in the current meta-game there are 2 classes...while there are 9 classes total...which makes 7 classes feel "left out." Anet is probably aware of this class disparity and their response to this is to tone down the two classes which they believe will "free up" the other seven classes. Here is where i believe Anet is making a mistake...in fact where everyone is making a mistake. Balancing the classes is not how to fix the games issues...rather it's reaching an understanding about complex systems, and then acting upon parameters that would change that complex system...one of which is build diversity.

True that 2 class is probably the most consistent in the meta but if you look at closely it's not really 2 right now when it comes to zerg play.A proper subparty consist of: Firebrand, Scrapper, Herald, Scourge, Scourge/Spellbreaker, generally you want spellbreaker every 2party.Niche class which can be used to add things: Mesmer (usually driver/commander use this), or maybe someone want to portal bomb play and then Weaver for some Big meteorSo the really left out class when it comes to zerg are: Thief and Ranger.

Stand The Wall.6987 · November 13, 2019

the main force stifling diversity imo is theme, which comes from the way the rpg system works. that being said, I think there is good diversity on paper but there are too many underpowered and overpowered classes. add to this the theme rule, which dictates only one class is good at this one thing, and we have our very one dimensional meta group comp. I think we should keep the one class should be the best at this one action thing we got going on, and do away with the monopolies. let some other classes dish out stability in a reliable way, so you would have to take two of them to be as good as the guardian. give more classes powerful profession unique buffs, this is imo the best way to ensure both viability and diversity. I like the way soulbeast is headed, but firebrand is just too powerful. it should be powerful, but right now there just isn't enough reason to take two soulbeasts over one firebrand. they need either more powerful buffs or other unique buffs. idk. obviously you don't want to power creep everything for the sake of diversity. its tricky. the mesmer stability mantra is on the edge of being viable, its radius is too small tho. there are a lot of these "just about" skills and traits that anet should look into. I get that guardian is the king of stab, but do you really think forcing this theme is going to keep people psyched to play the game years later? ofc not.

LadyKitty.6120 · November 13, 2019

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@"Psycoprophet.8107" said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.So, the problem is (and like Kitty's frequently mentioned): there's no perfect balance, just better and worse compromises of balance (and those compromises being a compromise of balances between gamemodes). Thus Kitty could only suggest changes that would either nerf or boost stuff without causing serious issues in other gamemodes.Here's some things Kitty would start with...

Guardian

Since guardian has excessive access to stability and boons which causes it to become overtly strong support compared to any other class, Kitty would start by reducing the stab an cleanse output and adding more opportunity costs to the boon output.-Reduce the stability output of "Stand Your Ground!" from 5 stacks for 5 seconds to 3 stacks for 3 seconds. (would be pretty much equal to Hallowed Ground after that)-Reduce the stability output of Chapter 1: Unflinching Charge from 1 stack for 4 seconds to 1 stack for 3 seconds.-Reduce the stability output of Portent of Freedom from 1 stack for 5 seconds to 1 stack for 3 seconds.-Reduce the stability output of Unhindered Delivery from 5 stacks for 8 seconds to 3 stacks for 5 seconds.-Reduce Quickfire's internal cooldown to 4 seconds and increase the burning duration of Ashes of the Just from 3 seconds to 4 seconds. (To make it a viable alternative for Loremaster when used by condi quickbrand. Currently it's quite unused due to nerfs before.)-Remove Slow from Stoic Demeanor and make it grant a "10% damage increased" effect for 5 seconds after disabling or immobilizing an enemy. (Makes it a trait worth taking for power quickbrands while it's mostly unused by now and power firebrands don't have any good alternatives in that column at the moment.)-Add 5 stacks of vulnerability for 8 seconds to Echo of Truth.-Increase the vulnerability applied by Voice of Truth from 5 stack for 8 seconds to 10 stacks for 8 seconds. (This mantra isn't currently used widely by any build as far as Kitty knows and making it apply decent vulnerability can make it a viable option for situations where vulnerability would be useful but there's none to apply any.)-Reduce conditions removed by Chapter 2: Radiant Recovery from 3 to 2.-Reduce conditions removed by Absolute Resolution from 3 to 2.-Reduce the quickness from Potent Haste from 2,5 seconds to 2 seconds.-Reduce the quickness from Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed from 2 seconds to 1,5 seconds. (These 2 nerfs mean you can't provide 100% quickness to 5 allies at 100% BD with Mantra of Solace and Potence alone as you'll need alacrity OR using something else than Restoring Reprieve+Potent Haste to trigger Stalwart Speed an extra time once a min or elite shout to fill the 2s gap. With elite shout you'll only need 60% quickness duration from gears/traits, compared to about 15% currently required.)-Reduce the quickness from elite shout from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. (so you can't just stack 5 DHs and have them use it off-CD for full quickness)-Increase the cooldown of Retaliatory Subconscious from 30 seconds to 40 seconds. (Similar traits Gale Song and Reactive Lenses also have 40s cooldown and this trait is slightly stronger than them. Having 2 direct stun-break traits in one spec is also something special to Virtues.)-Reduce the duration of burning of Chapter 2: Igniting Burst from 6 seconds to 4 seconds. Increase the damage multiplier from 0.55 to 1.2. (Would make Tome of Justice worth using as power firebrand as minor dps boost while nerfing the burn a bit to compensate for increased burn on Ashes of the Just.)-Increase the radius of Chapter 3: Heated Rebuke from 240 to 300 in PVE only. (Not a huge increase but a huge QoL.)-Reduce the stability output of Indomitable Courage from 3 stacks for 4 seconds to 2 stacks for 3 seconds.-Increase the damage multiplier for Hammer Swing and Hammer Bash from 0.8 to 1.0. (Hammer is super-slow weapon with twice as long attack sequence as for ex. thief's sword auto-attack chain and both have 0.8 damage multiplier on first 2 hits.)-Increase the damage multiplier for Zealot's Embrace from 0.8 to 1.1.-Increase the damage multiplier for Banish from 1.0 to 1.6 in WvW and PVP, to 2.2 in PVE. (It's slow, it's obvious, if you get hit to face by it you deserve that damage. And this'd make it worth using in PVE, too.)-Change the number of targets for Empowering Might from 5 to 10. (Choosing this trait allows guardian to provide max. 14 stacks of might for 10-person squad assuming 100% boon duration and triggering the trait exactly off-CD, realistically 10-12 stacks if using a fast-hitting weapon. As opportunity cost this trait competes with Pure of Heart's good heals and Honorable Staff's concentration and staff skill CD reductions. Since it requires critting on an enemy constantly, it can't be abused for excessive might-stacking in WvW. Herald already has similar more reliable trait with complimenting 10-target facet trait and deadeye, tempest and druid have superior mightstacking traits/skills.)-Add 15-second cooldown on Renewed Justice. (Tome of Justice spam is somewhat broken strong when you can trigger that trait instantly, just saying.)-...Wrath of Justice needs something done. It synergises well with Perfect Inscriptions but the other 2 traits synergise better with the other 2 traits.

...oh dear, this would've mostly brought guardian in line with other professions, but already a wall of text and 4 hours spent. Is this enough of an example? Kitty doesn't have energy to write similar thing of every other class (which have way more details to fix.)

Swagger.1459 · November 13, 2019

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

You don’t have a fundamental understanding of elite specs, and other elements to this game, so you should start there before asking questions. And nobody claims there to be perfect balance, so your question is moot and silly to even ask.

JusticeRetroHunter.7684 · November 13, 2019

@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

Reserved for a reply to this post

replies after getting back from grocery store

Heh ya np. I’m at work myself.

Thornwolf.9721 · November 13, 2019

Rather than tone down scourge or firebrand why not bring others up to their level? Why not let us be on the same power level and let everything in the game be forced to meet this bar, This way everyone would be capable of the raw power in their own unique way. Remove the gimicky one shot builds, and the over done just wonky (Perma-stealth 100% burst, boonbeast) builds and make it so the fights last longer because we are all capable of wading in more.

It would slow down the gameplay and let the combat engine shine again, Scourge and Firebrand are at the power that everyone should be at in both utility and application. So just make it so we all have such nuance and strength, then no one would truly have a need to complain because we would stand as equals in terms of kits and potential.

Psycoprophet.8107 · November 13, 2019

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

There is no perfect balance because to achieve that every aspect of every class would have to be standardized across all classes giving each class the exact same tools,skills and traits leading to 0 class identity and deversity but I think when people talk balance they mean the illusion and feeling of balance between non standardized classes. Perfect balance may not be achievable while keeping class identity but a state where healthy competition can occur are plausible.

ThomasC.1056 · November 13, 2019

Hello,

@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity.

I agree with that, and I wanted to thank you for your very interesting insight.

I'd go farther though. It's not only a matter of builds. It's also a matter of what they have in front of them. If the game mode is exceedingly demanding, then it's logically less forgiving. Which is why, as you stated, subpar comp lead to severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage. If you raid boss is extremely demanding, then among all the options available, only a few of them will be good enough to face it effectively. So eventhough you have a theoretical diversity, it may not shine just because of that. Then, in regular PvE, you've got far more choices at a given role that will be enjoyable and fulfilling, because the game mode is far less demanding.

@LadyKitty.6120 said:Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner.

I'm not sure it's a matter of dynamics. Even if it probably plays a role, to me, the thing is : tools available are raid-like DPS specs, to use against enemies that don't have raid-like sustain, unless it's a zerg.

So, interestingly enough, DPS shines far more than sustain in small scale. Because as you can get raid-like DPS in front of you, it means that encounters can be really demanding in terms of efficiency, so among all the options, only the most forgiving builds remain if players want to survive. And this is how you get one-shot builds, high escape builds, TB Mirage, perma-stealth and whatever cheese is the current flavor, with a tactic consisting in dispatching the foe in the shortest amount of time.

In a larger scale, more roles appear, so in addition to raid-boss-like DPS, you can have raid-boss-like sustain in front of you, so you have to spec for sustain as well, but the reasoning follows : as it's extremely demanding, it's not forgiving, so only the best builds are kept.

To me, it's a pity, and I really hope that toning down everything across the board in WvW will help make the game-mode less demanding because of sheer figures, which would allow more build diversity to be viable, because the effectivity of a given build would shift towards more skill.

Excursion.9752 · November 13, 2019

A game like this balance is pretty much mathematically impossible there are far to many moving variables to account for. Anet would have to reduce the amount of variables to even attempt it. They would have to give us pre built options to truly attempt "Balance" and no body wants that. That's why every time is see a balance patch I just laugh because its an oxymoron to me.

As for more valid builds I'm always for that but its easier said than done.

Obtena.7952 · November 13, 2019

^^ Totally agree with that ... the fact that Anet continues to sell players on 'balancing' is the worst joke ever ... and everyone knows it too.

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

There is no perfect balance because to achieve that every aspect of every class would have to be standardized across all classes giving each class the exact same tools,skills and traits leading to 0 class identity and deversity but I think when people talk balance they mean the illusion and feeling of balance between non standardized classes. Perfect balance may not be achievable while keeping class identity but a state where healthy competition can occur are plausible.

No, you just answered his question ... everything would have to be EXACTLY the same, except in name, to be perfectly balanced. Literally, the steps to perform this task is to wipe out everything that gives players meaningful choices in how classes perform.

So show of hands ... who would rather play a game with NO choices that's perfectly balanced ... or a game with more choice than you can practically use with balance all over the place? The answer is that there is SOME middle ground there ... enough choice to satisfy a wide range of playstyles that players want but narrow enough to allow a game dev to not have an insurmountable task of adjusting things to have equivalent performances.

GW2 is way past that ... way to far over on the 'diversity' side, offering players lots of options. To be fair, it fits the targeted market profile anyways, whether that's intended or not. if you want to market to players that play occasionally, do you think they want interesting choices/playstyles ... or balance? I'm betting on choice.

Psycoprophet.8107 · November 13, 2019

@Obtena.7952 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

There is no perfect balance because to achieve that every aspect of every class would have to be standardized across all classes giving each class the exact same tools,skills and traits leading to 0 class identity and deversity but I think when people talk balance they mean the illusion and feeling of balance between non standardized classes. Perfect balance may not be achievable while keeping class identity but a state where healthy competition can occur are plausible.

No, you just answered his question ... everything would have to be EXACTLY the same, except in name, to be perfectly balanced. Literally, the steps to perform this task is to wipe out everything that gives players meaningful choices in how classes perform.

So show of hands ... who would rather play a game with NO choices that's perfectly balanced ... or a game with more choice than you can practically use with balance all over the place? The answer is that there is SOME middle ground there ... enough choice to satisfy a wide range of playstyles that players want but narrow enough to allow a game dev to not have an insurmountable task of adjusting things to have equivalent performances.

GW2 is way past that ... way to far over on the 'diversity' side, offering players lots of options. To be fair, it fits the targeted market profile anyways, whether that's intended or not. if you want to market to players that play occasionally, do you think they want interesting choices/playstyles ... or balance? I'm betting on choice.

Nobody wants to lose their classes identify and unique feel. If all classes were standardized with each other u may as well delete all but one and just allow the player to name it lol the game would be barren ina few days easy.

Obtena.7952 · November 13, 2019

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:
@Obtena.7952 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:
@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@LadyKitty.6120 said:
@Psycoprophet.8107 said:Is balance is decent across all builds and classes more builds would be viable allowing for more build deversity no? Also having reworking traitline's to have more useful traits would open up diversity within the builds themselves cuz as of now almost ha f seem to have 0 synergy with anything and arnt worth taking.

^This.

And when it comes to roles, meta defines strict roles in squads in each gamemode. Trying anything else results in subpar comp if the roles are dominated by a few exact builds due to strong imbalance. If a gamemode had good balance among the builds, people could play around with various comps, roles and builds without severe roflstomp'd level disadvantage, just slight disadvantages for not playing the meta. In Kitty's opinion it's not the huge diversity of results that makes a huge build diversity but many builds with diverse playstyles (many of which work more or less efficiently) being valid alternatives for the same role creating a the real build diversity. Once again, Kitty's not much of a WvWer ('cause too slow reaction times to be efficient as anything but zerg support) but in PVE she's been able to fiddle around with many kinds of builds (like tank/mightbot/condi tempest or power/heal/boon reaper) effectively due to decent (not perfect) balance as she's aimed for decent, lower-than-meta efficiency. Though even then, there's still many builds like hammer on every profession that uses it and rifle warrior that do so low dps, heal-engi giving too low might for a primary healer and heal-deadeye, warrior and chrono providing tad bit too low heals that even Kitty can't bring them to any but the easiest bosses and say she's pulling her weight (and ironically hammer seems to be a widely-used weapon in competitive gamemodes, looking at people complaining about Coalescence of Ruin-nukes).Of course, in WvW and PvP due to their more dynamic nature, the imbalance causes way bigger issues due to performance differences between comps increasing the gap between them exponentially (while the gap is linear in PVE due to enemy always being equal strength regardless of squad comp unless it scales up according to number of players) and thus reducing the diversity in a way worse manner..

Kitty, let me directly challenge you with a paradox.

How would you achieve “perfect” balance.

By perfect, I mean perfect where nobody ever complains about anything. How would you actually take steps to do such a task.

Once you answer that question I’ll present you with a situation that will show that your balance won’t be perfect. But in the mean time humor the question.

There is no perfect balance because to achieve that every aspect of every class would have to be standardized across all classes giving each class the exact same tools,skills and traits leading to 0 class identity and deversity but I think when people talk balance they mean the illusion and feeling of balance between non standardized classes. Perfect balance may not be achievable while keeping class identity but a state where healthy competition can occur are plausible.

No, you just answered his question ... everything would have to be EXACTLY the same, except in name, to be perfectly balanced. Literally, the steps to perform this task is to wipe out everything that gives players meaningful choices in how classes perform.

So show of hands ... who would rather play a game with NO choices that's perfectly balanced ... or a game with more choice than you can practically use with balance all over the place? The answer is that there is SOME middle ground there ... enough choice to satisfy a wide range of playstyles that players want but narrow enough to allow a game dev to not have an insurmountable task of adjusting things to have equivalent performances.

GW2 is way past that ... way to far over on the 'diversity' side, offering players lots of options. To be fair, it fits the targeted market profile anyways, whether that's intended or not. if you want to market to players that play occasionally, do you think they want interesting choices/playstyles ... or balance? I'm betting on choice.

Nobody wants to lose their classes identify and unique feel. If all classes were standardized with each other u may as well delete all but one and just allow the player to name it lol the game would be barren ina few days easy.

Yeah that's exactly the point of this whole thread ... the next step in this theoretical discussion is this:

Just hypothesizing here but GW2 (and maybe all MMO's) are going to lean more to Diversity than Balance, because people are probably more tolerant of nonequivalent choices than limited choice and with many choices ... there are likely to be a good overlap of equivalent choices ANYWAYS. Players looking for balance can FIND it in SOME of the choices available to them, so more diversity is going to lead to a greater level of overall player satisfaction than forcefully balancing things will do. If it wasn't for those choices, we would all be playing FPS or RTS games, where the focus isn't on the character-building. But we don't, because generally, MMO players value choices to develop their characters how they see fit.

So really, the fix to balance isn't microscopically examining all these top performing builds and nerfing them ... or bottom builds with a buff. That's a fool's errand. Balancing will NATURALLY occur as the number of builds increases within the range. As long as Anet keeps a check on absolutely ridiculous effects and results ... they don't need to pretend like they they are making meaningful balance changes with a few percent change to this skill or that skill.

God.2708 · November 13, 2019

So, as a writing exercise I suppose since Justice is kinda bad at explaining himself and his subject material. The goal of this is, essentially, to state that Justice is horribly wrong about what they imagine Arenanet is doing with the game. (Based on their responses and statements like "Anet is probably aware of this class disparity and their response to this is to tone down the two classes which they believe will "free up" the other seven classes. Here is where i believe Anet is making a mistake...in fact where everyone is making a mistake.")

Let's create a game. We will call it polymock wars. There are 3 classes in this game each with two skills. Every class has one skill that deals damage (the same amount) and then they have a second skill that either stuns a player for some time, heals a player, or removes a stun from a player. These classes duke it out in a 3v3 arena. You might presupposition that various compositions will arise, a team of three stun players tries to keep the enemy team stunned as much as possible. Another runs one healer and two stun removers to keep the team topped off to counter the stun spammers. You get the picture.

Now where Justice gets bad at explaining themselves is the issue of balance in the above scenario (and by proxy GW2). There are two ways you can balance the above. You can balance it to equality, or you can balance it to force change (tilt the scale another way). You would do the former by giving every class a third, and then fourth skill, so they are all running the exact same skill set. You do the latter by adjusting numbers, like make the stun lengths shorter to discourage stun spamming or increase the amount healed to make stunning healers more valuable.

Justice says that the above is the wrong way to go about things. Most of the time they argue from the Point of View of the former case, but they equate both of them in all their arguments (or at least haven't provided a clear definition to work from). Instead they say the best way to balance the game (WvW specifically I assume given the forum location) is to introduce more options. IE introduce a class that increases damage, and another class that reduces healing. In a 3v3 this would ultimately be a dumb thing as you are just adding more to the platter to try to balance and you create a GW1 RA situation where people identify the necessary thing to win and the rest is basically left to lottery because its a big rock paper scissors match.

However, WvW is a sandbox mode pvp. Team sizes are not determined and can vary drastically. Because of this their argument has some merit. If instead of it being 3v3 it was an XvX with the number of enemy players constantly changing then you'd obviously want to increase diversity to better balance because then you leave the balance in the players hands to determine. If a player wants to only fight small fights, they work out what they want their team to do and what tools they need to do that, and quickly evacuate situations that are not that (because in a sandbox mode running away is always an option).

My qualms with Justice's argument is that they completely misinterpret Anets work with balance patches (which are generally directed at diversifying builds, not balancing them) and their job in the complex system (it should be to re-assess and balance goals of the system, not the moving pieces, since it is mostly a sandbox game aside from Competitive PvP).

We don't even have to look far to see that is the case. What did the most recent balance patch do? Yes it tweaked some skills here and there, that mostly falls under the latter case of balancing to tilt the scale one way or another. There is no homogenizing going on. It is a case of 'This is showing up to much, how can we adjust it so something else shows up more?'. Sometimes they fail. Such is life. However they also completely changed the Tactics line and Warhorn on warrior, vastly improving its ability to perform a healer/support role (diversifying the number of things a warrior can do). Changed the Death Magic line to give a more varied tank line to necromancers that wasn't so minion dependent.

Diversity is their goal. They recognized that 5 party limits was handicapping build diversity and adjusted several important skills to 10 man to reduce the necessity of those players being in every party. They adjust very under performing trait lines to give options (typically through the lense of roles, but it is important to recognize this is self imposed). They change utilities to make more unique options (Thief traps -> Preparations, Ammo system on some abilities). They change elite specializations to have 'negatives' so taking an elite specialization isn't seen as necessary. They do it slowly, and re-visit things because it is difficult to ensure things are healthy at the same time, but it is their priority in patches.

Likewise whilst they should utilize balance to flip the scales to ensure things stay 'fresh'. Their goal for increasing diversity should be to adjust the goals of the system. There is plenty of diversity in the game, it simply has no motivation to shine. It does not matter how many different changes you make, how many trait lines you re-vamp or if you re-vamp the entire trait system itself. WvW as it stands is about killing enemy players, and there are three things needed to do that. Abilities that hurt as much as possible (Single targets for roaming obviously, as many people at once for larger fights), Abilities that make the opponent vulnerable, and then Abilities that stop the enemy from doing those things to you. Can split skills, change shit, whatever. After every diversifying change you can think of, there will be between 1-5 classes that do those things best and will sit at the top (because of the 5 party limit).

@ThomasC.1056So, interestingly enough, DPS shines far more than sustain in small scale. Because as...

Also wanted to take a moment to address this. Sustain shines more than DPS in every scale. The reason damage prevails is because damage is done locally whilst sustain prioritizes party. IE when you walk into an enemy bomb, several unlucky players take the brunt of 15+ players damage, but only receive the support of 0-5 players (depending on the number of supports in the party, 2 usually in this meta). I am sure you have been in an instance where some trolly druid or thief in pure minstrels runs around keeping 3+ players busy.

ugrakarma.9416 · November 13, 2019

the root of problem is the GW2 unwriten law of "every professions can be everything", this end in null identity: "if every profession can play any role, then every profession is nothing". Also this lead to overstacking, for some months the problem was condition, then is becoming CC, or boon-overstacking, or damage, or bunkers... this is never ending problem because every class had a bit of every role, so its easy overstack any game mechanic.

ugrakarma.9416 · November 13, 2019

about OP he is right on several points, just couldn't express himself well.

And he's wrong about 9 professions, is actually 27 (or more, I'm simplifying), because one profession is basically the combination of the 3 traitlines, 9x3 = 27, is a simplistic calculation, but shows that GW2 has already saturated traitlines, and excessive choices to players. Which GW2 need is make the other options more meaningful, not add more.

LadyKitty.6120 · November 14, 2019

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:the root of problem is the GW2 unwriten law of "every professions can be everything", this end in null identity: "if every profession can play any role, then every profession is nothing". Also this lead to overstacking, for some months the problem was condition, then is becoming CC, or boon-overstacking, or damage, or bunkers... this is never ending problem because every class had a bit of every role, so its easy overstack any game mechanic.

All professions can do most of the stuffs, though. As someone who's taken that to insane extent, Kitty says that unique gameplay is the identity. And pretty much every professions and elite specialization has their own distinct gameplay (usually even main-hand weapons have wildly different playstyles, for ex. thief staff vs dagger vs pistols vs rifle). What leads to overstacking is some profession doing some competitively important thing way better than anyone else without needing to rely on other classes for getting close to full squad potential. Currently necros, guards and mesmers are pretty much the worst abusers in this regards.

Just to prove that every profession can do most of the stuffs. (+ if the can do it, - if they can't do it) This kinda includes both PVE, WvW and PvP important things.

! Guardian! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos (might need to evade some pizzas)! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! + provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! - can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! + can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Mesmer! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites! - provides full might for 5! - provides full fury for 5! + provides full quickness for 5! + provides full alacrity for 5! - provides protection for 5! - provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! + can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill (only if you kill the enemy before the Illusion of Life ends)! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! + can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! + can portal squadies! Revenant! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! + provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! + can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! - can reflect projectiles! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Warrior! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss (barely if you specialize on it but can't bring much else useful things while at it)! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites (Kitty's heard about spellbreakers)! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! - provides protection for 5! - provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! + can remove/corrupt boons! + can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! - provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles (small radius)! + can block projectiles! - can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Ranger! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! - can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles (small radius)! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Thief! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss (barely if you specialize on it, can't heal self well while at it due to how healing trait works)! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites (can be OP while at it)! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5 (with Detonate Plasma)! - provides full alacrity for 5! - provides protection for 5 (with Detonate Plasma)! - provides regen for 5 (with Detonate Plasma)! + can cleanse conditions from allies! + can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! - can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! - provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles (small radius)! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! + can portal squadies! Engineer! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! - can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! + can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles (small radius)! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Elementalist! + does 30k+ power dps! + does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos (doesn't need to move)! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! + provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! - can remove/corrupt boons! - can give barrier to allies! + can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! + provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds! - can give aegis for allies! + can reflect projectiles (small radius)! + can block projectiles! - can pull stuff! - can portal squadies! Necromancer! + does 30k+ power dps! - does 30k+ condi dps! + heals enough to get a decent squad thru a raid boss! + tanks Deimos! + handkites! + provides full might for 5! - provides full fury for 5! - provides full quickness for 5! - provides full alacrity for 5! + provides protection for 5! + provides regen for 5! + can cleanse conditions from allies! +++ can remove/corrupt boons! ++ can give barrier to allies! ++ can revive a group of downed allies 50% in 10 seconds by using a skill! +- provides stab for 5 more than once per 30 seconds (if people somehow walk thru the Trail of Anguish)! - can give aegis for allies! - can reflect projectiles! + can block projectiles! + can pull stuff! - can portal squadies

ugrakarma.9416 · November 14, 2019

@"LadyKitty.6120"

take "healing" for example, with HoT, the Druid was promised at "masterhealing", the problem is that guardian can do that, necro can do that, and list goes on.

but giving this role to more professions will make the problem worsen, not fix it. this will just make the meta goes to "all with xxx role", like occur with bunker meta from time to time. when Anet nerf all damages sources, all you need is just pick-up bunker from any xxx class.

Some roles should be very strict to 1 or 2 class at max: condition makers, CC guys, healers, corrupters. the Scourge fiasco for example, was because they just give the "corruption master" role and "condition master" to same class, when it should be splited....

The playerbase dont help much with cry for more specializations and spreading these roles, i had seen cries for a even a necro with shield(as if the scrapper bunker +warrior bunker wasnt enough, then lets go give that role to necro too!).

And theres roles that should be never walking togheter on same class, (pre-nerfs Scourge: corruption master+condition master) (Scrapper: CC chain master, bunker master, stability master).

Invisibility is one of worst offenders, Anet just distribute this to all evade masters(ranger, mesmers), and ofc to scrapper too.

JusticeRetroHunter.7684 · November 14, 2019

@"God.2708" said:Let's create a game. We will call it polymock wars. There are 3 classes in this game each with two skills. Every class has one skill that deals damage (the same amount) and then they have a second skill that either stuns a player for some time, heals a player, or removes a stun from a player. These classes duke it out in a 3v3 arena. You might presupposition that various compositions will arise, a team of three stun players tries to keep the enemy team stunned as much as possible. Another runs one healer and two stun removers to keep the team topped off to counter the stun spammers. You get the picture.
Now where Justice gets bad at explaining themselves is the issue of balance in the above scenario (and by proxy GW2). There are two ways you can balance the above. You can balance it to equality, or you can balance it to force change (tilt the scale another way). You would do the former by giving every class a third, and then fourth skill, so they are all running the exact same skill set. You do the latter by adjusting numbers, like make the stun lengths shorter to discourage stun spamming or increase the amount healed to make stunning healers more valuable.
Justice says that the above is the wrong way to go about things. Most of the time they argue from the Point of View of the former case, but they equate both of them in all their arguments (or at least haven't provided a clear definition to work from). Instead they say the best way to balance the game (WvW specifically I assume given the forum location) is to introduce more options. IE introduce a class that increases damage, and another class that reduces healing. In a 3v3 this would ultimately be a dumb thing as you are just adding more to the platter to try to balance and you create a GW1 RA situation where people identify the necessary thing to win and the rest is basically left to lottery because its a big rock paper scissors match.

So i thought pretty deep about your example of this poly-mock game. And essentially what you have is a fundamental misunderstanding. You are taking the idea that diversity and balance are the same thing, which they are not. In your above example, you missed a very important thing that you need to mention, which is the impact that those balance changes do to the poly mock game. I went ahead and really broke down this polymock game and went ahead with identifying what would happen for each particular scenario you laid out in your post.

Let's start with your first scenario:

"You can balance it to equality, or you can balance it to force change (tilt the scale another way). You would do the former by giving every class a third, and then fourth skill, so they are all running the exact same skill set."

The first thing to note about this balance change is that as you give each class the same skills, the number of total compositions decrease. In your very first and unadulterated iteration of the polymock game, there are a total of 9 possible compositions, which i'll be calling Class A, Class B, and Class C, and each class has 2 skills, which i will assign 2 numbers to distinguish them from each other, the first number being the attack [1], which is default on all classes, and the 2nd ability which is either a stun [2], heal[3] or stunbreak[4] :

Class A has access to [1][2], Class B has access to [1][3] and Class C has access to [1][4], and in total give you 9 possible compositions.

! A A A! A A B! A A C! A B B! A B C! B B C! B B B! C C C! C C B

Now, let's inact your first balance change, which is "giving every class a third, and then fourth skill, so they are all running the exact same skill set." Which as you would suspect reduces the total amount of compositions to 1 in total, which is that every class is exactly the same, so there are no unique compositions you can make.

! A=B=C

Let's now inact your 2nd balance change, which is "by adjusting numbers, like make the stun lengths shorter to discourage stun spamming or increase the amount healed to make stunning healers more valuable. " In this situation, the total number of compositions decrease, based on what exactly you change. Let's say for example you wanted to make stun lengths shorter. That means build compositions that feature groups with stuns have less effectiveness than groups that don't. This has an effect on groups that use stunbreaks as well, since stuns themselves are less useful, so are stunbreaks by proxy, which leaves only the following combinations as the most optimal in this post stun/stunbreak nerf envirnment

! B B B

Let's take the other example of a change in which you buffed healing by any arbitrary value. This now means that all compositions that involve healing are now better than groupings that do not. Groupings that feature stuns now take a front seat to help kill healers, making compositions with the most healers, and the most stunners more valuable than one's that do not.

! A A B! A B B! A B C! B B B

The real conclusion you should be reaching here isn't how arbitrary such balance would have on the number of compositions, it's that the number of compositions will never exceed the maximum amount of combinations, and changes that "balance" them will only tend to decrease the amount of possible combinations. Funnily enough, balance in one area creates imbalance for another, and overall the polymock game becomes less diverse, and by proxy imbalanced.

Let's now look at increasing diversity. To increase diversity i'm going to make the example you proposed much simpler and more practical. To add diversity to the polymock game, you would give each class the option to, instead of taking skill [2][3] or [4], they would have the option to use another skill instead [5][6] or [7] depending on their class. So Class A would be able to use 1[2] or 1[5]. Class B would be able to choose 1[3] or 1[6] and Class C would be able to choose 1[4] or 1[7]Let's pretend for now that ability [5] is block, [6] is dodge, and [7] DoT damage.

The total number of possible compositions increases from 9, to at least 36 possible combinations (There might actually be significantly more than that, not 100% sure but i'm a bit too lazy to figure out the exact number). Below i wrote only one of the iterations for one of the composition types.

! Combinations of AAA! AAA! 1[2],1[2],1[2]! AAA! 1[2],1[5],1[2]! AAA! 1[2],1[5],1[5]! AAA! 1[5],1[5],1[5]

So the number of combinations of each composition increases by a significant margin. Where does the balance come in? It doesn't. Remember this is your unadulterated poly mock game, we changed nothing about the skills other than adding more options without increasing the number of classes, or number of players in a game. The only thing we did was literately introduce more options, and by proxy, possible compositions. Balance by way of diversity comes in, when the builds compete with one another. If all the possible compositions are competitive with each other (which means no particular compositions are distinctly oppressive to the games diversity), than it's "balanced" by way of diversification.

God.2708 · November 14, 2019

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:
@"God.2708" said:So the number of combinations of each composition increases by a significant margin. Where does the balance come in? It doesn't. Remember this is your unadulterated poly mock game, we changed nothing about the skills other than adding more options without increasing the number of classes, or number of players in a game. The only thing we did was literately introduce more options, and by proxy, possible compositions. Balance by way of diversity comes in, when the builds compete with one another. If all the possible compositions are competitive with each other (which means no particular compositions are distinctly oppressive to the games diversity), than it's "balanced" by way of diversification.

The results of the balance changes are irrelevant. There is no state of perfect balance so all 9 combinations of being viable cannot exist. You will at best have 6 viable combinations (Remove the compositions with 3 and 2 of the 'weak' performer). Changes to balance can achieve this number, it just changes which is the weak performer and so which 6 combinations show up. The only time all 9 combinations are viable are if they are all the same (and thus there is only 'one' combination). The examples of balance changes were not meant to illustrate an increase is build combinations. It was meant to illustrate you can utilize balance to bring forward different combinations.

Your example of diversity does have more combinations than my example, but they are ultimately the same thing in terms of diversity, the fact that your new 'builds' are on the same classes does not change the number available to a team. (5 4 3 = 60 combinations vs your 6 5 4 = 120 combinations). And you would have to sprinkle some balance onto this to ensure there is in fact more combinations (as perhaps when introduced the DoT is so strong you would be stupid to take anything but 3 of those making only one combination viable) so balance does enter. Remember perfect balance does not exist.

The fact you focused on my example that was meant to illuminate the definitions you have been using (and you utilized them yourself to indicate they are indeed correct) but ignored the actual crux of my argument has me ????.

Obtena.7952 · November 14, 2019

Some run away discussion here. To be honest, there isn't much value in proposing these fictitious scenarios to argue about ... we have the real thing right here ... and many other MMO's too.

JusticeRetroHunter.7684 · November 14, 2019

@"God.2708" said:The results of the balance changes are irrelevant. There is no state of perfect balance so all 9 combinations of being viable cannot exist. You will at best have 6 viable combinations (Remove the compositions with 3 and 2 of the 'weak' performer). Changes to balance can achieve this number, it just changes which is the weak performer and so which 6 combinations show up. The only time all 9 combinations are viable are if they are all the same (and thus there is only 'one' combination). The examples of balance changes were not meant to illustrate an increase is build combinations. It was meant to illustrate you can utilize balance to bring forward different combinations.
Your example of diversity does have more combinations than my example, but they are ultimately the same thing in terms of diversity, the fact that your new 'builds' are on the same classes does not change the number available to a team. (5 4 3 = 60 combinations vs your 6 5 4 = 120 combinations). And you would have to sprinkle some balance onto this to ensure there is in fact more combinations (as perhaps when introduced the DoT is so strong you would be stupid to take anything but 3 of those making only one combination viable) so balance does enter. Remember perfect balance does not exist.
The fact you focused on my example that was meant to illuminate the definitions you have been using (and you utilized them yourself to indicate they are indeed correct) but ignored the actual crux of my argument has me ????.

This is where your misconception of the entire concept comes about. The balance you are talking about and the balance brought about by diversity are two different things.The balance brought about by diversity is competition. Competition doesn't exist in the balance that YOU are talking about.

Let's go deep again into the polymock game again. We start with the unadulterated version of your polymock game. You then introduce some arbitrary balance change and you are left with an arbitrary number of combinations. These combinations compete with each other, so now you only have say, 4 compositions that can compete, with the other 5 not being able to compete and they fall by the wayside. The higher the amplitude of "balance" changes you make to this polymock game, the greater the divide in builds that are able to compete with each other. So the more you buff stuns for example, then AAA garners less and less competition from CCC, and the amount of builds that are able to compete with each other will eventually collapse to one, which is the behavior you describe here:

as perhaps when introduced the DoT is so strong you would be stupid to take anything but 3 of those making only one combination viable

Now, the key thing here that you DO NOT UNDERSTAND, is that by decreasing the competition you are decreasing the ways for one composition to be countered by another composition. By contrast, Increasing competition provides more ways for one composition to "counter"(which is just another word for compete with...) another composition.

So now lets say you take the route of making the game more diverse. As you increase the number of different compositions, so does the competition increase. Let's say you now introduce an arbitrary balance change that increases the effectiveness of stuns. The higher in amplitude of this balance change, the less compositions are able to compete with one another, and again you arrive toward the same behavior you've described because of the balance change you've introduced. There is no debate on that. The difference here is that you need a higher factor of amplitude for this change in order to negate the same proportion of compositions. so if you have 90 different compositions, and the balance change made stuns twice as strong, then you've narrowed down the number of different compositions that can compete with each other to 40. That's 40 compositions that can still compete with each other over having 9 different compositions that can have only 4 different compositions that can compete with each other. If you want to reduce the competition to 4 different compositions, your balance change has to be 10 times more effective. To break it down, the AAA composition in our more diverse game now has to not only deal with CCC as competition, but with C1[7] B1[6] C[7] and every other additional variation that sought to compete with it, so the balance change you introduce has to be more and more significant in comparison if you want to set the competition that AAA has to deal with reduce to 1.

This isn't even the primary misconception that you have here on the subject. It's that as you introduce more diversity, you by proxy introduce more competition. Competition in and of itself is a form of balance, and it's not the same type of balance that you are familiar with. The balance you have converges to a singular composition, while competition converges towards an infinite number of compositions. Even when you introduce balance changes that try to decrease competition, because the system is diverse, it will always have more compositions available that can compete than a system that isn't diverse. more compositions = more competition. More competition = balance.

There are actually well established descriptions of the things i'm describing that exist in other fields, where this key property of divergence/convergence takes on different syntax based on the complex systems own set of rules. In economics for example, There are two "infinities". both are the same in terms of what they do, but they are on separate ends of the same spectrum. One is "monopolistic economy" and the other is "a perfect competition" economy. I've shared a quote and a link below so you can see what i'm talking about.

! "The long-run characteristics of a monopolistically competitive market are almost the same as a perfectly competitive market. Two differences between the two are that monopolistic competition produces heterogeneous products and that monopolistic competition involves a great deal of non-price competition, which is based on subtle product differentiation."! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition

Note: Don't be confused by their syntax and definitions, as their definition of diversity comes from the differentiation of products. Our diversity comes from the differentiation of builds. Products are not the same as builds.If you read carefully into it, you'll see that this and gw2 is basically the same, you just have to invert the syntax with the properties that are in common with gw2.

Anyway, i'm currently looking for a source that i can share with you that has formalism closer to our game rather than the economy. Just don't want you to get confused thinking that the monopoly of a single class in gw2 will give us infinite build diversity lol. (because i'm sure you would try to draw this conclusion based on the monopolistic economy formalism alone and then try to use such a conclusion against me to try and say my point is wrong /sigh)

The importance of Build Diversity and why it's more important than balance.

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