A Better Balancing Philosophy

[N A T E.3108]

For those of us that don’t only play the meta, we often run into the issue of getting caught in the nerfs that are meant to balance the oppressive builds. I main engi, so I’ll use Holo as an example: just recently, to cut back on holo’s sustain, healing turret was given a 50% longer cd. In this situation, core engi was not over-performing due to this skill and it heavily relied on it for what little sustain it has. Core already was in an unplayably bad position before this nerf and yet it got caught in it anyway just as badly if not worse than holo. Effectively creating a “beating a dead horse” scenario.

 

So, the philosophy I am proposing can be simply stated as follows: make changes to the over-performing spec first and the core specs last. There are a few examples where core versions of a class may perform better than the elite versions, so this philosophy won’t be perfect in every situation, but generally speaking, oppressive builds are due to something added to the class in an elite spec. Whether that be a combination of old skills/traits with the new ones or just an outright oppressive new trait/skill specific to the elite spec itself - either way, the issue needs to be addressed at the elite level long before the core level. This can be done by adding trade offs and nerfing the added sustain and damage additions from the elite spec. To use holo again as an example (not that I think it is over-performing by that much right now), if anet wanted to nerf it’s sustain, that can easily be done by further reducing the effectiveness of heat therapy (or reworking it), nerfing holo utilities, or adding another trade-off to the class. Let’s say that prot holo is seen as too oppressively tanky sometime down the line- instead of further nerfing alchemy or core defensive skills to the ground, maybe they add a trade-off to the minor adept (the one that enables photon forge) that makes prot 50% less effective- therefore limiting the effect to holo exclusively. This might be extreme, but the point still stands: most sustain and damage nerfs can be made at the elite spec level without also nerfing the rest of the (often underperforming) class. Obviously, if a skill is oppressive across the board (i.e Rampage), it needs to be dealt with accordingly, but I think a philosophy like this would do wonders for build diversity and overall game balance.

 

Just my two cents.

 

A L I E N

 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

I agree that pvp could use a better balancing philosophy, but there some issues with your suggestions. First and foremost, elite specs are not designed to be equal to core specs, and some PoF specs arent even designed equally with HoT specs. While I agree that tradeoffs can help with this, some of the fundamental designs of elite specs will always make them better than their counterparts. Using engi as an example, holo mode adds fast aoe attacks which are great at pressuring targets in close to mid range, and sword adds a mobile power weapon that has great synergy with shield. Additionally, holo leap adds incredible mobility to the class. Compare this to scrapper hammer, a slow melee weapon with easily avoidable and counterable attacks. And then core engi, where the only power weapon is rifle. Even without considering damage and sustain values, holo already has a massive advantage over the other 2 specs.

 

So for example, if explosive holo is over-performing, as it is now, how do you nerf holo so it doesnt benefit from explosives as much as scrapper or core? The main reasons why holo benefits so much is the added passive damage from explosive entrance, the blinds and daze from flashbang, and the ranged/burst damage from grenade kit. Explosive entrance is very strong on holo because forge skills are fast attacking and difficult to avoid. In other words, explosive entrance can be very easily added to burst combos. Flashbang is very strong on holo because it lets them play very aggressively, which is exactly what forge mode is good at. Grenade kit gives very strong ranged pressure to holo, which complements their strong melee pressure and mobility. It is the synergies between these skills that make explosive holo overpowered, and there isnt an easy solution to nerf holo, and not the other specs. If you end up with something like "explosives do 25% less damage as a holosmith", then you end up with a situation where elite specs have all these seemingly arbitrary disadvantages to them, just to restrict the synergies between skills. I would argue that this kind of tradeoff does nothing to improve gameplay, and it only ends up removing interesting synergies from elite specs. The only other option if you dont nerf explosives would be to nerf holo mobility and slow down forge attacks, which could arguably be a good change, but it requires much more work to implement.

 

To summarize, yeah it sucks that a lot of core specs get nerfed because of elite specs, and it would be nice if they were viable in pvp. However that is just a consequence of elite spec design, and there isnt much that can be done to fix it.

[Tayga.3192]

They should stop thinking about balance and start thinking about freedom of choice.

Every class should be different and satisfy a certain role. This way people wouldn't minmax certain builds but minmax team comps, which is way better. As in, this is already a team game.

[Arheundel.6451]

> @"Tayga.3192" said:

> They should stop thinking about balance and start thinking about freedom of choice.

> Every class should be different and satisfy a certain role. This way people wouldn't minmax certain builds but minmax team comps, which is way better. As in, this is already a team game.

 

This is something which should have been done before launch and before the marketing campaign would start, the game has been sold with tag line " play the way you want" , now you can't expect to have anet go and say :" your class gonna be support only from now on"...yeah thx not, I would insta quit and the vast majority would follow

[aelska.4609]

Having a philosophy is actually what is lacking to the game. So many things were introduced/changed because "wow it sounds cool" and now we just have to deal with inconsistent classes ?‍♂️

[Stand The Wall.6987]

> @"Tayga.3192" said:

> They should stop thinking about balance and start thinking about freedom of choice.

> Every class should be different and satisfy a certain role. This way people wouldn't minmax certain builds but minmax team comps, which is way better. As in, this is already a team game.

 

ye. balance would be fine if there were viable counters to the op builds. instead there is this wvw-esque one up one down scenario.