Standardize Base HP/Defense or make them make sense...

[Zeesh.7286]

Tldr; armor and hp should be same for all classes since the stat sets like zerker are the same and all classes have dps/tank/healer roles (or that is the 'design philosophy' *rolls eyes* of anet).

 

In most games, there is magic armor and physical armor. Light armor gives more magic defense vs physical defense compared to Heavy armors. Medium armors have a balance of magic and physical defense.

 

GW2 does not have magic defense as a separate metric so why exactly do light, medium and heavy armors exist?? This is even worse when you consider the fact that berserker or minstrel stats on both Heavy and Light armor add the same power/healing bonuses. Who would want to wear Light armor when Heavy armor gives the exact same power stats but with higher defense??? Light armor offers lower defense compared to heavy armor and is absolutely inferior!! Realistically it makes zero sense for anyone to wear light armor in this game by choice except for aesthetics...

 

So okay, maybe light armor is for classes that are supposed to be more mobile? Or maybe it is meant to be a balancing factor because Light armor classes are ranged and heavy armor classes are melee based so lower defense and HP is to compensate for the range advantage. BUT... Revs/Guards/Warriors all have viable ranged weapons! And Light armor classes are running melee weapons?? Let's look at Ele which as a class has the lowest HP and Defense. Yet the most viable weapon set for this class is a melee ranged dagger. Revenants wearing a heavy armor are running around with bows! And please don't give the bunker weaver argument. Bunker weaver getting barriers is not a viable way to offset the piss poor base stats for the class. Core Ele is absolutely garbage. The barriers and evades feel like a way to compensate the flaws in the design and whenever they try to compensate they often give either too much or not enough..

 

Right now what seems to be happening is that Anet made random decisions when the game originally appeared while creating classes without planning what they wanted each class to excel at or be bad at to balance them all out and now every balance attempt is a hotfix to mitigate issues originally rooted in the shortsighted class designs. If you want every class to be have a viable tank/dps/healer variant then every class needs to at least have some sort of level core base no? Otherwise build these classes to only suit certain roles. Heavy armors should be tanks/ supports. Medium should be DPS, Light should be CC users? Right now they're trying to give every class the ability to play each role and it's not turning out well leading to ultimately only a few classes with a few select builds being viable in a competitive game...

 

I really hope Anet takes a meaningful look at base stats for all classes and starts balancing by establishing some principles at least. Why does an ele deserve lowest HP/Defense pool vs. a Rev when both are running a berserker set which gives out the same power/precision/ferocity stats. The ele gets 2 shot in wvw zergs while the rev runs around with blocks and evades while having higher defense and HP?

 

Anyway I get that at this point asking anet to make some sort of sensible and rationalized design choices while developing game mechanics is a stretch... I mean... like... this is a game where we have greatswords shooting laser beams on mesmers, hammers on revs having 1200 range meanwhile a Holosmith gets more melee range on their SWORD in forge mode compared to a Warrior wielding a GREATSWORD.. anyway rant/questioning/suggestions whatever over.

[Zeesh.7286]

10 secs after pressing post and I've now realized how much time I wasted on this.. and how it will most probably lead to nothing..

 

Though I do feel this is still a better discussion topic than nerf teef/weaver/guard/mom threads so there's that at least..

[ollbirtan.2915]

I fail to understand what the problem is. There are no minstrel stats in spvp, and the armor segregation does have its meaning - at least used to. Today, the difference in defence from just armor is really negligible, so yeah - call it aethstetics.

P.S. Forgot very important thing - please nerf teeeeef!

[mes.4607]

I wish DH's base HP was around 15k. They could make it happen

[Fueki.4753]

Back, when GW2 released, those differences in Armour and HP meant something towards balance.

But now, in the absence of balance, they don't matter anymore and simply are a remnant of the past.

[FrownyClown.8402]

Professions with less HP have more mechanics do deal with damage. Stat wise it it can limit builds

[Dadnir.5038]

I think the OP have a lot of prejudices on armors...

It might also be possible that the OP is confusing sPvP and WvW...

 

That said, all in all, armor type and health pool are set as they are in order to balance sustain for each profession. It's all a matter of build and use of the proper skills. to expand on the example of the elementalist and the revenant, If an elementalist want to survive and thus use the utility and weapon skills that he do have to do so, he will be very successful at surviving (one can even claim that the elementalist can build to be better at surviving thanks to the elementalist's ability to actually chose his utility skills.)

 

Stats set and armor might be important at first glance but, in fact, GW2 character survivability rely a lot more on the skills used than stats and armor.

[Math.5123]

> @"FrownyClown.8402" said:

> Professions with less HP have more mechanics do deal with damage. Stat wise it it can limit builds

 

No, they don't. Spellbreaker has far more ways to avoid damage as well as resustaining than say, a firebrand.

 

There are other examples.

[Buran.3796]

> @"Math.5123" said:

 

> No, they don't. Spellbreaker has far more ways to avoid damage as well as resustaining than say, a firebrand.

>

> There are other examples.

 

At the current moment FB has way worse sustain than core Guardian or DH. He's right in the sense that in this game skills and traits matter more than brute stats in terms of both sustain and damage. Also, the difference in armor stats from wearing clothes and heavy plates is almost meaningless: a Elementalist wearing Nomad or Minstrel gear will be on paper more tanky than a Guardian, Warrior or Revenant wearing zerker stats, but if the same Elementalist is riding a fresh air glass canon build and the other ones bunker/support builds the later will have better sustain.

 

At some point this game has in PvP ~30 different amulets even with selectable cores to mixup stats, and more than a dozen usable runes and sigils. Now the variety of usable amulets, runes and sigils have been halved; the last thing it needs is resseting all the clases to have the same HP and armor. Also won't ever happen because traits and skills were already balanced around the basic stats of each class, so making a tabula rasa would be a nightmare in terms of time needed to re-balance all again (by the way, ANet already did a complete rebalance a year ago... just to leave PvP unsupported again).

 

And finally, if you don't like the complexity of having rooks, horses, bishops and pawns on the table just stop playing chess and go play checkers...

[Firebeard.1746]

I completely agree OP and it's something that bothers me all the time, I just haven't posted about it because I'm afraid no one will care. High HP classes seem capable of all the same roles as squishy classes, so there isn't a good reason to play them. Ele is probably the worst off, it doesn't get any passive defenses like guardian or perma stealth like thief to make up for it. This is basically why wizard classes always suck: They're launched with superior offense, other classes whine, get buffed, then the weaker wizard class is never given defense to make up for it. This happens in EVERY MMO and almost every online RPG I've seen.

[Zeesh.7286]

> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

> I think the OP have a lot of prejudices on armors...

> It might also be possible that the OP is confusing sPvP and WvW...

>

> That said, all in all, armor type and health pool are set as they are in order to balance sustain for each profession. It's all a matter of build and use of the proper skills. to expand on the example of the elementalist and the revenant, If an elementalist want to survive and thus use the utility and weapon skills that he do have to do so, he will be very successful at surviving (one can even claim that the elementalist can build to be better at surviving thanks to the elementalist's ability to actually chose his utility skills.)

>

> Stats set and armor might be important at first glance but, in fact, GW2 character survivability rely a lot more on the skills used than stats and armor.

 

I posted it in spvp instead of wvw because it is linked to spvp as well. A berserker amulet on Warrior vs Thief is a difference of 8k HP... insane tbh.. I didn't talk much about HP after typing it in the subject other than the defense stat because I lost steam typing it all down. Soz.. lol

 

Anyway the point is that the game's core philosophy for the classes and their roles is full of holes. Armor distinctions make zero sense

 

I also posted this in spvp because OMFG the absolute dumpster fire threads on QQing about nerfs are so annoying..

 

I just want to wear pauldrons on my ele instead of a shitty skirt and I want plate mail on my engineer instead of ridiculous trenchcoat. Can we please get rid of armors already.. it's god damned 2021 and the stat isn't adding anything remotely like balance..

[Zeesh.7286]

> @"Fueki.4753" said:

> Back, when GW2 released, those differences in Armour and HP meant something towards balance.

> But now, in the absence of balance, they don't matter anymore and simply are a remnant of the past.

 

It is still irritating for me in wvw. My full berserker Rev is with 17ishK hp and the same stats on my weaver is a piss poor 12ishk hp... that's a big difference imho while zerging.

 

In spvp it is worse. Berserker on my Holo vs Berserker on my thief? That's 3k HP that I lose when I switch classes.. (insert obligatory nerf teef qq)

 

A lot of power builds on squishy classes will become viable with HP adjustments across the board imho.. right now almost every build for our squishy classes must incorporate Vitality as a stat through either runes or amulets.. it just feels unfair. Of course sustain is a mix of things other than HP but like it is just irritating to me and feels like an itch at this point that must be scratched. Vitality in spvp window for my thief to ranger to warrior is 1000 base (B A L A N C E D) but God.. that translation into actual hp is so....*rips hair*....

[Zeesh.7286]

> @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> I completely agree OP and it's something that bothers me all the time, I just haven't posted about it because I'm afraid no one will care. High HP classes seem capable of all the same roles as squishy classes, so there isn't a good reason to play them. Ele is probably the worst off, it doesn't get any passive defenses like guardian or perma stealth like thief to make up for it. This is basically why wizard classes always suck: They're launched with superior offense, other classes whine, get buffed, then the weaker wizard class is never given defense to make up for it. This happens in EVERY MMO and almost every online RPG I've seen.

 

I think Sage amulet weaver has excellent sustain. Not the best but it's very decent for the role it has right now.

 

Meanwhile a tempest cries silently in the corner unable to use a berserkers with air overload because it will have 11k HP and die literally the moment the enemy team breathes on it or even looks it's way..forever forced to use Mender's amulet and heal the stupid ally that keeps standing in the Sword of justice without moving, dying to 50 burn stacks, blaming you for not cleansing and QQing in forums about burn.

 

Why does mirage still have a dodge Anet? nerf pls? >_>

[Zeesh.7286]

> @"Firebeard.1746" said:

> I completely agree OP and it's something that bothers me all the time, I just haven't posted about it because I'm afraid no one will care. High HP classes seem capable of all the same roles as squishy classes, so there isn't a good reason to play them. Ele is probably the worst off, it doesn't get any passive defenses like guardian or perma stealth like thief to make up for it. This is basically why wizard classes always suck: They're launched with superior offense, other classes whine, get buffed, then the weaker wizard class is never given defense to make up for it. This happens in EVERY MMO and almost every online RPG I've seen.

 

Also isn't it tragic the most mage like weapon for ele, the staff, is just so.. shit... I started this game because I saw a staff ele gameplay.. *it's 2021 and I have a pikachu face*

[Leonidrex.5649]

big lol, toughness matters, it always did and always will be, if you make hp/armor standard you will have to go through every single prof and change sustain and other things.

Cough cough imagine if weaver gets free toughness+vitality, yea no, no thank you no.

There are ways to mitigate the issue, for example you can take demo/maruder amulets or divinity rune amongst other things. It lets the classes go to the extremes, sure everyone can TRY to have ~ 20k hp and ~ 2300 armor or whatever but SOME can get ~16k, 1900 armor and get more damage and some can get more hp/armor but give up almost all damage.

[Buran.3796]

> @"Zeesh.7286" said:

 

> I just want to wear pauldrons on my ele instead of a kitten skirt and I want plate mail on my engineer instead of ridiculous trenchcoat. Can we please get rid of armors already.. it's god damned 2021 and the stat isn't adding anything remotely like balance..

 

Then use suits. You can cover you Ele in full plate armor if you want: there's plenty of oufits to make him to look like a walrus. And by the way I advise you to take a look at players like Cellofrag or Phantaram, and tell me them "how squishy" are the Eles.

[Zeesh.7286]

> @"Leonidrex.5649" said:

> big lol, toughness matters, it always did and always will be, if you make hp/armor standard you will have to go through every single prof and change sustain and other things.

> Cough cough imagine if weaver gets free toughness+vitality, yea no, no thank you no.

> There are ways to mitigate the issue, for example you can take demo/maruder amulets or divinity rune amongst other things. It lets the classes go to the extremes, sure everyone can TRY to have ~ 20k hp and ~ 2300 armor or whatever but SOME can get ~16k, 1900 armor and get more damage and some can get more hp/armor but give up almost all damage.

 

That's the thing. SOME classes have an edge due to higher HP pool. A tempest or core ele cannot competitively pull off a berserker amulet+ divinity rune combo. Even if it did it would still have 14k HP instead of 11k. While a spell breaker will have 18k (or was it 19k?) Hp With a berserker and dps amulet. It's still 5k more... just because a weaver has good sustain doesn't mean we throw core ele and tempest under the bus. This isn't even an ele thing. Mesmers/Thiefs are also punished with lower HP pools. Many runes are not used because classes are forced to pick vitality boosting runes.

 

Like you said, there are ways to mitigate the "issue". So like.. it is an issue for some classes.

 

It does hurt my sensibilities more in WvW when I see my own Rev having more HP/armor than my staff ele when both run power builds..

 

> @"Buran.3796" said:

> > @"Zeesh.7286" said:

>

> > I just want to wear pauldrons on my ele instead of a kitten skirt and I want plate mail on my engineer instead of ridiculous trenchcoat. Can we please get rid of armors already.. it's god damned 2021 and the stat isn't adding anything remotely like balance..

>

> Then use suits. You can cover you Ele in full plate armor if you want: there's plenty of oufits to make him to look like a walrus. And by the way I advise you to take a look at players like Cellofrag or Phantaram, and tell me them "how squishy" are the Eles.

 

Eww @ gw2 suits. Have SOME taste please.. most of them suck. I will one day make a post asking Anet to take community designs because their team is awful at armor skins. Only a few are palatable. T_T

 

If you're saying look at cellofrag then I guess all game problems solved since we have amazing players in all classes *shrugs*

 

Anyway my core point to reiterate for which I brought up the HP/Armor issue: Balancing and class discrepancies should have some reasoning and principles. Right now it's wild how balancing is happening. They nerfed mistform to hit tempest sustains last year which hits core ele even more than it hits tempest.. they removed cele amulet because of revs so no other class can use it either..

 

"Also just leaving it here last time: **Realistically it makes zero sense for anyone to wear light armor in this game by choice except for aesthetics...**

 

I really hope Anet takes a meaningful look at base stats for all classes and **starts balancing by establishing some principles at least. Why does an ele deserve lowest HP/Defense pool vs. a Rev when both are running a berserker set which gives out the same power/precision/ferocity stats.** "

[Leonidrex.5649]

@"Zeesh.7286" those classes have other reasons for having low HP/armor

you can make glass cannon berserker and nobody gonna get bursted by you cuz you have to walk up to them, meanwhile ele/thief/mesmer can instantly teleport to land the burst, for example. but hey, lets just compare raw stats, its all that matters :)

[Math.5123]

> @"Buran.3796" said:

> > @"Math.5123" said:

>

> > No, they don't. Spellbreaker has far more ways to avoid damage as well as resustaining than say, a firebrand.

> >

> > There are other examples.

>

> At the current moment FB has way worse sustain than core Guardian or DH. He's right in the sense that in this game skills and traits matter more than brute stats in terms of both sustain and damage. Also, the difference in armor stats from wearing clothes and heavy plates is almost meaningless: a Elementalist wearing Nomad or Minstrel gear will be on paper more tanky than a Guardian, Warrior or Revenant wearing zerker stats, but if the same Elementalist is riding a fresh air glass canon build and the other ones bunker/support builds the later will have better sustain.

>

> At some point this game has in PvP ~30 different amulets even with selectable cores to mixup stats, and more than a dozen usable runes and sigils. Now the variety of usable amulets, runes and sigils have been halved; the last thing it needs is resseting all the clases to have the same HP and armor. Also won't ever happen because traits and skills were already balanced around the basic stats of each class, so making a tabula rasa would be a nightmare in terms of time needed to re-balance all again (by the way, ANet already did a complete rebalance a year ago... just to leave PvP unsupported again).

>

> And finally, if you don't like the complexity of having rooks, horses, bishops and pawns on the table just stop playing chess and go play checkers...

 

I never said I didn't like the complexity, I said the values of health or armor are outdated.

 

Look at pvp, right now. Isn't it funny how the tankiest class in the game is the class with the lowest health and armor class?

 

I agree that every class should get a standardized value, be it 15k and medium armor or something else. But you would have to balance things accordingly.

You have classes like thief that would be damn near unkillable with another 4k health slapped on. While a class like zerk ele or zerk guard would get a much needed buffer.

 

I think you may have misunderstood the intent of my post.

[Bazsi.2734]

> @"Zeesh.7286" said:

> Tldr; armor and hp should be same for all classes since the stat sets like zerker are the same and all classes have dps/tank/healer roles (or that is the 'design philosophy' *rolls eyes* of anet).

>

> In most games, there is magic armor and physical armor. Light armor gives more magic defense vs physical defense compared to Heavy armors. Medium armors have a balance of magic and physical defense.

>

> GW2 does not have magic defense as a separate metric so why exactly do light, medium and heavy armors exist?? This is even worse when you consider the fact that berserker or minstrel stats on both Heavy and Light armor add the same power/healing bonuses. Who would want to wear Light armor when Heavy armor gives the exact same power stats but with higher defense??? Light armor offers lower defense compared to heavy armor and is absolutely inferior!! Realistically it makes zero sense for anyone to wear light armor in this game by choice except for aesthetics...

>

> So okay, maybe light armor is for classes that are supposed to be more mobile? Or maybe it is meant to be a balancing factor because Light armor classes are ranged and heavy armor classes are melee based so lower defense and HP is to compensate for the range advantage. BUT... Revs/Guards/Warriors all have viable ranged weapons! And Light armor classes are running melee weapons?? Let's look at Ele which as a class has the lowest HP and Defense. Yet the most viable weapon set for this class is a melee ranged dagger. Revenants wearing a heavy armor are running around with bows! And please don't give the bunker weaver argument. Bunker weaver getting barriers is not a viable way to offset the kitten poor base stats for the class. Core Ele is absolutely garbage. The barriers and evades feel like a way to compensate the flaws in the design and whenever they try to compensate they often give either too much or not enough..

>

> Right now what seems to be happening is that Anet made random decisions when the game originally appeared while creating classes without planning what they wanted each class to excel at or be bad at to balance them all out and now every balance attempt is a hotfix to mitigate issues originally rooted in the shortsighted class designs. If you want every class to be have a viable tank/dps/healer variant then every class needs to at least have some sort of level core base no? Otherwise build these classes to only suit certain roles. Heavy armors should be tanks/ supports. Medium should be DPS, Light should be CC users? Right now they're trying to give every class the ability to play each role and it's not turning out well leading to ultimately only a few classes with a few select builds being viable in a competitive game...

>

> I really hope Anet takes a meaningful look at base stats for all classes and starts balancing by establishing some principles at least. Why does an ele deserve lowest HP/Defense pool vs. a Rev when both are running a berserker set which gives out the same power/precision/ferocity stats. The ele gets 2 shot in wvw zergs while the rev runs around with blocks and evades while having higher defense and HP?

>

> Anyway I get that at this point asking anet to make some sort of sensible and rationalized design choices while developing game mechanics is a stretch... I mean... like... this is a game where we have greatswords shooting laser beams on mesmers, hammers on revs having 1200 range meanwhile a Holosmith gets more melee range on their SWORD in forge mode compared to a Warrior wielding a GREATSWORD.. anyway rant/questioning/suggestions whatever over.

 

Classes having different base healthpools and having different sustain/defensive tools is part of their design. If you standardise armor and health, how would a warrior fight an elementalist? As things stand, a sidenoder sage weaver already forces a sidenoder warrior off of the capture point. Boosting ele health would mean an elementalist can take a more offensive amulet, so you'd have to rebalance (basicly nerf) ele damage.

And if you just raise the health/armor of squishies only to nerf their damage/sustain, all you end up with is a lot of standardized classes which feel the same. Picking a class would be just picking the color of your animations and nothing else.

[Axl.8924]

> @"Zeesh.7286" said:

> Tldr; armor and hp should be same for all classes since the stat sets like zerker are the same and all classes have dps/tank/healer roles (or that is the 'design philosophy' *rolls eyes* of anet).

>

> In most games, there is magic armor and physical armor. Light armor gives more magic defense vs physical defense compared to Heavy armors. Medium armors have a balance of magic and physical defense.

>

> GW2 does not have magic defense as a separate metric so why exactly do light, medium and heavy armors exist?? This is even worse when you consider the fact that berserker or minstrel stats on both Heavy and Light armor add the same power/healing bonuses. Who would want to wear Light armor when Heavy armor gives the exact same power stats but with higher defense??? Light armor offers lower defense compared to heavy armor and is absolutely inferior!! Realistically it makes zero sense for anyone to wear light armor in this game by choice except for aesthetics...

>

> So okay, maybe light armor is for classes that are supposed to be more mobile? Or maybe it is meant to be a balancing factor because Light armor classes are ranged and heavy armor classes are melee based so lower defense and HP is to compensate for the range advantage. BUT... Revs/Guards/Warriors all have viable ranged weapons! And Light armor classes are running melee weapons?? Let's look at Ele which as a class has the lowest HP and Defense. Yet the most viable weapon set for this class is a melee ranged dagger. Revenants wearing a heavy armor are running around with bows! And please don't give the bunker weaver argument. Bunker weaver getting barriers is not a viable way to offset the kitten poor base stats for the class. Core Ele is absolutely garbage. The barriers and evades feel like a way to compensate the flaws in the design and whenever they try to compensate they often give either too much or not enough..

>

> Right now what seems to be happening is that Anet made random decisions when the game originally appeared while creating classes without planning what they wanted each class to excel at or be bad at to balance them all out and now every balance attempt is a hotfix to mitigate issues originally rooted in the shortsighted class designs. If you want every class to be have a viable tank/dps/healer variant then every class needs to at least have some sort of level core base no? Otherwise build these classes to only suit certain roles. Heavy armors should be tanks/ supports. Medium should be DPS, Light should be CC users? Right now they're trying to give every class the ability to play each role and it's not turning out well leading to ultimately only a few classes with a few select builds being viable in a competitive game...

>

> I really hope Anet takes a meaningful look at base stats for all classes and starts balancing by establishing some principles at least. Why does an ele deserve lowest HP/Defense pool vs. a Rev when both are running a berserker set which gives out the same power/precision/ferocity stats. The ele gets 2 shot in wvw zergs while the rev runs around with blocks and evades while having higher defense and HP?

>

> Anyway I get that at this point asking anet to make some sort of sensible and rationalized design choices while developing game mechanics is a stretch... I mean... like... this is a game where we have greatswords shooting laser beams on mesmers, hammers on revs having 1200 range meanwhile a Holosmith gets more melee range on their SWORD in forge mode compared to a Warrior wielding a GREATSWORD.. anyway rant/questioning/suggestions whatever over.

 

Em this is a terrible idea. Some classes like nec for instance which has low mobility and high hp use that to tank attacks. If everyone had high hp and mobility it would not only homogenize but also they would need to give mobility to classes which have lots of health and or blocks to compensate. I also suspect nerfs would have to happen to compensate.

 

A example: ele are meant to be low health mobile class who uses their attacks and condis combined with sustain to keep htem alive. It would be broken if eles had 30k hp with the sustain they had, and they would have to nerf. This would lead to cries and it would homogenize and more people would be angry and quit.