Mmorpg interviews Anet about Class Balance

[Spurnshadow.3678]

First off, was that AMA on this forum? I don't remember that. Why not have it on the GW2 forums? This infuriates me ever time I see something from Devs like this and I never am able to participate as I'm super late to the party. I go to one place for my GW2 stuff, and it's here, the official forums. So, is Reddit the official forums? "The team gets feedback from a variety of ways. Forums, Reddit, Discord" Discord? WTF? There's an official GW2 discord? Man, I'm so out of touch.

 

What I heard from that article are the ideals that have been laid out since launch. The reality couldn't be furthest from the truth. They've only just now made it so raids weren't so dependent on warriors for might. You still need 2 mesmers for full alacrity/quickness. When PoF lauched there were massive dps discrepencies between classes, which would have gone against their mantra and never should have been released that way. We still have it. Raids will always want the biggest dps, the biggest heals. Until all classes/builds are made to have close dps, i.e. balanced, this will always be, hense m.e.t.a..

 

Metabattle? Really? No offence to anyone here who might be a metabattle guy, but most of the builds there are crap for WvW/PvP. That's not just coming from me, but EVERYONE I play with. They are good starting points for anyone who doesn't know anything, but will soon be diverged upon. No guild group is ever going to post their builds on metabattle. I think the only builds that are close to being used are the ones for raids/fractals.

 

Another basic tenant that they've gotten away from is that melee dps always did a little better than ranged dps. Why? Duh, cause you were at ranged. The melee classes needed to gap close or CC in order to do damage, all the while they were being pelted. That went out the window with HoT with the Rev, power creep over the years from complainers, trying to normalize dps with raids, and now, we have scourge. Shame that.

 

Also, I didn't see anything being addressed about WvW or PvP or the massive discrepancy between power/condi.

 

Kinda a fluff piece.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @Spurnshadow.3678 said:

> First off, was that AMA on this forum? I don't remember that. Why not have it on the GW2 forums? This infuriates me ever time I see something from Devs like this and I never am able to participate as I'm super late to the party. I go to one place for my GW2 stuff, and it's here, the official forums. So, is Reddit the official forums? "The team gets feedback from a variety of ways. Forums, Reddit, Discord" Discord? kitten? There's an official GW2 discord? Man, I'm so out of touch.

>

> What I heard from that article are the ideals that have been laid out since launch. The reality couldn't be furthest from the truth. They've only just now made it so raids weren't so dependent on warriors for might. You still need 2 mesmers for full alacrity/quickness. When PoF lauched there were massive dps discrepencies between classes, which would have gone against their mantra and never should have been released that way. We still have it. Raids will always want the biggest dps, the biggest heals. Until all classes/builds are made to have close dps, i.e. balanced, this will always be, hense m.e.t.a..

>

> Metabattle? Really? No offence to anyone here who might be a metabattle guy, but most of the builds there are crap for WvW/PvP. That's not just coming from me, but EVERYONE I play with. They are good starting points for anyone who doesn't know anything, but will soon be diverged upon. No guild group is ever going to post their builds on metabattle. I think the only builds that are close to being used are the ones for raids/fractals.

>

> Another basic tenant that they've gotten away from is that melee dps always did a little better than ranged dps. Why? Duh, cause you were at ranged. The melee classes needed to gap close or CC in order to do damage, all the while they were being pelted. That went out the window with HoT with the Rev, power creep over the years from complainers, trying to normalize dps with raids, and now, we have scourge. Shame that.

>

> Also, I didn't see anything being addressed about WvW or PvP or the massive discrepancy between power/condi.

>

> Kinda a fluff piece.

 

Theres a problem with how the internet views "integrity" as concept, in which reddit's popularity comes from its perceived status as 3rd party. This has 2 primary effects.....

1. Since Reddit is seen as independent, people believe it can't be manipulated to cover up or alter information like they could on the forums. That has its own series of problems when you realize Reddit isn't the one providing moderation, nor is it unbiased. The upvote/downvote system they use is seen as being representative of "the will of the people". Which is even more ironic since its not a popularity vote, but a user leveraging post vetting system.

2. The forums being an "Official" mouth piece of Anet, it becomes a magnet for people digging up proof for one thing or another. The difference between here and Reddit boils down to things on the forums potentially being able to get them into PR and/or Legal trouble, where as Reddit has a weak veil of plausible deniability, since an Intern could be given permissions too it, and then "make a mistake" to back out of an unpopular response. With the forums, the Moderation staff, and their powers, are controlled by Anet's forum administration; so giving an "intern/volunteer" too much power is 100% on them for not vetting properly.

 

Fortunately the line between the 2 is getting thinner, as social media continues to integrate more tightly with their company identity.... but there is still that stigma of reddit having fewer direct consequences, and the veneer of "freedom to speak ones mind" that makes it less dangerous to make mistakes on.

 

 

> Metabattle? Really? No offence to anyone here who might be a metabattle guy, but most of the builds there are crap for WvW/PvP. That's not just coming from me, but EVERYONE I play with. They are good starting points for anyone who doesn't know anything, but will soon be diverged upon. No guild group is ever going to post their builds on metabattle. I think the only builds that are close to being used are the ones for raids/fractals.

 

This is a side effect of how metabattle works, and competition player's "trade secret" mind set. Metabattle is SUPPOSED to work by a public review and voting process, so the build information can be refined, and increase in conciseness. But the vast majority of players who use metabattle treat it like a wiki..... as in they don't contribute to the information process, and leaving it up to a handfull of people to not only develop the builds, but test/benchmark them for viability. This came to a head this year when a controversy was raised about MB's curators manually flagging builds as "Meta" and down ranking older builds to Great/Good. The accusation is that MB's staff is disregarding public feedback, and just flagging their favorite builds. MB's rebuttal to the accusation is that "they would consider public feedback, if the pubic was actually giving it". Looking at the build rating and comment section, nearly all of the Meta and Great builds have less then 10 ratings total, and rarely more then 1 page worth of comments. Of the totality of ranking feedback and comments, roughly half are affirmations of build viability (with not much other useful information), a quarter asking questions about skill or gear choices (actually useful discussion), and the last quarter nitpicking or lambasting the author about specific choices in the build (sounds helpful, but often isn't).

Now when we raise this up to a real competitive level, you're asking Comp players to tell everyone the builds they run, and how to beat them. And it should be at this point where this doesn't work. Thus its up to the small collective of buildcraft players who DO want to share their ideas to post it up to MB. The majority of the builds work at the PUG tiers, and the strongest builds tend to be ones that do a good job of covering their counter-plays. But improving them with feedback from higher ranked players is unlikely, because it tips their hand, and may require a higher play skill level to use effectively. But this has been a massive boon to WvW on the lower tiers, as its created a standard build listing Commanders can expect to see, and leverage based on their PUG squad comp. At T3 and T4, 50% is going to be PUGs, with maybe 10% running strict GvG comp or hardcore Roamers, and the remaining 40% Community Zerg- a mixture of reasonably competent players and Pugmanders trying to coordinate activity, and lead the rest of the pugs around, so its not a total shit show. The MB builds may not be top performers, but most are reliable enough on a half way decent player.

 

The bigger issue is that most players are afraid of the buildcraft, and is just too expensive to experiment with to play with it on their own. If you were check the build of a average PUG, a LOT of them take very straight forward number bonuses, and have almost no synergy within its setup. It also doesn't help that metabuilds yield substantially higher performance then a rando build. That night and day difference, and no requirement beyond following some instructions, is what makes it so popular with the majority of the population. Even at a fraction of their performance potential, its already higher then what they were running previous, and that middling performance is viable enough for most of what they do. You can't fix that without arbitrarily raising the difficulty level; and that in of itself is not only a shitty way to create difficulty, but also increase your player attrition rate. Raids are the Least played game mode for a reason..... and its not because its made to make a hand full of player egos feel special.

 

For all the legitimate problems that are with the game's design, our bigger issue with player perception of how the game is supposed to work. Because as of right now, players like a system they can cheese, unless that cheese is used against them. And while thats never going to change, you can deemphasize it by replacing the damage scales as the primary performance metric, and using a system that emphasizes mechanical understanding and situational assessment. Its what help make Guildwars1 stand out despite dated graphics and clunky controls; and of the games that went from a difference in kind to a DPS/TTK centric combat models in their sequels, the majority of them haven't managed well as their content expanded over their life times. Its probably too late this far into GW2's life cycle to even remotely resolve this, but its still something to ponder for future titles.

[Caedmon.6798]

"Currently there are some issues with how quickly condition damage can be spiked up, negating the benefits of power damage."

 

But hey as we notice this issue lets start by nerfing the resistance on warrior because they have too much of it before even adressing this condi problem which ruins entire game modes. Anet,what ?

[Sovereign.1093]

> @Bish.8627 said:

> > @Ayrilana.1396 said:

> > Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

>

> THIS. I miss the earlier days when you could roll with what you wanted. Now if you aren't in an optimal build you die or get moaned at.

 

you can still run as you please =) jist keep it a secret

 

[Genesis.5169]

> @Maugetarr.6823 said:

> >Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

>

> Well if they say they're listening to suggestions about conditions, specifically the ramp:

>

> Bleed: Cut damage per tick in half, double the duration

>

> Burning: Cut damage in half, double the duration

>

> Poison: Cut damage per tick by 33%, extend duration by 50%

>

> Torment: Cut damage by 33%, extend duration by 50%

>

> Confusion: Cut damage per tick and ability by 33%, extend duration by 50%.

>

> Total damage is kept the same per ability

> Damage×Duration=1

> 1/2Damage×2/1Duration=1

> 2/3Damage×3/2Duration=1

 

So you basically wanna make conditions worthless every class has condition cleanse expertise is useless in pvp because people do not allow conditions to stay on them that long and if your the type of play who does, you suck its simple as that.

 

Condition damage is fine, all the scrubs who don't know how to bring condi cleanse or resistance WHICH ALL CLASSES HAVE need to just stop pvping.

[DevilishLyx.2340]

They should interview me and I can tell them the real "balance" in the game ;)

 

And I dont see how they dont see the problem with condi!

They compare power with condi and claim obviously you choose the power build.

 

But they forget that:

Power = Power

 

Condi = Bleeding

Burning

Poison

Confusion

Fear

Torment

 

It isnt just one thing like power, several of them can be cast on a single player, and each once can be stacked several times!

 

When you look at the real way, the obvious choice is condi. As it is NOT balanced!

[Crazy.6029]

> @DevilishLyx.2340 said:

> They should interview me and I can tell them the real "balance" in the game ;)

>

> And I dont see how they dont see the problem with condi!

> They compare power with condi and claim obviously you choose the power build.

>

> But they forget that:

> Power = Power

>

> Condi = Bleeding

> Burning

> Poison

> Confusion

> Fear

> Torment

>

> It isnt just one thing like power, several of them can be cast on a single player, and each once can be stacked several times!

>

> When you look at the real way, the obvious choice is condi. As it is NOT balanced!

 

That's true, also direct damage has a stat on gear that actively reduces all incoming damage from that source ( toughness ), where as condis only have vitality which can only act as a small buffer, which really doesn't compare for active damage mitigation . Food for thought Anet :) IF that is in fact how anet is really looking at balance then that pretty much tells me they are completely out of touch with their own player base. Idk , maybe a lot of players just don't care about the current state of condition damage. Seems pretty far out of whack to me...

[ilmau.9781]

here they do miss the main thing, that to have a condi build works you just need the CONDI DAMAGE while to have a power build work you nedd POWER PRECISON FEROCITY

 

so if i want a balanced build (a build who allow me to stay alive and do damage) i can get a working condi build with Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage, while to get a decent power build i need to go for Toughness, Vitality, Power, Precision, Ferocity, so while i can get mix armor, weapons, runes stats and get both option ready the condi setup working on only 3 stats will ALWAYS RESULT A BETTER CHOICE. GG. Not hard to understand to be honest.

[Burnfall.9573]

guys, guys....at least they're honest.

Now the question you should be asking yourself is, are you honest with yourself to accept their honest answers?

 

That's the key.

 

That's what this thread should be about; being honest with yourself. Being honest to accept or to not accept Anet honest truth.

 

Not fighting among ourselves of who is right or who is wrong, or who should post this or who should post that.

 

This is what we all wanted to hear from them, the Truth; with no sugarcoating, just hard truth.

 

(Deep down, you already knew the truth, so why make it harder or complicated?)

 

Once again, what will you do?

 

Continue to be in denial? or to accept reality?

Make a choice for the better? or continue to have reality remind you it is what it is? continue have Anet tell you, no matter what, it is what they want.

 

choose wisely,

 

in the end, the truth prevails.

 

 

[DeceiverX.8361]

> @Ayrilana.1396 said:

> Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

 

And it's this reason as to why raids need to not be designed with roles in mind, and why balancing concepts should be made exclusively for PvP/WvW. The meta will always be harshly in demand and will always be what's optimal. You can't change this. It just becomes a rotation of FoTM. Raids can only be fixed/balanced by encounter design encouraging people to play what they're good at and not encouraging DPS races as they do now. Really, it almost goes without saying that for a game designed to not have a meta/group dependencies/strategies, there needs to not be hardcore PvE; the entire point of hardcore PvE is to optimize, which then mandates setting a precedent.

 

There's no reason to have no-cast-huge-nukes, insane AA damage/spammable abilities, passive defenses, huge mitigation, condi bombs, and so on as potent as they are for PvP/WvW. They exist for PvE and that's a terrible way to approach balance when they barely matter, anyways.

 

With the interview, ANet really needs to understand conditions are overpowered not from just DPS but because they only depend on one stat for those insane ticks which ignore armor. You can run around in WvW as a full-on tank with max condition damage dealing the same damage and burst as a nearly-glass power build.

 

If they just removed dire/tb, conditions would be so much closer to balanced; they've been overpowered in WvW since Dire was added to the game in 2012. People just didn't realize it because condition spam wasn't as real and there was the cap at 25. With powercreeped condition spam, there's no downsides.

[babazhook.6805]

> @DeceiverX.8361 said:

> > @Ayrilana.1396 said:

> > Pretty much how I figured they balanced the game. If players would drop their fixation on optimal builds being the only way to play, they’d have less issues as most of them are self-inflicted.

>

> And it's this reason as to why raids need to not be designed with roles in mind, and why balancing concepts should be made exclusively for PvP/WvW. The meta will always be harshly in demand and will always be what's optimal. You can't change this. It just becomes a rotation of FoTM. Raids can only be fixed/balanced by encounter design encouraging people to play what they're good at and not encouraging DPS races as they do now. Really, it almost goes without saying that for a game designed to not have a meta/group dependencies/strategies, there needs to not be hardcore PvE; the entire point of hardcore PvE is to optimize, which then mandates setting a precedent.

>

> There's no reason to have no-cast-huge-nukes, insane AA damage/spammable abilities, passive defenses, huge mitigation, condi bombs, and so on as potent as they are for PvP/WvW. They exist for PvE and that's a terrible way to approach balance when they barely matter, anyways.

>

> With the interview, ANet really needs to understand conditions are overpowered not from just DPS but because they only depend on one stat for those insane ticks which ignore armor. You can run around in WvW as a full-on tank with max condition damage dealing the same damage and burst as a nearly-glass power build.

>

> If they just removed dire/tb, conditions would be so much closer to balanced; they've been overpowered in WvW since Dire was added to the game in 2012. People just didn't realize it because condition spam wasn't as real and there was the cap at 25. With powercreeped condition spam, there's no downsides.

 

Disagreed. I have already pulled virtually all my condition builds out of Dire or TB (one remains in TB) and there no decrease in effectiveness. The oppoiste is in fact true in WvW. The vast majority of defense and damage mitigation is coming off of the passives (outside Toughness as passive) and or the actives (dodges , blocks invulns). Certainly there times when one can get caught without the same up and running but in such instances the damage output that people can spike in that window is high enough to take down people wearing those armors.

 

At the same time the person that is NOT in Dire can output more damage across a number of builds even in a Condition build. Powercreep does not exist just in condition builds. Dire provides no more protection then in 2012 even as power output damage jumped. I could take out people in Dire in 2012 and can do so today.

 

Case in point is the Scourge builds. If a person on ranged (Ranger, Thief) the Dire armor they might be wearing will not save them. At the same time if you put in an Engineer using Conditions and in Dire Those same ranged builds will have a much more difficult time. Take that same engineer out of dire and taking him out from range is not a heck of a lot easier and will still be more difficult then that Scourge in Dire.

[Maugetarr.6823]

> @"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:

> > @Maugetarr.6823 said:

> > >Moving forward we'll be aiming changes to bring a bit more parity between the options through the ramp time and using that to emphasize some of the differences. That said, a fundamental issue is that foes whose health pools allow them to survive a significant amount of time (beyond the point of condition stack ramping) are going to favor condition builds unless they specifically have mechanics which deal with conditions.

> >

> > Well if they say they're listening to suggestions about conditions, specifically the ramp:

> >

> > Bleed: Cut damage per tick in half, double the duration

> >

> > Burning: Cut damage in half, double the duration

> >

> > Poison: Cut damage per tick by 33%, extend duration by 50%

> >

> > Torment: Cut damage by 33%, extend duration by 50%

> >

> > Confusion: Cut damage per tick and ability by 33%, extend duration by 50%.

> >

> > Total damage is kept the same per ability

> > Damage×Duration=1

> > 1/2Damage×2/1Duration=1

> > 2/3Damage×3/2Duration=1

> That would also require condition removal and resistance gutted across the board accordingly. Strangely you left that part out.

 

Sure, that would be fine. Blow your condi removal too early, then get loaded up with them afterwards, you should die. I'm all for more strategic condi bombs and removal.