Notes for ANET: Analysis of the Attribute Lines

I'd like to give some feedback to ANET regarding where we need the most improvment in Class design - specifically balancing the Class Attribute Lines. I, for one, find diversity in playable builds BY FAR the most interesting thing about GW, and I would like to do everything possible to constructively promote further improving balance/diversity of builds.

NOTE: this discussion is based organized eight-man PvP (which is what this game is balanced upon, IMHO). My apologies to the PVEers (now just go make a MM for crying out loud!)

I am rating each Attribute line on a scale of 1 to 5 for usefulness in organized 8-man PvP. 5 = excellent, 3 = average, 1 = aweful, etc.

******Warrior******

Strength = 2; Average (at best) skills and poor inherent effect
Axes = 5; excellent line with lots of useful skills
Hammers = 5; ditto axes
Swords = 5; best weapon line not requiring an elite, also some interesting Factions elites
Tactics = 3; Some decent skills in here

WARRIOR OVERALL = 4.5; Half the backbone of the game. If only a strength warrior were viable....


******Monk******

Divine Favor 5; Good skills and excellent inherent effect
Healing = 5; excellent line with lots of useful skills
Protection = 5; ditto Healing
Smiting = 2; Only a couple of usable skills in any form of the game

MONK OVERALL = 4.5; The other half of the backbone. Now, if only a Smite monk (w/out prot skills) were viable...


******Mesmer******

Fast Casting 4; Poor skills but that's not the point, excellent inherent effect
Domination = 5; Excellent skills
Illusion = 5; ditto Domination
Inspiration = 5; Ditto Domination, Illusion

MESMER OVERALL = 5; Anet's best job on a class IMO


******Elementalist******

Energy Storage 2; Would be an easy 1 without prodigy
Air 3; A few very good skills, the rest below average
Fire: 3; Similar to Air, some very useful HA skills but most are underpowered
Earth 4; Fits its niche very well
Water 2; Another niche attribute, but should be better at doing what it does

ELEMENTALIST OVERALL = 2.5; An average utility class, but with tons of untapped potential... After all the complaints, the factions skills were very disappointing


******Ranger******

Expertise 5; Awesome inherent effect and good skills, what more could you want?
Marksmanship 3; Good weapon attribute, unfortunately most skills are damage based, which is not a Ranger's job
Wilderness Survival: 5; Wide variety of usefuls skills, I like this line alot
Beastmastery 2; Poor pet AI and skillbar-hogging skills make most of this line virtually unusable in PvP. A couple of good niche skills it's only saving grace

RANGER OVERALL = 4; An excellent all-around class.


******Necromancer******

Soul Reaping 4; Good inherent effect, unreliable but that's the point. Could use a couple of linked skills I think
Blood 4; Pretty good selection of skills - damage is weak considering some of the life sacrifice, but I can see where they're going with it
Curses: 4; Good selection of skills
Death 2; MM not viable in PvP, non-MM skills are below-average. I guess this is a PVE line, so I will cut it some slack...

NECROMANCER OVERALL = 3.5; A pretty good job - offers a diffent type of damage, which is a nice touch, though the damage is a little low to be noticable. New Factions skills were mostly disappointing.


******Assassin******

Critical Strikes 3; Good inherent effect, one very strong skill, the rest are average to poor.
Dagger Mastery 2; Combos were a nice idea, but their fragility makes your options extremely limited
Deadly Arts; Is there anything usable in here?
Shadow Arts; If the 'sins only self heal wasn't in here, it would be another dead attribute line

ASSASSIN OVERALL = 1; Only one-two viable builds makes this class extremely disappointing. The fact that they are even more useless in PVE is confounding ... what was the plan for this class? Definitely alot of work needed here.


******Ritualist******

Spawning Power 3; Good inherent effect, but the fact that your main attribute is tied to spirits makes any non-spirit build feel very gimped.
Channeling Magic 1; Yikes. Lower damage than an Air Ele without the utility.
Communing 4; A nice selection of offensive and defensive spirits. Non-spirit skills are weak.
Restoration Magic 1; Heals are average at best, and come with so many weird conditions as to make them virtually unplayable. If Restoration can't keep up with Healing (or offer anything different), then why have it?

RITUALIST OVERALL = 1; The fact that there is only ONE single viable ritualist build should be an eye-opener. Some serious work needed.


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CONCLUSION
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Anet has done a very nice job with the core 6 classes. (With a couple of minor exceptions - it sure would be nice if a nuker could actually nuke...) But overall, kudos on creating 6 very distinctive clsses that allow for a great diversity of builds.

The two new Factions classes, however, are quite disappointing and need major work. Assassins have basically one viable build, they should have more usable shadow-step options than AoD, and more usable combos.

Ritualists are even worse, Ritual Lord is so much above and beyond any other skill they have it's pathetic. It's effects on GvG have been a major bummer (seeing an enemy Ritualist elicits a collective groan from our entire team ... be prepared for a long boring match...) Then again, if it wasn't for Ritual Lord, the class would be totally unusable. I mean, Soul Twisting is a great skill, but what are you gonna do with the other 4-5 slots on your bar?

As far as the coming of Nightfall, Paragons look very cool. I'm not so high on Dervishes, though. Balancing them for PvE means they will probably be useless in PvP...

Your thoughts?

Give Shadow Arts under the Assassin a 3, and Deadly Arts a 1.

Overall, the Assassin gets a 1.5.

other then that, yeah.

This is rather subjective... especially the "overall class score".

Also, I stopped reading when you didn't give soul reaping a 5.

He's talking about it from a PvP point of view, in PvP Soul Reaping is less usefull then in PvE.

also, chapter specific classes are made to do one thing, so the ratings that you give them correlate with the original purpose of them

Some flawed math (and I'm assuming the rest is rounded up/down):
Rit:
4+3+1+1 = 9
9/4 = 2.25, not 1
And Restoration isn't that bad, some of the spirits can heal for good amounts. Rits are better protectors then Monks with Rit Lord, but with some of the Restoration spells, they can heal better then a bonder too.
War:
5+5+5+3+2 = 20
20/5 = 4

Sins have a few good builds, and they're pretty good in PvE as well in the hands of someone who doesn't think Sins can tank. Take a Sin to Tyria instead of fighting Afflicted with their AoE on death, or Shiro'ken with Song of the Mists, and you'll notice they'll die a lot less. Warriors have more and better ways to take the damage from those foes, while Sins don't. The Factions PvE is pretty hatefull towards Sins, let alone the players...

You should have kept your topic on the PvP side as you stated because now you just sound ignorant.
Assassins are ONLY useless when used by people who don't spend enough time using that class and looking at the skills, or think an assassin is a tank.

As was earlier stated, my OVERALL score was fairly subjective, considering he overall effect of the class on organized 8-man PvP. For example, when I see a Rit in PvP, I KNOW within one skill EXACTLY what his skillbar is. If the goal is to have diversity of builds/strategy (see top of post), then that's as clear a 1 as you can get. Ditto for the assassin.

I'm not saying that Assassins cant be effective in PvE. Hell - give me a 10th level necro with 16 Curses and only SS on his bar, and you have an effective PvE char. Bit IMO, if you were forming an elite PvE squad, why would you EVER take an assassin over a warrior?

You're still trying to compare apples and oranges.

I agree in general, except that Assassins and Rts are better than you give them credit for--Eles may be worse, as all they can do is bulk heal and blind, really.

No he's right, really. When have you EVER played against a rit that wasn't your standard rit lord spammer? Or, for the matter, how many assassin builds out there run out without AoD? It's not that these new classes aren't effective, it's just that they're too monotonous - nothing more than one trick ponies.

Mesmers are the highest ranking class? And Ritualists are the lowest?

Notice how often each one is used in PvP. Right.

This "analysis" reeks of bias.

I quite like the Hot Stepper assassin PvP template as an example of what an assassin is about - teleport in, frontload, teleport out. The only real comparison with warriors is that they both hit people over the head with bits of metal. The Critical Barrager A/R is quite a lot of fun, too.

I'll give the class a 2.

The ritualist seems popular for Shelter/Union spammage, so I'm surprised the OP scored it with a 1. The restoration magic is more than healing, it's more like a combined heal/protect line. I will agree some of the conditions for the bonus effects are a bit funky, but some of the heals are solid, let down by the longish recast times compared to the likes of Orison.

The heals with bonus reqs I like are Wielder's Boon (126 point heal for 5e) and Soothing Memories (106 point heal for 2e). Some of the weapon spells are decent - Resilient Weapon grants +6 regen and +24AL for 21s when your target is under hexes or conditions (an easily met req), and Weapon of Shadow is an interesting way of breaking up weapon-based spikes while meeting the req for Wielder's Boon.

I think the biggest let down is the comparative sluggishness of some of the spells. The 2s cast of Weapon of Warding is too long to raise a defence, and recasts of 4s for Wielder's Boon and 5s for Soothing Memories compared with 2s for Orison make them too sluggish to respond to the wounds of various party members.

I'll give the class a 3

I really need to play the classes more though tbh...

huh? Sorry I don't understand your argument.

Frank. Come meet my Assassin M'boy. True, I don't use Shadow or Deadly arts. But still...1?

AHEM

Learn to read, dear.

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I dunno that the low ele score is convincing, but yeah... at least, I haven't seen a Non-RitLord or Preservation(?) spirit spamming ritualist yet.

I think I have to disagree on the assassin, though. Like the mesmers, assassin can do all sorts of fun tricks. The only difference is that assassins, in the end, MUST have the final goal of "get in and make hurt with knife!"; while mesmers can have all sorts of different goals.

Yes, I think mesmers deserve a huge score. OMG, the range of builds you can face when playing against a mesmer... meep.

In the radio interview with jeff spain, he mentioned rit/sin are specialized and do one thing well.. vs core classes which are multi-functional.

I can easily see the "week" lines being more for adding functionality of a core class.. Example Monk/Rit.

I do like this comparsion but I personaly would refrain from saying this sucks.. w/o saying why.
But I would do a break down of pvp review and pve review.

On behalf of elementalists I'd like to add Fire is utter crap except for fireball and rodgort's invocation. Met shower is only useful in pVE...and even then,only for KD since most people dont bring hammer warriors.

And water is far more useful than you portray.

Very interesting rationale for your OVERALL rating, but I think that you're mixing diversity of builds with your perception of the VALUE of the class to GvG.

For example, Warriors generally have one function in GvG - damage dealers. That normally comes in the form of a Shock Axe warrior or a Hammer KD warrior, and there isn't a wide deviation from those types normally seen in GvG.

Yet, you give the warrior a 4.5, which totally goes against your "goal" above, since you don't see a lot of diversity in how they are played or their builds.

[Sidenote]Why in the world did you give swordsmanship a "5"? In my experience, it's pretty rare to find a sword warrior in GvG that is as effective as an axe/hammer warrior. Time to rethink that.[/sidenote]

In light of this, you gave Ritualists a "1", even though your gave both Spawning and Communing a 3/4, respectively, which obviously factors in the value of a Ritual Lord to most GvG groups.

Again, some inconsistencies which have been pointed out by others as probably containing a bit of "bias" towards certain classes over others, possibly due to ignorance about how those classes are played and their value to overall GvG teams.

Frank while I don't disagree with you. I don't think you explored smiting very well. If you've only tried pure smite then your doing it wrong. Smiting works best when coupled with a secondary class. Like elementalist earth spells for example.