Prevent Class Stacking

First, I will be upfront. I am mostly a PvE player. I haven't set foot in pvp arenas for over a year; although I used to play HA in the past. I am just not a competitive person.

That said, I have been watching the series of overpowered build that have been flooding HA. One common aspect to them is the fact the teams are stacked with mostly one class. Having 8 characters of the same class does have a tendency to break the system. Therefore, I propose a cap on the amount of the same class allowed in the party at once. From my observations 3 of each class should be enough to still allow build flexibility.

This would help remove gimmick builds such as the all paragon teams and ritualist teams without touching the skills and possibly allowing new exploits of such single class teams.

This idea will not completely eliminate overpowered builds, but it would help curb them. The idea is similar to how card games do not allow any more than 3 or 4 of the same card in a deck.

Now on the PvE side of things, such a change would not really hurt cookie cutter teams. B/P groups for instance, can take bp sins and rits to round out the party. DOA groups will not be effected because they usually have no more than 3 of the same class in the group. If anything, such a change would allow more class diversity in PvE groups. I am uncertain as to whether this should extend to heroes or not.

Granted, many would resent being forced into a more rigid team structure. However, 10 classes with 3 of each single class allowed in a group should provide ample flexibility. Such a change would help curb overpowered builds by removing single class focus teams. Although, it is by no means the magic bullet of balance. Overpowered builds will always be around as long as people remain creative and experimental.

If Anet wants a limited tournament, that should be its own PvP mode.

Besides your comparison to card game is incorrect. The players arent the cards, its their skills.

/not signed

People should want to use other classes because of their use, not because they are forced to.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10163620

read and be silent....... and if you dont play pvp then just shush cause i do play pvp and this is not an issue.....

I have read that thread, but it was mainly centered around paragons. Rit spike and other all single class groups have many players calling for nerfs when a simple class restriction would solve all the overpowering aspects of single class combinations. Just changing the skills will just result in a future overpowered single class time with time. It is best to nail the core of this balance issue to prevent this issue from occurring in the future.

@lyra song

I have seen and played a few card games that are not mainstream where the game is structured similar to guild war's team system. Each player had a deck that complimented the other team mates' decks. In these games, no one team is allowed to have any more than a certain number of one type of deck because team stacking overpowered the game. I don't remember what these card games were called.

In this situation, each deck is similar to a guild wars class in its functions. My example was flawed: I failed to further explain the reasoning behind it.

This proposal would see just as much flak from the PvE community as the PvP community in the very off chance it was implemented.

/notsigned

All ele groups are the most common, and SF/SH teams blow. Mirrior of disenchantment > fire attunement. Preproting and not clumping together owns those teams.

Rt spike is beaten by pre prot again (you see the giant ball of energy coming up at your allies feet, you know who to infuse ahead of time. Makes monking real easy).


The thing is, most good guilds don't run single class teams because most of them can be too easily countered. Those builds are effective, but not optimal, and are a good way for people to PUG and get experience and pratice in HA.

Why punish people for being creative? Yes, some professions work well together and some ideas work better in large numbers. So what if 8 people want to play the same profession in the same battle? Is that unfair? No. You have every right to go get 7 of your friends and do it too, or to find 7 friends and come up with a better team build.

I have never agreed with the idea of disallowing people from playing the profession they want. Worst case scenario, it is a balance issue with the profession and Anet will address it. In the mean time, let them have their cake!

/notsigned
as much as I don't like going up against a 8 necro bloodspike team in HA. I still don't like this idea.

A team of 4 rits primaries and 4 necro/rits is not an improvement. Zergway with 4 warriors, 3 paragons and a trapper is still an idiotic build. 8-class builds are a side effect of people trying to pack as many copies of a broken skill into the same build as they can. If the skills are that overpowered, they will first use alternate primaries, and second still fit as many of the overpowered skill into their build before seeking others that will synergize, and therefore still produce stupid, mindless builds.

/notsigned

If you set a limit then you leave no room for creativity

Not that I ever PvP, but I can see your idea removing freedom of choice within the game. And what if they decided to move this indea into PvE?

What happens if your in a pug and you're extremely limited for choice and you have no choice to use 4 or 5 of the same profession?

You would have to stand around for ages just to find anything of a different profession! Plus im sure people use one type profession teams for a reason, but its bound to give them a disadvantage.

8 elementals may do extreme damage, but they wouldnt last 2 seconds defensively unless they had healing of somekind.

/notsigned you have to be ready for those gimmick builds as well as balanced builds.

That is a very good point. Perhaps instead of actually preventing primaries from stacking(I do realize it is a limitation on player freedom) diminishing returns could be implemented as the paragon stacking thread suggests. Except this diminishing effect could work on ritualist spirits, traps, and other "stackable" skills.

For instance, the more spirits in one area, the less damage or protection they have and perhaps spirit related skills can receive a diminishing returns clause to their skills. In this way, it will not influence the pve side of things but still balance certain aspects. Granted, diminishing returns on traps would influence pve trap teams. To be fair diminishing returns would have to be applied to all classes that provide stackable skills or effects.

These are just ideas I am throwing out there to perhaps stimulate some more novel solutions to freshen the game and curb a few balance issues.

Speaking of Diminishing Returns, GW2 is said to be look at that subject where the more people on your team the less powerful you all are. So a solo player will have greater overall stats than an individual in a pack of 8. Similar to Phantasy Star but without the sucking.

I believe this is a step in the right direction towards skill/class balancing and stacking.