Why balance everything? Please help me understand.

Besides what everyone else has already said, sometimes it's nice to have big skill balances for no other reason than to shake things up. It's fun as heck to figure out mechanics and good builds all over again. Do you naysayers honestly wish you could run nothing but SF eles for 2+ years?

How are skills overpowered?!!! 1-3million people all have access to the same skills depending on the amount of campaigns they own. Why are people constantly demanding nerfs to skills every has access to? Ok so PvP has so-called "professionals" playing and there is money at stack during tournaments. Anet attempts to balance the game so the same group of individuals with the same skill bars don't win every match with their so-called overpowered skillset. That's like saying...

The New York Yankees should be nerfed because they keep winning with the same lineup. Their opponents change tactics and pitchers throughout each game and no matter what counters they bring it still doesn't work.

Some of you may not agree with my analogy and it should be expected in this forum especially but it doesn't matter. This is how all this balancing appears to me in my point of view.

Don't be ignorant.
Don't you think that Izzy would do a quicker and better job if he didn't have to take PvE into consideration. Seriously, balancing for PvP is not that hard (refer to Ensign's thread in glads section).
Let's look at it this way:
1. Izzy nerfs SR because it is obviously overpowered (not subject to debate plz).
2. a 3 million page SR thread pops up, with a majority "OMG ANET HATE PVE" and "Zomg IM RAGING" posts by ignorant and bad players.
3. Gaile includes this in her monthly report. Anet employees look at this and say "Hmm Izzy, look at the mess you've done! Make every1 like us again!"
4. Izzy spends time coming up with a new SR solution, get's it ingame and runs a test.
5. Anet implements solution.
6. Izzy will most likely get more forum posts forwarded to him by gaile about "good SR suggestions" which he has to read and think about because this is already a "fragile" subject.

Hmm... as opposed to:
1. Izzy nerfs SR because it is obviously overpowered.
2. All PvPers are happy, and PvEers don't care because they are already blowing shit up with their HaX PvE only skills.

You see what I mean?
Now do you see my point? Or are you one of those people that are religiously against everything I might ever do or say? My guess would be the latter tbh.
If you have anything to say about my idea, please go ahead. But if all you're going to do is "YA RIGHT! LOL" me, then don't even bother.

Here are some smilies because people seem to like it when Gaile posts them:

Honestly, I thought you were being sarcastic in your original post. I guess not. Sorry bout that.

Izzy re-worked SR because even the devs thought it "inelegant". Why would they leave it like that? Just because it would be too much work to do a simple 3/15 timer? You can't seriously believe that, Mendes. You can't seriously think they slapped that very simple fix solely because PvEers were bitching about it. If so, well I got nothing else to say but:

"YA RIGHT! LOL"

Everyone having acess to the same skills is called equality, not balance. Skills, like SF, are overpowered in certain formats of PvP and needed to be balanced.

Anet attempts to balance the game so that there isn't a set of overpowered skills that promote the build>skill type of play. Anet doesn't care who wins.


Your view of skill balancing is wrong, coming from a person that has heard Izzy talk about the skill balance process and has played in the PvP for the past year and a half. I also don't agree with your analogy.

What to do? If you didn't want the PvE Only skills nerfed you blame the players who whined about PvE now being too easy. Personally I felt some of the skills were a little over-the-top, but I never whined about it...they're new skills for whoever want to use them, and if people don't like them, they don't have to use them...simple solution.

This is just going to turn into another ego-fest of people trying to prove the other person is wrong out of opinion rather than actual discussion. It doesn't need to be closed, but I'm watching.

If you aren't raising or discussing the topic, don't post. I'd actually prefer it if you did post, so I can deal with it in a manner of my choosing, but it's in your interests.

What if you integrate pVE and pvp? This was guild theifs could be lvl 28 Margonites from Domain of ainguish complete with "Enraged," an instead of silly archers with power attack you could have Emmissaries of Dhumm: varrious Grasps of Insanity/scythes of chaos/Terrorweb dryders.

Someone hasn't been paying attention to the standings lately, have they?

Was it the Player part or the vs Player part you fail to understand about Player vs Player?

Thank you everyone who answered, I think I now understand. Does this sound right?

With new skills being added ( we love new skills );

PvP: Old skills / combinations must be adjusted to maintain an effectively equal capability for all competitors / teams, as without this balancing, PvP will slowly devolve in to a button mashing contest as a few overpowered skills / combinations draw everyone into using a small number of highly effective builds.

For PvE, the skills / skill combinations available to players across ‘professions’ need the adjustment. Without this balancing PvE will slowly revert to dominant professions and everyone else (professions) being excluded. i.e. Get away you nasty little necro.

So it’s all the same, PvP, PvE, it needs adjusting.

ps. I used Mark of Rodgort as an example. In a battle (PvE) I never have time to use it twice so the change makes no difference; I’m off spamming barrage and interrupts with a short bow and wondering why my interrupts are so pathetically useless.

pps. So watch out For Dr Izzy and his bag of adjustments

Karia

It's truly because of the level cap (which I'm a HUGE fan of!). With everyone stopping at level 20 cap-wise, you wind up with a specific amount of health and energy each class can have. That being that, armor follows suit and has maximum values for each class, which leads to weapons having max damage values based on attack speeds and skills used with... all the spells have to work within these constraints. So, if you have a spell that simply does too little damage because of the max armor level, you increase the power of the spell, increase the recharge rate or decrease the cost to bring the damage more in line with everything else. If a skill or spell simply does too much damage, you can reduce it, increase the recharge rate or increase the cost (or some combination). What happens in PvP is that people are far too clever for their own good. Suddenly a group of eight paragons is stacking particular skills to the point that they're nearly invincible (for example) in a way that goes beyond what the initial balancing could have predicted. To bring things back into balance these skills are softened up enough to restore balance. This often annoys people that don't run with groups of eight paragons in PvE... but if you look around you'll see that PvErs are a clever bunch too and will adapt.

But, in a nutshell, that's why the re-balancing. Everything needs to work within the constraints of level cap, that being health, energy, armor and weapon damage.

At least... this is how I see it.

I reckon if you want balance then all attributes and skills should be available from the start. The PvE only skills at least addresses some of the nutty balance decisions. But I suppose yo can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cant please all of the people all of the time.

lol... if you're find PvE hard...a nerf to mark of rodgort is probably the least of your problems. You say that you have always used it on your ranger etc...i don't know how long you've been playing the game for but if it is any significant time period...i'm amazed that you haven't QQ'd already from bordom. If you think back to the point when conjures and mind blast were buffed (tbh i doubt you noticed but anyway...) and looked how that totally changed the meta... anyone wanna run conjure flame wars and rodgort/mindblast eles? oh...everone already is...
Without the competative challenge of pvp...pve gets boring enough anyway (as much as i love it)...if i only played pve, i'd welcome any changes made (even if they were only as a response to the pvp meta) as it would maybe help to keep me awake.
There is a reason that a-net listens more to the pvp players. Good pvp players know a huge amount about the game (as they have to in order to compete at any decent level) whereas only a minority of pve players have the same knowledge/skill in the game. If the pvp comunity is compaining about an aspect of a skill that a-net has overlooked, more often than not, the skill is being used in a way in which a-net had not intended.
As for just buffing underpowered skills rather than nerfing overpowered ones...as already mentioned, there is the pve aspect of factions and nightfall bosses hitting quite hard as it is but also... imagine trying to infuse/preprot vs spikes that pack well over 700 damage with the initial hit then 500 more with the followup... the whole mechanic of the game is a balence between power of skills, armour, life etc... changing all aspects of this to be in sync with one that is unbalenced is just a stupid way to go about things. A-net have enough work on their hands already without having to change the game mechanics every few weeks instead of simply bringing one overpowered skill etc back into line.
Basically...if your ranger isn't as good as before using mark of rodgort...do somthing different...you might actually learn how to play ranger properly and run interupts or BHA if you fail at normal interupts/have bad lag.
You complain about friends leaving GW for WoW... how many people do you thing would be left if spirit spamming was still the meta and hadn't been nerfed for almost 2 years...

I just hate how Heal as One finally got fixed , I loved ressing my pet to full HP. Balancing is probably good for the game, but it doesn't mean I have to like it: out of the recent skill balances, 9 skills that I use got the nerf bat. Q_Q

I can fill 3 or 4 hours a night and never get time to do a mission. Lots of scandals, Radio shows, Dancing in LA, Window shopping, cleaning storage and misbehaving at Fisherman’s F1

I said at the start . . .
They should have kept the same skills for PvP and PvE but simply balance them seperatly
Eg move glyph of lesser energy into Energy Storage for PvP but leave it unaligned in PvE
HOW MANY PROBLEMS AND COMPLAINTS WOULD THIS AVOID???

Reading a lot of the discussion, this seems to be more about the principle of a nerfed skill than the actual nerf itself. People like their stone-set skillbar so much that even a small nerf on one of the skills (10 damage or 2-3 seconds less) causes a great deal of upheaval, such as a few messages above this.

Why not?

12345

Balance is "wanted", perhaps?

Why attempt to balance everything? Mostly because members of the forum communities ask for nerfs (much more than buffs from observation). Most likely they're exhausted of coming against or losing to the same builds in certain pvp arenas.

No.

Balance is needed to have a diverse amount of builds availiable, each with the same percentage to win against skilled opposition. If just a few builds are viable because they're the most overpowered, then it gets boring to play.

Isn't it PvE'ers who always complain about cookie-cutter builds? Without balance, everything everyone will run is cookie-cutter.

W.T.B LAWSUIT against Anet.

I dunno why...but younger players are really starting to complain about the
new changes...I heard in Elona..This guy just started playing and he said all the skills sucked. I asked him why... This is what he said. "They're all weak, They take too much energy and don't do any damage" Even for a little level you should still be able to pack a punch like back in the old days.

*Throws an Axe at the PvP players* Take that you good-fer-nothings!

everyone who asks for a separation of pve and pvp into two separate games is missing the entire *point* of guild wars.

eudas

I agree that balance is necessary in both modes of the game. However, I realize at the same time balance is nothing more than an illusion as well because of the nature of skill interactions. Players will always find new skill combinations that "break" the balance which will lead to an endless cycle of skill balances.

The only way to achieve true balance would be to set up teams that have identical skill bars. Yes, I am referring to the tired chess metaphor. Perhaps, the best solution to this would be to implement a special pvp area where the teams enter an arena where a certain team skillset is loaded onto all the relevant classes. In this regard, it would be just the skill of the players that determines the outcome. No other team composition would be allowed for that particular arena.

The arenas could be divided by the play styles, such as pressure builds, spike builds, etc. Of course the current skill sets would be posted so people could study and practice the current build.

These skill sets for the different arenas would rotate every few months to keep things fresh. These builds could be voted upon by the pvp community. The old pvp arenas would remain available for the people who prefer them. The new arenas would help reduce the need to balance high end pvp.

It is just a thought I would like to throw out there.

Critical Agility nerf, anyone?

I swear I do ridiculous amounts of damage on my sin because of that.

To be perfectly honest, besides anything completely game-breaking (like critical agility in pvp) or a class that's weak in pvp, skill balances generally don't need to be made -- people will always figure out a new build, and generally it's just as powerful as the last one. Sins have been bumped around a lot in pvp, yet they're still performing almost as well as BoA used to.