In PvP, when does a normal skill become "Overpowered"

I have been playing GW for over two years now, I have heard a lot of talk about skill balance and skills or spells being "Overowered", but it has occured to me that I must be missing something, because I fail to understand the definition of being "Overpowered".

The idea that a skill or spell that by itself cause damage, but not sinificant damage and has been in the game for over a year and never was even mentioned as being "Overpowered", suddenly become so after it was discovered that in mass it cause sinificant spike damage, enough so to kill a character in several seconds make that skill or spell now "Overpowered", that it now needs to be toned down, thus nerfed.

So I would like to know:

When does a normal skill or spell mature from being balanced to being "Overpowered", and why?

A normal skill or spell becomes overpowered when it goes OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAND!!!!!

Dragon Slash = useful, you get some of the adren back
Dragon Slash + For Great Justice = Get so much adren if you hit you can use it again, and again, and again untill FGJ runs out (1270 dmg average in 20 seconds) = 'Overpowered'

There are actually several levels to consider when assessing the relative power of a skill:

* As a single skill, compared to other skills which achieve a similar effect. This part is pretty trivial to balance by adjusting different parameters like energy/adrenaline cost and recharge time. Action is taken if somebody finds an unintended side effect that vastly affects the outcome (like the Signet of Might bug).

* One skill as a part of a build, compared not only to other skills but other builds with a similar purpose. Because of complex interactions between skills and the huge amount of skills, this is significantly harder to balance. Action is taken when some combination of skills is found to be overall significantly better than any other option.

* The usefulness of a skill or a build in the larger metagame environment. Since this is an evolving entity, a perfect balance cannot ever be reached. Action is taken from time to time just to 'shake things up' and prevent stagnation of the metagame.

There are no lines.
"Overpowered" is almost certainly based purely on how many people have decided that it is clearly flavour of the month and decided to use it.... thus reducing the general variety of builds being used. This in turn tends to draw peoples' attention toward the build being used and the main power of that build... and the "Overpowered" label promptly gets slapped on it.

A-Net implement an ubernerf and make the main skills in the build completely and utterly worthless (both in PvE and PvP).... and then while the PvE community breaks out in a flood of complaints, the PvP peoples start working on the next overpowered build while telling the PvE'ers to stop complaining because "skill balance" is "more important than PvE"...

*Shrugs*
As far as I'm concerned now, Skill Nerf falls under the same category as missing the bus or your grandmother dying of cancer: Sh!t happens.


If a build / skill is Overpowered, that basically just means it works a bit better than other builds / skills available and thus everybody uses it. It is entirely subjective... and Overpowered builds / skills will ALWAYS exist.

I think it's when a good build is seen in Observer/Wiki, and then copied and used so often that one can tell just by looking at a player's profession combination what that player's build is.

[skill]Shadow Prison[/skill][skill]Black Lotus Strike[/skill][skill]Horns of The Ox[/skill][skill]Black Spider Strike[/skill][skill]Blades of Steel[/skill][skill]Impale[/skill][skill]Tiger Stance[/skill][skill]Expose Defenses[/skill]

If a Warrior is only paying attention to how fast he can hit the key he's assigned to Dragon Slash he's not going to notice Ineptitude when it get's cast on him.

Threat: Neutralised.

I think normal skills become "overpowered" in two ways:
1. Wammos say they are overpowered and cry "nerf!"
2. People find a particularly potent use for a combination of skills which leads to high levels of damage or high survivability. Such builds can often be difficult to work around.

I think in general the idea of "overpowered" is largely subjective.

I am not an expert in this, so please feel free to correct me:

A general guideline

A skill or the synergy between skills is out of balance in comparison to other skills in the game (in terms of dealing, boosting or countering damage).
Thus this is always relative and often topic of discussions within the community.

In my experience there are two possibilities in which a skill or skills can be referred to as overpowered:

1. A skill by itself is overpowered
This happens less often.

A typical sign (not proof) for this is if you find one skill is used in the majority of skill bars of one profession, allowing to deal or counter significant more damage then other skills of that profession.

PvE examples are: "There is nothing to Fear!" and Critical Agility- before the first nerfs -

or an actual example: Ursan Blessing (which allows players to fulfill otherwise more difficult tasks in a much shorter time - see Mallyx Thread).

2. Synergies (combination of skill and circumstances) between two or more skills make a build overpowered:

A sign (and again not proof) for this is if a meta evolves for a certain profession including one skill that usually defines the rest of the skill bar as well.

[skill]Burst of Aggression[/skill] used by Assassins a while ago can be seen as an example.

This can also refer to a whole team:
An example was the so called "Rit spike builds" which allowed to deal and counter significant damage repeatedly in a short time over a long periode, making it hard to counter.

Concerning your question, "why do they suddenly become overpowered after all this time?":

Well, sometimes an overpowered skill can be "sleeping in the shadows" till synergy is found.
This can be because other skills are introduced to the game or just simply because some bright mind found a great build after all this years (it takes some time to read the skill descriptions).

I hope this helps a bit to answer your tricky question... may others be more helpful then me

Cheers,
Timebandit

Edit: HAHAHA took me too long to write this ... tmakinen's answer include my points in a much shorter and more elaborate version = gg

Thank you everyone for your answers, I am beginning to understand now. I am also beginning to understand skill balance as a whole.

Now all I have to do is pay more attention to builds, it always seems that I am the last to find out, then it is too late, thus caused my confusion over the term of a skill being "overpowered"

There's also that obscure meta game.

Once someone discovered touch rangers. They simply dominated random arena, and to lesser extent AB and FA.

The build wan't overpowered as such, and they didn't have the upper edge in most other pvp areas, so why?

The optimal monk build in that time was boon/prot. And that build couldn't outheal the toucher. You could go with another monk build, but that one couldn't outheal/pre-prot enough against other classes. Touchers were never changed, but instead monks were given better skills, making them a non-issue.

Umm, excuse me but I'm not tryin to get off topic or be rude but i think you could have came up with a better comment than the cancer crap.
When you have a grandmother die of cancer as i have you don't shrug it off as sh!t happens. So in the future please come up with a better term as some people will find your comments offensive.