Skill balance, and the disparity it creates

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Yeah, it started off alright, made some good points, even though I had no idea what your point was, and then you had to bring up the U word. So another nerf ursan post, let's just throw that in to the collection of 1000+ other ursan complaints =P

Let PvE skills remain overpowered. That's why they were implemented in the first place, so we can have slightly overpowered skills to play with, that don't ruin PvP.

And as a monk, there aren't that many PvE skills you can put on your bar - save maybe LoD and sometimes SS Rebirth Sig; but do you see me asking for a Brawling headbutt, or Drunken Stability, or any other PvE skill to be nerfed? No.

So what if people like farming with Ursan? I, and I am quite sure many others, still prefer going out with 7 other people, running a fun and balanced build, and having a grand ol' time. Even if I could make my heroes run Ursan, I'd still H/H in HM with balanced builds, simply because it's more fun for me.

Asking for an Ursan nerf is like asking for a collision detection nerf.

Oh, woe is me, people run a bonder, 2 healers, a tank, and 4 nukers! That's not fun, and it's overpowered!!!1one

Get over yourself, and if you don't want to be forced to run Ursan for farming, I suggest you find some friends who are capable of doing any area with a balanced build.

Problems:
1. Skill balance can ONLY revolve around PvP. To balance a skill we must not only look at the skill itself but also compare it to other skills and game rules.
PvE breaks pretty much all the game rules. Thus if PvE should somehow influence the balancing process - the skill will NEVER be balanced.
2. When discussing gameplay - farming should never be used as any kind of example - outside of being an example of a totally broken gameplay.
3. In PvE the player needs to win. In PvP - both sides need to have an equal opportunity to win. That is why balance is needed in PvP - and that is why - nothing can be overpowered in PvE.
4. The introduction of competitive elements in PvE. It doesn't matter if team Z performs much better then my team. Team Z isn't in my instance. And as long as the game isn't "balanced" for the build Team Z is using - their actions don't concern me in the slightest.
5. Because PvE breaks so many rules and because the player NEEDS to win AND because I am not in competition with anyone in my game - we can not define balance in PvE thus nothing can be overpowered thus Ursan is fine as it is.

Don't like it?
Don't use it!

Ursan isn't the problem here. The problem is that we are playing a degenerated form of PvE that enabled the existence of Ursan.

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Damned computer had to shut down in the middle of a post...

I'm purely theorycrafting here, having not used PvE skills nor played the game for quite a while.

The sole purpose of PvE skills is to let players toy with a new imbalanced skillset. Now, of course, this is common sense. However, the point I'd like to raise is that Guild Wars is pretty challenging, and these PvE skills serve to alleviate some of this challenge for newer players (oh, who am I kidding? ...), or in any case, less experienced/skilled players while still providing a source of enjoyment.

Perhaps the creation of a new skillset, and an addition of a mode that goes without the usage of 'overpowered' PvE skills. Maybe a more interesting idea for a different skillset of PvE skills would be to find flexible effects that would undoubtedly raise havoc in PvP play, but still promote skillful play in PvE...but chances are such flexible effects would also be a welcome addition to PvP play. Or perhaps it could be a testing ground for new skill effects and the relative usability/'skillfulness' of such.

The other problem which lies with this thread and various others dealing with PvE 'balance'...would be that while general PvE has absolutely no use for 'skill' balance, the imbalance of a skill is not insignificant. An oversimplified model of PvE balance mainly revolves around class balance and enemy balance. Class balance is to ensure that every character has an equal chance of success, i.e. every profession should, ideally, be of equal importance, none overshadowing the other. The other part of PvE balance would be a balance between player capabilities and enemy capabilities - put simply, the effectiveness of offense, defense (and disruption, as an afterthought) against the enemy; a good balance between these capabilities should provide for a challenging game that isn't impossible. Yes, there is no individual 'skill' balance (or at least the 'skill balance' as seen is mostly an illusion), as there is no opponent that will exploit that skill, and nobody would care if you would expoit that skill – it's PvE, after all, and people would probably congratulate you on finding such an 'innovative way to play the game' or whatnot. However, while there is no underlying 'skill' balance, such skill changes would change the class balance in PvE, and such 'skill' balance can drastically affect the balance of capabilities.

Most of the ranting done over PvE skills are due to this imbalance of capabilities – namely, that the balance has been shifted to the 'overpowered' side, where gameplay becomes too easy. However, it must be taken into account that this balance is mainly subjective, and so one person's view may not equal another's.

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Whilst I don't use Ursan (primarily cos my only character that has it is only Rank 2 Norn and an Elementalist), I can see the effect it has on high-end PvE.

Instead of nerfing Ursan, can I ask for a buff (or upwardly-focused balance) for both Raven and Volfen? I've always likened Volfen (particularly Volfen Pounce) to a wolf-pack type skill with great imagery of a team of Volfens using their enhanced speed to position themselves for a synchronised attack on an enemy. Great image but no-one uses Volfen, cos Ursan is better. Raven has some cools skills too, but lacks the weakening factor of Ursan Roar.

Anyways, agree with the OP, but buff Raven/Volfen instead!

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Overall, I do agree that things have to be balanced around pvp. I don't mind when individual skills get nerfed, but when entire lines are reduced to uselessness, then I start having a problem. For example, let's say ANet decides fire magic is overpowered in PvP (random example) and nerfs the entire line so much that it is funtionally useless and no one really brings it anymore. For a pvper, no big deal as you can reroll. For the pvper, the classes and skills matter less than being effective and winning.

However for a pveer, making an entire line useless has some added consequences. Let's say I have a fire el with a 40/40 set, +energy set, and a staff with enchanting on it that I've been playing with in pve and pvp. Depending on how I got my items, I've just lost a little bit of money as now I have to salvage what I can and rebuy at least 3 items. So now I either have to farm collector items (takes time since loot nerf), hope some good golds drop for me (not likely) lay out ~15K for crafter items, not including the cost of one or two perfect salvage kits, or try to buy something off another player. Then I have to buy a new +1 hat in my new chosen element which can get expensive depending on the set it was in.


IMO there should be a rule of thumb that there should be at least 4 generally useable skills in every line for both pvpers and pveers to use. If there is a nerf that takes you below that number you need to buff up a few skills to make up for that.

For those of you who are too stupid to read the whole thing and can only read one line, what I'm saying is not to just change PvE-only skills because of their absolute power. It needs to be changed based on its relative power to shared skills. For example, if today shared skills allow you to beat an area with 100 points of efficiency, and PvE-only skills boost that efficiency rating up to 120, then when those shared skills get toned down to only 60 points of efficiency, we should not leave PvE-only skill efficiency at 120. We should still make them stronger than regular skills, but not twice as strong (say, to 80 points of efficiency).

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"You Move Like A Dwarf!" is probably the most balanced PvE only skill there is. It would be too strong in PvP, however it has a useful application in almost every single PvE area as an instant interrupt + damage skill. At the same time if I don't have it on my bar I don't feel like I'm running a severely gimped build when compared to a skill like "Save Yourselves!".

Ursan Blessing and "Save Yourselves!" are undoubtedly the two most absurd skills in the game. The former allows the average player to coast through any zone encountering only some difficulties in hard mode elite zones while the latter provides an unstoppable blanket of defense. However Ursan Blessing is in an entire league of its own. There is simply no other combination of shared and PvE only skills that can compared to the strength of that one skill. You can get pretty close, but at the end of the day everything else is still inferior to run.

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The only problem I have with skill balances is the tendency to reduce strong skills to mediocre, and the hesitation to buff horrible skills into the below average stage.

Nerfing a build I use, but giving me new options and new builds - Fantastic.
Nerfing a build I use, but not buffing any other skills to a usable level - Fail.

I used to be okay with skill balances. Sometimes they were justified, sometimes they were &@#$*(ing ridiculous, but nonetheless, it was more "worth it." Now I'm just annoyed that aNet caters to a PvP crowd that hardly exists anymore. I've been in some hybrid alliances where, if it were not for the PvE crowd, everything else would have crumbled. No, I don't think PvE is the be all and end all of this game, but I am frustrated that at this point in the game the same small crowd is given more of an ear than the larger one.

Having said that, I realize that PvE-only skills were an attempt on aNet's part to sort of even out the disparity between PvE and PvP, but sometimes... I just miss the good old days. I'm not really trying to make an "I hate PvP" or "I hate aNet" post, but rather simply, I miss the pre-PvE-only skills, and I miss the days where a balance felt more "just."

Daring to touch on the topic of Ursan, I say this little bit: use it if you like. It has its time and place, and to those less able, or less patient people in PvE, this gives them a gateway to experience something they couldn't before. I'm tired of everyone complaining. Let everyone have their fun - I'm sorry if your stack of armbraces is worth half as much as it used to be, but to me, that is not as big as an expense as someone not experiencing this game in a new way. I am not too keen on Ursan, and I don't want to play with people who typically rely on that as their sole skill because it's their only key to success, but I realize there are others in the same boat as them that will empathize, and together, they will experience something new (like DoA, or hard mode).

Conclusion: my post really had no point, except reminiscing and being neutral on Ursan... /useful *cough*

Ghehe ;

they should remove ursan from the game ; its as simple as that .

Skills have to be balanced (nerfed) for PvP...that is true. But sometimes it makes it so that one certain class is not any good (or at least not nearly as good) as an alternate class and therefore that person can't get in a pug. That is what makes PvE people mad lots of the time. That's what made me mad when I created a Paragon, beat all 3 chapters pimped it out with armor shields and spears then got 3/4 builds that I ran on it nerfed to nothingness. The nerfs had to be made for PvP sake and I understand that because I hated the blockway meta that DA created and paraspikes and such. But 1 paragon on a team in PvE that is not a Motigon or a Ursan will have hard time fingind group. I only PvE anymore if I am looking for a specific thing for one of my toons to PvP with but I miss playing my Paragon in PvE, it was lots of fun.

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I'm not really convinced Ursan is the best thing ever. But it is a very strong build that has on its side, extreme versatility, and requiring no brains to play. Much easier than fine-tuning a warrior build that might be 5% more efficient for a particular area.

Ursan has however degenerated pug play. A balanced group snoring through the game with a SY paragon is infinitely better gameplay than 5-6 bears running amok, but that's all you can find in the elite areas. Because that skill succeeds even when players fail badly at coordination. It needs a serious hit for pugging to recover.

As to your larger point, a bunch of the random PvP buffs (like turret rangers, or necro sacs) seem to benefit PvE even more, so I don't see an overall decline of shared skill power and effectiveness (well, unless you're a paragon). But I'll take any rational excuse to bring some semblance of balance to these PvE skills.

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I don't have a problem with all the nerfs out there. Some of them were obviously coming, such as Rodgort's Invocation with the 5 sec recharge and Ancestor's Rage. I just hate it when they nerf a skill to the point where it can't be used at all. WY! and Incoming! are examples. They just aren't useful anymore in PvE anymore. RI and Ancestor's Rage are still widely used though. They can serve their same purpose, maybe a little less efficiently, but they still work.

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well, after reading the entire thread i still and do agree that save yourselves and "finish him" and you move like a dwarf are rather TOO useful. meh... i am happy with the way things are with the bar i run so it's ok to me. ^^

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