Skill Balances moving forward - PvE/PvP

(Mods: Move this to Sardelac if you must, but I am looking for answers and feedback more interesting than /signed or /notsigned.)

Skill balance updates and how they effect PvP and PvE; possibly one of the oldest and heavily debated topics on this forum and others. The problem stems from the different reasons behind the two sides to Guild Wars, which I will go into later.

Either side will always benefit from a balanced game, because it introduces diversity and gives players more choice. PvP takes this a step further in requiring near perfect balance to create a competitive environment. The problem is, as highlighted by the recent update, when a PvP oriented skill balance steps on the toes of PvE players.

The crux of the matter is this: Broken stuff in PvE is fun. Mowing through mobs on a D-Slash bar with Splinter Weapon being chained on you. Using Seed of Life to keep up your front line when dealing with a big agro... You get the picture. PvE is about playing out a story, feeling powerful, developing your character. It isn't hard to understand why seemingly unnecessary balance updates aimed at PvP can sting. Nobody likes the man interfering with their enjoyment.

With the introduction of Nightfall ArenaNet recognised the disparity between the two, dealing with it through introducing PvE only skills. Suddenly PvE players could have their cake and eat it, without it crossing the border and breaking PvP. I believe up untill then ArenaNet were against further separating the two sides of the game by doing this. However, the friction being created between the two sides of the community was already pushing them apart, a large part of that caused by this very issue.

The arguement heard over and over again (I used it myself a few times) was that skill balance simply didn't matter in PvE. It would always be easy, mobs would always be stupid, and wtf everyone uses Ursan anyway nub. From the perspective of a PvP player that is understandable, but the updates were still infringing on the core reason people play PvE; fun, as opposed to winning.

I think the recent update was a step backwards in ArenaNet's approach. They realized they had to have some kind of compromise, but dealt with it in a way that simply ends up displeasing both crowds. The PvE players still have to deal with the changes, and the PvP players face knowing that they will be reverted. I was quite pleased with the actual changes, some of them have been a long time coming, but the planned reversion just makes no sense.

Does PvP stop being a concern for ArenaNet after the last mAT? Is this a sign of things to come? Should we expect any more balance updates? Should Guild Wars 2 PvE players expect frequent updates and reversions that make little sense to them and just make their gaming less fun? All round it's quite worrying.

This brings me to the point of this thread, which is how this is to be dealt with in the future of Guild Wars and in Guild Wars 2.

The only way I can see this being dealt with in Guild Wars is simply to shift problem skills to being PvE only.

Take Splinter Weapon as an example. Knowing that this particular skill is a favorite amongst PvE players, I would have been very sketchy about hitting it with a significant nerf. On the flip side it has been causing problems in PvP for a while now, so something had to be done.

Instead of nerfing it for two weeks over the mAT and then restoring it to its previous broken state, I would simply have made it a PvE only skill and even considered buffing it just for funsies.

Obviously this isn't a viable solution in every case, but that really isn't a concern in this matter. The few significant cases where a skill sees a lot of use in PvE and is breaking PvP are where it really causes the friction and annoyance.

The important thing to consider here is how far down the road Guild Wars is. I wouldn't have considered suggesting this approach a year or two ago where over time it could have caused problems (PvE skill pool vast and overcomplicated, PvP skill pool diminished), but frankly I think the quick and dirty methods of solving problems are the best way forward right now.

You keep the PvE players happy by not interfering with their experience, and you keep the PvP players happy by completely removing the problem.

As for Guild Wars 2, there are a number of ways I can see this issue being dealt with, but a lot seem overcomplicated. For example. having two versions of each skill would just bloat the game and seem like a very shoddy work-around.

The solution that currently appeals to me most revolves around the five new playable races.

It has been stated that Guild Wars 2 will have race based skills, such as the Norn ability to shape shift into a bear. I would suggest that each class was given a racial trait attribute line (simmilar to a class' primary attribute line) that was only available for PvE and world PvP. Skills in that line or effects from having attribute points in that line would be frozen out in the arena PvP matches.

The game would then be designed from the ground up with the powerful and key PvE skills in the racial traits lines. This includes solo farming skills, big AoE damage attack skills, and so on. They would remain relatively untouched, with very little reason for them to ever be rebalanced. They would essentially perform all of the key functions of the game more effectively than any core (non racial) skill.

I'm interested in hearing any differing opinions on the problem its self, feedback on the proposed solutions, or alternative solutions entirely.

I think that you gravely underestimate need for balance in PvE.

IMBA stuff is fun, true, but that fun is short lived. You can only dslash mobs while chaining SY with said splinter and seed on you for so long.

After while, you need change, or you burn out. Now, most players don't want to change, so you need something that keeps gameplay fresh and that forces them to change:

Balance changes.

And here comes PvP that suplies steady flow of them.

ERGO, quality, long lasting, PvE needs interaction with quality PvP.

I mention in the second paragraph that PvE benefits from balance, and I think you misunderstand how that impacts the racial trait abilities I suggested.

I agree that the ridiculous skills/combinations that are just better than anything else (DSlash/SY, SoL, Ursan) are bad for the game. They hurt diversity and limit choice. The racial trait abilities would give people a large number of interesting and powerful abilities to choose from right from the start, and would preserve that diversity.

I mostly reacted to "Broken stuff is fun..." paragraph and elaborated why PvP-PvE connection is needed.

Agree with zwei2stein. Besides, I miss the pre-Nightfall times (or more like pre-GWEN times, as during NF it wasn't that bad for pve players), where if there was a buff/nerf, old builds in pve/pvp changed and people had new reason to play the game.

But now, what's the point of caring about PvE balance? Unless you change the Healer's Boon/m monk and Ursanway, there is actually no point in changing skills pve-wise. Because it will only affect ,,elitist ursanhaters'' and it won't affect ,,pr0 ursan winners''.

One thing I don't understand is why you compare SoL to D-Slash and D-Slash to Ursanway. D-Slash can be replaced by a paragon, dervish, assassin and ranger, just slap /w on those characters, give SY, whirlwind attack/Barrage/moebius+db combo and you are as good or better (in case of Paragon) as d-slash spammer.

On the other hand, SoL is useless and you can't replace ursan with anything. Elementalist? VERY limited range of knockdowns. Meteor Shower? 60 seconds recharge, horrendous cost and low spammability. Ursan knocks down everything every 8-10 seconds for 2-3 seconds (warriors get a huge advantage over other classes), deals higher damage than d-slasher or other cookie cutter build. This is the worst problem balancing team has to face.

I don't think having one race stronger in one aspect than another would be very fun to play. Being able to utilize trait-specific skills should be fun in its self. The very idea of playing an Asura is exciting to me. What would happen if a player wants to use an Asuran Warrior? His game experience would be diminished once he figured out that he was dealing less damage than a Charr Warrior and couldn't even survive in the front lines.

As for making everybody happy; I don't see that happening. Ever. Both PvE and PvP players should learn how to deal with nerfs, buffs and an ever-changing game. I feel for players that only play a few hours a weekend only to come back next week to find their skillbars radically altered, but that's what having hardcore GW friends is for.

I don't really like the race bonuses idea because it makes players feel like they have to make a very important decision that cannot be reverted later on. Locking people into something like that can have huge effects for the PvE crowd who may spend thousands of hours on a single character. Making the wrong racial decision and only realising too late could be disastrous and it adds the whole element of massive pre-game planning which I'd like to avoid. Guild wars should always retain it's freedom from lock-ins aspect.

I would just prefer if PvE didn't allow combinations that lead to everyone wanting a specific profession, with a specific build in order for something to get started.

It's really a buzz kill when it's so hard to find people willing to try an area with what the group has rather than insisting we need X or X because it kicks so much ass it would be stupid not to use it. That kind of game bores easily.

My words. Lasts thing most PvE players want is "Norn??? L2P and reroll as Dwarf, boon!"

Good post JR. Agree with just about everything. This 2 week long skill balance doesn't make much sense.

I do think there is an issue concerning overpowered in PvE compared to overpowered in PvP though.

The reason why Anet does not want to touch things like Ursan/Splinter is because it will tick off a large amount of PvE players who could care less about balance and just want to beat the game, farm, or have fun killing stuff. Now I understand that isn't everybody, but I'm guessing it is A LOT. What I'm saying is if something is overpowered in PvE, the game is still playable. You can't compare this to PvP, where overpowered skills make the game completely unplayable.

So I feel Anet saying "we will not make PvP changes that will affect PvE in the future" is almost like saying "we do not care if PvP is unplayable, as long as we don't anger PvE players".

I think that's why profession changing exists in PvE.
As an avenue to avoid that state.
As JR said, choice is good. It's also important that in a game where people spend so much time to build up to something there isn't an aspect of the game that can destroy all their momentum if they went in the wrong direction.

How is that particularly different to choosing a class? If you roll a Warrior and then later realize you would rather be casting spells then there is nothing you can do but re-roll or be gimped.

Look at World of Warcraft for example, you choose a race and a class, with both impacting the way in which you can play the game effectively. It's the model used by the most popular MMO going, so I think it's difficult to call it fundamentally flawed.

The racial traits don't have to be quite as straight forward or limiting as the examples I gave, or particularly influence how good your race is in a particular class. I agree that it shouldn't be a case of 'if your Warrior isn't Charr you are completely gimped'. They should be passive enough that if you really wanted to you could play a Sylvari Warrior and not be too gimped, and there may indeed be certain situations where a Sylvari Warrior is better than a Charr Warrior.

I do think that a racial trait mechanic offers a good way to divide the skills and prevent skill balances becoming as much of an issue as they do currently.

There is another approach: What you do defines your character. Classless system. In Gws, what you put on bar defines your class.

Ultima Online, father of success of MMOs, for example, used this approach.

Everyone there has two choices: if they went wrong direction, they can either create Alt or they can respec their character. Both that considerable effort, and meaningful decidions.

Tabula Rasa for example allows you to create "checkpoints" in from of clones that allow you to partially reroll character.

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As far as balance is concerned, i don't see point in restricting each player skills/abilities by race because it simply becomes part of build.

It looks like it not different from just loading different build. fundamentally, Races add one additional variable to builds, making them harder to balance (thats, if you add them to dual-class system we have.), and are inconvenience as far as character development is concerned.

It's interesting that you brought up primary professions as I was thinking about those when I wrote my first post. Primary professions are largely the only real "lock-in" we have in the game, however it doesn't mean it's ok to add more into the game.
There's a very slight difference between realising you don't like your warrior because of the class play style and realising your warrior is at a slight disadvantage in some areas because he chose a specific race.
Racial traits will need to be either extremely subtle or extremely well balanced in order to be implemented smoothly, and it seems that just brings us back to the original problem of balance affecting PvE play.

Basically, I see racial traits as the creative yet dangerous route to take. Getting it wrong will just create more problems than it solves, and this may be one of the cases where a simpler solution may be the better one.

I would like to point out that broken/overpowered skills are not always fun.

It creates a linear progression of gameplay that is more like "Stop, Go, Stop, Go" with no real sense of challenge.

I wouldn't tie PVE only specialties to specific races, since that just pigeonholes them into specific functions, creating a lack of diversity in builds.

Under your idea, a Charr Ele would be less effective than an Asura Ele in PvE, so why would anyone want a Charr Ele? PvP would be unaffected, since it essentially is just a skin difference.

Heres what my idea is: http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10170019

Wrong on so many levels, wow. It starts pretty good actually with the first paragraph. And then goes down the drain.

If a build gets boring people will change them on their own without outside force or they are going to look for a new game. There is absolutely no reason to force that change. In fact that is the source of the problem. Changing a build because you came to the conclusion that it bores you, is accepted by nearly every PvE player, because PvE is about having fun. Being forced to change your build, because someone else says so is not accepted, be it players telling others what to run or be it skills getting useless through "balance" updates.

Isn´t that the heart of balance? Reaching a place, where players decide to play a certain build, because they want to run it and not because it is stronger?? Where you can choose between several builds without gimping your group??

I hope that racial traits are not introduced.

Reason being that when you start it may not be "the best choice" to have a warrior as an asura or w/e, and by the time you realise this you may have put a lot of effort into the character and not be as good as that charr over there.

Since you can't (afaik) just change race from asura to charr i wouldn't like that to be such a factor and it'd be simpler to just remove traits, rather than "forcing" them to roll a charr to be a more effective warrior (i recognise that it won't force them, but it'll be strong push to).

It'd just bring more balance into the picture too which atm doesn't seem to be a good thing.

Unless of course they're pve only, but even then i don't think it'd be brilliant what with ursan rank requiring etc. PUG's would require warriors to be only the most effective race, other race warriors would be laughed upon.

However if they could balance it i think it'd be brilliant, but i just doubt they could.

If the devs want to address PvE balance, they need to start by toning down key PvE skills (Ursan, SY!, consumables, etc.). People whining about Splinter having a 8r should be the last thing they're concerned about when PvE is being defined by a very small number of abilities.

As for PvP, it sucks to see skill balances being influenced by people who have some kind of sentimental attachment to their build. Seeing as some of these people hate absolutely any skill update, it'd be better to tell them to just deal with it, rather than let pressing PvP issues remain in the game longer than they already do.

Sorry, what??? Why would people play a Charr Ele, even in that scenario above? Because they want to play a Charr Ele!!! Is that really such a foreign concept?

Are computer games players really at a point where only the most effective way to beat a game is played??? Or is it just Lyra Song? And some others on the two forums??

I just remember that some players do enjoy "hardcore" modes and looking for a challenge on their on by "gimping" themselves. So it is not all players.

My case:

1) Tank'n'Spank

This build is fairly boring. Anytime i was in such group, people complained how bored they are or how lame it is to just maintain bonds.

They didn't change it. Why? It worked well enough and it became standard. And it helped them to reach their goals. There was no incentive to use anything else than fail-safe stuff. Only exceptional players made different groups.

Which brings me to:

2) Ursan (its not that kind of thread, bear with me)

People play it, but even people who play it and like imba factor of it start to voice how unpleasing gameplay experience it is. But they still play it and support it, dont want it to be gone.

Same reason why people were played tank'n'spank. People dont like to change, even if they had more fun, they prefer "good old working" stuff. You really need outside factor.

Everyone eventually finds "their" build they would be unlikely to change even if it started to bore them enough to actually voice it. Seen that often enough.

Ideally, you want all builds equal so that change become voluntary, but if there are imba skills, Incentive to win (or not to let teammates down) is bigger than incentive to change.

PvE don't have to be balance, it need to be fun!!!!

You can call a rock a marshmallow and pretend its soft and squishy, but its still a rock. A gimped class is a gimped class, no matter how anyone would cling to the RPG factor of it.

If you choose to play a gimped class, then don't expect anyone to want to play with you.

Balance is about equality. We should strive for gameplay balance so everyone has the same opportunities to play.

Challenge should be structured around the GAMEPLAY and NOT around character choices.

Otherwise you create tier levels and certain characters will never be played.

When I played SSBM tournaments, theres only 3 characters you will see: Marth, Sheik or Fox. Why? Because they were the best. No one in their right mind would play Bowser or Donkey Kong since they have ZERO chance of beating the high tier characters (thanks to exploits like Wavedashing and Zero-delay fast falls).

If SSBM was properly balanced, the increased power of Bowser and DK plus their resistance to smashes would have been enough to compensate for their lack of speed against the faster characters like Marth/Sheik/Fox.

I'd like to again stress that you shouldn't get tied up with the examples of racial traits that I gave. There is no reason why they would have to be so biased towards a particular class.

You ruin replay value when you give players the option to plow through PvE. Sure, it's fun to see your team lay waste to anything in your path for a while, but it gets boring. I don't see many players playing GW after GW2 is released because of all of the Ursan players spoiling themselves silly. Fun is in a challenge.

Rly? So give me a ,,set your level to 255, attributes to 400 and turn all enemies into ladybugs'' button. It would be fun!111

For about 20, +/- 10 minutes.

lyra_song - you know that half of the people here have no idea what's SSBM? And half of those people don't know Marth, Sheik or Fox?

I have learned to endure Ursan to achieve the only thing that really keeps me in GW. Without the mindless grind for titles, I would not tolerate the mindless grind of playing an Ursan "build." Ursan makes the grind go faster. Once through the title grind, I intend to "enjoy" other aspects of the game, possibly even more PvP, assuming I can figure out how to stay alive for more than 12 seconds.

If the titles rewarded play, rather than grind, it may be a different story. If titles were based on points for utilizing the core attribute wisely, or a particular skill type well, or exceptional use of conditions, hexes or interrupts rather than points towards a title track that improves all ready strong skills even more, I might feel less grind. That is a very convoluted sentece - how about, give me a title for interrupts, rather than for UB?

PvP vs PvE? I think that I have two main problems with the balances. The first is that a toon, on its own, can be made useless. I used to love my Paragon. Because of the balances in PvP, because of truly overpowered P teams, I cannot get my sole Paragon in a PvE group because of those same balances. That stinks. My Paragon does still have a purpose, he is currently full of mods from raptor farming. The other thing that I do not like is having to spend a bunch of time figuring out new builds. I do enjoy experimenting, but spending time creating builds takes away from time spent towards completing missions, vanquishes, etc. It is nice to be able to jump in and complete a little something in a half hour, without having to retool, not just my toon build, but the heroes that come along as well. Associated with this is the fact the the PvP community can change weapons and runes on a whim. Some of these balances mean that I have to spend gold on these items for my toon and heroes, money that would otherwise be spent on knocking a title out of the way.

There seems to be such a difference between the purpose of PvP and PvE that I often have to remind myself to look at it from the other perspective. This is diffeicult as I do not PvP (ask me to GvG sometime, easy points for you). PvP is, at least from my perspective, highly competitive. PvE is, for me, a time to lay back and unwind. PvP requires thought and, although I am capable of this, this is something I choose not to spend my time on. I think this is why I tend to resent the balances, although I am sure that many will be happy to tell me that this is not what I think, followed by a few random shift characters and then a kind explanation of what I should be thinking.

I think Anet should keep doing skill balances where they nerf popular skills and buff less-used (or unused) ones. Why? Because to me that is one of the things that keeps the game interesting. Regardless if I want to play PVP or PVE, I like the fact that skills I typically wouldn't consider dropping off my bar now need to be weighed against other "fresh" skills/combos. It keeps me thinking and trying new things, and introduces a degree of creativity to the game - which quite frankly is one of the things that turned me on to this game in the first place.

I actually wish Anet would respec/"balance" more skills more drastically more often

I also agree with earlier points that some of the PVE skills should be adjusted/downgraded to encourage use of the full skillset we have available to us (cough cough.... something besides Ursan/HB teams with conset in every PUG these days).

And your point? :P That doesn't make the example less valid.

Heres an example that im sure NO ONE knows about.

Many many years ago, when I was still on 56k, there was this 2d online game I played called Silencer.

Silencer was an action side-scroller multiplayer game. It was sci-fi and featured players controlling hackers on a Martian mining colony.

The hackers were trying to undermine the government (known as the Guv) by stealing information from computer terminals.

Within the hackers were 5 Factions, each with different Pros and Cons.

Noxis faction - The Nox were impervious to the poison atmosphere of Mars. They were able to jump higher and take more hits than the other faction.

Lazarus faction - The Laz had the ability to ressurect once after being killed (if you kill them after they ressurected, they would then die and have to respawn). They had a special weapon that turned civilians into walking bombs.

Static faction - This faction was tech based and was faster at hacking. They were also the only class who can steal deployed guns, or hack government robot drones.

Calibre faction - The money based faction, they earned more money per hack and could afford expensive weapons in the matches much faster. They were also the only class to be able to buy security cards which let you walk past Government security without being shot at.

Black Rose - This faction was immune to poison bombs. Upon death, a Black Rose agent poisons all nearby players. They are the only class who can buy the poison bombs. They were also stealth to automated defenses.

This kind of balance worked for Silencer, since everyone had the same guns, same weapons (with except of the faction specifics), every agent looked the same (minding team colors of course).

The different factions played VERY differently from each other and required different tactics. But no ONE faction was better. The factions changed HOW you should play to be the best at that faction, but you could beat any other player with any faction (unless he was like 15 levels above you...in that case...no).

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This is the kind of balance I want. Everyone can a achieve the same goal, but everyone has different ways to achieve that goal, and no one way overshadows another way.

Guild Wars is balanced a different way in that some builds do well in some places, but useless in others. So when you encounter an area where you are useless, you have to change your build, rather than find out how your build can work in the area. This is still balanced because all players can change their builds, but at expense of cost of skills (or previously refund points). The BIG flaw in the GW system is when certain builds become obviously overpowered.

Then players become "endeared" or "trapped" by a certain build, that when Anet comes along to fix the overpoweredness, they scream bloody murder.

If an extra 3 seconds on Splinter Weapon is causing an uproar there is no way to keep the PvE crowd calm for the sake of PvP balance.

PvE really has no hope. Either you're going to have overpowerred PvX skills ruining PvP that can't be touched or the PvE crowd will go berserk if anything is done to them, or you have absurd skills like Ursan/SY that cheapen any challenge the game could have. It does seem like the majority prefers the lack of challenge because they're making money so that route might as well be taken. Buff all the PvE skills to stupid levels so PvP can be balanced. It will please the majority which is apparently all skill balances are about until GW2 is here.

Fluidity is everything!

In GW1 everything is fluid except gender which has absolutely no effect on gameplay. There is even fluidity within character professions with the different attributes. That's how I'd like to see the racial traits done.

Sylvari are magical creatures in touch with nature -- let them coose a racial trait like expertise OR energy storage OR Divine favor. And just maybe -- in the same way that you can change secondary professions now -- those choices could come with some fluidity. The Charr seem to be shamanic, tribal, and physical tanks. Let them choose between mysticism, leadership, and strength... This keeps the races meaning something, being more than just an aesthetic choice, while not locking out options during actual game play.

Going with: Char get +5% melee damage, -10 armor to elemental, asurans get +5% damage while using elemental skills but -10 armor to melee, is just... boring. It allows no creativity within the race/profession combination.

I hope the developers are having a blast creating this game -- I hope they're having fun! But when they're finished and I get my hands on it I want to have some input too. I want play choices that makes my character my own and build choices that let's me effectively meet the obstacles presented on the battlefield -- maybe after some thought and preparation -- but at least having full potential to do so.

Don’t assume that all of us pve use Ursan Blessing. The fact that several pvp have suggested that we start using only that skill really shows the underlying problem in that pvp will over use the build flavor of the week until an update causes them to create a new flavor of the week.

Don’t talk about stagnant builds until you look at the pvp skill usage. PvP is really just “Build Wars” when it comes to pvp and the fact that several of the players where fighting duplicates of themselves in tournament can be seen in the skill usage charts.

Race specific skills might work in pvp since it will be no big deal to re-roll a new pvp race to get the build flavor of the week. PvE might have a problem with that since after several skills nerfs a race may become too under powered to be enjoyable which could result in 100’s of hours wasted. I hope the new races are just cosmetic and have no affect on the game otherwise I am really looking forward to seeing all the norn warriors running around (last part was sarcasm).

The one solution for pvp and to reduce the number of updates is to make it so that pvp can change their build during game play. Ever skill (and by definition) ever build out there has a counter it is just not feasible to bring a counter for a specific build, the other team might not even use it.

I never get these people (I quote u because u made me think of that group and their outrage) complaining about the nerfs affecting PvE, because not only players, but monsters are affected as well, the difference is that not all monsters use splinter 100% of time. Players should be a bit more versatile too maybe?

All the nerfs have never made it impossible to play PvE, so what is the PvE crowd complaining about? that for a moment they have to think about a new build and can't go autopilot? I play my share of PvE as well, and I think no nerf can make it impossible to play, PvE is usually much more forgiving then PvP.

Who said it's about Splinter Weapon? Oo

I think A.Net should look at other popular, older and better in both pve and pvp game, Ragnarok Online. In other thread I already mentioned how things good in pve are good in pvp, too.

For example, if shadow stepping/teleporting (yeah, it was in RO before in GW ;d) is inbalanced in PvP (because jumping 10 cells into enemy territory, 10 cells again and again means one person can infiltrate enemies and destroy their healers too easily), then what did RO balancing team do? Limit shadow steps, so they don't work through walls, consume 5 times more SP (mana/energy) for hiding/teleporting and can't teleport on a cell 4 cells from enemy. This way shadowsteps are used as a fast/cool looking way to move around, yet it isn't gamebreaking.

Or, on the other hand, there was a skill underpowered in PvP (well, not underpowered - let's say it was balanced) and overpowered in PvE. It had the ability to deal massive damage, the more Vitality has enemy/monster, the more damage it would deal. So person with 30 vit would take 16k damage, but a boss with 150 vit would take at least 42k. See the difference? But balancing team noticed this abuse (average boss had 200-500k hp in those days, so in 15 seconds he would be pwnd by one person) and lowered vitality of bosses and that skill can deal only 20k dmg. Twice less, but this also means boss has twice as much time to heal himself/kill character. Especially that they are fast and very hard hitting...

Too bad A.Net doesn't know a rat's ass about balance.

PvE crowd (that is guru crowd) is complaining not about nerfs, but the lack of balance in PvE. Don't get us wrong - we, or at least I, love making new builds. But what's the point, if every build is either slower or inferior to Ursan in every way?

That was part of the reasoning. Race specific skills being PvE only would mean that they would rarely need to be balanced. You could spend the first few months after release bringing them all in line with each other, and then virtually forget about them.

If they were properly balanced there would be no uber combinations like DSlash/SY, and you would maintain a good level of diversity.

some folks enjoy the challenge of playing through pve with the constraints of proper balanced skills rather than the absurdly overpowered 1click win pve skills

it may be unpopular but i like JRs idea of different race stat buffs, certainly would add a new layer to gw2. i think however they will more likely go with race specific skills instead.

Fair point, but really a different arguement. Nobody was suggesting that PvE only skills for GW2 should be as mindless as Ursan or SY!.

You're right, they don't. A big problem is the typical PvEr can't adapt whatsoever or even look at the changes made and realize how it really doesn't affect their gameplay. Perhaps accept the fact that Splinter Weapon being capped at 3 enemies still means it does hundreds of damage with Barrage. But at the same time a lot of PvErs spend a lot of time farming, that is how they play the game. Skill balances make farming builds stop working, or working at a slower pace which is what causes a lot of the grief. Slow down the rate a PvEr can make money to play dress up with their PvE toons and there is hell to pay.

There isn't, but nerf Ursan and lots of people get angry. That statement made in this update shows that the majority are the ones who balances are directed towards with PvP as less of a concern. And for what? Because PvErs refuse to actually get better at the game and realize that there are other methods of getting the job done? If PvPers aren't going to get a balanced game there is no hope to get PvE skills balanced either for those who don't want to steamroll the game with the 1 key.

While I don't think you meant it as a deep statement, this really gets to the root of the problem.

In PvP, the game depends on razor-thin balance to be fun. Overpowered stuff needs to be promptly fixed, while FOTM builds need to be toned down so the game doesn't stagnate. It's fairly simple on the surface, although much more complex in execution. Unfortunately, Anet has been gun-shy in changing skills, which led to degenerate play. They have greatly improved on this in the last few months, but shutting the barn door doesn't do much anymore, the horse is long gone. The best skill balance for this group is one that fixes the problems with the current meta.

PvE is actually quite a bit harder to tweak. As pumpkin said, balance just doesn't matter, fun does. Unfortunately, there's 2 opposing camps on what "fun" is.

The first group is the stereotypical PvEer - the hardcore farmer who likes to run one build endlessly, and raises holy hell if anything changes about it. Keeping these players happy is as simple as adding overpowered stuff like ursan, then never changing it. The only ongoing changes this player needs is the addition of new and ultra-rare weapons to grind after. The best skill balance for this group is one that doesn't happen at all, or is one that only buffs skills (and preferably not those used by farmable enemies).

The second group includes many of my friends, posters on this forum, myself, and the mythical casual gamer - people who enjoy PvE just to play the game. The people complaining about the death of pugs and the overabundance of cookie cutter builds like ursan fall in here. Keeping these players happy means keeping the skills fresh and interesting, while encouraging grouping. This means a huge variety of viable skills that are fun to run in groups. Balance is only important so long as there are no useless skills and no horrendously overpowered skills destroying variety. The best skill balances for this group are huge, sweeping changes across hundreds of skills at once.

Find a way to accommodate all three of these groups at the same time, and you'll be a rich man.

Any time you add more you create more work and problems for yourself as the "passive" abilities for races in GW2 the OP mentioned. Without them though the races will seem rather cardboard and it will be no different selecting Norn or Charr than it is selecting male or female. We don't know yet how that's going to be, but, with Anet's direction I don't expect much more than cosmetics when it comes to the races. It will be easier to balance the less they add.

As far as Ursans it hasn't broken the game it's merely made a group of people angry that don't want others being able to play the whole game everywhere unless they play the game like THEY play it. It's nothing more than jealousy and greed as far as I see it. For those that like Ursans it IS a blessing it was created, now, just about everyone can play everywhere and they don't have to wait 2 hours to get in a group. Just put on your Ursans and away you go. If anything Ursans has helped to bring prices down on things like ectoes, shards and when you add it all up even FOW armors. Anything that requires resources of some sort has been reduced in cost thanks to Ursans. I'd say the majority of players are happy about that.

As far as PVE/PVP I do look for separation in GW2, if not I'm certainly not going to buy into it. For 3 years we've had nothing but disdain and arguing and crying about skill nerfs and because they are intertwined people have quit when something they've grown accustom to gets nerfed and nerfed and nerfed, entire guilds disappear and towns and outposts become ghost towns. There will almost have to be two sets of skills for GW2 to work and be successful and a separation of PVE from PVP. I do look for PVE only skills moreso in GW2 than in GW as EOTH/GWEN looks to be an example of things to come. I enjoy title grinds that make your character more powerful or even more useful in groups and I look for those to be part of GW 2 as well. Who knows maybe even Ursans will follow us which would be great as far as I'm concerned it will keep prices down from the getgo.

The problem with PvE is the hardcore PvE-ers, i.e., those who see the game as an optimization problem of killing legions of monsters to maximize profit. Until you can figure out how to get that braindead group to evolve higher cognifive functions, nothing can change for the better.

The ideal solution in my opinion is to split PvE off into its own ghetto where skills and items are not PvP-balanced. Let those who choose to play on the PvP servers play to win. They will truly appreciate the value of balance.

Of course, in a PvE-infested forum like Guru it is sacrilege to talk about hardcore PvE-ers as the red headed idiot children, so all such threads are doomed.