What is "balance" and can it be achieved?

for me, yes to ''master'' a game like GW you should know all the skills, master the ''mechanics'' [if by mechanics you mean things like knowing what target to prioritize at a given time].

to be ''pro'' would be to follow and counteract meta while knowing that you cant ''beat them all' but counting on the other teams with the build to counter yours not making it to you, if the chances are high for that then....you're (not individually specifically but as a whole community) doing it wrong.

you cant have balance in a game like GW or MTG or even CS without some measure of willingness from the part of the players/organizers.

MTG manages it through restricting skillsets.

CS [in pubs] with removing the AWP (like it or not) and/or pressuring campers (again like it or not). -the reason for this is cash flow in CS is NOT designed for long pub plays. In Scrims/Wars its a non issue.

GW could have managed by splitting pvp and pve sooner [balance is not the same in two different types of gameplay], by pressuring teams with ''degenerate'' builds through enforcing restricted skillsets in pvp, applying handicapping dynamic environmental effects towards degenerate meta and having a better community more inclined to thinking to directly counteract these builds until they cycled out rather than complaining about it until Anet changed the skills.

Yeah, I agree entirely. I'd say pretty much the same thing myself, as I think would anyone who played both games at a decent level and has an understanding of how they work.

[obvious]The problem is that they work differently, and you can't balance GW the same way SC is balanced (3 equal but different starting options, each having every tool at its disposal), so SC isn't practically useful. Yes, it is an example of balance, but you can't apply it in any way to GW.[/obvious]

Wow, just Wow! Outside of 2-3 people who have posted in this thread, the rest of it is nothing more than a headache.

I belive cracked armor and armor cap has killed all need for armor.
No point of a caster to have +20 rune armor if you can apply a condition that will totally ignore that, so you equip health runes that is immune to cracked armor, and also you find yourself on a position that you need as much HP as possible to prevent a spike.
You can have skills thta give you armor, its highly improbable to find yourself on a place were multiple armor buffs are needed or wanted. And even if you do have mutiple bonus, the max you will get is 20, wich can be easly ignored by one condition. With this we see ONE skill making TWO skill useless, with no need of having a direct interaction with these skills you are ignoring. Direct interaction as when you remove a specific enchantment or hex, in skills like this, that removes multiple skills from play, they have to have a long recharge or a high energy cost or something to balance it. A good example of a skill like this is Divert Hexes, its a avarage energy (10), has the status of elite (so you can have only one) and is a class-specific skill (on the contrary of cracked armor wich many classes can apply it, without the need of an elite). Cracked armor does not have this, even though is a condition and CAN be easly removed, the possibility of beeing removed is not a weakness because it can be easly applied and you only need seconds for it to have its full use, wich is in a spike case, not pressure.

So i propose to Cracked Armor to have a -20% armor reduction (to a max of 60) and armor cap to be increased to 40 with also major and superior runes to have their health penalty changed to -25 and -50.

With Cracked Armor reducing a percentage, will not directly ignore armor buffs, but will still give a good armor reduction, even against high armor targets. You see, the advantage of beeing having a precentage reduction is that will have less effect on low-class targets and higher effect on high-armor targets. But it will never directly counter an armor buff, no matter how high or low it is. Cracked armor will still fill its function, that is to reduce a huge armor buff, but will not destroy the buff. Also leaving low and avarage armor characters a chance to have armor bonus and not beeing afraid of having the bonus destroyed.
Having the armor cap increased will give players in general to opt to have multiple armor bonuses, like Watch Yourself and Stand Your Ground. Even though this is a pro-caster combo and puts all casters on even ground against heavy armor characters, the new cracked armor can still pierce through these buffs, this time ignoring one of the buffs (one must remind that "WY" and "SYG" do have their natural weaknesses, wich will still give a window to low the armor closer to 60).
The new health penalty proposed to benefit casters that will focus on a single attribute with high parameters, usually focusing on damage or heal spikes, and middle liners class that can opt to lose some health in order to boost his main attribute without putting his overall health in jeopardy. Multiple attribute casters can also opt to lose 50 health to boost 2 attributes in order increase the versatility efficience but never reaching the 16. Why this? Casters have not beeing used for damage focus because its not viable to wildly boost a damage attribute, we currently lose 75 health for that (in some cases not even a critical hit will make you lose that much) wich putts players one spike hit closer to death before beeing spiked. With this, casters can "suffer" a avarage health hit but with a greater compensation, damage increase.

In my point of view, we must first fix what will is going to be present in every match, runes, insigneas and armor. If we have bad skill we can replace it for another one, leaving this weak link away from battle, like it never existed. But if we are cornered to only one armor option (survivor), we can expect nothing different from the skills that are about to come, they will all round up on the high-health players with no armor bonus.
Players dont like seeing the same skills over and over, when this happens is because these skills are overpowered. At this case these skills are bound be nerfed, and they are indeed nerfed.
But if we see the same skills over and over, and these skills are not overpowered, it is because something is making players choose these skills. Arent these reasons bound to a nerf too? Are these mechanics succetible to a change too? Let us hope so.

Thank you, Fril, for starting an excellent thread. I have zip to add, but it's good reading.

Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) doesn’t really work in GW or any other RPG for that matter, simply because it ignores the assumptions which make RPS balanced in the first place. RPS by itself is imbalanced, it is the assumptions that make it balanced. Assumptions which read as follows in a traditional game of RPS:

1. It is a 1vs1.
2. Both players have the same choice of Rock, Paper or Scissors per round.
3. Rock, Paper, Scissors are of equal strength but Rock beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper, Paper beats Rock and they all stalemate against their mirrors.

For a RTS game like Starcraft, these assumptions can be followed quite closely and because they are, Starcraft can be argued to be one of the most balanced games out there.

However, apply the same to a RPG like Guild Wars and you have a problem. Guild Wars, or any other RPG for that matter, has you playing as the Rock, the Paper or the Scissors! Yep, you are not a player controlling your tools of Rock, Paper and Scissors and using those tools to beat your opponent. Instead, you ARE the tool trying to beat your opponent. You are playing as a Paper, trying to be more rocky, more scissory or just pure paper goodness against your opponent who is doing the same, except maybe not as Paper.

The problem is then compounded when you stop considering it as a 1vs1. What happens if I had 5 Rocks on one side and just a Paper on the other? The Paper beats the 5 Rocks? “But there are 5 Rocks!” you may argue. So what then? The 5 Rocks beat Paper? “But Paper is supposed to beat Rock!” you may argue again. So what then? How many Papers to beat how many Rocks? Immediately you run into a contradiction with the RPS concept once you stop considering it as a 1vs1.

The problem is further worsened if you then also make both sides have differing choices without the option to change choices as in the case of GW. What makes Starcraft balanced is the fact that you are able to change your strategy mid-game if you notice your opponent is using scissors a lot. You can stop using paper and start throwing Rocks and the fact that both of you have the same choices, you know your Rocks are going to work. However, in GW, whatever build your team goes in with, you are stuck with it for the duration of the match. So if you are a Paper build going against a Scissors build, good luck to you. You may win, but only because of the fact that you are playing as the tool, so some may play as a better Scissors or Paper or some may be worse, but most times your lost is already predetermined.

The problem culminates with assumption 3 which actually ties in with how RPGs have you playing as the tools you are supposed to be controlling in RPS. Rock, Paper, Scissors aren’t of equal strength because you are playing as them. So Rock doesn’t always beat Scissors, Scissors doesn’t always beat Paper and Paper doesn’t always beat Rock and stalemates don’t happen either. Which is kind of funny since the whole concept of RPS goes out the window. Intermingle all three problems with the hidden assumption that you are supposed to be controlling your tools and not playing as them and you end up with a giant question of “what is balanced?” that can’t be answered since the assumptions that makes RPS balanced aren’t really there in their entirety. It is all three assumptions existing at the same time that makes RPS balanced, not just any one of them.

You first must be unbalanced to be balanced

Balance is hard to define so I'm not even going to try. Let's just say I consider a game balanced if the masters of the game continue to play it for a very long time without complaining.

As for Guild Wars balance, I wouldn't even BEGIN to attempt to balance it without going to Prophecies only and POSSIBLY with Factions but much less likely.

I'm still in the process of gathering people's thought here and present a somewhat consensual view of the problem, while not keeping controvery and opposite point of views out of this. It's quite difficult to read through the various posts and cross-reference ideas (and I'm also busy with teaching!).

A few thought while reading posts: does the "right" kind of balance prevents game evolution? Isn't the warrior like Chess's queen, overpowered? Can you bring back some balance by reworking Sins (do you need to remove shadowstepping?), Rits, Paras and Dervs (end of avatars?)? Do the "top/pro/expert" people change their builds all the time? Is balance a means by experienced players to keep the game where they can play it? (I'm being controversial with the last one, hope experienced PvPers don't take it personally and badly; in other words: why did you get so fed up of adapting to new "successful" buildets?)

ty hallomik. Yichi you may want to say more...

Don't confuse overpowered with Imbalanced.

If we go to specifics, there are numerous safeguards against them totally dominating game.

Every class, Every skill tree, Every Skill type can work against them (okay, this is a bit of exaggeration but not that far from truth.).

Warrior versus player that makes no use of those tools will indeed be overpowered. Warrior versus player that uses them will be in bad situation, but can win with good gameplay. Balance happens when warriors are strong enough to be consideration when building skillbars for team, but are not main emphasis, which has all the desirable outcomes: Warrior is challenged, but not completely disabled while his opposition is able to handle other threats.

Issue: All new classes added way to buff physical damage output and new physical damage dealers, while also adding new layers of defense, in worst case it was combined into single class (paragon).

That created environment where defense and offense got both more powerful at same time. Armsrace. Such environment basically invites abuse of whatever which counter didnt make it to meta build.

In adition to this, new skills popped out, enabling more optimal bars. Even if only one new skill made it to bar on average, it means that bars became more powerful. Armsrace.

Simply put, Shaddowsteping, Avatars, etc ... etc ... they are only easily seen symptoms, but it is change of game with 4 casters/2 physicals to game with 5 casters/5 physicals what destroyed balance.

Umm... no.... just no.

People have ALWAYS gone with +health runes over +armor runes because of the spike heavy meta game (which usually runs on armor ignoring damage like +xx attack skills or blood spike). That's why +health is used more then +armor because of the propensity of spiking. Cracked armor has nothing to do with that being part of the meta, since its been part of the meta for over 3 years, long before cracked armor even existed.

And the only thing the armor cap migigated is degenerative play styles like healball teams full of paragons.

Bisu rolled FBH with scouts in MSL and Fantasy/oov's valk/metal build kicked the TvZ meta in the balls for awhile. Fun times.

Starcraft is balanced because you have the ability to adapt your strategy. In a way, it is very RPS - but if you see your opponent going rock (3 hatch muta) by means of effective scouting you can quickly go to various forms of paper (cannon up, archons, sairs, etc). Guild Wars is different in that once you enter the battle you have no way of changing your build, leading to a lot more 'Build Wars' where the game is over before the teams even walk out the gate. This has been brought up before in this thread and elsewhere and is the biggest hindrance to achieving balance in the game.

This. Even 4-pool is easily blockable unless you went for early econ, and in that case you're intentionally taking a risk for long-term advantage.

By comparison, GW gimmicks are not blockable unless you spec against them, for the most part. A lot of it is in the maps too - it's ok to have moderately imbalanced maps somewhat (pro-split maps, pro-8v8 maps, etc) so long as in they're made known before the game starts, but being able to choose your map without the opponent knowing what it is, that's just abusable.

If tournament bo3 matches are clearly stated to have, say, Burning Isle, Warrior's Isle, Frozen Isle, then the impact of gimmicks is taken away because each guild can prepare for the style of the maps and the likelihood of suitable gimmicks, rather than just going in to an unknown opponent-chosen map and having Burning Isle FoCspike dumped on them. That would also benefit diverse Guilds who can run more than one style of build and hence play to the maps better.

Balance is the ability to have many viable builds and tactics in a given scenario. Viability is the key. If you have two different ways of doing the same thing, and one is clearly better, then the other is not viable. Perhaps the most direct comparison would be Swords vs Axes.

Take the example of: Eviscerate, Executioner's Strike, Bull's Strike, Frenzy, and a stance speed buff. The other three slots could be for Shock, a Res signet, Adrenaline gain, or some other utility (Power Spike or a different type of snare for example). Sword warriors have nothing to compare to the Axe's two-hit spike of Evis+Exec. To deep wound, they need to cause bleeding, and to do as much damage, they need more than the +40 that Galrath can give them. Besides, by that point you're on your third hit of your inferior spike. Inferior, in terms of viability. Final Thrust is not viable, because of the huge adrenaline cost and loss it causes. Mind you, the Sword can do a handful of other things pretty well, like a Conjure Cripslash, but it doesn't have anything on the power of Evis + Exec + IAS.

There are also some base tenets that are rooted in GW's "have fun now" philosophy. Same-profession spike teams are not fun to play against. Whiffing with your weapon is not fun, and trying to punch a rock (smite balls) is not fun. There are plenty of other things that aren't fun to plenty of folks, which motivated some changes in GvG (aggression), and HA (map rotation).

I generally dislike the RPS comparison, because it's too simplified, and just not a good example. Skill should always be the main decider in the game, however, you should have the opportunity to show skill in three categories:
1) Skill in playing your individual role
2) Skill in playing your team role
3) Skill in choosing and building your skill bar

1 is knowing what you are capable of, 2 is capitalizing synergy, and 3 is where viability in skill selection is key. Something like a team split scenario in a GvG is a really great way to show versatility. If you know how to split successfully, you can easily beat well over 75% of all teams in the game.

So that's what's going through my mind. Here's my list of changes:

Overall changes:
-Whenever a creature is hit by more than one instance of a skill being used within two seconds, the second hit and following hits does only 50% damage.
-Skills like Earth Daggers, Deadly Daggers, and Dual Strikes type skills are modified so that each hit in the skill bundle is considered to be a unique skill, that is, they work as they did before the aforementioned change.
-Health degeneration is now based on a percentage of your health. 1 pip is equal to 0.4% health lost per second. This means that characters over 500 HP take slightly more damage from degen than they did before. Instances of positive health regeneration will heal for the same amount it does now (that is, 2HP per pip per second). Stacking degen and regen works the same it always has.

Assassins
-Shadow steps now work like movement that is 250% faster and you cannot be body blocked, start moving towards to your opponent/ally for 2 seconds, and ends when you are adjacent or you have moved to a point over an earshot's distance from your starting location. This will prevent jumping ledges, and Recall abuse.

Paragons
- All shouts and chants last for as long as their recharges are, they don't end until this time is up, and new copies of the same chant or shout can't overwrite the older copies. For example, one (PvP) Song of Restoration lasts 30 seconds. You gain the health from it once, when you use a skill, and it doesn't end until the 30 seconds are up. This means that only one copy of any one chant on a team is useful. A second copy would be wasted. In addition to this change, all chants are given a healthy and significant buff to their viability. (For example, Song of Restoration can be made 10/1/15, and "Incoming!" can be a targeted shout with nearby range with a 3 second duration and 15 second recharge) This will improve Paragon's in a team role, without re-introducing Zergway (a team of 8 invincible paragons).
- Echoes are reworked to have lower costs, but only a set number of triggers for those that give a benefit on chant or shout end (Finale of Restoration and Zealous Finale)

Necromancers
-All "Life Stealing" effects found in spells now do armor-ignoring shadow damage in one step, and heal the caster in a second step. This solves the long-standing blood spike problem where damage cannot be effectively mitigated in a spike by fast-casting enchantment spells.

Ritualists
- Spirits like Union and Shelter get lower costs and longer lives, but are strictly limited to earshot range. This is intended to re-introduce viability.
- All spirits have lower armor and take double damage from shadow, holy, and chaos damage, but are easier to cast and maintain. This can be tied to Spawning Power. This change is intended to help certain professions be more effective against spirit spam.

That's a quick summary. In general though (especially for Warriors and Elementalists) more skills need to be made with more versatility. The changes to Rust were excellent, that is, a skill with a very narrow scope was given more viability by adding good enough damage to be used anyways with an effect that is weaker but very worthwhile. Cracked armor on Lightning Orb was really smart. For a Warrior example, take Skull Crack, lower its cost, have it cause short-duration blindness on attacking foes, and give a partial adrenaline refund if you end up not causing daze. Now the skill is more viable in more situations. For a skill like Mind Burn, make it cause exhaustion only if the target is already burning. Now it's useful for a healthy dose of damage, but can't be spiked by a team. Again, with a Warrior and Soldier's Stance, just add an unconditional 25% speed boost. Make it both worth an elite and the team synergy needed to make it work proper.

"Balanced" would probably have different meanings to every person. But the answer to the second question is no. Here are the reasons:
1- a lot of players have short amount of time to accomplish something. If there's a shortcut, they'll take it- Usran, farm builds, subway, discords, etc
2- In pvp, if there's a build that has a much higher chance in winning fights, more people are going to lean to that build.

The cause these reasons are real life stuffs to do- family time, work/school, responsibilities, etc

Remove all skills.

Make a skill called Rock. Another called Paper. Final one called Scissors.

Melee get rock, midline paper, monks scissors.

Balanced.