Positives:
+ Prevents a set of skills (a build) for any one class from becoming overpowered and over used.
+ Promotes diversity in skill builds as players create custom builds that fit their play style instead of relying on a premade build that most others are using.
+ Balanced skills allow the players to surprise their opponents by using less popular skills successfully.
+ Balanced skills remove the ability to abuse a specific skill build to farm NPCs that drop certain items. This stops the game’s economy from being flooded with the items and helps keep inflation in check.
Negatives:
- If one class’s skills are overpowered then there will be an overabundance of that class in the game. The game offers no challenge to the class’s abilities.
- Balancing skills can break good builds that aren’t overpowered or abused requiring the player to redesign their skill bar and, sometimes, even replace weapons, insignias and runes. This can be quite expensive.
- Balancing some skills can break or decrease the usefulness of others. On the contrary, sometimes balancing those skills cause others to become overpowered.
- Relearning how to effectively use a newly balanced skill or creating a good build with newly balanced skills can be time consuming and have a bit of a learning curve depending on the changes made.
Thoughts:
~ A lot of time players complain because a certain skill or skill set seems overpowered to them. It’s actually not overpowered. More than likely it is that they either lack the skill to play or came up against a player who is more skillful.
~ Some skills are identical to each other. The duplicate skills came with one of the additional campaigns to provide those missing one or more of the campaigns with the basic skills all classes had. So, if a player has all three campaigns then they will have duplicated skills. This can effect skill balance in gameplay because one player may only have one campaign and therefore no duplicate skills while an opposing player may have two campaigns and so two duplicate skills. This gives the player with duplicate skills two opportunities to use the skill where the previous player has only one opportunity.
~ PvP and PvE are so different that many skills need to be split into a PvP and PvE version to address the different situations. I find it interesting that a skill that is balanced perfectly for PvE may be considered over or under powered for PvP. This is a fine example of AI versus player skill when it comes to gameplay.
~ Some classes are the main focus of skill balances, like the Dervish, because of their prominence in PvP. ArenaNet tries to keep the PvP playing field as level as possible. Unfortunately this means that classes that are not prominent in PvP, such as the Monk, do not get much attention.
Would Like:
* Skill descriptions can be a bit unclear at times and rebalancing doesn’t help. Often I’ll be looking at a skill wondering what had changed. I know that the developers post blogs addressing the changes but this does nothing for me in game. So, I’d like for rebalanced skills to have a more clear description of what they now do. I’d also like a way to compare pre-balance skill to the post-balance skill to judge the changes and decide if the skill is still worthy of my use.
* I’d like classes that aren’t as prominent in PvP, such as the Monk, to receive some skill balance attention. They really need it as their healing and protection prayers are in a major need of a tweak.
Credit where credit is due:
Various. (2007-2011). Guild wars official wiki. Retrieved from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
Various. (2003-2011). Guild Wars. Retrieved from http://www.guildwars.com/
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