Gems/Crafting/Upgrading has altered PvP balance.....
After taking much of the last 2 months off from PvP, I starting doing PvP again this past week. What I discovered is a vastly different balance between classes than existed when I last played regularly a couple of months ago. Here are my observations below. Keep in mind I am talking only about end game PvP here....
1) Warriors are much harder to kill than before, and 2 warriors together are impossible to kill even with 3-4 mages/rogues. The party with more warriors wins almost always regardless of gear.
2) Rogues are now very easy to kill. In fact, I find myself doing well even against 2-3 rogues at the same time, usually managing to kill at least one of them before they kill me, and often times killing all of them and surviving the battle.
3) Battles are lasting longer than before, which in general is a good thing.
So I kept wondering why suddenly things seem so vastly different, and then it occurred to me..... GEMS! Why would gems and crafting alter PvP balance? In order to understand that, we have to understand how Gems affect our stats....
So far, gems only give us STR/DEX/INT points, but do not give damage or critical stats. The makeup of our damage stats come only partly from our general stat points, but mostly from actual damage amounts included in our gear. However, health points come only from the general stat points, and rarely is health added as a separate addition, although a the new Tarlok Heart amulets do have 100 health added.
So by increasing everyone's general stat points, but not increasing damage & critical points, the net result is that everyone has significantly higher health, and to a much lesser degree only a very small increase in damage. That is what is making battles last longer.... big health increase with only a small damage increase equals longer battles.
But then how does this affect balance between the classes? Longer battles favor classes that have longer skill cool down times and better healing skills, i.e. warriors. Rogues on the other hand would normally finish a warrior off fast before he can heal himself. But now that the warrior has higher health, that is proving harder to do.
Warriors tend to add blood gems to all of their items, which give 30-60 extra health per gem. A full mythic warrior would have 15 gems, and would therefore see an increase of 450-840 health, depending on how many normal or super gems he has in his gear. As the warrior is adding all STR to their gear, they receive increased damage for each of these STR points they add.
Mages tend to add mostly INT and maybe some STR from their gems. So their health increase is not as much as warriors, but since most mages use Shield, the amount of damage the shield can absorb also increases from INT/STR points added. Because mages are adding some STR though, they lose out on some possible damage boost they would get if they choose only INT.
Rogues tend to add DEX and maybe some INT. So they see the least health increase of the 3 classes.
I'm not sure what the solution is to fix this problem and restore balance. One possible solution is to add some more gem options into the mix, some that include damage or critical bonus. Another option would be for STS to slightly boost damage across the board for all classes, not so it changes anyone's stats, but just so that we see the effects in PvP only.
Anyone have any thoughts? Am I the only one who has noticed these changes? We were talking about them in guild chat today and it seemed that everyone agreed that warriors are now OP, even the warriors. The question was posed "what strategy should I use when I encounter a warrior with a Glaive?" The answer was "run".
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