u/Realistic_Newspaper8

Let me start out by saying I LOVE GW2. I played it ever since it came out on my dad’s ps4, and I’ve put countless hours into it on steam. But the more I think about the balancing for this game, the more it drives me insane. I know every talks about Electro, Agent, and Plasma Pea, and Z7 Imp, yadda yadda yadda. But my problem lies with the classes in general. For starters any of the classes that are meant to mirror each other fail in one way or another. Sunflower and Scientist are the support for their sides, but Scientist gets a shotgun (for most variants), a way to get up close so that said shotgun is viable, and either an additional damage boost/trap using the stickies or more healing through the heal bomb to boost the healing already received through the healing station. What does Sunflower get? An assault rifle, no movement ability, and her sole method of self healing (unless you’re playing as Stuffy Flower) has cooldowns between healing, doesn’t affect all teammates around it, and can only be swapped out for a slight damage boost from the Evil Flower, losing your self healing ability.

For another example, how about the tanks of each team, Citron and All Star? (Technically Citron is supposed to be the counter to Imp, but I digress.) Citron gets awesome movement, a player-attached shield, a stun, and a hitscan laser. Meanwhile, All Star gets an instakill (imp punt), a potential instakill (Sprint Tackle),(especially when paired with imp punt) and THREE shields. THREE. The fact that All Star has projectile weapons isn’t really a downside for anyone who plays him for a while, once you learn to lead a little.

What about close range characters, Chomper and Super Brains? Chomper has a stupid slow (and weak) primary attack, two stuns, and an instakill. Super Brains gets a faster primary, a ranged secondary, high mobility to evade, and a high damage ability(Super Ultra Ball). (We don’t talk about Turbo Twister - RIP). You could argue Chomper gets the high damage ability as well with Chomp Cannon, but you have to either buy that ability or get lucky from a pack. Chomper leans heavily on his ability to get reliable burrow or goop stun kills, while Super Brains can manage just fine even without any stun abilities.

Foot Soldier and Kernel Corn? Gas vs butter barrage is fairly even, if you can get away. Soldier can get more mobility with rocket leap, but Corns jump comes with a bunch of damage. Soldier’s rocket is a one shot kill if it lands dead center, but Corn’s rockets splits in two and doesn’t even travel in a straight line. Good luck landing a hit if you aren’t point blank. Some of the variants aren’t fair either. What do you do as any variant of Corn when you need to reload but the enemy General Supremo can just keep firing?

Even minor things, like the backyard. Weeds automatically spawn heal weeds, but a healer zombie unit has to be manually spawned at a gravesite. What??? Every other variant of spawnable unit is the same, but weeds get a free healer???

Cactus and Captain Deadbeard? Cactus almost entirely leans into the sniper role, with defensive mines, walls, and her drone to hit from a safe location. Deadbeard plays more like a flex class, able to set up as a Sniper when needed but much more capable in a close quarters fight, with his high damage (and damage reducing) Barrel Blast, a shotgun, and a cannon for chip damage.

This issue persists even in other games like BFN. At long last, the Acorn would serve as the counterpart to the Imp! Now both sides have a glass cannon capable of becoming a temporary tank for the team! Nope. When your health runs out as Acorn while in tree form, you die. When it runs out as Imp while in your Mech, you AUTO EJECT, and get to keep running about, completely removing the risk of making yourself such a big slow target.

Sorry for the rant, and again, I really love these games. It’s just so annoying how the counterparts to each class are so lopsided in some ways when they’re meant to serve the same role for each team.