Guild Wars 2

The developers always say they only make skills different in pve/wvw and pvp as a last resort.

So before further balancing is done, shouldn’t those differences be eliminated first and use that state as a new balancing point for pvp then?

Like for example elementalist healing signet 50% pvp only nerf on the passive (I still find it strang to have the signet show 213 healing on the tooltip yet as soon as you equip it in the heart of the mists the healing goes down to 173) or the 5 seconds cleansing water cooldown that is only in pvp?

Not a bad idea really, there are some needs from long ago that seem strange now.

This could help stabilize things especially for Elementalist. Just revert some of the early nerfs or at least the first 2 nerf sets that happened back to back in the early parts of the game.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Thanks for this reply! Good to know that you’ll be taking a look at those nerfs and if they still are really needed.

crosses all fingers and toes that Ride the Lightning is also included in those nerfs (cooldown wink wink nudge nudge) that will be looked at

PVP, WVW, and PVE should honestly be balanced separately.

Balancing them all together is just going to make them all medicore. The dev said they don’t want to do this because they want the game simple to pick up to new players/that players would be confused by skills working diff in diff parts of the game, but I think that’s a cop out and they just don’t have the resources to do because I don’t know why they would chose to insult they’re players by implying they’re too simple minded to keep track of skills in diff modes of gameplay. If they really want pvp to take off and for wvw and pve to be better, they need to balance the game modes separately, more so than they already do.

Aza.2105:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

No!
Oh god no!
Please, please no more AI in PvP.
There’s already too much.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

That’s interesting to know.

I suggest looking at Elementalist’s Water Magic #30th trait, Cleansing Water. A 5 second cooldown was added in a previous meta, which made the skill less funnier and removed some interesting combos out of it. Since then, the condition meta came and the new version still didn’t see much use, while elementalist’s water condition removal was further toned down by putting both cleansing wave and soothing disruption at master tier (making it impossible to use all three). For all those reasons, and for how fun the trait used to be before, I think it’s one of the best candidates for a revert.

Even more so, reverting it would make its interaction with the new auto-regen trait at adept tier less clumsy. It’s annoying when the grandmaster trait is put under cooldown because our opponent critically hit us. It makes any second source of regen a gamble, because when we we proc a second regen, we don’t know if the grandmaster trait is still under cooldown or not.

Guardian shield 4 please? That one made no sense when it happened and makes no sense now. Oh, and ‘save yourselves’ too.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Good to hear.

I can understand why e.g. Mug cant crit in PvP, but why may it also not crit in PvE?
Like the Revealed effect, would it great could you disconfirmed it for PvE.

Well you could start by increasing ranger pet damage back to 100% or make pet scale in master power to compensate for your 50% pet damage nerf?

Because yes you killed beastmastery when you reduced the pet damage this badly, to fix the existance of tanking beast mastery ranger with heavy damage pet and while this nerf was legitimate it harms the whole class as a result and i strongly think ranger who want to specialise to make heavy damage with pet should be able to do so, just that they shouldnt be able to be tanky at the same time.

Our pet used to deal damage, it compensated for the fact the player can easily avoid getting hit by them and actualy made for their squishiness in pve. Now not only are they easy to avoid but they cant actualy deal damage either. Worse yet this directly affect all ranger ability to deal damage in dungeon.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Especially eles

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

crosses all fingers and toes that Ride the Lightning is also included in those nerfs (cooldown wink wink nudge nudge) that will be looked at

this was my first thought as well. Range as well as CD; when thieves can port halfway across the map every 10 seconds, RTL hardly seems like an issue, for a much squishier class at that.

Aza.2105:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

The last thing this game needs is more pet builds.

waxpax.6350:

PVP, WVW, and PVE should honestly be balanced separately.

Balancing them all together is just going to make them all medicore. The dev said they don’t want to do this because they want the game simple to pick up to new players/that players would be confused by skills working diff in diff parts of the game, but I think that’s a cop out and they just don’t have the resources to do because I don’t know why they would chose to insult they’re players by implying they’re too simple minded to keep track of skills in diff modes of gameplay. If they really want pvp to take off and for wvw and pve to be better, they need to balance the game modes separately, more so than they already do.

yeah i agree with u. spvp is more 1v1 based, so there it needs a different balance from wvw wher 30vs 30 happen quiet often. the reason why warriors are out of control in wvw is because they were buffed for spvp and the mesmer does well in spvp , but the 1v1 balance prevents us from getting buffs in wvw zerg battles. same with ranger. the wvw ranger didnt need nerfs, they needed buffs, but the rangers performance in spvp got them nerfed. eles dont need buffs in wvw as much as they need buffs in spvp, etc

Aza.2105:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

The Spirit hammer actually some some play back then. I remember having to learn the rhythm of the hammer: swing, swing, knockback. But that was when Guardians where more decap focused with X/Shield Hammer. Nowadays I don’t see it would see much play in the meta due to the more sustain focus builds with Staff and Mace. Though unerfing it might help the bring the old Guardian meta back to the older Decap Wars between 2 Guardians.

Meanwhile we are at it. Roll back Thiefs reveal to 3 seconds.
Thanks.

Lopez.7369:

Aza.2105:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Hey Josh,

Like guardian spirit weapons? Before the nerf no one used them, after the nerf no one used them. Everything about them became worse. Its sad. A part of me would like to create a guardian similar to: http://www.guildwars2hub.com/sites/sardu.tentonhammer.com/files/styles/banner/public/conjured-weapons-guide_0.png

Unfortunately its just impossible and not logical to do. Some nerfs in the beginning of the game for all classes were very hefty. Some never really recovered from those changes.

The last thing this game needs is more pet builds.

What is the point in keeping four useless skills??? They aren’t used in pvp or pve.

SoulSin.5682:

Meanwhile we are at it. Roll back Thiefs reveal to 3 seconds.
Thanks.

Totally Agree,

When they introduced the 4 sec reveal to PvE, WvW and Spvp, I actually quit the game for 2 months since it completly killed the fluidity of my DD thief, I came back when they reverted it for PvE and WvW but its the main reason I cannot stand Spvp anymore.
Not only does it completly crush my DD build but it also plays havoc with my timing of C&D, since the majority of my time is spent in WvW with a 3 sec reveal, having to then adjust to it being 4 seconds causes me to make mistakes I would never usually make, and is extremely fustrating. I would love to enjoy Spvp again someday but I cannot until this is reverted.

Pinkunicorn of Dethecus.3217:

LelouchViBritannia.3607:

crosses all fingers and toes that Ride the Lightning is also included in those nerfs (cooldown wink wink nudge nudge) that will be looked at

this was my first thought as well. Range as well as CD; when thieves can port halfway across the map every 10 seconds, RTL hardly seems like an issue, for a much squishier class at that.

One can dream. If they gave back the cooldown and the distance, that would be glorious.

If not the cooldown, at least the original distance it carried you. It’s one of the skills that inspired me to make an ele.

I can deal with the awkward cooldown mechanic, but I hate the neutered distance.

the distance is not an issue..
Everything over 20 seconds for cd instead prevent ele from stay in fight range with his target….making D/D uneffective at chasing enemies… (expecially with stability etc).

I strongly disagree that stealht instead needs buffs….at least for www its alread equals to being immortal…
When was the last time you managed to KILL a decent thief?

LordByron.8369:

the distance is not an issue..
Everything over 20 seconds for cd instead prevent ele from stay in fight range with his target….making D/D uneffective at chasing enemies… (expecially with stability etc).

I strongly disagree that stealht instead needs buffs….at least for www its alread equals to being immortal…
When was the last time you managed to KILL a decent thief?

Ppl want the nerf on stealth in pvp reverted back to 3s instead of 4s …
Also, last time I killed a decent thief was 10h ago before I went to bed? :P

4 s revealed in pvp gotta be reverted to 3.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

LordByron.8369:

the distance is not an issue..
Everything over 20 seconds for cd instead prevent ele from stay in fight range with his target….making D/D uneffective at chasing enemies… (expecially with stability etc).

I strongly disagree that stealht instead needs buffs….at least for www its alread equals to being immortal…
When was the last time you managed to KILL a decent thief?

Ppl want the nerf on stealth in pvp reverted back to 3s instead of 4s …
Also, last time I killed a decent thief was 10h ago before I went to bed? :P

You didn t in www….
I don t play pvp but i can see why there stealth is less of a problem…smaller maps and capture the point are the reason.

As said some thieves even put some vit and toughness just to stand in the front of enmy spawns and troll dozens of people in www….

LordByron.8369:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

LordByron.8369:

the distance is not an issue..
Everything over 20 seconds for cd instead prevent ele from stay in fight range with his target….making D/D uneffective at chasing enemies… (expecially with stability etc).

I strongly disagree that stealht instead needs buffs….at least for www its alread equals to being immortal…
When was the last time you managed to KILL a decent thief?

Ppl want the nerf on stealth in pvp reverted back to 3s instead of 4s …
Also, last time I killed a decent thief was 10h ago before I went to bed? :P

You didn t in www….
I don t play pvp but i can see why there stealth is less of a problem…smaller maps and capture the point are the reason.

As said some thieves even put some vit and toughness just to stand in the front of enmy spawns and troll dozens of people in www….

Why do you think I didn’t in WvW? Did you stalk me the whole time?

DiogoSilva.7089:

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

That’s interesting to know.

I suggest looking at Elementalist’s Water Magic #30th trait, Cleansing Water. A 5 second cooldown was added in a previous meta, which made the skill less funnier and removed some interesting combos out of it. Since then, the condition meta came and the new version still didn’t see much use, while elementalist’s water condition removal was further toned down by putting both cleansing wave and soothing disruption at master tier (making it impossible to use all three). For all those reasons, and for how fun the trait used to be before, I think it’s one of the best candidates for a revert.

Even more so, reverting it would make its interaction with the new auto-regen trait at adept tier less clumsy. It’s annoying when the grandmaster trait is put under cooldown because our opponent critically hit us. It makes any second source of regen a gamble, because when we we proc a second regen, we don’t know if the grandmaster trait is still under cooldown or not.

All of this. We’re glad to hear a response. I support the OP’s thoughts.

Mine go a step further, I feel you need to introduce a more complex armor system for SPvP, perhaps even bringing in core armor sets from WvW. Allowing ELEMENTALISTS to choose their own armor is extremely important, as our base stats are so low in some areas, we are up to 50% more damaging in WvW. We can’t achieve that in SPvP, and we suffer for that.

I still play SPvP, but it’s nowhere near as fun.

as said because even anet said you can t kill a good thief.
its quite like winning the lottery…

even if you play thief yourself.

If he is good he will just stealth run in a random directoin before his HP runs out…and with your same mobility there is no way for you to catch him unles syou guess the random direction….that has nothing to do with skill.

LordByron.8369:

as said because even anet said you can t kill a good thief.
its quite like winning the lottery…

even if you play thief yourself.

If he is good he will just stealth run in a random directoin before his HP runs out…and with your same mobility there is no way for you to catch him unles syou guess the random direction….that has nothing to do with skill.

1) In duels ppl don’t run, cause it’s forfait. In fights like those, thieves are beatable without counting the time since they last used their utility. Awareness of how much time you have once they used an utility is of essence though in open roaming
2) I play thief myself, I know how to catch up on a running thief in open romaing. Unless they used shadow refuge to flee they only have max 4s stealth or 7 if they burn two utilities at the same time. It’s possible to guess their starting movement and catch up. If they do use shadow refuge you’ll have to be able to guess their location inside it and burst that place. For example with a venom build: once I see the action of shadow refuge I cast basilisk venom. I hit where I guess the thief is (mostly outer edges, close to you instead of far) and immediately cast devourer’s venom (instant cast) and hit that place. This immobilizes him for 10 seconds. Throw in some condi to prevent the immob to be cleansed on stealth and you have enough time to hit him ‘till he dies.
3) If he burns shadowstep now to avoid the damage, he’ll be down to 1 utility while I still have 2 utilities. He can’t re-engage battle now anymore (even after leaving combat) because he’s disadvantaged. Mostly ppl used up shadowstep BEFORE using shadow refuge so this isn’t a problem.

You shouldn’t assume that NO ONE can beat a decent thief.

Reading what you wrote you confirmed most of my points ._.

A thief dies only if he wants to….

LordByron.8369:

Reading what you wrote you confirmed most of my points ._.

A thief dies only if he wants to….

No, it confirms that a thief only survives when he uses shadow refuge and shadowstep together. Which means he only has 1 utility to play with during our fight if he wants to assure his survival. So he’s disadvantaged and mostly likely won’t win. Decent thieves I play against use those skills offensively and don’t run with it. Cause then they’ll have to run every time and hope no one attacks them 10 seconds after cause both skill are still on 40s cd

Actually no because against any class but thief (playing on eyou have best mobility in game..warrior i second) even a 3-4 second stealth is enough

If it wasn t so mesmer wouldn t share the same issue….even with the awful mobility it has.

And as i said the many thieves trolling people in www are still a proof…..and your argument can t Always be everyone is bad but thieves…

I never said everyone is bad. Where in the wall of text did I say that? I said that everyone can beat a thief if they play their cards right. If you post even one question on how to beat a thief in the class specific forums, you’ll have tons of people giving you advice with a few certain people just whining about how godlike they are because they can’t beat them.

good tell arenanet that whined the same thing seems.

Could you give me the source of that information then? Same with the source that you had about arenanet saying that no decent thief can be beaten?

No i can t because the search function of this forum doesn t work or they delete old threads…..you can t even find most common quotes.

yet i think many players remember and could confirm if they read here…

They said something along “you win if you make them run away….” to people complainig they couldn t kill thieves.

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Great to hear. Please consider restoring the ranger pet leash range outside of sPvP.

Honestly, revert ALL nerfs, across the board, and balance everything separately. The bulk of the early ele nerfs were more a result of opponents being too stupid to counter, rather than anything OP about the builds. The same can be said for the ranger.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough – keep ALL PvP nerfs as PvP only. Gutting entire classes to satisfy 10% of the game populace is… shortsighted is the most polite term I can use.

stale.9785:

Honestly, revert ALL nerfs, across the board, and balance everything separately. The bulk of the early ele nerfs were more a result of opponents being too stupid to counter, rather than anything OP about the builds. The same can be said for the ranger.

Also, and I cannot stress this enough – keep ALL PvP nerfs as PvP only. Gutting entire classes to satisfy 10% of the game populace is… shortsighted is the most polite term I can use.

Dear sir, are you claiming that cough*only*cough 10 % of gw2 population is stupid ?

Karolis, you just made me spit coffee on the desk. No, the stupidity isn’t magically restricted to PvP. It’s endemic to the human condition. However, since PvP is the single touchstone for balance in the entire game, it’s the remaining non-PvP population that pays the price every time some noskill dies and starts screaming for nerfs.

Ele damage nerfs, mobility nerfs, the outright destruction of RtL, the strange changes to cantrips – all came from PvP.

Ranger pet damage nerf, with no corresponding damage increase on the ranger. Spirits being changed, and changed, and changed again. The endurance gain nerf. All from PvP.

Warrior going from free-kill to viable in PvP resulted in it going from “easy mode” to “stupidly-easy-afk-mode” in the rest of the game, to the point that every other class is eclipsed by it, due to one skill. The buff was for, surprise, PvP viability.

It comes down to, were you to pull up a comprehensive list of “balance” changes for every class, since the beta events, 99%+ of them would be “because of PvP”. Since, for some reason, Anet really really doesn’t want to split skills – despite the fact that the needs of the different venues are drastically different, it will always be the ones not playing “control-the-node” that suffer.

In PvP, discovering your build has been rendered useless and you have to respec is something that is free to rectify. In WvW/PvE, finding your build is useless and you have to respec can cost hundreds of gold, and weeks of time.

Byron, look in here
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/forum/2204-thief/
I haven’t found anything close to what you just said. I did find a dev stating that he didn’t had any trouble fighting a thief in PvP on his ranger.

stale.9785:

Karolis, you just made me spit coffee on the desk. No, the stupidity isn’t magically restricted to PvP. It’s endemic to the human condition. However, since PvP is the single touchstone for balance in the entire game, it’s the remaining non-PvP population that pays the price every time some noskill dies and starts screaming for nerfs.

Ele damage nerfs, mobility nerfs, the outright destruction of RtL, the strange changes to cantrips – all came from PvP.

Ranger pet damage nerf, with no corresponding damage increase on the ranger. Spirits being changed, and changed, and changed again. The endurance gain nerf. All from PvP.

Warrior going from free-kill to viable in PvP resulted in it going from “easy mode” to “stupidly-easy-afk-mode” in the rest of the game, to the point that every other class is eclipsed by it, due to one skill. The buff was for, surprise, PvP viability.

It comes down to, were you to pull up a comprehensive list of “balance” changes for every class, since the beta events, 99%+ of them would be “because of PvP”. Since, for some reason, Anet really really doesn’t want to split skills – despite the fact that the needs of the different venues are drastically different, it will always be the ones not playing “control-the-node” that suffer.

In PvP, discovering your build has been rendered useless and you have to respec is something that is free to rectify. In WvW/PvE, finding your build is useless and you have to respec can cost hundreds of gold, and weeks of time.

This. The meta between PvE and PvP are shifted too far apart for them to be balanced as one unit. There’s no excuse for not splitting the balancing other than sheer laziness, because a player that is interested in both aspects of the game will be invested enough to learn the mechanics and design of each one individually. Gamers aren’t stupid; we can figure out how things work on our own even if two different systems are in place. Most of us play many different games, after all, which often play completely differently from one another.

Engineer pistol AA. 2s bleed on a condi weapon with next to no power scaling? kitten that

Egorum.9506:

Engineer pistol AA. 2s bleed on a condi weapon with next to no power scaling? kitten that

You’ve reminded me of my very first experience in GW2, which was on an Engi.

They start with Pistol in the first PS instance (aka the tutorial dungeon), which seemed OK but the skills were just odd (I did not understand Condition synergy at the time – heck even now it feels a bit arcane).

About midway through a rifle dropped, and I suddenly fell in love with the class – warts and all. Its been an extremely rocky romance since then, but I still have the character, and intend to World Complete on him first (WvW is proving to be tricky, but mostly because I’m on a Tier 1 server).

Back on topic – any chance you’ll give Kits another look when you do this? I can’t Grenade (bad wrists) but I do support those who can. Making kits overall scale to Ascended damage, would be a reasonable move now as well.

Since WvW is in the mists, why not roll back all pvp changes, then balance for “The mists” as a place. Include all the armor options from WvW, but introduce some of the nerfs from spvp.

I say this because I am personally sick of the over simplistic armor options in spvp, lack of diversity, and the fact that what should be a superior game mode for small teams play and inter server dueling is ruined by the fact that your WvW builds are null and void.

Summation? Balance specifically for the mists. I’d like to get some support for this idea so perhaps the devs will see it.

I made a topic about this earlier, but I think the mechanic where damage taken in DS spills into a necro’s actual health pool should also be reverted.

I made a topic about that here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/PVX-Necro-Please-revert-DS-dmg-spilling/first#post3496373

As Josh stated, some changes might have made sense in a previous meta… I’m not even sure if the DS change made sense in any meta, but regardless, please revert it. This change made the necromancer less interesting to play than the class was at launch.