Guild Wars 2

I could post almost as much about this as a complete book, why Nerfing will not improve the game It’s very tempting to do so, cause I strongly disagree with Anet continously pushing to this direction with the game when that’s not the best direction. Especially after 18 months of mostly nerfs. But I can’t be bothered to type a wall of text with proof why nerfing has to stop.

Why is that, why make topic when you can’t be bothered to elaborate? I elaborated several times in the past. I saw november 2013 patch, as the final nerfs necessary. And it was calm for a very long period of time. I played all the meta in the meantime figuring ’let’s find the most viable burst profession, cause if that answer exist, we know why nerfs exist’. Truth is, purely burst wise, only warrior was ahead of the crowd, and only very slightly so. Very slightly. To small to even take serious.

I think all the profession have an ‘equal chance now to burst en enemy down before he becomes dangerous to you’ (since you are burst, you are vulnerable, and every single profession can strike you down if you don’t execute burst properly).

With spike damage (in my opinion), generally finetuned (there’s room for small improvements, but 50% nerfs on anything now are right of the bat, not a good decision), why nerf skills? In mixed builds (tanky + good damage) or pure tanky builds, damage modifiers don’t matter. Not that much at least. Those builds can only be corrected, by nerfing survival ability and not nerfing damage straight of the bat.

Nerfing will always have more negative impact then positive. Example:

For some awkard reason, someone still thinks Meteor shower is overpowered. Anet nerfs it 20% damage. List of * ASSOCIATED RIKS*

Pve ppl fed up, leaving the game. This one is serious, and not a threat, like you seemed to ignore it in the past. I know plenty people left the game cause nerfs you did to ranger, necro and thief.

Not a single pve ele will want to cast meteor shower, cause the channeling time makes it so risky that the damage after the nerf is simply not worth it, they will just spam auto -attacks.

They will jump professions. I know many people, changed profession to something like guardian/warrior (pretty stable to nerfs so far), because they couldnt bear to stay with the profession like this.

Pve has over a million of set out mobs/risks/possible things to destroy. If you keep on nerfing damage, that means, either you will have crazy much work changing those, or – more likely like we both know – you will ignore that pve aspect, and everything will be slower, more grindy, more frustration, and essentially everyone will be a step closer to leaving the game. With eso and wildstar on the verge of release, you guys really should be more serious.

Your job Anet balance team. I’m dead serious on this. If you nerf every 1,9 1,7 1,6 1,5 1,4 1,3x skill to a flat out 1,0, then the nerfing is finished and you cannot do anything anymore. Game over, job over, move along. Or, finally step up your game. And do finetuning, like you are supposed to.

I don’t know if you gets get this, but nerfing is just: you shake up the meta, meaning, there’s always another to replace it. Hell because of the nerfs, it’s very easy to find the ‘next best thing’. You basically pointing us RIGHT into the direction, of where the best potential lies. If you keep balancing calm (no major changes), instead people experiment, make small changes to builds, largely ignore the quest ‘must have best build, cause they did it again, the meta is shuffled’.

Hypothetical example. Atm 1,9 is the best ingame. I’m keeping it as simple as a number to not sound biased to any guild wars 2 profession. Anet decide ‘ok this skill is to strong, NERF IT’. Knowing anet – here lies their true mistakes – a 5-15% nerf will most likely not happen. 20-50% is more likely. It ends up 1,2. Result? You just achieved nothing. Truly nothing anet You know why? number 1,8 is now the strongest, and you just gave them the power, to be the meta. (quoted the virtual dev teams thoughts now): BUT BUT BUT if we all set it to number 1,0 with no difference, no power creep, then we are doing fine aren’t we? Then paradise in pvp is settled no? Back to reality please. We both know if everything represents number 1,0 in the game, that the game will be hugely boring, and the active, adventurous gw2 will be no more. The devs (virtual) think again, but but but what is now the perfect solution, omg this is so hard?

Here it comes. Embrace the truth. Embrace gw2’s (if you want to keep it) future.

20% and bigger nerfs are officially prohobit, abandoned ans scrapped from the solution list. Only tweaks are allowed now.

I know Anet. These rules require more work from you. But you and I know it’s for the better of gw2. The quesiton is, is this enough to change your guys minds. Is it enough to draw you away from the easy, very tempting way to deal with balance problems?

omg
no
nerfing is a good paradigm
for example, pizza. no other food gives a 25-40% damage boost. its clearly out of line. buffing other foods to give 25-40% damage boosts is irrational, other builds do enough damage as is. SO kittenING NERF PIZZA. and then the game is better. kthxbai

Well if pizza goes from 40% to 20% then didn’t break the rule (I guess you didn’t read my whole post). Additionally saying pizza is op, is quite complex. Cause there are arguments in it favor, like the crazy condition removal a zerg brings. Prolonging short conditions (2-3 secs) to 4-5, might be a enough cover condition on the zerg, to keep the bleeds ticking. Just an example, i’m not saying either way, but this mindless ‘have to be nerf and not even a bit, no immediately, by a heavy amount’-atitude, is just stupid. We’ve been for 4 months without meta changes now, and i hear nobody truly crying about this or that is op. There’s always a few posters for one thing or another, but that proofs nothing in the grand scheme of things. For a topic (imo) to be valuable about nerf request, you need 50 if not at least 100 different people agreeing with it.

Also say you nerf pizza. For one sec, let’s do it, even if we broke the rule. What prevents power builds from being even more OP in for instance wvw? I play often a condition build in wvw. And my bleeds rarely tick more then 300, and my poison rarely ticks more then 4-6 secs. But power skills can be spammed non stop and all do 1000-2000 damage per second (auto attack). Why are those not OP in comparison? Ofc this is only one side of the coin, wvw is an extreme (but definitely important) example. In pvp aoe cleansing will be less existing, and thus it might be better. BUT… pvp doenst have pizza potions, so I don’t see the issue for this. And in pve, well in pve those potions are only good if you are alone, in groups, the conditions top off anyway.

This is my whole post. 50% nerfs make the Meta ping-pong. And that’s even worse then a status quo.

Pizza is perfectly okay. The fact is, that condition builds have to have a minimum of +50% condition duration just to keep up with the direct damage builds. Compare Dire to Soldiers for example. Most builds, of most professions continue to be out damaged by the soldiers builds then the dire builds with the +50% condition duration. If anyone is suggesting other wise, they have not done reasonable damagecomparisons after field testing them. There have been many many threads displaying the damage numbers comparisons that show this to be the facts of the matter.

The problem is that a few people get there tail kicked, see that it was by condition damage, then come to the forums and cry OP with out actually knowing a single fact of the matter. This causes other to read it and jump on the band wagon. Reading thread after thread on this, it is clear they are making pure assumption and basing everything on here say or conjecture. When challenged to prove the damage comparisons, they disappear or ignore the challenge, going on without actually knowing what is or is not true to action.

here is a prime example of speaking out of a pure lack of knowledge:

omg
no
nerfing is a good paradigm
for example, pizza. no other food gives a 25-40% damage boost. its clearly out of line. buffing other foods to give 25-40% damage boosts is irrational, other builds do enough damage as is. SO kittenING NERF PIZZA. and then the game is better. kthxbai

When in reality 40% boost does literally no damage boost to most skills in the game. This poster appears to know so little about condition damage, that he is not even aware of that. Take engineers for example, they have 3 weapons combo choices, Pistol/Pistol, Pistol/Shield, and Rifle. The rifle is basically all power oriented while pistols are condition damage. Rare veggie pizza adds 0 damage to 3 of the 4 damage skills, while for example the +100 power food adds a total of 11.5% damage to the rifle skills total. When total damage of the pistols with rare veggie pizza are combined it is a 7.7% damage increase. Giving the power weapon with power food a 3.5% damage increase over the condition focused weapons with rare veggie pizza.

To be honest, they just need to stop nerfing across the board based on sPvP, which is the real problem here. Pet damage nerf in sPvP? Acceptable. In PvE and WvW? UNACCEPTABLE!

coglin.1867:

When in reality 40% boost does literally no damage boost to most skills in the game. This poster appears to know so little about condition damage, that he is not even aware of that. Take engineers for example, they have 3 weapons combo choices, Pistol/Pistol, Pistol/Shield, and Rifle. The rifle is basically all power oriented while pistols are condition damage. Rare veggie pizza adds 0 damage to 3 of the 4 damage skills, while for example the +100 power food adds a total of 11.5% damage to the rifle skills total. When total damage of the pistols with rare veggie pizza are combined it is a 7.7% damage increase. Giving the power weapon with power food a 3.5% damage increase over the condition focused weapons with rare veggie pizza.

oh. wow. no wonder you constantly defend soldier gear as being more dps than dire. you cherry pick numbers.

insanemaniac.2456:

oh. wow. no wonder you constantly defend soldier gear as being more dps than dire. you cherry pick numbers.

I cherry pick? I compared the entire available weapon set on an entire profession. An across the board comparison of near every skill in the game has been posted on multiple threads. Look it up. The more interesting thing, is that you offer no counter argument or opposing facts. You simply post a back handed comment in a one liner. If you refute my perspective, I challenge you to offer a fact of any kind of your own experienced experiment, or some applicable and comparable test result of your own. your counter productive one liners that offer nothing to the conversation, certainly do not aid in your argument my friend.

Feel free to offer similar numbers using bombs, grenades, or the tool kit, or all three, if you like. Or you are welcome to copy/paste the already posted damage comparison numbers on those main damage kits from previous threads. As Soldiers beats Dire in all of those cases, It negates your “cherry picking” argument a bit.

coglin.1867:

insanemaniac.2456:

oh. wow. no wonder you constantly defend soldier gear as being more dps than dire. you cherry pick numbers.

I cherry pick? I compared the entire available weapon set on an entire profession. An across the board comparison of near every skill in the game has been posted on multiple threads. Look it up. The more interesting thing, is that you offer no counter argument or opposing facts. You simply post a back handed comment in a one liner. If you refute my perspective, I challenge you to offer a fact of any kind of your own experienced experiment, or some applicable and comparable test result of your own. your counter productive one liners that offer nothing to the conversation, certainly do not aid in your argument my friend.

Feel free to offer similar numbers using bombs, grenades, or the tool kit, or all three, if you like. Or you are welcome to copy/paste the already posted damage comparison numbers on those main damage kits from previous threads. As Soldiers beats Dire in all of those cases, It negates your “cherry picking” argument a bit.

no. not worth my time.

suffice to say, you arent looking at what people actually use. an across the board comparison is not applicable. as an example, saying 100 power = 11.7% rifle dps increase is pure bullkitten.

@Colglin- here’s a thing though play a soldier’s power based build vs a Condi Dire build with 40% Condi duration (50% if you take Toxic Sharpening stone, Focus Crystal, or maintenance oil) duration increase on all conditions means long lasting cover conditions, higher stacks on stacking damage conditions, and longer damage tick time on duration damage conditions. Power builds get mitigated by : Protection, Dodges(if you have conditions on you, you’ll still have the damage ticking), Weakness, and Armor. Conditions eat through tougness(no effect), and the only way to keep up with condi application is to get condition removal (which has medium to high CD), And you have to reliably hit to get your damage in on power builds, which usually requires setup…..Then we look at Condition based builds again and see how easy it is to reapply the conditions again.

insanemaniac.2456:

no. not worth my time.

suffice to say, you arent looking at what people actually use. an across the board comparison is not applicable. as an example, saying 100 power = 11.7% rifle dps increase is pure ********

Interesting. It is not worth your time to offer a fact….that suggest you are aware that your speaking out of perception and not reality. As far as your accusation about whether or not I am looking at what people are saying, why would I listen to what they are saying when most of them are doing as you do, and basing statements on assumption and not actual facts. And if my numbers are wrong about rifle, I challenge you to post your damage numbers of the 4 rifle skills that do damage, before and after the +100 power food. If you like, I will assist you in the math to turn your findings to a percentage. Your logic process is interesting though. I offer you a fact, you retort with a profanity. That doesn’t aid your argument much.

Lucentfir on the other hand offers some reason to a perspective. The flip side to what your saying Lucentfir, is when a power builds uses the odd condition they have on weapons here and there, or other applications with with sigils or runes to bury cripples, chills, immobilizes, and vulnerability to to make you unable to escape some of their ridiculously hard hitting direct damage attacks. Just pointing out that to a certain extent, that it works both ways.

To be honest though, as I see it, the “covering conditions” argument doesn’t mean much, because with +50% duration, the conditions have to stay on the entire time to even come close to the damage of direct damage builds.

coglin.1867:

insanemaniac.2456:

Interesting. It is not worth your time to offer a fact….that suggest you are aware that your speaking out of perception and not reality. As far as your accusation about whether or not I am looking at what people are saying, why would I listen to what they are saying when most of them are doing as you do, and basing statements on assumption and not actual facts. And if my numbers are wrong about rifle, I challenge you to post your damage numbers of the 4 rifle skills that do damage, before and after the +100 power food. If you like, I will assist you in the math to turn your findings to a percentage. Your logic process is interesting though. I offer you a fact, you retort with a profanity. That doesn’t aid your argument much.

Lucentfir on the other hand offers some reason to a perspective. The flip side to what your saying Lucentfir, is when a power builds uses the odd condition they have on weapons here and there, or other applications with with sigils or runes to bury cripples, chills, immobilizes, and vulnerability to to make you unable to escape some of their ridiculously hard hitting direct damage attacks. Just pointing out that to a certain extent, that it works both ways.

To be honest though, as I see it, the “covering conditions” argument doesn’t mean much, because with +50% duration, the conditions have to stay on the entire time to even come close to the damage of direct damage builds.

not worth my time to argue with you about something i would have to think about for a long time to construct a decent response when i highly doubt anyone who has actual power to make changes will see it.

especially when you start off by calling me clueless and trollish.

coglin.1867:

insanemaniac.2456:

no. not worth my time.

suffice to say, you arent looking at what people actually use. an across the board comparison is not applicable. as an example, saying 100 power = 11.7% rifle dps increase is pure ********

Interesting. It is not worth your time to offer a fact….that suggest you are aware that your speaking out of perception and not reality. As far as your accusation about whether or not I am looking at what people are saying, why would I listen to what they are saying when most of them are doing as you do, and basing statements on assumption and not actual facts. And if my numbers are wrong about rifle, I challenge you to post your damage numbers of the 4 rifle skills that do damage, before and after the +100 power food. If you like, I will assist you in the math to turn your findings to a percentage. Your logic process is interesting though. I offer you a fact, you retort with a profanity. That doesn’t aid your argument much.

Lucentfir on the other hand offers some reason to a perspective. The flip side to what your saying Lucentfir, is when a power builds uses the odd condition they have on weapons here and there, or other applications with with sigils or runes to bury cripples, chills, immobilizes, and vulnerability to to make you unable to escape some of their ridiculously hard hitting direct damage attacks. Just pointing out that to a certain extent, that it works both ways.

*To be honest though, as I see it, the “covering conditions” argument doesn’t mean much, because with +50% duration, the conditions have to stay on the entire time to even come close to the damage of direct damage builds. *

The only time power builds dish out ridiculous damage is they’re packing Zerker gear. Packing some zerker gear means they gave up some defense for more offense meaning they’re much squishier. CC conditions on melee classes are needed to keep up with Kiters, if melee classes did not have any sort of Soft CC/snare, or very limited access to it (cough Guardian) you would be kited around to no end.

The arguement about the cover conditions. Cover conditions protect the damaging conditions so they aren’t cleared off as easy, the longer they last the more difficult it is to clear off something like poison…or burning, 10 stacks of bleeds. Not only that but most soft CC cover conditions will impair your ability to pressure the person hitting you with conditions.

On a full Condi damage build

Bleeds: 127.5 per stack with 1700 Condition damage(1s Tick stacking intensity)
Poison: well over 254 with 1700 Condition damage (1s Tick)
Burning: 753 per tick with 1700 Condition Damage(1s Tick)
(not going to include the others just the the most easily accessed )

50% Duration increase across all conditions is a huge buff in it’s damage, and control. And a stack of these easy to apply damaging conditions can add up to 2k a second just make sure you tag them with it and forget about it. Players are not AI mobs with Vet or champion health. The norm is 20k+ damage you have to do.

Now Power builds, you have to be consistently hitting your target to get the damage in, and for every second you don’’t hit, the DPS you inflicted shrinks(Passive Regen, or low CD heal) in actually pvp scene it’s common for people to kite or avoid heavy hits, and the only way to get those hits in is if you keep up with them through Soft CC and such, and a pure power build you will shrug of most of the damage if you’re good it does if you’re good. Lets not forget to mention sacrificing between defensive stats and offensive stats., The only counter to conditions is to remove them, but most removes have a somewhat lengthy CD. And whatever -Condition duration and passive regen can allow.

100 power =/= 11.5% damage

K U T M.4539:

100 power =/= 11.5% damage

Yeah, you would have to have less than 1k power for it to be over 10% damage increase.

Two words: Power creep.

I know the OP, but I disagree strongly on this matter.

Right now we need both nerfing and buffing. Guild Wars 2 is just 1.5 years old and we have already experienced massive amount of power creep in this game. The amount of buffs and introduction to new powerful mechanisms has pushed the power creep to crazy levels.

While in most cases small adjustments are enough, in some rare cases the nerfs needs to be stronger than 20%. Arenanet simply went too by buffing certain skills and I think majority of the people admit it deep inside or are themselves using the overpowered skill. E.g. healing signet got its passive heal almost doubled. A mere 8% or 20% nerf won’t be enough. I would say it needs 25% shaving for passive and at the same time 33% buff to its active to make it viable. Pin down is getting an added animation, but before that it got 6 stacks of bleeding in addition 3 seconds ranged immobilize. That is simply too much as the bleeds cover the immobilize (which can last 5 seconds easily in WvWvW because of the rune + consumable + trait line buffs).

Thief can spam sword #2 and #3 multiple times in a row, either getting shadowstepping, condition removal, stun (pistol whip) or boon stealing (larcenous strike) and evade frames and good damage at same time. How is this promoting skilled play?

I could go on for more examples for many other professions, but I just mentioned few glaring skills, which need nerfing.

It is a bit funny that you mention elementalist and then complain about lack of damage in pve. I think it is quite widely known that ele has the highest dps build in the game using lighting hammer. And fiery greatsword has one of the best bursts in the game. Staff elementalists are the staple of any zerg in WvWvW. Have been and continue to be so: for example rangers and engineers are much less useful in same situation. What elementalist lacks right now is survivability. Anet went overboard by nerfing some of the cantrips. But buffing ele survivability needs to be done with wisdom, giving too much at same time, while not shaving any of the damage, could easily push elementalist to become grossly overpowered.

Right now the most overpowered profession in the game is warrior. Best land mobility, highest health, massive amount of condition cleansing, immunities, good damage. Basically almost no weaknesses. Warrior has good builds for any sort of role and hammer warrior been always dominating WvWvW meta. Hammer warrior was already too good in Autumn 2012. 600 leap, 240 radius 2 second AoE stun with less 10 second cooldown! Condition warrior is very strong and the upcoming sigil changes are just going to make it stronger (2 sigils on 2 handed weapons, warrior can trait quick hands to get 5 s weapon swap, in other words fast access to 4 sigils).

Guardian comes a good second. Guardians have always been the 2nd most common profession in WvWvW if not the #1. Guardians have always been part of tpvp teams. Always the meta. And yet they have also been buffed.

At the same time every profession has really lackluster traits and utility skills, which see very little use in any game mode. These skills and traits could use buffing. The easiest is to reduce the cooldowns, which are often excessive. Some of the so called “elite” skills are feel to be really weak, not worthy of the elite slot, but most players would rather choose a normal utility skill instead if they just could equip that.

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I seriously do NOT think that nerfing is the reason why people are leaving the game. It has nothing to do with it. People stay if the game is good and they still enjoy it, even if some skill gets nerfed. But people leave the game or stop playing it for a while if they get bored.

But let’s face it: most of this game is a grind and the sad inclusion of ascended gear just included more gear especially for those with lots of characters. It is mostly a very simple repetitive grin. In pve world events players smash their auto attack. In the lag-ridden Eternal Battlegrounds and massive blobby fights in EotM, players auto attack the boss or the enemy blob as no other skill works. The real strategy for the win is to be in a bigger blob. Spam 1 for the win… gee, this must be the best game design invention ever and will lead to long-term success and glory.

This game hasn’t had any expansions. No significant set of new skills (most of the new healing skills are a joke). No new permanent dungeons besides the Fractals, no new permanent pve areas since the launch. Some players enjoy the Living Story. Those who don’t, are most likely either already really bored by this game or soon coming bored.

WvWvW is the true end game in GW2, but sadly it hasn’t had the right resources to develop it properly. The communication has been bad between the player base and developers. Players complained already in Autumn 2012 that Arrow Carts are broken and can shoot to places they should not be able to shoot. How does Anet fix this: it buffs AC damage and adds trait, which significantly increase the range, radius and damage (/facepalm). The glaring population indifferences (coverage wars) etc. haven’t been dealt at all. In fact stacking to the winning servers is further encouraged, while it is guaranteed to ruin many communities and servers. The community side of this game is weak and needs serious attention now, not any second later.

We need real Guild Wars, not Grind Wars!