Guild Wars 2

This will be the third and final preliminary Phase to discussions before the Final topic is written up and posted.

Less centric to Mesmers and more to the game as a whole.

Currently there are mechanics and play styles in the game that balance off the Risk vs Reward system. That is, the higher the risk the greater the reward. However, there are some places in game where there is minimal risk or potentially no risk for what could be considered a non-equated Reward.

We’ll try to keep it simple using a 3 tiered scale of:

High –
Medium –
Low/None -

Off the top of my head I can suggest that:

Passive buffs – no substantial risk – medium/high Reward. (Spirit Rangers could fit here)

Boon “Spam” – Low risk – High reward (these are quick reapplication, less or not affected by boon removal/corruption)

The above may not apply to ALL game modes, but in the interest of averages, I’ll settle for 2/3.

Underlying question – What in Gw2 Lacks Punishment/Risk?

Swish.2463:

Underlying question – What in Gw2 Lacks Punishment/Risk?

- Healing Signet. No risk in using that. It never goes on CD, as it’s more helpful to have the passive because of the heal, and it can’t be cleansed or removed by other players.

- Stealth. The Thief/Mez/Etc still moves at the same speed (IIRC), drops aggro/target. Thieves can passively heal/remove condi’s in stealth if specc’d right.

Basically, anything that promotes passive play.

Anomaly.7612:

Swish.2463:

Underlying question – What in Gw2 Lacks Punishment/Risk?

- Healing Signet. No risk in using that. It never goes on CD, as it’s more helpful to have the passive because of the heal, and it can’t be cleansed or removed by other players.

- Stealth. The Thief/Mez/Etc still moves at the same speed (IIRC), drops aggro/target. Thieves can passively heal/remove condi’s in stealth if specc’d right.

Basically, anything that promotes passive play.

Mesmer stealth is fine unless they use PU which makes them very hard to kill , thief shadow rejuv should get nerfed ( the base healing should be like 100 and then scale with healing power)

And yea warrior healing signet is low risk but warriors would be rather weak without healing signet.

Aside from that , any AI based specs or heavy AoE spam specs are low risk high reward

- spirit ranger
- MM necro
- turret engi
- hambow warrior

-Crowd control spam. No risk high reward, although they don’t stack they do reset which means they can be chained to technically maintain the overall effect. I think the term to balance this would be diminishing returns….. considering they apply that to pve dungeons already I know this isn’t a stranger to anet. Stability is not a counter to this, only a few professions have any stability at all and requiring someone to invest into stability is not opening doors to build diversity at all.

-Condition damage auto attacks. Low risk, moderate reward. Auto attacks should have some sustained damage but should not be the lethality of a weapon set. From what I see, 2-5 are to cover up the auto attack in condition builds or give it a little extra punching power but the auto attack just amounts to far too much and lets you kite people with heavy DoT. Not a huge issue in pvp although it certainly is present, pretty big issue in wvw where condition duration is easily accessed.

-universally passive condition clears. Low risk, high reward. Granted some professions absolutely need them, having no thought behind it with such a grand defense is terrible for class diversity. Look at warrior cleansing ire, great trait but try running without it in today’s meta. Ranger with empathetic bond, I’m sure there are a couple others that are stapeled onto most classes. There should be more active condition clearing across the professions who don’t deal with them all that well as well as to the trait lines and utility skills that don’t work well in that department. Not suggesting put heavy condition clearing traits in every tree, but some people go to those trait lines specifically because no other trait line comes close to dealing with their build weakness. Everyone needs condition clearing and everyone needs some form of stun breaking.

End result with conditions? It’s kitten. Give a bunch of condi clearing now condi builds are irrelevant, buff conditions and we’re back where we started. Bottom line conditions need to be looked at to stay relevant but not be overwhelming with such high reward. This comes down to 3 parts only, condition duration, condition stacking, condition removal.

NinjaEd.3946:

-Crowd control spam. No risk high reward, although they don’t stack they do reset which means they can be chained to technically maintain the overall effect. I think the term to balance this would be diminishing returns….. considering they apply that to pve dungeons already I know this isn’t a stranger to anet. Stability is not a counter to this, only a few professions have any stability at all and requiring someone to invest into stability is not opening doors to build diversity at all.

-Condition damage auto attacks. Low risk, moderate reward. Auto attacks should have some sustained damage but should not be the lethality of a weapon set. From what I see, 2-5 are to cover up the auto attack in condition builds or give it a little extra punching power but the auto attack just amounts to far too much and lets you kite people with heavy DoT. Not a huge issue in pvp although it certainly is present, pretty big issue in wvw where condition duration is easily accessed.

-universally passive condition clears. Low risk, high reward. Granted some professions absolutely need them, having no thought behind it with such a grand defense is terrible for class diversity. Look at warrior cleansing ire, great trait but try running without it in today’s meta. Ranger with empathetic bond, I’m sure there are a couple others that are stapeled onto most classes. There should be more active condition clearing across the professions who don’t deal with them all that well as well as to the trait lines and utility skills that don’t work well in that department. Not suggesting put heavy condition clearing traits in every tree, but some people go to those trait lines specifically because no other trait line comes close to dealing with their build weakness. Everyone needs condition clearing and everyone needs some form of stun breaking.

End result with conditions? It’s kitten. Give a bunch of condi clearing now condi builds are irrelevant, buff conditions and we’re back where we started. Bottom line conditions need to be looked at to stay relevant but not be overwhelming with such high reward. This comes down to 3 parts only, condition duration, condition stacking, condition removal.

yes, we need less condition spamming and less passive condition cleanse trait ,so we could actually make those active condition clean skills useful . that will add more counterplay not entirely condition dominates or entirely condition passive cleanse dominates(which we got right now).
the hell ,we almost had that 1 year ago,then anet decided that using skill to clean condition is too hard.