Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: I cite videos in this thread and certain communities of the game and I am not attempting to insult you, trash talk you, etc. in any way. I am making this of the purposes of balancing the game.

PVE is typically not discussed here but I figured it was relevant since this was about profession balance. As it currently stands, the FGS 4th skill untargeted is a gamebreaking skill for dungeons now and any future, more difficult dungeons they plan on adding. A group that has 4 fgs with 25 might, etc, has the ability to kill most bosses almost instantly if they can find a spot to stack them.

The last boss was killed in about 8.6 seconds. This happened right in the beginning of the fight. Basically what is happening is the boss is being killed before any mechanics can go off. That boss in ta aether does have a lot of mechanics added to it and I was really happy to see this fight initally added to the game. I liked this dungeon a lot, it had mechanics, it was a success in my opinion.

Here’s my problem though. Why should any significant rewards be given to this dungeon(gold/unique skins/tokens) if people are getting away with it so easy? You may say yes it takes coordination I agree, but at the end of the day you are killing a boss in under 10 seconds before it can do anything and thats gamebreaking.

In the future, Anet will add more explore paths, and perhaps they are much much more difficult, and have appropriate rewards tied to the difficulty(tokens that allow you to buy really awesome skins, ascended). The bosses in the dungeon require a very high amount of individual skill and coordination. They have detailed mechanics. Why should any of this be done when its very likely that a spot will be found to stack the boss and kill him before he can do anything?

There is no point. Because players would rewarded improperly. They didn’t have to deal with any of the actual mechanics of the boss, because he died before it could happen. Anyway I think I need to say no more as the point is already made apparent.

Oh wow, I had no idea that skill could be that powerfull.

As point of comparison, fully buffed classes not using fiery Greatsword deal around 10-15000DPS each. In that video they deal around triple that. My opinion isn’t popular, but I honestly wouldn’t mind anet outright deleting the conjure entirely, I make a point not to use it when I play ele.

Sorry but they already dealt with Fiery Rush recently. More would have been done if they considered this ability to be that “broken”.

:( sad day for you.

Well they have been updating dungeon mechanics to make some fights less stack and whack. They’ve also made reflects less of a hard counter to some boss mechanics. I have to believe that FG 4 is probably on the chopping block in some form. Be it through direct nerf or more boss mechanic changes. Imagine if bosses put up A high retaliation tick.

I personally would like to see the fire trail on the 4 skill removed and maybe give the 2 skill a direct damage component.

the fgs is fine as is, no need to change it. And I disagree with rewarding improperly. how are they getting reward improperly ? I am sure you can get an organized group and have a fun time how you want. you can go through all the mechanics of the game how you want. and let others have fun how they want.

This isnt really a profession balance issue though… its a matter of stupid and brainless bosses.

Imagine a simple AI mechanic that make the bosses think a little. Is the boss being wailed upon by 5 players at 100K dps? Well then buff yourself with retaliation. Remove all buffs from nearby players. Put confusion on players. Block incoming damage. Knock them back. Teleport and AoE damage. Just do something that any sane player would do. A dps check upon themselves and a set of automatic responses should be easy to program. Just take what’s considered “normal” dps and then increase the responses the higher from this “normal” it is. Its easy to calculate that from the average time devs want the boss to be killed. Of course you could still exceed the “normal” dps, but at least it would mean some sort of danger to yourself. So in short, the higher dps you got the more dangerous the boss become.

But nope, they just follow their normal routine and are prompty slain in under 10s.

A weapon which enables you to deal the same damage as four players is not ‘fine as is’, no matter how you want to spin it.

^

Putting high up-time retaliation on everything in PvE to counter one ability is nowhere close to a good solution. Now you have to re-balance everything because different professions are affected to varying degrees by retaliation.

Yes, the boss mechanics do need to be improved. But FGS#4 works against better boss mechanics too. The bosses just have to be next to a wall or other impassible object. Ya, you could add dodges or evades to bosses, but you can’t have bosses spamming those constantly. So players would just have to bait those out and then do what they do now.

Exedore.6320:

Putting high up-time retaliation on everything in PvE to counter one ability is nowhere close to a good solution. Now you have to re-balance everything because different professions are affected to varying degrees by retaliation.

Actually, it wouldn’t be bad. Depending on the damage retaliation does, if it lets say does 300ish per hit. Then healing will counter this, meaning healing would become more useful in a group setting.

300 dmg per retal tick would result in 20.4k damage to yourself with one fgs rush. Not really something you can heal through.

This has been known for at least 21 months now… ArenaNet has acknowledged before the FGS skill 4 is a problem as it can be abused and it was left unchanged for well over 12 months afterwards…

IMHO:

Yes, It’s rediculously powerfull, and I want to say only 1 thing If arenanet could make it that the skill stops activating (now think about a certain mesmer skill and then reflect on that) when you hit a barrier this would be more balanced.

The fiery rush is a real usefull skill with it’s own uses when used untargeted, but I do agree when used on 1 single spot it’s power is beyond imagination. A 5 man group containing 2 eles on a AC run will make you kill the boss(es) nearly instantly, maybe 2 seconds tops. There is only 1 requirement, a barrier. Without the barrier, the FGS works as intended. with a barrier it’s well… Then again if you pull wrong in path 2 you will need to wait 180 seconds before you can retry , which allows you plenty of time to kill the ghosteater with normal dps.

But on the other hand, the bosses in most dungeons will die in about double the time it takes the FGS groups anyways with a well buffed, fed and moderately experienced full DPS party. Needing the FGS is actually a sign of inability to do it “normally”, and not a sign of beeing a great group or something, leaving FGS users being the lazy, the inept and the would-be cheats….. Using the reference to FGS 4 in any connection to good, adept, record or 1337 makes the claimer look utterly stupid

I have a full DPS ele, and using the FGS you can do some great tricks, you can pull 3 lvl 30-35 starters in blue armor through AC with 2 players with the forementioned knowledge… But this would also be possible if you didn’t need to use the wall, it would just take 3-4 seconds longer. and it could also be done by normal DPS taking 3-4 seconds more… , just from previous experience.

My question If you are going to change it, it will make some runs a “little more difficult” (not for AC , CM, TA, SE, COF, COE… imho ) BUT on the other hand high lvl fractals or true HP bags will take 3-4 times as long to kill…. so you will make high lvl fractals last even longer and make a bit of the speed boost you actually use against the HP bags in Arah dissappear. Just so you can say well the game is balanced now? If you have a good group of people just DPS-ing any boss with meta gear and some experience they will kill a boss in little to no time anyways. The Spider or Kohler in AC causes most parties more problems then all 3 end bosses…. maybe the recharge for FGS 4 cold be lengthened a bit from 6 (or is it 8?) seconds base to 10 or so. It could just eliminate the problems…. or would we just switch to Ice Bows? In the end it would not actually fix anything. It’s a gimmick in the stacking meta, not much more.

In the end it’s not the FGS which is gamebreaking but the stacking itself…

spoj.9672:

300 dmg per retal tick would result in 20.4k damage to yourself with one fgs rush. Not really something you can heal through.

Would you use fgs rush on a player who is in a corner with a high duration of retaliation?

You would strip the boon first obviously.

Yea so, using fgs on a target with retaliation is a stupid check. If you do it then you deserve to wipe.

You an strip the boon like you mentioned sure, but its easily reapplied. Likewise it should be true for npcs depending on their type.

slapping permanent retalition on everything instead of just fixing the one problematic ability is silly. there’s plenty of other abilitys that deliver high hit counts that aren’t broken at all.

I can’t imagine it would be all that difficult to reduce the dozen or so fields it throws down to just one. which could then be given an actually balanced DPS.

Retaliation on bosses just breaks even more stuff. There are a bunch of multi-hit weapons and weaponskills that would get devestated by this.

Retaliation is its own balance problem, and certainly shouldnt be buffed or more widespread throughout the game. If anything the opposite.

The problem is stacking and a ridiculous ability on the flaming GS. Deal with the actual problem, instead of beating around the bush with “solutions” that just create even more problems.

Most PvE encounters are not interesting. Removing FGS will not make them any better. In fact it will only make the bore-fest last longer.

I agree there are some gamebreaking things in PvE.
FGS is one of them as its is shadow refuge, stealth fields for skips for example (but also the low investiments on guardian reflects and support that makes the profession MANDATORY in 99% pug runs in anything not extremely easy).
Also the fact that elementalist get oneshot by 90% more things in the game, needs to be rewarded somehow.

Remove FGS (and lighthammer please) and give us some sort of POWERFUL elite like any other profession plus more survivability for PvE that doesn’t need to destroy our dps.

Or you will really have the old WWWWG parties everywhere.

And i still think that Guardian is more of an issue for PvE than anything else.
They have numbers and they know how guard is in 99,9% fractal parties (30+) arah, TA aetherblade etc..

P.S. stacking was already meta before FGS..removing it will make thing worse without adding anything, this is why i believe anet will do something.

Not to say FGS is balanced but since when is PvE balanced in any way? Fights get trivialized by single skills (Guardian wall as example), the mob AI is way too poor, which enables stacking, conditions are useless most of the time, no need for any defense outside of the support capabilities the guardian offers while still playing full berzerker.
So, ofcourse, FGS is broken. But so is the whole PvE.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Not to say FGS is balanced but since when is PvE balanced in any way? Fights get trivialized by single skills (Guardian wall as example), the mob AI is way too poor, which enables stacking, conditions are useless most of the time, no need for any defense outside of the support capabilities the guardian offers while still playing full berzerker.
So, ofcourse, FGS is broken. But so is the whole PvE.

yep, mobs and bosses have too much health and passive defensive. There is no reward to build a complicated setup rather than a pure dps group

I love FGS. I don’t even play ele, but having an ele in my party when I venture into PvE makes things bearable.

FGS is balanced in the only serious istances we have:
Fractals.

the issue is not the fgs but the dungeons themselves.

In the big picture, I agree. That single skill is too powerful for the following limitations:

• On a temporary item.
• Requires a specific class.
• Requires a specific setup.
• Requires a specific type of target.

The problem lies in the last one working for nearly all bosses. If there were bosses who’d gracefully sidestep the Fiery Rush, pick up the player and toss them over a wall outside the dungeon, then that’d be fine and you’d have to pick where to use it. The way it is, push target against wall, FRush to death. That’s how PvE works.

And don’t get me wrong, the FGS is mighty cool. But I can’t help but think FRush wasn’t supposed to work this way when the devs thought it up.

LordByron.8369:

FGS is balanced in the only serious istances we have:
Fractals.

the issue is not the fgs but the dungeons themselves.

You do not say clever sensible things that often, and this is very sensible, my sincerest congratulations!

Quoted for truth!

I’m not seeing how there’s anything anet can do to fix a weapon allowing a five man party to have the DPS of 20 players. There is literally nothing anet can do about that besides throttling the damage. To blame the dungeons themselves is absolutely laughable too, HP pools should not have to be thrown up just so FGS rushes can’t explode bosses, they should just deal with the problem itself.

maha.7902:

I’m not seeing how there’s anything anet can do to fix a weapon allowing a five man party to have the DPS of 20 players. There is literally nothing anet can do about that besides throttling the damage. To blame the dungeons themselves is absolutely laughable too, HP pools should not have to be thrown up just so FGS rushes can’t explode bosses, they should just deal with the problem itself.

Yet you are fine with one warrior having the survivability of two elementalists?

Are you comparing one class’ survivability to a weapon that let’s one person output the damage four players can? Elementalists have plenty of active mitigation anyway, so I don’t know where the problem is.

Warrior has the most over the top self buffing alongside the best survivability. Its much harder to get a good solo with ele fgs than it is on warrior. But if you pull it off then it is considerably faster.

Game shouldn’t be balanced around soloing. But yes, banners should be reworked and health halved. And signets removed from every profession.

spoj.9672:

Warrior has the most over the top self buffing alongside the best survivability. Its much harder to get a good solo with ele fgs than it is on warrior. But if you pull it off then it is considerably faster.

Irrelevant. The game is designed around group play, not solo. And in group play, a party dealing the equivalent of 20 players worth of damage is broken beyond belief.

Its not irrelevant when you consider warriors dps compared to other classes in a group setting. They still have that ridiculous survivability. I admit fgs is over the top damage. But it only becomes a problem in dungeons. In fractals it is incredibly risky to use effectively. That said, i wouldnt be against a damage per tick nerf. But fgs should still provide huge burst.

is PVE for god sakes, who cares?

xbutcherx.3861:

is PVE for god sakes, who cares?

Could say the same about PvP.

You all crying about warrior survival but you don’t see the big picture.. because warrior can survive better and has a high hp pool they are able to help get up down players faster, we are meatshield, we are melee and because of that we need to have survival, like guardians always getting pounded by Mobs. You all crying about warrior but hell how you love having one in the group.

>.>

Busted!

spoj.9672:

Its not irrelevant when you consider warriors dps compared to other classes in a group setting. They still have that ridiculous survivability. I admit fgs is over the top damage. But it only becomes a problem in dungeons. In fractals it is incredibly risky to use effectively. That said, i wouldnt be against a damage per tick nerf. But fgs should still provide huge burst.

Survivability is like a complete non issue in organised groups, you just brain afk roll everything, which is why you get these world records with 4 eles. So let’s see, everyone has might and fury so self buffing of warrior is irrelevant, but then eles have this weapon that lets a party do four parties worth of DPS to a boss. If FGS should be used as a burst weapon, half the DPS of the rush ticks and set it on a 30s cd. That way you can do double the DPS of a normal player rather than quadruple, and you can’t just wave it around waiting for rush to come off cd otherwise your dps plummets – so you end up with a powerful burst weapon which you basically fire and drop afterwards. Then again that doesn’t really solve anything and people will just stack eles as usual, so maybe just force it to have a target and be done with it.

xbutcherx.3861:

You all crying about warrior but hell how you love having one in the group.

Crying about unbalances in a class, and still wanting them in your party because they are so strong, are not two things that cancel each other out.

This skill is easy to fix. You know what happens when you try to cast a phantasm without selecting a target? Something like…

Skill Failed. No Target Selected.

Easy solution without changing the intended functionality at all.

Which would completely destroy the skill, expect very niche situations.

Just make it always cast the targeted version.

You guys realise this will only change what happens in dungeons, for rather advanced groups, that is … us. You are asking Anet to nerf us. I don’t get it really. Why give Anet the stick to beat us like they love to do, when this issue is completely irrelevant to the vast majority of gw2 players ??

What they really should do:
- nerf dungeons rewards (make it a one-off thing, reward exploration not farm)
- buff fractal rewards a lot
=> People go into fractals more.
=>> People have more fun because fractals are
- more balanced
- more diverse
- more creative
- easy to expand in future patches
=>>> The community becomes better, and no more FGS issue since the last tournament has proved that FGS is not OP in fractals. On the contrary, the extreme survivability of warriors and guardians should be addressed.

I am pretty sure that this is the kind of design Anet had in mind when they released the game. It just happened that the vast majority of players were not able to get past Lupicus so Anet never bothered with fractals.

A simple shift in the reward structure from dungeons to fractals would solve most PvE complains.

Here is why - the power level is completely out of whack with anything else and the meta is now completely stale. Warrior for banners? Nah, take another ele. Guard for defensive utilities? Nah, take another ele. SE p1 and p3 would basically be 5-ele records if if weren’t for portal tricks. It’s like you enjoy the game being boring or something.

maha.7902:

Here is why – the power level is completely out of whack with anything else and the meta is now completely stale. Warrior for banners? Nah, take another ele. Guard for defensive utilities? Nah, take another ele. SE p1 and p3 would basically be 5-ele records if if weren’t for portal tricks. It’s like you enjoy the game being boring or something.

The meta … for dungeons!

Which are terrible. We all know that. You are trying to fix the symptoms, not the problem.

Come to think of it, this skill would be affected by my wish to fix mobility-quirkiness in GW2:

• Change all movement skills which are targeted to only fire if a) there’s a target and b) it’s in range.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

maha.7902:

Here is why – the power level is completely out of whack with anything else and the meta is now completely stale. Warrior for banners? Nah, take another ele. Guard for defensive utilities? Nah, take another ele. SE p1 and p3 would basically be 5-ele records if if weren’t for portal tricks. It’s like you enjoy the game being boring or something.

The meta … for dungeons!

Which are terrible. We all know that. You are trying to fix the symptoms, not the problem.

Dungeons are fine, just old. If people actually had to wake up and press dodge every now and then they might find dungeons more interesting than brain afk’ing with conjures.

Ok so let me get this straight OP. Your signature says you’re from DnT, now I don’t know much about the “hardcore pve scene”, but I believe those guys are known for speedclearing stuff extremely efficiently and quick (correct me if I’m wrong).

Why would you want to remove FGS 4?

Are other guilds catching up to your “records” by using this “cheese” perhaps?
Do you enjoy longer PvE fights?
Or maybe you guys never run elementalists, so you feel you’re at a disadvantage?

I honestly don’t understand why would you care.