Guild Wars 2

Thieves should get nerfs to stealth and major buffs/overhauls in other areas to compensate so they are more viable outside of stealth spam. They should be a powerful class in small fights but it shouldnt be just spam stealth and reset the fight every 5 seconds (and I know there are ways to counter it, spare me the “omg i havent died to a theif in my 12000 hours of playtime just l2 play”).

Eles need a lot of work in all setups with the exception of meteor shower/tornando lolspam which should get fixed in the first place. d/d, s/d and staff specs all need some tweaking.

Rangers also seem pretty weak though i dont know enough about them to comment, but the fact that theyre so rare and usually unthreatening seems to say something, but eles and thieves seem to need changes first.

• Necromancers (buff and fix DS problems)
• Rangers (buff and fix to pet problems)

• Warrior (nerf, they should have a weakness)

However, given their track record, I’d say we can expect a fix to either in about 5 years. That’s how long it took for them to give mesmers decent aoe in GW1’s PVE long after Eye of the North had been released (the change to Panic). Or in the case of the necromancer, life stealing never got fixed in GW1… so I expect a fix for that in about… never.

My signature describes the entirety of this thread.

Viking Jorun.5413:

My signature describes the entirety of this thread.

Not the entirety… My reply had no nerfs or buffs

buff skilled small group team play .
everyone wants to be a solo roamer
and everyone wants there class to be a better solo roamer than the thief ???
buff skilled team play ! or team benefiting traits / skills

Dear Viking,

What happens when rock and scissors are on the same character? Then, if I were paper I might want those two to be separated.

Hence. . .

Buff Rangers
Nerf Warriors

Wow..
I didnt knew that so many ppl acknowledge that Rangers have major problems..

Spirit Rangers is a viable build for spvp but its so boring that everyone is hating it..Now with the few nerfs is in a fine place..

Still Rangers need more viable options away from the constant NEED of Empathetic Bond for cond removal and the NEED for high toughness amulets…

I dont think that its too hard to fix em as soon as you realise those 2 problems….

PvE: Necro(buff) Guardian(nerf)

PvP: Ele(buff) Warrior(nerf)

Elementalist – Buff (CD reductions)

Ranger – Buff (Improved pet AI)

Buff: Rangers
Nerf: Stealth

Next in line for buffs would be Eles.

I think nerfing stealth would at least give Mesmers and Eles a little more breathing room in the DPS department in PVP. Two “buffs” for one nerf. Rangers need buffs in all aspects of the game. One~three good PVP builds doesn’t mean the class is balanced.

Warrior (nerf)

Ranger (buff)

I’m becoming of the opinion that Ranger needs a buff even more desperately than ele does. That being said, ele needs some pretty large buffs as well.

1. anything condi
2. god-mode. u know….

I’ve got 2 l80s: an ele (my main) and a ranger. I’ve also got a l20-ish engi and warrior. I had a mesmer up to level 50 something but deleted her because I was bored out of my mind. However, I’m happy to chalk that one up to my personal likes/dislikes. sooo, I’ll just go with what I know:

ele: 1) please increase survivability! When I first started with my ranger (!!!!), I remember thinking (and still do, whenever I play him) “wow, he almost never dies, yay me!”
ele: 2) enable other builds than “max out arcana, split the rest between water/earth/air”

ranger: needs more dps. Sure, I survive more than I do with my ele – which really isn’t saying much, to be honest. I also kill a LOT less. and people never want me in the party. Even though I’m decent enough to solo-kill most champs (given 30 min :P )

of the classes that I’ve encountered in WvW: thief perma-stealth +backstab is ferociously painful, maybe that could be toned down a bit? Though I don’t mind at all if Thieves got a little something in return for it to compensate. And hammer-warriors. Good god, there’s no counter for those. your only hope is to outrun them, which really is no hope at all. I managed it once though.

Ele buffs: not to passive survivability. Give us greater active defense, we’re not warriors.

Ranger change: I get that they’re supposed to be one of the more passive classes, but that whole spirit/overreliance on autoattack thing is a bit overboard and needs to be toned down to make room for more active abilities, which should probably end up as buffs as well to everyone who still has a soul and doesn’t sit in their spirits spamming 1.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Ele buffs: not to passive survivability. Give us greater active defense, we’re not warriors.

Ranger change: I get that they’re supposed to be one of the more passive classes, but that whole spirit/overreliance on autoattack thing is a bit overboard and needs to be toned down to make room for more active abilities, which should probably end up as buffs as well to everyone who still has a soul and doesn’t sit in their spirits spamming 1.

on ele survivability: I agree with you. I actually think that the ele heal options are pretty decent – I know, lots of people disagree on this one – but the problem is, there’s no active defence except for arcane shield and… well, looking at cooldowns plus viable defence options, it’s just sad.

Ranger: I don’t know what you’re talking about. mine’s a shortbow-greatsword signet ranger. I’m considering changing the shortbow against axe-horn, just need to figure out which ones I want :P

Viking Jorun.5413:

My signature describes the entirety of this thread.

lol brilliant. Haz a cookie

Vuh.1328:

Actual fixes or balance?
IF actual fixes:
1. Mesmer
2. Mesmer
Seriously the broken stupid AI with their annoying bugs are pretty darn gamebreaking.

For balance?:
1. Nerf Warrior’s ability to be so tanky yet deal so much damage while having alot of control.
2. Evade.. err i mean thief, god kitten rework the sword/x #3 to something not that is not a evade or slaugther the damage of them

yeah seriously fix the ai or simply redesign mesmer. its too much 1v1 and ai anyways. no light armor in any game should be a 1v1 pet class. give us aoe revamp ai, revamp all the glamours as u nerfed confusion into the ground already. remove mantras and replace them with aoe skills, fix the los bugs, fix ileap remove and replace mimic and moa.
if mesmers will get a whip as anew weapon, make it an aoe weapon like necro has with their staff. less single target

style.6173:

@OP: A thread like this is pointless. You need to specific what type of game mode. Anyone who answers without specifying is either new or only plays in one game mode (PvE, PvP, or WvW). Even within those, there are differences, but the 3 are good at a high level.

Why? Warrior is God tier in every mode in the game

1) nerf warrior (sustain/mobility)
2) buff ranger (pets/AOE/trap range)
3) buff Ele (mobility)

Necro, in terms of PvE. There’s no contest.

Each profession has something that they bring to the group that gives them an advantage; The common Warrior have really great damage and good support. A Thief have great single-target damage, evades, blinds and SR. Every profession have something. The Necromancer seems to be by a fairly big margin the worst profession in this respect. Anything they do can be done better by other professions. Sure, there is Epidemic, but the very nature of Conditions and their Cap makes it generally much more useful to go DD. But at that point, you’d absolutely prefer a Warrior, or an Engineer.

And I’m not biased; I play an Elementalist, an Engi, a Warrior and a Guardian, but no Necro.

nerf condi tanks

Phadde.7362:

Necro, in terms of PvE. There’s no contest.

Each profession has something that they bring to the group that gives them an advantage; The common Warrior have really great damage and good support. A Thief have great single-target damage, evades, blinds and SR. Every profession have something. The Necromancer seems to be by a fairly big margin the worst profession in this respect. Anything they do can be done better by other professions. Sure, there is Epidemic, but the very nature of Conditions and their Cap makes it generally much more useful to go DD. But at that point, you’d absolutely prefer a Warrior, or an Engineer.

And I’m not biased; I play an Elementalist, an Engi, a Warrior and a Guardian, but no Necro.

Until the design of the necro change from a selfish class to something else, or the content has meaningful amount of encounters where boon stripping and condi removal needed and other classes cant do it with less effort while provide other things or the damage becomes the highest, necro remains the underdog in pve. Move on.

1. Thieves – They have been the most complained against class in this game from day one. The combination of frequent in-combat stealth and high burst make them inherently frustrating to play against in WvW. Unless the class gets a fundamental redesign this will not change.

2. Rangers – Rangers just strike me as a dull class through and through with no defining abilities and no outstanding abilities. All they seem to do is pew, pew, pew like a turret while being assisted by various brainless AI pets.

Daishi.6027:

Ele: are fine if you make everything else fine.

If they fixed everything else, this would make Ele even worse. They have TERRIBLE sustain and damage. You go Zerker and one missed skill means you die. Ele are forced to go into defence to counter the fact they have Lowest Health and Lowest Armor and average damage after all the nerfs they have been slapped about with.

They need to be buffed so they can be more offensive and not have to trait and build so much to counter the innate weaknesses of the class. They need to improve the sustain of the class quite a lot. We are forced into going with Health and Toughness.

Phadde.7362:

Necro, in terms of PvE. There’s no contest.

Each profession has something that they bring to the group that gives them an advantage; The common Warrior have really great damage and good support. A Thief have great single-target damage, evades, blinds and SR. Every profession have something. The Necromancer seems to be by a fairly big margin the worst profession in this respect. Anything they do can be done better by other professions. Sure, there is Epidemic, but the very nature of Conditions and their Cap makes it generally much more useful to go DD. But at that point, you’d absolutely prefer a Warrior, or an Engineer.

And I’m not biased; I play an Elementalist, an Engi, a Warrior and a Guardian, but no Necro.

I whole heartedly agree, and I am biased, because I am a necromancer. But we really are absolutely rubbish in PVE compared to the other classes. And PVE really is against conditions in general, which makes a condition-focused class just terrible from the get go. Also, for an attrition class we really have terrible attrition.

1 Ranger: BUFF (PvP, PvE, WvW) (everything exept from spirits, which is the only viable option in competitive PvP).

2 Ele: BUFF (PvP, PvE, WvW).

3 Necro BUFF (PvE + some fixes here and there).

4 Engi BUFF (PvE + some fixes here and there).

5 Warrior MASSIVE NERF (PvP, PvE, WvW).

6 Mesmer I would not talk about nerf or buff, FIXING is the key imo.

Guardians are always balanced imo; thieves instead….I just can’t stand them and I don’t know the class well: I just know that if the first strike doesn’t kill you, thieves will just die or run away in stealth (both in PvP and WvW).

Nerf = Warrior
Buff = Ele

This is from a PvP perspective. PvE-wise, buff Ranger.

Dave Pare.2069:

Guardians are always balanced imo; thieves instead….I just can’t stand them and I don’t know the class well: I just know that if the first strike doesn’t kill you, thieves will just die or run away in stealth (both in PvP and WvW).

Guardians make the other classes feel unbalanced, and that’s I think because they don’t bring quite the same amount of team support as the guardian. If you have a guardian in your party (and who doesn’t?) he’ll be the primary source of buffs and healing, and your survivability improves a lot. But he also brings a lot of defense and offense to the table. This doesn’t make the guardian unbalanced, but it blatantly shows just how unbalanced the other classes are.

If the designers wanted to get rid of the monk after GW1, they shouldn’t have given all the monk’s characteristics to the guardian. If the goal was to allow all the classes to fulfill a similar support role, then they really should improve the support of the other classes.

For example, why are guardians also able to reflect projectiles? I can’t do that as a necromancer, but it’s an insanely powerful ability in PVE, which several encounters seem designed for. And it’s one of the primary reasons why people bring guardians and mesmers into dungeons.

I don’t want the devs to take that role away from them. But I want them to give the other classes also a purpose in dungeon teams.

If my necro can’t reflect projectiles, and the support of my class is poor, and my condition damage is capped… then how am I contributing to the team? What is my identity? What is my purpose?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Dave Pare.2069:

Guardians are always balanced imo; thieves instead….I just can’t stand them and I don’t know the class well: I just know that if the first strike doesn’t kill you, thieves will just die or run away in stealth (both in PvP and WvW).

Guardians make the other classes feel unbalanced, and that’s I think because they don’t bring quite the same amount of team support as the guardian. If you have a guardian in your party (and who doesn’t?) he’ll be the primary source of buffs and healing, and your survivability improves a lot. But he also brings a lot of defense and offense to the table. This doesn’t make the guardian unbalanced, but it blatantly shows just how unbalanced the other classes are.

If the designers wanted to get rid of the monk after GW1, they shouldn’t have given all the monk’s characteristics to the guardian. If the goal was to allow all the classes to fulfill a similar support role, then they really should improve the support of the other classes.

For example, why are guardians also able to reflect projectiles? I can’t do that as a necromancer, but it’s an insanely powerful ability in PVE, which several encounters seem designed for. And it’s one of the primary reasons why people bring guardians and mesmers into dungeons.

I don’t want the devs to take that role away from them. But I want them to give the other classes also a purpose in dungeon teams.

If my necro can’t reflect projectiles, and the support of my class is poor, and my condition damage is capped… then how am I contributing to the team? What is my identity? What is my purpose?

I agree with you but that’s the kind of class diversity we’re aiming for: having a guardian in your team is a must (most of the times). The real problem is when, for example, three warriors become a must in your team or when there’s no space for a ranger or an ele in a Dungeon party, in a tPvP tourney or a GvG match.

That is THE problem. At least necros (and engis) have a role they fulfill very good in WvW and PvP, other classes such as Elementalist and Ranger (which can rely ONLY on the spirit build in PvP and on sword dps build in PvE) doesn’t have a reason to be played right now.

Dave Pare.2069:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Dave Pare.2069:

Guardians are always balanced imo; thieves instead….I just can’t stand them and I don’t know the class well: I just know that if the first strike doesn’t kill you, thieves will just die or run away in stealth (both in PvP and WvW).

Guardians make the other classes feel unbalanced, and that’s I think because they don’t bring quite the same amount of team support as the guardian. If you have a guardian in your party (and who doesn’t?) he’ll be the primary source of buffs and healing, and your survivability improves a lot. But he also brings a lot of defense and offense to the table. This doesn’t make the guardian unbalanced, but it blatantly shows just how unbalanced the other classes are.

If the designers wanted to get rid of the monk after GW1, they shouldn’t have given all the monk’s characteristics to the guardian. If the goal was to allow all the classes to fulfill a similar support role, then they really should improve the support of the other classes.

For example, why are guardians also able to reflect projectiles? I can’t do that as a necromancer, but it’s an insanely powerful ability in PVE, which several encounters seem designed for. And it’s one of the primary reasons why people bring guardians and mesmers into dungeons.

I don’t want the devs to take that role away from them. But I want them to give the other classes also a purpose in dungeon teams.

If my necro can’t reflect projectiles, and the support of my class is poor, and my condition damage is capped… then how am I contributing to the team? What is my identity? What is my purpose?

I agree with you but that’s the kind of class diversity we’re aiming for: having a guardian in your team is a must (most of the times). The real problem is when, for example, three warriors become a must in your team or when there’s no space for a ranger or an ele in a Dungeon party, in a tPvP tourney or a GvG match.

That is THE problem. At least necros (and engis) have a role they fulfill very good in WvW and PvP, other classes such as Elementalist and Ranger (which can rely ONLY on the spirit build in PvP and on sword dps build in PvE) doesn’t have a reason to be played right now.

^^^
This.

Nerf Warriors
Redesign/buff Rangers
Redesign/buff Thiefs
Nerf Mesmers
Buff Elementalists
Nerf Necromancers
Nerf Engineers
Guardians can stay like they are.

Thats my opinion viewing on all 8 Classes.
This view as alot to do with the Base Health of Classes and certain Mechanics, that could work better and could need redesigns as also nerfing certain way too OP Condition Spam Builds.

But that has also then again to do with my experiences in WvW and I think some of those nerfes weren’t needed, if ANet finally would decativate the usage of Buff Items in WvW.. this stuff should be PvE only…

Alot of the Buff items make specific builds of certain classes for WvW way too overpowered, especialyl for Condition Spam Builds of the Necromancer and the Engineer, if you have stuff on you that raises condition durations by whopping 40% and massively increases also the damage you do with conditions. This together with the right equipment , runes and sigils maskes these kinds of builds just too OP and thats why i absolutely think, either these builds need ASAP nerfs, or anet has to finally remove all of the buff item crap out of WvW, because that stuff has nothign to search there.

WvW has its own kind of passive buffs with Guild Banners and the SHrione Buffs, thats more than enough of passive buffs, there should be also the buff food and nourishment buff also on topp, especialyl when there are also those 2 WvW Skill Lines that further increase your Power and Vitality on guard kills …

these buffs all together are pure madness and make it unneccessary harder to balance WvW. I know absolute balance in WvW will be always impossible, but if you can make it a bit easier, you should do it and it would definetely be easier to balance all classes for WvW, if there would be the buff food/potions !!

Buff all
nerf stealth

Ranger and Thief.

Both ranger and thief are in serious need of a complete redesign.

Dalanor.5387:

Until the design of the necro change from a selfish class to something else, or the content has meaningful amount of encounters where boon stripping and condi removal needed and other classes cant do it with less effort while provide other things or the damage becomes the highest, necro remains the underdog in pve. Move on.

Seems like you’re trying to prevent people from bringing up the Necro as a profession that needs a lot of help in PvE. . . Anyways, it’s not even a hard issue to solve: increase the amount of traits that gives the Necro boons and buffs and have them shared with nearby allies. Make the Hp-scaling sensible and give the Blood tree a good damage and healing boost. Further increase Vulnerability- and (especially) Torment-stacking (it is a Necromancer, and the Attrition-theme is not working out currently). And give them a good block/evade-mechanic. . . And perhaps make that bloody useless Corrosive cloud-utility a projectile-exterminator.

In PvE the only place Necros are wanted at is at Husks at Crimson Wurm.
They don’t really provide anything special to a party in most places.
Not that I’ve seen many particularly want Rangers in PvE either…

Necros need buffs, but possibly nerfs, too?
Vampiric Signet is worthless and most skills scale very badly with Healing Power, so Vampiric builds aren’t worth using.

At Condi AoE, however, the Necromancer is extremely strong.
This makes them dangerous in WvW. (and useful at Wurm)

Also the dev team’s insistence on keeping Necro slow and with limited defenses in a game so based on mobility hurts them really badly in many areas of the game.
Many boss fights are way harder for a Necro due to lack of Vigor, Stability and Evade.

On the flipside the high health + Death Shroud makes them crazy strong in areas with a lot of deaths going on.

The amount of bugs is pretty disappointing, too.

For example transformations destroying Necro minions is actually a bug.
…but instead of ever fixing it they added a description warning about it as a temporary measure.

And It’s been that way ever since.
To this day Moa Morph destroys MMs all minions…

Or wanna use Lich Form or Plague as MM? Good luck. :P

Also I’ll mention that Warriors are pretty crazy atm, from what I’ve seen.

PvE
Buff – AoE, range damage, condition damage, mobs AI
Nerf – Melee, direct damage, damage reduction (vitality + toughness)

WvW
Buff – Remove AoE cap to ending stacking – smaller maps for me PvP amd less PvDoor.

PvP
Revert to GW1 PvP and reintroduce healers

Yeah I’m in the nerf Warrior boat (By that I mean give them real down sides), since warriors don’t need to play smart for the most part and will still be fairly effective. A lot of warriors face tank under the assumption that you are being cc’d too hard to mount any real resistance and if you are getting attacks in, healing signet will counter act a decent chunk of that damage. If all else fails they can use their mobility like a make shift healing skill since most classes can’t keep up. This is without getting into their damage mitigation which falls under the make shift healing skill for me.

Condition are overdue for some changes so I won’t touch on condition warriors.

Lack of hard cc on PU condition mesmers is probably the one thing preventing them from jumping to warrior status imo and instead they’re more like ghosts with an grudge.

Ranger definitely needs a buff, but I doubt just tweaking numbers can save this class. Anet needs to sit down with it and remake entire portions of it if they have to.

style.6173:

@OP: A thread like this is pointless. You need to specific what type of game mode. Anyone who answers without specifying is either new or only plays in one game mode (PvE, PvP, or WvW). Even within those, there are differences, but the 3 are good at a high level.

They balance them all the same, so why should we separate them? I agree they should be balanced separately, but Anet doesn’t. Alas this thread is just as it should be.

Warrior (nerf)
Ranger (Buff)

Ele needs buffs, but only for PvP. It’s already strong in the other modes.

Ranger, Necromancer and Engineer. (I know 3, but still)

As for the Necro thing above, I feel like Necros are useful in PvE, just that PvE itself never challenges the part where Necros are good at (Boon/Condition control).

Carighan.6758:

As for the Necro thing above, I feel like Necros are useful in PvE, just that PvE itself never challenges the part where Necros are good at (Boon/Condition control).

I think that someone doesnt know the sheer amount of bugs that plague that part of a necros kit… 2 builds that are viable are power chill fractal setups and scav carrion vampire for husks (yay for true damage).
As for pvp god noone wanted dhuumfire, believe me, look the forums for the date, the frontpage was going from “omg we got a nubstomper trait why?” to “kitten it im quitting necro a-net have no idea how to balance this profession”.

No no Andele, I mean they could be useful, if PvE were to contain enemies which work with the kitten nal of abilities a Necro has. They don’t, outside of the Husks at the worm.

The aetherblade dungeon / fractal was a nice step towards this too.
However only that 25 bleed stack is problematic, the trash dies way too fast to feel their boons effect. On the other hand there are dredges, but they are a really different problem (rapid boon application, blind immun, beefy as hell etc.).

reikken.4961:

Ele needs buffs, but only for PvP. It’s already strong in the other modes.

Not play much WvW then? with even 1600Toughness and 18k health you can be killed in under 2 seconds….

Ele have the same problem in all game modes, it just isnt as obvious in PvE due to how easy mos of the content is. That problem Sustain. with our very limited survivability utilities being WORSE than counterparts of other classes in cases and having the good old ele issue of insane cool downs, it’s not bad enough that our weapon skills have ridiculous cool downs our utilities have insane cool downs and don’t get me started on our Elites where FGS is the best of a bad bunch and mostly used for mobility in WvW…

By the way, on the subject of boon control, the boon system is also completely broken in PVE. When do you ever need to remove boons in PVE? Most of the time boons on enemies last so short, that they disappear by the time you’ve finished casting. Or the moment you remove a boon, he instantly reapplies them, making your efforts completely futile.

Short answer is weapons need fixing more than classes do.

Pvp warrior: NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF
Pvp Ranger: W/e clever, never played one, but i wouldn’t complain if they got buffed, they’re my favorite class to kill

ENGIE gadgets cd and turrets (unusable pathetic)

There are some good buffing enemies, Malafide. The dredge and the Aetherblade come to mind, who also scale really well with power. The Aetherblades during the scarlet invasion go from ~2k damage with a grenade to 5k, and they crit more often due to fury.

The issue is: Those enemies which do buff, they rebuff constantly. It’s virtually useless to try strip them. :S