Guild Wars 2

This has bugged me for a while, all the ‘nerf celestial/might stacking!!!’ threads, and I’ve never had a clear idea how folks even know for sure. Is it just ‘they seemed to do more damage and take less damage than I was expecting, so it must be Celestial!’?

Well, if you play each profession, you learn a bit of what is what. When you seem them individually build up the boons, you can see how much of what boon they have, and generally deduce most of any defensive traits.

The problem with many of the threads here, is that most of the players making them, have never played the profession they are accusatory of. They generally only know attacks to avoid from the weapon they see being used, and generally have no clue what the opponents build is, or what they are doing that allows them to win. It is always clear when you ask them what build they are specifically complaining about, and how many hours they have on said profession they are complaining about.

To get more direct and to the point of what I am saying. Posters make threads of claims and accusations against other professions very often when they do not have the slightest idea what they are talking about. The often do not have any experience or play time on that profession. They will often claim to be experts based on second hand knowledge from some friend or guildy.

There’s always clear indications on builds if you know traits well enough. On eles it’s pretty simple, just look at the might stacking, if they have evasive arcana, and if they heal when entering water+ have vigor and regen with cantrips, they are the popular x/x/x/6/6 build, nothing too hard to guess. Then you watch the direct damage and condi damage you’re taking, if the burning is about 400 buffed then it’s not celestial, if it’ up to 500-600 it is. Ele is one of the easiest class to scan builds, but it’s really the same for other classes. For instance, if a guardian procs one stack of might when you break his first aegis and is using shout, it’s definitively a ah shout guard; to confirm it watch if his health bar goes up when he uses boons. Warrior traits are usually harder to see because it’s mostly passive, but they usually get the weapon swap reduction ( just count time spent before weapon swapping) and most have passive endure pain ( 30 in defense). Shout heal and banner regen are obviously easy to spot, as is dogged march and cleansing ire; etc

so it’s a guess.

An educated guess, but a guess.

Windsagio.1340:

so it’s a guess.

An educated guess, but a guess.

Yes, indeed.

It’s not a guess. It’s an analysis of facts leading to an observation. There’s sometimes 2 or 4 unknown traits, but you can tell 100% what a player is using. Gear is harder obviously, but celestial is pretty easy to spot especially in pvp where you can’t mix stats.

Windsagio.1340:

so it’s a guess.

An educated guess, but a guess.

You can’t know for sure every little detail of what the opponent is using, but for what concerns the amulet and the build.. well, that’s not a guess.

It’s true but you CAN predict almost exactly what a person is running if you are familiar with that class. For example I mainly play Warrior, so I know most every warrior trait. So let’s say I notice that I attempt to CC a Warrior and it doesn’t affect him, but rather immediately grants him stability, that means that he has gone 4 into Defense, now let’s say that he also has the ability to use Cleansing Ire, He activates Endure pain at 25% health, or every time I crit him he gains retaliation This would mean he actually has invested 6 into Defense. Also let’s say this warrior can swap weapons ever 5 seconds. This would mean that he has gone at least 3 into discipline. That leaves 5 points left to determine stat investment. Those points can be determined by whatever the warrior is using/ any other unique effects the Warrior is exhibiting.

For rangers: walking spirits: 6 points in vitality. Fast arrows: 6 on power. 3 sec stun from gs: 6 points on crit etc

McWolfy.5924:

For rangers: walking spirits: 6 points in vitality. Fast arrows: 6 on power. 3 sec stun from gs: 6 points on crit etc

unless you’re wrong, no offense intended.

@ Topic OP

An educated guess is a guess, unless you are determined to take video of a fight and compare the dps ranges to the kinds of amulets that could possibly provide such ranges and take note of every instance in which X warrior randomly popped swiftness meaning furious speed (or maybe he used balanced stance? rewind video, check to see if stability popped u- nope, furious speed).

And even then you might miss the finer details.

You cannot scan builds in this game. you can only assume they are running a particular thing.

you can indeed scan builds in spectator mode, but i guess that’s not what OP wanted to know

Not really scanning builds as much as being educated as to what is commonly run by which classes and how your teammate/enemy fits into those specs based off weapons and/or obvious traits.

Really isn’t a whole lot of variation in those specs, because people will want to be the most effective, and that’s why most use the “meta” builds.

After some time playing, you won’t miss the “finer details” most of the time. I won’t say always because a smart guy will find that one spec no one uses without any outisde indicator.

I was stymied by the title character limit.

I just wonder, in terms of all the ‘celes/stacked might’ complaints if there isn’t a meaningful element of ‘They seem to do more and take less damage than I think they should. I see they have might (sometimes) it must be this thing that people are complaining about!’

Windsagio.1340:

I was stymied by the title character limit.

I just wonder, in terms of all the ‘celes/stacked might’ complaints if there isn’t a meaningful element of ‘They seem to do more and take less damage than I think they should. I see they have might (sometimes) it must be this thing that people are complaining about!’

that’s always going to be an element you see getting tossed out there, and usually people who do incorrectly say stuff along those lines are put in their place quickly or at the very least have dead give aways in their posts that they have no idea what they’re talking about and that their opinion should be discarded.

that however shouldn’t detract from when people who do know what they’re talking about post sensible arguments about the things ignorant people are wrong about.

so just because you see someone claim something outlandish like “i am tired of seeing mesmers with 25 stacks of might coming through and one shotting me!! nerf might!!” you can’t let that affect your view on when you see people making good arguments that certain professions’ mightstacking ability is unbalanced. it’s not complicated.

Quite a few people watch the visible tournaments being streamed to get a sense of both “meta” builds and the frequency and effectiveness with which such builds can be used, or have the capability of.

The issue with balance threads, as the OP and many others have so aptly pointed out, is that people then take their observations and experiences and use them to form an opinion, and then instead of trying to discuss their opinion in a logical way, treat their own opinion as fact and rebuke every dissenting point or opinion presented.

But ignoring the forums, as far as in game is concerned, it is almost entirely educated guesses based on personal knowledge or common knowledge. Most people do tend to focus on a single class or a small handful of classes though, so finer details of what exactly is occurring does have the potential to be lost.

At the same time though, it could be argued that some details are so minor (they may add up to something major in totality, but minor on their own) that during the course of combat they would have simply been missed anyhow (a good example of this is Ranger Spirits active ability can proc the passive effects of other spirits, like stone spirit proc’ing sun spirits passive).

Anyhow, forum opinions, and generally opinions about anything being strong/overpowered boil down to some sort of combination of high frequency (how often you see it), perceived effectiveness, and usually but not always, direct bias on how individuals both use and combat against the option.

Ultimately though, no (visible) forum goer has run the numbers and gathered data and done data analysis on every possible situation before making claims, they just try to draw the most logical conclusion they can think of from their own personal experiences.

That certainly doesn’t mean, however, that every balance based thread is inaccurate. In fact, in certain extreme cases, it is more likely that somebody is making fairly accurate enough assumptions and conclusions, and that those assumptions/conclusions simply aren’t precise or are unfounded (which doesn’t make them incorrect).

To have a clear idea of what you complain against you must first have played the profession yourself. I worked realy hard to learn about all and any profession mechanics because knowledge is power when fighting against them. Knowing their cooldowns ability and available builds help to counter them better. On a side note before complaining about a class mechanics you should first study it deeply.

For instance if i complained about warrior Hambow having to much damage id need to pull of why and how it makes them strong for nothing. If a character who runs on a tanky set (not as in condition damage but more as a knight/soldier style maybe even cleric) can nearly equalise or even outshine the damage of a full glass cannon build in the same class witheout sacrificing any survivability then likely it is overpowered and needs to be toned down some way.

Most people on the forum complain on empty facts (such as the dude killed me!) and conjecture what you should bring on the table is actualy how the guy did it with what skill in what situation and what build you were using so that people can gauge your odds. In the case that you were more then able to handle the situation you likely just got outplayed but if the guy globaled a fully geared character speced correctly and using his ability at the right time either the guy was to good or you werent good enought. In the end proof and fact needs to be proven by playing the broken build yourself or by showing a video of how it is done (aka for instance that lovely video of a troll thief killing whole bunch of people in wvw with a single weapon and no off hand, funny thing is the same guy killed people with firework after but meh)

Sometime by playing the very build that destroyed you you can learn its hard counters. Spirit ranger for exemple has several weakness that can be exploited such as AOE attack.

Thing is you cant accuse witheout facts else how are you realy sure of what your writing about in the first place.

often just seeing a certain weapon (and taking a hit or 2) gives you enough info about a build to know what theyre running…