Guild Wars 2

Erulogos.2591:

Also… buff engineers. Mine is tired of being a second rate grenade monkey.

Seeing grenades are an aoe you can expect after the changes to be a third rate grenade monkey

So what effect will this have on arrow carts?

Keep in mind grenades just got a 30% damage nerf in the last update, just remove them from the game already.

Medazolam.3058:

Keep in mind grenades just got a 30% damage nerf in the last update, just remove them from the game already.

Just remove the whole class while your at it..lol Honestly..what are they doing?

I appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to us and I am happy for the info we got. I know braving the community is no easy task when there’s so many people that act like morons. however it seems like the only things you really covered were pvp related and some of the larger pve concerns weren’t even given the generic response. I’m sure you make more money off of the pvp community and its understandable to cover more of that content but the past few live q&a we’ve had were also majority pvp. even saying the other pve concerns were seen and are being worked on but you don’t have much more to give us would have sufficed. it was just kinda skirted around and seems like over is always taking the backseat to pvp. perhaps its just me idk. anywho thank you again for the info you gave us today and any communication with the community is always a good thing. I love gw2 and am looking forward to the upcoming changes

I play an engineer and I love it, but seriously, it is very clear from all the major nerfs and bugs, the class is not what they envisioned it to be. It appears they really have no idea where to go with the class. The AoE nerf is crazy, most of these attacks take active aiming, miss often and are indicated be a big red circle.

my main is an ele and i am scared. i aoe in wvw because i cant see anything, so i just guess most of the time. i still dont get any badges, but aoe was a good answer to the culling, and i want it to stay that way. with culling in place, targeting become difficult to impossible, since you can only see several opposing players at one time. so popping aoe on a inviso-zerg was the great balance, i think.

Did they specifically mention engineer? Cause given the recent grenade nerf I can’t imagine another nerf, from what they said it won’t be an across the board nerf to all aoes.

the fact that anet wont separate the power/attributes of abilities between pvp, wvw, and pve is quite frankly ridiculous. their reasoning behind it is even more baffling. people who pvp don’t enjoy pve at all. people who pve don’t really care about pvp. wvw is sort of a middle ground. of course people like to dabble in all of the content, but there is absolutely no reason to gimp a class in all aspsects of the game just became of their niche performance in one. i primarily play a mesmer and examples since release are the nerf of portal, phantasms, shattered strength, shatter gcd and likely soon time warp due to pvp whining are some that come to mind. again i don’t care even the least bit about pvp. pvp nerfs shouldn’t effect my already weak pve experience.

coming from someone who doesn’t really like gw2 pvp in the least bit, their view on becoming an esports is pretty silly as well. concentrating solely on conquest gameplay with these few static classes with so few abilities and builds is not going to bring in any sort of interest or spectators. pvp in this game is an afterthought and no amount of fixing is going to bring it in line as a reason to even play instead of lol or dota (not even going to include wow, its hardly a competitive nor interesting game in terms of esports.)

communication between anet and the community is minimal at best, and updates take much much too long for what minimal balance or content they provide.

morrolan.9608:

From dulfy’s transcript (thanks dulfy):
“Q: Elaborate your plans for changing AoEs
This is not a quick fix, we are getting a lot of data.
If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs.”

Which aoe has the same opportunity cost as a powerful single target skill say on a staff ele? Meteor shower has a long cooldown and cast time it costs way more than any single target spells the class has. Same with churning earth on D/D.

They also said they want to discourage zerging in WvW, well making aoe less effective will only lead to more zergs.

That quote was more likely aimed at an engineers flamethrower, fits the description said and you can use it constantly. So yeah, more engineer nerfs I think.

Crowns for monthly? Sounds like I actually have incentive to do monthlys now, then.

Here’s hoping the ability to “choose which achievements appeal to you” in regards to daily / monthly means that I can choose not to do WvW stuff, because thats whats been keeping me from getting monthlys thus far.

Nerf the flamethrower? Aka the miss-thrower. Hahaha, talk about a kicking some one when they are down.

Really glad with the upcoming changes, especially with lowering HP on some bosses in dungeons. I’m pretty exited about AoE nerf as well, like that change. For people who seem to take everything literally, they aren’t going to destroy AoE builds, they just want to bring them to place where it should have been from that start. Also they didn’t say AoE will be nerfed the same amount on every aoe skill. There are aoe skills that are fine, but there are some that are actually to strong. Really people if you don’t like the game anymore just leave… you’re not paying subscription, no need to get upset over a game.. There’s a ton of other mmos…
Honestly you can’t please all people..

So you think the developers don’t want player feedback?

Maybe I’m over reacting but my poor engineer is really in the ropes here.

why not just make skills different in the different game modes? like in Guild wars 1, when you entered pvp, the skills changed or behaved differently in function. why not just change skills based on game mode or type?

Part of the problem with games today is developers over balancing classes. Classes should have advantages in some areas and disadvantages in other areas.

If a class is at too much for a disadvantage in one area to anther class. Decrease that disadvantage to the appropriate level.

You rarely have to make a class weaker though. Imbalance in some areas creates exciting gameplay.

The designers are looking at each skill individuality. When instead they should create charts of CC and AOE skills of all classes. Put the charts on a wall.

i’m sad they haven’t announced new weapons/new swappable skills for existing weapons/new utilities and elite skills. This is what i want the most! Not use the same utilities/weapons weeks after weeks of playing no matter if i’m in wvw, dungeon or spvp… Don’t take 1 year to release new skills for us to play with or you will lose people.

Medazolam.3058:

So you think the developers don’t want player feedback?

Maybe I’m over reacting but my poor engineer is really in the ropes here.

My ranger’s sitting at a dragon and my engineer’s sitting on a node. That’s how much I hate these classes.

Has it occurred to anyone that AoE is actually too dominant in this game? That virtually every class is full of AoE skills?

And that maybe the devs would like combat to look less like carpet bombing?
Dunno. If they nerf AoE but buff single target damage or survivability where needed, it could actually be a good thing.

Gaudrath.6725:

Has it occurred to anyone that AoE is actually too dominant in this game? That virtually every class is full of AoE skills?

And that maybe the devs would like combat to look less like carpet bombing?
Dunno. If they nerf AoE but buff single target damage or survivability where needed, it could actually be a good thing.

Given the often huge numbers of mobs thrown at players in events, no, AoE is not too dominant. Try to single target kill every mob that spawns during Shatterer some time and then say with a straight face that AoE is broken. Go on, I’ll wait.

I really don’t understand how a class like the Elementalist, which its ONLY redeeming quality is AoE, deserves a nerf? That’s so ridiculous I feel like I need to huff some fumes to properly appreciate it.

Prior to the nerf, they really need to put a lot more effort into the Elementalist class to actually make it viable or else just remove it from the game, completely.

No DR No loot restriction in open world talks, no magic find discussions, why did they bother?

If they aren’t going to fix whats needed why will anyone play, as stated above new games are going free to play with less issues and bugs why would anyone want to stay here with important issues not getting looked at..

Nerfing AoEs will be very silly they affect all classes including the insanely weak ones, why will anyone play the game when their classes no longer perform viably..

rgrwng.4072:

why not just make skills different in the different game modes? like in Guild wars 1, when you entered pvp, the skills changed or behaved differently in function. why not just change skills based on game mode or type?

That what they did in the holiday SPvP games. They said CTF doesn’t work. Buf if you change the abilities it will.

SPvP games can be devided into two catagiores.
*with normal SPvP abilities
*with unque SPvP abilities (ex. Keg Brawl, allow warp from mists for free)

Hopefully giving portal to other classes will appease the PvP whiners (it won’t) and stop them from using it as an excuse for why Mesmer shouldn’t have any bugs fixed or under powered areas buffed (it won’t).

Also what is wrong with throwing aoe on people trying to res?

Dante.1508:

No DR No loot restriction in open world talks, no magic find discussions, why did they bother?

If they aren’t going to fix whats needed why will anyone play, as stated above new games are going free to play with less issues and bugs why would anyone want to stay here with important issues not getting looked at..

Nerfing AoEs will be very silly they affect all classes including the insanely weak ones, why will anyone play the game when their classes no longer perform viably..

I’m in total agreement with this, honestly… Arguably one of the biggest issues presented on the forums (open world loot/DR) got zero response from the development team. Bravo. Glad to see ANet took the whole improved communication seriously- by repeating things that had already been announced, and giving out virtually no new information, other than to say “we’re nerfing the KITTEN out of AoE”.

Well played. I would like to thank the Development staff for their time, and for confirming that I continue to have no reason to log into the game.

Gaudrath.6725:

Has it occurred to anyone that AoE is actually too dominant in this game? That virtually every class is full of AoE skills?

And that maybe the devs would like combat to look less like carpet bombing?
Dunno. If they nerf AoE but buff single target damage or survivability where needed, it could actually be a good thing.

Yes, let’s nerf AoE. Surely that will help reduce zerging in World vs World.

The devs can’t nerf AoE as a general rule and reduce zerging, since one of the core tactics against large zergs (besides another large zerg) is AoE damage.

Penguin.5197:

That quote was more likely aimed at an engineers flamethrower, fits the description said and you can use it constantly. So yeah, more engineer nerfs I think.

Good point, the issue is then that flamethrower is hardly an overpowering weapon. and they want to nerf it further??

Elementalists have only one viable build at the moment, i am really curious to see how you are going to fix this, i want to see 5-6 viable builds for my favorite class.

And about AOEs be careful cause you dont want to do something irreversible, as an ele myself dont have much of a choice cause 95% of my skills are aoe.

Dont let us down A-net.

Faerun.3091:

Really glad with the upcoming changes, especially with lowering HP on some bosses in dungeons. I’m pretty exited about AoE nerf as well, like that change. For people who seem to take everything literally, they aren’t going to destroy AoE builds, they just want to bring them to place where it should have been from that start. Also they didn’t say AoE will be nerfed the same amount on every aoe skill. There are aoe skills that are fine, but there are some that are actually to strong.

Which abilities are too strong? And why?

Gaudrath.6725:

Has it occurred to anyone that AoE is actually too dominant in this game? .

How is it too dominant? Give an example.

WHat’s so ironic is that AOE damage is really not that great anyways and is very easily avoidable. Have you honestly been in a dungeon for example , where you thought..omg your aoe really flattened those scavangers? More likely you were thinking ..Oh this is so lovely being knocked down and then not being able to get up while the mob wails on me. Yeah..it’s stuff like THIS that needs fixing..not aoe….

Gaudrath.6725:

Has it occurred to anyone that AoE is actually too dominant in this game? That virtually every class is full of AoE skills?

And that maybe the devs would like combat to look less like carpet bombing?
Dunno. If they nerf AoE but buff single target damage or survivability where needed, it could actually be a good thing.

I would really like you to provide crystal clear examples where AOE is too dominant..and actually of much use for that matter.

Levetty.1279:

Hopefully giving portal to other classes will appease the PvP whiners (it won’t) and stop them from using it as an excuse for why Mesmer shouldn’t have any bugs fixed or under powered areas buffed (it won’t).

Well I don’t like it because it will remove some of the uniqueness of mesmers. I don’t really sPVP any more cause I find it boring but mesmers are not mandatory in WVW, useful yes but thats all.

Would be nice to hear about the Necro minion issues, you know, that have been broken since the game was launched. A major class mechanic that is still not working…. ?

I was very disappointed with the live stream. I’m almost convinced your intentions are to alienate your playerbase. Whenever you encounter something minor you don’t agree with, you nerf it. While other serious issues remain which the community have been asking for a fix for months. You told us this game is meant to be played the way we want to, but patch after patch it seems you only want us to play a game the way you want us to.

I am starting to get excited about the WvW changes. This is definitely one area I think they are spot on with what we want. They are working on culling, big project, but they are determined to get it done for us. Unique WvW abilities will be awesome, almost sounds like a class within a class for WvW (I picture scouting abilities for thief, buffs for the warrior, etc). They want to reduce the zerging and increase strategy which is exactly what I would like to see.

My only gripe is with the commander system. I feel they should refund commanders their 100g and tie in the commander system with the progression system some how such that experience people get the commander icon over those with 100g. However, it sounds like there are no plans for commanders.

AoE nerf is basically nerfing Ele. There are no other class that is as reliant on AoE as Ele. Why don’t give us a greatsword instead, remove staff from game. Problem solved. Nerfing is never the way to go. Thief does insane amount of single target burst damage and ANet still wants to nerf AoE. Joke. Clearly they aren’t monitoring and studying their game close enough. Nerfing reminds me of D3 developers where the answer to everything is to nerf drops, destructible to hero skills.

FateZero.8536:

AoE nerf is basically nerfing Ele. There are no other class that is as reliant on AoE as Ele. Why don’t give us a greatsword instead, remove staff from game. Problem solved. Nerfing is never the way to go. Thief does insane amount of single target burst damage and ANet still wants to nerf AoE. Joke. Clearly they aren’t monitoring and studying their game close enough.

Engi–oh wait Engineer lost the worthwhile damage of Grenades and now they’re going to be nerfed again.

I mourn for our Elementalist brethren.

Because everybody is complaining about how super OP the Elementalist is in WvW amirite?

FateZero.8536:

AoE nerf is basically nerfing Ele. There are no other class that is as reliant on AoE as Ele. Why don’t give us a greatsword instead, remove staff from game. Problem solved. Nerfing is never the way to go. Thief does insane amount of single target burst damage and ANet still wants to nerf AoE. Joke. Clearly they aren’t monitoring and studying their game close enough.

If you are a S/d and staff necro..you’re entire build relies on conditions and aoe….the ataff in particlar becomes completley useless. As well as bad staff1, the other 4 are all marks on the ground which can be unwieldy to use in the first palce as they aren’t direct damage. Honestly gutted about how badly implemented necros are..and don’t even get me started on those pathetic minions.

Faerun.3091:

Really glad with the upcoming changes, especially with lowering HP on some bosses in dungeons. I’m pretty exited about AoE nerf as well, like that change. For people who seem to take everything literally, they aren’t going to destroy AoE builds, they just want to bring them to place where it should have been from that start. Also they didn’t say AoE will be nerfed the same amount on every aoe skill. There are aoe skills that are fine, but there are some that are actually to strong. Really people if you don’t like the game anymore just leave… you’re not paying subscription, no need to get upset over a game.. There’s a ton of other mmos…
Honestly you can’t please all people..

Problem is that some classes basically only have AOE skills, so nerfing AOE would just destroy their ability to do damage. I run d/f or d/d ele, and there are only 2 skills that are single target. Staff and scepter is in the same boat.

If the concern is about zergs in WvW, then WvW should be tweaked to discourage zergs. They’re even already updating it, so just make some terrain tweaks, etc to make zergs less easy.

If the concern is about people using AOE skills for single targets – well, when a class is mostly AOE skills or when their single target skills are bad, they’ll use AOE because they don’t have an effective option. Buff single-target skills, and people will use them more.

The other side of this coin is aggro – it’s so unpredictable in this game, and frequently people pull more mobs than they intended. So of course they use AOE a lot more than single-target, a lot of the time they aren’t fighting single mobs. Making aggro easier to deal with or posting some clear aggro rules would help with that.

The ele trade-off is that they have the lowest HP, the lowest armor and can stay out of harm’s way either by moving like mad in combat and using pbAOE or through ranged attacks. AOE nerf sounds kind of like the devs saying they don’t like the entire rationale of the ele class, and everyone should just roll a warrior and do single-target melee damage.

I really appreciate the livestream, and the steps that ANet devs have taken to reach out to players. I hope the devs don’t take the wrong lesson from the backlash – the message hear is that when you have bad ideas, people will be upset and you’ll get clear feedback, not that we don’t need to have communication.

Asking for people’s feedback on proposed large-scale design changes, i.e. ‘What do you think about this?’ would have been a gentler way and might have gotten less ragey feedback. Class forums are there for exactly that kind of feedback.

DE, dungeon, wvw all are about AoE, how can you effectively kill tons of mob/people without AoE?

Aoe will be made in a dynamic damage method…

Example Meteor Shower post update as a lv 5 in Queens dale as a lv 80 scaled down:

1 foe = 8 damage to that one foe
2 foes = 16 damage per foe
3 foes = 32 damage per foe
4 foes = 64 damage per foe
5 foes =128 damage per foe

My Fireball does variable weapon damage from 16 -256 damage to a single target (yet it explodes hitting 2 other foes in that small radius so it will also be scaled to enemy count being hit) .

This is what they could be talking about. If I’m wrong I guess I’ll shut up and be barred from all parties until GW 2 closes up shop as I know darn well eles will be no longer allowed in parties.

@Arenanet – Just to prove to you that D/D eles aren’t OP i will be sticking with my D/D build no matter the nerf, you need to realise that nerfing skills doesn’t change player skill.
We need to work 4x as hard to achieve anywhere near what other classes do, add player skill & Knowledge and you have an OP Player not class.
Being a d/d build it gives me a challenge, something that lacks in this game, and an adrenaline rush.
D/D is also good for soloing thing in PvE when 1/2 of your servers population upped and left due to a faulty tiering system that has no use in a video game.

So go ahead, nerf all the abilities and i can still solo/duo unorganised zergs.

morrolan.9608:

From dulfy’s transcript (thanks dulfy):
“Q: Elaborate your plans for changing AoEs
This is not a quick fix, we are getting a lot of data.
If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs.”

Which aoe has the same opportunity cost as a powerful single target skill say on a staff ele? Meteor shower has a long cooldown and cast time it costs way more than any single target spells the class has. Same with churning earth on D/D.

They also said they want to discourage zerging in WvW, well making aoe less effective will only lead to more zergs.

It’s not like we have much freedom with weapons tied to our primary skills…i dont understand the AoE nerf. Seems unnecessary unless they are setting up for a bigger implementation of some sort.

morrolan.9608:

They also said they want to discourage zerging in WvW, well making aoe less effective will only lead to more zergs.

Absolutely. If anything, strong AoE encourages players to find less defended objectives or sneakier ways to attack. If you put a stronger emphasis on single target, or weaken AoE, there’s no incentive at all to avoid the zerg, because it’s really difficult if not impossible to coordinate people onto the same target for single target damage.

If every one is doing single target damage with more or less the same level of skill, the winner is the side with more people, which makes zerging even more important a strategy. If AoE is a big enough threat then there’s an incentive to spread out and attack along multiple vectors so AoE has to be spread.

As well, without AoE, choke points become much less valuable, which makes any kind of defense less useful. Why bother trying to control terrain if channeling the enemy into a narrow kill zone doesn’t make them any easier to kill, and why bother trying to flank or surprise some one when you can just run straight up into their face and win simply you’re a bigger zerg?

roostapro.9827:

@Arenanet – Just to prove to you that D/D eles aren’t OP i will be sticking with my D/D build no matter the nerf, you need to realise that nerfing skills doesn’t change player skill.
We need to work 4x as hard to achieve anywhere near what other classes do, add player skill & Knowledge and you have an OP Player not class.
Being a d/d build it gives me a challenge, something that lacks in this game, and an adrenaline rush.
D/D is also good for soloing thing in PvE when 1/2 of your servers population upped and left due to a faulty tiering system that has no use in a video game.

So go ahead, nerf all the abilities and i can still solo/duo unorganised zergs.

Yeah, d/d bunker is basically the only viable PvE build. They need to buff and tweak the other builds, not nerf them even more. I love d/d for the movement, but I have a friend who’s been trying for scepter/focus and already has trouble getting into PUGs. If that was a more viable option ele would have a lot more build types and people wouldn’t pigeonhole eles.

And No one reads my logical answers… Anet you have people that can’t listen to reason.

My example explains what is going to happen to AoE as I just know how things work.

GoZero.9708:

FateZero.8536:

AoE nerf is basically nerfing Ele. There are no other class that is as reliant on AoE as Ele. Why don’t give us a greatsword instead, remove staff from game. Problem solved. Nerfing is never the way to go. Thief does insane amount of single target burst damage and ANet still wants to nerf AoE. Joke. Clearly they aren’t monitoring and studying their game close enough.

Engi–oh wait Engineer lost the worthwhile damage of Grenades and now they’re going to be nerfed again.

I mourn for our Elementalist brethren.

Because everybody is complaining about how super OP the Elementalist is in WvW amirite?

ANet is walking the D3 path. Nerfing things instead of buffing/change other less used skills. Nerfing isn’t the way to go, it kills the game and also the player’s hardwork in building their toons with specific equipments which isn’t cheap. I know Ele aren’t the only ones affected, necros are affected as well. This is a really bad decision by ANet.

They expect everyone to use single target spells when we’re fighting against a large group in WvW? Isn’t it common sense to use AoE to prevent enemies rezzing their allies?

Hawkmoon.5849:

Dante.1508:

No DR No loot restriction in open world talks, no magic find discussions, why did they bother?

If they aren’t going to fix whats needed why will anyone play, as stated above new games are going free to play with less issues and bugs why would anyone want to stay here with important issues not getting looked at..

Nerfing AoEs will be very silly they affect all classes including the insanely weak ones, why will anyone play the game when their classes no longer perform viably..

I’m in total agreement with this, honestly… Arguably one of the biggest issues presented on the forums (open world loot/DR) got zero response from the development team. Bravo. Glad to see ANet took the whole improved communication seriously- by repeating things that had already been announced, and giving out virtually no new information, other than to say “we’re nerfing the KITTEN out of AoE”.

Well played. I would like to thank the Development staff for their time, and for confirming that I continue to have no reason to log into the game.

To be honest i am getting confused. all the talk about making open world more rewarding i though Anet had realised we are the salami in the sandwich between poor drops/DR and rapidly increasing cost of equipment. I was expecting news on how playing the game any where but a fractal would become viable. What i was not expecting was that Anets priority is to further reduce our ability to play the game. Orr with out aoe lol.
I read the forums is see what people are asking for then i see what is coming and think what the kitten we have thousands of posts on hundreds of topics and you “fix” some thing i dont even remeber people complaining about i was at first shocked then angry now just sad. The game i so loved when my floppy eared eng first ran out into metrica and went oohhh ahh seems to becoming a TP a cash shop a fashion parade in LA and little else.

I wish they’d talked more specifically about their story plans in the forthcoming updates.

This AoE “fix” seems like a cover up for lazy WvW development. The dungeon argument is incredibly stupid as AoE is only used on groups of enemies (not counting eles who have no choice but to use AoE on single targets) where it should be. And now, because they don’t want to put in the effort to fix/get rid of zerging (the right way) they are going to nerf a massive aspect of the game and reduce everything into warriors which is already a big problem.

Anet, if you hated all of the classes you promised us you could have made a statement telling us that you had decided that you wanted to reduce the number of classes to one. The Warrior. You could have even rid yourself of pve because you obviously care more about the balance in one tiny aspect, WvW.

You guys REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY need to rethink your not separating the skills between modes because you are only making it so much harder on yourself and ruining the game for us. Did it not work on GW1? You know, that game that people liked.

What’s up with all these unwanted nerfs? Who wants Ele bunker or AoE nerfed? Stop nerfing… Also stop screwing up other game modes because of PvP.