Guild Wars 2

Ever since the livestream I’ve been wondering something. And maybe this is just me here, but I am confused. I enjoy PvE, WvW and even sPvP quite a bit. I was really into GvG in GW1 but haven’t had a lot of time to participate in high end PvP in GW2 (yet).

So I can understand the importance of balancing the game around sPvP. It makes sense to me. However, I really feel like my PvE experience in GW2 has suffered for the changes that have already been made. PvE content in GW2 is not easy. And these constant – sometimes drastic – changes to the PvE game are not helping me figure out what your expectations of each profession are in PvE.

And I believe that many of the comments (and QQ) on this forum are related to that confusion. Think of those posts like this; AoE isn’t supposed to do good damage? Condition damage is supposed to be easy to remove? Pets/minions/turrets are supposed to do almost zero damage and die in one or two hits?

Partly, I feel like ANet doesn’t properly communicate what they expect from players – especially in regards to their expectations of each profession. Their game design is devoid of the holy trinity and constantly “evolving” sure. And both of those things are fine. But I have some rather large unanswered questions which have caused me to reroll too many times.

When I pick up an engineer what am I going to be playing? What roles are there? Attrition, group support, survivability? An engineer does none of them reliably. What do you want from my engineer? You haven’t defined them well enough and they don’t do anything well enough. They can not be versatile if they have to specialize specifically to perform each role competitively. And the small number of engineer players will tell you the same thing – they simply are not competitive.

When I pick up an elementalist what am I going to be playing? I thought it was AoE damage and area denial. Clearly, that isn’t the case. So what does an elementalist do? Heal? Snipe at range like a um.. an archer? You tell me. I will play it the way you tell me to.

When I play a necro, what am I going to be playing? Condition spam? Not minions, not rez denying wells, not AoE damage, not single target damage. What is my role as a necromancer? Survival alone? I don’t get it.

When I play a ranger what is my role? I am not a competitive tank or ranged DPS dealer and I don’t do enough AoE damage or support to provide that.

I think that part of what made GW1 work was that professions had clear roles. Elementalist did AoE damage. Assassins did single target damage. Warriors did attrition and survival. Necromancers had conditions. Monks had healing. And they all had a few roles they could perform.

Sure, not having entirely predefined roles is cool but you made a mistake. By taking away all roles, you brought it down to the core of what every game is – damage and survival. And whoever does those two things best will be the chosen professions.

All professions now do only two things – survive long enough to kill or kill fast enough to survive. So we have this problem. Thieves kill very well. Mesmers kill very well. Guardians and bunker eles survive very well. These are the only two significant roles available to players. CC is insignificant, conditions are insignificant and group support is mostly insignificant. This is why people play mesmers, thieves and guardians so often.

And part of the problem (as I see it) is that people don’t get what the expect when they play certain professions. The ranger, the necromancer and the engineer specifically don’t even remotely fill the described or expected roles.

So the other professions that you have designed, iterated, redesigned and reiterated (pun intended) don’t do either of the only two things that can be done in gW2 as efficiently as the professions that excel specifically at them. I think you’ve iterated yourself out of the usefulness of any other roles, you’ve iterated yourself far from the current profession descriptions and that you guys are just as confused as we are about what roles these muddily-described professions should be playing. And now, with this AoE nerf, you want to take away another potential role.

I don’t know what all the potential solutions are but any good post includes some suggestions (not that this is a good post). Make CC viable? Make constant condition removal less easy to achieve? Make combos more important? Improve single target damage for these professions that aren’t good at it? Add in support roles? Obviously, balance will take time.

Whatever you do, ANet, please explain to us what you expect of us – not what you are going to do but how you want us to play the game. In sPvP, in WvW, in PvE: all of them. Explain what roles you want the professions to perform (and versatility is not a role). Stick to whatever you finally decide (which i think is another part of the problem, it seems to constantly change). Then go change the meta to better allow for those roles; change the professions to perform those roles.

I can adjust how I play the game. I can adjust my character to perform in a role if you will but define and support the potential roles before me. And I’m willing to do those things. But for the life of me I can not read your collective mind nor anticipate what you are going to change next. You may not know it yet, but this constant iteration confusion is a serious problem.