Guild Wars 2

They’re bad. Let’s face it, gw1 PVE was quite a ways from what you’d call balanced, despite the fact that it worked. The ‘split to retain balance in both areas’ approach has been proven to fail. I’m hoping that "Save Yourselves!’ fix is a temporary stopgap rather than a taste of things to come.

You don’t encourage people to try out PvP by changing things they think they already know as soon as they enter. Nor are the barriers to entry lowered by having 300 extra skills to learn if this is indeed the way you’re headed.

The interaction change between mirror of anguish and reaper’s protection also seems a bit hacky btw.

Hopefully this criticism is taken as intended, I love the game, and am looking forward to the patch when I can get online, but that split is a little concerning in the context of a few other aims that you guys have stated.

No. Because a great example is in pve where enemies stand still mainly, perma swiftness is less strong, but in pvp where movement is everything, its MUCH much stronger.

Stability? that kitten is nigh usless in pve since its so hard to come by, and knock downs are not frequent enough. But in pvp wheere control will kill you, Stability is amazing. See? The game modes are entirely diffrent and need to be treated as such.

It has been proven to fail in a sense that complexity is created but at the same time, the benefits are prominent over the long run. However splitting balances do work a lot better compared to making them invariant between both forms of game play as balancing the smaller figure known as the player would be a lot more proficient as opposed to balancing the monsters around them.

Anet will continue to separate balances if they have to and if it concerns TRUE balance between both values that exist in PVP and PVE, segregated changes would be made a long time ago.

I also noticed the “SY!” split with some trepidation. Not so much for myself, because I came from GW1 and am used to split skills, but because it may be ANet conceding that despite their efforts not to split skills for GW2 because of the increased work it meant for them, they’re going to have to end up doing it anyway.

Spoolooni.6712:

It has been proven to fail in a sense that complexity is created but at the same time, the benefits are prominent over the long run.

If this were true, gw1 pve wouldn’t be the broken collection of builds farming the hardest areas of the game in 5-20minutes that it is. It achieves nothing except making pve very very easy, not ‘pve balance’. That’s fine, but it also throws up an additional entry barrier to pvp, and that’s not.

This also strikes me as a fairly unnecessary split. 5s less Save Yourselves wouldn’t exactly break guardians in PvE.

Never really gotten into original GW PvP – and I agree with original poster.

Moreover, for me splitting also removes very beneficial function of Heart of the Mist & PvP in general. Thing is: even with 2nd lvl char, you can get insight at how things will work when you’re lvl 80. I also tried elementalist’s elites with my ele – and decided to grasp one of them after two others proved to be impossible to  contain within my playstyle. And I think I’m not the only one who uses HotM as the testing grounds not only for PvP, but for PvE as well.

More nerfs to the guardian. Thank you Anet You really don’t want us to play it.
How about instead of nerfing the guardian you give him a real ranged wep? if things keep the way they are anet, you’re going to lose a lot of people.

I deeply appreciate ArenaNet splitting PvE skills from PvP skills!

I loathe my PvE skills being “adjusted” (read: nerfed) because of PvP.

Separating the PvE skill abilities from the PvP skill abilities ensures that the PvE skills are NOT compromised because of necessary adjustments needing to be made to that skill in PvP (and visa versa).

Nep Leet.5491:

I deeply appreciate ArenaNet splitting PvE skills from PvP skills!

I loathe my PvE skills being “adjusted” (read: nerfed) because of PvP.

Separating the PvE skill abilities from the PvP skill abilities ensures that the PvE skills are NOT compromised because of necessary adjustments needing to be made to that skill in PvP (and visa versa).

It simply devalues your achievements in pve anyway when you get to use op skills, further dividing the community. Take your nerfs with the rest of us so pve remains challenging, and pve players don’t get laughed at by pvp players. Again, see gw1 community. The most common insult in the laughable trollfest that was ra wasn’t ‘scrub’ or ‘noob’, it was ‘stick to pve’.

Constantly skipping balance adjustments for pve was a contributing factor in pve becoming so easy.

I agree with the splitting of PVE and PVP skills, it worked fine in GW1 and it is the best way to balence overpowered PVP skils without disturbing PVE players. Like in this case with save your selves, 5 sec of it in PVE would not have been worth the skill slot, it is just too short with everything that follows you for miles in dungeons. I’m very happy you made this choice Arena net, please keep this up!!

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

I agree with the splitting of PVE and PVP skills, it worked fine in GW1 and it is the best way to balence overpowered PVP skils without disturbing PVE players. Like in this case with save your selves, 5 sec of it in PVE would not have been worth the skill slot, it is just too short with everything that follows you for miles in dungeons. I’m very happy you made this choice Arena net, please keep this up!!

Fine as in solo fow in 45 minutes? Fine as in full group fow in 7 minutes? Fine like shadowform? GW1 PvE was not balanced. It worked and was fun for many despite that. So what good does the split do?

pve/pvp split will save this game

pvp balancing was what ruined 95% of the skills in this game, 45 seconds bulls charge in pve, whoop de doo, 5s save yourselves in pve, might as well fall asleep as soon as you load the game

split saved gw1, im sure mesmers in gw1 appreciated domination and shutdown skills being aoe in pve. serious pvp mesmers lol’d when going into pve. pve mesmers, well… no one played pve mesmers which is probably why it got split

I also welcome the splitting of PVE/PVP skills. Trying to balance skills towards two completely different types of game play only serves to frustrate players.

As far as GW skill split goes. It was a good thing, I played the game for 6 years and I never played the meta I spent A TON of time theory crafting and testing builds. Yes I farmed, but never with builds I got off of somebody else, they were builds I came up with myself and they worked.

MrsAngelD.6971:

I also welcome the splitting of PVE/PVP skills. Trying to balance skills towards two completely different types of game play only serves to frustrate players.

As far as GW skill split goes. It was a good thing, I played the game for 6 years and I never played the meta I spent A TON of time theory crafting and testing builds. Yes I farmed, but never with builds I got off of somebody else, they were builds I came up with myself and they worked.

By farmed you mean you soloed content intended for groups of 8, in hard mode, with no chance of dying, right? So in what way did splitting skills ‘balance’ pve? It didn’t, it doesn’t. All it does is throw up barriers to pvp, and prove that people will pve no matter how unbalanced it is.

It’s quite pathetic and irrelevant when you judge balance splits based on social pressure and mostly irrelevant in the sense that you suddenly started to attack the history of gw1’s community instead of balancing factors. Putting that aside, you should perhaps consider ignoring the elite community. Afterall, if PvE is what you like, then keep playing as no one is going to stop you at the end of the day.

In regards to the balancing side of your argument, If you got to end game and actually tried most of the dungeons, you’ll learn that many of the traits and skills are situated for certain encounters where blind/dodge/dot/burst values set the stepping stone towards a hindered mercenary up to competent profession.

In addition, I’d like to remind you that Anet is struggling to balance the game knowing that certain changes regarding pvp will negatively effect pve which is why certain classes take longer to balance than others. Though the reality is, separating them in the beginning will make things a lot easier for both the players and anet. Besides, if we’re going to aim for competitive Esports, changes are to be finely adjusted and tweaked and treating PvE values as a “figurative bank” would hinder their customers that enjoy PvE as well. Remember that we’re aiming at options.

Spoolooni.6712:

Mammoth.1975:

English is not your primary language is it Spoolooni?

Clearly you’ve stooped down to throwing insults. Perhaps anyone here shouldn’t take you seriously at all.

No, I’m asking, so as not to be insulting. If it is, well then, consider this constructive criticism:

90% of your post relates to nothing I’ve said at all. If you want to discuss it, maybe you should address at least one of the points I’ve raised. The only part of your post that is in any way relevant is the ‘insulting’ statement about how pathetic it is to judge balance splits based on social pressure. The problem with that is that anet themselves have said that they are aware of and trying to reduce the barriers to pvp, both social and otherwise. Tell me what happens when you type /rank in gw2.

Mammoth,

before more skills get pve/pvp splits, go now into the mists, or an spvp or tpvp match and ask “i play pve and my skills have the same stats as yours. do you respect me and my pve accomplishments?”

if you screenshot at least 5 people saying yes, i will man up and recognize the magnificence of pve and the prestige of pve skills being exactly the same as pvp skills

jiverooster.7134:

Mammoth,

before more skills get pve/pvp splits, go now into the mists, or an spvp or tpvp match and ask “i play pve and my skills have the same stats as yours. do you respect me and my pve accomplishments?”

if you screenshot at least 5 people saying yes, i will man up and recognize the magnificence of pve and the prestige of pve skills being exactly the same as pvp skills

But I don’t play pve, so perhaps you could give it a shot.

TBH I don’t know how they’ll balance the game WITHOUT splitting.

WvW, PvE, and SPvP are 3 COMPLETELY different beasts and balance is completely different between them all. Since PvE has pretty much no endgame or anything they could throw PvE balance away I suppose, but WvW and Spvp balance is still completely different.

Mammoth.1975:

jiverooster.7134:

Mammoth,

before more skills get pve/pvp splits, go now into the mists, or an spvp or tpvp match and ask “i play pve and my skills have the same stats as yours. do you respect me and my pve accomplishments?”

if you screenshot at least 5 people saying yes, i will man up and recognize the magnificence of pve and the prestige of pve skills being exactly the same as pvp skills

But I don’t play pve, so perhaps you could give it a shot.

doesnt matter, you can lie for surveys sake

i cant personally do this because i cannot tell a lie

Let’s clear up what I’m saying here, since people still seem to be under the misapprehension that splitting helps pve balance.

1. GW1 had split skills.
2. GW1 PvP was pretty well balanced.
3. GW1 PvE was horribly unbalanced.
4. More people played PvE than PvP in GW1.

Conclusions:

1. Splitting doesn’t help with balancing both sides, it just means more work trying to balance the extra skill versions.
2. People will PvE no matter what.
3. More skill versions means more complexity means greater barriers to PvP means less PvPers means less PvP.

Mammoth.1975

By farmed you mean you soloed content intended for groups of 8, in hard mode, with no chance of dying, right? So in what way did splitting skills ‘balance’ pve? It didn’t, it doesn’t. All it does is throw up barriers to pvp, and prove that people will pve no matter how unbalanced it is.

No Chance of dying? Are you kidding me?!?!?! I died tons of times while farming content. Yes I did solo it but it wasn’t without risks and there were plenty of times I died while doing it. I think you are over exaggerating in an attempt to make a point.

PVE skills were balanced and are still being changed and updated in Guild Wars. Just because you may have only played PVE meta builds to farm doesn’t mean we all did that. My husband and I completed pretty much all the content in guild wars together using hero’s. Including Slavers, UW, FOW, and DOA. We didn’t use meta builds we used builds we worked on to be the best for a given situation based on where we we’re going. Just because you can’t understand how to counter the enemies that are in the content you’re trying to do, doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced it means you haven’t spent the time to see what skills they have and what you can bring to the table to counter it.

MrsAngelD.6971:

Mammoth.1975

By farmed you mean you soloed content intended for groups of 8, in hard mode, with no chance of dying, right? So in what way did splitting skills ‘balance’ pve? It didn’t, it doesn’t. All it does is throw up barriers to pvp, and prove that people will pve no matter how unbalanced it is.

No Chance of dying? Are you kidding me?!?!?! I died tons of times while farming content. Yes I did solo it but it wasn’t without risks and there were plenty of times I died while doing it. I think you are over exaggerating in an attempt to make a point.

PVE skills were balanced and are still being changed and updated in Guild Wars. Just because you may have only played PVE meta builds to farm doesn’t mean we all did that. My husband and I completed pretty much all the content in guild wars together using hero’s. Including Slavers, UW, FOW, and DOA. We didn’t use meta builds we used builds we worked on to be the best for a given situation based on where we we’re going. Just because you can’t understand how to counter the enemies that are in the content you’re trying to do, doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced it means you haven’t spent the time to see what skills they have and what you can bring to the table to counter it.

Um, does any of that beyond the first four sentences have anything to do with what I said? FYI, I played almost the same way as you in GW1 PvE, as did most players I think. Heroes, my own builds, etc. I never did complete foundry though, although obviously I could have gone with a group instead. None of that means it was balanced when I could have levelled a sin in a few hours and have completed everything a few hours after that, instead of ‘figuring out how to counter the enemies, spending the time to see what skills they have and what I can bring to the table to counter it’ for each area.

Which one of those conclusions are you disagreeing with? Or are you disagreeing with the premise that GW1 PvE was unbalanced?

I disagree that gw pve was unbalanced, with the two exceptions being pema-sins & ursan which no longer exist in those forms because arena net saw the unbalance and fixed it.

MrsAngelD.6971:

I disagree that gw pve was unbalanced, with the two exceptions being pema-sins & ursan which no longer exist in those forms because arena net saw the unbalance and fixed it.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_SC_builds

Mammoth.1975:

Spoolooni.6712:

It has been proven to fail in a sense that complexity is created but at the same time, the benefits are prominent over the long run.

If this were true, gw1 pve wouldn’t be the broken collection of builds farming the hardest areas of the game in 5-20minutes that it is. It achieves nothing except making pve very very easy, not ‘pve balance’. That’s fine, but it also throws up an additional entry barrier to pvp, and that’s not.

This also strikes me as a fairly unnecessary split. 5s less Save Yourselves wouldn’t exactly break guardians in PvE.

Then the problem comes from the balance of PvE skills, not from the fact that they are split…

MinkoAk.7049:

Then the problem comes from the balance of PvE skills, not from the fact that they are split…

I agree. However, the split clearly doesn’t have any impact, it just gives them more work to do, nullifying any potential gains. So there’s no benefit.

It does on the other hand, have a negative impact on pvp.

Mammoth.1975:

MrsAngelD.6971:

I disagree that gw pve was unbalanced, with the two exceptions being pema-sins & ursan which no longer exist in those forms because arena net saw the unbalance and fixed it.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_SC_builds

Those are team builds meaning they take a full group to run. It actually proves my point, somebody took the time to see what the mobs in those areas had then looked too see which skills could counter them and do it fast. That’s not unbalance its simply using the given skills to accomplish something as efficiently as possible.

MrsAngelD.6971:

Mammoth.1975:

MrsAngelD.6971:

I disagree that gw pve was unbalanced, with the two exceptions being pema-sins & ursan which no longer exist in those forms because arena net saw the unbalance and fixed it.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_SC_builds

Those are team builds meaning they take a full group to run. It actually proves my point, somebody took the time to see what the mobs in those areas had then looked too see which skills could counter them and do it fast. That’s not unbalance its simply using the given skills to accomplish something as efficiently as possible.

Oh, sorry.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_farming_builds

Anyway, I don’t think FoW was designed to be completed in 7 minutes. I don’t think it was meant to be soloed. I don’t think DoA was meant to be completed in 17 minutes either. That’s not balance, that’s ridiculously easy. Might as well play farmville. If your ‘elite endgame’ areas can be cleared, on hard mode, with 99.9% success rate, in less than 20 minutes, and usually take about 30, your balance is probably a little out.

More to the point, if 5% of your available skills make their way into 95% of the builds people run, your skill balance is probably more than a little out.

Mammoth.1975:

MrsAngelD.6971:

Mammoth.1975:

MrsAngelD.6971:

I disagree that gw pve was unbalanced, with the two exceptions being pema-sins & ursan which no longer exist in those forms because arena net saw the unbalance and fixed it.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_SC_builds

Those are team builds meaning they take a full group to run. It actually proves my point, somebody took the time to see what the mobs in those areas had then looked too see which skills could counter them and do it fast. That’s not unbalance its simply using the given skills to accomplish something as efficiently as possible.

Oh, sorry.
http://www.gwpvx.com/Category:Meta_working_farming_builds

Anyway, I don’t think FoW was designed to be completed in 7 minutes. I don’t think it was meant to be soloed. I don’t think DoA was meant to be completed in 17 minutes either. That’s not balance, that’s ridiculously easy. Might as well play farmville. If your ‘elite endgame’ areas can be cleared, on hard mode, with 99.9% success rate, in less than 20 minutes, and usually take about 30, your balance is probably a little out.

More to the point, if 5% of your available skills make their way into 95% of the builds people run, your skill balance is probably more than a little out.

yeah sorry still not seeing what you’re saying. The builds you linked too are either solo builds meant to farm one type of mob (not complete content) or team builds.

Mammoth, the fastest solo fow was ~52 minutes.

I agree with MrsangelD. Content cannot stay difficult for all players forever, it’s a really bad point you’re trying to make with this whole “not nerfing pve skills will make content a joke”. The more time players spend doing the content, the more likely they’re to discover or think of ways to complete it easily and efficiently (see: gw1 speed clears).

A split was in no way responsible for what you seem to think was so bad in GW1. If skills needed to be nerfed in regards to PvE, they were. This works both ways. How would you feel if core skills were nerfed in PvP because it was being abused in PvE? I imagine tears.

Balancing classes for PvE/PvP by splitting them stops either one from being hurt by the other. It’s not the splits fault gw1 PvE ended up like it did, it’s anets lack of care to nerf what needed to be nerfed i.e. shadow form, energy surge, sliver armour, whirling etc etc etc.

You should also learn what you’re actually talking about. These ‘7 minute fow’, ‘17 minute doa’, ‘14 minute UW’ runs were only achieved 2-3 times, in DoA’s case only once, with two teams achieving 18. These runs involved hundreds of consets and consumables, as well as a decent amount of skill. These times were not easy and were not done on a frequent basis. You really don’t know what you’re talking about in terms of GW1 elite areas.

MrsAngelD.6971:

yeah sorry still not seeing what you’re saying.

OK, I’ll clarify a bit and take away the extraneous. 95% of builds use 5% of the skills. If you think that’s good skill balancing I think we’re just going to disagree.

Some classes don’t appear in any meta team build unless there’s a spot for a ‘misc guy’. Other classes appear in every meta team build. Does that seem like classes are well balanced?

Content that was designed to take so long its broken into sections so you can do one at a time is being cleared in twenty minutes. Balanced?

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Mammoth, the fastest solo fow was ~52 minutes.

I agree with MrsangelD. Content cannot stay difficult for all players forever, it’s a really bad point you’re trying to make with this whole “not nerfing pve skills will make content a joke”. The more time players spend doing the content, the more likely they’re to discover or think of ways to complete it easily and efficiently (see: gw1 speed clears).

A split was in no way responsible for what you seem to think was so bad in GW1. If skills needed to be nerfed in regards to PvE, they were. This works both ways. How would you feel if core skills were nerfed in PvP because it was being abused in PvE? I imagine tears.

Balancing classes for PvE/PvP by splitting them stops either one from being hurt by the other. It’s not the splits fault gw1 PvE ended up like it did, it’s anets lack of care to nerf what needed to be nerfed i.e. shadow form, energy surge, sliver armour, whirling etc etc etc.

Sorry which premise or conclusion that I posted are you disagreeing with?

Mammoth.1975:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Mammoth, the fastest solo fow was ~52 minutes.

I agree with MrsangelD. Content cannot stay difficult for all players forever, it’s a really bad point you’re trying to make with this whole “not nerfing pve skills will make content a joke”. The more time players spend doing the content, the more likely they’re to discover or think of ways to complete it easily and efficiently (see: gw1 speed clears).

A split was in no way responsible for what you seem to think was so bad in GW1. If skills needed to be nerfed in regards to PvE, they were. This works both ways. How would you feel if core skills were nerfed in PvP because it was being abused in PvE? I imagine tears.

Balancing classes for PvE/PvP by splitting them stops either one from being hurt by the other. It’s not the splits fault gw1 PvE ended up like it did, it’s anets lack of care to nerf what needed to be nerfed i.e. shadow form, energy surge, sliver armour, whirling etc etc etc.

Sorry which premise or conclusion that I posted are you disagreeing with?

He is disagreeing with the same thing I am. The skill split has nothing to do with what you perceive as being unbalanced the only thing it does is keep skill changes that are made for one style of play from affecting another style of play.

This is done. Mammoth’s just fishing for attention at this point.

Your four points are accurate. Your conclusions are not. I don’t exactly agree with saying GW1 PvE was unbalanced, however there were skills which needed adjustments. These skills generally weren’t excessively strong by themselves, they often relied on another skill or sometimes specific scenarios. For example, Shroud+Shadow form, Energy surge+balled enemies aggro’d on a tank. Whirling defence with dwarven stability.

All I’m getting from this is that a lot of people think splitting helps balance but they don’t know why, and have no evidence to support that belief.

Which conclusions do you disagree with?

Now that we’re opening the floodgates, all skills that go in the healing slots need both effectiveness doubled and cooldowns halved in order to scale them properly with incoming damage in PvE.

Most, if not all, utility skills need cooldowns halved in PvE. Most, if not all, elites need their cooldowns reduced to one-fourth of their current values.

There’s no reason for these skills to be so restricted in PvE anymore if skill splits are happening, and boss damage scales far beyond the player’s capability to mitigate that damage no matter how much defense they pump. There’s a difference between not relying on a tank, and no one being capable of taking sustained damage in PvE, and now that there are skill splits there are no worries about PvP balance being broken.

[[ For the record, I think skill splits are bad and create a lot of confusion for the average player, but since we’ve apparently decided we’re doing it… ]]

Corian.4068:

Now that we’re opening the floodgates, all skills that go in the healing slots need both effectiveness doubled and cooldowns halved in order to scale them properly with incoming damage in PvE.

Most, if not all, utility skills need cooldowns halved in PvE. Most, if not all, elites need their cooldowns reduced to one-fourth of their current values.

There’s no reason for these skills to be so restricted in PvE anymore if skill splits are happening, and boss damage scales far beyond the player’s capability to mitigate that damage no matter how much defense they pump. There’s a difference between not relying on a tank, and no one being capable of taking sustained damage in PvE, and now that there are skill splits there are no worries about PvP balance being broken.

And there it is. PvE skills split, now there’s no reason we can’t make the game easier. Let’s start by having one guardian skill work at double effectiveness in PvE and take it from there.

Mammoth.1975:

And there it is. PvE skills split, now there’s no reason we can’t make the game easier.

That’s not it. PvE bosses scale far beyond the capability of any player to mitigate no matter how defensive they build. The reason why is that the skills are balanced towards fighting other players, and not fighting PvE bosses.

There’s nothing difficult about a warrior pulling out a rifle and kiting a champion/boss/whatever. However, a warrior with a mace and shield in hand standing toe-to-toe with an enemy and using his skills and dodges to survive can be difficult, if it weren’t currently impossible. Making self-heals stronger gives the skilled player a chance of being able to do that, instead of mindlessly kiting (which is easy either way).

If we’re being honest though I would rather boss/champion damage scaled down rather than skills being scaled up for PvE.

Corian.4068:

Mammoth.1975:

And there it is. PvE skills split, now there’s no reason we can’t make the game easier.

That’s not it. PvE bosses scale far beyond the capability of any player to mitigate no matter how defensive they build. The reason why is that the skills are balanced towards fighting other players, and not fighting PvE bosses.

There’s nothing difficult about a warrior pulling out a rifle and kiting a champion/boss/whatever. However, a warrior with a mace and shield in hand standing toe-to-toe with an enemy and using his skills and dodges to survive can be difficult, if it weren’t currently impossible. Making self-heals stronger gives the skilled player a chance of being able to do that, instead of mindlessly kiting (which is easy either way).

If we’re being honest though I would rather boss/champion damage scaled down rather than skills being scaled up for PvE.

Agreed, and good point. I don’t PvE, so I wasn’t aware that bosses are impossible to deal with unless kited, and that’s definitely something that could use attention. Likewise agreed on tuning content for the characters, rather than characters for the content.

It’s case by case. I think ANet is trying to avoid splitting where possible, but going for a split when no easy solution exists.

If they do it only in the most serious cases, then additional complexity is minimised. And it might result in faster turnaround for balance changes.

ie. A skill is currently a problem in PvP, but fine in PvE. (or vice versa.)
The solution in PvP is fairly straightforward, but the easy answer has a strong chance of breaking PvE.

So ANet is faced with:

A. Let the PvP problems continue whilst they try to figure out a solution that works for both (which might not even exist.)

B. Implement some sort of compromise, which has to be tested for both PvP and PvE, even though the original purpose was PvP only. And it might not even fix the problem.

C. Split the skills, change the PvP version, and test it only for PvP, and release.

So we can see that option C is the fastest and most responsive one. As long as they don’t take this “easy way out” too often, (and maybe commit to re-combining the skills in the future if a better solution is found) then it’s probably the best way to go.

Especially with a playerbase that howls for blood on an hourly basis if their pet issues arent patched RIGHT AWAY RIGHT NAOW.

D. Fix the skill, and fix the content.

I agree that it’s fine as a stopgap measure, but not a good long term solution. This instance doesn’t strike me as a ‘serious case’ though. Would guardians suddenly be unable to run dungeons without the extra 5s on SY?

i am against a split of skills. i already feel a disconnect from my character when i go from pve to wvw or spvp. having my spells possibly do differnt things will only increase that feeling. i want to be able to take my Mesmer from the pve world and still be able to play a Mesmer in pvp. splitting skills is dangerous water to tread, imo.

Mammoth.1975:

D. Fix the skill, and fix the content.

I agree that it’s fine as a stopgap measure, but not a good long term solution. This instance doesn’t strike me as a ‘serious case’ though. Would guardians suddenly be unable to run dungeons without the extra 5s on SY?

Well, like I said, it would be fine if ANet makes a commitment to trying to merge the skills again later on if they can figure out a combined solution. In the meantime, split.

Sorry, but you’re on drugs if you somehow looked at Guild Wars 1 and concluded that the PvE/PvP split somehow caused PvE to be easy.

First off, two things caused PvE to become “easy” (and I use that term lightly, because speed clears are not easy in a mechanical sense – they involve rote memorization and execution, but learning them and completing them effectively can be difficult).

1) Anet’s reluctance to significantly alter cookie cutter clear builds. This wasn’t a bad thing, either. No matter how many times Anet hit shadow form, people found a way to abuse it. There was really no way that skill was going to be stopped unless they either removed it from the game, or completely changed its function. People always mix/max until they clear as fast as possible – and if it wasn’t shadow form it would have been something else. That’s why Ursan took over for a while. And speaking of Ursan.

2) The introduction of PvE only skills. This sounds like what you’re trying to argue against and are instead turning it into an argument about the PvE/PvP split. THESE are the skills that made clearing elite areas a cakewalk. Ursan. Cry of Pain in the DoA. EBSoH bypassing the nerfed Shadow Form. Your issue is with these skills, not a split between PvE and PvP versions of the same skills.

Meanwhile, the effects of a lack of a PvE/PvP split are still really obvious. Paragons remain, to this day, one of the least viable PvE classes and are only taken when they run one build that crutches on (surprise!) an over-the-top PvE only skill. How did they get this way? Because running two Paragons in PvP was overpowered. So “Incoming!” got hit, and so did “Stand Your Ground” and tons of others. The result is a class that’s still wholly ineffective at anything and turned away by everything except niche groups. Paragons would be in a much, much better spot if the split came before they got hammered.

Its also fallacious to ignore skills that would be completely destroyed without a split. Remember Smiter’s Boon? If you seriously think the absurdly ineffective version that was implemented in PvP to essentially take it out of the game is something that represents “just balance and diversification” in PvE then I don’t know what to tell you. Without the split the skill would have been killed both in PvE and PvP.

I really don’t know how you can claim to have played Guild Wars 1 and claim that the PvE/PvP split was a bad thing. There’s a reason it was the #1 most community-requested feature and the only major game feature to ever be implemented into the game based solely on community outcry.

I completely agree with the PvE/PvP split. I wish it was done earlier in GW1 and maybe paragons and mesmers wouldn’t had become the most ignored professions there.

And since splits are needed for two completely different game styles, balance needs to be done for both. Right now, I see only changes for PvP meta.

However, there should be sweeping changes for all professions to bring skills to the same level of usability(utility) in the context of PvE encounters.

Sorry Darmikau, which of those points were you disagreeing with?

BTW, to paraphrase, you’re on drugs if you think paragons would have been in a good state if they were split before nerfed. GW1 PvE was always all about abusing broken synergies, and paragons had a nice one with SY. So that was what they did.

There’s no such thing as a good state in GW1 pve. You abuse broken stuff or you play casually.

“Save Yourselves!”: This skill has now been split between PvP and PvE. In PvE, players will notice no difference. In PvP, this skill’s boon duration has been changed to 5 seconds.

Taken from the latest update from ANET (re: Guardian skills). I really hate to see divergence in skills between PvE and PvP. When this sort of thing happens, ‘what’ you play becomes more important than ‘how’ you play, winding up with PvP specific builds, skills, and gear.

The beauty of GW2, imho, is that each class has a tremendous depth of customization and that skills, gear and builds are situational… there is no one dominant class or build, nor can you easily tell ‘what’ you’re up against. I fear that splitting skills is the start of fracturing GW2’s already awesome depth into something purely PvP and purely PvE.

Not sure why that would be split when this is a pvp based game. Their pve is basically just leveling and a couple of dungeons. Until they add actual raids, not sure why they would do that.

Of course there’s going to be questing/dungeon builds and PvP builds! Fighting a big dragon that could two shot players and three or four shot tanks with special abilities with tons of HP is going to be different from fighting players who have roughly the same HP and skills you do. This is why knight’s gear and the power/toughness/vitality gear is a godsend for dungeon goers. You will take a lot of damage in dungeons, guaranteed, so you may as well prepare yourself to survive the impact whereas all that defense isn’t going to help against stunlockers with insane burst (well it can depending).