Guild Wars 2

Gery.2718:

After hearing about the SotG, it really made me wonder why anet starts (or rather continue) to nerf everything… I saw many games falling into the same mistake, and I really don’t want to experience it in GW2.

Too late its been happening with every class balance change since the BWEs.

D/D is getting screwed, it still isn’t screwed enough if you ask me, live with it.

As far as Eles are concerned we got two amazing joke lines from our favorite Dev team:

“Want to bring down cantrip Ele without affecting lesser used builds”
and the equally awesome:
“We want more viable Elementalist builds”

And yet each and every change affects lesser used builds more than bunkers, forcing everyone to use the “OP” build more. So they are nerfing lesser used builds AND make less and less builds viable, the complete opposite of their goal. Maybe they need to rethink the way they are going to achieve those two goals.

Hint: nerfing isn’t a way to do it

Gery.2718:

snip….

Amen to that brother!

seems like nerfing skills and builds which are fine and ignoring the real issue which is the broken MECHANIC behind the meta….

is the path this game have chosen….
i am a ‘fanboi’ of this game but even little o’me can get really frustrated with the uncalled changes…

hope the patch will be more balanced than the pieces we heard in “state of the game vid”

The warrior buffs are a start. This is JUSTICE. GREAT JUSTICE. =3

Eh, I’m a big picture kind of guy. I try to look at things from a different perspective than “such-and-such is more powerful/effective than similar things, therefore I have to do such-and-such.” Because when something stands out as more effective than everything else, it becomes a matter of “do such-and-such of fall behind.” This is bad for the game as a whole, and it’s usually corrected as soon as they can figure out how to bring it back in line with the rest of the game.

People don’t like it because now they can’t impress the noobs, or it takes longer to kill the boss, or whatever. But it wasn’t supposed to be like that in the first place, so instead of being a setback it’s really just correcting something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

So, someone discovers that if they press “backspace” before an attack, the attack does double damage. They tell their friends and suddenly “everyone” thinks they have to press backspace before they attack or their toons are weaker than other toons. So the devs notice this and the next patch notes say “pressing backspace no longer affects damage.”

People who have come to expect double damage by pressing backspace complain that there was nothing wrong with this, and it’s not fair that they should be “nerfed” when any smart player presses backspace before attacking. But this doesn’t change the fact that the devs never intended backspace to affect damage in the first place, they are simply correcting an error that a lot of people know about but not everyone takes advantage of.

The devs have to view the game as a whole, while players tend to look at it from a single point of view, care only about a single class or technique, etc.

Anet suck at balance.

Sure, it’s not an easy thing to get right, with pve and pvp. But there are so many small things, things they should have known in advance that weren’t done. They don’t learn from any of their mistakes, even after making builds a ton simpler than they were in GW1.

From release there should have been a pve/pvp split for most skills. GW1 should have shown them this, what works in pvp does not work in pve, and vice versa. Only now, months after release are they starting to do this, after already doing quite a bit of damage trying to make skills work in both.

There are things like engineer turrets, which have been useless since beta. They are pets that don’t move, the obvious advantage that they should have is massive amounts of health. That would pretty much fix them. Such an easy thing, but it’s probably never going to happen, so engineers will be stuck with useless skills. It would also give the engineer back its originally intended role of an area denial class. Which highlights the problem of class roles, several classes don’t have them, or are playing second fiddle to another class which can do it better, or they have roles which are simply not required in pve/pvp situations.

If you want to know how this game will turn out, just look at GW1. Best you can hope for is that your profession doesn’t turn out to be the paragon of GW2.

Swizzle.7982:

Anet suck at balance.

Sure, it’s not an easy thing to get right, with pve and pvp. But there are so many small things, things they should have known in advance that weren’t done. They don’t learn from any of their mistakes, even after making builds a ton simpler than they were in GW1.

From release there should have been a pve/pvp split for most skills. GW1 should have shown them this, what works in pvp does not work in pve, and vice versa. Only now, months after release are they starting to do this, after already doing quite a bit of damage trying to make skills work in both.

There are things like engineer turrets, which have been useless since beta. They are pets that don’t move, the obvious advantage that they should have is massive amounts of health. That would pretty much fix them. Such an easy thing, but it’s probably never going to happen, so engineers will be stuck with useless skills. It would also give the engineer back its originally intended role of an area denial class. Which highlights the problem of class roles, several classes don’t have them, or are playing second fiddle to another class which can do it better, or they have roles which are simply not required in pve/pvp situations.

If you want to know how this game will turn out, just look at GW1. Best you can hope for is that your profession doesn’t turn out to be the paragon of GW2.

Engineers are quite good in SPvP though and even WvW. Only in PvE do you really have that problem. As a turret engineer in SPvP, I’m almost designed to hold a point.

Vayne.8563:

Swizzle.7982:

Anet suck at balance.

Sure, it’s not an easy thing to get right, with pve and pvp. But there are so many small things, things they should have known in advance that weren’t done. They don’t learn from any of their mistakes, even after making builds a ton simpler than they were in GW1.

From release there should have been a pve/pvp split for most skills. GW1 should have shown them this, what works in pvp does not work in pve, and vice versa. Only now, months after release are they starting to do this, after already doing quite a bit of damage trying to make skills work in both.

There are things like engineer turrets, which have been useless since beta. They are pets that don’t move, the obvious advantage that they should have is massive amounts of health. That would pretty much fix them. Such an easy thing, but it’s probably never going to happen, so engineers will be stuck with useless skills. It would also give the engineer back its originally intended role of an area denial class. Which highlights the problem of class roles, several classes don’t have them, or are playing second fiddle to another class which can do it better, or they have roles which are simply not required in pve/pvp situations.

If you want to know how this game will turn out, just look at GW1. Best you can hope for is that your profession doesn’t turn out to be the paragon of GW2.

Engineers are quite good in SPvP though and even WvW. Only in PvE do you really have that problem. As a turret engineer in SPvP, I’m almost designed to hold a point.

Completely agree PVE is so very much lacking in engineers it’s amazing. It’s like everyone else runs up does 2-3 moves done! Meanwhile engis are standing there going 1 2 3 4 5 9 4 5 2 5 1 5 then the things dead. Thanks for the nerfs every single patch since launch except 1.

Think OP is onto something however I don’t think the devs will change because somehow they think their system is working. We need less crashh-test-dummy testing and more PTR testing.

We need true separation between pve/pvp skill behaviors.

We need the many of the abilities on the CC side to be uniform (behaving the same way within the same categories ie. Smoke Vent should do the same thing as Black Powder.

Physics are not equal. We need the speed by which attacks happen underwater to be on land (yeah it’s sad when you can attack faster underwater without buffs).

There’s plenty wrong and having just a couple of folks working on it won’t effectively improve it and neither will constant nerfs.

You guys are complaining about nerfs when they are buffing stuff as well. What they are doing is weaking some things and making others stronger. AKA balancing. Your making it sound like they are just nerfing everything to oblivion without giving anything back which is totally incorrect. We don’t know at this point fully whats going to be buffed or nerfed in this patch. People always complain about nerfs but they must happen. League of Legends buffs and nerfs things all the time to change the meta of the game. GW2 is fully capable of doing the same and it appears they are.

Suddenflame.2601:

You guys are complaining about nerfs when they are buffing stuff as well. What they are doing is weaking some things and making others stronger. AKA balancing. Your making it sound like they are just nerfing everything to oblivion without giving anything back which is totally incorrect. We don’t know at this point fully whats going to be buffed or nerfed in this patch. People always complain about nerfs but they must happen. League of Legends buffs and nerfs things all the time to change the meta of the game. GW2 is fully capable of doing the same and it appears they are.

Oh, excuse me. I wasn’t aware that the Elementalist was receiving any significant buffs to weak weapons/utilities/traits to make up for the heavy-handed D/D nerf.

You can’t increase the number of viable builds by leaving unviable parts of a profession unviable.

Here is how we can solve Whack-a-mole balancing:

Everyone stops complaining that things are killing them too much and either do something else or find a counter to their bane.

Suddenflame.2601:

You guys are complaining about nerfs when they are buffing stuff as well. What they are doing is weaking some things and making others stronger. AKA balancing. Your making it sound like they are just nerfing everything to oblivion without giving anything back which is totally incorrect. We don’t know at this point fully whats going to be buffed or nerfed in this patch. People always complain about nerfs but they must happen. League of Legends buffs and nerfs things all the time to change the meta of the game. GW2 is fully capable of doing the same and it appears they are.

If only this was the truth… instead what we get are massive 50% nerfs with very little (if any) compensation. This sort of thing doesn’t do anything other than limit builds.

All the changes mentioned in the SOTG make perfect sense.

They have already made a big mistake in reverting the Reveal adjustment from a previous patch. It show that they did not test the change within all modes of play and at this point it make all the previous ‘balance’ fixes questionable.

Honestly the BWE’s should have been entirely focused on bug finding and fixing as balancing the game before the skill caps were found is not a good way of creating balance across the play mode. Just look at sPvP where at low overall skill level (ie everyone was new to the game) look how much thief and warrior dominated and how highly valued they were compared to now.

But they just nerf D/D and didn’t buff anything. So how does that make other specs viable? Maybe because they are all crappy now? D/D was fine as it was. What they need to do was to buff the other weapon sets or other traits.

Yeah, nerfing just isn’t the right way to go…. and I don’t even play an elementalist. With that said, the nerfs aren’t that bad, rtl was reasonable, mist form, a little harsh but not that bad either.

Guardians go untouched as usual. With the current boon+ damage though, warriors are gonna be hitting me for 21 % more damage I guess.

I love all these D/D complains.
A skilled D/D at its current state is unstoppable by most classes.

Why as a main Guardian player, must I give up before the fight started against any D/D ele? at least against a thief I get the chance to work a quick strategy and a somewhat fair chance to kill.

D/D can simply gtfo whenever he pleases, not before giving a completely controlled fight, and as soon as things go south, run away with no trouble.

Great defence, solid offence, and unparalleled mobility.

I doubt this nerf will hardly do enough in this case.

I’m really surprised they actually know the problem with thieves, I’ve actually gained hope in the pvp scene a bit, but it’s still going to suck seeing EVERY thief in the game now be S/D. Boon hate was needed but backstab or C&D better get some utility to it to keep up…

And yeah, D/D Ele right now is insane, stop complaining it was WAAAY over the top. Don’t worry you can still go faceroll for a few days before the patch hits. I don’t even think the nerf will be enough honestly but we’ll see.

Nerfing a single top build may be a fast way to bring several previously second rate builds into the limelight. For this to work right a) the nerf must impact the top build far more than it does on other less powerful builds, and b) there must be viable builds left in that class after the nerf.

Nerfs that do this well may increase diversity and improve play overall. Nerfs that do this badly reduce diversity and are ultimately worse for the game.

I can somewhat agree with the OP.

Not that I don’t think some of the changes aren’t necessary, it just felt…strange to me that the dev that works on balance would be so out about nerfing things. Not that things don’t need nerfs, but you usually want some sort of description of what behavior isn’t desirable to help justify it.

For instance, the change to the Cleansing Water trait to have an internal cooldown seems like it should have been that way from the start. Regen is abundant and being able to drop conditions coupled with traits that give you regen seems like undesirable when cleansing basically screws any type of condition-centric build.

The change to Mist Form so you can’t use utilities feels heavy handed. It really removes a lot of usefulness from the skill itself if you can’t actually use it for anything but to move…and you can still be immobilized if you are before going in…they could have just increased the cooldown on this to 90sec and left it alone.

The changes to Ride the Lightning seem out of touch…if the problem was disengaging and re-engaging during fights, they should have put somekind of cooldown on how often you can actually disengage for everyone. You leave combat, recover HP then if you enter combat again within the next 15 seconds, you will be locked in combat for 60 seconds. Now no one is pulling cheap ‘Run away, get my HP and charge back’ tactics.

But all these changes are to hamstring a certain build on Elementalist…and yet it hurts every elementalist despite if they’re bunker or not…if anything, it pushes elementalist to all be bunkers because they will have 40sec disengages where everyone else can do so much more often.

“Focus on skills that are unused/not good enough. "

They have done. Players have selective memories or complain that the developers are wasting time on skills nobody uses. For example: ranger off hand axe improvement, ranger greatsword improvement.

They’ve been doing this since GW1. No testing, no data collection. They nerf, then they buff it again a few months later.

You’ll see. It’s hilarious.

Human nature I guess to have tunnel vision in these types of games. People don’t look at the end result of any changes.

Example. Class A has a rating of 8. Class B has a rating of 6. So class A is stronger. How to fix ? You could buff class B to get to 8. Now both classes are the same. ..or, you could nerf class 8 down to 6. Now both classes are the same.

What’s the difference ?

These game developers need to do a little sleight of hand to fool the whiners. Buff one class and make them 10% stronger. Buff another class by 20%. At the end of the day, the class that got “boosted” 10% is happy….even though in practical terms they actually got nerfed.

Forzani.2584:

Human nature I guess to have tunnel vision in these types of games. People don’t look at the end result of any changes.

Example. Class A has a rating of 8. Class B has a rating of 6. So class A is stronger. How to fix ? You could buff class B to get to 8. Now both classes are the same. ..or, you could nerf class 8 down to 6. Now both classes are the same.

What’s the difference ?

These game developers need to do a little sleight of hand to fool the whiners. Buff one class and make them 10% stronger. Buff another class by 20%. At the end of the day, the class that got “boosted” 10% is happy….even though in practical terms they actually got nerfed.

Works in PvP but not PvE. Because if you keep buffing professions like that, you have to buff every NPC enemy in the game. PVe is too easy for a lot of people now. You want to redo every single creature, event, heart and dungeon?

That’ll happen.

And that’s just it. If PvE and PvP aren’t split entirely – which I’m not sure should happen in the first place due to WvW being thrown into the mix – you risk upsetting balance in PvE because of the NPCs themselves. It will take time, but I think balance without a massive division is possible with a lot of trial and error.

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Oh, that is most definitely whack-a-mole. But the change at hand is also whack-a-mole, especially considering earlier changes (such as HALVING the effectiveness of Evasive Arcana heals and removing all but one blast finisher from it). They HALVED the effectiveness of Ride the Lightning if it is dodged or used as a mobility/escape tool. They completely removed a safety net from Mist Form that was useful for glass builds. They lowered healing. Etc. Etc. If this isn’t heavy-handed and without compensation, nothing is.

Oh, oh, oh, wait, but they MIGHT buff Staff later. You know, the weapon that has been underpowered since launch?

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Confusion is very powerful in PvP…not so much in PVe. If they’re splitting it, I don’t find it so bad. Shutting down people is fine…shutting them down completely for more than a certain number of seconds is no fun for them. So if you’re on the receiving end of that confusion (and remember you can spec so all shatters add confusion, there’s a phantasm that adds confusion and the scepter adds confusion), that can really screw people up in WvW and PvP. In fact, I can often stack confusion as fast as people can remove it on my mesmer in PvP.

That makes it OP.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

They completely removed a safety net from Mist Form that was useful for glass builds. They lowered healing. Etc. Etc. If this isn’t heavy-handed and without compensation, nothing is.

Oh, oh, oh, wait, but they MIGHT buff Staff later. You know, the weapon that has been underpowered since launch?

Unfortunately it is in my experience that they have a knee jerk reaction to any single skill that is being overused in a specific build regardless of it’s use in the wider scope of the class, so every build get screws.

The strangest part of all this is how unlike arenanet this behaviour is.

In Guild Wars 1, true nerfs were rare – their preferred approach was to instead buff unused skills, or introduce counterskills – for example “invinci-monks” were perfect tanks and farmers in the early game; too good they were nearly unkillable hence the name. Instead of nerfing the build directly, they instead introduced a couple of new skills that could break the mechanic (A combination of enchantments), rendering the invincimonk less than invincible – the build remained viable, but it now had counters and rapidly fell into disuse outside of very specialised scenarios and had no effect on unrelated builds because none of the builds skills were themselves changed.

Vayne.8563:

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Confusion is very powerful in PvP…not so much in PVe. If they’re splitting it, I don’t find it so bad. Shutting down people is fine…shutting them down completely for more than a certain number of seconds is no fun for them. So if you’re on the receiving end of that confusion (and remember you can spec so all shatters add confusion, there’s a phantasm that adds confusion and the scepter adds confusion), that can really screw people up in WvW and PvP. In fact, I can often stack confusion as fast as people can remove it on my mesmer in PvP.

That makes it OP.

it’s already 50% less in PvP. They were talking about making it 25% of its original strength in PvP (mesmers only) and 50% of its original strength in PVE, making a condition build for mesmer useless, especially having in mind that stacking confusion is so much easier on an engineer, but engineer confusion wouldn’t be changed, which is weird having in mind that engineer is able to apply lots of different conditions while pretty much the only thing condition mesmers do have is confusion.
I think that what they said in that video was pretty kitten not intelligent and they understood that themselves, because confusion change was not mentioned in patch notes nor future updates.

Mirta.5029:

Vayne.8563:

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Confusion is very powerful in PvP…not so much in PVe. If they’re splitting it, I don’t find it so bad. Shutting down people is fine…shutting them down completely for more than a certain number of seconds is no fun for them. So if you’re on the receiving end of that confusion (and remember you can spec so all shatters add confusion, there’s a phantasm that adds confusion and the scepter adds confusion), that can really screw people up in WvW and PvP. In fact, I can often stack confusion as fast as people can remove it on my mesmer in PvP.

That makes it OP.

it’s already 50% less in PvP. They were talking about making it 25% of its original strength in PvP (mesmers only) and 50% of its original strength in PVE, making a condition build for mesmer useless, especially having in mind that stacking confusion is so much easier on an engineer, but engineer confusion wouldn’t be changed, which is weird having in mind that engineer is able to apply lots of different conditions while pretty much the only thing condition mesmers do have is confusion.
I think that what they said in that video was pretty kitten not intelligent and they understood that themselves, because confusion change was not mentioned in patch notes nor future updates.

Am I reading this correctly? Confusion accounts for about 3% of my mesmer’s damage output in PvE. Condition spec mesmers aren’t even viable because of how easy it is to override bleeds and burns. The burst shatter cheese build is the problematic one. The confusion build is only problematic in WvW because the damage unmitigated there, but even then Mesmers can only reasonably apply 2-3 conditions at a time so it’s prone to cleansing. Competent players can often wait it off. It might be more reasonable to cut the duration or tweak the proc conditions and is effects (pure damage is bo-ring). Come to think of it retaliation is a similar condition that could use a lot of work as well.

I pretty much agree with OP, but mainly because they’re focusing too much on numerical changes. Their methodology is to tweak skill damage and space out skill usage in hopes of reaching some semblance of balance, when in actuality it’s just spacing out the use of broken and/or uninteresting mechanics.

TwoBit.5903:

Mirta.5029:

Vayne.8563:

Ryuujin.8236:

If you want to see whack a mole check out the new confusion nerf – slashing 50% off the damage. Yes… 50%

If confusion is so overpowered that it needs it’s damage halved how come the entire metagame isn’t built around confusion, and we havn’t seen mass exodus from all the other classes flocking to mesmer and running pure confusion builds?

Even amongst mesmers confusion is typically treated as a secondary source of damage outside of WvW zerg-support builds.

Halving and doubling the damage dealt by skills goes wayyyy beyond what is reasonable, it displays no attempt to fine tune a skill they just wipe it out or make it flavour of the month. (And I bet we won’t see any buffs to mesmer’s damage output to compensate)

Confusion is very powerful in PvP…not so much in PVe. If they’re splitting it, I don’t find it so bad. Shutting down people is fine…shutting them down completely for more than a certain number of seconds is no fun for them. So if you’re on the receiving end of that confusion (and remember you can spec so all shatters add confusion, there’s a phantasm that adds confusion and the scepter adds confusion), that can really screw people up in WvW and PvP. In fact, I can often stack confusion as fast as people can remove it on my mesmer in PvP.

That makes it OP.

it’s already 50% less in PvP. They were talking about making it 25% of its original strength in PvP (mesmers only) and 50% of its original strength in PVE, making a condition build for mesmer useless, especially having in mind that stacking confusion is so much easier on an engineer, but engineer confusion wouldn’t be changed, which is weird having in mind that engineer is able to apply lots of different conditions while pretty much the only thing condition mesmers do have is confusion.
I think that what they said in that video was pretty kitten not intelligent and they understood that themselves, because confusion change was not mentioned in patch notes nor future updates.

Am I reading this correctly? Confusion accounts for about 3% of my mesmer’s damage output in PvE. Condition spec mesmers aren’t even viable because of how easy it is to override bleeds and burns. The burst shatter cheese build is the problematic one. The confusion build is only problematic in WvW because the damage unmitigated there, but even then Mesmers can only reasonably apply 2-3 conditions at a time so it’s prone to cleansing. Competent players can often wait it off. It might be more reasonable to cut the duration or tweak the proc conditions and is effects (pure damage is bo-ring). Come to think of it retaliation is a similar condition that could use a lot of work as well.

well confusion if properly set up in PVE can hit for 40-50K max, in PvP it hits for 20-25K max. Now the number for confusion build would be down to 20K and 10K, which is very silly in my opinion, because power build is easier and allows you to crit for 38-40K.
Running confusion build is really helpful in dungeons where bosses love to spam AoE’s. Alpha goes down from confusion fast, Lupicus kills himself in a few minutes, Ice fractal boss, when he starts doing his AoE’s while standing on a wall and being untouchable self destructs. While I do agree that it might not be the most viable build for Spvp and WvW, it still has its uses. IT would be a pity if it would be nerfed so much that any other different build would be easily more viable.

Firstly, I want to make it clear I don’t have a problem with ANet nerfing stuff per se. Sometimes it just has to be. But I have a big problem with how they do it. Time and time again we see those knee jerk reactions.
50% damage reduction for confusion? Nerfing escaping, condition removal and being able to heal while in Mist Form for the ele, which is the class with the lowest base HP and armor in game, in one single patch? Come on!

Maybe condition did need a nerf? But 50%? Why not try a 20-30% nerf for two weeks, analyze the impact and if you feel it’s still too strong after that, you can nerf it again.
Same for e.g. the ele changes. Nerf 3 things at once that are strongly related to survivability? Heck, that you must only change one variable of a system at a time to be able to determine the effects it has on the system comes even before “Science for beginners 101”. What if eles die way too often after the patch? Was it the RtL nerf? The Mist Form nerf? Was it the nerfed condition removal capability? Who knows.. better again make multiple changes at once to compensate for it; just to make sure! Couldn’t they just nerf RtL or Mist Form or what ever, wait for 2 weeks and then take further actions depending on the result? That way they’d at least know what every change really does/did. Besides, this nerfs will not just hit bunker eles. They will also hit staff builds etc. which are having a hard time surviving to begin with and this is likely to drive even more people to use a bunker build.

I just feel like they always overshoot. One very recent example (of many) is the revealed nerf to thiefes. Culling was a big part of the invisibility problems in WvW. But they remove culling and nerf invisibility at the same time and we all know how that worked out: They’re changing it back again now. Clearly they have not tested that throughly before releasing it. I think I remember them mentioning once that they rather make small changes and see how they work out rather than overshoot but it doesn’t feel like that at all.
One also might arguee that ANet knows more about their game than some QQers on the forums do. But I’d also argue that there are people out there that have played classes for hundreds or thousands of hours and know way better what changes may have what kind of effects on a build/class than the small balancing team does.

Also, if they absolutely have to make big changes, they should at least give people a compensation system. I’m not a confusion mesmer. But I personally know someone (and bet there are a lot of others in the same situation) that wanted to play a confusion mesmer in WvW. It’s a lot of work and money to gear it. Especially if you play WvW, you have to grind forever to get the money for the armor. Then you also have to do the dailies etc. if you want best in slot. You have to do a lot of TA runs to get the best runes even if you really are only interested in WvW. Then, suddenly, the whole thing your build revolves around gets nerfed by 50% shortly after you went through all that grind?! That’s not just a minor change, that’s likely to render this build useless. What now? If you want to switch to another build, you have to force yourself through hours upon hours of the same kind of grind? And in the end that build might get nerfed to death again too?
It’s so very grindy and takes a kitten lot of time to get the gear for a specific build. Please at least give people the ability to change in their gear if you’re going to do such massive changes.

Deal with nerfs. Game is still on the balance process.

Titan.3472:

Deal with nerfs. Game is still on the balance process.

and it’s being balanced wrong and in a very extreme way. It’s making the same mistake like WoW instead of following the path of Terra that is a better balanced game out of the two.

Titan.3472:

Deal with nerfs. Game is still on the balance process.

Sorry, but your post adds nothing to the discussion at all. Noone here is saying that the game doesn’t need any kind of balancing.
But a lot of people have issues with the way how it’s done and have constructive ideas how it could be done better and cause players less grief.
If you think the way balancing is done by ANet, maybe you could elaborate a bit on why you think so, why people not liking it are wrong and even convince some of us in the process if your arguments are good enough

I completely agree with the OP. Arenanet has already acknowledged that there are too few fun/efficient/synergistic builds in the game, with some professions suffering worse than others. When you are trying to expand the number of fun/capable builds, you don’t start by systematically nerfing the builds that actually sit at what should be the desirable point of playability!

I say no more nerfs for the rest of the year, unless it is something so completely beyond balance that the need is undeniable. Focus on bringing one build per profession per month up to snuff until all professions have eight solid/fun/viable/competitive builds, then balance all the top tier builds relative to each other, using fine adjustments, rather than ham-fisted nerfs.

Suddenflame.2601:

You guys are complaining about nerfs when they are buffing stuff as well. .

the main problem is that they are buffing what’s already facerolling (heavy and medium armor classes), and nerfing what is in dire need of a massive boost (light armor classes).
Of course I am talking about world pvp, pve is so easy any class can be successful: I can foresee armies of thieves and warriors in WvWvW collecting free badges from other classes….

Is it fun? Nerf it.

This is the mentally of the gaming industry and frankly it’s utter bullkitten.

Grevender.9235:

Suddenflame.2601:

You guys are complaining about nerfs when they are buffing stuff as well. .

the main problem is that they are buffing what’s already facerolling (heavy and medium armor classes), and nerfing what is in dire need of a massive boost (light armor classes).
Of course I am talking about world pvp, pve is so easy any class can be successful: I can foresee armies of thieves and warriors in WvWvW collecting free badges from other classes….

Shelving my Ele and rolling a Warrior as we speak (type? xD).

Can’t we all just shut up and adapt?

r z.7261:

Shelving my Ele and rolling a Warrior as we speak (type? xD).

rolled warrior AND thief after reading about upcoming patch

Zacchary.6183:

Can’t we all just shut up and adapt?

And if adapting requires lots more g for the re-equip?

Thieves are not getting buffed, at least not their for their best build. They are getting their playstyle changed. Unless you think that Mug no longer being able to critical (but heal them a bit instead) is a buff to extreme thief burst builds (note: it’s actually a nerf). Thieves are basically getting more viable playstyles here. Likewise, warriors are weak in pvp and are getting pvp changes. The devs have actually implied, somewhere in the forum, that their hundred blades’ damage might be nerfed for more utility, which will be a needed buff to their pvp counterpart, while a nerf to their OP pve build.

The only class that seems to get clear buffs this patch, is the Ranger.

If confusion wasn’t so overpowered in the WvW’s ZvZ environment, first, noone would complain and noone would build and gear so many mesmers. Btw a power that give the choice to activate any skill/cleanse and get damaged or wait doing nothing getting damaged by other regulars attacks is a kind of broken power that I would compare to a SINK action typed (This power effect: target pass his turn to use a skill on every turns or die or cleanse it but it reapply immediately to be sure noone will ever complain about it^^ lol). Killing people while using 1 condition and stay inactive while people kills themselves was soooooooo dumb just because of the intensity damage stacks. 50% decrease of damage is a good nerf well deserved for the sake of balance :p.

Titan.3472:

If confusion wasn’t so overpowered in the WvW’s ZvZ environment, first, noone would complain and noone would build and gear so many mesmers. Btw a power that give the choice to activate any skill/cleanse and get damaged or wait doing nothing getting damaged by other regulars attacks is a kind of broken power that I would compare to a SINK action typed (This power effect: target pass his turn to use a skill on every turns or die or cleanse it but it reapply immediately to be sure noone will ever complain about it^^ lol). Good nerf well deserved.

There would have been ways to fix it without making it completely useless.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Confusion-1/first
People running with rabid gear will be pretty upset, including me, if there’s no compensation since confusion was the only damage condition mesmers had broad access to, and it already is laughable in PvE. All other condition abilities and traits are even more laughable, we have winds of chaos which is random and… that’s it, pretty much.

Zenguy.6421:

Zacchary.6183:

Can’t we all just shut up and adapt?

And if adapting requires lots more g for the re-equip?

+1

See this is one of the several problems with nerfing as a general tool for balancing. My response…level all of my professions to level 80 so I can switch around mains when ANet throws out the nerf grenade.

And it’s not the upcoming patch..it’s the idea of taking a strong build (who wants to play a weak one?) and then nerfing it back to the middle (or in some cases worse) of the pack. It doesn’t make me want to play more, it doesn’t inspire build diversity. Most importantly (from a business side) I don’t want to spend real world $$ to purchase gems/gold. Why spend time/money on something that could be ruined by a misguided nerf?

morrolan.9608:

Gery.2718:

After hearing about the SotG, it really made me wonder why anet starts (or rather continue) to nerf everything… I saw many games falling into the same mistake, and I really don’t want to experience it in GW2.

Too late its been happening with every class balance change since the BWEs.

It’s been happening in every MMO for all of time. I’ve never understood why all game creators feel the need to balance in THIS manner.

Anet just happens to be worse about it than most. To be fair, they haven’t been near as terrible about it as they were in GW1. They were downright infamous in their nerfing of that game.