Guild Wars 2

very simple question. This talk of AOE, mesmers, theives, this and that. I am very astonished how out raged a group of people become over a virtual game that costs a small price.

People are either scarred, as some posts have stated of the impending damage to come or they are angered by the balancing act that anet plays.

Why?

ok so your favourite spell on ele or your favourite skill on war or what ever was nerfed so bad its “unusable.”

why does that anger you? or make you scarred? or want to “RQ” or even Q_Q?

im very confused and just want to understand this. They nerf mes and I make a new build….

fill me in?

It worries me because I am unsure if my characters can survive after Monday. Simple as that.

I’m wondering if my engineer will get another nerf soon because if she does, I’ll be scarred. You know, for life. lol

Because nerfing isn’t always the answer? They should be balancing it more instead of nerfing an entire damage class.

Chorel.1720:

Because nerfing isn’t always the answer? They should be balancing it more instead of nerfing an entire damage class.

care to elaborate?

They are not nerfing an entire damage class. They said they would be looking at each profession and ability individually. We’ll see what that means on Monday. No reason to get bent out of shape over it until then.

Last time ANet nerfed a skill I was using, it got a “-50% damage” change

It’s the same in almost every game. It’s a built up mentality that nerfs = I will automatically lose now lol.

A lot of damage adjustments are done as balancing though, but people have a tendency to call everything that lowers your damage a nerf. So far, I’ve never had “nerfs” break my classes I play (thief, elementalist, and warrior). I actually dislike “nerfs” more because of the mass amount of complaints that accompany them XD.

Take a look at what nerfs did to the ranger and engineer professions, and wonder how long it will be before those professions are worth more than a quaggan dropping. That’s one reason.

Because the last time they nerfed my class, it got destroyed beyond repair.
Yes, it’s obviously Ranger.

Arekai.5698:

Because the last time they nerfed my class, it got destroyed beyond repair.
Yes, it’s obviously Ranger.

why do you think that? wwhat kinds of builds did you experiment with to proove this?

Salacious.7358:

Arekai.5698:

Because the last time they nerfed my class, it got destroyed beyond repair.
Yes, it’s obviously Ranger.

why do you think that? wwhat kinds of builds did you experiment with to proove this?

I don’t play a ranger and think that.

Since the last major ranger nerf, I haven’t seen ONE in dungeons.

I’ve seen a lot of rangers in dungeons/wvw still. And I have a ranger myself and I’m eager to level it and see how it is.

Why do they nerf…because the WvW community are a bunch of cry babies..and of course ANET has to cater to them.

Salacious.7358:

very simple question. This talk of AOE, mesmers, theives, this and that. I am very astonished how out raged a group of people become over a virtual game that costs a small price.

Quite simply because they are taking something away from us, plus its seen as them creating an issue where none exists ie. the complete lack of complaints about aoe despite what they said.

My main is a mesmer and we have exactly one AoE I know of and use- chaos storm.
I do have an engi and a staff ele but I am fine with it.
I have learned too adapt having a mesmer for a main :P
seriously though, they are looking at all AoEacross all classes, it is not a train smash.-

Morrigan.2809:

My main is a mesmer and we have exactly one AoE I know of and use- chaos storm.
I do have an engi and a staff ele but I am fine with it.
I have learned too adapt having a mesmer for a main :P
seriously though, they are looking at all AoEacross all classes, it is not a train smash.-

There are many real issues in this game with class balance (LOLBACKSTAB), reward systems, depth of combat, etc.

AOE was not one of those issues

ANet is behaving like the freaking politicians have been with the economy since 2009:
D’s – “Don’t pay attention to that pink slip you just got – The real problem is healthcare”
R’s – “Don’t pay attention to the fact you can’t find a job – The real problem is the national debt”

ANet – “Don’t pay attention to your porous bones and getting backstab-gibbed by thieves – the real problem is AOE!”

Analsysis of all the above:
Stupid
Stupid
and…
Stupid.

ANet needs to fix what’s actually wrong rather than inventing problems.

Because sometimes their nerfs go overboard and can shut a class down entirely. Look at Engineers. :-\ If you look at the past several patches, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that they want to migrate people out of the Engineer class and into other classes, by making Engies as weak as possible.

Most folks have a problem with a nerf because class A gets nerfed due to its ability to kill classes B and C with ease. That would be fine, but you still have classes D, E, F and G that it was perfectly balanced against. So, the players get confused as to why you would nerf A, making it inherently underpowered against D-G, when you could just buff the 2 classes it was strong against and be done with it.

Arenanet is and always has been especially guilty of this. Their nerfs in Guild Wars 1 became something of an infamous legend in the MMO community, known about by folks who didn’t even play the game. Someone, somewhere, would create a build using an elite skill that was a little unbalanced, and Anet would step in and nerf the holy crap out of that skill (-50%+ damage reduction, + 50-200% cooldown time, or just completely remove the skill) and break a whole heap of a lot of builds in the process. You could take a break from the game, come back 2 months later, and find almost all your builds broken because of the nerfs that took place while you were gone.

The thing is, MMOs are a lot about rotation. Learning what buttons to hit and when. People who play MMOs spend a great deal of time trying to build up muscle memory for those rotations to become as efficient as possible at hitting em. But nerfs mess that up. You can never get into a good rhythm because you might have to remove a skill entirely from your rotation. It’s worse in GW2, where a nerf could require you drop ALL your weapon skills by switching to a different weapon, since your previous one no longer comes close to being competitive in PvE or PvP.

Nerfing is a lazy way to deal with a problem. Balancing issues are difficult to manage, as a change anywhere can affect other classes. So a lot of devs take the easy way out- nerf a class into oblivion to fix it. Why? Because at least then you know who you broke, and can work in the next patch or two to fix it by giving light buffs here and there to other skills in their repertoire.

very simple question. This talk of AOE, mesmers, theives, this and that. I am very astonished how out raged a group of people become over a virtual game that costs a small price.

/Sigh
Everytime people state something like “hey! it’s a pay to play, so stop complaining!” I just think they know nothing about customer service or longevity of that product they bought.

Put it in context: You get given lifetime membership to a Gym. One fee, for the rest of your life. You go in, and it’s awesome. Everyone’s there, and all happy at the prospect of the lifetime membership and availability to use the equipment.
Then you arrive a week later…they have a notice on the main door saying they’ve made some “adjustments” because too many people were using the dumbbells and rowing machines…

you go in and see that they’ve taken half the dumbbells and half the rowing machines away, but added more treadmills (pun intended). As a customer who’s paid for the access to that gym, you’ve still got a right to complain or get annoyed when those features are lacking, or are changed to a level that isn’t really benefiting anyone besides the owners’ ideals.

Sorry if that was a bad analogy. It’s the best I had.

But there are two main points on this:

1. Because continual Nerfing (without balancing PvE areas, mobs, dungeon encounters, bosses, other classes in relation to the initial nerf) will eventually lead to a never ending spiral of nerf, after nerf.
I rarely hear they’ve buffed something, unless its a boss, general mobs, or warrior changes.

2. Because the game is coming close to being called NerfWars2. Cant farm or speed-run dungons and gain decent rewards the because of nerfs to the reward system, can’t farm karma at the old karma-train of Dynamic events because of nerfs. Now there’s going to be a so-called AoE nerf, and even waypoint removal from dungeons….so instead of finding useful or inventive ways of dealing with issues they’ve just decided to Remove instead of Improve

In the particular case of AoE:

One of the biggest issues in WvW right now is the fact that zerging is the end-all-be-all of gameplay. Nerfing AoE only makes the problem worse.

As far as my own profession (Elementalist) goes in general – it nerfs specs which are already weak in general (staff/scepter) and in conjunction with what seem like inevitable nerfs to survivability (to reign in bunker eles), there’s a real good chance the profession is going the way of the Engineer (or worse).

All of this is speculation based upon vague information given a little over a week ago, so the fears could be completely overblown. We won’t know until Monday.

Just throwing this out there, but they may nerf your build/playstyle enough to make you have to change how you play completely by getting a new equipment set. This = an awful lot of grind.
With ascended coming out I need to make it very clear what build I’m going to stick with so I’m not SOL and have to do weeks of grinding repetitive dungeons to change it.

Doggie.3184:

Just throwing this out there, but they may nerf your build/playstyle enough to make you have to change how you play completely by getting a new equipment set. This = an awful lot of grind.
With ascended coming out I need to make it very clear what build I’m going to stick with so I’m not SOL and have to do weeks of grinding repetitive dungeons to change it.

It’s not just an aweful lot of grind, it’s a betrayal of their manifesto:

They claim they want to reward you for playing the way you like.

I don’t call destroying the synergy of the build you like rewarding you for playing how you like.

Instead of only intervening when the community can’t come up with their own strategies to deal with certain mechanics or builds, they step in and swing the nerf hammer (blindly, I may add) at anything in sight, often missing their targets and hitting innocent and balanced builds in the process (SOW nerf on guardians targeting “perma-retal” destroying symbol support anyone?)

Setting aside the whole “people are afraid of change” thing that is just a way to make it uncomfortable for people to voice legitimate concerns over bad changes, the actual reason is simple.

Players enjoy using a certain power or skill. Devs see a lot of people using a certain power or skill. Devs assume power or skill is broken. Devs make power or skill that people enjoy ineffective. Players then have the choice of being ineffective, or switching to a power or skill they don’t enjoy using as much.

Or, forum poster doesn’t like a power or skill. Forum poster writes long, well-written, post that convinces devs that power or skill is broken. Devs nerf power or skill. Move on to next power or skill a forum poster doesn’t like and repeat.

Or, devs see players having fun with power or skill in way they didn’t intend. Devs change power or skill because it is better for the players to not have fun and do things the way the devs intended.

It isn’t just MMOs that do this. FPS games and even tabletop RPGs have the same issues.

Warriors have dodged this so far, but their rifle abilities are probably soon to be nerfed because they’re supposed to be a melee class. Fewer options for everyone! Yay!

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

Vorch.2985:

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

Adapting for the sake of adapting is pointless. If you are about to run a race and have a car that runs perfectly, and then someone runs up and says it isn’t fair that your car can move faster than theirs… would you think the appropriate response would be to remove half the air from all four of your tires, as opposed to helping the other guy find a way to boost his car’s performance? Would you consider it unwilling to adapt if that person complained about the choice that was made to even the playing field?

Vorch.2985:

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

This post is insulting.

People go for a specific build or profession due to the way it feels to play it.

When these builds or professions are nerfed due to subjective value judgments by the devs on how they think the game should be played, this robs people of the feel they were targeting when playing the game.

Abilities should only be nerfed in VERY targeted manners, and only when the playerbase can’t adapt to them, not just because vocal whiners who can’t be bothered to learn to play properly don’t like it.

• You stand in a red circle with 40 of your friends and don’t bother to use the dodge button? You ALL deserve to die swift deaths.

• You can’t be bothered to break stun? You should die to pistol whip thieves.

• You spec glass cannon and can’t be bothered to slot condition clears? You SHOULD die swiftly to bunkers.

• You can’t be bothered to use CC and boon strips? Yeah, that bunker ele DESERVED to eat your face.

Vorch.2985:

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

Thank you, they won’t break the game, just adapt.
Your class will still be there when you log on :p

credibility and competency is at the heart of it for me. I remember when they said there was 5 pages of fixes/nerfs for the ranger alone. Didnt happen.
Or how they force into cheese builds by removing some of the more fun builds and your stuck with what they want you to play. Think thief backstab issue.

Every new round of nerfs seems to break more things than they fix and most of the time leave you saying eh?
It limits your options and combine that with how much it costs resource wise for ascend gear you are stuck at 1 build.
Stuck with a monotonous build leads to stagnation. So so called balance and VP cause a significant loss in variation of play.
Sad Panda.

Morrigan.2809:

Vorch.2985:

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

Thank you, they won’t break the game, just adapt.
Your class will still be there when you log on :p

More insults.

If I buy an SUV from BMW, they don’t come by every month at midnight and strip out things like cargo space, suspension, etc, until I have a sub-compact.

Can I still “adapt” to a sub-compact? Yes. But that’s NOT what I bought.

Adjustments should not force people out of specific builds. If they would, then the answer is to buff the people who lose against them.

Narkosys.5173:

credibility and competency is at the heart of it for me. I remember when they said there was 5 pages of fixes/nerfs for the ranger alone. Didnt happen.
Or how they force into cheese builds by removing some of the more fun builds and your stuck with what they want you to play. Think thief backstab issue.

Every new round of nerfs seems to break more things than they fix and most of the time leave you saying eh?
It limits your options and combine that with how much it costs resource wise for ascend gear you are stuck at 1 build.
Stuck with a monotonous build leads to stagnation. So so called balance and VP cause a significant loss in variation of play.
Sad Panda.

And this guy not only hit the nail on the head, he buried it into the 2×4 in one.

I’m just excited. Maybe we get a few new exciting specs to try out.

plasmacutter.2709:

If I buy an SUV from BMW, they don’t come by every month at midnight and strip out things like cargo space, suspension, etc, until I have a sub-compact.

Can I still “adapt” to a sub-compact? Yes. But that’s NOT what I bought.

Adjustments should not force people out of specific builds. If they would, then the answer is to buff the people who lose against them.

Not sure what you mean but you can’t compare an mmorpg to a car.

Narkosys.5173:

credibility and competency is at the heart of it for me. I remember when they said there was 5 pages of fixes/nerfs for the ranger alone. Didnt happen.
Or how they force into cheese builds by removing some of the more fun builds and your stuck with what they want you to play. Think thief backstab issue.

Every new round of nerfs seems to break more things than they fix and most of the time leave you saying eh?
It limits your options and combine that with how much it costs resource wise for ascend gear you are stuck at 1 build.
Stuck with a monotonous build leads to stagnation. So so called balance and VP cause a significant loss in variation of play.
Sad Panda.

I’ve known since the manifesto 180-turn fiasco that you should ALWAYS take Anet talk with a hefty, pile of salt.
They’re really good at the hyping/PR of parts but not so strong on execution. Like the company’s PR and the development team aren’t fully interacting with each other. (this isn’t uncommon…look at SONY’s internal infrastructure).

They can talk the talk, but they hobble and trip alot when they’re trying to walk the walk.

plasmacutter.2709:

Morrigan.2809:

My main is a mesmer and we have exactly one AoE I know of and use- chaos storm.
I do have an engi and a staff ele but I am fine with it.
I have learned too adapt having a mesmer for a main :P
seriously though, they are looking at all AoEacross all classes, it is not a train smash.-

There are many real issues in this game with class balance (LOLBACKSTAB), reward systems, depth of combat, etc.

AOE was not one of those issues

ANet is behaving like the freaking politicians have been with the economy since 2009:
D’s – “Don’t pay attention to that pink slip you just got – The real problem is healthcare”
R’s – “Don’t pay attention to the fact you can’t find a job – The real problem is the national debt”

ANet – “Don’t pay attention to your porous bones and getting backstab-gibbed by thieves – the real problem is AOE!”

Analsysis of all the above:
Stupid
Stupid
and…
Stupid.

ANet needs to fix what’s actually wrong rather than inventing problems.

well I agree that AOE was not one of the issues we had, it is still being addressed now.

Since I don’t PvP I have no idea where this comes from, why we cannot seperate PvE and PvP I do not know

Nerfing isn’t a fun mechanic in a game, hence why it worries me.

I bought this game to have fun and “play” the way i want to, not to have my favourite class nerfed/destroyed.

Playing the nerf game isn’t fun, if needs keep happening it just makes this game feel more generic and less unique.

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Salacious.7358:

Chorel.1720:

Because nerfing isn’t always the answer? They should be balancing it more instead of nerfing an entire damage class.

care to elaborate?

Because the overuse of a specific build most times than not is caused by lack of diversity, or to put it simply viability with other options.

Phira.3970:

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Because that’s not the easiest way. It’s like vertical progression vs horizontal. Why make a new dungeon/raid with 10-15 different armor/weapon skins but the same stats when you can make just 3 different armor/weapon skins (heavy, medium and light) but then put different, bigger numbers on them.

It’s easier to just nerf a class into oblivion and then give them light buffs to make them viable again than it is to buff another class and deal with the repercussions of that.

Phira.3970:

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Because buffing can potentially lead to even worse balance problems than nerfing.

Tolmos.8395:

Phira.3970:

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Because that’s not the easiest way. It’s like vertical progression vs horizontal. Why make a new dungeon/raid with 10-15 different armor/weapon skins but the same stats when you can make just 3 different armor/weapon skins (heavy, medium and light) but then put different, bigger numbers on them.

It’s easier to just nerf a class into oblivion and then give them light buffs to make them viable again than it is to buff another class and deal with the repercussions of that.

Several skills that are “nerfed” today are still in use in endgame. I have yet to see a nerf so bad it essentially removed a class from the game. There is always benefits to taking a certain class, regardless of their damage.

Chase.8415:

Tolmos.8395:

Phira.3970:

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Because that’s not the easiest way. It’s like vertical progression vs horizontal. Why make a new dungeon/raid with 10-15 different armor/weapon skins but the same stats when you can make just 3 different armor/weapon skins (heavy, medium and light) but then put different, bigger numbers on them.

It’s easier to just nerf a class into oblivion and then give them light buffs to make them viable again than it is to buff another class and deal with the repercussions of that.

Several skills that are “nerfed” today are still in use in endgame. I have yet to see a nerf so bad it essentially removed a class from the game. There is always benefits to taking a certain class, regardless of their damage.

The current use of engineers in Fractals atm is…?

And before them: the use necros in end game was…?

So the group can get their “Kick a party member” achievement done, perhaps?

Salacious.7358:

Chorel.1720:

Because nerfing isn’t always the answer? They should be balancing it more instead of nerfing an entire damage class.

care to elaborate?

The elementalist is something like 80-90% AoE based. If they don’t handle this nerf with tact and precision, they could end up ruining the entire class. I am unfortunately expecting the already-garbage staff to become worse. My elementalist (who used to be my main) will continue to collect dust until hopefully one day in the far future when the balance of power shifts back in his direction.

Tolmos.8395:

Chase.8415:

Tolmos.8395:

Phira.3970:

Why nerf when you can buff?

Buffs make people happy. So why not

Because that’s not the easiest way. It’s like vertical progression vs horizontal. Why make a new dungeon/raid with 10-15 different armor/weapon skins but the same stats when you can make just 3 different armor/weapon skins (heavy, medium and light) but then put different, bigger numbers on them.

It’s easier to just nerf a class into oblivion and then give them light buffs to make them viable again than it is to buff another class and deal with the repercussions of that.

Several skills that are “nerfed” today are still in use in endgame. I have yet to see a nerf so bad it essentially removed a class from the game. There is always benefits to taking a certain class, regardless of their damage.

The current use of engineers in Fractals atm is…?

And before them: the use necros in end game was…?

I just bring whatever I want in fractals and I’ve had no troubles at level 24 in doing so. Which brings up another point, I have yet to see any content in this game become “impossible” because we didn’t have a particular class.

Salacious.7358:

ok so your favourite spell on ele or your favourite skill on war or what ever was nerfed so bad its “unusable.”

why does that anger you? or make you scarred? or want to “RQ” or even Q_Q?

I’m scared that classes that were already bad (my burst damage on a necro is 1000 -_-) will get so bad that I’ll have to shelf them for good, even though I was enjoying playing them.

I mostly worry that classes that currently struggle will be hindered more by the change (maybe struggle is the wrong word for that, maybe subpar I guess). Though I can kind of see where the nerf is coming from a little bit.

That said, if I still enjoy my character/class enough a "nerf " usually doesn’t stop me. Unless it makes it entirely unplayable. Which I don’t think will happen, but who knows. If anything my current build will become a less desirable one and everyone will find some new cookie-cutter build/class to play.

I’m not one to complain about nerfs, but they do scare me. :P Usually they turn out not as bad as they sound, but considering this is probably one of the first serious nerfs that has affected me in gw2 I am a little nervous of how that will go.

On this game nerf scare people because they are heavy handed a lot of times, and when a class is nerfed, you have to wait the next patch and hope they will adress the problem, but usually when something is nerfed we dont see a counter balance or useless mechanic revamped.

People play a game for fun. If they can’t use their favorite build anymore, it’s not as fun. Or if said nerf makes them so weak they can never win anymore, but that’s not usually the case.

Because playing an uderpowered prof is not fun,which is what games are supposed to be.
I see no reason not to /ragequit if they take the nerfbat too far

Navzar.2938:

People play a game for fun. If they can’t use their favorite build anymore, it’s not as fun. Or if said nerf makes them so weak they can never win anymore, but that’s not usually the case.

ahahah lol, since october i see all my builds nerfed on every single patch, and i have to confirm this, its not fun lol

Vorch.2985:

There are very few people who like to adapt. It’s a problem.

Throwing out posts like this you must be a pretty tough guy.

Let me tell you something tough guy.

If someone breaks their manifesto and adds grind, it makes adapting to new things kinda grindy and costy, you know?

Do you understand that?

Now let’s take it even further.
How many people are there, you think, that like to spend a fortune of either gold or grind to get new builds?
I don’t know.

Ask the thousands of thousands of people who already quit because of this bullkitten.

It is pretty easy to understand really, customers spend money, hours of their time and hard work on their characters, then to have them nerfed good or bad upsets and angers them..

Especially when you play classes like ranger and engineer, seeing how buffed warriors and guardians are on a daily basis or being smashed over and over in wvw by broken mechanics like thieves stealth exploits…