Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of hate for stalemate 1v1s, and that’s natural. They’re not exciting. However, if we literally removed the possibility of two builds not being able to kill each other…well, that would require a massive nerf to everything defensive, not just bunkers.

I’m fine with “toning down” the extreme builds so the “balanced” builds will be more viable, but we should be careful what we ask for. Removing 1v1 stalemates would be a massive nerf across all 8 professions. Glass cannon builds would also have to be nerfed hard to compensate for the defensive nerf.

In reality, every traditional RPG has the potential for stalemates. Every healer vs healer is a stalemate. Most tank vs tank fights are stalemates. Sure, it would be great if there were never any stalemates—but as far as I can tell, that’s just not feasible.

Certainly, there are some professions/skills that can be toned down. The fact that every good team NEEDS a guardian is a little odd, but I don’t think it’s a problem that every team brings 1-2 tanky builds. That’s…kind of a balanced number, in reality.

I think you need to look at the reason why the stalemates occur. If healing/time > DPS/time, then you have a stalemate. Otherwise, healthbars will slowly drain, even if a 1v1 takes a longgg time to resolve.

I’ve been thinking about this problem, and the main issue seems to come from long-term healing sustain builds coupled with additional defensive utilities. With these builds, your 6-healing ability is basically used on cooldown to erase whatever damage occurred for that period of the fight. Unless your opponent is ridiculously skilled, in a bunker v. bunker fight, you are probably overhealing the damage they caused during that period.

I think Arena Net needs to take a look at the healing co-efficients as modified by amulets and the healing stats for all abilities that grant gradual healing over time. Right now, the rule seems to be that if the defensive player makes a few mistakes, but is running one of these bunkery, high-sustain healing builds, a 1v1 still might not resolve. Alternatively, if a DPS makes a single mistake (including timing a burst that gets blocked by a lucky aegis or a random dodge from a high-vigor opponent, who is just dodging on cooldown), then it definitely will not resolve.

The presumption needs to be flipped. A player should be able to miss out on some DPS as mitigated by defensive utilities and dodges, but still be able to do slightly more damage/time than the other player can maintain healing/time. Further, healing from the 6-ability should be by far and away the major source for heals — a burst heal ability that can be interrupted or impacted by a well-time poisoned.

Right now, these low health pool high healing builds are viable because they basically result in an infinite health pool. That needs to change first and foremost in my opinion.

Edit: Instead of messing with the healing co-efficients, which could have an impact on PvE (not that I care), they could also consider playing around with gear modifiers with heal stats to try and tone down the healing over time.

To all whiners…try run something like this..go sPvP and then come back, go watch for yourself how fun it is to die if they sneeze on you

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;044Z;1kHFC0D43JkJ0;9;5T99J;118A1;02;016-KNm6;2hoHAhoHA2Vt

I can already see people’s answer : " you noob you need to invest in defense", so basically you as ele must go defense mode but still be killable if somebody touch you but at the same time you’re noob if you go full offense, you’re noob if going defense..and you’re noob if go full offense.

Why don’t we go this route for GW2 balance?

1) Remove all professions except thief
2) Change name of the game to Thief Wars
3) Get crazy with F1-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-F1-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-F1-2-2-2….

Atlas.6901:

I think you need to look at the reason why the stalemates occur. If healing/time > DPS/time, then you have a stalemate. Otherwise, healthbars will slowly drain, even if a 1v1 takes a longgg time to resolve.

I’ve been thinking about this problem, and the main issue seems to come from long-term healing sustain builds coupled with additional defensive utilities. With these builds, your 6-healing ability is basically used on cooldown to erase whatever damage occurred for that period of the fight. Unless your opponent is ridiculously skilled, in a bunker v. bunker fight, you are probably overhealing the damage they caused during that period.

I think Arena Net needs to take a look at the healing co-efficients as modified by amulets and the healing stats for all abilities that grant gradual healing over time. Right now, the rule seems to be that if the defensive player makes a few mistakes, but is running one of these bunkery, high-sustain healing builds, a 1v1 still might not resolve. Alternatively, if a DPS makes a single mistake (including timing a burst that gets blocked by a lucky aegis or a random dodge from a high-vigor opponent, who is just dodging on cooldown), then it definitely will not resolve.

The presumption needs to be flipped. A player should be able to miss out on some DPS as mitigated by defensive utilities and dodges, but still be able to do slightly more damage/time than the other player can maintain healing/time. Further, healing from the 6-ability should be by far and away the major source for heals — a burst heal ability that can be interrupted or impacted by a well-time poisoned.

Right now, these low health pool high healing builds are viable because they basically result in an infinite health pool. That needs to change first and foremost in my opinion.

Edit: Instead of messing with the healing co-efficients, which could have an impact on PvE (not that I care), they could also consider playing around with gear modifiers with heal stats to try and tone down the healing over time.

Fair enough. We’re basically talking about nerfing one specific profession now, which I don’t disagree with because currently, it’s a mandatory profession. You also point out that playing a bunker guardian is very forgiving and pretty easy, which is true and unfortunate. Eles are also getting pretty close to mandatory for the same reasons, but at least they’re a little more difficult to play than a bunker guardian.

I just don’t think we should expect to eliminate stalemates. I stalemate in a lot of my fights as an engineer, because I gave up my gap closers for area denial and knockbacks. In other words, I can punish someone for trying to close on me and kill me, but I can’t catch them after I force them to disengage. I also have some HoT, but nothing that’s going to save me if I make a wrong move. I don’t use a healing amulet. I can block one attack on a 32 second cooldown, but that’s it. I really enjoy that playstyle and it’s more exciting to me than the old “knock someone down, kill him before he can get back up” that is the average dps playstyle.

So, yes, I’m all for buffing underplayed professions/nerfing mandatory professions. It’s silly that I will probably find the same profession filling the same role in every single tournament match I play today. I’m just trying to give some reasons why we should not expect to eliminate stalemates—GW2 already has far fewer stalemates than most RPG games, and as Anet continues to balance, we will probably see even less. But they’ll never completely go away.

Nerfs will never solve anything.

If you want to change the bunker/burst meta, the best option is to buff balanced builds. We’re not dealing with a situation where “bunkers and burst are OP.” That has never been the problem, and changing it won’t help anything. The problem is that non-bunker/burst is underpowered.

The other issue is that much of the meta is based around solo-building rather than team synergy. Players currently build around min/max of their own character, without much regards to team effects (at least in the middle and near the bottom). The weapon swap change was a step in the direction of focusing on team building instead of solo play. If anything needs to be changed, balanced builds need to be better rewarded, and synergies need to be buffed.

Syeria.4812:

Nerfs will never solve anything.

If you want to change the bunker/burst meta, the best option is to buff balanced builds. We’re not dealing with a situation where “bunkers and burst are OP.” That has never been the problem, and changing it won’t help anything. The problem is that non-bunker/burst is underpowered.

The other issue is that much of the meta is based around solo-building rather than team synergy. Players currently build around min/max of their own character, without much regards to team effects (at least in the middle and near the bottom). The weapon swap change was a step in the direction of focusing on team building instead of solo play. If anything needs to be changed, balanced builds need to be better rewarded, and synergies need to be buffed.

A clever post from a cleaver person, unfortunately you’re the minority and whiners the majority…it’s a lost battle

Just a funny anectode.
What stronly resembles the actual GW2 PvP in GW1 was Hero Battles and they were removed due to the stupid meta they had and the impossibility to shift that meta properly.

It’s not like we haven’t being saying this for the past 3 months…

Whats bunker dominated about it? It’s EXTREMELY EASY to kill a bunker. l2p

They decided to not put traditional healing in the game – therefore bunker builds and self reliance are the only way to ensure uptime outside of a very few limited DPS stealth options.

Because reliance on others is so minimal we aren’t grouping up in regular teams like we are forced to in other games creating symbiotic units. It’s self reliant bunker mode.

This meta isn’t about map design, it’s about glass cannons being far too glass when there is no option of hooking up with a healer that can keep them standing. If you remove the healer only being a bunker enables reliable objective completion. therefore you have a meta full of bunker strategy vs. heal plus tank or dps strategy.

Yes we find this meta shallow and 1 dimensional as a result.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I just don’t think we should expect to eliminate stalemates. I stalemate in a lot of my fights as an engineer, because I gave up my gap closers for area denial and knockbacks. In other words, I can punish someone for trying to close on me and kill me, but I can’t catch them after I force them to disengage. I also have some HoT, but nothing that’s going to save me if I make a wrong move. I don’t use a healing amulet. I can block one attack on a 32 second cooldown, but that’s it. I really enjoy that playstyle and it’s more exciting to me than the old “knock someone down, kill him before he can get back up” that is the average dps playstyle.

So, yes, I’m all for buffing underplayed professions/nerfing mandatory professions. It’s silly that I will probably find the same profession filling the same role in every single tournament match I play today. I’m just trying to give some reasons why we should not expect to eliminate stalemates—GW2 already has far fewer stalemates than most RPG games, and as Anet continues to balance, we will probably see even less. But they’ll never completely go away.

The point about stalemates is that stalemates occur with a very high frequency, tbh.

A guardian can stalemate any offensive proff aside the mesmer ( which is able to do it only thanks to boon stripping shatters, something quite ridicolous for a 20 point investment but whatever) and resist long enough for support to come to any condition build, aside MAYBE the necro.

An ele can do fairly well against both, if not in very specific situations or against high sustained damage builds ( like, again, the mesmer). As a condi build, you’ll never kill an ele.

The point is always the same: if a bunker can survive against 80% of other builds, aside direct counters, aren’t bunkers too strong ?

If you nerf bunkers, isn’t burst going to be too strong ?

So we really need to nerf both, there’s not very much to discuss.

And aNet even stated it in their bs “balance phylosophy”: they’ll nerf burst and bunkers.

But, and this really worries me, HOW MUCH ?

And even more, are they really willing to create more build diversity ? if they really are, why classes are still always running with the same U-skills and weapons ? ( aka: sub-par stuff is still sub-par and has never been touched in 3 months).

Sure, I don’t disagree. There are a couple of builds for two professions that force a stalemate against almost everything, and that’s why guardians are mandatory and boring. There isn’t really a “counter pick” to the old guardian/mesmer/necro/ele/one other profession. It would be great if there were something else that worked. I’m just saying, a better way to gauge balance would be if there were multiple compositions that worked for tournaments, not necessarily that every build could eventually kill every other build.

When I PUG in a tournament I always look to see if we have a guardian. If we dont and they have a competent one then I pretty much resign myself to defeat. The guardian is just too good to be honest.

Lordrosicky.5813:

When I PUG in a tournament I always look to see if we have a guardian. If we dont and they have a competent one then I pretty much resign myself to defeat. The guardian is just too good to be honest.

This. In PUGs the team with the most guardians/mesmers wins 99% of the time.