Guild Wars 2

The upcoming balance changes are FULL of passives that will carry the player through many situations. Just how things like Nightmare Runes (who knows if they return to flavour with Necro changes) , Transmute, Incendiary Powder or simply non-meta passives like Shared Anguish are bad for the gameplay right now (and the list of gamebreaking [read: making your build easier than it should be, breaking gameplay through simplicity] passives is long), all these new upcoming passives will just add to a boring playstyle of having your builds do the work for you.
Passive stunbreak on Engineer, passive Analyze on Engineer, passive Frost Aura on Elementalist when crit, where does it stop? Again, the list is endless and if you just look to convert all the current meta builds of most classes into HoT variants, you will see them filled with passives that take away one aspect of the game you should be in control of yourself (Auras, stunbreaks, condition immunity)

I truly hope I’m not the only one that finds this balancing towards passives disturbing.
Yes, like everyone I am hyped for the changes in gameplay and playstyles, heck, perhaps even a meta overhaul. But are all those effects you don’t have to activate and those effects that have minimal actual counterplay really necessary?
I think not.

I like this guy. Been saying the same thing for 3 years. Passive’s have been the name of the game for a long time, it’s only just getting stronger.

Yeah the goal is to appeal to the masses. And the masses don’t like active play, it requires skill, time, and knowledge.

“I just want to faceroll my keyboard and win”
-XX_Pro_Passive_Player_XX

From a business prospective arenanet is totally doing the right thing. Its hard to make a good PvP game as only the best really build playerbase. So why not half kitten it, make it easy to play, and get people in the door that way?

Passives are not bad! there is only so much active defence can Do to prevent damage , with these condi changes I highly doubt you’ll survive without these trait changes.

vs all those new Mob Mechanics and Taunt! where all you can do is Auto attack everything else is locked out (so those passive stun breaks on engi ect ) will save you from 1 chain K.os from taunt mobs.

times are changing though every is good within moderation.

it matches the content , it matches the new stability system and movement changes you won’t leap further so your a little more prone to hard CCs.

also if i wanted to play a game with 20 skills on a bar just to make them all “Active by activating the skill” as you put is not what anet aim for that goes back to the older style of MMo’s with lots of skills on a long confusing bar which people never read that much, and half the skills were not even used because they were too Situational , i like anets method of adding passives to traits that way the things that Do keep you alive are Actives like blocks , evades and dodge.

shared angusih as you say Has a 90sec cooldown its hardly game breaking considering Rangers hav LR, SoR for stun breaks and both are on a 48sec+ cooldown also unless you trait LR for 32secs, a reason to why they still have Shared anguish in HoT is because of the lack utiltity slots for everything else.

if everything was active you’d be looking at 20 skills on a bar again…

<—- sees no problem with gaining additional bars based on slotted traits. It would increase skill cap, and I’m okay with that.

OneKlicKill.4285:

<—- sees no problem with gaining additional bars based on slotted traits. It would increase skill cap, and I’m okay with that.

gw1 had 8 skills no weapon swap.
gw2 10 skills with weapon swap = 15 skills now you want more..

eles have 20+5 additional skills heal 1 , 4 utitlies .

there is enough skills to click or use in this game already anymore would be pointless.

more skills does not increase skill cap , it just increases the amount of buttons you have to press .

Buttons don’t equal skill
Skill = the Effective use of what you have available to use.

getting more buttons won’t solve that so called “increase skill cap issue” as you call it , if you did add buttons Pvp would just become a Spam fest to see who dies first or a Really long winded fight with a full rotation of blocks, blinds , leaps , stun breaks ect even " skilled " players would struggle vs the bad because they have so many skills to counter with.

as to why Anet restricts the amount of buttons and the amount of stunbreaks you can Control to the point where if you miss click or mistime a skill it is detrimental to your chance of recovery or countering .

best grab a book on Game balance before suggesting more buttons = increased skill cap, more buttons just makes it easier for bad or new players to chain spam a target to death and to counter that new Blocks ect ect will be needed to stop that chain spam so you just end up with the current skill system in the first place , were 10skills do the same job.

Everytime i die its like 12k fro air and fire sigils. Hope these get the 30% nerfs they need

Welcome to proc wars…where passive procs carry you to victory or mean your bitter defeat.

Overall, these changes are very much power-creep, and in the worst possible way. It isn’t like everyone will have fun, new, active effects. Bursts will get burstier (which is terrifying, as it is already king right now), “spam sustain” bruiser builds get more sustain and damage as they mostly follow a rotation of skills mindlessly for wins, condi builds just fart out condis like its nothing, and sigils are still going to keep doing all that.

I have a feeling this is just gonna end up with combat that is kind of lame.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

OneKlicKill.4285:

<—- sees no problem with gaining additional bars based on slotted traits. It would increase skill cap, and I’m okay with that.

gw1 had 8 skills no weapon swap.
gw2 10 skills with weapon swap = 15 skills now you want more..

eles have 20+5 additional skills heal 1 , 4 utitlies .

there is enough skills to click or use in this game already anymore would be pointless.

more skills does not increase skill cap , it just increases the amount of buttons you have to press .

Buttons don’t equal skill
Skill = the Effective use of what you have available to use.

getting more buttons won’t solve that so called “increase skill cap issue” as you call it , if you did add buttons Pvp would just become a Spam fest to see who dies first or a Really long winded fight with a full rotation of blocks, blinds , leaps , stun breaks ect even " skilled " players would struggle vs the bad because they have so many skills to counter with.

as to why Anet restricts the amount of buttons and the amount of stunbreaks you can Control to the point where if you miss click or mistime a skill it is detrimental to your chance of recovery or countering .

best grab a book on Game balance before suggesting more buttons = increased skill cap, more buttons just makes it easier for bad or new players to chain spam a target to death and to counter that new Blocks ect ect will be needed to stop that chain spam so you just end up with the current skill system in the first place , were 10skills do the same job.

I’m not saying buttons equal balance that’s just dumb. I’m saying that if say stunbreak actives, clenses etc became buttons when conditions were met it would require skill to know you need to activate it or even wait, and save it for the next stun or condi cap your expecting to hit.

On the topic of passives, a buff should be on players showing they currently have an passive off cd, letting you know you should blow something to get rid of it or play around it. Fire/air procs should be able to miss and when you see their buffs up you can gamble a dodge to do just that.

The current passives allow for no counter-play. If we got an additional ability for say a auto stun break it could be Activate for 15 seconds to allow you to be immune to the next incoming stun, or to break a current stun. Then it would show a buff and allow counterplay, as well as bad players blowing it too early etc.

Or if fire/air sigil and other on proc sigils had a missile and travel time, you could dodge it as well.

There are plenty of ways to make passives work, but the current passives do not promote active play and that is a bad thing for a skill based game.

All these passives and no one cares about passive boons / procs… DATS WACISTS

Nightmare runes will be meh for the Necro. Simply because nobody will take Terror and 50% fear duration traits.

But we complained that we as Power Necros, rely on procs too much. So they gave us two more passive signet procs <3.

Well, conditions are passive so… shouldn’t we get rid of those too if that’s the case? >,>

Tyreal.5230:

Well, conditions are passive so… shouldn’t we get rid of those too if that’s the case? >,>

Conditions, at least Necromancer ones, have to be applied by attacking (with exception of Reaper’s Protection). They’re no different from your Power attacks, they just do damage differently. Thus, they have even more counterplay because of condi removal.

Of course, we’re not talking about passive procs, like Engineer’s IP. But Power damage has procs, too.

+1 agree 100% with OP. People saying otherwise are just plebs xD The only thing that is going to get me to continue to play gw2 is an interesting class mechanic which I can learn and grow on. Active play please, make these passive traits instead trigger with the use of an ability or utility skill.

I agree. Prefer to see the game going in the opposite direction (more actives).

Darn OP, shushhh it.

Passives, stun-breakers and cleanses are all you need. Everything else is secondary.

I hope no one reads this thread. Ugh, I hate you forever OP