Guild Wars 2

I don’t get why it takes the balance team so long to figure out what is wrong with this game.

At least do something small and fix the worst of the issues. Here is a hint: Adjust engi. It is brain dead easy to play and yet can bunker quite well.

I agree, an Engi can bunk for days against a Necro with all those boons and heavy condi clear… oh wait…

The game is as balanced as its ever been. S/D Thief is what you were looking for in terms of broken stuff – the Trickery Acro build is disgustingly good against just about anybody 1v1 and fast to boot.

Other than that build, the game is actually in a good place. Ranger QQers are polluting the forums with their nonsense, but the class just has to be played better than it has been in the past. There are still top 100 Ranger mains and the community is, ever so slowly, realizing that Zerker Ranger is actually pretty kitten good.

I’m messing around with a life siphon MM build on my necro and I noticed today that it handles turret engineers pretty well.

I feel balance is pretty good right now, not perfect of course, but I don’t see anything that screams “OP!!”. If you find yourself struggling against a specific build a lot, try to make your build target that build, then make adjustments to round your build out so it isn’t useless in other situations.

Inscrutable.8347:

The game is as balanced as its ever been.

What game are you playing?

Klinch.2964:

I feel balance is pretty good right now, not perfect of course, but I don’t see anything that screams “OP!!”.

You too, what game are you playing?

Very constructive and insightful Wilco. Why not offer what you feel is OP so they can see another perspective. As for me, I feel similarly to them, I have trouble against some builds, but dominate others.

Dude, there has been so many balancing patches that no matter what happens someone is always too op. Hundred blades, hundred nades, spirit ranger, fear necro, etc etc etc.

I do agree this turret engy should get nerfed a bit though because its zero skills, at least with hundred blades warrior you were fighting a real person and not someone and all his turrets kittening you off.

Other than that, they need to stop this balancing nonsense, its never going to be truly balanced and someone will always be too op. They need to focus on other things like a real tournament system, real ranking system, more maps, pvp exclusive items (for example that pvp bags they got rid of, they need to bring those back).

uberkingkong.8041:

Dude, there has been so many balancing patches that no matter what happens someone is always too op. Hundred blades, hundred nades, spirit ranger, fear necro, etc etc etc.

there have been what 2-3 noticeable balance patches over 2 years?
i don’t count the “reduced damage of X by 5%” as a balance patch.
i look at whats happening in other games and it makes me wish i’d skipped GW2,
because the combat system here is so good that its ruined all other MMOs but the pvp is seriously lacking and unrewarding, the balance is ridiculous and dev support is none existent.
i look at games like Champions Online (a rather old F2P game) and see their bi-weekly patches and it makes me wonder, what the heck are the Anet devs doing?! do we even have any devs?!

1 patch per year …. it has to settle down

they call this slow patching/balancing =shaving ….. they all look like santa clause now – i bet

only 1 BIG patch each year.. so what?
do we need a patch every week which compeltely changes the way pvp is palyed the way runes sigils etc work?!?
nah..
there are a lot of small 5% less +2% bugfixes etc
and as it is now the variety is better than it has ever been and all classes are at least playable

sure some classes lack thigns other classes have a lot of

but currently its better than it has ever been

seriously? In all the things you could balance the first that comes to your mind is engi?

you seriously have no idea of pvp.

So much to listening to the wrong players..

and to be ontopic: dont expect anything in balancing for the next year

The fact that you can find a bunch of people (even on this small thread) saying something is OP, but everyone disagreeing what exactly is OP is the only proof you need about balance being quite decent.

If everything is OP nothing is OP. Switch your build or scream for help if you are countered.

Wilco.1458:

Inscrutable.8347:

The game is as balanced as its ever been.

What game are you playing?

Klinch.2964:

I feel balance is pretty good right now, not perfect of course, but I don’t see anything that screams “OP!!”.

You too, what game are you playing?

How long have you been playing PvP competitively, you are a WvWer too
Oh please, don’t even get me started.

This meta right now is way better then what we had since last year may and actually feels right as in tPvP perspective, sure mesmer need some tweak and stuff cuz trickery thief is broken, or maybe nerf trickery thief. but other then that, this meta right now is way better then what we had for 1 year.

Inscrutable.8347:

Other than that build, the game is actually in a good place.

Really? S/D thief build? Not many of the numerous broken builds that are around?

There are a few builds that are a bit on the powerful side, but overall, I think this is a relatively balanced game compared to the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if ANet took their time before doing a balance patch.

Personally, I’d rather see more PvP content like maps and game types than another balance patch.

Simon.3794:

Wilco.1458:

Inscrutable.8347:

The game is as balanced as its ever been.

What game are you playing?

Klinch.2964:

I feel balance is pretty good right now, not perfect of course, but I don’t see anything that screams “OP!!”.

You too, what game are you playing?

How long have you been playing PvP competitively, you are a WvWer too
Oh please, don’t even get me started.

This meta right now is way better then what we had since last year may and actually feels right as in tPvP perspective, sure mesmer need some tweak and stuff cuz trickery thief is broken, or maybe nerf trickery thief. but other then that, this meta right now is way better then what we had for 1 year.

I’ve been top 100 on leaderboards for a while, haven’t played a game in a week or so .. probably much lower now. How about you, Mr. INeverPlayedTeamQueue?

If you guys really must know the problems with balance in this game, here it goes. First, hard counters to builds is not good balance. It turns the game into rock paper scissors and removes any amount of creativity. For example, engineers are very strong, the argument is “counter with a fearbomb necro”. That’s bad balance, more than a hard counter should be able to deal with an engineer.

Next, you have a number of builds that dominate the scene, including hambow/axebow warrior, d/d elementalist, and any engineer. People complain about s/d trickery being the strongest build but frankly it’s just an easy build to play and a not so trivial build to play against, but at high levels it doesn’t have great matchups (the previous three I listed should beat a trickery thief).

Besides the fact you have this obvious power creep, the bunker and healing meta is way too popular. You can win games without ever killing anyone now, which I personally find super boring. Put a guardian + staff elementalist on point and stalemate anyone you come across. Power creep is way out of control, there are way too many completely useless builds and too many builds that only lose to a hard counter and too many builds that the only job is to not die as opposed to actually do damage.

If they implemented hotfixes balance would be much smoother. You reduce number on like two rune sets and fix incendiary powder and you get a brand new meta once again without any of the fuss of “we’ve been preparing this patch for 8 months.” It would also be interesting to see more game modes than capture point. Engi wins like 90% of battles fighting on a point, but much less so off one. But that’s much more work than simple number changes that can come every few weeks.

ANet just needs to nerf everything. Literally every class.

Freeelancer.2860:

The fact that you can find a bunch of people (even on this small thread) saying something is OP, but everyone disagreeing what exactly is OP is the only proof you need about balance being quite decent.

If everything is OP nothing is OP. Switch your build or scream for help if you are countered.

This is called power creep and it’s bad for games. If everything is OP then everything is OP.

Here’s a handy video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw

Let’s face it. Everything that you can’t kill is OP.

Hue hue hue

Wilco.1458:

If they implemented hotfixes balance would be much smoother. You reduce number on like two rune sets and fix incendiary powder and you get a brand new meta once again without any of the fuss of “we’ve been preparing this patch for 8 months.” It would also be interesting to see more game modes than capture point. Engi wins like 90% of battles fighting on a point, but much less so off one. But that’s much more work than simple number changes that can come every few weeks.

Agreed with both points. A few small changes could shake up the meta without needing a huge time investment from ANet.

Also, this game is definitely in dire need of a new game type. Conquest is stale and a new gametype could shake up build diversity more than any balance patch.

Expectations at this point are pretty low for me, but if all they did this year was a massive push to fix known bugs for all professions, that would be significant. For some classes, bugs are so prevalent that fixing them would likely shift balance a bit because there are potential builds no one is playing across many classes because of the bugs.

nerf:
- sd acro thief
- runes of strength/max might stacks → resulting in too much damage from war/ele with tank stats and too high cond damage without cond stats.
- runes of balthazar

- turret engi
-mm necro

buff:
power rangers
many other useless specs/skills/traits

tichorum.2415:

Let’s face it. Everything that you can’t kill is OP.

Hue hue hue

Or cheese, don’t forget, it’s very important

Runes of strength confirmed to be nerfed via Wooden Potatoes new video.

MM necro is not op. It’s far too easy to completely negate the minions if you aren’t really really dumb. Makes really kittenty players ok but almost nerfs better players.

Since they semi nerfed dhuum necro could use a little buff somewhere.
Ranger could use some sort of buff.
S/d theif is ridiculous.
Turret engis a little nerf maybe just make the turrets less durable?
Hambows and d/d eles are actually fine its just the runes that need to be changed. Strength runes are way to strong.

NeXeD.3042:

MM necro is not op. It’s far too easy to completely negate the minions if you aren’t really really dumb. Makes really kittenty players ok but almost nerfs better players.

never said it was op. its just an idiot spec which is “too viable” while too easy to play. thats why i didnt put it in the same line as thieves and strength runes. same for turret engis.

Sorry didn’t know that second line was different……………..

Also it’s really only viable against bad players … good ones will abuse the z axis honestly it could probably use a nerf and a buff at the same time.

another patch, nothing but tooltip updates, surprise surprise…

well, to be fair, runes of strength got balanced

We got jack kitten in PVP. We didn’t even get a living story reward track for PVP. And people wonder why PVPers are so disgruntled.

Illusionary Leap: Fixed a bug that allowed players to swap places with their clone after it was destroyed.

Thanks for another mesmer nerf.

Jekkt.6045:

NeXeD.3042:

MM necro is not op. It’s far too easy to completely negate the minions if you aren’t really really dumb. Makes really kittenty players ok but almost nerfs better players.

never said it was op. its just an idiot spec which is “too viable” while too easy to play. thats why i didnt put it in the same line as thieves and strength runes. same for turret engis.

Good plan, something is “dumb” to you, so lets decrease build diversity. Pet builds have existed in many mmos, and they are unique, you should learn to embrace them. Pets are strong area denial, pressure for movement on the enemy, but in turn are severely weak against AOE, their own stupidity, and the master is much less of a personal threat alone. (In the case of MM, much weaker, no stability, protection, vigor, mobility, minor damage alone, and long cast times to resummon, and nearly paper when they’re dead). Quit crying about “its not my style of play because they can do automatic damage” and just learn to exploit their AI weaknesses, which there are many. Stealth, evades, stability, protection, auto-regen heals and other “passive” cast-and-forget defesnes are just as bad if you want to go for skill play only. In no way is passive damage worse than passive defenses (the trade off MM necros go for, less passive and active defenses for more *constant pressure). Think of them as DOTs you can aoe blow up and leave the master left for dead.

Just saying, if you’re “not saying they’re OP” then you’re just being close minded and ignoring the whole game’s mechanics. Much of GW2 is “press and forget” and passive, lets not single anyone out because you can’t handle one over the other.

Django.5923:

seriously? In all the things you could balance the first that comes to your mind is engi?

you seriously have no idea of pvp.

So much to listening to the wrong players..

and to be ontopic: dont expect anything in balancing for the next year

Mostly because engi is so easy to play right now. It doesn’t take any skill to drop a turret with the shield and then just run around.

As others have said, only having one hard counter is not balance.

NeXeD.3042:

MM necro is not op. It’s far too easy to completely negate the minions if you aren’t really really dumb. Makes really kittenty players ok but almost nerfs better players.

Since they semi nerfed dhuum necro could use a little buff somewhere.
Ranger could use some sort of buff.
S/d theif is ridiculous.
Turret engis a little nerf maybe just make the turrets less durable?
Hambows and d/d eles are actually fine its just the runes that need to be changed. Strength runes are way to strong.

I’d argue that hambow, d/d eles, and s/d thieves all benefit too much from runes of strength. I disagree with ANET’s decision to shave the rune. The rune should have been removed from PvP and left as-is in WvW and PvE.

Cheese just means “a build I should be able to kill with my skillset, but can’t”.

Silentshoes.1805:

Cheese just means “a build I should be able to kill with my skillset, but can’t”.

More often than not, that actually more comes down to “counter”, more than “cheese”, what’s cheese for one guy is cake for another. So if you dissect it to its core, every build is cheesecake.

I should say, Cheese means: “a build I want to be able to beat with my skillset, but can’t”

Wilco.1458:

Freeelancer.2860:

The fact that you can find a bunch of people (even on this small thread) saying something is OP, but everyone disagreeing what exactly is OP is the only proof you need about balance being quite decent.

If everything is OP nothing is OP. Switch your build or scream for help if you are countered.

This is called power creep and it’s bad for games. If everything is OP then everything is OP.

Here’s a handy video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxszx60ZwGw

Except there is close to zero powercreep in PvP (the only thing that you could call a powercreep was recent change to runes or sigils on 2h weapons, but even those are debatable).
No, the issue here is that people get roflstomped and they can’t handle it so they lash out at “balance” or “ANet”.

Is not that I suck, is that everyone else is using cheeze.. or cheats.. or both..

Jekkt.6045:

Buff: power rangers

I agree, taking away the 5 power ranger megazord combo a few patches back left both them and earth completely defenseless from giant monsters.

when they can figure out how to sell balance for 800 gems i’m sure they’ll get off their kitten s and attempt to balance their game.
until then they’re more concerned about pumping out countless tacky £ini$h€rs.

What I really want to see is a balance patch addressing bad traits/skills.

The game already has a reduced number of them so that they could be more easily balanced and still 70% of available traits/weapon skills/utilities/elites are considered trash and unusable.

Buffing bad traits is the easiest way to induce build variety since to pick anything that becomes interesting means to give up something that was considered viable.

I agree with turret engi being op.

Still it’s not usefull in tpvp unless you build your whole team around it. It’s underwhelming in teamfights (if you say otherwise you really haven’t played it. I tried it top 100 tpvp. It’s insane in 1v1s but slow and you have to build around that, or you are just a minionmaster sitting on a point while your team looses the other points 4v5)

And other than that build engi is in one of the worst positions atm (trust me I’m one of the only engineers left in top 200 of tpvp).

The problem is the highsustain highdmg builds ALL of them. They render spikebuilds void.

The best meta was where paradigm played engi,mesmer,ele,ranger,guard and car crash ele,thief,necro,engi,guardian.

Basically everything was balanced ok (shaves would have been good) except warrior was underwhelming. But the meta was so much more interesting with spikes etc going on.

At the moment where good teams (like paradigm) who played their classes almost to the max were forced into OTHER classes should have been alarming. Before the necro doomfire update you could basically play your class and if you played it to the max even warriorteams did well (plastic fantastic). After it, Phantaram had to reroll, Xeph had to reroll, Teldo didn’t want to but it would have been better too

That point should have been so alarming that they should have reverted the updates. (as you saw car crash did well with a necro eventough it was stated as underwhelming they won and where one of the best teams around)

Django.5923:

I agree with turret engi being op.

Still it’s not usefull in tpvp unless you build your whole team around it. It’s underwhelming in teamfights (if you say otherwise you really haven’t played it. I tried it top 100 tpvp. It’s insane in 1v1s but slow and you have to build around that, or you are just a minionmaster sitting on a point while your team looses the other points 4v5)

And other than that build engi is in one of the worst positions atm (trust me I’m one of the only engineers left in top 200 of tpvp).

The problem is the highsustain highdmg builds ALL of them. They render spikebuilds void.

The best meta was where paradigm played engi,mesmer,ele,ranger,guard and car crash ele,thief,necro,engi,guardian.

Basically everything was balanced ok (shaves would have been good) except warrior was underwhelming. But the meta was so much more interesting with spikes etc going on.

At the moment where good teams (like paradigm) who played their classes almost to the max were forced into OTHER classes should have been alarming. Before the necro doomfire update you could basically play your class and if you played it to the max even warriorteams did well (plastic fantastic). After it, Phantaram had to reroll, Xeph had to reroll, Teldo didn’t want to but it would have been better too

That point should have been so alarming that they should have reverted the updates. (as you saw car crash did well with a necro eventough it was stated as underwhelming they won and where one of the best teams around)

Nope, that meta sucked because that was the first meta with S/D thief in. Which is the ultimate in high sustain/ high damage. Way more than warrior – even though warrior is obviously too strong too. Dunno why they gave a class the best mobility, massive damage and huge sustain. Seems pretty strange to me.

Kiriakulos.1690:

What I really want to see is a balance patch addressing bad traits/skills.

The game already has a reduced number of them so that they could be more easily balanced and still 70% of available traits/weapon skills/utilities/elites are considered trash and unusable.

Buffing bad traits is the easiest way to induce build variety since to pick anything that becomes interesting means to give up something that was considered viable.

The last time a patch successfully brought many underwhelming traits/ skills up to par, on June 2013, it wrecked this game’s pvp state with plenty of new cheese builds.

The problem wasn’t so much (only) with balance, but with inherent design issues that make many of the current playstyles (be them viable or those “waiting” for their time to awake) lack counter-play, have high reward/ low risk ratios, depend too much on AI, etc, etc.

This game needs more of a polish/ redesign in some areas, than a balance patch, at the moment, IMO.

I’d be fine with just a nerf to turret engis right now. It just shouldn’t be that easy to do well. It is similar to a spirit ranger before that got nerfed.

The PvP game does not have a problem in balance, but in concept, the way each profession was thought, that is the problem. As it stands, some professions are vital for teams, or more important to have then others because of their unique integration abilities, and this represents a concept issue, not a dps/support/heal/bunking issue.

On the other hand there is no room for more imagination and vision. You are forced to play the meta, or else your team can not explore the full potential of your profession, or you simply get smashed by your opponent.

In conclusion, no patch can fix this. The whole concept must be rethought, from profession abilities and traits, to the currently ignored combos and teamwork.

Putting more sprinkles on the tµrd of 1 game mode isn’t going to make it more appealing.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

well, to be fair, runes of strength got balanced

After 3 months!
Players knew it was OP the moment there were announced in dev conference. (You can look at the price history in marketplace).
But the “balance” team did not saw it coming?
Now what, another 3 moar months for Parrot nerf?
Is it so hard to see that putting easy access AI cheese is bad for the game?

You know all those ppl here and there saying:
“Balance is a joke, PVP is dead, I am quiting…”
And I always kept thinking yeah.. but game is still fun. Well it is’nt for a long time.
Sometimes you get a nice match with no lag on there cheap servers, without skyhammer w/o petting zoo w/o supa cheese builds. But for that one game in week it just ain’t worth it

Acrisor.8097:

The PvP game does not have a problem in balance, but in concept, the way each profession was thought, that is the problem. As it stands, some professions are vital for teams, or more important to have then others because of their unique integration abilities, and this represents a concept issue, not a dps/support/heal/bunking issue.

On the other hand there is no room for more imagination and vision. You are forced to play the meta, or else your team can not explore the full potential of your profession, or you simply get smashed by your opponent.

In conclusion, no patch can fix this. The whole concept must be rethought, from profession abilities and traits, to the currently ignored combos and teamwork.

And there are many other issues that lead to this. The 3-slot utility system is not only restricted to unique key utility skills (like portal), but usually to as many stun breaks and condition cleansing that you can get out of them. The room/ freedom to use more niche, gimmick or general utility skills is almost none. The forth slot being dedicated to an epic skill that does not feels epic most of the time without being op/ highly annoying, does not helps the restrictive nature of skill customisation in this game either. Couple all this with some other problems that are more apparent in pve (underwhelming skill progression), and you can really see that this system is not really that good as a whole.

As I said in my post, I think more balance patches won’t do much. They’ll probably bury some builds to make others shine, while the same problems will remain. We need a more ambitions concept/ design patch that is willing to revamp some mechanics in this game for the better. The game, as it is, is cripping anet’s ability to balance it any better, so keeping things as they are will not be good for anyone: not for us players, not for anet’s balancing devs.

There have to be splits between PvE and PvP.

Making everything universal doesn’t work.